Chasing Hearts -- A Kingdom Hearts Story--

Part Seven: Land Of Toys

"Who do they think they are?" Demi yelled to herself, slashing hard at the combat dummy, music blaring loudly. "Locking me up inside a spaceship like a little china doll!" Her teeth clenched together, and once more, she knocked the head off a dummy. Throwing her arm back, after feeling the small numbness in her hand. "If anything, Donald's the fragile one! It took two hits for him to die in the game!" A grunt escaped her lips, hidden by the pants of breath that came from both her intense frustration of Donald putting a locking spell from the outside on the ship and the record time she'd broken of training dolls taken out in five minutes: seventy-five.

Truthfully, she'd done fine when cooped up for the first five days. But when nobody had even dared visit her for a week in total, slowly the faceless dummies had faces. She'd called Merlin, and complained about the spell, but he told her it couldn't be broken from the inside. However, he did give her some tips on ice magic and fire. The wizard never quite stated what for, but even Aerith was giggling. She'd also been talking to Cloud and Tifa about combat techniques. Everything had been going fine with that, until they even pecked each others lips. Demi gagged when that happened, and always ended the call quickly before things could get awkward.

The girl grasped the plastic bottle forcefully, feeling the tiny droplets on the outside of the drink sliding off and hitting her bare feet. She tilted it straight up, gulping down the icy liquid inside and walking out of the training area, slamming the button to turn it all off as she trudged out of Riku's room. Her tablet sat at the dining area's table, so Demi snatched it up and tossed the empty bottle into the sink for later cleaning, twirling around and unlocking it.

Off the angry music went, and now came the studying portion of her day. True, the previous game she'd played left her with pretty decent knowledge on heartless, but now, she learned, there was a new breed. To much of her entertainment, they were called Homewreckers. The basic information gave off that they altered the storyline of the world by taking over the body of one largely known person, such as Buzz, and ruining everything they can. Usually, such breeds don't reveal themselves until force is used against them. The only way, it said, to take it down, is to find the doppleganger and destroy it before it hurts anyone.

"And naturally, I'm probably the only one who knows how to get rid of the loser." She griped, going back to the main server and selecting another type of heartless. This was supposedly one the King had sent directly to her, saying while the boys were out, she'd need to help come up with ideas on how to destroy it. Basically, the said heartless would enter a world, and make it seem as an alternate universe. The female became males, and vice versa. However, the heartless would take the form of almost anyone in the world, so there was no telling who was who. Once destroyed, they believed the world would return to normal, and everyone who actually lived there would forget everything. The only problem was figuring out who was who.

Demi sat there at the bar for a few hours, writing out different theories onto notebook paper and in turn usually ended up tossing it in the air and mindlessly using her newly learned Fire spell to dispose of it. Later on she quit at it, and went to go take a shower and practice with her makeup and hair. God knows when she'd ever need to know that kind of stuff again, but it was still good knowledge for her to know. Or, at least, she thought it was.

She kept her pajamas on, not finding any reason to actually put on clothes after being tossed aside by her companions. But, as she pushed in the last pin into her hair, her eyes moved to her window, watching the soft glow of the external lock go transparent, and the footsteps from the front of the ship could be heard. Forcefully she sat the mirror down, grasping the stone at the end of her necklace, which could resemble a galaxy with its hues of cool colors, and squeezed it. A white glittering overtook her as she stormed over to her bed, grabbing a pillow and snatching it up with her now gloved hands.