Lightbringer; Chpt. 11- Of Many Hearts
Adalai- Alright Zena, Disclaimer!
Zena, Muse of Tragedy- Adalai never owned anything, never will own anything, and does not own anything. Ever. So don't sue. It will get you nowhere. Maybe, if she's a really good girl, Santa will give her Riku with a big red bow on his head, but I told her not to hold her breath. Then she started blathering about the Copenhagen Interpretation and Other Worlds Theory, and I ignored her. But yeah, that's the only way she could possibly own anything of Disney's or Square's.
Ok, now to answer Blahx3's latest review...
Don't worry, Kairi and Axel will reappear soon, Axel with his...well, I won't tell who. In this chappie. Sorry about the 'god why me' repeating. I cut and copy the beginning from previous chapters. But this one's new!
...
Dear Diary,
For once, I find myself writing not about me or my day, but about Strife. I worry about him, even though such emotions as worry or regret are useless, as they are reactions to things I can't change.
So why do I worry? Because he is my friend? Because I believe that I can do something?
I know he hides something. I can tell; something that rivets him with guilt and shatters his confidence in himself. I'm afraid it will cause him to do things he will later regret. I'm afraid it will draw him away from those close to him, from those who want to be close to him. But I have too much respect and trust to ask. But how can I trust him if he won't trust me?
I think the Nobody are using that to manipulate him. I think he's using them for his own ends, at well. Why else would he refuse to become a Nobody? I have no clue what he's planning to do, what he hopes to accomplish with the Nobody?
"Writing in your journal?"
Cid paused, pulling a small, cigarette-sized-and-shaped cigarillo cigar out of his jacket. Cutting off the tip, he lit the cigar by running a lit match over the cut end. To preserve the flavor of the cigar; you learned these sort of things, hanging around Cid.
Ellos breathed in deeply, savoring the sweet, flowery, muted red-purple, green and blue smell of the cigar. She always loved cigarillos for their smell, and the smoke never really bothered her like it did Aeris. It was nothing compared to the hot ashfall and the volcanic smoke form Yul; a little puff of cigar smoke didn't even faze her.
Cid had stopped smoking, but from time to time, he would smoke a cigar, usually to celebrate a victory. Even though he had broken his smoking habit, he could still be seen with a piece of hay or toothpick stuck between his teeth, especially when he was nervous or angry: oral fixation. It was sometimes the only sign of emotion Ellos could read on his harsh, craggy face.
Ellos remembered the time she had first seen Cid; the large butt of a Double-Corona cigar clutched in his mouth, Blue-green eyes considering the broken, ashy-headed teen in front of him. As the first image of Cid she had ever seen, Ellos could never shake the feeling that Cid should have a cigar clenched in his teeth when she saw him; he always seemed more relaxed and natural, more like himself.
Though Ellos could not really consider him a friend; she hadn't spent enough time with him to really be able to call him that, the two did enjoy each other's company. While dissimilar at first glance, they both shared some traits in common; introverted, a common belief that they should not meddle with the lives of others, a reluctance or inability to show feelings, a common interest in working with their hands. It was the same qualities that enabled Ellos to get along so well with Cloud. She and Cid could spend hours in Cid's Assesory shop or the Gummi hangar, working on gummi ships, without saying so much as a "Pass the 5mm wrench" in perfectly comfortable silence.
"Now" spoke Scion, sitting outside with the others on the balcony Leon had brought Ellos to meet the Nobody, "I suppose you want to know about Sora and why I look like him."
"YES!!!" Yuffie exclaimed, almost knocking over her chair as she stood, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation. "We've only been waiting for you to say something!" Aeris grabbed her gently and pulled her back down into her seat.
"Sora's heart was shattered into many pieces. Because all those pieces came from a single heart, they are all entangled. Somehow, all or at least some of those pieces gained bodies. Because they where pieces of hearts, inside bodies, each became a Nobody." Ellos stated. "And because of the fact they where entangled, you though that I would help you located the other Soras. Now, Scion, you fill in the blanks."
