Kingdom Hearts Online
Chapter 2: "What Am I Worried About?"
A/N: Let's all say a big thank-you to FierceDeityMask, who agreed to breathe down my neck until I finish this whole side-arc. I also have a few bubbles of inspiration rising up for the next chapter of Silver Linings.
There may be a few differences between this and the way the anime worked. The episodes and the wiki can only tell me so much, and I made a few changes for story purposes.
To avoid confusion, I've decided this takes place a while before the events of SAO episode 15, during the year that ALO and SAO existed simultaneously. So the parts Kirito should be there for aren't happening yet.
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Entering the tunnel maze...
Riku noticed a problem after walking for about ten feet. "There aren't any light sources in this tunnel. How do people find their way through?"
Lambda listed a few obvious ways, counting them up on her fingers. "Well, there's a Torch item. People planning to go through here generally have a chance to stock up."
Riku sighed. "Too bad those are other people."
Lambda nodded, visible from her own glow in the pitch-black tunnel. "Secondly, there are spells to create light or see in the dark without light."
"There's magic in this game? Wait, 'see in the dark'... I just remembered something..." Riku recalled having to put up with a lot of stress while blindfolded. And to deal with that, he trained himself to... "Good, my dark-sense still works. Navigating these tunnels will be way easier than fighting Roxas with a blindfold on was."
Lambda raised a hand for a high-five, but Riku had to do a sort of finger flick on his part to match Lambda's tiny palm. "Nice thinking, Riku! Luckily, smell is a perfectly valid sense in the game, so there won't be any objections from the system against finding your way around by your nose. By the way, you should probably hear about the magic system."
Riku was beginning to see a pattern here. "Will I be able to trick the system into thinking my spells are local spells?"
Lambda shook her head, causing her long braid to sway back and forth. "Sorry, not this time. The magic in this game is based on a unique language created specifically for ALO, so you cast spells by saying the proper incantations. They can get pretty long, too; it's not like you can just point your Keyblade and yell 'Fire'. Or 'Dark Barrage', for that matter."
Riku winced; half of his combat options just went down the drain. "Ouch. That's probably going to be the biggest restriction on what I can do in here."
Lambda started floating down the tunnel again, signaling that they should walk and talk instead of just standing there. "Well, I suppose if you could figure out the description for your moves and got an opening to say it in the Words of Power, then it would still work. Of course, the monsters would never leave you alone long enough to do that unless you had someone to keep them off you. Stupid half-foot-tall pixie form keeping me from helping..."
Lambda trailed off into nonsensical grumbling, then caught herself and got back on topic. "Luckily, you don't have to call your attacks for physical sword skills, although you can if you think it looks cool - I sure think so. I'm pretty sure you can still do the ordinary version of Maelstrom and any other neat combat moves you have. This game doesn't have a list of sword skills built in, so you're supposed to actually figure out how to fight with a sword while flying. Good thing we spent the last month doing...I'll call it 'applied research' in that field."
Riku went through the motions of his favorite combo without summoning Way to Dawn. "I like that metaphor! I guess I'll be okay in battle, but is there any way I can learn these Words of Power? Just curious."
"There's a full dictionary in your menu for the Words involved in spells, along with a few examples of the basic spells available to all races. You can cast them based on your MP gauge, like any other player. If you want anything better than the absolute basics, though, you have to figure out what phrases work through trial and error." Lambda suddenly stopped moving forwards, and was flattened up against Riku's chest when he kept going. "Oof! My fault, sorry. Speaking of trials, I stopped because there are monsters up ahead. A lot of them."
Riku stopped walking to let Lambda get off his chest. "What kind of monsters are we talking about?"
"I can't be sure because the scanning protocols provided by the system aren't half as good as my own, but I'm pretty sure they're fairly ordinary bats."
As he equipped Way to Dawn, Riku wondered, "Why would I need to worry about a bunch of bats?"
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Warning! Fate temptation in progress! Defeat the Bat Swarm, or escape the Tunnels!
Lambda resisted the urge to scream at Riku, and only managed to stay quiet because her boyfriend seemed to require a lesson about tempting fate. Her grimace slowly morphed into a mischievous smirk as she realized how to deliver that lesson. "Okay, if you're so confident... HEY! CALLING ALL BLOOD-SUCKING BATS IN THIS CAVE! COME OUT AND FIGHT! RIKU SAYS HE'S READY FOR YOU!"
