The swarms of heartless kept coming and Aislinn let her mind wonder once more trying to deal with the situation the best that she could. Her mind drifted back to before she had a keyblade, it was before her parents died. Something about her parents death and the desire to fight to protect her sister seemed to be the catalyst to bring her keyblade to her. Was it the tragedy that brought the keyblade to her aid, or perhaps how she dealt with it. Everyone here seemed to have gone through their own hardships, but each of them were still fighting instead of running and hiding or giving up, it must have been part of the reason that they had it. Aislinn always knew that strength of heart was something that keyblade wielders had to have, but perhaps she also needed something to show the strength of ones heart. If there was nothing to test yourself against then there as no way of knowing how long that strength would hold up. For Aislinn the hardship was the loss of her parents and the war against the heartless in her town. With her being just eighteen when her parents died, someone had to take care of Sarah, and keep her safe. While sure they could have found someone to look after them, at that point they were both old enough that they didn't want anyone else in their lives. That being said, they needed to support themselves, and that wasn't possible if they were both depressed, so Aislinn had to learn to be strong. As the heartless moved in closer she knew that she couldn't just sit back anymore either and help her sister ignoring all those around her, she needed to pick up a sword and fight alongside everyone else, it would be the best way to protect her sister. It was only so long after that before her keyblade came to her, and Aislinn was sent searching for someone to train her in how to use it. The training seemed to pay off seeing how she was managing to deal with the heartless here and now, even if she couldn't use the training to save her world yet, at least something was better than nothing, she had a place to start, she was quickly gaining power and now she was at the point that if she went home, she was sure she could make a difference, it was no longer just a maybe. The battle stretched on before her and while Arctus and Luna were fighting at a respectable speed, Karina found herself pushing herself more than she should to keep going, keep fighting. There was a jealousy of the power of those around her. She hated that she was so weak compared to them. At one point she used to be the strongest and now she was struggling to make a difference. While Karina was starting to get over her power hungry habits, it was not something that she broke in a day. It took a lot of time fore her to get over herself, and not feel the need to outdo everyone. From visiting her home world the thing Karina learned was that she would never be strong enough, and there was nothing that she could do about it. She had to deal with her problems another way and not just add strength until she was strong enough to rip apart the world. It would get her nowhere in the long run if she didn't deal with the issues in her heart, issues that Karina was still lost on how to deal with. Total Words: 606 EXP: 60 Total EXP: 3540 Aislinn Heartless Defeated: 18 Neoshadows Karina Heartless Defeated: 6 Neoshadows 1 Darkball Heartless injured Neoshadow 1/15 Enemies Remaining: 347 Neoshadows 434 Darkballs
Thea was rather confused but at least the man didn't seem to want to harm her, even allowing Zephyr and Gavin to slowly catch up even if he took the time to talk with her first before he got there. "What sort of danger? What sort of evil? They said you were taking their children and they were just trying to keep them safe. I don't understand. I do want to see the other kids, I need to know that they are alright. And if you are telling the truth we need to help the others." Thea tried to ask and figure out a bunch of things at once. Necos wasn't making much sense in her mind, and that was perhaps because Thea was tired and her mind tended to jump from place to place. "I am not in danger anyways. I can handle myself. I am a powerful mage, see!" Thea summoned a little bit of fire to her hand before looking back to Gavin and Zephyr arriving. "Guys... I think you should hear this. I don't quite get it, but maybe you can make more sense of it." "Alright good night Chief Yolvun. We will continue our search tomorrow. Thank you for your help." With that Everette turned to follow the other two towards the Inn. While Everette felt tired and ready for bed himself, there was a lot on his mind about everything that was going on, and the state of the town. Sure being S-class he had been through a lot of towns and seen a lot of different situations, but the longer he spent with Renza the more he wanted to get this sorted out and quickly. The girl reminded him a little bit of Thea, all the energy and positive attitude despite their circumstances. For Thea, there wasn't much he could do to chance things, but for Renza, they could get this dealt with. Looking at the writing on his hand, Everette cursed quietly to himself, he hated his memory problem and he just studied the note he had written to himself which was already starting to smudge. "This is important. There is no way I will forget about it." He tried to tell himself quietly, as they reached the inn. Heading to the kitchen he unpacked some of the food and grabbed a knife to cut some vegetables. "Renza do you want to peel the potatoes, and Conrad start on the meat?" Everette asked. Everette decided that he couldn't be trusted with anything that could burn, he had learned that rather quickly when learning how to cook. Way too often did he forget to check the stuff on the stove and it burned, at least with chopping things it was repetitive enough that he could handle it.
