Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, its characters or storyline. This story is mine, as are McCallister and the Fractured Circle. This chapter serves as part one of the two part final battle. As always, constructive criticism is welcome!
..:-X-:..
Chapter Ten: Ally
The island looked disturbingly normal as Tabaeus stepped off the boat with Sora. The wind abruptly faded away as soon as she had summoned it…She had summoned wind…and not like the Aero Spell…It was like creating something out of nothing…Twisting logic and playing with this…reality.
The idea of that kind of power was terrifying…and liberating. And it only reinforced her certainty that Kairi had been right…This world wasn't real…None of it was…And they had to wake up. But there would be no convincing Sora…He would go his own way no matter what she or anyone else told him.
So she would play along.
He marched up the beach like a predator stalking his prey. She followed, glancing around as though the leader of the Fractured Circle, the shapeshifter, would jump out and yell 'Surprise!'. As he did no such thing, she watched Sora stride up the wooden walkway toward the waterfall and thorn-ridden cave.
Well, it had been a thorn-ridden cave…Now she could see that the vines had been stripped away, hastily, so that someone could get inside. That…that evil was here…not fifty feet from where they were. And Sora was closing that gap quickly.
Tabaeus swallowed any words of warning. She had long realized that her voice was mute to him, but she kept her eyes sharp as Sora ducked into the cavern's entryway. She hesitated and then stepped after him. A few rocks were dislodged as they brushed against the narrow walls of the entrance. They clattered to the floor and echoed like gunshots in the cramped tunnel.
As they shuffled toward the Secret Place, Tabaeus felt a chill lift the hairs on the back of her neck. It was too dark to properly see, but if there had been light, she wondered if she would have been able to see her breath…Islands were not this cold, especially not tropical ones. Someone was tampering with reality…bending logic…to what end? To frighten them? To put them on edge?
If so, this shapeshifter wasn't as intelligent as the Alliance believed.
Wait…shapeshifting…
Before she could finish her thought, Sora stepped out into the expansion of the cave and she followed, glimpsing the Secret Place for the first time. Chalk drawings scraped across every surface. Few columns of light entering from holes and gaps between the rocks and dirt in the ceiling. Then…against the far wall, was a single, solitary door, with no hinges nor knob…
But standing in front of the door, back to them, hands on his hips, was a man. Tabaeus didn't recognize him immediately, but the way Sora's fists clenched at his sides and his shoulders lifted was indication enough. Neither of them said anything, but they had been noisy enough that there was no way the man didn't know they were there.
"I was starting to think that you weren't going to show." He said softly, turning slowly to face them.
Sora remained silent, and Tabaeus squinted in the semi-darkness. The man had shifted his shape again, taking the form of a young man, a little older than herself or Sora, and with shoulder length silver hair and the most piercing blue eyes she had ever seen.
There were many different shades of blue, she knew. Sora's were a harsh, electric blue, like a bolt of lightning. Major General Leonhart's were a steel gray-blue, like the sea after a storm. Cloud Strife, what little Tabaeus had spent around him before he was killed, had had unnaturally blue eyes, like a cat. These eyes looking at them now were the kind of crystalline blue of a rising tide.
The leader of the Fractured Circle had morphed himself in the guise of Sora and Kairi's friend Riku. Gooseflesh broke across her arms, but she just glared across the cave.
"Ah, Private McCallister," He spoke softly, with a slight growl, "Nice of you to join us."
Fury was rolling off Sora's body in waves, and Tabaeus wondered if the anger had melted his jaws shut, rendering him mute. The imposter clasped his hands behind his back as he faced them, smiling wryly. He seemed to look at her for a long moment, as though something was off about her.
Maybe she was 'off'…She narrowed her eyes at him.
"I've been waiting for this." Sora's voice was low, dangerously soft.
"Yes." He replied. "I know you have."
A few loose rocks tumbled from the walls, and Tabaeus felt uneasy. It was like there were eyes lurking against the rocks, watching their every move.
"Then you know why I'm here." Sora took a slow step toward the right.
The man took a mimicking step to the left. "No, I don't. What would be the fun in knowing?"
Sora took another step, and the shapeshifter mimicked. Tabaeus remained where she was.
"I've come here to kill you. Slowly." Sora hissed.
"Is that so?" The imposter canted his head. "Could you do that?"
"I've killed people before…You know that."
"Ah, but you've killed faceless people that you didn't know…And with a Keyblade to boot." He remarked. "You think you could cut up this body?" He gestured to his borrowed figure.
Sora gritted his teeth and took another step, slightly closer.
"And no Keyblade to help you." The man taunted.
"I don't need a Keyblade to kill you…you sniveling little rat." Sora seethed.
