Author's note: I've used the original Japanese names for the Sailor Soldiers here, mainly because those are the names I'm used to. Check Wikipedia if you get confused over who is who. I've done my best to describe them and make sure they are all recognized, but even the best can make mistakes. ;) Oh, and the park in this story is completely my own invention, nothing that can be seen in teh Sailor Moon series, as far as I know. /Silverspegel
Chapter 22:2: Heart of the world
"From the light, comes darkness!" (Anubis, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie – The pyramid of light)
"So are you sure this is the spot?"
Ami, the blue-haired girl that Kairi and the others had met as Sailor Mercury the night before, nodded solemnly at the question. "There's no doubt about it, Kairi. All my calculations lead towards this place. I'm sorry I can't be more exact than this, but this area is where it should be. Do you sense anything?"
Kairi tried hard to find that slight tug in her heart that had lead her towards the heart of previous worlds, but couldn't sense it at all. Either the heart was very well concealed, or it wasn't here at all. Considering the soldier's confidence in her data, Kairi forced herself to think positive and lean towards the more optimistic of the alternatives. "I can't sense it, but that doesn't mean it isn't here," she said and took a look around. "We'll just have to start searching for it."
The group of Sailor Soldiers in their civil clothes, the two talking cats presented as Luna and Artemis, and Kairi and her two companions were standing in a forest area that according to Rei, the girl who also was Sailor Mars, was some sort of wild life preserve. Trees were growing high and pompous along the sides of a broad, well kept gravel path that lead through the park grounds that were positioned on the side of a low mountain hill. It was a beautiful setting, but something about the way shadows clung to the tree trunks gave Kairi a not so pleasant chill down her spine. The heartless thrived in shadowy areas like this.
"Do you think we'll have any trouble with the heartless showing in daylight?" Minako, also known as Sailor Venus, asked as she peered down towards the edges of the city.
"You can bet your cute little red ribbons on them showing up when we least expect it," Astrid said and weighed her axe in her hands, trying to decide whether or not she should keep it ready.
"What my less than tactful friend is trying to say," Hauru cut in as he noticed the golden haired Sailor soldier's irritated appearance ", is that the heartless are made of shadows, and although the night is optimal in its darkness, they have no trouble moving about in the light of the sun, so we better be on our watch."
The gathered Sailor soldiers seemed to appreciate Hauru's explanation and Astrid muttered something poisonous under her breath to him as she passed him, but Hauru only smiled.
"Alright, then," Haruka said, rolling her shoulders and pushing a hand through her short hair. She was dressed in jeans and a white shirt, looking rather masculine in compairance to her outfit as Sailor Uranus. "We better start looking then. Since it's a large area we probably should divide into groups to cover more ground in less time."
"It sounds like a good idea to me," Usagi said while thoughtfully gazing into the forest ahead, nervously stroking one of her long blonde pigtails. "But wouldn't it be better for us to keep together in case the heartless actually does show up?"
"It's easy for us to send a warning should it happen and we could agree on getting ourselves to the centre of the park if we get attacked, so that we easily can come to the attacked group's help," Michiru, or Sailor Neptune, put in, getting a grateful smile from Haruka. "The fountain at the centre of this place is a good rendezvous spot, easy enough to find for all of us. What do you say?"
"I guess it's ok," Usagi said slowly, still not fully convinced and looking rather scared at the thought of the large group splitting up. "But if we split up, then I'm going with Kairi and Makoto!" she wailed and grabbed a hold on the tall brown-haired girl that was Sailor Jupiter.
"Actually, Usagi, it would be smarter if Kairi and you were in separate groups, since you two are our strongest weapons against the heartless," Luna cut in, sounding like a tired and slightly annoyed mother, sighing heavily as Usagi made a sour face at the comment. The black cat, Kairi had learned, was in fact the one to have helped Usagi awaken her Soldier powers to begin with.
"Well, if Mamoru was here, I'd go with him, but since he's not, I want to at least feel a little safe," Usagi said with a pout.
"About that, where is Mamoru?" Rei asked while she tied her raven hair up in a loose ponytail to get it out of the way. "I thought he would show up last night. Have you two had a fight or something?"