Scion nodded. "Sora stabbed himself through with a heartless sword. A heartless sword takes the heart and turns it into a heartless, but differs from conventional heartless in the fact that it shatters the heart into many fragments. Sora turned into several heartless, but one of the pieces managed to return to normal and gain back it's original human body, and all the other pieces also gained a new human body, made from his DNA. DNA's a tricky thing; some of them, like me, gained a blonde-haired gene instead of a brown one, some where female instead of male, some where deformed or had genetic disease thanks to missing, damaged, or extra DNA. Some became Nobody, managing to change back from a heartless, but some...didn't."
Aeris gasped. "Heartless with human bodies and minds; as smart as a normal human, but stronger."
Scion nodded. "Which is why we needed Ellos to track down all the 'reflections' as we call them. We need to kill them, before they manage to do serious harm.
Ellos spoke again. "So the Sora we saw tonight was the original body; but the reflections are trying to gain control of it for their own purposes. That why he seemed so unfocused and constantly changing from one moment to the next."
Scion nodded, aware that Ellos could not see him with her back turned but doing it anyway, out of habit.
"So what now?" Ellos asked.
"You come with us." Strife answered. "The sooner we get this over with, the better. Go to the lab and set up your equipment so that you can get to work as soon as possible. I want to have all the reflections located by this time tomorrow."
Obviously aware the conversation was over, everyone left the room. Aeris said she was needed at the night shift in the infirmary, processing Ellos' DNA test. Cid, Cloud and Ellos merely walked out, knowing whoever wanted to find them would already know where they were. Leon picked his gunblade, always by his side, and went off to practice before turning in. After Leon said this, Yuffie leaped up and said she was going to train too. Leon gave her one of his infamous icy stares. They had a usual relationship, those two. In reality both liked each other, but it was not in Leon's nature to express affection publicly and Yuffie expressed her own affection for the gunblade wielder with play teasing. So to the casual observer, they both seemed at each other's throats.
As the last person left, Strife turned to Scion. "What about Ellos' theory?"
Scion turned to him. "We don't know for sure if they are going to attack this world, and if they are, how and when. And if they decide to, we cannot stop them. We are too few in number."
"So you won't even try. You will just abandon them to their fate." Strife said, disgust and anger in his voice. "I thought the Nobody where committed to destroying the Mindless, to protecting the present world from the Mindless threat by keeping them locking in the In-Between Place."
"We can only do so much, and there are only so many of us. We preserve the balance and fight evil. In absence, evil prevails." Scion spoke, quoting the motto of the Non-Extistant Ones. "You can't save them all. You'll be lucky if you can save even those closest to you. Think about it. Ellos is a mere shell, human only in appearance; she feels no sorrow, no regret, no pain, no worry. Broken in body and mind, but stripped cleaner in heart of humanity than carrion crows strip a carcass. Human hearts don't last in Kingdom Hearts. They get burned away. I know what happens to people like that. Humans can't live without their humanity for long. The memories come back, to replace the humanity lost. They become consumed in them, unable to escape the sins of the past. Sora's just as broken, controlled by others for their own evil purposes, unable to escape a fate he can't fufill, which binds him to a door that doesn't exist. It's driving him crazy, making the darkness in his heart grow and grow."
All because of me. Strife thought. If I hadn't given in to the darkness, if he had never been born on Destiny Islands, Sora would have been safe with Kairi, never knowing about other worlds. I wasn't worthy to be the true keyblade master, but I wished I had been strong enough to carry it, instead of slinking into the darkness like the coward I am. Now he's suffering because of me. I should be the one out there, not him.
Scion continued. "Cloud, Cid and Leon get more withdrawn every time we come here. Aeris spends all her time in the infirmary, trying to make up for all the people she couldn't save before. Yuffie's starting to have panic attacks and mood swings and depression; she's happy and uppity one minute, and in the depths of depression the next. Aeris is thinking of putting her on depressants and bi-polar medication. You can only watch the destruction of your home so many times before it affects you."
