Re: Kingdom Hearts: Keys to the Kingdom
Chapter X: Walks Like An Ape, Looks Like A Man, pt. 1
As Sora lays on his back, looking up at the high roof of the wooden tree house he’d landed in not more than a minute earlier, he remembers something his father used to say about a person’s vision being twenty-twenty when they had the advantage of looking back on events in hindsight.
He’s never really understood that notion until right this very moment, looking up at the hole his body had just recently made by crashing into the roof of the tree house with great speed. His body still hurts like hell, even as he struggles to grab the potion he’s kept in his pocket for quite some time now, just in case.
While it’s true that Azlyn had been a stubborn ass back onboard the Gummi ship, that doesn’t mean Sora should have reacted like he had. After all, who knew how hard it would be to repair the Gummi ship when it was time to leave?
Finally, Sora manages to drag the potion bottle to his lips and take a sip. A green glow surrounds the boy briefly, and
when it fades the pain of the fall drops into the background of his senses. Not gone, but much easier to ignore.
Sitting up, the Keyblade wielder sighs and tries to work out a course of action. Azlyn and Telary are out there in the jungle somewhere, but then again Riku and Kairi might be as well, so…
Behind him, there is a solid
thunk of something large hitting the wooden floor of the treehouse, followed by the sound of a low growl.
Slowly, Sora turns his head to see what has landed behind him that sounds so angry. Upon getting his answer, he immediately regrets it.
Crouched in front of him is the lean, strong form of a leopard, spotted yellow fur covering its shoulders and back, with a white fur underbelly. Its piercing eyes, a pale yellow color not unlike those of a Heartless, are narrowed and fixated on him. Razor sharp teeth glint in the faint sunlight coming through the treehouse’s windows.
The creature looks dangerous as hell, and ready to pounce.
“Whoa, kitty!” Sora says slowly, rising to his feet at a snail’s pace as the leopard’s eyes keep careful track of his movements. “Is this your home? If it is, I’m sorry that…”
Sora doesn’t get to finish having his zookeeper moment, however, as the four-legged creature pounces, launching itself through the air at the boy, paws outstretched and black, razor-sharp claws fully extended.
Sora cries out in a mix of fear and boldness, swinging the Keyblade in front of him in a wide arc, hoping to knock the pouncing animal away. He succeeds, connecting Keyblade to leopard with a shock that travels all the way up his arm.
The beast manages to get ahold of itself by the time it lands, all four paws touching the ground, legs already preparing another springing stance. Startled by the intensity of his opponent’s eyes, Sora takes a step back in sheer shock.
Unfortunately, the boy is so afraid that he isn’t mindful of his steps, and his foot connects with a loose board, sticking maybe a half-inch up from the ground. It isn’t much, but it’s enough to trip the already rattled Keyblade wielder. With a startled cry, Sora falls to the floor, knocking his tailbone into the wood and sending an unpleasant tingling down his legs and up his spine.
Seeing an opportunity, the leopard charges, taking three running strides before launching itself into the air. Sora desperately raises the Keyblade in front of him, hoping to at least keep the animal at bay for another few moments so he can come up with some new strategy…
Luckily for Sora, intervention arrives not a moment too soon, in the form of a large man clad in nothing but a brown cloth about his hips. He leaps through the air at the attacking leopard, knocking into it and sending it sprawling to the floor of the house in the trees.
The creature growls its displeasure at the man, who now crouches in front of Sora. The boy can see now that in his hand, the scantily-clad man clutches a crude stone knife. When the leopard growls at him, the man returns a vicious hiss, stabbing the air with his knife and grunting, establishing himself clearly as the alpha in this situation.
Realizing that two to one odds are not circumstances it can overcome, the leopard lets out a last warning rumbling, then springs out of the treehouse via a window, shattering it and leaving glass everywhere in its wake.
Sheathing his knife, the man who saved his life turns to Sora, brushing a stray brown lock of hair out of his face.
“Um…” is all Sora can say, shocked into silence by the events that just occurred.
“Sabor,” the man grunts, his voice deep and resonant. “Sabor danger.”
“Uh, I’ll say!” Sora agrees, a little bit leery of the way the man is staring at him, transfixed somehow. The boy stands and dismisses the Keyblade.
The flash of light from the weapon’s dismissal apparently surprises the man, sending him stumbling back a few steps, landing in a crouch, weight resting on his bent legs and knuckles.
“Sorry!” Sora apologizes, holding out his hands placatingly. “I didn’t mean to scare you, I just… When I don’t want to use the Keyblade…”
“Keyblade,” the man repeats slowly in a low voice, tilting his head, his mouth almost over exaggerating the word, like he’s trying to get his mouth to fit around it. “Keyblade…”
“Uh, yeah…. So, what exactly is this place?” Sora asks, looking around at the treehouse. Dust covers most surfaces, and the rest of it looks to be in complete disrepair, uninhabited for many years, decades at least. Surely this strange man doesn’t live here? “Where am I?”
