A Wonderful adventure in Wonderland (Chinzo)

[daemonsol]

Jìzhu​​ sat on her bed in the guest room looking out of the window looking into the vast, deep ocean of space. It amazed her to think about each of those little dots in the distance being an entire world. She simply couldn't wrap her head around the idea. She looked around at her room, which was nice looking but relatively empty. She had nothing with which to furnish the room, because she had nothing other than her own clothes to begin with. Her thoughts turned to her desire to repay Chinzo for his kindness. While recovering, she had learned that she was apparently a beautiful singer, according to Erik who had overhead her singing one day. Since she had insisted so much, Erik said she could repay their kindness by singing to them occasionally. She hoped that her singing would be a good way to repay Chinzo. As she looked out the window again the words just seem to come to her. She closed her eyes and started to sing a lullaby.

"Oh sweet little swallow,
Flying o'er the Sea.
Why won't you fly low,
And show your wings to me.

Oh sweet little baby,
Oh Sweet baby bird.
I'll be nice to you baby,
I give you my word.

Oh sweet little swallow,
Flying o'er the Sea.
Why won't you fly low,
And show your wings to me.

Oh child of the Sky,
I wish to join you.
Oh child of the Sky,
I wish to join you."

She didn't know it, but her sweet voice carried through the entire ship as she sang. She was just practicing for later, but it was still amazing. She could feel that there were more words to the song, but she couldn't recall what they were. She could feel however that this song was important to her somehow, and even though she sang it herself, it somehow brought her comfort, like the warmth of a mother's arms.

Jìzhu​​ gasped as a memory flashed through her mind. It wasn't more than two seconds long, she was laughing and looking at a woman who was holding her up. A few bittersweet tears fell down Jìzhu​​'s cheeks as she grasped desperately at the memory. "Mother, that was my mother, I just know it." she said to herself, though she couldn't recall anything more. That impenetrable wall blocking off her memories was back. She could still see her face, but no name came to mind. She felt that she had been a little child during this memory, maybe 5 years old. The sadness of her situation came crashing back down on her, but she held herself together. That had come back, surely more would too. It had too.

[chinzovsmarth]

Why was Wonderland so far from Traverse Town? Really, a flight of more than two hours in a gummi ship is just stupid and annoying. Why couldn't the cosmos just be closer together, huh?

Oh, well. It was all made alright by that beautiful lullaby. Chinzo relaxed in his big, black chair, dozing off as the beautiful notes reached his ears and lingered there. As soon as the song was over, Chinzo frowned at the(relative) lack of sound in his ears. That actually reminded him.

Where was that sound coming from?

Chinzo reluctantly got up and out of his chair, and walked through the hallway and into to guest room, the only plausible source of the music. And Chinzo was right. It was that young lady, Jizhu, she said her name had been, was the one who was singing. He clapped as soon as he entered, applauding her skill. Even Chinzo couldn't sing like that!

"Now where did you get that beautiful voice, Jizhu?" he said, surprised. "You know, I'm kind of jealous! Not that I don't have some musical skill of my own, though," he smiled warmly, the aura of happiness filling the room again. He sat down on her bed and summoned a cello into his hands, his intrument of choice. A flash of black and white motes of light summoned a bow to his hand, and he placed it on the metal strings, moving it back and forth, up and down, creating a beautiful, rich, wonderfully low-pitched song of sadness. The song was beautiful, though, so even though the story the song told, one of romance and of loss, was saddening, you were happy by the end of it, for hearing the beautiful piece.

"Maybe we should have a jamming session sometime, my lady?" he asked after his song. But her answer was interrupted by a computerized female voice being projected from a speaker in the room.

"WE ARE BEGINNING OUR DESCENT," it said. "STRAP YOURSELVES IN." Chinzo looked up. Why did it have to end so soon?

With a snap of his fingers, an enchantment covered the room, protecting them as if they were strapped in well. You would notice as soon as you felt the spell, too, so there was no need for Chinzo to speak about it... but he felt like he needed to anyway.

"This spell will protect you as if you were strapped in tight, my dear. But still, be ready for a jostle at the end." Chinzo's warm smile lit up the room again. Ahh, how this girl always made him feel good. She was a great traveling partner.

