A Bench Near the Duck Pond, Just Around Lunch-time
Naminé sat down carefully on the park bench, smiling a little at the wintry scenery. To her, winter never looked dead, just dormant. Sleeping. Alive with possibilities, and waiting to nudge forward and express them all. And of course the color scheme was pleasant.
She was early, it seemed, as neither Valentine nor Cassandra were in sight. Perfect. That left her a few minutes to sketch the duck pond. Or start on it, at least.
She took out her sketchpad and crayons, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear as she bent forward, intent on drawing.
She never heard the soft crunch of approaching footsteps.
Of all the places Xaldin might have imagined he'd arrive, this would be rather far down the list: a boarding school on a small island. It was, however, immediately clear what had been creating all of those anomalies - this blonde girl, now seated in front of him. He had followed at a distance, and she had never once looked his way. How careless. And now she was alone.
"Hello, Naminé."
Naminé froze, crayon stuttering in its pathway, and her head snapped up quickly, eyes wide. "No." It couldn't be. It couldn't be ...
Xaldin closed the distance between them, a smile playing on his lips. "It's so good to see you again."
Naminé scrambled to her feet, pulling her sketchpad in towards her chest. Her crayon slipped to the ground unnoticed. "No. I w-won't ... I won't go with you."
The smile widened. "How odd. I don't believe I offered you the choice."
Xaldin reached forward, grabbing the girl by the upper arm.
"No!" She jerked her arm back, as hard as she could, but couldn't break his grip.
"Now, now," he said, pulling her against him smoothly as he clamped his other hand over her mouth. "Let's not make this difficult, shall we?"
She knew it. She knew it. Foolish to stay here, hopeless to stay anywhere, they would just find her, they found her, she couldn't go back, she was going back, not them, not this again ...
Naminé struggled uselessly against his grip. They would make her hurt Sora again. She couldn't say no forever. Valentine and Cassandra would wait here for her, never know she wasn't coming. And then ... he'd think she had left without a word, he'd think she had changed her mind ...Valentine ....
Xaldin dragged Naminé back a step, freeing one hand long enough to create a portal. The Superior would be surprised to see him back so soon, and pleased with his discovery. Their new toy.
Valentine, Valentine, he would never know what had happened to her, he would ...
Naminé realized, with a start, that struggling wasn't useless, even if she couldn't hope to free herself from Xaldin.
She wriggled one arm a few inches out of his grasp, and hurled her sketchpad as far away from herself as she could. She flinched as it landed with a thump against the ground, pages splayed and torn.
"Temper, temper," Xaldin said mildly, sounding bemused.
One step further.
There was a rippling noise as the portal closed, then silence.
All in all, it had been a good morning of juggling in the streets. Sure, Valentine had been vastly inexperienced with the notion of juggling fire, and it had come at the unfortunate expense of a sleeve from his coat, but there had been spectacle. Spectacle was what it was all about, after all.
Even if he was now headed for the park, his juggling partner in tow, with a one-sleeved coat and singe-marks on what was left of the shoulder. It had been entirely worth it, and now he was going to celebrate their vast success by meeting Naminé in the park for lunch. Lunch, of course, was extremely important. One simply couldn't juggle on an empty stomach.
"Honestly," he mumbled as they headed down the path to the duck pond, "how was I to know it was so horribly flammable?"
Cassandra was smirking just a bit and shaking her head, "It's cloth. Cloth's flammable."
Aha! Somewhere amongst the mess of shrubbery in the park, Valentine spied the bench that they were to meet Naminé at.
"It isn't exactly as though I've run around burning things. Don't tell me you have?" He glanced over his shoulder at her rather suspiciously.
"Not recently," she answered vaguely.
"...Right."
Valentine shook his head a little, still grinning with the leftover high of a successful juggling act (and the leftover adrenaline from the "I am on fire save me save me I am going to die" panic), and he stepped up to the bench.
Well. She wasn't there, really, was she? She had never really been late, before. Fine, fine. He knew how it was. Important things to do, objects to...
