Chapter 47: Waiting For The Lights:
Corridors of Darkness
"Are we sure about this?" Terra asked as he and Ludor jogged through the Corridor of Darkness. The two fugitives had stopped to pay a visit to one of Luxord's old gambling buddies, a (to Terra's surprise) talking, centuries old Shar Pei who happened to owe the Gambler of Fate a lot of money. Ludor had cleared the magical dog's debt in exchange for a few capsules of Dreamshade for the duo to use in the event of capture. Both of them had deduced that Sephiroth had been ordered to bring them back to the Castle That Never Was alive, otherwise they'd already be dead, meaning that Xehanort still wanted to use the two of them as vessels. Neither wished to lose their bodies to that madman again, which was why they'd traded the dog's gambling debt for poison capsules, not intending to be brought back alive.
"It's either this or becoming vessels again," Ludor replied snappishly. "Don't worry, we're not going to use them now. As long as we can stay ahead of Sephiroth, the capsules will only be our last resort. But if we get caught, I'd rather end it now that lose myself to that madman again." Terra nodded in understanding as the two ran through the Darkness in search of a barren world for them to hide on. There was one obvious choice, but neither of them had any desire to set foot in the Keyblade Graveyard unless they had no other options. Right now their only options were the deserts of Agrabah, the open plains of the Empire of the Sun, the caverns of the Lost Empire, or the mountains of Arendelle. Eventually, they emerged from their Dark Corridor to find themselves in a frozen wasteland. Ruined fortresses and other buildings dotted the pockmarked landscape, and the place was devoid of any sign of life. The perfect place to hide from someone like Sephiroth without putting innocent lives at risk.
"Perfect," Terra declared as he and his partner jogged across the frozen tundra, hoping to get a head start before the One-Winged Angel finally showed.
Kingdom of Corona – The Snugly Duckling
Well this is unexpected, Sora thought to himself as he, Donald, and Goofy went on singing, ignoring Xion and Roxas' laughter ringing in his head, hoping that they weren't singing too. They'd walked into a tavern called the Snugly Duckling to get a place to eat, only for the five of them to be surrounded by the crowd. Apparently Flynn was a wanted thief, much to the trio's irritation, but Rapzunel convinced the assembled diners not to throw him in prison yet because she needed him to help her fulfill her dream. When she asked if everyone else there had a dream, they all started breaking out in song about what they're dreams were. But as the song ended, a patron who'd snuck out the back arrived with a squad of soldiers to have Rider arrested.
Flynn quickly dragged Rapunzel and the three heroes out of sight, where they hid under a table while the guards searched the diner. He panicked when he peaked out and noticed that the guards were accompanied by a pair of redheaded men in chains. Must be old enemies or accomplices, I guess, Sora speculated to himself. As they anxiously crouched beneath the table, Hook Hand beckoned them over to a hidden tunnel that would lead them out of the pub.
"Go," he said. "Live your dream."
"Thanks," Flynn replied. "I will."
"Your dream stinks," Hook Hand retorted as the off-worlders struggled not to laugh. "I was talking to her." Rapunzel quietly thanked the man as they crawled down into the tunnel while the rest of the pub thugs distracted the guards. As they walked through the secret tunnel, Flynn congratulated Rapunzel on her impressive handling of the situation back in the pub. Rapunzel attempted to ask about Flynn's backstory, but he shut her down. Sora, Donald, and Goofy on the other hand, openly told her about where they were from. They mentioned a little bit of why they were there, explaining that they were trying to stop evil monsters like the Heartless from getting their claws on magical artifacts. Suddenly, the ground began to shake, the five of them looked back to see a group of guards running towards them.
"RUN!" Flynn shouted as Sora helped Rapunzel pick of her extraordinarily long hair before they sprinted further down the tunnel with the soldiers in hot pursuit. They emerged from the tunnel onto a cliff at the base of a dam. As they looked down and spotted a tunnel on the other side of the canyon, they prepared to climb down the ladder that led to the bottom of the cliff when another boarded up tunnel nearby burst open to reveal the two red-heads from earlier, armed with swords.
"Who are they?" Rapunzel asked fearfully.
