Chapter X: Limited Time

Riku and Tracy walked through the doorway into a long, deserted corridor of Tracy Starlight's high school. After going between memories for several minutes, the two had become used to sudden and normally impossible shifts in their setting. This one was no different, for they had previously been walking through one of Riku's memories of Monstro before entering the high school. Behind them, sunlight penetrated windows through one of the entrances to the school, while hallways extended in front of them as well as to the left and right of their position. Riku was effectively lost within the alien surroundings, but he knew that Tracy felt confident in his sense of direction. It was his school, after all.

"This way," Tracy led them down the hallway to their right.

Riku followed the teen, the Lockheart in his grasp in case it was needed at any time. He looked at the walls of the hall, lined with lockers taller than he was and squeezed together tightly. They were a dark share of blue, and they seemed to suck the light from the hall as they walked. Clusters of lockers were separated by small alcoves, the homes of doors to classrooms. None of them were open, and no light came from them.

"So, this is your school?"

Tracy responded directly, "Yeah."

"Nice place," the other complimented the facility. "Too quiet, though."

Starlight let the comment slide by as he went to one of the doors. Curious and unafraid, he held the knob and turned it quickly, pulling the doorway open to peer within the room.

"Hey," came Riku's voce from the room, "aren't you guys forgetting about me?"

On the other side of the door, the waves of the ocean crashed against the beach where Sora, Riku, and Kairi were gathered. Kairi faced the two boys, and Sora was sitting down in the sand, having just awoke from a fateful nap. The image of Riku held a large log under his right arm as he stared at his two friends.

Riku's lines continued just as they had in reality, "So, I guess I'm the only one working on the raft." He stepped closer to Kairi, tossing the log into Sora jokingly. "And you're just as lazy as he is!"

"Let's get outta here, Tracy," the real Riku put forth, "We've got a job to do."

"Fine by me," he conceded, seemingly only slightly sorry to leave the interesting moment behind. He closed the door and continued through the hallway.

So, a memory lies behind every one of these doors, reasoned Riku. "Maybe the right door," he spoke aloud, "leads to the others."

Tracy's eyes ran along both walls of the hall, counting the nearly myriad supply of doors. "That's a lot of doors."

"That's a lot of memories," Riku added, "but this seems like the best place to start." He paused momentarily before he told Tracy, pointing to the left wall, "You check that side of the hall, and I'll check the other one."

"Agreed." Both of them quickly went to their work, starting the long job of door-checking.

Riku opened the first door on the right wall, where a dimly-lit room awaited him. It was filled with people of vastly differing ages and sizes as many of them rolled a heavy ball down a lane trying to knock down sets of ten wooden pins at the end. Despite the fact that Riku had never seen anything quite like it, he focused himself on his task, looking for any trace of Felicity, Zidane, or Sora. Finding no one familiar except for a memory of Tracy playing the same game as the others, he started to go on, but when Tracy smacked the rear end of another, unfamiliar kid who looked just a bit older than he was, Riku's eyebrows raised in interest. Though the recipient of the slap didn't seem too thrilled with it, Tracy and his friends had a literally giggling fit at his expense. Riku, too, couldn't help but chuckle at him. Weird kid, he thought to himself as he closed the door, moving on to the next.

Behind the second door for Riku to open up, one of his own memories presented itself to him: he and Sora as small children playing together on the beach, the very same beach that would years later be the building place of their raft. That raft might as well just have belonged to Kairi and Sora, he thought in saddened disappointment, All I'd do is get in their way. They don't need me when they've got each other. Even when they were planning the raft's construction, I was just... along for the ride to them. The door shut almost instantly, bringing far too many thoughts to the young boy's mind.

When he approached the third door, however, a much deeper and more serious sense of awareness came to Riku. The door itself seemed to have a feeling of darkness overflowing out of it, though it appeared just as every other door in the hall. With reluctance, he turned the doorknob and slowly creaked it open.

The sight of another hallway greeted Riku on the other side. The walls of faded yellow stone were covered with murals and writings with meanings lost in time. At regular intervals, sconces were attached to the stone, burning with eternal flames that lit the room eerily. The place was lifeless, abandoned and deserted for a millennium.

"This is it," a disembodied voice spoke calmly, knowingly, echoing through the mural-filled hall, a voice that sent shivers down Riku's spine, "The secrets of darkness and light are here. Everything is here."