[daemonsol]

Jìzhu​​ sat up with a start when Chinzo entered, applauding her song. She quickly wiped off her tears, slightly smearing her make-up as he said "Now where did you get that beautiful voice, Jìzhu​​?".

"N-No, I-" She started to say before he continued.

"You know, I'm kind of jealous! Not that I don't have some musical skill of my own, though," Chinzo said with a smile as he summoned his cello. He then play a song that struck straight to Jìzhu​​'s heart. It spoke to her of Love and Loss. For some reason it felt like it was telling her story to her. Once again, tears rolled down her cheeks as she listened to the music. When he finished she wiped her tears off.

"Maybe we should have a jamming session sometime, my lady?" he asked, but before she could answer, a synthetic voice spoke out.

"WE ARE BEGINNING OUR DESCENT," it said. "STRAP YOURSELVES IN."

As she looked up, wondering what that voice was, Chinzo snapped his fingers, and Jìzhu​​ felt an invisible force embrace her and hold her still. She figured that Chinzo did it and waited for him to explain what happened.

"This spell will protect you as if you were strapped in tight, my dear. But still, be ready for a jostle at the end."

"Oh, OK, but who was that before, her voice sounded...off?" She thought about the spell though. Magic? So weird, but convenient apparently. Jìzhu​​ thought magic was weird since her own abilities seemed magical in origin though she had no aptitude for the magic others seemed to use.

[chinzovsmarth]

"Oh, OK, but who was that before, her voice sounded...off?"

Chinzo gave an incredulous look at her question. He attempted to cover it up with a shake of his head. "Well, er," he began, slightly confused. "There is a computer in the ship, you see, and it can say things to you... Like, uhm, this. You can ask it questions." He looked up at the white ceiling. "Computer. What are the two Worlds closest to the Land of Dragons?"

"THE LAND OF DRAGONS IS CLOSEST TO OLYMPUS COLISEUM AND BEAST'S CASTLE." the female, computerized voice replied. Chinzo smiled, and nodded.

"You see? But it is not a real person - just a machine simulated to sound like a human." he explained, kind of surprised that Jizhu didn't know what a computer was, even after living in Traverse Town for so long.

A vibration ran through the ship from the bottom, signaling that it had landed. But the computer felt that it needed to explain anyway.

"THE SHIP HAS LANDED IN WONDERLAND." it explained. Chinzo smiled, got up, and led Jizhu to the door. They stepped out onto the grassy carpet of the edges of the Lotus Forest. A sign hung on a tree pointed down a long, tortuous road. Chinzo whinced, and sucked in a breath, not expecting such a long trail. Unfortunately, to make it worse, several spheres of purple, blue, and black formed across the road. Soldiers, Shadows, Large Bodies, Wizards, and Crescendo's. Chinzo scowled, and whipped out his short sword, then laid it down in front of Jizhu.

"I don't expect that you can fight, my lady, but if anything gets past me, then that sword will be your only defense. I am so sorry for this unfortunate turn in our vacation." He then summoned a Blizzard around one hand, Fire around the other, and then stamped his foot, and thunder ripped down from the skies, blasting into their ranks. With holes in their formation, Chinzo loosed his fire in a jet-like fashion, seperating the Heartless into a porous shape, and sent several spikes of ice flying into the crowd. They tore though the already-weakened Heartless like butter. Hopefully, this girl could fight...

[daemonsol]

Jìzhu​​ knew what a computer was. Erik had one of his own for his business and had shown it to her. But this was the first computer that could talk.

"Oh, I see?" she said after Chinzo's explanation and example. The world he mentioned though, the Land of Dragons, sounded interesting to her. After they visited the worlds Chinzo planned to visit, she decided to ask to visit that one.

Jìzhu​​ followed Chinzo off the ship after it landed. She found Chinzo's reaction to the long looking road very amusing. Before she could make a comment however on how the exercise would be good for them, several varieties of Heartless appeared. Chinzo scowled as he gave her a short sword, saying that he'll protect her. She almost dropped the thing however because of how heavy it was. She watched as he blasted several of them away with magic.

Jìzhu​​ carefully set the useless(to her) sword down before she got ready to fight herself. As the adrenaline started to pump through her, she felt herself calming down, her instincts starting to take over. She gracefully slid her arms out of her Kimono's sleeves and let the upper part fall around her waist, held in place by her silk sash, giving her arms their full range of motion, while also revealing her sleeveless dark green bodysuit underneath. Her face grew serious as her arms swiftly started to spin in wide arcs, calling on her power to create a ball of condensed air in front of her chest.

