Room 206, Early Tuesday Evening
Naminé liked to talk, idly, while she sketched. It was a combination that served both well; she would ask light questions, and Valentine would launch into grand stories, spurred on by her amusement. And all the while she would be coloring in someone's nose, or putting the finishing edges on that particular group of trees.
Today it was a garden, actually.
"So then ... how did you first learn to juggle?" she asked. It seemed a fair enough question.
Valentine rather enjoyed speaking. Particularly to Naminé. There was just something about the way that she so patiently sat there, listening to the words that came out of his mouth without interruption. Even if she barely ever glanced upward, he knew that she was listening, that he wasn't speaking to himself. (Valentine did a great deal of speaking to himself regardless, but at least with Naminé, he had the notion that the words that passed his lips weren't flying across the room to bounce off the walls and fly back at him like a book written by a drunken idiot.)
Now was one such moment.
"It all began," he began, "the day that I was walking down the street in the City of Light, a perfectly lovely day, I'll have you know, with the fish flying and the monkeybirds 'Bob'bing and such, and a wayward book headed back toward the library managed to completely knock a bowlful of fruit off of an open-mouthed balcony far above my head, and as the oranges and apples and whatnots and suchamathings were toppling down toward me, I thought-- my, if I could only catch them all, then none of them would have to be wasted in the landing. ... Of course, most of them hit me on the way down, and those that didn't wound up on the ground, and it really was rather a terrible waste. Very sad, actually."
"Terribly sad," Naminé smiled, not looking up. "And you decided then and there, no fruit shall die in vain again?"
"I did! It was a very noble cause, really." Not that he had learned juggling in order to earn himself a living after his mother-not-really-his-mother threw him out. Honestly. Looking noble was far more important than appearing unimportant in the least. And besides, food was as good an inspiration as any. "And so, after weeks and weeks of what was really quite rigorous training, I took my juggling act onto the street in order to entertain the masses and nobly rescue fruit of all shapes, varieties, and sizes. It was a remarkable show, you know, and passers-by were all too happy to leave money to encourage progress in my performing skills. Juggling is really quite a lucrative skill to have, when one performs in the proper places, nothing like standing on the streetcorners in a small town like Fandom, I'll have you know. Busking is far more effective when one has an entire city looking for individuals well-versed in the arts."
He pulled out a trio of juggling balls and started a simple three-ball show. It never hurt to be doing something with his hands, after all. Kept him from going twitchy.
"And so, there I was, juggling on the street in the glory days of the City of Light, which at the time was full of days and nights and a sun and moon and all the twinkly little stars, and it just so happened that I was in desperate need of a partner. One juggler is rare enough, you know, but imagine an act with two. Two jugglers, in the same show, with balls flying up and down and back and forth with ease and grace and unparalleled talent, that would draw a remarkable crowd, you know. Unbelievable! And that would be when I... Met..."
He looked around him.
A small pack of enraptured sphinxes stared back from their various garbage-can perches.
"...Bing."
Had Valentine been more attentive, he might have realized that, somewhere around 'very noble cause,' he had ceased to be in his bedroom at all, and was, in fact, standing on a streetcorner in a world that had stopped existing, with a very attentive audience of very ugly felines.
"What the bloody hell--?"
Naminé had wondered why he had lapsed silent on 'noble cause,' and had continued coloring in daisies and irises for a few moments, adding a quick, "Go on," in case his mind had wandered away on him mid-sentence. Which it was, in fact, likely to do, now and again.
When that was met with silence, she looked up ... and discovered the room to be empty.
"Valentine?" she called, standing up and setting her sketchpad aside. "This isn't funny."
Especially not after the angels had whisked off so many, just two weeks ago, not funny at all.
But she would have heard the door open, would have heard him crawling under the bed -- which she inspected in any case, because she had to -- would have heard him stepping into the closet -- likewise, Valentine-free.
"Valentine!?" she shouted, nearly in a panic now.
One ball fell to the ground, rolled across the cobbles and came to a stop in front of the sphinx nearest him.
Ginger, was it? The ring-leader from before, back in the summer, before the whole world had--
Ginger, if-that-really-was-Ginger, proceeded to pounce the ball and kill it in creative, rather terrifying ways. The other sphinxes simply stared at Valentine.
And grinned.
Sphinx grins were rather unnerving.
She opened the door, quickly, and looked up one side of the hallway and down the other. No Valentine.
She shut the door, just as quickly, and tried not to panic. People didn't just vanish. Even horrible angel statues had to open doors. He wasn't gone. Couldn't be gone.
Naminé shut her eyes and tried to think. One way to tell for certain. She held a hand flat in front of her, steeling her nerves, and opened a portal.
Take me where Valentine is.
"Nice puss," Valentine said, holding up his hands. "Good cat. Cats. Cat-things. Sphinxes. Not-Aleas." He took a step backward. And then another. A few, really. All so very slowly, so very carefully.
The sphinxes, being the hungry, mangy little beasts that they were... They followed.
Step. Follow. Step. Follow. Step. Follow.
Valentine turned and ran for his life, pursued very closely by more hungry felines than he could shake a stick at, not having a moment to pause and wonder at the hint of shadow flickering somewhere within his limited line-of-sight as he had been turning.
Not being eaten seemed so very much more important at the moment.
The portal flickered into place, calmly, as if there had never been any doubt of it doing so, and Naminé let go of the breath she'd been holding. Good.
She clenched her fists, swallowed past her nerves, and hesitantly stepped through.
Naminé was greeted by ... a world unlike any she'd seen. All was soaked in flat sepia tones, and the buildings looked curiously unreal, as if they were fronts laid out for a movie set. No real buildings behind, just the shapes of them.
Bizarre. Odd. And no Valentine anywhere, no matter how she craned her neck.
So much for that, she thought, frowning, as she stepped back through the portal and into room 206, closing it with a snap.
Bitey, stupid, nipping little sphinxes! Valentine had quite had this fill of them the last time he had been in this place, and the last thing he had ever thought he might be doing, even for as paranoid as he was, would have to be tripping down the streets of a city that he had long figured was lost for good, trying not to be devoured by hairless grey beasts that went by names like 'Fluffy' and 'Snowdrop.'
It was very fortunate that Valentine was so bloody good at running away, then, wasn't it?
From the look of things, it was simply going to be 'one of those days.'
Her portal hadn't helped. Time to check his regular haunts. Maybe he had dashed out of there when she wasn't looking. She didn't believe it, but it sounded better than believing he'd vanished without a trace.
With a growing knot in her stomach, Naminé left room 206. First stop: to the preserve, to make sure those statues were all exactly where they should be.
(OOC: Establishy and therefore NFI, but broadcast is fine! *opens the door for the squirrels to get in* Preplayed with the lovely palestshadow, who also coded up this monster. Much love and cookies! OOC is welcome~)