Approaching Twilight {A Kingdom Hearts roleplay}

[her-my-oh-ninny]

T e n. ~~ N i n e. ~~ E i g h t. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ b r e a k i n g ~~ a w a y.

I' m ~~ a l l ~~ d r e s s e d ~~ u p ~~ a n d ~~ I' m ~~ r e a d y ~~ t o ~~ P L A Y.

SPACENaito’s eyes stayed fixed on Frey’s face when she noticed his eyes making attempts to open and remain open. She couldn’t help but smile and let out a small sigh when his red eyes stayed open. Even cure magic wouldn’t be able to help wake someone up from a head injury. What would she be able to do if Frey hadn’t woken up? Of course she would have had to go outside by herself to see what kind of world they were in, and if there was someone who might be able to help. But she didn’t need to even think about that possibility anymore.

SPACEA light smirk found its way onto her lips. “CPR are for those who aren’t breathing. You seemed to be breathing perfectly fine.” Before, when Naito got out of the driver’s seat and headed over to Frey, she noted that he was breathing. Of course Frey was joking, but she also knew that CPR was very important in emergencies. She watched as Frey sat up from the floor, smile fading when he fully sat up and a small amount of blood fell down the right side of his face.

SPACE“Frey, are you sure you’re okay? You’re bleeding. We should bandage that…” Yes, they crashed. Naito’s eyes shifted away from Frey when he noted that out loud. Frey was driving the ship, but because he was driving he also lessened the damage that could have been done to everyone plus the ship. It was her fault that they actually crashed. Not Frey’s.

SPACEWithout letting too much time go by Frey continued to ask Naito questions. “I’ll be fine, just a bit sore.” Soreness was to be expected after a crash. If you did not wear the seatbelt there was a high chance of injury or death. If you wore the seatbelt, there was less of a chance of the person being killed from being flung around. However, that doesn’t mean that injury would be fully avoidable. The seatbelt prevents the person from going in which ever direction out of the seat, but also acted as an obstacle between the person and continuing their movement of travel. Therefore, injury and bruising could appear where the seatbelt was in contact with the body. But, like most injuries, it will heal over time.

SPACE“The others should be okay, they had their seatbelts-” She was cut off when Frey attempted to move and ended up doing a face-plant into her chest. Almost instantly her face turned red from the sudden contact. Naito lifted up her arms to get ready to push Frey away, but stopped when he spoke. Letting her hands freeze where they were, and then slowly move back down to her sides. She remained quiet as Frey sat there, waiting for him to get up. Even when he got up away from her chest, and stood up, her face remained red. Only slowly beginning to fade when she stood up onto her feet and followed Frey to check on the others.

SPACEThe brunette helped check on the other three, making sure that they weren’t bleeding or injured badly. She seemed to have been right, the belts managed to save them from any major harm. Of course they weren’t able to see if the belt itself hurt them, but even if it had that would be able to heal rather quickly. But they were all breathing and seemed perfectly healthy, just unconscious. She watched as Frey gave each one some potion, that was the best that they would be able to do for the time being.

SPACENodding in response to Frey she watched the three as he bypassed her to head towards the exit. “They’re probably going to be pissed whe-!” She was caught off guard by the kiss, causing her eyes to widen just the slightest and her cheeks to adopt a scarlet coloring. Her sapphire eyes watched his when he let her go and apologized for the crash. “I-it wasn’t your fault.” She responded. “And I’m really glad that you’re okay.”Her eyes watched his for a few moments before turning away slightly when he cleared his throat and went to find a way out.

SPACE“But Frey, we should really bandage your head for now.” She talked to him as he found the normal exit blocked and walked to the pilot’s seat, sitting down. But before Naito was able to say anymore, he hit the eject lever and exited the ship through the roof. “Frey!” She moved quickly to where the seat used to be, looking up, out of the ship at the world outside. As soon as Frey hit the lever and was shot out of the ship a gust of freezing air found its way into the ship, causing Naito to shiver slightly.

SPACEAs she stood there, looking up and waiting for Frey to come back, some snow fell into the ship and gently landed on her head and shoulder. She turned her attention away from the outside and looked at the snow on her shoulder, using her right hand to brush it off then looking at the few melting snowflakes left on her hand. That was snow? She smiled as she watched the last few flakes quickly melted from the heat given off by her body. She knew of snow, but she never had the chance to actually see the frozen water droplets. It was because of this that she couldn’t help but feel excited about seeing how the world that they crash landed on looked.

SPACEOnly when she heard her name did she turned her attention back up to the opening in the ceiling. “What?” She called back to him the second time he called her name, seeing the seat being passed down to her so she could reattach it to the spot where it belonged. Once the seat was back in place, she quickly moved over to the first aid kit in the ship and grabbed some bandages out of it. Once she put the bandages in her pocket she looked back up at Frey. Pulling her up and out of the ship was probably the best idea, since using the eject seat again could end up causing more problems than they needed. And it wasn’t as though Naito would be able to easily pull herself out of the ship. “What’s that grin for?” She said as her browed furrowed slightly and stood onto her tip-toes, grabbing onto his forearms so that they both would have a better hold of each other.

SPACEAs Frey pulled her out of the ship, she made sure to keep still until half of her body was outside of the ship. Letting go of Frey’s right arm, she began to pull herself out the rest of the way. “Okay, I got it. I got it.” She extended her left arm all the way and used her right leg to completely pull herself fully out of the gummi ship. Once she let go of Frey’s other arm she began to stand up onto her feet but stumbled forward into him. “Sorry, Frey.” She apologized as she backed away from Frey and stood up onto her feet.

SPACEWhen she was finally onto her feet, her eyes moved away from Frey and looked around at the snowy landscape. Her face brightened up as she took in what the area of this world they landed in looked like. She couldn’t help but feel excited about actually seeing snow for the first time. Naito walked forward a few steps away from the opening in the gummi ship, and then turned around to look at Frey, smiling. “This is snow, right?” She asked him watching as her breath came out from her mouth like a light fog, barely able to hide her excitement.

SPACEBut as she turned back towards Frey she noticed the blood on his face once again. “Right, let’s bandage that up first.” She walked back towards Frey, pulling the bandages out from her pocket and kneeled down to be at Frey’s level. As she unraveled the bandage to wrap around Frey’s head, she could feel her body’s temperature slowly dropping from the cold. Because of this her hands slowly began to shake just the slightest, but that didn’t stop her from unraveling the bandage further and looking at the injury on Frey’s head. “Hold still.” Without any more words she began to gently wrap the cloth around Frey’s head, even if it wasn’t much it would at least help keep the wound from bleeding more into his face and help close it.

SPACEOnce she felt that the bandage was wrapped around his head enough, she used her teeth to cut the bandage and used a piece of tape she brought along with the bandages to hold the bandage to itself. “That should work for now.” She told him as she put the rest of the bandages back in her pocket. “We should probably get going.” She told him. “Oh, wait!” Turning away from Frey she leaned back towards the eject opening and pressed a small switch near the opening, causing it to close. At least the other three should be able to stay warm for a while. The gummi ship had a way to manage the temperature inside when it got too cold.

SPACEFinally standing up onto her feet she looked around the snow. “Where should we head towards?” She asked the male. But as she spoke some snowflakes began falling from the sky as the wind began to pick up slightly, causing a strong gust a wind to blow past the two. Naito quickly crossed her arms and raised her shoulders in response, trying to keep her body as small as possible. She was completely excited about the snow and seeing it for the first time in her life, but she wasn’t so excited about the cold that seemed to come with the small white flakes. Even with the cold, she managed to keep her body from completely shaking. She should be fine for a bit in the cold. Still, she couldn't help but smile.

S e v e n. ~~ S i x. ~~ F i v e. ~~ F o u r. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ a l l ~~ o v e r ~~ y o u.

C o u n t i n g ~~ T h r e e. ~~ T w o. ~~ O n e. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ h a v i n g ~~ F U N.

[Hallow Genki]

.:: // [ f a t e ] IS a puppet master and CONTROLS [ t i m e ] as its strings...

<3<3<3<3 Frey raised an eyebrow, watching as Naito made life hard on herself by insisting on utilizing his help to get out of the ship as little as humanly possible. Still, it was amusing. Particularly riveting was the snow that clung to her breasts when she at last stood up, which caught his eye for an extended period before inevitably sliding off and melting. “Yeah,” he mumbled as the last of it dripped from her, and cleared his throat, his eyes going up to her face “Yeah, that’s snow all right.” He sounded a little bit too excited about it being snow, but he supposed he could chalk it up to whatever it was that was making her so excited, too. Judging by the question she’d just asked, he’d venture to say that this was her first experience with the frozen fluff.

Suddenly, she’d decided his head wound needed wrapping. He tried to dodge her but was too dizzy from blood loss, so he just kept his a** in the snow and folded his arms, annoyed. “Why don’t you just dump a potion on it or use cure or something? This is stupid…” he mumbled. Of course, he knew that certain wounds were best healed naturally, at least at first, and that casting cure on it could only do so much, but the last thing he needed if faced with a battle was to look less intimidating because he had a head injury. Not to mention, in a fight scenario, that bandage would basically be a giant sign pointing to his head that read “WEAK SPOT. ATTACK HERE.” Still, he appreciated her concern and supposed that it he may as well just let her have her way for now. After all, she did seem rather guilty about the accident, had let him do a dizzy face plant in her boobs, and if anyone did use his head injury as an indication that they should underestimate him, they would be met with an unwelcome surprise.

It would work out. He could make it work.

He stood and stretched, masking a wince with a yawn when they began to leave, pausing only to watch Naito hurry to close the Gummi Ship. “I hope they don’t wake up and think we’ve abandoned them or something. Or been kidnapped. Or killed. Or turned over to the dark side.” He smirked as he spoke, wiggling his fingers at the words “dark side” as if it were a mythical thing that little kids were spooked with via their parents in order to scare them into good behavior. Sometimes, the only thing left to do in dangerous situations was to make light of the darkest thing you were facing. At least, that was how Frey thought of it. If you could find light in the darkness, then the darkness could never overpower the light.

A space of light in a dark heart, saved only for love to live in.

He frowned as this thought flashed across his mind, remembering his dream. Remembering his past and memories.


He shook his head to cause his thoughts to disperse, though it caused instant pain to his head. Oh well. The distraction of pain was a welcome one in this troubled moment. His hand lifted and rubbed against the bandage as he began to make his way down the steep, snowy hillside with Naito, occasionally sliding in the snow as he went. He could tell she was cold. Uncomfortably so. And yet she seemed amused by it all. As if the snow were a subsequent novelty of this amusing thing that was snow.