“This place, this place, where this place,” the man repeats much more quickly, grunting out each word.
Sora begins to realize now that whoever he is and whatever his reasons for being here, the man who just saved him cannot speak English. So far the only words he’s managed are the ones Sora has already used.
Still, whether it will be easy or not, Sora has to try to communicate with him. It’s his only hope of finding his way around this strange world.
“I’ve been sep-er-ated from my friends,” Sora says slowly, enunciating every syllable of his words as much as he can. “Have you seen them? Have you seen… My… Friends?”
“Friends?” the man repeats, cocking his head to the side. “Seen friends.”
“Yes!” Sora exclaims, happy to be understood. At least he thinks he has been understood anyway, it’s hard to tell. “One of them is a blonde girl, uh, she’s really loud, her name’s…”
Suddenly, Sora stops, remembering the fight he and the knight had back on the Gummi ship, the one that resulted in his inglorious crash landing. The fight in which she’d declared his search for his friends unimportant. Well, now he wonders how
she would like being lost without anyone looking for her… Well, then, why shouldn’t he give that loudmouth a taste of her own medicine?
Coming out of his contemplation of revenge, Sora notices that the loincloth-man is staring at him once again, head-tilted to the side, obviously confused by the sudden cessation of Sora’s explanation.
“Um, never mind,” he says finally, shaking his head at the man. After thinking of what it is he
does want to say, he looks the man straight in the eye. “I’m looking for my friends
Riku and
Kairi. A boy with silver hair, and a red-headed girl. Have you seen them?”
“Red-head,” the wild man mutters, ducking his head for a moment. After a second, his face rises once again, brown hair framing it. “Friends Riku! Silver friend Riku friend!”
“Yeah, that’s right!” Sora says encouragingly, hoping that this odd conversation is going to actually lead him somewhere useful in the end. “Riku and Kairi!”
“Kairi…” the man repeats, his voice lowering. After that he pauses for a moment.
Sora bites his lip, hoping that he actually managed to get through to the man. He truly hopes he has, for at this very moment, he swears he misses Kairi so much that he can almost see her, grinning playfully at him, before clasping her hands behind her back and walking away, exiting the treehouse…
“Find Kairi friend,” the wild man grunts, pulling Sora out of his momentary stupor. Shaking his head to clear it, the Keyblade wielder looks back at him. “Friends here!”
“Really!” Sora exclaims, practically shouting in his excitement. Is it possible Riku and Kairi might actually be somewhere on this world? Could he be that close to reuniting with his best friends?
“Friends here!” the jungle man repeats, thumping his chest with his fist. After that, the next few noises that come out of his mouth sound like complete gibberish.
“Excuse me?” Sora asks, his confusion actually managing to bring him out of the elated feeling in his heart.
The man just repeats the string of strange noises, thumping his left pectoral once more.
“I’ll be honest, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Sora admits, shrugging. “But if you can take me to Riku and Kairi…”
“Tarzan!” the wild man grunts, touching one hand to his stomach. “Tarzan go!”
“Oh, so your name is Tarzan, right?” Sora asks. Judging by the loud whoop the man lets out, he infers that he guessed correctly. “Well, I’m Sora,” he says, touching his stomach just as Tarzan did when introducing himself. “Sora go, Tarzan go, together Tarzan Sora go go!”
Tarzan nods in what Sora hopes is agreement, turning and loping over to the wooden door of the treehouse on hands and knuckles. The strangeness of the movement throws Sora off, but he shuffles along after Tarzan regardless.
Reaching the closed doors, Tarzan throws them open, walking out onto the large wooden deck that surrounds the main house. Sora follows, and once he’s out in the open air, he stops dead in his tracks.
Looking out he can see an expansive vista of green treetops, stretching out to absolutely huge mountains that must be a hundred miles away. The sky is so clear blue, as or more beautiful than the skies above Destiny Islands, that all he can do is stare up at it with a slack jaw.
One thing’s for sure, Sora thinks as he follows Tarzan across the deck, still gazing all around, both at the fantastic jungle vista on one side of him and the huge, well-constructed treehouse on the other.
He’s glad Tarzan is here to lead him to his friends, because there’s no way that he’d be able to search this whole world on his own.
Deep Jungle
“Azlyn!” Telary cries out, swiping a trio of huge bamboo shoots out of his face and trying not to trip on those underfoot as he struggles his way through the thicket he’s found himself in. “Sora! Are you out there? Please tell me you’re out there!”
Heaving a great sigh, the mage moves on, using hands, forearms, elbows, and whatever other body parts he can think of to struggle his way through the long wooden stalks that threaten to trip him up, not to mention occasionally swing back and hit him in the face.
After a few more minutes of struggling, calling out desperately for his companions all the while, Telary finally manages to reach a clearing, a large grassy space surrounded on all sides by bamboo. In the center sits a moss covered rock, looking almost lonesome.
