Lightbringer; Chpt. 1- The Face of the Waters

Adalai- alright Zena, disclaimer!

Zena, muse of tragedy- Adalai does not own Kingdom Hearts, it's characters, worlds, ect. Those belong to Square and Disney. Adalai does not own free magic, either. That belongs to Garth Nix. However, Adalai ownz this fic, Asher, Ellos, Strife, Yul, the plotline, any new concepts or ideas, and fills my food bowl and cleans my litter box, and that's what matters!

Author's notes at the bottom
... ... ... ... ...

Research Report #1

A note on ages...

In this story, the word World will only be used to denotate Kingdom Hearts, the Present World, and the In-Between World. The word Age will be used to denotate smaller worlds inside Kingdom Hearts and the Present World, for example, Wonderland, Tarzan's jungle, and Traverse Town would all be ages. This is to prevent confusion.

A note on systems...

Ages in the present world are divided into systems, or rings. Systems vary widely in size, from small (traverse system- 13 worlds) to medium sized (Disney kingdom system- 375) to large (twilight system- 1,456) Each system has a name; the systems the story will take place in are traverse (the original 13 worlds of KH1), Disney Kingdom (the home age of King Mickey and all the worlds he rules over) and Twilight (where Twilight town is located). Not every world in all these systems will be visited during the course of the story. The largest ages are in the center, with the ages decreasing in size the farther from the center you go, with the smallest being on the very edge of the system. The biggest world, the hub age, is in the very center. When an age is destroyed, the survivors go to the hub age, and the hub age increases in size as needed. 2 examples of this type of age are Twilight and Traverse Town. However, some of the smaller ages, called edge ages, are so close to the edges of nearby systems that survivors of that age can actually end up on an edge age of the nearby system, and not the hub age of their own system. An example of this type of age is Destiny Islands, or Hollow Baston, or the Final Fantasy string of ages in the Twilight system. (This is the reason why all the Final Fantasy characters come from Hollow Baston and Destiny Islands; when their edge worlds where destroyed in the twilight system, the ended up on the edge worlds of Traverse system, specifically Destiny Islands and Hollow Baston.)

A note on names...

All ages have 2 names; common and scientific. The hub age's common name is the name of the system followed by "Town" (Ex. Twilight Town). The Scientific name of the hub world would be the name of the system, followed by "Prime" (Ex. Twilight Town would be Twilight Prime). A common and edge Age's common name would whatever it is commonly called. (Ex. Wonderland). It's scientific name would by the system name followed by a roman numeral showing its place from the hub age (Ex. The second age from the hub ages would be called Twilight II, the third age Twilight III, ect.) Edge ages scientific names would be the system name it was in, the system it bordered, followed by the roman numeral showing it's place from the hub age. (Ex. Destiny Islands would be Traverse/Twilight XIII). Scientific names are only used in navigation and by the Nobody.
... ... ... ... ...

I just wanted to be left alone...

Ellos sighed and slumped down lower, or at least as low as her position allowed her to. She was kneeling on a metal floor, her legs tucked under her, her arms held horizontally, straight out, and parallel to her shoulders. Iron manacles extended down from the ceiling of a 7 ft. square metal cell, attaching to her arms and keeping them in place. On her upper left arm, a plastic bracelet pumped out her blood and replaced it with a solution of nano-machines and antifreeze.

Slowly, the cell around her began to cool. Eventually, the temperature would drop down to near freezing, sending her into a deep sleep, with the antifreeze in her blood being the only think keeping the water in body from freezing and killing her. She stood (or sat) facing a metal hatch, with 2 inch thick vertical bars.

On the other side which stood Asher.

Every person has a weakness, this Ellos knew. Asher (or Lasher, his nickname, derived from his weapons of choice, two cat o' nine tails 1) had, on his home age, been a mercenary. But, when his age was destroyed, he built a gummi ship of his own and became a high-paid mercenary who brought in people who fled to other ages for cash rewards from private parties.

