((Note: This chapter was up, but I had to rewrite part of it due to a continuity error. So I added a bit, everyone who already read this should read it again and forget what they read before because there's a ton of little things I changed.))
"Elexi, please stop crying. Ray, no don't bang your head on that wall. Kisatrix, quit pretending to cry, I know you want to but that's just bad dude..."
Chaos had broken out, and it was bad. Despite Elexi's best efforts, Mirra's injuries were far too severe and Elexi had to give up on her. Ray was taking it particularly hard, and Elexi was freaking out because he had never lost anyone he had ever tried to help before. Kisatrix cared, and really wanted to show her sorrow, but her attempt to cry made Skyla want to throw her into the water.
The thing with Ray was, like Damayon he was in love. Seeing as it was rather difficult to be in love with his own sister, he was in love with Mirra. Before the whole darkness situation that started all this, he and Mirra had a casual relationship, which they more or less lost when they were forced to run after Damayon every which direction. It wasn't like they got very much downtime other than when Skyla had beat them all to hell.
He was hoping that after all this was over that he and Mirra could pick up where they left off. Sure, they had little in common, but that didn't seem to matter usually, other than the odd argument over whether pizza or lasagna was better.
This just totally ruined all the plans that Ray had. He had pictured himself and Mirra getting married in a couple years and having two or three kids, and living next to his sister, Damayon, and the four kids they had planned to have.
Kisatrix had known Mirra even longer than Ray had really; they had met in Kindergarten when Ray was in his 'I hate my little sister' phase. Since becoming a nobody she had never really learned how to tap into the fake emotions based on memories like Skyla and Elexi had. She knew she wanted to cry, she just had no idea how. Instead, she just ran her memories of Mirra through her head over and over, trying hard just to feel something.
Elexi, while not having such a direct relation to Mirra, was having an absolute breakdown. If it looked anymore real Skyla was going to have to kick him out of the Reorganization for having a heart.
Elexi had actually had a medical certification for awhile, being granted a honourary degree from the university because he knew how to treat absolutely every little problem with different plants. It didn't make his parents happy however; they found his obsession with flowers and plants to be a foolish waste of his life and insisted he go and get a physics degree as that was 'more useful in today's world'.
The short time he had actually applied his medical degree he was considered to be something of a miracle worker, as no one else knew how to treat things like he could. He had never lost anyone until today.
Sure, there were rational explanations. He had never dealt with keyblade inflicted injuries before, and it had been quite some time before he got to take a look at the damage. The truth was however that the moment they became nobodies he should have been out studying the effects of keyblades on hearts and injuries and such instead of growing pretty blue roses everywhere and being crazy.
Skyla herself was becoming highly annoyed. She understood why they were all upset, but it seemed that Damayon was the only one being reasonable in this situation. He was being the quiet sorrowful type, which was a nice change from the rest of the mess going on. Damayon, while good friends with Mirra, wasn't quite as close to her as Krista and Ray had been. It saddened him, but he knew that there was nothing he could do about it at this point. It took less effort to sit and remember the good times than sit thinking about what could have been done differently.
"OKAY EVERYONE STOP!" Skyla exclaimed, causing everyone to stop what they were doing instantly. "Yes, Mirra is gone. Ray wanted to marry her, she was Kisatrix's best friend, and Elexi is upset because he hasn't lost anyone before now. Now, let's build the extension to the castle, because I have a feeling that's what Mirra would want and it's much more productive than sitting in this room screaming, trying to cry, actually sort of crying, and banging our heads on the wall."
No one could argue with Skyla's logic here, Mirra had put a lot of work into editing all the blueprints. For the most part they were done now; it wouldn't take long with Skyla's help to put the extension in.
Elexi sobbed a couple more times and Ray rubbed his head. All four of them got up and followed Skyla to look at the blueprints.
--
Riku and Sora, along with Kairi who was now on Riku's back, finally walked themselves out of the End of the World.
There had been a large amount of heartless in the whole journey out. Riku found that highly interesting, as the Reorganization didn't seem to control them, or even entirely know about them perhaps. It was an untapped resource that Skyla didn't seem to look into, was there something about the End of the World that was inaccessible to the Reorganization?
