Chapter 35
~ Awakening ~
At first, Sora could do little more than stand back and stare as the glow around Roxas' twin swords began to grow brighter and brighter by the second. Despite Ansem's assertions to the contrary, the power radiating from the other boy's weapons was clearly unlike that of the Fangirls; Sora wasn't sure how he could tell, but just staring into that light as it grew ever brighter awakened a feeling somewhere deep within him, one which was somehow both familiar and completely alien all at once.
Roxas launched himself forward, weapons trailing behind him at first and then clashing together in an X-shaped formation just inches short of Sora's face. Though he instinctively raised his own weapon to block the swords themselves, this did nothing to stop the explosion of light that erupted from them as the three blades clashed together, sending Sora tumbling backward through the air and rolling across the floor once he landed. He quickly pulled himself to his feet, breathing heavily for a moment and then mounting a charge of his own. Before he could land a single blow, Roxas caught his Keyblade's shaft with the hook on the end of the white-bladed sword and fired a narrow beam of light from the tip of the black-bladed sword, striking Sora's armored chest and sending him flying backward.
"That light," Sora thought as he drifted backward through the air, feeling almost like he was moving in slow motion. "What… is that light?"
Upon landing, Sora recovered almost immediately. Somehow, the attack just now hadn't hurt as much as the first; he wasn't sure why, but something had changed. The feeling within him grew stronger.
It was a feeling that Sora had never felt before, one his mind was not quite prepared to process. Not quite anger, not quite concentration, not quite the self-aware knowledge of one's inner strengths that made the Organization's powers emerge at full force…
He flipped back to his feet, glancing down at the scraped-up chestplate of his armor for just a moment before readying his Keyblade and charging again. He and Roxas clashed, again and again, his lone Keyblade deflected and shoved aside at every turn by his opponent's twin swords. Sora reared back for an overhead smash, but Roxas simply rolled out of the way and then fired another beam of light at his back, this time with both of his weapons. Sora smashed face-first into the floor, skidding across the carpet for several feet before coming to a stop.
The feeling intensified again. It wasn't quite any of those things that Sora had a name for, those things that Sora could describe. But it had just enough in common with those feelings to fulfill their purpose.
Something inside him had changed. And at this point, as Sora stood up once again, a yellowish-white glow began to creep up the shaft of Sora's Keyblade, eventually surrounding the entire weapon and projecting strange metallic reflections across the hallway. Roxas just blinked and stared; the glow from his own weapons faded slightly as he lost focus, his power and Xion's falling out of sync with each other.
Sora charged, once again going for an overhead smash; once again, Roxas raised his weapons to deflect the attack. This time, the tables were turned a bit—Roxas' weapons had not been charged with enough power to stop the blow fully, and he was shoved backward for a moment just before the aura of light around Sora's Keyblade suddenly exploded outward, sending Roxas stumbling back as the force of the blast knocked him off balance. He wasn't hurt, of course—just like any other member of the Organization, Roxas could not be harmed by the element he had control over–but certainly a bit shaken. He hadn't expected Sora to suddenly start using not just his fighting style but his light-controlling powers against him.
"What the…"
Sora attacked again, but this time the glow around his Keyblade had faded and Roxas easily parried his swing, knocking him off balance with a kick to the gut and then sending him ricocheting back down the hallway with a swing of the flat sides of both swords.
"It's like he's learning as he fights," Xion's voice in Roxas' head spoke up. "The longer this goes on… the more he manages to figure out."
"He's… just like me," Roxas mumbled, staring across the hall as Sora forced himself to stand up once again. "Not even just what he looks like, or the way he uses his weapon… everything."
There was a moment of silence as the two stared across the hall at each other, Sora slowly walking back over toward Roxas and both readying their weapons for another strike. Finally, however, this was interrupted by the sounds of two pairs of metallic footsteps approaching from behind where Sora was standing. The two weaker Keybearers, who had stayed out of the fight when it first began, had now returned.
"Sora!", one of the soldiers shouted. "Ya need any help with this guy?"
"We're not banged up too badly," the other added in, wincing slightly from his injured side but managing to cover it up well enough that the flinch wasn't quite visible from such a distance. "We can still fight. Don't worry about us!"
