Crown Your Own Glory

Name: Grayson
Age: 20
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Silver
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 210#
Personality: N/A
Other: catatonic

Name: Gris
Age: n/a
Gender: Male
Race: Heartless
Eyes: Gold
Hair: Silver
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 210#
Personality: Narcissistic, smug

Name: Xreig
Age: n/a
Gender: Male
Race: Nobody
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Silver
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 210#
Personality: Narcissistic, smug

Name: Caera
Age: 19
Gender: Female
Race: Human
Eyes: Grey
Hair: light red
Height: 5'1
Weight: 97#
Personality: Happy, chipper, adorable
Other: raises pygmy chocobos

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It was another average day in Hollow Bastion. The sun was shining, it was warm, and the chocobo were wandering aimlessly across the field.

Caera, the rancher that raised the smaller copies of the large birds, was moving around the field and checking each individual. She had to keep a watchful eye out for hearless, even though the heart of the city had a newfound defense system, it didn't reach all the way to the more rural areas such as her chocobo fields. She sighed, wistfully, wishing she was closer to the city, or that she had her own defense system. She was so engrossed in her work and thoughts that she didn't even begin to notice the creeping shadows.

Gris stirred in his sleep. It was a warm, sunny, pleasant day outside, and that was all the reason he needed to stay and laze about the house; Xreig often compared him to a cat. He was already irritated before he was fully awake.

The Heartless about the town were on the move; he could feel it in the core of his being, the essence that made him what he was. It wasn't a heart, as he clearly didn't have one, but it was something similar. An anti-heart, if you will. Whereas a heart was made of mostly light, and usually had only the faintest shadows of darkness within it, Gris' essence was mostly darkness with only faint glimmers of light.

He didn't like it when the low-level Heartless that resided in Hollow Bastion (now known again by it's former name, Radiant Garden) took an initiative to do things on their own. It made him suspicious and uneasy. While he had no love lost on the humans that resided there (save for his own human), he had no desire to see his world once again possessed by the Heartless. Were he to make an effort, as he sometimes did, he could easily bring the Heartless there under his control, but when they moved on their own it made him worry that there might be a stronger Heartless than himself somewhere in the world.

He hauled himself out of bed begrudgingly and combed his thick, silver hair. Even if he was just going to resolve a minor problem with some rouge Heartless, he still needed to look his best. It would be a shame to waste beauty like his through poor upkeep. He got himself ready to leave the house, but he had one thing to do first. He walked to a bed pushed against the far wall, where a young man, nearly identical to him in appearance, slept.

...Or at least he seemed to sleep. In truth, he was in a coma. A coma induced by losing two of the pieces that made up who he was. He lost his heart, which became Gris, and then his soul separated from his body not long after. The soul was what lay sleeping, keeping the other two anchored, and his name was Grayson. The empty body, void of heart and soul, became a Nobody named Xreig.

Before he left the house each day, Gris checked on his human counterpart. He made sure that he was comfortable and safe, and in good health; Xreig did the same.

Having completed that last chore, Gris set out to discover what the Heartless were up to. As he exited the small house in a yet-abandoned district of Radiant Garden, he sunk mysteriously into the shadows, through which he quickly travelled in the direction of one of the rural districts of town.

Caera ran her brush over the chocobo's feathers lightly, smoothing and cleaning them at the same time. These Chocobo were like her babies and she did her best to raise them and keep them safe from the heartless. The strange silver things that the restoration committee called 'nobodies' did no harm to the chocobo and seemed rather uninterested by both the chocobo and herself, for which she was thankful for.

Turning to put the brush in her small bucket and fetch a treat for the obedient chocobo, Caera managed to see a shadow inflate itself into one of the small heartless, followed by a handful more and a sleeker heartless that looked similar to the small ones.

The chocobo she had been grooming gave a startled squawk and bolted, leaving her there defenseless. She straightened quickly, gripping the brush in her hands like a weapon as she slowly started to back away, watching the heartless carefully.