Welcome to Gaia! ::

[John.: Louis’ Heart :. Throne Room]

John watched them depart the bridge and his heart sank. The little wave from Amy was enough to send him into his own thoughts. He returned the wave timidly.

So again, here I am on the sidelines as a ******** coward watching them all risk their lives in a crazy world filled with crazy s**t with insane rules and everything wanting to kill us… I’m so god damn useless…

John watched the group depart the bridge, walk through the courtyard and out of sight through the door. He stood there a couple moments silent just staring at the door. The silence from the castle was enough to calm his nerves, but soon noises of shouting, reminiscent of a battle, came ringing out of the open door.

Alright, ******** this.

John began running in a dead sprint toward the castle, adrenaline pumping through his veins. The shouts started to get louder as he came closer and made his way into the courtyard. He soon cleared the courtyard and bounded through the foyer when the shouting went back down to a normal speaking tone of conversation.

…did they… did they win…? So soon?

He walked into the throne through the open door and his eyes immediately went to the corpses on the ground. They startled him a bit, but it was no more than a moment. He had to remember that they were, in fact, in the heart of a person and everything had to be taken with a grain of salt. He entered the foyer just as the thing named “Nemesis” began his recitation. John paused, then walked to the back of the group solemnly and silently. He simply stared at the man, or whatever it was. Grasping the situation in front of him was hard to say the least, but he wasn’t stupid to realize that whatever was in front of him needed to die, and die quickly. On the last line of the verse, the familiarity of the voice hit him like a ton of bricks.

s**t... how powerful are these things anyways...?

John waited impatiently for Louis to stop speaking.

“Ya Nemesis, I got a question for ya,” John piped up from behind the group, “Why you gotta be such a ******** cocksucker?”

John was always rather blunt with the people he didn’t like.

{Bobbi, Demyx, Zell, Nanaki, Yuffie .:. Louis’s Heart .:. Throne Room}

To say that Bobbi was glad John had decided to join them would be an understatement. Bobbi was fully of the opinion that they would need all the help they could get against any and all remaining Louis shards.

The reaction Nemesis gave, though, was unexpected.

For a moment Bobbi’s brain completely stopped. She literally could not comprehend what she was seeing or hearing. Her lips parted in confusion, forming a silent "what?" as her eyebrows furrowed. Without realizing, her grip on her arrow loosened, and the bolt flew wide off of its original mark, tinging off of a nearby column and ricocheting somewhere off into the hall.

Zell had actually stopped moving, jaw completely slack with surprise. His fists lowered back to his side and he slumped in absolute disbelief. Was this guy for real? First the dramatic entrance, plus the name "Nemesis"— which really was not a nice word at all—and now he was flirting with John? This couldn’t be real. There was absolutely no way.

Nanaki and Yuffie barely seemed to react, however. Nanaki simply assumed Nemesis was acting, deliberately distracting the team with this seemingly out of character behavior. Most disturbing, though, was that it seemed to be working, as Bobbi’s accidentally loosed arrow zipped by harmlessly. Yuffie, on the other hand, didn’t care one way or the other what this guy said or did or who he flirted with (although that did seem kind of weird, but whatever) so long as he didn’t do anything attack-ish. Her shuriken was still up and at the ready, although she still glanced to the corpses from time to time, and gulped down a wave of nausea.

Off near the back, not too far from John, came the sound of hysterical laughter. Anyone who cared to look would see Demyx doubled over, holding his gut and slapping his knee, as if this was the funniest thing he had ever seen in his life. It seemed like several minutes before the Melodious Nocturne got hold of himself long enough to straighten up, wipe the tears of mirth from his eyes, and clap John on the back.

"Awww, you have an admirer!" he crowed, and punctuated the statement with a wolf-whistle. He slung an arm across John's shoulders, and winked. Not even a subtle wink, and he accompanied it by holding up two fingers in a V. "Way to go, buddy! This one’s a keeper."

[Garuda : Louis's Heart : Throne Room]

Garuda almost jumped out of her skin ready to attack when the door opened. She, however, held back when she saw it was one of theirs that came. However, the one who called himself Nemesis left her awe struck.

Garuda looked over her shoulder at their enemy fan girling over John when he came in. Her eyebrow twitched with an expression that could only be that of annoyance and confusion.

~'What. The. Hell!?'~

The last straw broke when Demyx wrapped his arms around John, congratulating him. The summon with the twisted annoyed expression of Dawn (Glowing green eyes and all) glared at the Nobody. With a swift movement of the Tessen she summoned a gust of wind at his direction to knock him away from John.