“Should have brought along that blanket.” He was referring, of course, to the one thrown on Allaeyah. “I doubt she’d miss it since she’s been passed out this whole time and didn’t even know you’d given it to her.” A smirk stole across the dark mocha skin of his face, and he reached over, pinching Naito on one of her bare, exposed sides, before hurrying down the hill from her to escape her wrath. Once she was within reaching distance, he did it again, pinching and tickling an teasing her before running further down. He’d never bothered to answer which way they should head, but was going there anyway—downward. It seemed like the obvious option. They didn’t know what lay at the top of the mountain (if anything at all). So even if what lay at the base was unfriendly, they could have the advantage of seeing it and scoping it out ahead of time.

Making his way. Frey paused frequently to scoop up snow and fling it at Naito before hurrying onward, at one point running up behind her and dropping some down the back of her shirt.

But as he stood there with his hands on her shirt collar, Frey heard a sound that had only just recently been registered as familiar. The same sound he’d heard when he’d called Naito’s name out a few moments earlier. His eyes slid up and he saw a shelf of snow sliding down the mountain. But this time, the sound was getting louder, and it wasn’t stopping. “[********]” he snarled and grabbed Naito’s wrist, instantly booking it down the mountain, he tripped at one point and tumbled forward, but let her hand go at this so as not to drag her along. He eventually regained his footing just a bit shy of the base of the mountain. The avalanche of snow that was chasing them was gaining fast. The potentially dangerous encampment ahead was too far. They wouldn’t reach it in time. He looked right, then left and—“In here!” he called, grabbing Naito once more and pulling her into the cave as the snow slid by.

Comparatively, the avalanche was not the largest known to come from that treacherous pass, but to Frey who had never experienced one before, it was terrifying. An unstoppable rush of frozen fury that cascaded down toward them with force enough to snap a few barren trees on its way. Fearing it might flood the entrance to the cave, Frey grabbed Naito once again and dragged her futher inward. The temperature wasn’t much better, but there were candles burning and there was a small shrine set up for a purpose that was not immediately clear. There were remnants of human activity in the cave, and Frey had to wonder if it had been used to escape the snow flood in the past.

The almost metallic, almost stone-like grinding sound of the snow passing was deafening, but just as soon as it had begun it seemed to stop and once its echoes had died out, silence replaced it, bouncing around the cave and framing their audible and visible puffs of breath.

“Hell,” Frey muttered eloquently, sitting down on the cave floor, his a** on an animal pelt. “That was close”

.// [ w e ] ARE the puppets in the performance of [ l i f e ]. Our stage IS called [ f R e e d o m ], and EXISTS only in the place between one [ d r e a m ] and the NEXT ::.

[her-my-oh-ninny]

T e n. ~~ N i n e. ~~ E i g h t. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ b r e a k i n g ~~ a w a y.

I' m ~~ a l l ~~ d r e s s e d ~~ u p ~~ a n d ~~ I' m ~~ r e a d y ~~ t o ~~ P L A Y.

SPACENo response was made to Frey’s comment about the bandage being stupid. Naito knew that Frey probably understood exactly why she chose not to use a potion or magic. He was just being stubborn. The bandage could be taken off after a short amount of time since the wound didn’t look too deep, so it should be able to heal quickly on its own. The bandage was mostly to stop any more blood from falling into his face and help it seal itself just that much faster.

SPACEThe brunette kept her arms crossed as they began to make their way away from the ship. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.” She watched as a snowflake fell from the clouded sky here and there. “But I’ve got to say, us turning over to the dark side is probably the first thing that they’ll think of.” As she said this she rolled her eyes and stopped them on Frey, letting a smile play across her lips. Of course she was joking. What kind of friends would wake up without some of their friends there and instantly think that they suddenly decided to follow the darkness. Of course, if it was an abnormally long sleep then it would be a different story.

SPACEAs they continued to make their way down the mountain, Naito slowly tried to make herself smaller and as close together as possible. Every so often she found herself rubbing her arms to try and warm herself up, but at the same time brush off the cold. The more time she spent outside, the less interested in it she became and the more her body temperature dropped. And yet, she still couldn’t help but want to be interested in the snow. Her body just was not being very grateful to the unforgiving cold.

SPACEWhen she heard Frey speak she turned her attention away from in front of her and towards him. A blanket? That sounded absolutely wonderful. But wait a minute… “Oh yeah, because leaving her there naked would have been a good idea.” She glared at him as she uncrossed her arms and rubbed her hands together to try to warm them up just the slightest, but to no avail.

SPACEBut no time was spent in between her rubbing her hands together and Frey pinching her arm before running ahead down the mountain. “Ow! Frey!” She hissed at him as she clumsily made her way down the path, following him and trying to catch up to him. A frown remained fixed on her face as she tried to get him, but as soon as she got close to him he pinched and tickled her. She flailed her arms at him, trying to make him stop, but she couldn’t help but laugh slightly. When he ran ahead she let out a large ‘huff’ as she followed after him, slipping ever so often. “Dammit Frey!”

SPACEJust as she was getting closer to Frey a ball of snow was flung at her. She managed to duck enough to not get hit in the face, but the snow collided with the top of her bangs, leaving some of the remnants behind while other parts fell to the ground. She stood there for a few moments, lifting up her cold hands to brush off the remaining snow. Afterwards, she quickly picked up some snow, flung it at Frey and continued down the mountain.

SPACEEvery time that Frey flung snow at her she picked up snow and threw it back at him. Naito managed to dodge some of the snowballs but others hit her on various places, luckily not too many managed to hit her on her head other than the first one. Frey had even managed to get behind her and drop some snow down the back of her sash and black top. As soon as the snow made contact with her back she inhaled quickly and let out a “Eep!” Turning to look at him she smacked him on the shoulder, the contact hurting her mostly numb hand more than Frey probably even felt it. “Stop that!” She frowned at him as she looked at him.

SPACEHowever, as her eyes looked up towards his her brows furrowed. “What are you looking at?” She asked him as she followed his eyes towards the direction they were looking. Naito stood there watching the snow tumble down the mountain, unsure of what to do. An avalanche? Of course she never experienced one, nor had she seen one, but she knew what they were.

SPACEWithout any more time being wasted, Frey had grabbed her wrist and pulled her to run along with him down the mountain. “Wait, Frey! I don’t think-!” As she spoke Frey tumbled forward, letting go of her wrist. The sudden lack of force pulling her forward caused her legs to fumble and cause her to fall forward, straight into the whiteness of the snow. She tumbled forward slightly, not nearly as much as Frey had. When her skin made contact with the snow a sharp pain from the coldness almost instantly flowed through her body. She waited, lying in the snow for a few moments as her mind tried to process everything. But just as soon as her body came to a stop did she tell herself to get up and out of the snow, they needed to find a way to escape the avalanche. There was no chance that they would be able to outrun it.

SPACEAs soon as she was fully onto her feet once again, Frey grabbed her and pulled her into a nearby cave, following him when he went further into the cave.

SPACEShe listened as the avalanche finally came to a stop, replacing the loud sound with silence. Where exactly were they? Obviously a cave, but she hoped it didn’t belong to anyone or anything. Still, she was thankful for the cover from the avalanche and the harsh wind. “I…it was.” It took her a few tried to finally be able to get the two words out. Her clothes were soaked from the snow. She looked over towards a small fire pit and summoned her keyblade, pointing the tip at the remaining wood. “F-fire.” As soon as the spell left her keybalde and ignited the firewood, Naito’s keyblade dispersed. Returning to where it waits for her to call it again.

SPACEHer sapphire eyes watched the flames for a few seconds before she crossed her arms and walked over towards where Frey sat down. The snow that melted on her hair caused pieces of it to cling to the sides of her face and flattened down other parts of her hair. “It…it’s freezing.” As she spoke she sat down on the ground near Frey with her legs bent and her arms crossed. “So…” She paused when a shiver moved down her spin, causing her body to beginning shaking to try and keep itself warm. “Cold.”

SPACEShe felt exhausted. They were finally out of the snow and escaped the wind, but it wasn’t exactly warm in the save either. And it wasn’t until she was actually away from the snow and stopped running around that she was able to feel exactly how cold her body had become. How much energy was her body spending trying to keep itself warm? A lot. But by the temperature of her limbs, ears and nose her body was not able to do as much as was needed.

SPACE“I’m just really…” She sighed as she set her arms on her knees and forehead on her forearms. “tired.” Naito closed her eyes as she sat there, listening to the crackle of the fire and its echoes. They could take a nap for a bit, couldn’t they? It wasn’t as though it would hurt anyone if they waited for the snow from the avalanche to settle a bit more before heading out into the cold once again.

S e v e n. ~~ S i x. ~~ F i v e. ~~ F o u r. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ a l l ~~ o v e r ~~ y o u.

C o u n t i n g ~~ T h r e e. ~~ T w o. ~~ O n e. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ h a v i n g ~~ F U N.

[Hallow Genki]

.:: // [ f a t e ] IS a puppet master and CONTROLS [ t i m e ] as its strings...

<3<3<3<3
Frey sat shivering in the dark of the cave as well. When the sound stopped, he set Naito up directly in front of the fire she’d cast before quickly hurrying to the motuh of the cave to assess how snowed in they were. The answer was something along the lines of “considerably.” And what about the gummi ship? Had it been completely buried up there on the mountain? Would they ever see it again?

Would they ever see anything again at all? Squinting toward the top of the mouth of the cave, he could see a tiny gap, through which blue-gray sky was visible, slowly becoming duskier as sunset approached. Good. At least they could see where the top was. They would be able to dig their way out. But not now—there was no point right now, nor did either of them have the necessary energy.

Frey returned to Naito, his expression bracing as he eased himself onto the floor beside her. “We’re going to spend the night here, at the very least. There’s no way we can get out of this cave tonight without freezing to death trying. We’d better just focus on keeping warm, for now.” With a heavy sigh, he held his twitching, blue-tinted fingertips up toward the fire, the feeling of pins and needles jabbing into them as they began to regain their sense of touch. But his soaked gloves—not to mention the rest of his clothes—insistently kept an overwhelming, bone-drenching chill around him. He sneezed. “[********. This isn’t going to work.”

He glanced over at Naito, but his look was resigned before he immediately began pulling off his armor—which felt like it was made out of carved ice at this point—dropping it onto the cave floor near by. Once that was all off, he started with anything made of cloth, setting it beside the fire, on the hot stones—or, well, eventually they would be hot, right? He peeled off his gloves, stockings shirt and pants in that order, shivering violently for a moment once it was all off, but as he leaned closer to the fire he let out a shaky sigh of relief. “You should probably do the same. The extra layers are doing nothing but bad s**t for you now.” He flicked his eyes over to her once more, his gaze following the way her garments clung to her form. He swallowed a lump that had flew into his throat, and tried to dispel the idea that his body had come up with without the consent of his brain.