Strife looked out the window. He would not give up on this world if it was attacked; despite the fact that his knew and expected his resistance would be useless. Guilt made his resistance grow, drove it to and past the point of recklessness.
The black clouds, laced with burning white lightning, took up the whole sky. For one time only, Twilight Town experienced a night without rain. Though Strife would usually be happy for the respite from rain, it's absence, omen-like, filled him with dread.
...
Ellos ran her hands over the materials in the lab, content to be in a familiar setting. But not happy. Ellos had never really felt 'happy' in the sense others did. She could be content, or pleased, but not really happy. To be happy, you had to be consumed by something to the point where you focused only on that thing which provided you with happiness, centered yourself around it to some extent, relaxed. Though Ellos was in familiar settings, she was and never had been completely relaxed, feeling safe. She was never consumed or centered entirely by her work, some part of her mind still focused around the room, waiting for an attack.
Setting up her equipment, Ellos turned to look at Clay when she tried, unsuccessfully, to sneak in.
"Damn." Clay exclaimed, snapping her fingers in front of her. "I must not be remembering how to sneak right anymore. My rein memory must be getting rusty."
"Your rein memory?" Ellos said, fingering the ends of her hair, straight now that she had blow dried and brushed it.
"Reincarnation memory. What' ya doin'? Can I help?"
"Yeah. Go find Scion and tell them to get down here. I need a keyblade and whatever passes for a heart in that Nobody to do this."
"Right-o." Clay said, saluting stiffly and just as stiffly walking away. Ellos merely shook her head, dismissing the Endless' apparent randomness.
Well what did you expect? Ellos thought. Whatever it was that she expected from the Endless, it was not a hyperactive unnamed sea-creature with horns and twigs for hair. Shaking her head slightly, she began setting up her equipment.
Suddenly, She straightened up, head cocked to the side, listening. The sound of guns and bombs going off could be heard through the walls, causing the room to vibrate.
Planetary defense systems Ellos thought, knowing that was the only thing that could make this much noise. Grinning slightly, Ellos picked up her gun and two S-shaped weapons and headed for the Ship Hangar.
And so it begins.
...
It was a beautiful, clear night, pitch black from the clouds which obscured what heavenly bodies might strive to light Twilight Town's darker hours. Bright as noon to Ellos, who shunned the light.
Long, graceful tentacles drifted lazily down from the clouds; slowly, taking their time, as if unconcerned with the multitude of fiery bolts, rain of sparks, and other projectiles from the Sunspires. Fog streaming from they're lithe tips, the tentacles wrapped around the buildings of the Center City. All around Twilight Town, similar tentacles descended from the ominous black sky, a coordinated attack that would make even the most battle-hardened general proud.
Gaining their purchase on the alien soil, the tentacles heaved, contracting. The behemoths slid with terrible, ominous grace over the tops of the buildings. Different from the original heartless ships, each was a heartless or mindless made from a world heart. The bottom of the creature was entirely composed of tentacles. The top had a torso and short arms with long, thin fingers and hands. The head was composed of hundreds of glowing eyes, fixed on many faces fused together, gaping openmouthed, faces contorted and twisted with emotion; sadness, fear, rage, despair. Out of the open mouths flying heartless and mindless and their fighter ships flew like a plague of deadly insects. Whether wailing in despair at the desolation soon to come or moaning in triumph of it's new conquest depended on whether the observer was inside or outside of it. It's appearance had been designed to for functionality as much as it was to impress awe on the weak, fleshy, ensouled bodies bellow it.
Right now those same weak inhabitants stopped where they stood, heads up, mouths agape, some gazing in awe, the wisest in fear, at their destruction. The bolts, magic spells, and screams of launching missiles from the sunspires became even more powerful and frenzied, trying to bring down the heartless ships who shrugged off the attacks like flies. The night sky lit up with moving lights and streaks of fire brighter than the stars, reminders of other ages never seen in Twilight's sky. Meteors hurled downwards as well, remnants of the age's world wall.
