Chapter 15 – Yes, Yoko Ono

"I don't wanna face it," said Donald. "Yoko. I want her to just pass me by."

"Are you sure about this, Sora?" said Mira. "Baby, please don't go. You could be killed. Beating Yoko is a long, long, long way from taking down her henchmen."

"I'll get by with a little help from my friends," said Sora. "Won't you believe in me?"

Mira sighed. "If you want me to, I will."

Donald shivered. "Those henchmen were tough enough. I don't wanna be a soldier, Sora. I don't wanna die."

"Crybaby. Cry," said Sora. "Is that how you're going to intimidate her? Flying away at the first sign of danger?"

"This bird has flown," said Donald.

"Surprise, surprise," said Sora. "If you run for your life now, you're going to have to carry that weight. A long time."

"Give peace a chance, Sora."

"Peace? This world won't be at peace until we stop Yoko Ono. There's no way. There might not be a tomorrow."

"No tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow never knows. Nothing's a guarantee when the Heartless run your world."

"I know," said Donald. "I'm just scared. I wanna hold your hand."

"Hold Mira's hand!" said Sora.

"I'll help him out, for your sake, Sora," Mira said.

"Good."

"Donald, I'm here for you. I know we're all scared to be alone. Everybody got to have a home."

"Aww," said Donald as Mira clung to him. "Please don't tell Daisy about this, though."

"Your secret's safe with me," said Mira. "Let's just get through this and stop that villain. She's got the Devil in her heart, I swear."

Goofy laughed. "Sora, you're gonna lose that girl if you keep letting her snuggle up to Donald like that."

Sora blinked. "You won't see me losing sleep over that possibility. Besides, Donald's already got a girl."

"I should have known better than to tease you at a time like this," said Goofy. "Just say the word, and we'll be off."

"The word is—let's go get Yoko!"

"How do we find her, though?" Donald wondered.

Sora stopped to scratch his head. "Good question. Any ideas, Jiminy?"

"You gotta think for yourself on this one, Sora," Jiminy answered. "I just don't know."

Goofy raised his hand above his head, shaking it frantically. "I've got a feeling I know how to find her."

"What is it, Goofy?" Sora said.

Goofy pulled out Jiminy's map of the castle and pointed to the legend. "Tell me what you see here."

"Oh Yoko!" Sora and Donald shouted at once. "She's put her secret lair on the map."

"Right behind this room labeled 'trap' and this room labeled 'instant death,'" Goofy said. "I think we're in good shape. Shall we head off?"

"So many rooms with traps, though," said Sora. He gazed at the labels of all the surrounding rooms. "Traps here, there, and everywhere. We'd best be cautious."

XXX

The first trap room looked innocent enough until the entrance and exit doors slammed shut, leaving the party standing on a checkered floor, eight by eight squares. Eager to meet whatever challenge lay ahead for him, Sora walked into the middle of the floor. Everyone else joined him at about the moment when the ceiling began to rumble. Thirty-two suits of polished armor, in six designs, descended from above, apparently on wires, and landed on the squares next to the entrance and exit.

"Chess pieces?" Sora wondered.

Donald sneered. "I think this is where we have to beat the magical guardian of the castle in a game of chess in order to continue. Pretty cliched for a trap, I say."

"But Donald," Goofy said, "how will you tell which side is yours? The pieces are all the same color."

"What?" Donald looked around. Sure enough, on each side of the board stood sixteen white chess pieces. "That's not fair! How am I supposed to win this?"

"Maybe the point is that we can't win?"

Donald bashed Goofy over the head with his staff. "You're not helping!"

"Calm down, you two," said Sora. "I think I can handle this. I have a plan."

Donald waved his hands in front of his face and backed off. "If you're talking about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out?"

"You can count me in!" Goofy said.

"Great." Sora drew his Keyblade and hacked at the row of pawns blocking the exit. They crumbled under his assault.

