This chapter took longer than I thought to start on, there were some ideas that were on a rough edge and needed some smoothing out, if anyone finds that anything is too confusing to understand, just ask and they'll be adressed as a side note next chapter.
Chapter 4 - The Heartless with a Name
Let me through!
It's mine!
Sora howled as Mickey parried him off again with a stroke of golden radiance. The pain of the light seared his skin, it burned his flesh. But Sora paid no attention to these minor details, for so long now he had never felt the call of his heart as strongly as it called for him now. It was so close, and soon he would be whole again.
"Out of my way!"
Sora raised his black blade and brought it down upon Mickey's keyblade, behind the 3 feet tall mouse, the other humans and barn animals were running into Kingdom Hearts, it appeared as though they were attempting to take shelter within.
Sora slashed again, this time from down to up, as Mickey blocked the strike he could feel himself being lifted off the ground by the massive force of power.
"Your majesty!" Riku, the one who had come through the door, we'll call him D Riku, extended his hand right before Mickey was sent off for a homerun and pulled him back in.
"Is everyone inside?"
Riku nodded in response.
"Let's go then!"
Both Riku and Mickey ran towards Kingdom Hearts, back inside the door which to everyone present seemed to be the only able barrier between them and the rampaging heartless.
"STOP!"
Come on guys, don't do this to me.
It's not funny you know Riku, both of you for that matter.
Sora reached out with his claw to grab Mickey as they stood at the door's bounds. Mickey shoved Riku right inside the door as he turned to strike Sora's claw with the keyblade. Sora's claw recoiled before Mickey could put a hit on it, but then as Mickey turned to continue running, the claw extended again faster than it had recoiled and grasped the keyblade.
"O no you don't!" Mickey concentrated as a golden raidance spread through the blade of his weapon.
The light seared the flesh of Sora until black smoke began arising from his claw, but he held still. Pain was nothing, meaningless to a heartless, all he wanted as his heart back, and that was all that he would care about.
Instead of continuing in the power struggle, Mickey released his blade and dashed within the door, to where the others stood, amazed, shocked and somewhat terrified.
"Your majesty, the keyblade!" Riku noted that it was still there, and if Kingdom Hearts was going to protect them from the heartless, the keyblade would be needed to seal the door.
"Don't worry, I can summon the keyblade." Mickey extended his hand outwards expecting the same thing he had done so many times. The keyblade would vanish and appear again in the hands of its worthy one at their summon.
Instead what Mickey saw was his keyblade as it shattered into a million pieces at the hands of the heartless. The shockwave it generated sent the heartless flying back for a few steps, but the keyblade itself was all but gone.
"What?" Mickey peaked his ears out in shock, his tail pointy and straight.
D Riku summoned his sword from the shadows and stood in front of Mickey, with the keyblade gone they would simply have to hold off their stance here. Whatever this heartless was, it was far too powerful to be let into Kingdom Hearts.
Kairi tapped Mickey on his shoulder, "I've got a keyblade right here. Is it enough to close the door?"
Mickey opened his eyes...and stared..."Kairi? You've got a keyblade?"
D Riku turned around, "Wait what? This is Kairi? That's way too old to be Kairi your majesty!"
Kairi relentlessly struck D Riku on the head, needless to say, it hurt. "Sorry for being too old Riku!"
"That's not what I meant, ow ow ow..."
"Guys, we can talk about how not to upset woman after we're safe." Riku spoke calmly but naturally he was annoyed and freaked, not only was he staring at his double make a horrendous wise crack, Kairi seemed insistent to go along with it right before the heartless outside the door slashes them to pieces.
Mickey seemed to get the clue well enough, "Right, Kairi point your keyblade there and just seal it like you do with the world keyholes." Mickey pointed towards the center of the door, where the handles would be on Kingdom Hearts if the door was closed.
Kairi took a deep breath in and raised her keyblade towards the empty space constituting for a door. As she did so, Sora's foot stepped within Kingdom Hearts and his blade extended, driving it towards Kairi's face.
D Riku struck out the flat of his sword right in front of Kairi's face before Sora's blade reached the tip of her nose. The collision caused a mini-shockwave that blew in Kairi's face and lifted her hair, while Riku's blade looked as though it was about to shatter.