"So," Asher said, "Ellos, I hope your feeling good after your long, long vacation on that quiet, backwards age you picked. Think of how lucky you are!" He said sarcastically. "after your vacation, you get to be escorted home with me, the most famous head hunter in this system, and meet some of the most influential and dangerous people of the Twilight system. I'd be careful; you wouldn't want to make any of them mad, now would you?" More sarcasm.

There it is, Ellos thought. His flaw. Asher was like one of those comic book villains who, once they had the hero in their grasp, instead of just killing them, wined on about how clever they where and revealed all their plans, or devised overtly complex plans to kill the hero and eventually failing because of said complexities in plan instead of just shooting the hero or something simple or foolproof like that. Asher had an ego so big you could practically see it bursting out of his head, and he loved to stoke that ego. This was why bursting his bubble would be so much fun.

Both of them looked at each other, calculating. Ellos looked at the rest of the crew that Asher had brought with him. They seemed...nervous, scared even. She could smell it, see it on their faces, the way they moved, in their auras. She wondered if Asher had told them what had happened to his first crew. But this crew wasn't like the first one; they where experienced head- hunters. She was surprised he would share the glory of her capture with other mercenaries; apparently the reward on her head was large enough that he would bury his ego to admit he needed help catching her.

Then she looked at Asher. Asher was tall, like her. He was big boned, thin, and muscular, wearing a worn, brown, leather trenchcoat with black and dark brown clothing underneath. The shaft of his car o' nine tails was solid chain links, the nine prongs made of leather covered by metal sections. The tips had razor blades, jagged pieces of metal, and sharpened wire attached to them. The two whips where wound over his trenchcoat, over his shoulders and under his armpits, the handles in front so they could be easily grabbed and unwound. He also had two handguns on a belt outside his waist. Asher looked to be in his 40's or 30's; he had a swarthy 2, rough, windburnt 3 complexion, and, if Ellos remembered correctly, a perpetual 5 o'clock shadow on his jaw and large, calloused hands. His face was round and flat, lined, and with the beginnings of jowls 4on his chin and jaw, thin lips and big brown, almost black eyes that made him look like a mean lizard. His hair was wiry and thin and cut short, military style. He wore an old, worn pair of goggles on his head. He hadn't changed that much in the 2 years she'd known him.

And she, Asher thought, hadn't changed that much either. He was the best in his line of work; there was no one, anywhere, who could beat him, no one he needed to be scared of. He was the one who scared others, who beat others. And he had spent his entire life making sure it was that way, that he was the one on top. But Ellos made him a little... uneasy. Yeah, that was it. She was tall and slim, about 6 ft. 1in tall, with arms and legs that seemed too long for her body, and a lean, angular muscularity usually associated with long-distance runners, all which made her seem taller than she really was gave her an aura of simple elegance and style. She had long, slender, tapering fingers, and thin, elegant, delicately formed hands and feet. His first impression of her, the same as he had now, was that she moved too much like a heartless for comfort; but whereas the heartless movements where jerky, Ellos' movements had a grace that was smooth and mercurial5 which the heartless lacked.

Another thing about her was that she seemed... faded. Her skin was pale; her hair was an ashy brown, like the color had been partway leeched out of it. She wore a pair of black cloth pants, figure hugging but not tight, an olive ribbed stretch tank tee that left her shoulders bare, and a black and white coat that went down to her knees with zippered pockets and a hood. It was stronger than it looked; it was made of silk over a canvas base, had several pieces of armor attached, and was lined on the inside with ceramic scales. Her hair was long, straight, unlayered, and reached easily down to her waist. She had a narrow, oval face, with delicate, defined cheekbones and jaw line, long, slightly sharp features, and a blindfold over her eyes.