The man chuckled and rolled his neck. As he moved, his form started to change. Tabaeus gawked as his skin, hair, and shape changed. His body seemed to shrink by at least a foot and he almost started to look like—
"You always were a little murderer deep down, Sora." The shapeshifter spoke with Kairi's lips, hands over delicate hipbones as he—she—smiled. "But by that pained look on your face, I see this test hasn't completely rid you of a soul."
Tabaeus saw the shapeshifter reach behind his—her—back, and there appeared a long, slender machete. The weapon looked strange and alien in Kairi's gentle hands. Sora looked torn, but still murderous.
"But where's your bravado now?" He—she—taunted. "Surely a big man such as yourself couldn't be derailed by a set of baby blues?"
"You're a coward, hiding behind a mask." Sora snapped. "Fight me like a man. You deserve to die."
Tabaeus saw a slight flicker of something in the shapeshifter's eyes, but it was gone just as quickly as it came, and then he—she—whatever—was transforming again. Kairi's visage disappeared and before Tabaeus could register how the imposter managed to bend the reality around him to change like that, he finished morphing and stood to the left of the door, a mirror image of Sora.
"A man like this?" He teased, a dark smile on his face.
But Sora was past words.
Faster than Tabaeus had ever seen a man move, he launched himself at the shapeshifter, like his evil twin. He tackled the man around the torso and they slammed into the ground. The machete had disappeared and all they had were their fists…but then again, that wasn't true, because this villain knew about this…this simulation world that they were trapped in, and he could bend it to his will. A sword, a gun, a grenade launcher…and it would be over in seconds.
Feeling completely useless standing against the wall, Tabaeus watched them wrestle on the ground. Sora was throwing punches, kicking and tearing and biting at every part of the imposter that he could reach. In a purely physical way, he was fighting himself.
If she believed in philosophical horse shit, she might have laughed at the irony of the sight.
But the shapeshifter was scrappy, and he punched, kicked, and tore for every blow that Sora landed. Tabaeus watched with a pit in her stomach as Sora got the man in a headlock and made him eat dirt…Except…maybe the shapeshifter had Sora in the headlock.
The leader of the Fractured Circle was undiscernible from the real Sora while they were fighting. They were moving too quickly for Tabaeus to gauge which was which. That kind of uncertainty made her nervous. The fact that she had no weapon on her made her even more nervous.
But if this world wasn't real…and a man could change his body just by shifting the laws of physics…She had made a sand castle…He had made a machete…Maybe she could make a weapon too. Drawing a slow breath, she flexed the fingers of her right hand at her side.
Moving sand to make a sand castle was one thing…but creating a gun out of thin air had to be much—Her fingers closed around cold, familiar steel and Tabaeus's eyes widened. She looked down to see the silver barrel of a Colt 1911 A1 .45 Caliber semi-automatic hand gun. Right there. In her hand.
She had seen Sora summon a Keyblade countless times before out of thin air…but Keyblades were magic…Guns weren't magic. Yet she had just summoned one.
There was a grunt of pain and she looked back over to see that both Soras had drawn blood on each other and one was missing teeth. Things were getting out of hand. No matter which was which, Sora wasn't winning. The shapeshifter had an advantage in this battle. Sora was going to get himself killed.
And Tabaeus was just dumb enough to still care.
"That's enough!" She lifted her gun to point at the fray.
They paid about as much attention to her as to the rocks around her. She swallowed and fired one warning shot into the rocks above their heads. Luckily, this was at the same moment that one of them punched the other hard enough to break apart their death grips on each other.
Bleeding, bruised, and breathless, they both looked at her.
"Sora." She wheezed, without the slightest clue what she was doing—only knowing that she had to do something. "This is crazy. There's something you have to know…This shapeshifter isn't real. None of this is real. I tried to tell you—"
"This isn't your fight." Sora snapped at her from the left.
"Stay out of this." Sora barked from the right.
They both looked at each other and Tabaeus faltered, the gun aimed between them. They both looked to her again, and the gun in her hands.
"Shoot him." The one on the left said. "He's the shapeshifter."
"What? No!" The one on the right snapped. "He's trying to confuse you."
Tabaeus flexed her jaw, squinting her eyes as the gun drifted back and forth between them.
"What's my first name?" She asked.
"Tabaeus." They both responded.
"Now shoot him in the balls so I can kill him!" One of them barked, pointing at the other.
"No!" The other growled. "Back off. He's mine to kill. Get out, McCallister."
She paused as the first Sora pointed, his mechanical fingers closed to his palm. Sora had lost those two fingers in the initial attack that started this madness…The pinkie and ring fingers of his right hand…But the Sora pointing at the other had mechanical fingers on his left.