Riku covered his ears at Lambda's sudden, piercing shout, so he almost missed the massive rustling sound of thousands of leathery wings taking flight. This was not merely a "bunch" of bats. This was a colony of airborne rodents numerous enough to suck all the blood out of an entire Frost Giant tribe. Riku's eyes widened in the darkness as his dark-sense picked up the advancing wall of fur, claws, and teeth. Even so, he lashed out with his Keyblade, slaying five bats with every swing.
Unfortunately, at five bats per swing and one or two swings per second, Riku just couldn't kill enough bats to make a difference. Despite his best efforts, the bats invaded his personal space and sunk their tiny fangs into any part of his body they could reach, disregarding his fully-covering Black Coat (due to its lack of any armor bonus). After a few intensely-unpleasant seconds of this assault, Riku finally decided to turn tail and run. Lambda dove into one of the pockets of the dark warrior's coat as he dashed back the way he came like a bat out of hell...or like a boy being chased out of hell by bats.
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Outside the Tunnels...
Riku burst out of the cave, heaving and panting. Thankfully, the bats turned back and left him alone the instant he left the cave mouth. "Ouch..." Riku collapsed against a nearby tree and began checking over his various wounds.
Lambda poked her head out of Riku's pocket. "Now, dear, what did we learn about tempting fate today?"
Riku growled. "I learned that I shouldn't do that, Mom. I get that I needed to stop acting overconfident, but did you have to be so mean about it?"
Lambda wore a sympathetic expression, but nodded resolutely. "Yes, I did. That attitude leads to Ansem's...Xehanort's...take on what the Darkness is for, remember? Also, I'm not your mom, I'm your girlfriend. As I understand it, I'm fully within my rights as your girlfriend to call you out on your errors when you do something boneheaded, like challenging a swarm of bats to a duel."
Riku winced, feeling thoroughly chastised. "You're right, Lambda. That was pretty boneheaded of me. These bites still hurt like getting a hug from a Morningstar Heartless, though."
Lambda floated up and gave a quick kiss to one of the nastier virtual scars on Riku's stolen Ansem-face, noting that wounds always appeared to glow red in this world. "You're forgiven. If you open your menu, I'll point you to the basic healing spell. That should deal with the damage, but...that's weird. I don't think you should be feeling any pain from damage in this game. The game engine is specifically set to block any sensations of pain. Maybe it has to do with the way our real bodies are merged with our virtual avatars, so the pain barrier doesn't work properly."
Riku opened his menu with a finger swipe. "No use worrying about it; I've dealt with worse pain. Now, where's this healing spell?"
Lambda scrolled the interface and brought up the spell examples, then pointed out the Heal Self spell. "Here it is. Translated, it means something like, 'Heal myself, healing water.' You could change the pronoun word to set the range of who it affects, but affecting more people takes a higher skill level in the spell's element, which is water in this case. I'll open another pop-up for the pronunciation guide."
Thusly armed with online research, Riku tried to cast Heal. He fumbled over the words the first time, but the second attempt created a blue glow around him. The red marks faded away, and Riku noticed another pop-up in the corner of his view (which had actually been at the edge of his vision for the entire time he'd been in ALO) that showed his green HP bar growing as his blue MP bar shrank. The spell ended when his HP was fully restored, costing about a quarter of his MP. "Well, awkward pronunciations aside, it's nice to have healing magic of my own for once. I probably owe Mickey dozens of favors by now from all the times he's healed us."
Lambda giggled. "I thought we agreed to stop keeping score back in Castle Oblivion." She sat on Riku's shoulder, and the two rested for a moment in companionable silence. Lambda leaned up against Riku's neck, and accidentally brushed against Ansem's characteristic silver mane. "Wow, this is really soft. From the way it sticks up on top, I thought it would be stiff, but..." The rest of Lambda's sentence was muffled while she buried her face in the silver locks.
Riku blushed crimson, trying and failing to crane his neck away from Lambda. "Hey, Lambda, what are you doing? Is your head on straight?"
Lambda reluctantly released the warm, silver sheets from her tiny fists and stood up on Riku's shoulder. "I think I'm as sane as always, but I might be a little bit less restrained than usual because of the novelty of this whole experience. Everything looks so different at this size! Plus, I doubt I'll get another chance to bury my face this deep in someone's super-soft hair when I get back to my normal height."
