Crowned Hearts Chapter Fifteen

By Blue Dragon

Heartless swarmed around and over every layer of the dungeon.

"Will you be able to defend yourself Old man?" Riku asked as he went back to back with Sora.

"That won't be a problem" Old man said, pulling out a Kalashnikov assault rifle.

"What the?" Sora asked.

"You think I go defenseless?" Old man asked, blasting away at the heartless. The charging shadows fell as bullets pierced into them and Sora and Riku didn't even have to lift a finger.

"Heh. Don't interfere with our progress!" He put the Kalashnikov back in the hidden holster inside his overcoat behind him.

Slowly at first, and then more rapidly, defender heartless appeared. They held their shields high, the wolves on them growling and snarling, preparing for fire and blizzard spells.

Old man gulped, noticing that his bullets bounced right off the shields.

"Sora, we might have a problem" Riku stated the obvious.

"Out of my castle!" A figure in jeans and a vest jumped out of nowhere, and started slashing away, his double blade piercing the shields and turning the heartless into nothing but . . . munny. And lots of it, too.

"We're friggin' rich!" yelled Riku, dropping the keyblade and picking up all of the stray munny.

"Save some for me!" yelled Old man.

"Wait for me!" Sora ran over and started picking up the munny as well. The three were so obsessed with picking up the cash, they didn't even notice the sixteen-year old Terran standing there tapping his foot.

"Excuse me?" he asked.

The three of them looked up.

"Yeah?" Riku asked.

"Why did you make holes through every layer of my castle!" he asked angrily pointing upwards.

"Uh, why do you ask?" asked Riku.

"Lets see? I live here. . . I rule here. . . and its extremely expensive to repair it. I deserve an explanation."

"Just who are you?" asked Sora.

"I'm Zidane! King of Alexandria!"

Riku stood up and gave him a funny look.

"You don't really look like a king"

"That's because I hate the outfit"

"And you seem pretty young" Sora added.

"Hey, I'm the second king of Alexandria in history!"

Sora, Riku, and Old man looked at each other, and then burst out laughing.

Zidane looked even angrier.

"King? What was that sound?" a pawn asked.

Sora, Riku, and Old man immediately stopped laughing.

"Never mind. Leave me be for now"

"Yes sire" the pawn said, bowing and exiting the room.

"As I was saying" Zidane said, putting away his blade the Ultima Weapon.

"Uh. . . sorry. We'll fix your castle as soon as we get back" Riku said, heading for the hole in the ground.

"Why not now?" Zidane asked, his mood softening.

"Well, I have somewhere to be"

"Huh. I'll just follow you and make sure you come back to pay for all of this! Who are you, anyway?"

"Just call me Old man"

"My name's Sora."

"And I'm Riku. . . why do you have a tail?"

". . . I'm a Terran, a geno- wait a minute, why am I telling you this? Get us movin'"

"Just follow me"

Riku dove into the hole into another layer to another world, Sora immediately after, and then Old man.

"I know I'm not going to like this. . . " Zidane said as he jumped in after them just as the hole closed.

The four flew downwards in a mass of blue that looked just like the borders between worlds that they had been traveling through in gummi ships. The went down head first and their hair flew back.

Riku looked next to him, where Zidane was, falling just as fast.

"Shouldn't you be ruling a kingdom!" he yelled.

"That's none of your concern!"

"You like Shirley and Laverne!?" he yelled over the roaring noise.

"I said none of your concern!"

"Make a left turn!?"

"None of your CONCERN!"

"Your mother was real stern!?"

"NONE OF YOUR CONCERN!"

"When will you ever learn!?"

"None of your mother-friggin business you hobo!"

Riku heard that just fine.

The four plunged down further and faster until no one could hear anything aside from the roaring noise. Finally the four landed on their feet in a grove of endless wild white crystals glowing and shining everywhere on various trees, plants, and just lying around.

"Uh, where are we now?" Zidane and Riku asked at the same time.

"I believe we've reached the spirit world. Your girlfriend should be here, Riku"

Sora expected him to say something like 'she's not my girlfriend!', but he only beamed.

"Then I'm off!" Riku ran into the distance, once again leaving the group alone.

Old man shook his head.

"That boy. He didn't even wait for my directions. Always running off and never waiting for us"

Zidane looked at him.

"So what exactly are we here for?"

"This boy's looking for his girlfriend, claims she disappeared. She should be here."

"Disappeared? I don't get it."

Suddenly, in a pool next to them, a boy with seventeen-year-old boy in unsymmetrical clothing flipped up from the pool professionally, and dove downwards.

"He looked a lot like a grown-up Tidus. He seemed to be practicing that game that Wakka and Tidus said they'd call blitzball" Sora explained.

"See! This is where the spirits go when they disappear from sight and someone's heart. The presence of another proves it." Old man said, pointing to the distant fields and cliffs of white crystal.

"Huh" Zidane said as more of a neutral and bored statement than a question.

"When can we leave so you can pay for my castle?"

"Later. We can't get out of this place until Riku finds his love"

"What!" Sora and Zidane yelled simultaneously before realizing there mistake.

Old man tsked at them.

"You don't think that Riku's love exists, do you? And you think we'll be here forever? Well, let me tell you, we couldn't even be here unless there was someone that Riku really loved. And that spirit is definitely here. So don't worry. Besides, the time we spend here doesn't carry on the next world"

"Worlds?" Zidane asked.

"For get it monkey-boy. Just sit tight"

Zidane slammed his hand on his forehead, hating the name that people always developed for him.

Sora, Zidane, and Old man started trekking through the crystals to where Riku had run off to, hoping that he hadn't gotten too far.

Riku looked around and was surprised. In white crystal pods were bodies. All kinds of bodies pretty much naked except for the opaque crystal lining that covered them from the neck and down.

He searched amidst the bodies lined neatly on the blue wall. He thought they were probably the spirits of other people.

"Where is she?" he asked to himself. He looked around, seeing quite a few girls but not his beautiful Lisa.

"She has to be somewhere . . . goodness . . . " he couldn't seem to find Lisa anywhere.

He looked behind him and saw Sora, Old man, and Zidane enter.

"Must be lookin' for me. Anyway . . . " he ignored them and continued looking around.

His eyes widened in happiness when he saw her, beautiful as ever, wrapped up in crystal. Lisa was right before his eyes. His eyes then widened, as he looked at her sleeping figure. When he got close, she started breathing, and life seemed to come into her.

"Woah"

He was just inches away from seeing Lisa again.