Chapter 33: Jailbreak
Koal and Triana dashed through the halls of the dungeon. As Heartless appeared to block their way, they readied for combat and attacked without a second thought.
"Too bad these things don't talk..." Triana remarked, slicing one to shreds with her sword, "...otherwise we could force them to tell us where the others are."
"They left your weapons with you when they put us in the cell, so I'm guessing that the others are free by this point." Koal remarked. An armored Heartless charged her, but she had a plan THIS time. She let loose a lightning bolt at the Heartless and it began to move as she willed it. "Electromagnetism, wow I'm good." She turned her head and smashed the Heartless into a wall, taking great pleasure in doing so.
Lance pulled the trigger on his gunblade, obliterating an unfortunate Heartless with a devastating fireball. Rokka hurled a storm of ninja stars at an incoming troop of sword-wielding Heartless, chopping them to bits.
"Can you believe these idiots left our weapons with us?" Rokka laughed, remembering Lance's gunblade blasting a hole in the bars of their cell, moments after they had been put there in the first place. "Then again, they've got shadows for brains, so they're not really good for anything more technical than 'mobbing heroes' or 'eating worlds,' am I right?"
"Makes you wonder why they have a factory creating these things." Lance quipped. He stopped for a moment to contemplate that these run-of-the-mill weakling Heartless weren't worth ransoming a planet over. There had to be something more to this. Much worse. Much more dangerous. As he backed up while reloading his weapon, he bumped into something and swung his sword at it, causing it to clash with another sword -which just so happened to belong to Triana, who had been backing away from another group of Heartless.
The two warriors exchanged a glance that said, "Let's kick some ass!" and charged forward, chopping apart any Heartless that was suicidal enough to attack them.
Elsewhere, Venqas and Turbo rushed down the halls of the Heartless factory, desperately trying to locate their friends.
"Where do you suppose they keep their prisoners?" Turbo liked to make small talk to pass the time, even when lives hung in the balance. "Factories generally don't have holding cells."
"Why did they even take them prisoner anyway?" Venqas wondered. "Heartless usually just attack people on the spot, but these actually went to the trouble of capturing intruders. Why did they do that?"
They came across a door, Turbo jumped into the air, rolled up into a ball and tackled the door down. Venqas reminded Turbo that he could've unlocked the door, but Turbo didn't care. They found themselves in a giant room with a devilish contraption in the middle. The contraption was a rod with a sinister black crystal on the end. Beneath the crystal was a huge metal case. On a platform high atop a wall was a human-looking robot in a red cape with glowing blue eyes.
"Who's that dude?" Turbo asked as he entered a fighting stance.
"Couldn't tell ya." Venqas responded, clenching his Keyblade.
"My name is Sigma." The robot proclaimed, his voice almost human, "I am the overseer of this factory, and a member of the Black Star Organization."
"Black Star... Organization?" Venqas asked.
"It is a band of gentlemen like myself who seek dominion over the universe." Sigma boasted, applying the word 'gentlemen' quite loosely. "Lord Kixur has brought us all together so that we may claim our rightful place as-" All of a sudden, he was hoisted up off of the platform and dropped to the floor below. He looked up to see Koal flying above and gawking at him,
"You bad guys really DO like to boast, don'tcha?"
Sigma pulled himself off the ground and proclaimed, "You will soon learn the foolishness of such bravado." Triana, Lance and Rokka entered through another door that had obviously been blasted open.
"Is that?..." Triana looked over to Venqas and Turbo, "It's Ven and Turbo!" The group quickly reunited with their spiky-haired compatriots.
"Hey, the gang's all here." Turbo remarked. Koal landed next to the group and wasted no time in noticing Venqas,
"Looks like you finally decided to show up." Koal wasn't pleased to see Venqas at all, but her aggravation with him was beginning to cloud her judgment.
"Hey, I'm not the one who got you all captured in the first place!" Venqas snapped, being tired of being picked on. "We came to save you guys and THIS is the thanks we get?"
"We didn't need saving, but I guess I can give you points for coming in the first place." Koal was stingy with compliments, if you could call them that.
While the heroes were distracted, Sigma got to his feet and pressed a button on the giant canister. It hissed as it split open, grabbing the heroes' attention, steam coming from it as it separated into two and revealed something much worse...
