Secrets of Memories Chapter 32: Success and Failure
" There are too many of them!" Riku yelled out as he tried to stab a Soldier, only to stumble forward as the Soldier leaped aside gracefully. "Way too many of them!"
The strange machinery on the gummi ship hovering over the maddening battle scene was still glowing, though the light was intensifying now with ridiculous speed. Riku wondered whether or not it was a weapon, then told himself, "Of course it's a weapon! Dammit, fire it already then!"
Jack was now forcing his way towards Oogie Boogie, being rather intent on strangling that bag of bugs. Tarzan was busy dodging the Red Nocturnes, the Blue Rhapsodies, and the Yellow Operas; they seemed hell-bent on getting rid of Tarzan completely.
" Strike Raid!" Riku yelled and threw out the Dark Keyblade. It spun like a boomerang, taking down many Heartless before returning to Riku safe and sound. Riku repeated the move three times, wondering with each throw whether or not this was going to help them in the fight against the Heartless and Oogie Boogie.
As Heartless piled on top of another in an attempt to reach him and pull out his heart, Riku thought, Obviously no.
" Riku, that weapon comes from Dr. Finkelstein," Jack suddenly realized what that strange contraption was that stuck onto the gummi ship. "And I thought he said that weapon was unstable and could blow!"
" Blow?" Riku gaped at him, then turned back to the gummi ship. "If that gummi ship blows, I am not one happy little guy. And so far, nobody's liked me when I'm not a happy little guy."
" You're little?" Jack stared at Riku's strong six-foot frame.
Riku just shook his head and said, "I don't think we're getting anywhere taking out all these Heartless!"
" Finally you realize that!" Oogie Boogie laughed. "See, you cannot resist the power and might of the Heartless! So just give up, you fools!"
" Giving up is not an option," Tarzan said calmly.
" Is that so?" Oogie Boogie said. " And what are you going to do then? Fight all of the Heartless until you die?"
The contraption on the gummi ship suddenly discharged. A pinprick of light, a tiny particle, drifted down on the Heartless. Everyone stared.
It suddenly exploded in a huge shield of white, blinding everyone in its hot glaring light. Riku shielded his face, for he could see the light through his blindfold and his eyes still could not take in the light, was not used to the brightness of the real world.
" That...light..." Riku somehow could tell the light was draining something out of Oogie Boogie. " No...make it stop...make it stop!"
Riku could feel the energy pulsing from the great white shield but the damage resulted from the blast was what shocked him the most.
Oogie Boogie was the only one left standing in the in the area. There were no traces of the Heartless; they had all been destroyed.
" The-the-the Heartless..." Oogie Boogie stammered out in a hopeless sort of voice, staring at the vast empty space in front of him. "Where'd they all go?"
" They're gone," Tarzan said matter-of-factly.
" And you'll go with them!" Riku shouted and leaped at him, the Dark Keyblade poised high.
" I don't think so," Oogie Boogie replied sinisterly and jumped back. "Do you really want Halloweentown destroyed?"
" Riku!" Jack said. "Don't attack him!"
" What?!" Riku shouted back. "Jack, he's a leader of the Heartless!"
" But what about Halloweentown?" Jack asked. "There has to be a way to save this world!"
" See what I mean?" Oogie Boogie said, with a triumphant smirk on his face. "Get rid of me, Halloweentown is gone! You win, I win!"
" I prefer "I win, you lose", bastard!" Riku growled at tried to jump at him again. Jack quickly stepped up and restrained Riku. When Riku looked up at the pumpkin king to yell what was obviously rich profanity, Jack winked. Riku closed his mouth, nodded, and backed away.
" Now, Oogie Boogie," Jack said calmly while turning to his nemesis. "What are you going to do to Halloweentown?"
" Make it a base, duh!" Oogie Boogie boomed at him. "Seriously, Jack, you may be a pumpkin king but you've got no brains when it comes to warfare; why, you even let me live, and that's saying something!"
Riku was quite amazed how well Jack was handling all these insults.
I'd have thrown him into a pot of boiling water, to wash out those bugs and make that lunatic of a sack clean all over, Riku thought to himself.
