The Secret of the Sun [Open]

Ever since Luna had shown him her plans for Mary-Kate, Drake couldn't just sit there. He couldn't help but be reminded of one of his lost projects. It wasn't benched because it was a failure, or that it was outside of his grasp. At-least, it wasn't outside of his ability. However, after Tsubot being killed in front of his own eyes, it had been too hard to continue it for much longer after it started. Tonight, he had a banquet to attend and he had just finished messing around in the main OGFL laboratory with Luna. Drake was down in his hidden laboratory, sifting through files like a mad man. Sweating, messy, teary-eyed. There was something wrong with him. Maybe it had to do with what he was looking for, maybe it had to do with the resurfacing guilt that he didn't get his chance to kill L'Ombra. That he didn't take his chance to kill Sparrow. Drake remembered it as if it just happened...letting his mind drift to the past. His blade was impaled into Sparrow, nearly splitting the man in half.

But Drake's vengeance was an eternal mere inches from being achieved. Now he'd likely never see them again, knowing their type for being the kind to get themselves killed somehow. Finding a file magically sealed, he wave his hand. Watching trails of fire release from the file without harming it, he was then able to open it. Dropping the file, he walked past the file room of his Laboratory, which he treated like an index. The next room he entered was like an elevator. Typing in his own private password, he was prompted to let something scan his eye and his hand print. First it confirmed they were living parts, then it confirmed they were the right keys. Hearing a shifting of machinery, a door was revealed to his right. Passing through it with great worry, Drake nearly tripped.

Passing into a dark room, he commanded the lights on, revealing a sort of vault. Passing by several contains mounted into the walls, each had a window and dark rooms within. Eventually, he came by a rather large container. Heavily fortified, it was clearly designed to keep whatever was inside from getting out. Rushing to a pad mounted to the left of the container's door, he read, "STATUS: DEEP STASIS" Banging on the keyboard, Drake started screaming aloud as he rushed to pull whatever it was out of stasis. "Come on, baby, I'm here for you...Daddy's here for you...I'm sorry...FUCK! Open up you piece of shit!" Banging on it, he eventually let an indigo energy release into the machine. Suddenly, it became more responsive and even stated that the stasis was lessening.

Minutes passed and finally the door released, sliding out as massive amounts of fog released. Sliding away from Drake, he slowly drift himself into the container. It was dark at first, but slowly it illuminated himself. The initial area revealed robotic parts, synthetic limbs and mechanical organs. As the room lit up, prototype Ellis sparks and different cores had been scattered but held in place by containers. Walking further in, Drake finally came upon what he was looking for. Separated from everything was a stand of some sort coming out of the ground. On it was mounted a head. The head of a pretty young girl, with vibrant ginger hair. It was combed to the side, a port of some sort radiating indigo energy being empty. Summoning one of the prototype cores, Drake calmly approached the head and placed a hand on her hair, with his other hand placing the core into the slot.

Waking up, the girl smiled warmly as she casually greeted him. "Hi Daddy! My, did you get bigger since yesterday?" Breaking down almost instantly, Drake removed the core from her head and stormed out of the container. Putting it back into stasis, Drake made his way towards the portal leading into his room.

Later on, he would spend his time at the bar, drinking. It didn't do much, but it helped ease the pain. It was like being able to take Tylenol all day without over-dosing. After he was done, he slipped out the back before anyone noticed him and just went on a stroll Downhill. He had a look of disgust. Not disgust for the people living there, but the fact that he and the mayors before him had done nothing to improve this pocket of poverty. Of all the great work he had done, he still couldn't accomplish this simple task. With the re-emerging desire to bring back one of his old projects, he knew he was going to have a lot on his plate. But Drake had a job. He had to do that job, not just yell about how he has a job. It was definitely a time for change.

