1.
when's Sora and Aozora coing back into the picture? they'll
always come back so relax. Its only a question of as in which chapter
and in which situation
2. what does Sally mean by 'The dual
blades of the crownless king will open the door of light from dark
depths.'? for me to know and for you to find out. So clique its
stupid but that's the only answer I can give right now
3.
great story even tho it is seriously confuseing me rite now, but i
have alot of time for pondering stuff like this. it's great 2 have a
story where u kinda have to boogle over things like what Sally
said... it makes u use your imagination. not a question, lol. Sorry
for the confusion but it can't be helped
4. update soon or i
will send my army of killer bunnies, mutated beanie babies, freaky
flying freckled monkies, and a giant-man-eating-marshmellow after
you! that I'm officially afraid of, so here's chapter 41
Secrets of Memories Chapter 41: The Princess, the King, and the Society
" Der…still musing?" Goofy asked tentatively as they began to sight a world teeming with life yet surrounded by vast bodies of water. " Sora?"
" …huh, wha, what?" Sora jerked at his name. " Someone say something?"
" We were wondering what's up with you," Donald replied as patiently as possible from the back of the gummi ship. " Daydreaming at the controls; you'd make a pilot yet."
" Well I'm sorry," Sora replied, scratching his head in the process. He sighed, then said, " I was just thinking…"
…about some pretty weird stuff, he added silently and mainly to himself. A whole bunch of nonsense rolled into one. If someone were to try and prove that adults can go lunatic, well I've got the proof.
His memories were fading from his mind now and he was now focusing on the task at hand. " What kind of world is this?"
He was staring at a world surrounded by vast bodies of water, with continents dotting the blue. In one particular place, there was a huge sleeping volcano that rose up high; it sputtered moist air constantly.
" How curious, very curious…" Sora had never seen a volcano of any kind behave that way before. " I'd like to see…"
" Donald," Goofy had gone to the back to join the wizard. " We're approaching Atlantis."
He gave a wary glance at Sora, who was busy musing over the odd volcano.
" Already?" Donald asked, quite surprised by this. " I didn't think we'd reach Atlantis so fast."
" Well – der – now, we have," Goofy answered. " And Sora's found the other passageway, the one by the volcano. Should we go in that way?"
" Why not?" Donald replied. " It's been years since we've all done that together, you, me, and Mickey – King Mickey, I mean."
Goofy gave him an odd look but let it pass. " It was fun but Donald, we nearly crashed – huyuk – remember?"
" Yeah, thanks to your piloting skills!" Donald shrilled back at him. " We could've crashed if King Mickey hadn't interfered."
" All the same, we nearly crashed," Goofy was still unfazed by Donald's fits. Sora, listening from the front, still marveled at the knight's patience. " But do you remember…Pete?"
When all that answered Goofy was silence, Sora turned around to see what was wrong.
" And why should I remember him?" Donald asked carefully, his voice shaking slightly. " Goofy, give me just one good reason why I should remember him!"
" He's still at large – huyuk?" Goofy suggested.
" Who's Pete?" Sora asked curiously. " I've never heard of him before. And you guys never told me."
He gave them an accusing stare.
" What's the use," Donald finally sighed after giving up on the staring contest. " He'll know everything eventually anyways."
" Besides," Goofy added, " Pete, he…der…didn't he work for ol' Crimson that King Mickey beat years ago?"
" Crimson?" Sora was curious. " Do tell. But first: who's Pete?"
" Pete's what you call a real villain," Goofy explained. " Real evil guy, black at heart. He wanted to be king but he wasn't made of the right stuff and so he worked under the king, wanting to overthrow him. Not too long ago, we found out he was in league with the Heartless and forced him out. Never heard from him since."
" Okay…" Sora had never heard of this before. " How come I never heard of this before?"
" You were too young, Sora," Donald answered as though it was obvious. " Use your head!"
" I've never heard of Crimson either," Sora replied. " Why don't you tell me about him, since Goofy said this Pete of yours worked for Crimson -"
The gummi ship dipped violently all of a sudden and, yelling, Donald and Goofy slid right into Sora.