“Join the club,” Telary mutters to the rock, giving it a good pat before sitting down on it. Normally he’d spend a bit of time magically decontaminating it to get rid of any jungle germs that may be clinging to it, but at this point he doesn’t care.
He knows he should be mad, about Sora smashing up the Gummi ship’s computer and causing the crash, or the fight Azlyn started that led to the event, but honestly at the moment his only concern is the fate of his friends. He’d seen Sora thrown from the ship during the crash, and he’d followed the Keyblade wielder out mere seconds later, but he hadn’t managed to get a good look at Azlyn before being ejected himself. She may still be with the ship, which landed who knows where, or maybe she’d been flung out of the falling craft herself.
Either she or Sora could be hurt, seriously injured, or even…
Telary shakes his head, getting rid of that thought as quickly as he can. As ridiculous and unrealistic as it is, the mage just cannot afford to think like that. He has to keep the notion that everyone is safe and soon to be reunited firm in his mind, or he may just lose it.
It’s likely that he’ll lose it soon anyway, the very minute he stops being concerned for his friends and has to think about what the destruction of the Gummi ship computer actually means. Without the hardware intact to keep his program running, and assuming that the folks at Disney Castle would keep the return program running non-stop, the minute the ship’s computers reboot it will be recalled.
He wishes, of course, that he and Azlyn had been able to explain their situation to Sora before they were forced too, but it’s too late for that kind of thinking now. No, all that’s left to do is get reunited and face consequences.
The first part of that, of course, is the actual reuniting, so Telary heaves another sigh and rises up off the rock. There’s still a lot of bamboo to cover, and more jungle beyond that, so…
Suddenly, Telary hears a rustling noise from the bamboo behind him. Managing to maintain his composure even after being startled so, the mage quickly draws his staff from the holster at his side, already preparing magic in case whatever is causing the noise is hostile.
“Azlyn…” he calls softly, hoping to get lucky for once on this miserable trip. “Is that you, Sora?”
There’s no verbal response, but the bamboo shifts once again, and this time it doesn’t stop after a few shakes, the noise getting louder and the shafts getting shakier as whatever is making its way towards Telary comes ever closer…
Suddenly the shoots nearest to Telary part to reveal a huge animal, roughly humanoid in shape, but covered in thick black fur. It walks on two hind-legs and its knuckles, ambling along at a slow but steady pace. Until it sees Telary, that is.
With a loud noise somewhere between a grunt and a scream, the animal turns and retreats, darting into the bamboo thicket to its left. The rustling of bamboo stalks grows quieter until it is clear that the animal has retreated.
Sighing, Telary holsters his staff once again. He’s actually pretty proud of how he’d managed to maintain his calm during the situation, in spite of just how many nasty things could be lurking in this jungle, waiting for their chance to pounce…
“Hey…!”
“Aaaaah!!!” Telary cries out in terror, leaping almost two feet into the air. The second his feet touch the ground once more he’s turning, not even bothering to pull out his staff, relying on the strength of his fist alone…
He connects with something hard, hurting his hand not insignificantly. A little yelp of pain follows, but it’s nothing compared to what he hears from whoever it was he just managed to strike.
“Damn it!” a familiar voice cries out, a loud, ugly exclamation. Telary immediately recognizes the voice behind it, from tone alone.
He opens his eyes to find Azlyn lying flat on her back in the grass, blood dripping from her injured nose. A lesser man would take a bit of pleasure at the reversal of past roles in this situation, but Telary’s just glad to have his friend back. Well, and full of remorse for sending her flat to the ground with a bleeding nose.
“Sorry about that,” the mage apologizes sheepishly, dropping to his knees and examining his friend’s condition. “You just kind of snuck up on me and, well, I’d just almost had this
really unpleasant encounter with the local wildlife, which is
huge, by the way, I mean really, there must be a fully functional gym somewhere in this jungle, because…”
“Telawy!” Azlyn interrupts curtly, her words distorted by the state of her nose. “Cood you jusd please figs ma node?”
“Sure thing!” With a wave of his hand and an utterance of the Cure spell, Telary fixes his friend up good as new. “All better?”
Azlyn sits up, tweaking her nose a bit to make sure it’s all better. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” she says, her voice on the verge of losing volume control. “I mean, I got stranded in the jungle by an idiot who may be the only way we can save our hides, who we
really need now considering that as soon as we get our stupid ship up and running again we’ll get pulled back to the place our punishment is waiting, BUT AT LEAST MY NOSE ISN’T BLEEDING!”
The air above is filled with noises as Azlyn’s yelling frightens animals of all kinds, who fly, climb, or scurry away to avoid whatever it was that made that very loud sound. A very good idea on the part of the animals.
“Well,” Telary says after a moment, sitting his butt back in the grass, “it’s a good thing you were able to get your frustration out there! Now we can channel some of that energy in a positive direction, like finding Sora and…”
“He can rot in this stupid jungle, for all I care!” Azlyn scoffs, turning away from her counterpart with a scowl on her face.
