Shibuya Stories: Tales of the Four Kings

by Mathemagician93

Sora knew he would pay the price for violating a nature taboo. He was prepared for the consequences. But higher powers have intervened,and he has a slight chance to return. He just has to work with an old friend and make some new ones that all share the same goal of returning to the lives they lost.

Author's Note: I wasn't expecting to get this story posted so quickly, but my beta reader somehow managed to get to this despite a lot of crazy things going on in their life. This story takes place in my ongoing Kingdom Hearts series, although it can be read independently of the others since this story covers what Sora was up to in the year his friends were looking for him between KH3 and Melody of Memory.

A fair warning: this story heavily features characters from games I have never played, so all backstories presented are made from just me reading about their various canons, interpreting what that means, and then molding that interpretation to fit with the story I was writing. Some things may be contradicted in the source material but I tried to keep things at least mostly fitting. Since there are many pieces I needed to set up for the finale, this story is more of a setup piece than my other stories.

Sora groaned as he slowly came to, with the first thing he noticed was that he was lying on a cold, wet surface. He pushed himself up off of what he quickly realized was wet pavement, taking a moment to examine his left hand. Just as it had been when he awoke in the nighttime version of the Final World, it was a relief to see the hand was still there, instead of the fading away at his extremities he had noticed after finally saving Kairi. Then he turned his attention to his surroundings, finding himself in a well-lit city that reminded him somewhat of San Fransokyo at night, although most of the signs were in a completely different language. He was currently standing in the middle of a crosswalk, but despite all the lights in the windows of buildings and even cars in the middle of the street, he couldn't see any signs that the city was inhabited. He found his eyes drawn to the one thing he could actually read—the giant 104 sign lit up on the top of a skyscraper. Figuring that might be as good of a place to start as any, he stepped towards the building only for a voice to sound out immediately behind him.

"Well, Sora, how exactly did you end up here?" Sora spun around with his Kingdom Key in hand, only to stop at the sight of a familiar blonde teen smirking at him—an old friend who certainly hadn't been standing there a second ago, but that seemed to be par for the course for this individual.

"Joshua! Not that I'm not glad to see a friendly face, but did you have to give me a heart attack?" The potential angel with claims of omniscience just shrugged, and Sora sighed as he dismissed his weapon. Based on his interactions in the sleeping Traverse Town, Sora could tell his friend got a good amount of enjoyment out of being cryptic. Deciding to just forgo any further confrontation, he addressed Joshua's question.

"Well, I'm honestly not sure. I know I got banished from my world after I broke some sort of taboo thingy, but then things get kind of weird. It's hard to say if any of it was real or not… I met someone I thought was a video game character, he said he was going to save me and then attacked me, I'm pretty sure I lost? And then there's some really weird stuff. There was a guy wearing red with blue overalls that could conjure fire, a yellow mouse with electricity, Cloud and Sephiroth were there but a bit different than I remember them…"

Joshua chuckled. "Sounds like you had a smashing time of things. But I suppose I should have been more specific. I am generally aware of how you came to be in this particular realm, but I'm more wondering on how you got to this intersection. Last I was aware, you were up in crystal stasis on top of the 104 building while your essence recovered from getting kicked across the barrier. I was wondering how you woke up and made your way here without me noticing. Should have expected you wouldn't be able to answer though—crystal stasis often involves disorientation and hallucinations when you come out."

Part of Sora knew that there were important details Joshua wasn't explaining about this stasis thing, but he figured the details would probably go over his head anyway. Instead, he focused on the other information his friend had revealed. "Wait, you know how I got to this realm? How did that end up happening? And is there a way I can go back?"

Joshua pinched the bridge of his nose as if fighting a headache. "I'll give you your answers if you can give me some to my questions, but I can already tell that neither of us will like the answers we get. I'm going to have to ask you not to freak out about anything for a good while, and we may as well talk as we walk since I'd rather be back at my base of operations for some of the things that are bound to come up."

Sora nodded. "Sure, that won't be a problem. You can lead the way to your place, and after all the stuff I've been through over the years I think I'm pretty good at rolling with stuff."

