Just a little more…
I don't think I've ever pulled this hard before, perhaps my heart has given me a strength unlike any I've ever had.
The mouse behind me is doing his best as well, taking out those dark side creatures left and right… all while I close the only thing that takes them to the outside world.
Here I am, fighting in the oddest area I've ever seen, one that looked like such a haven from the outside… the door to Kingdom Hearts. On the other side, my best friend aids me in closing the door…
Just a little more…
"Hurry Sora!" I yell, "They're closing in!"
The door clicks and I grin in satisfaction, however my portal to the outside is now cut off.
I'm stuck here, with only the mouse as a friend… what an odd turn of events.
"Come on Riku! Let's do this!" Yells Mickey while fighting off a group of Darksides.
5 of the creatures known as invisibles fly up to me, causing my eyes to bulge in fear. I suck in the feeling, putting my hand to my side, where I used to keep my weapon…
The touch of metal welcomes my hand, I glance down to see that another Keyblade has found it's way to me. A faint lettering can be seen on it, and the one word sticks out in my mind as I unsheathe it.
Masamune…
The origin of the blade is unknown to me, however, I find it includes a strong holy power residing inside of it. It's almost as if it truly belonged to me… I feel some sort of kinship with it.
I furiously attack the nearest invisible, dispatching it with a quick combo, and I move on to the next with even greater speed.
Time slows around me as I pick up the pace, my Keyblade glowing white with holy power. Before I realize it, the invisibles are gone, to whatever realm of afterlife their stolen souls reside in…
I shudder, thinking about the darkness again, and how even I was not immune to it's icy grip. I turn to my mouse ally, to see how he is faring.
Not bad, the Darkside Heartless fall down swift before his mighty royal blade. Although one of such a small stature, his heart must be larger than 10 grown men. Mickey actually holds his own quite well, as do I… even though we sort of took a back seat in the adventure to stop the Heartless from taking over.
But they are still here, and more of them seem to appear…
I don't know if I'll ever be rid of them…
"King Mickey! How many more of them are there?!"
He turns his head to me, shaking his head, "An entire army, greater than the likes of even my own… it will take us quite a long time, but I am sure we will persevere. It's only a matter of time before all of them are stopped."
An army, eh? I thought about this for a second before realizing… for an army, isn't there a powerful superior to head them? A Heartless General perhaps?
Hours passed… perhaps even days…
I couldn't tell, it was all the same to me. When I was hungry, I'd take a bite into the magical rations the king had, and instant refreshment flowed through me, he seemed to have a never ending supply. He also was skilled with his magic, and could create a circle of power (that's a save point, in case you might not realize that) when he took a break from the Heartless in order for us to pitch tents and rest up (yes, I realize that those are old school save points).
Finally, we surveyed the area to find that many of the lesser creatures had been destroyed, but would slowly be replaced by more anew if we did not stop the two greater Heartless creatures.
So the hour of destiny was upon us… if we stopped the generals of the Heartless army, then our work would be finished.
At least, that's what I believed… Mickey was being entirely too secretive than he normally was.
"We will split up when we reach the forking paths, each of which leads to it's respective General…" the king stated, "Now you must realize that these bastards are going to be harder than anything we've previously fought, but they're no where near as powerful as… Ansem."
He spat the final name out rather angrily, a tone that did not fit with his voice well. He was obviously angry at Ansem's fall to darkness.
Frankly, I couldn't blame him… that man deserves every bit of hate that's coming to him.
I waved goodbye to the determined mouse as we finally parted ways to each of our separate destinies.
Upon reaching mine, a gasp erupted within me.
There stood a reasonable facsimile of myself… although he was more of the shadowy kind. However, he looked quite deadly…
In fact, he seemed to be the shadowy aftermath of my own plunge to darkness… almost as if he was some sort of copy. However, this being held with him two odd knife shaped weapons, which I believe were called Katal, and were also attached at his wrists.
My doppelganger grinned madly at me for a second before charging in at the attack. I barely brought my Masamune up to defend, but was surprised to find that it deflected his attacks with relative ease.
It looked like his power was not quite at full yet… raising an army must have been draining to him.
His mad cackling interrupted my thoughts as he leapt at me with feverous strikes from his small hand weapons. I grimaced, bringing my blade to meet them, finding that it was not quite good at defending against strikes from two separate weapons.
He took advantage of this by leaping back and chanting in a deep, demon possessed voice, "Ultimate fury… in the name of Kiros, I call upon you! Blood Pain!"
He leapt at me, swinging in a wild fury. I blocked as best as I could, but those I could not block were what counted in giving him the upper hand.
Once, I was slashed across the arm.
Once more across my solar plexus…
And one tore a gash near my left eye, across my cheek.
The stinging pain was incredible, the weapons seemed to have some white-hot demonic energy inside of them to cause so much damage.
