Fallen Shipmates

Disclaimer: Same as before. Just a short angsty piece about Stith and Gune talking about their fallen friends. I'm going on vacation for a couple of days, I'll be back Sunday. And to clear up any confusion it's Armand's father that's French.

~ ~ ~ ~

"Cale." Stith said, an unusual gentleness in her voice, a sharp contrast to her rough tone, "What can I say? The Heartless have spread, and recently they shot up unarmed civilians in Los Angeles. Everything we worked so hard to build on New Earth, or Planet Bob as you liked to call it, is gone. It's a good thing that we managed to evacuate as many people as possible to another dimension. Hopefully in time we can use the blueprints of the Titan that Akima salvaged and hid away here on the Valkyrie to build another world for us."

Gune said, "Why you not let Akima rescue Cale when he was captured?"

"Gune, it was a trap. The Heartless would have killed us all if we tried to rescue Cale. I wanted to do it as much as you, but in the end we had to break Akima's heart to save her life. She was the only one who could unite all the resistance cells." Stith explained.

The memory was gruesome to behold, Cale, when broadcast over the planetwide information grid looked like he had been through hell. Much of his narrow face was covered with bruises and cuts. One eye was swollen shut. His lips were puffy, and covered with dried blood. His hair was disheveled and blood and earth had long since congealed into it. He and two other leaders of the resistance captured alive were tied to poles and then a Heartless soldier fired rounds into their bodies, emptying a full magazine into each one as they read out their manufactured crimes.

The door behind their little shrine opened just then. In walked Bilby, Lance, and a third fellow that Stith vaguely knew as D'Artagnan, one of the four SEALs in the hangar.

"What's going on here?" Lance asked. The room smelled like incense and was lit by only a pair of candles flanking each portrait of which there were three. There was one of a blonde haired young man, another of an older, bearded fellow with brown hair, and the third was a young woman, with dark hair and some Oriental ancestry.

"It's an old Mantrin ritual." Stith explained, "It's one where we remember those that went before us. We believe that our dead are not gone forever, they may be physically lost but their spirits remain and we believe that we should stay in contact with them. Hence this ritual of ours."

Martin Bilby stopped in front of the portrait of the blonde man, Cale, "I wish I could have met you. Akima talked about you all the time and said that you really left an impression on her. She said you would be glad that she was able to move on with her life after you were gone. I took care of her as best I could but even I couldn't prevent what happened to her next. If only my unit arrived sooner..."

Bilby headed over to Akima's portrait and left a small item beside it. "Akima, what can I really say to you now that I hadn't said when you were still alive? If there was ever question of whether I love you, I hope it has been answered. I really wish that fate hadn't been against us from the very start. I was going to plead exile as soon as we had driven the Heartless off. I wanted to stay on New Earth, or Planet Bob as Cale loved to call it, with you. I truly felt that I had found myself a home on your world and I wanted to live out my days there. Unfortunately fate decreed that I was not to do so."

The small item was a necklace of some sort with a single decoration, an ornate and delicate representation of planet Earth. "I know this was a gift from Cale, and after the clasp broke a while ago I went over to a jeweler to get it fixed and the day I was gonna surprise you with it again your imposter was revealed." Bilby began.

"If I could add a few words?" Lance asked.

Stith nodded in reply, "Imposter or not, she had me fooled for the longest time. I really wished that it had been Akima and not a young woman forced to play the role against her will."

"You and me both Stith." Bilby replied, "I'm gonna get Mindbender for that."

"I guess technically I never really met you." Lance said, " But I speak for all the Misfits when I say you really grew on us. I never before met anyone brave enough to give Kitty a flying lesson, even if it was in a simulator. You really became kind of a big sister to all of us. Who would have thought you could have taken down Althea, Jean, and Wanda combined in a massive pillow fight."

Walking in front of the bearded man's picture Stith started them off, "Corso, I don't know where to begin. You were a strong and loyal captain, more than that, you were a friend. I'm still miffed that you betrayed us to the Drej at first, but when you turned around, sacrificing your life to let the Titan do its work, you redeemed yourself."

