Vanitas-and-Aqua leapt down from the stream of keyblades. They landed on the giant flower with a puff of gray pollen, which froze in mid-air as if someone had cast Stop. They sneezed into the crook of their elbow.
"Bless you," Aqua said. Their voice seemed to boom in the eerie silence.
"So you have time to bless us, but not time for me to give us a cool name?"
"It was two words." She snorted, raising the X-Blade with both arms. It felt lighter the closer they got to Kingdom Hearts—like the moon's magnetic pull was fighting against gravity.
The pull might've been more than magnetic. In the gaps between the clouds, stars stretched from pinpricks into thin rods, as if their lights were being sucked into Kingdom Hearts. The dead earth stilled as it gave up its color. The vines holding up the massive flower had withered, its dull petals curling in like the legs of a dying insect.
They didn't care much about the Keyblade Graveyard, but if the life was being leached from other worlds… they didn't have much time.
"Uh… lock?" they said. "Close sesame?"
They weren't sure which half of them had made the stupid joke, or which half of them started cracking up at it. Bad news—both for their collective heart, and their apparently abysmal sense of humor.
Better to laugh than to break down in panic, though. They had work to do.
The X-Blade shot out a beam of light, and a keyhole appeared where it made contact with the moon.
"So… just turn it, maybe? Like locking a door?"
"Wait!" Ven called from behind them.
Wait. Ven?
They spun, nearly dropping the X-Blade. Ven leapt off his glider and dashed towards them, panting.
"Aqua! Are you…?"
"I'm okay," Aqua answered, smiling. So her friends could still pull her consciousness free—for now, anyway. "We're going to seal Kingdom Hearts for good. Then this will all be over."
(Assuming they weren't already too late.)
Ven's head tilted. He bit his lip.
"But… you're still…"
"We'll worry about that later. For now, we're working together," she said.
Vanitas tried to stick his tongue out, but she wouldn't let him. That was fair, he guessed, since he was keeping her from pulling Ven into a mushy hug.
"But he wanted to—"
"Look. I just want to get some crêpes, and that means not screwing up the whole universe," Vanitas interrupted. "Let's get this over with, alright?"
"Terra's in there," Ven said quickly.
They blinked. Ven looked as serious as they'd ever seen him.
"Terra's… where?"
"Inside Kingdom Hearts. I think he thought he could use it to bring you back… bring Aqua back, I mean. Without Vanitas."
"Figures," Vanitas muttered. Aqua pinched their arm. "Rude. That hurts you too, you know."
"Just—shut up." Aqua shook their head. "We can't lock Kingdom Hearts with him in there."
"I don't see why not. If he's going to be stupid—"
"We have no idea what that would do," Aqua snapped. "Even if Terra wasn't my friend, which he is, it wouldn't be safe."
Ven stared at them like they were crazy. Which was fair. It really sucked that their hearts had blended too much to talk within their heart pillar. Vanitas could've just projected his emotions, but that would've been too easy for her to ignore.
"Then what are we gonna do, huh? Go in there after him?" Vanitas retorted.
He felt their expression harden. Aqua's determination flooded them, pushing back against the world's crushing emptiness.
"Oh no. You're not serious."
"If you're going in, I'm coming with you," Ven said firmly.
Aqua shook their head.
"No, Ven."
"But—"
"We need someone out here. In case…"
They stared across the bleached earth. The wind had frozen, holding crumbling stones in place. The stillness wouldn't necessarily prevent those dark monsters from returning, though. Someone needed to be here on the outside to protect them.
(Or to protect the worlds, if they failed.)
"I hate that you're right," Ven grumbled, but then he sighed. "Fine. I know we don't have time to argue. Just—be careful, okay?"
"Of course. We'll be back before you know it."
Vanitas didn't fight back when Aqua went to hug Ventus, this time—potentially the last time. She deserved that much.
(She deserved a lot more, after what he'd put her through. But they couldn't always get what they deserved.)
"Stop that," they muttered into Ven's shoulder as grief threatened to overwhelm them. No one was dead yet. There wasn't time to mourn when they could still fix things.
(They were getting so, so tired of fixing things.)
"Sorry." Ven let go. His eyes were tinged with red. "Not trying to keep you."
