Funny story, I actually finished this chapter a week ago, but I didn't want to upload this chapter only a day after updating my other story, so I aimed to put it off by a couple days, only to forget about it and not realize that I never actually posted this. My bad.
Ch. 3
Naminé held back a laugh as she watched Sora's interactions with the memory-generated illusions of his friends from Traverse Town. As she viewed it through his mind's eye, she realized that she had not had much time to properly program the illusions' reactions to him, Donald and Goofy. During each fight with the Heartless that materialized with each contact with a Shadow that appeared on the field as a switch bogey, she took the time to focus on how the characters from the next set of worlds would act around the trio.
In the meantime, she detected something appear farther below in the castle, although she could not determine what it was at this point, as it had only been a minor shift that had not created any further ripples.
She shrugged and decided to return her focus on watching Sora and figuring out how she would make things work. When she saw Sora defeat the Guard Armor and have a final talk with the Traverse Town crew, she plugged in a conversation with Aerith that only Sora was aware of. It was her way of slipping in a warning that things might not be as they appeared in a way that Marluxia would not be able to see. However, she was not sure how effective it would be, given how Sora was not actually under any sway yet. Hopefully, it would cast doubt on him.
"Hey, Naminé," Axel greeted, catching the girl by surprise and causing her to scratch a long line on her current drawing. She looked down at the mistake and sighed. She might not like what Marluxia was forcing her to do, but she did like drawing.
Axel approached her and looked down at the ruined sketch. "Whoops," he said, realizing what he had caused her to do. "Anyway, the boss is expecting some more of those World Cards. You think you could spare a few for Sora to run through?"
Naminé nodded. She took a set of five cards and handed them to Axel. He looked at them, recognizing some of the worlds: Agrabah, Wonderland, and Olympus Coliseum. He had heard a bit about the world that looked like a pumpkin with ghosts floating about, but he had never actually been there. But the last one perplexed him, as it looked a lot like a whale. He decided not to press the issue and shrugged.
"I'll be sure these get put to good use," he said mischievously as he walked off and left the room.
Naminé watched him leave with a curious interest. She did not know what to make of the redhead. He seemed to be working with Marluxia and Larxene, but he did not appear to participate in their scheming, as if he had been sent to work with them but had an agenda of his own. However, she knew very little of Marluxia and Larxene's intentions, so at the moment she had no hope of discerning Axel's wishes. All she could do was watch them and work on her plans.
Sora, Donald and Goofy stepped through the doors leading out of the replication of Traverse Town. Sora was mulling over what Aerith had said to him after the fight with the Guard Armor. Don't let the illusions lead you astray? What was that supposed to mean?
However, he did not have much time to contemplate her words when the man in the black coat appeared in front of them. The tree of them took confrontational stances.
"Well, Sora? Did you enjoy meeting your memories?" he asked.
Sora nodded. "Yeah. It was good to see everyone," he admitted. "But what do you really want from me?"
"What do you have to give?" the hooded man simply asked in reply. He began to walk toward them. They summoned their weapons, getting ready for a fight.
However, a dark pod formed behind the hooded man and vanished to reveal a similarly-garbed man whose hood was pulled down, revealing his face and his head of spiky red hair.
"Hello!" Axel greeted cheerfully.
The hooded man had to restrain a sigh. "What do you want?" he asked without bothering to turn around.
"No hogging the hero," Axel teased.
Marluxia turned around to properly address his colleague. "Then perhaps you'd like to test him," he suggested.
"Perhaps I would," Axel replied just as Marluxia vanished in a dark pod. With the master of the castle gone, Axel directed his gaze at Sora, who was still armed and anticipating a fight, and winked. "My show now, Keyblade Master. Who am I? Oh, my name's Axel. Got it memorized?"
"Uh, sure…" Sora said, thrown off by the redhead's playful attitude.
"Good. You're a quick learner," Axel joked. "So, Sora, now that we're getting to know each other better…" He raised his arms to charge up energy, then extended them out to the side. Discs of fire spun in front of his palms and transformed into a pair of red and silver metal chakrams, each consisting of a large ring, four smaller ring centered around the larger wheel, eight spikes evenly spaced around the ring, and a cross-shaped handle in the center, which connected to the inner points of the smaller rings. As soon as the chakrams materialized, he caught them on the handles.