"See? No problem." Sora assumed his patented cocky smile and folded his hands behind his head. "We'll be out of here in no time."

"Uh, Sora," said Donald, "don't look now, but I think you made them mad."

One of the chess pieces—the enemy king—actually spoke: "You broke the rules. You laid them waste for all to see. Now, you must die—aaaaaaaaugh!"

The king shattered under Sora's Keyblade before it could finish its speech.

"Come on, come on! It's such a joy to smash you fiends," Sora taunted. "I won't take it easy on you."

"Me neither," said Goofy.

Magical mystery chess pieces or not, they were still made of wood, and thus they were still not terribly smart. The remainder charged Sora and Goofy all at once, and all met the same fate as the king.

"That's what I call zugzwang," Donald said. "Hey, the door's opening!"

The party moved on into the next room.

XXX

The next room housed a giant talking wall, a bowl of nails, and a hammer. The wall stretched completely across the middle of the room, blocking passage to the exit on the other side.

"No one has ever gotten past this point," the wall informed Sora's party. "Funny, really. All you have to do is hammer a nail into me, and I'll let you through, but I don't think you can manage that."

"Donald's pretty good with a hammer," said Sora. "I'm pretty sure he's up to the task."

"Not so fast, boy," said the wall. "I'll have to charge you five trillion dollars to put in the nail."

"Five trillion?"

"Money, that's what I want," said the wall. "It's all too much for you, isn't it? I won't be surprised in the least if you never give me your money."

Sora thought for a minute. "How about this? I'll pay you five trillion imaginary dollars in exchange for pounding in one imaginary nail."

"Hey," said the door, "that's a pretty creative answer. I haven't heard one that good since the 1960s. Go ahead and pass."

"Great," said Sora.

XXX

The third and final trap room contained only a small table with an apple sitting on it. A placard below the apple had the word 'apple' printed on it. The exit at the back of the room stood wide open.

"I'm pretty sure this one is just a joke," said Sora.

"How are we supposed to take these traps seriously?" Goofy asked. No one bothered to answer him.

XXX

The final room, the throne room of Dakota Castle, was everything one could expect from the lair of an evil overlord. Fake lightning illuminated the windows at fairly regular intervals, chandeliers creaked on old chains high above everyone's head, hideous drapes matched horribly with the rest of the décor, and the Queen of the Banshees herself, Yoko Ono, sat on a gilded throne in the center of the room. Upon seeing her guests arrive, she cackled.

"So you're the ones who have been running about helter skelter in my home," said said. "It's been a long and winding road to my domain, but this is the end. The pain you take here is equal to the pain you have made elsewhere, and then some. Prepare yourselves, or run while you still can."

"We're going nowhere, man," said Mira. "I don't really want to stop your monologue, but I thought you might like to know that Sora is the Keyblade Master, and in a minute here, he's going to be making you feel like you've never been born."

"Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl," said Yoko Ono, "but she's got too much to say. How did a princess like you get to this world, anyway?"

"Princess?" Mira looked aghast. "Me?"

"You're Kairi, one of the Princesses of Heart, aren't you?"

"Not at all. My name is Mira."

"Really?" Yoko Ono stroked her chin. "You look just like her, too. I was so certain. Not that it matters. It's time for you to imagine there's a heaven!"

A black mist filtered up from the ground where Yoko Ono stood. It enveloped her and, seemingly, gave her some sort of supernatural strength. Whether it was a Heartless or not, Sora could not tell, and he had little time to appreciate the spectacle before a bolt of fire shot from Yoko Ono's fingertips and singed the ground at his feet. Fortunately, he was able to jump away in time to avoid being burned, but as soon as he landed, he had to dodge two more.

"Goofy, protect Mira!" Sora shouted without taking his eyes off of the enemy. "Use your shield. She's your top priority now."

"Can do, Sora," said Goofy.

