Lightbringer; Chpt. 6- Unbreakable

Adalai- Alright Stinky, Disclaimer!

Stinky, Muse of Comedy- Adalai does not own Kingdom Hearts, it's characters, worlds, ect. Those belong to Square and Disney. Adalai does not own sunstones either; those belong to Garth Nix. Adalai does not own Sephiroth or anything from Final Fantasy. However, Adalai ownz this fic, Asher, Ellos, Strife, Yul, Alma, Danya, Hector, Root May, Root Kay, Scion,The End, the plotline, any new concepts or ideas, and fills my food bowl and cleans my litter box, and that's what matters!

Authors notes at bottom.
...

That he recognized the sound did not trouble him, but the fact that he recognized the voice that began to speak over the steady scrape of stone over steel.

"We have always had, since the first hearts were created, a peaceful understanding between those with hearts and those who do not have hearts, who live beyond our ages. We do not stray into Kingdom Hearts, their refuge; they do not come into our world. I have always seen them as protectors of mankind, in their own, silent way; they have allowed us to live here, in their shadow, in this safe haven beneath their wings. It is...a truce. Or perhaps a stalemate."

Leon carefully walked into the room and sat at the table, across from the voice. If the owner of that voice had come to kill him, he would already by dead. He could only hope that she was just not taking her time.

"I could admire them. There is much to be learned from those without hearts. They are fearless in a way I can never know. Between everything we love and everything we fear is a line we shall not cross. For there wait the heartless, reflections of a darker animal of ourselves. The nothing from which all hearts are born."

There were any number of a variety of hair products and irons to style the hair, but perhaps out of a desire of independence or out of tradition, the tall woman had washed and towel dried her hair the night before. Sleeping with it wet, it had dried wavy, rather than her usual straight style. Concentrating on sharpening her weapon, for all he knew she could almost not have seen him come in. But Leon knew that there was no almost about it.

"Did we make the right decision? To come here? To let them fester behind the door? Whether we made the right decision of not, I fear our days of peace are over."

Stopping her sharpening, the woman got up to check on something she was cooling. She drew a hard-boiled egg from a pot and two pieces of toast. As she put them on the plate and made her way back to the table, she spoke.

"These heartless we now see are not the heartless created by Ansem. They were aberrations, mistakes, not made by the source of the heartless and not representative of their will but of a human will. These are different. These heartless come from behind the door, created by the source of heartless; their false hunger for hearts has long since been forgotten. They and their children seek but one goal; one which cannot be fathomed by humans or anything that has a heart. For as the heart has reasons for which reason knows nothing, so too do the heartless have reasons for which reason knows nothing. They seek hearts only to provide the soldiers for their cause. These heartless that our now here serve as a warning for us; they have come, for reasons unknown, and no human heart, keyblade or otherwise, will stand in their way."

Now seated, she began eat her meal, dipping pieces of toast into the egg yolk. Leon had never understood why she liked toast and 1-minuite 1 eggs so much; they where actually quite tasteless. He figured it had to be a synaesthesic thing; he remembered all too well the time she had told Riona her soup tasted spherical and blue. Without thinking, he looked upstairs.

"She's upstairs in the shower." Ellos spoke, already knowing who he was thinking about.

"Where did you go?"

"Someplace with lots of forests. Trees. With oceans, lakes; lots of water. No real name; too thick of forests to settle on. And too dangerous. In the forest, you can get away from all the...temptation. All the extra light. Just hoping to live in the shadow of nowhere."

Weapon in hand, the woman got up, and slowly began to circle Leon. She had gotten a medium bronze tan, and was wearing baggy light brown cargo pants tied up halfway up the shin, a beige ribbed, sleeveless tank top, hobnailed 2 lace-up military boots, and a dark brown leather jacket that reached to her ankles, with long, scalelike peaces of dull metal clustered on the upper back and shoulders. She had a chain around her neck tucked under her shirt. She also had on black gloves, which reached up to her elbows, the palms and back of her hand covered by some kind of metal that hugged the skin and moved as if made of liquid. She was no longer wearing her blindfold; she had on a sunglass/goggle hybrid of her own design, made of mirrored silver metal, the lenses made of a liquid containing nanomachines, stretched taught over the frames like bubble solution on a bubble wand. Changing colors and properties in different lights, the lenses were now an opaque, mirrored gold.