Sora turned for a moment, then silently motioned for the two soldiers to join him. They nodded in response and came running to his side, Keyblades at the ready.
Something inside Sora began to change again. A different feeling than before, though it was sometimes intermingled with traces of that familiar-yet-unfamiliar feeling. He wasn't sure how he would describe it, but he wasn't really thinking about that—taking time out in the middle of a fight to think about things just wasn't how Sora was. He was acting purely on instinct now, somehow knowing of a way to make himself stronger and not really worrying about the "how" or "why." A barely-visible glow began to surround his entire body, unnoticed by the two soldiers whose darkened visors obscured their vision just enough that it didn't stand out. He lowered his Keyblade to the ground and turned back toward Roxas, revealing that his eyes had begun to glow as well, flickering between blue and yellow as they did. A moment passed, and he held out one hand toward each of the two Keybearers that had rushed to his aid.
"Hey, you two," he said, turning slightly toward one of them and then to the other before returning his focus to Roxas. His voice was not quite the same as before; both Sora's typical friendly, childlike tone and the anger and confusion that he had shown during his battle were absent now. "Give me your hands."
They paused for a moment, then nodded and did as he said, no matter how odd it sounded. Something about the boy just made them feel like they should trust him, and in the middle of a combat situation they didn't have time to doubt that feeling. The two metal-coated hands each grasped one of Sora's own, and in an instant a bright light flared up around all three of the Keybearers, gradually draining away from the two others and moving so that only Sora was illuminated. It soon became clear that the other two had slipped away into unconsciousness; the moment Sora released their hands, they collapsed to the floor with a pair of metallic crashes, their Keyblades slipping from their grip and clattering to the carpet alongside them.
Roxas just stared straight ahead as the glow around Sora changed—his eyes flashed red for just a moment before shifting to a constant yellowish glow, and then red energy began to spread out throughout the aura raging around him, illuminating the hallway with its strange glow. He reached down and grabbed his Keyblade with one hand and then raised the other, causing narrow bolts of red electricity to crackle across the gap between it and his weapon for a few seconds before, slowly but surely, a translucent second Keyblade composed entirely of bright red energy began to appear.
"Okay," Roxas thought, taking a step back and bracing himself. "Maybe there's some differences between us after all…"
Zagan launched himself down the hallway at speeds that surprised Axel; it seemed his former subordinate had indeed changed in the time he had spent with the Keybearers, as he had certainly never been quite this quick before. Demyx jumped aside just in time to avoid a powerful Keyblade swing which split the floor open in its wake, causing a shower of broken building materials to tumble down into the third-floor hallway below them. He slid back down the hall to create some distance between himself and his opponent, propelling his feet with small jets of water while he launched a barrage of exploding spheres of the stuff in Zagan's direction. The taller man turned and raised his Keyblade up to his face, pressing a button and smirking as he spoke into the handle.
"Activate… World Barrier."
The Keyblade's mechanical parts began rapidly whirring and enlarging and spreading apart, the weapon's usual shape shifting until it had transformed into a massive shield bearing the shape of the demonic goat-like head that had previously been little more than a decoration. Demyx's attacks collided with the transformed Keyblade in rapid succession, but they exploded against the shield and accomplished little more than pushing Zagan back slightly and soaking the carpet at his feet.
Axel gritted his teeth and surrounded one of his chakrams in a sphere of flame, flinging it at Zagan's unprotected back. Before the attack could hit home, Zagan turned and blocked this attack with his Keyblade-turned-shield as well, causing the flames to dissipate and sending the weapon itself bouncing back down the hallway. Axel quickly regained control of the stray chakram and returned it to his hand, but it had become clear that such simple attacks weren't going to accomplish much against that shield.
"Heh," Zagan laughed, returning his weapon to its original form. "Looks like I can handle both of you at once after all. Honestly I'm a little surprised… didn't think my first try at making my own Keyblade would turn out this well."
"First try?", Axel snapped. "What, you mean you're going to go back and get another one later?"
