World Refugees Final Mix

[With tea brewing and a timer set to make sure it doesn't overbrew, Roxas turns to Ven and considers his answer. He really doesn't want to say too much now, as then he'd have to repeat it when Terra and Aqua arrive. Well, he can mention a few things he's already mentioned to Terra and Aqua, he supposes.]

Well, a few things. How the people from Earth already know us, for instance. And... and how their knowing a few things they happened might have been a problem.

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Yeah, I heard something about a prophecy, or something like that. But what kind of problem...

-sorry. Guess we should wait for Terra and Aqua to catch up, right?

[As curious as Ven is, he's thinking along the same lines as Roxas - anything said before his friends arrive will have to be said again. Better to wait, he thought.

So...what to do until then?]

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"Yeah. I might end up repeating a lot if I started now." Of course, the decision to wait only made things more awkward... unless someone left a Wii lying around or something. Leon and the others still met at Merlin's place for meetings and Yuffie had insisted on there being video games for when they were either waiting for everyone to get there or for after the meeting was over.

Then again, knowing Yuffie, it was hidden somewhere and Roxas wasn't the type to go through someone's things. If it was just sitting out in plain sight, he would go ahead and turn it on. However, he didn't see it. Maybe that was for the better, as the timer he'd set for the tea went off and the sugar bowl was (or would have been if it had eyes) giving him a death glare. Why was he using the enchanted tea set again?

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[Aqua appears right on cue]

Ven, Roxas. Something smells good.

[Smiles for all! Though she is vaguely surprised at Ven having beaten her here. She's usually first, when they don't get there at the same time.

Speaking of on time, where's Terra? Hopefully he wasn't taking an afternoon nap again, right when Roxas needed to talk to them...]

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[That comment, about something smelling good, reminds Roxas that he's almost forgotten something. Just tea would have seemed a little lacking, so he'd mooched a muffin recipe off of Aria. Clearly, the muffins are done, so he's hurrying to get them out of the oven while also wondering where Terra might be.]

Hi. Uh... just a moment...

[Not surprisingly, he manages to burn himself on the hot pan, but it's nothing serious and merits only a wince and grumble that might have been a curse under other circumstances.]

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earthlybonds.livejournal.com

[Terra shows up not long after Aqua.]

You wanted to talk about something?

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Aqua!

[Good timing! Ven brightens when he sees her come in, relieved that she got there when she did. He's even more relieved when he sees Terra. Now Roxas doesn't have to wait to get whatever is bugging him off his chest.]

Terra! Right on time, guys.

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Roxas set the pot of tea and some cups on the table, along with the muffins he just pulled out of the oven, before inviting everyone to sit. He had to shoo the sugar bowl away before it could start heaping sugar into his tea cup and watches it head over to one of the other cups. Maybe the distraction of the mischievous crockery would help a little...

Other than that, how could he say this without being too blunt?

The short answer was that he couldn't.

"It's about the people from Earth... and how a couple of them almost helped Xehanort create his new world."

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Aqua was in the middle of thanking the sugar bowl for a spoonful and was just about to push it toward Ven... but then Roxas spoke, and to say she was surprised would be vastly understating it. She looked up at him sharply, suddenly unaware of the growing pile of sugar in her tea.

"What?" she asked in confusion. The "Refugees" were nice people. Aqua had seen that herself. They wouldn't... But then, Roxas wouldn't lie about something like this, would he? And if it was true...

She didn't want to think what that might imply.

"That's a very serious accusation, Roxas," she continued, trying to reign in her emotions. "Why would they do something like that?"

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earthlybonds.livejournal.com

"What?" He replied, a little too much anger in his voice. Terra looked not only horrified, but outright offended. Why would anyone do such a thing? Terra figured the answer was easy, whoever had been helping him had been manipulated. It was the only logical answer. (At least the only one he could bare to think about.) But that Xehanort was still (apparently) manipulating people, while inhabiting his body, well, Terra just could not stand that thought.

He looked at Roxas, waiting for an explanation.

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"There was some background information missing from their little 'Prophecy' when they first came into contact with him," Roxas replied, looking into his teacup, "They didn't realize just how much of a monster he really is. Initially, they tried to stay out of trouble and avoid disrupting the events that prophecy predicted. Then they found out that he knew about them and the prophecy anyway thanks to their computer network. He knew what would happen. After that, most of them maintain a policy of letting things run their course... But, well... that didn't happen, even though most of the stuff the prophecy saw happened anyway."

He paused, partly to take a sip of his tea and partly to let some of what he'd said sink in. He knew he would have to clarify some of it and the fact of the matter was that he had more to say.

If only there was a gentle way to mention that one of the Refugees had actually fallen in love with Xehanort...

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At first, Ventus couldn't quite process the idea. All the people he had met through the network had seemed really nice. Not like the type who would want to help Xehanort, anyway. Ignoring his own tea, he listened to Roxas, not even so much as attempting to hide his surprise.

"But...they had to know that he was up to no good, right? So why would any of them try to help him?" He, too, waited for an explanation - some way to make sense of the very idea that anyone would help a man who had wanted to destroy everything. There had to be more to it than that, right?

