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CHAPTER 32:
TOGETHER WE SIPHON, DIVIDED WE FRAGMENT
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Author's Notes: The pieces for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'The Girl Who Stole the Star,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; and after this 'Vector To the Abyss,' from KINGDOM HEARTS: THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-EIGHT DAYS OVER TWO; and after this 'Another Side – Battle Version,' from KINGDOM HEARTS: THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-EIGHT DAYS OVER TWO. The first Track can be found on Zophar's Domain, the second Track can be found on KINGDOM HEARTS Insider in its KINGDOM HEARTS: THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-EIGHT DAYS OVER TWO GameRip MP3 section with the name 'XionBattle,' and the third can be found in the same location with the name 'RikuBattle.'
Roxas' face could have been clear air, it was so pale.
Xion moved her feet fast to walk to Roxas' left side at a distance she could do no more than hope desperately he wasn't uncomfortable with, and was still close enough to be reassuring.
Anna was rising to her feet so swiftly Xion wasn't sure she was fully aware she'd chosen to move until she had, and then she sprinted to Riku and Kairi and took one of their hands in each one of hers in a close, soothing, tight, reassuring clasp.
Xion's insides contorted with aching sickness with the need to hold Riku's and Kairi's other hands similarly, but she couldn't risk moving that far away from Roxas.
Her insides were also twisting sickeningly in empathy and sympathy for Kairi and Sora, not just because of how well she knew what it was to hate herself for hurting someone she loved with all her heart and self and tear his humanity from him, or to lack it; but because even though the Keyblade of Hearts, far less a barely functioning one, didn't compare to the Kye-Blade, Xion now also understood all too well how horrifying and debilitating and terrifying and obliterating it was to know you were capable of bringing power like that to bear upon the people you loved and cared for and others and existing reality, whether you wanted to or not.
Xion knew the other surviving Xehanort couldn't be Xemnas, or Riku would have said so directly, for Roxas' sake and her own, but this was no comfort in any figure.
Because all Xion could do for Riku and Kairi was address what she could tell as well as Roxas.
"That isn't all," she stated.
Anna jolted violently.
"What else happened, or what else did you discover, or both?" Xion ended.
"We can get to that later," Riku answered, his tone now slightly more empathetic and understanding and knowing and sympathetic, but Xion barely felt lighter at how he was ensuring to direct it more to Roxas rather than her, due to how he was almost as responsible for what had happened to Sora as he was for the devastation of Roxas' own life.
But that wasn't going to happen now.
Xion wasn't just an imitation of a living being and a person's heart any longer.
She was the wielder of the Keyblade of Hearts.
She could love and protect and keep safe and cherish Roxas now.
From anyone and anything.
As well as Axel.
And Riku.
And Namine.
She needed to believe that, with all her heart.
Roxas needed her to believe that.
Axel needed her to believe that.
She would never let anyone or anything hurt them the most infinitesimal bit and minute fragment of a minuscule amount once again, for as long as they lived.
But if that was true, why was Roxas so pale?
Why couldn't she walk closer to him, pull him close and safeguarded and secure and warm from all of his current torment, old and new; and keep it as distant as possible from him eternally and forever more?
Why couldn't she keep Axel from even finding out about any of this?
The Keyblade of Hearts could create and unlock Final Keyholes and Doors to Darkness, and the hearts of people themselves, and who knew how much more.
It was an artifact second to but the Kye-Blade.
So why?
Why couldn't she still keep their pain away, and take away the suffering they were already being ravaged by?
What was the point of having a heart and a body and a Keyblade of Light and the Keyblade of Hearts if she still couldn't love and safeguard a single person she cared for, or anyone or anything around her or outside of her surrounds?
Ven's visage shifted with a mixture of emotions, including empathy and sympathy and understanding and mild irritation, and he kept his eyes as much off of Vanitas, Roxas, and Xion as he spoke up.