Draw. Over there was Naminé's sketchbook, splayed across the ground as though--
Naminé.
Naminé wasn't there. And she'd never treat her book like... Entire worlds just thrown on the ground like...
Valentine was suddenly having difficulty breathing.
Cassandra's eyes flicked around the park around her out of habit, but when Valentine stiffened she looked again, more closely, and noticed the sketchbook.
"Something is wrong," she said unnecessarily.
"Someone took her," Valentine said, leaning against the park bench as his legs decided they weren't about to cooperate with him anymore. "She's been saying it for months now. Someone's after her... They'll make her do... Things. And she isn't here and her book is on the ground in tatters and she's gone."
Along with most of Valentine's ability to form a coherent thought. His entire world had been snatched away again.
Cassandra reached up and squeezed Valentine's shoulder. It wasn't a gentle squeeze either. Her voice was flat and matter-of-fact, "We'll find her."
Then she stepped forward, looking around for signs of what might have happened.
The squeeze on his shoulder jolted him at least slightly back to some sort of rational thought, albeit a panicky sort.
"Find her? But how? She could be anywhere by now. She could have been dragged away by wild dinosaurs or teal deer or the Organi--" he wasn't going to go there. Was not. He could deal with teal deer, but that other possibility sent chills down his spine. "By anything..."
Cassandra was only half-listening to Valentine as she looked around the area. Her eyes scanned from the bench to the sketchbook and back. "Footprints," she said, "They just end. That means flight or teleportation."
Valentine flinched back when Cassandra mentioned teleportation, leaning even more heavily against the bench as he turned his gaze toward the ground.
Footprints. And the marks of something else, sweeping about. A cloak. What could only be a long, sweeping uniform belonging to a member of the Organization. He was familiar enough with those cloaks.
"There are people who are looking for her. Were looking for her. She's been taken by them. The Organization. It... She wouldn't just... leave her sketchbook like that. There are worlds in there, and hearts and memories. She... I don't know where they'd have taken her. She's gone."
Somewhat rational. Mostly panicky.
"We'll find her," Cassandra repeated. Namine had told her a few things about the Organization, and there was no way Cassandra was going to let them keep her friend.
"We need to figure out how they got her, and where they took her. Then we go after them." Her eyes were dark, dangerous.
"Getting her is simple enough if they can find where she is," Valentine said, his voice suddenly tired and rather numb. "They can portal, you know. Just... hold up a hand, and there's a doorway to anywhere else. They probably just stepped in from nowhere, grabbed her, and left the same way. No trail to follow, no warning. Just... here, and then not."
He couldn't take his gaze off of her sketchbook, just sitting there. After a bit of a stumble toward it, he bent over and picked it up. It wasn't right leaving it like that, whole worlds laying broken in the dirt. With a bit of a wince, he tried to straighten the disheveled pages as he continued speaking.
"I know two people here who might know where she was taken..."
"Then that's where we start." It was generally unfortunate, but specifically fortunate that Cassandra had something approaching extensive experience with kidnappings and dangerous rescues..
"Where to?"
"Sora." There was another option, of course. But going to a member of the Organization to ask about a kidnapping most likely perpetrated by the Organization itself didn't seem to Valentine to be the most expedient solution to this. And there was the possibility that he would attempt to kill Demyx in horrible ways before they could get any answers. Sora was...
Sora was a hero. They needed to deal with a hero right now, didn't they? Valentine most certainly wasn't one.
"We have to speak to Sora."
"Let's go," she said simply. "They've got a head start, and they're getting farther ahead."
Valentine nodded, too tired to point out the probability that anyone who traveled using a doorway to darkness was probably already as far ahead with her as they wanted to be. He grasped Naminé's sketchpad protectively to his chest and stared at the cloak-marks in the dirt for a moment more before he turned back to the pathway.
"Let's."
(OOC: Preplayed with the awesome importantman and iseewhatyoumean. NFI, but broadcast is A-OK, and OOC is love.)