A/N: Hey guys! It's been a long haul, but we're closing in on the ending. I'm thinking probably two more chapters after this. I stick by my April deadline, though!

Disclaimer: If you honestly can't tell what I own and what I don't by chapter twenty, you're in sad shape and probably need to get some psychiatric help. And possibly rehab.

The Darkness and the Light

" . . .No way . . ."

I laughed, a high-pitched, scared-out-of-my-mind, I-think-I'm-going-to-be-sick kind of laugh, "Way."

Okay, let's be clear, I'm no chicken. I've fought a lot of Heartless before. But this was more than a lot. This was an army.

It put the world's biggest mosh pit to shame. It was like an entire ocean of bodies, filled with glowing eyes and grasping claws, stretched out in all directions around the tiny spit of land that we'd ended up on. And that was just the Shadows.

Beyond them were all the real bad boys, the Dark Balls, Defenders, and Behemoths. And a black mass, which I had first thought were clouds, turned out to be wave after wave of Gargoyles, Wyverns, Invisibles and Angel Stars, so many that they blocked out the sky. There was a minute where everything seemed to hold its breath.

Then the Heartless remembered that they were supposed to be attacking.

Riku, Amaya and I sort of formed a small circle around Kairi, me with the Keyblade, Riku with a sword, and Amaya with her magic.

"Any ideas?" Riku called from my left.

"Well, I'd say just barreling through is out of the question."

"You think?" Amaya snapped from my right.

"Getting mad isn't going to help," Riku said to her. "What we need is a plan. What can kill a bunch of stuff at once?"

" . . .Amaya!" Riku called out, "That thing! That thing you did on your world? Could you do it again?"

"Riku!" she shouted angrily.

"What did you do on your world?" I asked, taking out another Shadow.

"It doesn't matter!" She took down a Wyvern with a gravity spell. "I can't do it again. And besides, it's a darkness-based spell. Who's to say it would work against these guys, anyway?"

"You can do it again!"

"I can't!"

"Riku! Amaya! Now is not the time to be fighting with each other!" Kairi said a little shrilly. Riku and Amaya both fell silent, but it felt a little like being stuck inside a thunderhead.

"We still need a plan, guys!" I shouted at the two of them.

"Working on it!" Amaya shouted back impatiently, her face a sickly purple because of the glowing jewel still resting in the hollow of her throat.

The Invisible I was fighting suddenly dive-bombed at me. I raised my arm to shield myself, but the blow never came. Instead, it fell straight into the ground, spreading itself into a thick, black pool. As if that had been some sort of cue, all the other Heartless began to do the same thing. Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, they stopped and sank into the ground.

"What are they doing?" Amaya's whisper sounded weird, when we'd been yelling not just thirty seconds ago.

"I've only seen Shadows so this before, and that's to avoid a hit. They never did it all together like this," I answered.

"You're right. Other Heartless can do this, but they normally don't—the other kinds are so much stronger than the Shadows that they don't bother with those sorts of tactics. And they're not trying to avoid us."

Kairi scooted a little closer. "Watch out," I told her, "You get to close, my arm might hit you when I swing." She looked at me, almost pleadingly, but let go of my sleeve and miserably inched back to the center of our circle.

"I really don't like not having a weapon."

I thought Amaya might have looked back at Kairi pityingly, but I was more concerned watching the shadows on the floor. All the individual pools of shadows were merging into one big one. But then, a spear of light, so bright and hot it made us all wince, jutted out of the floor, about a football field away. The Heartless shrieked, the first noise I'd ever heard a Heartless make, and let me tell you, it made me glad that they were usually silent. It was the kind of sound that sends shivers up your spine, makes your hair stand on end, makes you want to cover your ears. But what we were watching was worse.

The pool began moving, trying to free itself from the spear of light, and others, that kept appearing in their midst. Trying, still, to get away, the Heartless started rising back up out of the floor. Not into their Heartless forms, but into a giant dark wave.

"Go! Move! Go!" Riku shoved Kairi and me one direction as he and Amaya took off the other way. The dark wave crashed down between us, spraying drops everywhere, just like a real ocean would. Only, unlike a real ocean, the drops actively crawled to get back to the larger darkness. Yech.

