Pitiful

by the red 1

Riku based, no paring. It made him sick to think about how, even at his strongest level, people still thought he was so weak.

Pitiful

One-shot

The Red 1

Summery: It made him sick to think about how, even at his strongest level, people still thought he was so weak.

Start

There was a loud explosion as Maleficent's dark thunder spell crashed into the ground Sora and Riku had just been standing on. As the two teens made a dive for any cover they could find, a half a dozen more dark thunder spells fell around them, coming within a few inches of hitting them.

As Sora and Riku kept moving to avoid becoming deep-fried, Donald and Goofy tried to make a direct hit on the green skinned witch. With perfect timing, Goofy's shield and a thunder spell from Donald hit Maleficent at the exact same time, causing he to leach forwards a bit.

While Maleficent recovered fast, there was enough of an opening for Sora to rush in for an attack. Jumping into the air, Sora began pulling every drop of energy he could together. That caused his Keyblade to start to glow a bright gold, before the whole Keyblade seemed to become pure energy. Sora then brought the blade down, trying to finish Maleficent with one powerful blow.

Maleficent, however, wasn't about to go out without a fight. The green skinned witch raised he staff, which was covered in her own green flames, and thrust it against Sora's Kingdom Key. However, the end result wasn't what anyone was hoping for; Maleficent's staff, still completely covered in flames, tore right through the Kingdom Key, sending it and Sora flying across the room, Sora hit a all before coming to a stop, and the Kingdom Key returning to it's solid shape now that it no longer had Sora pouring in energy to it.

"Did you really think that you're little toy sword could over power me? The Mistress of All Evil?" Maleficent said, as she raised her staff once again, ready to finish Sora off for good. However, a certain duck, dog, and white-haired best friend wasn't about to let that happen.

As Goofy and Riku rushed in closer, Donald started casting as many thunder spells as he could manage at Maleficent, drawing her attention away from Sora and onto himself. Raising her staff into the air, Maleficent called down a much more powerful version of her dark thunder spell, it crashing into Donald, knocking him to the ground, out cold.

Next Goofy came in, shield ready for a quick attack. Once he was close enough, Goofy jumped into the air and started rotating around, spinning fast enough to keep himself in the air. However, Maleficent seemed to hear him coming, as she simply turned to him and raised his staff, causing a portal to open up in front of her. From that portal, over a dozen meteors came flying out, all radiating a dark energy. Goofy wasn't able to move out of the way in time, and was quickly sent flying back, landing near Donald.

As Maleficent turned to face were Sora was lying on the ground, she heard the sound of energy sizzling behind her. Turning, she noticed that Riku had jumped into the air above her, and had started pouring all his energy into his Keyblade, similar to what Sora had done. However, instead of gold, Riku's blade was a bright blue. As Riku took hold of the hilt of his Keyblade with both hands and brought it down on Maleficent, she raised her staff, it once again becoming engulfed in her dark flames.

The two attacks hit each other, and began pushing against each other, trying to see which one was more powerful. The backlash from the two attacks colliding was enough to keep Riku in the air, and push Maleficent a little lower to the ground. As time wore on, both Maleficent and Riku found their energy getting lower and lower, their attack draining everything they had.

Drawing upon whatever energy she had left, Maleficent managed to make one last surge of power, enough to overpower Riku's attack. As Riku was sent crashing into the wall across the room, Maleficent started the classic "victory taught." "Like I said before, I am the Mistress of all Evil, I cannot be beaten by mere children like you."

Maleficent then turned to finish off Sora, only she noticed that Sora was no longer lying on the ground. A bright light coming from behind her caused her to turn around, and then she finally saw what had happened. While she had been fighting off Riku, Sora had managed to make his way over to Donald and Goofy, and had just managed to enter his Final Form.

As Sora's outfit was not a light silver version of what it normally was, he also had two Keyblades floating behind his back; the Kingdom Key, and the Oblivion. Sora then dashed forwards, floating about a foot off the ground, swinging both Keyblades around using some sort of telekinetic power to move them. As energy began to swirl around Sora, Maleficent began to gather every ounce of power she could get from the darkness.

As the two collided, there was a large explosion, before Sora tore right through Maleficent and her dark powers, creating a blinding light as Maleficent and all her darkness was destroyed. As soon as Maleficent was destroyed, Sora dropped out of Final Form, and made his way over to Riku to check on him.

"Riku are you alight?" Sora asked as he ran up to his friend who was still lying on the ground. Riku gave a slight nod in response, causing Sora to let out a slight sigh of relief. "That good to hear, if anything happened to either you or Sora, Kairi would kill us." Donald said, motioning to Goofy when he said "us."