Returning back uphill, Drake scratched his head in frustration. So many things he had to do, but he couldn't just be this perfect being. It would be impossible to do all he wanted, but he could at least do some of it. Putting his coat over his shoulder, the mayor looked towards the Sunset Terrace and its massive homes lining the edge. Shaking his head, he knew that tonight...SOMETHING would go wrong. Something always goes wrong.

"It has certainly been too long, Twilight Town."

It was Edis Rehtona's first visit to Twilight Town in 5 years, technically ten since he hadn't left the house during a five year period before he left home. Back then, a younger, dark Edis left his home and his family to explore the worlds and learn all he could about the Keyblades, a journey that would end up taking him to Port Royal, where he would learn how to fight and use his own powers to win against the Heartless, mastering many different fighting styles and gaining a new insight into his own powers with Imitation, his constantly changing weapon which rested in its sheathe strapped to the man's hip, and Typhokinesis: the ability to manipulate the smoke of the world around him and use it, along with the elements of fire, plant, and blood, to shape weapons and burn, grow, bleed or suffocate his enemies. That journey from portal Royal would then take Edis, the 23 year old fighter of heartless, to the Castle of Dreams for an audience with the Queen: Valerie Noria, a visit that would result in him leaving the next day with Lorencia, a friend of the Queen's, as he journeyed to find a café in a random world to jumpstart Lorencia's memory regarding two Keyblade wielders she had once heard of. However, during one night of resting in Atlantica, Edis was not still.

He never was, always suffering from the same old nightmares since he first left Twilight Town, and so he had decided to take a brief break from Atlantica to visit his home world, maybe visit his parents, but more likely visit the bars that he had never had the chance to experience in his younger years. He had missed out on that entire section of his life: the fun transition from childhood into adulthood where the laws of the land stopped affecting him in some aspects, allowing him to have have, go to a bar and drink. Edis had forced himself to miss out on those happy times and grow up faster than his age allowed him too. He was not happy, his happiness had left him long ago, and he was now on a mission to get it back. Maybe then, maybe after all of this, he would relax and have fun, but those days seemed very far away, as the young man strolled through the town, gazing up at the clear sky and marvelling at its wonder and beauty, as it stayed in perpectual twili-

"WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?"

High in the sky, floating away from all the buildings and structures, was a ridiculously large floating sphere of some description, almost like it was a big metal ball. It was huge, the scale of which being something Edis had never actually witnessed before. Sure, he had seen tall buildings and castles, having lived in a manor at home and having visited the Castle of Dreams: which in itself was a giant, glass coated marvel, but everything he had seen had been grounded, being built upwards. This, this orb of metal, floating high in the sky, was nothing like anything the young man had ever seen before. And now that he looked around, he noticed that it wasn't the only thing that had changed. How had he not noticed it before, the entire city looked different, more modernized, with magical and techniological creations all around: from the tram system being a monorail one, to strange creatures that weren't human or living doing tasks for others. This place had surely changed from the last time Edis had been here, and he imagined it had something to do with the mayor. The man had been mayor for a fair while now, but it was only recently that he had started to introduce large changes to the city. His name was Drake Pathos, the Governer of the world, but beyond those two factoids Edis knew nothing about the man. He was a mystery, only mentioned in the outside world but never in great detail for Edis to gain any insight into his character. But, after looking around and processing it all, the dark haired man had to admit that, whoever Drake Pathos actually was, the Governer of Twilight Town was making progress in his world, very impressive progress at that.

It was then that Edis saw him: a normal enough looking man with orange, bright hair. Now, if not for one, well technically two, aspects of the man, Edis would have glanced his way, paid him no heed, and continued on his journey to the house of his parent's, to his home. But there were aspects of the man that intrigued Edis, and they were things he could not help but ask the man about, as he walked over to him, smiling with a lit cigarette in his mouth as he inhaled and exhaled, making sure to face his smoke away from the man so as not to seem rude. Nodding his head as a gesture of greeting, Edis spoke, his eyes never leaving the metallic, inorganic arms that the man possessed in place of his real arms, a technological advancement Edis had never seen before.