"I understand where Kairi and Xion were, and are, coming from; when we visited Olympus the last time and now.
"But Sora did–"
"If you're going to say there's a gossamer thread in this because Sora turned himself over to Young Xehanort willingly, don't do it," Riku cut him off, and there was something in his voice Xion had never heard before; a loss and self-hatred and despair and bitter guilt so profoundly depthless Xion almost forgot what the concept of breathing was, wasn't, and could be even with as much as Roxas and Axel needed her now.
She hadn't once heard it in anyone's voice before, even Roxas' or Axel's or Mare's or Namine's or Isa's or Aqua's or her own.
Ven blinked, and his visage composed itself into a neutral one.
Xion suppressed the urge to clench her teeth.
Ven; and how carelessly he expressed his naïvete and the ways in which it made a sick mockery of the innocence Roxas and Sora had used to possess and they'd been waging inexorably and irreversibly increasingly futile struggles to hold onto even the most frayed bare shards of; were really getting on her nerves.
"What matters is that Young Xehanort offered to perform a prisoner exchange, so we have twenty people we can ask if they are or aren't willing to participate in one," Riku continued, the loss and anguish gone, but his voice now too resolved and determined.
"Am I one of them?" Anna questioned.
Kairi's face became a mask of its own now.
Elsa pressed her lips together tightly in response to Anna's question.
Then they thinned further at Kairi's reaction.
Kristoff shifted uneasily.
Olaf blinked, not totally sure what was upsetting the four of them.
"As an alternate means of forging the Kye-Blade, I assume," Vanitas said.
"You can count me out, unless Namine needs me to."
Riku shifted slightly, as did his own expression, and then it became a further mask.
Ven opened his mouth, and Vanitas gave him a glare that told him he'd already said enough, and to stay quiet this time.
Ven started slightly, and he closed his mouth.
But then he opened it and questioned, "As you're on our side now; can we be sure that we can't just forge a Kye-Blade by working together, and then think of a way to trick two people as good at subterfuge as two Xehanorts, exchange ourselves for Sora, and then break it without it damaging one or both of our hearts?"
Vanitas scowled blackly.
"First off, dispense with the sides terminology," he answered.
"Secondly, even if there was such a thing as sides, I'm not on anyone's but Namine's."
Riku's face shifted another time, before reassuming its masked set.
"That in mind, I have enough memories of my life in the age of fairy-tales to be reasonably sure, while there might – big emphasis on might – be a way to forge the Kye-Blade without hurting each other very badly in combat; even if we can deceive Young Xehanort and the other one and then wreck that Keyblade, we will go down with it again.
"The Keyblade of Hearts can harness the power of waking as easily as you like running your mouth of,"
Xion's vision became hot at hearing that,
"So Xion can theoretically wake you right back up.
"But, in your current condition, if you try to hide inside someone else's heart for the brief period of time necessary to preserve it until Xion rouses you, you'll strain it so much you'll lose the pieces Sora gave you when the true Xehanort brought me into being; and that kind of sleep can't be awoken from by anything less than the power of spectral.
"If you want to spend who knows how many months back in dreamland until Aqua or Terra, or both, learn how to use it, though; as Sora is one of the most capable people of anyone to protect Namine, I'll agree to your idea.
So much of Aqua's blood drained out of her face she became almost as pale as Roxas.
Terra appeared to barely be able to keep his lips pressed extremely hard together.
"But I'm not going to take an unpleasant nap of my own, even for a few hours or less, unless you lose your talk about things like sides.
"If I need to lower myself to working with you, you're going to awaken from your waking dream.
"Do I make myself clear?"
Ven's expression turned inward for a few seconds.
Then he sighed heavily and resignedly.
"I don't like being treated like a kid by you, of all people.