Well, it told him in a convincing fashion, That is a very good way to keep warm…

But Naito had just told him she was tired. And she looked it. And he was tired too. But at the same time… if they just went to sleep as they were, there was no way they would last the night. Not in this cold. Not with freezing clothes or no clothes at all. He cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together “And I should…uh…I should probably take off my underwear, too.” He’d left them on so as not to give her the wrong idea, but at this point, his balls felt like they were resting in icewater and he couldn’t stand it anymore. “If you want me to look away, I can,” he offered as he turned his back on her and rolled his sopping boxer shorts off, exposing the whole of his soft cocoa-colored skin. From the cold, the scar that Dei had left on him at the end of their first journey became more visible. Pale and almost sickle-shaped on the back of his left shoulderblade, and directly overh is heart in the front. He glanced over his shoulder at her and smirked in what he hoped was a confident and not self-conscious fashion, raising his eyebrows. “Do you need help with those?”

He couldn’t help himself anymore. Keeping one hand over his crotch in a vague attempt at modesty, he half-turned back toward her and reached with his free hand to grab her sash, tugging at it to bring her closer. “Come on. You don’t want your nipples to get so cold they fall off, do you?” He chuckled and kissed her cheek, then pulled her sash off for her, setting it on top of his clothes beside the fire. “And don’t even think about hitting me this time. I’m doing this for your own good. You’re too stubborn, and if I don’t help you with this, you’re going to die of hypothermia.” Her belt came next, and he set it beside the sash, though a bit further from the fire since it wasn’t really fabric and would dry differently and—assumedly—easier.

He stared down at her, smirking more. “You know, you look kind of like you’re going biking or something without this pink s**t on there. Also,” he flicked one of her nipples and chuckled, “How does this work without a bra? Doesn’t it hurt? Christ, your clothes make no sense. If I didn’t know better, I’d say their only actual function was to make people stare at you…” He wet his lips and stared at her a bit more, a smirk still on his face before he realized he was probably being a little creepy and cleared his throat, looking away.

He’d forgotten entirely about the fact that he was supposed to be covering himself with one hand, and sat spaced out, completely naked beside her, staring into the fire. One of his hands dropped to scratch at his stomach, the other resting on the rug behind himself. “Now are you going to take the rest off yourself, or do I have to do it for you?” He turned his head to look at her again, grinning, his teeth so starkly white behind his dark lips, his eyebrows lifting in question before his gaze dropped to rove over her, as if to point out “those clothes. Yeah. The ones on your body,” before they rose to meet hers again.

“I won’t look at you all night…if that’s what you want.” He cleared his throat and looked away again, turning his head to face the darkness of the cave entrance, shivering a little even just from looking at the area that was not bathed in the warmth of the fire. “I mean, I want to. But…” he trailed off slightly, lifting his head to scratch the back of his head, then looked at her again, then away instantly as he realized he said he wouldn’t look anymore and had just proven himself wrong. He couldn’t help it! “But uh. I can keep you warm, though. With my eyes closed. And I’ll just…I won’t touch anything weird. But we need to stay warm, you know?” He was saying all of this as convincingly as possible to the darkness in front of him, his ears pricked to try to tell if Naito was undressing behind him.

“You can trust me. I’ll be good if…you want me to.” But I really don’t want to be, said the silence that followed his words.

.// [ w e ] ARE the puppets in the performance of [ l i f e ]. Our stage IS called [ f R e e d o m ], and EXISTS only in the place between one [ d r e a m ] and the NEXT ::.

[her-my-oh-ninny]

T e n. ~~ N i n e. ~~ E i g h t. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ b r e a k i n g ~~ a w a y.

I' m ~~ a l l ~~ d r e s s e d ~~ u p ~~ a n d ~~ I' m ~~ r e a d y ~~ t o ~~ P L A Y.

SPACENaito brought her head up from her arms and watched the fire dance in front of her as she set her chin on her arms. The clothes that clung to her body continuously sent shivers down her spine while the fire in front of her tried to warm her back up. However, it wasn’t working. Even with the heat from the fire heating up the areas of her body that weren’t covered in freezing cold and wet clothes, the areas that were covered kept her from being comfortable and warm. But there was only a limited selection of actions that she could so to help keep her warm. It didn’t help that she grew up on an island, so humid hot air was what she was what her body was used to.

SPACEUpon hearing Frey return from having checked the entrance she glanced at him, only moving her eyes instead of moving her body and risking having her clothing move and become even colder. She only nodded in response to him saying that they should stay in the cave for the time being. Naito didn’t even want to think about how cold it would be outside of the cave without the brightness and heat from the sun, let alone actually be out in the coldness of the night.

SPACEAt some point she had turned her attention back towards the fire. Looking at the fire move seemed to help her feel just a bit warmer than when she wasn’t watching it. Even though she very well knew watching the fire actually did nothing but try and pull her focus off of the fact that she was sitting in a cold cave, with drenched clothes on.

SPACEWhen Naito heard metal hit the ground she lifted her chin from her hand to glance at Frey, who was in the middle of undressing. “Frey! W-what are you doing?” She said as she shivered, her body subconsciously trying to get her body to heat back up to the normal temperature.

SPACEShe should do the same? Her brows furrowed when he said that. “I’m not going to get naked in this cold cave.” She sat up straight when she said this, keeping her arms crossed over her chest in an attempt to keep her arms and torso as warm as possible. Of course her soaked clothes weren’t doing anything good for her, but she didn’t feel like taking off her clothes would be a good idea either. She didn’t want to be fully undressed in the cave with the only source of heat from the fire that she had made.

SPACE“Wait, what?” As he turned to remove his boxers she turned to look towards him. Almost instantly her cheeks adopted a light rose color. She went to turn her attention away, but her eyes caught the shape of the scar on his back and caused her to stop from turning her eyes completely away. So was that the scar from the scene that she had seen before? The scene that Dei practically forced down her throat. The pain, the fear… Her heart throbbed with pain from remembering that and knowing that Frey had gone through that first hand. His own sister hurt him so badly. A through and through wound? What else had she done? What else will she do?

SPACENoticing that Frey had turned his attention back she quickly turned her sapphire eyes away from him. She hoped that he didn’t catch her staring for too long, not that it was a long period of time anyway.

SPACEBut no sooner had she turned her attention away from him had he moved towards her to grab her magenta sash. “H-hey! Frey!” She could feel her face getting more red by the second. “I’ll be fine! I will warm up eventually.” The kiss on her cheek did not help her calm down at all. She had tried grabbing Frey’s hands to stop him from removing the sash and the belt, but with no luck.

SPACEWhen he stopped she huffed, slightly frustrated at him. When he flicked her she winced. “Ow!” She hissed as she crossed her arms over her chest, more in an attempt to keep him from doing that again than keep her arms warm. “It has a built-in bra, okay?” Her brows furrowed once again as she spoke, the red on her cheeks refusing to disappear. “And clothing like this is what I prefer to wear at my home. On an island.”

SPACEAs soon as Frey mentioned her or him taking off the rest of the clothes and smiled the red on her face deepened once again. “I-I’ll do it!” She spat out in fear of him taking off the rest of her clothes right away. “Just…just don’t look while I undress.” As she spoke she removed her boots, socks and headband, tossing them on the ground near some of the other clothes so that they would dry eventually. Once he was done speaking she carefully stood up from where she sat, she didn’t want to stand up too quickly and find out that her feet and legs had become numb at some point.

SPACETurning her back towards Frey she slipped off the rest of her clothing, tossing those on the ground as well. She then proceeded to sit back on the blanket, or rug, with her arms covering her top and her eyes focused on the fire in front of the two. “…You suck.” She mumbled as she shivered just the slightest from the coldness on her back. Although she was cold, there was a difference between without soaked clothes on and with them on and continuously causing the parts that it touched to remain cold.

SPACEAfter another shiver crawled down her spine she mentally cursed at herself. She moved closer to Frey, letting her side touch his. Almost instantly she could feel the difference in body temperature when just her upper arm and hip touched Frey. She also noticed how her mind and body began to wake up once again.

S e v e n. ~~ S i x. ~~ F i v e. ~~ F o u r. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ a l l ~~ o v e r ~~ y o u.

C o u n t i n g ~~ T h r e e. ~~ T w o. ~~ O n e. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ h a v i n g ~~ F U N.

[Hallow Genki]

.:: // [ f a t e ] IS a puppet master and CONTROLS [ t i m e ] as its strings...

<3<3<3<3

Frey promised he wouldn’t look, but of course, he wound up looking. He couldn’t help himself! His girlfriend was undressing behind him, and he was naked, and… But he really didn’t see much since her back was turned, and he made sure to turn his head back around quickly, so that she wouldn’t catch him peeking. He supposed he should feel like a creeper for this, but whatever. They were dating, and that was generally the only situation in which it was universally okay to be a creeper, right?

He took her clothes and helped her situation them in front of the fire, discretely feeling her top. He wanted to know what the ******** a built-in bra was and what it felt like, but afterwards he still felt kind of confused about it all. He felt a little skeevy in general for forcing her to start stripping, and cast a guilty look at her, making sure to keep his eyes on her face. “Sorry. This really is best for us right now, though. It’s not like I enjoy having my d**k hanging out in the cold air, either.” He smirked a little awkwardly, trying to clear the air and smooth things out a little, though he got the distinct feeling that he was failing.

Focus, Frey. Focus.

But what on? All that existed at that moment was the two of them in that cave. (NAKED) and there wasn’t anything that could be done about anything else. To make matters worse, they were still cold. He could almost hear Naito shivering beside him, and he felt it too. A coldness that persistently crept up into his spine, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

That was, until her arm brushed his, and the hairs pricked up for another reason entirely. He glanced sideways at her, raising a periwinkle eyebrow. At first brush, he assumed that she’d rubbed against him on accident and would instantly pull away and slap him or something as if it had been his fault. But she didn’t. Instead, she settled in more against him. He instantly felt what felt like a hundred degrees warmer, and it wasn’t from the direct transfer of body heat via skin contact alone.

But, hey. That was something to think about, too.

He cleared his throat. “You know, taking off our wet clothes is enough to keep us from getting colder because of them, but it isn’t really going to help us keep warm. Uh. Obviously,” he glanced at her, smirking a little, mostly because he couldn’t seem to keep the muscles on his face from drawing into a grin. He lifted his arm in an obvious way so as not to startle her when it made its way across her back and wrapped around his waist, coming to rest with his palm flat on her stomach, fingers twitching. “We should use body heat to keep our temperatures up.”

He tried to gauge her reaction, not wanting to scare her away by being too forward. His heart was racing but he couldn’t help it. Although his intentions were—at the root level—entirely pure, much less pristine thoughts kept cropping up in his mind. His hand idly slid along her stomach, side and hip, fingertips twitching against her skin, hand distractedly squeezing at her hip or her thigh as it roved over it. He realized himself and cleared his throat, his hand pausing. “Oh, sorry. Just trying to warm you up, you know. Ha,” he said lamely and unconvincingly. Oh hell.

