Author's Note: Before all else, I'd like to apologize. Riku's side of the
story is entirely complex, not to mention confusing for me, the author. If
you have been furious that he ended up stuck with Tarzan and Pooh, please
understand it was all done on purpose, because I believed the story needed
some outrageous groupings. Kairi's side of the story is complex as well;
actually, it is more complex than Riku's side. Therefore, if it gets all
the more confusing as you read the chapter, bear in mind that if you are
patient enough and read through the whole chapter, it will all be worth it
in the future chapters. Now, on with the story!
Secrets of Memories
Chapter 10: First Steps
"You've piloted this before?" Tarzan asked curiously, his green eyes staring the controls of the gummi ship Cid let Riku, Pooh and Tarzan rent.
"Um...no...but," Riku answered as he faced the controls. Doubt was rather pronounced in his voice.
"This is beautiful," Tarzan said with a sarcastic smile. "Here we are, set and ready to go, and Riku here don't know how the use this?"
"Does that mean we're gonna stay here in Traverse Town?" Pooh asked dubiously as he peered out the window. They had not left the dock right outside Traverse Town yet. He sounded rather hopeful. After all, his home was Traverse Town.
"Nope," Riku answered as he felt about with his feet. "There might be a pedal here..."
His boot touched something like a lever and pushed it down.
The Gummi ship roared to life. Pooh shouted, "Oh! Its alive!"
"Now to get it to move forward," Riku found another lever, at his right. His hand gripped it and pushed it forward.
It would not budge. Riku gritted his teeth and tried to push it forward but it would not budge.
"I think Cid gave us a dud just for the heck of it," he growled.
"I think this says B-R-A-K-E-S," Tarzan spelled out slowly as he leafed through a pamphlet. "What's that?"
"Brakes?" Riku said. "Oh great, I just switched on the brakes! But ships don't come to life if you put on the brakes..."
His boot lifted the lever back up, undoing the brakes. However, he had the misfortune of having his hand trying to push forward the lever to his right. His whole weight leaned on his right hand and as soon as he lifted the brakes, the lever to his right gave way and the ship bolted away, promptly shoving everybody backwards. Riku was shoved into the back of his seat, Tarzan clung to the pilot's chair, which would've been ripped off its bottom if Riku hadn't been sitting on it, and Pooh was tossed to the way back of the ship. Just as Riku gripped the steering controls, which were practically floating in front of him, he heard something crack in the back, and all the lights in the gummi ship were turned off. It was all dark, all black. Pooh was heard saying, in a very small voice, "Oops. I think I broke something."
"Disastrous," Riku sighed. "Well, it looks like we'll be traveling in darkness."
"Maybe this one'll bring the lights back on," Pooh mused and Riku heard something click.
Frigid cold wind began to course through the inside of the ship. Riku found his face very numb from the cold and it annoyed him, for he was still trying to understand how the controls worked, was trying to sense his way to the Coliseum, and he was trying to dodge the many obstacles that would be rather hindering if he crashed into every one of them.
"A-I-R C-O-N-D-I-T-I-O-N-I-N-G," Tarzan spelled out.
"Air conditioning," Riku snarled, his temper starting to thin. "Pooh, can you try and turn it off?"
Pooh promptly pressed another button and Riku swore he heard a hissing sound, as though the door into the gummi ship was opening in the middle of space.
"He opened door to space," Tarzan calmly told Riku. "Is that bad?"
"WHAT DID HE DO?!" Riku bolted out of the pilot's seat. Tarzan sat in the pilot's seat and wrestled with the controls while Riku pulled Pooh away from the door. "Pooh, what did you do?"
"Tried to stop the air...um...air something," Pooh explained.
"Well Pooh, you just succeeded in turning off all the lights in the gummi ship, turned on the air conditioning, AND opened the hatchway into space! Pooh, don't touch anything from now on."
"Um...okay," Pooh agreed. "Oh bother...what does this button do?"
Riku, who was tussling with the door, could not believe Pooh could forget so fast. "Pooh, don't touch-"
The engines suddenly shut down and Tarzan yelled, "Stopped moving! Pooh shut down engines!"
Riku gave a suppressed roar, pulled the hatchway shut and stormed over to the controls where Pooh was looking at the buttons and the switches balefully.
"Pooh, DON'T. TOUCH. ANYTHING," Riku said each word slowly. "Understand?"
His teeth started to chatter. The air conditioning was still on.
"What I have to suffer through in order to find Sora," he muttered as he peered at the controls. "Ah...AIR CONDITIONING."
He flipped the switch and the frigid air stopped flowing. "And the...ah, MAIN POWER SWITCH."
He flipped that switch on as well and the engines roared back into life. Tarzan immediately thrust the lever forward and began to fight with the controls.
"And...oh great, Pooh, you broke the switch! LIGHT SWITCH. You snapped the thing. Excellent, Pooh, excellent," Riku told the bear sarcastically.
"I did good?" Pooh questioned.
Riku smacked himself.
"Is that big swirly thing good or bad?" Tarzan suddenly demanded, seeming to master the controls. "Its very strong. Very difficult to fight it."
"A big swirly thing?" Riku ran to the cockpit. "Oh shoot. That's a warp hole! To the left, to the left!"
Tarzan smoothly executed the command and the gummi ship slowly pulled away from the gravitational pull of what was a warp hole. Riku scowled at Tarzan; why was he able to control the ship and he couldn't?
"Wow," was Pooh's comment as they soared through the asteroids and spinning rings. They didn't count on the number of Heartless ships, though. And they did not expect those ships to fire.
"Up, up!" Tarzan complied to Riku's directions. "No, no, down, get down! To the left, to the left-shit!"
Tarzan cringed at the way Riku cursed as a bolt of energy clipped the gummi ship. Growling all the more murderously, he began to walk circles around the spacious area behind the cockpit, obviously searching for something. He was still walking circles when he noticed that he didn't see Pooh. And he had just learned that it was a bad thing.
There was a sudden sizzling sound, Tarzan gave an exclamation of surprise in a language Riku had never heard of, and a greenish-white bolt of energy curved through space to demolish two Heartless ships. Another bolt of energy ran through three ships before dissipating. It was obvious somebody was firing the weapons that Cid had installed on this gummi ship. And Riku had a very good idea who it was.
"Pooh!" he yelled.