"But because Xion is siphoning"
Roxas crashed to his knees and then fell on his torso, eyes wide and unseeing of even sight
Existence wasn't and reality was
Xion was barely even aware of the roaring searing her ears and the edges of what wasn't her perhapsnotmaybewasn'tperception as the Keyblade of Hearts spiraled into her left hand in coiling incandescent crimson and onyx, while her Kingdom Key coiled into her right hand in curving golden and silver
she focused
on everynotmaymightnot
their surroundings
inside her without
rippledshifted
they were all standing on top of a tall circular dais of wrought stained glass with an ornate portrait of Ven at the center and Aqua's, Terra's, Eraqus', Vanitas', and Sora's heads in respective backwards circles from above the front of his forehead curving past it and down his back, while emblems of assorted animals showed in more circles than she was interested in counting now in a ring around the edges
Xion's head throbbed with dizziness, but she'd been successful in calling upon one of the minority of reserves she'd deciphered the indescribably weakened Keyblade of Hearts could call up in its current state.
All of them were inside Ven's Station of Awakening.
Even Roxas, because she couldn't risk Axel leaving the Usual Spot and finding him without her able to try to be there for him.
"Thundaza Frame," Xion spoke, pointing the Keyblade of Hearts at Elsa.
The next second, Elsa, Kristoff, and Olaf were inside four coursing walls and one ceiling of currents of yellow white sheet lightning, too potent for Elsa to be able to redirect them by converting ice to water faster than Xion could replenish them, thus electrocuting Elsa.
Anna let go of Kairi's and Riku's hands and spun as they, and the others; with the exception of Vanitas, who was now just standing straight and giving Ven an amused look that said clearly, 'I told you so'; moved back or stood up into wary combat stances.
Aqua and Terra positioned themselves in front of Ven, but they didn't summon their Keyblades.
Xion wasn't sure whether it was breath taking relief or stabbing and twisting betrayal she felt that Riku, however, knew her well enough to know to call Braveheart to his hand in coiling silver and black and brought it into a neutral position.
His tone was a mask of congealed worry and wariness as he talked.
"Roxas was going to find out sooner or later anyway," Riku kept his tone even but reassuring.
"This isn't how I'd have preferred he learned, but at least this way the Foretellers and Maleficent can't tell him themselves, in a way they can exploit."
Xion bit off the urge to laugh similarly to how Kairi had.
"So Ven can?" she shot back.
"After he said he agreed with Eraqus; someone who practically literally tried to stab Xehanort, one of his own two best friends, in the back, for no other reason than because he wanted to study darkness without dragging anyone else into those studies unless they were interested in assisting him in those studies of their own free will?
"As Ansem the Wise believed all Nobodies were inhumane monsters for no other reason than because they were born of darkness, and this led him to ruin Roxas' and Axel's and Namine's, and even Isa's, lives for up to two years?
"I'm never making that mistake again."
Kairi and Terra both looked as though they wanted to say something, but neither opened their mouths.
Ven appeared sick with guilt, but determined to defend himself if necessary.
A flicker of unease cut through Xion.
"How many times do I have to beat you?"
"All right. You've left me with no other choice."
"What?"
"I have to release the power in my heart– The dark power that I've been holding back. Even if… it changes me forever.
"I have accepted it.
"DiZ… he could feel Sora."
"Oh, he told you how he 'felt,' did he? Ridiculous. A Nobody cannot feel anything."
Then all there was was blinding hatred of he
Ven
so white molten it was cold night frigid frozen of even the vacuum of the lack of absolute zero in the void outside the most absent vacuum of space.
"Both of whom hurt Ven in their own ways," Riku answered.
"And neither of whom are Ven.
"Ansem hated anyone who dwelt in the darkness outside of me because he hated his apprentices and wanted revenge against them, so he let his hatred for them blind him so much that he saw almost everyone who had dealings with dark vile.
"That's how you're thinking, by seeing Ven as the same as Ansem and Eraqus.
"If you actually attack Ven, you'll be no better than they were."