"Hah!" Jìzhu​​ let out a small yell as she stepped forward, launching her Wind Ball forward. It flew at the Heartless, and knocked them all down. She then followed up with several air whips, knocking them around before finishing up with a large gust of wind, causing most of them to pop and disappear. Only a couple Large Bodies were left, and that was only because of their toughness.

Despite how well she had done though, Jìzhu​​ was worn out. She was tired and panting now. She pulled her kimono back up and on as she asked, "Can,*pant* can you get those last two?" She wiped some sweat off her forehead and noticed that her butterfly hair-clip had fallen off. She picked it up and pushed her hair back over her ear as she put it on. "How was that Mr. Verzmarth?"

[chinzovsmarth]

Chinzo watched in awe as this woman, seemingly so small and innocent, blasted several Heartless away with lots of powerful wind attacks, like spheres, whips, and large gusts, all exploding out of her hands through martial arts excersises. Chinzo opened his mouth, then closed it again, then opened it up, then closed it, in total surprise.

"I, er, well, you..." Chinzo tentatively began, not really knowing what to say after that performance. "...That was amazing! Truly wonderful!" Chinzo spat out after a while, but then, noticed the two Large Bodies charging. He scowled, snapped his fingers, and his short sword appeared in one's back, and he whipped around sending tendrils of pink lightning and fire leaped from his fingertips, permeating the other from the front. They both exploded into strands of darkness. The sword reappeared in Chinzo's sword sheath.

Then he turned back to Jizhu, and gestured for her to follow him along the path, and he began to walk. Then he asked the question that he was wondering, and probably anyone else who might have been watching. "Where the hell did you learn to do THAT?"

---

In fact, there WAS somebody watching. It was the master of those Heartless, and was using a small Heartless bird planted on that edge of the forest, being used to spy on any intruders on his territory. Which, of course, was all of Wonderland. Well, so he thought.

"Argh, so someone tries to enter the Walrus's kingdom? Unacceptable! But, they may prove useful yet..." He whipped out a match from seemingly nowhere, lit it on the side of the big red chair he was sitting in, and lit a cigar, and began to puff. "Mmm... I know!" A wicked idea had popped into the Walrus's head, as they always seemed to do. "Go, Heartless, go; to harrass the intruders along their sightseeing trip is what I chiefly need." The Heartless didn't seem to do it right away. He frowned angrily. "Kalloo, kaleigh, go! Run away! You're the Heartless, and I'm your king!"

(I take most of Walrus's dialogue from the scene in the movie ;D Go, check it out here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nql1_RKwQt0)

[daemonsol]

Jìzhu​​ wasn't surprised by Chinzo's reaction, Erik and Monica had acted much the same when she had discovered her powers, stunned at first, but pleasantly surprised. But her powers took a lot out of her, leaving her quite tired. So she watched as Chinzo wiped out the last two Heartless. He then motioned for her to follow him. After that came the question she was unable to answer.

"Where the hell did you learn to do THAT?"

Jìzhu​​ was uncomfortable as she answered Chinzo quite honestly. "I don't know. In the time since I lost my memory a year ago, I've accidentally learned that I have these abilities. They seem to work best when they happen instinctively, or when I simply let my body do what it seems to know. I've learned that my powers are not magical based, as they don't draw on Mana, or Mental Power. Instead they seem to draw on Spiritual Power, which is a combination of both Mental and Physical energy, which is why I'm left so tired. With the loss of a lifetime's worth of memories, I've lost a significant portion of my Mental energy, so my body has to compensate. My powers also seem to revolve around Martial Arts which increase the efficiency of their use. At least, that's all I've really learned since the first time I used my power."

Jìzhu​​ was quietly staring at the ground after she explained everything she knew about herself. Despite seeming like she knew a lot, she felt like she knew nothing at all about her powers. She looked over at Chinzo to see what he thought about what she said.