"Here," a dislocated voice answered. Riku had another very good idea where the voice came from, though, and went to the immediate right outside the cockpit. He spotted a door, well hidden, and swung it open.
There was Pooh, sitting on a stool that was rather tall for him and he was holding something that looked like a stationary steering wheel with vertical handles on the sides for the hands/paws and a red button on the top of each handle. There was a radar screen in the very center of the wheel and Pooh was looking at it very intently. Neon-green circles on the screen were pinpointing the Heartless ships, which were red triangles, and Pooh was tapping the red buttons nonstop. The lasers and cannons on the gummi ship fired as soon as they recharged and Pooh kept up a barrage of lasers and ammo, keeping the way clear for the gummi ship Tarzan somehow was able to pilot, as they made their way to Coliseum, where Hercules and Phil were said to be under siege.
Riku kept a scowl on his face as they soared through space. Here he was, the most knowledgeable of the three on the matters of Heartless and he was rendered helpless in a gummi ship. And his two unlikely companions had never seen a gummi ship before and they were able to use it with the greatest of ease.
What kind of games was life playing?
Tarzan uttered something in a language Riku doubt he'll ever be able to decipher but from the way Tarzan uttered it, Riku knew the situation was not beautiful. He peered through the spacious window in the front of the ship and felt his jaw drop.
Masses of dark Heartless ships (you'll never be able to label them if you ever saw them; they're like nothing seen before) were swirling around a world that seemed to be occupied only by one big marble building. (If you ever saw Finding Nemo, you can compare how these ships move to how those moonfish that teased Marlin and helped Dory moved) The big marble building had columns and was pale in color, like marble. It was marble.
"Is that Coliseum?" Riku wondered as they neared the masses of Heartless ships. "Oh shit, it is! Damn, look at all those ships!"
"Oh bother..." Pooh's voice drifted in. "Do we have to go in? There are a lot of red triangles and they're all starting to point in our direction.
The blood in Riku went cold. If he was correct, those red triangles on the radar screen were the Heartless and they have just noticed this very foreign gummi ship jumbling its way through space. Tarzan affirmed his fears when he exclaimed in that unknown language, then spoke in English, " They're pointing their guns at us!"
Riku's heart took a very deep dive. Now every Heartless ship was pointing in their direction. He could feel the strange newness of these ships, which looked so different from the ships a year ago. He could very much sense the laser cannons each Heartless ship had. Each of them had two and a few huge ones that resembled Leviathans had three. Or was it four?
"Like dodging bees going up the honey tree," was Pooh's analogy to this very dangerous predicament.
"How'd you do that?" Riku had an idea.
"You...um...oh bother, I can't remember," Pooh replied.
"Oh bother myself," Riku grumbled. How'd he ever get Pooh into this?
"Oh, oh!" Pooh suddenly exclaimed. "You dodge them. You keep going through and dodge them. Very simple. And you have friends, at least some, trying to help you in the process."
"Like an elephant charging through the forest," Tarzan mused. "Many obstacles but they keep trampling through. Scaring up my family in the process. Kerchak really had me for that."
"And who do we have to can distract those Heartless ships in the process of charging through that mass of nightmares?" Riku demanded.
"That's the problem," Tarzan agreed.
The ship suddenly rocked. Riku grabbed onto the pilot's chair before he lost his footing. "Pooh?"
"A missile," Tarzan read off of something on a screen that suddenly popped up out of nowhere.
Riku watched as a missile, painted with colors that clashed horribly (" Probably why Aerith chose the colors of the gummi ship instead of Cid himself," Riku mused out loud in the process) sail past the Heartless ships. Multitudes of cannons tilted their aim from them to the missile and they fired.
"Hang on," Tarzan said abruptly. Riku was given less than one second to decipher the meaning behind the two given words when Tarzan shoved the lever forward and the gummi ship jumped forward. Riku heard Pooh give out an," Oh!" Then he found himself wincing as he heard a crash and Pooh went sliding out of the room he was in seconds ago on his back. He hit his head against a wall with many buttons (more wincing) and all he said was, "Oh bother."
"Booster rockets charging," a mechanical voice boomed into the atmosphere. Riku winced. His head was right next to the loudspeaker the voice came from.
Tarzan suddenly swerved left; as Riku nearly sent himself flying and Pooh slid across the floor and bashed his head against more buttons, Tarzan shouted, "Like swinging from vine to vine!"
"How's that possible?" Riku yelled. He suddenly jolted and his ears ached from the screeching sound of metal hitting metal.
"You jump from one ship to another!" Tarzan answered. At the same time, the mechanical voice roared in Riku's ear, "Booster rockets fired."
Riku grabbed onto the pilot's seat for dear life as the gummi ship jumped forward and bounded from one Heartless ship to another, scrunching up those poor ships in the process through impact. Pooh continued to slide to the very back until Riku heard a very distinctive crunch. Before he knew it, water was spraying all over the place. Cid, apparently, tried to install a sprinkler system and succeeded. But, in this case, there was no fire to put out, except the fire that was Riku's temper.
"Pooh!" he yelled as Tarzan shouted, "We made it!"
Before Riku had time to understand what Tarzan had exclaimed over his own voice, the gummi ship bounced on a very hard surface, then slammed into a rather foreign surface. Pooh went sliding on, partially slowed by the wet conditions that made him rather soggy, and did not do any more damage to Cid's poor ship. The ship apparently had come to a stop; Riku staggered to his feet and slowly and carefully walked over to the miraculously undamaged hatchway. Tarzan swung himself out of the pilot's seat, grabbed his spear, and helped Pooh up. They moved rather gingerly across the soaking surface; Pooh seemed to have a horrible habit of sopping up the water. Tarzan made a move to suggest that Pooh use fire to dry out the water but Riku quickly stopped him, explaining the full purpose of a sprinkler system. They moved rather slowly and carefully to the hatchway; they never really did get a chance to see where they landed. They had the really bad luck of having the nose of the gummi ship was somehow buried in what seemed to be marble.
"Ready?" Riku asked the other two.
When they nodded, he slowly opened up the hatchway and spotted a rather dark sky, with smoky clouds. He pulled himself out of the ship and helped up the other two. They then took to observing their surroundings.
