What Is Home? (Open)

Unfamiliar places were quickly becoming a normal thing for the creature, who walked upon two legs and appeared to be human...except for the fact that said human had cat like ears and a tail and wore an outfit unlike any other in the place. While its look certainly got many eyes drawn to it, this creature did not particularly care as it made itself right at home and took to wandering the streets seeing what it could find in this town.

It had been here three days now sometimes appearing as a cat and at other times taking on the more human form it had now. Sometimes it flipped and flopped between the forms just to cause an uproar in the otherwise to quiet town. It was quite amusing watching the people jump back startled every time the cat did this, but after a while it became a bore so the cat had started to do something else with its time, like make himself appear and disappear on whim around a certain area of town causing the rumor of a ghost cat thing...yes they were that creative with the title...Anyway a ghost cat thing haunting the place at night. The cat had certainly gotten the townfolks checking around every nook and crany at night, but no one had been able to catch the cat yet and to make matters even more hard for them, the cat kept shifting forms or wearing things so no one got a true look at him making the game that much more interesting. Thus when the creature did walk around right under their noses no one knew that it was the problem to begin with. 

Humans and how slow they could be. It was amusing really, but something that was not going to keep the cat entertained right now. The creature needed something more to do, so it wandered until it saw in the distance something that caught its eye. And what is that you may ask? Why it was a very familiar tuff of blonde hair that the cat hadn't seen in ages. Well then, it was time to play wasn't it? 

With a mischievous grin on its lips, the humanoid cat would vanish from its spot and travel over to where the blonde was staying invisible and quiet as it watched the blonde speak to another that was there. It was right when the other reached out his hand that the cat made itself known. 

"And yet some of us have met and some of us have not. How nice to see familiar and yet not so familiar faces in a place like this," a voice would purr from out of no where as a pink and purple striped tail came out down from the air above to settle in the blonde's out stretched hand; however, there would be no body. Just a tail and a disembodied voice for now. 

 @alexius ; @tapir

The voice and sudden sensation of fuzz in his fingers managed to get Roxas to almost leave his skin behind, eliciting a surprised fidget and …perhaps not quite so manly…yelp.

Alexius, he of claymores and fashion input, had tensed in way that sent alarm bells ringing in Roxas’ head. It was brief and he reined it in pretty quick, but Alexius had been battle ready in the span of a second. While he supposed it wasn’t surprising in retrospect that a guy hefting around a sword had the training to use it, it was one more threat blaring red in his brain while Roxas tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

Roxas breathed slowly as he worked through it, trying to fight off the reflexes of his own militant upbringing. Normally Roxas was the first to let loose when things got hairy, but this place was his home, or the closest he’d ever get to it. There was nowhere else. He couldn’t afford to screw up here. Thus was Roxas’ mantra as his brain caught up with the adrenaline.

Blond brows furrowed together into a scowl as Roxas glanced around the wide plaza of the Tram Commons. Market Street began or ended here, depending on your point of view, corner stores and tiny strip malls sweeping down from the Height’s hill to hedge in the sleepy circumference of the tram-line. Shoppers and commuters milled and thronged around apparel outlets and cafes, but gave didn’t give the two boys more then an errant glance. Roxas scoured the crowded, but didn’t find any of the ‘usual suspects.’

“Someone’s trying to prank us with the Ghost Cat,” declared Roxas sullenly, a crimson flush coloring his checks and neck. He threw the offending tail down towards the cobblestones. “You’re not funny,” he groused to the empty air. “Cut it out! …Vivi if that’s you I swear ….”





@alexius @cheshirecat

The Cat would chuckle amused with the sharpness of this one and also his calmness in the face of oddness. And would you look at that! He even had the gall to brush the cat off. Oh, this was delightful indeed! More delightful when the spikey haired blonde so familiar to the Cat began swatting at things that were not there. Or perhaps they were there. After all, just because one cannot see things does not mean it is not there. The Cat was an expert on this subject after all. One could trust the Cat on this.

In any case, the head would go with the brush falling to the ground and rolling about as the tail decided it was going to make a turban upon said head. Bouncing around as if it was oh so normal to have a bouncing head without a body around, the head would observe the display of power from the blonde with the gauntlet unafraid as its eyes narrowed in delight.

“Unordinary we are indeed,” the Cat would begin with a grin before that grin disappeared into a mock frown. “And yet your power, while fancy, is not natural talent like mine, but this should be no problem for you don’t care! And neither do I! Mad, don’t you think, how we are so not similar that we appear to be similar no?”

The head would disappear along with the tail as the other spoke of being hanging out alone and questioned what to do with it, but the fangy grin would remained floating into the air as the cat spoke. “Everyone believes themselves to be alone, but in reality no one is ever alone,” the mouth would say before disappearing.