Zagan didn't respond; he only readied his Keyblade and charged at the spiky-haired man who had once trained him. Axel raised his chakrams and shifted into a defensive stance, preparing to block the incoming Keyblade swing, but before he had a chance Zagan was suddenly thrown upward into the ceiling by a pillar of water erupting from underneath him. As the sound of scattered notes from Demyx's sitar began to drift through the hallway, he was struck by another, and another. Faster than he could even react, he was being juggled by jets of water bursting through the floor below as Demyx manipulated the contents of the building's water pipes into leaping upward to attack. Finally, Zagan came crashing back down to the floor, landing with a splash in the now-flooded hallway. As the water began to drain back into the holes that now dotted the floor, Zagan pulled himself back to his feet.
Axel and Demyx both charged at this very moment, hoping to catch him off guard, but before either of them could reach his position he raised one hand and snapped his fingers. Almost instantly, two patches of dull orange energy formed on the floor, erupting upward into two rubbery walls of fungal material just in time to block the hallway in both directions. Demyx was unable to slow down in time to avoid the wall that had sprung up and found himself running into it at full speed, stretching the fungus for a moment after impact and then being bounced backward and sent flying back down the hall as if he had just landed face-first on a trampoline. Axel let out a battle cry and swung his arms out to the side, causing a wall of flames to erupt from the floor and destroy the fungal barrier just in time for him to avoid bouncing off of it. A split-second later he emerged on the other side of the flames, taking a swing at Zagan with one of his chakrams but finding his attack deflected just in time as his opponent raised his Keyblade into its path. Axel didn't stop there, rapidly slashing away with both of his weapons over and over as Zagan shifted the position of his own to push each blow aside. He ducked down and attempted to knock Zagan off his feet with a sweeping kick, but he simply jumped over it and countered with a Keyblade swing that struck Axel in the chest and sent him sailing backward across the hallway.
A torrent of water tore through the one remaining fungus wall, but Zagan turned and shifted his Keyblade back into its shield-like form just in time to divert the brunt of the attack away from his body. He was still carried down the hallway by the rushing waters pushing against him, but managed to stay on his feet. Demyx ran along the surface of the water as it slowed to a stop, ducking to the floor and sliding along it so that he slipped past Zagan's shield and then popping up behind him too quickly for him to react. Just as Zagan began to turn, he was struck from behind by one of the musician's exploding spheres of water, sending him toppling forward and crashing to the ground.
His Keyblade shifted back to its normal form again as he stood, pointing the weapon directly at Demyx. He was beginning to breathe a bit more heavily than before at this point; no matter how strong Zagan may have become, taking on two Organization members at once was still no easy task. Axel had now recovered from the hit he had taken previously and walked over to stand alongside Demyx, dematerializing one of his chakrams for just a second to wave his hand over the still-bleeding wound in his chest. Flames briefly flashed across the surface of his torn-open cloak, and the trickle of blood instantly ceased; his powers had cauterized the wound.
"You're starting to look a little worn-out over there," Axel said, giving Zagan back a smirk of his own. "And is it just the water you've been getting smacked around by so often, or is this fight actually making you sweat a little?"
Zagan just smirked back and then replied.
"It's been a while since I've had a real fight… I've just gotten a little rusty," he said, raising his Keyblade's handle to his face once again and pressing down one of the buttons in preparation for another voice-activated command. "Don't go thinking you know how this is going to end so soon… you haven't even seen half of what this thing can do."
Sora charged, swinging both his original Keyblade and the new one he had somehow formed from energy at Roxas one after the other. Just like before, Roxas deflected his blows, but it was clear that something was different—Sora's strength seemed to have drastically increased, to the point where Roxas could no longer block every attack quite so effortlessly. Even drawing upon Xion's power, he still needed to push back against the force of each blow or risk having his own weapons knocked flying from his hands. After several repeated clashes between the two boys, Roxas jumped back and charged his swords with a brilliant aura of light, lunging forward and thrusting with both weapons so that they unleashed a powerful beam directly at his opponent.
