application . luministi

[worldsapart]

Player Information
Player Name: Malathyne
Player LJ: terrenetortoise
E-mail and/or AIM:
Email: when.all.your.dreams.come.true at gmail
Personal IM: whitepoof
Timezone: Central Standard Time
Current Characters: n/a

Character Information
Character: Xion
Fandom/Series: Kingdom Hearts
Original or Alternate Universe: Alternate

Canon Used: 358/2 Days game only. This mun is still reading through the novels and, though the manga is nice for icons, she has decided not to use it as canon, as there are significant differences in some characters' personalities between the different medias.

Age: Technically, Xion has been fully operational for one full year, but she looks like she's about fourteen or so and has the personality and development of a fourteen-year-old.
Gender: Xion identifies as female, but... Her body matches Sora's, so her sex is male.
Species: Replica. However, unlike the Riku Replica, who was made to look and act exactly like Riku, Xion is a "blank" doll meant to replicate Roxas's abilities, i.e., the Keyblade. As such, she was built with absorption capabilities, which will be covered later in the application, and it wasn't until she took some of Roxas's -- Sora's -- power, and therefore Sora's abilities, that she started to look like Kairi and have her own identity and personality. But, in the end, she had all of Sora's memories, so she took on Sora's appearance, and once she absorbed Roxas's power, the look stuck.

Appearance:
Although Xion originally looked almost exactly like Kairi, only with very Sora-like features (the eyes) and black hair, she now looks exactly like fourteen-year-old Sora. From the round face to the adolescent (but still cuddly-looking) body to the ridiculously spiky brown hair, she could easily pass as Sora if she ever decided she wanted to.

She wears a long black hooded coat with an interlocking teeth silver zipper and silver chains across the chest and silver drawstrings. The coat, like all Organization coats, is form-fitting and matches the shape of her (male) body perfectly. She has a habit of always wearing her hood up, especially in the company of those she doesn't know and generally when she's feeling uncomfortable. She likes being able to hide her face; it makes her feel safe. With a reminder and a bit of coaxing, she can be convinced to lower it, but she won't really want to now that her face isn't quite hers any more. Around other Kingdom Hearts characters that she knows, she will be especially reluctant to lower her hood at first.

Personality:
Xion is, on default, a quiet, shy girl. This doesn't mean she isn't friendly, it just simply means that she's naturally quiet. She is an introvert, and instinctively turns inward to find the answers and solutions to the questions and conflicts of life. She tries to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders, keeping her thoughts and feelings to herself instead of relying on her friends, as important they are to her. She is also accordingly solitary; when she is upset and conflicted, she does not turn to even her best friends for support, and instead she closes herself off in her room to think. When she has a problem, she's more likely to just turn to people she looks up to for advice; in Days, she never, never tells Roxas her innermost problems or goes to him for comfort, instead turning to Axel with questions and then going off to her room to think and work things out by herself.

Perhaps in this way, she is more like Sora than one would normally think; Sora never talks about his own problems, instead holding them inside and putting forward a cheerful face. Xion keeps her problems inside as well, she just handles the external interactions with people differently, and perhaps more so like her friend Roxas. She needs the space to think, and she will grow distant or even cold if she is being held up from her Quiet Time, even if her behavior hurts the feelings of those around her at the time. Also like Roxas, she can get lost in her thoughts, getting wrapped up in her personal issues and having seeing beyond them, and her tendency to keep her thoughts and secrets close to her (false) heart coupled with her surprising personality 180 can sometimes make her confusing and difficult to understand.

She has been described as emotionally fragile, and because of her insecurity, she certainly gives off that vibe -- of something small, soft, easily broken, something to protect and cherish -- but it is more like there are some very sensitive areas that, when breached, make her react in very emotional ways. She is very insecure about who she is as a person. The knowledge that she is just a replica, created to be controlled like a common puppet, makes that subject especially sensitive. Although she is a "turn inward" type of person, she is also, like Roxas, a "lash out" type, and so when she feels strong emotion, she cannot stop it from showing. When angry and upset, she's likely to fall to childish insults, going as far as to call Riku and Saïx "jerks" at the beginning of the game and over-emphasizing her point in ineloquent ways (using all capital letters in her diary to make her point that she isn't a "sham"). Her words in personal arguments are far from poignant and thusly reflect her youthful nature.