"But then I find myself in a mercenary ship. With a 1.5 million price tag on my head. Only one person with the means and motive to put such a tag on me. Was I wrong to trust that you would leave me alone? Why?"

Leon worded his reply carefully. In the presence of this woman, there was just no predicting what she would do or what would set off her temper. "It's complicated. There are many reasons..."

Suddenly, the woman squeezed the palm of her glove, a large blade coming out from a sheath sown into the cloth, attached to the glove. She held it to Leon's neck. "Tell me." She spoke, voice so soft it was almost a whisper. "Why you brought me here."

"To give us a fighting chance against the heartless."

The woman's goggled gaze shifted, but her blade on Leon's throat did not. A brown haired woman in blue was standing at the door to the kitchen.

Looking at the visitor, she could see worry in Riona's eyes.

"Ellos." She was not afraid. Her eyes suggested disbelief and worry, not fear.

For reasons know only to her, Ellos removed the blade from Leon's throat. Riona visibly relaxed, but she was still anxious and worried. She looked as if she wanted to rush over to Leon and pull him out of danger.

Ellos looked at Riona. Advancing at Riona, Ellos examined the older woman. Riona felt uncomfortable under that stare; it hinted at unhuman ways of seeing, at experience and knowledge learned too soon. It made her feel as if her clothes and skin where stripped from her without knowing why.

From behind Riona, another girl peeped around her at Ellos. She had shoulder-length brown hair and eyes, and was wearing a yellow and orange outfit. "You're Ellos?"

Ellos turned around to the girl. "Yes"

"Did you really live in Kingdom Hearts? With the Heartless and Mindless?"

Ellos turned sharply to look at Leon. She knows about that?

Leon shrugged. "You know how it is with bedtime stories. Those kids want to know ever thing about us and anyone we know."

Seemingly unnoticed by Ellos, Riona shepherded Natalia and herself out the room, quietly closing the door.

Now that the two were outside, Ellos sat down and turned to Leon. Sighing, she buried her face in her hands, her fingers running through her hair.

"Who do I have to kill so the world will leave me alone? What do I have to do so you'll leave me alone?"
...

Business in the heartless ship was the usual; that is, messy, violent, loud, crude, bloody, and all around generally unpleasant. Today was no different. 7 shells and a Nobody where transporting a prisoner to the heartless kennel; the heartless ship had no prison or cells to hold prisoners. The heartless didn't take prisoners.

But Nobody did. This distinction did not matter to the shells; they had only a little bit more intelligence than the heartless, but they did as the Nobody told them. The strong resemblance between Nobody and captive went unremarked but not unnoticed among the shells; it wasn't their business, anyway, and the red-haired Nobody was well-known for his temper.

Finally reaching their destination, they opened the kennel where the prisoner would be housed. The heartless kennel was a solid wall of steel cages packed on top of each other, each of which housed a new breed of predator mindless. They looked like combinations between solider mindless and wolves; they had the head and hands of a mindless, and from the neck down looked like they were covered in a white bodysuit similar to that of the solider mindless, but with thousands of tiny, sharp spikes. They wore armor on the head, shoulders, back, and legs that seemed to be made of white bone. The headpiece contained the mindless crest; the weeping face.

Sensing a newcomer to their domain, the mindless wolves howled and struggled against the bars of their cage, hungry for the heart so near to them, and yet so far.

Opening the door of the metal cage the prisoner was in, they waited for the girl to come out. This was the most dangerous part of the transfer. Each of them drew a sword; it was black shadowflesh, with the heartless insignia emblazoned on the blade and hilt. These were keyblades made from heartless, called heartless blades. If you were stabbed through the chest with one of these, you instantly became a heartless yourself. These blades were made from shadow heartless, and where the least powerful, but they where still sharper and much more deadly than their metal counterparts.