((OOC: The walrus? interesting choice of villain for our story ))

[chinzovsmarth]

Chinzo nodded nodded thoughtfully of Jizhu's explanation of her power over the air, and why it was based off of martial arts, and why it was so physically taxing. "Well, I must say I've never heard of mystical powers derived from spiritual sources, probably because in my home World we relied very, very heavily on mana-based magic... but that doesn't mean it's not useful!" Chinzo smiled, puffing out some rainbow sprinkles, and then began to walk on the road through the forest, beckoning her to follow again. Then he remembered. If she fought the Heartless, and probably hated them as he did, he had to explain to her about the Keyblade.

"Well, as we go, I'm sure you'll be somewhat bored - what are we to do on a trip through a forest besides sightseeing anyway? - so I think I'll tell you a story about an evil Heartless, one in the mask of a human, and what I'd managed to learn from him." And so, Chinzo told Jizhu about his huge battle with that green-haired brute, Seed, and how he met the city girl, Saffron, the kick-ass medic, and the old, stupid, annoying, and positively evil in every fashion mapmaker.

"And then, when I woke up, I attacked him with ice and lightning magics, together, and he told us all about a special weapon, called the Keyblade, that would destroy the Heartless completely, because any normal weapons or magic would only send the core of the Heartless back into the Darkness, where they would reform, and come back to torment more people." he finished his tale, after about an hour of storytelling and climbing and jumping and fighting myriad Heartless.

"So now, I hope to find this 'Keyblade', and use it to stop Heartless all across the Worlds." he explained. "Perhaps, with your help, milady, I can do just that!" he smiled and helped her up onto another particularly large lilypad. He was beginning to breath quite heavily - Chinzo was not a young man anymore, and although Wonderland was probably one of the most beautiful Worlds of them all, it was tough going through this odd forest.

But as he turned around to see the next part of the forest path(after making sure that Jizhu was up too, of course), Chinzo's heart fell. For as he turned around, the only thing he could see was Soldiers, Wizards, Shadows, Large Bodies, Fire Plants, Blizzard Plants, Creeper Plants, Crescendo's, Red Nocturnes, and other, odd creatures in his way.

But, there was no weakening in front of a lady! Chinzo summoned up his ice magic and thunder magic, and tore it into the crowd. It was then that they noticed, and several Soldiers and Shadows came for Chinzo, claws outstretched. Chinzo whipped up a fire in a wall shape in front of him, polishing them off into black mist. Then he shot a straight forward Blizzard through the wall of flame, whipped around into a kneeling pose with his arms in an upward 'V', and thunder blasted into the ranks. Then in the same fluid motion, he twirled up, dispelled the wall of fire into several balls of flame which flew into the crowd with a forward shove of his palms, then whipped his arms up, twirled again, and blasted a blizzard at a charging trio of Soldiers. That was the technique known as the 'Dance of the Magician', which he learned about back in Blacchia.

So much mana spent, though! It tired him out mentally, physically, and spiritually. Chinzo teleported a mana potion into his hand, and began to sip it. Then, along with several pants, Chinzo said, "Can you..." pant, "cover me until I..." 'nother pant, "finish this potion?" he managed to spit out before having to take another sip. All of these Heartless... they weren't known to congregate in groups like this, especially not in Wonderland. Someone, or something, was summoning and/or controlling them...

---

Walrus smiled as that fat, old man attempted to beat the horde he'd managed to scrape up. It'd taken quite a lot of work to summon up that many Heartless. But once both of those intruders were tired and near the brink of death and exhaustion, Walrus would dispell them, take them in, and get them to his dirty work in the upcoming invasion. He leaned back in his big, soft chair. He snapped his fingers, summoned a Shadow, and waved it off to get him some bread, sauce(full of mustard seed and other seasonings), and oysters. Light-filled, of course.

(Well, he is my character! He's the link under 'WCs'. Click him and see is profile, if you'd like ;D)

[daemonsol]

Jìzhu​​ nodded as Chinzo explained his Home World's use of Mana and magic. "Your people must be very smart and strong-willed to use so much magic." She said with a hint of reverence in her voice as she followed him through the forest. Because of her memory loss, she had no preconception on how the woods would normally be, so where a normal person would have been in awe, or at least very confused about the way the forest in Wonderland looked. She thought that this forest must be normal.