“Oh, you don’t mean that!” Telary chides her, crawling around on his hands and knees so he’s in front of her again. “Even after what he did, Sora is still your friend. I mean, people fight, that’s normal, so…”
Azlyn says nothing, and actually turns away once again.
Telary sighs. Best to just let her stew in this anger for a while, he thinks. Eventually her real feelings for Sora will manage to win out, and then she’ll be ready to set out on a path to forgiveness on her own. Either way though, they’ve got to get moving if they have any chance of reuniting with their Keyblade-wielding friend.
“Well, I guess you have every right to be angry with him,” he concedes, which gets his partner to at least look at him again. A very encouraging first step. “But whatever your personal feeling are at this moment, we at least need to find him, okay? That’s our mission, if you remember, and it could be the only thing that will save us once we get pulled back to Disney Castle. So…”
“Let’s move out,” Azlyn says wearily, heaving a deep sigh even as she rises. She’s pretty incensed that Telary has managed to reason cooperation out of her, but also realizes that everything he’s said has been true.
“Great attitude!” Telary exclaims without even a hint of irony, popping to his feet next to his companion. With a confident, determined look on his face, he examines the bamboo surrounding the clearing.
“So which way do we go?” Azlyn asks, also examining her surroundings. “How do we find Sora in this huge jungle?”
“I’ll be honest,” Telary admits, his fearless expression faltering a bit, “I have no clue.”
“Well then,” a deep, masculine voice says behind the pair. Startled, they both turn around to see a tall men dressed in hunting clothes, carrying a rifle. His face is movie star handsome, complete with a dapper mustache, and his eyes are alert, calculating, and suggest a hint of sliminess about them. “If you two need a guide, I’d be happy to oblige. For a small fee, of course.”
Azlyn and Telary share a look, not sure at all of what they’ve gotten themselves into.
KH-KH-KH
Over the course of his adventure outside his home, Sora has found himself facing down innumerable dangers, from strange circumstances to actual heart-eating abominations of Darkness. So far he has faced each challenge, whether it be a Heartless at his back or a Buster Sword to his face, with the minimum safe amount of healthy fear, always burying it under confidence and daring.
He’s trying to apply that principle to his latest obstacle, but is finding it rather difficult in this situation. After all, a Heartless you can swing a weapon at and eventually destroy. Gravity, on the other hand, is a bit heartier a foe.
Tarzan gives another grunt that Sora suspects is of frustration, before demonstrating the principle for the third time. With a running leap, Tarzan manages to grab a hold of the swinging vine that is perfectly placed between the two steady branches he’s traveling by. As his momentum carries him close to the next landing spot, he lets go of the vine, landing on all fours, loudly but steadily. Turning back to Sora, he grunts encouragingly.
After a deep breath and a second to shore up his mental reserves, Sora charges for the vine, letting out a frightened scream as he jumps towards the hanging plant. For a split second that nevertheless feels like an eternity, he hangs midair, nothing beneath him but the jungle floor far, far below.
Next thing he knows, the vine is in his hand and he’s swinging, legs pumping to give him the extra momentum he needs to get to the next landing spot. With another cry, this one more triumphant than the last, Sora lets go.
His feet land clumsily on the branches and leaves, and he bends his knees to maintain balance, accidentally overcompensating and getting sent to his knees.
After taking a moment to catch his breath and reassemble his composure, Sora looks up at Tarzan with a cheeky grin. The jungle man squints at him for a second, then returns Sora’s grin with one of his own, almost comically wide.
“Well, that wasn’t so hard!” Sora boasts as he rises to his feet once again, sparing a glance for the platform of leaves he just swung away from. From the other side, it actually doesn’t seem so far away. “In fact, I feel like I could swing anywhere in this world I wanted! Walking will be a thing of a past for Sora…”
Tarzan grunts, interrupting his triumphant, overblown speech. Once he’s sure he has Sora’s attention, he knuckles his way over to the edge of the leaves and branches. Sora follows, still puffed up a bit from his triumph over the vine.
What he sees makes that confidence evaporate like water in a frying pan. Stretched out, maybe for a mile, is nothing but vines to swing from, with the only safe landing place so far away that the Keyblade wielder can’t even see it.
Tarzan backs up a few steps, obviously ready to start his run. Before he can though, Sora nervously sticks out his hand to stop him.
“Um,” he begins nervously, “Tarzan. Look, I know that this is easy, for both of us, and I’m sure it’s quick, but maybe there’s another way to…”
Before he can finish, Sora feels a strong arm wrap around him. Next thing he knows he’s pressed right up to Tarzan’s side, held firmly in place by the wild man’s insanely muscled appendage.
“Tarzan Sora swing both,” Tarzan grunts, nodding at the vine in front of him.
“Um, okay,” Sora says, his voice shaking fiercely. “Are you sure about this Tarzan, because that’s a long way to carry me, and…”
He doesn’t get to finish this objection either, because by the time he reaches the vicinity of his point, he and Tarzan are on their way through the air.
