Dust swirled violently through the air as Ventus plummeted through it, unable to move in the ice that Xehanort encased him in. He had never felt such cold, one that seeped deep into his body and mixed with the chill of his fear. He feared for Terra, who stood atop the high plateau he had been dropped from where Xehanort was ready to face him. He feared for Aqua, who last he saw had hit the ground hard enough to cause cracks in the rock beneath her. Her armor had taken most of the blow, but it was more than enough to knock the breath from her and paralyze her body briefly. He feared for Master Eraqus, hoping the man was still out there somewhere despite the destruction of their castle he had witnessed when he had returned there, only to be ambushed by a stranger in a black coat that had put him through the fight of his life before vanishing as mysteriously as he had arrived.

But right now, he feared the ground as he quickly approached it, and his frozen helmet shattered as he glanced off a protruding stone. Shards of it razed his cheek and he squinted his eyes shut, all the while trying to force his unresponsive body to move. His partial heart pounded in his chest, and he felt sick with terror. But as soon as he hit something solid, he heard a grunt along with metal skidding against the ground, and the next thing he knew, he found himself looking up at Aqua's concerned face as she held him protectively in her arms. She was panting softly as she adjusted him to hold him more comfortably.

"Ven, are you okay?" she asked, but he couldn't move his jaw to respond. He let out as confirming of a grunt as he could muster, and she let out a small breath of short-lived relief. But at the sound of a strange rumble, she looked up as a light broke through the thick, dark clouds above them. Ventus gave another frustrated groan that he couldn't turn his head to look at whatever it was worrying her so much, nor could he even ask. Her breath was shaky as she returned her gaze to him, her arms tightening slightly around him.

"How 'bout you leave the popsicle with me so you can go have your little fight with Terra?" Aqua looked up, alarmed, at the new voice, pulling Ventus closer to her, just enough that he could see the voice's owner. He was a slender man with black hair he slicked back, and he wore an eye patch. The other side of his face had long scar not unlike the ones Master Eraqus bore. He wore what appeared to be the same uniform he had seen the guards in Radiant Garden wearing along with a slightly tattered red scarf. He gave them a predatory smirk.

"You can't be too happy about him deep-sixing your Master," he went on, and Aqua's eyes widened while Ventus's face thawed enough for him to grit his teeth and furrow his brow. Deep-six the Master? There was no way. The newcomer chuckled slightly as his eye narrowed.

"Who are you?" Aqua demanded of him.

"You think you two have got some grand role to play," he taunted, ignoring her question. "As if. You're only here so that when I finish you off, Terra will succumb to the darkness." The heat of Ventus's anger must have helped quicken the thawing process of his body, as he found he could move slightly, and he tilted his head up to get a better look at this foe. "So, who wants to go first?" he asked, lifting his hands.

"Shut up!" Ventus snapped, and Aqua's grip on him tightened again for a moment.
"Oh!" the man held his hands up. "So this kiddo thinks he's a full-fledged Keyblade wielder?" He grinned. "He's got the angry look down."

"Go ahead if you want to waste your time," Aqua said as Ventus glared at him. "Keep trying to drive us apart with your mind games. It'll never work!" She gently laid Ventus down and placed her hand on his arm before standing up, and he grunted softly as he struggled against the ice imprisoning him. "Terra will prove to you he's stronger!" she snapped, and she summoned her Keyblade. Ventus called out to her as she charged at the man, who in turn summoned a pair of arrowguns. The strain of tilting his head against the ice proved to be rather painful, and Ventus huffed as he looked up at the sky. His heart ached as he listened to Aqua's grunts and cries along with the taunts of her opponent while he fired at her. But he knew she could handle herself and trusted her to put him in his place. What worried him was what she must have seen before- a large, heart-shaped moon floating high in the sky, and while he had never seen it, he found a name for it hidden deep in his memories.

Kingdom Hearts.

This is what Xehanort was after, for whatever reason. This is why he had tried to turn Ventus to Darkness and forcibly removed it from him when he refused to do so. This is why he needed Ventus to clash with Vanitas in order to forge the χ-Blade. The thought of it made a sharp pain shoot through his head as he dug up memories that preferred to remain buried.

