Standard Disclaimer: I often draw Riku and Sora, but that doesn't mean I own them unfortunately, or any of their friends :emotear:

Notes: The chapter when some things fall apart. Not really a warning, but be prepared for some mild intensity and the appearance of a new villain.

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Dive into the Heart

Part 7: No Time to Think

"Be ready for a fight." Riku was being serious. Naminé and I glanced at each other for a moment before she called her pad so that she could prepare the next portal. I glanced down at the image quickly noting what looked like a cluttered, fenced off alley somewhere before turning my attention fully to Riku, focusing on his emotions. I could feel his distress, the barely contained anxiety lurking just beyond the surface of his heart, and this more than anything told me that something was seriously wrong.

"What is it?" I asked him. I didn't at all like the way that he was responding to this threat, whatever it was. Sure, it would be the first real battle that any of us had faced aside from Gran and Ansem, but we were all well trained. Riku was always absolutely confident in his abilities. In a world with as much ambient darkness as Twilight Town had, he would have access to almost unlimited power and he knew how to use it. So then what could be so bad that it would have him so freaked out? I didn't know if I actually wanted to find out.

"I can't describe it," he told me shaking his head. He gave a small shudder and that sent more alarms going off in my head. "It's like…like I'm getting scrambled or something. I keep feeling this energy; dark energy, colliding with my barriers, but it feels…" he stopped and I watched him struggle to find the right words. "It feels like me," he told me, "but not. That doesn't even make any sense." He ran a hand through his hair and I reached out a hand to offer what comfort I could, but before I could, Ansem was there grabbing Riku's shoulder and my breath caught at the sheer intensity radiating off of him.

"What did you say?" he asked in a voice that was way too controlled to mean anything good.

"I said that it feels like me," he growled shrugging off Ansem's hand. I could felt his temper spike at Ansem's rough treatment and I stepped to his side offering quiet support as Riku glared at the older man. We'd only really known Ansem for a few hours after all. The only reason we had to trust him was because Gran did and so did Naminé, but it seemed suddenly obvious that he was hiding something from us.

"What aren't you telling us?" I asked eyeing him carefully and paying close attention to his emotions. He knew what I was doing and he also knew that he wouldn't be able to hide a lie from me. He looked right back at me with a bit of an ironic smile, but before he could reply,

"We got it!" Sora's cheery voice suddenly cut through the tension in the air and all else was momentarily forgotten. "It's easy too, now that we figured it out, so locking the other paths should be no problem. We just have to do a little wading through darkness unti—"

"We're leaving now," Riku had walked over to Sora as soon as he began talking and guided him to Naminé's side. He had cut off Sora's rambling as the rest of us gathered around the portal. "And Ansem, you're going to explain yourself once we get where we're going." Ansem raised an eyebrow at the commanding tone Riku used in speaking to him and I couldn't help but giggle a little at it, too. Riku didn't wait for a response but reached out to touch the light vanishing immediately as he did. We all followed suit and I know that at least I was as eager as Riku to get some answers about what was going on. Both Sora and Roxas just looked at each other in confusion as they reached out to touch the light. I'd forgotten that they both had been completely unaware of what had been going on around them while they had been focusing on closing the path they'd opened. Well they would get clued in as soon as we got to the other path site…or so I thought.

The first thing I noticed when the glare of energy faded from my vision was Riku go down. Sora and I both rushed to his side, Roxas standing at Sora's back as Naminé, Gran and Ansem took defensive positions scanning the room for danger. Riku was gasping for breath and shaking so hard his arms could barely support him as he clutched at the ground, eyes staring blindly down.

"Riku! What's wrong?!" I winced as a wave of panic ripped from Sora slamming into us all.

"Sora, you have to calm down," I told him watching the others stagger under the emotional assault. I fought against the imposed panic trying to get through to him. "Riku's fine, but if you don't control your panic you're gonna make it hard for any of us to protect you guys."

