Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts or any of the characters related to Kingdom Hearts.
Chapter 28: Fusion
The scythe gracefully cut through the air, leaving a trail of pink rose petals in its wake. Nihil managed to dodge the attack but was forced to move backwards as the scythe once more was aimed at her direction. Her retreat was forced to a sudden stop when she reached the railing at the end of the balcony.
"This is the end of the road for you." Marluxia said. "Hand over the keyblade now."
Nihil opened her right hand and a blue fire sprung from the palm, but instead of throwing the dark fire at Marluxia, Nihil let the fire ball grew in her hand until it was at double size.
"I hope X'ero informed you that I can cast three spells at once."
Nihil began to charge up a thunderga-spell, Marluxia sensed the danger and leapt backwards. Nihil fused the two spells together to a dark blue glowing sphere, but instead of aiming it at Marluxia she threw it at the floor. As it hit the floor it exploded into a shockwave of fire and thunder. The walls between the hallway and the balcony were blown in by the force as well. When the dust had settled down, the three Nobodies in the hallway, there had been watching the fight the whole time, saw that not much was left of the balcony.
"That is why I prefer not to mix thunder and fire spells." X'ero dryly commented. "It tends to explode." She looked down. She could not see the bottom of the hole the balcony up till now had been watching over. X'ero hoped that it was only the many airborne heartless that blocked for her view of the bottom, but she had a slight inkling that it properly went all the way down to the bottom basement floor. "Does Marluia by any chance have the ability to fly?" She asked Larxene.
"Not what I know." Larxene glanced at Saïx unsure if she should continue. "But he does have a second form..." She whispered to X'ero. "I might have helped him."
"We already know that." Saïx said coldly. "Do you think we are idiots?"
"Yes."
"Don't start an argument." X'ero interrupted before it got out of hand. "I can't fly, but I'm willingly to bet that Nihil survived that fall. She has an amazing ability to survive her own crazy suicide moves."
"Funny how both of you worry about the fall, but not the explosion." Saïx pointed out.
"It was a magical explosion." X'ero waved her hand in the air. "It won't damage Nihil that much."
"But it could wound Marluxia." Larxene said and stood up. She flexed her muscles a little. "Screw it. I'm not letting that witch win. Not before I have beaten Marluxia up for not respecting me properly."
Before X'ero could stop Larxene jumped and disappeared among the mass of heartless.
"..." X'ero looked at Saïx speechless.
"I'm not doing that." Saïx said firmly. "I may be tough, but I have no desire to try out my ability to fall thirteen floors."
"We don't know if it's thirteen." X'ero began. "Why did she jump?" she suddenly asked. "The fall is too deep and they are arguing on top of that. Why risk yourself?"
"Larxene has always been rash. If she had thought more about it she properly wouldn't have jumped." Saïx sighed. He was absolutely not the right one to explain such a thing to X'ero. "Sometimes your body just react and you just move and do all the thinking afterwards. Have you never tried that?"
"After becoming X'ero? Not while I was in a sane condition..." X'ero stopped talking, Saïx could see by the quick flash of pain that flew over her face that it was an unpleasant memory. "That is not true I did do something unexplainable one time."
"What?" Saïx asked curious.
"I saved someone." X'ero shrugged. "What about you?"
"I'm a berserker. My fighting style is based on giving in to rage and just destroying whatever is near me."
"That doesn't count." X'ero said with crossed arms. "That is the moon affecting you."
"Then - No! I don't make mistakes."
X'ero mumbled something that seemed to consist of the words 'Sora' and 'defeat'. Saïx lifted X'ero's face up with a finger under her chin.
"Watch what you say." He warned.
"What do we do now?" X'ero asked undisturbed by the treat. "I'll have to agree with you on the 'not jumping part'.
"We meet up with Demyx and Luxord as agreed - and pretend we know nothing."
"But..."
"No buts." Saïx grabbed her hand and began to walk back.
"Slow down. You don't have to drag me."
Luxord and Demyx were already there when Saïx and X'ero arrived.
"We found something." Demyx proudly claimed. "Like this really huuuuge room at the almost bottom - with tons of heartless." Demyx suddenly deflated as he looked at Saïx. "You are not going to make us fight them are you?"
"No."
"I wonder if that was the room the balcony reached into." X'ero said.
"There certainly was a long way up to the ceiling." Luxord said. "But we didn't stay. Also when we moved away there was this loud sound. Like something fell down."
X'ero and Saïx looked at each other. They knew what had fallen.
"We should go there." X'ero said after a short break. "It might be the only clue we have to get out of this world. Besides I don't think Marluia and Larxene are going to show up. We are way past the agreed time of meeting." Nothing in her face or attitude reflected what she truly knew about the situation. She didn't even have her normal disastrous smile.