They seemed to be in a courtyard, with columns and walls made of marble. There were statues of warriors, with rather archaic armor, short swords, and round shields, their sword arms outstretched over large doors framed by graceful columns. Large braziers, some frosted over, some still crackling merrily, sat on both sides of the courtyard. There seemed to have been a few battles here; scorch marks and minor damage could be seen everywhere. There was also evidence that some plaques had been ripped off walls; very large plaques, Riku noted. Of course there was the fact that half of Cid's ship was buried into one marble wall. There was also the fact that three beings were watching them with caution and great impatience.
One was a short, rather grumpy-looking man with horns and a goat bottom, complete with fur, hooves, and tail. The most notable details on his face were his very big nose and his glaring eyes, ready to criticize everything in life.
With him was a tall and willowy young woman with long, curly red hair, rather seductive purple eyes, and adorned in a purple dress that Riku sensed was rather simple and antiquated. Standing next to her was a tall white horse with blue poking out here and there and from its shoulders were big white-feathered wings.
"Some reception," Riku muttered through his lips.
"And about time you got here, too!" the little half-man, half-goat yelled at them. "Cid told me you three were coming to help us a long way before Meg and good ol' horsy right here-" the winged horse snorted in protest "- saw a ship come down and stick itself in a wall! What took you so long?"
"I-uh-we-uh-um..." Riku had a bit trouble recovering from the short person's harsh words. "Sigh...its not easy flying through swarms of Heartless ships."
"It doesn't take that long," the woman, Meg, retorted.
"And we had trouble using the ship," Tarzan quickly added.
The little guy waved it all away, obviously changing the subject. "Now we have some trouble here and it's a good thing the three of you are here. I don't know what this little teddy bear-" he pointed at a stupefied Pooh "- can do but I know you two can fight. And that's good 'cuz our Mister Godlike Superman ain't here!"
"Who?" Riku asked in complete confusion.
"Hercules, that's what!" the little guy exclaimed.
"...Kairi, I don't think this is home," Selphie moaned as Kairi tried to focus her eyes.
Her eyes focused on two things. One, where Selphie and she landed was blanketed in gray, so that the colors were rather hazy and dreamy. Two, she was staring straight into the cheery, 'I'm the man' face of someone with blue eyes, a red headband that kept back curly blond hair, and the biggest grin on any face she had ever seen.
"Uh...um...hi there," Kairi said nervously.
"Phew...I thought the two of you wouldn't make it!" the rather buff guy said with an even bigger grin.
"Uh...yeah, hi," Selphie had noticed him, too. "Who are you?"
"Hercules is my name," the man replied as if he was the self-appointed Superman. "Helping people is my game. What's your trouble?"
Kairi and Selphie blinked. Who was this guy?
"Um...we were just..." Kairi was at a loss for words.
"Stuck here, too?" Hercules supplied. "You're not alone! Do you two, by chance, know what this place is?"
Both shrugged. Selphie answered, "We got in here through a door. You?"
"A door? Hm...funny," Hercules had a thoughtful look on his face, the expression enhancing his good looks. Kairi had a suspicion he was a womanizer. "I got here when some big white creature made a jab at me. I jumped back to dodge it but instead, I was falling. Then I was here."
"A big white thing?" Kairi asked.
"Heartless aren't white!" Selphie said vehemently. "You must've been dreaming!"
"You know of the Heartless, too?" Hercules suddenly looked very much depressed. "First that kid with the huge key, now you two youngsters. Why would Father make kids fight Heartless. I don't understand..."
The words "...that kid with the huge key..." suddenly clicked in Kairi's mind. She stared at Hercules, her mouth falling open.
"Kairi? Kairi, are you okay?" Selphie asked worriedly.
"Kairi," Hercules repeated the name. "That's a really nice name."
"Selphie, he's...he's..." Kairi tried to say.
"Selphie's a nice name, too," Hercules mused.
"Sir-Hercules, did you meet Sora?" Kairi finally spit out.
For what seemed to be the longest side, both sides said nothing. Then Hercules said, "As a matter of fact, I did. Why? You know him?"
Kairi nodded. "I'm looking for him."
Hercules had a thoughtful look on his face. "It's not going to be easy, I can tell you that."
"Huh? Why?" Selphie asked curiously.
"Donald, Goofy, and he were headed for the other side of the universe," Hercules explained. "Ol' Phil got a message from a Princess Kida about some Heartless invasion around where she lives and told Sora that he had to go there. The odd thing was Phil never told them who told him that they had to go there. He just said that they had to go there and I think he made up some lie about a whole lot of Heartless being there. Sora gunned for that spot so fast, I don't think even Father would be able to stop him with lightening."
"So he's...not here," Kairi concluded, desperation in her face and voice.
"Nope," Hercules answered. "And judging from where we are, its not easy getting back into the real world where the others are."
"Real world?" Selphie demanded, startled by that statement.
Hercules nodded. "Yeah, this place ain't the real world. That's why its so gray-" he waved his hand at the gray mist that blanketed the land "-and that's why you don't' see much living stuff. I think Father told me it was the 'world In-between'."
"In-between?" Kairi repeated. "What do you mean by 'In-between'?"
"Beats me," Hercules answered with a shrug. "I was trying to figure out what In-between meant. That was when I heard some screaming, which was the first time I've heard real voices in months. Then I discovered you two falling from this door-shaped hole in the sky. And here we are, the three of us lost in this gray world."
Kairi and Selphie looked very upset.
"Oh relax!" Hercules laughed. "Its not like we'll be lost here forever! I was talking to a Shade not long ago and-"
"What's a Shade?" Selphie asked quickly.
"Oh, they're escaped souls from the Underworld," Hercules answered good- naturedly. Noting the blank looks on their faces, he re-explained, " They're souls of the dead people and the only Shades you'll ever see are the ones who escaped Cerberus and the Underworld."
Selphie's face turned horribly white. "Dead?"
"They won't hurt you," Hercules said rather worriedly. "Unless, of course, you're covered in blood. Them Shades go crazy when they smell blood."
Selphie looked like she was about to faint.
"Well, anyways," Hercules continued, not noticing that Selphie was about to faint, "I was asking a Shade where the hell I was-not hell as in the Underworld but hell as in hell- and he told me-it was some old seer or sumptin' like that 'cause he kept mumbling about the downfall of some place called Atlantis- that where I was called In-between, where all the worlds devoured by the Heartless and the Nobodies are-"
"Nobodies?" Kairi and Selphie demanded.