"They don't like me," their guide replied bluntly.
"Who's that?" she asked as the guards emerged from the tunnel with swords and spears drawn.
"They don't like me either," Flynn added. When she asked the same question when a white horse came out of the tunnel behind the guards, he just stopped her.
"Look," he said. "Let's just assume that everyone here doesn't like me."
"Considering you're a thief it's not hard to see why," Sora pipped up with a smirk. Before Flynn could come up with a witty response, Rapunzel handed him her frying pan and used her hair to swing across the ravine. As Heartless and Nobodies appeared along the canyon floor and began climbing up toward Rapunzel, Sora, Donald, and Goofy used Aero spells, a little parkour, and the train summon he'd learned earlier to attack the Heartless and make their way over to protect the young woman. Seeing the thief outnumbered, the guards attacked. With Rapunzel's frying pan, he was able to defeat the guards within a minute. Unfortunately, the horse proved to be a bit more of a challenge as it held a cutlass in its teeth.
"You should know," Flynn called as he dueled a horse with a frying pan. "That this is the strangest thing I've ever done." I've done stranger, Sora thought to himself as the horse knocked the frying pan out of the human's hands. Before the horse could do anything, Rapunzel used her hair again as a whip to drag Flynn over to their side of the canyon. When Flynn landed near the open tunnel, the horse started kicking at the wooden beams supporting the dam in order to create a bridge to cross with. While Donald, Goofy, and Sora slide down the wooden aqueduct sloping downwards, Rapunzel jumped off the ledge above seconds before the horse tried to grab her. Once the girl had swung safely to the ground, Flynn joined the Key bearer and his friends in riding the aqueduct downwards. Sora and his friends reached the ground first, but the aqueduct fell apart and collapsed before Flynn could reach the bottom. Fortunately, he jumped just in time and landed right behind Rapunzel as the quintet raced into the tunnel to escape the horse, the red-heads, the guards, and the onrushing water as the dam burst.
They made it inside just before a stone butte collapsed in front of where they'd been standing, blocking the tunnel entrance. But it wasn't blocked completely as water continued rushing into the small cave. The group raced away from the cave mouth only to discover the way ahead blocked. No, Sora panicked as he and Flynn dove under the water looking for a way out while Rapunzel and Goofy banged their frying pan and shield against the wall of rubble. I'm not going to die right when Kairi and I are finally together. He winced when Flynn cut his hand while trying to push the blockage away.
"It's no use," Flynn said as he came up one last time. "I can't see anything." When Rapunzel tried to dive down herself, he pulled her back up. "It's no use," he added sadly. "It's pitch black down there."
"There's gotta be another way," Sora whispered. "I need to get back to Kairi. I have to."
"This is all my fault," Rapunzel sobbed as the five of them sat against the wall as the water rose around them. "She was right, I never should have done this. I'm so sorry, Flynn."
"Eugene," Flynn said after taking a deep breath. "My real name is Eugene Fitzherbert. Someone might as well know."
"I have magic hair that glows when I sing," Rapunzel admitted with a giggle, figuring that if they were all going to share their dying confessions, she might as well go next. Wait. What? Sora and his two friends all thought as they turned their heads in the girl's direction. Then that means she can get us out of here. Clearly Rapunzel realized it too, as when Flynn expressed incredulous disbelief at her statement, she started singing just as the water rose up over their heads. For a moment, they all held their breaths as they floated in the pitch black water. Then, the darkness faded away as Rapunzel's hair did indeed begin to glow. As her hair started to get sucked into a small gap between two of the rocks in the wall of rubble blocking their exit, Eugene, Sora, and Goofy raced over and quickly started digging. After removing a few stones, Eugene's hand broke through the wall of rocks and reached open air. With enough rocks removed, the flow of water pushed the remaining rocks out along with the cave's occupants.
Everyone gasped for breath as they pulled themselves up onto the riverbank. Rapunzel started cheering about being alive while Donald and Goofy helped the thief from the water as he stuttered about glowing hair. The three heroes shrugged. They had seen far stranger things than glowing magic hair, but when Rapunzel announced to Eugene that her hair didn't just glow, the trio were a little curious to see what she was talking about. An hour later, the sun had set and Rapunzel was wrapping her hair around her guide's hand.