Though he’d never admit it to anyone if asked, even under pain of death, Sora closes his eyes and holds on tightly to Tarzan’s chest, praying to whoever’s listening that this ride will be over sooner rather than later.
Sora isn’t sure how long it takes, but eventually he feels a jolt as Tarzan’s feet connect to something, hopefully solid ground.
Opening his eyes, Sora can see that the pair have, thankfully, arrived on the ground floor of the jungle, in a large clearing, rounded on all sides by tall shoots of bamboo, stretching almost impossibly high into the sky. The space is absolutely filled to capacity, with tables and shelves set up all over, covered in books, papers, and scientific instruments that Sora is sure he’s never heard of before. In several places where there are no tables, crates are stacked high like pyramids. Back in the corner, propped up near a wall of bamboo, sits a large yellow tent.
Tarzan heads immediately for the tent, knuckling his way there faster than Sora has ever seen the wild man move before. Something in his gait definitely suggests a sense of joy. Hoping that whatever is giving Tarzan joy won’t terrify him like the vine swinging, Sora follows along after.
The tent isn’t quite as large on the inside as the outside belied, basically a small square room with a cot resting in the corner, with a small bedside table covered in a stack of three blue books and a sketchpad. One wall of the tent is set up as a giant projector screen, and what Sora suspects is a projector sits across from it.
Sitting on the cot is a young woman, at least ten years older than Sora, if he had to guess. She has a red book open in her hand, and Sora can see that the pages are absolutely filled to the brim with text. The woman wears a sleeveless shirt, white originally but warped by a long time of use without proper washing facilities, and a long red skirt, with a slit in it that goes to about mid ankle. She has straight brown hair, and big eyes that look up as the pair enter the tent.
“Well hello Tarzan!” she greets the wild man cheerfully, dog-earing the page of her book and setting it aside. “I see you’ve brought a friend! I hate to tell you this Tarzan, but he certainly is a much snappier dresser!” The girl rises from the cot and holds out her hand to Sora. “Hello, sir, my name is Jane Porter.”
“Uh, I’m Sora,” the Keyblade wielder replies, shaking the offered hand.
“Oh, good you
do speak English!” Jane says with an air of relief as she pumps the boy’s hand companionably. “I was worried for a moment there that your linguistics were as advanced as Tarzan’s.”
“No, I speak English good enough,” Sora assures her, getting confused when that elicits a giggle from the girl.
“Well, since you’re obviously not related to Tarzan, may I be so bold as to ask how you came to meet him?” Jane inquires, cocking her head curiously. “After all, this isn’t exactly the sort of place one just finds themselves in.” Suddenly, an exciting thought occurs to the young woman. “Are you here to study the gorillas?”
“Uh…” Sora says hesitantly.
“I highly doubt it,” a deep voice interrupts from the entrance to the tent. Everyone already inside turns to see him, swaggering in with his rife against his shoulder. “He looks barely old enough to shave, let alone make scientific discoveries.”
Sora scowls indignantly at the man’s comments. If he wanted to stand around getting insulted, he might as well have stayed with Azlyn.
“What does it say,” the girl in question states with an air of amused superiority, strolling in after the deep-voiced man, “that everyone we meet seems to think you’re some sort of incompetent child?”
Telary ignores the knight’s rude comments, rushing immediately to Sora and enveloping the younger boy in a hug that literally lifts him off of the ground.
“Oh, Sora!” the mage exclaims, shaking the boy all around in the air. “I thought we’d lost you!”
“Yeah,” Azlyn adds, sidling up to her counterpart nonchalantly. “Which was really inconvenient for us, so…”
“Oh, enough of this juvenile buggery!” Clayton declares haughtily, sneering at the reunited trio before turning to Jane. “I regret to inform you, Miss Porter, that once again my efforts to search for the gorilla nesting grounds have been futile.” Jane frowns at the bad news, while Clayton reaches for a pouch at his side, digging around for a second before producing a small object.
The object in question is small and square in shape, colored red with stripes of orange through it. It jiggles, as if made of a spongy material.
“I did, however, manage to find this,” he says, shaking the item contemptuously. “Though I could not tell you what it is, I…”
“That’s a Gummi block!” Telary explains, finally paying attention to the pair’s chat once he’s finished examining Sora for injuries. Curious, he approaches Clayton and actually grab the block out of the bewildered and indignant jungle guide’s hand. “It looks like your standard building piece,” he explains as he examines it closer, really taking his time and judging it from every angle.
“What exactly is a Gummi block, may I ask?” Jane chimes in, squinting at the object in Telary’s hand.
“Well, they’re building materials,” Telary explains after a second, trying to give an explanation without letting the cat out of the bag about other worlds. “They’re pretty rare to find just lying around.”
“Any monetary value?” Clayton inquires, his eyes going wide.
“Not really, no,” Telary explains, deflating the guide’s enthusiasm. After a second, he looks over to his companions. “Might we be able to have a private conference for a minute or so?”