As Chinzo described his battle with Seed and the people he met Jìzhu​​ listened with rapt attention. She found his story thrilling, especially since he told it while fighting off the Heartless. Jìzhu​​ wanted to help fight the Heartless but she was still quite tired from her tiny little display. She hated that her powers drained her so much. She felt that because her body instinctively used large, powerful techniques, she must have been able to do it much more easily before her memory loss. However, when Chinzo told her about the Keyblade, she was wide-eyed.

"And then, when I woke up, I attacked him with ice and lightning magics, together, and he told us all about a special weapon, called the Keyblade, that would destroy the Heartless completely, because any normal weapons or magic would only send the core of the Heartless back into the Darkness, where they would reform, and come back to torment more people. So now, I hope to find this 'Keyblade', and use it to stop Heartless all across the Worlds." he explained. "Perhaps, with your help, milady, I can do just that!"

Jìzhu​​, with her feelings of helplessness and uncertainty, felt honored that Chinzo wanted someone like her to help her with something so important. But then she remembered why she wanted to travel the various worlds. She needed to find herself. And now, despite the friendship she felt towards Chinzo, she felt conflicting priorities.

"Mr. Verzmarth, I'd love to help you, but you have to understand how important finding out who I am is to me."

But before she could continue anymore, the two were attacked by a large horde of Heartless. Chinzo jumped into action with a glorious display of magic, but there were too many. Chinzo exhausted his Mana and summoned a potion to drink, asking Jìzhu​​ to cover him while he finished it.

"Of course." She said as she turned to fight. She felt rested enough to fight, but this time she wasn't gonna show off. This meant that she would be fighting her instincts to use her bigger techniques and would use more of her Martial Arts than her powers. Problem was, her kimono would be in the way since she would need 100% mobility. So instead of simply dropping the sleeves off and letting the top half of her kimono hang by her sash, she quickly slipped out of the entire thing and threw it on Chinzo's shoulder to hold on to and also put her hat on top of his hat. This showed her rather embarrassing "battle suit", a skin tight dark green outfit that only covered what she needed covered. She tried to ignore her embarrassment as she ran forward to attack the Heartless.

If Chinzo's display of magic had been called a dance, Jìzhu​​'s was even more so. She used her natural grace and agility to duck, weave, and leap through her enemies, quickly drawing all of their attention to her when she got on the other side of the horde. And now that she had their undivided attention, she came back into the fray, using kicks and punches that used large circular motions to build up tremendous amounts of energy. To further strengthen these attacks, Jìzhu​​ lowed the air pressure around her and especially in front of her attacks, lowering the air resistance so that she used virtually no energy as she destroyed the Heartless almost effortlessly. To Chinzo it must have seemed as if this tiny girl was fighting with the strength of ten men, and the grace of a ballerina, all without breaking a sweat. By the time Chinzo was done with his potion, Jìzhu​​ had wiped out the last Heartless. And this time because her use of her power had been much more subtle and less flashy, she wasn't as tired as last time, though she was still panting slightly.

With the battle done, she remembered how she looked, like she was only wearing a one-piece swimming suit. She quickly ran back over to Chinzo and took her kimono back. She put it on with a slight blush of general embarrassment. "Thank you for holding my stuff." She said as she took her hat back and put it on her head, pulling it low over her face to hide her blush. "I'm sorry if my fighting outfit is too revealing, but my kimono makes it hard to get a full range of motion, so I have to use that."

((Oh, I didn't realize that, awesome, also, can I get a link to your meeting with Seed so I can read it and know in detail what you told Jìzhu​​?))

[chinzovsmarth]

Again surprised by this girl's great skilled, Chinzo blinked over his empty bottle. "I, uh. Wow, I really do need to get used to that..." Chinzo said, smiling, then hurled the bottle at a fringe Shadow that had managed to survive the massacre. It exploded into strands of Darkness. Chinzo grinned savagely, his milky eyes fading to red for a moment, then back to normal.

Then he continued to walk along the path, stopping for long amounts of time to marvel the great views in autumntime Wonderland, sighing in wonder at the beautiful scenes. Those streams of running gold - it's blue, Chinzo! Blue! Damn that negative vision - were just breathtaking. Chinzo decided to come back here next autmn. Or maybe spring. Yes, spring would be beautiful. Wonderland was such a nice place. Except for, you know, the swarms of Heartless. And the crazy people. And the terrible monarchy. But the view was nice.