"What?" Sora asked looking up at me in confusion and I focused on him, locking eyes and placing a finger to his heart as I spoke one of my prepared spell words.

"Control." The spell worked instantly and I watched his eyes widen in wonder as he felt himself calm.

"We forgot to tell you before, but part of your power is that you effect the hearts of those who are around you." During the exchange, Riku seemed to have regained his balance and was now struggling to his feet. Sora Roxas and I all helped him up as I continued explaining. "Those of us with power have ways to block it to a certain extent, but it takes strength and concentration. If you start freaking out, it's gonna be a distraction to all of us so you have to try to keep it under control, alright?" Sora was staring at me in horror as my words sank in. I could imagine what was going through his head. One stray emotion from him could lead to the death of any one of us. I shot him an encouraging smile, then Ansem was there ushering us all to a corner of the fenced in alley and suddenly it wasn't Sora's panic alone that I was picking up.

"There's no time for this," he was saying, "We must leave at once!"

"Wha-wait! Where are we going?" Sora asked clutching at Riku and Roxas who were one either side of him. I found that I again had to focus my power into keeping him from affecting the rest of us too much. It was good that we would be leaving soon because I definitely wouldn't be able to keep up with him for long.

"You've met a man named Merlin, correct? His world is where we must go. Quickly, before it's too late," Ansem told him and we all held to each other waiting for the pull of power that would take us across the sea of darkness that separated all worlds to the place that Ansem specified.

"Too late for what?" Roxas asked quietly as Sora began pulling us out of Twilight Town. The world began to fade for a moment but suddenly stopped and I had to focus all of my will to fend off the wave of horror suddenly screaming from Sora.

"Heartlock!" I screamed activating the emergency shield I had placed around Sora's heart years before. It fed directly off of my energy and I knew that it wouldn't last long if Sora didn't calm down soon, but I had to do something while we figured out why he was freaking out. It took only a split second for me to realize the problem and I screamed as I saw the bloody blade tip protruding from Riku's chest. Then everything went crazy.

The blade tip vanished and Riku crumpled to his knees, staring down in shock at the hole in his chest as blood began running from his mouth. I couldn't stop staring at him as he fell to the ground light fading from his eyes, but then someone was screaming my name and I instinctively cried out the command for a shield just as the blade came swinging towards me this time. The shied kept me from being sliced in half, but with my power divided, containing Sora's emotions and trying to protect myself, I couldn't defend completely against the attack and found myself flying through the air and slamming into a wall.

I fell dazed to the ground watching the battles as it began. Gran rose from the ground, spinning once and hovering as her clothes exploded into a rain of sparkles revealing flowing periwinkle robes with rose lining. The clothes seemed to pulse with power as she positioned herself in front of Roxas and Sora who were both leaning over Riku. Naminé was standing in front of Gran across from Ansem and both were facing a shadow that began to take on distinct features even as I watched. Flowing silver hair, a strong, angular face, piercing green eyes, a single black feathered wing and an insanely long sword whose tip was already stained with blood. He looked like Riku…but not. And I realized that it was Riku's blood that stained the tip of his blade.

Rage cleared my mind as I struggled to sit up, but before I could make a move against this new threat, his focus fell on me and I felt everything fall away as darkness flooded my mind and body. It assaulted my heart, trying to consume me from the inside out, and I fought with all that I was to hold onto my self. Even as I did, I could feel my consciousness fading. All I could do was cry out with my heart as darkness swallowed me.

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Insane. In the blink of an eye, everything just went insane. Sora was shouting, Kairi was screaming, Riku was bleeding and just that fast, everything spiraled completely out of all of our control. Now I'll be honest, when Gran and my dad first dropped the news on us that everything in our lives had been a lie, both Sora and I had been completely freaked out. Shocked, hurt, confused, betrayed…we pretty much ran the emotional gambit. We understood that everything was going to change and that life would never be the same for us again. We even got that we should be pretty scared of the things that were out there coming after us, but nothing—nothing could have prepared us for the degree of terror we faced after crossing Naminé's portal.