"No, it's—you know." She tapped the side of their head.
They didn't have time to keep stalling. The wrongness permeating the air prickled their skin. The oppressive silence threatened to crush their lungs.
They raised the X-Blade again, and this time, the beam of light from their blade consumed them.
XXX
Kingdom Hearts… looked a lot like the inside of Terra's heart.
A faint glow illuminated him as his feet drifted down to touch the stained glass platform. The glass glowed a warm orange in the darkness. Everything was just like the night he'd first received his keyblade—except for the heart-shaped moon crafted behind the glass image of Terra.
"I don't understand," he murmured.
Had he done something wrong? He still held the Keyblade of Heart in one hand and Ends of the Earth in his other. Had he failed to reach Kingdom Hearts because the Keyblade of Heart was incomplete?
No. He could still feel the pounding THUMP, THUMP, THUMP ofthe worlds' hearts lending him their strength.
Calling him to join them.
And there they were—rising throughout the darkness, pillars wider and taller than Terra's, glowing so brightly they burned. Ten, fifty, a hundred; as far as his eyes could see.
It was beautiful.
THUMP.
(Not beautiful enough. Not unified, not whole.)
THUMP.
Glass tiles in a rainbow of colors spiraled into existence between the platforms, delicate walkways to tether the city of worlds' hearts together.
THUMP.
He ran for the newly-formed stairs, searching for one world among the many.
THUMP.
Not the Keyblade Graveyard. The image of the barren world shuddered under his feet as he ran, the glass cracking and snagging on the hems of his pants.
THUMP.
Radiant Garden's heart sparkled like a gem even among the other jewels. Life flooded through him, cool fountains and fragrant flowers sprouting along the pillar's edge.
THUMP.
The Castle of Dreams. The Keyblade of Heart hummed in resonance with the shimmering blue-white glass.
THUMP.
The Land of Departure felt hollow underfoot. Each step echoed like a gunshot. He couldn't even travel the vast expanse—the middle of the pillar had crumbled away, leaving a dark pit where the Castle's image should have been.
THUMP.
He clenched his jaw.
THUMP.
He could fix this. He could right his mistakes.
THUMP.
All he had to do was focus on that—
THUMP.
—and the worlds' desire to be whole.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMPTHUMPTHUMP
The iron keyblade glowed white-hot. Molten glass poured from its incomplete teeth—
THUMPTHUMPTHUMPCRASH
Terra stumbled at the shattering impact. Hot glass splashed and cooled against his boots, anchoring him in place. If it hadn't, he would've fallen into the abyss of the Land of Departure's heart.
"What—?"
Behind him, a different world's pillar had struck the Land of Departure at an angle. Colored shards shot through the air, which he barely deflected with an Aerora spell.
Thump-THUMPTHUMPcrash thump thu-thump—
He clenched his fist with Ends of the Earth over his heart. It beat wildly out of rhythm—with the same manic energy that seemed to possess the pillars around him. They rose and tilted at obtuse angles, twisting into shapes he could barely comprehend, colliding and crashing and clipping through each other—
Combining. They were combining.
thump-THUTHUMPTHUuuuump thump THUMP
Spurred by the beat, he broke free of the glass, then leapt onto a different world's pillar before Dwarf Woodlands could completely impale the Land of Departure. His new platform was tilted precariously, the glass floor thinner than the others. The Mirage Arena, he recognized from its pattern of concentric circles.
He caught his breath, dismissing Ends of the Earth to better cling to the angled glass. What had he done? All he'd wanted—all he'd wanted was to bring back his world—his friends—
"Terra!"
His head snapped up, searching for the voice.
(Searching for her heart.)
thump-thumpTHUMPthmpppppp thump THUMP
Aqua's glider swooped through the crashing pillars. She stretched out to him with one hand.
The other still held the X-Blade.
"Terra, we have to get out of here!" she shouted. Her golden eyes reflected the colored glass like a kaleidoscope.
Gold. Vanitas. That was a presence he couldn't allow to taint his Kingdom Hearts.
"No," he gasped out. "I have… to get… you out."
He slammed the Keyblade of Heart against Vanitas's arm. There was a crunch, but he couldn't tell if it was bone or more breaking glass.