"Hi there. Uh, I'd just like to enquire about your arms. I'm not really from around here anymore, and I really don't understand most of what is happening in this world. Any chance you could explain a few things for me? Mostly how you got you're arms like that and if they are any different from the organic originals, and secondly what the hell that thing is?"

Edis simply looked up, seeing the great lumbering ball of metal above him, having no idea what it actually did. Perhaps it was surveillance, perhaps it was a defensive mechanism, or a weapon of mass destruction, or a combination of all three. Either way, Edis did not know its function, and he hated not knowing things, almost as much as he loved learning about new things.

As Drake was walking down the street, he couldn't help but chuckle at a newcomer's reaction to the master Ellis Sphere. The gigantic, gyroscopic wonder in the sky that powered the whole world with room to expand its reach. It could act as a hub for all the worlds to use his Ellis Spheres, he just needed to advance its networking capability. What a marvel, so it was no surprise that every now and then, a traveler or tourist freaks out from excitement. Shaking his head as he was walking by, the boy actually tried catching his attention. Raising a brow while turning to him, the boy asked about his arms. His arms, which were taken many years ago by a vile person. He wouldn't need them if he didn't have to remove his arms from how badly he was wounded, but he was glad he had them. The advancement in technology would vastly improve the public medical field. His goal was to make these things accessible to the public, not just the creators and rich of the worlds.

Smiling warmly, he gave a small demonstration of them moving just as well as normal limbs. "These are just as good, if not better than normal limbs. They can be repaired, replaced, programmed to do different things. I can customize them to have tools you don't normally get from regular, ol' arms. Look, I even have a PDA system in my arm!" He showed Edis the screen on his arm, but he didn't activate it. Of course he had to answer the excited curiosity over the metal gyro in the sky with its indigo core releasing energy. "That's the master Ellis Sphere! It's a device that powers everything without any wires! We have a bunch of smaller ones connected to it, and their used as energy cores. It's really complicated, but basically it draws from the same thing people can draw from for magic, and converts it into various forms of normal energy. It can also convert regular energies into different types of energies." A part of his childhood popped up whenever he got a chance to explain something like this, a wide smile on his face as he looked into the sky.

"Also, welcome to Twilight Town! What brings you here?" Drake was always happy to see excited, new people coming to his world to explore its wonders or even learn from his schools. It reminded him that from the bad that he did in his past, he has done so much to give back to Twilight Town and it deserved whatever he gave. It was the least he could do, afterall. Darius Fetch could do that much for the world he helped burn. It also reminded him that the mayors before have not done all they could like he has. Amadeo especially, who helped destroy a portion of the world's population those twenty-one years ago. But it was alright now, he's created something much better. Downhill may exist, but he's trying. He's trying his best to improve that area. That's the only place he is still failing, when he shouldn't.

Unbelievably to the dark haired man, the prosthetic metal arms not only seemed to work just as well as normal arms, but were better due to their technological nature, having the ability to be programmed, repaired, upgraded as well as given various other strange features. As an example, the orange haired man showed Edis a screen on his arm which was not switched on, a PDA was certainly a useful thing to have constant access to, and these arms were certainly marvellous things. Edis couldn't hide the grin on his face as the man explained all the things his arms could do that Edis' own arms were unable to do, being made of flesh and bone. "If I ever lose a body part, I'm definitely coming to whoever made these for you." A second later Edis regretted his words, but his face didn't show, still full of joy and excitement. The man had clearly lost his arms, and to make light of it and joke about it was no doubt ridiculously insensitive. He was about to apologise before the orange haired man started to explain the big ball in the sky.

Apparently, this creation was known as the Ellis Sphere, or the master Ellis Sphere to be precise: a central hub that drew power from the land much like a magic user would draw magic from the ground to power their spells and replenish their magic power, but this converted it into energy that was used to power the city through a series of what sounded like wireless relays dotted around the town which received the power from the master Ellis Sphere and distributed it as necessary. An ingenius system that sounded like it would be very complicated to an uneducated soul. Edis wasn't like that at all, and wanted to be tested on whether or not he would actually be able to understand what was being said, but the man was continuing his talk, so Edis held his mouth until he was finished. The man was smiling after all, and Edis didn't want to interrupt him and end that phase.

