-o- CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE -o-

emerge

It was surprising how no one came to bother me for hours. I guess everyone was busy enough just dealing with what was about to happen. I sat by the pond, contemplating. Soaking in the sunlight and the quiet. It was the first time I'd experienced solitude in so long.

My stomach rumbled some time after noon, but I maintained my post. I couldn't walk away from this serene intermission. Once I did, it would all become real. It would be time to promise myself to battle. I tried to prolong it.

Leon broke the quiet. He crept in, as he had once before. I stood to speak to him.

"Are you disappointed in me, Captain?" I asked.

Leon grimaced. "Well it isn't great for morale, you running off and disobeying orders. Disregarding the wishes of your team."

Of the team, or just Leon? I wanted to trust his leadership but there was just something that didn't feel right. I said nothing. I wanted to argue but I knew my pleas would fall on deaf ears. I felt separate from him, separate from the team. Alone on a limb.

"But that's not why I came." He reached into the leather pouch that rested on his hip and pulled out a meat and cheese sandwich, wrapped in a cloth napkin. "I thought you might need some lunch. You'll need your strength to help with Master Yen Sid's spell."

I nodded my thanks, and started nibbling at his offering.

"He'll be starting soon," Leon continued, prodding. His voice was soft but his eyes were stern. The message was clear: it was time for me to stop hiding and pouting and get back to work.

Leon sighed and, to my surprise, he placed a brotherly hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry if it felt like everyone ganged up on you this morning. I think some of us were just frustrated. It was hard to see the team divided on something when we only just reunited. We're about to take a huge risk; we're risking our lives and we might still fail. We can't be divided, Kairi. The only way we can hope to win this is if we stand together, united."

I frowned, looking at him. "Do I get to fight this time? Or will you make me stay behind and wait while others bleed?"

Leon gave me a censuring glace. "This is exactly what I mean. This is war. The King is our general, and just so happens, he made me captain of this unit. I needed you to stay behind in Mesoamerica, and you needed to accept my judgement as captain. You can't look at our battle tactics solely from the lens of how it affects you. There's a bigger picture to be served."

I nodded again and swallowed. "Okay," I said. "I'm coming. I just need… I just need another minute."

Leon bowed in acceptance. "Good. I'll see you in the Chapel." He paused for another moment, then touched my shoulder again. He gave me an encouraging smile. "Someday you'll understand all this, Princess, when it's you who leads us all."

I tried to smile back as he turned to leave; I'm not sure I was entirely convincing.

It didn't add up. From the beginning of my membership in the King's Thirteen, I felt like I didn't quite belong. No one had really seen what I could do. I had yet to test the bounds of that for myself. Leon had kept me out of center stage in the Mesoamerica campaign, and still hadn't seen me fight or lead or face anything. How could he be so confident that I could become their queen one day?

I closed my eyes and tried to remember the trembling feeling of Axel speaking into my mind. I summoned the challenging kind of magic that grew more natural with every beat of my heart, and I reached out to him.

Axel, I called out to him. Where are you hiding out?

Took you long enough to ask, he answered. Nice telepathy, by the way. I was getting sick of being the one to start all our conversations.

I smirked, despite my anxiety. I'm getting the hang of this whole magic thing… that's why I needed to talk to you, actually. Master Yen Sid is starting his spell soon. We're supposed to meet him in the Chapel.

And what do you plan to do, princess?

What, indeed? My heart felt set, but I still needed to find the strength to articulate it out loud. Meet me in the garden… I instructed him. I realized that I could not go on this quest without him. We were a team now. Bring Simba and Launchpad. Simba my steed, Launchpad my pilot. They were part of me too.

I had enough time to eat the much-needed sustenance Leon had brought me, and pace the edge of the pond a few times before the three of them arrived. I felt an alarming flutter inside as Axel came into view, and when he was within my reach, I surprised myself by giving his hand a quick squeeze in greeting.

"Folks are heading to the Chapel," Launchpad said with a nervous head scratch. "But I get the feeling you may have something different in mind, eh, little fella?"

I nodded determinedly, retrieving the mystery medallion from my pocket and clutching it in my hand. "I have to find out what this message means," I said decisively. "I understand if you don't want to come, but I had to at least let you know. You've all become so special to me."

Simba bowed his mighty lion head. "We ride together," he answered simply.

"I'm not giving up on Scrooge, no way," Launchpad asserted, clapping his hands together fervently.

I smiled at each of them, landing on Axel, whose agreement was obvious just in the gleam of his eyes. I ran my thumb over the etchings of the medallion, determined with my rogue mission in mind.

"Let's do it then," I said. "Let's see what Scrooge's message is all about."