" What are they doing down there?" Pooh asked Sally nervously as he inched out of the room he was in.
" Negotiating, I think," Sally replied worriedly as she peered out the window. "But why would Jack be negotiating? Clearly Jack has his reasons for doing what he's doing. Well, I hope he does..."
"...of course, with Ancient Greece all the way on the other side of the universe, this is one of the last places to find one of those damned doors of Darkness," Oogie Boogie was ranting on. "If you destroy this world, there goes that door and there goes your home!"
Riku was clearly and thoroughly impatient with the bag of bugs. His hands itched; he wanted so badly to march up to Oogie Boogie and cleanly cut off the part of the sack that was his head.
But no, I must wait until Jack pulls a move on him, Riku thought angrily, sensing that Jack hadn't made any moves yet nor did he seem to want to. I don't' understand Jack; I thought he was a pretty straightforward guy; apparently he also goes side to side and in diagonals!
Tarzan was merely content to watch from a distance away, though he kept a sharp eye on Oogie Boogie, not trusting the bag of bugs himself. The gummi ship still hovered over them, the contraption now quiet, sleeping, waiting for another chance to prove its strength. Halloweentown itself was darkening, the lights turning off. A strange, disturbing silence had fallen on this world.
" Whether or not I want my home destroyed..." Jack said coldly, "is up to me now. For better or worse; I am willing to lose my home if only to destroy you."
" Oh is that so?" Oogie Boogie replied, buffing himself up.
Jack glared at him, then moved so fast all Riku could sense was a blur of energy. Oogie Boogie jumped back howling, clutching his stomach. Huge jagged slashes decorated his front and bugs were pouring out of them like a waterfall.
" Now Riku!" Jack yelled. "Now or never!"
Riku didn't need to ask what he had to do. He's been itching to do it ever since he first spotted Oogie Boogie at Halloweentown. He leaped forward, swinging his Dark Keyblade backwards, and swung it forward in a perfect arc towards a doomed bag of bugs.
The Dark Keyblade sheared off Oogie Boogie's head. As the head and the body toppled down, the insects within exploded and tumbled out everywhere.
" Get rid of these bugs!" Jack ordered. "He may try to regroup again! And Tarzan, I don't think you should eat these bugs."
Riku obliged and got his Firaga spell going while Tarzan took to stomping on them, making bug juice out of the black mass of shimmering, buzzing insects. Jack was busy frantically swiping the bugs away into the green river and was still at it when Sally suddenly appeared behind him and said, calmly, quietly, "Jack, we have to go."
The world began to tremble, shaking violently, angrily. Cracks started to form all over the ground and into the towering walls surrounding them and steam roared out of the cracks and fissures. Riku could swear he spotted flashes of energy coming out of some of the fissures, in the form of fire. It was obvious what was happening.
"Halloweentown's going to blow!" Riku yelled. "Everybody get in the gummi ship!"
"Bring down the gummi ship, Pooh!" Tarzan called out and Pooh obliged, shutting off the engines.
"Oh no..."
The gummi ship sat down on the ground. Hard. Clouds of dust billowed from underneath the gummi ship and temporarily blinded those who still had functioning eyes.
"Pooh..." Riku growled under his breath while running up to the side of the gummi ship and yanking the hatch open. "Everybody get in!"
"But what about Dr. Finkelstein?" Pooh's voice called out.
Everyone froze momentarily.
"He's taken the portal," Sally offered. "I think."
"You think," Riku grumbled while waiting for Tarzan to get through. "We don't' have time to find him; we've got to get out of here! Tarzan, hurry and get those engines working!"
Tarzan willingly obliged but then he encountered a problem; the engines refused to start. They would rumble a bit, then hiss and fizz out. That caused quite a problem and Riku knew who was at fault.
"Pooh..." he turned on the suddenly nervous bear while tapping his foot. " Look at what you've done now..."
"Well, the problem is," Jack interrupted, "we've nothing to boost ourselves out of here. Everything seems to be working fine-" he stopped to check the readings "-but the gummi ship boosters that get us off the ground. They are...dysfunctional as of now."
