Young Writers Society

It took him several seconds to put the letters together in his head. "Kirux..." he tasted the name, then glanced down at the motion he was making with his hands. Writing. "Oh, yeah, of course. Uh..." he glanced around, then dug around in his bag, pulling out a pencil and a beat-up notepad. "Here." He passed it to the fellow and his gaze wandered back towards the keyblade.

Keyblade.

"Wait...are you from Kingdom Hearts?" he asked, eyes widening.

He kept his head tilted as he readjusted the pillow. He needed to get it flat so he could easily write on it, but the phrase just made him confused. He had heard of Kingdom Hearts before. They seemed to come up in conversation whenever he was talking to someone who had known Riku. But he still didn't know what they meant, and didn't get how he could be from them.

"I don't know," he wrote. He went to hold up the paper, only to pause when he realized that he had never answered Matt's earlier questions. "I didn't want to show up here. I was trying to run away from all of the Heartless, and the corridor brought me here. I'm sorry..."

The Heartless? Sure sounded like Kingdom Hearts. "Uh...No, that's fine. I just...didn't expect it," he laughed a little awkwardly. "Well...make yourself at home, I guess, until you can get home. I can try to find you some more normal clothes so you blend if you need to go out but it's probably wiser to stay inside until you can go. You don't look...right. You wouldn't blend in."

He nodded. New clothes sounded like a good idea. His appearance sometimes changed when he went to new worlds, but he guessed his clothing was similar enough to this one.

He leaned over his makeshift desk and wrote another sentence down.

"I want to go outside." He tapped his chin with the pencil's eraser, trying to figure out why he felt like that. "I need to find R-"

He looked up sharply, turning back to Matt with excitement in his eyes. "Riku!" he signed. Riku could be here! He still didn't know where here was, but that didn't matter. "R-I-K-U! Have you met Riku? Everyone who knows about the Kingdom Hearts has met him!"

"Uhhh...No," Matt shook his head. "He's just fiction here." He felt bad breaking the young man's bubble, but he couldn't lead him on. Better to nip it in the bud. "Going outside is really dangerous, I seriously wouldn't advise it. Especially with the keyblade."

He rose, going to his closet and rifling through it before producing a black t-shirt and some jeans. They'd be a tad bit big on the other man but it'd suffice.

What was he talking about? Riku was real!

"Riku's real," he wrote, a frown flickering across his lips as he took the clothing from Matt a few seconds later. He slipped off his coat and left it beside the pillow and notebook. Out of habit, he began to remove his shirt and pants - he only paused when the shirt was halfway off of his head and his pants were already partially off of his butt.

Aand now he was getting naked.

Well, he'd seen stranger things, that was for certain. He let out a sigh and turned around. "Right. Well. I'm...just going to be in the other room, then," he said, promptly slipping through the door and into the living room in an attempt to escape the awkwardness. Once outside, he leaned against the wall and waited. What was he to do with this? He glanced down at his phone, contemplating calling Keith for advice, but...It was weird. Too weird, after everything.

Kirux finished getting changed with a strong blush on his cheeks. He hadn't realized his mistake until it had already been made - he was just really used to getting changed without other people around him, and hadn't had to think about strangers watching him in a long time.

Before he joined Matt in the other room, he turned back to the pile of clothes on the bed. He was still tired, but he conjured another corridor and threw the clothing through - if he had gotten the place right, it would have ended up in a neat pile at the end of his bed.

The darkness disappeared, and he joined Matt out in the next room with a strong blush still apparent on his cheeks.

He looked up as Kirux came back in. "Let me make a phone call, then we can go and uh...do soemthing about...that." He gestured vaguely at Kirux's appearance and pulled his phone out, dialing Kartiel.

"Come on," he murmured on the third ring. "Pick up, pick up, pick up." Damn it! Couldn't he find a better time to be out of town? It wasn't long before Kartiel's voice told him to leave a message and he sighed.

"Hey...It's me, Matt. Uh...I think there's someone from another world here, and I don't mean Aeyis. Like...Kingdom Hearts. I swear to god I'm sober, it's just, um...weird. Uh. Yeah. So. Anyways. Hope you're doin well, uh, call me back when you get the chance. Bye."

The phone went back to his pocket and he turned to Kirux. "You ever been to another world before?"

As Matt did something with the small device, he looked down at his outfit. Matt made it seem like there was something wrong with it, but he had been the one to suggest it! He gave Matt a very, very confused look when the man finally stopped talking into the device, folding his arms and tilting his head to the side to convey his desire for an explanation.

But then Matt asked him a question, and his mind instantly switched topics.

"I H-A-V-E," he signed, perking up. He tucked the notepad and pencil underneath his arm. As long as he kept things short, it would probably be faster to just sign things instead of writing them. "I G-O E-V-E-R-Y D-A-Y. L-O-O-K-I-N-G F-O-R R-I-K-U."

Matt blinked. "Uh, you'll have to go slower, I haven't taken ASL in years. But I guess 'yes' is all the answer I needed." He paused, gazing at the man's strange countenance. "Alright. Here's the plan: you stay in the car and I'll get an eyepatch or something and a wig or dye. I'll come back, you put it on, and we'll go from there. Questions?"

It wasn't much, but it was something. He didn't really want to draw attention, not now.

He grabbed a strand of his hair and held it up, staring at the almost silver sheen for a moment before letting go. So it was his hair that was the problem, and his eyes? He could work with that. He reached into his pocket to pull out his eye patch, but he suddenly realized that he had left it back in his coat.

...that he had just thrown into the corridor...

...that he wouldn't be able to make for awhile...

He covered his face with his hands and frowned, massaging his temples and side of his face in his frustration. He could have made things easier on Matt if he had just gone through his pockets before putting the coat away! He felt really bad for making Matt's life more difficult.

Then he removed his hands and thought for a moment.

His eyes were the problem. His green eye had to be alright - his golden eye was the one that was weird. If Matt had so many resources, maybe he could get him a temporary replacement! No eye had ever been as good as this one, but he could always deal with the discomfort.

He turned his back to Matt and removed his eye.

He screwed his eyelid shut and spun back around, golden eye hidden in the curled up fist he held out.

"N-O E-Y-E," he slowly signed with his free hand. He gestured up at what should have been his left eye. "L-O-S-T I-T."

"Oooo-kaaay," he said, eyes wide as he stared at the glass eye he'd just popped out. "Uh...wow. Wow. Alright. Um. Damn. Lost an eye. Uh...just...put that in your pocket, or something, I guess...We'll uh...Okay, uh, idea. Just put that back in, and then we'll get an eyepatch when we get to the store, but until then you'll look less weird with a gold eye than no eye at all. Right? Okay."

He shouldered his bag and went to the door, letting out a deep breath. This was going to be a very long day.

He looked down at his hand; his eye had been a little more visible than he had expected it to be. Making sure to turn away from Matt, he slipped the eye back into its socket.

Then, struck by another idea, he undid his ponytail and let some of his hair fall in front of his eye. Screwing it shut the entire time would make him look weird, but this was probably less weird. Then he followed Matt to the door, eager to see what lay beyond what he assumed was Matt's home.

"F-I-X-E-D I-T," he signed. He gave Matt a warm smile.

"Great," he said, forcing a rather convincing smile in return and opening the door, gesturing for Kirux to go ahead of him. Once they were outside, he locked it behind them. "You ever been in a car before?" he inquired. With any luck he wasn't going to have to explain every bit of tech to the man. Things were hard enough for him to figure out after his long absence--trying to guide some dude with a keyblade was just going to be hellish.