Grunting at his own lameness, he boldly pulled her closer anyway, turning toward her a bit more, and pulled her head more toward his. He wrapped his arms around her, forcing her arms open. Before she could protest too much, he hastily said “I’m not looking, okay? I’m not looking!” And truthfully, his eyes were closed as he put her arms around his shoulders and pulled her so that their chests pressed together. Akwardly, he tried to keep their hips apart, though, with her kneeling between his legs. He didn’t want her to wind up kicking him in the balls if she accidentally touched something she didn’t’ want to, and well, as it stood (literally) right now, it was pretty likely that if she were any closer, she would brush up against him.

And of course, Naito couldn’t be thinking about the same, additional extra way they could stay warm, could she? Her mind was never in the gutter. She was always walking the straight and narrow.

Right?

Frey opened his eyes and glanced down at her, scanning her face for a reaction. “We have to stay warm,” he explained in a tone that should have been very righteous but instead sounded simultaneously giddy and guilty. “This is no time to stand on principle.” Clearing his throat, he shut his eyes again. “I won’t do anything else if you don’t want me to. I swear. You can trust me…” Mumbling this out, he opened one eye to peek at her face again, hopefully, wanting her not to be scowling at him with a venomous fire in her eyes, about to crush his babymaker with her knee and shove his face into the fire. Really, she should have felt very safe since he gave her such an upper-handed position, being able to knee him in the family jewels whenever the hell she wanted.

Crimson orbs searched sapphire ones. Smirking as he squeezed her against himself to keep her from trying to flee and the feeling of her chest squishing on his filled his mind, Frey could not help what came out of his mouth next: “Cold? <3” He grinned at her cheekily as if none of this bothered him at all, but the truth was that even by the dim light of the fire and his dark skin, Naito could tell that even Frey was blushing now. Mostly, he was embarrassed by his own lameness. It wasn’t like he was self-conscious about being naked. But he’d always thought that if he managed to get Naito completely undressed, he’d be much more suave and it’d be going in a much different direction than this. Instead he just kept making lame—albeit completely valid—excuses to touch her and made a n****e joke and thought about how awkward it was to be aroused right now.

Yet much to his incredulity, she wasn’t hitting him or spitting in his eyes or ripping his face off and stomping on it. Maybe she was too cold, and too tired. Or maybe…

And in an instant in which the only sound was their hearts beating, he felt himself drawn toward her, and pressed their lips together in a halfnumb kiss, seeking to warm them up. The first kiss was innocent enough, the second of course only seeking warmth, the third breathing more life into her. “We’re going to be okay,” he said in what may or may not have been unnecessary comfort, his lips brushing hers as he spoke, his voice low. He rested his forehead against hers, then kissed her again. The fourth kiss was much longer, much deeper, and really he had no excuse for it at all except that he wanted to kiss her. His lips groped against hers as his tongue stole into her mouth, his brow knitting as a jolt of heat shot through him again, leaving him feel burned from the contact, as if he’d been electrocuted by her mouth and it had exited from his crotch.

The feeling reawakened his sense of consciousness, and simultaneously heightened his inhibitions. Frey had told Naito that he wouldn’t do anything more that she didn’t want him to, and he meant it one hundred percent. But, as both brains in his body were convincing him now, that didn’t mean he shouldn’t at least try to see if she wanted to do certain other things… and if she pushed him away, that would be that, and he would leave it alone.

Continuing to kiss her, Frey pressed his palms against Naito’s back and knelt forward a little bit, over her, one of his hands dropping down to her backside. In one quick sweep, pulled her hips flush with his, the personal problem he’d been trying so hard to hide from her this whole time (though whether he’d been successful at all was unknown to him) now certainly becoming painfully obvious to her. He began to lay her back on the furs, but paused and opened his eyes again to look into hers, questioningly, asking permission.

.// [ w e ] ARE the puppets in the performance of [ l i f e ]. Our stage IS called [ f R e e d o m ], and EXISTS only in the place between one [ d r e a m ] and the NEXT ::.

[her-my-oh-ninny]

T e n. ~~ N i n e. ~~ E i g h t. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ b r e a k i n g ~~ a w a y.

I' m ~~ a l l ~~ d r e s s e d ~~ u p ~~ a n d ~~ I' m ~~ r e a d y ~~ t o ~~ P L A Y.

SPACENaito watched the flames form the fire extend upward and then seem to disappear or shrink back into the center of the fire. As soon as she was close to Frey could feel her body begin to heat up on the areas that were in contact with him. Then, the heat began slowly spreading through her body but it wasn’t from the simple contact or the fire. It took a few moments for her to realize, but the more she sat there the more her nervousness grew. What were they doing? What was she doing? She very well understood what could happen if she kept close to Frey in their current condition. But she also trusted him.

SPACEWhen Frey began talking Naito shifted her eyes over toward him. Of course she knew that just removing the freezing wet clothes wasn’t going to warm them up. Humans weren’t created to survive in cold environments without anything to cover their body from the harsh weather, and to hold their body heat in. She watched as he moved his arm around her and set it onto her waist. As soon as his hand began moving around slightly she glanced downward, even though she couldn’t completely even see her stomach because of her arms that remained crossed over her chest. “Yeah, but Frey…” She looked at him, giving him a blank, almost threatening, stare. Trying to warm her up? Yeah, right.

SPACEQuickly Frey had carefully grabbed her and brought her closer to him. “H-hey!” She shouted at him, her brows furrowing in response along with her cheeks turning scarlet. Naito looked up at him, ready to smack him for more than likely actually looking at her. But to her surprise, he really did have his eyes closed. Still, she couldn’t help feeling frustrated at the situation. There wasn’t any kind of barrier in between their bodies, and she couldn’t stop thinking about that. However, as she froze there with her arms around Frey and his around her, she could feel her head start spinning as it continuously repeated ‘Too close! Too Close!’

SPACEShe listened as carefully as possible while Frey spoke. Naito wasn’t afraid, she was more nervous about being that close to someone. The thing that she was mostly afraid of was her own body and mind. Her eyes turned towards the side, trying not to look at Frey in fear of her head spinning out of control and her face turning even more red, if that was even possible at this point.

SPACEUpon hearing his comment about the temperature she looked back up towards him, brows furrowed. “It’s below freezing here!” She almost hissed at him. Naito watched his eyes for a few moments, taking note of the redness of his cheeks. A huff was let out of her mouth as she stayed there, slowly getting more and more used to the feeling of Frey’s body against her’s. Slowly beginning to enjoy it.

SPACEAnd then he kissed her. Once, twice, three times… With each time that their lips made contact Naito became more and more comfortable, responding more each time. Slowly her nervousness began to take second seat to her growing want to be closer to Frey. But as soon as Frey pulled her closer, her nervousness and usual thinking fought its way back to the center of Naito’s mind. She could almost hear her brain fighting with itself and her body. What was she doing? Of course her body was quickly heating up, but it was definitely more than the contact of Frey’s body and the body heat that was warming her up.

SPACEQuickly her mind started panicking. Wait, wait, wait. Too close, need to create distance. But none of her thoughts or any warnings from her own mind seemed to make it down from her brain and out of her lips. It still seemed as though her body had a higher priority than her mind’s warnings did. And only after a few moments did her brain begin to slow down and work alongside with the wants of her body.

SPACEWhen Frey paused Naito’s eyes opened and looked up at his eyes. Watching him for a few moments, searching. A few quick moments passed before she carefully moved her arms from around his torso to around his neck, pulling him closer to her. She kissed him, letting her tongue venture into mouth.

S e v e n. ~~ S i x. ~~ F i v e. ~~ F o u r. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ a l l ~~ o v e r ~~ y o u.

C o u n t i n g ~~ T h r e e. ~~ T w o. ~~ O n e. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ h a v i n g ~~ F U N.

[Hallow Genki]

.:: // [ f a t e ] IS a puppet master and CONTROLS [ t i m e ] as its strings...

<3<3<3<3

Frey grinned when Naito slid her arms around his shoulders, and as they kissed, he lay her down on the animal fur beneath them.


-----


The following morning, Frey woke up feeling much colder than he had when he’d fallen asleep, and yet less like his life was in danger for it. The dry chill that had settled on his skin and on the inside the tip of his nose, fingers, toes, ears and any other protruding extremities was something he was able to tolerate much more easily than the damp bone-chill which had saturated them after the avalanche. At first, Frey wasn’t sure it was morning at all. It was still dark inside that back portion of the cave and the only light was the dying fire which he blew on to try to bring it back to life. He checked his clothes and found that his boxers, at the very least, were dry—not to mention toasty from sitting on the hot rocks by the fire all night. They felt fantastic, like they’d just been microwaved, and he stood still in them for a moment or two, just enjoying the way the warmth lay against him.

His eyes strayed to Naito on the fur by the fire, and he realized that his absence may cause her to be come a lot colder, especially since she was sleeping, so he grabbed his shirt and pants and after checking them for dryness draped them over her. He could just wear his boxers until she woke up, at least. Her clothes would not have made a very good blanket. He slid his feet into his boots, and in boots and underoos he trekked forward in the cave to check out the entrance.

Yes, it was definitely morning. Sunlight was leaking in through the small gap at the very top of the snow through which clear, blue sky could be seen. He summoned his keyblade, and used it as the world’s worst snow brush/shovel, but it was kind of like trying to shovel snow with a pitch fork—the many holes of the keyblade caused snow to escape it and the blade merely cut through it in lines instead of pulling off chunks. Though he did manage to make the hole at the top a little bigger, he found that doing so actually let colder air in. The cave’s temperature must have been raised by the fire over the course of the evening, making it much more bearable. He backed away from the snow and thought of his options, his mind dizzy and swimming from getting up too quickly and immediately trying to do something labor-intensive, a cold sweat having broken out on his face because of it.

Naito knew fire magic, that much was certain. But he also wasn’t sure how much better Naito would be feeling. Would she be able to cast it? Not to mention, fire alone could melt snow, but depending on how cold it was outside, it could very well just melt down into a sheet of ice on top of the rest of the snow.

And ice, as strange as it was, did not melt as quickly when confronted with a flame.

Not to mention, while the cold snow and ice would be melting, it would also be letting of a lot of cold air in reaction, wouldn’t it? He wasn’t sure about this, but the last thing they needed was to be frozen inside of the cave with it even colder than it started out. He found himself really wishing there was a way to contact Suzushii and see if the others in the ship were okay, and if they could potentially come help dig them out.

Mentally, Frey ran through his own magical repertoire, pacing slightly in the entryway of the cave, staring at the wall of snow, which was illuminated so that it glowed from the sunligiht near the top, but was grayer near the bottom.

It was rather pretty, really. But now was the time to focus on destroying it.

He knew Blizzaga. A fat lot of good that did them right now. He also knew Stop. If it had been stronger, it could have been able to potentially stop the avalanche from happening, or at least, stop it long enough for them to get somewhere better than a tiny cave. Then again, he’d been feeling so frantic that he wondered if he would have even had the fortitude of mind to attempt to stop it with a spell. Probably not. The last of his three spells, Graviga, would probably be just as useless. What if he tried it and all that happened was that it pulled more snow in on them? Yeah. A tiny cave avalanche. That’s exactly what they needed right now.