A short while later the Cat would appear fully, its sleek purple striped body resting easily on the one called Roxas’s ahead as the Cat got comfortable and folded its paws under its chin as if it were a person. “Though it does feel lonely when one forgets you and even more so when one commands you to be boring,” the Cat would say rolling its eyes at Roxas’s comments before grinning again and looking down at the blonde with an almost malicious grin. “Is a hat as fabulous as I something that should be hidden?” The Cat would chuckle. “I think not and yet you run to hide. Such sneaky, sneaky children. And you worry about little old me causing a scene!” the cat would finish with a purr seeming to take delight in the situation and fortunately or perhaps unfortunately for the pair it was with, the Cat didn’t seem like it was leaving any time soon.

@alexius @tapir

Blue eyes rose up to where surprisingly soft periwinkle fluff had appeared just within the upper horizon of his vision. The ‘unordinary’ cat had already proved protests to be futile. Likewise, while Roxas was naturally filled with curious dread at the ‘forgets’ comment, estimating that was probably aimed at him, it definitely wasn’t a conversation he’d prefer to have in front of Alexius.

“Town council won’t talk bout it,” Roxas said to the swordsman’s first question, stepping in unusually precise rolls of heel to toe in order to avoid jostling his feline fedora. “Maybe somebody didn’t put on the emergency break while dropping off cargo on Market Street.” The standard explanation Roxas faithfully repeated was attractive in its mundanity. Yet, a glance back up the zig-zag meandering of Market and the distance they were currently traversing across the Commons soon revealed myriad unresolved issues of angles and dynamics. “Might have somethin’ to do with the abandoned mansion in the woods,” Roxas continued, affecting a playful horror flick pattern of vocal emphasis, as he stepping over the residual lower bricks. Guess one benefit of only hitting five foot three on his tip-toes was being able to walk through the tunnel upright without risk of clotheslining the dialectically inclined cat.

The sounding bricks of formed an erratic channel of varying browns. Moisture from exposed pipework dribbled through cracks in the mortar. Creeping ivy snaked along the blocky broken coutures. The weight of sneakered footsteps squished and sunk into the carpet of mosses thriving in the damp dark. “Some people complain the hole lets in Dusks,” said the Nobody with coy irony, voice slightly muffled by the enclosure. Traces of teenage transgressions lay among the shadowed verdure, broken beer bottles and other relics of furtive adventurism that perhaps concerned the parents of Twilight Town more then bogeymen.

The trio emerged into aboral shade. Evening filtered down through the canopy in rays of emerald tinged amber. Hushed pillars of deciduous trunks tricked the eye with illusions of depth and order, the fruitless struggle of the mind to impose order on organic happenstance.

“So,” Roxas’ cleave towards the chase didn’t slow his steps. “What Worlds are you guys from?”


@alexius @cheshirecat

"Story goes that when a person loses their loses Heart, they lose themselves."

Sycamores swished in hushed sways, breeze stirring shade-blackened leaves as if by the caress of an unseen hand. The forest canopy was rotted cave, riven with bright fissures through whispering boughs. Soft sunlight steamed down in a sepia haze that stained the tree’s chestnut bark to something fondly faded, the weary breath of an ever-dying heaven. Grass, long and verdant in a land bereft of winter, protested in crisp slithering stalks beneath the pair’s shoes. Though the winds stirred the entire forest in low susurrate sound, there seemed an absence that gnawed at unconscious instinct. All the animals, bold birdsong, and small scurrying things in the brush, had gone absolutely silent.

“Still alive,” Roxas continued, subdued tenor playing duet to the whisk of fluttering leaves, “but they can’t feel.” Bitterness blunted the last syllable. “Most bodies lose their shape, go insane from the numbness,” sneakers raised huffs of sun-brightened dust on the footpath, “become a Dusk.” The boy reached down to rough yank away a handful of long grass encroaching upon the unkempt path. For a time it seemed the tale was over. The shorn green strands soughed discordantly in the young man’s hands as he absently rubbed the together. This importune music accompanying their woodland hike was unpleasantly sporadic, dips into steady timbre suddenly broken by a uptick in frenetic motion, like the spastic swaying of silver skinned folk tales. The tune ceased just suddenly as it began, gloaming glow from above easing the pinnacles of clenched whitened knuckles. Yet, the unmelodious whisper still seemed to linger in the air, shivering through this vaulted garden of shadows.

“They’re deformed,” Roxas resumed without warning, “twist around like paper in the wind.” The boys fist opened, freeing grass to flutter on the wind back towards and above his companion. Yet the grass clumps the breeze caught were lifeless, sandy brown to point of being almost grey, as if parched by a desert sun. “But others look like people,” came the soft warning. Wavy flaxen hair seemed to spin into molten gold as they passed under a sunny gap in the forest roof. “Can talk to you just like I am now,” noted the changeling whose unnatural presence the fauna had fled. “But they aren’t,” the insistence was sharply stated, loathings keen edge poised inward. “They’re Nobody."

Warning mingled with an air of religious rote, an echo of nihilistic vespers spoken in selenic solemnity.

“All they want is a Heart,” Roxas gripped the front of his shirt, crumpling the cloth beneath which half of Sora’s Heart beat. “They’ll rip one out if they have to.”

Roxas looked back at Alexius, with an coy cock of the head. “So,” the easy smirking grin said the spooky joke over, but violently vivid blue eyes said the lie went deeper. “You got any good ghost stories?”

@alexius