Usagi put her tongue out at Rei and Kairi had to put a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing at the silly and childish gesture.
"No, we have not, thank you very much!" Usagi said grumpily. "But I don't know where he is. It doesn't feel right," she added and all of her childish manners were instantly swept away by a serious expression of worry in her big blue eyes. "If he'd gone away on a trip or something he would have told me."
"Who's Mamoru?" Hauru asked, his pale blue eyes quickly locking on to Kairi's before being directed towards Makoto to get an answer to his question. His quick look into Kairi's eyes had made it very clear to her what he was thinking about and Kairi hoped with all her heart that their mutual worry would not prove to be necessary. One look at Astrid told her that she was thinking the same thing.
"Oh, right, you haven't met him," Makoto reminded herself, not noticing the growing anxiety in Hauru's, Astrid's and Kairi's faces. "He's Usagi's boyfriend and, well, he usually helps out fighting together with us. He has magical powers of his own, although he's not one of the Soldiers."
"And he's missing?" Astrid asked in a low voice, not wanting Usagi to catch up on their half whispered conversation.
"Well, I haven't seen him for two days or so, and Usagi just said she couldn't get a hold of him today, but I'm sure there's nothing to worry about," Makoto explained, then took another look at the trio. "Why do you look so worried?"
"It could be just a coincidence, but if he really is missing, then we better hurry up and find that heart, or we might have to fight someone we don't want to fight," Kairi said cryptically and moved up to Usagi who was trying to make Rei agree to come in her group.
"Usagi, Luna is right in you and me being the best defense against the heartless, but I'm not willing to let you out of my sight, so we're teaming up," Kairi said and received a happy smile from the blonde.
"I knew you'd be on my side in this! Thank you Kairi!" she beamed and gave Rei an angry sideways stare which the raven-haired girl completely ignored as she walked off to team with Ami.
"Hauru will team up with Makoto and Minako and Astrid will go with Rei and Ami. I suggest that Luna comes with us and Artemis…"
"I'm going with Haruka and Michiru, aren't I?" the white cat sighed sadly, throwing Minako a longing look.
"He doesn't have to come with us, we can take care of ourselves well enough," Haruka objected.
Kairi shrugged indifferently. "I just figured he would be a good messenger if you happen upon some heartless. He could quickly seek the rest of us out and get our attention to where you are."
After some minor fussing over the un-necessary concern for the duo, Michiru finally convinced her partner that taking the white cat along would be the best idea and they all split up, going into separate directions with the intention of finding the location of the world's heart as fast as possible. Each of the Sailor Soldiers got a small detecting device from Ami that was filled with the data necessary to find the energy they were looking for. The detector also worked as a form of one-way com, making it easy for them to quickly get in contact with each other once the location of the heart was found.
Despite it being her own idea to split up Hauru, Astrid and herself into three different groups, Kairi felt a little bad about going on without them with her. But dividing her own group was the best way to protect their new friends, seeing as how both Hauru and Astrid had more knowledge of fighting the heartless together with her, than did the Sailor Soldiers.
"So, uhm, just how are we to find the heart of the world?" Usagi asked after they'd walked in silence for a while.
Luna sighed. "Didn't you listen to Ami? She gave you a detector that will be able to pick up the energy."
"I did listen, Luna," Usagi objected. "What I was wondering was what it looks like, so that we can be sure it's the right thing and not just a ball of energy tricking the detector."
Luna actually looked surprised at this statement and she stopped in her tracks to look up at the blonde. "That's actually a rather good question, Usagi…"
Kairi nodded. "It is. I don't know how accurate Ami's detectors will be, seeing as how she haven't had the real heart's energy to base her search data on. But I will know it when I see it. First off it won't look like a heart, but more like a keyhole. Secondly, the light inside of me, as well as you, Usagi, have a connection to the light of the heart, letting us sense it once we're close enough."
"Why me?" Usagi asked, slightly baffled at the information.
Kairi shrugged. "I have a way of sensing when people are connected to the world heart, letting me know just who to look for when I need help keeping the world safe. Let's just call it intuition."