Vanitas yelped, clutching their arm to their chest.
"Seriously? Can't we do this after we stop the world from ending?"
"The world… isn't ending," he gritted out, between offbeat drums of his heart. "This is just… a beginning."
Glass melted and regrew after each crash, filling in the broken gaps. Healing broken hearts. No longer alone, alone, alone.
This was what the worlds wanted. Who was he to stop it?
"Are you insane?" Vanitas snapped. "Kingdom Hearts is going to consume you!"
THUMP-thump-th-thump THUMP THUMP THUMP
"Maybe it will," Terra grimaced, "but I don't care. Whatever the cost is, I'm willing to pay it!"
He leapt from the Mirage Arena's platform onto the front of Aqua's glider. It dipped with his weight, but he was ready for it.
He wouldn't be weak again. He would save his friend.
Vanitas tried to swipe at him with the X-Blade, but its reach was too long. Terra's incomplete keyblade had the advantage in the close quarters.
He thrust the Keyblade of Heart forward, and a blast of molten glass shoved Vanitas off of the glider, and into the churning pillars below.
XXX
For the first time, Luxu got why the Master had worked so hard to get rid of Kingdom Hearts. The damned moon was making a real mess of things. If Luxu hadn't had space-bending magic, the rifts opening-and-closing in the ground would've swallowed him whole.
"Think I preferred when this place just looked dead," he muttered.
That much he'd dealt with in the past Keyblade War: Kingdom Hearts sucking the life outta every world in the cosmos, making the air thick enough to choke. But this? The wind's abrupt start-stopping, the phantom green bar flickering in the bottom-right corner of his vision, the way the world seemed to be unable to keep itself together—that was all new.
No doubt that was thanks to whatever the bozos bouncing around in its shared-heart were up to. He'd find out for sure once he got up to the plateau—which would've been a lot easier if his magic weren't thrown off by the glitching atmosphere. Every time a shred of some other world tried to slot itself back into place and ended up in this one instead, it ended up pushing another piece of the puzzle awry.
Didn't help that he could only teleport so far while carrying the Box, either. It gave off a temporal-distortion field nearly as bad as Kingdom Hearts itself. Every warp took him two steps forward, one step back, and a boulder or ten sideways.
But he'd been prepping for this for ages. He could handle a couple of rocks.
Through the flashes of chaos, he caught a few disjointed glimpses of Ava's kids fleeing from the crumbling pillar. That shouldn't cause any problems, now that he had the Box. Probably best to keep out of their way.
Luxu's heart pounded harder as he blipped closer-closer-closer to the looming moon. It could mess with his body all it wanted, but its thrall couldn't sway him from his mission. No cosmic power could be as sweet as the relief of being done.
No more watching. No more waiting. He could just… be, for the first time in his hundreds of lives.
That was a harder thought to wrap his head around than any of the distortions folding across the gray world.
"Plenty of timefor mak-g v-cationnnn pla-s lattttter," he said to himself.
His voice skipped longer and shorter, louder and quieter, cut through with static and the mourning screech of violins.
"Thaaaaa-t's new," he said, and the auditory distortions happened again—a droning choir seeming to join the hellish music. The sound seemed to come from everywhere at once, even though the place was abandoned, least as far as Luxu could tell.
Maybe he should stop talking for a while.
Once he got Kingdom Hearts under lock and key, none of this chaos would happen ever again. He could only imagine the state the rest of the worlds were in, their Hearts all thrown in a blender because some kids decided to play god. Things could only get worse from here. The longer the worlds' Hearts beat out of time, the less the worlds would be able to beat at all.
He might not've been a doctor this go-around, but he wasn't gonna let the universe go into cardiac arrest.
The Dandelion kid's flower-arrangement was missing geometric chunks by the time Luxu made it to the top. Least it was still around, though. All this reality-glitching was putting a real drain on his magic. It would've been a real pain to keep the Box suspended for however long it took to absorb Kingdom Hearts.
He slid the Box off of his shoulder, placing it gently in the center of the dead flower.
"Hope you d-n't mindddd a bit of pollen," he said quietly. Not quiet enough to keep his voice from going all eldritch again, though.