"Yeah, Nobodies," Hercules answered. "They are the strangest you've ever seen. They're white, for one, and they can shape shift when they want or need to- I thought this one Nobody was Pegasus and let him in and he got me here instead of being my flying horse- and I've heard that they got their name Nobody because they can get rid of a person's soul. It would never help them because they can't made more Nobodies by doing that but that's what they do. They've been at war with the Heartless for so long it amazes me that they're still standing and trying to get rid of the rest of us."
"Nobodies?" Selphie sounded very helpless. "Oh my god."
"Well, anyways, we're standing at the crossroads. Go one way, you'll find some world that's been taken by the Heartless or the Nobodies. Go another way, same thing. Everywhere you go, you find half-destroyed worlds. They're half-destroyed because the Heartless only removed the heart of the world, not the soul. Believe me, you don't want to know what happens when Nobodies take a world. Wonderland exploded into bits of pieces thanks to the Nobodies and only the heart remains, which is here. In-between is where either the heart of a world or the soul of the world come to. Quite a depressing place, isn't it?"
Kairi and Selphie moaned. "What kind of life is this?!"
"The Shade told me of a door," Hercules said rather thoughtfully. "It is a door that will help hinder the progress of the Nobodies. I mean, there's Kingdom Hearts but only the Oblivion can seal that. And nobody knows-I mean as in people, not the Nobodies- where the hell the Oblivion went. And only one person owns the Oblivion and that one person can close Kingdom Hearts and slow down both the Heartless and the Nobodies. Did you know that Kingdom Hearts promotes all darkness? But this one door- I think the Shade called it the Door of Twilight but I'm sure there's a shorter name for it- can stop the Nobodies, at least for a little while."
"Really?" Kairi asked eagerly.
"Yeah," Hercules answered. "The Nobodies can be slowed down and that will give the others, the ones in the real world, time to find the owner of the Oblivion and close Kingdom Hearts for good. But, of course-"
"- I thought Sora was the owner of the Oblivion," Selphie said. "Didn't he close Kingdom Hearts?"
"- the war's coming so-no, Sora isn't the actual owner of the Oblivion. He's the owner of the Kingdom Key," Hercules corrected. "That's what the Shade told me, at least. Somebody else is the real owner of the Oblivion. And I don't know who it is."
"What war?" Kairi asked.
"–I mean, it could be- war? Oh, right, war," Hercules explained. "There's a war between the dark and the light. Been going on since life first came into being but the thing was, the dark was becoming so strong, it was ridiculous. Close Kingdom Hearts and the Door of Twilight and the dark is still stronger than light. That's why Sora needs to open the door of light. But closing both doors still help since they slow down the progress of eating up the universe so-"
"Let's find that Door of Twilight," Kairi suggested. "Its here and we can find it and do whatever in order to help Sora find the door of light. Then we can all go home."
Selphie had a skeptical look on her face. "Oh yeah, like...where? We don't know where this door is or what we're supposed to do once we find it!"
"The Shade said he spread clues all over the place," Hercules said. "He's one weird Shade."
"Then why don't we find the Shade and ask him about the clues he left all over the place and the Door of Twilight?" Kairi proposed. "Hercules already talked to this Shade before; he'll be easier to talk to when we have someone who's talked to him before. And Selphie and I can do something worthwhile. I mean, spending days on Destiny Islands without a single thing to do is a bit boring, right?"
Selphie and Hercules both had grins on their faces.
"All right, Herc," Kairi scanned the gray-toned scenario before them. " Where to?"
"...remember, they must be stopped at all costs," the hooded figure spoke to the cluster of beings dressed in black coats, with hoods shadowing their faces. "They cannot meet Princess Kida. She knows too much for her own good. We must see to the Princess. And the King. We must track him down before he finds us out. He cannot know who we are. Understood?"
The hooded heads inclined towards the speaker slightly.
"Do not fail," the speaker said coldly. "He will not like it if we fail."
The beings nodded and dispersed. Two of them headed for a third, who was wandering away from the rest of the hooded beings.
"There are too many of them," one of them, slightly shorter than the others, spoke quietly. It was the voice of a young woman. "It will not be easy."
"I've been to the meetings," the tallest one, with a calm, collected deep voice of one who knows, answered. The three glowing orbs around him danced silently."They won't all be where the Princess is. And at least a third will be after the King. And the King is not easy prey."
"All Phoenixes aren't easy prey," the third spoke with the voice of a young man. "Dragons, on the other hand, are easier, since they tend to fight instead of flight."
"They're not dragons," the woman countered. "They're people who must know of the world around them."
"In time," the eldest one spoke. "Grandmother Willow is not some fool of a tree, you know. She told me that her young charge's dreams will help those two. Her young charge is very much aware of the world. She will help them. And Grandmother Willow is more than a match for the handful of us who will be there."
"Who is this Grandmother Willow anyways?" the young man muttered, obviously irritated. His question went unanswered.
"And the Princess?" the young woman asked.
"The Crystal force recognizes the darkest evil," the eldest answered. " They know of the Princess' circumstances. She is not like the other princesses, the ones Maleficent was searching for. Of course, I will have to tell her that she can't just go ahead and collect all seven of them again. She always gets touchy when the word princess pops up. Next thing you know, she's gonna try and get herself really killed and that won't be good for Him. Maleficent is too important to go running around ranting about her dream of harnessing the powers of the Heartless. Her dream is not worth dying for. I should tell her that and try not to get scorched by her in the process."
The other two snorted.
"Are you two ready?" the eldest's voice had a steely edge to it.
The figure of the young woman tapped at something at her waist on the left side; the eldest barely made out a sword hilt. The young man didn't make any motion; he was already holding his weapon, a staff brimming full with magic.
"Go quickly and quietly," the eldest said quietly. "The others are too busy; they won't notice your absence. Clear the way for them in any way you can. But don't get caught. And don't let them see you. Both of them."
The young woman and the young man nodded, bowed, and strode away.
The eldest watched them walk into the strange, dark moonlit world they all existed and grounded in. The quiet, dark waters of the seashore of this moody world tapped against the shore. The wind was soft, quiet. Maybe a little too quiet.
"And whatever in the world were you telling those two?" a cold, dark voice asked behind the eldest one. "You know I won't allow secrecy."
The eldest one stayed silent, knowing that the speaker's copper-brown eyes were on him, glittering yellow with anger.
