For the Queen!
by KC
Summary: Riku finally gets to meet Queen Minnie.
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts belongs to Disney and Square Enix, not me.
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Riku's Soul Eater sliced through a dozen small shadows in one swoop. Sometime during the fight, the heartless had separated Riku and Sora, drawing them to opposite ends of the castle's main hall. Riku didn't worry about their amateurish tactics. The clangs and triumphant battle cries told him Sora could hold his own, although he did feel a little anxiety every time he heard a cure spell. But fighting alone and away from everyone else felt more comfortable to him anyway.
Despite proving himself with King Mickey and Sora, Riku knew everyone else saw him as the Keyblade Master of Darkness, the one who might bring chaos and shadows to the world. Moreover, many of them knew about his time spent with Maleficent helping and controlling the heartless. That his Soul Eater's chain held a heartless emblem didn't help.
Finished with the shadows, he was about to turn his attention toward a few of the bolt towers hovering toward the end of the hall when he heard a cry behind the tall doors that led to the throne room. Without hesitation, he raised his hand and blasted the door open, stepping in as his dark energy swirled and misted.
He hardly noticed the little shadow nuisances that flattened out and rushed around on the floor like ink. In the middle of the huge room, clusters of minute bombs and neoshadows surrounded someone he couldn't quite make out. White bursts of light from the center of the darkness meant that their target was fighting back, but Riku doubted that they could hold out very long.
Running with his Soul Eater scraping the floor to grab their attention, he leapt straight into them, cutting swathes through the edge of the group before they could disappear into the floor. The fight took surprisingly little time. The hardest part was destroying the bombs before they counted down. He could absorb the blast. He didn't think whoever he was trying to save could.
With the smoke of the last bomb slowly disappearing, he stuck the tip of his keyblade into the floor and knelt to catch his breath. These heartless died quick, but there were so many of them.
"Oh! Thank you for rescuing me," a high pitched voice came from the smoke. "Are you hurt?"
He blinked and looked up. He didn't get asked that question very often. Few people cared enough to ask. Out of the smoke, he spotted a bright pink dress, a crown, a familiar if feminine face--
"Queen Minnie," he blurted out, startled to finally meet her. What should he say? He refused to bow, although he vaguely noticed he was kneeling, and since he and Mickey were close friends, he felt like he should show some kind of respect towards her. Her demeanor didn't help. She tilted her head curiously, looking at him as if she could read his every thought.
"I'm okay," he finally said. "Is there somewhere safe I can take you? The fighting isn't over yet."
"Yes, I know," she said, nodding and turning away. "I heard the battle start so I tried to get to the cornerstone, but those things surrounded me and I've been fighting them back this way."
"All this time?" he asked. The battle had been going on for awhile. She was stronger than she looked.
"Mm-hmm. Please escort me to the cornerstone, and we'll see if we can't get to the heart of the problem." She patted the dust off her dress and waited for him to stand, holding his keyblade at the ready.
After a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure nothing was sneaking up on them, Riku followed at her side. He wondered how everyone in the castle would react when they heard that the terrible Keyblade Master of Darkness had been taken straight to the vulnerable center of the castle alongside the queen. He hoped she would tell them at once, perhaps here in the royal throne room, so he could watch their overly polite faces drop in horror and shock.
end