We marched out of the garden, nervous as cats as we crept down the less commonly trafficked hallways to exit the castle without intercepting our comrades on their way to help Yen Sid with his suicide spell. We made it as far as the labyrinthine hallways of the leaky basement, where we planned to use one of the back exits, when we turned a corner and nearly collided head on with Riku and Lulu.

Startled, we stood in confused silence for a moment, eyeing and analyzing one another. I squinted determinedly at Riku. "We're investigating the coordinates Scrooge sent us," I said sternly. "You can't stop us."

Riku glanced at Lulu, smirking, then back to me. "Stop you?" he said. "Nah. We were just coming to find you to tell you we think you should check it out."

I hesitated, glancing toward Lulu, who gave me a simple reassuring nod. "Oh? So…"

"So we're coming with you. Come on, Kiks, when have I ever been good at listening to authority?"

My eyes softened in thanks, grateful to have Riku by my side more than ever because I feared I might never have Sora again in the same position. I smiled gratefully at him and Lulu both, beckoning them to follow.

We didn't make it past another twisting corridor before we were stopped again, and this time our interceptors were wielding weapons. My heart was tormented as Leon, a mentor to me, stood squared against me with his Gunblade in hand and fire in his eyes. Flanked behind him were the others, Aerith and Yuffie to his right, Mulan, Aladdin, and Sora to his left. They stood firm, obedient to Leon's lead, but their faces mirrored my own conflicted feelings. No one had ever wanted it to come to this: the team divided, a line in the sand between us.

"Kairi, you can't do this," Leon ordered. "You can choose to follow us now, or we'll take you by force."

Axel stepped forward immediately, angling himself in front of me and glaring at Leon. I could see the formations of flames begin in his open hands. "Surely you don't think the rest of us are going to let that happen," he said with a cold chuckle.

"The rest of you can become deserters if you choose," Leon responded. "But I'm afraid I can't let Kairi leave my custody."

That struck me as odd. Why just me? Why was I the only one worth stopping?

I saw on Sora's face that it seemed suspicious to him, too.

"It doesn't have to be this way," I said seriously, unsheathing my Keyblade at my side. "We're on the same side… we shouldn't be turning one another into enemies."

I saw, in Leon's face, not stubbornness or aggression, but genuine sorrow. "I agree," he said, pleadingly. "So don't do this. I made the King a promise that I can't break."

"To follow orders no matter the cost?" Riku scoffed, gripping his weapon tightly.

"To protect Kairi no matter the cost." His words were shocking. "We all knew the risks of this war, that there might be consequences and unpleasant choices. But the King made me swear that no matter what else, I would make sure Kairi made it through this alive."

His eyes were pleading. Think about your future, when all this is over, I heard his voice say to me in what seemed like the distant past.

I raised my Keyblade. "That's no one's promise to make but mine," I insisted. "I'm going to find Scrooge, and you can't stop me. I'm pretty over being held captive, to be honest."

And then I leapt, with a fierceness I was growing increasingly comfortable calling my own, straight at Leon with my glimmering Keyblade. I felt movement on every side of me, as the soldiers on either side of the line prepared to join the fray, and then, everyone stopped as another Keyblade zipped in front of mine to block Leon's striking Gunblade.

Sora stood between Leon and I, his feet dug in, guarding me.

He looked back at me, with little time to explain himself, but our hearts knew each other well enough for me to understand immediately. "We'll always be best friends, Kairi," he said. "That can't ever leave my heart."

Leon growled and freed his blade, taking a rageful swing at Sora, who parried and knocked him back several feet. It was microseconds before the others were coming at him, too- I'd never seen a Keyblade move so fast.

"Kairi, go!" he screamed, single-handedly holding off the crew of retaliators for as long as he could.

I only had time enough to offer him the most grateful gaze I could muster before I made a mad dash for the castle gates, flanked by my fellow renegades.

We flitted quickly through the inner city streets, reaching the crumbling canyons that ringed the outside of the capital. It was a tedious climb, into the chasm and eventually back out again, until we were free to run across the arid and abandoned plains in the Radiant Garden countryside.

"We should come up on the spot any minute now," said Launchpad, reading his compass. "It isn't too far outside the city… In fact… wait… this is… this is it."

We stopped in our tracks, confused. There seemed to be nothing any more special about this patch of dirt than any other patch of dirt. Scratching my head, I was struck with the idea of casting a moderate wind spell. Sandy brown sediment went flying away across the rolling plains, until buried under the dirt, we saw something: onyx-colored railroad tracks. They had an ethereal shimmer to them, stretching several dozen yards into the plains beyond.