No! How is it possible?

"With this knowledge, I will gain the powers of supreme darkness, and become all-knowing!"

"Ansem!" Riku shouted out uncontrollably, stumbling away from the door and slamming it shut before falling on his rear end to the ground. "Can't be... Can't..."

"Riku!" he heard Tracy yell at him, "What's wrong?" The running footfalls of his new friend resonated through the hall of memory as he neared the silver-haired fifteen-year-old. Tracy bent down over Riku with concern, asking him, "Are you all right?"

"I-I'm fine, T-Tracy," he stuttered his reply, still shaken by the voice of his internal tormentor.

That was not my memory, and it was definitely not Tracy's! It was Ansem's voice, but how could one of his memories be here? Could he have left behind some of his memories before he vanished? Yeah, that has to be it! It's just a remnant, lingering on after the fact.

Tracy's eyes stared into Riku's, obviously not believing him but finding it difficult to question him about it in his shaky state. For a moment, Riku hoped that Tracy wouldn't buy his answer and force the issue further just so that he could have someone, anyone, to talk to about the strange happenings within himself, but instead, the other said instead, though diffident, "I think I know where we'll find them."

"Where?" the question came naturally from Riku.

"Just follow me!" A childishly certain smile penetrated Tracy's face as he admitted, "I'm not certain, though. Just call it a hunch."

—————

"Where to now, O fearless leader?" asked Felicity in a tone of obvious sarcasm.

Sora glanced behind him at the older girl from Madison as he said back to her, "To be honest, I have no idea." As the Keyblade holder glanced around their location, it was becoming more likely that he had never been as lost as he felt then. The chamber was like nothing that Sora had ever seen. It was a room composed of many different leveled platforms, and each of them seemed to be connected by strange teleportation devices. Gray was dominant in this place, and the only other colors were on the teleport pads, one of which was close by. Sora and Felicity knew fully that it was simply a memory, but the memory's owner remained unclear.

"I guess we could use that," Sora suggested, feigning certainty as he pointed at the nearest pad, one he knew they hadn't used before. Sora went towards it wordlessly, Felicity shrugging and following the boy, effectively rendered choiceless. As the pair stepped onto the pad, mysterious blue light surrounded them as they were transported to a platform above them.

When Felicity stepped off and glanced around the new, higher location, she dropped her jaw in amazement when she saw something that told her instantly where she and Sora had gotten themselves. "A moogle!" she screamed gleefully, pointing at one of the said creatures standing nearby. "Now I remember this place!"

Sora's interest was gained by her admission, and he questioned her immediately, "Where is this, Felicity?"

"That big place on Terra, Garland's place!" she replied before struggling with her own bad memory, "What was that name again? Pan-something..."

Before Felicity could begin to dig through the depths of her mind for the name of the castle, a massive explosion sounded from nearby, shaking the entire structure with its incredible power. Sora's senses determined that the bang's source was very close to their position, and as debris and dust made themselves present on the platform from a doorway at the end of a short walkway not far from them, he had a very good idea where it had come from.

"This way!" Sora urged her, waving to the doorway while making a swift dash in its direction. Felicity followed once more as the moogle soon went wild and flew away in fear.

Sora was the first to behold the sight that awaited them at the source of the blast. It was another platform, but this one was outdoors. The sky and everything about the strange world was a light cerulean shade except the platform that he was standing on, which was brown and black. In front of him, the path extended further until it led into a large circular stage. Still further in front of him, a red orb of light rested atop a tall stand, casting its faint glow brilliantly. Felicity and Sora, however, was not alone. Scattered about the ground, obviously in great pain, were four familiar figures: Freya, Vivi, Amarant, and Zidane. A strangely-dressed individual whose gender was a mystery to Sora was the only one standing on both legs, and behind that figure, a man in a very black suit of some sort with light gray hair was kneeling down, seeming to be in as much agony as the others.

Felicity entered only a moment after Sora, only to stop short of him as she yelled out with a blend of terror and thrilled excitement, pointing out, "Ahhh! Kuja! Tranced! Ahhh!"

"So, that's Kuja?" Sora determined, finally seeing the villain with his own eyes. In a split-second, the Ultima Weapon was readied in the Keyblade master's grasp, prepared for battle with the villainous person.