I felt something inside of Sora break when Riku went down, and I too had a moment. Not exactly the same breaking since Riku didn't hold the same place in my heart as he did in Sora's, but as things began happening I definitely felt like I was about ready to have a nervous breakdown. He sat on the ground cradling Riku's head in his lap even as Kairi went flying across the room. She had almost died, too. At the last possible second, Naminé had noticed the flash of silver heading for Kairi and screamed her name in warning. Faster than she should have been able to, Kairi had somehow made a shield that kept her protected from the blade that would have cut clean through her.

I think that's when it really set in for me. The fact that Riku was on the ground bleeding to death, that Kairi had almost been cut in two, and that everyone else was taking up defensive positions in front of Sora and me, prepared to die…all for us, to protect us, and as the dark creature took form before us all, I knew that it was useless. There was so much power radiating from it…him. I mean, I barely understood what all these powers meant, but I understood that this was no normal threat. He was going to kill all of our guardians, and then he was going to take every drop of power in both Sora and me…and there was nothing any of us could do to stop him.

I was scared. I'd never been so scared in my life, and all I could do was fall to the ground shaking next to Sora who was still clutching Riku to himself.

"No," he was saying brokenly. "This can't be happening. It's not supposed to happen like this. We're all supposed to be safe, Roxas," he looked to me, eyes welling with tears of despair, and I knew what he was thinking. I was thinking it too. We had to do something. We couldn't let everyone we cared about die for us while we sat there doing nothing. If we truly were as powerful as they said we were supposed to be, then there had to be something that we could do. There had to be.

Both of our attention was pulled to away from each other as a wave of dark energy crashed around us and we saw Dad and Naminé attacking the man who looked a lot like an adult Riku, Naminé pulling papers from thin air and Dad using them somehow to cast his magic. Gran was hovering above us in shimmering robes projecting an energy shield around us.

"You boys need to go!" she called down to us as pillars of flame suddenly filled the alley pulling Naminé and my dad towards the blazing infernos even as they tried to get away from them. The one winged demon was coming towards us, now. I clenched at Sora's shoulder.

"We can't leave you guys here!" I screamed at her even as terror turned my insides to jelly.

"If you don't everything we've done for you will have meant nothing!" she screamed back. "GO!"

"We can't!" Sora told her. "We won't," and as our hearts spoke in desperate unison a familiar energy overcame us both. It was like that first time when we had fully come in contact with each other. Everything seemed to explode outward and suddenly, there was no more Sora or Roxas. We were a single mind, a single entity, and once again, We felt Our mind expand, and once again, We were everything.

Being of one mind, We looked down at Riku whose blood was slowly spreading across the dirt floor. It was not his time to die. This We knew. With a flash of something green, and fresh, and filled with the essence of life, his wound healed and he came gasping awake, shaking and pale. We turned Our eyes to Kairi. We could hear her heart calling out desperately as it struggled against the darkness that was so close to consuming her completely. We flooded her with light and her heart's cries quieted as she fell into a healing sleep.

The dark creature was just starting at Us, an odd smirk on his lips. We had raised a shield to keep him away from Us. A seed of knowledge somewhere in Our collective thoughts said that he could not hurt Us so long as he could not come close enough to touch Us. We would gather the others and leave. This dark thing would not be able to follow once We sealed the path from the other side. We just had to—

We were suddenly ripped apart somehow. It was like having an entire ocean of water come crashing over my head, and I was left shaken by the loss of that feeling of…completion. As my senses came back to me I felt a familiar pressure in my chest and looked up in horror to find…a nightmare; one far worse than anything that had happened in the previous minutes.