But what other options did they have? If Naito’s fire magic was not enough to melt their way out, or even worse, if it froze the snow into ice that they couldn’t even climb up, they could be stuck in there for days. Fire was of course still their best option, but he didn’t want to have to wake her for it. He was sure she was tired from last night.

As he thought about what had happened, he felt his face get warm. He briefly toyed with the idea of just putting his face in the snow, letting dirty thoughts steam it away. Smirking, he shook his head and twirled his keyblade a little.

Well. At least Naito wasn’t standing right there to potentially be buried under a little avalanche. If Graviga pulled snow in on top of them, she’d likely be fine. It’s just him who would be buried, mostly-naked and soaked from head-to-toe again. But maybe if that happened, she’d be willing to warm him up again.

He grinned at the thought, and on this positive note, Frey pointed his keyblade at the wall of snow blocking their exit, and said, “Graviga!”

A heavy black orb grew against the snow. The areas that it hit, it seemed to condense down by a third, leaving behind a snow ball inside a larger, carved out ball of snow. Okay. He cast it a few more times, and by the time he ran out of magical strength, there were a series of perfect little snowy orbs sitting on the floor of the cave, having rolled out of the snow outside which looked like someone had taken a giant icecream scoop to it. It wasn’t as if he’d cleared a great path or something, but at least they could climb up on the snow. Or maybe, he mused, create a tunnel beneath it with this technique. Though that seemed a bit risky, and he found himself feeling very protective over Naito this morning. The last thing he wanted was for her to get trapped in a collapsed snow tunnel in her stupid, totally useless outfit and not be able to recover from it. Then again, who was to say that the snow on the top was packed and firm enough to walk on? For all they knew, they could fall straight into the snow anyway and still wind up buried.

It was a dilemma, but at the very least, the camp they’d spotted before was not too far from where they were now. If something disastrous happened, they would hopefully be able to signal to someone that they were there, even if they couldn’t get out of the fix themselves, and whether enemy or ally, encountering another entity right now seemed like a step in the right direction.

A brief pang of guilt shot through him as he remembered that they’d left their friends in the gummi ship, and although the others were undoubtedly warmer, he felt a little sorry that he’d actually had a very, very enjoyable evening with Naito, and found himself glad that they hadn’t been around to interrupt it. These thoughts just underlined the fact that it was so very hard to get time alone with his girlfriend. Who knew how long it would be until they had another chance like this one? That was, assuming she wanted one but… well, she seemed to have enjoyed herself…

Frey quickly shook his head to disperse the thoughts that caused him to feel warm again, and headed back to Naito and the fire to see if she’d woken up, and to tell her about the snow.

.// [ w e ] ARE the puppets in the performance of [ l i f e ]. Our stage IS called [ f R e e d o m ], and EXISTS only in the place between one [ d r e a m ] and the NEXT ::.

[her-my-oh-ninny]

T e n. ~~ N i n e. ~~ E i g h t. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ b r e a k i n g ~~ a w a y.

I' m ~~ a l l ~~ d r e s s e d ~~ u p ~~ a n d ~~ I' m ~~ r e a d y ~~ t o ~~ P L A Y.

SPACEThe coldness began to slowly seep into Naito’s body as she laid there. Her brows furrowed slightly when she began to stir. She moved her arms slightly before opening her eyes. When her hands came in contact with the pieces of clothing that were draped on her body she gently grabbed them. She attempted to curl in as much as possible so that more of her body was under the clothes, trying to escape the freezing air. Even though she knew that she should get up and dressed she could feel her eyes slowly closing again, her body obviously telling her that it didn’t want to wake up yet.

SPACEShe was exhausted. Exhausted from the excitement of the snow, the terror of the avalanche and the night spent with Frey. All she wanted to do was remain where she was and sleep.

SPACEBut she knew that she would have to get up sooner or later. Still, she was dreading it. She didn’t want to wake up and have to make her way through the snow. Just the thought of stepping in snow, and possibly falling in it, was enough to make her brow furrow and her mouth to turn downwards in a frown. Could she just melt all of the snow? Would that make it warmer? She would surely give up the joy of seeing and being in snow for the first time in exchange for some warm weather.

SPACENaito remained in the spot she laid in while she thought to herself. She wanted to try and prolong the act of actually getting up as long as possible. But as she continued to think of ways to remain where she was she could also feel her brain slowly beginning to wake up. She knew that if she tried to sleep for longer that her brain wouldn’t agree with her and she would end up groggy. The possibility of a headache was higher when she was groggy, and she really didn’t want a headache at all. Getting up and dressed would be much better than resting for longer and being dizzy when finally getting up.

SPACEShe shifted once again when she heard Frey saying a spell in the direction of the entrance of the cave. The actual word didn’t particularly register in her mind, but seeing as though she heard the same spell being used quite a few times he must have found a spell that was useful for getting them out.

SPACEWith her mind made up, she opened her eyes once again and turned her eyes onto the dying fire. She sighed and slowly uncurled her body, stretching it out as comfortable as possible and without having the clothes set on her falling off.

SPACELifting up her left hand, she set it on her chest to hold the shirt over her as she sat up from the ground. She sat there for a few moments longer, preparing herself for the movement that she would need to make in order to get onto her feet. Her head already seemed to disagree with the small movement of sitting up and she really didn’t want to stand up and lose her vision for a couple of seconds because of the sudden change.

SPACENaito grabbed Frey’s pants and set them to the side, but still held onto the shirt. She shifted the shift slightly so that it hung on her shoulders but her arms weren’t through the sleeves, covering her back and most of her front. Finally she lifted herself up onto her feet and walked over to where she tossed her underwear and black top the night before. She picked up her colorful bottoms and slipped them on before putting on her black tube top.

SPACELuckily the clothes managed to remain warm despite the fire dying. She assumed that the clothes would be dry, but that they would still be cold because of the cold air that has filled the area. However, even with the fire almost dead, the rocks around it remained relatively warm. In turn, the warm rocks kept the clothes that were set on them warm.

SPACENaito was grateful for this. She would not have enjoyed having to put dry, but cold, clothes on. The relief of now having dry and warm clothes was comforting, even if she wasn’t as warm as she would prefer. Of course, Frey’s shirt, which she still had on her shoulders, was helping her keep more of her body heat in than her own shirt and sash would.

SPACEHer sapphire eyes scanned the ground as she stood there looking for where she had set her shorts. But her attention shifted when she heard footsteps coming back from the entrance of the cave.

SPACEAlmost as soon as her eyes found Frey, her cheeks reddened just the slightest as she remembered the night before. “G-good morning!” She had to at least say something. If she waited for him to say something before she spoke up she had a feeling that the air around them could possibly become awkward.

SPACEHer eyes shifted back to the ground, searching for her shorts once again. She managed to get her undergarment and top on before Frey returned from whatever he was doing with the snow, but nothing else. If it was any other moment, if she was getting dressed and Frey walked in on her, she would have found the nearest object and thrown it in his direction to get him to turn away. But she assumed that there wasn’t too much that she needed to hide anymore. Still, she wanted to find the rest of her clothes and put them on.

SPACEThey needed to get going anyway, didn’t they? Were they going to head towards the camp site that was at the bottom of the mountain? That was the direction they were heading in yesterday, before they had to run from the avalanche that raced them down the side of the mountain. But what was waiting for them at the camp? Friend or foe?

S e v e n. ~~ S i x. ~~ F i v e. ~~ F o u r. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ a l l ~~ o v e r ~~ y o u.

C o u n t i n g ~~ T h r e e. ~~ T w o. ~~ O n e. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ h a v i n g ~~ F U N.

[Hallow Genki]

.:: // [ f a t e ] IS a puppet master and CONTROLS [ t i m e ] as its strings...

<3<3<3<3

When Frey returned to the back of the cave and saw Naito searching for her shorts, his eyes immediately went to her panties and he couldn’t help but grin like a fool. “Hey, yeah…good morning.” He vaguely registered how awkward she sounded, stuttering like that, but he was too busy being mind-numbingly attracted to her to notice. “Nice a** <3 all prickly with goose flesh.” Grinning broadly and teasingly, he walked over and lifted up one of the warm stones, exposing her shorts which had been underneath it. He prodded them gently with his fingertips, and made a small sound of approval.

“That s**t’s nice,” he grunted before standing and offering them to her, though as soon as she’d taken them from him, Frey grabbed her around the waist and pulled her in for a firm, affectionate kiss. He groped their lips together for a moment, his chest pressing tightly against hers before pulling reluctantly away and stepping back to let her dress. He could feel himself grinning like a fool, and he blushed because of it, his right hand raising to scratch the back of his head while his left moved to rest on one of his hips.

“So. I’ve used Graviga to compact some of the snow, and it made a hole near the top big enough for us to crawl out of to get atop the snow. But…it’s not really clear whether the snow’s hard enough to walk on right now. I’m game if you are, though? We don’t really have much of a choice. We’re going to have to take some kind of risk in order to get out of here quickly enough to avoid either of us freezing to death.” Frey mused through all of this aloud, relaying it to her for her consideration, all while handing her piece by piece of her clothing—what little there was of it—to help her get dressed faster. However, once she’d finished, he grabbed his shirt and made his way to the mouth of the cave to show her what he’d gotten done, gesticulating toward the carved out scoops of snow, all while shirtless with his tunic still in one hand. However, once he’d finished explaining and gesturing and demonstrating and had moved on to waiting quietly while she took in what he’d shown her, he realized how cold he was getting and pulled his shirt on, briefly returning to the back of the cave to get anything else he’d left behind, putting it all on as well.

With a slight sigh of simultaneous comfort and guilt, he took a moment to appreciate the fact that his clothes covered a lot more of his skin than Naito’s did, but felt bad. He didn’t like the thought of her going out there in what she had. Not again. Not when it had been so damaging for her to fall in the snow last time. What if they both fell in again? Frey pursed his lips, and pulled his shirt off again, having to carefully pull it out from under his gloves as well, before returning to her. Without asking, he reached forward and slid one arm of his shirt onto hers, then grabbed her other one and slid it on there as well, pulling it closed around her as much as possible. He held the shirt like this with one hand while standing behind her, and held her back to his chest to keep her from turning around and fighting with him about this, pinning her to himself, essentially, so she couldn’t rip his shirt off and throw it at his face, saying she was fine without it. His other hand quickly unfastened his waist belts, and he fed it around her, only moving his other hand to help with it at the last possible moment, cinching the belt a bit loosely at first, so he could pull the shirt closed as much as possible since it had slipped upon being let go, and then cinched the belt more, as tight as he thought it could be without causing her a lot of discomfort.