Bilby's words were more to the point, "I would have been honored to serve with you sir."

The ceremony concluded and Bilby walked out of the Valkyrie with a little less heavy a weight on his heart than he had when he walked in.

"I remember that day." Lance said, "It was one of those stupid little pillow fights we all used to get into. Akima loved those. Then we found her chain on the floor and handed it over to you."

"Believe me mate." Bilby said, "I remember. I remember I took it over to the jewelers to get it fixed and the day it was ready to be picked up..."

"I too have lost people I cared for." D'Artagnan replied, "It was good to know that I do not need to tackle it on my own."

"What happened?" Lance asked.

"The Destiny Islands," Armand replied, "That was my dimension, my world. It was a peaceful little paradise where children played during the day, and where life flowed at a slow and easy pace."

The Frenchman smiled as he talked, his eyes getting a far away look in them as he talked of a place far away and lost, "The skies were almost always a sapphire shade of blue, the ocean almost always calm. We never heard of locks, keys, or burglar alarms on the Islands because we had everything we ever needed. Grandma Kairi always used to tell me about the Great Storm that swept everything away, but I never used to listen to that. To me the Heartless were something Grandpa Sora fought years and years ago before he passed away when I was sixteen. I always thought his story of the Keyblade was a bunch of crap."

"Doesn't it bother you that it chose me?" Lance said, "Though why it did is something I question."

"It doesn't." Armand replied, "Grandpa Sora said the Keyblade would always choose right. And it believes you are the next savior for this world."

Armand's face contorted painfully when he next spoke, "Then the Great Storm returned, when I was seventeen. It destroyed the Destiny Islands yet again, scattered those of us who survived into the four winds. The Heartless again ravaged our shores."

Armand saw every moment of that horrific day. He saw his next door neighbor, Riku, beaten savagely on the beach. The Heartless had dragged the old man from his hut and started to beat him with rifle butts and pieces of driftwood. They defiled and destroyed Sora's gravesite, finding only his remains but not the weapon they sought.

"Mother! Father!" Armand shouted.

"They've gone." Kairi shouted, "The helicopters are flying them out!"

Indeed, several helicopters were touching down on a far off beach, taking what refugees they could before flying off into wherever they had come from. Over head more helicopters circled, firing rockets and cannon fire into the Heartless they saw.

"Grandma! You must go! I will keep them away!" Armand said, taking up an aluminum baseball bat.

"No Armand!" Kairi replied, a strength in her voice that defied the ravages of age and contrasted the normally gentle and nurturing personality that had reared three small children and four grandchildren into the world.

His grandmother, Kairi, seemed to be possessed with an ancient strength stronger than the ravages of time for a mysterious weapon appeared once more in her grasp as she fought to save Riku. He did not see what occurred afterward, for he had been evacuated by a US Navy helicopter.

As the helicopter flew off, Armand's tearful gray eyes looked toward a sky darkened by a sinister force, "I will find those of you who remain! And for those of you who have died, I will avenge you until the last breath has left my lungs..."

"For six years now I have searched all the worlds I have traveled for any sign of those who survived the Destiny Islands." Armand added, "My search has found very few people who survived. My list of survivors is short and incomplete."

Armand withdrew a picture from his pocket, it contained a picture of a younger version of himself with two other youths. One was a longish haired lad with oiled and slicked back brown hair with blonde highlights, the other was a young woman with shoulder length brown hair and a slender dancer's physique. "These are my closest friends, the young man's name is Gary Blucher and the woman is Jackie Harris. I grew up with them, played with them, went through so much with them, and then they were among the citizens listed missing. My search goes on."

Armand gave a jaunty wave and walked off to the computer lab, where Mainframe was going to help him hack into a few computers to search for missing people. Bilby knew that little fact about his hangarmate since day one that he was searching for people but he didn't know the extent of the man's search until Armand told his heartbreaking tale.