"You are properly right." Luxord said. "Marluxia and Larxene don't play the game by the set rules. We cannot wait for them. It was at the 12th basement floor."
As they left the entrance hall Saïx briefly placed a hand on X'ero's shoulder signaling her to stop.
"What is it?"
"I'm impressed that you can lie with such a straight face. That creepy smile of yours usually tells when something is not right..."
"I did not lie." X'ero said firmly. "I just left out a lot of the details. That's a lot easier than lying."
"What worries me is that you might have 'forgotten' to tell something important about Nihil. It wouldn't be the first time."
X'ero tugged in the long side of her hair and glanced at Saïx.
"..."
"X'ero, we are properly going to face her again now, and it wasn't exactly a success last time ..."
X'ero sighed.
"Unfortunately you do have a point." Suddenly X'ero's visible eye shone up and her gloves appeared. She took a step towards him. Worried that she had suddenly turned aggressive Saïx was about to step back when X'ero tiptoed so she could place a gloved hand on his forehead. Coming into full contact with it, Saïx could truly feel how her gloves were not made of cloth but of darkness, it spread out over his skin and he felt a slight tug at the back of his mind. Saïx realized that he was being scanned.
"Whoa...!" Not being the most elegant person in the world, X'ero lost her balance - standing on her toes as she was, and fell towards Saïx. He automatically grabbed her.
"Sorry!" X'ero said and backed away a little. "I cannot say if it's because we are Nobodies or if there really is something wrong, but the darkness inside Nihil felt more controlled and concentrated..." X'ero paused. "Perhaps it's just different for us. I mean you were just touched by darkness in the process of losing your heart, and I... well I'm a Nobody too. It's not like I can have my heart corrupted again. I would need someone like that Riku guy to truly compare: Someone with a heart. Perhaps nothing is wrong."
"But you don't think so."
"I think that it is idiotic of us to fight Nihil in a room filled with heartless..." X'ero sighed. "But I guess it is too late to point that out now."
"It's a trap, Sora!"Axel had repeated Nihil words to Sora, and just as he had expected Sora was eager to go. Perhaps eager was not the right word. Axel had never seen Sora or Roxas so angry and so determined.
"Open the way in."
"All right, all right..." Axel opened a path to the dark corridors. "But I won't go, so don't expect me to save your hide. I can't keep doing that, you know." Despite his words Axel knew that he would take another route in and follow Sora. Sora was all that was left of his friends.
The path to Castle Oblivion was filled with a strange type of metal-like dogs. Sora, Donald and Goofy immediately summoned their weapons.
"They are with us." The male knight appeared again with his female counterpart. "I thought you said that it wasn't revenge you wanted."
"I must see her," Sora said. "The person who..." Sora couldn't get himself to say 'who killed Kairi'. He tried, but the words just wouldn't cross his lips.
"You must not see her." The knight said seriously. "You must stop her. She's evil. However, you should not face her alone. We will support you..."
"No!" Sora didn't mean to shout but he did it anyway. "I need to face this person alone."
"As you wish." The knights and the dogs faded away again.
"Sora..." Donald said. "You are not alone."
Sora looked at his two friends and tried to smile.
"I know."
When Sora, Donald and Goofy disappeared as well, the low sound of pages being turned could be heard, and Xemnas, Xigbar, Xaldin and Zexion appeared.
"That was close." Xaldin said. "Good to see that your skills have not been affected by your sleep."
"Of course not." Zexion claimed as he closed Lexicon again. "But it seems that it will be crowed in Oblivion."
They both looked at Xemnas since they expected him to come with some kind of statement, but their leader seemed lost in thought and for once silent.
Luxord, Demyx, Saïx and X'ero arrived in the room that Demyx and Luxord had found, in time to see Marluxia revert from his second form to his human form. It soon became clear that he had reverted back to save the little energy he had left. However, he kept up the fight.
"He is tired." Saïx stated the obvious. "Not surprisingly if they have been fighting the whole time."
"This confirms that there is something different with Nihil." X'ero said. "I do not have such stamina."
The green echo firmly sitting on Nihil's shoulder, turned its head towards the group of newcomers, but that was all Nihil bothered with them. The way she ignored them was actually quite insulting.
A knife suddenly pierced through the air, just above Saïx's head.
"Larxene..." He said.
The group quickly moved in the direction the knife came from and found Larxene sitting up against a wall rubbing her left ankle.
"Why are you down here?" Luxord asked. "You are supposed to be upstairs."
"We jumped." Larxene chose the short version.
"But we are on the twelfth basement floor." Luxord looked quite shocked. "That was an unnecessary gamble to take young lady."