“Shut the ******** up. I don’t want to hear about it. You’re wearing it, and that’s final. You can’t be running around here in that. You’ll die.” He smirked at her despite his words, then looked at the snow. While she was still talking and without warning, he stepped forward onto one of the scoops his gravity spell had made, then up another, before crawling out and onto the snow to test its stability. First he lay on it, making as much surface area with his body as possible. It was so cold it hurt his skin to touch it for very long, and he knew that he’d made the right decision by forcing Naito to wear the shirt rather than he. Then, gingerly, he sat up on his a**, before rolling to his knees. He moved them a little, trying to rock weight onto them, then onto his hands. The spikes on his armor dug into the snow, but the weight didn’t seem to be punching through it. Gingerly. He moved onto his haunches into a crouch. However, when he did, something gave way beneath him and he instantaneously dropped an inch or two.

Yeah, no. He was not going to risk falling in.

“Okay. We’re going to go on top of it, but we’re going to have to crawl, okay? It’s too dangerous to try to walk.” he said this as he very carefully shifted to his hands and knees instead and moved out of the space where he’d begun to sink.

As he waited for Naito to climb out, Frey set his eyes on the camp at the base of the hill, his ears pricked for the sound of danger, but he heard none. Just the very faint echoes of voices mostly muffled by snow, and the slight crunching of Naito emerging from the cave beside him. On the breeze, Frey could faintly smell smoke. Pure wood or coal smoke—not the toxic-smelling kind of an unintended fire. In other words, someone had a fire going intentionally, probably to either keep warm or to cook, and both sounded amazing to Frey right now, who had snow melting in his bellybutton.

“C’mon.” he said, his stomach so empty that it was growling from merely smelling the smoke that might have been from food. Frey began to crawl forward, but paused, looking the opposite direction, over his shoulder at the mountain. There was no sight of the gummi ship. A strong pang of guilt and concern shot through Frey, landing in his empty stomach, causing it to turn over. He’d been secretly hoping that the avalanche would have simply pushed the ship down the mountain, and that it’d be sitting in the town, open with the others having been taken out and taken care of by what happened to be—in his best-scenario dream—some benevolent and friendly villagers. But there was no sight of the ship. Frey wanted to go find the others, to make sure they were okay. After all, If Naito was cold, he couldn’t imagine how that other girl—Ally, was it?—was faring if they’d attempted to leave the ship. It wasn’t like she had clothes to change into.

But it just was not possible for them to go looking for their friends right now. They were too weak, too cold, too ill-prepared for this situation. Frey hated it, but they had to turn their backs on the ship for now, hope that the others had ridden out the avalanche from inside and were still safe, holed up with their rations or something for now. He quickly began to crawl again and said nothing to Naito, hoping that she hadn’t noticed him looking for the ship. He didn’t want her to worry about Suzu and the others—he wanted her to focus on getting to safety and getting in some real clothes so he could take his shirt back without feeling like a terrible boyfriend.

Carefully, slowly, he made his way with her, crawling on top of the snow, whose dangerous, fragile pile became slightly less and less so the nearer they got to the town, which seemed to only have a few feet of extra snow spray flooded into it. Every so often, one of his hands or knees punched through the top crust or snow, but he managed to avoid disaster by quickly pulling it away. He continually glanced at Naito to make sure she hadn’t fallen in any time she wasn’t talking. It wasn’t that he thought she was incapable of doing the same thing he was doing, but he couldn’t help but to worry. Even with his shirt on, she was still very exposed, and falling into the snow could be very, very bad for her. He lifted a hadn to rub his nipples in sympathy as he thought about it before he suddenly fell forward. He cried out, but it was cut short as the hand that had pushed through the snow hit solid ground. They were just outside the camp.

His outcry rang through the valley, but thankfully, there was no avalanche in response to it. Not even a nervous budge of snow. The sounds from the camp, however, had grown quiet, and he could hear footsteps coming toward them.

Please be friendly, he thought.

He couldn’t bear the thought of having alerted enemies because he was rubbing his nipples. Naito would never let him live it down.

.// [ w e ] ARE the puppets in the performance of [ l i f e ]. Our stage IS called [ f R e e d o m ], and EXISTS only in the place between one [ d r e a m ] and the NEXT ::.

[her-my-oh-ninny]

T e n. ~~ N i n e. ~~ E i g h t. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ b r e a k i n g ~~ a w a y.

I' m ~~ a l l ~~ d r e s s e d ~~ u p ~~ a n d ~~ I' m ~~ r e a d y ~~ t o ~~ P L A Y.

Naito listen to Frey while she put her outfit back on, piece by piece. Finally, she grabbed her boots from Frey when he handed them to her and slipped them on. At least her clothes were warm now. That was much better than the temperature they had been the night before, when they were soaked from the snow. However, Naito knew that as soon as they left the cave she would more than likely be just as cold as she was. If she was lucky the sun would keep them somewhat warm. Even if the snow and the wind insisted on making every living creature freeze.

Would the snow actually hold them up? Naito wasn’t sure. She didn’t know how long it took snow to compact down so that people would be able to walk on the top of it. After all, it was her first time even seeing snow. Before crash landing on this world all she knew of snow was what her father told her and from reading a few books.

But she was able to form a picture in her head that was similar to what was now in front of her. Billions and billions of tiny little pure white snowflakes. Untainted until they are touched by some outside force.

She followed Frey as he began walking back towards the entrance of the cave. “Well, we’ll have to try. We can’t just stay in here.” Obviously, she knew that he knew that. There was only so much fire wood left in the cave, but more importantly, there wasn’t any food or water. Yes, snow was a form of water but not a great one to try and drink. Who knew what could be hiding in it? However, no matter how you looked at it, there was no food in the cave.

“Graviga seemed to do a good enough job-” She began to say aloud after Frey had left to get dressed, but was cut off when he returned and gently grabbed her arm. Her blue eyes shifted to look at her arm and then at the other as she realized he was putting his shirt on her. Quickly her head snapped up to try and look at Frey, her brows furrowing. “Hey! I don’t need-!” Once again she was cut off and she frowned in response. Of course she was cold, and she knew that she’d only become even colder once they left the cave and were hit by the wind. But it wasn’t like Frey had layers of clothing, he only had one shirt.

Then, Frey walked forward from where they stood and climbed up and out of the cave. Naito huffed as she crossed her arms and watched him. “Fine. You get hypothermia then” she mumbled as she waited for him to say something from atop the snow. Of course she was joking, she wouldn’t really want him to get sick. She would feel horrible if he ended up getting sick.

Hearing him tell her it was okay, but that they would have to crawl, she stepped forward toward the opening. “Okay, I’m coming out then.” She called as she slowly, and carefully, climbed her way out of the cave and to the top of the deep snow.

As they made their way down the mountain Naito was glad that she was smaller and lighter than Frey. There were a few moments were she set her hand or knee down and had to quickly move them so that she wouldn’t sink into the snow, but it didn’t look like she had nearly as many close encounters as he did. Even though she was having less difficulty, she knew that she had to continue to crawl, no matter how uncomfortable it was.

Once they neared the bottom of the mountain Naito’s head turned back towards the top of the mountain. Wait. What about the others? Her eyes scanned the snow covered mountainside. There wasn’t a sign of the gummi ship. Would the others be okay? There were things in the ship to keep people warm, and the ship itself had a heating and cooling system that was constantly running. But what if they decided to try and make their way out? With the amount of snow that had fallen, the only thing that opening any of the hatches would do is let snow pile in.

She turned back towards Frey and opened her mouth to speak, but shut it when he fell forward and yelled.

Naito froze. There wasn’t any rumbling coming from the mountain like when the avalanche started, but there also wasn’t much noise coming from the camp that they were heading toward. Did they hear them? They had to have.

She moved forward a bit more before carefully getting onto her feet, listening to the footsteps that came towards them.

Who was it? Would they be a friend or enemy?

Naito watched and waited.

Only a couple of second passed before a young girlish boy, in military armor, came into view with. They looked at the two, seeming to contemplate whether or not the two in front of them were enemies or not. “Who are you?”

Naito opened her mouth to speak, “Um…we’re travelers” but before she could say any more a small red snake looking dragon made its way out of the back of the person’s armor and looked at Frey and then Naito. He squinted when he looked at Naito, seeming to try and remember if he knew her or not.

“Hmm…you look familiar.” He quickly made his way off of the person in armor and over to Naito. He made quick work of climbing up her and standing in front of her face with his tail holding him there by gently having wrapped itself around the back of her neck. One of his hands held his chin while the other was set on Naito’s face as he tried to put his finger on the person he was thinking of. “Ah ha!” He set his left hand in his right as he spoke. “Sora! That’s who you reminded me of!”

Naito watched the lizard as it spoke, about ten seconds away from swatting it away from her. But then it said her father’s name. Her sapphire eyes looked at the lizard in front of her, suddenly remembering her father telling her of such a creature. “Mushu, right?” She smiled as she spoke.

“Yep!”

“I’m Naito, Sora’s daughter.” As she spoke she turned to Frey, “And this is Frey” she introduced him to Mushu and the other. She couldn’t help but feel slightly awkward having to tell the first people they meet on this world that she is Sora’s daughter. Of course, it helped them. And it usually did help her in worlds that her father went to so long ago. But, well…she just didn’t want to think too much of her father today.

Mushu grinned as he walked back to the other and climbed up them, sitting in the back of their armor. “This is Mulan! My pride and joy!” Mulan fumbled as she scrabbled to get Mushu to quiet down. “Mushu!” She hissed at him. The red small red dragon dodged Mulan’s hands. “Right, Ping.”

Naito watched the two in front of her and Frey. Well, at least these two were friends. They wouldn’t have any trouble with these two, but her father knew them. What about the rest of the camp?

S e v e n. ~~ S i x. ~~ F i v e. ~~ F o u r. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ a l l ~~ o v e r ~~ y o u.

C o u n t i n g ~~ T h r e e. ~~ T w o. ~~ O n e. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ h a v i n g ~~ F U N.

[Hallow Genki]

.:: // [ f a t e ] IS a puppet master and CONTROLS [ t i m e ] as its strings...

<3<3<3<3

To be honest, Frey was very glad to see that the first people they encountered seemed to know Natio’s father.

Though, even more honestly, his mind did a brief pause as he thought about the man in question. And what he might say about the fact that he and Naito were dating. In particular, what he and Naito had done in that cave.

His swallow would have been audible were the little red dragon not so powerfully noisy. It felt like he had to swallow his whole stomach back down into place. But he forced himself to see reason, and at that moment that reason was a little less than straightforward and pure-hearted, but his keyblade would understand, right?


What Sora doesn’t know won’t hurt him.


With a sigh he extended his hand toward “Ping” when he was introduced, raising his eyebrows only a little bit as he tried to contemplate a reason why “he” might be incognito at the moment. Leaning forward, Frey whispered, “What’s with the disguise?” He stayed close to listen for the answer, not wanting the others to have to shout in case undesirables were just around the corner.