" Sora, you idiot!" Donald was shouting. " You didn't put the ship on 'Auto-pilot'!"
" Sorry!" Sora climbed over Donald and Goofy and reached for the controls, only to find them locked into position. " Hey, I can't move this!"
" Atmosphere," Goofy said rather pleasantly and disturbingly, as the ship seemed to hit into some weak resistance of sorts. " And gravity!"
The ship was pointing downwards towards a volcano. Towards the looming maw of the great silent mountain in the middle of the sea.
" That's it, we're gonna die," Sora grumbled as he fought with the immobile controls. " What's wrong with this thing? What's going on? Why doesn't this stupid piece of junk work!"
Sora banged at the controls and one of the joysticks clattered to the floor.
" Oh great move, smart guy," Donald snapped. " Now look what you've done!"
" I'm sorry!" Sora shouted back, fury growing in him. " Damn it! Damn it all!"
Very quickly they found themselves facing the great jaws of the volcano. It was very black, nearly as black as the heart of the Heartless – darkness.
" Darkness…" Sora whispered as the gummi ship somehow, and with perfect precision, dove downwards into the very center of the volcano.
"…so we may have been getting wrong information?" Princess Kida was not happy, not happy at all with this. " How can we get our information wrong? That doesn't make sense!"
" Darkness is strange and twisting," Sally answered calmly and patiently. " Warping its way into even our pure minds, darkness seeks ever to separate us from what is true. If only she was here…"
King Mickey suddenly jerked. He looked at the glowing, rippling wall right behind Princess Kida and his eyes narrowed. Everyone noticed this and that meant only one thing: wait for King Mickey to speak.
" Kida, Princess," King Mickey said, his noble voice terse and alert. " You have to go back now. Something of immense power has entered your home. You must look to it immediately."
Princess Kida looked at King Mickey in surprise. She had not felt anything at all and neither had the others.
" Power…" the Emperor mused. " Perhaps…the Keyblade Master?"
There was a gasp and everyone turned to Kairi, the young Princess of Heart and by far the strongest of the Seven. Her face had grown ghostly and she trembled.
" It could be," the Emperor agreed. " Or…it could be the Guardian."
" The Guardian escaping so soon?" King Mickey was skeptical.
" No, it is not the Guardian," Sally answered. " It is the Keyblade Master. Princess Kida, you must go. The Heartless and the Nobodies have invaded your home."
Princess Kida felt her face drain of blood. No, not now. It can't be now! She was too young and her father was too old. Atlantis had been crumbling; if the Keyblade Master fails in his mission on Atlantis, she would lose everything to the Heartless and the Nobodies…
Princess Kida nodded to King Mickey, then gave a half-bow to all the others gathered, as was the custom of the Order. She then gave Kairi a kind, reassuring smile.
" Do not worry, Princess of Heart," she told the teenager. " You will see him again."
Prophetic words, perhaps, but nobody thought about it now as Princess Kida gave everyone one final nod and then walked straight into the rippling wall behind her.
King Mickey watched her, then turned to Sally, who spoke with sadness, " All things change, dark and light. Lost the heart will be, gone be the white. Sadness trails the lonely royal, blue will be her days. Let fire be buried in ashes and the old order will fade away. Dark times are still coming, Your Majesty. They are still coming. We must prepare for the darkness."
The first thing Aozora noticed was the breeze. There was a breeze wherever he was and with it drifted a rather familiar scent of a strange sea from a distant memory that still haunts him.
The shadows of the people loomed before him. Scrambling backwards as fast as he could on his back, he took a quick look behind him and silently cursed as he saw others closing in on him. He was encircled, trapped. And everywhere was the smell of the accursed sea…
He opened his eyes slowly, unsure of where he was. He blinked several times, as everything was blurry and he waited for his vision to clear. He did grow a bit worried when everything was still a bit fuzzy but by the time his vision cleared complete, he knew where he was.
" The Gathering…" he murmured to himself, his face dark. " But…why?"
" Well," a surprisingly cheery voice spoke up behind him. " About time you got up."
Aozora whirled around and had his arm around the speaker's neck in no time.
