Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts, Hunchback of Notre Dame and Final Fantasy are not my IP.

* * *

Huit

* * *

"Die, traitor!"

He'd been out of it too long, Delita Hyral realized. A few days ago he could have beaten his attackers down in minutes, but now it seemed to him he had to work much harder for each stroke. He pivoted, taking his sword underneath the first soldier's wild slash and into his gut, only to feel it bounce off a thick plate he devoutly missed having. He parried the other one and leapt back, only to see a third man emerging from a lavatory spot the fight and draw his blade.

Maybe it was the blood loss, or the fact that he was now having to fight without armor and ensure he dodged every blow, but his movements felt sluggish and unnatural. If he didn't do something to even the odds soon, he might actually die here, at the hands of three average soldiers whose names he hadn't even bothered to learn while in the city guard.

Then someone helped him. Coated in the black of night, a misshapen mass of muscle fell upon the other two soldiers, punching one in the gut to pitch him over and grabbing the other with a brutish hay lift. Without looking up, Delita took the remaining guard in the back with his blade, creating a jagged line of white that burned as he fell. "So", he spoke conversationally, looking up at the hunchback as he plunged his sword into the last survivor with similar results. "What made you change your mind?"

"My friends", Quasimodo replied non-commitally, his larger eye looking almost sinister in the dark alleys of the city. "And I remembered something that can help us."

Delita glanced around the street. No one else seemed to be coming their way. The city almost felt too quiet, their little skirmish notwitstanding. He'd had a hundred soldiers under his command while serving Frollo, and had almost as many under Jaques du Salera. There should have been way more soldiers congregating at the entrance to the Court of Miracles, but the streets seemed deserted for now. Not even the fires pierced the gloom.

"All right, what is it?"

Drawing closer, the hunchback raised an oval-shaped stencil pattern on a string. It featured many colors but didn't seem to have anything approaching a clue. "It's a band."

"Esmerelda gave it to me when we first met", Quasimodo explained proudly. "I didn't figure it out until later, but she told me that 'when you wear this woven band, you hold the city in your hand'."

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, the ex-Captain stared back. "Yesss. So?"

"It's the city", the hunchback declared. "See, here's the river and all the bridges, here's the cathedral in the center, and-"

Curious, he looked closer. The thing looked far too symmetrical and homespun to be map, but then he wasn't a native of this World. Quasimodo was. "So, that red and white star symbol is...?"

"The entrance to the Court of Miracles", Quasi deduced. "Let's go!"

"In a moment", he told his malformed companion. "Go on. There's something I want to do first. Won't take long. Go."

A bit confused, but focused on his goal, Quasimodo gestured for the route he was taking and ran off. For once, Delita felt bad about using the kid in such a way, but then he hadn't asked to be followed by him. He was a strange one, alright. A malformed visage that would have had him labelled a demon in Ivalice coupled with the emotional level of a child. Not stupid, but uncomplicated, and utterly smitten with the girl Esmerelda. Other people might take advantage of him simply by accident. Either way, he was still a citizen of Notre Dame, and apprenticed under a Minister of the church to boot. Seeing what he was going to do now would destroy whatever shred of an alliance they might have.

Quasimodo had flung one of their foes out of reach, but the other two remained on the cobblestones where they had fallen. In a few more minutes they'd both expire. The burning white cuts he'd inflicted would become nothing more than ordinary slash wounds, leaving no traces of the very special properties of his sword. A few minutes they would not get, as he raised the blade to the stars and concentrated, gripping it tight to activate its special power.

The white cuts then exploded into flames, burning both bodies out from the inside in clouds of unnaturally dark smoke that funneled towards the guiding spire of his blade. When it cleared, two short scurrying creatures with glowing white eyes and long antennae were left behind, their uniform texture of rippling darkness providing good camoflage for this time of night.

Delita, however, was disappointed. All that for only two NeoShadows; not even Soldiers, or any Nobodies at all. "Weakasses", he scoffed at the two small Heartless awaiting orders before him. "Fine. I guess you'll have to do. Go find Minister Claude Frollo. His heart is your meal."