She is especially sensitive to failure; just one will send her spiralling into a panic. Failure is unacceptable, as it means she's useless and therefore dispensable. Because she is so insecure about her role and purpose in life, the concept of being worthless terrifies her; if she is, what good is she? She wants to be important, not only to her friends, but to everyone else and herself, too. She feels a need to prove herself because if she doesn't... She's nothing, and she might as well not exist.

As such, Xion flocks to kindness and acceptance like a moth drawn to flame. Be kind to her, and she will return that kindness with (first surprise, but then) her own. This is the quickest way to earn her trust, and once her friendship is earned, it is very difficult to break. Breaking promises and betraying friends just isn't in her nature, and it's hard for her to cut off a friendship, even if she has a very good reason for doing so. She loves her friends with every fiber of her being. They are the center of her world, her inspiration and motivation, and she needs them to have any state of stability. Her friends are the ones who embrace her for who she is, and she needs that, as if it validates her -- as if they are what make her "real."

Do not mistake her shy and sensitive nature to mean that she is meek and mild as well; she is quite the opposite. Like Kairi, she has a sisterly attitude towards her close friends. She worries (a lot) and looks out for them, and she is always ready to protect and support them. Like Sora, like Roxas, her friends are her everything, and she is loyal to them to a fault. Around them, she relaxes and opens up, and she will laugh and jokes around and tease her friends, and it is perhaps here that she acts the most obviously like Sora, playfully competitive and almost bouncy with optimism and cheer.

When she is comfortable, she can be even confident in herself and her abilities, which can come as a surprise to those who have seen her lowest moments. She is a very determined individual, and when she has made up her mind to do something, she follows through with it, even if she is second-guessing herself all the while. She is also curious and observant, taking delight (like Sora) in exploring new worlds and things, noticing little details and drawing conclusions from them; she was taught this for reconnaissance missions, but it carried on into the way she watches people, too. In some ways, smarter than Sora and Roxas, for she processes information and is capable of putting pieces together. It can be said that she is empathetic like Kairi as she can see the different sides of an issue, but she is also idealistic in her morals, much like both Sora as well, believing very strongly in love and friendship, and in the light that is always somewhere inside the darkness.

Now that she has all of half of Sora's power, Xion has also picked up a few more of Sora's traits. For one, she has the capacity to be more social simply because she is more accepting of the presence of other people. Although she is still shy, she will slowly grow into being more open to talking to people than she used to be, as well as being more likely to offer a helping hand or lend a sympathetic ear to someone in need. This will play into many of her personality traits, combining the way her friends validate her existence and her happiness and confidence when she feels accepted into a fuel for sociability. This especially plays off her desire to be useful and her need to be needed, as in this way she'll be able to get close to people and she'll be able to help them, making her important to them and useful. However, this also adds to her sensitivity to failure; now that she will be more likely to bank her success on whether or not she was able to help or protect someone, she's going to take it extremely hard when she fails to or cannot do so, especially since she does want so much to make other people happy and keep them safe. In her mind, their unhappiness will be entirely her fault, because if she had just done "the right thing," her precious friends who support her and give her so much wouldn't have to suffer. And taking Roxas's death and the question of whether or not it was an accident into consideration... Letting people down is just simply not an option for her.

Xion is also now has a tendency to see things closer to black and white, good and bad, light and darkness. This may simplify her world view somewhat, especially when it comes in regards to those who she'll regard as her enemies. As Sora exhibited a habit of classifying things into "there's us, the good guys, and we do everything for the sake of good" and "there's them, the bad guys, and everything they do is evil and wrong and they must be stopped," whenever Xion finds herself an enemy, she's likely to do the same. This makes her especially accepting of her allies, but also more ruthless against those she is fighting. This unexpectedly clashes horribly with her moralistic nature and her desire to find and do what is right, as it makes her more bias and unwilling to consider and accept her enemy's side. If she is aware of this, she doesn't really think about it (and if she does, she represses it until it's a small naggling voice in the back of her head that she can largely ignore) out of self-defensive instincts because of the moral dilemmas and emotional conflicts that would ensue.

