Dear, uh, well, everyone.

It's Sora. You know, the guy you've been reading about the past 80-something- thousand words.

I bet you're wondering what's up with the sudden change of prose. Well, the authoress shoved a pen and paper into my hands and sighed, "Okay, I'm done, it's your shitty story you finish it." She left. I was gonna snap some kind of insult back at calling my story shitty, but then again it was pretty bad. In the "wow your life sucked" sense, I mean. But I guess that maybe some of you feel the latter.

So, anyways, I'm gonna be writing out what would've taken several more chapters the authoress apparently really didn't want to write. She seemed pretty done with chronicling this mess.

Where were we? Oh yeah, I managed to get drunk off my ass in Port Royal and in the company of a pirate and a desperate man. Beggars can't be choosers, I guess. Especially drunk ones. So after my encounter with Xemnas, I woke up still hanging around with Captain Jack, but I was now with our target Elizabeth. Job done, right?

Well we were kinda stuck on this deserted island. So, with Jack taking the lead, "Operation: Drink all the rum" commenced. Dunno what happened after that. I think I passed out and Vanitas had a share of control for awhile, but either way I was back to wandering.

I think the most significant event that happened next was bumping into Kairi.

She was pretty livid. And had a pretty strong arm to go with. After a pretty not happy reunion where we dissolved romantic ties and decided we were better off friends for good, she explained that while I was just wasting away on the wind she'd found out that we weren't quite done yet. Turns out it was a lot deeper than any of us expected.

This guy, Xehanort, was trying to forge an ultimate weapon called the χ-Blade and he had a pretty simple recipe: 13 darkness to 7 light. The problem was he was coercing out the 7 light dealio by forcing us to scrape out 7 defenders for the Princesses of Heart. He already had his thirteen.

And somehow I was both a light and a dark. A wild card, thanks to Vanitas. I could either save everyone or say "screw this" and cause an apocalypse and basically kill the universe. Let me tell you I would have no problem with the latter. But as you can tell from me writing this I probably saved everyone.

And I did. I kinda died from it.

See, turns out Kingdom Hearts or God or whatever higher power there is was pretty impressed with me. So while I was in a mostly dead limbo, I was approached by Ven and Riku, who explained that I got one wish for doing all of this heroics and putting up with all the bull that came with it.

I leapt to conclusions and asked that Ven and Riku could come back with me. They explained it could only be one person that could come back, since death was a kinda tricky thing. And someone else would have to go in payment. So I grabbed Riku and woke up in a hospital bed with Kairi hugging me with relief.

And people screaming in the halls as Riku's reanimated corpse (though not decomposed; it just looked like he'd been asleep for awhile) walked over. You'd be screaming too if a guy you were pretty sure was dead started roaming the halls.

With all of the good things going on, I decided to hold back on the "someone has to die". It'd be nicer if it just seemed like coincidence, I figured. Besides, Kairi was arranging a ball to celebrate. How could I burst her happy bubble? She was enjoying herself because our little trio was whole again and she was the head of a party.

I had some teasing fun with Riku dressing me up as a mystery prince to sweep Kairi off her feet for a night. Riku relayed some messages to Aqua from Ven and her other friends lingering around in the afterlife. It was a good night. One where I was actually happy the whole time through. Nothing interrupted me having a good time, and I didn't even need a drink for it.

I forgot to mention I finally found out how to get Vanitas out. It only took me realizing and accepting just how similar we were. I let him in, but the difference was I let him in as a part of me. It would've been easier with Ven, but Ven was dead so I'd have to do. Besides, I think Vanitas liked someone accepting and loving him who actually had an inkling of what made him so twisted.

And then Aqua died. We found her the next morning face down in her bed and smothered. It was apparently suicide, but her face was smiling in content. Maybe she did it to get back to her friends. This wasn't her time, after all. She was kinda a relic of the past because of what had happened to her and her friends. Amazing what a difference ten years can make.

And it also made me a little relaxed because she could be the price paid for bringing back Riku, and while it was sad it was somewhat hopeful in that she'd be happier. Still feel guilty for thinking that. But of course life loves telling me I'm wrong.

See, this letter? I'm writing it from the afterlife myself.

But let me back up a bit. Something happier. Let me tell you I died with the widest grin of my life on my face.

Because Kairi found the islands again. My home was back. I don't know what exactly happened: maybe it was Kingdom Hearts, maybe it was just a natural cycle for worlds and it just grew back like a lizard tail, but I did not care. Me, Riku, and Kairi spent the whole day there. Splashing in the surf, eating paopus until we were sick of the sticky juice on our hands and we washed it off in the waves, making seashell charms and hibiscus flower crowns, exploring every nook and cranny. It was all perfect.

And I guess my heart was so used to sadness and anger and fear that this amount of happiness was too much for it. It gave out. But I think it was also because it was me who was Riku's payment for returning.

And so here I am, sitting here and writing all this in whatever way the words pour out. Ventus has gone off to hang around with Aqua and Terra like they've always done since getting back together. Mom n dad are still here with me and fixing up whatever mistakes I make so the final draft is somewhat readable. I've watched Kairi and Riku, and they've hitched up and have been excellent rulers of Disney Castle.

They married for love, but if you ask me Riku isn't quite all the way. Like he's holding back because of some previous heartbreak that hasn't quite healed. I guess I'll ask him what's up with that when he gets back here, because if I remember our childhood right he never really got attached to anyone. Or maybe he found out he's just one of those guys that doesn't like girls but decided that Kairi loved him enough for them to hook up. Not to mention I guess he needs something to get his mind off of me. It wasn't very cool getting us together and then splitting us up again,

What makes me laugh at a lot of this is that somewhere all this didn't happen.

Maleficent wasn't lying to me at all when she showed me that illusion. Somewhere I'm still alive, and I'm happy, and I have so many friends I'm having trouble counting them because the number grows every day. And I have Riku, and Riku has me. And we both have Kairi. And Ventus, Aqua, and Terra never had to die to be together again and got to laugh and smile at their reunion without a bitter aftertaste of sadness. And even Axel found his own little niche where he got his own family. Three kids to look after and a best friend turned evil turned good guy to help him raise them a little better than they had been.

I dunno. The world's got a weird, ironic sense of humor.

But that's about that. The story's over. We did manage to triumph over evil, and we got to celebrate before some of us passed on. And after that things kinda mellowed out into this better than things were but still kinda bittersweet time.

I know it's terribly anticlimactic to end it like this, and I did point that out to the authoress, but she only sighed again, "Either this, or no ending because I've given up." She also mentioned that all this coming from my words would bring some better sense of a fancy french word meaning something about endings. An ending of some kind is better than letting things continue on. That's one of a lot of things I can draw from this.

But I guess this letter sums everything up. It's pretty long too, I should wrap it up.

I'll see you around, then.

-Sora


SO YEP THIS IS HOW I END IT.

Really sorry about finishing it this way but over time I've come to just kinda look at this story and go "what the hell was I doing" and I've just completely lost all drive for finishing it. As our handy dandy Sora quoted me saying I've given up. I know it must be pretty disappointing to wait for what, a year or more and then just have the end wrapped up in a neat little letter, but as Sora also quoted me saying, it's this or nothin' because I'm not going through the headache of figuring out where to go with this actually pretty bad example of writing.