Kingdom Hearts - Blades of Three Realms

[[XIII] Roxas]

"Selfish, huh?" Crystal looked over at Roxas again and then back toward Axel. "I think this is probably less selfish than when I was keeping everything to myself."

"What were you doing in those bushes anyway, Axel?" Roxas managed to sit back up again now that the initial shock had worn off.

Crystal glanced over to where Xion was still fumbling to roll away from Shiro who seemed about to reach blushing critical mass. "Might be a good idea to help her up before Shiro detonates," Crystal got on her feet and walked over to help Xion up off Shiro.

"Is he going to be okay?" Xion was surprised to see that Shiro seemed to have achieved a level of blushing well and beyond what she was herself was experiencing at the moment.

"Hard to say," Crystal admitted. "I don't think he's ever been this close to a girl except for me and I definitely didn't have this much of an effect on him."  

[Kuukyo_Fushichou]

Roveth had finally chosen to speak up, turning to face the others from within the tree "he'll be fine Xion, he'll be fine, as for why he didn't react like that Crystal, is he was more closed up and Hollow than he is now, not only that, he thought of you as a sister so he wasn't going to be embarrassed as easily by you being so close." he said, moving to slip off the branch backwards, before flipping to land feet first on the ground smiling a bit.

Axel meanwhile shrugged lightly "its near where Isa and i slept, so i chose it as a decent hiding spot when i woke up from Roxas's exclamations." he said calmly enough while Shiro was slowly calming down now that Xion was off him, it was taking a bit thankfully to get him calmed down, but hearing Roveth did help some cause being embarrassed around his dark half is just news for TROUBLE! granted, he didn't know Roveth had no intentions on capitalizing on his light half's embarrassment.  

[[XIII] Roxas]

"You have a point," Crystal nodded to Roveth's assessment. "Plus, we never camped out in such close quarters like this. The only times we were ever that close were because of his clumsiness acting up. Believe me, that took some major getting used to. Or, I guess there were the handful of times when he didn't know better and stood too close to a tree I was sleeping in and then I'd fall on him. Kinda why I don't really sleep up in high places so much anymore."

"Oh yeah, I think you almost landed on me a few times in the woods outside of Twilight Town," Roxas realized.

"That's definitely possible," Crystal admitted with a slight chuckle. "I spent a lot of time hiding in those trees. It was peaceful and it seemed like a good place to avoid Seifer."

"What'cha doing?" Aang had appeared alongside Isa who was still prowling in the bushes nearby. "I thought I heard someone mention something about a goddess before, but everyone else looked busy so I didn't want to interrupt."

Isa practically jumped a mile and stumbled out of the bushes to collapse near the mountain of pillows before rounding on Aang. "Where the heck did you even come from?!"

The sight of Isa freaking out so spectacularly got Roxas and Xion both rolling with laughter given they were still accustomed to how super serious Isa had been as Sai'x.

"Oh, well my shift at the tea shop doesn't start until later so I thought I'd see if anyone wanted bending lessons," Aang explained. "And it looked like they were all still busy so I thought I'd ask you first."  

[Kuukyo_Fushichou]

Axel and Roveth just stared at the freaked out Isa from Aang's sudden appearance, and then Axel drops to the ground laughing and rolling his own body along the ground unable to help it with how funny that was, Roveth did the same not too long after, pointing and having tears anime-ishly coming out in droves at how funny that was.

Shiro meanwhile had taken the moment Isa decided to pull the spotlight from him to put himself inhis happy place of swords and battle, and managed to calm down from the Xion incident, before getting up himself and dusting himself off and looked to the odd bald-headed kid "that sounds like a good idea to me." he said with a smile, just to get rid of the embarrassment from the morning had been.  

[[XIII] Roxas]

It took several long moments for everyone to recover from their fits of laughter over Isa's rather undignified emergence from the bushes, but once they managed to get past that they were ready to start learning some bending techniques. First and foremost, with the exception of Crystal and Axel, they still needed to discover their specific affinity with regards to the four elements. While that was going on Crystal worked on packing up the camping supplies so they wouldn't be in the way once they got to practicing as the field they had used seemed like a good wide open space to do just that.