Riku relented. "Fine, try whatever you want while you have the chance. Just don't call for attention from monsters again. That hurt my ears before the bats even attacked."
"Acknowledged. Requesting upper limitation to qualifier 'whatever you want.'"
Riku was momentarily distracted by the sudden return of Lambda's protocol-speak. "Um...I guess as long as it doesn't involve getting under my coat or inside my ears or mouth, it'll be fine. Can I order you to speak normally as much as possible?"
"Affirmative."
"Then I hereby order you to keep the protocol-speak to a minimum. And that's all the direct orders I'm going to give you right now."
"Acknowledged. ...Okay, I can talk normally again, at least for now. Please don't feel like you need to watch your wording to dodge around the control protocol, okay, Riku? It's really not a big deal for little things like these, and if you accidentally order something along the lines of 'go jump in a lake', I can ask for confirmation - at which point you can tell me not to do that. Metaphors and programs don't mix, so I'm allowed to make sure." Lambda returned to the "hammock" in Riku's hood.
Riku pondered this info. "I'll be sure to keep that in mind. Whether you trust me or not, though, that protocol still kind of spooks me. I can't afford to mess up when I'm holding some kind of leash on your free will..."
Lambda hummed. "I guess I should probably be more worried about that, but in the end, that's also a part of love, isn't it? You have to hand part of yourself to someone else, and it's scary, but it's worth the risk."
Riku nodded, accidentally bouncing Lambda's hammock. "That makes sense. I never thought of it that way, but then again, I don't think about emotional stuff much. It's too bad we can't just sit here and talk this through."
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Random encounter: Heartless!
As if to prove Riku's point, a group of Heartless rose from the ground and stalked toward the dark warrior. There were five Armored Knights (minor-league enemies that could eventually grow into more powerful Heartless such as the Stalwart Blade), two Assault Riders (centaur-like warriors that spun their huge spears to keep targets at bay), and seven basic Shadows. In a flash, Riku was on his feet, Keyblade in hand. He dove into the battle with a yell, and came back out of it 75 munny richer. "Well, it's apparently time to get back to work. Interesting that I can still get munny here. Let's try this tunnel again; maybe we missed a path?"
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Tunnels: Take 2...
Lambda groaned and slammed her head against the cave wall she'd been examining. "There were signs on the wall the whole time! It even says in big letters, 'WARNING: Bat Swarms! Have wind magic ready!' And here's a sign with an arrow in the other direction that says 'Neutral village ahead: Cave Town, 1/2 mile.' I guess some other players left these here. That's nice of them."
Riku felt a similar pull between his head and the wall. "I feel like an idiot for missing that. Let me guess, 'Spriggans' can't use wind magic?"
Lambda nodded in confirmation. "It would be be more difficult, and only Sylphs can use the highest-level spells. It's odd that you ended up as a Spriggan illusionist when Imps are the dark elementals, but I know you're not just Darkness... Luckily, we don't have to bother the bats if we take this other, well-traveled path, which we totally missed last time." After one final head-slam, Lambda returned to Riku's hood for now.
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Cave Town...
Riku wound up on a large bridge over an underground lake. This cavern chamber was immense enough to house a full-sized lake. Silhouettes occasionally formed on the lake from the powerful aquatic monsters under the surface, which thankfully always stayed underwater. A walled settlement stood on a large island in the center of the lake."So, this is Cave Town? Not a very imaginative name..."
Lambda piped up, "It's a neutral settlement started after the game began, so it was named by the players. I personally prefer the way this town has a functional name that you can easily mention in conversation, instead of some huge, unpronounceable mess translated to Nordic/Faerie." Riku had to concede the point.
Riku approached the town gates. "What can I expect?"
Lambda hummed. "Other than a mix of faerie races, which would mean some actual intelligent life, there isn't much besides some NPCs running shops. We may want to pick up a party member to handle magic while you're on the front lines with the Keyblade, but we'd have to pick out which parts of the truth are okay to tell them."
A red-haired player hailed Riku from atop the wall. "Halt! State your name, affiliation, and intentions!"
"I'm Riku. I'm sort of a freelance wanderer. I'm just passing through while looking for something, but you may want to know about a new bunch of monsters spreading through the world."
"New monsters? I'm interested. Come on in." The gates opened with a loud rumbling sound, and the guard climbed down a ladder to greet the newcomer, which allowed Riku to get a good look at the guard in turn.