Strengths/Abilities:
also: see here
Once upon a time, Xion had a connection to Roxas. Between the two of them, they shared half of Sora's power, and when one was strong, the other was weak. However, since Xion absorbed Roxas's powers, she now holds all of half of Sora's power, and will not have any kind of connection with any Roxas at Luministi (unless one of them desires to have one; we'll talk something plotty out for that if it comes up).

Xion initially used a Keyblade that was an imitation of Roxas's, but after absorbing all of his powers, she now wields two Keyblades, though whether or not they are both imitations, both real, or a mix is uncertain (not even Xion herself knows for sure). She also knows the typical array of spells (Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, Aero, Cure), low, mid, and high level, found in Kingdom Hearts, as well as any other skills that Roxas knows, as she was meant to learn his absorb his abilities and has done so. In canon, her stats are evenly split between physical attack and magic attack, making her a balanced fighter, like Roxas and Sora. However, because the Keyblade wasn't and isn't her original default weapon, she started out just using magic, so it can be assumed that she is perhaps even more comfortable using magic as opposed to physical attacks, the "mage-fighter" to Roxas's all-out offensive tactics.

Although Xion can dual-wield, she doesn't have much experience doing so yet and it's not entirely comfortable for her, so until she can train to the point that she can dual-wield proficiently, she'll be using only one. Whenever she uses just one Keyblade, its form will be Aubade, which comes with the abilities Striker and Grand Slam, which gives her a boost in strength when her health is low and allows her to deal more critical hits when on low health, respectively. Whenever she dual-wields, she will be using Oathkeeper and Oblivion, like Roxas would have while dual-wielding himself. While dual-wielding, her strength will be much higher but her speed will be much lower because of her inexpertise. She'll also have access to the abilities Defender, Damage Control, and Second Chance. Defender increases her defense while her health is low; Damage Control helps her take less damage when on low health; Second Chance helps her survive blows that would be "fatal" (that is to say, that would knock her out).

Xion will also have equipped an accessory. It's a simple ring called the Princess's Crown, which, while also adding to her health and defense, increases the power of the healing items she uses by a little and boosts the experience she gets from defeating enemies. She also has on her person, via her backpack, an array of hi-potions [4], hi-ethers [4], and the occasional elixir [1] and limit recharge [2] (which restores her energy so that she has enough to use her Limit Break again, as normally she can only use it once per battle because of how much energy it expends).

Speaking of Limit Breaks, Xion has not her normal one but also her Final Limit. Her normal Limit is called Event Horizon, and it is identical to Roxas's and very similar to a skill Sora had in KH1 called Ragnarok. She can only activate when in low health, and in order to do so she must tap into and use a large amount of energy. The KH Wiki article describes it best: "During Event Horizon, Xion rapidly darts around the field while her Keyblade enveloped in light, slashing away at enemies with great strength. ... During her Final Limit, Xion summons four thin pillars of light to quickly move in straight paths to ends of the field, dealing heavy damage to any enemies in their path."

I'm also going to say that, as a replica, Xion has a false heart. This is speculation, since Chain of Memories heavily references the fact that the Riku Replica had a heart, though a false one, but it's never actually stated in 358/2 Days whether or not Xion has a heart or not. She is treated as though and led to believe that she doesn't, but her behavior indicates otherwise (insecurity, fear, and love are not things Nobodies can feel), which is what has brought me to this conclusion. It's also never specified what the difference between a fake heart and a real one other than the origins (the former being created in a lab and the latter coming naturally from Kingdom Hearts).

Weaknesses: word count: 539
Despite being a dual-wielding Keybearer with half of Sora's power, Xion is nowhere near being invincible, nor is she a flawless master at battle. She can still be defeated in battle and incapacitated like any human teenager. She also cannot efficiently use both her Keyblades at once, so if she is pushed so far as to try to battle, is caught in the middle of training, or attempts to spar with someone using both, her skills, speed, and general mobility decreases.

Although she is stronger than she looks, she is still very lightweight (Axel and Xemnas pick her up with one hand in canon as if she's just a ragdoll), and she still has the physique of a fourteen-year-old boy. Although Sora could move the small boulder in the Olympus Coliseum at the end of Kingdom Hearts, that doesn't mean he's Superman, and neither is Xion. Heavy objects are beyond her, and it would be a simple matter to just throw her across the room.