Aqua opened her mouth, but Terra held up a hand with an admonishing look.
Aqua jolted violently and closed it.
Xion knew better than to take any chances.
Within a minority of more seconds, Aqua was standing inside a globe of bright orange and shifting chains that didn't draw any power away from the Thundaza Frame.
What had EraXemnas called Axel?
"A regular Keyblade won't be able to open that," Xion informed AnsAqua.
"Stay out of this, also-ran."
Aqua became as transparent as Roxas had, and Xion's stomach contorted.
"Please don't hold back, Axel. Promise."
"What's your problem? You both… think you can do whatever you want. Well, I'm sick of it. Go on, you just keep running. But I'll always be there to bring you back!"
Xion barely remembered what coldness and heat were through the desperate, hopeless hate and bitter despairing reproach.
Elsa shifted, but she must have realized from how the walls of electricity weren't dimming even a little that trying to channel the lightning with water would just hurt her.
"Who cares if I'm not any better?" Xion questioned back.
"Even with the Keyblade of Hearts, I still can't protect Roxas or Axel, or anyone else.
"I'm still just a hollow shell born to be nothing but a weapon, and do you know what weapons do?
"They wage wars.
"And wars happen to murder or hurt people in order to strive for what you believe in, defend it, safeguard other people, or avenge hurt or death done to the people you care about or you; or a combination of all of this.
"Ansem picked the wrong person to take revenge on.
"Because one of the central causes of war is to harm or kill because one or more other people were harmed or murdered, and because I'm a living weapon, I'm vengeance made flesh.
"Maybe I can't protect Roxas, but I can very likely at least avenge him."
Riku opened his mouth, but this time Ven interrupted, sounding resigned but accepting.
"If that's how bad you feel because of what I said; don't waste any time, and beat me up until you're satisfied," he spoke.
Aqua tensed as though she were a coiled spring.
Terra pressed his lips tightly together a second time.
"I'm very, very sorry, Roxas."
But Roxas didn't even move, and Xion wished her inability to breathe would last long enough for her to pass out from losing oxygen, and it would continue until she died.
No.
Until Ven did.
"I'm very sorry, Xion."
"I won't fight back.
"Just go to town on me until you can feel assured I won't say something that stupid once more."
"So you need to know this before you lose your chance to know how strong a connection I'm willing to extend for you.
"That's wonderful. You know what I'm going to say.
"But you need to hear it.
"I don't love Kairi the way that Sora does.
"I love you that way.
"I'm sorry that I didn't tell you this until now, of all times."
There was no such thing as heat, frost, or perhaps.
"As I was assured of Xemnas for months, while the whole time he saw Roxas and Axel and Isa and Namine as nothing more than puppets?
"That's another mistake I won't make again.
"I'm putting you back to sleep, inside your own heart,"
Aqua fell to her knees.
Earthshaker appeared in Terra's hand in spiraling dark colors.
But Ven just raised his arms in what he must know was a futile hand to hand defensive position.
"You let them reduce you to this?"
"I thought you outgrew the marks under your eyes."
this time, Xion wasn't even sure the flicker of sickness or unease happened, or she was just imagining it
"and locking your heart in sleep past the power of waking to restore; until Riku can convince me, by my standards, I can trust that you've grown up, and you're no longer a danger to Roxas or Axel, or anyone else."
"Enough of this," Terra said, voice set and determined, and he walked in front of Ven and assumed a neutral position with Earthshaker.
"That's full fledged darkness, and I won't let Ven become the victim of another Keyblade wielder who gives into the darkness out of a desire for the power to protect the people she or he cares about."
But Riku interposed himself in front of Terra.
"No, Xion is my friend," he spoke in words of clear determined resolve.
"She's thus my responsibility if this does come to a fight, and I have enough memories from when Ansem wielded the Keyblade of Hearts to have a better chance of keeping her from shattering Ven's heart.
"Leave this to me."
