Welcome to Gaia! ::

Though the world was eternally cloaked in the Convergence's shadow, the neon lights filling the town gave off enough ambient that ordinary travel wasn't impossible. Still, the empty city was naturally haunting and exceptionally creepy all the same--especially as more and more of the small, floating droids began to fill the skies and streets like specks of shadow and glinting will-o-wisps.

Adam walked along one of the many hallways of one of the many buildings before turning into a room that brought him to a large, windowed view. It wasn't clear, with other towering structures still here and there--it was hardly the highest building in the land, that would be the castle--but from here, it was clear enough to see the great amalgam of worlds beyond the horizon.

Inspecting the room, he rubbed one of his gloved hands, double checking that its purpose was still active. Then he turned, mentally navigating the unconscious body from the hall behind him and lightly placing it--no, him--against the wall, propped up into a sitting position.

"Are you sure about this?" his robotic companion asked for what must have been the tenth time that day. "If you didn't alter anything like you say, then there's still a decent chance he could become more threat than ally, like Cory."

"Debts to clear," the man said, looking down at the man with a tilted head, biting the inside of his cheek. The man before him was basically naked, save for the large beach towel-like cloth he'd wrapped the man in as soon as he'd been pulled from the pod. "If worse comes to worst... that's the price paid."

And with a deep, reaffirming breath, Adam psychically pulled off the golden circlet that kept the young man unconscious and thoughtless, dispersing it to pocket space. He stood far enough back and to the side to give the man breathing room, making sure to be on the opposite side of the door in case he felt the primal instinct to run rather than attack. Using corridors, of course, would be impossible; his powers, likewise, were lacking as a consequence of the memory re-chaining.

Well, most powers. The man would still have power, in the abstract sense that included raw energy that he could probably will into some form of assault. But other powers, formed powers were out of the picture.

Still, he had someone on call for that. Hopefully things went well.

Adam shifted on his legs a bit awkwardly, arms tucked into his sides before lifting one up in a sort of weak wave. "Yeeaah, it, uh... it's been kind of crazy," he said, giving a sheepish grin. "I mean you no harm, though you probably don't believe that, which is fine. How do you feel?"

The small, polyhedral droid hovering above his left shoulder simply stared in silence, small green eye lit by circuitry.

The young man cringed as the other's voice echoed down the empty hallways of the building. "There are a lotta reasons I deserve that, I'm sure. Is this for almost dying? Or...?"

His body had tensed as the man approached, mostly to prepare for some sort of strike.

It remained tensed, however, due to shock.

As the man hugged him, Adam found himself mostly blanking out, his eyes wide and expression confused. Sluggishly, his arms found themselves coming up to embrace the other. His chest tightened. His body warmed.

He'd been alive and new for maybe twenty-four hours, and his memories extended back a few days prior. In that time, in the entirety of his heart's life, he had never once experienced physical compassion. Passion, sure; that had been a night of discovery. But this was different. This was someone showing... concern? This was...

His face felt warm. His breath hitched for the briefest of seconds, and his mind scrambled.

"Yeah, I, uh... sorry, I was kind of... on the run, and... um..."

"You're naked."

"Well, we made a deal," he said, shrugging, though he couldn't quite meet the other man's gaze. "Shook hands, said alliance and stuff, all that."

"What he's trying to say--"

"Shut up."

"--is that at first he didn't mean it--"

"Shut up!"

"--because only darkness, only suspicion--"

"Stop talking!"

"--no understanding of friendship--"

"Why."

"--but as soon as he got a real heart, he looked back and felt shitty and realized there might have been some genuine friendship there."

There was silence as Adam simply held his face in one hand, the other held across his chest.

"I'm not here for tropey time-wasting guilt shpiels," the robot said, turning to look at Adam. "I'm here to make sure this s**t's settled."

"So, this is Data-Ajora, who we're just calling Daj," Adam said in flippant frustration, waving the hand that was covering his face toward the robot. "And no, he's not just a robot, he's a digital copy of me, so he's got feelings and everything, he just doesn't care what s**t he stirs because he's ironically disconnected."

"Oiy, that's not--we're doing it again."

"Yes so shut up."

The robot went silent, turning its eye back to the other.

"Anyway... what is the last thing you solidly remember?" Adam began, finally looking back. "I mean, I tried to reconstruct your memories as best I could, what with Mateus' ********, so hopefully you should at least have up to... well, his last not-so-precious moments."

"Alright, so, story-time," he said, sort of widening his eyes in an expression of preemptive exasperation. "After that, you tried to help the Disney crew kill your dark seed by merging it with your heart-form. That... ended in a struggle. A really, really explosive one."

He paused, his gaze a sort of thousand-yard stare. "I can't really stress that enough. The repercussions of last night's fight--it was just last night--was felt across worlds and will likely completely alter the conflict going forward," he said, sheepishly scratching his head. "Because of all the power your corrupted self had been accumulating in the heart-spell, the dark seed... basically tried pulling the Darkness... thing into reality. And it frankly got very, very close. Close enough that they technically lost at first."

"For whatever ridiculous reason, it actually kept them alive--unconscious, but alive, trying to turn them all into vessels. That... that was a terrible idea, apparently," he continued. "I'm not exactly sure what happened. Only that a massive column of light erupted from the Cornerstone of Light, literally bent across the world, pierced through the spell, revived and empowered the party, and managed to completely cut off a chunk of the Darkness' consciousness into a form they could destroy. And in doing so, they... I can't believe I'm saying this, but it appears that they freed millions upon millions of hearts that it had been hoarding. Also, the Cornerstone? Actually a trapped entity. Like, light incarnate or something, I'm still trying to uncover the details. But something woke it up, and it reached out to help."

"With that done, your spell ended, and you... transpired? I'll be honest, I didn't stick around, I was in a bad place," he said, looking apologetic. "I just know that something happened, and you... disappeared. That's about as Kingdom-Hearts-y as it gets. But the entire reason I was there--under the guise of Melisandre--was to collect your memories while I could. I knew one of two things would happen: the Earthlings would win and would somehow screw over the man I knew as Louis, or the Earthlings would lose because the man I knew as Louis had become too far gone."

The man's expression was of mild surprise at first, and then toward the end of the other's words it shifted to embarrassed. "Oh! Oh, right, let's, um," he started, shifting around to check his pockets before pulling out a leather bag the size of a medium purse from his back pocket, "here! Dress spheres. Won't give you much besides clothing at this point, but it's whatever you want your wardrobe to be."

"I'll, uh, to be honest, I didn't know what you'd want to do. New lease on life, no puppet strings," he said while the man would have reached in for one. "Wasn't sure if you even wanted to associate with me, frankly, even if I've got a fresh heart. Which, uh, yeah, that got mentioned earlier, I suppose. I'm going by Adam now. But you, uh, still wanna work with me? I'm... basically starting a one--"

He paused, chewing his cheek.

"One-and-a-half man rebellion against the Darkness at this point."