Should Xion be driven to use her Limit Break, she will be highly vulnerable directly afterwards, as she will not only have low health but also be in a state of exhaustion because of how much energy she needs to use in able to activate it. Xion also has a limited number of casts per spell she can use each day depending on how many panels she has "equipped." More to come on how this actually works in a story 'verse later.

Her largest weaknesses come from her personality, which has all ready been covered, but these traits will be summarized again. Xion is sensitive to failure, as just one is enough to make her question her worth, which is her biggest weak point. She needs to believe that she isn't useless, because otherwise she will be sent spiralling into a deep depression that she will not be able to claw her way out of on her own. Another trait that could be called a weakness is her not-so-new-but-newly-emphasized habit of seeing things in black and white, them versus us, "they're the bad guys so it's okay to take them out." This is a weakness because it conflicts with her high morality of doing the right thing, and should this be pointed out to her, it'll send her into a mental debate that would never end. (Her "do the right thing" mentality can also be a weakness, as the world is not as simple as that; she could easily worry herself sick over what is "right" and what isn't, but since that is the core of her character and what she stands for, that conflict is inevitable.)

But now this Alternate Universe Xion has a new personality weakness, one that is about to be covered in her history: her Roxas. She killed him and absorbed his powers, and it's unclear whether or not she did so on purpose. Just his death in and of itself throws her into despair, as she hasn't had enough time to deal with it and move on; the question of if she killed him on accident or not will break her heart and mind as she tries to figure it out -- if she tries to figure it out.

History:
In the Kingdom Hearts universe, people are made of three parts, which can be simplified as thus: the body, the physical self; the heart, the emotions; and the soul, the animating life force. Every person has an amount of light and darkness within their hearts (with the exceptions of the Princesses of Heart, who have purely light hearts, and other beings in Birth by Sleep which will remain unnamed to protect those who do not wish to be spoiled), and there are creatures made out of the darkness in people's hearts that were ironically misnamed Heartless. They operate on instinct, and they automatically seek to steal the hearts of other people. When a person with a strong heart loses it to the Heartless, there is a chance that their body and soul left behind will remain intact and become a Nobody, a being without emotion. If the person has an especially strong heart, they retain their human form, consciousness, and memories of being whole.

A group of thirteen of these human-like Nobodies bonded together to form Organization XIII. Their goal? To create a doorway to the heart of all worlds, Kingdom Hearts, which would then give them their hearts back. In order to reach Kingdom Hearts, the Organization's leader, Xemnas, devised a plan: if they could defeat Heartless with the legendary weapon called the Keyblade, they would be able to capture the released hearts and create Kingdom Hearts that way. As such, the Organization began to make plans to manipulate the Keybearer of the time, Sora, going as far as to recruit his Nobody, Roxas.

The Organization knew that Sora and Roxas might not work for their plans, however, as they have free will and therefore might rebel against them, so they made back-ups using the Replica Program. In the Kingdom Hearts series we only see two such replicas. The Riku Replica, a clone made from the data of Riku, was deemed such a "failure" that he wasn't even given a number, and he was kept at Castle Oblivion. However, No.i, an empty shell or puppet of sorts, was functional enough that Xemnas decided to take it to the Castle That Never Was. He named it Xion, believing that "a name defines an object [and] gives it a purpose" and for all appearances, the replica was inducted into the Organization. Its purpose: To replicate (ha ha) the abilities of Sora's Nobody, Roxas, and gain power over the Keyblade. Its power: To absorb Roxas's powers (or magic, or life energy, or whatever you want to call it).

Roughly half of the Organization was sent to Castle Oblivion, including Axel, the friend of Roxas. The plan was to manipulate Kairi's Nobody, Naminé, into taking apart the memories of Sora in order to turn him into a tool for the Organization. Around this time, the replica was sent on a couple of missions with Roxas, and the two struck up a friendship. Because of their proximity, Xion was able to begin absorbing some of Roxas's power, and in doing so, also picked up some of Sora's fragmented memories. Because Naminé was removing Kairi from Sora's memories first, those were the memories first "available" -- and so, Xion absorbed Sora's memories of Kairi and began to resemble her, both in appearance and personality. This was an unintended effect; Xion was never meant to have developed an identity.