The gun slid back to aim to that one.
His eyes darkened with rage. "McCallister, stand down…I order you to stand down."
"I don't follow orders from shapeshifters." She snarled. "Or from Sora for that matter."
The other Sora—the real Sora on the left—got to his feet. "McCallister, this isn't—"
Before she could talk herself out of it, she swung her gun back on the real Sora and fired. The bullet punched into his shoulder, dropping him like a stone.
..:-X-:..
Destiny Islands was a mess. And so was Tifa.
"You have to stop this." Leon said as they stepped out of the Gummi.
He could see from the distant look on her face that Tifa was actually thinking about what McCallister had said. This world was real. The minute they started thinking otherwise, all the ground rules went out the window and complete anarchy set in.
"Leon…Radiant Garden froze in time…No spell could do that." Tifa said, her eyes far away.
"Tifa." He grasped her elbow, trying to anchor her to the present. "I don't know what happened in Radiant Garden and I don't know what McCallister is smoking—but you can't join her in delirium right now."
"It explains everything that's gone wrong in the past four years." Tifa said. "Everyone dying…Sora taking power as easily as he did…shapeshifters…time stopping in Radiant Garden…and all the other weird stuff that has been going on lately."
"Saying it didn't happen is not going to bring them back." Leon ground his teeth. "You can't wish away reality, Tifa."
She narrowed her eyes, "Then why is the sky turning to static?"
He frowned and looked up with her. It was a disorienting sight…It was as though the entire sky had been covered by a television with horrible reception. Jagged lines of static buzzed through the clouds, the occasional flicker of brilliant color flashing through the bars. At the same time, the waves crashing on the shore around them sounded like glass breaking on tile floor.
"That's…odd." He muttered.
"Odd? Leon, it's not possible. It's not logical."
"I've seen Heartless do impossible and illogical things before." Leon retorted, still not willing to entertain this nonsense. "We don't have time for this. Sora and McCallister are hunting down the shapeshifter as we speak. We have to intervene before the Alliance shows up and—"
"And does what?" Tifa threw up her hands. "They're all frozen in Radiant Garden!"
Before he could put together a dry response, she walked past him toward the ocean, where across the blue was the small island where presumably Sora and the shapeshifter were with McCallister and her madness. Tifa reached the water, the foam lapping over her boots. She glared across the waves and Leon walked over to her.
"What are you going to do?" He remarked. "Part the sea?"
"Interference is preventing us from flying the Gummi over there…and a boat will take too long…" Tifa snarled. "We have to try something else."
"Tifa—"
"Just trust me."
"This isn't—"
"Leon, please—" She turned to face him, and her eyes were pained. "I know it sounds crazy and it know that nonsense is your Kryptonite, but I NEED you to open your mind THIS much," She lifted her index and pinkie finger two inches apart, "and consider—just consider the possibility that the past four nightmarish years of our lives might not have been real."
"I can't." His shoulders drooped, but he didn't know how to make her understand this.
Not all of the past four years had been nightmarish…A great majority of it had…but before the madness of the Massacre and the Fractured Circle, he and Tifa had barely known each other and now…He was closer to her than any other person on the Restoration Committee…Hell in the Alliance…and considering that this reality was a lie was considering that their relationship was a lie…and he just couldn't accept that.
Tifa's eyes hardened, "Then keep your narrow mind…but trust me. You owe me that."
He exhaled heavily. She had him there.
"Fine…but if nothing happens…"
Tifa silenced him with a hand and faced the ocean again. Leon stayed quiet, looking from her to the ocean, and the island that they needed to reach. This was a waste of time. Even if the Gummi refused to fly anywhere near the island, this model was equipped with some materials that would allow it to hydroplane for a limited while. They should hook up the equipment and—
She lifted a hand, reaching out toward the ocean, her palm facing the far island. He couldn't figure out what she was doing, but she looked like she was reaching for a jar from a high shelf. Her face was frowning in concentration and he looked to her hand. One could never say that Tifa Lockhart didn't stick to her guns.
But nothing was happening.
A peal of thunder rumbled what felt like directly from the ground and Leon looked up at the sky. The static continued to blaze through the clouds, trickles of discoloration bleeding through. Red flags going up, he looked down and saw the sand trembling around him and—more importantly—Tifa. Something was happening. Something was reacting…to her.
"Come on…" She hissed.
The waves on the ocean began to calm eerily. The wind seemed to cease entirely. Leon blinked and looked around. Movement on the water made his eyes snap back to the ocean.
