Young Writers Society

Vil's blood ran cold.

Baba was gone. They had been in the corridor. Vil knew that much. He had felt them bumping up against them as they all crashed through the portal. But Baba wasn't here with them right now, which could only mean that they had ended up somewhere else in Twilight Town.

...A town that Axel liked to go to.

"Fuck!" Vil swore, panicked. He rushed to his feet. When he glanced around, hoping that Kate was wrong, he couldn't find Baba anywhere. He had already lost Lira to the organization. If he lost Baba too...

He curled his hands up into fists and bit his lip.

"They must have ended up somewhere else," Vil said, still looking around in the hopes that they were just past the gate or within the forest. "I lost my focus when we went through the corridor. We're on the same world, but they're not here with us. Which means they have to be..."

A sinking feeling formed in his gut.

"...in town," he said.

Which is where Axel went to most.

Please, Vil thought, begging the powers that be that he didn't really believe in, let Baba be as far away from the clock tower as possible.



Elsewhere in Twilight Town, a corridor of darkness subtly opened at the very top of the clock tower. Axel, of course, could have just easily taken the stairs up the clock tower, but being a Nobody had few perks. The least he could do was take advantage of one of them.

He arrived with two popsicles, just like he usually did. He knew one of them would go to waste, but he wasn't exactly short on money these days. He could indulge in some nostalgia and hope that Vil would finally take him up on his offer. If he was there, of course. What had once been a daily routine had become less of one ever since Vil left the organization, and Axel found himself struggling to come here every single day after a mission like he used to years ago.

Axel gazed out at the sunset city, a ghost of a smile on his face at the memory of Vil—Levi back then—tugging him to the clock tower's edge back when he was just a tiny little kid. Six or seven, maybe. Saix had thrown a fit the first time he found out Axel had brought the kid with him to that spot, but he hadn't ever fought it. Axel couldn't guess why.

Axel sat down on the edge, black coat and fit dangling over the town down below. Too caught up in the nostalgia, he was completely unaware that he wasn't the only one atop the clock tower.

Kate scowled. "Could you do just one thing right for once," she muttered under her breath, directed at...she didn't know what fucking name to call this guy. He wasn't her friend from childhood, but he wasn't exactly some villain to fight off or sic Tallulah on. He was just...nobody. He was nobody to Kate.

"Come on then. Let's get that fucking sack of straw." With that, Kate marched off toward the town.

And now there was a red hedgehog in a familiar black coat silently waxing nostalgic at the roof's edge. Oh, there was a man under there. Good to know.

Baba squinted. (Baba had buttons for eyes, but the energy defied the logistics.)

It seemed that tomato hedgehog man had not perceived Baba yet. Good.

Baba stalked behind him, and shimmied up a little corner spire with spiderlike grace. Baba clung to the spike, in the very edge of tomato hedgehog man's vision, and stared.

Baba wasn't sure what they were doing. It was a Halloweentowner thing. Stalk first, think later.

Something in the air shifted.

Instinct kicking in, Axel turned to see someone watching him from behind a corner spire. It took a moment for him to recognize the all-too-familiar straw hat the watcher was wearing. It took another moment for him to get over his confusion on why one of Vil's friends would be off on their own. As far as he could tell, Vil wasn't here. Even if splitting off was normal for Baba, Axel was sure that Vil would have warned them not to come here. Vil hadn't liked him much since leaving the organization.

"Hello," Axel said.

Baba didn't know what to say, so they hissed to buy some time.
(It was distinctly casual, different from their more serious hisses.)

"Hi." Baba continued.

Oh, biscuits. They didn't need to buy time at all, if that was what they were going to say. New plan!

Baba leapt off the spire, and circled tomato hedgehog man on tactical tiptoes, poised to strike at any time.

Indecisively Baba circled him thusly, and leapt up to hide, this time behind the corner spire to the man's right, instead of his left.

The plan was a work in progress.

Axel couldn't help but give an amused smile when Baba hissed and circled him. The smile only grew when Baba went running behind one of the spires. He was concerned about why Vil wasn't here with Baba, but at least he could take some joy in Baba's antics. They reminded him of Vil's, back when he had been a cute kid and not a moody teenager.

"I can still see you," Axel commented. He eyed the spire for another moment, then sat down on the edge of the clock tower with his feet hanging over the edge.

"If you can see me," Baba replied from above, "Then your time is already up."

They'd heard some of the local vampires say that line before. Very suave. Very foreboding.

Baba crept up into full view, and stood atop the spire at full height.

They called the Keyblade to their hand, and pointed it at the dark stranger, still as a scarecrow in the menacing breeze.

