Challenge: Starting Out
Title: Beneath
Word count: 535
Warnings: BBS and KH3D spoilers! Also, Xehanort being creepy. And wordy. So, Xehanort.
Notes: Something I will write something cheerful with the heroes. Someday! When the villains stop eating my brain.
It was the faint sound of an impact that first drew his attention. In a place as isolated as this, he hadn’t expected to be troubled with the presence of others. It was simple enough to track down the source, even with the roaring of the waters; the feel of the magic was quite distinct, with such a strong will behind it.
What he found was well worth the inadvertent loss of privacy.
Xehanort took his time watching, weighing how best to approach. He was still fairly young, with a temper evident in the makeup of his heart that was more volatile than he suspected most who knew him would realize. The power was unusual as well, the sort of thing most would find disconcerting. Yet his young prize seemed to relish it, twisting the path of his gun’s bullets in increasingly complicated patterns, occasionally even tearing small holes in shape of reality around them to move them from one place to another.
And he was playing with his power as much as practicing, that much was delightfully obvious. Reckless, destructive, innately dark - that such a person could stand the gleaming confines of a world so bright as the Garden without having been dulled by it was very promising.
But he had come down here, into the isolation of the city’s water supply. Perhaps to seek solitude as much as he had himself, but he doubted it. More likely this behavior had gotten him unwelcome attention from the more placid-minded of his world’s inhabitants; those who by nature fit into such a world were often hostile to those whose natures drove them outward.
A brief moment was spent wondering if it was something inherent in the nature of water that drew hearts like theirs, or if it was the heart that sensed the connection of oceans between worlds.
So. He was beginning to be bored with his little game; best to begin by indicating there was something better. It took a moment for one of the bullets to veer sufficiently close to his hiding place, but it was well worth it for the expression on his face. Momentary fear and anger both at being discovered, quickly wiped away by surprise and curiosity at the darkness he summoned to dispose of the projectile.
He looked briefly between them before scratching the back of his head. “Alright. Not sure if I should be apologizing for the near miss or demanding to know why you’re down here, old man.”
“No harm was done, so I hardly see a need for you to apologize. Though I had thought you would be more interested in how I was down here.” He smiled as he opened a portal, stepping out just before the young man.
Aaah, and now he was glaring, and his voice was darker with anger and a touch of jealousy coloring it. “Okay, you’ve got my attention. How did you do that, and who are you.”
“I suppose someone born to a world so filled with light would be unfamiliar with darkness. As for myself, I am but a humble traveler between worlds.”
The hunger those words brought to his eyes was an excellent start.