Keep moving, she could do that. She kept on her feet and dodged out of the way of a few attacks. Aislinn had surveyed the field to see who was doing well and what was going on. For the most part things were exactly as she had expected them to be. It was clear that this new group was no amateurs though. They were holding their own as well as anyone else in this battle, despite the fact that they didn't have keyblades of their own. It was almost entertaining watching the bigger man with the ax go about this battle. He seemed to have a lot of fight in him and Aislinn wished luck to all of his allies that had to deal with him. From what she could tell just by watching him for a moment, that he was a hard one to deal with, had a lot of energy to him, or at least it seemed that way. The girl who made the big entrance seemed to be more familiar with those around her, though much to Aislinn's surprise not as many people were talking to her as she had originally thought. Then Hikaru and Aux were talking to another boy who had quickly run over and caught Luna's attention. To her it was interesting watching how everyone was getting along now, perhaps that was just something she found interesting, but it at least gave Aislinn something to contemplate as she fought the heartless that were now coming at her from all sides. There was not a chance she would let them catch her off guard though as she shifted her balance and adjusted to give the muscles on her right side a bit of a break and fight the heartless focusing more on using her left, less dominate side for fighting. When Karina turned her attention back away from Stratos, she scanned the rest of the people. Guilt still sat in her heart when looking at Beuce due to what had happened the last time she was in this battle and ended up falling unconscious. That was not going to happen again, and even if she did, she was sure that Arctus would have her back. Karina was just thankful that there was no mutated behemoths to face. These Neoshadows were nothing compared to Derpy the Derpmoth, or Arma or even Free Willy Cat. The heartless in that battle were all insane and stupid and Karina didn't know how to handle them, meaning at some times she seemed to find her mind broken. It was really weird really, Karina didn't like thinking back on those times, it was not pleasant to say the least and to say she had lost it during that battle was an understatement. Glancing back to Arctus she certainly hoped that it didn't happen again during this battle. She had enough embarrassment for one day, she didn't need to add to it by losign her cool. Wanting to show off a little more of what she had learned to do, Karina channeled her flames through her whip and sent it flying at the heartless, causing a bit of an explosion that took out some of the heartless around it as well. It was just a shame that there was no fire based heartless here, if there was she could show off her fire eater ability. That being said after the explosion at the lab, perhaps she had enough of that for one day. Though she had been healed, Karina could still feel the faint ache from where the injuries should have been, she was just thankful for the power that Lea had given her, if it wasn't for that then she would have been dead. Total Words: 629 EXP: 60 Total EXP: 3480 Aislinn Heartless Defeated: 18 Neoshadows Karina Heartless Defeated: 6 Neoshadows 1 Darkball Heartless injured Neoshadow 1/15 Enemies Remaining: 394 Neoshadows 497 Darkballs
Giving Stratos a small smile in return, Aislinn turned her focus back to her battle. The silence that had fallen over those who were not new to the combat, or at least talking with those who were new was becoming deafening. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the silence, and as she parried out of the way of an attack, Aislinn herself could feel her lungs burning. It was no wonder that people weren't talking, it was getting hard enough to breath as it was with the amount that was going on and the need to keep on their toes moving. As she spun once more, her muscles started to feel sore and protest, making Aislinn plant both feet on the ground instead of up on the balls of her feet like she had been to keep herself light and moving. The concept in theory was a good one, and had been working thus far, but it was better for shorter battles, the longer this one went, the more her body was failing her. While yes she was getting injured on occasion, it was more the fact that Aislinn wasn't used to having to fight this much without a break. It was wearing on her body, leaving it tired and unable to react as quickly as she wanted it to. Even as the heartless fell more easily to her blade, she still could feel her muscles tire with each swing of the keyblade and each time she launched herself forward for another attack. