'Hey you lazy bum, I thought you were supposed to be the hardworking one...'
Kairi..?
Riku struggled to try and open his eyes. He had to get up and see if she was really there and... okay. Riku slowly pushed himself, his eyes finally forced open. The girl sitting nearly on top of him wasn't Kairi. Riku sighed audibly.
The black haired girl smiled. "Hey! You finally awake?"
Riku groaned and turned over. It was too early, in Riku's mind, to deal with people like that. "No, I've probably been kidnapped, so the least you can do is let me sleep off the anxiety of that."
Riku felt the blanket being pulled away from where he had grabbed onto it, and pushed his face further into the pillow, just to irritate whoever did that. A deeper voice that Riku recognised from as the cultist guy from before sighed at him. "Well, we had to get that keyblade away from you, or you'd bring the whole town on our heads."
Riku sat up slowly, figuring he couldn't put off this conversation any longer. "What do you mean, 'bring down the whole town'?"
The man in the leather coat raised an eyebrow. "I figured your first question would be what the keyblade was with your look."
Giving him a look, Riku frowned at the table. "Well what other large key-shaped object is around here. Now seriously, what do you mean about the town?"
The man smirked. "True enough. What I mean, is that the keyblade attracts heartless. And, in the last year, the heartless count has soared."
"Oh." Riku considered that for a moment, and his head shot up again. "Wait, who are you guys anyways?"
The black haired posed in what was probably supposed to be dramatic. "I'm the great ninja Yu—"
"Other than complete weirdos, of course." the white-haired teen continued, ignoring her.
Yuffie glared at the back of his head. "Well, my name's Yuffie, if hadn't interrupted…."
Everyone ignored this, but Riku did make a note of her name, since he knew retribution was coming. It was best to prepared…
"I'm Leon. In the next room is Aerith, she probably will be back soon." Leon walked over to the table where the keyblade was. "Of course, we'll have to leave soon. The heartless will catch on eventually."
Leon picked up the keyblade. "It's hard to believe that this is the legendary weapon. Especially with you as the wielder." Leon's fist clenched tightly as Riku summoned the key back to himself.
Riku twirled the key arrogantly in Leon's direction, and banished it. "Not my fault. So why are there so many heartless anyway?"
"Well, by this point, you should be aware there are many worlds, but…" Leon paused.
"We're not supposed to know." Yuffie interjected. "Everyone separate 'n stuff."
Leon frowned at her and continued. "The problem is the heartless, they changed everything…in a bad way."
"You see there was this guy named Ansem who studied the heartless!" Yuffie stated as if this was of most importance. "Of course, all of his research is lost, so we don't know too~ much…"
"But what we do know is the heartless are the darkness in hearts," Leon said grimly. "And they track people's hearts with that darkness. But the keyblade is the one thing that kills them."
"So this thing is that important..?" Riku stared down at his hand, memories springing up, unbidden.
"Yes." The dour man walked back over to him. "The heartless fear the keyblade, so they will always be trying to kill you, for the rest of your life. And with increase of heartless lately…"
Riku slumped backward. "Yeah, I get it, I get it."
Leon sharpen his gaze. "We need to get moving. Are you ready?"
Riku smirked up at him. "Yeah."
As if sensing the tension in the air, a heartless in armor popped out of nowhere. "Yuffie, let's go! Aerith should be waiting." Leon yelled, getting his gunblade out and ready.
"Right!" Yuffie ran into the next room, slamming the door.
Riku ignored the cry of surprise from the next, and focused on the threat in front of him. Where there was one heartless, a dozen more were probably preparing to swarm them. Riku summoned his keyblade, and glanced at Leon. "What now?"
The heartless jumped out the window during this exchange, as if recognizing the imminent danger at this point. "Well that's simple." Leon moved to follow the heartless out the window. "We follow this guy, and then, we find the leader."
Riku blinked as Leon proceeded to jump out the window. And rushed to follow immediately after, the sense of that finally making it through to him. "Right then," Riku said as he landed, years of island buffoonery finally paying off. "Where do we go from here?"
"The place you'd least like to be is good start. So that way." Leon waved his gunblade toward where a new wave of heartless were swarming out of the shadows around the side of the hotel.
Riku snorted. "Of course, it's there, why would we ever get a break?"
Leon smiled slightly. "Yeah, it's never easy in life. Get used to it."
Riku swung his keyblade absently to get a few more of the heartless soldiers out of his way as they turned a corner into an alley. "I'd rather not, personally. 'Cause that would mean I'd be stuck with this."
"Well, you are." Leon frowned again. "Save your strength, you're gonna need it."
Pushing aside a few more heartless, Riku and Leon reached the third district's door. "Yeah, I know. Not my fault they were in my way." On this note, Riku pushed open the doors.