But the prisoner did not move. Puzzled at her hesitation, they poked at the cage, trying to get her to move. Grabbing the end of one of the swords, she turned and stabbed it's owner in the hand. The shell's cries of pain mixed with the inhuman calls of hunger from the surrounding mindless. Shooting forward, she thrust herself into the cage, the door closing behind her.

Their mission now fulfilled, the 7 mindless wandered off, lost in their blind wanderings until called by another Nobody to fulfill another task. Satisfied with the result, Axel left, joining another figure, wrapped in a hooded cloak which seemed to be made of many strips of black cloth sown together and peppered with tiny, silver chains.

Inside their cages, the mindless howled and flung themselves at Kairi's cage. Sitting on the floor of the kennel, as hard and unyielding as the shadowflesh of the ship, she spoke;

Can we please SHUT UP THE NOISE!!!!!!!!

Her request was fulfilled; for two seconds. Then the howling resumed. Trying to ignore the fear and the heartless surrounding her, she buried her head in her knees and rocked back and forth, whispering "It's okay...It's okay...It's okay..."
...

"You won't find them. Even if you looked."

"Why should I find them when they are right here? You've already called them down here, I expect."

"It's not that easy, Ellos. They're Nobody."

Any shadow of candor vanished from Ellos' face. "Don't talk about easy with me, Leon. My whole life is surviving what isn't easy. Now, If there's any kind of communications on this overlit, blinding ball of reanimated dirt, they'll be here."

Leon looked at Ellos. He had managed to convince her to leave the kitchen and go out on a wide balcony that had been converted into a sort of sitting room.

Sitting in chairs opposite of each other, Leon and Ellos regarded each other with a mixture of reserve and cautiousness. Finally, Leon broke the silence.

"Ellos, you lived in Kingdom Hearts. Tell me...did you ever come across someone called Riku?"

Ellos frowned, thinking. "Nope. Why do you ask?"

"No reason. Anyway, I don't suppose you know this guy, but we need you to find someone."

"Who? Any leads?"

"We don't want you to go out and search for him. Trust me, we've tried that. You remember how you told me that if one heart is entangled to another, and if you have one of the entangled hearts, you can find where the second heart is, right?"

"Yes. So you want me to find this Sora person using that? Who is this guy? Why do you want him so bad? And more importantly, where did you get a heart that's entangled with his?"

Leon blinked, surprised. How did she know about Sora? Or more importantly, how did she know about Sora but not about him being the key bearer?

"Well, Sora has this key that can close Kingdom Hearts. If we can close Kingdom Hearts, and these heartless are from Kingdom Hearts like you say, the heartless will disappear, and the worlds will return to normal."

"No they won't."

"Why?"

"That only works with the artificial heartless. Do you remember the time your worlds were destroyed? The Final Fantasy Worlds? They didn't return; they're still missing. And..."

And the Endless Worlds. Ellos stopped. She didn't want to talk about that dream she had last night. "and those other worlds? The real heartless may not just disappear when the door is locked."

Ellos paused, remembering something. "Only this 'key' can unlock the door to Kingdom Hearts, right?"

"Yeah."

"So how did the Door to Kingdom Hearts get unlocked after Sora locked it?"

Leon paused. That was actually a good question. To unlock the door, unlike locking it, only the kingdom key, instead of both the Golden Kingdom Key and the Kingdom Key needed to be present. But the keyblade master would also have to be present in Kingdom Hearts; Sora was only a keyblade wielder, and not in Kingdom Hearts.

"I don't know."

Leon got up, looking at the sky. Waiting for someone. In the last 30 minutes, Leon had managed an understanding, almost a familiarity between himself and the Forgotten; both had survived went all else around them had perished, both hearts of great strength, lights when all around them was darkness, when they were darkness themselves. The greater the shadow, the stronger the light. It was all they had in common, and a tenuous link, to be sure, but it would have to do. He could only hope it was enough.

The night sky. It was a home of something dreadful, something that smothered stars, that could possibly be hiding something behind it's perpetual sunset. Perhaps the end of everything he knew, that he worked so hard to build. His friends. His home. His fiancé. Much depended on the woman seated across from him. Knowing what little anyone could know about such an individual, it seemed a last effort to trust so much hope on one who nobody could know what that person would do.