Sora was screaming, clutching at a blade pulsing with dark energy whose tip was buried in his heart. A swirling darkness surrounded the blade where it entered Sora's body, just as it had for Maleficent's hand, and I realized in horror that the blade was acting as a conduit for the bastard to drain our power away.

I watched helplessly as Sora's cries began to weaken, his hands falling lax to his sides and all light fading from his eyes. He was dying. The asshole was killing him! I remember screaming Sora's name as I made a useless lunge at the man but before I made it two steps, the growing pressure in my chest became a screaming agony that took me down. I knew what it meant and tears of more than just pain began running down my face as the realization slammed into me. Dad had told us that I wouldn't be affected by the draining spell until Sora had been completely drained, and if he was drained that meant… he was dead.

Dead. I knew that's what I would be soon, too. The pain washed everything else away. It was everything, but even through the pain, I could feel life slipping away from me. Everything that was me, everything that was Sora was being sucked into the dark creature whose blade was still stabbed through Sora's heart. All thoughts of the others who were with use faded from my mind; all thought of saving myself faded. Everything in me just seemed to begin to fade away…

And in an instant it was all rushing back in. I looked up through hazy eyes to see Gran engulfing the man in a cocoon of light, my dad clutching the blade, blood dripping from his clenched fists. It looked as if he had pulled the blade from Sora's chest with his bare hands. Already, I could feel the power that had been stolen away finding it's way back to us, and everything was starting to come back into focus. Riku had dragged himself to Sora's side, weakly shaking him, a look of desperate terror on his face. Naminé had moved to Kairi's side, singed and staggering, and was pulling her towards Sora and Riku. All I could do was stare dumbly as it all happened, extreme amounts of restraining energy screaming through the air as Gran and Dad both fought to keep the monster at bay.

"Roxas!" My eyes snapped immediately to the source of the voice calling my name. My dad was using his power to contain the dark energy that was angrily pulsing from the blade that had come so close to killing us all. I just stared at him, still completely panicked.

"Roxas! Get the others out of here! You're the only one who can reach Sora now!" He was shouting over the screaming energy ricocheting through the alley that was so familiar but now so foreign to me, but I couldn't understand what he was asking. I couldn't do what Sora could; I couldn't open the paths between worlds without him, and Sora…Sora was…Sora was…

Naminé was suddenly at my side clutching me in her arms and I could feel hot tears streaming down my face as my brain tried to make sense of everything. Sora was dead! I'd felt him die! What was my dad talking about? Without him, I was nothing; I could do nothing!

"C'mon Roxas," Naminé whispered to me. I looked up at her and saw that she was crying, too, a little shaky on her feet and a lot paler than she normally was under the dark smears of soot that marred her face. Her skin had an almost gray pallor to it. I realized slowly that I was being led to Riku, Kairi and Sora's side and something inside of me clenched painfully at seeing Sora's still form staring blankly out at me where he was slouched against the wall.

"He's not gone yet, Roxas!" Naminé told me through her tears. "You're still alive, so he'll come back to us, but you have to reach him now! Gran and Daddy are holding that thing off for us so that we can get you two to safety, but they won't last for long! He's too strong for us here, so we have to get to Merlin! You have to reach Sora and tell him to take us to Merlin!" I could only stare at her blankly, even as a sudden wave of dark energy slammed into us all and Gran went flying as her restraining spells were broken. I tried to watch to make sure she was okay, but I found my face redirected to look only at Naminé.

"ROXAS!" She shook me a little to get my full attention. "Talk to Sora. NOW, or we're all dead!" Her words finally started sinking in as a ball of dark energy suddenly came flying towards her head. It rebounded against a shield of the same dark energy and I looked up to see a very pale and shaking Riku holding up a hand, creating the shield.

