One Cast
Zexion cast one last glance at the ballroom over his shoulder before he left and closed the doors behind him. It was getting close to eleven o'clock and the volunteers were starting to pack up their table. The ball would probably go on for longer but no new attendees would be given access. He calmly walked around them, giving them a smile and a polite wave, which they responded to similarly, just as he predicted. He walked halfway down the hall, intending to open his portal once he got around the corner and out of sight, however, a tall boy in a blue, button-up shirt with a long-sleeved shirt underneath, black jeans and buckled, leather boots charged down the corridor and skidded to a halt at the end of the hall. Zexion raised his eyebrow at the familiar weapon that had now apparently become a Keyblade and the recognisable face of its wielder.
"Riku," Zexion muttered. "It's been a long time."
"It couldn't ever be long enough," Riku spat back.
The Nobody smirked. "Perhaps not for you. I personally don't care either way."
"You're supposed to be dead. All of the Nobodies and their freak experiments were destroyed in the end."
Zexion tutted in a mocking way that he knew would irritate Riku. "As always, you're a few steps behind. I was never like others in the Organisation who were so absorbed in their memories of their old selves, developing such a profound sense of narcissism and egomania to the point that they became psychopaths. Due to my unresolved complexes and identity, I was never able to-"
"Shut up and die already!" Riku screamed, charging at Zexion wildly.
The volunteers paused their activity and stared in shock. Zexion smirked. Riku took hold of his Keyblade with two hands, planning to stab Zexion right through. The Keyblade was about to hit its mark when suddenly Riku was aware of having stepped over an invisible magical threshold. A Reflectra shield appeared in the blink of an eye. Riku had a brief experience of vertigo when the shield suddenly flipped. The counter-strike feature of the shield activated and launched Riku backwards. He crashed into the half packed up table with enough force to break it in two.
"See, this is the problem with everybody," Zexion muttered with a shake of his head. "They simply don't have the patience. You can't keep a cool head long enough to form a solid strategy or two and you won't bother standing the lengthy amount of time it takes to let logic and discourse occur before deciding what your course of action will be. You didn't even consider that I may have some hidden trick tucked away somewhere before you charged, which I would have thought would be predictable, given that I am a master of illusions. Why are you in such a hurry?"
"Because as long as you survive the Organisation can be rebuilt," Riku hissed, getting up again despite the pain in his back. "The worlds have already suffered enough at your hands by your creed."
"I assure you, the research goal of Organisation XIII is the only principle that I am determined to maintain. I won't begin another Organisation."
"That's something you would just say to try to stop me from fighting you," Riku growled, charging his Keyblade to cast Fira.
"Touché," Zexion said, summoning his Lexicon into his right hand. He doubled himself, causing Riku to hesitate with the spell. However, it was only for a moment. Riku chose one Zexion and fired. The target he aimed at cast Reflectra (or at least seemed to), throwing the power of the spell back at him. He nullified it with Blizzara.
Zexion doubled his images again and again until the hall was filled with them. They even appeared behind Riku. Then all of a sudden the doors to the ballroom opened, casting a line of gold into the hall like an inverse shadow. The two new arrivals froze and stared at the scene wide-eyed.
"Riku, what's going on?" Kairi asked, her eyes darting from one Zexion to the next. "Z?"
"Stay back, Kairi," Riku shouted, searching every clone for a clue as to which may be the original. "This guy is a member of Organisation XIII."
"He's what?!" Sora exclaimed, running forwards and summoning his Keyblade. He slashed through an image directly in front of him, which turned out to be an illusion. "How? Didn't we defeat all of them?"
"I'll admit I was defeated," Zexion said, the sound coming from behind Riku on his left. There was a flicker of movement from that direction as if one of the Zexion clones was trying to attack him. Riku turned on the ball of his foot and swung down on the image. It stared at him in shock and raised its Lexicon to block. The wing of Way to Dawn pierced through the book as if it weren't magic but just paper and cardboard. "But it's very hard – I'd say nigh impossible – to kill someone who makes a habit of making others do the fighting for him."
The illusion fizzled away and Zexion was no longer the person trembling behind the book. Riku's eyes widened. It was the male volunteer, holding up a very thick book. He gulped. Riku scowled, wrenched the Way to Dawn out of the book and turned around. The copies of Zexion had disappeared while he was distracted and a dark portal was closing at the other end of the hall. A Blizzaga spell zoomed past him but it was cast too late to get through the portal. It struck the wall and created a giant crystal of ice.
Sora cursed when his spell missed. The male volunteer's legs gave away and he slumped to his knees. His co-volunteer rushed over to his side to check on him. Kairi thought of doing the same thing but couldn't will her feet to move. Her mind was whirling with so many conflicting thoughts. Did she trust Zexion or didn't she? Should she trust Zexion or not? Her heart was stinging with the twisted dagger that was betrayal digging deeper, trying to cut the resilient bond of trust that was holding her together. Zexion's trust. Despite what he had done and said before, she had still trusted Zexion and now Zexion trusted her too.
The man dropped the book on the floor when the woman helped him stand up. The cover was too mangled to read properly but the words were clear on the spine: Psychoneuroimmunology for Beginners, the book she had been curious to read. She finally found the motivation to move and walked around the broken table to crouch beside the book. The tome was a little difficult to open but once the cover was pried off the pages Kairi could see that the inside cover had the library's stamp in the top left hand corner.
"Kairi!"
She looked up at the sound of her name. Sora had come up beside her and was looking worried. It seemed that he'd called her name more than once. "Are you going to be okay?" he asked her, crouching to her level. "You said he was your friend – I mean, clearly he was just pretending to be your friend for some reason. But he made you trust him, didn't he?"
"Maybe," Kairi said, shrugging noncommittally.
"What do you mean 'maybe'?"
Kairi held her right hand out in front of her, fingers still curled around the little orb. She slowly loosened her grasp until she could see the whole thing nestled in her palm. The edge of the spherical orb was blue but most of the mass was taken up by a swirling darkness. "What the heck is this?" Kairi thought.
"Wait, did the Nobody give that to you?" Sora asked in horror, reaching for the orb but Kairi tried to snatch it out of reach. His hand knocked hers and it dropped onto the carpet next to the book. "Get rid of it! You don't know what it'll do to you!"
Riku turned to look at his friends and his gaze went down to the little dark orb. He narrowed his eyes. "We should destroy that thing immediately. Don't play right into his hands."
He approached them with Keyblade in hand, lifting it for a destructive strike. His step faltered when he saw the way Kairi looked at him. She looked scared. Not scared of him but scared of what he was going to do. She pushed Sora over and summoned her own Keyblade. Riku dashed forward, seeing the determined look on her face. He could see that she wasn't about to destroy it. Kairi flipped her weapon to a reverse grip and brought the tip down on the orb, cracking it open and releasing the energy inside. The dark energy burst forth and engulfed her.
"Kairi!" Sora and Riku shouted. Sora jumped to his feet and leaped into the fully formed dark portal, followed closely by Riku. It collapsed quickly and disappeared, taking all three Destiny Islanders with it.
Chapter 50 in all its fine glory. I have written 50 chapters of something. This story was already the longest I've ever written, ever since chapter 27, in fact. But at the rate I'm going, it's also going to be the longest story I have ever finished, which will be so awesome.