" Who are you?" Aozora hissed. " And where am I? Why am I here?"
" Just the thing I wanted to ask," the person gasped out, his silver hair rather glaring in this dark world. " If you let me go, maybe we could all sort these things out."
Aozora was rather hesitant but the person's reaction to his demands, " Just the thing I wanted to ask" , confused him. He slowly and very cautiously let go of the person's neck and backed away, suddenly noticing that they were sitting in a very large, crude prison of sorts.
" What's going on here?" he whispered as the person, rubbing his neck painfully, sat down opposite of him. Aozora turned and scanned the person.
The person sitting in front of him was his own age, fifteen. He was pale like Aozora but he had icy green-blue eyes and brilliant silver hair. A band of navy blue wrapped around his head and kept his long silver hair out of his face. He, too, was wearing the black trench coat of the Unknowns but Aozora suspected that the person was in trouble with the Society like he was.
" I honestly don't know," the person answered amiably. " I suspect we just weren't doing what we were supposed to be doing. But that's not why I'm here, I believe. They, the Society members that are corrupted, suspect that we're in league with the Keyblade Master."
Aozora twitched but the person did not seem to notice. " I wonder who blew our cover…"
" Wait a minute," Aozora said, staring at him. " What do you mean by 'we'?"
" Oh, I mean by our mentor – oh, I see what you mean," the person replied. " Its me and my friend; we've been trying to clear the path for the Keyblade Master for a while and then some members of the Society just snatched us and dragged us back here. I'm Kobi; what's your name, Guardian?"
He held his hand out to Aozora but he found himself too hesitant to take it. Well, maybe not hesitant, stunned shitless.
Kobi? Did he just say Kobi?
" Um…hello?" Kobi waved his hand in Aozora's face. " Do you want to be called Guardian for some time or would you like for me to say your name?"
Aozora stared at him. Yes, yes, I could recall it all. Silver hair, the icy sea-colored eyes, the pale skin, the cheerful personality…
" Kobi?" Aozora whispered. " Kobi, is that you? Is that really you?"
" I'm – I'm sorry?" he was confused. " What do you mean?"
" Kobi," Aozora exclaimed, his heart beating furiously with hope. " Kobi, its me, Aozora. Remember? We were friends on Celt Circle."
Kobi's rather pleasant smile faded from his face. His face, already pale, grew whiter, draining of blood.
" Oh my god," he murmured, his hand dropping to his side. " Aozora? But you're dead!"
Aozora shook his head. " I've never been dead, Kobi. But – but what are you doing here? In the Society, I mean. How'd you – how'd you still stay alive?"
" I don't know," Kobi replied in a whisper, staring at the hard, uneven ground. " The explosion, when Celt Circle was destroyed, I woke up…at another world. I forgot the name; it exists no longer now, but I stayed there, until the world was destroyed. But I was still alive…and I found myself here. This dark place and the funny-smelling ocean…and the Society found me. I've been with them ever since."
Aozora still stared at him. " I thought you were dead. You and Lorien."
" Lorien…" Kobi's voice faltered and faded, and Aozora thought he saw his childhood friend's eyes harden. " She was with me…the whole time, every time. She's part of the Society, too, and she's also here in this cage -"
" I want to see Lorien," Aozora demanded, rising to his feet. But he didn't need to.
A figure stood a little way from where the wall of the prison angled into the room violently, as if it was built there in an attempt to create two different rooms. Aozora froze and Kobi looked behind him, as someone stepped into whatever light was there.
She was taller now, taller than what his memory recalled. Her hair was long and red, like satin; she had bangs that stood out rather harshly against her hair. Her eyes were stormy blue, hardened with whatever she had to face in life. She, too, was wearing a long black trench coat.
Her eyes, they were still lonesome…she's faced a hard life, like Kobi did, like I did…
But now she was staring at Aozora, as though she had seen demons.
" Its – its you," she stammered, in the same voice Aozora heard quite some time ago.
" Lorien," Kobi said softly, looking to her. " Lorien, this isn't the Guardian."
" What?" she gasped, confused. " What do you mean he's not the Guardian?"