"Donald!" Kairi bellowed.
Donald waved his wand in a few circles as he called upon his most destructive spell.
"Meteor!"
A concentrated ball of heat shot from the tip of Donald's wand and incinerated the heartless. He stepped back and out through the door again, grasping his face which burned from invisible flames.
Virgin's Kiss - Pulsate
Kairi placed her hand along with her keyblade on the chest of the heartless, she could feel a tiny portion of the sear of heat radiating from him, but she was much more protected by her affinity to Donald's magic.
In an instant, her body seemed to twitch all over the place starting from a spiral motion at her ankles until her wrists flicked, causing a shockwave that tumbled Sora backwards.
"Now Kairi!"
Kairi jumped back, her keyblade raised to seal the door.
Keyblade Magic - Seal
A beam of light shot from the keyblade and split into hundreds of beams as they clung onto the edge of the door and began to close it.
"Faster faster!"
"Be quiet Donald! I'm going as fast as I can."
Beyond the closing door, Kairi saw the heartless standing back up, looking as though it was ready for one last attempt.
Kairi?
Is that really you Kairi? Who are you Kairi? Who's Kairi...
Kai...ri?
"Kairi..."
For a split moment, time seemed to stand still for Sora and Kairi, she paused, unaware that the process of closing the door had also stopped with her. And for Sora, it was as though for that short moment, he had grasped again his heart.
"Kingdom Hearts!"
Kairi was shaken away from her trance as the heartless began running towards her. Her focus began to seal the door again, there was no time to ponder whether the heartless calling out her name meant something, she could do that later when he wasn't busy trying to kill her.
Sora raised his blade and struck down at the tiny crack that now remained open of the door, the blade wisped by inches away from Kairi's face as the door shut on his arm, tearing it apart from his body. The arm fell to the floor, and within a few short moments, disintegrated into the surrounding darkness.
Kairi escaped the ordeal unharmed except for a few hairs that had been scraped off. The thump from the closing of the door still rang in her ears as her legs buckled and she sat down, exhausted and somewhat afraid. This heartless was nothing that she had ever seen before, devastating power and bottomless determination.
She laid her head back down on the ground, now that she had time, she noticed this place was rather awkward. The world was a mixture of dark and white, the floor she laid on seemed to be the only solid surface in all this world, while it held her steadily it was soft and gentle.
She rolled her head back on the floor until her eyes met with D Riku, "So? Got a story to tell?"
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"So, allow me to make a summary of what we've put together."King Mickey stood in the center of the semi-circle the group had formed, as though they were waiting to hear a camp story told by the fire. In which case, Mickey would be standing in the fire and burning himself.
The information exchange had lasted a decent while and it took even longer to make sense of what was going on. In the process, both the Riku's got to know each other well enough, not that they were different enough anyways, to pull off a few pranks and a game of "guess whos who". Kairi lost miserably.
"Basically, imagine a giant sphere at the center of everything. On the outer rims of this sphere are the doors known as Kingdom Hearts, the key point is for your to imagine that there are many of these doors, hundreds, thousands, millions. Each door leads to another sphere but in these spheres there are no other doors, instead what exists are many worlds within that sphere. Twilight Town, Arabia, Hallow Bastion, worlds like those. My speculation is that the sphere Kairi came through is concidently very close and thus smiliar to ours whereas other spheres may have been different since the start."
Goofy raised his hand, "Gwarsh, does that mean there's another me on the other side of this here place King Mickey?"
"That's the idea. In my sphere, Kairi never gains the powers of the keyblade and Sora was the one who defeated Ansem. So we can tell that while the general structure of these spheres are the same, what occurs in them are ultimately different. Though this may only be a speculation on my part, but I imagine it's possible that there may be many similar and different spheres outside Kingdom Hearts. By the way, stop calling me King Mickey, I'm not quite used to you two doing that."
(Mickey's simple theory was used as the basis of Donald's attempt at opening passageways towards different spheres through Kingdom Hearts. Though Donald failed to see the completion of his work before his natural death, his future apprentice succeeded his work and opened the door the a sphere long gone array. That is a story far away in the future of course.)
"So Sora's fine in the other world huh..." Kairi bit her lips silently, why couldn't see have such luck. She kind of envied the other Kairi, even if they couldn't see each other, at least she knew Sora was still alive.