"Drop the lecture." Larxene snapped at Luxord. "I hurt my foot and now I can't support on it properly and I'm a speed fighter." She smirked. "I least I got the pleasure of jumping on a few heartless heads on my down." The smirk quickly became a pained one. "Stupid foot."
"Speaking of heartless. Why are they pacified? I mean they are just standing or floating here. Why not use them against us?" X'ero asked.
"Don't give her ideas." Demyx said. "She's scary enough without the heartless."
Saïx shook his head.
"Let her pay for her arrogance." He said. "Including ignoring us."
"So we are teaming up on her?" Luxord asked.
Saïx nodded and Luxord quickly lifted his hand, and before anyone could blink, Nihil was surrounded by human sized cards. The green bird on her shoulder lifted its head in the air and cried out, creating a shockwave that knocked the cards down.
"Dance water! Dance!"
The room was filled with water clones. The green bird lifted from the shoulder of the witch and flew through each of the clones, absorbing them on the way. Nihil still ignored them and concentrated on Marluxia.
"That's cheating!" Demyx said.
"Magic techniques won't work - Even if they are indirect attacks." X'ero explained. "She's not even going to acknowledge our presence unless we attack her directly."
"I tried throwing knives at her from here." Larxene said. "But she just blew them away."
"It's that bird…" Saïx said. "Besides making magic useless, it also has a nice pair of eyes to watch us with."
"Technically it's not a real bird, but the reflection of…" X'ero began, but stopped when Saïx glared at her. "It's perhaps a little late to be coming with information?" She asked unsurely.
"A little…" Saïx said, but then he suddenly stared at X'ero more intently or rather at her visible eye. He had always thought that X'ero just had a weird fashion taste, but now he thought about it: X'ero's eyes were mismatched in colour – not a lot, but still... Nihil usually hid the same eye which X'ero showed. Saïx looked at Nihil. Her left eye was definitely yellow while her right was brown, perhaps…
"Larxene, give me a knife…"
"No way! They are my weapons. That would be like lending you a part of me!"
"Don't argue. It's an order."
Larxene cursed, but still summoned a knife. Saïx took it and summoned his own weapon. He grabbed the claymore with two hands to hide the knife under the hilt. Then he leapt a Nihil. The bird on her shoulder immediately began to flap its wing and cry out. Nihil pushed Marluxia backwards with a triple aeroga spell and spun towards Saïx.
"Dark-firoga!"
Saïx threw the knife in the same second Nihil cast the spell, in the hope that she wouldn't notice the extra weapon before it was too late. He was hit by the full force of the black tornado. But the pain was worth it when a scream told him that he had hit the target. X'ero was quickly by his side, turning off the blue flames that threaten to burn him.
"Did you have to run straight into a spell?" She scolded, but then saw Nihil. "Oh…"
Nihil had thrown the knife on the floor and now tried desperately to quell the bloodstream, dripping out from the place where her left eye had been.
"Y… you bastard." She screamed, but then froze when the echo began to act up. It flapped its wing and swung itself off the shoulder of its creator, and then it proceeded to flew around in the room - aimlessly, while bumping into heartless on the way.
"How did you know?" X'ero asked Saïx. "That my scanning ability is placed in my eye?"
"I already told that I like your eyes." Saïx said and succeeded in making X'ero look at him utterly confused. "I did notice that your left eye have an tendency to shine. Beside Nihil usually hide that eye."
"That's just because she's weird." X'ero claimed, but quickly changed the subject before someone had a chance to point out the X'ero was weird as well. "Let's use the opening." X'ero summoned her gloves and clasped her hands together. "Dark-firoga."
"Reflect!" Nihil quickly blocked the spell, but had to leap back when Luxord's cards suddenly came flying at her.
"Dance water! Dance!" Even Demyx was motivated to join the attack and X'ero quickly backed him up by throwing a double dark-fire at her other.
"Triple-thunderga." Electricity split Nihil's fingertips to pierce the water clones, while she avoided the fireball from X'ero, but suddenly she stopped moving as she grabbed her right arm that was hanging strangely numb from her body.
"Ha!" It came from behind them where Larxene had fought herself up in standing position with the support of the wall. "Stupid of you to use my element: Real thunder paralyzes!" She summoned four knives with her free hand and threw them at Nihil. With the right side numb, Nihil barely managed to dodge and it was impossible for her to avoid Marluxia's sudden incoming scythe attack as well. It grazed her leg and she fell down.
"To hell with you all." She said, as she fought to stand up again with the wounded leg. "What kind of group goes six against one?"
"With all the heartless here I would say that it's you that have us outnumbered." X'ero coldly said.
"Do you have any idea how long it took me to pacify all of them?" Nihil asked. "I have a plan. I can't waste them against nothings like you."