It was only a few seconds later that Edis chuckled lightly as he was welcomed to Twilight Town and asked about what brought him to the world. It was a fair assumption to make: tenants of Twilight Town would no doubt already know some facts about the sphere, and it wouldn't surprise them like it did Edis, nor would the metallic arms that this man possessed, but the fact of the matter was the welcome was unnecessary. He may have only been visiting, but this place had still once been his home, and he still had many fond, and dark, memories of this world.

"I lived here once, before all this", Edis spoke gesturing to the sphere and to the general town, noting how much it had changed in the last few years, "I was here walking down memory lane as they say, and also planning on seeing my family, as I'm sure they still lived in this area. It has been a while though, as I'm sure you can tell, and there is clearly a lot about this world I have missed seeing. I even hear the mayor has been doing a lot recently to further to town, making it look like this. It seems like he's doing a good job. Drake... that's his name right? Drake Pathos, governer of Twilight Town, what's he like? He's clearly working for the benefit of Twilight Town, but what do you think of him as a person?"

There was that awkward moment, where someone says something unintentionally inconsiderate of how another may feel. That quick slip without thinking; Drake did it all the time. Everyone did it all the time. It was fine. But it didn't stop the ginger from putting a hand to his arm and getting brief flashbacks from when L'Ombra took the very things he wish he had to feel Luna's face. Now it was just a simulation felt through metal masterpieces. It wasn't the same, however, and it hurt knowing the difference. Regardless of the brief awkwardness, Drake immediately shifted it into a laugh. He was genuine enough, knowing how to laugh at himself and even the worst situations. That smile, fiery like the sun and glowing for everyone to see and feel its warmth. That was a smile a mayor should have. A leader needs that happiness, that bright light to shine upon the people's blights.

And he had it. "Ah! O-G-F-L, whatever that stands for, does wonderful work. I know the owners personally, so I got a hold of a few prototypes and viola!" Even Drake himself was amazed at the work he'd put into those arms and legs of his. Everything still amazed him. Maybe it was the age getting to him. Knowing that Edis might've felt bad, and that he was clearly hurt indirectly in that brief moment of awkwardness, Drake sighed, darting his eyes away and then back onto Edis. "It's alright." He didn't need to say anything else, Edis would get it. It was inevitable that whatever happened to Drake would cause PTSD, but no one would guess exactly what happened...and how bad it was. When Edis mentioned the fantastic mayor of Twilight Town, a big grin stretched across his face.

Oh boy, an opportunity to rub himself. "Oh man! That Drake guy? Heard he's super handsome and stuff. I mean, I don't usually roll that way, but he'd be the Johnny to turn me from the Sallies, y'know? A right chipper dipper to dip your tea-sipper, you see-sir?" For a moment, Drake's old cockney accent popped out, which he caught and then proceeded to push down, clearing his throat. "Otherwise, I don't know about him. We have a bunch of fancy stuff, statistically our economy is fantastic...but there's something off. We have all these things, yet it doesn't feel like enough. It doesn't feel complete. I mean, even Downhill still exists. Why hasn't it been finished? Why is it so afflicted by its illnesses? It's a stain that is completely the fault of his project's incompetence. They can't just pay attention to part of the world. All of it needs love...and if he has that love, he isn't really showing it." Looking away, Drake tried masking his feelings about himself with words akin to a distressed citizen.

"I don't know...He's still a lot better than the mayors before. I mean, hell, at least he didn't flood the world. Ha!" He did set a portion of it on fire, but that was a story for another time that will never be told. "Pathos is aight. Anyways, I must be on my way, I have a few errands and appointments. Nice meeting you!" He slowly started walking away, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. Whistling a giddy tune, he bobbed his head and made his way for the School of Magi.