"You guys okay?" I called over, keeping Kairi close to me as we watched the blackness run between us and our friends, like a flooding river between two islands.

"We're fine," Riku called back, "You?"

"We're okay!" Kairi called back.

"Well, what now?"

"I don't know!" I looked around. "I mean, there's no way out of here, not that I see. An' I really don't want to mess with that," I pointed the Keyblade at the shadows between us. Suddenly, the river doubled in size.

"Whoa!" I jumped back.

We hadn't noticed at first, because the 'Heartless River' had flowed so far into the distance. But it had actually turned, to create a huge circle around Riku and Amaya. We only noticed it when it started making its second loop, widening the gap between us. And making the island they stood on much smaller.

"Riku!"

"Sora!" Kairi screamed, pointing the other direction. The spears of light had concentrated into one nearly blinding mass, and it was hurdling toward us. Way too fast. I grabbed Kairi and managed to roll us both out of its path, letting it go flying past. I took a look to the other side of the river, only to see that it had made another circle, and Riku and Amaya were practically standing on each other to avoid the flowing darkness.

"Guys, hold on! I'm—" I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but they never heard the hesitation, anyway. Because that was when the light hit.

My heart stopped. I know it sounds cliché, but it really felt like it did, when I saw that light turn itself around and come rushing at them like some sort of mad comet. Like a shooting star. And then it hit.

I couldn't stop the scream from ripping out of my lungs. They were gone. They were gone. I'd had to shut my eyes against the bright burst of light, but I'd seen it hit, I'd seen the explosion. They were gone.

When I finally reopened my eyes, there was nothing to see. No bodies. Nothing. Just the blinding white light, covering the floor, glowing with a terrible purity. Completely vaporized. Tears were already running down my face, and I could see them pouring from Riku's eyes as well. For just a moment, we didn't even think about what was going to happen to us when the dark river made one more turn. We were just thinking of our friends. His friends. My baby sister and her boyfriend. Gone. Then something moved, as we kneeled together, crying.

At first I thought it was some new sort of Heartless, since it seemed to come straight out of the ground. Then I realized it had been there the whole time; we hadn't seen it because it was the same color of the glowing ground it had been lying on. It stood, and turned to us, while another stood up behind it. I heard Riku make a sort of strangled choking sound.

Their bodies, their clothing, their hair were entirely white, shimmering and eerie. Their eyes were a glowing blue, light and pupilless. But these eyes gave you no idea that they were blind, because when they saw the river before them, they very clearly glared at it. The girl's lips curled into a snarl.

Once it became clear that they weren't going to attack us, at least not while we were on this side of the river, I took some more time to look. They were tall, that much was clear even from this distance. It was clearly a man and a woman, but it was difficult to make out their features. At one moment, the woman looked like a goddess; beautiful, unattainable, and, when she turned her eyes back to us, terrifyingly powerful. But I thought, if I looked, I might have seen a little chubbiness in those cheeks, a childish widening of her eyes. But then it was gone again, and the statuesque goddess remained. The man, too, for a moment seemed to have long, flowing waves one moment, and wild, spiked hair the next. He was definitely a grown man, but, for some inexplicable reason, an arm or leg would seem youthfully gangly for a moment, before returning to its muscular, strong self.

"It's them," I breathed.

"Sora?" Riku almost whispered.

The thing turned its eyes back on us. We noticed too late that the river had made another turn. We quickly stood, and I looked in panic at the shadows lapping at my shoes. I felt the shadow (do shadows have shadows?) before I saw it—a huge wave had risen up behind us. Riku grabbed me and held me against his chest.

"If we fall . . ."

"We fall together."

I'm not afraid of the darkness.

Review Responses

1blondegamer: Glad to have ya! I've tried very hard to make Amaya your not-so-typical OC, so I'm glad you found that to be true!

Idiotichobo: Final battle's coming soon, I promise:) Thanks for the review

Kosa-kun: Hope I lived up to your expectations!