"HURRY!" He screamed at me, and it was enough to help me finally get my ass into gear. I wasn't sure exactly what I was supposed to do, but I just did what was natural, reached out to grab Sora, closed my eyes and called out to him. I felt hands reach to touch some part of me as Riku and Naminé prepared for us all to be pulled from Twilight Town. I called out to Sora, begging him to take us to Merlin; to safety, but all I got was a tired, barely perceivable flicker of his awareness. He was so far away.

I begged him, reaching out, pulling him, offering what strength I could so that we could save our families, and as the spark grew, I felt the familiar sensation of shifting energy as he pulled us out of one world and into another. I snapped my eyes open in time to see Twilight Town blending into nothing but a blur of colors; watched as my usual hang out spot vanished before my eyes realizing too late that neither Gran, nor my dad were anywhere near us and hadn't even tried to be. There was nothing I could do. The colors were already reshaping into another place; a stranger's home, and even as my heart began pounding painfully in my chest, a stranger's hands took hold of my shoulders, frantically trying to get my attention.

"You must lock the path!" he told me, but I shook my head in protest. If we locked the path then Dad and Gran would be…they wouldn't be able to…

The hands on my shoulders loosened their grip as I tried my best to stay calm. I could feel myself shaking in reaction to everything that had just happened, and I just wanted things to start making sense again. I wanted my dad. I wanted my friends. I wanted Sora to wake up and show me he was ok, but I knew that all of my wanting was in vain. Things had changed now, and they would never be the same again.

Fingers brushed lightly over my head calling me from my thoughts and I looked up into a kindly old bespectacled face with eyes that shined with sorrow and compassion.

"Lock the path, lad," the old man told me in a paternal voice that reminded me too much of my father who was still trapped in Twilight Town with that…thing. My eyes began to tear up again. "If you don't, their sacrifice will have been in vain." I didn't know what to do. How could I just…leave them there; block their only means of escape? It would be like sealing their fate…like killing them myself.

I looked around me, hoping for support from someone familiar, some idea of what I should do, but I found that I was surrounded by unconscious bodies. Sora's head was in my lap, Riku draped over his legs. Naminé was clutching my forearm with one hand, and one of Kairi's hands in her other. One man had done this. One man and his limited energy. If we let him get his hands on the full power laying dormant inside of Sora and me, I could imagine that it really would mean the end of all things.

The true weight of the responsibility that had fallen upon our shoulders the moment Sora and I reconnected seemed to crash down on me in that moment, and in the wake of it's near suffocating intensity, I felt a frozen calm settle over me. Gran and Ansem had stayed behind to protect us because that was their duty as our guardians. Their only purpose in life was to make sure that the power held in our inexperienced hands did not fall to those who would abuse it, and I had to accept their sacrifice as a part of the path that we were now set upon.

Despite my eerie calm, it still felt like a giant stone fist was pounding on my chest as I nodded my acknowledgement to the old man. Shutting my eyes, I reached out to Sora and asked him to help me lock the path connecting us to Twilight Town.

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A/N:

ZOMG!!! That was really crappy…I mean I had planned for this to happen from the beginning, but still. I really kinda liked Gran and good ole AtW (Ansem the Wise) Hmmm…I might have them survive somehow…we'll see.

So…a few things about this part of the story:

I dropped a few clues earlier on and in this section hinting at Gran's true identity though I never went right out and said it. Anybody figure it out?

This turned out a lot bloodier than I had intended, but hey…it works, and it wasn't too bad I don't think.

The story really gets to get going now. The first tragedy has happened meaning that the gravity of their situation has been made clear so both Sora and Roxas will get to do a lot of growing up from this point on.

Next chap should be a bit sad, but fun. They start learning about magic, and as far as I'm concerned, that's always a good thing :D

Anyway, thanks for reading. Please drop a review if you like this story. It's a big help to keep me inspired and motivated. Oh, and the space between here and the end of the story is pretty open at this point, so if you have any ideas for stuff you'd wanna see happen, drop a line. I might include it.

Next Chapter: More familiar faces; we find out what was up with Riku; magic ahoy!