He was young-looking, and had short, rust-red hair with a single curl sticking up on top like Lambda's. He wore simple plate armor and had a two-handed broadsword strapped to his back. His eyes were a bright shade of green that stood out next to his hair, but other than that, he seemed very average.
Riku stepped through the gates, which shut behind him. "So, why the chilly welcome?"
The guard bowed his head briefly in apology. "Sorry about that. We've had an uptick in shady characters coming through here, and then we get blamed for letting them through when they raid travelers. So, what are these new monsters?"
Riku took a deep breath. "This is going to sound crazy. They're called the Heartless, and they're invaders from outside the game. I can't guarantee your real body will be safe if you're defeated by one."
This got an immediate, shocked reaction from the guard. His hair curl even stuck straight up, apparently reacting to his emotions. "What?! How is that possible? Will the AmuSphere fry my brain?"
Riku shuddered. "The what? No, it's arguably worse than death by brain frying. If a Heartless kills someone, they take their victim's 'heart', which contains their ability to feel emotion, and that becomes a new Heartless. So basically, if they kill you, you'll turn into one of them, a mindless monster. I'm not sure whether they can do that in virtual reality, but I wouldn't want to test it."
Lambda flew up and confirmed it. "The Heartless don't do much of anything if there aren't any hearts around to steal. Since they're aggressive here, they can indeed steal the hearts of players through their avatars."
The guard was rapidly being overwhelmed by the apparent shift in the way the world(s) worked. "That's crazy... Does that mean my real body will suddenly turn into a monster and attack people in the real world?"
Lambda put on a serious expression, which worked surprisingly well despite her overwhelming cuteness. "That's why everyone has to be careful. I don't think there have been any casualties yet, but we have to keep them from claiming even one person, or the real world won't have much defense against the resulting outbreak. I have pictures of several varieties so people know what to look out for." She raised her hands in front of her, which glowed orange and transferred several image files to the guard's virtual photo album.
The guard saw the download notification in his HUD, and opened his menu to check out the pictures. "Huh, these seem real enough, but they certainly don't look like the typical monsters in ALO. What are you two? She looks like one of those private Pixies from the pre-order raffle, but they aren't supposed to be nearly this intelligent. And you don't exactly look normal either, Riku."
Lambda nodded. "You caught us. We're not a special event, nor are we AIs or normal players. We got into the game from another world, and in doing so accidentally let the Heartless follow us."
Riku facepalmed. "Way to blow our cover, Lambda..."
Lambda shrugged. "What would be the point in hiding it anymore? The players need to know enough to defend themselves, and what we say to the players isn't analyzed the way system commands are. Anyway, I'm Lambda. I had to take the Pixie role when the system found me hacking it - no malicious intent, I swear! I was just trying to learn about the new world! So, what's your name, sir?"
The guard sweatdropped, and his hair curl bent into a question mark. Who could say stuff like that so casually? "Well, if you hacked in from another world, you probably don't know the customs of this one. We don't use our real names. My avatar's name is Meteor; I came up with it when I saw the Salamander race option, and I made up a special move as my namesake. But that's not important. If the Heartless have broken into ALO, how can we stop them?"
Riku spoke up. "That's why we're searching. There should be a thing called a Keyhole in this world; If I can find it, I can use the Keyblade..." Riku equipped Way to Dawn as a demonstration, "...to seal the Keyhole, preventing the Heartless from stealing the heart of the whole world. Then I can seal the Dark Corridor that's letting them invade in the first place. I don't think sealing the Corridor first will work, and no one's ever actually tried to seal a Corridor before, but at least I can keep the world itself safe. The Heartless will ease up attacking people if they can't steal the world's heart."
Meteor didn't seem convinced. "Why do all that when we could just call the admins and let them handle it?"
Lambda shook her head. "The Heartless can't be deleted by security programs - we tried that elsewhere. And if worst came to worst, the admins might simply delete the whole game, which might not even solve the problem, on top of ruining such an awesome world. Right now, the only way the Heartless can invade your real world is by attacking a player's avatar here, but if this world were removed, it's an even chance that the Dark Corridor will either be severed...or fold into your world directly. I don't like those odds. The vigilante method really is our best option."
Meteor mulled over the info, then finally nodded. "Okay, I guess you're right. But do you even know where the Keyhole is? You need to find that to get your plan to work, right?"