A jeep pulled up alongside them, containing Shades and Mario, "Hey fellas, need a lift?" Shades said.

"Yeah, sure." Bilby replied.

"You guys looks so glum, what's up?" Mario asked.

"I just went through a memorial service for Akima. I'll be alright. I did find out we need to remember our fallen mates, no matter how painful it is." Bilby replied.

"Wally was just one of 'em." Mario said respectfully. Shades looked just as respectful.

"The Heartless took quite a few of our guys over time too." Mario explained to Lance, "Shades here lost quite a few buddies when he was with the 101st Airborne Division's LRRPs (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols)." "Don't worry, I can tell 'em." Shades said, his voice still even and calm, "There were seven of us that enlisted from my home town together. In three years, six of those guys were dead."

"What's a LRRP?" Lance asked.

"Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols. They go out in teams of seven or eight guys with a couple radios and minimal arms and equipment, go deep into enemy territory and track down enemy forces to keep the main line units informed of enemy activity." Bilby said, "Very dangerous work, we lost a lot of good people on those ops."

"Six of my closest childhood buddies got chewed up during those ops. They never saw the end of their three year tours of service." Shades began, "The first guy we lost, Ernest Wenseclas, just got on his first patrol. They were exfilling out of Heartless territory before they got bushwhacked by an enemy patrol. Ernest went down in a blast of gunfire when he was covering the pickup with his M-60. He was sixteen years old when it happened and I'd known him since kindergarten..."

Lance felt a stab of ice cold dread inside, Shades, Bilby, Mario, Armand and people just like them had lost friends, relatives, and loved ones to this black plague he was fated by the choice of some magical blade to fight. Even under the sunglasses Lance could see Shades was visibly shaken by the loss of his six buddies to the Heartless. It seemed almost every single one of the guys in that Task Force had lost at least one person, a friend, a lover, a relative, or in the case of D'Artagnan a world.

The attacks of self-doubt and fear were getting rare, but they still occurred. And hearing his new friends talking about their fallen shipmates was not helping any. The true extent of Maleficent's evil could be felt in the words of his friends talking of fallen comrades.

"So many have died to stop you. If it has to be me, fine. I'll do everything I can to get rid of you and make sure no one else has to lose an entire world, or six of their good buddies, or someone they intended to spend their entire life with." Lance said, inaudibly. Somehow this galvanized him with a terrible resolve. He would do everything in his power to stop Maleficent, even if it meant his death.

~ ~ ~ ~

"Which it well might Alvers...." Maleficent began, standing in a dark, musty cavern, "Mindbender was too greedy and gave himself too willingly into darkness. My true link should be one who is stronger than that buffoon. Who will it be?"

Maleficent ran her hand over the seeing stone and revealed the face of Raven Darkholme, better known as Mystique. "Ah, a strong willed personality that will not fall prey so easily to the darkness."

Maleficent moved her hand yet again, showing the picture of a feeble, half transformed and mutilated Mindbender suspended in the green fluid from which noxious fumes arose.

"I had high hopes that you would come through Mindbender, but your lust for power and greed ultimately condemned you to an unenviable fate." Maleficent said, "Perhaps you, Mystique, will show greater promise."

"And what have we here, your weakness, Lance Alvers." Maleficent said, the image of Kitty Pryde walking along appeared on the wall, "You would be truly powerless to help her..."

"Do not underestimate the power of love, Maleficent. For it was the love of Kairi that enabled Sora to defeat you the first time..." the voice of a disembodied soul sounded.

That soul was connected to a mirror on the wall behind Maleficent, it was an oracle who's quest for forbidden knowledge earned him only the right to be enclosed for all eternity in the glass confines of the mirror. The King could only find a fate so perfect for a man who was consumed by his desire for knowledge, granting him his dream and yet confining his essence to an inanimate object who's only power was an eye that pierced all forms of cover. That man's name was Ansem. The father of the Heartless.