Sora, Donald and Goofy gasped, and they took on their battle stances.
Axel looked back up at them and grinned. "Don't you go off and die on me now!" he finished. He stood like that for a few more seconds to make sure they were prepared, and dealt the first attack, throwing one of his chakrams underhand straight at Sora.
Sora dodged the attack, but the flames burned Donald and Goofy. Axel teleported to where Sora had previously been and caught his weapon, then struck out at Sora. However, the boy retaliated and dealt a combo attack at Axel. Grinning the fiery redhead jumped over him and struck out, holding his flaming weapons. Sora was hit with the first blow, but he brought his Keyblade up and parried the next hit, throwing him off balance. Goofy charged in and shoved his shield into his side, knocking him to the ground. Axel whirled to his feet, sending tongues of flame spinning around him, and jumped over their heads. Donald cast Blizzard at him, but he deflected and neutralized the spell. Sora threw himself at Axel and attacked him, but Axel blocked the combo finisher and swatted him aside.
Charging up his power, Axel teleported to the center of the room. He raised his flaming chakrams dramatically. "Let the flames burn you!" he shouted, then held his arms out as three pillars of fire flared around him, making Goofy regret trying to go in for a close-range attack. He then pushed a radial fire blast away from him. The fire wall spread all the way to the walls, meaning that Sora, Donald and Goofy were caught in the attack and singed in the burning heat.
While Sora was recovering from the pain, Axel took the opening to attack, swiping with his chakrams and sometimes letting them hover a few inches from his fingertips. After the combo finished, Sora rolled to safety. Donald attacked with Blizzard, after which Axel warped to a different location. He threw a chakram at Sora, but the boy deflected it with his Keyblade, propelling himself toward his foe at the same time. He dealt a combo to send him reeling, then took the moment to cast Cure on himself and his allies. Axel regained his senses and attempted to conjure the fire wall again, but Sora struck him in the back, knocking him down.
The fighting persisted for a few more minutes before Sora delivered a finishing combo that launched Axel into the wall. Groaning, he vanished in a dark pod, but not before he flicked his wrist and dropped a set of cards out of his sleeve.
Sora, Donald and Goofy stared in bemusement as the cards floated up until it was in front of Sora, just above his head. The boy reached up and grabbed it, bringing it down so that he and his companions could take a look at it. Jiminy climbed out of Sora's hood to have a look as well.
"More of them? What do they do?" Goofy asked.
"Hmm… They kinda look like the card you used when you made Traverse Town," Jiminy observed.
Sora raised an eyebrow at this assessment, realizing that the cricket was right. "Then I guess we're gonna need it to keep going," he surmised.
"That's right."
Sora gasped when he heard the voice and looked ahead, noticing Axel casually leaning against the wall to the left of the stairway leading up.
"Axel!" Donald blurted. He and his friends summoned their weapons once again.
Axel calmly walked toward the trio. "Did you really think after that introduction, I would give up oh so easily?" he asked in a slightly taunting tone.
"You were testing us," Sora realized.
"And you passed," Axel replied. "Congratulations, Sora! You're ready now, ready to take on Castle Oblivion." Sora relaxed his guard, confused by what Axel was saying. Axel then took on a more cryptic tone, which would only confuse Sora more. "You will need to follow your memories; trust what you remember and seek what you forget. Then you will find someone very special."
"You mean King Mickey and Riku?" Goofy guessed.
Axel let out a chuckle. "You will just have to give some more thought to who it is that's most important to you," he replied ominously. "Our most precious memories lie so deep within our hearts that they're out of reach. But I'm sure that you can find yours, Sora."
"Why me?" Sora asked.
"You have lost sight of the light within the darkness, and it seems that you've forgotten that you forgot," Axel claimed.
"The light within darkness…?" Sora repeated, trying to understand what the stranger was implying.
Axel reached his hand out as if beckoning Sora to take it, even though they were still more than ten feet apart. "Would you like me to give you a hint?" he asked.
Sora considered Axel's offer. Could there really be someone important to him that he no longer remembers? Of course, considering how the man with the hood led him and his friends to the castle, whereupon they were made to forget all of their magic and special techniques, and the mere fact that neither he nor the other similarly-garbed stranger seemed to be a friendly sort, it could very easily be a trap. But if there was even a grain of truth in Axel's claim, then he could not just turn it aside. Although, he was not quite ready to trust these enigmatic characters.