Joshua chortled. "Why don't you prove that by looking at your palm?" Sora blinked in confusion before looking at his left hand again, only for Joshua to roll his eyes. "Other hand…you'd think a right handed person would default to that…" Sora turned his right palm towards him only to gasp in shock. There, glowing in red across his hand, were the symbols ※※:※※.

When the symbols didn't disappear after blinking his eyes a few times and wiping his hand, he decided to just accept they were there, and their presence did trigger a memory. "Wait a minute, didn't Neku have something like this for the Reaper thing? But I think his was a timer, not some symbols…"

Joshua blinked. "Wow, Sora, I'm impressed. I expected Riku to remember something like that, but you did as well. And yes, it is a timer for the Reaper's Game, but at the moment it isn't active. You're involved on a different level, and it's thanks to a special ticket. But that leads into my next question. You have in your possession a very special card—a King of Hearts. Where exactly did you get it?"

Sora wasn't sure how the card was connected to this situation, but he reached into his pocket to dig it out. "I was wondering about this. It was supposed to be a wild card, but other than being a king of hearts it was blank—" He cut himself off as he found the card, and realized it had changed. Instead of a blank expanse in the center of the card, he saw an image of himself sitting on a throne. Still, Joshua seemed to know about the particular card, so he decided to answer the question to see what the other teen knew.

"I got this from Luxord in our last fight. He seemed to think it was a prize for beating him at his last game, and thought it could help me turn the tables. Didn't end up doing anything for my fight with Xehanort though…"

Joshua seemed to be lost in thought. "Hm, Luxord. Let me try to remember. Is he the blonde guy with time powers? The one who always seemed to turn conflicts into some sort of minigame?"

Sora probably wouldn't have described the card and dice transformations as minigames, but the rest of it seemed accurate enough. "Yeah, that sounds like him. Why?"

Joshua just groaned and muttered. "Great, him again. Of course this all ties back to her…" He then snapped his head back up to Sora. "Okay, I'll explain as we walk. Follow me."

He turned around and marched off, leaving Sora trailing behind. "The first thing you need to understand is this world is very different from things you are familiar with. It's almost easier to say this is an entirely different side of reality to what you deal with—not like the Realm of Light or Darkness you have, but even further separated. It's normally impossible for people to cross between without divine intervention, but ideas sometimes bleed over. When you were banished from your side of reality, you should have just faded from existence, but that card you hold was a ticket to come here instead."

Sora smiled. "Well, looks like Luxord was right and it did help." Then he thought a bit further. "Hold on, I needed divine intervention to get here? Does that mean Luxord is a god if his card did that?"

Sora could practically hear Joshua roll his eyes. "Of course not. Just because Luxord gave you the card doesn't mean it was actually his. It was mine."

After finding out Herc's heritage, Sora thought he would have been more used to reveals like this, but he couldn't help himself. "So you're a god then?"

Joshua spun on his feet and grabbed on to Sora. "No. I merely serve the gods. Call me an angel if you must, but I get confused for that other guy enough as it is. It's why I changed my title from King of Kings to Kingmaker—just because our names are based on the same origin and I am divine in nature doesn't mean I was able to inspire a religion over two millennia ago."

Sora wasn't sure why this was such a sticking point for the angel since he didn't know what other guy Joshua kept being compared to, but he decided to let it go. "Okay, you're an angel. But if it was your card that brought me here, how did Luxord get it? And what was the whole thing with me getting locked in stasis when I got here?"

Joshua turned back around and resumed walking, leaving Sora to follow. "Considering your interaction with Yozora after your arrival, I have a pretty good idea how Luxord got my card, but I'd rather confirm my hunch before mentioning it. As for the stasis, the card only served for your gateway here, but since I wasn't exactly aware that you were coming I couldn't stabilize your essence. You still probably would have completely fallen apart if you hadn't been locked in crystal stasis for a while."

Sora put his hands behind his head. "Well, then I guess Yozora did actually save me by fighting me. Although if he had just explained that, we wouldn't have had to fight at all. I've been locked away in sleep for my own good before, after all."