Sora gritted his teeth and crossed his two Keyblades to intercept the attack, being gradually shoved backward as Roxas kept his twin blades aimed forward and poured more of his power into the beam. His boots tore apart the carpet underneath them as he slid back further and further, and red electricity crackled around both of his Keyblades as they struggled to contain the power of Roxas' light. Eventually, however, Sora managed to overcome the attack, swinging both of his Keyblades up through it so that it shattered into several smaller beams and went flying off harmlessly in several directions. Each of the small beams left a hole behind in one of the nearby walls as it went, but none of them touched Sora.
Before either of them could make another move, a series of rumbles and the sound of clanking pipes from one of the floors above caught the attention of both of the boys, and they glanced upward just in time to spot a few drips of water coming down from the ceiling.
"Water all the way down here," Roxas mumbled to himself. "Demyx must be really going at it up there…"
Sora turned his attention back toward the other boy, staring at him for a moment with his glowing-yellow eyes and then charging once again. Roxas noticed just in time to block another flurry of blows, jumping up into the air to avoid a sudden thrust from the red energy Keyblade and then bringing down both of his own weapons on Sora's back as he leapt over him. The armored boy was thrown to the floor immediately, Roxas' swords leaving two deep gouges behind in his armor as he passed over him and landed several feet behind. Sora yelled out in pain and immediately turned toward Roxas to counterattack, this time flinging the energy-Keyblade at him like a boomerang. This caught Roxas off guard, the spinning weapon smashing into his chest just as he turned to face his opponent. The second Keyblade continued to spin as it pushed Roxas backward through the air, striking him over and over again for several seconds before eventually stopping and beginning to spin back toward its owner's hand once again. Roxas dropped to the floor and groaned, coughing up a bit of blood onto the carpet as he forced himself to stand once again.
"Okay," he said, readying both of his weapons again. "Looks like I'm going to have to hurry up and finish this."
"You're going to need my help," Xion's voiced chimed in. "And not just a little bit this time. But… you already knew that, right?"
Roxas just smiled slightly and nodded in response.
As Sora walked and then ran down the hallway toward Roxas' location, the light around his twin swords began to glow so brightly that the shape of the solid weapons within their auras could no longer be seen. This glow intensified and spread out in the shape of two much longer blades, neither katanas like Roxas' or hook-tipped swords like Xion's but something entirely different. Roxas just stood and waited as Sora drew closer and closer, swords held down at an angle so that they nearly brushed against the floor, until finally his opponent came within 10 feet of him. And then, as a barely-noticeable image of Xion's eyes flashed in front of his face for just a moment, Roxas charged so quickly that Sora didn't even see it coming.
For a few seconds, the room was illuminated with a series of whirling silvery-white lights as Roxas slashed at Sora over and over again, the gouges in the surface of his armor growing deeper and crisscrossing each other more and more as the moments passed. Sora was unable to do anything in response, his body being knocked backward by every blow that landed, his reactions not quite quick enough to raise either of his Keyblades in defense. Finally, as the red glow and electricity crackling around the Keybearer had begun to weaken and he was having trouble standing, Roxas leaped into the air and thrust both of his light-shrouded swords into the ground at his feet. A massive pillar of light erupted from the floor, incinerating the carpet instantly and launching Sora upward into the ceiling. The pillar of light continued ever forward, apparently unhindered by the fact that it was now shoving Sora along with it, smashing straight through the ceiling and beyond. As the beam—and Sora—pushed through yet another ceiling, water poured down from somewhere up above and finally, with a heavy thud and a clanking of metal armor against some hard surface far above, Sora came to a stop.
The light that had erupted from the floor and that which surrounded Roxas' swords both faded almost immediately, the weapons' shape having already reverted to that of his own twin katanas. He just stood perfectly still for a few seconds, breathing heavily and listening for any sign that Sora was still conscious; when none came, he dematerialized his weapons and let himself fall backward onto the floor with a sigh of relief. Axel and Demyx may have still had work to do somewhere on the upper floors, but his battle was now over.
"Y'know, I've never really had a chance to try this one out yet," Zagan said, grinning as he held his Keyblade in front of his face. "Activate... Infinite Gatling."