"What exactly is happening, anyway?"

Leon looked at Ellos. "You've been kind of out of touch lately, haven't you?"

Ellos shrugged. "Ever found the time. Or the means."

Leon opened his mouth to speak, but another voice answered.

"The Artisan age is gone. The 13 outermost worlds of the Twilight system have gone missing. Completely gone, no survivors. Not even Nobody can step foot there."

Ellos leaped out of her chair, and whirled around, pocketknife in hand, looking for the speaker. A boy with blue eyes and messy blonde hair in black and white clothes was standing in the room. Even though he looked normal enough, she could tell he was a Nobody.

Leon spoke.

"The one you want is now here. Ellos, meet Scion."

Ellos looked carefully at his face. She could read people better than any machine. She had never seen this person before; was this some kind of test? She knew that there had to be another Nobody, or someone who knew her. Was this a test? Was she being played?

In turn, Scion examined her. His countenance was as enigmatic as her's. Ellos met his gaze with her goggled one. Had this Scion been brought here to examine her? Was this the man she sought, someone from long ago she had forgotten?

Suddenly, Ellos whirled, her knife at the throat of the second Nobody. He was a powerful one; he had made no sound when he teleported behind her, only a disturbance in color that triggered warning bells, literally, in her head.

"And who is this?" Ellos said, turning to the second visitor. The Nobody was shrouded in the black raincoat they all wore, and shadows seemed to crawl around him, signs of an etheric body; the NEO had taken on the properties of darkness. The Nobody did not respond; she hadn't expected him to, either.

"I you kill him, then you'll never know why we brought you here." Scion spoke.

"I already know. You want me to find this Sora character."

"Yes, but there are other people who could just as easily track him down, using heart entanglement. There is much more at stake than such trivialities as bounties and revenge."

"Then start explaining. I'm tired of being kept in the dark."

The second Nobody smiled at the irony of the statement, which no-one else seemed to catch. Concentrating, he disappeared, seeming to melt into the shadows along the wall. Ellos moved her knife, but too late.

The second Nobody spoke, from nowhere and everywhere at once. "Balance is everything to the Nobody. Earth to air, fire to water, light to darkness, matter to energy. The worlds cannot survive in chaos. They must have a still, a balance. But there is a problem with balance."

Ellos was one of those rare people who where smart enough to fathom how much they did not know the extent of their ignorance and humble enough to recognize it. "Maybe you need to pretend that you're talking to someone whose main education was how to survive in the worst possible conditions. Where anything 'civilized' or 'moral' or dealing with philosophy was pretty much left out. Now don't pretend. I understand what you're saying, but not where you're going with it."

"With balance..." Ellos whirled around, trying to discern a pattern in the Nobody's movements, something she could use to see him or predict where he would move next. stagnation. Things stay the same, not growing, not getting better. Sometimes change is necessary for growth, for improvement. Not all balances are good. Some 'controlled' chaos is necessary."

"About 30 years ago, an invasion of Heartless and Mindless swept across the outskirts of Twilight System. They destroyed the Final Fantasy Worlds, but that did not seem to be their target. Their target was a small, middle- sized system that bordered the Final Fantasy Worlds. The inhabitants of these worlds were destroyed. Feared by the heartless, for whatever reasons."

"The Endless." Ellos spoke. The voice of the second Nobody seemed familiar. It seemed she had been drawn to the Bell Tower of her own will; this person seemed to know her, and know her well. But not well enough. Out of touch, and for once, glad of it, there was obviously some kind of ongoing political conflict in the system. These Nobody wanted to use her as some kind of hero to consolidate their power in the region. Ellos chuckled grimly. Amazing how this person could know so much and yet so little about her. She was many things, but hero was not one of them. So be it for her to pop their misguided delusions of her.

She didn't know how wrong she was.

More confident now, the Nobody emerged form the shadows, still moving around, dissolving a reappearing in a cloud of black mist, teleporting around the room. But wherever he appeared, it was well out of the way of Ellos' knife.