Lambda shrugged helplessly. "No, but we have a general idea. The Keyhole is a portal that leads directly to the heart of a world. It'll be in an important place connected to that world's legends. My best guess is that it's at the World Tree."
"That makes sense..." Meteor suddenly perked up. "Hey, do you need a guide to get there? I want to help with this. I won't be dead weight; I'm better than any other Salamander at healing and barrier magic."
Riku considered the offer. "I'd certainly appreciate having someone else handle the magic - the way I usually do it would draw too much attention from the system. But it'll be dangerous. If a Heartless gets you, you won't just log out or have to wait a while; you'll be extinguished, replaced by a monster that will attack your friends and family in the real world. Do you still want to go?"
Meteor nodded resolutely. "I do. I really have nothing better to do, for starters. It's kind of a long story, so bear with me. Salamanders start out being good at fire magic and brute strength, so I put my effort into learning healing alongside that. Why stick to only one good strategy, you know? But it seems the rest of the players in ALO had a different opinion. The other Salamanders scoffed at me for learning 'sissy magic,' and I eventually had to leave the territory altogether to find any opportunities. That got me branded as a 'renegade', which doesn't really mean anything except that other players are bigots."
The red-haired boy grumbled a bit about virtual discrimination before continuing. "Even here in neutral territory, my so-called renegade status means I don't get many chances to join raid parties or meet new friends, and a solo player can only get so far. I eventually had to settle down as a guard here in Cave Town, logging in only when I'm bored."
Meteor continued his story on a lighter note. "Meeting you was about the luckiest thing I've ever had happen to me, either in the real or virtual world. This could be my chance to do something that really matters. Even if it doesn't turn my avatar's virtual life around, or if no one believes me, I'll be able to think of myself as a hero who was strong enough to save Alfheim, which I could be proud of despite what other player say. And if it turns out I'm not strong enough, that's fine, too. I don't actually have friends or family to endanger in the real world. My parents are big-shots at a technology consulting firm, so they're always traveling, and they let me get into VRMMOs to keep me occupied in an empty house, while they were off attending meetings in other countries to support a company I don't want to inherit."
Riku gazed at Meteor in sympathy. "I certainly understand wanting to explore other worlds out of boredom, and I understand wanting to be a hero. That was basically how I got started. Which is why I'm happy to help you out by taking you along, but I also have to warn you that being a traveling hero didn't turn out at all like I expected. It's not going to be a string of glorious battles and meeting new friends, although that's part of it. You have to be willing to sacrifice anything and everything, and to fight to avoid unnecessary sacrifices. Whether the achievement is worth the pain or not is up to you."
"Then count me in!" Meteor fiddled with his menu to send Riku a party invitation prompt.
Riku touched the green button on the hologram, and Meteor's HP and MP bars appeared below his own. "Good to have you along, Meteor! First, we need to make the news about the Heartless public knowledge."
Meteor opened his Contacts sub-menu. "I've got that covered. There are public billboards you can post on from the menu, and I have a few information brokers from around Cave Town and in Salamander territory in my contacts. They're not expecting a call from me, but they're good enough people to help spread this info around to other territories. Give me a few minutes to send out copies."
A couple minutes of fiddling later, Meteor looked up. "One of my contacts in Salamander territory wants to know what rewards the Heartless drop."
Lambda answered, "Tell him that beating the Heartless wins you another day among the living, but the items they drop have no use in ALO."
Riku blanched. "You mean my munny is totally worthless here?!"
Lambda nodded. "Yeah. ALO uses a currency called Yrd, which you can get by trading items, defeating monsters, or clearing quests. We don't have any Yrd whatsoever, which could be a problem. Of course, we never had much use for our munny, either."
Meteor closed his menu. "Well, at least the fact that the Heartless aren't profitable helped me convince the broker to route the info around for free. I'm ready to go, so let's head northeast to get to the center of Alfheim. The town there is called Alne, it's built on the roots of the World Tree, and it's the largest city in Alfheim. The Keyhole has to be there."
Riku started walking toward the northeast gate and waved his companions after him. "Well, this is a better plan than I usually have. Let's go!"
The party set out for the surface, in high spirits and looking forward to an adventure.
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A/N: Meteor is one of my OCs. Originally, he was a Sylph called Zephyr, but this version of the character needs fewer unnecessary changes to the way ALO works.