Through Roxas, Xion also met Axel, and the three of them became a trio of best friends. Roxas and Xion wanted their friendship to last forever, but because of Xemnas's constantly adjusting plans, it was not to be. Although he had not originally intended to destroy Roxas or Xion, the replica was absorbing too much of Roxas's power (as well as Sora's memories), making him almost useless to the Organization. It would be more optimal for Xion to completely absorb him and his powers and become a more perfect Sora Replica -- and then Sora could never wake up, and the Organization would have a Keybearer, theirs to manipulate, control, and reprogram.

Over the course of Xion's attempts to learn about herself, she encountered Riku, who was working alongside Ansem the Wise (then known as DiZ) and Naminé to awaken Sora. Though their first encounter was by no means friendly and it left Xion shaken deeply, in the end she began to consider him someone she could trust. He was honest with her and did not hide answers from her, unlike the Organization, and, more importantly, he gave her a chance to choose what she wanted to do. Did she want to go to Sora, or did she want to stay with her friends? He urged her to make the decision that was right for everyone, not just for her, and these words impacted her heavily, and in the end they are what helped her make up her mind. She ran away from the Organization to return where she truly belonged, with Sora. Riku had told her to go to Twilight Town and find a girl called Naminé when she was ready, and that is where she went... And that is where the story changed.

Xion searched all over the sleepy hilltown before finally turning to the mansion in the southeast. However, no one came to greet her. She let herself in and began to explore, and while doing so, stumbled upon a room where Riku was talking with a man he called DiZ. Their conversation was centered around Roxas. What were they going to do with him?, Riku was asking. Sora needed Roxas's power to wake up, too, after all. DiZ replied that they would have to get him away from the Organization, with force, if they had to. He had been preparing a way to keep Roxas hidden from the Organization: they would hide him within the world of the computer used to monitor Sora's status. DiZ had been programming it into a simulation of Twilight Town, complete with townspeople created from samples of the hearts of the real townspeople. He would have Naminé lock away Roxas's memory chain and replace it with a false one of this imitation Twilight Town in order to throw off the Organization's scent. When Riku questioned the necessity of that, DiZ answered that he would also be able to shape Roxas in some ways, take some of the fight out of him so that he would be less likely to fight back against them when the time came.

Xion couldn't believe what she was hearing. She thought she had made the right decision. How could this man talk so flippantly about Roxas like that, as if he wasn't even human? She knew at that point that the both of them, herself and Roxas, would have to go back to Sora in the end, but... She didn't think it would happen like that. It didn't have to happen like that. More than that, she didn't want it to. She wouldn't let it. But before she could burst in and give DiZ a piece of her mind, Naminé found her. Numb with shock, Xion followed her upstairs to a white room to discuss her fate.

Naminé told her that if Xion went back to Sora, gave her memories -- his memories -- back to him, she would more than just disappear from life, she would disappear from memory as well. Because the foundation of the essence of Xion had been founded on Sora's memories, when those memories were taken apart and given back to him, all the memories connected to them would break apart as well, and it would've been as though Xion never existed. And though Xion knew she had to go back to Sora, could feel that she had to go back to Sora, she hesitated. What about Roxas, though? She tried to turn the conversation down the path that would lead to her questions, starting by telling Naminé that she knew what was going to happen to her. "I'm ready. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here. Roxas belongs with Sora, too. But... I don't think he would understand. Not yet." But before she could begin to ask about what she overheard, DiZ entered the room, announcing that the Organization had found them -- that they had followed Xion, and it was her fault that they had been discovered. Xion, stung by his words, decided to use the opportunity that had been given to her: she said that she would take care of the Organization and ran out before the others could stop her.

At the mansion gate, Xion found Axel, who had been sent by Xemnas to recapture her. He demanded what she was going to do, and Xion answered, "I don't know. But I feel like... I have to go back to where I belong." Axel agreed that he thought that he thought that it was best, but something about the situation still bothered him. He argued with her, saying that they were going to destroy her, and then, with his behavior, showed that he wasn't willing to let that happen. "Go on, you just keep running. But I'll always be there to bring you back!"