As it turned out, they had a pretty uniform mix in their little group. Xion was attuned to water bending, Isa showed an innate talent for earth bending which seemed to please him after his rather embarrassing start to the day, and Roxas proved to have an affinity for air bending, although he didn't have the repertoire of prior martial arts knowledge Crystal did to take full advantage of it. However, it did mean that Roxas could learn the basics from Aang and also potentially learn more by getting Crystal to teach him her slightly more unique style. Okay, so at the very least it was a valid and very good excuse for them to spend more time together, but Roxas really was interested in learning what he could, although he knew it had taken years of practice for Crystal to get where she was and duplicating what she was capable of wasn't going to be easy.

Shiro and Roveth were, as ever, much more difficult to figure out. Even with Aang wracking his brain to try to get a read on their potential it seemed to be going nowhere with Roveth and Shiro's aura just tasted impossible.  

[Kuukyo_Fushichou]

Axel of course was an obvious Fire element due to various reasons, however hearing Isa was earth didn't surprise him, nor did he poke fun about it as long as Isa didn't poke fun at him for being a pyromaniac. in either case Roveth and Shiro looked at Aang and seeing his confusion and increased frustration of getting past both Shiro's Resonance and Roveth's Shadow aura, the two looked at each other before Shiro spoke up "i know you can suppress your Shadow element which is probably looking like a Void for our teacher here." Roveth nodded, humming a bit "i can, but you pushing down -that- resonance is gonna be hard, so you might be stuck learning all elements rather than just one." Shiro shrugged a bit lightly "i have an idea, but it's gonna take a couple of lines of -that- to do.." he said, while sighing, and closing his eyes, before Roveth shrugged, and did the same, for Roveth, it would be odd to Crystal and Roxas and the others to feel that ever present shadowy feeling permeating from Roveth to shrink down, and completely start to disappear, almost like he was erasing his presence completely, when all he was doing, was parting his powers in half, so to speak, and pushing them behind clear barriers to pave a path towards his elemental affinity. Shiro however had spoke up softly "I am the Bone of my Sword..." he would let his Prana spike, but he was focusing it within his own body as he worked "Steel is my Body.. and Fire is my Blood." he intoned, as he still focused, sure enough, Shiro's aura would shift, and dissappate as well, sucking itself not into a void or anything, but temporarily putting the aura of the Resonance from the Chrono Cross within his own Reality Marble, and leave only whatever would feel right and natural to his body, though he did look like he was struggling to hold it so Aang would need to hurry before the warring resonance in his body broke free of his reality marble to rejoin where it was.  

[[XIII] Roxas]

"Oh, that's much better!" Aang could sense it clearly now for both Shiro and Roveth. "Earth," he pointed at Roveth. "Fire," he pointed at Shiro. "I have no idea why that was so hard, but you both have very strange auras."

Crystal had by that time finished packing up the camping supplies and had her own idea for a rudimentary training exercise. She gathered some chi into the palm of her hand, making a few simple and fast motions to force a small pocket of air pressure into a ball, and then flung it across the field a ways until it glided down toward the ground displacing some of the surrounding grass.

"What exactly are you doing?" Roxas wondered as he watched Crystal's strange antics.

"You don't have too much spiritual sense, right, so chi manipulation isn't so easy for you either," Crystal explained. "But with this we can gradually work to improve your ability to perceive the unseen."

"I think I get what you're saying, but how is this supposed to work?" Roxas understood what she meant more or less, but what she was doing right now didn't really seem that much like training.

Crystal readied a new pocket of air pressure into a ball in the palm of her hand and this time let it fly at Roxas. "Let's see how well you can catch!"

The ball nailed him in the chest, but he barely felt it because there wasn't actually that much force behind it. "Okay, now I think I see where this is going. Give me your best shot!"

"Oh, that looks like fun!" Aang quickly noticed the rather inspired training regimen that Crystal had plotted out for Roxas in the span of only a few minutes and kinda want to join in, but of course he needed to help everyone else get in tune with their own elements first. Still, Crystal seemed to have a real knack for teaching things.

Gradually, Roxas was able to perceive the position of the ball of air before it hit him and he could block it with small bursts of his own air pressure, but as the session went on he was able to actually launch the ball back at Crystal to begin a crazy volley that would be invisible to the untrained eye.

"It seems to me like Crystal must really enjoy coming up with these kind of games," Xion pointed out while watching them.