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Roxas understood their confusion and disbelief, truly he did. Now he just had to explain this bullshit as best he could.

"For starters, they came to this odd conclusion that maybe he was as much a victim of circumstance as the other members of his Organization. That he just wanted his Heart back and that he figured maybe creating a new world was the best way to do it. I... huh. Come to think of it, did anyone tell you guys about Nobodies yet?"

Why he hadn't asked that sooner, he didn't know, but it was kind of relevant. If they hadn't been told, he would have to tell them, as it was sort of necessary for understanding some of this.

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"King Mickey did," Aqua replied quietly. She was still trying to wrap her head around this, and Terra... She stole a quick, furtive glance at him. The fact that he hadn't said much meant he was taking it just as hard as she expected him to. And Ven, true to form, just couldn't seem to understand that morality was never black and white, as much as they would like it to be... as much as she pretended it was.

Gently pushing the ruined tea away, she looked Roxas straight in the eye. "He was using them. They should have known that, if they had a prophecy."

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You mean that he tricked them, somehow?

[That...makes a little bit of sense. Comparatively speaking.]

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"He uses everyone," Roxas replied, "Tricks everyone. Even people whose goals coincide with his or who simply agree with his ideals. Which is where we get a couple of the people from Earth helping him. They kind of liked the idea of creating a new world. One even explicitly tried to help him on the condition that he try to find a better way than destroying existence as we know it. Whether he actually did try to find a better way or not, I have no idea, but it never happened and I think she even stuck with him for a while when the more destructive path looked like the only way. Then again, I guess it was easy not to feel guilty about betraying the others since she was also a Nobody at the time."

He was doing a lot more talking that he really wanted to at the moment, but it kind of was necessary. Of course, this might not make him very popular with the Refugees. He was sharing something that could make working together a bit... difficult... to put it delicately.

"You could say we were tricked, but some were every bit as bad before losing they're Hearts as after."

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earthlybonds.livejournal.com

Terra was just staring blankly off into space. He didn't know what to say. How could anyone, anyone sane at least, like Xehanort's goal. Of course, is was blatantly obvious that no good would come of those plans. Wasn't it?

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Aqua was horrified. How anyone could agree with Xehanort was far beyond her ability to comprehend. He embodied everything Master Eraqus defined as evil, and his plans were... His plans were nothing short of heinous.

But there were a few things that caught her attention as Roxas kept talking. The first?

"'She?' Who is 'she?'" she asked. After a pause, she added quietly, "And what do you mean... 'we?'"

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Well, now this... wasn't planned. He had meant to add in his own involvement with the Organization when going into more detail about how some people had been tricked. Obviously, he'd screwed up. Still, there wasn't a whole lot he could other than what he'd been doing: answering their questions. It wasn't like he intended to keep it secret.

"I... was a member of that Organization for a while," he explained, resisting an urge to go staring into his tea cup as he spoke, "I don't know it you were told this already, but when Sora had lost his Heart, I was his Nobody. But, I didn't have any memories, so when Xemnas found me and offered to help me fill in the blanks, well... besides that, I had to nowhere to go, as far as I knew. In return, all he wanted me to do was kill Heartless, since killing Heartless with the Keyblade releases any Hearts they might hold and he needed the Hearts for his plan. As far as I knew for most of my time with the Organization, all that plan was was for everyone to get their Hearts back. It didn't occur to me to ask what collecting Hearts from Heartless had to with it. I left when I found out that it had almost nothing to do with that, if it ever had anything to do with it at all."

There was no way in hell he was going to get into the fact that the most likely reason he, as a Nobody, had been able to use the Keyblade in the first place was because he had probably been carrying Ven's Heart around at the time. There were also probably some points within what he'd just said that he would have to clarify.

And then there was the other question. He'd been about to name a name and maybe reveal the thing that was probably going to cause the most brain damage. That... could maybe get put off for the moment. Actually, he fully expected that if he somehow forgot that reveal, Aqua might ask again.

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Ventus didn't need to be told about that particular detail, of course. His Heart may have been resting, but a disturbance as great as the one that had moved it from Sora to Roxas was difficult to miss...and to, in some strange, vague sense, remember.

In any case, he already knew that Roxas had once been Sora's Nobody; the fact that Terra and Aqua didn't hadn't even crossed his mind. He didn't know about the Organization, of course, but hearing about it didn't surprise him - again, it was just the feeling of a piece falling into place, the sense of emotions that he couldn't place suddenly gaining context.

So that's not what he asked about, when he finally opened his mouth. Instead, Ven focused on something else entirely.

"But, Roxas...you stopped helping him once you figured out what was really going on. The Refugees who were helping him did the same thing, right?" To be honest, Ven didn't really understand what had happened, or what Roxas was trying to tell them. All the Refugees seemed like good people...so what did it matter if they had made a few mistakes?

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So Roxas had helped Xehanort, too, even if he didn't realize it at the time. Another victim of the Darkness, she supposed. Another victim of Xehanort's corruption. She sighed, yielding her earlier question to Ven's. It would get answered soon enough, or she would find out for herself.

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