"No matter," the speaker said. "They will be hunted down, like the King and the Princess and them. You won't be leaving here either. Not for a while. And you will be dealt with when the time comes."
The eldest did not mind. He trained the both of them well. Too well.
Secrets of Memories
Chapter 10: First Steps
"You've piloted this before?" Tarzan asked curiously, his green eyes staring the controls of the gummi ship Cid let Riku, Pooh and Tarzan rent.
"Um...no...but," Riku answered as he faced the controls. Doubt was rather pronounced in his voice.
"This is beautiful," Tarzan said with a sarcastic smile. "Here we are, set and ready to go, and Riku here don't know how the use this?"
"Does that mean we're gonna stay here in Traverse Town?" Pooh asked dubiously as he peered out the window. They had not left the dock right outside Traverse Town yet. He sounded rather hopeful. After all, his home was Traverse Town.
"Nope," Riku answered as he felt about with his feet. "There might be a pedal here..."
His boot touched something like a lever and pushed it down.
The Gummi ship roared to life. Pooh shouted, "Oh! Its alive!"
"Now to get it to move forward," Riku found another lever, at his right. His hand gripped it and pushed it forward.
It would not budge. Riku gritted his teeth and tried to push it forward but it would not budge.
"I think Cid gave us a dud just for the heck of it," he growled.
"I think this says B-R-A-K-E-S," Tarzan spelled out slowly as he leafed through a pamphlet. "What's that?"
"Brakes?" Riku said. "Oh great, I just switched on the brakes! But ships don't come to life if you put on the brakes..."
His boot lifted the lever back up, undoing the brakes. However, he had the misfortune of having his hand trying to push forward the lever to his right. His whole weight leaned on his right hand and as soon as he lifted the brakes, the lever to his right gave way and the ship bolted away, promptly shoving everybody backwards. Riku was shoved into the back of his seat, Tarzan clung to the pilot's chair, which would've been ripped off its bottom if Riku hadn't been sitting on it, and Pooh was tossed to the way back of the ship. Just as Riku gripped the steering controls, which were practically floating in front of him, he heard something crack in the back, and all the lights in the gummi ship were turned off. It was all dark, all black. Pooh was heard saying, in a very small voice, "Oops. I think I broke something."
"Disastrous," Riku sighed. "Well, it looks like we'll be traveling in darkness."
"Maybe this one'll bring the lights back on," Pooh mused and Riku heard something click.
Frigid cold wind began to course through the inside of the ship. Riku found his face very numb from the cold and it annoyed him, for he was still trying to understand how the controls worked, was trying to sense his way to the Coliseum, and he was trying to dodge the many obstacles that would be rather hindering if he crashed into every one of them.
"A-I-R C-O-N-D-I-T-I-O-N-I-N-G," Tarzan spelled out.
"Air conditioning," Riku snarled, his temper starting to thin. "Pooh, can you try and turn it off?"
Pooh promptly pressed another button and Riku swore he heard a hissing sound, as though the door into the gummi ship was opening in the middle of space.
"He opened door to space," Tarzan calmly told Riku. "Is that bad?"
"WHAT DID HE DO?!" Riku bolted out of the pilot's seat. Tarzan sat in the pilot's seat and wrestled with the controls while Riku pulled Pooh away from the door. "Pooh, what did you do?"
"Tried to stop the air...um...air something," Pooh explained.
"Well Pooh, you just succeeded in turning off all the lights in the gummi ship, turned on the air conditioning, AND opened the hatchway into space! Pooh, don't touch anything from now on."
"Um...okay," Pooh agreed. "Oh bother...what does this button do?"
Riku, who was tussling with the door, could not believe Pooh could forget so fast. "Pooh, don't touch-"
The engines suddenly shut down and Tarzan yelled, "Stopped moving! Pooh shut down engines!"
Riku gave a suppressed roar, pulled the hatchway shut and stormed over to the controls where Pooh was looking at the buttons and the switches balefully.
"Pooh, DON'T. TOUCH. ANYTHING," Riku said each word slowly. "Understand?"
His teeth started to chatter. The air conditioning was still on.
"What I have to suffer through in order to find Sora," he muttered as he peered at the controls. "Ah...AIR CONDITIONING."
He flipped the switch and the frigid air stopped flowing. "And the...ah, MAIN POWER SWITCH."
He flipped that switch on as well and the engines roared back into life. Tarzan immediately thrust the lever forward and began to fight with the controls.
"And...oh great, Pooh, you broke the switch! LIGHT SWITCH. You snapped the thing. Excellent, Pooh, excellent," Riku told the bear sarcastically.
"I did good?" Pooh questioned.
Riku smacked himself.
"Is that big swirly thing good or bad?" Tarzan suddenly demanded, seeming to master the controls. "Its very strong. Very difficult to fight it."
"A big swirly thing?" Riku ran to the cockpit. "Oh shoot. That's a warp hole! To the left, to the left!"
Tarzan smoothly executed the command and the gummi ship slowly pulled away from the gravitational pull of what was a warp hole. Riku scowled at Tarzan; why was he able to control the ship and he couldn't?
"Wow," was Pooh's comment as they soared through the asteroids and spinning rings. They didn't count on the number of Heartless ships, though. And they did not expect those ships to fire.
"Up, up!" Tarzan complied to Riku's directions. "No, no, down, get down! To the left, to the left-shit!"
Tarzan cringed at the way Riku cursed as a bolt of energy clipped the gummi ship. Growling all the more murderously, he began to walk circles around the spacious area behind the cockpit, obviously searching for something. He was still walking circles when he noticed that he didn't see Pooh. And he had just learned that it was a bad thing.
There was a sudden sizzling sound, Tarzan gave an exclamation of surprise in a language Riku had never heard of, and a greenish-white bolt of energy curved through space to demolish two Heartless ships. Another bolt of energy ran through three ships before dissipating. It was obvious somebody was firing the weapons that Cid had installed on this gummi ship. And Riku had a very good idea who it was.
"Pooh!" he yelled.
"Here," a dislocated voice answered. Riku had another very good idea where the voice came from, though, and went to the immediate right outside the cockpit. He spotted a door, well hidden, and swung it open.