"Hey Sora! We took care of Pete, and we destroyed most of the heartless!" Yuffie's voice broke the slight silence that had fallen. The ninja then walked through the door, along with Leon, Tifa, Cloud, Aerith, and Kairi, each holding their weapon ready incase they had to join the battle against Maleficent.

"Riku, what happened?" Kairi yelled as she ran over to her white haired friend, clearly thinking that he had taken a series injury. "It's not as bad as it looks Kairi." Riku said, as he pushed himself into more of a sitting position. "You should have seen it Kairi; Riku was standing toe to toe with Maleficent for at lest two minutes! He bought enough time for me to recover from a hit I had taken, and make my way over to Donald and Goofy so we could go Final Form." Sora said, a grin spreading across his face as he started to retell the events of the entire battle.

As Sora was retelling what had gone on during the battle with Maleficent, Aerith made her way over to Riku and started using he magic to heal his wounds. After a couple minutes, the glow that was coming from Aerith's hands faded away. "I'm sorry, I used so much magic in the battle outside that I can't fully heal you here. Once we get back to Radiant Garden I will be able to heal the rest of you're wounds." Aerith said to Riku.

By now Sora had finished his story, and everyone was getting ready to head back to Radiant Garden. As Leon helped Riku out of the Castle that Never Was, Leon turned and said something to Riku that would haunt him for the next couple weeks. "Don't worry about this, Sora is just in a league of his own."

0-0-0

Even after three weeks, Riku still couldn't get Leon's words out of his head. That was the first time it had really struck him that for the first time in his life, Sora was stronger then him. Sure, Sora had beaten him when he was being controlled by Ansem, but that was only when he was using the power of darkness. Now that he was using his own power, he thought that things would go back to the way they were, were the two of them were basically equals in power.

But ever since the battle with Maleficent, Riku had clearly seen how much stronger Sora could be. And what made it worse is the fact that they had both reached the limit of their power. There was no way for them to become any stronger, if they tried then their bodies would most likely destroyed themselves. So Riku would always be weaker then Sora; he would always be second best, or the sidekick or whatever you want to call it.

While normally Riku wouldn't have had a problem admitting that Sora was stronger then him, it was the way that Sora became stronger then him that bugged him. If it were just a straight out fight, or one on one battle, then Riku would be able to beat Sora. The two of them differed in skills in a very clear way; Sora knew more attacks and magic spells, but because he knew so many, they weren't as strong as Riku's, since he only knew a few hand picked one's.

But Sora was, for lack of better words, able to cheat. Since neither one of them can become stronger on their own, Riku would normally be able to win against Sora. But Sora had found a way to overcome this; by using Drive Form's, Sora could increase his power level without the risk of destroying himself by going beyond his limits. The only reason that Sora was able to do this was because Yen Sid talked the three fairy sisters into giving Sora that power.

Now, most people would look at this and say, "why not just talk to Yen Sid and the fairy's and get your own Drive Form?" Well, Riku had tried that a long time ago, before he had fought Roxas's for the first time. But the meeting hadn't gone so well…

"So you'll be willing to help Sora get a head start once he awakes?" Riku asked the old wizard Yen Sid. Riku was currently standing in Yen Sid's tower. He had come to ask Yen Sid to help Sora get started once he woke up, since Riku had no way of knowing if he would be coming back from the battle with Roxas.

"Yes, I will help the Key barer regain some of his power. In fact, I have the perfect idea in store for him. Inside this tower there are three good fairies, they specialize in making magical clothes. There is an ancient power known as a Drive Form. It allows a person to meager with another to increase their power far past their normal limits." Yen Sid said, making a couple hand gestures as he talked.

"Drive From, huh? That sounds like it will fit Sora perfectly." Riku said as he started walking towards the door, intending to leave the tower, however he stopped just before the door. "Alright, this may sound some what demanding, but would it be possible for me to get a Drive Form to? I don't know how strong Sora's Nobody is going to be, and it might be nice to have a backup plan it case things go wrong."

"No. I have worked my whole life to protect the worlds from darkness. You are the first person with in the past hundred years to come so close to destroying the world using dark powers, and you want me to ask three fairies of light to give you more power? You are luck I didn't destroy you when I felt you enter my tower, and I suggest you leave before I change my mind." Yen Sid said, clearly planning to make good on his threat if he needed to.

So, needless to say, asking Yen Sid for a Drive Form hadn't worked out, so there was no way Riku would ever be able to use Drive Forms. So, Riku really was stuck being the weaker of the two. And since Kairi had just started training a few weeks ago, there was a good chance that she would be stronger then both Riku and Sora some day.