Chapter 34: Fusion
The opened canister revealed a giant Heartless that looked like a giant suit of armor outfitted with heavy weapons. Its fingers were cannons, a glowing device was mounted on its chest and its eyes were cybernetic and soul-piercing. Miniguns were mounted on its shoulders, ready to shred its fearful prey to pieces in seconds.
"What is that?..." Turbo's blood turned to water at the mere sight of the monstrosity. This Heartless made the armor Heartless in Hyrule look like a ball of crumpled-up, dirty tinfoil by comparison.
"Behold, the fruits of my labor!" Sigma gloated, victoriously. "After all this time, the prototype is complete- Armorgeddon, the ultimate Heartless super weapon! Once the final version is complete, nothing will stand in our way! And wouldn't you know it, I have six 'heroes' to test this prototype on!" He pressed a button on his gauntlet and bellowed, "Eradicate them!"
The robot began to fire blasts of white energy at the heroes from its finger-cannons. The heroed were quick to scatter and prepare to retaliate. Lance fired at it with his gunblade, but the blasts did not even scratch the monster's armor. Turbo spin-tackled it, to even less avail. Venqas pointed his Keyblade at the metal monstrosity and yelled,
"Water!" He unleashed a torrent of chilling water from the tip of his Keyblade, but the robot did not seem impressed in the slightest. Koal then flew in low, hoping to shock it with her lightning breath. It punched Koal before her powers could do her bidding and she was sent flying back and collided with Venqas.
"Hey!" Venqas grunted. All of a sudden, his hoodie began to glow a mystical silver color.
"Uh, where'd you get that thing?" Koal nervously inquired.
"From a sorceress..." Venqas groaned, knowing this wasn't going to be fun. A blinding white light consumed him and Koal like an explosion. When it cleared, Venqas stood alone, his clothes now black and purple like Koal's scales. He had two dragon-like wings with pink webbing sprouting from his back and his eyes had turned yellow, just like Koal's.
"Uh, Venqas?" Turbo's eyes widened at the sight of this, his mind racing to find a possible explanation.
"What just happened?" Venqas asked, his voice sounding like he and Koal were talking at the same time. "And why do I feel so... weird?" He spun around to see his reflection in a panel of glass on one of the machines. His eyes blazed open and he exclaimed, in the same overlapped voice,
"Augh, I've turned into Venqas!" He grabbed his head, shook it and said, "Wait, why'd I say that? I'm Venqas." He grabbed his head and shook it again, "No I'm not, I'm Koal! Not some spiky-haired, whiny, apathetic-" He shook his head again, "Why am I saying this? I'm not a-" Turbo grabbed the mutated Venqas and pulled him out of the way of the robot firing a devastating laser at him,
"I don't know what the hell's going on, but you two getting blasted won't help at ALL." Turbo quipped.
"Two? What do you mean 'two'?"
"Don't you get it? Koal, Venqas -you two were fused together by that weird hoodie!"
"Wait, I'm in Venqas' body?" Koal gasped, her mind almost unable to comprehend what was happening. Turbo regrouped with his allies and stood the Venqas-Koal hybrid up.
The boy and the dragon's minds overlapped as they struggled for control of their new body.
"Hey, stop pushing!" Venqas snapped.
"You stop crowding me!" Koal barked back.
"It's my body!"
"You did this to me!"
Triana, Lance and Rokka looked on, confused at Venqas yelling at himself.
"Venqas and Koal got fused by some magical powers of tailoring." Turbo didn't have time to explain in-depth, as there was a monster that was trying to kill them. Not that he had any idea how this happened, or why it happened for that matter.
"Okay, while Ven-Koal goes crazy, let's scatter and go for that robot dude." Lance didn't have time for this. "We defeat him and, in theory, the giant Heartless should stop working."
"Sounds good to me." Rokka nodded.
"But not to me." Triana detested the idea of leaving her two best friends trapped like this. "Poor Venqas and Koal... we need to figure out what the hell happened!"
"There's no time!" Lance snapped. "We have bigger problems!"
"If Koal and Venqas are in trouble, that's the biggest problem in my book!" Turbo barked.
"Um, not that I'm complaining, but how come the Heartless hasn't been attacking us this past minute?" Rokka asked.
The gant Heartless was still as a statue as Sigma angrily mashed some buttons on a remote control.