There was Pooh, sitting on a stool that was rather tall for him and he was holding something that looked like a stationary steering wheel with vertical handles on the sides for the hands/paws and a red button on the top of each handle. There was a radar screen in the very center of the wheel and Pooh was looking at it very intently. Neon-green circles on the screen were pinpointing the Heartless ships, which were red triangles, and Pooh was tapping the red buttons nonstop. The lasers and cannons on the gummi ship fired as soon as they recharged and Pooh kept up a barrage of lasers and ammo, keeping the way clear for the gummi ship Tarzan somehow was able to pilot, as they made their way to Coliseum, where Hercules and Phil were said to be under siege.
Riku kept a scowl on his face as they soared through space. Here he was, the most knowledgeable of the three on the matters of Heartless and he was rendered helpless in a gummi ship. And his two unlikely companions had never seen a gummi ship before and they were able to use it with the greatest of ease.
What kind of games was life playing?
Tarzan uttered something in a language Riku doubt he'll ever be able to decipher but from the way Tarzan uttered it, Riku knew the situation was not beautiful. He peered through the spacious window in the front of the ship and felt his jaw drop.
Masses of dark Heartless ships (you'll never be able to label them if you ever saw them; they're like nothing seen before) were swirling around a world that seemed to be occupied only by one big marble building. (If you ever saw Finding Nemo, you can compare how these ships move to how those moonfish that teased Marlin and helped Dory moved) The big marble building had columns and was pale in color, like marble. It was marble.
"Is that Coliseum?" Riku wondered as they neared the masses of Heartless ships. "Oh shit, it is! Damn, look at all those ships!"
"Oh bother..." Pooh's voice drifted in. "Do we have to go in? There are a lot of red triangles and they're all starting to point in our direction.
The blood in Riku went cold. If he was correct, those red triangles on the radar screen were the Heartless and they have just noticed this very foreign gummi ship jumbling its way through space. Tarzan affirmed his fears when he exclaimed in that unknown language, then spoke in English, " They're pointing their guns at us!"
Riku's heart took a very deep dive. Now every Heartless ship was pointing in their direction. He could feel the strange newness of these ships, which looked so different from the ships a year ago. He could very much sense the laser cannons each Heartless ship had. Each of them had two and a few huge ones that resembled Leviathans had three. Or was it four?
"Like dodging bees going up the honey tree," was Pooh's analogy to this very dangerous predicament.
"How'd you do that?" Riku had an idea.
"You...um...oh bother, I can't remember," Pooh replied.
"Oh bother myself," Riku grumbled. How'd he ever get Pooh into this?
"Oh, oh!" Pooh suddenly exclaimed. "You dodge them. You keep going through and dodge them. Very simple. And you have friends, at least some, trying to help you in the process."
"Like an elephant charging through the forest," Tarzan mused. "Many obstacles but they keep trampling through. Scaring up my family in the process. Kerchak really had me for that."
"And who do we have to can distract those Heartless ships in the process of charging through that mass of nightmares?" Riku demanded.
"That's the problem," Tarzan agreed.
The ship suddenly rocked. Riku grabbed onto the pilot's chair before he lost his footing. "Pooh?"
"A missile," Tarzan read off of something on a screen that suddenly popped up out of nowhere.
Riku watched as a missile, painted with colors that clashed horribly (" Probably why Aerith chose the colors of the gummi ship instead of Cid himself," Riku mused out loud in the process) sail past the Heartless ships. Multitudes of cannons tilted their aim from them to the missile and they fired.
"Hang on," Tarzan said abruptly. Riku was given less than one second to decipher the meaning behind the two given words when Tarzan shoved the lever forward and the gummi ship jumped forward. Riku heard Pooh give out an," Oh!" Then he found himself wincing as he heard a crash and Pooh went sliding out of the room he was in seconds ago on his back. He hit his head against a wall with many buttons (more wincing) and all he said was, "Oh bother."
"Booster rockets charging," a mechanical voice boomed into the atmosphere. Riku winced. His head was right next to the loudspeaker the voice came from.
Tarzan suddenly swerved left; as Riku nearly sent himself flying and Pooh slid across the floor and bashed his head against more buttons, Tarzan shouted, "Like swinging from vine to vine!"
"How's that possible?" Riku yelled. He suddenly jolted and his ears ached from the screeching sound of metal hitting metal.
"You jump from one ship to another!" Tarzan answered. At the same time, the mechanical voice roared in Riku's ear, "Booster rockets fired."
Riku grabbed onto the pilot's seat for dear life as the gummi ship jumped forward and bounded from one Heartless ship to another, scrunching up those poor ships in the process through impact. Pooh continued to slide to the very back until Riku heard a very distinctive crunch. Before he knew it, water was spraying all over the place. Cid, apparently, tried to install a sprinkler system and succeeded. But, in this case, there was no fire to put out, except the fire that was Riku's temper.
"Pooh!" he yelled as Tarzan shouted, "We made it!"
Before Riku had time to understand what Tarzan had exclaimed over his own voice, the gummi ship bounced on a very hard surface, then slammed into a rather foreign surface. Pooh went sliding on, partially slowed by the wet conditions that made him rather soggy, and did not do any more damage to Cid's poor ship. The ship apparently had come to a stop; Riku staggered to his feet and slowly and carefully walked over to the miraculously undamaged hatchway. Tarzan swung himself out of the pilot's seat, grabbed his spear, and helped Pooh up. They moved rather gingerly across the soaking surface; Pooh seemed to have a horrible habit of sopping up the water. Tarzan made a move to suggest that Pooh use fire to dry out the water but Riku quickly stopped him, explaining the full purpose of a sprinkler system. They moved rather slowly and carefully to the hatchway; they never really did get a chance to see where they landed. They had the really bad luck of having the nose of the gummi ship was somehow buried in what seemed to be marble.
"Ready?" Riku asked the other two.
When they nodded, he slowly opened up the hatchway and spotted a rather dark sky, with smoky clouds. He pulled himself out of the ship and helped up the other two. They then took to observing their surroundings.
They seemed to be in a courtyard, with columns and walls made of marble. There were statues of warriors, with rather archaic armor, short swords, and round shields, their sword arms outstretched over large doors framed by graceful columns. Large braziers, some frosted over, some still crackling merrily, sat on both sides of the courtyard. There seemed to have been a few battles here; scorch marks and minor damage could be seen everywhere. There was also evidence that some plaques had been ripped off walls; very large plaques, Riku noted. Of course there was the fact that half of Cid's ship was buried into one marble wall. There was also the fact that three beings were watching them with caution and great impatience.