They illuminated Natalia's face, giving her an innocent glow she had so recently lost.
"So Pretty..." she said, sadly.
Riona grabbed Natalia, gently guiding her away from the window. She had been like this since she had seen Ellos so violently stab that heartless woman to death; sort of stuck in her own dream world, unwilling and unresponsive to the real one.
Feeling an hand on her shoulder, Riona turned around to see Leon, her own eyes as dark as the night sky was light. Leon lowered his gaze and whispered urgently to her.
"We take nothing, this time. Nothing but ourselves."
It did not matter that he was a SeeD. It did not matter that he was a gunblade wielder. It did not matter that he was an Advisor to the Twilight Town Senate. It did not matter that his financial resources where substantial. Such bodily trappings did not matter to the heartless or mindless; only the heart did. Only one thing mattered, anymore.
Finding a way to get the one person he loved most away from those that had already taken her from him once, away from the falling lights in the sky.
...
Working in the Infirmary, Aeris paused, seeing the blinking red indicator light on the DNA machine. She turned around, looking at the results. She blinked.
"3 separate sets of DNA? The samples must have been contaminated." Aeris mused. But as she scrolled downward, looking at the results of Ellos' DNA test, she realized it couldn't be a mistake.
Hearing the shots and missiles through the walls, she saved the information on a floppy disk and headed for the gummi ship. She would go to the Disney Kingdoms, try to find King Mickey. He needed to see this.
...
Ellos climbed out of the window and ascended to the top of the building. Near the top, she pushed off from the wall, landing on her feet on the roof. It was a jump not possible for a normal human. Thus Ellos had to expend extra effort to achieve it. Now she stood up, vision much improved.
The sky was aflame with bursts of light and destruction, the missles growing steadily more intense. The noise was overwhelming, the light even more so. Ellos had to shield her eyes against the light, even with her special glasses, which had turned black and opaque to protect her from the glare. Swarm heartless, all variety of new flying predator heartless and a wide variety of different types of smaller heartless ships, some designed as transport ships, others as fighter ships. Utilizing magic attacks and technology from worlds within and even farther than the Twilight System, the nimble heartless and their ships ran circles around even the fastest of defensive fighter craft deployed from the surface of Twilight Town.
Moving it's vast bulk with immense, pondering grace, the massive heartless behemoths smashed buildings and rend cracks and furrows in the ground. Pausing over a building too large to smashed with it's tentacles, the behemoth paused over it, multiple minds joined as one thinking, considering what to do next.
"Second foot down, Lord Axel."
The Shell's lips moved, but as always when one Nobody talked to another, Axel heard the words in his head, not his ears. Waving his hand, he shooed the Shell off impatiently, turning to the other figure in the room.
The figure was wreathed in shadows, only a pair of yellow heartless mako-energy saturated eyes visible. Looking down at the rough wood table, holographic screens imbedded in the wood came online to show the battle bellow.
"All those people on all those worlds who spoke of their wars as such horrible things; they've never seen a war like this. A war to end all wars. This system has grown weak and soft from these 4 years of peace. Soon all worlds will fall to it's fate." The figure with the yellow eyes spoke.
Always unable to hide his true feelings, Axel let his distaste show. He always felt the other was too confident and too artistic for the job. But they were always two commanders; one for the heartless and one for the mindless.
"Perhaps this time, new mindless and heartless will be easier to come by; the pure hearts, will fall to us easier. It is discouraging when so many of them die without knowing the reason why they were marked by the Endless. Without being given the truth, what their hearts where really meant for."
"Good fighters, these. Care should be taken to preserve as many as possible, to convert them."
"Don't talk about converts till we have taken the age. The work must be finished and the lessons delivered before we take the pure hearts."
"Yes, yes." The figure in the shadow's spoke, as If he did not wish to be bored by the details. "Go now, and 'finish the work'."