"Please don't hold back, Axel. Promise."
"You're next, Roxas. I have to make you a part of me, too. Don't you see? This is why I was created."
Xion didn't know if it were her ears that were shrieking or the stomach that wanted to throw up everything inside her and outside her and about her and everywhere and anywhen and that wasn't and that might not be.
She couldn't do this again.
She couldn't fight Riku as she had Axel and Roxas.
She couldn't do this to him, too.
Not Riku, as well.
Riku must have known how she was feeling, for he gave her an expression filled with so much understanding empathy and knowing sympathy that she couldn't tell if she was asphyxiating in her own throw up or drowning in it.
"You understand now, right, Xion?" he questioned with soothing gentleness.
"This is where the path of darkness and revenge leads.
"Ven said he's sorry, and he even offered to let you beat him up; though that's darkness in and of itself, so that's a very bad idea of its own.
"You're not keeping in mind that Ven is as capable of learning from his mistakes as the rest of us.
"Why do you think he tried to reason with Vanitas last year, as a result of what choosing to duel him caused?"
Xion couldn't think of a response.
Now that she wasn't sure she needed to protect Roxas and Axel, she didn't even understand how she was still capable of feeling or thinking or remembering or imagining anything in the first place.
"No! Xion… Who else will I have ice cream with?"
But she didn't need to.
She knew what her response was.
Her fingers around the Keyblade of Hearts shifted to end the Thundaga Frame, and remove the barrier around Aqua and return them to Twilight Town.
"What if, as the one who forged the first Keyblade of Hearts, I could identify a way for you to keep Ventus from being a potential danger to Roxas and Lea without you needing to battle Riku?"
Xion suppressed the urge to clench her teeth at the knowledge she had just reflexively made her face a mask, so no one would be able to tell Maleficent had just telepathically contacted her.
But after what she'd just almost done, it was for the best she not let anything she was going through internally show, and convince Maleficent to leave her alone without letting anyone know she was talking to her.
There was nothing Maleficent could say to convince her to give into the darkness now, after she'd almost done to Riku what she'd done to Roxas and Axel, so she didn't need any assistance in feeling and thinking of ways not to believe Maleficent's trickery.
She'd deal with her on her own.
"You know my answer to that," she thought back.
"I do indeed.
"But that doesn't change the fact that a living Station of Awakening, an inhuman weapon similar to yourself, successfully took Luxu captive by wielding the darkness you so abhor."
What had she dimly perceived Sora saying to Isa the first time they'd met in the Castle That Never Was?
Xion wanted to throw up now at the memory of how she'd actually been aware enough to feel a little glad Sora was telling off Isa.
"I'm supposed to believe that?" she responded.
"Do as you choose.
"But while yes, as you must have surmised, trusting me will enable it to become that much easier for me to take Oathkeeper from Roxas; you would do well to heed my words this time.
"What I propose will actually be more merciful to Ven than to shatter his heart; and if you prove to me that you are willing to consider wielding the darkness, so I know I have a valid chance of convincing you to give into it; I am willing to tell you what I know about the abilities of the Keyblade of Hearts."
Xion couldn't breathe once more, and this time it was irrefutable that her ivory obsidian frigid molten hatred was directed at no one but herself, because she knew now that she had no choice but to hear Maleficent out.
There was solely one other person who had wielded an almost finished Keyblade of Hearts, and that person was now permanently dead.
If she didn't at least let Maleficent tell her what manner of darkness she wanted Xion to unleash to purportedly protect Roxas and Axel, she'd lose her best chance of learning how to wield the Keyblade of Hearts better.
And as a former replica of a Nobody, she knew enough about how to wield the darkness, with and without a Keyblade, she could pretend to go along with Maleficent long enough to learn how to unlock the Keyblade of Heart's powers until she had a firm enough foundation she could continue learning about them without any assistance from the fairy.