Riku growled and hit his head with his hand. "This is not making me happy! I'm supposed to be finding Sora yet here I am trying to save what's left of this side of the universe. And we're losing, too!"
"Or are we?" Sally asked mysteriously. "A world is not gone unless its people are gone. The people of Halloweentown are safe; this world will never be truly destroyed; it will never appear in the other side."
Riku opened his mouth to ask what she meant by 'other side' but was interrupted when the gummi ship lurched violently to the side.
"We can use the steam coming out of the crack to help us get out of here," Jack mused, looking out the window onto the long crooked crack that ran right underneath the gummi ship. "The steam seems to be coming out forcefully, really fast and strong. And, if you notice, the amount of steam's increasing. Once the steam gets strong enough, we can use that to propel ourselves forward."
"All before this world explodes, right?" Tarzan asked.
"Uh...hm..." Jack pondered this.
"We can use the explosion of the world itself, can't we?" Riku demanded.
"But what will protect us from that?" Pooh asked. "That exposion or whatever it is."
"We can put up the shields," Riku said, leaning over Tarzan's shoulder and pressing several buttons. "The shields right here can protect us from the explosion and the force of it can propel us forward."
"Just think," Jack said sadly, "the destruction of a world can save us. How ironic can that be?"
"Jack, the world isn't gone, not yet," Sally told him softly. "Don't worry. When time comes, Halloweentown will come back. All worlds will come back."
"And what makes you say that?" Riku demanded while crackling walls of green and blue went up and encased the gummi ship in an oblong protective bubble.
"There will be no war unless all worlds come back," Sally replied. "And though we may still have to decide between war, absolute destruction, and enlightenment, I know it may be a while before the universe is destroyed or enlightenment is found. A thousand years...and neither have been reached."
"You seem to know much," Riku said rather testily. "Do you have any idea what our purpose here is?"
"We will survive," Sally admitted calmly. "For now. All we need to do is keep a world alive and if we can, save a world as a whole. However Riku, I suspect there is something more for you, a door to search for..."
"A door?" Riku demanded, then grabbed onto the pilot chair as the gummi ship lurched again. It began to tip downwards, the nose with the contraption pointing down at the long, widening crack. Steam continued to roar from the depths of Halloweentown.
"Oh no," Tarzan said, then grabbed at the controls of the gummi ship. " Not good!"
The gummi ship tipped precariously downward into a gaping black hole filled with rising steam. Everyone stared at it, seeming like they were all waiting for all hell itself to come out and devour them. Of course hell was actually located in Ancient Greece but only Sally's aware of it.
"Crack's growing wider!" Jack yelled. "Now or never, Tarzan; get the engines!"
Tarzan thrust the lever forward and the twin engines of the gummi ship roared to life. The fissure was widening continuously, while the tall walls surrounding them crumbled away. They saw fire shooting up at the sky, tall towers of light surrounding by swirling dark clouds of darkness. Bolts of lightening struck the ground and thunder rolled across the world. Steam shot up at an unbelievable speed and it lifted the gummi ship up into the air.
"Forward!" Riku yelled.
But everybody else was too busy gaping at the destruction of Halloweentown; Riku grumbled and grabbed at the controls, forcing the gummi ship forward on its way away from anywhere near Halloweentown.
" Halloweentown...gone," Jack gasped as he stared at the back window of the gummi ship.
Halloweentown, dotted with storms, light, fire, and steam, shook mightily and exploded in a rain of fire. The gummi ship was, thankfully, far away enough to avoid any harm.
"Another world...gone," Riku said softly.
"And three more remain," Sally said quietly. "Atlantica, Neverland, and Hollow Bastion. I have doubts about Atlantica, however, Atlantica and Hollow Bastion. Atlantica because I'm quite sure it can stand on its own; King Triton is an extremely powerful person. And Hollow Bastion...its predicament is questionable and the secrets the world holds...dangerous."
"Then lets visit Atlantica and Neverland," Riku said. "And then we can find those secrets to Hollow Bastion, whatever they are."
"Those secrets..." Sally drifted off, then thought, Very scandalous.