...
Down in the depths of the heartless ship, The mindless hounds howled and screamed, hellish parodies of animal screams, which couldn't be produced by any organic throat. Among them, men and women, taken as prisoners by the Nobody for reasons unknown to them, shrank back from the Mindless hounds, some whimpering in fear, some stoic, some shrinking back, terrified, some only regretting that they were not able to kill the Mindless hounds as much as the Mindless hounds regretted not being able to kill them.
Bellow them, a writhing mass of shades flowed, a hellish parody of a river. Some shades were sleeping, wracked with pleasant dreams or with nightmares; some were, horribly, awake. Beside the river, demons, half-demons, and devils resided, preferring the river of the dead to the company of the living, as they had done in the hells of their worlds, flotsam and jetsam collected by the warden of the Heartless ship's prison to serve as prison guards.
As the crescendo and pitch of the Mindless' hounds screams increased, Kairi stuck her head out of the bars of her makeshift cell. The walls of the place seemed to vibrate, shifting with malevolent purpose. Though she did not know what it meant, her cellmates did. It meant that another age would soon fall to the evil they're own worlds had fallen to. There could be no other outcome.
"Alright, Alright all ready!!!" an irate voice yelled from above. "Sheesh!" mechanical clacking was heard as the doors of the cells slid upward. The hounds rushed out, braying, searching for the one thing that could abate their awful hunger. Most ran out, disappearing through portals leading to the planet's surface bellow.
But as their own cell doors opened, the inhabitants grabbed their own weapons, preparing for what was to come. For not all the mindless would go to the surface, but seek out hearts nearer to them.
Kairi felt her fingers tighten on her quarterstaff. Squeezing herself into a ball, she fought her rising panic, forcing herself calm and praying the mindless would pass her by. Over her knees, she saw a pack of them, 5, jump onto her level and pad softly down the isle, sniffing for hearts. Sniffing for her.
Keeping quiet, she held her breath as they passed by her cell. Down below, another group leaped down to the lowest level, heading for where their demonic guards stayed. She heard the hounds scream, screams of pain as the demons of the pit ripped them apart on their blades, demonic blood giving them a hunger for blood and violence not unlike the heartless' hunger, screaming and boiling in their veins.
Suddenly, the last hound paused, sensing something. Maybe a flicker of energy from Kairi's heart, the carbon dioxide exhaled from her breath. Whatever it was, he turned and began to head, head down and haunches risen, a sign that he was stalking prey.
Oh God, Oh No, no, no, no...
Fear twisting her gut into a knot, Kairi stood, quarterstaff at the ready. Crouching, the Mindless leaped, jaws open to devour Kairi in one bite.
With a silent scream, Kairi thrust her metal pole into the heartless' neck, the blunt, pointed end going straight through the windpipe. Heaving, she swung the pole to the side, flipping the Mindless on the side. Ripping the pole from it's throat, she brought it down on it's stomach, unprotected by its armor. In it's death throws, it arched it's back, every spine shooting from it's back into the floor, embedded themselves in the cement. The pole ripped holes in it's flesh, white-blue ichors spilling from it's veins, finally dissolving into white mist, a blue-grey heart floating up, turning red and gold and finally disappearing.
Kairi collapsed against the back of the cell, exhausted. "This place is going to kill me." She murmured.
...
Clamoring bellow the last line of pipes on the gummi synthesizer, Ellos and Strife leaped down from the metal catwalk, landing with a thud on the dirt floor.
"This way, Doc." Ellos said, pulling Strife along behind her. As Ellos jumped down from the ledge after him, Strife felt his breath catch in his throat. After finding out Ellos had Marfan's, he seemed to catch his breath every time she jumped or fought, as if at any moment she might collapse. He had read a little about Marfan's in one of his father's books.
"Don't called me 'Doc', or I swear I'll throttle you." Ellos grinned. "But unfortunately you're the closest thing we have, which is pretty pathetic if it's a kid that gets all his knowledge from watching his dad and medical books."