The Heartless seemed confused for a while, but then caught on and melted into their puddle forms, obeying. With any luck, they'd distract Frollo at a crucial moment. All the same, he'd expected a bit more power from folks who'd nearly beaten him. Things were getting cagey. For now, he'd have to keep a low profile, following after Quasimodo in hopes that his 'map' theory was right.

When this was over, however, he'd definitely have to talk to Maleficent about upping the dark power of the blade somehow.

* * *

The Grand Gate was an imposing sight. It had started life as a simple sewer grate, but over time the gypsy underground had reinforced it and placed all manner of protective measures upon its brick archway, ranging from a blood-red powder that was supposed to repel evil beings to several scraps of paper bearing arcane lettering of ancient tongues. With every bar inscribed with similar markings, Sora could tell by looking upon the massive rolling stone door at the back of the Court of Miracles that this was meant to keep something in, not out.

"We call it Tonnesectere", one of Clopin's bearded lieutenants explained to him bluntly, catching up at the gate and unwilling to let him pass. "A giant insect creature. When it appeared some years back, we could not allow it to destroy our sanctuary, and so master Clopin exercised all of his power to seal it further down in the darkest levels of the catacombs, behind the Gate. Sometimes, late at night, the children can still hear its angry roars, echoing through the deepest depths of these catacombs like thunder... T'would be suicide for you to go, monsieur."

"It's calling to me", Sora told him, explaining why he'd woken up from a perfectly nice nap. Though no one saw the sun down here, there was a generally agreed-upon time when the majority of the Court's citizens went to bed. Esmerelda and Clopin, both tired and confused from the ritual, had called it a 'day' already. Sora, on the other hand, could not bring himself to rest when a strange presence intruded on his mind in this way. The disturbing, ethereal dreams it had woken him with reminded him of the bizarre one he'd had before first encountering the Heartless, and not in a good way.

"Clopin says you are very strong fighter, boy", the gypsy acknowledged him, tucking his chestnut beard back into long, flowy robes that obscured everything but his face. "But even you cannot hope to stand up to such an abomination. We of the Court have sworn to keep it locked down here in the dark until it is gone. Just one more reason why it is imperative that the church never find this place."

Looking back at the Grand Gate as if expecting to see some sign of the beast locked within, Sora frowned at the man's caution. "It's really that bad?"

The gruff man's eyes tightened into specks, his dark skin tightening with them. "Worse. It reproduces, creating dark creatures subservient to it that feed upon humans, transform them into their own kind in turn. It is a nightmare straight from the Rapture, my boy. We take no chances."

Even he could easily recognize that particular attribute, but Sora still could not understand why a Heartless of all things would be telepathically calling out to him, a Keyblade master. The mere fact that it had done so made him consider not going, fearful of a trap, but his instincts said just the opposite. If this Tonnsectere Heartless really was as bad as everyone said, he owed it to them to take his best shot at destroying it. It couldn't possibly be bigger than the Groundshaker.

Besides, he mused onward, I could at least accomplish something important in this World before I leave. The fact that he'd been chasing down a person who'd been turned into a Nobody more than three years ago still rankled him, as did the fact that he'd been led to believe such a cruel person as Larxene of Organization XIII would ever help him. If ever they met again, he was going to have a long talk with the 'Keyblade Knights' who had gotten him into all this.

"I don't like to brag, mister", he tried as the gypsy beckoned him towards his tent for a warm cup of tea. "But that thing sounds an awful lot like a Heartless, and I've destroyed enough of those things that I'm sure I can take whatever this insect dishes out."

The man's eyebrows arched in reproach, the very picture of the wise old man disappointed by the blind arrogance of youth. At once Sora felt as though he were imposing on his hosts. "I tell you what", he managed, wrapping one bandaged arm around the boy's shoulder. "If you can best master Clopin, we'll let you give it a try. For all his skill he could not defeat it, and opening the Grand Gate's protection for even a second to let you pass through into the underlevels is a risk."

"Okay", he agreed. "But I'm not so good at fighting my friends."

The old man chuckled warmly. "Who is? That's why they're your friends."

Clopin was already up by the time they finished dinner together, but Sora banished all ideas of challenging him after seeing the melancholy expression on the jester's face. While garbed in the mask and riotous colors he usualy wore in the city, the eternally-joking clown was nowhere to be seen upon his face as he waited at a table, patting a chair expectantly while looking directly at Sora with maudlin eyes. Had he been crying?