As his Keyblade transformed into the shape of a gun that would look far more appropriate mounted to some sort of vehicle than being held by a single person, Zagan raised it to his shoulder and took aim. Axel and Demyx both launched a few quick blasts of their respective elements in his direction, but before they could get anywhere near him they were shot down by a series of purple energy bolts which detonated each of the elemental blasts in midair. Zagan adjusted his aim slightly and then began firing away with even more of these energy bolts, sending both Axel and Demyx scrambling to avoid them. Dozens of shots filled the hallways, with Demyx managing to avoid most of them (though his cloak, swishing behind him as he ducked, jumped, and ran out of their path, was not so lucky) but Axel occasionally being grazed by one or needing to knock a few aside with his chakrams.
It wasn't long before every surface in the hallway peppered with dozens of almost fist-sized holes, the floor creaking slightly as more and more bolts pierced through it and the two Organization members continued to dodge and block the incoming storm. Zagan just laughed at the sight of his former mentor and Demyx both being forced into a position where they were always on the defensive, unable to do much of anything but run and block.
"Not much longer now," he thought, watching as Axel was struck by two shots directly to the chest and even the faster Demyx had begun to have trouble avoiding the seemingly-endless blasts. "They're getting worn down, and then…"
Before he could complete that thought, a small, blinking red light from the handle of his Keyblade caught his eye. His battery was running low. His face shifting away from his usual smirk for once, he abruptly disengaged his weapon's machine-gun-like transformation and gripped the Keyblade in just one hand, summoning the weapon he had wielded in the Organization in the other. As the last of the purple energy shots faded from the hallway, he prepared to charge in, hoping that his two black-cloaked opponents would be too distracted from dodging his previous assault to have any suspicions as to why he had suddenly changed his strategy. And then, abruptly, a voice came through the scratchy radio speaker built into his Keyblade's handle.
"This is Riku," the voice said, "Responding to your call for backup earlier. I'm outside the building right now… coming up in just a second."
Zagan paused; though that had been the plan as far as the lower-ranked Keybearers present had been told, he himself had never called for backup. He immediately turned toward the other end of the hallway, where the other four soldiers stood, just in time to spot one of them saying something into the handle of his own Keyblade.
"Looks like he's stopped," Axel muttered, clutching his aching chest with one hand and breathing heavily between words. He paused for a moment to catch his breath before turning toward Demyx. "For now, anyway… you still in good shape?"
The musician nodded, brandishing his sitar. Though his cloak was now full of holes and there were a few spots where it was clear that the bolts of purplish energy had burned through and gotten a direct hit on him, he seemed to be in far better shape than Axel. He had always been the better of the two when it came to running and dodging, a fact that not even Axel could deny.
"Okay, then," the spiky-haired man said, lowering his voice slightly. "Let's figure something out while he's distracted."
As it turned out, Zagan was about to be even more distracted then he already was. A series of metallic crashing sounds from below rang out, and then suddenly a pillar of light tore through the floor, launching a heavily-injured Sora up through the hole left behind. The standing water left over from Demyx's attacks that had not yet soaked into the carpet rushed down the hole as quickly as it could, showering the floors below as it went. Narrowly missing the four Keybearers gathered at the other end of the hall, Sora slammed into the ceiling and then fell to the floor, groaning and twitching for a moment before finally falling unconscious and lying completely still. A few sparks of some unusual reddish electricity crackled around his left hand for just a moment, and then just as quickly as they had appeared they were gone. Immediately, the other low-ranking Keybearers were thrown into a panic.
"What the heck!?"
"Oh man… that's Sora!", one of them blurted out, noticing that the boy's helmet (which was now mostly destroyed, in addition to having the visor open) was not concealing his face. "Is he…?"
"No," another said, crouching down and checking his pulse. "He's alive… but he's in pretty rough shape. We'd better get 'im outta here pretty soon."
"Master Zagan," the last remaining Keybearer said, running down the hall toward the only Keyblade Master currently present. "Sora's hurt… looks like it's pretty bad, too."
Zagan paused for a moment, for once not sure what to say. He hadn't been counting on a third Organization member being present, especially not one strong enough to handle Sora after fighting their way through part of a Fangirl swarm.
"Master Zagan, we've got to retreat," the soldier continued.