I stepped back, determination in my eyes, praying to whoever was watching over me to grant me a boon… something, anything… in order to fight this maniac.
My wish… granted from what I believe was the power of my own heart. A second Keyblade appeared, and I reached out with my left hand, grasping it's hilt as words entered my mind.
Murasame…
The sister weapon to my other blade… fascinating, and yet I wondered if there was anything stronger out there… perhaps something I would receive later.
I attacked with my own sword combo, taking no heed to the blood dripping from me. His short weapons were no match for my longer Keyblades. In a matter of minutes, I turned the tide of the battle in my favor and left him on the ground bleeding out of nearly every area near his vital organs.
His sadistic grin left me with something to ponder as I proceeded to strike with the deathblow.
It never happened… he leapt through some sort of portal, not unlike the one I took to find myself with Maleficent.
I swore under my breath, looking up to the sky as my vision blurred from the blood escaping me.
"Healing wind, cleanse the pain! Curaga!"
I felt replenished, somewhat, as I turned to King Mickey, who nodded to me as if to acknowledge that he had completed his task.
I, however, failed where he did not, and my enemy was still on the loose… perhaps to bring another army of heartless to terrorize the innocent. In a way, it reminded me of things I read in stories, the leader of a group of people who only wished to strike terror into the hearts of the innocent. Stories of masses of people being wiped out by the very tools they used for transportation, much like gummi ships, where they were slammed into large areas of commerce and subsequently exploded in order to deal pain… and most likely: death.
Terrorists, that's all they were. And I had failed to protect innocent people from the possibility of another outbreak of this sort of terrorism.
The mouse next to me shook his head, "Do not be too hard on yourself, young Riku. You still have much to learn if you think that one person can fully take out these monsters."
Wait… then why were we doing this? What was the mouse's reasoning behind this?
"Your friend, Sora, will prove to be quite a large help in the upcoming battle…"
"What? You mean what we've been trying to take out isn't ours to do alone?"
"Correct," he answered, "It does not take the work of one or two… or even three to completely stop the work of evil… no, such a small number would only deter it from happening. Perhaps you have been educated with the story of the Final Fantasy?"
Such a thing must have been ingenious to his planet only, I shook my head with a frown.
"Allow me to enlighten you then…" he spoke, his voice lowering.
"This story spans back countless generations, long before the Magic Kingdom ever existed on my planet. And the person who first brought this story to us, only vague descriptions are given… some say the man wore a cloak, pitch black as the night sky, with a single cross twinkling on the back of it like one of many stars. A hood covered his face… concealing him, but I digress…
It started with four warriors, on a world very far away from our own Solar system. Each of these warriors carried with them an orb, which was each their own proverbial guardian angel of each unique warrior. The one who lead them had fiery red hair, with equally colored clothing. He carried a magical blade… some say it was the legendary Excalibur itself! Another of them was a man renowned in his abilities of quickness, a man shrouded in mystery, like a fabled ninja! The next were their two mages, who used opposing magic, white and black, much like our own, but some have speculated that the power described within the full story is more than anything we have ever seen before.
These warriors fought against a being known as Chaos, who plagued their world by grasping it within a time loop, causing the being to come from the future and go back to the past to plague the world, get defeated, and then return to power in order to return back to the past. It's quite a hard subject to grasp, I'm sure, but the warriors had to use a mystical flute in order to return to the place where the evil being resided, where they had to fight his fiends of the elements, whom they previously had fought and conquered before.
Well, when all was said and done, the four warriors ended up triumphing over the Chaotic beast of evil, but there is some speculation that he was merely brought down in order to rise up at a later date. He must have lost so much power, that he could not sustain his time loop, and thus the warriors were able to go back to a world that was better than anything they could have ever hoped for.
Now comes the part that causes me to believe that we will end up facing an evil much like we faced before. It's the fact that a paradox such as the one that occurred during the story causes evil to come back once again and assume it's place as those that dominate and cause terror to the weaker, innocent beings. Though there is reason to believe that the story of Final Fantasy was a lesson taught to us in order to make sure that the same mistakes are not repeated, there is still the fact that something similar to it must have happened in this universe previously in order for something such as the Heartless to come to power and cause terror."
"But how do we know when this evil fully returns?" Interrupted Riku.
The king held up a finger, to enunciate his knowledge of the subject, "Ah, that in fact is quite simple. Things happen that shouldn't, such as night occurring when it should be daytime, or people suddenly acquiring the use of space travel, or stars disappearing from the nighttime sky. This, my friend, is what we call a Prophetic Fallacy, where fair is foul and foul is fair."
I listened to him intently, despite the foggy area or the filthy smell permeating from the dead.
"Besides, my young friend, we are going to follow your adversary… you were not meant to defeat him during your first battle, he was far too strong for either of us. However, you caused so much damage to him that with you growing stronger, I believe you will be the chosen one who shall truly adhere to the prophecy of the Keyblade."