Sora heard Joshua muttering again. "Something tells me this was all for her benefit more than yours…" Sora was going to question the angel on this person he kept mentioning, but before he could Joshua continued in his normal voice. "Anyway, back to the topic of this world, we're in the city of Shibuya, but this world actually exists on multiple layers. What we are in now is the Higher Plane, only accessible to divine beings and those they bring with them—which is why you don't see any people around other than us at the moment. A few layers below us is the Realground, where the normal denizens of this world live. In between the two is the Underground, which is where the Reaper's Game is held. When people in the Realground die under certain circumstances, they have the ability to play the Reaper's Game in the Underground for a chance to come back to life. Those of us in the Higher Plane are responsible for running the Reaper's Game."

Sora shrugged. "I guess it's not that different from Olympus, what with the Underworld, surface world, and Realm of the Gods—although I guess I was able to just go between all of those physically while it sounds like this is a bit different…" Then something clicked. "Wait, if I'm not an active player in the Reaper's Game, does that mean I have to run it now? Or am I just waiting for the next game to start so I can win my chance to come back to life and go home?"

Joshua sighed. "Neither. See, one thing you have to understand is in this world, magic as you know it doesn't—or at least, shouldn't—exist. Sure, all of us from the Higher Plane have a significant amount of power, but the people in the Realground in general are no more threatening than you were before you first left your island. It's one of the underlying assumptions of the Reaper's Game—it's fair because nobody is individually able to face down the trials, and instead of having supernatural abilities people have to rely on their connections with a partner. It's why Neku had to fight with Dream Eaters until he reunited with Shiki—on his own, he had no power."

Sora tilted his head. "Okay, but how does that—"

Joshua interrupted. "I'm getting to that. See, those of us who run the Reaper's Game still have certain limitations we need to follow. Normally we work through administrators within the game itself, but in cases where players start to go off of the rails we can use certain amounts of force to correct that oversight. But all of our systems in place were on the assumption that anybody we dealt with would be essentially powerless. That all changed when we had a new Player join the game. This one man was able to manipulate time to a certain extent, and even when we issued an Emergency Call to try and rebalance the game his power threatened to imbalance everything about our world."

Sora gasped. "So Luxord almost destroyed this whole system just by existing? I guess I can see that. He was really hard to fight normally, so I can't imagine trying to do it without any of my powers."

Joshua groaned. "It gets worse. Luckily he wasn't in Shibuya so I didn't have to deal with him personally, but my counterpart in Shinjuku tried to fight him directly. She thought it would be over quickly, but he managed to keep up with her. The fact that a mere mortal could potentially defeat a Composer in direct combat was almost enough that we would have had to call on the gods directly to change things if she hadn't cut a deal. The one you know as Luxord was restored to life, the other players from the game got a do-over, and we were all scrambling to stop this from ever happening again."

"I'll spare you the details of all the ensuing bickering and arguments between the Composers, Producers, and even the gods themselves on how to best address this system upheaval, but we eventually came up with a solution. Moving forward, any individual of significant power such that they'd unfairly dominate the Reaper's Game was banned from participating. But if something did happen, and if a standard Emergency Call was insufficient to deal with the problem, Composers could invoke the Brave Saints protocol. Every composer would be able to gather a team of four individuals far too powerful to compete in the Reaper's Game on their own to instead serve as emergency enforcers. This team couldn't come to life through normal means, but if a Brave Saints protocol was issued and the team successfully contained the problem then they would return to life. To denote a Composer's current active team, they were given a set of four playing cards, which they could bond to the soul of a person to indicate their status as a Brave Saint. My cards just happened to be the Kings."

Sora took a second before responding. "So, I guess that means I'm your King of Hearts for whenever there's a Brave Saint thing? But if you had to bond my soul to the card, how did you not know I had it until I got here?"

Joshua's voice took a hard edge. "Because at some point, my King of Hearts card went missing. I wasn't exactly in a hurry to complete my team at the time due to other factors, but now it seems I have no choice. I cannot revoke your position as my King of Hearts until we finish a Brave Saints protocol, and now that I have a full team we'll have to make due with what we have."

Sora blinked. "Wait, you make it sound like there's something happening right now. I thought this Brave Saints thing wouldn't happen very often."