Luna's red eyes focused on Kairi with a sharp suspicion in them letting Kairi know that the cat suspected that there was more to it than what she had said, but luckily enough Luna didn't say anything more about it as they went on.
When they arrived at a large circular fountain made of white stone, Kairi figured it to be the one that Michiru had spoken of. In the middle of the fountain pool stood a statue of a young woman in some sort of billowing clothes, the artist having been skillful enough in imitating the fall of the fabric around the woman's body to make it look more like real clothes than actual stone. The woman had her arms reaching up above her head, her hands open to the sky. It was from the hands that the water pooled out in thick pillars that bent downwards in two wide bows on each side of her.
"It's beautiful," Kairi said in a soft exhalation as she walked up to the fountain. As she got closer, Kairi could see that the statue had several signs worked into it, all of them in some way being connected to the moon.
"It's a statue of the goddess of the moon," Usagi said, reading off a plaque that was put up on the edge of the fountain pool. She then looked up at the statue, as if trying to find something she recognized in the face of the woman depicted, then turned to Luna. "She doesn't look very much like me, does she?"
Luna sighed and shook her small head. "No, and it doesn't take much to figure that out, Usagi. It's just a piece of art made by a human who wished to make something pretty."
"Why would it look like you in the first place?" Kairi asked, then suddenly all pieces of information seemed to fall in place. "Wait, your Soldier form is Sailor Moon," she said, smiling. "So you're actually getting your power from the moon, just like the so called goddess here would be, am I right?"
Luna grimaced. "Well, it's a bit more complicated than that, but one could say you're mainly right I guess…"
Usagi simply nodded. "Yep. My powers comes from the moon, just like Rei gets her power from the planet Mars and Makoto from the planet Jupiter and so on."
Kairi struggled to understand the concept of different planets within the same world, and decided she would ask Hauru about it later. He seemed likely to know about those kinds of things.
She was going to ask Usagi more about the way she was connected to the moon, feeling that somehow this information was important, when she heard the detector Usagi held in her hand start beeping.
"Hey, I think the detector's found something…" Usagi said and looked at it to figure out just how to understand it.
That's when Kairi felt the first chill of darkness touch her conscience and she called the Soul Reaper into her hands within a second running up to Usagi and slashing down the Senshi Heartless that had materialized itself right behind her back. As it went up in black specks of darkness, Kairi turned on her heel, facing Usagi.
"Transform and call the others!" she ordered her and Usagi simply nodded and held up her transformation trigger high in the air.
"Moon Prism Power! Make up!" she called out with a steady voice and all at once she was enveloped in a white light, fading a second later to reveal Sailor Moon, jumping up at the edge of the fountain pool to avoid a strap of blue cloth lashing out at her from a Shadow Senshi having appeared some way off to her left while she transformed. She reached up to her forehead and lifted off her now glowing tiara, quickly sending it out like a boomerang at the heartless, hitting it straight on and making it explode into a dark mist. But the creature was reshaping itself already as the tiara went back to place itself at her forehead again.
Kairi sent her keyblade flying at another heartless, but as it returned to her, she realized she had to change her tactic and shifted keyblade, letting the Falling Star keyblade fill up with magic as soon as it appeared. The needles at its head started to glow, growing longer and translucent with the energy poured into them before she released the Rain of Stars attack, clearing the field of enemies in one swing.
Kairi, Sailor Moon and Luna looked warily around themselves, waiting for new heartless to suddenly appear and for the others to answer to the distress-signal Sailor Moon had sent out through the detector/communicator. Among the shadows Kairi spotted a figure moving towards them and at first she thought it was Hauru, but as he stepped into the light, she realized that she'd been mistaken.
"Tuxedo Mask!" Sailor Moon called out with a smile and jogged towards the man. He was dressed in a black suit with a billowing red foddered black cape at his shoulders, a black cylinder hat on his head and a white mask hiding his eyes. He walked slowly with calm motions, holding a long cane in one of his hands, swaying it softly with each step.