"Stupid glitches! I know this thing's programming isn't complete yet, but I didn't expect it to randomly go into standby during combat!" Sigma grunted in a fit of rage.
"You two go attack the Heartless, we'll help Ven-Koal." Turbo whispered to Lance and Rokka. The two rebels nodded their heads in agreement and charged the glitching monster. Turbo and Triana ran over to the Venqas-Koal hybrid, which was struggling with having two minds in only one body.
"Venqas, buddy? You okay in there?" Turbo called, not sure what good it would do him.
"Not really..." Venqas responded in a pained grunt.
"Koal, what's going on?" Triana asked, trying to see if she could get the two to calm down.
"I'm not sure, but it's like Venqas and I are the same person now..." Koal groaned in despair. "And it sucks..."
All of a sudden, a blast of energy nailed Turbo and Triana from behind, sending them flying into the wall. The robot Heartless approached Venqas/Koal, causing them to try to run away, but the lack of coordination between their two minds caused them to flop over onto the ground, landing face first and frantically struggling to get back up. Lance and Rokka began to attack the Heartless furiously in an attempt to get it away from Ven-Koal.
"No... this can't be the end..." Venqas thought as the Heartless cast a shadow over his altered form. "My life... my friends... all for nothing... I'll be a casualty in a war I shouldn't even be part of..."
"Shut up! We can still win this!" Koal barked.
"No we CAN'T! We're trapped in a form we can't control without working together! And thanks to you, that's out of the question!"
"You're not one to talk! We're supposed to be heroes, yet you've done nothing but whine about having to risk your life!"
"Being smart-mouthed and rude doesn't accomplish much either!"
"At least I TRY to be a credit to the team! You're the Keyblade master, which makes you the most important guy here! But you act as if you're just being dragged along for the ride even though you CHOSE to come with us! You're being a baby when literally everyone needs you to be a man!"
"Well, I'm SO VERY SORRY that verbal abuse isn't a form of mediation where I'm from! I might not be brave or useful, but at least I'm not picking on the member of the group who lost his parents, his home and everything that meant anything to him and then got drafted into a war that he never wanted to be part of and has no way out of!"
"That happened to me too, in case you haven't noticed! I lost everything too, but do you see ME brooding over it? Do you see Turbo brooding over it? We're trying to make the most of this situation. Hell, Triana's more willing to be part of this than you, even though her world's still intact and she's royalty back there! She had the most to lose by going along with this. And yet she's on the team, risking her life because unlike you, she cares about people other than herself!"
"I... I..." In a sudden turn of emotions, Venqas was close to tears, "I care about YOU... and Triana and Turbo... why do you think I went with you guys when the Herald gave me an offer to stay in Hyrule?"
"You... really?" Koal was astonished to find that Venqas wasn't as self-centered as she had made him out to be,
"And you know, I came to save you even though you were being such a bully..."
"I... well... I guess I thought Turbo had dragged you along..." Koal was taken by complete surprise, "It's just that it's hard for me to think of you as selfless or brave when you've been complaining about having to risk your life so much. I know you're scared for your life, but you don't need to whine all the time; It gives us a negative image of you."
The robot blew away its attackers and refocused on Ven-Koal.
"We're going to have to clean up our act when this is over." Venqas sighed, "But we're not gonna let this bucket of bolts kill us, are we?"
"No way!" Koal agreed with Venqas for the first time.
Chapter 35: Scrapped Nightmares
The metallic monster Heartless pointed its finger cannons at the fused hero/heroine with the intent of finishing them off with a devastating laser blast, but the young warriors weren't having any of that.
"Fly us outta here!" Venqas ordered Koal, their minds now working in tandem.
"I'm on it!" Koal complied. The wings on Venqas' back spread, flapped and lifted the body off the ground. Venqas summoned his Keyblades and faced the robot,
"What now? How do we fight it? None of our attacks worked before!"
"Maybe we have an attack in this form that can affect it!"
"What? That's ridiculous!"