Baba was prepared to fight if their challenge was returned. But the gesture could not have been more half-hearted in its conception. The scarecrow threatened the stranger in the suspicious hood because it seemed like the thing to do, they considered interrogating him because it was what Kate or Donald might have done, but no specific questions were actually coming naturally to Baba's mind.

But what did come to Baba's mind was that they were lost, and frustrated, and in no mood to make sense.

"Tomato hedgehog man,"

spoke Baba in their deepest, drippiest gothic narrator impression.

"What're you're doing, and who'ses be yon here? Why are the zippers? Who spins the capes? Vil wears the same, and he wears the shroud with contempt.

Wear you yon shroud with pride, shadowy one? Know ye the winding corridors of contempt? The wells of worn wails, and the piteous pits?

Speak, thou red demon, or perish."

If Axel hadn't already known that Baba was from Halloween Town, that little dramatic speech would have confirmed it. He could have easily beaten the scarecrow, but he could tell that Baba was just threatening him because they were desperate. Vil had gushed about Baba plenty of times before. The scarecrow had their moments, but they were overall a good kid.

Axel held his hands up in mock surrender, ice cream high above his head.

"The jackets were a gift," he said, simplifying things just a bit. "And Vil's worn them before because we used to live with the same group of people."

He glanced up at his ice cream.

"Can I eat these now?" he asked. "They melt fast, and it would be a waste of a good ice cream."

Baba disappeared the Keyblade, and scuttled down. They sat next to mystery stalagmite man, and accepted the ice cream.

They didn't eat it, as they didn't have a mouth, but they seemed to enjoy holding it in their gloved hand.

"Baba is Baba." said Baba.

What is your name?"

"Axel," he offered. He tapped his forehead, still smiling—even without outright offering the ice cream, Baba had still gone for it. "Got it memorized?"

Baba nodded, unnecessarily heavily.

"Memmer'zed."

"Baba likes making friends. Baba will make more of them, forever and ever.

But they're such a pain. They must be worried for Baba, but... Baba isn't sure they want to see them right now. They're always fighting, and splitting up, and going missing. Bother."

It was alright to open up to Axel. Baba hadn't mentioned any names, or where anybody was. It was probably safe.

Fighting, splitting up, and going missing?

That was alarming. If Axel hadn't been all too aware that Vil would hate any interference from him, he would have gone looking for the youngest Nobody.

Axel licked his ice cream, thought for a moment, and then lowered the popsicle stick.

On the other hand, Vil didn't have to know about said interference.

"I know a thing or two about arguments with friends," Axel said.

"Do you?" said Baba, turning suddenly to look Axel in the face. Ice cream drips shook onto the both of them.

"What about when they're worried about you, and you're worried about them worried about you, worried about some more friends who are also missing, but the friends that are looking for you are- well, she shows that she cares by shouting and grumbling and calling you a potato sack, and the other one is too tired to even talk in riddles- it's just all noise-"

Here Baba paused to smoosh the melting ice cream into their sewn on Jack 'O Lantern mouth. Predictably, it only made a mess. But the action was cathartic.

"-That makes a whole five friends Baba lost track of. An hour ago it was three, and now it is five.

Baba should be looking for them. Baba should!"

The scarecrow twitched with guilty anger, causing the remainder the of ice cream to fall in a puddle on the legs of their overalls. It had been doomed to this fate from the beginning, of course.

They relaxed.

"But Baba doesn't want to see them yet. Is that wrong?"

The one too tired to talk in riddles was probably Vil. He had become so defensive lately; Axel wasn't all that surprised that Baba was having trouble understanding him. From what he knew about the scarecrow, Baba was pretty straightforward. Add in Kate, who was as bad as Saix was about being honest about how he was feeling, and he could understand why Baba was struggling to handle their two friends.

Axel mulled over Baba's question.

"I don't think so," he said. His only ice cream was little more than a stick now, periodically dripping a few stray droplets of melted ice cream on his black organization coat. "If I had your friends, I'd want to take a break from them, too."

Baba needed that break, alright. But talking to Axel had helped the scarecrow calm down somewhat. The ice cream had helped, too! Even if none of it had actually been consumed.

"Baba can always find them later. " Baba mused. "Somehow. There's a thousand thousand worlds out there. But Baba is sure to find them."

Baba began to rock comfortably back and forth where they sat, letting their mind swim about.

Axel wasn't a stranger. Though he wasn't not suspicious, he was not a stranger. He was friendly, and he'd helped Baba with their friendship troubles more than their actual friends had been able to do.

Thus, Axel had become familiar enough in this short time that Baba had forgotten the importance of not telling him anything that they happened to think of. Depending on what the scarecrow child thought of next, the group as a whole was in grave danger of critical information being leaked to their enemies.

"Baba wonders what happened to the giant puppy." Baba said absentmindedly.