Scion spoke again. "What do you know about your childhood, Ellos? Before you came to Kingdom Hearts? Your family? Your parents? Your ancestry? Your upbringing?

Stopping his commentary short, the second Nobody began speaking again. Any attempt to reason, to relate to this woman would be a waste of time. "Do you remember your home age? It's appearance, location? It's people; your people? Why your family abandoned you in Kingdom Hearts? What happened to it?"

"have you met any others?" Scion said with urgency.

"Others like yourself? Cousins, siblings?" the second Nobody said.

These questions where meaningless to Ellos. He past was a traumatic one; she stayed sane by staying in the present, in the today. The past was dead, as her family and world and everything she had known was and as she would one day be. Her purpose in life was to keep that day as far away as possible, not wonder about things already dead. Every day she was alive was an accomplishment to her. She had no family, nor needed one; she did not want them and they obviously did not want her; why else would they abandon her to Kingdom Hearts? Why did it matter who they where? Or where she came from, for that matter? If she didn't care, why would it matter to anyone else? Yet the answers to these questions seemed important to the Nobody.

You want something from me, give me something first. She did not give away anything if there was hope for something in return. Turning to the balcony, she fingered the charm on the chain around her neck, the sunstone in the middle flashing. "My people didn't even know what to do with one of me. They threw me into Kingdom Hearts before I could walk. What makes you think there are others?"

Turning to the Nobody, she spoke. "I'll work with you. But I have one condition."
...

Strife picked up a box of paperwork and carried it down the ramp, towards the bottom of the cavern. Reaching a room of the side halfway down, he set the box down with a smothered 'whump'. In the room there were also several more boxes, along with some equipment. Their 'headquarters'. Emerging from the room, he looked around, spotting Ellos.

Ellos was on a cavern ledge just bellow him. She was being hassled by three men he had never seen before. One punched Ellos in the stomach, making her double over. The other kicked her legs out from under her, making her collapse on the ground, bent over. The other man kicked her viciously in the stomach and sides, the other two standing back. Through this, Ellos made no sound.

What was Ellos doing? Strife wondered. Usually if anyone laid a hand on her like this, they would already be dead. Ellos had a 'thing' about people touching her. He waited, hiding behind a rock, slowly working the blade of a knife out of it's scabbard, carefully that no light reflected off the blade to alert the three men bellow of his presence.

Finished kicking her, the man looked at his comrades. "What are you afraid of? What is she, a hundred and ten pounds? I thought you wanted a quick lay."

Clutching her stomach, Ellos tried to stand up, but failed, dropping to the ground. She had been roughed up by the three a lot; her nose looked broken, and her entire body was covered in cuts and bruises. After the beating she had gotten, she would probably have a few broken ribs, too. She tried to stand up again, but the man who had spoken knocked her down again, kicking her in the face.

"Let's go sweetheart. You know the drill."

Finally letting a moan escape, Ellos tried to turn over, only to find her arms and legs held down by two of the men. She had her eyes shut, murmuring some kind of mantra under her breath, and had a defeated, reserved look on her face, as if she knew what terrible thing was about the happen to her and was resigned to it. That look gave Strife a weird, sinking feeling in his gut, the same feeling he got when something bad was about to happen.

They where going to rape her.

The man holding down her arms frowned. Something was hovering in the shadows above, just out of his blindfolded vision. Turning, he saw a boy there, about 15-16, arms crossed in front of him. Well, no matter if he lingered or stayed, he wasn't going to get a turn at the girl. If he was smart, he'd disappear, and maybe they'd leave him alone. Maybe.

But instead of going, the boy came out of the shadows and jumped down on the ledge with them. He spoke. "You should go and leave us alone."

The man sneered. He wasn't going to let this guy get the girl all to himself. The boy spoke again. "Take you business and get out."

"Why? You gonna fry us, pretty boy?"

The three looked at each other and sat up, surrounding Strife. Ellos just lay there; it hurt too much to move, yet. It even hurt to breathe, and she didn't want to face the business end of another steel-toed boot.