For a moment, Zagan thought about the possibilities. His Keyblade was running low on power—only the second time in the history of the Keybearers that this had happened out in the field, though training sessions and failed Mark of Mastery exams were a different story—which meant he probably wouldn't be able to keep up with both Axel and Demyx much longer. Just when he was about to agree that retreat was probably the best option, the sound of creaking metal and rushing water from behind him caught his attention.
As he turned, he attempted to shift his Keyblade into its shield form but found that the battery was too low to support that transformation for more than a split-second. The partially-formed shield quickly reverted to its usual Keyblade shape, then went even beyond that and reverted to just its handle again, the other parts miniaturizing and going back into storage. He attempted to draw upon his fungus powers to defend himself in that split-second before the blast of water made contact, but when the rubbery wall of fungus formed in front of him it was quickly burned away by a wall of fire. He caught sight of Axel grinning at him and waving through the flames for just a moment before the fire shifted its shape, leaping toward him in a spiral around Demyx's incoming blast of water. The two opposing elements collided just before impact and a cloud of scalding water and superheated steam washed over Zagan. He raised his hand to close the visor of his helmet as quickly as his reflexes would allow, but it wasn't quite quick enough—he snarled as the steam and splashes of boiling liquid hit him head-on, undoubtedly covering every bit of exposed skin with nasty burns. He was pushed back, managing to remain standing but nearly bowling over the other unfortunate Keybearer in the process.
The low-ranked Keybearer, narrowly avoiding getting knocked over by Zagan, ran out of the expanding steam cloud as quickly as he could but still ended up panting and overheated by the time he reached the safety of the other side of the hall. He collapsed to the floor and deactivated his armor in an attempt to cool himself off, causing it to shrink away into a single segment attached to his upper arm and leaving him in little more than a white t-shirt and boxer shorts. The other three Keybearers carefully lifted Sora and hurried into the elevator, their no-longer-armored comrade joining them seconds afterward once he managed to stand again.
As the cloud of vapor cleared, Zagan was the only one on the Keybearers' side left in the hallway. Once the steam and the suffocating heat it brought with it had dissipated, he opened his helmet's visor once again and scowled. Axel and Demyx, worn but not yet beaten, slowly walked toward him from the other side of the hall, both fully prepared to capture him and return him to the base to be punished for betraying the Organization… in whatever way Xemnas deemed necessary. Before they could reach him, however, there was a sound of smashing glass and a strange vehicle came flying in at high speeds from the gaping hole where the window at the other end of the hall used to be.
"Hmm," Zagan said, noticing the sound but not turning away from his opponents for even a second. "Sounds like my backup's arrived."
The Keyblade-glider, this one more closely resembling a floating jet-motorcycle with several pairs of bat-like wings (and a single white feathery one) decorating it, quickly reached Zagan's position. Riku, now clad in the more-elaborate armor of a Keyblade Master, hopped off of the vehicle but did not return it to its usual Keyblade form.
"Zagan," he said, "Sora's going to need a way back to the base to get patched up… and if your Keyblade's out of power, my glider's the only one we've got."
For a second, the older Keybearer just stood there, still facing toward Axel and Demyx, breathing heavily but not saying a word. Then, dematerializing his kusarigama with a brief flash of orange, he nodded slightly and hopped onto the back of the vehicle, leaving the driver's position to Riku. Axel and Demyx lowered their weapons and just watched as Riku's glider went into reverse, rocketing back down the hallway at full speed and leaving the building through the same broken window it had entered before.
"Damn," Axel muttered. "If that kid hadn't shown up when he did…"
Demyx dematerialized his sitar and sighed, sitting down in one of the few dry patches of carpet left after his attacks had drenched most of the area.
"Yeah… I mean, Zagan looked like he was pretty much done already," he said, "So we could've just beat 'em both up, but… I'd feel kinda bad about it. Zagan would've deserved it, but the other guy never did anything to us."
Axel dematerialized his own weapons and slouched against the wall for a moment before realizing that, being full of holes from Zagan's attacks earlier, it probably only barely supported his weight. After hurriedly putting some distance between himself and the wall to make sure he wouldn't do that again without thinking, he turned back toward Demyx and spoke up once again.