I cast the spell again, and we saw a metal hatch that had been buried under the dirt. In the corner was a small panel of control buttons. It was a square roughly two feet by two feet, labeled with a regal font: McDuck Interworld Transit Enterprise.

"Holy mackerel," Launchpad whispered. "I can't believe he actually built it."

"It?" I asked. The others watched Launchpad with a similar bewilderment. "What exactly is it?"

"I mean, for all we know this is just a non-operational prototype…" he mumbled, bending down. He opened the control panel door, examined the mechanications beneath, mumbled some more, then slammed the door shut. "Here goes nothing…" He punched in a pattern of instructions, and in the next moment, we heard a massive roar beneath the earth. Another metal hatch, ten times the size of the control panel, squeaked and rumbled as it parted open from the earth. Massive clouds of dirt and dust were disturbed all around us. Suddenly a giant, shimmering black train car had appeared from nothing, resting like a monolith on top of the tracks.

I exhaled, suddenly connecting the dots. "He actually built it," I breathed.

Axel laughed, stunned as he understood it, too. "He actually built it," he echoed.

Riku rolled his eyes. "This isn't the Field of Dreams, people," he interrupted our awe. "Somebody better explain to the rest of us what exactly 'it' is."

"This was Scrooge's most ambitious and controversial project," Launchpad explained. "An Interworld Transit System, a singular transport that would connect all worlds. It would make any world accessible to any ordinary person. No need to have a gummi ship or a complicated understanding of Doorways. You'd only have to buy a ticket, and you could visit other worlds. It was the whole reason Scrooge and Mickey ever met - the King was at first very excited about the project. He and Ansem the Wise both supported the research and drew up the plans to make it happen… but then, recently, Mickey suddenly condemned the entire project. Claimed it was unstable, dangerous - he said it violated…"

"World order," I interjected. It was King Mickey's default explanation for his obsessive secrecy. "So if this is what Scrooge wanted to show us, it's no wonder Mickey tried to stop him, if he wanted the project shut down. But why? What did Scrooge expect us to accomplish by finding it? How can we even know where it goes?"

Boldly, Riku jumped into the vessel, glancing around. He pointed to a flashing screen on the wall. "Not sure where, but it's definitely going somewhere. In here it says 'Destination Programmed' in flashing green lights."

Lulu pursed her lips in thought. "Programmed… to where?"

But Riku couldn't find that answer inside the strange and ready vehicle.

"Let's think about this from Scrooge's perspective, try to get inside his head." Axel supplied. "The king has blacklisted him, he packs up everything and runs, but leaves a message with Goliath somehow, for some reason..."

I remembered the scarce but punctuated details from my first meeting with Scrooge. "Family problems," was the ambiguous phrase Launchpad had kept repeating. "Maybe it's programmed to Scrooge's home world," I said.

"Maybe Scrooge really is the traitor they say and it's programmed to an ambush location," Lulu played devil's advocate.

"Maybe we just get in and see where it goes," Axel said with a sigh, almost bored.

I let my breath catch for a moment. I glanced around us, noticing the sinking sun and the shifting rose hues of the sky. Surely Yen Sid had already begun his spells and had already noticed our absence. In just a few minutes the sun would be completely set and Goliath would awaken; the departure of the King's Thirteen was scheduled for less than half an hour, and half of us were missing in action.

Climbing aboard Scrooge's mystery vessel and following it to its mystery destination was a dangerous enough proposal on its own, but as time slipped away from us, the momentum was becoming an ultimatum. I understood that it was now a choice between following the unknown and sticking with the mission we'd agreed to. We'd already violated our loyalty by coming this far, but it wasn't too late to turn back.

I met Axel's eyes. I meant to speak to him, but he spoke first.

It's your call, Princess, I heard internally.

Why mine? I asked with butterflies in my stomach.

Look around. Everyone's waiting for your command. Sometimes leaders are chosen, sometimes they just… emerge. We're a rogue outfit now, on your whim. Your call. Whatever you choose, they'll follow.

I thought of the firmness with which Yen Sid had denied my intuition.

"I can't sign us up for a one-way trip when there's clearly something the King hasn't told us," I said, decisively. "I'm just not willing to believe that a suicide mission is our only option. Not yet, anyway. Scrooge knew there was something else, and he risked his safety and his reputation to make sure we found this place."

I followed Riku's footsteps into the clean, metallic vessel. There was a warm hum that accompanied the blinking lights. Without time for hesitation, the others followed and soon the tiny vessel was comfortably crowded with passengers.

"Ready?" I asked everyone, though I didn't really wait for a response before pressing the bright white button that said simply, Depart.