star_kingdom | [Video] Chess

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[Video] Chess

[The heartless have been getting to quite a few people lately. It's hard to tell at first whether Ami is one of them. She's inside, seated at a small table and playing chess against herself. Masters of the game would note the arrangement of the board as a very famous end game maneuver. She's testing it again, noting its weaknesses and the ways to defend against it.

It's keeping her mind off the shadows, and the things that always seem to not-quite-be-there when she looks. It's keeping her mind off the doubts, the worries, the insecurities. But there's very little of her usual gentle smile despite the seeming calm. She has a perhaps not-so-incongruous question.]

What are the things you do to relax and unwind your mind?

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[She frowns at that for a minute, because while that sounds true, that doesn't sound like Ami - she'd rather throw herself into doing something that will help her forget her sadness than mope.]

Are you sure? You seem much more... quiet than usual.

[Oh, she is throwing herself into distractions.

They're just not working.]

I don't have much to say for myself. I suppose you could say I never have. [Mousy, quiet, Ami in the corner, that's her.]

[...And that's very much not Ami. Rinoa's frown deepens at that.]

Ami, where are you? I'm coming over.

[No, she's not asking. She's just doing it.]

[She doesn't quite put together that Rinoa intends to come over, so Ami answers without thinking much of it.]

I'm at home.

[Maybe she'll get the hint when Rinoa shows up at the gummi station? Because that's where she's going now.]

Where is home?

[It's the first time, in eight months, that she's called it by the word 'home'; a small sign of how hard it's become to maintain that hope of going back to her world.]

Agrabah.

I'm coming, Ami, just stay there.

[Whether you want her to or not. SO THERE!]

[After a pause, she names the street she's at. There's no sense in Ami creating a fuss, after all.]

[It takes Rinoa awhile to get there since it is an entirely different world. But eventually she does, and makes her way to the street and the little house. Making sure it's the right one, she transfers the white bakery box she's brought with her to one hand to knock on the door.]

Ami?

[Ami comes to the door; she'd thought about it, but she hasn't left the house yet. She opens it to allow Rinoa in, and her eyes drift to the baked goods.]

You didn't need to. [The polite objection comes without the usual gentle smile.]

Of course I needed to, you aren't acting like yourself at all. Something's wrong, and you don't just go around abandoning your friends when they need help, even if they don't realize they need it.

[Got that? She's very, very stubborn, Ami. Best just to go with it.]

[It quite honestly somehow hasn't crossed Ami's mind that in all her fretting over the girls not being as close, she's the one abandoning them right now by her attitudes.]

Please come in. [That seems to cover it without raising the awkward questions.] I'll make tea.

[Good Ami, otherwise Rinoa will make you be sociable. ...Well, not that she isn't already, but more sociable!]

All right. Where should I leave this? [She waves the box around a little to show what she means.]

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