Kairi felt a pang of fear as she looked at the man, sensing the darkness oozing out of him.
"Sailor Moon! No! He's not who you think!" she called out, running even as she spoke the words, firing up the Strike Raid as she went. She released the attack as soon as she could and threw herself forward to push Sailor Moon out of the way of the attack she sensed coming from the man in the cape.
Sailor Moon yelped in surprise as Kairi crashed into her and they fell tumbling to the ground just in time for the thrown black rose to miss them both with only an inch to spare, boring its way into the fountain stone instead. At the same moment the keyblade came at the masked man, who only barely managed to get his cane up to block it, sending it crashing into a tree.
"What are you doing?" Sailor Moon asked as she huffing got herself up on her feet.
"He's not himself!" Kairi told her and called the lost keyblade back to her hand. "He's being controlled by a powerful heartless. I've seen it happen before."
"What? But he's…"
"Look out!" Kairi yelled out and got the Falling Star up just in time in front of Sailor Moon's face to block yet another black rose thrown at them.
Sailor Moon looked at the man in disbelief.
"Mamoru… no…" she mumbled, disregarding Kairi's warning and walked towards him without even being ready to defend herself from an attack.
The man only smiled viciously, an aura of darkness emitting from him as Sailor Moon walked closer.
Kairi ran up to stand in front of her friend, stopping her in her steps and taking the blow of the cane onto her own back as it came lashing out, intended to hit the Sailor Soldier. Kairi screamed out with pain as the cane hit her, the darkness stinging cold against her skin and the hard material bruising her back at the impact.
This seemed to wake Sailor Moon up from her daze of disbelief and with terror she looked Kairi in the eyes, realizing that her mistake had caused her friend the pain now showing in those dark blue orbs.
With an unexpected speed, the Sailor Soldier moved herself and Kairi out of the way of the next strike of the cane and as the heartless maneuvered the controlled body into yet another attack, it was cut short by a ball of flames thrown straight at him, forcing him to step back in order not to get burned, while Sailor Mars, Sailor Mercury and Astrid rushed to Kairi's and Sailor Moon's side.
"Kairi! You're hurt!" Astrid noted anxiously as she reached her friend.
"It's not as bad as it might look, just a very lucky hit that pushed the air out of me. I just need to catch my breath," Kairi huffed with a strained voice, doubling over with her hands on her knees.
"Is that Tuxedo Mask?" Sailor Mars asked, a bit confused at what she saw as her fire died out to reveal the enemy. "What's gotten into him?"
"Exactly that," Kairi said, straightening herself out and calling forth the Soul Reaper. "A heartless has gotten into him, controlling him."
"What?" Sailor Mercury called out. "But, how? Why?"
"How I don't really know, but why is easy," Astrid filled in as Kairi still tried to get her breathing right. "The heartless simply looked up a person whom you would have a hard time trying to fight, either because the person is superior in skill, or because it's a person you care about. It's a way of making it easier for them to win the battle and get to the one connected to the world heart."
"I see," Sailor Mars replied, fire building up in her hands. "They're cheating."
Sailor Mercury produced a beam of icy water that rapidly formed a wall of thick ice to prevent the masked man from leaping over the remaining flames and get closer.
"What do we do now then?" Sailor Mercury asked, panic in her voice. "I don't want to hurt him!"
Sailor Mars renewed the fire separating them from the enemy, but it was only a temporary protection and they all knew it.
"Sailor Moon, get a grip! We need to get that thing out of him before he hurts us!" Sailor Mars snapped and turned to face her friend. "I don't want to hurt him anymore than you do, believe me, but if it comes to it, I'd rather hurt him than see him hurt you! You got it?"
Sailor Moon blinked her teary eyes and nodded, trying to focus on the trouble at hand. "Kairi!" she called out and the keyblade wielder turned to look at her. "Is there any way for you to get rid of the heartless without hurting Mamoru?"
Kairi bit her lip in thought, then nodded. "I think so, yes. And I will try not to harm him, alright?"
As Sailor Moon nodded her acceptance of this answer, Kairi turned back her attention to the enemy on the other side of the flames.
