I
Several minutes later, once everyone had picked themselves up and brushed themselves down, all eight nobodies stood around the edge of the fissure and stared down into the abyss. Well, five nobodies, a replica, a liquid quaver, and a mirror, anyway. Zexion was still unconscious.
"…How are we going to get him?" Marluxia wondered aloud.
"Do we need to get him?" Vexen asked.
"At this point, for the sake of completion." Larxene grumbled, before glaring up at the scientist. "And by the way, yes, you should have mentioned this earlier!"
"How was I supposed to know you didn't already know about him?" Vexen said defiantly. "You seem to have discovered everyone else's whereabouts just fine!"
"Not on purpose! And why haven't you done anything, if you've known about him for all this time?"
"I was interested in finding out the relative depth of the void, if you were listening earlier. This seemed a fine experiment for the purpose and all I had to do was allow events to unfold on their own."
"And you're curiosity didn't include how this happened to him?"
"One experiment at a time, my dear Larxene. There was much I could learn from this situation before it required any action on my behalf."
"And if he didn't come back again? What of your experiment then?"
"He's done it thirty-seven times now, hasn't he? And since your meddling has caused me to miss this pass, you've set the experiment back nearly two weeks. I hope you're happy."
Larxene's daggers punching into his chest answered for her.
"You know, I think I'm going to get used to winning arguments this way." Larxene grinned, and turned her attention back to the abyss.
"Seriously though, are we going to try to rescue him?" Axel wondered.
Marluxia rubbed his palm across his chin thoughtfully. "He was always very diligent about his duties, loyal to a fault, and quite frankly the strongest of us all, physically. He would be a valuable asset to us if we could recover him. The only question is how…"
"And if he's still whole." Axel said, scratching his hair with his free hand. "I only caught a glimpse of him as I was hanging there, but he looked like a big blob of darkness."
"Actually, he's covered in a layer of heartless." Vexen lectured, stepping out from his lab and glaring daggers at Larxene. "I believe the Shadows are attempting to feed on his leaking darkness, though the fact we can still hear him vocalizing his denial proves that he's maintained his corporeal form, at least."
"Can't you open a dark corridor to him?" Xion asked, pressing her hands against the glass.
"Corridors require a flat surface to open upon." Luxord reminded her, before frowning and paying her more attention. "Oh dear, it seems you've cracked."
Xion blinked and looked down at herself. A large fracture split the bottom three or four inches of her mirror from the top, right across her abdomen. Another hairline fracture curved up from the crack over her right cheek, just missing eye before curling back to the frame. Her hands flew to her mouth in horror at the sight.
"When did this happen?" Axel asked, staring at the break with no less dismay.
"Probably when you threw all you chips into the pot and dived after her." Luxord said, walking over to them and reaching out to take her. He paused at the last second and seemed to rethink his actions, pulling his hands back sharply. "Better not risk the bad luck. Come now; let's see if we can't put your pretty poker face back together. I can't stand to see a damaged looking glass…"
"I suppose we could fly after Lexeaus in a gummi ship." Demyx suggested after those three had left. "Um… do we have any gummi ships?"
"I have no idea." Larxene shrugged. "With the corridors, I never thought I'd need one again."
"Hmm…dived… you could dive down after him…" Marluxia mused, still lost in thought.
""And catch up with him how?" Larxene shot him an exasperated look. "I don't see you leaping off the ledge."
"Perhaps if we had a really long rope…"
"Oh, for crying out loud!" Xigbar shouted, exasperated. He took a step to the left of the universe and vanished from the room.
It took Xigbar several hops to get his bearings straight, but within moments he stood upside –down in the inky darkness, peering down at the approaching living meteor between his legs. He summoned both his needle guns into his hands and waited until just before the mass would have barreling into him before leaping aside.
"Yah-haha ha!" He crowed, spinning in a tight spiral and holding down both triggers. A seemingly endless barrage of glowing darts flew from the barrels and, regardless of the direction they had been fired from, curved in on their targets. Each dart slammed home in a shadows chest, blasting them into nothingness. After nearly half a minute of continuous barrage, Lexeaus's body was finally cleared of the parasitic creatures.
Xigbar cocked his guns in salute and allowed them to fade away. He teleported after the falling body and caught his heavy frame over his shoulder. Before the excess weight could knock him spiraling away, he twisted space and they were gone.
