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The woman nodded in response to Kyle, her forehead furrowing slightly despite his smile, "Well dear, if you need anything... my name is Fiona, the royal alchemist, herbalist, medic... a doctor, if you will. They call me many things.. but despite the multitude of names and superfluous titles, I am no more than an old woman who loves to help others. I can not leave anyone in need alone, a curse of my nature I suppose. Runs in my blood like it did my mother before me."

The woman cackled to herself, "Please do enjoy the garden. I've spent many years in this place cultivating and nurturing these plants and animals. It brings me such joy to see others brought peace under the canopy of these trees," she trailed off a bit and looked to the tree next to the two boys, "I remember planting this one as a little sprout-ling, oh how it's grown over the years." At this point she went silent, the domino making it impossible to read her eyes, but it was almost obvious they were either closed or staring off into the past lavishly soaked in nostalgia.

In a small jump, she returned from her reverie, "Ah, I'm sorry. You young ones don't desire to hear the ramblings of an old woman. Here you are trying to relax and you have me filling your ears with my nonsense." She ended with a laugh, covering her mouth as she did so to try and stifle it into a giggle.

[ Kyle : Narnia : Atrium ]

When the older woman suddenly broken into a tangent, Kyle struggled not to interrupt; frustrated as he may have been, he didn't generally enjoy being rude, even when others were. Besides, the poor thing was probably senile.Fiona spoke about her mother, then went on about her garden. But though he heard and registered what it was she was saying, Kyle couldn't take his mind off his earlier thoughts, trying to remember the timeline that just a few hours ago had been as clear as his own. When she finally jumped back to the two of them, he smiled toward her, more out of cordiality than sincerity."We're not so much trying to relax, and it's not that your experiences aren't fascinating," he said, maintaining his expression. "It's more about... well, we both thought the other dead for the past week. Lost to the darkness. For me, at least, it felt more like a decade*. So we were just hoping for some alone time to reconnect. Your king-to-be has seemed most generous, and we don't want to waste this gift."

[[ * - heh. 'Decade'. ]]

[Dawn : Narnia : Library]

"Oh thank goodness," Dawn said with a sigh of relief as Krystal came from behind Joe and hugged her knees, "Krystal, you need to stop wandering off. Silly bug." Dawn looked up at Joe with an apologetic look. "Sorry Joe. Hope she didn't cause too much trouble for you."

She smiled up at Joe as she picked Krystal up and kissing her niece on the cheek. She held onto the child silently as her smile faded into one of worry for Joe. He was rather upset before.

"You okay Joe?" she said softly to her friend, "You stormed out like you wanted to punch something before."

[Dawn : Narnia : Library]

"No, I understand completely" Dawn said with a sympathetic look at Joe as she shuffled holding Krystal and resting her back against the wall looking down before she continued. "I dunno about you, but I can still remember that horror very vividly. It was like living a nightmare," she mumbled staring at her left hand that had been burned with Ajora's seal during that ordeal and the hell Ajora put her in afterwards.

'Strange. How did that thing get removed...?'

The dancer shook the thought away both mentally and physically, before she looked directly at Joe again her eyes serious as she looked at the fighter.

"To be honest it is a bit odd, don't you think?" she said putting Krystal down on the ground who walked off to look at the books, "This is a Hero's banquet. Yet, it is like they fear something is going to happen so they put up the negator. What do they expect? Us, the hero's to blow it up? All is kind of silly."

Dawn's eyes softened as she watched Krystal, "I am still finding it hard to believe that she is here. After watching her, along with Eli and Shalynn's hearts get taken by Heartless... I thought I would not see until we returned home. Yet, she is here. It feels like it is too good to be true. Like it is a dream. Or yet another nightmare."

She paused again. This time her face going red realizing she was now blabbering and looked at Joe nervously, "Oops sorry. I didn''t mean to blabber. Just thoughts running from my mind to my tongue."

{Bobbi, Zell, Yuffie, Red XIII}

Bobbi bit her lip and tried to hold back a frown when she got confirmation on the negator. She didn't like being without her magic and, ergo, her bow. Suddenly she felt naked, vulnerable. She didn't realize how much she'd come to rely on her magic and weapon in the past few days, but apparently she had. And something else...

Her hesitant query of Shiva? was met with silence. And that... that just didn't seem right.

"No, thank you, child," Nanaki said, inclining his head to the little girl who was trying to feed him. "But the offer is appreciated." He turned his attention back to the conversation at hand, which had devolved into an argument. Joe was tense, and that worried the lion-like person. He tilted his head to one side to observe, and learned quite a lot more about these Earthlings than they probably expected him to in this exchange. Such as Joe's heretofore unrevealed anxiety issues, simply as the most blatantly obvious bit of newly gained knowledge. A couple of the two-legs displayed attitudes he wasn't fond of, but he could certainly work with around them if needed. Such a disparate bunch these Earthlings were...

Bobbi huddled in on herself when venom began to flow amongst the group, and slowly backed away. She couldn't handle this right now, not on top of learning about the Negator, not after being cut off from Shiva. She loved Joe, and she wanted to leap to his defense, maybe slap some sense into these idiots, but she couldn't deal with it at the moment. She tapped her mother on the shoulder and nodded off towards the refreshment tables.

"I need a drink, mom. What's good here?"

Linda gave her daughter a knowing look, then glanced between the argument and the rest of the party, and nodded. She reached out to rub Bobbi's head, a gesture that made the archer flinch just a little; she didn't like her head being touched. Mom didn't know, though. Once upon a time Bobbi hadn't minded, and she never did feel like explaining how she didn't know why head-touching bothered her, it just did. So she let her mom pat her head, and smiled back at her.