As uncertain as Xion was about DiZ now, she definitely knew that she did not want to go back to the Organization. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and she didn't know which choice was the best. Confused and scared because she knew that the direction of more than just her fate, but Roxas's, rested on her decision, she drew her Keyblade to battle Axel -- for she wasn't about to go back to the Organization willingly -- and begged him, "Please, don't hold back, Axel. Promise." In that moment, she hoped that Axel would kill her. Perhaps then, she would return to Sora, and then Axel could protect Roxas from DiZ. But Axel didn't kill her; he defeated her -- barely -- and carried her back to the Castle That Never Was.

Once Xemnas got a hold of her unconscious form, he made alterations to her design. The Organization had set up devices all over the worlds, devices that would draw on the world's energy and Sora's memories through Roxas. Xemnas made it so that Xion could draw on that energy, and that would make Roxas even weaker and Xion even stronger. He also attempted to program into her orders: Fight Roxas and kill him.

From there, Xion could not fight the compulsion. She sought out Roxas, who had argued heatedly with Axel and then left the Organization like Xion before him, and engaged him in battle. To his eyes, it looked as though she had gone insane; she spoke of making Roxas a part of her, of that being the reason for her creation. He didn't want to fight her, didn't want to hurt her, she was his best friend and the only person he had left. During the battle, Xion drew more of Sora's memories through Roxas, taking that power, changing her form, weapon, and abilities as she did so. But she had enough of her free will to try to hold herself back, to try to encourage her to defeat her, going so far as to shout at Roxas things such as, "Is that all you've got? Stop holding back!"

But it felt as though she couldn't stop herself -- either because of Xemnas's orders... or because some part of her didn't want to. Because now she knew what would happen to Roxas after she died, knew what awaited him and how cruel and unfair it was, knew that he wouldn't want that and that she didn't want that, either. Between Sora's memories clouding her mind, Xemnas's alterations, her inner dilemma, and the heat of the battle, Xion felt as though she had gone insane. She ran entirely on instinct, unable to clearly think.

And Roxas either refused to go all out on her, or he simply didn't have the power to. In the end, he fell, collapsing into the darkness that all Nobodies fade into as they die. Xion couldn't even run to him to hold him in her arms as he died -- all of his power, all of Sora's memories, were flowing into her, changing her, and she could barely see for the force of everything happening. By the time she finally came to, Roxas was gone, and she no longer looked like herself. She looked like Sora.

Horrified at what had happened and terrified of what would if Xemnas got a hold of her again, Xion fled, opening a dark corridor to escape to somewhere, anywhere quiet, any place where she could be alone with her grief and her thoughts and her conflicts. Sora's memories, so fresh in her mind, called up a world trapped in perpetual night named Traverse Town, and that is where she went.

She found the place abandoned save for Heartless, but it suited her purposes fine. After her grief-driven breakdown, she felt empty. She didn't know what to do. She couldn't go back to the Organization because they would all but destroy her -- the real her, the one inside this Sora body -- in order to wipe out her free will so they could use her as a true puppet to gain Kingdom Hearts, which she knew Xemnas would only use for the power. But... She didn't want to go back to DiZ, either, not when she knew how horrible he really was. But she didn't have any choice, did she? She had to go back to Sora. But Roxas...

She just needed time, she decided. Time to come to terms with everything. So, she took to exploring Traverse Town, seeking out the best shelter possible among the abandoned houses, living off of whatever non-perishable stocks she found, fighting Heartless whenever she had no other choice. This was how she discovered that she could bear not just one Keyblade, but two. She couldn't understand this at first, but slowly came to the realization that this second Keyblade was Roxas's. This belief, coupled with the fact that using two when she was so accustomed to fighting with just one felt awkward and unwieldy to her, led to her changing tactics and just using her one Keyblade, just like she always did.

Xion lived like this for two weeks -- fourteen days exactly -- fighting and eating and sleeping and thinking. On the one-year anniversary of the day she had first seen Roxas, the day she had been introduced formally into the Organization, Xion would wake up to find herself not in Traverse Town, but in a place she had not fallen asleep in, a town that she did not recognize, and a world that she never knew even existed, all with no answers to how or where or why... except for a message.

When Xion returned to her canon, she woke back up in Traverse Town, where she was last before she found herself in Luministi. With her memories of the town gone, she was no longer at peace with herself and hadn't accepted what she had to do. While she stalled, though, she didn't think about the possibility of the Organization patrolling Traverse Town... and that was when she ran into Axel.

