Chapter 6: The Arena

I don't own anything but Vian and the castle. How pathetic.

The river disappeared into the mountains where they couldn't reach beyond a hill behind the school. In the distance, Sora and Riku were racing to the top.

As the hill got steeper, Sora grabbed onto some overhanging Ivy from the wall, and used it to help him up.

The others were all laughing at Sora a Riku struggle as they casually strolled up the hill.

"I think we're having an easier time doing this than they are!" Tidus said in between his laughter.

The winding creek was much smoother, compared to the bumpy steep hill of the castle.

There was a large splash as Sora and Riku finally made it, only slightly ahead of the casual group.

Though Riku was waiting for them, Sora was so tired he had fallen down and started to drift down the river, without considering stopping and waiting.

Riku grabbed the leg of his trunks, "Don't get lost, now." He said to a Sora that was about to go down river head first.

Sora mustered up his last slice of energy in order to crawl back up to a reasonable starting point, and collapsed on the side, halfway in the water, and half in the grass.

The rest of them got in the river, and Sora had regained his energy, and they all went splashing down the river and wound up in the lake. They were all splashing each other and playing games, and Selphie caught a fish with her bare hands, and began to chase Kairi around with it. It was a good sized small mouth bass, too ignorant to see Selphie grab at him. Everybody lost track of time, and before they knew it, Vian grabbed his watch and everybody watching him saw his eyes bug out.

"We're going to be late for dinner!" He shouted.

Though only Vian, Tifa, and Tidus and Wakka's Trator knew what this could mean for their divisions, everybody followed their lead and grabbed their towels and hurriedly dried off on the way up the castle.
"Lucky it's not a formal night!" Vian shouted to Tifa as they dashed up the castle stairs to the Entrance Lounge.

Tifa did not reply to this, merely putting on an extra burst of speed to make it to the dining hall to suddenly halt. She turned suddenly, knowing they would all bump into her, and stuck out her arms, pushing Ollette to the ground, who would have been first to bump into her.

"Alright, now, we're casual, we've been walking the whole way and made it fashionably late." Tifa said with an "am I right?" tone in her voice.

As they entered the dining hall, a noticeable amount of heads turned and stared for a moment, before going back to enjoying their food.

A tall man walked over to Tifa, he had dark brown hair and wore black pants, a white shirt with a black jacket.

"Tifa, you know what being late to dinner means."
"Yes Leon." Tifa responded.

"So your division's coming for arena training tomorrow? Because it's the first day for these kids, and they didn't know any rules, I'm only going to take five points, rather than the normal ten."

Tifa beamed up, "Thanks, Leon. I knew you couldn't give your old friend the maximum pun-."

"Oh yes I can." Leon said.

Tifa was silent. Leon pointed them to a table that had plenty of space, but stopped Tidus and Wakka.

"Cloud, why did you split up your division?"

"Well, Pence said he wanted to go to the library to study and Seifer said he didn't feel good. They both said for us to go ahead, and not spoil the fun." Cloud explained for his division.

Leon frowned. "I saw Seifer coming in. He didn't look sick then. He was messing around; I came over and asked him for his name, he doesn't sound like one of our better ones."

"We're going to have some trouble with him." Cloud responded.

"I saw him come in with some other people. He couldn't have known them; all our students from twilight town and Destiny Islands were at the river, apart from Pence."
Cloud spotted Seifer at a table with a group of four others. "There he is. If he doesn't come back to the room after dinner, then I'll have him taken care of."

Dinner was great, and they had a dessert afterwards, baked Alaska in celebration of the first day back of school. For many returning students, however, this was no celebration.

Wakka and Tidus saw Pence sitting next to Hayner and Roxas, glad that they had found part of their division among friends. The two sat across from Pence and Hayner, with Sora on their right.

Sora was sitting next to Kairi, and across from Riku. Kairi was sitting in front of Selphie, and Naminé was sitting across from Roxas down the other side of the table, with Ollette on her left. (A/N Sorry, this was kind of pointless to put in.)

