Cosmic Hearts
Chapter Nine
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts
But where do we go first? He could be anywhere. Do we just take a guess? Does it even matter? That man's not going to let Ciro go unless we give him what he wants. But how do you work a magic necklace? Magic. Is that it? Is this some magic power? Well of course it is. No other necklace can make you fly. At least none that I know of. Then again, I never knew about this one…
I wrapped my hand around the Starlite. I tended to do that when I was thinking.
But where would we even go?
However, at that moment, I wasn't making much progress.
I laid back on the roof, shielding my eyes from the sun with an arm. Yes, I was sitting on a roof- Kairi's roof. Why was I sitting on her roof? I had no idea. We'd agreed to meet back in Kairi's house to discuss our plan of departure. So while everyone else left to get ready or whatever, I decided to find a quiet place to think. Thus, the roof.
Why does this have to be so hard?
I hated having all these questions I couldn't answer. It felt like that was all I had really done this entire time: ask questions.
Well ya know what, it's time to get some answers.
I stood up, and hopped my way back down to the ground. I landed in front of the door just as it was opening. Kairi stepped out, looking surprised.
"Oh, hey, I was just coming to look for you. Where have you been?" she asked.
'On your roof."
Obviously she took this as a strange answer, and I laughed at the look on her face. "Do you know when Sora and Riku will be getting back?"
She shook her head. "No, but let's go back inside and wait for them. They should be back soon."
"Okay." I followed her inside, and sat on one of the couches in the living room. Kairi did the same. We talked for a while about random things, like what color we'd dye our hair if we could. Kairi said that she liked her hair just the way it was.
"Umm, to tell you the truth, I'd probably dye mine pink," was my answer.
She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then said, "I can't see it. I don't think you'd look right without white hair."
"Then I think I'll keep it this way," I told her with a smile.
Knock, knock.
Both of our heads turned to the front door. Kairi got up to answer it, and Sora and Riku strolled in.
"Well it's about time. What have you two been doing?" I asked them.
"Probably taking a nap," Kairi responded, sarcastically.
"Nuh uh! We got hungry, and went down to that diner," Sora shot back in a childish voice. Typical Sora.
I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. Now that you're here, we need to figure out how to get off this island. Any ideas?"
The two boys, along with Kairi, made their way to the couches, and appeared to be thinking. Sora was the first to say something. "Well there's always the Gummi Ship."
"The what?" I asked.
"It's what Donald, Goofy, and I used to travel between worlds. But wait, they took it back home with them."
"Which means that we have no way of using it," Riku finished for him.
"Great, so that idea's a bust…unless…do you know where they live?" I asked, sitting up straighter.
Sora nodded.
"Then maybe I can go get it, and bring it back so that we can all leave together." It was only after I said it that I realized how many flaws there were in that plan. When I saw Riku shake his head, I said,"Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. It's not a good idea, so just nevermind."
And then we went back to thinking…and thinking…and even more thinking…and after what seemed to be an eternity of thinking, Kairi spoke up.
"Luna, you can use the Starlite to fly."
"Yeah…" I didn't know where she was headed with this.
"Do you know if more than one can use it to do the same thing at the same time?"
Oh. "I don't think so, no."
"Can you try?"
I sighed. "When Ciro gave me this, he told me he wasn't going to be able to come with me. If he had been, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place."
"Maybe he just didn't know. All we can do is try."
I didn't answer that time.
"She's right. As we learned earlier, there's a lot you don't know about the Starlite. This could be one of those things. And the longer we take here, the shorter the amount of time we have to look for your brother. So just give her idea a chance," Riku suddenly said.
"Fine," I said quietly.
Once again, I took hold of the Starlite. Can you work on all of us? I silently asked it.
Unity.
I let it go, startled by the voice that had entered my head. I had forgotten all about that…
"What is it?" one of the others asked, probably to my seemingly random reaction. I ignored them, instead focusing on the Statlite again. What do you mean?
Unity.
The same answer. The same useless, one-worded answer. I fell back against the couch, not knowing what to do. It looked like it would be another dead end. As I stared at the ceiling, I said, "I asked, and all it would tell me is 'unity'."
"What does that mean?" Sora asked.
"To be one," Riku murmured in thought.
"One," I repeated after him.
"Well what does that have to do with anything? Luna, are you sure that's what it said?" Sora continued.
"Yeah, but I don't get it. How do you 'be one'?"
"Maybe it means you're supposed to become one," Riku suggested.
The image of a circle flashed through my mind, and in front of my eyes. For that moment, all I could see was a white background and a circle being drawn on it. "To become one," I heard myself say. It suddenly made sense- I knew what we were supposed to do. I sat back up quickly, and stared each one of my friends in the eye, the last of which was Riku. I reached an arm out to him, and said, "Take my hand."
He looked confused, but did what he was told, and took my hand in his. I smiled, then looked to Sora. "You too." I extended my other arm towards him, and he took that hand. The circle was almost complete. "Kairi." I glanced pointedly at Riku and Sora, took each boy's hand.
"What are we doing?" Kairi asked me.
"Uniting."
I concentrated on the Starlite, letting the energy fill me with its familiar warmth. This time I knew where it was I wanted to go, and wouldn't have any problem getting there. My skin began to glow, and I slowly rose into the air. But before I went any further, I stopped to ask the others a question. "You guys ready?"
The each nodded in response.
I raised one corner of my mouth, and said, "Then let's go."