"Riku! Come on, you've got to see this!" Sora yelled as he ran up to his friend, or more or less started dragging him towards town. "You'll never believe what everyone in town did!" Was all Sora said during the walk into town. Once they were in the middle of the shopping distract, Riku finally spotted what Sora was so excited about.

Apparently the people in town had made a statue in honor of everyone that had defeated Maleficent and Pete, two of the last known dark users. It was made of bronze, and was split up into two sections. The first was of Leon, Yuffie, Aerith, Cloud, Tifa, and Kairi, each holding their weapons, with a couple Shadows around them.

The second one made Riku want to hurl. It was a statue of Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Riku, but there was one very big difference in everyone there. Sora's part of the statue was three times bigger then everyone else's. Riku also noticed that while Sora's part of the statue was incredibly detailed, his, Donald's, and Goofy's seemed somewhat lacking in details. (For instance, while every single detail of Sora's outfit was done perfectly, it almost looked like Goofy was wearing a skirt.)

Riku took a quickly glance over at Sora, and noticed that he was in the middle of signing autographs. That was enough to make Riku turn around and walk away from the whole shopping distract. However, before he was able to fully leave, Kairi caught him. "You aren't made because Sora's part of the statue is bigger then everyone else's, are you?" Kairi asked, as she was able to stop Riku from leaving for the time being.

"No, I understand why everyone likes Sora. I mean, he never gets mad, he always helps people no matter what, and that when he's in Final Form, he probably the strongest person alive. But what I do have a problem with is that he never so much as gave me a thank you for everything I've done for him. I mean, I talked Yen Sid into helping him, who in turn talked those three fairies into giving him the Drive Form. I nearly died making sure that Roxas would reunite with him. I pulled him out of the realm of darkness during the heartless attack here. I stopped Xemnas from cutting him in half. And I stopped Maleficent from deep-frying him. And all he dose is give a laugh, and tell everyone how he defeated some of the most powerful people alive." Riku said, before he brushed past Kairi and kept going.

As Riku started walking out of town, heading towards the Great Maw, he started venting off some of the anger that had been building up over the past couple weeks. It just didn't seem fair, that even after everything he had done to help Sora, no one thought he was strong enough to do anything on his own. Even though he had proved himself time and time again in battle, people still asked if he needed help when he went out to destroy heartless. Yet when Sora went out, they just whished him luck, and went back to doing whatever they were in the middle of.

Before Riku knew what was going on, he was standing in the middle of the Dark Depths. Standing at the edge of the cliff that over looked the Castle of the world, Riku had to force himself to calm down before he started blasting a random object. Taking a few deep breaths, Riku started to calm himself, finding it easier to feel the world around him.

And imminently whished he had calmed down sooner. Turning around quickly, Riku saw the unmistakable figure of Sephiroth standing off to the side. "I was wondering when you would notice me standing here." Sephiroth said as he pushed off from the wall he had been leaning against, sword already in hand. "I was hoping for Cloud, or Sora to be the one that found me, but I guess you'll have to do."

That was the sign Riku took as the start of the battle, because he summoned his Keyblade and got ready for Sephiroth's first attack. The attack came fast, Sephiroth diving at Riku, moving at speeds that wouldn't have been possible if weren't for his wing. Sephiroth swung his huge sword around in a lightning fast arc, which Riku was barley able to block. However, the force from the blow was enough to send Riku about fourteen feet in the air.

Riku then spun around mid-air and took advantage of the fact his sword was easier to maneuver then Sephiroth huge sword. Moving quickly, Riku was able to parry Sephiroth's first strike, knocking it to the side. However, before Riku could counterattack, Sephiroth went right into a horizontal slash, forcing Riku to use his Dark Shield spell to block the attack. Again, the force knocked Riku back away, giving Sephiroth the chance to move in for another attack.

However, this time Riku was ready for him. Drawing all his energy into his Keyblade, Riku caused it to go into the same energy like state as when he had been battling Maleficent. Swinging it around, Riku slammed it into Sephiroth's blade, causing another power struggle to begin. Only it became clear fast that Riku was losing this struggle, as Sephiroth kept pushing him farther and farther back, and Riku was using more and more energy.

For some reason, something seemed to bring up a memory for Riku. After he had told DiZ that he was taking the road to dawn, DiZ had said something else to him.

"If you really want to take that path, I cannot stop you, but know this; a path of twilight is a long a painful path. People will most likely never know of what you have done, and you will be alone for many of you're battles. But, there is one thing you can do that light, darkness, and void cannot; you can ignore the limits set in front of you, you can make your own destiny."

Ignore the limits set in front of you? An idea began to form in Riku's mind. It was dangers and stupid, but who knew. If he went past his body's normal limits, one of two things would happen. He would either destroyed him self, which wouldn't matter since Sephiroth was about to destroy him anyway. Or he would somehow be able to still move, only at a great power level then before. What the hell, you only live once right?