"Little cheater!" He strained to look back to Aqua's battle and found she had cast a barrier around herself, and it reflected the man's shots back at him. He teleported to another spot above the rock, apparently able to stand on nothing, and charged another shot, but when he released it, she cartwheeled out of the way and aimed her Keyblade at him. From it came a blast of fire, and he grunted, losing his balance and falling to the ground. She cried out as she charged him, slashing the teeth of her Keyblade across him, and he jumped back, panting.

"I keep forgetting- don't mess with Keyblade wielders." He pointed at her briefly and shook his head. "But you know what?" She readied her Keyblade again and didn't respond, but stood defensively between him and Ventus. "That just means I made the right choice." She grit her teeth and started toward him again. "Well, he wanted me to buy time, and I'd say he got it." With that, he turned around and ran off, disappearing in the crevices of the rising stone spires around them.

"What?" Aqua came to a halt, her body visibly tense. She turned back to Ventus and said his name with deep concern, and he tilted his head back to her as he continued to try to make his body move. But as he did so, he looked up to find a red and black streak plummeting at his friend.

"Aqua!" he called, and she turned around and looked up, and with a gasp, she leapt back, skidding across the rock. Vanitas's Keyblade struck the ground where she had been standing barely a second before, leaving a crack when he removed it.

"How many times do we have to go through this?!" Aqua demanded as she set her stance, and he did the same.

"Don't worry," he seethed. "This'll be the last time."

"Vanitas!" Ventus snapped, and Vanitas looked over to him.

"I warned you," he chided. "Now watch your precious friend fall!"

"Never!" Aqua raised her Keyblade and a spike of ice appeared from it, but Vanitas disappeared and reappeared just above her, and she whirled around. Her Keyblade collided with his, but she stumbled under the force of his strike. He leapt back and sent a wave of flames at her, one she blocked with a barrier.

Ventus grunted as a stream of Keyblades flew over him, and Vanitas jumped up onto one of them. Aqua fired a burst of magic at him, but barely missed her mark. He directed the Keyblades at her and she rushed back. A few stragglers managed to raze across her, and she grunted quietly as she regained her balance. She focused her magic in her Keyblade and a long, blade-like shaft of light appeared around it, and she leapt into the air and vanished briefly. Every few heartbeats, she reappeared to strike Vanitas a few times before disappearing and appearing again in a different spot. Vanitas, disoriented, dove into the ground itself with only a smoldering shadow giving away his location. He erupted from the ground and knocked Aqua off her feet. But she rolled out of the way before he could stab his Keyblade into her chest, and instead it drove into the rock where she had been a heartbeat before.

She performed a cartwheel to get behind him and struck him with another few casts of magic, upsetting his balance, and before he could do anything else, Ventus watched in shock as she drove the light of her Keyblade directly through the dark entity. He dropped his Keyblade and fell to one knee, then lowered his head as a dark aura appeared around his body. Aqua glared at him, daring him to make another move.

"Well done, Aqua," he said in a low voice as he slowly stood back up. "I knew you'd make a perfect back-up."

"Back-up for what?" she demanded, and she watched with both intrigue and horror, as did Ventus from where he still lay on the ground, as the visor of Vanitas's helmet melted away to reveal his golden eyes, his starkly pale skin, and his spiky black hair.

"Now that my body is about to perish, I'll have to join with another heart," he continued with a sinister smile. Ventus grit his teeth, struggling against the cracking ice around him, and Aqua took a step back in alarm. "The χ-Blade will be forged!" The darkness around him circled around Aqua, and from it, several Floods shot out from within it and pinned her, forcing her to her knees and rendering her Keyblade useless. Several more positioned themselves between their master and Ventus, eyeing him as they twitched.

"The Unversed come from you?!" Aqua managed to say as she fought against her captors, and Vanitas smirked.