"Monsieur Sora", Clopin spoke absently, tinkering with his drink. "I see Lamperouge has been showing you the Grand Gate."

"He said if I could beat you, he would let me through", Sora explained, not wanting to beat around the bush this time of night. "Not yet, though."

Tilting his marine blue face mask, Clopin took a deep sip. "Non. Trouble's on the horizon, Clopin felt it. Now is not the time to be arguing who is better. Perhaps a different form of competition?"

Looking into his cup, Sora made a show of mulling it over, knowing full well that the gypsy leader was simply joking around, even amidst this most serious of times. "I'm too young for a drinking contest. How about a footrace?"

Clopin drummed his feet on the floor rapidly and smiled. "Perhaps later. Monsieur Sora... Clopin has been thinking about what you have said about the Nobodies and the Heartless, and how they are created. You say this Larxene woman you so dislike was nearly identical to my Relena?"

Knowing that he'd greatly offended his host the first time he'd lost control, Sora simply nodded calmly- the tea helped, and whatever Clopin was drinking seemed to make him less prone to outbursts or turning everything into a joke. He was even referring to himself as 'me', something he almost never did. "Yes. Almost the exact same. I don't like telling you this Clopin, but she was... Well, evil. Even more so than a lot of the other members of the Organization. Larxene was the cruelest woman I've ever met. Is that okay?"

"Okay?", Clopin asked him aloud, managing to sound incredulous even while deep in thought, or drunk. "Okay? Au contraire, it actually makes things a great deal easier for Clopin to bear if you are correct."

"What do you mean?" Then, when Clopin had drifted too deeply into musings to pay him attention, he carefully locked eyes with the raven-haired jester. "I want to know the truth, Clopin. I promise I'll behave this time."

The clown turned out two of his pockets and shrugged as if expecting to find more of the gypsy 'memory-powder' in there. "Clopin cannot be sure", he answered, suddenly dead-serious. "But he knows what it looks like. Trouble executed Lady Relena in the square that day, burning her at the stake. There was no sign of a body, or even bones when the fires went out. And then, not a day later, Mademoiselle Relena returns from the dead to attack the Palace of Justice, suddenly possessing more power than her apprentice ever knew her to have. Too, she had never before laughed while killing someone."

Sora strove to stay focused, going over each clue as Clopin presented it. He took a moment to realize that 'her apprentice' was Clopin talking about himself in the third person again. "You think the fires turned her into a Nobody? Larxene attacked the Palace of Justice three years ago?"

"C'nes pas possible?", Clopin shot back expectantly. "If your theory on the darkness of the heart is correct, monsieur Sora, then it is possible Lady Relena's heart was consumed with darkness instead of the fire. Too, it was only a week after the attack on the Palace that we first encountered le Tonnesectere."

"Right", Sora concluded. This was starting to make some sense at last. "Whenever a Nobody is created, then a Heartless is too, although sometimes you just get a Heartless. But why? Lady Relena didn't have an evil heart, did she?"

"Never", Clopin assured him. "But knowing your own inevitable death can do terrible things to a person's heart, monsieur Sora. Particularly when it is visited out of fear and prejudice." Glancing over at the tent when Esmerelda was still sleeping soundly, he gave a nod of concern towards her. "Lady Relena despised Trouble just as much as Lady Esmerelda, and God knows Clopin fears every day that the same may happen to her."

"I see", Sora sank back in his chair, inevitably travelling over the grim words of another dark being he was actually glad had been destroyed: A heart is born from hatred and suffering. Darkness sprouts with it, it grows, consumes it. Such is its nature! In the End, all hearts return to the darkness whence they came.

Sora shivered. He wasn't nearly so optimistic about mortality as he had been back when he'd seen his first Heartless rise out of the Destiny Island sands. Over two years of world-hopping he had matured, faced the very real possibility of violent death many times, and he had mused over the concept more than once.

But never once had he considered that facing an unavoidable death would turn his own heart to rage and despair, consuming it until he was nothing but another spawn of the darkness, only ever able to feel lingering hatred towards his killer. Was that what was going to happen when his luck finally ran out? Were all beings condemned to that fate as they were all condemned to an eventual death?