He bent down to start unlatching the thirteen locks—overkill, if you asked him—when someone interrupted.
"Huh—wh-t are yyyyyyyoudoing h-re?" a kid's voice demanded.
Ventus. No longer retconned out of existence, apparently.
Luxu groaned.
"'Course n-thing can bbbbbbe thateasy," he muttered.
"I'mnot lllllletting you get K-ngdom Hearts!" Ventus summoned his keyblade.
At least it was just him, and not one of his overpowered pals. Losing another eye would really ruin Luxu's day.
"I've got b-gger fish to frrrrrrry, kiddo," Luxu said.
Even with the distortions, the stretch and pulse of what should be Braig's easy vocal fry, his voice sounded too tired. C'mon, he could be more intimidating than that.
"Why don't youuuuuurun alo-g? While y- still can." He nodded up at Kingdom Hearts above, flashing his best sinister grin. If nothing else, the scar and eyepatch hopefully added to his intimidation factor.
"No way!" Ventus took up a… geez, was that supposed to be his battle stance? With his keyblade held behind him?
"Man, Ava sure kn-w howttttto pick 'em…"
Luxu straightened up, sighing and unbuttoning his uniform's jacket. If he was going to have to fight in this suffocating atmosphere, he was at least gonna make himself comfortable. He shrugged off his coat and dropped it next to the Box.
"Well, don't say I didn't warn ya."
He stretched his arms, summoned his arrowguns, and opened fire.
Ventus was a quick kid, Luxu could give him that. Only a couple shots clipped him before he rolled out of the way, gray pollen clinging to his back like snowflakes.
Whatever. It hardly mattered if Luxu missed—he just had to keep the kid away from the Box long enough to get it set up. Dodging wouldn't help Ventus there.
Having only one eye did make it pretty hard to keep track of his surroundings, it turned out. He tossed one arrowgun back into its pocket dimension and knelt down to work on opening the Box, but he couldn't follow Ventus at the same time. Didn't help that the world kept freezing in patches, like a Stopza gone wrong. He only got two latches open before Ventus's blade was in front of his face.
"Not this time." Luxu grabbed the keyblade's shaft before it could take out his other eye.
"W-ndddddd!" Ventus shouted, blasting Luxu back with an Aeroga from his free hand.
Luxu tumbled backwards, head under heels, before warping out of the gale. Dry petals flaked off and spiraled away, freezing in the air as soon as they were out of the wind spell's range. He wasn't any worse for wear—but Ventus was standing on top of the Box now.
Luxu grit his teeth. Even after all these years, Ava and her minions were still screwing everything up.
"Do you even r-memberwhatttt you're fighting ffffor?" Luxu called as his second arrowgun dropped into his hand. He snapped them both together, combining them into a heavy sniper. "Or are y- just pissed at mefor takin' on your frrrrrriends?"
"I don't need t- remember everythi- to protttttectmy friends." He took up that stupid-looking stance again. Luxu wouldn't underestimate him this time, though—he knew better than to make sloppy mistakes this close to the end.
"As if. If they're atttttt the center of th-s, theyyyy're two steps from kickin'the bucket." He took aim while talking.
Didn't matter if Terra and Aqua had survived inside of Kingdom Hearts—they weren't here now, and he only had eleven latches left.
He fired one concentrated shot. Before Ventus could even block it, the spacial fabric shifted, replacing a chunk of air with a cube of Radiant Garden cobblestone. His energy bullet bounced off and uselessly zapped a couple more dead petals.
"That all yyyyyougot?" Ventus taunted.
"Look, I'm goin' eas- on ya, kidddd." Luxu tossed up his right arrowgun, and No Name fell into his palm in its place. "It's been a lo-g day. I'm tired. I'd rath-r be, I d-nno, sittin' in frontttttof a fire eatin' burritos than killing you."
Ventus's head tilted, the action sharpened by another time glitch. That had to have popped something in his neck.
"Then why don't y- do -at, instead of… whatttttever youwant with this Box and Kingd-m Hearts?"
Luxu's laugh sounded like TV static, scratching in the back of his throat.
"This ain't b-rrito weather, kiddo." He waved No Name through the crackling air, cutting through a clump of leaves that vanished as quickly as they appeared. "All I wwwwantis to get that moon out of here. Plainandsimple. You're th- guy who want- to let th-universe implode over a petttttty grudge."