A small string of islands was beginning to rise, like beads on a strand of thread from the beach before them to the island a few miles across the ocean. Leon stared dumbly as the water began to ebb away from the sand that was rising. It was like a bridge. The sand and stones from the bottom of the ocean were fluctuating and spreading wider as they created a bridge between the islands.
The thunder was swelling to a constant roar as this happened, and Leon stepped up beside Tifa, who was trembling from the effort of it. Finally, her arm dropped to her side and she took a halfstep sideways to adjust. He looked at her in alarm.
She smiled. "See?" She wheezed. "I told you."
"What—" He looked from Tifa to the sandy bridge that was drying ahead of them, looking solid and strong. "You actually—"
"Let's see Merlin do that!" She pointed, catching her breath and straightening. "Leon, I was right."
"I see that." He gaped in disbelief.
But it couldn't be disbelief…He'd just seen it happen with his own eyes!
"How did you know to do that?" He looked at her.
"I didn't." She looked behind them, then to the bridge ahead of them, and then behind again. "But I figured if this world wasn't real, then it could be changed. Alternate realities have subjective rules. So I just tampered with them." She turned and walked back toward the upper part of the beach.
Leon continued to reel. "Tampered—If this world isn't real—Merlin could still be alive—The others—"
"Sharp learning curve, huh?" She said behind him.
He turned and saw her walking up to a small shed that hadn't been there seconds earlier.
"Where did that come from?" He pointed, feeling increasingly confused and exasperated.
"I created it…from nothing." Tifa looked high with the implications of what she was doing, this sudden power at the fingertips of her imagination. "It's like a Green Lantern ring."
"This is not a comic book!" Leon jogged over to her. "And how does this shed help? We've got a bridge now—"
"Because this world isn't real and I created it without magic." She pointed out.
"Gloat later…We have to go!"
"It'll take too long to run across that bridge." Tifa gripped the double doors to the shed. "This will be faster."
She pulled the doors opened and the dull light of the static sky did nothing to increase visibility of whatever was inside. Leon squinted as Tifa walked inside the shed. He saw her shadow climb onto whatever vehicle she had conjured. An ignition whirred, growled, and then turned over with a roar that replaced the thunder of the sand around them.
The sky was darkening at the edges of the horizon. For the past four years, this alternate world had been as real as Tifa was to him. In the past week, things had briefly seemed weird…Now the unusual and unnatural were getting more frequent by the minute. Whatever was happening, it was exponentially getting worse. There was no ignoring that.
He looked back as Tifa nudged the vehicle out of the shed. The waning sunlight glinted off the massive black hull of the motorcycle, and the mufflers in the rear quivered as she revved the throttle. The front haunches of the beast were engaged and looked ready to spring open at a moment's notice. The engine snarled like a wolf ready to pounce.
Fenrir.
Leon looked from the growling motorcycle to Tifa, sitting behind the handlebars like a woman with a mission. Her jaw was set and her eyes were sharp. She looked at him briefly, and then to the bridge.
"This will be faster than running." She said. "Hop on."
"Tifa—" He said, trying to register what had just happened.
"Leon, stop pussyfooting around and get on the motorcycle."
"You just pulled Fenrir out of your ass."
"Well, that's because you didn't pull a teleporter out of yours." She snapped, "Now hop on before Sora and McCallister get killed over there."
Leon gritted his teeth but moved to the side of the motorcycle. He swung one leg over and hauled himself across the seat behind Tifa. Her hands were wrapped around the handlebars tightly and she lifted the kickstand.
"Here we go." She revved the engine and let go of the brake.
Leon barely had a second to grab onto her before Fenrir shot across the beach like a cannonball. Sand was spat out from under the tires like a machine gun and the beast under the hood screamed to be let free. Tifa increased the gas and Leon managed to get his bearings before the front tires slammed over the rough transition from open beach to rigid bridge floor.
Tifa's hair whipped against his face and he steadied himself behind her to make sure a sudden change in speed wouldn't throw him off into the water. They were moving fast enough now that that kind of contact would peel the skin right off him.
He pushed that thought aside and focused instead on what lay ahead of them. Sora, McCallister—with whom he would consider even after this—and the shapeshifter, the mastermind behind all of this.
The world wasn't real…He looked out at the ocean as they drove, literally, over it.
Tifa had dismantled the laws of physics and magic so easily…Could it be that easy?
Tentatively, he lifted a hand, just an inch or so from the seat of the motorcycle, and looked toward the ocean again. It still felt ridiculous and illogical, but he focused on the choppy waves. The ocean was never still. So he focused on trying to make it still…To prove to himself for himself that physics had—
The ocean waves smoothed and faded away at his thought, forming a solid, unmoving surface.
-gone completely out the window.
God help them all.