In the End, every light must fade. Every heart return to darkness.

"No!", he sat up over the table abruptly, drawing a dozen gypsy eyes to his outburst. "No. I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now. There had to be something more to her transformation here, some clue that we're missing. People don't just turn into a Heartless because they died. If that was the case, the Heartless would be even more numerous than they were when I first fought them."

"I trust your words", Clopin concurred, recognizing the Keyblade master's argument being both passionate and unusually logical for him. "You are our highest authority on this matter. Regardless of what actually happened, everyone in Notre Dame took the Lady Relena's attack on the Palace of Justice as a sign that Trouble and the Order of Rheims were correct in their assessment of our people. That deep down inside, we were all devils and killers just waiting to be unleashed, forever accursed by God for our independence. There are few people who are willing to help us these days, monsieur Sora. Very, very few."

"To say nothing of the blow your own heart must have felt", Sora reminded him gently, refusing to part eyes. "Everyone here knows that you two were in love with each other before she was burned. You were her apprentice, weren't you? Then, after she was burned, it looked like she'd become evil, didn't it?"

Clopin had no masks left in him now, only a gaping hole in his heart that he always kept under alternating layers of good cheer and sarcasm, never healing, and never forgotten. "Everyone said she was a witch, a sinner, a monster", he spat out, staring hard into his empty mug for empty seconds and letting tears fall into it. "And she proved them right."

Just like that, his first layer was back up. He crossed himself, stood and clapped an arm to Sora's shoulder. "They said it drove me mad. Mad! But everyone knows Clopin is not mad, isn't that right monsieur purple frog?"

Maybe just a little bit 'mad', Sora acknowledged as he staged-smiled and waved to the crowd Clopin was holding him up before. But so what? He's still a great leader to his people, and still my friend. And he's had to suffer with that horrible guilt and doubt for far too long before learning the truth.

Any further demonstrations of how not-mad the jester was were interrupted however, by a sudden ringing noise. While Sora curiously peeked into Clopin's tent to see several of the wire-mounted silver bells ringing, their owner did not even wait that long before rallying several of his people to him. "Another time, mon ami", he called to Sora while donning a more serious-looking robe and heading for the main exit. "It's just as Clopin saw. The spy who will bring disaster to us draws near."

"A spy?", Sora echoed back from the tent, surprised. "How did they know?"

The gypsy leader shrugged, face darkened with the duty he now had to perform. "All Clopin knows is, that this spy will soon learn the other reason why we call this place the Court of Miracles. See you soon."

Sora shuddered for the spy.

* * *

"We're being followed", Delita Hyral noted, striding through another green basin of God-knew-what in liquid form, already feeling oppressed by the gloom of this reeking cross between catacombs and sewers that Quasimodo believed led to the Court of Miracles. "You know that, right?''

"I do", Quasimodo shot back, careful not to stop and give away that fact. Though they were allies for now, the hunchback wasn't forgetting the ex-Captain's past actions anytime soon. The possibility of betrayal must have occurred to even his primitive mind, hence how they'd been sniping at each other the whole way in. "Nobodies. What do you suggest we do about them?"

Delita scoffed. "What else? Destroy them. You can fight, right?"

"I don't know how many of them there are. If Sora or Ramza were here we'd be okay, but..."

There was that 'Sora' kid again. Whatever else he'd been doing around here while Notre Dame burned, he'd certainly made an impression on the hunchback. Who was he, anyway? Another interworld traveller? Whatever the case, if Quasimodo was to be believed he was the greatest fighter this World had ever seen, able to blend both swordsmanship and magicks into an unstoppable offense. He vowed to make sure to at least see this kid in action once before he finished up here. Damaged as he felt sometimes, there was still room in his heart to appreciate a veteran warrior practicing the art of organized death that was a fact of life in his World.

"It's either that or let them into the Court of Miracles. I hope I don't have to tell you that they're working for Frollo."

"It crossed my mind." All at once, the hunchback halted in the middle of another pool of ankle-deep sewage. "I guess you're right. There's really no way out but to fight. On three."

He smirked, pausing in the spot as Quasimodo with his eyes closed. "Get the ones with the masks first. They can revive the others."

