Don't fall to pieces

[apollo-chase.livejournal.com]

Who: Ren, Chase
What: Researching to save the world. Again.
Where: Ansem the Wise's private library
When: The morning.

Chase was glad Ansem had let her into his private library once she explained the urgency of the situation. Honestly, the man still intimidated her - she had been polite and forthcoming and damn well earnest in her pleadings to find some sort of answer in his private collection of books. From the scattered bits of paper and notebooks at one of the desks, Chase realized that the Refs hadn't been alone in their quest to find answers.

But if Ansem couldn't fine anything in his own library...Chase had squared her shoulders - well, a fresh perspective wouldn't hurt anything.

So there she sat about two hours later, her notebook open, scribbling with her odd mix of cursive and print. A mug of chai tea - specially created by the Moogles to actually keep said coffee hot (Chase had priorities, she really did) - sat just next to her left elbow, and she paused every so often to drink from it.

Ugh. She was going to need help with this. Thank god she had asked Ren to join her.

Comments

[apollo-chase.livejournal.com]

[[ooc: Ugh, sorry. I had to threaten my browser with physical harm until it finally opened]]

"Hey Ren!" Chase said brightly, giving her a small wave. "That's okay. I oversleep all the time." She cleared off some the area around where she had been working.

The smell of fresh bakery made her pause just slightly and her grin grew even more. "You know you're my favorite person ever, right?" She reached for a blueberry muffin and some butter and nodded towards the stacks of paper around her. "Haven't really gotten far. Ansem has an insane amount of notes."

[hyperpsyche.livejournal.com]

"I know, I'm awesome," Ren bragged laughingly as she set the basket down after Chase had made her selection and grabbing a raspberry danish for herself.

Her eyebrows shot up as she looked and saw just how insane the piles of notes really were. "Yikes," she muttered as she slowly sank into her seat. "Well, at least we should have enough time to make a big dent in this today," she said optimistically. Okay, so it was the forced, "I have to smile or I'm going to scream" kind, but hey, it counted for something, right?

[apollo-chase.livejournal.com]

"I haven't gone through this much paperwork since I was studying for AP exams five years ago." Chase frowned at the large pile of notes, thankful that Ansem's handwriting was neat and any other records were printed. She hadn't really felt like deciphering anyone's handwriting while trying to write down important points. "I hope we'll find something useful. I hate not knowing anything, and I hate seeing Sora all upset because we can't find Kairi."

She rubbed the bridge of her noes before taking a big bite out of her muffin. "Dead pirates are fine, I guess, but the worlds being all wonky just doesn't sit right." A thought occurred to her then, but instead of voicing it aloud, she just chewed her muffin, thinking it over.

[hyperpsyche.livejournal.com]

"Tell me about it," Ren sighed as she picked up a random sheet of paper and glanced at it. "Poor kid. It sucks when The Call refuses to move on to somebody else."

She leaned back in her seat and stretched, cracking her knuckles before sitting up straight again, ready to get to work. "Well so far, the worlds that have been destroyed seem to have been the ones the Princesses were from, right? Do we know which of those are still intact for the time being?" she asked before stopping to take a bite out of her danish. Mmm, raspberry...

[apollo-chase.livejournal.com]

"I know." Chase shook her head. "And I don't care that he'll be an adult this year. I just kind of want to give him cookies and send him off to an amusement park with Riku and Kairi or something."

She opened up her laptop and quickly dismissed her screensaver. She peered at the map that she had linked from the main console at the Restoration Committee HQ. She pointed at two of the worlds. "Agrabah is still around. So is the Enchanted Dominion. For now at least." She also pointed to another dot on the map. "I'm not sure if anyone's realized it, but Traverse Town is back too. If anyone survived from the Princesses's worlds, they might be there."

[hyperpsyche.livejournal.com]

"I know, right?" Ren said with a soft laugh. "I guess it must come from watching him grow ever since he was a wee little novice Keyblade wielder to today..."

She peered in close, biting her lip. "Only two left huh... scary," she mumbled softly. "But Traverse Town should be worth investigating. If there are any survivors, a firsthand account of what happened would be invaluable." Ren took a deep breath and ran her fingertips through her hair, knowing that she was mussing up her ponytail and not really caring. "I really, really hope we're not going to get slapped with H-Day all over again..."

[apollo-chase.livejournal.com]

"Ugh, now I'm going to start feeling old."