"Now where did he go off to?" Larxene asked, right before Xigbar reappeared in a swirl of his element. He staggered slightly under the weight of his burden and allowed Lexeaus to slide off his shoulders. The others spread out a bit, giving the big man room to collapse.
Lexeaus stumbled to his knees, but caught himself on his arms. His clothing was in rags and he was breathing heavily, sweat clinging in a bright sheen on his skin. Surprisingly, he held the pose for a count of ten seconds, his eyes closed tight as if in concentration. A slight tremor ran through the ground, but that was all. He opened his eyes and slowly climbed to his feet.
He looked around the room, taking in their appearance and the state of the floor, and said, "Took you all long enough."
He brushed some soot from his sleeves and started for the stairway. "But thanks, anyways." He almost made it to the steps before Larxene broke out of her shock and grabbed him by the arm.
"Hey, wait!" she ordered. Wow, I forgot how tall this guy was! "You… you can't just walk off without some kind of an explanation! What happened to you?"
He looked down at her raised his eyebrow. "I was falling. What did it look like?"
"That's… that's not what I meant!" Larxene sputtered. "What was…"
"You just need to ask in the right way." Marluxia said, walking over. He straightened his back, craned his neck way back to look Lexeaus in the eye, and spoke in a commanding tone. "Xemnas is gone and we are all that is left. Report, number Five."
Lexeaus stared down at him for a few seconds, and then looked up at the rest of them. Apparently coming to the conclusion that no one was playing a joke on him, he squared his shoulders and shuffled his tired frame into a ready posture.
"I challenged the real Riku to a fight and lost." He began. "He simply overpowered me in skill. I could feel myself coming apart, so I decided to unleash all the darkness within me in a last ditch effort to overwhelm the boy. I do not know if I was successful, but releasing my darkness gave me one last surge of strength. The ground below me was already trying to swallow my body into it, so I threw the last of my strength into tearing the earth away from me. That hole in the floor and in all the floors below are the result of that.
"Once I was free of the ground, my body stopped coming apart. But the darkness within me was still leaking out and it attracted the heartless. They came and tried to finish me in my weakness, but I fought them off and was able to draw some strength from each one I killed. I don't know how long it took, but eventually the void looped on itself and I found myself approaching the castle again. I landed on the cliff just outside out door and immediately could feel my body start to disappear from contact with the ground. I threw myself over the ledge and have been falling ever since."
He crossed his arms over his chest and stared them each down in turn. "Now I am going to find a bed and sleep." He turned and made it six steps before collapsing on his face. This might have been more concerning of he didn't immediately start snoring loudly.
"Well…" Marluxia blinked. "I'm not sure what to make of all that, but he seems to be fine."
Larxene was trying unsuccessfully to suppress giggles. "I'm sorry, but I almost couldn't pay attention with you standing next to him. You barely come up to his knee!" She, Luxord, and Xigbar broke down into laugher. Marluxia crossed his arms and waited for them to stop, glowering all the while.
Larxene heaved on last sigh and looked up. "Alright, now that the giant is back with us, I have just one question. Just throwing it out there to avoid any more confusion in the future. Does anyone else know where any of the missing members are?"
Everyone shrugged save for Xigbar, who seemed to be deciding something. "Well…" the sharpshooter started.
Xigbar's dark corridor opened to a mostly barren, wooden room. Larxene was glad that the room was only barely lit, as this trip through the darkness had left her with quite the headache. She looked up as Marluxia and Luxord walked in behind her, pulling along a very reluctant Vexen.
"I said that I would rather remain in my lab!" Vexen protested, struggling in their grasp. "I have some very time sensitive projects that I simply can't be torn away from. At least leave the corridor open for me. Where are we, anyway?"
Larxene tuned him out and looked around the room. I was sparsely furnished, with only a low desk without an accompanying chair on the other side of the room. There were two doors, one which appeared to lead further in the building behind the desk and another by a large picture window on the other side of the room. A figure in a black cloak was standing at the window, facing away from them.
Xigbar looked at the rest of the group over his shoulder and approached the figure. He gave a slight bow at the waist before addressing him. "I told you they'd be here soon." he said with a surprising amount of respect.
The figure turned around and Larxene realized that he wasn't standing; he was floating. And that the cloak was far, far too big on him. Despite preparing herself for almost anything after all her experiences so far, she still had a hard time believing what her eyes were telling her.
"I see they have." The figure said, floating closer. "So, we meet again. Kupo."