They turned, drawing sword and fist without even giving Quasi time to ask how he knew that. A gliding Dusk took the initiative and was cut down for its trouble. On the left, a Priest and a Sorcerer Nobody emerged from the water, somehow not drenched in the scum they'd been hiding beneath. The hunchback wasted no time in hammering the former into a moldy brick wall, taking it out with a second strike to the face.

Impressed, Delita shifted to dodge a stream of tiny magic cubes and saw two more Dusks zigzagging their way through the tunnel. While the hunchback was a slow fighter and a bulky target, every blow he landed that didn't finish a foe off sent them flying, stunned enough by the power so that one could strike the coup de grace without trouble. Not wanting to be upstaged, he bisected the Sorcerer's defensive barrier, having to slash it several more times to finish the job.

Seveal more white husks popped up and several more fell. Thankfully this was only a recon force, not meant to kill them, for it was not long before both the fighter from Ivalice and Notre Dame felt the accumulation of their injuries slowing them down to a crawl. Breathlessly punching out the last Dusk, Quasi sank down close to the muck and put out one hand to hold himself up. "Not fun."

"For once we agree", the ex-Captain gasped, leaning against a wall. "But then, I've never enjoyed killing as much as some in my land. If these things can be considered to be 'alive'."

"Your land", the hunchback echoed, leaving Delita to curse his carelessness. Fortunately, the kid didn't seem to care. "What's it like in your World, anyway? Is it nice?"

He couldn't help a mirthless chuckle at that. "There are green hills and rivers, grasslands as far as the eye can see... But I would never call it 'nice'."

"Why not?"

Where to begin? "My land is a place of anarchy and turmoil, Quasimodo. It is a place rigidly divided between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'. The sharpest swords and the devious minds rule the land while the common folk rot in the gutters. By comparison, your Notre Dame is a major improvement. The only city in my land that even comes close to its grandeur is Lesalia, the capital." He paused. "Though admittedly no one ever burned Lesalia down to catch one person."

"I'd like to see it someday", the hunchback remarked as if Delita had been describing paradise.

His eyes narrowed. "Why? So you can watch the knights killing each other over nothing? The aristocrats bickering in their gilded palaces? The peasant children starving in their broken-down slums?!"

"So I can experience it", Quasi finished. "There is an old saying in the church that goes: 'the grass is always greener on the other side'. If it's so bad, why didn't you try to improve things?"

Ah. So the gypsy girl had been talking to him about their little encounter in the cathedral. As entertaining as this was, they were getting a little too close to the real reason for his mission here. "I tried to improve things. It was... An enlightening experience."

It seemed that was that. He wasn't going to risk coming any closer to the truth. They had both regained enough strength to keep going, and so the monster and man moved onwards down the tunnels. Piles of skulls decorated various places now, and Quasimodo recoiled from their touch.

Delita stopped again. Something wasn't right here. "We're being fol-"

Rough ropes siezed their necks and mouths before he could finish, pressing them against a wall and threatening to black him out from the lack of oxygen. As he'd almost caught onto in time, the gypsy guards had been disguising themselves as skeletons with matte black suits and white body paint, hanging motionless until they'd already passed by. There were at least four of them there, and in their current state Delita dreaded having to fight even one. Two of them held Quasi and Delita tight, while the other two removed their skull masks. One of these did a double take.

"Quasimodo?", he asked incredulously. "Is that really Quasimodo? Et tu? Et TU? Oh non. Ooh-non-non-non-non-non...", here he banged his head against the dirty wall melodramatically, black hair hanging down as he pretended to cry. "Leading a spy right into our hallowed home... Lady Esmerelda will be crushed. She liked you, you know. How terrible of you to turn on us like this."

Trust them to get exactly the wrong idea. "We're not spies!", Delita protested, forcing himself free of the rope and gag for a split second. "We're here to-"

"DON'T interrupt me!", the raven-haired gypsy cut in, obviously the leader of the group. As if to prove that beyond all doubt, he snapped his gloved fingers and flashed a new gag into place on Delita's mouth with an explosion of green powder. This one was sticky, humiliating, and could not be removed no matter how the young Ivalician worked his jaw. Never seen that before. Maybe Frollo was right to fear them, or at least their leaders.