"I would go so far as to say she is glad for being in the company of those who are willing to play along with her," Isa agreed. "Although the rules of this game are pretty sophisticated for mere child's play."  

[Kuukyo_Fushichou]

Shiro and Roveth both nodded, Shiro of course slowly edging his aura back out slowly to let the resonance retake things, showing he -clearly- had capabilities of handling al elements, but his main element was obviously fire. in the case of Roveth, he let go of the barriers in his body, and sure enough, like an idiot, instead of trickling it back in, it all came blasting back in, like a rush of shadow energy reasserting itself and probably disrupting delicate things, clearly by accident since Roveth didn't know better and didn't have the kind of control Shiro did over his aura though, shiro of course swayed to the side a bit from the aura release of his dark counterpart "Ugh! Roveth, remind me later to teach you control, seriously!"

Axel of course would be playing with a couple of fireballs in hand due to his typical fire control stuff that he uses to keep himself in the know of how to use it without summoning his Keyblade or his Chakrams at least.  

[[XIII] Roxas]

As Roveth's aura released everywhere again it immediately ended the volley between Crystal and Roxas as the little packet of air wasn't stable enough to withstand that kind of disturbance. Crystal didn't pay it much mind though as she simply engineered a new ball of air pressure to get them started again. Later on she would have Roxas try to do that part himself, but for the moment it was easier and much more efficient for Crystal to handle the air-based construction.

Aang would go over the basics of each element until each of them seemed to be getting the hang of it. Then, after a while, he would let them split off to train by practicing amongst themselves while personally overseeing Xion since she was the only water bender out of the lot and didn't otherwise have someone to practice with. Isa would be practicing with Roveth, which suited him just fine as it gave him an opportunity to observe and attempt to gain a better understanding of what exactly made Shiro's dark half tick. He had been very open about revealing Shiro's personal history, but Roveth didn't reveal much about himself or his personality. And you could learn a lot about a person by fighting with them. Although, Isa was also curious to see what Lea planned to do to Shiro now that they were being left alone together to play with fire.  

[Kuukyo_Fushichou]

Roveth thankfully had no problems of at least opening up a bit to Isa while training, granted, it won't be much of an opening up as it was Roveth's natural paranoia to stay on guard.granted, the two of them launching small rocks at each other, levelling the ground out once the rocks hit, and repeating the process was pretty fun even if it was a bit dusty.

for Axel and Shiro however, they were doing something different."alright, now, i know you can trace my chakrams by now by the times you've seen them, however, what i ask you to do today is not make them to aid you with this." Shiro nodded while watching Axel form a fireball in hand, about softball size, and no more burning dangerous than say a low powered fire spell "we are going to play Fireball Dodgeball. in essence, there will be two ways to play, one, you can watch with your cute eye trick thing and try and dodge my fireballs, or you can also try to catch them and fling them back at me." Shiro had sweatdropped lightly "... something tells me i'm about to be on fire a lot aren't i." he said, while at the same time his blue eyes turned green as he activated Structural analysis and started his chore of watching how Axel not only manipulates the fire element and utilizes it much like Fire benders do, but at the same time watch the trajectories... but given he had also Roveth and Isa in their own bending fight, and Xion and Aang in their bending instructions within his line of sight, he was getting a -lot- of information to the point where he was starting to get a mild headache, but he pressed on.. and the 'game' began... more than likely with shiro being set on fire more often than fighting back at the moment.  

[[XIII] Roxas]

Xion was getting in tons of practice with the healing aspect of water bending as a result of Shiro's incredible misfortune of spending probably about as much time being set on fire as he did successfully bending it. Fortunately, the burns were relatively minor and easily mended, but it was surprisingly good practice at poor Shiro's expense.

Roxas was making steady progress and the air volleys were becoming more and more drawn out as both him and Crystal were becoming increasingly proficient at it. The repetition started to wear on them, of course, and they soon decided to abandon that particular training exercise in favor of something a little more entertaining. Such was how they came to be practicing in the very same stream where Aang was working with Xion on her water bending. Instead of tossing pressurized pockets of air at each other, however, this time around they were using air pressure to form mini-cyclones to splash water at each other and anyone else who happened to get in their way, including Aang and Xion. This naturally erupted into a full-blown water fight not long after.  