---

Walrus simply boiled with rage. Steam rose up in his bathtub behind him from the release of magic. That little girl and that stupid old fat man hat beaten his horde! It had taken him so, so long to pull that together! How dare they?! HOW DARE THEY?!

"Oooh, I... I...!" He stamped his foot. "That's it! Parasite Cage! HEEL!" Darkness began to leak in through the cracks in the wall and under the doors and even out from the gaps between buttons on his various machines.

The Darkness twisted and molded together into a small Shadow, full of pent-up chaos and power. Walrus pointed to the two travelers on the large screen of his computer on the wall, and then smiled much more comfortably and rubbed his gloved hands together, winking an eye and widening the other quite evilly, and watching as the Shadow appeared along the road, far from the travelers, merely standing, then as it exploded into the full-fledged Parasite Cage and began devouring Hearts of animals all around, quite silently, and sat right in the middle of the road, just waiting for the travelers to come along and walk right into its mouth. "Now... You can begin the feed..." the Walrus chuckled, still rubbing his hands.



(Here it is!: worlddestiny.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=seconddistrict&action=display&thread=7646)

[daemonsol]

Jìzhu​​ smiled as Chinzo said he'd have to get used to her skill. She was glad that her weird abilities were actually coming in handy. When Chinzo threw his empty bottle away, she followed it with her eyes as she was about to go get it and tell off Chinzo for littering when it hit and killed a stray Heartless. Since it shattered when it hit she couldn't really pick it up now, and since it went towards killing a Heartless, she decided to go easy on him.

"You shouldn't litter like that Mr. Verzmarth, even to kill a Heartless."

She then turned to follow Chinzo as he walked through the Forest. As she looked around she thought that the forest looked very pretty, such large flowers, some bigger than her.

"Mr. Verzmarth, could you tell me about this world? Are there people here? If so, what are they like?"

She was curious because she didn't know much about how different other worlds could be from each other, and because of her time in Traverse Town, she thought that there would have been more people here.

"They haven't all turned into Heartless have they?"

She looked at Chinzo with a curious look on her face, showing how innocent she was and how little she really knew.

[chinzovsmarth]

Chinzo glanced at the girl's comment at littering. "Hm? Oh yes. Sorry, my dear!" He snapped his fingers and the shards of glass compressed, decompressed, recompressed, and decompressed several times, until it was just glittering dust, which fused well into the environment. Wonderland was already a crazy place - who would notice some glittering dust?

Then, after a few minutes of walking, Jizhu asked a question.

"Mr. Verzmarth, could you tell me about this world? Are there people here? If so, what are they like?"

Chinzo nodded. "Certainly. I haven't been here much before, but I have met some people. One time, I saw a fat cat with pink and purple stripes that had very, very powerful magic. I also met a pair of madmen, one a rabbit the size of a young man, the other a short, old man with a huge hat. I've met lots of others, too. But, it seems, from various sources, that everyone is crazy here. But that doesn't mean it's not pretty!" Chinzo looked about at the huge flowers of rainbow colors, and the beautiful birds, and everything else.

"But no, they haven't all been turned to Heartless, fortunately." Chinzo glanced around, his negative vision soaking in all of the crazy colors. There were pockets of Darkness across the forest, with blackness just floating out. For you see, with Chinzo's negative eyes, blessed by his goddess, he could see Darkness and Light inside of people's Hearts, and in the environment. It was one good part of his trade, normal sight for near-insanity-inducing negative colors.

[daemonsol]

Jìzhu​​ was glad that not everyone had been turned into Heartless, but she was curious about everyone's apparent insanity. It brought an interesting philosophical question to her mind. "Do you think that though they seem crazy to everyone else, we seem insane to them? I feel that this place has it's own sense of balance. It's beauty tells me that however this world works, it works perfectly." The was thoughtfully quiet for a moment as they walked when suddenly she saw the Parasite Cage up ahead.

"What is that?" She asked, pointing at the obscenely large Heartless blocking their path. From the emblem on its front she figured that it was a Heartless, but she had never seen one that big before. She wondered what person could have possibly created that creature. She incorrectly thought that the Heartless to shape similar to what they were in life, that the wizards and such were mages, that the Large Bodies had been fat people, the Soldiers had been, well, soldiers. She didn't know that the appearance of a Heartless was representative of how monstrous the Darkness in their Hearts were.