“By all means,” Jane says encouragingly.
Azlyn and Sora follow Telary out of the tent, giving each other stink eyes as they do. When Telary turns around to address them, he notices, and sighs exasperatedly.
“Oh, will you two knock it off!” he says in one of his rare moments of authority. “I know tensions are high right now, but we’re going to have to put this aside for a second. Okay?”
Azlyn and Sora just mumble in halfhearted agreement.
“Well, I guess that’ll have to be good enough,” the mage sighs, resigned to the situation at hand vis-à-vis attitude. “Anyway, I think we’ve come to the right place. At first I thought this block may have come from our ship when we crashed, but after examining it, I don’t think it could have come from us.”
“Wait a minute,” Azlyn says, her jaw dropping in shock. “Does that mean that…?”
“Yeah,” Telary confirms with a grin. “I think the king is here, in this jungle. Or at least, he was at some point.”
“Ha!” Sora laughs triumphantly, smirking at a shocked looking Azlyn. “I guess somebody owes me an apology, huh? In fact, make that double, because Tarzan says Riku and Kairi are here too!”
“This cannot be happening,” Azlyn growls, rubbing her forehead as she suddenly feels a headache coming on. “I mean, the odds on this have got to be… Wow.”
“So if the king is here,” Telary says slowly, clearly turning mental gears in his head, “and so are Sora’s friends, then I guess we’ve just got to stick it out together for a little while, eh?”
“Okay, sure,” Sora says, grinning at the thought of how close he is to reuniting with his friends. He looks at Azlyn and his grin fades a bit. “I guess you can tag along with me.”
“Yeah, well,” Azlyn sighs, fixing a nasty glance on Sora, “if it’ll help us complete our mission, I guess we can all stand to be around each other for a little bit longer.”
“Great!” Telary exclaims, clearly the only one actually excited about the continuation of the trio’s alliance. “Now, let’s go talk to this Tarzan of yours, Sora. If he knows about Riku and Kairi, maybe he can lead us to the king too!”
“Uh, yeah,” Sora agrees with an air of hesitation, scratching the back of his head a bit sheepishly. “That might be harder than you’d think. You see, Tarzan isn’t exactly… Well he’s not that… Uh…”
“Tarzan was raised by gorillas,” Jane explains, exiting the tent with Tarzan trailing behind her, fixing her with a clearly adoring gaze. “Sorry to interrupt, but I overheard you talking about something Tarzan told you. Anyway, although I’ve been doing my best to teach him, I’m afraid his speech hasn’t progressed to a very advanced state yet.”
“Wait a minute!” Azlyn says, waving her arms about before fixing Sora with a withering look. “You’re basing the fact that your friends are somewhere in this jungle on a conversation you had with a guy that doesn’t speak English?”
“Well, uh…” Sora tries to defend himself, but realizes after a second that he really can’t. His earlier joy sinks immediately to much lower depths.
“Well, what exactly did he say to you, Sora?” Jane asks, hoping to help this obviously desperate boy. “Did he use any words you weren’t familiar with?”
“He said that Riku and Kairi were here,” Sora recollects, scratching his chin idly while he thinks back on the strange conversation with the wild man. “He said that in English, I’m sure of it. But there was one word he said that I didn’t exactly understand, so…”
“Well, maybe I have a solution to your problem,” Jane suggests brightly, grinning softly as an idea comes to her. “I have a projector in the tent there with me, we’ve actually been using it quite a bit to help teach Tarzan. Perhaps if we show Tarzan some of the pictures on the slides, one of them could perhaps correspond to the word he told you.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea!” Sora agrees excitedly, nodding.
“It
sounds like a waste of time!” Clayton huffs, emerging from the tent smoking on his pipe. “Miss Porter, I must say that if this, hmph, circus of
clowns thinks they’re going to distract us from hunting gorillas, they must be sorely mistaken!”
“Mr. Clayton!” Jane snaps, the angriest the trio have seen her yet. “If I have told you once, I have told you a million times, we are here to
study the gorillas, not hunt them! And the fact that this is not the first time you’ve slipped up on that particular wording seems to suggest to
me…”
“Come now, Jane,” Clayton deflects haughtily, “I merely misspoke. I’d hope we’ve gotten close enough in these past few weeks for you to know that I would never needlessly hurt a living creature.”
“Yes, I suppose,” Jane admits, glaring at Clayton as he brushes past the trio and heads to a further off part of the camp to have his smoke. “Anyway,” she says, turning back to the trio and returning to her cheerful disposition, “Let’s have a look at those slides, shall we? Come along Tarzan!” She goes back into the tent the ape-man following close behind her.
“Tarzan sure has a thing for her,” Azlyn observes wryly.
“Sure does,” Telary admits, cocking his head to one side and smiling idly. “The wild man and the lady scientist. I tell you, someone should write a book.”