"Well, they have s**t coffee, but you don't like coffee anyway. Weirdo," Linda said, gently steering her daughter away from the tense, arguing group. Bobbi and her mother spent a few minutes talking about trivial things, but soon Linda took her leave. Mom mentioned something about another surprise, and Bobbi hugged her tightly and kissed her, insisting that Mom pass the love on to Dad. And Steve, if he'd accept the hug. No kiss for him, though, but a "moo" and a high-five via Vulcan hand signal.

Bobbi enjoyed the performance, perhaps not as immensely as she would have. The longer she stayed, the more she wanted to get out in the open air--preferably out of range of the Negator. Sure it was a blizzard out there, but she'd walked two miles through a blizzard once. Besides, as soon as she could get back into contact with Shiva, she was confident that the storm wouldn't just calm her, but revitalize her. Every muscle was tense, and even though she managed a smile for the crowd at the end of the dance, with every passing second she felt the need to escape.

I need some air, she decided, and began looking around for an exit. She immediately dismissed the one Joe took; she wanted to give him a longer time to cool off before his seething drove her batty. Maybe... Maybe the one Kyle and his brother took? She felt like Kyle would be a good person to talk to to help clear her head, but she didn't want to interrupt his time with his brother at all.

Brother... Steve.

Dad.

Her mind was made up. She was going to see her family.

Bobbi placed the glass she'd been sipping from on a nearby table and began walking deliberately towards the northeast exit to the room. This was a castle, so from her readings of various fantasy books, theoretically there should be tons of servants running around she could ask directions from if she got lost. She glanced at the plaques beneath Susan, Jadis, and Edmund... and paused.

"Traitor" was misspelled. And didn't someone say something about golden plaques and riddles? Was this part of the riddle? She frowned at it a moment, then dismissed it as irrelevant and continued her march to the northeast exit. She wasn't interested in solving the riddle at all, not when her daddy and little brother were within reach.

Not when her family could be together again.

[[Narration - Northeast Wing]]

As Bobbi moved across the main hall and to the exit she desired, she might have noticed as she neared the northeast exit, behind the throne and the statue of the unknown figure behind it, under which another golden plaque she couldn't quite see at that angle and distance, was yet another exit to the main hall, a fifth door. Her focus was on the door to the northeast exit however, so she didn't venture over to either of these things.

She reached down to the handles to the double doors and pulled. Clunk. She pulled again. Clunk. Gave a sharp push on the handle this time. Thud. Nothing. The doors to the northeast wing of the castle wouldn't budge and appeared to be locked.

{Bobbi, Zell, Yuffie, Red XIII .:. Narnia .:. Grand Hall}

She felt a panic attack rising on finding the doors locked. Usually her cleithrophobia wasn't bad enough to go off in a place this big, but with the crowds and finding the door locked--worse, being closed off from her family--

No. No! This is a mistake, this has to be a mistake, I was just wrong about what door they went through, that's all. Maybe it was the other one, the one I saw when I was heading this way. That has to be it, I just got my directions mixed up, that's all. Mom and Dad and Steve are fine, they wouldn't keep us away from them, not now that we know they're okay. It was stupid not to bring them to Disney but whatever, slight oversight, it's fine. Breathe, Bobbi, it's okay. It'll be okay, just calm down. Breathe. You can do it. Don't cry, you're not going to cry, you're stronger than this it's okay god dammit that's a ******** tear you're crying way to go s**t ******** no no no no...

The Archer hastily wiped away the tear that was rolling down her cheek and sniffed. She pressed her head against the cool surface of the door, gasping for air, trying to regain her composure. As her panic attacks went, this wasn't too bad so far. She just needed a moment to calm down. Of course, trying to find somewhere to calm down and finding the door locked was what set off the attack in the first place, but that was beside the point. No one was talking to her, in fact despite the crowd she didn't even seem to feel any eyes on her at all. She had privacy to freak out, for now.

Wiping the inevitable second tear away, she looked over to the fifth exit from the hall. That had to be it. Her sense of direction was great, but she was stressed, and that messes things up. She just got the door wrong. She turned towards the fifth door and started walking briskly, and the rapid, rhythmic click of her boot heels against the floor soothed her a little. A third tear came and went as her breathing finally slowed and hear heart rate returned to normal, and that seemed to be the extent of the attack. She ignored the plaque she passed by, and reached out to open this set of doors. Her hands were still trembling.

Open, dammit, I'm not dealing with that again.

As usual, once her attack had run it's course, anything that might possibly trigger another was met with anger. She never really knew why she did that, but it seemed to help prevent another attack from happening so soon on the heels of the first, so she figured it was a kind of defense mechanism.

As Bobbi moved to the last door, she had drawn the attention of two separate individuals. One was Daniel, who like her, had begun to wonder where his brother and the others had gone. The other, was the woman in blue, ever observant as she made her way across the hall to find out what seemed to be bothering her, the tugs at the door gave her enough reason to inquire.

Meanwhile, Bobbi had already reached the north door while Daniel stopped at the northeast exit and gave his own try at the handles. Nothing. Neither Bobbi nor Daniel could get the doors to budge from their position.

The archer's attempt to open the doors to the north wing were... unfortunately the same as the last. Her futile attempts to breach the threshold came with nothing but the struggled noises of a girl already on the verge of desperation. The doors to the north wing were locked and would not open.

Tehehe~