The more Riku thought about it, the more that made sense. Skyla had a hard time accessing it when they all appeared there; it almost seemed to be a fluke. Did the End of the World mean the end of her spatial power?
"What's on your mind, Riku?" Sora noticed that Riku had been silent for an unusual amount of time. They had just called the Gummi Ship and were waiting; normally Riku would've started talking about something by now.
"I think... that I know how to beat the Reorganization."
--
The whole situation in Midnight's Light had now settled down. Without Elexi and Damayon around it didn't take long for their powers amplified together to die down. It still caused a great deal of damage however, the lucky ones being the ones not taken by the darkness.
Leon's group was a large portion of these lucky ones, and was already back to rebuilding the town. They found it odd that Sora and Riku had magically disappeared in the middle of all of that, and of course they were concerned for what had happened.
"Now wait guys, you're all having doubts as to weather Sora's okay?" Yuffie was listening in on a conversation between Leon, Cid and Merlin. None of them sounded confident in Sora's safety.
"It's not that the kid's not great, Yuffie." Cid started, taking a breath of his smoke. This situation was highly stressful; his opinion was they shouldn't have ever left what was now Hollow Bastion yet again.
"It's that those nobodies were incredibly powerful." Leon had heard the stories from all three of Sora's group. He knew they were fairly intelligent and quick thinkers, but he didn't know they were high powered on top of it.
"I think we're going back to Hollow Bastion after this."
--
"Well, I think it's done."
The gauntlet extension to the castle had finally been completed, minus the gauntlet room that would have been Mirra's. Before Skyla even said that it was safe to walk into everyone had run off to their large, cylinder shaped rooms to decorate.
Skyla sighed, knowing that all of them were incredibly lucky they drew very nice blue prints, otherwise she wouldn't trust her own handiwork.
Instead of going to her own room to get ready, she decided it was time to run a status update in the control room. Upon arriving she found that Kisatrix had gone through all the papers. No doubt Ray had set her off on some weird tangent.
She looked at the digital heartless count, and she rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn't just going blind again.
"Four hundred and seventy thousand heartless?" She couldn't believe it. She almost refused to believe it. She knew that the Reorganization's power didn't range so far as the End of the World, but had there really been that many heartless in there?
It looked to her like she had done all this building just in time, if she called all the heartless back she could lure Sora's group here and then eliminate the problem they posed.
"Skyla, can we talk?"
Skyla jumped up and turned around to find Elexi, had he been smaller and been holding a teddy bear he would have reminded her of a child who had just had a nightmare. He was semi standing behind the wall, it was adorable-ish.
"Of course Elexi." Skyla smiled at him, pointing at one of the rolly chairs in the room and sitting in another.
Elexi just shook his head though; he wanted to talk to his teacher, not just Skyla.
"Can we go to your secret office? Please?"
"Ummm... okay."
--
"We're nearing the end..."
Ray, Damayon and Kisatrix had finished with the excitement of checking out their new rooms and were now all sitting in Skyla's.
The point behind the whole decorating concept wasn't exactly to make it look pretty, but it was also to make the room work to each of their advantages. Ray's was covered in a thin layer of ice; Damayon's was painted a darker colour; Kisatrix had attached highly flammable pouches to the walls to make awesome explosions.
Each room had also been designed to stop them from collapsing over, so that Ray's ice wouldn't melt and Kisatrix's room wouldn't blow up from the flammable pouches.
"What do you mean the end is coming?" Ray asked Kisatrix, clearly slightly concerned for her seemingly depressed state.
"The end. The heartless count is over four hundred thousand. When we were doing that research I saw it."
Ray thought about this for a moment. Maybe it wasn't something he'd notice, as he never spent much time in that particular room.
"That's my doing." Damayon spoke softly, it being the first time he had spoken since news of Mirra's death. "I've been slowly crushing my own powers; I've got very little left."
Kisatrix and Ray just stared blankly at him for a moment. Ray wasn't sure what to say, while Kisatrix was working on acting out a small fit.
"You've been crushing your powers, what are you crazy? When we get home how are you supposed to deal with the world without your powers? Damayon you're crazy, why would you do that?"