"Yes, from what I've been able to gather, the key difference seems to occured at some point during or after your visit to Hallow Bastion. Either Sora never escaped the fate of a heartless in your world or his return has caused damage to his memory. Of course this is the only one of many potential differences."
Riku spoke up, "So why are you guys here then?"
It was D Riku who answered this time, if Kairi wasn't looking at the two of them, she'd swear one Riku asked a question and just answered it himself.
"We found the condition to locking away Kingdom Hearts. It takes 2 keyblades to do it, one from the outside, one from the inside. His majesty, as you can imagine, took care of the inside while Sora sealed the door from the outside. I tagged along cause well...it seemed like something I could do."
Kairi realized the implications of what he had said, "Wait, isn't the door already sealed? You mean someone's going to have to stay here?"
Mickey nodded, "And this brings us to the key point of what we're going to do. As you can now imagine, Kingdom Hearts is not sealed, and if let be in it's current state, the heartless will be able to enter it and cause changes and damage unknown."
"But there are already heartless in here." Donald asked puzzled
Donald spun around a little and pointed out a clod of level 2 heartless in the distance, gathering around patches of white light.
"That's true, but none of these heartless have enough will to do much except to take the occasional heart that drifts by, the heartless from outside who have experiences things and have evolved have enough will and desire to cause shifts in the core of Kingdom Hearts. For example, this powerful heartless we're dealing with seems to want something from within Kingdom Hearts, normally Heartless don't conciously enter Kingdom Hearts, if they do enter, it's simply because they happened to drift in."
Mickey took a quick pause and seemed to think deeply about what he was going to say next.
"About Kairi's question, I'm rather certain of it now that I've met you all, that there are in fact other spheres, and as such, more keybladers. You see, as me and Riku have been wandering through Kingdom Hearts, we've heard various whispers and voices calling out to us. I've been wondering for a long time what it is, but now I'm rather sure that it has been the calling of other keybladers of other worlds, perhaps inside Kingdom Hearts perhaps outside."
"Guh, so there are actually lots of people in here besides us?"
"That's what I believe, if not here then at least right outside the door. What I've also been led to believe is that time flows differently inside and outside of Kingdom Hearts. I've happened to come across a few messages that seem to stretch on for hours and sometimes days on end when they would normally take only a few seconds to say. Though it's been giving me and Riku more than a few headaches, I believe it will be the key to our plan."
"Our plan being? I hate to sound rude your...majesty, but I hope this plan gets us all back home." Riku was blunt, if this plan meant Kairi was stuck in here for who knows how long alone, he wouldn't go through with it.
"Don't worry Riku, the plan is simple and it ensures that we all go home properly."
Mickey took a seat now, he looked around a bit as if expecting some water but realizing nothing of the sort was around.
"My keyblade has the ability to open passages to worlds that I have already visited, though I can't seem to do this within Kingdom Hearts, I'm sure that I can do it outside. This is how I'm going to get you home Riku." Mickey pointed at D Riku.
"From what I believe, the Riku of your world has still retained most of his powers right? Our Riku has lost most of his while he was defeated by Sora, so one part of my plan is to have you two combine your powers to help hold off that heartless."
The two Riku's looked at each other, easier said than done, were they supposed to merge, transform or something?
"I've got a feel for how strong that heartless is and I think even with all of us combined we can only drive it off at best, what I'm afraid of is any stray heartless stumbling into Kingdom Hearts while we fight. The main plan is that while that heartless is distracted, Kairi and myself seal Kingdom Hearts, I'll do it from the inside. The sealing of the door will cause a resonance effect within this space which will collapse it, I've seen it happen once. Use that collapse to escape and head back to your world however you came, even if the heartless escapes it as well, the resonance effect will prevent him from rebuilding a path towards Kingdom Hearts for many many years."
Kairi stood up, "I see but...your majesty, you're not suggesting you sacrifice yourself."
Mickey shook his head, "Nothing so heroic, if you remember my theory from before. I will simply switch places with someone outside another Kingdom Hearts and then return to my world using the ability of my keyblade."
"I see, because time flows differently, there may be a chance that only days have passed before you find someone else to switch with." Mickey nodded at this, though he left out the fact that he had also more than once heard messages so fast he could barely catch them with his ear.