"Rukia made it alright," Astrid pointed out as she noticed Kairi's worried features.
"Yeah, but Rukia was a soul-being only, Astrid. I don't know if a person with an actual body can survive this. I mean, I haven't done it before."
"Just do your best and we'll hold nothing against you," Sailor Mercury cut in and gave her a sad smile. "We have to protect Sailor Moon, that's our number one priority."
A shock of thunder and lightning suddenly erupted on the other side of the fading fire and melting wall of ice and soon Hauru half flew, half jumped over the flames, quickly followed by Sailor Jupiter and Sailor Venus.
"We came as quickly as we could," Hauru said as he landed softly next to Kairi. "I'm guessing that man is the one who was missing earlier?"
Kairi nodded and Astrid snorted. "Yeah and guess what: the heartless has him. Figures, huh?" the viking said sarcastically and took a new grip on her battle axe.
"Have you seen the crest?" Hauru asked Kairi, who shook her head in response.
"No, but if we find it we might be able to put a stop to him before he does any real damage."
"What are you talking about, what crest?" Sailor Venus asked, having overheard the conversation.
"Well," Kairi started, "it's a mark of sorts, looking much like a heart with a jagged bottom and a cross over it. Usually it glows with a purple and black shimmer and if I can break it, then the heartless is forced out of the host body."
"Then let's find that crest!" Sailor Jupiter said, having listened in on the explanation as well. "We'll keep him busy and you go up around him and try to get as close as you can, that way, he hopefully won't notice you before it's too late for him."
"Sounds like a good plan," Kairi admitted and soon the others were told about the plan as well.
But as the last remnants of the ice wall were shattered by a thrown rose, the group noticed that they weren't the only ones to have received allies. Around the masked man they now saw a number of Shadow Senshi heartless of varying colors.
"This sure makes it a bit harder," Astrid noted and swung her axe to cut the first attacker in half, yellow ribbons slashing in the empty air with yellow sparks going off as the heartless went down.
Hauru created a protective bubble around himself and Kairi as they moved to the side and got around the battlefield in a try to get behind their main target. An orange glowing gigantic orb slashed through the ground, causing a thunderous earthquake as it went and announced the arrival of their final two Sailor Soldiers. Sailor Neptune rushed up to Kairi and Hauru who were closest and got an update on the situation while Sailor Uranus moved in to aid Sailor Venus and Astrid who were surrounded by a number of green clad heartless.
"What's the matter?" Hauru asked as they moved on after having parted with Sailor Neptune.
"She said that they were kept away from here by a number of heartless, but none of you others were kept away like that, right?"
"No," Hauru confirmed. "So?"
"I'm getting this bad feeling that those heartless weren't supposed to just keep those two away, but to keep them in place. Remember the shadow creature back in Gin's world?"
Hauru nodded, grimacing at the memory.
"Well, that thing was searching for something it called 'shards' and mainly for the one it thought kept those shards."
Hauru's eyes widened as he realized what Kairi had come to realize when Sailor Neptune had told them about the incident.
"You think that the creature might want one of them?"
Kairi nodded in response, her eyes fixed on the masked man as they circled him.
"Yes, and this man here is a decoy as well as a subject to get to the keeper of this world's light and thus getting the heart of the world."
Grimacing at the idea, Hauru started to look around to try and spot a dark portal or something reminding him of the shadow creature. Doing this, he noticed how the heartless had started to swarm around Sailor Uranus. The others were getting their fair share of the battle too, but the tall short-haired blonde seemed to get a bit more attention from the enemies than the rest of them.
"I think you might be right in your guessing," he said in a low voice. "Let's try and take out this puppeteer quickly."
Kairi stared hard at the masked man, trying to spot the shimmer of the heartless crest she knew had to be somewhere on his body.
"Well, the crest isn't on his back, as far as I can see," she muttered disappointedly. "I don't get it, it should be there, because it's not at the front of him…"
Suddenly the wide cape billowed up and Kairi spotted the mark she'd been looking for, positioned right at the curve of his lower back. The cape had somehow been able to hide its presence from Kairi's scrutinizing eyes. Without further delay, Kairi shifted keyblade from the Soul Reaper to her original Destiny's Embrace, before filling the keyblade with all the light power she could muster, causing it to glow with a white shimmer.