" Its Aozora, Lorien," Kobi answered carefully. " Aozora's the Guardian."
The look on Lorien's face was full of astonishment, shock, and…nervousness.
" Aozora?" she whispered. " Is it really you?"
He nodded slowly, speechless, for he was seeing a new Lorien, a total surprise to him. His heart was beginning to beat loudly and, to his bewilderment, faster.
" It's come down to this…" Kobi sighed. " Us three, from Celt Circle, in a prison, after half a decade of absence from each others' lives. Here when we shouldn't be here."
He then slammed his fist onto the floor, which not only made a loud sound and cracked his knuckles in the process, it woke Aozora from a trance. Lorien, in the meantime, had drifted to one side of the prison and leaned against the wall, her eyes never leaving Aozora.
" We were supposed to keep Pete from getting to Atlantis, too," Kobi continued to talk with a scowl. " Now that the Princess of Heart is finally starting to revive the worlds the Nobodies and Heartless - " he spat out the names like they were venom " – we're supposed to be there to safeguard the worlds against Pete. But we're not there! We're here! If Pete gets a hold of that stupid lamp in Agrabah, we're in for some serious trouble."
" And Sora hasn't reached the next level of power yet, either," Lorien added calmly. " Trance is still out of his reach. And that power will not stay with him if he loses memory. Just like before."
" Trance?" Aozora asked, puzzled.
" The ability to combine with others to use double the power and a different set of weapons for a set time," Lorien replied. " Powerful, but risky, very dangerous. If you use this ability too much, it will drain you to the point of dying. If you forget…you will lose the power forever."
Aozora nodded slowly. " This is new."
" That's because you weren't here long enough to learn more of the Keyblade Masters," Kobi answered. " Trance is powerful but it has plenty of drawbacks, so I don't know how much it can benefit the Keyblade Master. In the meantime, we should do what the mentor had told us to do if we get caught."
" Mentor?" Aozora was curious and suspicious.
" Why?" Kobi asked.
" I knew of a mentor once, long ago," Aozora answered carefully, cautiously. " His name was Eldest."
" As is the name of our mentor," Lorien replied. " It seems he was doing this on purpose, teaching all three of us what we are supposed to know."
Aozora stared at them once again. Their teacher, their mentor, was his? Eldest?
Do not be surprised at this, my protégé¸ he heard his mentor's voice chuckle in his mind. Great students they are but you are still my protégé. However, now is not the time to dawdle. Danger is surrounding you in every way imaginable and you must get out of here. The Gathering is set to begin soon. Perhaps you should stay a bit before taking your leave and following the Keyblade Master again. Listen to what they have to say before leaving. The Peg-leg is abroad, Aozora, Guardian. Sora is still in great danger but the danger is now magnified perhaps tenfold. Oh, and if you have trouble leaving, look to your friends for help. If all three of you cannot make it, then we shall see…oh yes, we shall see…
The voice faded.
" Tell me," Aozora turned to Kobi and Lorien. " What exactly is The Gathering?"
" And where are we?" Sora demanded while rubbing the painful spot on his head.
The landing was a hard one. Dropping down a volcano, the gummi ship ricocheted off the sides in the process, finally coming down with a crash and expelling Sora, Donald, and Goofy in the process.
" In a volcano!" Donald shot back, lying on his stomach.
" My back…" Goofy moaned; he was sprawled on his back over Donald. " There's something underneath me…"
" That's me, you oaf!" Donald exclaimed.
" Oh, I knew that," Goofy replied and he rolled off the indignant duck. " My back…I think I broke it."
" That was a hard landing," Sora said, also rubbing his back. " Some volcano."
" The gummi ship," Donald wailed, gesturing to the dented, smoking sorry piece of metal.
" Oh man…" Sora groaned. " We've got to fix that up."
" You know," Goofy said, while on his back. " This really is a very nice place. I mean, its so empty, so calming; you can see the sky up there through the hole and the footprints on this sandy floor. Real lonely footprints at that; kinda like peaceful isolation, you know."