Sora slept well that night, but with a slight homesickness that was surely spread all among the others. He was awoken by Riku shaking him. The alarm went off 35 minutes ago! Get up! Riku and Hayner were all ready for breakfast. Sora and Roxas was hurried, however. When Vian arrived at their door, they were all ready to go, but Roxas had the wrong shoes on the wrong feet. Everyone was excited for breakfast today, because they knew what was following.

They still did not know their way entirely around the castle, just the places they needed to know thus far.

The arena was a door that looked completely normal, and Sora decided to remember the door by the evil looking picture of a man being killed by a guillotine.

He stood for a moment staring at the awful picture before snapping back into planet Earth through a wormhole.

He had fallen steadily back in the line, and was now near the back with Naminé, who was walking with Roxas.

They entered into a room, obviously a briefing room of what they were about to set eyes upon.

"Welcome." A voice from apparently nowhere said, until Sora saw the speaker was Leon.

"This is the arena. Or at least this is the briefing room of the arena. The arena is a game; don't think it's entirely for your entertainment, though. This is a special game, designed to look for different sorts of people. The most obvious traits we find in people are the strategically strong and combatants. Though everyone is a combatant, not everyone is a good one. Tifa, for example, is a great combatant, and is o.k. in her strategies, through experience, and has always had some good strategists in her division, like Vian, over there."
Tifa and Vian waved comically.

"Now, I don't know how many of you believe in magic, but I for one sure do. You guys will just have to wait until you meet Merlin. This coming up is just a small demonstration."

There was silence for a moment until Tifa whispered to some girls around her "this is cool."

Leon took no notice and continued. "But all those who have ever received a scholarship to this school have had a weapon choose them as an individual. Now you've all heard of keyblades, but I'm afraid those are among a rarity, only for those with the strongest of hearts. You'll probably learn about keyblades in Ansem's class of the heart. Obviously this is a class where you learn about different hearts of different kinds of people and worlds. Now, there are thousands of weapons possible, maybe even millions, they are always pertaining to the person given to, none are the same. You will enter the arena, and you may begin to explore, and your weapon will appear in your hand, at any given time. This may seem odd, but it's just the way Merlin made it. Take it or leave it."

There were obviously no objections made, however strange it seemed.

They entered the arena and were very surprised at the appearance. There were plenty of objects everywhere. They ranged from piles of items to an overturned car. The arena was gigantic, and the objects were obviously to hide behind. There were two doors at the opposite ends, though there was so much clutter that they would not be able to see the other division if they stood at their door.

"This is just one of the setups." Vian said to Riku, who was looking at the objects as if he was trying to think of ways to use them. "You're going to have to look at this room like that every time you come in. Expect a surprise. This is good, what you're doing. You look like an all around kind of person. You can know how to use the obstacles and you can do the maneuvers, too. It's going to be up to you guys to create your strategies, Tifa and I are only going to show you one, and it will be a simple one."

"Seems easy enough." Riku said easily.

"Yes it does, and your enemy is thinking the same thing." Vian said smartly.

"You have a point there." Riku said, remembering that when they would both have an easy time of it, it was suddenly not such an easy task.

"Go ahead and practice, see if you can figure something out that could work in every scenario." Vian suggested.

"Thanks for the strategy, Vian." Riku said.

"Go away before I give you all my secrets." Vian retaliated to that remark.

So far nobody had received their weapon. They were all tense and expecting a surprise. When it actually happened, none of them could be prepared.

Riku found Sora diving behind the overturned car, as if dodging an enemy missile. Then he heard the familiar laughter of Kairi. "Sora," Thought Riku, "always being a clown."

Riku walked over to them, and was knocked down by Sora.

"They've got heat-seekers, Riku, jump in the ice box!" He yelled, providing more and more laughter from Kairi. In half a second, Sora got off of Riku and took the ice box in reference from a pile, and put it on Riku's head.

"Now they'll leave you alone, and Oh my gosh, come after me!" Sora ducked as if there really were heat seeking missiles.