"I'll believe anything at this point!" Koal had seen many crazy things today, so she was forced to succumb to the chaos she was consumed in. The Heartless blasted its energy cannons at the combined heroes. Ven-Koal pulled up to avoid the attack and swooped in at the mechanical monstrosity. Venqas swung his Keyblades, leaving a gash in the monster's armor. The Heartless retaliated with another blast of white-hot energy, striking Ven-Koal point-blank and consuming them in a blinding explosion. However, when the smoke cleared, the fusion merely laughed off the attack,
"That all ya got, tin man?" Venqas was surprised to find himself quipping. Or was it Koal who was making the joke?
"It can't be!" Sigma gasped, his 'ultimate' weapon turning out to be -like most things labeled as such- anything BUT ultimate.
"It most certainly can." Triana pointed her Master sword to the back of his head. Turbo brandished his hammer, Lance pointed his gunblade at the villain and Rokka just stood around with his arms crossed, trying to look "badass." "Call off the monster or we'll sell you for scrap metal."
The robot Heartless stopped in its tracks due to its controller being in a position where if he tried anything funny he'd be a hood ornament by nightfall.
"Now's our chance!" Koal saw that the Heartless was vulnerable and had no intention of fighting fair. "Let's melt this robot Heartless!"
"Yeah, let's see if your powers mix well with my magic..." Venqas pointed his Keyblades at the robot, Koal imagined herself breathing fire, and all of a sudden, the Keyblades unleashed a blast of all-consuming fire upon the monstrosity. It began to stumble backwards and crash into a wall. Ven-Koal flew up to the downed Heartless and slashed away at it with the Keyblades again and again, cutting out more and more chunks of metal until all that remained was a useless pile of shadowy scrap metal. The remains of the Heartless began to disintegrate like any other slain Heartless. A glowing-blue heart-shaped object floated out of the remains and slowly vanished into nothingness.
"Yeeaaahhh!" Venqas and Koal roared in triumph.
"Looks like your super-special robot just got smashed." Lance taunted Sigma, holding him a gunpoint. "It's over."
"Not by a longshot!" Sigma created a portal of darkness below him and sunk into it. Turbo attempted to dive in after him, but the robot had fully submerged into the darkness, which then closed behind him, causing the young hedgehog to land on his face.
"What?" Turbo roared in frustration, "He can do that? That's just cheating! There's gotta be a 'no vanishing into darkness rule' somewhere, right?"
"If there was, I doubt they'd follow it, what with being bad guys and all..." Triana shrugged, trying her hand at being snarky for once
Turbo noticed a glow coming from the evaporating wreckage of the robot. He dashed over to it and where once stood a formidable foe was a glowing green jewel.
"What's that?" Ven-Koal asked.
"It's a Chaos Emerald." Turbo picked up the green jewel. "These things are gems that hold a mysterious power called Chaos Energy. Legend has it that when all seven are collected-"
"Um, not that I don't enjoy sharing a brain with Venqas, but how are we supposed to change back?" Koal interrupted, more worried about her predicament than Turbo's glowing rock. All of a sudden, the combined form began to glow. Venqas began to stop hearing Koal's thoughts run through his head, and likewise, Venqas' thoughts were now silent to Koal and in a flash of light, Venqas and Koal were separate again, as if they'd never fused at all.
"Well, that was weird." Venqas looked to his back, glad to be rid of the wings. "But I'm glad it's over..."
"It's good to have our thoughts to ourselves again." Koal chirped, happy to be back down to one crazy voice in her head.
"Let's get the hell outta this place." Lance called. "We destroyed their pet project and there's no one here to man the factory. Our mission here is done."
"Shouldn't we destroy the machine that makes the Heartless first?" Koal looked to the dark crystal on the sinister machine, still puzzled as to why no one had taken care of it before.
"No, the crystal is still too dangerous. We have no idea what could happen if we broke it."
"Well, how's THIS for an idea?" Koal blasted the crystal with her lightning breath, making the dark gem glow like the sun and explode into a thousand tiny shards that fell like rain, some of them pelting Koal and, unbeknownst to her, melding into her body like a rock in quicksand. She turned to Lance with a smug grin, "See? Wasn't that easy?"
"Well, I for one feel stupid." Lance remarked with a lighthearted grin, "Guess they didn't have a dragon all those years ago. C'mon, let's blow this dump."
As the heroes headed for the exit, Triana couldn't help but feel that they were forgetting something...
Writer's Note:
Thanks to my buddy, Alex for making up that giant Heartless for this story. It seems like all my friends are helping me out with this fanfic, which I appreciate.