He walked slowly in, and looked back to where Leon was. He was not getting ambushed by himself if he could help it. This is why Riku immediately straightened up when he heard a loud noise above him.
Riku looked up to the small balcony to see to forms (not dark, so not heartless he hoped?) flying towards him. He turned and tried to run away, but found himself helpless as the shield one of them was holding slammed into his back, the two following right after.
Riku groaned, eyes opening slowly after a long instant of pain, the stone floor grinding into his cheek. It was probably bleeding. He just had to be the bottom of this pile, didn't he, the way his luck was going...
Riku heard a cry of 'the key' before everything went to hell. Any muttering of irritation at how dang famous the keyblade seemed to be, were cut off by far more pertinent observations. Like the walls that came up between him and backup. Or the four soldier heartless he found creeping up from behind them.
Riku pushed the assailants, who were animals apparently (?), and got into battle position. "Hey, you guys ready to fight? I see your weapons, I know you can, probably."
"Of course! I am-" the duck yelled petulantly.
"Great, let's go then." Riku dove at the first. Actually forced to fight them, he had to admit they were far tougher than the shadows from before. Their claws were sharper, and they kept on guarding!
All this meant was that he had to surprise them. This was a bit easier said than done, and Riku found himself missing the mark far more than he'd ever admit. That little bump had thrown him off, and he was getting punished for not adjusting faster. Riku strained himself to remember if he had that potion from before. He had one back on the island, but what had he done with it…
Riku snapped out of it as another claw hit its mark. It didn't hurt much, it was tiny, but it reminded him he needed to focus. Riku swung down hard and defeated the first of the four, smoke bursting out along with a looked like a stylized heart. He sighed inwardly, and turned to the other three.
The other two, he really needed their names, it was probably terrible to refer to them as dog and duck, were doing okay. The seemed no more used to real battle, since he could see how the dog was hiding behind his shield at some of the attacks. Not all of them, though, the dog did seem to be doing some damage.
As Riku began to attack the next heartless, he saw the duck look at him in the corner. He ignored the visible wince he got from him. Yeah, he knew he looked terrible, didn't need a reminder—
"Cure!"
Riku gasped as he felt the pain from his head and the scratches went away with a green glow. He hadn't realized how bad his head was hurting till it was gone. Riku smirked as the counter he had been trying for a while finally went through, taking down the second heartless. "Thanks, what was that?"
"Haven't you ever seen magic before? That was a healing spell, obviously." Riku gave the duck a glance, that was one arrogant duck. Or rather, annoying.
"Well, no." Riku decided to step on that arrogance. "We heal up the old fashioned way in my town, it's better than dealing with your kind of personality. Just isn't worth the trouble. Besides, most of the time you just need a potion or two. Why bother?"
Riku smirked. That had gotten to the irritating magician, his whole was red. Of course, Riku thought, we are in a battle. A quick dodge around the next heartless, and with one blow he had stunned one of the damn things. Riku began beating the thing in earnest, and with several slashes it had finally dissipated.
"Finally, halfway." Riku took a long breath.
The dog nodded earnestly. "Yup!" He slammed into the next heartless with that shield of his. "I think we've almost got 'em!"
Riku eyed that shield again, it seemed like a useless weapon to him. Then again, he supposed if you hit someone hard with metal like that, it'd probably give them a concussion. In fact that was what really took him down bad a few minutes ago.
Riku slashed at the heartless' back while it wasn't looking at him. If nothing else the two were a good distraction, while he might complain, it was easier to have the duck heal him than to dig out a potion.
With one more jab, the heartless turned to smoke. Riku turned to face the final one, only for it to be finished off by the duck with some flames. He frowned, finding that almost too simple after the battle against the Darkside. 'I mean sure, I have allies, oh boy. But that doesn't mean much. And Leon said something about a boss…ohhh no, not again.'
Gulping already, Riku looked up and saw multicolored armor falling from the sky. Really big, really… vibrant armor. The blue, red, and gold armor clattered down onto the ground, loudly. Then they slowly levitated up into the form of a body, except there was no head, or any other sign of a person. Although that was impossible from the beginning being at least twice Riku's size, probably more like three or four times.
It sat there for a moment, and then the helmet came hurtling down exactly where it needed to be.
"Gawrsh…" The knight seemed to huddle behind that shield just a bit more now.
As if that broke the tension, the armor swung the two clawed gauntlets out, in preparation to attack.
Riku clenched the keyblade in his hands just a little tighter. "Yup, that definitely is not good. Let's take it on down then!"
o-o-o-o-o
AN: Hello! The first segment of this chapter with Riku waking up I've been writing and rewriting forever! After that mess, it felt like I wrote this chapter in one go.. By the way, I've been feeling like this has been mostly a rehash of KH1. It does actually end up changing a lot, but I just realized a lot of those changes come around CoM... Hopefully this part won't drag on too long, then.