"There's really so much to know, so much to learn," Merlin said quietly as he gently set himself down on a crate, "yet there is so little time. My dear, you are one of those in the heart of a great struggle between the dark and light."
"A struggle?" Kairi asked.
"I remember Tarzan mentioning something about a war," Jane offered. " A war between two opposite forces."
"The great struggle," Merlin acknowledged. "Yes, he seems aware of it. All of you, this war has been going on for millenniums. From the very beginning the dark sought to overthrow the light and influence all life in the universe. That, of course, was undoable. But now the dark has a chance to do what it had set out to do ages past: bring down the light and rule."
"Going on and on for years and years?" Selphie whispered in awe.
Merlin nodded. "Only recently have the stakes grown higher. There is a greater price to pay now, for if we lose, we lose everything. If we lose, even the dark loses but the dark has yet to understand that."
"Why don't we just tell them that?" Terk suggested. "Isn't that the solution?"
"If we did that and it worked, the struggle would not have lasted so long," Merlin countered. "Their hearts and minds and souls are locked against compromises like those. They only see victory and defeat."
"Wow, they're narrow-minded," Terk huffed.
"What is my role in this?" Kairi asked tersely. "What's my purpose?"
"You are a Princess of Heart, Kairi," Merlin said quietly. "Until now, that was all we thought you'd ever be, that it would be your only purpose. How wrong we were."
"Why, what am I to do?" Kairi questioned, starting to feel uneasy about the whole business.
"There is a door here in In-Between," Merlin said slowly. "It has been sealed, locked away for ages. What lies inside is only a little bit but it should help us all. The door locked away a bit of the light, the light Sora is out to find. Once released, the door of the Nobodies will close, temporarily speaking, and a brief calm will fall on the universe. If you open that door, all we will have to face is war. But whether or not war is worse than total destruction remains to be seen."
"Why's that?" Selphie asked.
"War can drag on for months, for years, decades, centuries," Merlin explained. "It will drain everything out of everyone and you will be living death every day. With destruction, you die once, though dying itself isn't pleasant."
"It's all a matter of choice," Jane said. "All about choice."
"Indeed," Merlin looked at Kairi sternly. "And you must also find one of Ansem's two reports; his son will find the other and we can find out the real truth behind the past, about the first two Keyblade Masters and what became of the last one. For there were always two, two and no more and together they wielded three Keyblades of immense power. The dual-wielder always opened the door of light and the single-wielder was always a guardian and a great leader. But long ago the last Keyblade Master vanished and his heirs are assumed dead. Why the Keyblades have sought out King Mickey and Sora we still have to understand, as well as finding out the whereabouts of this third key. Truth be told, Kairi, we know almost nothing about the present except for the here and now. Nothing more. That is why I believe you were chosen to search for Ansem's Other Report, the Report of the Keys. We need to find the heirs of the Three Keys, why two of the Keys have gone to King Mickey and Sora, and we have to find the third key."
Kairi nodded, registering the immense amount of information Merlin had given her.
"Wait a minute," Selphie thought aloud. "Who's Ansem's son?"
Kairi jumped. Of course, who was Ansem's son? Wait, Ansem had a son?!
"We lost all trace of him," Merlin replied hopelessly.
"Are we all completely blind about everything?" Terk demanded, rolling her eyes.
"Well, not exactly," Merlin replied. "We don't know who he is, since we lost all trace of him thirteen years ago. All we have now are records of the days leading up to the destruction of Old Citadel and Deep Tranquility. What we do know is that like his father he has silver hair. There are very few people in the universe with silver hair. I expect you two to know someone who fits the vague description?"
"Riku," Kairi and Selphie quipped.
"Whether or not it is Riku or another person depends on who reaches Ansem's Other Report," Merlin answered calmly.
"I heard that we were supposed to look for a report on the Nobodies," Selphie said skeptically. "What's all this about kings and heirs and keys?"
"The Nobodies are a part of the report, dear," Merlin replied with a chuckle. "They became widely known around the time the last Keyblade Master turned traitor and those terrible events took place. It's quite tragic, our whole predicament that is. If Sora loses...no, wait, let me rephrase that. Depending on how Sora fails, the universe can go down one of two paths: destruction or war."