"You expect me tttto buythat? You were w-rking wi- Xehanort!"
"As if! I just h-d to get this—" he warped next to Ventus and swung No Name, "—backkkk somehow."
Ventus blocked the brunt of the blow, but at least it knocked him off of the Box. Another glitch in reality replaced the patch of flower-ground with a square of water, botching Ventus's landing with a weak sploosh. It bought Luxu time to open latches three, four, five.
Then the ground fell out from under him. He caught himself on the lip of the square-shaped hole, trying not to go dizzy from the stars dangling inside. The wind picked up as air rushed to fill the void.
"Geez," he gasped, barely managing to scramble out before the gap closed again, this time filling with polished Olympian marble.
What would happen if one of those holes swallowed the Box? Maybe the Master's magic wards would keep that from happening, but Luxu didn't want to bet on it.
Luxu dodged Ventus's Thundaga and skidded back across the flower to flip latches six and lucky seven. Over halfway there.
Warp away from Ventus. Fire off a few rounds to chase him away from the Box. Dodge any spontaneously-appearing obstacles. Rinse. Repeat.
Eight. A Strike Raid cut through a cube of mist, shearing off a lock of Luxu's hair.
Really inconvenient that reality had decided to spit Ventus out of his retcon with full health, while Luxu had been in action for nearly two days straight. The kid wasn't the brightest, at least—he hadn't tried closing any of the latches Luxu had opened. Maybe he was afraid of accidentally doing Luxu's job for him.
Ventus was hardly the biggest obstacle here, though. Reality was shuddering, shuffling more square-shaped pieces of worlds and spitting 'em out where they didn't belong. A patch of ice under his boot, sending him slipping sideways. A cubic thicket of brambles at eye level, forcing him to duck and leap onto a fragment of horizontal staircase.
Nine. A stone wall materialized between him and the Box, nearly swallowing his hand. The rough rock scraped away the palm of his glove, and he tore the now-useless scrap off with his teeth.
He didn't have much time. The longer this went on, the more worlds the bulls knocking around inside Kingdom Hearts' china shop were gonna break. He already had enough to deal with without having to head some cosmic cleanup crew, fixing a drowning Radiant Garden or a Graveyard choked out by broken half-trees floating in midair.
At least his space magic had accustomed him to reorienting himself within the shifting terrain, even if he didn't dare use that magic to warp anymore. Last thing he wanted was to teleport into the same place one of those cubes appeared. Ending up with a chunk of something-or-other in his chest sounded like a nasty way to go.
No warping. No easy way to aim, with all this interference. The terrain hazards were more than a nuisance; the flashes of fire and ice chipped away at his bare arms; the floating thorns hooked into his scarf and pinned him long enough for Ventus to slam his keyblade into Luxu's gut.
That green bar in the corner of his vision wasn't looking so hot, now. He had a sinking feeling as to what that meant, when he compared it to the other phantom bar that flickered into view whenever Ventus got close.
Luxu needed to shake up his strategy. This wasn't like his usual fights—he couldn't rely on speed or evasion. He wasn't here to distract Ventus or stall him out.
He tossed his arrowguns into the air for the last time. No Name fell into his right hand, leaving his left free.
Time to end this dance.
No Name cut through every obstacle in his path, organic and artificial barriers crumbling to ash and dust. He'd nearly forgotten the rush of wielding it like this, of being able to face his enemies head-on, rather than through a haze of double-bluffs.
He grinned as the last layer of smoke between him and the kid cleared. Ventus was trying to drag the Box away, but it was obviously too heavy for him. Luxu caught him huffing and squinting at the red emblem on the top.
"Xsuper…?"
"Ah, so you can read," Luxu couldn't help teasing.
It had a useful side effect. Ventus looked up sharply, just in time to take the full brunt of Luxu's overhead swing—
Well, almost the full brunt of it. A sudden bubble of snow slowed Luxu's strike, dulling the hit from "fatal" to "K.O." Not flashy as he was used to, but effective enough.
Ventus crumpled, slumping over the Box.
Luxu kicked his unconscious body out of the way and got to work.