One was a short, rather grumpy-looking man with horns and a goat bottom, complete with fur, hooves, and tail. The most notable details on his face were his very big nose and his glaring eyes, ready to criticize everything in life.
With him was a tall and willowy young woman with long, curly red hair, rather seductive purple eyes, and adorned in a purple dress that Riku sensed was rather simple and antiquated. Standing next to her was a tall white horse with blue poking out here and there and from its shoulders were big white-feathered wings.
"Some reception," Riku muttered through his lips.
"And about time you got here, too!" the little half-man, half-goat yelled at them. "Cid told me you three were coming to help us a long way before Meg and good ol' horsy right here-" the winged horse snorted in protest "- saw a ship come down and stick itself in a wall! What took you so long?"
"I-uh-we-uh-um..." Riku had a bit trouble recovering from the short person's harsh words. "Sigh...its not easy flying through swarms of Heartless ships."
"It doesn't take that long," the woman, Meg, retorted.
"And we had trouble using the ship," Tarzan quickly added.
The little guy waved it all away, obviously changing the subject. "Now we have some trouble here and it's a good thing the three of you are here. I don't know what this little teddy bear-" he pointed at a stupefied Pooh "- can do but I know you two can fight. And that's good 'cuz our Mister Godlike Superman ain't here!"
"Who?" Riku asked in complete confusion.
"Hercules, that's what!" the little guy exclaimed.
"...Kairi, I don't think this is home," Selphie moaned as Kairi tried to focus her eyes.
Her eyes focused on two things. One, where Selphie and she landed was blanketed in gray, so that the colors were rather hazy and dreamy. Two, she was staring straight into the cheery, 'I'm the man' face of someone with blue eyes, a red headband that kept back curly blond hair, and the biggest grin on any face she had ever seen.
"Uh...um...hi there," Kairi said nervously.
"Phew...I thought the two of you wouldn't make it!" the rather buff guy said with an even bigger grin.
"Uh...yeah, hi," Selphie had noticed him, too. "Who are you?"
"Hercules is my name," the man replied as if he was the self-appointed Superman. "Helping people is my game. What's your trouble?"
Kairi and Selphie blinked. Who was this guy?
"Um...we were just..." Kairi was at a loss for words.
"Stuck here, too?" Hercules supplied. "You're not alone! Do you two, by chance, know what this place is?"
Both shrugged. Selphie answered, "We got in here through a door. You?"
"A door? Hm...funny," Hercules had a thoughtful look on his face, the expression enhancing his good looks. Kairi had a suspicion he was a womanizer. "I got here when some big white creature made a jab at me. I jumped back to dodge it but instead, I was falling. Then I was here."
"A big white thing?" Kairi asked.
"Heartless aren't white!" Selphie said vehemently. "You must've been dreaming!"
"You know of the Heartless, too?" Hercules suddenly looked very much depressed. "First that kid with the huge key, now you two youngsters. Why would Father make kids fight Heartless. I don't understand..."
The words "...that kid with the huge key..." suddenly clicked in Kairi's mind. She stared at Hercules, her mouth falling open.
"Kairi? Kairi, are you okay?" Selphie asked worriedly.
"Kairi," Hercules repeated the name. "That's a really nice name."
"Selphie, he's...he's..." Kairi tried to say.
"Selphie's a nice name, too," Hercules mused.
"Sir-Hercules, did you meet Sora?" Kairi finally spit out.
For what seemed to be the longest side, both sides said nothing. Then Hercules said, "As a matter of fact, I did. Why? You know him?"
Kairi nodded. "I'm looking for him."
Hercules had a thoughtful look on his face. "It's not going to be easy, I can tell you that."
"Huh? Why?" Selphie asked curiously.
"Donald, Goofy, and he were headed for the other side of the universe," Hercules explained. "Ol' Phil got a message from a Princess Kida about some Heartless invasion around where she lives and told Sora that he had to go there. The odd thing was Phil never told them who told him that they had to go there. He just said that they had to go there and I think he made up some lie about a whole lot of Heartless being there. Sora gunned for that spot so fast, I don't think even Father would be able to stop him with lightening."
"So he's...not here," Kairi concluded, desperation in her face and voice.
"Nope," Hercules answered. "And judging from where we are, its not easy getting back into the real world where the others are."
"Real world?" Selphie demanded, startled by that statement.
Hercules nodded. "Yeah, this place ain't the real world. That's why its so gray-" he waved his hand at the gray mist that blanketed the land "-and that's why you don't' see much living stuff. I think Father told me it was the 'world In-between'."
"In-between?" Kairi repeated. "What do you mean by 'In-between'?"
"Beats me," Hercules answered with a shrug. "I was trying to figure out what In-between meant. That was when I heard some screaming, which was the first time I've heard real voices in months. Then I discovered you two falling from this door-shaped hole in the sky. And here we are, the three of us lost in this gray world."
Kairi and Selphie looked very upset.
"Oh relax!" Hercules laughed. "Its not like we'll be lost here forever! I was talking to a Shade not long ago and-"
"What's a Shade?" Selphie asked quickly.
"Oh, they're escaped souls from the Underworld," Hercules answered good- naturedly. Noting the blank looks on their faces, he re-explained, " They're souls of the dead people and the only Shades you'll ever see are the ones who escaped Cerberus and the Underworld."
Selphie's face turned horribly white. "Dead?"
"They won't hurt you," Hercules said rather worriedly. "Unless, of course, you're covered in blood. Them Shades go crazy when they smell blood."
Selphie looked like she was about to faint.
"Well, anyways," Hercules continued, not noticing that Selphie was about to faint, "I was asking a Shade where the hell I was-not hell as in the Underworld but hell as in hell- and he told me-it was some old seer or sumptin' like that 'cause he kept mumbling about the downfall of some place called Atlantis- that where I was called In-between, where all the worlds devoured by the Heartless and the Nobodies are-"
"Nobodies?" Kairi and Selphie demanded.
"Yeah, Nobodies," Hercules answered. "They are the strangest you've ever seen. They're white, for one, and they can shape shift when they want or need to- I thought this one Nobody was Pegasus and let him in and he got me here instead of being my flying horse- and I've heard that they got their name Nobody because they can get rid of a person's soul. It would never help them because they can't made more Nobodies by doing that but that's what they do. They've been at war with the Heartless for so long it amazes me that they're still standing and trying to get rid of the rest of us."