Taking a deep breath, Riku pushed the amount of energy in his body to its limit. Then in one quick move, Riku pushed past his limit. It was an odd sensation; there was a mixture of pain, agony, excitement, and raw power flowing through him. Sephiroth must have noticed something different about Riku, because he quickly teleported back a little, giving a good buffer zone between them. The sensation in Riku then reached its peak, as a blinding light surrounded him.

When the light faded, Riku was standing there, but he was dressed completely differently. Were before he had worn a pair of blue pants, a black shirt, and yellow/tan vest, he was now wearing body armor. It was a light silver color, with a slight blue tint to it along the sides. Riku was also wearing a helmet; only there was no top to it, so his hair still hung out in its normal style.

Riku took a moment to look over his new set of armor, before attacking Sephiroth full force. Riku quickly learned that he was around five times faster when he was in this Drive Form. As he swung his Keyblade around to attack Sephiroth, the dark user quickly teleported above Riku, trying to bring his sword down on him. However, Riku was able to quickly sidestep the attack, before quickly jumping up to Sephiroth's level in an instant.

As Keyblade and sword clashed, there was a flash and a couple sparks and both white haired swordsmen went flying back. Riku then smirked, before pulling all his energy into his Keyblade one more time. Sephiroth understood what was happening, and began to do the same thing. Then they both rushed towards each other at inhuman speed.

People could see the huge explosion of light all the way back in town.

0-0-0

"Riku, Riku!" Riku grounded as he heard someone calling his name. As he pushed himself up off the ground into a sitting position, he noticed that he was lying at the side of the Dark Depths. "Was that all a dream?" Riku though as he looked around the area. It didn't take him long to find a huge crater in the middle of the Dark Depths. "I guess not…"

"Riku, don't worry pal we're here to save-what the hell happened?" Sora yelled as he came around the corner and saw the huge crater. "What, did you decided to take you're frustration out on the land-OH MY GOD SEPHIROTH'S IN THERE!" Sora yelled as he looked in the crater. That got Riku attention, and he started walking over there.

What he saw shocked him; Sephiroth was lying in a pool of blood, having been cut in half at the waist. As both Riku and Sora backed away from the crater, they looked at each other in shock. "So…uh did you do that?" Sora asked, still in a shocked state from seeing Sephiroth dead.

Riku gave a slight shrugged before he started talking. "Look Sora, I know that I've kind of been in an emo funk the last couple weeks, but hear me out. Remember when we were kids, and we would have sparing matches with those old wooden swords? Remember how we would always be even when it came to skills? Well, I've been in my emo faze because I finally realized that with you're Drive Forms that you would always be stronger then I am now. And since Kairi is a Princess of Hearts, there is little doubt in my mind she'll become stronger then both of us. So, I guess I just didn't like the idea of being the weakest of the three of us." Riku said, sitting back down on the ground, still tried from using his Drive Form for the first time.

"I can understand that; when we were younger I was always jealous of you and how fast you would be able to get stronger with you're sword. I then started thinking that if we were able to get off the Island and find were Kairi was from, I wouldn't be able to do anything to protect here if we needed to. That's kind of why I tried so hard to keep up with you in sword fighting." Sora said taking a seat next to Riku.

"Sora, Riku are you two all-what the hell happened here?" Kairi yelled as she to came around the corner into the Dark Depths. "Kairi, word of advice, don't look in the crater." Sora said, causing Kairi to change direction from heading to the crater to heading over to her two friends. As the Princess of Hearts took a seat between the two boys, she began looking the two over for injuries.

"So are you two okay?" She finally asked after a minute. Sora gave one of his trademark grins, and Riku gave a slight smile. "Yeah, we're alight Kairi. Also, I want to say I'm sorry for what I said before I left town, I was just kind of working some things out." Riku said to his redheaded friend. "That alright, I knew you didn't mean it anyway. Now come on, everyone's waiting for us." Kairi said as she stood up and started to pull the two boys up as well.

As Riku walked back to town, he couldn't help but smile a bit. He had done it again; he had taken the middle road. Sora's Final Form was stronger then he was now, and there was no way Yen Sid was going to let him have a Drive Form. So if he couldn't fight at Sora's level now, and no one would give him a Final Form, then he would have to make his own. And who knew, Sora's might still be stronger, but at lest now they were back on even ground, right?

END

(In some ways this was almost more of a rant of what I though was unfair in the Kingdom Hearts games, and how I would fix it. I always thought it was unfair how Sora's strongest ability was just given to him by some random old guy and three fairies. Anyway, I hope you liked it, and reviews are always appreciated.)