This blindfold was what made Asher so uneasy around her. It marked her as a Forgotten. A Forgotten was someone who had lived in Kingdom Hearts. To be a Forgotten was to live a lightless existence, devoid of color, and utterly alone. As far as he knew, It was impossible to escape Kingdom Hearts. That was part of the reason why Ellos' presence was so worrisome. It meant that the doors between the present world and that place where beginning to weaken, enough for someone like her to slip out. Another reason was because, even though blindfolded and raised in darkness, Ellos could still see. She just saw differently from normal people. Better, sharper. You could say the view was wider, in some aspects, than normal sight. And her sight was not the only sense that was improved. Every sense was changed and improved.

"Let's see..." Ellos spoke, her face demure and emotionless. "There are 3 groups of people interested in me; the Nobody, people who want revenge, and people who want information from me. It's not the Nobody; they wouldn't have hired headhunters; they would have come after me themselves. Not only that, but me and them have an agreement; they don't bother me, I don't bother them. It's not someone who wants revenge; I would be dead by now; I can tell if a group of people are trying to kill me or just capture me. So it must be someone who wants information." Sighing, Ellos shifted again, trying to get comfortable in her (rapidly cooling) chains. "This ship is too small to go far. So there's only one place you can be taking me: Twilight Town."

There was silence in the cockpit. Asher opened his mouth, as if to say something, thought better of it, and closed it again. Whirling around, he stomped forward and resumed piloting the ship, muttering under his breath.

"Hey Lasher? How come she knows where we're going and we don't?" one of the head hunters asked. Asher turned around and roared at him to get down here and man the guns. The rest of the crew prepared for cryosleep. The ship wasn't fast, so all the crew would sleep (except the pilot and gunner) for the 2 days it was required to reach twilight town. Asher pulled up Ellos' personal file to view the reward on her head, trying to shake the feeling that, even though she was in chains and he behind the wheel, that Ellos was the one running the show.
...

When it rains, it pours...

It was night now, it Twilight Town. Rain could be an advantage or disadvantage to someone with his kind of sight. On one hand, the sound waves made from the falling rain heightened everything with greater clarity, making every detail of the buildings around him seem etched with light. On the other hand, he could hear the fall of every single raindrop, every splash, and every ripple.

It was distracting, and he needed to be focused.

It had rained every night he had been here, like clockwork. This was the inevitability that was Twilight town; the day was perpetual twilight, the night pitch black, with wave upon wave to storms dumping water over the patchwork city. Now that night had fallen, visible light was gone, leaving his sight to shift into the ultra-violet range, painting the landscape in a palate visibly inclined to the cooler colors of the rainbow, such as blues, violets, ultra-violets, cyans, and other colors not visible to a person whose eyes where adjusted to only see the visible wavelengths of light. Thus, an approaching figure in a black raincoat was not hard to see. Even though it was to far up to see the details of the figure, he could guess at what he looked like; a full, round face, tapered jaw, narrow chin, messy, long blonde hair that fell into his eyes, and a tall, spare 6 figure, covered with a black rubber raincoat the zipped up the front, with a drawstring hood pulled over his face to hide his identity, and a string of metal beads attached to the front of the raincoat.

The figure on the ground whipped out 2 keyblades from under his cloak; Oathkeeper and Oblivion. Attracted by the presence of the keyblades, newly called into being, darkness oozed under the puddles in the square, and heartless formed on the face of the waters, drops of rain vanishing on inimical shadowflesh 7. The Dual Wielding Unknown began systematically destroying the heartless, catching them between his twin blades and slicing them in two.

Closing the gap between themselves and the Dual Wielder, a group of heartless sprinted forward, leaping in the arm, intent on slicing him into ribbon with their claws. Turning around, he crossed his blades over his chest and backflipped. The first heartless landed, missing him by inches. The Dual wielder jumped higher in the air, higher than a normal human could jump, and threw Oblivion in the air, destroying the rest in the air. When he landed, he preformed another inhuman flip in the air, landing at the base of the building. Looking up, he noticed the blindfolded man staring down at him. Grinning, the Dual wielder leaped up on the building and began running up the side.

And the heartless followed.

Showoff...

Crouching, his hands on the edge of the skyscraper, Strife waited. The Dual Wielder to hit the Screen of the building. Sensing his cue, Strife bolted up, sprinted to the edge of the building,

And threw himself over the edge.