"I sure hope this will work," she mumbled and stepped out of the protective bubble that had kept them safe until now and started running. Just as the man turned, somehow having noticed her moving towards him from behind, Kairi stomped off in a high jump, turning in the air so that her keyblade hit the ground before she did and set off the Light Blast only three steps away from her target. The man stumbled around, turning away from Kairi, blinded by the light and the heartless inside of him probably squirming with pain from the force of the impact, while Kairi wasted no time to pick up the keyblade and direct it straight at the spot where she knew the mark to be.
"Release!" she called out and a bright beam of light shot out to hit the crest spot on before the man could move away. With a short cut outcry, the man fell to his knees as a dark mist poured out from the crest and vanished.
At the same moment as Tuxedo Mask slumped down on the ground, Sailor Uranus screamed out in pain and Kairi turned, her heart panicking in her chest and her eyes widening with terror as she saw the short-haired soldier. Sailor Uranus' body was rigid, as if frozen in a movement and behind her stood the shadow creature Kairi remembered from Gin's world, reaching its hand into the young woman's back, where a dark light erupted. As it pulled the hand back, the creature held a pitch black shard of a jewel in its grasp.
"It'sss mine, sssweet ssshard," the creature hissed with a sharp-fanged grin and pushed Sailor Uranus in the back, causing her to fall forward. Before anyone else had the time to react, Sailor Neptune flung herself forward to catch her friend, only to have her dissolve in specks of light the moment she touched her.
The pain and sorrow in Sailor Neptune's eyes was horrible to see and Kairi felt like crying, remembering all to clearly a similar scene some years ago, when she had woke up on the floor of that strange room in Hollow Bastion, only to see Sora turn into nothing before her eyes.
But instead of crying, Kairi tightened her grip on the keyblade, changing it into the Soul Reaper and filling it with blood red energy. Simultaneously, Sailor Moon produced a scepter of pink, red and gold, and started an incantation that caused it to light up like a torch of glittering light, and Sailor Neptune rose to her feet with rage written in her face and gestures, her hands moving swiftly in a pattern calling forth her inner powers as a petrol shimmer enclosed her.
"SOUL-" Kairi started to call out, aiming the keyblade at the Shadow creature who now flinched as if it only now realized she was there.
"MOON SCEPTER – " Sailor Moon chanted, aiming her staff towards the creature as well. Something close to fear showed in the yellow eyes of the creature.
"DEEP-" came the outcry of Sailor Neptune, as she turned towards the creature who had taken away Sailor Uranus.
"-DEFENDER!" Kairi finished her calling of the attack, and blood red daggers shot out at the enemy.
"-ELIMINATION!" Sailor Moon released her attack in a blast of glittering light.
"-SUBMERGE!" With a throw of her hands towards the shadow creature, Sailor Neptune sent off the orb of pressing dark petrol oceanic energy with all her might, flashes of static electricity bristling around it as it rushed along the ground.
The target for those attacks had no way of escaping as it seemed, the powerful attacks racing towards it like piranhas smelling blood. But in the very last second, a dark portal opened beneath its feet and engulfed it, causing the attacks to crash into each other in a bombastic explosion both deafening and blinding.
Sailor Neptune fell to her knees in a frustrated outcry which turned into a violent sobbing and as soon as her sight was back, Kairi stumbled forward and lowered herself down on her own knees beside the soldier, putting an arm around her shoulders. Sailor Neptune looked up at her with tear filled eyes and Kairi nodded.
"I know it might sound awfully cliché and unbelievable," Kairi said as she let the older girl lean into her embrace, "but I actually know how you're feeling and you should cry for as long as you need to do it."
Sailor Moon had got herself over to Tuxedo Mask, and pulled him up to sit next to her as she talked to him in a hushed voice, shame and relief mixing in the man's eyes while he listened to her summary of what had happened.