"For you, Kris." Damayon smiled a little at her, "Lookit, I've got enough of my powers to live back home. I crushed the part of my darkness that controlled the heartless, killing off the ones in my control with the power of my keyblade and sending them off to Kingdom Hearts. I'll be fine, trust me please?"
Kisatrix sighed, seeing that she had no choice but to just trust him. The moment she knew how to properly lecture him however he'd have an ear full.
--
"Okay Elexi, what's the matter?"
After Skyla had taken Elexi to the private office, he insisted on setting it up as close to Skye's original office format as was possible here. Skyla had just watched as he spent five minutes lining up a small computer on the desk and put vines up around the desk to make the room seem smaller, as Skye's had been. It was an odd sight indeed.
Now that he had finally settled down and made Skyla put on the old lab coat he had stolen for the break in, it looked like he was ready to talk.
"Professor Skye, did I choose the right major? I mean, I don't think I'm entirely qualified to be a botanist nobody, I'm not doing well and I'm afraid of failing and disappointing my parents."
Skyla now knew where this was coming from, Elexi had the same breakdown when he messed up an electromagnetic field experiment and electrocuted his lab partner, sending him to the hospital with some major burns. This breakdown here was Elexi's way of telling her he wasn't taking losing Mirra well at all.
"Eli, I'm not going to lie to you. That was a horrible performance." Skyla paused a moment to let Elexi sob a couple time, like he had before.
"However, you have a ton of potential as a botanist nobody. Everyone makes mistakes dear, and I'm sure you'll learn from this. You'll have your Master's by the end of the year and then you don't have to worry about this, right?"
Elexi sobbed a bit more and nodded, clearly reassured now.
"Now, let's take a look here." Skyla pulled her keyboard off the top of her monitor. It amazed her that Elexi had remembered a little detail like her habit of placing her keyboard on top of her monitor when it wasn't being used. "Eli... it looks like you have a ninety-five in your saving people's lives class, I don't think one little mess up is going to jeopardize your success here."
"Thank you Professor, now I have to go do my completion of Kingdom Hearts exam. I'll see you later." Elexi got up and left the room, although walking in a straight line looking for the door to Skye's office only caused him to run into a wall. Skyla just made him appear back in the main part of the castle, knowing he'd eventually wander his way to where he was supposed to be.
"Crazy Eli." Skyla smiled and folded her arms, thinking about the day that had happened before.
It was odd to her how Elexi's memories of his past life didn't seem to affect his personality as a nobody. Instead of acting like who he was, he acted based on the memories of what he wanted to be like. Very rarely did he act based on his normal life, let alone act out any portion of a day like that.
Her rationalization of it was that he knew that one of his largest failures had before been resolved in a meeting like that and he figured it would help again. It would be interesting to see what he would be like when he got his heart back...
"No, can't use students as lab rats..." Skyla mumbled to herself as she hung up the lab coat and left to meet up with everyone.
--
Riku and Sora had finally gotten into the Gummi Ship, which had taken forever to pick them up at the End of the World. Riku safely put Kairi in one of the back seats and sat next to Sora, looking at the radar.
"That wasn't there before." Sora commented and pointed to a specific point on the radar. Based on its size Riku knew exactly what it was.
However, what Riku didn't know was whether he should tell Sora was it was or not. Sora would be all gung-ho to get there as fast as possible, but he knew Kairi wasn't currently in any shape to fight the nobodies at this moment. Apparently her injuries were a little worse than they looked. A little white lie wouldn't hurt here.
"I'm not sure what it is, Sora." Riku sighed, pretending to be disappointed in himself for not knowing. "Kairi's pretty beat up though, we should stop by Midnight's Light. Aerith can probably help her, and we should assess the damage there."
Sora nodded in agreement, and set auto-pilot to head off to Midnight's Light.
--
Upon arriving in Midnight's Light, Aerith immediately took Kairi to take care off all the cuts. Leon and everyone else were just glad to see they were all alive, having all that worry.
"You can go ahead to the World That Never Was." Leon pointed up at the night sky. Riku and Sora were surprised to see that on a night as clear as this, it the castle was actually visible on the horizon. Kingdom Hearts was just a speck of nothing from this distance, Sora had a hard time wrapping his mind around the fact that the tiny speck was what they were fighting to protect.