Beat that, kid.

Seeing Strife approach, the Dual Wielder slowed and pulled back the one of the keyblades and threw it to him. Once he caught it, Strife dug his heels into the screen, slowing down his descent. As the two passed each other, the Dual Wielder pulled out the Kingdom Key and turned to him, asking him something, but the wind carried the sound away before Strife could hear it. Falling faster now in to the square, which had now become a broiling sea of heartless, Strife pulled out a second sword, a black one shaped like a bat wing. He realized that Dual Wielder had given him Oblivion. Fitting... he thought. And ironic.

Turning his attention to the heartless below him and the one from above closing in fast, he sliced up the heartless with a practiced ease that was almost mindless now. Dual Wielder watched Strife's fall from his position on top of the building. There was only a few feet between Strife's amazingly hard blindfolded head and the ground, now. And he calls me a showoff. Dual Wielder though. He knew exactly what Strife planned to do. While he watched, Strife flickered, and then vanished. There was no wind, no light, no sign of his passing. Dual Wielder felt a shiver go down his spine. To vanish without a trace like that was a sign of a truly powerful Nobody. Only the Enigmatic Man could vanish like that.

Even though Strife did not heard Dual Wielder's question on the building, he could hear his words in his mind. The question had gotten more pressing and less likely to be answered. There where bigger things at work here than him and Ellos.
...
Where's Sora?
 ...

Now that's a good question.

Time had proven to Ellos that she could not, and would not, sleep. Sleep was anathema 8 to her; in Kingdom Hearts, there was no need for sleep or eating; the darkness around them kept them fed and rested. Nor was their time to relax your guard in blissful unconsciousness; Sleep was an unaffordable luxury. All her experiences spoke to the contrary to it, her instincts shunned it, the darkness akin to the power of the heartless which had come to reside in her bones didn't need it, and her whole way of life up to this point programmed her in a way that made the idea of spending a third of your day unconscious seem absurd and dangerous. Her body frozen, swimming in darkness, while the rest of the crew twitched in their cryosleep-induced dreams, Ellos sat entranced in the wasteland between sleep and wakefulness. Awake, but dreaming, aware of the world around her.

Forgotten memories, thoughts, dreams, swam in a soupy, grey fog in her mind, until the question cut through the jumbled fog, burning away those unimportant thoughts with the intensity and urgency of it. It's wasn't her thought; somewhere, some Nobody had asked that same question, and it was important enough that she, being a Half Dead, was able to pick up on it. That was another thing she hated about sleep; it reminded her that she wasn't that different from those whom she hated. Strife had also been looking for a Sora when she had found him in Kingdom Hearts. She wondered who this Sora was, that he would have the Nobody on his tail. We must have done something to really piss them off.

She mentally shrugged of the Nobody's thought out of her head and lost herself on the far horizon of dreams.
...

Shout or be lost in the shuffle.

Where are you? Ellos shouted. Desperately she looked out at the broken landscape in front of her. She could hear a human voice, calling for help.

Ellos looked out across the landscape; Some ages of this world where not habitable, some marginally so, some could be rendered marginally habitable, but should not be made so. Yul 9was a prime example of this kind. No other world was as hellish, as geologically schizoid, as melted, as reformed, as impossible as Yul. Yul was the underbelly of hell itself, the wart on the asshole of Kingdom Hearts. In the Present world, dawn and dusk where leisurely times, to get ready for the day or for bed, for meals, for socialization. On Yul, dawn and dusk where 1 hour windows, the only times when Yul had an atmosphere and temperature that could support human life. It was also a time of great danger to. In this age, day and night killed.