A call from Jane gets the trio to gather inside the tent, Sora making sure to close the entrance flap as thoroughly as possible to keep the light from coming in and disrupting the projection. The whole group stands behind the projector, ready to see what comes up on the screen.
The first picture is of a large, furry beast resting on its hindquarters, massive arms resting beside its torso.
“GOR-IL-LA!” Tarzan exclaims, bounding up to the picture and actually head-butting the screen.
“He certainly seems to know that word,” Telary observes somewhat amusedly.
“Well, it’s one of the first ones we taught him,” Jane explains, looking at Tarzan with fond bemusement. “Sorry about the shouting though. I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise you to learn that Clayton taught
that particular lesson. Anyway, I just wanted to start with something familiar so Tarzan could pick up the game. Now we’ll move on…”
The next few pictures yield little but grunts from Tarzan, and none of them correspond to what Sora had heard in the treehouse.
Just as he’s about to give up hope, Jane slips in another photo to the projector, and the image that appears on the screen ignites a jolt in Sora’s heart.
The picture is of the façade of a castle, set on a cliff and towering high into the sky. Curious, Sora leans forward to get a better look.
“Something wrong, Sora?” Telary asks the boy, concern in his voice.
“No, I just…” Sora trails off, “I don’t know, something about this picture makes me feel, I dunno, weird. It’s almost like I’ve seen it before, but…”
Telary lets the boy trail off into silence, returning his own gaze to the photo being projected. The castle being shown fills him with a bit of an aching feeling as well, thinking back to the castle he himself grew up in. In the corner of his eye, he can see that Azlyn most likely feels the same.
Tarzan doesn’t seem to recognize the picture, though, and Jane moves on. She shows a few more images, but none of them seem to hold the answers they’re looking for.
After the last picture is shown, Jane powers down the projector, leaving everyone in the tent in a funk.
“Anything, Tarzan?” Jane asks the ape man. He says nothing, and even backs up a few steps, cowed by the gazes of so many people all resting on him. After a second, he even turns his head away, hiding his face beneath a curtain of dreadlocked hair.
“Nothing worked!” Sora laments after a few seconds of silence. “We really
are going to have to search the whole jungle to find my friends!”
“Not necessarily,” Clayton’s smooth, smarmy voice says as he enters the tent, still smoking on his pipe.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, my dear boy, it’s like this,” Clayton explains, still sneering at the Keyblade wielder. “We have been traipsing around in his jungle for quite some time now, searching high and low, leaving no stone unturned, and we have yet to encounter these friends of yours.”
Sora hopes that wasn’t supposed to make him feel better, because it most assuredly did not.
“There’s only one place we haven’t yet managed to search out,” the hunter finishes, giving his pipe another puff for dramatic effect. “The gorilla nesting grounds. That’s the only place left we could reasonably expect to find your friends.”
“But wait,” Telary says, thinking. “Isn’t that where Tarzan grew up? He should be able to lead us to the nesting grounds.”
“Well, actually he wouldn’t have necessarily grown up there, seeing how gorillas are migratory creatures by nature,” Jane corrects, the scientist in her absolutely unable to let that fact go unexplained. “But, he has to go
somewhere when he leaves our camp every night, so I’d imagine he knows the location.”
“So, whaddya say, Tarzan?” Sora asks his new friend, crouching down so he’s face to face with the jungle-bred man. After a second of contemplating, Tarzan turns his face to the Keyblade wielder.
“Tarzan Sora go,” he replies, slowly and steadily. “Tarzan go see Kerchak.”
“Kerchak?” Azlyn asks, bewildered.
“I’d wager he’s the head monkey,” Clayton says, his face split in a wide grin. “Splendid! I’ll go along as well, as an escort. You can never be too careful in the jungle. It’s a very dangerous place, don’t you know.”
The trio, Tarzan, and Clayton head out for the gorilla nests only a few minutes later, leaving a sad but understanding Jane to look after the camp.
They head east, past the bamboo grove Azlyn and Telary had landed in. After a few minutes, Telary signals for Azlyn and Sora to drop back from Tarzan and Clayton.
“I know you’re excited about seeing your friends, Sora,” Telary begins, talking in low tones so the other two up ahead won’t hear. “But even if we do find them with the gorillas, we’re going to need to get the Gummi ship up and running. And to do that, we’ve got to find it first.”
“So what are you saying?” Sora asks the mage, hoping that it won’t do anything to impede his reunion with Riku and Kairi.
“What I’m saying is, you go with Tarzan and Clayton to the gorilla nesting grounds, see if there’s anyone there,” the mage explains. “But Azlyn and I are going to split off and search for the ship. If I’ve got my trajectory calculations correct, it should be somewhere in the same area.”
“Okay!” Sora agrees. As he walks, he’s practically bouncing from one foot to another, almost skipping he’s so excited. This could be it! Finally, after many long days of searching, he could actually be close to finding his best friends! “I can’t wait until you guys meet Riku and Kairi!” he says happily. “And then they’ll get to come with us to other worlds in our cool ship…”
“If they’re even there,” Azlyn mutters under her breath. “Which I doubt.”