" Footprints?" Sora was intrigued. " If there are footprints here, then there must be a way in and out of here."
He leaned over to look at the floor and immediately regretted the move. " Ow, my…back."
He did, however, see the footprints Goofy mentioned moments earlier. They seemed to be headed down a gently sloping floor into the shadows of the inside of the volcano. He stood up again, wincing slightly at the pain but intrigued greatly by the direction the footprints where headed towards.
Donald, in the meantime, had spotted several different sorts of footprints. He scrambled over to see these isolated sets of feet imprints. They were…human footprints, three different sizes but apparently belonging to humans. And as Donald looked closely, the unique designs of the soles of the shoes on each foot became rather familiar, jogging his memory and making him recall another day, when he and Goofy crash-landed into this world the same way, with another Keyblade Wielder…
" I think we should follow these footprints," Sora announced, gesturing at the footprints he was staring at. " Maybe there's a passageway underneath this volcano."
" I think there is a passageway," Goofy agreed as he slowly turned over and pushed himself up. " I remember there was a passageway in a volcano once…we had to follow footsteps, too; huyuk, remember?"
" Of course I do!" Donald shot back. " Now come on, let's see where this passageway leads to!"
Sora, no longer as disturbed by the two's mysterious conversations, carefully followed the footsteps, walking into the shadows of the volcano. Goofy kept looking back to the still-smoking gummi ship, while Donald stared intently at the one spot where he had found three different sets of footprints, old but untouched by the forces of nature. His mind kept racing, kept remembering the dark starry night, the hard breathing, the sound of footprints racing across the sand, heartbeats that sounded like great gongs, the fear, the insane fear of darkness…and then there was the betrayer, the one Donald firmly believed began the decline of this Universe, the Old Order.
Somehow I think Pete's deep into this, Donald thought as he followed Sora deep into the shadows and into a very inconspicuous passageway. All this enigmatic, confusing talk; the ways the Society seeks to stop Sora…why does it seem like Pete is conducting all this? Does he really have power over the Heartless and the Nobodies, the Society and Ansem and the others? Where is King Mickey when you need him!
Der…maybe it is Pete who's doing all this, ol' Peg Leg, Goofy thought. It seems kinder weird that the Heartless and Nobodies and them Society persons attack in the same way Pete coordinates it all. Some special units in this part, some in that part, and some spread out in the middle. Sounds just like Pete! I wonder why Pete came to my mind in the first place, der…
Sora was also perplexed as well. Pete? Who the hell is Pete? Why haven't they mentioned this before? Why are they keeping this type of information hidden from me? Why are they still hiding from me what they don't want me to hear? Why don't they want me to hear? I don't understand. I just don't understand.
But he decided not to ask Donald and Goofy. He didn't trust them anymore; they hid from him what they had not wanted him to hear and if he found out and asked, they would not tell him. Or, they would dangle tidbits of information in front of his nose, to the point that he thought he would have to get down on his knees and beg for the knowledge that laid just beyond his reach.
There's gotta be someone who knows just as much as they do, Sora reasoned to himself. I mean, how many people out there know as much as Donald and Goofy? Well, I don't exactly know what it is that they know but still…sigh…I wish somewhere out there, there would be someone who could at least tell me what I NEED to know.
And then he noticed the faces staring at them. Well, okay, they weren't exactly faces; they were masks. But they were still staring at them. And Sora took this to be a bad sign.
" Father," Princess Kida paced in front of her elderly father as he sat on his throne. " What ARE we supposed to do? Sally says we might've gotten our information wrong…or that the darkness purposely twists them in our minds. How is it that she is unaffected? And how do we know what is the truth? If Sora or the Guardian comes here, what are we to tell them?"
" Calm down, my daughter," the ancient King Kashekim Nedakh said in his deep regal voice. " You think too much about this. Calm yourself and think more rationally, more reasonably. It is true that the darkness can twist whatever we know. But that is where our hearts come into play. What our minds don't know, our hearts know. Say whatever is closest to the heart and perhaps we may be right. And when in doubt, look to the books, to the written facts, and the prophecy."