~"Knock that off!"~ Garuda shouted at Demyx then turned to Innocence, ~"You too. This is no game."~ she then turned to Nemesis, ~"Stop playing with us like we are your pawns, you inflated Jackass"~

[[Justice : Louis' Heart : Throne Room]]

Justice did not react to Nemesis and his antics, however he did flinch and duck, when Bobbi's arrow snapped across the wall and clattered over the floor, a glare shot at both the archer and Innocence, "Nemesis... shouldn't even be here. He died. Liar killed him before even we were defeated. I don't know why he's alive or how he was brought back. He's not attacking... so, maybe we should welcome this as a momentary reprieve? If we struck now-"

Justice stopped, just then noticing Nemesis had cut his gaze and was, while still smiling and blushing, staring at Justice, eyes wide enough to spot the white all the way around his irises. Once eye contact was made, it shifted back to John, as though the shift had never happened.

Could he hear their conversation? It wasn't possible. He couldn't have, yet he was looking at him with such an unfaltering intensity it made his blood stop cold.

"...If we struck now, we might just waste this chance to gather ourselves. Some of us seem to have been more effected by Liar's outburst than others and if we have to put up with Nemesis and these antics for a bit longer to make things right, we should just bite the bullet and humor him for now. Unless you have a better plan..."

[Amy : Narnia / Louis's Heart : Castle ]

Amy proceeded to the piano. She was paying attention to the conversation with Nemesis, but she thought the lady in blue disappearing a more important thing. She was tired of this, tired of asking questions of Louis shard 1, 2, 3, and 4. They either never answered or only had pieces of the puzzle: how to fix Louis's shattered heart. Perhaps the lady in blue had more answers. She seemed...significant, somehow.

Amy sat down at the piano. She looked up when John called Nemesis a cocksucker. Nemesis's reaction was weird, mocking-like maybe? He couldn't be serious. "What a bunch of weirdos," Amy said under her breath, referring to the Louis shards. She began playing the Moonlight Sonata but stopped after 40 seconds. That was all she knew. She hunched over, put her elbows on the keys and held her head in her hands.

[ Kyle & Riku : Louis' Heart : Throne Room ]

No offense, but we obliterated you into less than dust before, and you were able to reform. He's a piece of a heart, and except for that weird cornerstone ordeal, I don't think you can just destroy one, piece or whole.

Kyle chewed on his shard's sudden pause and the rest of his words, but his ears perked at the piano--and the sound of a familiar song. He looked to Amy and gave a look of surprised approval, as if to say 'not bad', before turning back to the scene at hand.

Riku wasn't looking toward Dawn, so he didn't catch her gaze. All the same, his brows furrowed somewhat as he tried to word his response while also taking in the scene with Nemesis and the others. Amy playing the piano made him snap his head toward her, but other than seeing it was the gunner, his eyes were back on the shard.

"You say you don't want to let anyone down, but what do you think you're doing now?" he replied, his mental voice firm but not hard. He took Joe's lack of contribution as silent approval for his approach. "You're not the only one who wants to save him. But you can't save him if you're hiding. We need to know we can rely on you. So stand with us, or go back to the train."

He chewed his cheek in hidden frustration over the mental conversation. He wasn't going to participate in that, but the whole charade was pushing him to the brink of his diplomatic boundaries.

Better plan? No. Equivalent? Yes.

He didn't act on it yet, though. All he did was strum the fingers on his right hand on the throne's armrest, indicating his impatience.

[Dawn/Garuda : Louis's Heart : Throne Room]

~"I..."~

Garuda's hand made a fist as she felt Dawn retract at Riku's answer. Which was accompanied by Bobbi's gentle agreement and concern.

~"I want to fight with you. Not for you, Sunlight. I know you want to save Louis. However, you got to do this on your own. You can't hide from it. You'll only regret it."~ Garuda's face twisted into anger as she looked down at her feet at one of the broken and bleeding shards, ~"I want to break him in half after he used you. Something I should of protected you from and must repent for."~

~'But Garuda you didn't... That was my fault.'~

~'No! I was powerless. You were in pain. And I let the first person in to help you. I believed it was for the best. I should of forced his a** back out when I had the chance. I had doubts about Louis of my own. But I ignored them...'~

~"That is why I need you to fight this and not run!"~ Garuda continued forcefully to Dawn over the charms as her eyes started to show the normal blue behind the green light, ~"This is your battle. Not mine. Again, I will fight by your side. But not for you. What you decide to do, is up to. Face what is before you, or go and hide."~

A tear went down Dawn's eyes cheek as Garuda slowly forced her out of herself. She looked over at Riku, though he was still looking away. She looked like she wanted to say something, but stopped when Nemesis finally answered Joe's question from before.

"How much is left?" Dawn asked, her voice weak and cracking a little, "Is there anything left to save?"