[Kuukyo_Fushichou]

Roveth ofg course with Isa were currently ignoring the water fights since they weren't being involved in it, just continuing their training and Roveth of course relaxing more around Isa than he would the others at the moment since they're busy being brats/kids.

Axel of course thankfully would keep the game up, however it led to SHiro devolving into being set on fire consistantly due to the atomic blush he had and being -way- too distracted if his glances at a wet Xion were any indication.  

[[XIII] Roxas]

"Shiro seems awfully flammable today," Isa observed vaguely while continuing his sparring match with Roveth. "I wonder, is it normal for him to be so easily distracted?"

Aang and Xion of course had to rush over to heal Shiro yet again, although there would no helping Shiro's intense redness anytime soon as both parties were still completely drenched from the water fight. Crystal and Roxas were still going at it, but their antics ceased somewhat abruptly as Crystal became distracted by a sudden beeping sound from the vicinity of her pocket where she kept the now infamous Dimensional Distortion Grid. In her distraction she was thrown back unceremoniously into the water before sputtering back to the surface and pulling said artifact from said pocket to evaluate the situation while Roxas hurried over to make sure she was okay.

"I'm fine, but... this isn't looking too good," Crystal had activated the display on the Dimensional Distortion Grid to show a nearby world outlined flashing in red with many large flashing red dots depicted on its surface. "You see these distortions?" she pointed at the screen. "These mean an immense influx of Heartless have suddenly appeared on a nearby world. But, from the size of the dots on the display, these Heartless must be huge."

"So then this is how you always seem to know where to get yourselves into trouble," Roxas realized. It was interesting that it hadn't gone off at all during their travels, meaning it probably didn't have a detection setting for Nobodies or Unversed, only Heartless. It made some sense, Roxas supposed, since Heartless were naturally occurring and had been around seemingly forever while Nobodies and Unversed were pretty much unheard of until very, very recently. He helped Crystal to get back on her feet. "I suppose this means we'll be cutting our stay here on this world a little short."

"Wasteland Paradise," Crystal frowned visibly. "Isn't that the desert world we thought must be where Wolfwood originally comes from? He's not going to like this if it is because that seems to be the place where all of these giant sized Heartless are suddenly appearing."  

[Kuukyo_Fushichou]

Shiro of course had been thankful for the help by Aang and Xion, despite the atomic blush he sported by seeing the wet girl at the moment, before suddenly losing his blush upon hearing the fact that there was massive activity going on via the grid, Roveth also stopping what he was doing to come check on the grid as well, given he has been studying it "and that many at the same time? oh yeah.. if wolfwood found out about this he probably is going to be -pissed-." he said with narrowed eyes Axel of course cracked his knuckles a bit and summoned his Keyblade as well, looking more than ready, Shiro meanwhile seemed distracted, but not because of Drenched Xion, in fact, it was because nearby was a starting to open rift, one of the many he had originally travelled through before meeting Crystal "... ah. it's been a while since i saw my old travelling method." he said with a bit of a nostalgic smile, while Axel looked over, and blinked a bit, before sweatdropping "... THAT is what you traveled through?" after getting a nod from both Roveth and the nostalgic Shiro, before looking to Crystal "how suicidal is he?" he asked with a bit of a strained voice, as if trying to wrap his head around Shiro actively -WALKING- into an unstable dimensional rift.  

[[XIII] Roxas]

"Typically, a rift like that won't kill you, but you can't generally predict where it might take you," Crystal shrugged. She brought out World's Rift and actually pointed it into the unstable rift filling it with light and causing it to stabilize into a fully actualized pathway. "However, given what we know from the grid, this will probably take us directly to the next world without us having to walk the whole way along the unseen roadway."

In fact, through the pathway they could clearly see what looked to be a vast expanse of desert with a good sized town visible off in the distance. Of course, it also revealed an unpleasant number of Behemoth class Heartless.

"Before charging into battle, I'd recommend you stock up on items, kupo!" the Moogle had of course come over to see what the commotion was all about.

"How are we even supposed to fight so many of those at once?" Roxas wondered what they all were probably wondering at least in some small part.

"Brute strength and being clever usually works," Crystal tightened her grip on the hilt of World's Rift while taking on a determined expression. "But I think I might have to go all out on these ones."