Marluxi tried to laugh, but ended up coughing. Even with the break the rest of the group had bought him, he was still tired.
"Now. Is. Not. The. Time. To. Be. Belittling. Us." He said. His words would have been a lot more threatening if he didn't have to gasp for air after each words.
Nihil narrowed her healthy eye:
"Well, I do know what you are after." She held a hand out in the air and darkness formed until she stood with the airy keyblade in her hand.
"What?" Luxord gasped and looked at X'ero.
"Eh… I had no idea about that." X'ero quickly said. Luxord had enough tact to not question her further and X'ero just hoped that Saïx wouldn't notice the fact that Demyx was not surprised about the keyblade at all.
"If you think I'm going to hand it over, then you are wrong." Nihil swung her hand backwards.
"She's going to use a raid-attack." X'ero tried to warn Marluxia, but it was too late. The keyblade rotated through the air. Marluxia tried to block with his scythe, but the block wasn't timed right and his scythe was knocked out of his hand and fell to the ground where it dissolved into rose blades. The keyblade turned around in the air and returned to Nihil like a boomerang. She grabbed it with her no longer numb hand, and swung it around until she stood in a new fighting stance. A green light emerged from the tip of the weapon. Without enough stamina to re-summon his weapon Marluxia couldn't block the attack and the beam pierced him through the chest. Even though it was an attack to his torso, Marluxia grabbed his head.
"No," He said as he dropped to his knees. "It's all disappearing. My… my memories. It's not fair. This time I won't... I deserve to win for once …" And with that Marluxia faded into the nothingness.
There was silence amongst the Nobodies. It had all happen so fast that none of them had reacted in time. Not to mention that the two fastest amongst them were hurt.
"You bitch!" Larxene was the first to react. She flung herself from the wall to charge at Nihil, forgetting all about her bad leg. As soon as she took a step on the bad food she swayed and would have fallen very ungraceful to the floor if Luxord hadn't been a gentleman and supported her.
"I don't need your help." She spat.
"No. You need an elixir."
Nihil laughed:
"So who's next?" she asked.
Saïx summoned his claymore.
"Back me up." He ordered X'ero.
"Are you crazy?" X'ero asked. "You took a direct hit from a magic attack earlier."
"I'm the only one suited for close combat right now. Unless of course you want to go."
"It won't be necessary." X'ero said then she suddenly smiled her eerie smile at Nihil. "Saïx really messed up your scanning, huh? You can't even sense that the keyblade wielder is close to this castle."
"Seriously?" Nihil seemed to doubt X'ero for a second but then she changed her mind. "Why should you lie about that?" She asked herself more than X'ero. "I no longer have time to play with you."
Eraser disappeared again and Nihil stepped into the middle of the room, mumbling some kind of chant. Black feathers began to cover her body.
"Is she reverting back to a heartless?" Saïx asked X'ero.
"I don't think so…"
The feather removed themselves from Nihil's body, floating around her – around her and up in a dark vortex. Each feather sought a heartless out and fused with it only to pull the heartless into the merciless vortex. The Nobodies all backed closer to the wall, afraid to be sucked in as well.
"She's fusing them all together. She's creating something big from the heartless." X'ero shook her head. She just couldn't believe this.
"You mean like a big heartless?" Demyx asked.
"A really big heartless, but if I know that chant correct it's an ability fusion not a body fusion. So whatever comes out it will be capable of doing each what the heartless was capable off."
"I jumped on a lot of Possessors on my way down," Larxene said. "And there was a lot more. Do you remember the forest?"
X'ero's visible eye got big:
"She's going to turn the whole castle into a heartless."
Saïx immediately summoned a portal.
"We are out of here!"
"Have you forgotten the keyblade monsters?" Luxord asked.
"If the choice is between being inside a castle of a heartless or fighting some keyblade monsters: I'll choose the last.
the group tumbled out of the dark portal in a safe distance to Castle Oblivion, and watched the castle being covered in a black aura.
"That is not natural." X'ero said with a shaking voice. "She truly is a monster. Why did she have to prove it?"
Saïx looked at X'ero as she spoke. Her expression was normal, but her voice revealed the pain. He didn't know how to answer her question, and before he had the chance X'ero suddenly spun around.
"That is just too much." She said a hint of anger in her voice. The other turned around as well to see the male knight standing behind them.
"Well," Saïx said as he realized that the cover-story somehow had become the truth. "It looks like I'll have my fight."
Ns: And the chapter is up.
Larxene: You... What Am I supposed to do now?
Ns: I advice: Survive! You are not exactly in safety.
Larxene: I'll kill that bitch!
Nihil (Laughs): You are welcome to try.
Ns (Sighs): do you have to provoke everbody?
Nihil: Yes.