"Okay, I'll see if I can get somebody on to Traverse Town since the Trio is investigating Alexandria. Not quite sure where everyone else is..." Chase pulled up another document on her laptop - ever since her post, she had started a small little spreadsheet to keep track of the Refugees's locations, how long they had been there, and any other useful tidbits of information. "Cid is working on building some more gummi ships and the Federation is still kind of stingy with theirs, according to Brandon and Ryune."

She grimaced at mention of H-Day. She was one of the handful of Refugees who had not survived the last one. "Yeah. That'd suck. Not to be mean or anything, but I hope it's limited to just the worlds of the Princesses."

[hyperpsyche.livejournal.com]

Ren snickered and nudged Chase with her elbow. "Hey now, we're all old at that rate," she teased.

She glanced at the spreadsheet Chase had open and whistled softly, impressed by her friend's far superior organizational skills. She herself had her own laptop and a few notebooks' worth of scribbled observations, but she considered herself lucky if she could find any specific information from one at any given time. "Mm. Is it a case of the ships still being in the testing stages, or do they just not realize that hey, this is kind of important?" Ren asked, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at the imagined bureaucrats grinding things to a halt. "Maybe we can send them a very 'polite' message explaining the situation..."

Yeah, H-Day wasn't a pleasant memory for Ren, either. "Yeah... Hopefully, we should be able to get their worlds back before we lose any others," she said quietly. What scared her the most was the idea of losing her family again... even if they had ended up just fine after H-Day, it still hurt, and this time around, she hadn't left home on the most pleasant terms with her parents.

[apollo-chase.livejournal.com]

She gave an embarrassed little shrug about her spreadsheet. "I'm anal retentive about collecting data. And I think it's just that their ships are still in the testing stages. I'd hope that people back home aren't that stingy."

Chase took a sip of her tea. "Yeah, me too. Family and friends and what-not. I missed the first big adventure so I don't know what it's like to lose everything. And I really don't want to find out."

She quickly scribbled down Traverse Town before reaching for one of the notebooks on the pile. Peeking through it, she wrinkled her nose. "Even. So much scientific brouhaha in here that my brain would explode."

[hyperpsyche.livejournal.com]

"Well one of these days, I'm sure that anal retentiveness is going to be what saves us all," Ren said in all honesty. "We won't be able to remember something crucial, and then there you'll be with your notes."

She chewed a bit more on her danish, nodding thoughtfully. "Believe me, you've got the right idea," she told Chase with a cringe. "Nightmarish is putting it lightly."

Well, that piqued her interest. "Let me see!" she laughed, glad to get off the topic of H-Day. She was no scientist, but if she could have a quick laugh at the expense of Even's perceived uptight reporting, so much the better.

[apollo-chase.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, but I only get to be cool if that happens," Chase replied with a self-deprecating shake of her head. She paused at Ren's comment about H-Day and repressed a shudder. She really didn't want to find out and she would try her damnedest to make sure it didn't happen again.

Chase grinned suddenly, handing over Even's notes. "You can always tell where he starts to get pissed off in there. Because suddenly, apparently the experiment must have been wrong and surely he couldn't be at fault for that destruction of the chem set."

[hyperpsyche.livejournal.com]

"The way things are going? More like when, I'm sure," she insisted gently.

Ren snorted and pressed a hand over her mouth in an attempt to keep from laughing any louder as she read over Even's notes. "I see what you mean. I love these not-so-veiled little hints that it's probably Braig's fault one way or another."

[apollo-chase.livejournal.com]

Chase picked up another notebook - this one with Ansem's leisurely scrawl in it - and began paging through it. "Wish I could actually track them down and get some answer, but they've been super busy too, what with putting Radiant Garden back to how it was. I'm glad the people here finally go over their..." here she made a face, "'rahr traitors must die.'"

[hyperpsyche.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, they know this world far better than any of us do, after all," Ren sighed as she closed Even's notebook and set it down. "But yeah, the citizens not being after their heads anymore is definitely a good thing. The last thing we need is a lynch mob on top of everything else..."

Ren reached over and picked up another book, frowning as she flipped through the pages. "Sheesh, this is worse than my handwriting," she muttered as she tried to decode the notes inside. "Scratch that, it's worse than my grandfather's handwriting, and believe me, that's saying something." She knew it wasn't fair, but her mind automatically jumped to the first likely author: Braig.

*punches browser in the face*

[apollo-chase.livejournal.com]

"It would definitely make things more interesting, I'll say that much," Chase said, going back to writing in her notebook. She jerked a thumb to the scores and scores of notebooks behind her, lining the shelves. "At least Ansem divided everything into specific sections - we've got science, history, philosophy - which I don't think is going to be much help, and personal research."