"What do you mean by 'depending on how Sora fails'?" Kairi demanded.
"Death comes in many forms," Merlin answered.
"Very true," Jane agreed, her eyes shut close in what seemed to be an attempt to forget something.
"Who said anything about Sora failing?" Selphie asked.
"And how?" Kairi fired again.
"Nobody is perfect, for one," Merlin said. "No doubt the others are doing their best to keep Sora well protected; it will be very difficult for the enemy to kill him without having to kill the others first. Notice I said 'doing their best'. He still has a chance of dying but I have checked with a certain someone and the chances of him dying are very slim; that is, if something goes haywire, the percentage rises. How, though, is a good question...that is something that still baffles us, I admit."
"And what are we supposed to do to help him?" Selphie then asked.
"Uncover the past," Merlin answered. "The past must be known for us to truly understand how to defeat the Darkness and find the door of light. Nobody knows where the door of light is, though I suspect where it possibly lays can be found in this Report. Not the other one but this one."
"What does the other Report say, by the way?" Kairi asked curiously.
"That is another problem," Merlin echoed. "We don't know. I suspect he has written something for his son but that's what I'm assuming."
"And life is beautiful," Jane quipped. "Merlin, why don't we figure out this beautiful jade box and what's in it?"
"Give it to me, please," Merlin took the jade box from Jane and set it in between him and the others. "This jade box has sealed away another piece of the Other Report. I must tell you, there are many pages to the Other Report here and though I am aware that most of the pieces are safely stored somewhere in Deep Tranquility, there are the parts missing, scattered all over In-Between. Many parts are vital. If they are not found, we will not be able to understand the Report of the Keys, wherever it is."
"How are we supposed to open it?" Kairi murmured, fingering the smooth covering of the box. Her finger slipped into a hole on the top piece of the jade box and encircled the figure the hole was shaped into. It seemed to be in the form of a butterfly. How interesting, a butterfly...
"Maybe the key goes here," Kairi said, showing the others the butterfly-shaped keyhole. "What do you think?"
Merlin pushed the spectacles up his nose and leaned towards the jade box, in order to get a better look. Meanwhile, Jane and Terk gave each other knowing looks. There was one place they knew, only one possible place where you could see beautiful blue butterflies.
"Hm...the key seems to relate to butterflies," Merlin mused. "See, look here...the intricate carvings surrounding this butterfly-shaped keyhole really is the trunk of a tree, a tall, slightly twisted tree. The cover of this box is the top of the tree, the leaves, the part that's supposed to be green. The shapes surrounding the tree are...well, you should know."
They nodded, with Kairi, Selphie, and Jane understanding more than Terk did.
"Terk and I...we've seen the tree before," Jane offered.
"You have?" Merlin asked, surprised by this sudden bit of information. " Where?"
"That tree holds the Keyhole to this world," Jane replied. "When we first entered the place, so Sora can seal our world, there were blue butterflies everywhere. It was, I thought, a beautiful sight, watching Sora seal our world away from the Heartless while blue butterflies flew all around us."
"Wait 'till you see Sora unleash the door of light," Merlin murmured.
Something then suddenly clicked in Kairi's head. "Merlin, you said one of the heirs of the previous Keyblade Master opens the door of light. And Sora does have a Kingdom Key. So, does that mean-"
"He has only one," Merlin countered. "And there really is no proof about Sora's father being the previous Keyblade Master. One, nobody knows who Sora's father is; two, the last Keyblade Master was a traitor and that could put a taint on the heirs, preventing them from inheriting the Kingdom Keys-oh, excuse me but what I just said moments ago, there an be either one heir or two; three, it has already been officially recorded and eye witnesses had sworn to the records that the heirs of the last Keyblade Master no longer exist, have died long ago. Well, it goes like this: one of them died thirteen years ago along with the world they had lived on, Deep Tranquility. The other died just five years ago, when Celt Circle, one of the worlds you must go to, exploded as well."