Yul's sun, Ra, was an old sun. It no longer emitted visible light; nothing in Kingdom Hearts did. But Ra emitted radiation, ultraviolet, and gamma rays strong enough to irradiate anything caught in it's wake. This was how the days on Yul went- first, the sun came up, irradiating and killing any living thing on the surface, burning up the atmosphere, heating the gases so hot that they exploded. The ground melted into lava, resolidifying at twilight into a completely new landscape. As twilight approached, the superheated rocks cooled, releasing enough oxygen and various gases to create a temporary atmosphere and a sustainable temperature which lasted about an hour. After that, night approached. The temperature dropped to -200 degrees, the temperature dropping so fast the gases in the atmosphere froze solid, awaiting the dawn, when they would be heated into gases, creating the second window. Then dawn would come and the process would start all over again.

Each period had it's dangers; in twilight, the land around you was still mostly lava, and unformed; there where poisonous gases, ashfall to clog lungs, lava flows, crust of land that where deceptively thin, crumbling and pitching you into lava, and a thousand other dangers. In the dawn, there where ionic disturbances, gravity wells formed when the air was burned up and new air rushed in to fill the gap, explosions, thinner atmosphere, and the ever-encroaching dawn, a malovent entity just waiting to burn you to ash like the weak, flesh sack of water you where. And there where the heartless and mindless, roving around just waiting to take your heart.

No normal human could survive in such an environment. But Ellos was not normal. Her unique sight and years of living saturated in the dark powers in this place had helped her survive. She could detect the infrared heat waves that showed her where the lava flows were, both on the ground and underfoot, to avoid them. She could detect the heartless without being able to see them by feeling the dark energy that surrounded them. She could detect hollows under her or crevices disguised by ash by stamping her feet on the ground and listening to minute echoes. She could see the electromagnetic fields that signaled the start of an ion storm or the tell- tale ultraviolet, X and Gamma rays that where emitted before a gravity well formed or by the deadly dawn.

But whoever was trapped out there did not have these abilities, and probably wouldn't last long without help. She looked at the landscape around her. Craters littered the surface, from where rock crashed on Yul's surface, unprotected by an atmosphere. Twisted arches, canyons, fissures emerged from the grey, semi-cool rock, steam coming of from them. Lava flowed under and on top of the rock in grey flows, squirted out of holes in the ground like geysers. Volcanos erupted, sending lava bombs and ashfall down on the terrain. Everything was gray; gray rock, gray lava, gray ash; you can't have color without light. Geysers erupted super-hot matter and plasma hundreds of feet into the atmosphere. Huge sheet of razor-sharp obsidian, volcanic glass, and other crystals bloomed from the rocks. Smaller pieces crunched underfoot and other pieces hung tenaciously to the undersides of arches, waiting to fall on the heads of the unwary. Stalagmites and stalactites hung on every available surface. Carefully picking her way around a stalagmite the size of a car and covered in razor sharp obsidian glass, she wound her way around the broken, psychotic terrain, her steed in tow, following the weak energy of a heart.

Her first though of the boy she found was how colorful he was. She had never seen colors like that before; white and black, yellow and blue, so bright they burned into her eyes. What surprised her the most was his eyes; they where this unusual color, somewhere between green and blue, that seemed as vast, deep and wide as a pool of water. Later, he would tell her that they where the same color as the oceans of his home age. He was tall, lanky and ungainly even, extremely muscular, and deeply tanned, something she had never seen before. He had black gloves, a yellow sleeveless T- shirt, and blue pants. He had a oval face, like her, but wider, and a more sculpted, triangular jaw. He had whitish blue hair, which was very spiky and fell down to his jaw.

At the current moment he was in a wide, shallow depression filled with fine sand; drum sand. Every time he moved, it would shift under his feet, making a drumming sound, alerting the mindless surrounding him of his presence. Despite this and his inability to see, he was doing a good job of keeping them from attacking him; he had a sword shaped like a bat wing, and would stand perfectly still, concentrating, until one of the mindless would give away it's position with a sound and them he would charge forward and slice it in half.