She held up one of Ansem's notebooks. "Most of it is divided into PHEOC, so I guess that's a start. Looks like high school chemistry knows no worldly bounds."

She sat back in her chair and glanced up at the ceiling suddenly, looking a bit frustrated. "Is it selfish to want a prophecy this time around?"

*hugs*

[hyperpsyche.livejournal.com]

"As if we needed any more interest right now," Ren commented as she looked at the packed bookshelves with a gradually rising level of distress at the thought of having to go through them all. Well, at least it was all organized.

She turned back toward Chase at her remark about a prophecy and smiled gently. "Nah, I'll bet most of us would appreciate a handy little guideline on what's going to come next right about now," she reassured her. "At least things followed the first game pretty nicely..." Ren trailed off after that, drawing her brows together in thought. Something about the first game was ringing a faint bell...

Re: *hugs*

[apollo-chase.livejournal.com]

"Life's never dull around here," Chase murmured before sipping her chai. She then gave a lopsided grin at mention of the first game. "Yeah, wouldn't know about that. I suspect epic happened quietly."

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Ren nodded a bit distractedly. "Yeah, at that point we were all 'shoot, can't let Sora find out about us, let's just hide and wait for him to beat Xehanort's Heartless so we can get Earth back and not screw things up." She shrugged, smiling with a little embarrassment. "And it worked, more or less... up until Xemnas crashed our victory party and started to call us all prophets." She could still remember that night, with "Anna" and Demyx managing to disguise himself pretty well, and it was almost funny aside from Xemnas...

"Speaking of destroyed worlds though, can I see that list of the worlds that have gone under again?" Ren asked quietly, as if she was afraid of what she was going to find there.

[apollo-chase.livejournal.com]

Chase grinned - she had heard about that infamous masquerade from other Refs. She had the feeling that there were pictures somewhere, but where was the question.

She turned her laptop to face Ren, pulling up the appropriate document. "Those are the five that have disappeared so far."

[hyperpsyche.livejournal.com]

Ren bit her lip as she looked over the list. Wonderland, Beast's Castle, Dwarf Woodlands, Castle of Dreams, Destiny Islands... "They're all worlds the Princesses of Light are from," she pointed out again. "Enchanted Dominion and Agrabah are okay for the moment, but I'm really not liking this pattern." And yet, it fit far too well. Aerith's vision of Radiant Garden's spirit in pain, the steadily rising numbers of Heartless and Nobodies...

"Chase?" Ren said in a very small, frightened voice. "I think Radiant Garden is going to be consumed by Darkness in the very near future."

[apollo-chase.livejournal.com]

"'At the moment' being the key phrase there," Chase said, lacing her fingers underneath her chin as she peered at the document. There was only so much they could really do - a mass evacuation of an entire world? Their best bet was to find the source of everything and as soon as pos-

Ren's next words stopped her cold.

She blinked and quickly mulled over the words. Of course. Even though Destiny Islands was Kairi's adopted home, she was originally from Radiant Garden. And everything that had happened so far...she knew in her heart that Ren's words were true.

Shit.

She jumped to her feet, nearly knocking papers and notebooks and pastries all over the place, a serious look crossing her face. "Alright, first things first. We need to get to Ansem, let him know what we've found out and see if he can round up the beginnings of an evacuation. I'll check with Cid to make sure Agrabah and the Enchanted Dominion are still safe for now."

Time. It was hardly on their side. Her mind was racing just to keep up. "Never thought I'd know what it felt like to be the captain of the Titanic - wanting to save people but not wanting to cause a panic."

[hyperpsyche.livejournal.com]

Ren nodded numbly and got up to follow Chase. Her mind was slowly shifting out of its steady stream of four-letter words and variations of "no, not again" and into a more coherent and useful line of thought. "After that, we have to tell the others... Ugh, this is not going to help Sora feel any better about the way things are going." Of course, that wasn't the most pressing of their problems at the moment, but still, poor kid.

For a moment, the idea that maybe she was wrong, that she had just read too much into things, that everything would be fine, crossed Ren's mind. She honestly wanted to believe it, but the way Chase had reacted, she knew her theory made too much sense to be wrong.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Ren replied, anxiously biting her lower lip. And just like with the Titanic, there was the problem of lifeboats--how could they possibly evacuate the citizens of this world with the few Gummi ships that they had on hand?