Additionally, by doing this, she could give Maleficent a taste of her own medicine for what she'd done to Riku before they'd met; and protect Riku as he had just protected her.
She knew she was playing into Maleficent's hands even by hearing her out, far less by trying to be a partial double agent for the guardians and their companions by acting as though Maleficent might be able to persuade her to give into the darkness; and that Maleficent had contacted her explicitly because she knew her knowledge of the Keyblade of Hearts was an offer Xion couldn't refuse, in good conscience.
But she wasn't so naïve herself any longer not to be able to tell when she was being played.
She could beat Maleficent at her own game.
Further unease caused her insides to warp with illness.
Could she?
Maleficent had learned from her own mistakes.
That she'd successfully murdered Jiminy, and won her first true victory against Sora, proved that outside the realm of any misgiving.
But she had no choice.
If she didn't, she wouldn't have the power to protect Roxas or Axel, of darkness or light.
And she couldn't say a thing to Roxas, or Axel, or Riku, or Namine, or Isa, about this; after how long and how horribly they'd suffered when they'd served the darkness.
And she was the greatest puppet of anyone, with the possible exception of Mare.
No one else, save maybe Mare, was better suited to try to outwit Maleficent in subterfuge.
Xion suppressed still another urge to clench her teeth.
"Been there, done that," she spoke back mentally, putting as much angry resignation in her voice as she could without risking sounding too enraged to be resigned.
"But yes, you have a point.
"So hurry up and tell me your catch, and what you want me to do to Ven, so I can decide whether or not to let you waste your time sinking your horns into my heart."
Maleficent's voice was as smugly triumphant as Xion had believed it would be.
She suppressed the urge to smirk, even as a pang of sympathetic pain at why Maleficent was the way she was blossomed inside Xion.
For all Maleficent had gotten better at strategy, she was still every bit as overconfident as she'd been every other time Sora, or any of the other guardians of light, had needed to thwart her.
"As I told you, it will be merciful.
"The Keyblade of Hearts possesses the ability to perform a permanent Formchange on the mental and physical forms of vessels that carry hearts, so you merely need to use it to alter Ven's shape to one as near human as possible, but one that is also confined by painless restrictions."
Xion suppressed yet another urge, to feel anything at how too obviously too good to be true this was.
Because the memory of the first time she'd dueled Roxas was strewn as blindingly brilliant across all of her own heart's being as the rest of the memories.
She had a very easy way to turn this back on Maleficent.
"Does that include changing his form into that of one of Halloween Town's ghosts, so he'll be bound to keep out of sight if he wants to preserve the world order?
"So I'll thus have a means of telling him, if I need to, I can limit his contact with Roxas and Axel; but it will be in such a way he'll get a useful Formchange out of the bargain, and one that will enable him to make new friends even more easily?"
"That isn't one of my preferred choices, but yes.
"I was going to advise you to shift him right now, into a living disembodied soul confined to Olympus' Underworld's Styx Maelstrom, and leave him there until it had scared him enough that he'd be more sure to take you seriously from now on."
Xion pushed protective fury, for Ven now, away.
"Why am I not surprised?" she retorted.
"You may feel however you so choose.
"But, if you're inclined to ask, you should know that while Auron was able to regain his life from a complete death; this was possible because Hades enabled the space time plane he names the Styx Maelstrom in contact with the material dimensions, and it thus brushed The Final World.
"Jiminy died on a world with an afterlife kept totally separate from any space time of matter, and one thus without any connection to The Final World.
"He is beyond salvation, even by the most genuine shape of resurrection."
New hot wetness obscured her vision, but Xion had already known this was most likely the case, and Roxas and Axel and Mare and Riku and Namine and Isa needed her now.
When Maleficent spoke next, her voice was still calm, but now very irritated.
"However, I have no means of convincing you to alter Ven into nothing but a disembodied spirit.
"So if you will merely bestow upon Ven the ability to perform this Formchange, by himself or by your hand, I will consider you a potential ally for the future.