"So," he began. "You're being strangely cryptic as you wrap your hair around my injured hand." Off to the side, Sora and Donald were having a bet over what else her hair could do, with Sora betting 500 Munny on healing powers, and Donald putting 1,000 on rewinding time, arguing that with Xehanort's obsession with time travel, "why else would he send the Heartless and Nobodies after the girl?" The Duo fell silent as Rapunzel began to sing, her glowing all the way.
"Flower gleam and glow,"
"Let your power shine,"
"Make the clock reverse,"
"Return what once was mine,"
"Heal what has been hurt,"
"Change the fates design,"
"Save what has been lost,"
"Return what once was mine,"
"What once was mine."
As she finished the song, her hair's glow faded. Eugene unwrapped the hair from his hand and was shocked to discover that the cut in his hand had been completely healed. Her healing power is what Xehanort is after, Sora realized as Donald forked over a thousand Munny. The reason her hair is so long must be because cutting it weakens her powers.
"Mother says when I was a baby people tried to cut it," Rapunzel explained when Eugene asked how long her hair had possessed this ability, and she'd told him forever. "They wanted to take it for themselves," she continued as she pulled back her hair to reveal a patch of brown. "But once it's cut, it turns brown and loses its power. A gift like that, it has to be protected. That's why mother never let me… why I never left…" Sora's heart went out to the poor girl, her experience reminding him of what Lea had told him about Queen Elsa of Arendelle when they'd run into him in Radiant Garden while their Gummi Ship was being repaired, and how she'd shut herself off from the world because she was afraid her ice magic would hurt people by accident.
"Never left that tower?" Eugene finished with a concerned look on his face. Rapunzel nodded.
"And you're still gonna go back?" Goofy asked. "Your powers may make a lot of people envious of you, but you're eighteen, right? One of the things I learned as a parent is that sooner or later a kid reaches the point in their life where they need to make their own decisions. Do you really want to be cooped up there the rest of your life?"
"No…" Rapunzel answered half-heartedly. "Yes… It's complicated." She put her head in her hands, unsure about what to do. After everyone discussed Goofy's experiences parenting his son Max, Rapunzel turned to grilling Eugene Fitzherbert about his own backstory.
"I'll spare you the sob story of poor orphan Eugene Fitzherbert," he replied. "It's a little bit of a downer." When Rapunzel slid closer to him expectantly, accompanied by a few knowingly raised eyebrows from the off-worlders, he relented and continued. "There was this book. A book I used to read every night to all the younger kids. "The Tales of Flynnigan Rider." Swashbuckling rogue, richest man alive, not bad with the ladies either, not that he'd ever brag about it of course."
"Was he a thief, too?" Rapunzel asked curiously. Over on the side, the other three travelers had started up another bet, this time on how long it would take Eugene and Rapunzel to get together.
"Well… No," Eugene replied. "Actually, he had enough money that he could do anything he wanted to do, go anywhere he wanted to go. And, well, for a kid with nothing, I don't know, it just seemed like the better option. You guys can't tell anyone about this okay? It could ruin my whole reputation."
"We wouldn't want that then," Rapunzel promised with a warm smile.
"Yeah," Eugene replied mirthfully. "After all, a fake reputation is all a man has." They're totally falling for each other, Sora thought as the two shared a quiet moment before Eugene awkwardly excused himself to join Donald and Goofy in gathering firewood while Sora stayed behind to patrol the perimeter of their makeshift camp for Nobodies, Heartless, or Maleficent's agents. He'd spotted a few of the red Stitches back at the dam, meaning that Maleficent had heard of Rapunzel's magic hair as well. We won't let them get to her, Sora silently resolved as he walked through the woods, always staying within earshot of the campfire. But I'm surprised that she hasn't already tried cutting her hair so she can go out and have a normal life. There's something off about that. I just can't figure out what it is yet.
Dreamshade is from Once Upon A Time. From the way it's described in the show it's like the magical equivalent of a cyanide pill, so I'm treating it as such here.