She was frozen with fear as she looked at the creature. As the Heartless began to move to attack them, she couldn't move out of the way.

[chinzovsmarth]

Chinzo listened to Jizhu's opinion about the craziness. He'd never thought of it that way. But he was still right, however logical Jizhu was. "Well, you'd think that," Chinzo said, scratching his head. "But it's not true - they told me themselves that they were crazy. Now, that might not be true - they could just be saying that jokingly - but they act pretty crazy, at least around me." Then Jizhu pointed something out, that he'd been wondering about the whole trip, since that last horde.

It was a large mountain of Darkness, looming ahead on the road, though he hadn't the foggiest what it had been radiating from. And then Jizhu saw it.

It was a huge Heartless, giant actually, no! gargantuan, with a large, pear-shaped purple bottom half with a giant mouth whose teeth resembled that of prison bars. It also had another, pink head sprouting from it with long blue arms waving, ready to thwack. Chinzo was discouraged, greatly, but there was no excuse for weakness in front of a lady.

Chinzo summoned a heroic light about himself, drew his sword, and a bright pillar of white lightning spat from the end of the blade, burning right into the emblem in between its eyes. Darkness bled from it, then floated into the air.

The Parasite Cage roared, leaned toward the two of them, and swiped a firehose-arm at Chinzo. He threw a Blizzara at it, and it twisted back. But the other arm came swooping in from the other side. A well-aimed Blizzara threw it back, like the other. Chinzo angrily stamped his foot and an angry Thundara fell right on its head. The thing roared, and again, the arms swooped in. Chinzo stopped them quickly with a fast Fire spread around himself, then threw a two Blizzaras and a Fire at the pink top. The spells accidentally leaned to the right, though, and the right arm of the creature exploded off. Darkness began to flow like a waterfall from the wound.

Enraged beyond belief this time, the Parasite Cage wrapped its remaining arm around Chinzo, despite attempts to stave it off with fire and lightning, and threw it into its mouth. Chinzo tried to jump back out again, but it snapped shut. Then he tried to blast the thing from inside-out with his strongest spells, when an anti-magic field formed around him, oppresively blocking off all magic.

Chinzo scowled and whipped out his blade, then began swiping around in random places. It wasn't doing much, but it cut off strands of Darkness with each strike, so it was at least doing something. The girl would have to save him... again. Damn his weakness!

[daemonsol]

Fear kept Jìzhu​​ frozen as Chinzo valiantly fought to defend them with his magic. When the Heartless swung its massive arms Jìzhu​​ could only drop to the ground and scream. She was so terrified. She had defeated an entire horde just a while ago but this monster's appearance and size just was too much for her. She was shaking like crazy and Chinzo fought, destroying one of its arms. In rage the monster grabbed Chinzo and put him inside it's cage-like mouth. "CHINZO!" She cried out, saying his first name for the first time. She watched with terror as her friend furiously fought from within the beast, slashing it with his sword.

Her friend was in peril now. Jìzhu​​ realized that she had to do something, she had to save him. Her small body shook even more furiously with fear as she tried to fight her instincts to run away. He needs me, he needs me, he needs me! She slowly stood up. The Heartless was apparently ignoring the frightened girl for the moment as it tried to fight it's indigestion. After a moment Jìzhu​​ stopped shaking, her body was calming down. She was trying to get her combat mindset to kick in. She knew she had to look at the monster not with fear. She had to think of it as merely another mindless creature to destroy. Calm now, the girl glared at the Heartless.

"Chinzo, I'll save you, just wait." Jìzhu​​ slipped out of her kimono and let it drop on the ground. She couldn't worry about her clothes at the moment. She had an idea come to mind on how to destroy the Heartless, hopefully she could do it. Jìzhu​​'s body slipped into a combat stance instinctively as she started to move her arms in circles, pulling in air and condensing it into a tiny ball. Ready, she stepped forward, and moving her arm in a swiping motion, launched a blade of air at the Parasite Cage. The blade curved and cut the Heartless' other arm off as well as a portion of the monster's head, causing the monster to roar in pain, opening it's cage mouth. "Get out of there, NOW!" She cried out as she dropped to her knees, exhausted again. Oh no, I did too much. She thought to herself as she fell to the ground and started to black out. She tried to stay conscious, but she just couldn't. "Please be safe.." She mumbled as she lost consciousness.