"Make no mistake, however.
"I will exact payment from you for this audacity later."
"I'd be disappointed if you didn't try," Xion responded.
Xion felt slightly lighter.
Axel and Ven themselves had occasionally experimented with casting new potential Formchanges on all of them over the more than a year since Sora's disappearance.
So Ven wouldn't have any problems with her doing the same to him, and then she could focus on trying to be there for Roxas.
She didn't know why she wasn't doubled over retching violently at how he still wasn't moving.
She concentrated on the Keyblade of Hearts, and it shone briefly with the glimmering light red shades of the heart.
A similar aura adumbrated Ven.
His mouth opened in a silent scream and he disappeared.
Riku jolted violently.
Violent frost engulfed all of Xion's insides and heart and erupted up her spine in icy frigidity absent of even absolute zero frozen cold itself at the knowledge she'd been wholly wrong about how Maleficent had intended to maneuver her in uncountable vital ways.
There had been a specific reason Maleficent had waited to be sure Xion would remember the ghosts of Halloween Town.
But Xion refused to let any of her horror and terror and self hatred and fury at how Maleficent had successfully played her in the end into her voice?
"What Formchange did I just give Ven?" she questioned, vocally now.
When Maleficent answered, her voice resounding throughout the whole Station of Awakening, there was smug glee and victory in her voice.
"The very one you yourself thought of, child," she spoke.
"But you neglected to ask what happens to people whose bodies are given the ability to perform an undead Formchange through a weapon as potent as the Keyblade of Hearts; unless the Formchange is precisely directed to function in the ways Donald's magic, or the spell cast on Barbossa and his crew, do.
"The answer is very simple.
"Even giving the recipient of the Formchange the ability to become a ghost transfigures the person entirely and wholly into one, so Ven has now been sent to Halloween Town along the same pathways the undead civilians of that world travel to reach others.
"Perhaps this Formchange is reversible, as Donald's magic, and the spell on Barbossa, were; but if it is possible, I haven't the slightest knowledge of how.
"But there is one thing I am certain of.
"A Formchange performed by the Keyblade of Hearts, unless precisely channeled, takes effect in the most essential ways possible, and you know as well as I do how the truest ghosts are born.
"You are now worthy of becoming my apprentice as the wielder of the Keyblade of Hearts, dear child.
"For you have now murdered your beloved Ven with your very own hands."
.
"Why do you hesitate? Take what is yours. The Cryst is a blade. It was meant for you. Wield it! Avenge your father! Yes. It was I who wore Basch's face – who cut down the life of Dalmasca. Lady Ashe! Your father's murderer is here!"-Judge Magister Noah 'Gabranth' Fon Ronsenburg
"You!?"-Princess Ashelia 'Ashe' B'nargin Dalmasca
"And Reks!"-Vaan
"I slew your King. I slew your country. Do these deeds not demand vengeance? Yes. Good! Find your wrath! Take up your sword! Fight, and serve those who died before you!"-Judge Magister Noah 'Gabranth' Fon Ronsenburg
"A Judge Magister there was… Two years past, he took the Midlight Shard and used it not knowing what he did… and Nabudis was blown away. Cid ordered this of him to learn the Nethicite's true power. That man swore never to let such terrible power be used again. He forsook his Judicer's plate, and his name."-Judge Magister Zecht 'Reddas'
"Judge Zecht!"-Judge Magister Noah 'Gabranth' Fon Ronsenburg
"It's been too long, Gabranth. Reach out your hand, Lady Ashe. But remember that which you must grasp is something beyond revenge, something greater than despair. Something beyond our reach. Try as we might, Gabranth, history's chains bind us too tightly."-Judge Magister Zecht 'Reddas'
"No, we cannot escape the past. This man is living proof."-Judge Magister Noah 'Gabranth' Fon Ronsenburg
FINAL FANTASY XII