"Donald, watch Yoko Ono and look for a weakness in her attack pattern!"

"Roger, Sora!"

No weaknesses presented themselves. Sora and Donald both had to dedicate all of their concentration to dodging Yoko Ono's attacks. Seeing no openings to close in with the Keyblade, Sora tried taunting.

"You want us to do to you what we did to your servants?" he shouted in between dodge rolls. "I heard just about every horrible sound that there is during that fight, and your bird sure could sing. Didn't help her, though."

"I don't care about them. You've got to serve yourself, you know. Ain't nobody gonna do it for you."

"Whatever gets you through the night, Yoko," Sora growled. "That's probably why nobody loves you. Not when you're down and out. Not even when you're six feet in the ground, like you're gonna be after this fight."

"You won't see me losing to the likes of you, brat," Yoko said. "I'm looking right through you, and all I see is s scared little boy, hiding behind his Keyblade. You miss your mommy, don't you, little boy?"

"Enough!" Sora swung the Keyblade at the nearest fiery projectile and sent it streaming back toward its source. Yoko Ono could not dodge it fast enough, and it exploded in front of her face. She screamed.

Yoko Ono's scream was even more primal and even more piercing than Hayden Panettiere's. Everyone else in the room covered their ears immediately, lest the sound inflict permanent damage on them. Sora even closed his eyes in a vain attempt to block Yoko's death knell more effectively.

The problem was that Yoko Ono was not dead. Sora discovered that fact when a fire bolt hit his feet and knocked him on his back, half a dozen yards away.

"Living isn't easy with eyes closed, is it?" said Yoko Ono. "Really, you give me no credit at all."

Sora grunted and clamored to his feet. He gripped the Keyblade defiantly. "If I needed someone to insult me, I could just talk to Donald and Goofy," he said. "We'll see how you run from this next wave. Like a pig from a gun, I'll bet."

Before Yoko Ono could reply, Donald's staff came down across the back of her head. The impact made a loud crunching noise.

Somehow, though, Yoko Ono shrugged the blow off, picked Donald up the scruff of his neck, and tossed him on the floor next to Sora. "Man, you been a naughty duck, letting your face grown long like that."

As soon as Donald gathered himself, his temper went off, and he began hopping up and down on one foot while swinging his arms wildly and squawking incoherently. Yoko chuckled at the display.

"Fools," she said. "You'll never understand the pools of sorrow and waves of joy that drift through an evil mind. You'll never understand the darkness. You'll only fear it to the bitter end."

"That's where you're wrong, Yoko Ono," said Sora. "We're here to stop the darkness, not to fear it. It's been a long, cold, lonely winter for the folks of this world, but it's about to get better. Behold!"

What happened next seemed to be the volition of the Keyblade itself, not Sora. He had no way of knowing what was about to happen, but the Keyblade pointed itself to the ceiling of Yoko Ono's throne room. A beam of light then shot from the tip of the blade up to the ceiling, tracing out a pattern. First, it outlined a tiny letter 'N', and then it drew a circle next to it. 'NO', in capital letters.

Incidentally, that was precisely what Yoko Ono yelled as rays of light dripped from the ceiling word, first in a trickle and then in a downpour, spreading outward so as to cover most of the room. Yoko Ono could not avoid being hit; several of them sliced right through her flesh. She tried to run and hide her head, but she might as well have been dead.

And in a few seconds, she was.

The light did not harm Sora's party. Only a heart lost to darkness would sooner die than be exposed to brightness.

The darkness outside the windows cleared up in an instant. Dakota castle's miserable atmosphere vanished, replaced by something dirty and uninviting but easily less intimidating.

Mira smiled. "Here comes the sun, Sora. I say it's all right."

The last remnant of the old castle to disappear was the word on the ceiling. It didn't quite blink out of existence, however. The bright outlines of the letters clustered together and turned into a blob, which melded into the shape of a keyhole.

Sora knew what to do from there.