"Nobodies?" Selphie sounded very helpless. "Oh my god."
"Well, anyways, we're standing at the crossroads. Go one way, you'll find some world that's been taken by the Heartless or the Nobodies. Go another way, same thing. Everywhere you go, you find half-destroyed worlds. They're half-destroyed because the Heartless only removed the heart of the world, not the soul. Believe me, you don't want to know what happens when Nobodies take a world. Wonderland exploded into bits of pieces thanks to the Nobodies and only the heart remains, which is here. In-between is where either the heart of a world or the soul of the world come to. Quite a depressing place, isn't it?"
Kairi and Selphie moaned. "What kind of life is this?!"
"The Shade told me of a door," Hercules said rather thoughtfully. "It is a door that will help hinder the progress of the Nobodies. I mean, there's Kingdom Hearts but only the Oblivion can seal that. And nobody knows-I mean as in people, not the Nobodies- where the hell the Oblivion went. And only one person owns the Oblivion and that one person can close Kingdom Hearts and slow down both the Heartless and the Nobodies. Did you know that Kingdom Hearts promotes all darkness? But this one door- I think the Shade called it the Door of Twilight but I'm sure there's a shorter name for it- can stop the Nobodies, at least for a little while."
"Really?" Kairi asked eagerly.
"Yeah," Hercules answered. "The Nobodies can be slowed down and that will give the others, the ones in the real world, time to find the owner of the Oblivion and close Kingdom Hearts for good. But, of course-"
"- I thought Sora was the owner of the Oblivion," Selphie said. "Didn't he close Kingdom Hearts?"
"- the war's coming so-no, Sora isn't the actual owner of the Oblivion. He's the owner of the Kingdom Key," Hercules corrected. "That's what the Shade told me, at least. Somebody else is the real owner of the Oblivion. And I don't know who it is."
"What war?" Kairi asked.
"–I mean, it could be- war? Oh, right, war," Hercules explained. "There's a war between the dark and the light. Been going on since life first came into being but the thing was, the dark was becoming so strong, it was ridiculous. Close Kingdom Hearts and the Door of Twilight and the dark is still stronger than light. That's why Sora needs to open the door of light. But closing both doors still help since they slow down the progress of eating up the universe so-"
"Let's find that Door of Twilight," Kairi suggested. "Its here and we can find it and do whatever in order to help Sora find the door of light. Then we can all go home."
Selphie had a skeptical look on her face. "Oh yeah, like...where? We don't know where this door is or what we're supposed to do once we find it!"
"The Shade said he spread clues all over the place," Hercules said. "He's one weird Shade."
"Then why don't we find the Shade and ask him about the clues he left all over the place and the Door of Twilight?" Kairi proposed. "Hercules already talked to this Shade before; he'll be easier to talk to when we have someone who's talked to him before. And Selphie and I can do something worthwhile. I mean, spending days on Destiny Islands without a single thing to do is a bit boring, right?"
Selphie and Hercules both had grins on their faces.
"All right, Herc," Kairi scanned the gray-toned scenario before them. " Where to?"
"...remember, they must be stopped at all costs," the hooded figure spoke to the cluster of beings dressed in black coats, with hoods shadowing their faces. "They cannot meet Princess Kida. She knows too much for her own good. We must see to the Princess. And the King. We must track him down before he finds us out. He cannot know who we are. Understood?"
The hooded heads inclined towards the speaker slightly.
"Do not fail," the speaker said coldly. "He will not like it if we fail."
The beings nodded and dispersed. Two of them headed for a third, who was wandering away from the rest of the hooded beings.
"There are too many of them," one of them, slightly shorter than the others, spoke quietly. It was the voice of a young woman. "It will not be easy."
"I've been to the meetings," the tallest one, with a calm, collected deep voice of one who knows, answered. The three glowing orbs around him danced silently."They won't all be where the Princess is. And at least a third will be after the King. And the King is not easy prey."
"All Phoenixes aren't easy prey," the third spoke with the voice of a young man. "Dragons, on the other hand, are easier, since they tend to fight instead of flight."
"They're not dragons," the woman countered. "They're people who must know of the world around them."
"In time," the eldest one spoke. "Grandmother Willow is not some fool of a tree, you know. She told me that her young charge's dreams will help those two. Her young charge is very much aware of the world. She will help them. And Grandmother Willow is more than a match for the handful of us who will be there."
"Who is this Grandmother Willow anyways?" the young man muttered, obviously irritated. His question went unanswered.
"And the Princess?" the young woman asked.
"The Crystal force recognizes the darkest evil," the eldest answered. " They know of the Princess' circumstances. She is not like the other princesses, the ones Maleficent was searching for. Of course, I will have to tell her that she can't just go ahead and collect all seven of them again. She always gets touchy when the word princess pops up. Next thing you know, she's gonna try and get herself really killed and that won't be good for Him. Maleficent is too important to go running around ranting about her dream of harnessing the powers of the Heartless. Her dream is not worth dying for. I should tell her that and try not to get scorched by her in the process."
The other two snorted.
"Are you two ready?" the eldest's voice had a steely edge to it.
The figure of the young woman tapped at something at her waist on the left side; the eldest barely made out a sword hilt. The young man didn't make any motion; he was already holding his weapon, a staff brimming full with magic.
"Go quickly and quietly," the eldest said quietly. "The others are too busy; they won't notice your absence. Clear the way for them in any way you can. But don't get caught. And don't let them see you. Both of them."
The young woman and the young man nodded, bowed, and strode away.
The eldest watched them walk into the strange, dark moonlit world they all existed and grounded in. The quiet, dark waters of the seashore of this moody world tapped against the shore. The wind was soft, quiet. Maybe a little too quiet.
"And whatever in the world were you telling those two?" a cold, dark voice asked behind the eldest one. "You know I won't allow secrecy."
The eldest one stayed silent, knowing that the speaker's copper-brown eyes were on him, glittering yellow with anger.
"No matter," the speaker said. "They will be hunted down, like the King and the Princess and them. You won't be leaving here either. Not for a while. And you will be dealt with when the time comes."
The eldest did not mind. He trained the both of them well. Too well.