Ah. So a woman had no place in the army. But that didn’t bode well for them, either. If this girl had to cross-dress as a boy, then what about Naito? What would she have to do? Would they have to pretend to be soldiers, or could they simply state that they were civilians? He hoped for the latter, because in all honesty, it was obvious that there was no way in Hell Naito could pass herself off as a boy, particularly in the clothes she was wearing that day. Shaking his head, Frey glanced around, trying to peer around the corner. “We’re here on…you know. Similar business to what brought Sora here. But we need help. She needs clothes, especially.” He jerked one dark thumb toward Naito at this, his expression unimpressed. He didn’t care how many times she said that she came from an island. When they were back at her house, she should have realized that hey, the other worlds they’re visiting might not have such a warm climate and that it might be a good idea—at the very least—to wear at least a full layer of clothing on both her upper and lower body.

Granted, Kairi was the one who had actually purchased their clothing, which somehow made Frey rethink Kairi’s motives for her daughter’s attire. Was she really looking to protect Naito in an outfit like that? Or was she looking to get a son-in-law.

Frey would not have been surprised either way.

Frey shook his head again at his own thoughts, though his lips twitched into a small unintended smirk at the thought of Kairi being so devious. And then his mind wandered onto the possibility of having…parents? It was almost too much.


Slow down, Frey. You only did it once. You’re dating but that doesn’t mean she’ll want to… marry you…


His attempts to shake his head to clear his thoughts and put him back into the conversation at hand had failed repeatedly, so instead he cleared his throat and forced himself to reenter by speaking aloud. “So if you guys could spare some clothes and food and uh…maybe a shovel or two, that’d be great. Our friends are in a…” he paused as he considered what sort of transporation this world might have. He could hear and smell horses on the other side of the somewhat unsophisticated wooden wall that surrounded the camp. “A kind of carriage, and it was caught in the avalanche. We want to go back and make sure they’re okay.” He hoped that this was believable and that they wouldn’t look at him like he was crazy. Granted, the thought of a mere carriage being caught in an avalanche like the one they’d faced yesterday was a pretty terrifying, and definitely deadly scenario to consider.

So he added, “We want to find them, even if we…don’t like what we find.” His voice softened a bit before he shrugged. He was sure they were alive. Alive and well, on the other hand, was a different story.

“So can you help us?”

“Ping.” A strict voice cut into their conversation, and a muscular, severe-eyed man rounded the corner just behind the spoken word. Frey guessed by the long, swishy, militarily impractical cape the man was wearing that he was of a higher station than “Ping.” Frey straightened up his stance in an attempt to be respectful, though at the same time he felt like this was just a little disrespectful, since it only made Frey taller, and he already had a few inches on the soldier in front of him. In fact, the realization of this made Frey realize that Mulan was a tiny woman. A couple of inches shorter than Naito.

The man eyed Frey with a mix of suspicion and curiosity, his stare a tiny bit extended before it moved to Naito, though it immediately moved way and rounded on Mulan. He looked a tiny bit uncomfortable. “Ping, what is going on out here? Who are these people?”

“I am sorry, …captain?” Frey guessed at the rank. When the man just stared at him and didn’t correct him, he assumed his own rightness and continued. “Our carriage crashed up on the mountain, and the avalanche had us trapped in a nearby cave all night. I am concerned for my…” Would “girlfriend” be appropriate? He wasn’t sure how Naito would react to him saying “fiancé,” or “wife,” but Frey was equally unsure of how an unmarried woman travelling with a man might be viewed in a world such as this.

Well, one thing was certain. There was no way in hell Frey could try to pass Naito off as his sister.

Every second he delayed just looked more and more suspicious, and he felt like he’d been floundering for a while, though in actuality it was just a pregnant fraction of a second. He held up a finger and coughed into his hand to buy himself some time. The captain did not look impressed.

Would they buy that she was his wife, either? He didn’t know the marital customs of this world any more than he knew the status of women in general. But if women weren’t allowed to be soldiers at risk of death, he could only assume that their status was somewhat lowered for whatever reason. And there was one thing that societies that held women at lower status to any small degree always held as a norm. And it would help explain why she was so scantily-clad in weather such as this.

Frey was grateful that he’d been to so many worlds before, and that he’d studied about different cultures.

He just hoped Naito didn’t hit him for the result of that.

“Sorry,” he said as he stopped his cough and patted his own chest, before grabbing Naito by the arm and pulling her closer. “As I was saying, I’m worried for my concubine. Naturally, she is ill-dressed for this weather, and when our carriage fell to the avalanche, she took a tumble in the snow. We’ve been doing our best to stay warm, but I fear for her health.”

The captain looked a whole lot less suspicious, and he eyed Frey’s clothing a little. Frey was certain it must have seemed very exotic, since it looked absolutely nothing like the uniforms the locals were wearing. And, Frey hoped, they looked expensive enough to make him look like he could potentially own a concubine.

“My name is Shang. What did you say yours were?” Shang bowed his head just a little bit, but his eyes never left Frey, which was just a little unnerving.

“My name is Frey, and this is Naito. We humbly beg quarter in your camp, Captain Shang.” Shang looked less than thrilled, so Frey bowed low, his eyes closed. “You may search us for weapons, or anything else you might find suspicious. I promise we mean no threat. We are simply lost and stranded.”

The captain’s eyes slid over to Mulan, again looking unimpressed before looking back at the pair of them in time to see Frey grab Naito’s head and pull it down into a bow as well. “Very well. Ping, search them for weapons. I will find what little rations we might spare for them.” With that, the Captain slowly headed back inside the camp. Frey could hear him say, just inside, “Get back to your training! Do something constructive!” which was succeeded by the sound of multiple sets of scrambling feet.

Once he was sure Shang was out of eye and earshot, Frey straightened up and let go of Naito’s head. “…it was the only thing I could think of,” he said, a bit nervously as he stared at her. “It’s not like I actually think of you as uh…you know. You should be thrilled I’m so goddamn clever.” he stared at her a moment longer before grunting and sighing, his eyes shutting as a resigned expression came over him. “You’re going to hit me, aren’t you?”

.// [ w e ] ARE the puppets in the performance of [ l i f e ]. Our stage IS called [ f R e e d o m ], and EXISTS only in the place between one [ d r e a m ] and the NEXT ::.

[her-my-oh-ninny]

T e n. ~~ N i n e. ~~ E i g h t. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ b r e a k i n g ~~ a w a y.

I' m ~~ a l l ~~ d r e s s e d ~~ u p ~~ a n d ~~ I' m ~~ r e a d y ~~ t o ~~ P L A Y.

Mulan stumbled when she heard her other name called by the captain. Mushu immediately hid himself in the back of her armor just in time not to be seen. The young female, disguised as a male, looked awkward and uncomfortable as she stood straight and listened to Shang. “Oh!...Uhh…um. Civilians it seems.” She coughed and lowered her voice as she fumbled with words. It was obvious that she was not great at pretending to be a guy and felt a bit uncomfortable. A small feeling of relief came over Mulan when Frey began to speak and give an explanation.

Naito’s blue eyes turned away from Mulan and onto Shang when he rounded the corner and began speaking. He looked at them and then turned his attention back to the disguised female. He looked awkward as he stood there.

Wait. What made him uncomfortable? Naito watched him for a few moments while Frey spoke. He did only seem to quickly glance at Naito when he looked at the three. Did she make him uncomfortable? But she was fully clothed. There wasn’t anything wrong with the way she was dressed. At least Naito thought so. Of course, her clothes didn’t suit the weather in the world so far. And if she was wearing warmer clothes she wouldn’t have been at risk of getting hypothermia. But still!

She opened her mouth to say something -and it would probably be stupid that would end up her getting in trouble with this captain- but she was stopped when Frey pulled her closer to him. She stumbled slightly when she was pulled, causing her to fall into Frey a bit more.

“Frey” she hissed at him. Naito was not in the mood for sudden, unwanted movements.

And that’s when she heard it.

Concubine.

Her cheeks instantly turned beet red. At that moment, she was unsure if it was because of the embarrassment or the anger of being called something like that. But either way, she knew that she wanted to yell at Frey and hit him the instant that word came from his mouth. He seriously didn’t need to call her that. He couldn’t think of anything else to pass her off as? Why couldn’t he be her male concubine? Of course Naito knew that she probably wouldn’t have even thought of the idea, but that didn’t matter.

Naito opened her mouth to speak once again but stopped when she glanced back at the military captain. Well, didn’t he look a bit less uncomfortable now? She gently bit the inside of her lower lip as she slowly exhaled through her nose. All she needed to do was keep calm and quiet until Shang left them, right? Then it would be free game.

Fine then. She would try to remain calm until the other male was out of earshot.

Naito did her best as Frey introduced them in response to the other introducing himself. She crossed her arms and glanced toward Mulan before Frey pulled her head down in a bow. Just a bit longer.

Finally, Shang left after telling ‘Ping’ to search for weapons –which she responded with a “Yes, sir!”- and she was able to straighten up when Frey let go of her head. Immediately her sapphire eyes turned to look straight up at Frey’s. Her brows furrowed as she listened to him explain himself. It didn’t matter what he said, Naito already knew how she would respond. She wanted to respond right after he called her his concubine, but it might have gotten them in some sort of trouble. So she thought better of it.

But now the one they had to worry about was gone.

“You’re damn right I’m going to hit you!” She yelled at him as she hit him hard in the arm. “A concubine?” Naito hissed as she said the word, hitting him once again. “Really? You couldn’t think of anything else?” Her eyes narrowed as she spoke, hitting him once more and pushing him away. “Clever? Clever my a**.” She huffed as she crossed her arms and looked away from her. The shade of red on her cheeks only deepened since she began yelling at him.

Mushu had made his way out of the back of Mulan’s armor and now sat with his arms crossed and his eyes staring in the direction that Shang had went. “Seriously. That guy sometimes…” Mulan turned her attention away from the camp and back toward Frey and Naito. “I’m going to trust you guys don’t have weapons on you?” “I’m sure the only kind of weapons they would have are those key shaped things. Which if I remember correctly they don’t keep on themselves.”

Naito crossed her arms and turned away from Frey, setting her eyes onto Mulan and Mushu. “Right. No weapons.” At that Mulan turned and began to lead them toward the camp so that they would be able to see what the captain could find for them.

Mushu managed to stay hidden behind Mulan’s head as they walked, so that he could speak to Naito and Frey. “I don’t know if you two will be able to go up the mountain to find that carriage of yours. There’s a storm coming in.” The small dragon pointed up towards the Northwestern sky. “I don’t think you’d be able to make it up there, let alone if Shang will let you right away.” Mushu rolled his eyes as he said the captain’s name, obviously not thrilled by him. “Mushu!” Mulan hissed the word through her teeth as they entered the camp. In response, the dragon slipped back down into the back of her armor to hide from the others.

When they entered the camp Naito crossed her arms back over her chest, still fuming and cheeks still burning. The mention of a storm didn’t help their situation at all. If there was a creature made from darkness on this world it would have shown itself to them. Keyblade wielders have always been an instant target for Heartless, Nobodies and the like. But if there was a storm coming then how would they be able to make their way to where they would assume the gummi ship to be and dig out their friends?