Joshua at this point turned and entered a building, leaving Sora to follow. The angel was silent until they both entered an elevator and Joshua pushed the button for the top floor. "The Brave Saints protocol was established fifteen years ago. About a year ago, the Composer of Shinjuku wiped out the entirety of her population after deeming them unworthy of continuing to live. I challenged her decision, and the fact that a foreign Composer was intruding on the domain of another resulted in the first situation to justify a Brave Saints protocol. Since I didn't have a complete team at the time, Shinjuku was placed in limbo until that could be rectified. A few months ago, you arrived in this world, but in stasis you couldn't compete. Now you're awake. And I'm going to have to do everything in my power to buy as much time as possible before the Brave Saints protocol becomes active, because you are not ready for this fight."

Sora wasn't sure what he would be fighting that Joshua was so sure he wasn't ready, but the elevator dinged before he could ask. Joshua led him into a penthouse apartment, where he saw the first other person since arriving in the city. A teenage girl with blonde hair was laying on the couch, using a black cat plush as a pillow while she played on a game system. She had a large set of red and white headphones on and didn't seem to notice their arrival until Joshua called out, "Yo, Hype-chan, aren't you going to greet our new guest?"

Sora hoped Hype-chan was just a nickname, but the girl did get off of the couch and her face lit up when she saw him. "Do you finally have your fourth person, Uncle Joshua? Does this mean we can get mom and dad back soon?"

Sora couldn't help but interject. "Wait, Uncle Joshua?"

Joshua just rolled his eyes. "You accept that I'm an angel, yet you can't wrap your head around the fact that I'm old enough for a human teenager to call me an Uncle? I just happened to befriend her parents when they were teenagers, and they named me godfather. It's the only reason I was able to save her from Shinjuku when it got erased—such titles have a bit more meaning to us than they do to most mortals."

Joshua's goddaughter just rolled her eyes before turning to Sora. "Don't worry, you get used to his attitude eventually. He does care, he just…has a different way of showing it sometimes. Anyway, I'm Tsugami Sakuraba. It's nice to meet you." She added a little bow to the end, which Sora returned.

"My name's Sora. It's nice to meet you too. Although, you said your last name is Sakuraba? Do you happen to know a Neku Sakuraba?" Sora figured if he was lucky this could be Neku's cousin or something, but he wasn't expecting her response.

"Yeah, he's my dad. How do you know him? I thought Joshua only pulled on people from another reality—it's how it went for the other three."

"Wait, dad? But, he was my age a few months ago! How could Neku have a kid already?"

Joshua sighed. "You do remember how I told you that the Neku you met was made up of the fragments of memories that I was able to bring to Traverse Town, right? In that Sleeping World, Neku and the others took the forms they had when I first met them in their Reaper's Game…which was almost twenty years ago. They all had plenty of time to grow up, have kids, and move to Shinjuku just in time for them to get deleted when someone decided to invert Shinjuku. Isn't that right, Gabby?

Sora wasn't expecting a new voice to answer, and spun around to see another girl dressed entirely in black, with her bright blue hair in a pixie cut and tattoos covering her exposed arms and the parts of her legs visible through the holes in her leggings. The new arrival didn't seem to care about him at the moment, only addressing Joshua.

"And you know very well that there was nothing personal about that, Yoshi. If I were to change my decision just based on the fact that another Composer had personal ties to a non-Player in a deciding game, I'd be making a mockery of the system. We can't exactly have a repeat of what Lucy tried, now can we?" Her voice lost its harsh tone as she turned to Tsugami. "Not that I'm not willing to bend the rules a little for your sake, which is why we have this whole song and dance now keeping Shinjuku in limbo. As for the answer to your earlier question, you did get my gift last month, right? If you've played through Dream Drop Distance, you'll know exactly how Sora met your father."

Sora could only blink in shock. "Wait, why do you make it sound like I'm a video game—"

Joshua cut him off by grabbing his shoulder, but the angel's eyes never left his counterpart. "Don't try to get out of this situation by causing an existential crisis. Apparently, Sora is only here because your promoted pawn handed him my King of Hearts card. Now, I know how this looks, but I want to confirm before I do anything rash. Is this all a coincidence, or did you intentionally steal my card?"