Riku acted out the pessimist, "What makes you think they want to switch places though?"
Mickey looked as though he wasn't quite sure how to explain this, "You haven't been in there Riku, I hear and feel their urges, whatever the reason, those people want in, and if I can let them in for just a little cooperation on their end, I don't think it'll be much trouble. Besides Riku, I love my family and world as well, I may try my best to do the right thing but I also want to return to them, no matter what."
Both the Riku's stood up, all that had needed to be said had been, "Well guess we better go practice this combining thing while we still have some time."
Kairi looked at the two of them walk off, "Your majesty, I personally don't think it's possible for Riku to hold off that heartless for very long, which is why I was wondering something. Is your keyblade fine now?"
Mickey summoned up his keyblade for her, the blade had miraculously put itself back together, except that now there were many cracks and chips over the place, some parts looked as though they would simply snap apart if the heartless got ahold of them again.
"Not in the best condition as you can see, but it's enough to seal the door."
Kairi looked to be in deep thought for a moment, "Yes, it should be enough...Your majesty, at one point I attempted to invent a twin blade technique based on the keyblade."
"Huh? Twin blade?"
"The original idea was to be able to hold two swords at the same time, I had Cid forge one for me and Donald enchant it, but the blade never lasted long against heartless above level 2. Yet the techniques worked rather well, so I was thinking whether we were able to share keyblades."
"O?" Mickey extended out his keyblade to Kairi, offering it.
"The other way around your majesty, you can bring out the power of the keyblade a lot better than me, I can teach you the one technique that can work best against that heartless. And if Riku is able to help out then we should at least be able to drive it off if not defeat it altogether. After all, you can't really send Riku off back to his world if he's busy fighting heartless." Kairi smiled.
Kairi offered Mickey her keyblade, he held the emerald keyblade gently, its touch seemed cool and sharp, much different from the feel his own keyblade gave him.
He swung it.
A golden radiance emitted from the core of the keyblade and shattered away the emerald surface as though it were paint, quickly, the keyblade now looked as his own tattered blade did before the heartless got a hold of it.
"Well, better start teaching."
Kairi nodded as she instructed Mickey in her duel blade technique but she only had time to teach him one combination, the one she thought would work best.
Duel Blade Combination - Sora
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"Ready everyone?" Mickey asked.
The team nodded, Goofy and Kairi as well as Riku stayed towards the back, they were the ones who weren't able to provide real firepower anymore.
D Riku and Riku had managed to channel the power of darkness remaining in Riku into D Riku, while some strange complications arose, no immediate dangers seemed to occur. Upon channeling the power, D Riku summoned up his old blade and felt the strength emminating from it once more, but at the same time, he also seemed to be subconciously mumbling something dark and disturbing. Riku left that fact alone, they needed power right now, even if it came at a cost. To be honest, he also didn't mind it as much, after all this would be the last time he saw his twin if all went well, it wasn't that he was cold, it was just that he had enough after all this time, he just wanted to go home.
"One last time Kairi, like this right?" Mickey held his tattered blade on his left hand and immitated a quick jump, spiral, slash combination.
"It'll have to do." Kairi looked upon the door, a few hours ago they had begun hearing bashing sounds on the door, now what had looked sealed hours ago had creeked open bit by bit. Beyond the door still protected by Kingdom Heart's magic, Kairi saw that the heartless seemed to be moving very slowly from her eyes, at least that part of Mickey's theory was confirmed now.
"One!"
"Two!"
"Three! Go!"
Mickey side stepped his body through the crack that was now big enough for him to enter through, for a moment his felt his body twitch and acknowledged it as the correction of time and space.
Behind him was D Riku, his sword in hand tailing Mickey as though he was a shadow.
Sora reacted quickly to the enemies whom to him had only dissapeared through the door minutes ago. He jumped a step back and ripped a small handful of flesh from his hips, slowly as he raised his handful of flesh, he crushed them with the claw he held it with.
The flesh seemed to turn liquid and dripped out of his palm followed by a massive incinerating sensation in the atmosphere.
Firaga - Tornado Special
A tornado of flames appeared from before Sora and launched itself towards D Riku and Mickey.
"Riku, don't falter!"
"Alright!"