"I was once a part of your dear Ventus's heart," he told her. "But he was too weak to contain me, and I was better off without him. My darkness would have and still can swallow his light. He's too weak." He snorted. "So I decided your light would be better instead. But we needed to isolate all of you, push you away from Terra, make you stronger. The Unversed, these monsters born from the negativity of what I feel, were the perfect opponents." From him appeared several other species of Unversed, including the Trinity Armor Ventus, Aqua, and Terra had defeated in Radiant Garden. "I released them in all the worlds I could, spreading darkness and drawing you out, away from your Master." He approached her, a smirk on his face at the anger in her eyes that glared at him. "And better yet, no matter how many times you defeat them, their negativity flows right back into me." At his words, the extra Unversed he had summoned to prove his point returned to their states of darkness and streamed back to him. "None of you ever stood a chance- not you, not that wimp, not Terra. And now, you're the perfect, defiant, driven light I need to forge the χ-Blade!" Aqua's eyes widened as he stepped toward her again, and Ventus watched, horrified, as a bright light engulfed them both.

"Aqua!" he called out, barely able to see her struggling within the light. From around her, a blast of wind sent him flying from the ground, and he cried out in pain as he hit a rock pillar. The impact shattered the remaining ice around his body and he fell to the dirt, shaking, and he looked up in alarm as he heard Aqua scream. As her voice echoed across the deserted landscape, a bright beacon of light shot toward the sky and Kingdom Hearts above.

"Oh, no!" Ventus turned to find a friend he had made in his journeys, a Keyblade apprentice like himself named Mickey. Mickey hurried over to him with his own Keyblade in hand. "Ven, are you all right?" Ventus bit his lip and summoned his Keyblade, then climbed back up onto the plateau where Aqua was. Mickey followed, having a bit more difficulty with the incline.
"Aqua!" He approached her, finding her standing in the middle of the scarred landscape, her head down. She held a long, intricate blade in her hand, her fingers wrapped around the shared handle of what appeared to be two intersecting Keyblades, from which came the rest of the blade. But Ventus was too concerned for her to worry about it. "Aqua, are you okay?" He approached her and bent over a bit to try to find her gaze, but her eyes were closed.

"Oh!" He turned to Mickey to find a concerned, even angry look on the King's face. He turned back to Aqua just as she lifted her head, smirking at him, and the golden color of her eyes made his skin feel like it had been encased in ice again. In his shock, he couldn't react as the blade she held stabbed toward him, but Mickey knocked it away as he stumbled back. Mickey landed between them and held his hand toward her. "That's not Aqua!"

"Aqua…" Ventus choked out around the lump in his throat. He watched, grief-stricken, as darkness flooded over her body, changing her armor into a garb similar to her own- bell-shaped sleeves, thorned boots, and straps crossing over her chest. But instead of the mark she, Terra, and Ventus all wore, instead they featured the symbol of the Unversed. Her clothes were predominately colored black and red with a long, slightly tattered blue and red cloth belted around her waist.

"Are you really that stupid that you couldn't figure it out yourself?" The sound of that voice shook Ventus to his core. It was both Aqua's and Vanitas's, dripping with darkness and malice. "Her heart has become a part of mine now." Ventus's jaw clenched and he fought back the hot water stinging his eyes. His grip on his Keyblade tightened, and Mickey readied his own.
"This χ-Blade will open a door- one that leads to all worlds," Vanitas continued from within Aqua's body, lifting the blade in hand toward Kingdom Hearts. "Then, Keyblade-bearing warriors will flock here from each and every one of them to battle for the light within Kingdom Hearts!" Aqua's head tilted toward the sky. "And just like the legend says, the Keyblade War will begin!"
"Shut up!" Ventus snapped as he took several quick steps toward Aqua and set his stance. "Your fight is with me. Leave Aqua out of this!"

"Too late, Vanitas taunted. "Four years too late. You're weak, Ventus. And now, I can finally do what I've wanted to for so long. I can destroy you and snuff out your heart!"
"No," Ventus's brow furrowed. "I won't let you hurt Aqua's heart!"

"Well, then you'd better step aside," Vanitas chuckled. "Because the only way you're getting to me is if you go through her." Seeing his dark smirk on Aqua's face made Ventus feel sick. "If you want to destroy me, you'll have to end her too!" Ventus frowned and swallowed.

"Whatever it takes," he said. "I know she'd never want to fall to a freak like you!"
"Don't worry, Ven," Mickey told him. "We'll get Aqua back. Let's get 'im!" Ventus nodded, and with that, he readied his Keyblade behind him and started forward, all while Vanitas lifted the χ-Blade and prepared to strike.