The blue-haired girl didn't even bother trying to deny anything. "Oh come on, you know you were just stalling. I was just speeding up the—"

She cut herself off when a sudden pressure filled the air, and Joshua began glowing with light. Sora noticed six pairs of wings sprout from his back, while his outfit switched to what looked like a pure white version of the Organization cloak. Sora had known Joshua was powerful from all the little hints in their interactions, but now that the angel wasn't restraining himself Sora could feel just how powerful. He had faced down gods, Titans, and a Keyblade Master who had bent time to his will and wielded the Keyblade that was a counterpart to Kingdom Hearts itself. Sora wasn't sure if any of them could match what he was facing now.

However, while Sora was in a bit of awe at Joshua's power, Gabby seemed more disappointed than anything. "Really, we're doing things this way? Fine then." She then underwent the same change as Joshua, although while the wings and robes were the same, her hair turned blonde and grew out longer than Joshua's. While Sora wasn't sure what that meant, he could feel Gabby giving off just as much power as Joshua, and he wasn't sure if he'd be able to survive getting caught in the crossfire of the two divine beings. It seemed Tsugami didn't share his worries though, as she immediately threw herself between the two.

"Listen, I understand that this is part of how you flirt, and I can't always apply human morality to the two of you, but how about instead of doing the whole show of force you actually talk this out? Now, Aunt Gabriella, you did steal something very important to Uncle Joshua, and while that might not be on quite the same level as trying to overtake your city, can you see how that might have made him feel the same way? And Uncle Joshua, if Aunt Gabriella can deal with you challenging her authority without trying to level a city block, you should be able to show the same level of restraint now."

The two angels seemed sheepish at being called out by a human teenager, and dropped down from their ascended states. While Joshua looked the same as he had before Gabriella arrived, her hair remained the same as it had in her ascended form while her tattoos had all disappeared. The female angel took the initiative. "Yoshi, I'm sorry that I stole your card. I was angry that you seemed to just be stalling on completing your team as an excuse to keep messing with my authority. Still, you at least went through proper channels in going through my patron, so I should have talked to you or at least Nomura before taking matters in my own hands."

Joshua sighed. "And I'm sorry for overreacting. Yes, you took away my card, but I wasn't really making an effort to find my fourth member and keeping your city in limbo just to try and gain any advantage I could get would just make things worse. Nomura may be my patron, but that doesn't mean I have any more authority than you do. But I am going to have to ask you for a favor. Since I just completed my team while yours has been a unit since before you recruited them, could we get a few more months to prepare?"

Gabriella laughed. "Well, since you asked so nicely, I might be inclined to agree. However, it's going to cost you. Since you forced me to assume my ascended form, I'm going to have to re-dye my hair and replace my tattoos. That's all going to be on you."

Joshua rolled his eyes. "As if I wasn't going to do that anyway. But thank you."

Gabriella chuckled. "I suppose it's inevitable that your Kings would lag behind my Queens. After all, a King can only move one space while a Queen can go wherever she likes."

Joshua groaned. "Are you making a chess reference, or just referencing the song?"

Gabriella shrugged. "I can do both—and don't act like you don't enjoy either reference." She then turned to Sora. "I'm sorry that we had to meet under such circumstances, but perhaps we can start over. My name is Gabriella Nagisa. I've got many titles—although I would prefer you use my chosen one of Queenmaker since my assigned title made me sound like some sitcom. Perhaps more importantly, I recently served as the Composer of Shinjuku, which led to this whole scenario. As the new King of Hearts, you'll be one of the players determining our little dispute. Looks like you have a few months to prepare, although since you've already met two of my Queens that's a bit of an advantage for you."

Sora could only blink in confusion. "Uh, so there's a lot going on here, but who? I'm barely following all this so which two people are your Queens?"

Gabriella smirked. "Well, admittedly my Queen of Hearts is more of a fill-in since I lost my initial pick, but you've had multiple interactions with him—I believe you would know him as Luxord. And my Queen of Spades is the one who ensured you survived your trip to this world—while you might not have liked his method, you have to admit that Yozora gets results."