They didn't battle; they were both too tired -- physically, from fighting the Heartless, and "emotionally," from the loss of Roxas and each other. Instead, they just... talked. Xion, also exhausted from keeping everything inside, came clean to him and told him everything that had happened, everything that she'd found out, all the things she'd been thinking lately. After a lot of going back and forth about what she should do ("If you don't wanna go to DiZ, don't go." "But I do. Sora needs to wake up." "So go." "But if I go back to the Organization, they'll turn me into a mindless puppet." "So run away from both. Hide out here like you have been." "But who would stop Xemnas?" "..."), Axel finally snapped.

"Make up your mind, would you?! If you had a heart, what would it want you to do?"

Xion fell quiet after that, but then nodded. "It would want me... to go back to where I belong. Back to Sora."

"Well then," Axel said, "there you go." After a quiet moment, he spoke again. "Let's meet again in the next life, the three of us."

Xion smiled softly and stood. "Yeah. Roxas is waiting for us. We'll wait for you together."

She opened a corridor of darkness to take her back to the Twilight Town mansion and left. Axel didn't answer until after she was gone.

"Silly. Just because you have a next life..."

Canon Point: Post-Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days

First Person Sample:
[Xion opens her eyes and immediately closes them again. Whoa. That... didn't normally happen. She opens them again and blinks the spots away. She considers rolling over and going back to sleep. She was up all last night worrying -- worrying about something different than usual, and she can't quite remember what. Maybe it's because she's still sleepy. She does roll over and immediately winces as sunlight cuts into her eyes.

Except there isn't any sunlight in Traverse Town.]

What?!

[She immediately sits up, tensed. Her first assumption is that someone -- DiZ or Riku or one of the Organization members -- must've found her and carried her off. But... no. That doesn't seem to be right. This isn't the Twilight Town mansion or the Castle That Never Was. None of this is familiar at all. Xion frowns, moving to slide off the bed. She instinctively pauses a moment to take in the setting (just like the Organization taught her; isn't she such a good little puppet?). Everything in the room looks... really nice. From the blankets on the bed to the curtains framing the windows to the rug under her feet, it's all of decent quality -- higher than anything she's found in Traverse Town, for sure.

[But that's all she has the chance to absorb, because there's suddenly a voice talking to her.] Ah-! [Xion jumps, spinning around, searching the room for the source, ready to fight if she has to --

And then she realizes that it's coming from some kind of giant screen on the wall. Xion blinks, now completely confused.] H... Huh? [All she can do is stand there, almost dumbfounded, as the overly friendly man talks at her. (She can tell he's not really talking to her, because he's not even looking directly at her, but at some fixed point on the wall.)

Since she hasn't had experience with this kind of technology before, she doesn't know what to think. She missed the details of the first part of what he said because of her panic, but she definitely catches from "let me give you the highlights of our great and beautiful town" on.

Most of it flies over her head. What is this supposed to be? Just... information? Before she can process it all, it's over just as soon as it started. What is this? She doesn't even... Xion scratches the back of her neck (in a very Sora-like fashion, though she doesn't consciously realize it).

Well... As far as she can tell, she's not in any kind of danger. What now? ... All she can really do is learn more about this place. "Luministi," the man called it? Well. It's time to do some reconnaissance.]

[After poking around the room, Xion finally turns to the basket on the table.] Huh. What's all this? [A whole lot of fruit, it looks like. She tries shifting it out of the way to see what's underneath it to find a bunch of packets, some yellow plastic-looking spheres, some baked treats, a small stack of papers, a brightly-colored cup, a white box, something fabric neatly folded in a square (she can read "LUMINI LI" and half of an O, whatever that means), and an oddly-shaped metal... thing. What is she supposed to do with all this...? Well. Besides eat the fruit and the treats; she gets that.

And then she spies it -- something about the size of her palm and shiny. Following her gut instinct (something that was highly trained on missions; "anything shiny found on the field must be important" -- but sometimes she wonders if Xigbar was just pulling her leg), she reaches into the basket and manages to pull it out -- and as soon as she touches it, it lights up.] Oh! [Xion almost drops it in surprise, but she catches it again and cradles it close to her chest. It's... some kind of little computer, she guesses. She's never seen one so small! Xion lowers herself into a chair at the table as she begins to read over the text on the screen, and will be absorbed in the thing for quite a while.]