Sadly, Strife had to agree. He had been living by mending wounds in exchange for slag from the surface.
"Here we are." Ellos said.
The pipes snaked down from above them, settling into a shallow pool of grey water. Strife bent down, running his hands in the sulfur-tainted water. As it trickled down his fingers, he saw that the water, in the deepest part, still retained some of it's blue-green color, so faint only a Forgotten's eyes could see it. It reminded him of the color of the sea at his home.
"There's this weird greenish-blue color in the water we can't get out. In not caused by the sulfur. I'm thinking it might be because of chlorine leaking in..."
Strife laughed softly. "Ellos, water's supposed to be that color."
"Oh. Did you have a lot of water where you come form?" Ellos asked, curious. She had always had an affinity for water.
"Yeah. We lived on an island; we where surrounded by the ocean."
"What's an ocean?"
"Well, imagine water as far as you can see, but a stronger, deeper blue-green color."
Ellos tried, and imaginative as she was, failed. "Will you show me the ocean when we get to the Present World? Your World?"
Strife paused, thinking. He didn't deserve to go back to his home, after helping the darkness that had consumed it. But Ellos did deserve to be someplace happy and carefree. To see the ocean. "I'll show you an ocean, but I don't think I'll be able to get back to Destiny Islands from Hollow Baston; It's just too far."
Ellos nodded. Unslinging the pack from her back, she began to set materials and machines they would need to combine the keyblade pieces and the batwing sword into the shell of the keyblade.
Ellos picked up a piece of Heartgiver and a piece of Souleater. She could feel the keyblade's hearts pulsing in the piece of metal, crying out to be healed. "I'm going to go and sythesis the heart we need to make this thing. You work on the keyblade shell." Ellos said.
Strife nodded and went to work. First, he'd need to make a mould of the bat-wing sword, and then remove the heart from it, and bind it into a completely new sword, made from the remains of the keyblades. They planed to mix it with gummi blocks and pour it into the mould, so it would crystallize into the batwing shape, giving it a sharper edge and making the blade itself stronger, lighter, and less likely to crack. Then they'd have to bind the Endless and mindless essence from the bat-wing blade into the new blade, as well as the heart made from the remains of the 2 keyblades and the Nobody heart. Long, difficult, and with no room for error, it would work.
They just needed a Nobody's heart shard and they had no idea how to get one.
...
Adalai- Yes! I am so grea-at, I am so grea-at! I did a chappie with Sora's explination and Kairi and Axel and everything! (drops down snoring)
Zena- what happened to her?
Stinky- She took pep pills and sleeping pills at the same time.
Zena- oh.
Adalai- (wakes up) And now a word from our sponsors!
Zena- we don't have any sponsors.
Adalai- yes we do. That's weird, Stinky isn't...well...stinky anymore.
Stinky- It had to do with that thing me and Blahx3 did when you gave me up.
Adalai- oh. I don't suppose you'll tell me.
Stinky- lets just say you won't be having anymore problems with Dante Sparta eating your lunch anymore.
Adalai- Ok-kay...Anyway, I cleaned away all the miscellaneous unused characters from this section and put them in the fic. Except for Sephiroth. But now I'm lonely...
Sephiroth- what am I, WEAPON food?
Adalai- So feel free to review and suggest characters, real or imagined, to do my disclaimers and beg people at the end of the chappie to review. However, since Sephy is the only one here, he gets to do the first one.
Sephy- Yay!, uh, I mean, KILL!
Adalai- just read it. Don't make me set Natalia on you. (Natalia beams at Sephy with cutesy eyes.)
Sephy- ah, cuteness...to...much...fine, I give. Review please!
Adalai- now back to your cages.
Sephy and Natalia- awww...
Adalai- don't make me use the cattle prod.
(Sephy and Natalia run into their cages and close the doors.)
...
Because the great day of their wrath has come and who can withstand it?
- Revelation, 6:17