Sora managed to hold in his groan. Yozora had kept him on his back foot from the start of the fight and he hadn't managed to last very long, yet it sounded like he'd have to fight him again. "Okay, thanks. But going back to earlier, what did you mean when you said Tsugami would have seen me meeting Joshua?"

Gabriella turned to the other two residents of the world. "You know, I think you'll be better served for this explanation. Sure, I may be the biggest Kingdom Hearts fan in the room, but you're the ones who will be working with Sora more directly. So you'll have to figure out how to handle this mess." She then disappeared in a flash of light, leaving Joshua to sigh.

"Fine, I'll handle this. Tsugami, would you grab the games? Probably best to have them on hand for this." While Tsugami left, Joshua turned to Sora. "Okay, probably easiest to start with this. You know how on your side of things, Yozora is a video game character, but on this side, he's a real person? That happens because while people or physical objects can't typically cross between the two sides of reality, ideas can. If I had to guess, the Verum Rex video game is based on things Yozora actually went through on this side. Probably not 100% accurate, but close enough. It'd be easy from the perspective of your side of reality to say that everything that happens on this side is something fictional…but it works in reverse as well. For the average inhabitant of this side of reality, they could be familiar with things on your side of reality—but only as the events of movies or video games."

Tsugami returned to the room, and Sora's eyes could only stare at the image on the cover of the first game she was holding. Sure, it was a more cartoony artstyle and the title of Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMix didn't help realism, but the cover prominently featured what could only be a picture of him sitting on a throne with Donald, Goofy, and a younger Kairi standing around him. Riku, Naminé, and Mickey were off in one corner, while Roxas, Xion, and Lea were in the other.

Joshua just sighed. "While I'm sure you'll be able to speak more to the accuracy than I care to look for myself, there are games that cover everything from your first fight against Xehanort's Heartless through your Mark of Mastery exam. The next game would obviously cover the Keyblade War, but it certainly took its time getting released—which makes sense, considering you just got here. And Tsugami is a bit…enthusiastic about the games, so I'm sure she'll have plenty of questions."

The girl in question hung her head. "And yet I have enough tact not to bring anything up while Sora's clearly struggling. Seriously, Uncle Joshua, you've watched over humanity for how many years, been closer friends with my parents since they were my age, and you still can't realize certain social norms?"

Sora groaned. "Alright, well, I'm not so sure I'm really ready to dive into all of that right now…so…if there's some sort of team I'm the last member of, can I meet the others?" Gabriella had made it sound like there was going to be some sort of big fight coming up, and presumably the other members of the team would be at a similar level of strength as he was. Right now he could use a bit of stress relief and sparring with new friends would be as good of a chance as he could get.

Joshua smirked. "Sure—and they'll probably be happy to meet you. Although you can expect that to cause more problems—two of them in particular will be keenly interested in you. But if we hurry, we should be able to catch them before they finish."

Joshua then walked back out of the room and headed towards the elevator, and Sora could tell he was being purposefully cryptic. Still, the silence at least gave him some time to think, so he would take that to try and come to terms with everything. A quiet elevator ride down a floor ended when the doors opened to a small balcony encased in glass over a massive room a floor below. Sora's eyes immediately jumped to the three figures below—although he wasn't sure what jumped out at him more. The fact that one of the three was taking on the other two while she had a pair of golden-tinted wings behind her, or the fact that one of the two taking on the third was using what looked like a golden version of the Starlight Keyblade.

Joshua decided to actually provide some clarification. "I'm going to let all of them tell all of their stories, but to answer some of the obvious questions: yes, she is using a Keyblade. Her name is Strelitzia, she died shortly before the first Keyblade War, and she's my King of Clubs. The one with the wings is Rinoa Heartilly, my King of Diamonds and the squad leader. She's not an angel like me—although she is a Sorceress with power that descends from a banished angel. And since he'd never stop complaining if he knew I introduced the other two without introducing him, the guy with the broadsword is Zack Fair, my King of Spades. Ideally he'd be the last one to talk to you since he was my last recruit and also the last in your world's chronology to die, but he's a bit excitable and as soon as he sees your Keyblade he's going to probably jump at you with a bunch of questions and a desire to fight you. But that will come after we have a group meeting—we'll be heading down as soon as the sparring match is over."