"That's enough!" said a man's voice from an unknown origin. Felicity and Sora first believed it to be Kuja, but the memory's mouth hadn't moved at all. Then, like spirits of yesterday, the Tranced Kuja, the black-suited man, Vivi, Freya, and Amarant vanished like footprints wasted away on the shore of a beach. Wasting no further time, Sora ran to Zidane's side to give him whatever help he required.

"Zidane! Are you all right?" the child asked.

"I was on... the bad end of... an Ultima," the thief retorted, his breathing labored, "Other than that... peachy."

"Still hurting, are we?" the same voice asked the injured hero.

With a clear anger at the speaker, Zidane shouted, "Kuja! Show yourself!"

"Very well," he replied, and in that moment, Kuja materialized where the memory of himself had been standing previously. Sora noted the vast difference between the Kuja he had seen before and the Kuja he was looking at then. Whatever this Trance thing was, Sora guessed that this Kuja wasn't in it. "So, Zidane, how have you been lately? You look quite well for someone whose whole world is gone."

This evidently hit a few wrong buttons with Zidane, and he tried to stand up and bring his dual Orichalcon daggers ready, only to fall back down under his own weakness. "Why, you...!" he barely managed to cough out, "I swear, Kuja..."

"Zidane," Sora tried to calm him, "hold still!" The youth held a hand above Zidane's downed body, opening his palm and aiming it at Zidane as he spoke clearly, calling on his magic talents, "Cure!"

The restorative magic showered Zidane's body in an instant, mending the warrior's wounds with a brilliant green aura. As the light faded after a few moments, Zidane's eyes widened with energy as his strength returned. He sat up slowly, giving Sora a sincere, "Thanks, kid."

Sora's wide grin conveyed his thoughts effectively, No problem.

Restored and rejuvenated, the man with the tail leapt gracefully up to his feet and armed himself with his daggers once again. His eyes glared at his mortal enemy with a flaming fury from his heart that was calmed only by his desire to remain in control of himself. "Kuja," he spoke with placid rage, "you destroyed my world, my friends."

"And you're going to avenge them or die trying?" Kuja sadistically suggested. "Noble, just noble!"

"Not for revenge," Zidane corrected him, "Justice! You've murdered countless lives, and you deserve what you're gonna get!"

Kuja shook his head in disappointment as he pressed Zidane forward, "And your point is...?" When Zidane's teeth visibly gritted together with passionate resentment, Kuja gave the trio a quick examination as he analyzed for Zidane insultingly, "A fifteen-year-old girl with a rod, the Keyblade Master, and you — I hope you don't actually intend on fighting me with such a hopeless crew!"

Either he's super-powerful, Sora told himself, or he's in way over his head. Or both. Either way, I don't see much choice.

"So, my fine fools," Kuja spoke with mad delight, "Who will be the first to die, hmm?"

"Ummm!" Felicity fool-heartedly risked, raising her hand as if she weren't visible before, "I have a question before you start destroying and killing and ruining what might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship!" Kuja remained silent, either allowing her to speak or ignoring her completely. Sora was unsure which, so the fearful lady proceeded, "Are you really gay?"

"Leave it to you, Felicity, to ask such a stupid question."

Kuja's three opponents all adopted expressions of happy, welcome surprise at the friendly, joking voice of their ally. Almost in sync, they turned around and beheld the sight of Tracy and Riku, side-by-side as they appeared on the platform from nowhere.

"Riku!" Sora sounded with a smile.

"Tracy!" Felicity spoke at the same time, "Where've you been?"

With an honest look and a kidding smirk on his visage, Starlight replied innocently, "We took a wrong turn at Monstro and ended up at school."

"Well, well, well," Kuja cut into their conversation, "What a pleasant reunion of friends! This is—"

The villain's face contorted strangely as he stopped mid-sentence. Pain combined with horror and disbelief were apparent on his face as Kuja began to writhe in agony. "Wh-what...?" he breathed quietly as he fell down to one knee, holding an arm to his stomach while he continued to suffer from some unknown, internal ill. "No... Not now!" he told his body in vain, "Not before I'm..." Kuja looked up abruptly to Sora and the others, his silvery-white hair drifting in front of his face chaotically. Struggling to rise to his feet once again, Kuja mentally called forth a black vortex and said to his five enemies, "It's not over yet..." At last, he staggered backwards into the darkness and vanished in retreat.