Mickey jumped straight into the flaming tornado, spiraling in a motion that resembled the tornado itself except in the opposite direction. The next moment, a golden radiance was unleashed within the tornado and the flames seperated themselves.
Mickey had lost his momentum due to the flame assault, but D Riku had never stopped.
D Riku slipped under Mickey who was still air-borne from the spiral assault. Coming right beneath Sora, Riku unleashed a brute slash upwards. Sora's claw extended out to catch the blade, as the powers of darkness clashed together D Riku felt a constant pulsation in his head as if a strong but far off voice was screaming at him.
D Riku backed off, but it had been enough, he had covered the heartless' attention long enough for Mickey to reach him.
Mickey kicked off of D Riku's shoulders, it can't be helped, hes not tall enough to pull off the combo without a boost. Unexpectedly, D Riku collapsed from Mickey's jump boost, but he had no time for that now, Mickey had only one chance to do this right, his own keyblade wouldn't be able to handle a second try in its current condition.
Duel Blade Combination - Sora
Mickey's left key hooked onto the heartless' arm as he used it to swing right into the heartless, the left key then retracted and hooked onto the heartless' right arm, but as Mickey moved, his right blade struck down in a spiral motion on the shoulder of the heartless.
From the second arm Mickey swung towards the hips, legs, shoulder, neck. Each time he made a transition, he would place a spiraling hit on the heartless, while all the time he had been speeding up, faster and faster in his swinging.
Due to the immensity of the strikes and the seemingly random positioning of Mickey's strikes, Sora was left bellowing and clawing around in places on his own body and hitting air.
"Here it comes!" Mickey yelled out as he prepared for the last part of the combination, the part that he had no confidence in.
Mickey hooked both of his keyblades onto the shoulder of the heartless as he brought his own body circling up towards Sora's face. The original idea was to used all the momentum gathered and perform a finishing strike down towards the face of the opponent. Unfortunately, in the process of all his swinging, the left keyblade had deterioated and broke as Mickey hooked it onto Sora's shoulders.
The shattered swing made Mickey lose his balance, but this was his only chance, so he struck down with the keyblade that remained on his other hand.
The strike was tremendously powerful, Sora felt his body vibrate from the intensity as his body was sent flying towards Kingdom Hearts.
"No!" Mickey yelled realized the mistake he had just made, his blow would throw the heartless right into Kingdom Hearts, into Kairi, and if the heartless could still muster whatever strength it may still have, then he would have won.
Kairi watched as Mickey's slip sent the heartless flying her way, the door was open wide enough that he would be able to crash through.
Kairi charged towards the flying heartless while Donald and Goofy attempted to call her back.
With a wave of her hand, Kairi summoned her keyblade from Mickey's grasp, she swung it down towards the heartless, as hard as she could. There was no technique that would do here, it was a test of brute strength and Kairi was very weak in that category.
Traces of the golden radiance remained on the blade as Kairi brought it down on the heartless. The result was an emerald sphere that engulfed the two of them that kept flying back towards Donald who fortunately dodged it before his tail was burned yet again.
"Kairi!" Riku ran up towards where the sphere had crashed, Kairi had to be alright, she just had to be.
But when the emerald gust cleared enough for Riku to see through, he stopped, steps away from Kairi and Sora.
Before his eyes was Sora, the Sora he had known for all these years, the boy with the gravity defying hair who was roudy, far too happy for his own good and his best friend.
"Sora? ...how?"
Sora slowly opened his eyes, he looked around, Riku, and another Riku and King Mickey along with Riku, helping him walk towards himself. There was Donald and Goofy in the corner, they seemed surprised as they walked towards him.
Then there was Kairi, he was lying on top of her lap. She seemed surprised, scared, happy, sad, so many things all at once.
A tear drop trickled on Sora's face and he looked up to see Kairi crying, tears of joy perhaps? Or it could be just about anything. What had happened? He didn't remember anything, but at least Sora could tell what he was supposed to do at a time like this.
I lifted my hand gently and placed it on her cheek, so warm, so soft, gentleness that I hadn't felt in such a long time.
"Kairi." I said, and then I smiled.
This one seems to have pulled on a bit longer than I thought it would but it's mainly because I wanted to wrap up the story next chapter, so look forward to it.