He was surrounded by about 10 soldier mindless. The Mindless where tall, stretched out humanoid creatures with long sharp claws that looked like they where covered in white bodysuits with lots of zippers and grayish-navy blue belts hanging from their arms. Unlike the heartless, who where black and had no mouths, the mindless where white and had no eyes. Where as the heartless' insignia was a stretched out heart with an X through it, the mindless' insignia was a fusion of a cross and a anchor, that looked like a weeping face. Soldier mindless could bite and scratch you with there teeth and claws, and the tops of their heads where large and flat so they could charge you. They where always moving, jumping, flipping in midair, rotating at impossible angles and contorting their bodies in painful shapes. Both the heartless and the mindless where mutable10, but only the mindless used their shape shifting abilities, and seemed to be slightly smarter than the heartless. But the heartless where the more aggressive and stronger of the 2 species. Also, the mindless where arranged into groups which had leaders; take out the leader and the others usually flee. The heartless did not have this weakness.

The middle mindless was the leader; he was the first to attack. He readied him self for a charge. Holding his head forward so the mindless insignia could be seen, his body began to shift, becoming short, squatter, and more muscular, especially around the neck and shoulders.

Blue energy, lightning, and free magic began to gather over the insignia. I drew my gun, waiting for the right moment to fire. When the top of the mindless' head glowed white, right when it was about to charge, when the free magic was so strong I could feel bile rising in the back of my throat, right when the boy realized that the mindless was going to charge and held his sword and a defensive stand, not having enough time to attack, I fired right into the middle of the white light.

The mindless dissolved into a pool of white lightning. The rest scattered.

The horizon was turning ultra-Red, now. The horizon would go from that color through several other colors whose wavelengths where too high to be seen by human eyes, until it turned a color known as bees' yellow. By that time, anything that values it's internal water would best be underground. I ran over to the kid. "Come on! We need to get underground. I know somewhere we'll be safe. "The boy looked around, arms outstretched, trying to find me.

"Where are you? I can't see..." I reach out and took his hand.

"You don't need to...I'll guide you. What's your name?"

"Strife" he said. "And yours?"

"Ellos. Just hold on to my hand. Where almost at the tunnel."
 ... ... ...

Adalai- yeah! Its done! does happy dance

Zena, Muse of Tragedy- now will you clean the litter box?

Adalai- but if I clean the litterbox, you'll stop talking.

Sora- your cats talk when you don't clean the litterbox?

Zena- clean the litterbox or kiss the rosebed goodbye...

Adalai- you should see what they do when I don't fill the food bowl...

Review. Please review... complements and constructive criticism welcome, flames will be met with fiery death (I got a cage on Yul waiting for you flamers). If you want to criticize, at least offer suggestions on how to make it better.
... ... ...

Author's notes

1.) cat o' nine tails- a type of whip used by 17-18th century naval
officers for flogging and roman legionaries for whipping and torture
with 9 individual prongs onto which sharp pieces of wire, bone and
metal where attached. Roman versions used jagged pieces of bone; 18th
century naval versions used fishhooks (think Hellraiser). For a good
idea of the damage these whips can do to a human body, see the
flogging scene of The Passion of the Christ, which used cat o' nine
tails.

2.) swarthy- a dark, tan complexion

3.) windburnt- red, irritated and tough skin due to exposure to the
elements, especially high-velocity wind

4.) jowls- rolls of loose skin under or on the jaw either due to
sagging, flaccid skin in old age (as in Asher's case) or to fatness.

5.) mercurial- swift; active; sprightly; fickle; volatile; changeable;
crafty; liable to sudden unpredictable change; quicksilver, cool,
willful, erratic, eloquent

6.) spare- to be trim and have good muscle tone

7.) inimical- adjective used to describe a substance harmful and
injurious to life; Opposed in tendency, influence, or effects;
antagonistic; inconsistent; incompatible; adverse; repugnant.
Shadowflesh in my name for the substance the heartless are made of.

8.) Anathema- something that is cursed or damned, or greatly reviled, loathed, or shunned

9.) Yul is Mongolian for "on a far horizon"

10.) mutable- changeable

And so it came to pass that we stepped down on a place we believed unformed, where only darkness moved on the face of the waters.
 - Orleanna, The Poisonwood Bible