"A moment, mes amis", the leader finished solemnly, letting his burly men escort their captives deeper still into the tunnels beneath the city. "I simply must compose some way of delivering the bad noose to Lady Esmerelda tonight."

* * *

They didn't have to wait long. Quick as clockwork, the men shackled Delita and Quasimodo down in a pair of wooden stocks, draping ropes around both their necks, a little one and an extra-large they had to bring in for the hunchback's neck. The whole of shelter-turned-town had turned out for this, either out of boredom or a real desire to see some retaliation against the people who had forced them underground. For a moment they both agreed it a silver lining that none of the angry outcasts had tomatoes.

All the same, things were grim. The gypsy leader was dressed in a judge's robes, but no one doubted it was nothing but a 'show' trial, simply more of their leader's eccentricities. If Lady Relena had still been in charge, they might have skipped the theatrics altogether and gone straight to the finale.

"And soooooo", the masked leader was winding up his diatribe, "we have a double-header here for your amusement today, ladies and gentlemen and... Miscellaneous! A couple of Frollo's spies! And not just any spies; his Captain of the Guard, and his loyal, bellringing, hench-back!"

"Wait!", Quasi called out in desperation. "I need to see Esmerelda! Please, just let me talk to her!"

For once, the gypsy looked quite sad, kneeling close to Quasi's ears, enough so Delita could hear him too even if he could not talk. "And let you break her heart, dear boy? She has had more than enough of that, I assure you. Perhaps you should have been more careful in choosing your loyalties. Next time, maybe." Shifting back into showman mode with a wink, the leader looked like he was going to pull the skull-handled lever just off to the right of the stocks, but instead brought around one of the sock puppets he normally used in children's pantomime. Its presence down here seemed like a violation, somehow. "Now then, on with the sent-"

"Wait, OBJECTION!", a voice thundered from somewhere. Both the condemned took a moment to realize that their 'judge' had produced the voice, and he now answered his own hand puppet with mock-rage as they went back and forth:

"Overruled!"

"Hold it!"

"Enough!"

"Objection!"

"QUIET!"

"...Dang."

Please. Esmerelda. Esmerelda. Please let me see her, just one last time... My death is nothing if I can just save her...!

This song and dance would be slightly funny if it didn't involve my death. Oh, God. Oh God no. I can't die yet... No... Not until... All the Worlds are united... No no no no...!

"We find you totally innocent", the leader sang slowly as if their deaths were a mere game, leaving them to their seperate trains of thought. "Which is the worst crime of all... So you're going to HANG!"

"Quasimodo?"

Saved by a single word, the hunchback opened his eyes. There she was, standing in the square as if disbelieving what she was seeing. Thankfully, she snapped out of that fast enough: "What the hell are you doing, Clopin?! Release him at once!"

"Hm. The Lady makes a compelling argument", their would-be executioner mused aloud, cradling his goatee as if considering, and turning to his sock puppet companion for answers. "The verdict?" Without any visible movement, the sock fell from his hand to the floor. He peered down, looking surprised. "Oh. Case dismissed, then."

From life to death and back again in a flick of the wrist, both the condemned stood up from their stocks with gratitude in their eyes. Quasimodo ran blissfully into the arms of the girl he'd come all this way to save, and Sora emerged from a tent to join the congregating crowd near Delita. "I hope you're not expecting me to hug you", he cracked at the ex-Captain. "How did you ever get down here?"

Sizing up the increasingly-renowned Keyblade master, Delita grimaced, not sure how friendly he wanted to get with the kid or the gypsy leader who had nearly taken his life. "Through a great deal of stank water. They must have bribed an architect to build this place underneath the old graveyards, hooked it up to the sewers."

"And we are all the thinner for it", Clopin commented dryly, plopping his hat onto the ex-Captain's brown hair and tussling it up like they were lost brothers instead of enemies. "Apologizes, mes amis. But you know what they say about being too careful."

"You're forgiven", he decided after a deliberate pause. "But don't thank me. Thank Quasimodo. If he hadn't figured out that woven band out, we never would have been able to find you."

"NOR WOULD I!"

Everyone in the Court turned to the source of the booming voice. Djali hid under his owner's tunic. Esmerelda and Quasimodo drew back in fear and shock. Clopin gasped in the opposite direction. Delita and Sora scowled and drew their weapons. At least two dozen gypsies panicked and ran.