Even at this distance however, Riku could already spot an issue with the castle's appearance.
"They built an extension..." He commented softly, squinting into the distance to see what was going on. He couldn't tell from here, but he could tell that something was up. Last he even checked they weren't very far in getting back Kingdom Hearts, and yet even the speck in the sky that was Kingdom Hearts looked awfully alive.
Sora looked at Riku, and then the castle. He himself hadn't spent nearly enough time in the World That Never Was to notice something like that from this distance, but now that it was pointed out he could definitely see a rather long, weird looking extension to the side.
Leon hadn't been to the World That Never Was at all, but he could see what they were talking about.
"Guys, be careful when you go there. And no gambling." He teased them both. "We're going back to Hollow Bastion when this is all over."
"Awesome!" Sora was happy to hear that they finally all got to go home. No offense to the people of this world, but it definitely looked like a place you needed to be born into in order to fully appreciate.
Sora and Riku decided then they'd help with a bit of damage control here, Riku insisted on it because he felt bad for agreeing to "the experiment". After changing out of the comfortable, custom made outfit Skyla had spent hours on into his normal clothes, he and Sora spent a couple hours cleaning up the mess and the platform and such.
After a couple hours, they were excited to see Kairi up and about again. She looked much better than before, and that was a relief to everyone.
"So Riku," Sora questioned as they sat in Leon's house again, drinking the highly caffeinated drinks, "how are we supposed to take down the Reorganization?"
Riku had been thinking about this for awhile. He had finally figured out how to beat Skyla, but that was something he needed to do himself at this point. It was too complicated to take Sora along. He didn't want to hog the spotlight, but the true point here was to eliminate the Reorganization.
Other than that, he didn't know what the plan was right now. Somehow, all of them had kept their plans relatively secret to him. Sure, he knew that something was going on with building something, but he had no idea what it was.
There was then the problem of having to face all the members, including Damayon's group, individually. All of them had different strengths and weaknesses, and that was an issue.
Damayon himself had a keyblade, and even without other elemental powers all keyblade wielders were quite skilled and difficult to combat, as they found out with Roxas.
He wasn't so concerned about Mirra; she had looked pretty beaten up when they all left. She probably wasn't up for a fight at the moment. Ray however had ice abilities, and that was something Sora was going to have to deal with, seeing as Sora was the one to deal with the ice wielding Vexen during his time in the Organization XIII's castle Oblivion. Same with Kisatrix's fire abilities, although that was a bit of a double whammy. Kisatrix was also as skilled with a sword as any keyblade wielder.
Elexi was a different matter all together, as his flowers and vines were designed for long range combat. That was for sure a fight that needed to be done with at least two members of their group fighting. Skyla was a matter of getting her powers temporarily disabled, as she was fairly useless without them.
He did need to take into account however that Skyla and Elexi were close; he was practically her little brother. Or something, to him Elexi had acted kind of jealous when he was around Skyla. He didn't think Elexi and Skyla were on the same page with how they felt about each other.
It was all a mess; he'd have to figure this all out as they went.
"Just leave Skyla to me, and watch for everyone's individual powers."
--
"Alright, team!" Skyla clapped in enthusiasm as she entered her room with Elexi, who had calmed down a great deal. "By the way, love your room Ray, very awesome."
Ray just nodded to Skyla in acknowledgement, but was a little nervous about all this. There were three Keyblade wielders, the odds didn't look good.
"We're nearing the end of this. One of three things will happen: The thirty thousand heartless approach will kill them, we'll kill them, or they'll kill us." She didn't lose her chipper tone at all. "Everyone up for the challenge?"
Everyone just nodded in semi-agreement. Sure, this was exciting, but it was also scary. There may have been more of them, and while this gauntlet concept was designed to wear the keyblade wielders down, it wasn't looking good for the people who were closer to the start of it.
"Okay team, they're coming. I'm going to start at the bottom, and let everyone know when it's their turn to go ahead." She threw a walkie-talkie to Ray.
"Let's show those stupid Organization XIII idiots that five is better than thirteen."