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, Aislinn forced herself into another frenzy of attacks. There was no time to be wasting just relaxing even if her body was telling her that she needed it. A look of determination crossed her face as Aislinn forced herself forward to use a cross slash before dodging out of the way of another Neoshadow. Breathing heavily Aislinn continued to move, though she didn't want to. At this point if she stopped moving she would have a hard time getting going again. It was a matter of maintaining momentum at this point and that was something that she seemed to be doing rather well, as she cleaved through a heartless and kept her swing going as it wrapped around and bashed into another one. Two went down and she kept going, moving quickly to the next heartless, followed by one more, keeping herself moving through the smoke as her eyes scanned the battle field. If she couldn't keep up with strength of the rest, she would just have to make up for it with how quickly she was killing the heartless. To Karina this started to feel like old times, except this time, instead of having Stratos at her side, she had Arctus. Her eyes drifted over to the boy who helped push her through the Battle of a thousand heartless, who had managed to stay with has as they not only finished off their own wave of heartless, but started to move around helping everyone else. Once more he was a force to be had. While sometimes he didn't seem too strong, when it came to things like this, there was no one that could match him. Not even she could keep up with as much as she tried. Every step she took she was still one behind Stratos. If it was anyone else than she would have been annoyed, but given it was him, there was nothing she could do about it, and Karina accepted that at this point and continued on with her fight against the Neoshadows and Dark balls that were around her. Total Words: 609 EXP: 60 Total EXP: 3420 Aislinn Heartless Defeated: 18 Neoshadows Karina Heartless Defeated: 6 Neoshadows 1 Darkball Heartless injured Neoshadow 1/15 Enemies Remaining: 425 Neoshadows 529 Darkballs
It was to be expected, the shock that came with Arctus realizing what she had said. But it did surprise her the nervousness that he showed when she suggested that she would walk away. This was a battle, not a meet and greet, she would think he would have been in his element here and not care who was around as long as he knew who to kill and who not to kill. Given that the things he needed to kill were black with glowing yellow eyes, Karina assumed that he could figure at least that much out on his own, it wasn't a difficult task after all. The creatures kind of stood out from the people like sore thumbs. Perhaps some of his confidence was just a ruse.... she should know what that was like, it was a common occurrence for Karina. And while sure she had anger issues, and was temperamental, and didn't get along with most people, or even try, Karina wouldn't draw attention to it. There was no reason to and quite frankly, while she wasn't quite sure what was going on between them, she didn't want to ruin it. "Look I didn't have much of a choice. I would have rather not given up my keyblade, but that was not something I could control. After we were thrown into the realm of darkness we all lost our abilities to use the keyblade. Essentially we had to earn them back for ourselves by going back and visiting our home worlds, and whatever demons were there for us. I was not prepared. When I went, while I had spent a year getting stronger physically I let the anger and fear of my father drive me, so when I faced him again and I still wasn't strong enough to beat him, I did not have the will to continue facing him. I did not have the will to stop him when he tried to have me executed. Even as someone else died, trying to get me to stand up and fight, I was simply in too much shock of the entire situation." Karina admitted, she seemed annoyed at herself with the entire situation and she wasn't fond of explaining it, but in the end it was her first step to facing the past and perhaps she could one day earn back her keyblade. "When we were released from these... illusions, I still couldn't summon my keyblade back, meaning I couldn't go with the others to take the Mark of Mastery and earn exit out of the realm of Darkness, so Lea took me to meet you guys. That was when I tried to change my name and run from who I was another way. Clearly that didn't work out, and instead of running I was faced with more from my past." Karina glanced over at Uniform before turning back to the heartless she was fighting. "So yeah not my choice." Stratos was dealing a great amount of damage to the heartless around them and Aislinn took a moment while he fought to catch her breath before turning to watch his back in case he needed a chance to catch his breath himself. She didn't want anyone to get too tired and make stupid mistakes. In her mind it was okay to take a moment and breath as long as someone was there to cover you when you needed it, in this case that was her as she stepped forward and took lead on the assault against the heartless doing whatever she could to deal with them as quickly as she could, which thankfully wasn't as hard as it seemed in previous waves. Total Words: 614 EXP: 60 Total EXP: 3360 Aislinn Heartless Defeated: 18 Neoshadows Karina Heartless Defeated: 6 Neoshadows 1 Darkball Heartless injured Neoshadow 1/15 Enemies Remaining: 494 Neoshadows 600 Darkballs