It seemed that this man knew the best way to get good mobility replacements for limbs: OGFL, something even he did not know the true name of. Maybe it stood for something, maybe it was just an enigmatic name that the owners decided would stick in people's minds. But it was certainly going to be an important thing if the world of Twilight Town ever went to war. That was the sad truth about business like those, they thrived on despair and pain. They helped create prosthetic arms for people, but that would only work if someone had gone through the pain of actually losing their arms in the first place. Perhaps they did more than simply that, perhaps they helped create things that made people feel better, but prosthetics was a product that survived through pain and destruction, and it was sad that such businesses were required throughout the worlds. For as long as humans would exist, so too would war, death and pain, and businessmen and women would always seek out a way to capitalise on that fact, if for no other reason than to keep themselves from perishing too.

Thankfully this man, who could've been a war hero suffering from various war related conditions for all Edis knew about him, was understanding at Edis' thoughtless remark. For a moment, the man's eyes looked away, no doubt as a part of him relived through the moment he lost his arms and remembered how much it had cost him, usually more than simply money and time. If Edis knew anything, it was reliving the past and revisiting past demons, he saw his own every time he closed his eyes, lurking in the back of his mind, waiting for a chance to break the man. He knew that the physical pain the man felt was nothing anymore, it had passed, but it left mental scars, things he couldn't control, that was the true pain of going through hell and making it back alive: you were never unscathed.

It was then that the mood drastically changed for the better. At the mention of Drake's name, the man with the orange hair gained a wide grin on his face as he began to discuss what made the current mayor 'so good'. It began with a load of nonsense that Edis could not decipher no matter how hard he tried. He understood the man calling Drake handsome, but everything beyond that was spoken in a language that Edis had never heard before. He just hoped it was all on a similar train of thought, that the mayor was a decent looking man. Once his throat was cleared, Edis understood everything much better, as the man began to talk about the state of the land, the facts that they had a great economy, a lot of technological advancements that were unheard of in other lands, but there was doubt in his voice. It almost sounded like the man was blaming himself as he spoke of the condition of  what he called Downhill: an area of poverty in Twilight Town that Edis had heard very little concerning beyond its name being uttered. The death, the illness, the man was blaming it all on Drake and the government of Twilight Town, before looking away, almost as if a tear was forming in his eyes he didn't want to show.

He turned back and continued very calmly, stating that Drake is better than many of the previous mayors, since he had yet to do any large scale destruction to the world, before ending his talk with a simple "Pathos is alright". He then stated that he had somewhere to be, and headed off, ending their encounter, but giving Edis a lot to think about, and allowed the dark haired man time to kick himself for not noticing sooner. It was the 'errands and appointments' which made it obvious. The grin when discussing Drake, his knowledge of how the world worked, his anger at the state of Downhill, and having appointments. It all clicked into place as the penny dropped, and Edis watched Governor Pathos head off into his own world, as Edis made his own way, wandering around for a while before deciding on a destination.

---

"Oh wow."

It was almost his choice phrase for the day, as Edis walked over to the School of Magic in Twilight Town, a grand building befitting the title with which it was given. Students ran around doing all sorts of student like things, from getting food, running with books and chatting with their fellows. From what Edis had learned, there were three schools in Twilight Town, the other two of which focussed on Combat and Creation, two things Edis felt particularly better at than he was with magic, and he had to get better with his magic abilities, otherwise he wouldn't be able to use everyone else's to the best of his ability when transforming. And so heere he was, walking through the front doors of the School, hoping to learn a couple of things about magic from the best of the best. He spent the entire day there, learning as much about magic as he could that he didn't already know, and then left. He didn't go home to his family and see them, he didn't want to burden them with his presence, so instead he summoned a corridor and went back to Atlantica, before anyone had even noticed his departure.

Time to get back on track. Find the Keyblade, right your wrongs. Family can come later.

-Exit-