For across the way near the entrace, the Court's gypsy guards lay facedown on the floor. Claude Frollo stood silhouetted against the dark entryway, arms folded, with hundreds of armed soldiers spilling in behind him.

"Stand down!"

Sora turned to look at Delita in shock, but the ex-Captain kept his hardened gaze on the advancing army as he grudgingly sheathed his dark sword. "Too many to fight. They've won this round."

He spoke the truth, Sora realized. Even if he was willing to go all-out against human opponents without worrying about their safety- which he wasn't- they would eventually get overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Even with a miracle, Frollo could still call in his Nobodies. Far more reluctantly than Delita, he willed the Keyblade away, causing it to disappear.

Frollo, in the meantime, was approaching Quasimodo with a genuine smile, though not a comforting one. "Ah, Quasimodo. I always knew you'd someday prove your usefulness to me, but in this case you've outdone yourself."

"What do you mean?", Sora saw Esmerelda shout, stricken eyes refusing to accept what was happening. Twenty years of secrecy, all undone in an instant, everyone she knew bound in shackles.

Frollo turned to her now, eager to confess the truth. "Why, he led me right to you, my dear. There are more undesirables down here than the city has dogs."

"Damn you...", Esmerelda bit out, nearly spasming with fury so it took three soldiers to hold her down. "Damn you...!"

With all resistance pacified, the Minister went further down the line of captives, some held by soldiers and others simply acknowledging there was no way out of this. Leering, still unable to contain his satisfaction, he leaned over each one in turn, doing his best to leave any thought of resistance or defiance in ruins. "Ah, this would be the so-called 'Keyblade Master' Sora, would it not? Your skills are already well known by my men. Every scarred, injured one of them."

"Pleased to make your acquintance, ma'am. How's Brother Jehan?", he replied, not looking up. Not perfect, but it was the best rebuke he could think of on short notice, and his hosts had taught him the best way to insult the Minister was to use his brother's name.

Still ecstatic, Frollo didn't flinch. "And such cheek. You have talent, boy. A shame you elected to waste it on the wrong side." On that note, Frollo strode over to Delita, pressing hard on his wound with one palm. "Speaking of wrong sides, if it isn't Captain Hyral, back from the dead! Another 'miracle', I presume. We shall remedy that."

"The dead can't return from the world beyond this one, minister", Delita shot back with venom. "A fact you'll deplore when I am finished with you."

Now it was the ringleader's turn. Frollo looked up and down the man's multicolored outfit, wincing before looking him straight in the eye. "Que-tu... Clopin?"

Clopin waited several seconds, all the while looking as pleased as if he'd just had a tasty meal before speaking a rapid-fire rant of at least a dozen foreign words Sora could not understand one syllable of. It must have been something truly obscene however, because Frollo struck the jester in the face with all his might afterwards, a hammer blow leaving him unconscious for the soldiers to tie up.

" 'Legion are the aspects of evil'... All of Notre Dame's enemies gathered in a single place", the Minister finally commented to himself in adulation, loud enough for everyone to hear. "...All of them, except Ramza the Heretic. But none of you need worry; he'll be joining us for the bonfire in the square tomorrow... Lock them up."

Everyone had various degrees of despair on their face as the soldiers dragged them off, but it was Quasimodo who Sora felt the worst for, even if none of the soldiers were touching him yet. More than anger, more than fear of execution, his face was scrunched into an expression of complete surrender as he sank to his knees with the horror of what he'd done. Against all advice against it, he'd traveled to the Court of Miracles, to the last sanctuary of gypsies, of all who opposed the destruction of their city, of the woman he loved.

Now, he'd destroyed it.

* * *

In all your fantasies

You always knew

That man and mystery

We're both in you

And in this labyrinth

Where night is blind

* * *

M: A cautionary tale I'll never forget for the rest of my days... Beware of free antivirus programs, no matter how professional they look!

That's right, my computer is currently fighting a nasty bit of rogue spyware called Antivir 2010, which fooled me just long enough to implant itself. I have multiple antivirus programs working on it but the prognosis is grim, and thus I may be a while in making my next update. In any case, hope you liked this chapter.