Goofy stepped up far enough to see Sora's face and try to see what he was thinking. "Sora, do you need it?" he asked.
Sora stood up straight and shook his head, then look the redhead in the eyes. "I'm gonna figure it out for myself," he declared. To assert his conviction, he entered his battle-ready stance. "If you're in my way—"
Donald jumped in between Sora and Axel, giving the redhead the stink-eye. "Don't worry, Sora. We'll protect you!" he said. Sora blinked in confusion and rolled his eyes, though his change in expression was unseen by the duck and obscured by the lanky man.
Axel let out a laugh. "Good answer. Just what I'd expect from the Keyblade master," he said, returning to his playful tone. However, he went back to an ominous tone. "But be forewarned: when your sleeping memories awaken, you may no longer be who you are now." With those parting words, he vanished into a dark pod, leaving the trio perplexed.
Sora cocked his head to the side at the message, wondering what he could have meant by that. With no clear answer, he examined the cards that Axel had left behind, and counted five. He, Donald and Goofy recognized the images on all of them as locales which they had visited together over the past several weeks. He shuddered when he saw the picture of a familiar whale on one of the cards, remembering the gargantuan creature that had swallowed the Gummi Ship whole with them inside.
Sora shrugged. "I guess we should keep going," he said uncertainly. Donald and Goofy nodded in agreement, and the three of them made their way up the flight of stairs carved into the wall ahead of them.
Riku breathed evenly as he slowly faded back into consciousness. When he could think clearly again, he continued snoozing, not sensing anything wrong with his current circumstance. However, once he recalled the last thing he remembered, fighting numerous Heartless alongside King Mickey, he jolted awake. He looked around, seeing that he was in some sort of grey void, as it registered that he was floating face-up.
"Where am I?" he asked, posing the question to no one in particular, for as far as he could tell, he was all alone.
"Stay asleep," he suddenly heard a strange voice tell him. Gasping in surprise, he did the opposite and fidgeted himself until he was in an upright positon, though he still appeared to be floating.
"Who's there?" he shouted.
"You should remain asleep," the voice continued. Riku looked around, trying to discern where the voice was coming from. "Here, between light and dark."
"Between… what?" At that point, he realized that something was truly wrong, and someone was missing. "The king! Where's the king? Together we closed the door to darkness. After that…"
"You came drifting here by yourself," the voice claimed. "You did not have the strength to overcome the darkness. Or… maybe you were close to it."
"Hmph. As if I'm some kind of demon," Riku spat back. Something tickled in the back of his mind. The voice seemed strangely familiar.
"Turn from the light. Shut your eyes," the voice advised. "Here, blanketed by the darkness, sleep is safety. Sleep is eternal. But…"
A blinding light shone in front of Riku's face, forcing the boy to turn away and close one eye. When the light faded, he looked forward to study the strange blue card that had appeared, and which had begun to float around him.
"What's this?" Riku asked.
"It is a door to the truth. Take it, and your sleep ends, as you take the first step toward the truth," the voice explained. "But know this: the truth will bring you pain. Will you still go?" As the voice spoke, the card circled around Riku and stopped in front of his face, giving him a clear view of the dilapidated castle depicted on the front face of the card. "There is no return to the security of sleep.
Riku closed his eyes and considered his options. Either stay, and go back to an empty slumber in the void between light and darkness, or take the card and face uncertain truths, which may be more painful than he can bear. Finally, he reached a decision and opened his eyes. He reached out and grabbed the card.
"This seemed like a boring place to take a nap anyway," he quipped, taking on a smirk.
"That was very well-said, Riku," the voice replied, as if amused by his line, though the tone did not change.
The card shone once again with a blinding light, and when Riku's vision cleared he found himself in a cube-shaped room with white walls and columns. In the wall across from him, raised on a platform led up by a short set of stairs, he could see a set of cream-colored double doors. Riku glanced around to take in the sight, before his eyes settled on the doors. He could tell that through them was the way he needed to go. He looked at the card, deducing that it was his ticket through the door.
"A door to the truth, huh…?" he mused.
Fun fact: I looked up a playthrough of the Axel fight on YouTube and then wrote the fight around that. I hope you enjoyed.