Hauru got over to Kairi and Michiru, who had transformed back into her civilian self and seemed to be over crying for the moment.
"Any clue as to where to find the heart of the world yet?" he asked in a low voice when he reached them and got a declining shake of the head as a reply from Kairi.
"No, not really. Only…" she said, then seemed to come to think of something she had forgotten in the midst of fighting. "The statue!" she gasped and left Michiru's side.
Sailor Moon rose to her feet and jogged up to Kairi and went along with her as she walked towards the fountain. Kairi stopped at the edge of the basin, hesitating for a moment, then climbed into the water.
"You've found it, haven't you?" Sailor Moon said, but didn't wait for an answer before she went into the water herself. It reached them to their knees and was surprisingly soothing to the skin, neither freezing nor hot. Kairi switched keyblade from the Soul Reaper to the Destiny's Embrace, feeling the warmth of its power fill her from the hand and up as she lifted it to point at the statue of the moon goddess.
Sailor Moon stopped at her side and raised her scepter as well in the same manner as Kairi had lifted her keyblade and took Kairi's hand.
"We'll need both of our powers to open this door," she said, making Kairi a bit surprised by the serious tone in her voice. She almost sounded like a completely different person, older and wiser.
Kairi nodded, then in a silent communication to their weapons, the two princesses made two beams of light shoot out from the weapons and merge with each other; one a pale pink and the other pale blue, creating a single beam of gold hitting the chest of the statue in a soft splash as if it was water. Out from the shimmering pool of light created by this, a golden brimmed keyhole emerged and while Sailor Moon kept the stream of light from her scepter going, Kairi concentrated and twisted her keyblade away from the golden beam. White light now shot out from the tip of the blade and straight into the keyhole and as Kairi let the flow of energy die out, the soft sound of a lock being turned was heard and she stepped back to sit at the edge of the fountain, exhausted.
Sailor Moon turned back into Usagi and followed her example, while the rest of their group gathered behind their backs.
"What was that creature?" Usagi asked after a moment of silence.
"It took something from Haruka…" Michiru said, a sob heard in the background of her words.
"Who knows what it is," Astrid said with an angry huff. "It's on the bad guys' side and it's really starting to piss me off!"
"We've met it once before," Kairi said slowly. "I don't know exactly what it is or what it's doing, but it is somehow part heartless, part something else, and even though it's not the thing controlling the heartless, it is following direct orders from the one who is, that much I'm sure of. And it's searching for something that it calls 'shards'. My guess is that's what it pulled out from Sailor Uranus. A shard of something that its master wishes to have."
"And it seems like it knows about where to find Kairi's friends as well," Hauru filled in, causing Kairi to flinch. "At least it mentioned something like it last time we met."
Usagi nodded slowly and looked up as she felt a hand on her shoulder. Her true love looked down at her with sad eyes, before he turned to Hauru.
"I truly wish there was something I could do to help you, after you saved me from that demon," Mamouru said. "But I'm guessing that the turning of that lock means that there will be no more visits from those shadows again?"
Hauru turned to Kairi, who gave him a confirming nod. "Yes," she said. "This world is now out of reach for the heartless and that creature both."
"Then at least let us give you this," Luna said, the black cat suddenly hopping up onto the stone lining of the fountain. Behind her Artemis followed, the white cat carrying something in his mouth which he let go in Kairi's hand as she held it out.
"It's a keychain," Kairi mumbled, looking it over in wonder. It was a ribbon of all the seven main colors of the Sailor Soldiers, each color reflecting the corresponding symbol of power for each soldier as she held it to the sunlight and at its end were a small, smooth crescent moon of gold.
"The Moon Staff blade contains the power of all the soldiers who gave their power to create this keychain for you," Luna said. "We worked on it last night, thinking it might be of some help to you."
Kairi nodded and held the keychain to her heart, letting it be absorbed by the inner light that was the keyblade.
"How come she's the only one getting presents all the time," Astrid muttered and Hauru chuckled at her grumpy face, causing the rest of the gathered to join in with the relieving laughter that only comes after relaxing from a bitter fight. Even Michiru pulled her lips into a sad smile.