"I guess you're right," he mumbled, crossing his arms. "Still… would've been nice. Zagan's been working with the Fangirls for months, and now he's apparently signed up with the Keybearers too… who knows what kind of information we'd be able to wring out of him."
There was a brief pause, and then suddenly Demyx remembered something.
"Dude… where'd Roxas go?"
Axel's eyes widened.
"Crap," he snapped, "That other Keybearer got launched up here by a huge pillar of light… that had to have been Roxas. What's taking him so long getting up here?"
Axel hurried over toward the other side of the hallway as quickly as he could manage with his injuries, with Demyx hopping back to his feet and following him shortly afterward. Reaching the perfectly circular gap where Sora had come flying up into the fourth floor earlier, Axel hopped down, and within a matter of seconds he had landed back down on the second floor. Demyx hesitated a bit, then followed after him.
"Well… looks like he's in better shape than the other guy was, at least," Axel said, looking over Roxas' unconscious body. "A few cuts and scrapes here and there, but nothing too serious."
By the time Demyx had walked over as well, Roxas had opened his eyes. He groaned, glanced around for a few seconds, and then slowly pulled himself back to his feet. It seemed that he hadn't quite been unconscious when they had arrived after all—just exhausted, lying on the floor to get some rest.
"Whoa," Roxas said, glancing over the other two Organization members' heavily-damaged cloaks, "What happened to you guys?"
"Zagan," Axel muttered, his feelings toward the bearer of that name obvious from his tone. "Oh, and it gets worse… apparently he's learned some new tricks since the last time we saw him. I'm not sure if either of us would've been able to handle him alone."
"Hey, check this out!", Demyx suddenly called out from somewhere behind where Roxas was standing. He and Axel turned their attention over toward that side of the hall and found what Demyx was talking about—two Keybearers, lying unconscious on the floor, with their Keyblades alongside them.
"Looks like they're both still alive… just knocked out," he added, shrugging slightly. "I guess the other guys were in so much of a hurry to get out they forgot to come looking for 'em, or something."
Axel and Roxas both headed over in Demyx's direction, Roxas being a bit relieved to find out that the two Keybearers had survived whatever Sora had done to them and Axel mostly just being curious about what was going on. The redhead reached down and picked up one of their Keyblades, glancing over the overall design of the weapon for a few seconds before poking at the buttons. Before long, he found that the buttons apparently were not functional, though a few of them pressed in like the kind of button you'd expect to actually do something would.
"Huh… looks like their weapons aren't working. Wonder what happened down here…"
"I'm not really sure what happened, and I was here to see it," Roxas said, "That Sora guy… it seemed like he kind of drained away their energy to make himself stronger, or something like that. They've been unconscious like this ever since."
Axel poked at one of the buttons a few more times, eventually giving up on making anything actually happen before turning toward Roxas.
"So… you're saying he must've drained the batteries to these things, too?"
Roxas shrugged.
"Kinda weird that they stayed like this if that's what happened," Demyx said, picking up the other Keyblade and poking around at it just like Axel had been doing. "I mean, Zagan's just kind of packed itself up and left after it ran out of power…"
"Hmm… maybe we'd better take these back with us," Axel said, briefly swinging the not-entirely-functional weapon around in one hand in an attempt to figure out how he might use one if he had the opportunity. "Drop 'em off by Vexen's lab once we get back, see if he can figure out what's up."
Demyx nodded. Roxas, however, was focused more on the Keybearers themselves than their weapons.
"What about these two, though?"
Axel scratched his head for a second.
"Huh… good question. I guess we can't really drag 'em back to the base with us… besides, I doubt a couple of grunts like these guys would have really be able to tell us much that we didn't already know."
"So… do we just leave them here?"
"Well… they're not really hurt or anything," Demyx said, "As far as I can tell, anyway. They'll probably just get back up in a little while."
He and Axel began to walk back down the hallway toward the stairs, while Roxas hung back for a second. He still wasn't quite comfortable with the thought of leaving the two unfortunate Keybearers just lying there in the middle of the hallway, but it seemed like there wasn't really much of a choice. Hoping that the others would return to search for their missing comrades, Roxas eventually turned and headed off down the hallway as well, leaving the now-heavily-damaged office building behind.