Third Person Sample:
Sometimes Xion felt like a coward.

Not that she ever felt... brave, necessarily. Not that she actually knew what being a coward felt like, or if she even could feel something like that. But she thought that this was what it must be like. Knowing that she should be somewhere else, doing something important, or at least trying to think about what she had to do, but feeling -- "feeling" -- a huge resistance rise in her mind any time she tried. She got this... something in the pit of her stomach at times, something clenching and unhappy that made her feel sick, and during those moments she seriously considered opening a dark corridor to Twilight Town and going back right then and there. But other times, the ones where her stomach wasn't churning, she didn't want to leave Traverse Town. It was... quiet. And almost peaceful. And it gave her lots of space to try and think, or to try and not think. Even if it was a lonely, just a little.

Xion did do a lot of thinking. Mostly about memories, hers and Sora's both. After battles where she had to fight her way out of a corner just to escape from the Heartless, she would collapse on a bed or a roof or the floor of some building and think that then would be a nice time for ice cream. But Traverse Town had been abandoned for a long time (though Sora's memory didn't tell her how long), and if she managed to dig up something like ice cream, it probably wouldn't be safe for her to eat. Besides, she bet it wouldn't even be sea salt, and what was the point of that? But those kinds of memories hurt (somehow, she thought out of habit), and she tried not to think about them too long.

Sometimes Xion was grateful that Traverse Town was always at night time. She didn't have to see any sunsets that way, and she thought that if she saw another one, her heart -- no, no, her head would explode. (She flip-flopped back and forth between correcting herself when she thought about having feelings and things like that and correcting herself when she corrected herself. After all, if she decided that she loved Roxas and Axel, no matter what, didn't that mean that she could say she felt other emotions, too? But even if she did, did that mean she was deluding herself? Xion didn't know. Thinking about it made her head spin.)

Sora had a lot of memories of Traverse Town. It was like a home away from home for him, and it was all because of his friends. He made a lot of them because a lot of people lived there, once upon a time. Not too long ago, actually. Because the Heartless were eating the worlds, and sometimes people would just wake up in Traverse Town after their world was lost to the darkness. They didn't know where they were or how they got there or what just happened -- maybe they didn't even know that their world was destroyed, and if they did, they didn't know if they'd ever see their loved ones again. But they found the other people in the town, the other refugees, and they bonded together because they all went through the same thing and then they all had to work together to survive. That's what they were -- survivors. Every last one of them.

Because of Sora's memories, Xion knew a lot about Traverse Town. It was almost eerie, going to a world she had never been to personally, but still knowing where every street and alley lead, knowing who used to live in what house, what building used to be what store. Walking through the districts felt like walking through Twilight Town -- that's how familiar it was to her. It... She wasn't sure if she liked it. She didn't think she did. It was useful, though, since it meant she knew where to stay and where she could find food. She'd get used to it eventually.

She shouldn't have had the time to get used to it, though. She was taking too long. She couldn't run and hide forever. Xemnas still had to be stopped and Sora was the only one who could do it, and Sora couldn't wake up because she had his memories, but if she went back to him then she'd die (Roxas never wanted to die, didn't -- wouldn't -- want her to die, never wanted to be anyone but himself, wouldn't want her to lose who she was, all he wanted was to live a normal life and be with his friends forever and so did she, but but butbutbut). But that was okay. Really, it was. Because Sora was important, and he was a good person, and Xion thought that if she could, she would've liked to have met him, at least once. Maybe in another life, they could've been friends.

But Xion did have time to get used to Sora's memories, and she did start to get used to it. She counted the days as they passed by. It'd be fourteen, soon. Two weeks. Two whole weeks since Roxas... since everything went wrong. Since she ran away. And, if she remembered right (and maybe she didn't; she had trouble remembering the early days), that would make it one whole year since she joined the Organization. She wondered how long Sora had been sleeping. Maybe he'd been asleep for the whole year. How much longer would he sleep? That... that was up to Xion, now. But she couldn't get herself to leave. Something kept her there, and she didn't know what, or how to describe it. Something that made her stomach twist until she felt sick. Something that made her wonder if she was a coward.

Did you read the rules? NO. WHY WOULD I WANT TO READ YOUR STUPID RULES. ... jk, jk, of course I read them. <3