Just their luck.

Naito was too busy being frustrated and pissed at Frey to pay attention to any of the looks from the males in the camp. Of course she knew why Frey called her a concubine. But that didn’t stop her from wishing he had called her something else. Anything.

S e v e n. ~~ S i x. ~~ F i v e. ~~ F o u r. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ a l l ~~ o v e r ~~ y o u.

C o u n t i n g ~~ T h r e e. ~~ T w o. ~~ O n e. ~~ A n d ~~ I' m ~~ h a v i n g ~~ F U N.

[Hallow Genki]

.:: // [ f a t e ] IS a puppet master and CONTROLS [ t i m e ] as its strings...

<3<3<3<3

Frey knew Naito was pissed. He’d anticipated this before the word “concubine” had even passed his lips. He didn’t blame her, but at the same time, he felt like she should have appreciated his ability to think on his feet. For all she knew, this story had been the line between the slightly begrudging hospitality that they were presently receiving and a battle with an army of world natives who were almost certainly good people on the inside. Someone can have a good heart, but when their cultural beliefs are threatened and torn, they most certainly will become hostile. All cultures should be respected by those visiting them. Even if he and Naito disagreed that women should be treated as less than men, that didn’t mean it was their place to try to push back against that norm. They were interlopers, and it was someone else’s fight. Someone whose personal life was affected by these prejudice’s. Someone like…Mulan.

Yes. This was Mulan’s war to wage, not his. Not Naito’s. All they could do was help Mulan the best they could, and right now that meant not getting attacked or kicked out of the camp.

Frey wanted to explain this in plain language to Naito so that she could hopefully ultimately see reason from his perspective, but there was no way for him to do so. The onlookers they’d collected were many and varied, all members of Ping’s training camp and all looking with heightened amusement and interest at Naito. Frey had to remind himself that hey, they were probably good guys, even as they were staring blatantly at his girlfriend’s a**. Grunting, he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against himself, before tossing a cocky smirk over his shoulder at some of the men who were ogling her. If she was going to be a concubine for the day, he wanted to make it clear she wasn’t open for business to anyone but him. She might not have appreciated him treating her like that, but he hoped she’d understand that it was better than letting those guys think they could have their way with her if they showed her a pretty penny. After all, it would probably be culturally inappropriate for her to tell them off for trying to do so.

Fearing that she wouldn’t see his point of view again, Frey leaned in and whispered to her. “Sorry. I know you can take care of yourself, but just play along. You don’t want to get in a fight with those guys and blow our cover, do you? Just…act offended at their cat calls and leering. Like they’re not good enough for you anyway. You can beat me up all you want, later.” Frey smirked at the last bit. Yes, getting beaten up by Naito hurt, but he couldn’t help but be amused that their relationship worked in such away—that he let her use physical abuse against him as a bartering chip for behaving.

It felt a little kinky.

Shang had reappeared, his eyes just as hard and unyielding as ever though he extended an open-palmed hand toward a tent, which happened to be the second-largest in the camp. “As I am certain that you are unaccustomed to military housing, I am offering my quarters to you.”

Frey made a point of putting on his most grateful face, and pushed Naito down into a bow which he mirrored once more. “That is most gracious of you, captain. I will make sure to let those in my homeland know of your generosity and diplomacy. But you needn’t put yourself in the cold for us. Any small tent will do. Despite how things may seem, I do not blister at the prospect of sleeping on the ground. We merely require something more protective than the open sky.”

Frey prayed silently that this would win them points with Shang rather than offend him. For a moment, it seemed these plans had failed. Shang’s frown had deepened and he looked confused, before a small smirk came over him. “Very well. You can have Ping’s tent. Ping, you can share a tent with one of the other soldiers. Hopefully one of them will be willing to quarter you.” Without giving Mulan a chance to argue, though Frey seriously doubted she would have tried to anyway, Shang gestured to Ping’s tent, then to the only tent larger than the one that was apparently his own quarters. “You will find rice in there. You may go to the front of the line and have your bowls first, but then I would appreciate it if you would stay out of the way of my soldiers, as they need to eat hardily to build their strength. Please see Ping if you find your accommodations are lacking.”

And with that Shang left them again, heading back into his tent, no doubt returning to whatever he’d been doing before. Frey suspected he was war planning. That’s what he’d be doing, anyway. In fact, it’s what he wished he had time to do, right then—make a plan for what worlds to hit next and the best ways to do so. Granted, it wasn’t really up to them where they went next, was it? It was up to the universe, or fate, or whatever the ******** made up those corridors between worlds other than busted heartless ships and asteroids.

Frey chanced a glance at Naito and let one of his eyebrows lift. “Hungry?” He knew the answer. He himself was ******** starving. Not only had it been a while since they’d eaten in general, but they’d “worked up an appetite” the night before, so to speak, so they were running on empty. Quickly, he led her to the large tent where a man had already doled out two bowls of rice for them. HE was tall and broad-built and kind of hairy but looked friendly enough. At least, he was friendly when he looked at Naito. When he looked at Frey, he scowled. Frey scowled back, though the man seemed unintimidated by him.

Once they had their rice, Frey made his way back to Mulan’s tent, and crawled inside, looking around. Well, if anyone was going to be able to see Ping’s stuff, it may as well be them. After all, they were the only ones who knew her secret… not that there was anything particularly incriminating lying around. He had a feeling if Mulan were from Destiny Islands or Radiant Garden it would be another story. There would probably be girly panties and makeup stuffed in a pillow case somewhere.

.// [ w e ] ARE the puppets in the performance of [ l i f e ]. Our stage IS called [ f R e e d o m ], and EXISTS only in the place between one [ d r e a m ] and the NEXT ::.

[Pykel]

The first thing Suzushii became aware of was pain. Pain in the back of his head, pain in his side, pain in his knees; every inch of him felt as though he were beaten with a stick and then put in to the dryer on the tumble cycle. The second thing Suzu realized was that he couldn’t pinpoint exactly how he was lying. As he struggled to assess the situation, the inability to focus his attention on his equilibrium just made him dizzy. The dizziness plus the pain made him nauseous. It was no good. He’d have to open his eyes.

After scrunching his eyes shut tighter in an unconscious attempt to keep them from opening at all, Suzu’s green eyes blinked slowly open. The darkened inside of the Gummi ship came in to focus… upside down? He could see the outline of the upside down seats just in his vision. His head and neck were on the floor, as well as part of his back, which curved up at an uncomfortable angle up the side of the ship. One of his legs followed the way up the wall; the other had his foot flat on the wall and his knee almost in his face. Not even sure how he’d managed to stay that way, Suzu let his legs fall to one side before he pushed himself on to his knees.

It was cold in the Gummi ship and Suzu wondered how long he’d been out; and the others, where were they? Squinting around in the darkness, he could make out the front of the ship, the windows barely lighter than the rest of everything else. If he could make his way over there, he could probably push a few buttons and get the lights working. Well, that was if the ship still had power. Suzu vaguely remembered Frey stumbling in to him and then shouting at Naito about being a crazy driver before everything went black. He’d been too preoccupied with getting dressed to notice anything else going on around him, but now he supposed they had crashed-landed in to a world.

He got laboriously to his feet; every muscle in his body screaming in protest as he did so, noticing the ship was partially slanted. Suzu carefully made his way to the front of the ship, confused at why it appeared to be lighter outside but offered no additional light inside. When he reached the pilot’s seat, he squinted down at the controls, trying to see in the dark. It had been a long time since he himself had flown a Gummi ship and not all Gummi ships were created the same, but he remembered enough so he wasn’t just blindly punching buttons. He pressed a button and the dashboard lit up. The ship had power, at least, so that was good. Feeling heartened at this, Suzu punched a few more buttons and all but three of the cabin lights flickered on, one of them stayed flickering. Suzu blinked in the sudden light, looking up to the windows again. What he saw made him frown. Something white was pressed against the windows. Frowning, he walked up close, putting his nose almost to the glass. It was, “Snow…?”

It had been a long time since Suzu had seen snow. There had been snowfall on his home world, but never this much. Never had he seen so much snow that would cover something so much it was dark inside. A little seed of panic started to grow inside his heart. From what he remembered, snow could get heavy. How much snow was there? Were they buried fully or was only their nose buried in to it? Trying to swallow the small lump of panic in his throat, Suzu turned his attention to the rest of the ship and the people in it.

Frey and Naito were missing completely from the ship. Tempest was wrapped awkwardly around the base of one of the seats, fully clothed save for his shoes which had to be somewhere. Then there was that other girl. Alex or Alby or something… She was buckled in to another of the seats. A blanket, held in place by the seat belts, covered her lower half and most of her upper half. Sometime during the crash some of the blanket had slipped and… was she naked under there?! Suzu stared for a moment at the half a breast and naked shoulder that was peeking out from the fallen edge of the blanket. He quickly made his way over to her, fixing the blanket, not exactly wanting to see her assets. He stood there for a moment, deliberating over the two unconscious bodies he had on his hands, trying to decide who to rouse first. He decided on Tempest, knowing him a little better than the girl. He wasn’t exactly sure how she’d wake up, finding herself naked and alone with a guy she didn’t know. She might attack him for all Suzu knew. No. Better to have Tempest as backup if she decided to do that.

Suzu’s attempts at awakening Tempest, however, came to nothing. After detangling him from the base of the seat and sprawling him out on his back, Suzu kneeled next to him and tapped his face lightly and called out his name. When that didn’t work he slapped harder and shouted his name. He tried poking his sides, pulling up his eyelids, and pulling his hair. Nothing worked. Suzu sighed and turned his attention back to Ally. He straightened up but didn’t walk over to the girl.

Perhaps he’d have a go at seeing at exactly how buried the Gummi ship was before waking them. Suzu thought about their options for exit. The hatch in the back was probably out of the question; no doubt that it was covered in snow. There might be a slim chance the safety hatch on top was free of snow, but Suzu wasn’t confident. Back up at the pilot’s seat, it took Suzu a few moments to figure out how to open the safety hatch, and when he did, the hatch moved just enough to let a dusting of snow in before getting stuck on the roof of snow above it. Fantastic. He could try a fire spell, but that could risk damage to the ship. He wasn’t sure if he could concentrate his spell in to such a tiny area. He needed help. These two people were no use to him the way they were.

Suzu tried once again to awaken Tempest and once again had the same result. Resigned to deal with the newcomer on his own, Suzu finally stepped his way over to Allaeyah. He tapped her lightly on the cheek with his gloved hand. “Hey, girl, wake up!” He waited for a response before trying anything else. He really hoped he didn’t have to get in to slapping with her. Not really a good first impression when the first thing you wake up to is a stranger slapping you, especially when you’re naked. But he’d wake her up even if he had to shake her. “Girl, hey! A-Alle.. Al. Hey. The Gummi ship crashed! Wake up!”