His words were hard to make sense of, maybe it was the fact that I was tired, and a lingering pain still stayed with me despite the intensity of the curing spell.
I saw him move over to a sandy area and start to draw pictures on the ground with his index finger. It took me a moment before I realized what the pictures really were.
They were magical runes, he was doing some kind of high powered magic on this place…
"Mickey… what are you doing?" I asked, with a hint of fear in my voice.
"I'm finding us the Keyhole…"
Riku began to sweat, "The… Keyhole of Kingdom Hearts?"
"Indeed… if we seal this, then maybe the Heartless will truly be gone."
"Maybe?"
He nodded, "However, it's all a matter of speculation. The Heartless are said to be born from the darkness in the hearts of all beings, what's to say that this isn't the cause of their birth? What if this is just another goal to accomplish before beating them… what if… it only makes them stronger?"
I shook my head, "What if nothing happens?"
Mickey continued to draw more runes into the sand, causing a slight wind to pick up.
"I guess we'll find out what happens when it happens."
"True…" I answered, "But who knows what the true nature of the Heartless is… you told me that Kingdom Hearts may very well be the heart of the entire Universe… but what if it is just for the planets in our system? What if…"
"Riku… it is all speculation. Let us just complete what we came here to do."
He made a swirling network of lines in the runes before picking up a handful of sand and dumping it on them, causing the faint wind to become just short of a tropical hurricane.
All of a sudden, I saw it, appearing with the howling wind. The Keyhole making a sling outline against the black background behind it. It appeared with a slight shimmer, then suddenly the wind stopped, and all was silent except for a slight humming noise that the gigantic hole was making.
Mickey nodded, "I don't think a Keyhole of this size has ever been locked before. I think the both of us have the power to do this."
He motioned to the gigantic hole as I nodded.
"We must lock it, no matter what the consequences…"
"It is not the sword that is evil, but only the person that wields it. Wield your sword, knowing fully what the consequences entail…"
The same voice that told me the names of my twin blades is speaking to me once again. Though I do not know who it is, I can tell that it is an older voice, more likely that of a male. For some reason, I feel I can trust the voice… something inside of me tells me that it is somehow close to me…
"Riku… if we are to complete our business here, the deed must be done before the Keyhole returns to it's previous area! We must act now!"
I nodded, lifting up both of my blades and feeling a surge of power through me.
Wield your sword
I arced them upwards, as a bluish hue took upon them. The king followed my graceful movements with some of his own nimble swipes.
Knowing fully
I leapt towards the hole as the energy in my Keyblades intensified.
What the consequences entail.
We struck as one, the blue energy wrapping around the hole and closing it with the resounding noise of that which has been locked.
The deed was done… and…
"I knew you could do it, Riku, you truly were the one destined to use the blade of the key. However, your fight is only beginning. A portal is going to open at your position quite soon, allowing you to go to a planet called Earth."
I turned to Mickey, seeing a similar expression on his face as I must have had on mine.
"Another set of planets must be saved, another set of holes to lock. What you have done here is only the beginning, a similar warp hole will be opened and your friends notified…"
The king reacted accordingly, although I was sure the message was playing in my mind. He must have been sent a similar message as well.
"Beware, the Heartless had nearly a successful invasion if it was not for the havens that the planet's inhabitants constructed. Do not worry about the ship of gummi either, for a new vessel will be appropriated for you…
Remember the name 'Calnus', it will be your tool for justice, and one, perhaps two 'Warriors of Light' will come to your aid. All that glitters is not always gold, look out for the false lights, and don't be so quick to stray from what seems to be dark, a book should never be judged merely by its cover.
If I had my way, I would join you, Riku. Alas, I can not, for the powers that be have set a limit of boundaries, and I am unable to overstep them… all I say is good luck… my son…"
The mouse regarded me oddly for a time, as a faint light began to glow in front of us.
"What ever brought this light to us… it called me… 'my son'."
Mickey nodded, "Perhaps it is the voice of your father wishing to protect you, his only progeny?"
It seemed so, I thought, as the portal grew in circumference to a reasonable size for a human being.
The mouse stepped forward, "See you on the other side Riku… we must heed the warning given to us."
I agreed, and leapt in with him, together we passed through the energies of the portal, not knowing what it was that we would be there to meet us.
Author's Note: To commemorate the merging of Square and Enix in the near future, I decided to add the world of Star Ocean in as the destination (as you probably found out through the "Calnus" reference. As for TWO warriors of light… well, you'll just have to see what that's all about!
To all my reviewers: Thank you for finding the time to show your encouragement of my first Kingdom Hearts fan fiction, and as I am a busy person I may not always have the time to update the story on a weekly, or even a monthly basis.
Perhaps I'll even dedicate a chapter to a very special person in my life… of course only one of my reviewers would know even remotely what I'm talking about…