The biggest of the three looked at Strife. "Is there a name for the this little delusion your currently in? Are you high or something? Are you going to kill us with your bare hands?"

"With Sin Harvest, actually."

The guy frowned, not sure he had heard correctly. The only person who could do Sin Harvest was Sephiroth. "Whazzat?"

"I said, I'll kill you with Sin Harvest."

Holding out his hand, a sphere of red energy formed. Carefully, he placed it just soooo...on the rock next to him. No craftsman or artist could have been more precise. Slowly at first, but gaining speed, bouncing higher and higher as it slowly got bigger and bigger.

Unnerved, the three men's eyes looked from the boy to the spell, spell to boy. One part of his mind told him he was missing something important. The other told him that it didn't matter; there was no way in all the ten thousand hells this boy could cast Sin Harvest. The latter won out. It wasn't a matter of strength or magic affinity, but of ability. The ability to cast sin harvest was passed down genetically; only Sephiroth or anyone related to him by blood could do it. And you had to have a certain degree of dark powers and magic ability to cast it.

He started toward the white-haired boy. White hair...Sephiroth had white hair...

"Oh shit, he isn't bluffing!"

Running past his two comrades, he sprinted away as if the devil himself was on his heels. The other two looked at Strife. Another ball of energy appeared in his hand, and he put it down on the floor in front of him. Just sooo.

Making the same connection as their friend had, the two man looked at each other and ran, cursing, in the opposite direction.

Strife looked at the three men, until they were out of sight. Exhausted, he released the two spells, the balls of energy dissipating into nothing. Ellos hauled herself up on a rock. Shoulders shaking, she made a gasping, wheezing sound. At first Strife thought she was coughing, but then realized she was...laughing?

"Death by Sin Harvest. Why didn't I think of that? No everyone will think your Sephiroth in disguise or his long-lost son or something."

Strife helped Ellos up from the rock, for once not hurting him for touching her. Ellos knew well the requirements to cast Sin Harvest. She didn't know how he had learned or met the requirements to cast it; truth be told, she didn't want to. Strife kept silent too; wondering how often these guys had done this to Ellos, and why she hadn't fought back.

"They do this to a lot of girls. Usually if you keep quiet and don't respond, they just beat you and move on. Usually."

"Did you ever fight back?"

"Once." Ellos said. You know what that can do to you? When your 12? Doesn't matter that you passed out, just the idea...But Ellos shook such thoughts of self-pity from her brain.

Strife nodded. "I guess we'll start tomorrow, then?", Trying to make a joke. But Ellos just ignored him.
 ...

Author's notes.

1.) 1-minuite eggs and toast is a very common European breakfast. You dip the toast in the egg yolk. I wanted to give Ellos somewhat of an unusual favorite breakfast.

2.) hobnailed- to be studded with short nails with thick heads used to protect the soles of shoes or boots.
...

Adalai- wootage, it's don-one!!!!!! Does happy dance now time for our new slogan!

Stinky- we have a slogan?

Adalai; yes. Here it is. in sing-song-y voice If you really like this story, please review! If you really like this story please review! If you really like this story would you please just try and show it, if you really like this story please reviewww...

empty except for charon-of-the-depths. Crickets chirp.

Adalai- Damn you Crickets! DIE!!!!!!!!!!

Grabs Keyblade from Sora and Masume from Sephiroth and, with a red glint in her eye, charges after the crickets, going off the screen. Crashing noises ensue.

Sora- does she always do this?

Stinky- nope, this is the first time, Soma

Sora- Sora.

insert sound of a atomic bomb going off here

Sephiroth- Whips out popcorn and watches Adalai run back on the screen from the opposite side she disappeared from, waving both swords around but still, somehow, not managing to hit the cricket fleeing in front of her. She disappears off the end of the screen and more noises of mass destruction ensue.

Stinky- Wheeelllppphh..., until we can get Ellos under control or until she finally manages to kill a cricket, you heard the girl, review!

...

What can I do to wound you, you cold fish of a woman? You are ice, you are stone!

- Ayesha, The Deeds of the Disturber