She doesn’t mutter quietly enough, though, because Sora hears. The Keyblade wielder spins around to the knight angrily, looking her dead in the eye, madder than she’s ever seen him direct at her.
“What is your problem, Azlyn?” he asks, pointing an accusing finger at her like a pistol. “Huh? Every time I bring up Riku and Kairi, you act like it’s some big burden you have to deal with, that every time I want to see my friends, who I lost when our
home vanished, it’s just a huge inconvenience to you! I’m sick of it, espescially since
you were the one who said I could use your ship to look for them.”
“Well, I lied!” Azlyn replies, the words bursting out of her like shots from a cannon, intended for maximum pain. “I don’t care about your dumb ‘quest’ for your stupid friends who might be…”
“Azlyn…” Telary says warningly, desperately hoping that for once his friend will show some actual freaking tact and not continue this line of argument, which will only lead to an even worse blowup than the one that got their ship actually, well, blown up.
“
Dead!” Azlyn concludes, packing as much venom as she possibly can into the single, terrible word.
The entire party is silent. Sora is the angriest he can ever recall being towards someone he thought of as a friend, Azlyn is not feeling quite as smug or triumphant as she thought she would, Telary literally wants the jungle to develop sentience and swallow him up into the ground or a tree just so he doesn’t have to be in the position he is at this moment, and Tarzan and Clayton, though not knowledgeable of exactly what the strangers are getting so angry about, of course can feel the uncomfortableness of the whole mess coming off in waves. Clayton has at least the social grace, bred into him by a lifetime of high-class living, to turn away, while Tarzan just looks back and forth between Sora and Azlyn, like a spooked animal.
After a full minute of silence, it’s Sora who responds. “Y’know, Azlyn,” he seethes, his words hissing out through still clenched teeth, “I don’t care if I never get out of this jungle, but I swear to you that there is no way, if I find my friends or not, that I am
ever going
anywhere with you ever again. You pretend to be all noble and concerned with saving the universe or whatever, but I know that actually, you just care about yourself. And believe me when I say, I do
not want to be friends with a person like that.”
He turns away and stalks over to Tarzan and Clayton. “Good luck finding your ship, and your king,” he says as he goes. After a few steps, he stops and turns back, facing Telary. “I’m sorry you’re gonna have to put up with her. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, especially someone I actually like. Goodbye.”
Joining up with Clayton and Tarzan, Sora motions for the ape man to continue showing them the way to the nesting grounds. The jungle man looks from the boy to his former companions, then back to Sora, who nods. Turning then, Tarzan leads the way to his family’s home, still having trouble comprehending what exactly happened back there.
“Good luck, Sora!” Telary calls halfheartedly after the departing trio, grief and sadness filling his heart so heavy he almost physically feels it sink to the bottom of his stomach. He knows he should be at least partly concerned with what possible consequences Sora’s departure could have upon him once he returns to Disney Castle, but mostly he’s sad to see the boy go. He thought they had become friends, but he supposes that’s over now. It’s all over now, all thanks to…
“Azlyn,” the mage says, turning to his counterpart with a look she hasn’t ever seen on his face, so angry and twisted that it seems like a logical impossibility. “I hope you’re happy!”
“Look, if it’s about what’ll happen at the castle…” she starts, but is immediately cut off.
“I don’t care about that right now, Azlyn!” Telary explains, exasperated by his friend’s failure to see beyond herself for once. “Whatever happens there will happen, that’s alright. What I’m talking about is how you just drove off our friend.”
“He doesn’t care about us!” Azlyn retorts, folding her arms in front of herself and huffing angrily. “All he ever wanted was to ditch us for his precious Riku and Kairi. He made it clear from the beginning that he was just using us.”
“Like we were using him?”
The question from Telary hits Azlyn harder than any Heartless has managed to so far on their journey. As she thinks more on it, she realizes that the mage is correct. She’s the bad guy here, not Sora. It seems like she
always ends up the bad guy.
“You’re right,” she sighs, falling back into a sitting position on a nearby tree branch, fallen from high above some time ago. “I can’t believe I said all that to him. I didn’t mean any of it! Telary, we have to…”
“I think we should give him some time alone,” Telary suggests, placing a comforting hand on his companion’s shoulder. “If we go back to him now, it could just start another fight. Besides, we
do need to find the Gummi ship if we’re going to get out of this jungle.” For a second, he just looks at the still dejected Azlyn, her head bowed and vision focused on the ground. “Are you gonna be okay?”
After a second more of mopey staring, the knight looks up at Telary. “Yeah, I think so. I just hope things turn out.”
“They will,” Telary assures her, helping her to her feet. Together they take off into the forest in search of their most likely wrecked ship. “And who knows,” the mage chimes in after a few seconds of walking, “maybe Sora
will find his friends, and he’ll be in a better mood than ever when we see him again!”
Things have to get worse before they get better, right?