I closed my eyes, and resumed my focus. I felt ghost like- transparent and light. Very light. And so did the three people I was carrying with me.
Seconds passed as I concentrated on moving upwards.
Faster…faster…come on, faster.
I involuntarily tightened my grip on Sora and Riku's hands. Frustration built up inside me, and just when I was about to let go, I felt someone squeeze my hand back. I looked at it, then to the person holding it, Riku. He was smiling. Not the sarcastic smirk he usually wore, but a confident, reassuring smile that told me I could do this.
Being the easily distracted person that I was, I almost made all of us fall by focusing on Riku instead of the Starlite. But I blinked, and switched back before that could happen.
I blocked out everything else around me, and concentrated as hard as I could on moving towards my destination. Our speed was finally picking up.
The sudden change in temperature made me realize that we weren't inside the house anymore, but I didn't dare open my eyes that time for fear of losing focus again. I wanted to wait just a little while longer to be sure that we were moving fast enough. I had people to protect from falling to their deaths.
"Luna!" a muffled voice called.
At least I think they called.
"Luna!" Again, I barely heard it, but I opened my eyes to see Kairi shouting- or atleast trying to- at me.
"What is it?" I asked her, as loudly as I could manage.
"Look!" She pointed down, and I looked in that direction. Her house, along with the rest of Destiny Islands, was disappearing more with every passing second. We had to be a few hundred feet into the air.
I looked back up her. "I know! Hold on tight, we'll be there soon!"
She didn't say anything else after that, nor did the rest of us.
The sky gradually started changing colors, getting darker the further up we went. Stars appeared soon afterwards, then the worlds. Thousands of stars, dozens of worlds, all with their own unique shape and colors.
I smiled. We're here.
We all came to a sudden halt that even I hadn't been expecting. I screamed as everyone crashed into me. Without giving my next action much thought, I let go of the two hands I had been holding and pushed them away from me. Then I gasped.
"Oh, well, I guess we can let go now," I said, which the others did.
"Wow," Kairi said in a mesmerized voice as she spun around in a little circle, looking at the infinite space.
"This sure brings back memories," Sora said in a similar tone.
I laughed a little until I saw that Riku had turned himself around in isolation. I floated over and put a hand on his shoulder. He flinched, and I quickly pulled away.
"Oh, sorry, I was just…are you okay?" I sort of stuttered.
"Yeah, I'm fine," He turned to face me, "But we should keep moving."
"Right." I was about to turn around too when I remembered something. "I have no idea where to go."
"Ask Sora. He's probably been to most of these places."
"That's…a good idea." Now seriously, why hadn't I thought of that?
He chuckled. "Come on, those two will wander off if we don't watch them."
I laughed again. This was the most I'd really ever talked to Riku just one-on-one. He wasn't as open or energetic as Sora or Kairi, and while I liked hanging out with both of them, sometimes it was nice to have a quiet conversation.
When we rounded everyone together, we started brainstorming…again. Well, Kairi, Riku, and I were anyway. Sora had figured out how to float around lying down, and it had taken a good ten minutes to get him to stop.
"Seriously, Sora, you these worlds better than any of us. Where do you think we should go?" I asked him when he finally settled down.
"You have to give me something to go on first. What do you want to do?"
Good question. What did I want to do? It would have been pointless to go looking for Ciro then. It wouldn't have gotten us anywhere. So…
"I need to unlock the Starlite's power before we do anything else." Not that I had figured out how to do that yet.
"Then how do you want to start?"
"I…don't know."
"Well what do you know so far?"
"Using this, all I can really do is fly…and swim."
"Then why don't we work on that? It might at least give us another idea later."
It sort of surprised me that Sora had come up with a plan that quickly. That usually wasn't his specialty. However, I decided against saying it out loud.
"But we still don't know where we're going," I pointed out instead.
"Actually, I know a place that would be perfect for learning to fly," Sora continued, smiling. Wow, he was really on a roll.
"Really? Where is it?"
He started looking in every possibly direction for this mystery place.
"Aha! There!" He pointed way off into the distance. What exactly he was pointing at, I wasn't sure.
I squinted. "Uh…"
"I'll show you. Follow me," he said, waving us after him.
"Okay."
Riku had to pull Kairi away from whatever it was she was staring at before we could leave though. She didn't say anything about it, but was strangely quiet the whole way to wherever it was Sora was taking us. I zoned out after about five minutes of silently wandering through space, which turned out to be extremely boring. Why couldn't somebody start a conversation? I inwardly sighed right before I bumped into the person in front of me.
"Gah!" I cried out, startled. I rubbed my nose, seeing that I had hit Sora, who was floating in place. We stopped? Why?
I leaned sideways to see around him, and immediately went wide-eyed. "Whoa."
Before us was a world that had appeared out of nowhere. Or that was how it seemed to me. Again, I hadn't been paying attention. It was a lot bigger than I remembered Destiny Islands looking.
"This is it," Sora said, putting his hands on his hips.
"Well what are we waiting for?" Kairi said, obviously excited. She had told me more than once that she wished she could have been with Sora while he was off saving the worlds. I had to say I was pretty excited too.
I hadn't thought about what I was doing when I took off for it. I still hadn't thought about it when I started flying faster. And by the time all four of us broke the clouds, falling at full speed, I figured it was time to start thinking.
Chapter Nine complete. Please review, and I'll try to have the next chapter out as soon as possible. Thank you for reading :)