" I almost forgot about that," Princess Kida said with a smile. " But still…something bothers me. I don't know what it is but it bothers me."
" Speak your mind, Daughter," King Nedakh said calmly.
" When Sora comes," Princess Kida looked to her father intently, " he brings darkness with him. The meeting I had with the Order…it seems strange. When the Heartless, the Nobodies, and the Society appear, Sora appears. And when he leaves, so does the darkness. But there's always the remains, the residue, the echo. If he comes here, Father, what then? Our world is dying and we know it. The crystals, we've forgotten what their uses are, and our people, every year we lose someone, every generation, there are less of us. What can we do, if Sora comes here?"
" The Crystal force has never abandoned us," King Nedakh answered. " They will help us."
" But not all the way," Princess Kida added. " The Old Order is finished. Sally said so herself. Well, not the exact words but she means the same. The Old Order from the very beginning was doomed to some extent. But the darkness had kept us blind to it for the most part, until Dragon and Phoenix were chosen by the Keyblades."
" The Old Order will die," King Nedakh agreed. " It has been that way ever since Sora was born, Sora and the Guardian."
" And with his coming comes the death of the Old Order," Princess Kida mused. " And our home will go down with it, won't it?"
" Such is fate," King Nedakh said solemnly, sadly. " Our world is as old as the Old Order; the downfall of the Old Order is the downfall of Atlantis. Our world will die but perhaps our people will still live to see the coming of a New Order."
" If the New Order can survive its birth," Princess Kida said. " Fate is still hidden from our eyes. The feathers, will they fall or not?"
" I prefer that they never fall," King Nedakh told her. " And that's when you get involved. Don't let anything happen to the Keyblade Master when he comes. Do you understand Kida? Now we must be careful with every step we take, every step we make. The time is drawing near; Sally was right when she said the era of the Old Order is drawing to an end. And when it does come to an end, we shall make it the most glorious ending of all Time."
Princess Kida bowed at these noble words.
" Your Majesty," a messenger bowed and made his presence known from the doorway of the decaying yet graceful palace. " Our scouts found strangers wandering on our lands."
" Is that so?" King Nedakh said, sitting straight on his throne. " Who and what are they? And where are they from?"
" Well Your Majesty," the messenger said, a bit hesitant. " Thing is, not only did they come from within the inactive volcano, they're at a stand-off with our scouts. And not only that, we've got reports of a disturbance beyond the great walls that enclose us. Something's trying to get in here and its something of power."
Princess Kida looked to her father, alarmed. " What do we do?"
" I think, Daughter, it is best that you see to this source of disturbance," King Nedakh counseled. " We do not allow strangers into Atlantis; they are to be killed as soon as they are beyond the walls that hold us. However, the ones at a standoff with our scouts, bring them here. The scouts are to kill them; those who can face us…bring them here, immediately!"
Princess Kida was bemused by this breach of ancient law but she did as told. The messenger, in the meantime, had bowed and backed out of the throne room, carefully avoiding the intricate patterns of the pool of water in the middle of the throne room.
" We extend a hand of peace," one of the strange people said in perfect Common Speech. " Our King Kashekim Nedakh welcomes you to Atlantis."
The person then turned his gaze to Donald and Goofy, who were quite calm but still on their toes. " And sirs Donald and Goofy, welcome back."
" Why are you giving them star treatment?" Sora demanded with narrowed eyes.
" They have been here long before you, stranger," the man answered. " We are familiar with them, their friendship, their authority. Not you. But to you King Nedakh extends a hand of peace, at least until he knows who you are."
" Fine then," Sora grumbled darkly. He gave everyone angry blue stares and prompted the group of people to lead them to the palace of King Nedakh.
" What were they talking about, Goofy?" Sora questioned the knight, ignoring Donald, who was becoming rather infamous on Sora's list of people as tight-lipped.
" As in?" Goofy asked curiously.
" How do they know you?" Sora drilled. " Why did they call you 'sirs'? What do they mean by 'friendship' and 'authority'? What in hell are they talking about?"
" We came here before," Goofy said, though his tone was a bit evasive. " We came here with King Mickey on some very serious business. Very serious business."