"They...died?" Kairi asked, shocked by the violence. "But...how? Who? Why?"
"That is what you're supposed to find out," Merlin answered as he got up and moved for the way out of the Tree House. "You must find out what had happened at Deep Tranquility thirteen years ago. Now I suspect that Ansem's Other Report in the real universe may have something to do starting from twelve years ago...but that is only an old man's intuition. Oh, and three: I have high, very high doubts about King Mickey and Sora being siblings, don't you?"
Kairi and Selphie snickered at this. That was hilarious, King Mickey and Sora being siblings. And besides, neither of them died five years ago.
But just think, Kairi told herself. The last heir of the Kingdom Keys died five years ago, when I was just ten, not long after I came to Destiny Island. I wonder who he was...and what gave the universe the right to take his life anyways? This is creepy...I'm going to the world he once lived in, the world where he died...and what Hercules said, about specters, of dead people coming back as ghosts, like Oracle Kenaii...will I see him there? That'll be creepy...that'll be weird, seeing the true heir of the Kingdom Keys.
It will be a while before Kairi finds out whether or not she will see the ghost of the last of the heirs of the Kingdom Keys at Celt Circle...and if the last of the heirs was a ghost or not.
"Here, take my hand," Terk said, hanging her long hand over the edge of the cliff. Kairi grasped her hand and felt herself being hoisted up over the ledge. Jane came up on her own and helped Selphie up while Terk very nearly chucked Merlin sideways into the dry river to their left.
"When a world passes into In Between, does everything dry up?" Kairi asked curiously, looking at the landform which obviously had once been a waterfall. "As in water."
"Looks to be like that," Selphie answered, eyeing the bone-dry river as well.
"Oh the Waterfall Cavern looks more beautiful when there's water flowing," Jane said wistfully while they picked their way through mysterious debris into the Waterfall Cavern. The cavern loomed up before them, dark, dry and ominous.
Jane and Terk walked briskly towards the tunnel to the side of the Waterfall Cavern and the others followed closely. They walked through a dark tunnel, seeming to be dry as bone.
"There used to be so much life here," Jane said sadly as they followed her through the darkness. "But after Deep Jungle appeared in In-Between, the river stopped running, the water flowed no more, and this green world dried up. We've been searching for water, for a way to make this world green again and brighten up this place, when Merlin approached us with a box that was already green and a mission for us to follow through."
"Maybe that is what we have to do," Merlin commented as they came out of the tunnel and into a realm of rock, of ledges worn with the flow of water that no longer flowed, of depressions in the stone once filled with cold water, of dried vegetation, brown and gray; there were long, shriveled vines rising up the wall and branching out into different directions. There were ledges of stone that stuck out, jutted straight out from the wall and they were longer than other ridges, didn't have the smooth texture of the ledges that represented the tiny waterfalls that they created. Vines would snake towards them and Kairi had a feeling they were supposed to climb one of the vines and head for one of the big ledges.
"And where is the tree, may I ask?" Merlin inquired pleasantly, scanning the Waterfall Cavern.
"Up one of the ledges," Jane answered while Terk pointed up. "We have to climb the vines, that's the only up there."
"How can we climb up there?" Kairi asked while Selphie went up to one of the snaky vines and touched it. It was dry and felt very delicate. Selphie gripped the vine and pulled up.
"Its not that hard climbing a vine," Jane told Kairi. "See, all you do is..."
Kairi's back was to the cavern wall and Jane was facing her and the wall. She happened to see a vine fall straight down from the top of the cavern.
"And?" Kairi questioned.
"Selphie, did you just pull down that vine?" Jane asked, ignoring Kairi.
"I just wanted to see if the vine was strong enough to hold someone..." Selphie explained nervously, her voice full of guilt.
"We need water to make the vines green and strong again," Merlin noted as he knelt down and studied the vine Selphie had pulled down. "We need to find water."
"Can't you use magic?" Selphie asked suspiciously. "You are a wizard, right?"
"For all vines? I think not," Merlin answered sadly. "I highly doubt I have enough magic to do so. We have to find a source of water."
"Where?" they looked around desperately.
There was not a drop of water in sight.