Riku couldn't help but smile, Sora was so dramatic and comical.

In the midst of all this, nobody knew what had just happened. Kairi got her weapon, and she didn't even notice until Sora stood up and pointed, jumping up and down, at what she was holding.

It was a keyblade, they were all sure of it. It had a general shape of loops and spirals all over it, with helix strands creating the handhold.

"I will call it Paopu!" Kairi shouted in delight, after taking a look at it. Sure enough, the keychain was a golden star.

She took a practice swing at Sora, who did another silly dive.

"Ha-ha! I have the power here!" Kairi yelled. "Look out, Riku!" She shouted yet again, swinging at Riku.

To her surprise, Riku merely blocked it.

"Cheater! Nobody can block a keyblade with their own hands!" Kairi complained.

"I'm not." Riku said calmly. Kairi then saw that Riku had a keyblade, also. It was a black and blue hilt, with a waving net of white down until the jagged end of the blade, which looked to be a wing.

"Way to the dawn." Riku said strongly. "That's its name."

Sora was not doing dodges now. He was standing there, with his hand outstretched like a true warrior, clutching in his hand… a stick that he had found from a nearby pile.

"Sora!" Kairi said exasperatedly. "Don't fool around. If you're holding that stick when you get your weapon, it'll be part stick, and you'll break it."

"Well I'm not sure about that theory, Kairi." Said a voice behind her, making her jump.

It was Tifa. "But I'm sure surprised that we have two keyblade wielders in one division. Usually, there aren't any at all!"

She turned to Sora. "You're next to go, buddy; everyone else has theirs by now."

This made Sora angry and sad. What if he didn't get a weapon? What if it wasn't a keyblade and he was separated from Riku and Kairi? Would he be sent home if he didn't get a weapon?

Sora did not show his feelings, however. He didn't want to ruin everybody else having such a great time.

He took out his lucky charm. Kairi had given it to him. It resembled a Paopu fruit, in a way. But it was smiling. It was nice, and Sora would cherish it forever.

He took it out and examined it, and suddenly it began to move. It looked to be adjusting itself, and Sora didn't want to interrupt its dance. It had almost slid off the left side of his right hand when it became attached to something.

Sora knew what it was before he looked at it. Only one weapon had a chain like that. It was a keyblade, with his lucky charm as the keychain. He didn't even think of a name when Kairi said, "Oathkeeper."

"Huh?" Said Sora.

"You promised me you'd take GOOD care of it!"

"I have!" Sora said a bit too loudly.

"So you're an Oathkeeper!" Kairi said exasperatedly.

There were three keyblade wielders to be in a division together. Sora and Riku began to duel together, devising strategies and moves they could use against their enemies. Kairi suddenly jumped in and had them both on the ground within seconds.

"No fair!" Riku shouted.

"We can't hit girls!" Sora shouted.

"No, Sora, she interrupted our battle!"

"Hey, if you guys aren't alert 100 of the time, then you're going to be defeated!" Tifa said walking up to the trio.

"Three of you. Three Keyblades!" Tifa said in awe.

"I'm guessing it's a first?" Sora said.

"Of course it is!" Kairi said, knocking him on the head with her keyblade.

"Alert Sora! Be alert!" Vian said. "You'll make me look worse!"

"But I can't hit a girl!" Sora said.

"She's going to be a tough one, Sora, you're going to have to learn to hit all the girls as long as you're in here." Vian said. "At least you're polite, though."

Everybody left the room feeling good, everybody happy with their weapon.

"We're going to make sure you guys win!" Tifa said. "You have the best combatant and the best strategist with your division!"

"I thought you weren't supposed to help us?" Naminé said.

"We're not going to." Vian said mysteriously yet simply.

Nobody understood this, but they knew that if they said so, it must be right.

A/N I'm so so so Sorry I didn't update faster, but considering this story is 2,484 words, I think I can let it slip.

GIVE ME BIG NICE REVIEWS! I worked hard on this chapter!