Last update: November 6
Today's date: December 8
Never let me utter the phrase "a good pace" about my writing ever again, because of course after saying that I would immediately get The Cold From Hell, and my writing groove goes straight down the drain. Thanks, flesh vessel.
Admittedly, part of the delay is that I also got distracted writing plot threads that won't appear for a while yet. Can't say I'm done with that, either. Oops.
But at least I'm not ill anymore, so hopefully after this... no, perhaps I'd better say nothing. Don't want to tempt fate again.
"Tempest! You big jerk! I was... we were all so worried about you!"
Yuffie was, naturally, making a big show about my return.
"Uh, you do know I didn't get captured on purpose, right?"
"That doesn't matter! I trained you for a whole week, and the moment you get a day off you forget rule number one!"
"... Sensei is always right?"
"No! That's rule zero! Rule one is constant vigilance!"
"I am almost entirely sure you said that exactly zero times."
"Wh-? No way!" She looked around at the others. "Back me up, here!"
"Wouldn't know, I wasn't there," Leon said.
"You've changed your 'rule number one' three times that I've noticed, and I'm not actually paying attention," Cid added.
"... Sorry, Yuffie. I have to agree with Tempest on this one," Aerith said.
"Oh, so I guess you've all already forgotten rule zero, huh?"
I couldn't help it, I snrk'd. And then Leon snrk'd, and soon everyone was bursting into giggles.
"Well, I'm glad everyone's having a good time without me," said a familiar yet unfamiliar voice from the doorway.
"Sora!"
Everyone else rushed over to greet the Keyblade Bearer, while I just sort of hung out in the corner.
"It's great to see all you guys again." Sora said, as he stepped away from the group and towards me. "And... I don't think you and I have met, but I have a sneaking suspicion I've heard of you."
I nodded. "I'm Tempest."
Sora nodded. "The others said a lot about you. Mostly about how worried they were, actually..."
I sighed. "I didn't get abducted on purpose!"
"Heh. Guess you've heard that a lot already."
"Pretty much the only thing I've heard since getting back, yeah..." Suddenly, my phone chimed. "Hm?"
There's a situation. Er, several, really, but one of them I need your help with. You're at RG, right? Meet me in the plaza.
"Hmmm. Well, Sora, I imagine you're busy thwarting Xehanort, but there's apparently a situation my brother needs help with." I moved toward the exit.
"Actually, it's the weirdest thing. Right after the old Organization reappeared, Xehanort dropped off the radar entirely. We're pretty sure he's vanished on purpose, but we don't know why..." Apparently not busy after all, Sora walked with me.
"... Well, this just keeps getting weirder. You figure he's up to something?"
"Is he ever not?"
"Heh. Fair point. So if Xehanort has paused his original plan, what are you guys up to?"
"Shoring up our defenses, mainly. The Princesses of Heart have been moved to secret safe places. We wanted to teach them self defense, but we're stretched pretty thin, so it's been impossible to get anyone to do the teaching.
"Meanwhile, Maleficent has taken Xehanort's little vacation as an opportunity to get back into world domination. But the inexplicable return of the Organization is apparently a reason for her to be cautious about it, cause she's only summoning huge Heartless and tossing them at the most vulnerable-looking worlds.
"So the four of us - me, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, are hopping between worlds and hoping to catch any nasties before they cause trouble. And sometimes we bring along Kairi or Lea, though they're usually busy with training. But today it's me and Kairi checking out this world."
"No Riku?"
"He's got another job to do. Something about the Realm of Darkness..."
At about this point, we had arrived at the plaza. "Hmmm. Looks like Luke isn't here yet. I guess we're just waiting for him?"
"Well, I was going to meet up with Kairi here. We spilt up to cover more ground, and it's about that time..." Suddenly, a chime from Sora's pocket. He pulled out an unfamiliar device - his equivalent to a cell phone, or a two-way radio? - and held it to his ear. "Something up? ... I can get there in a minute. Stay out of its sight til then as long as it's just lumbering."
He put the device away. "It's in the gardens," he said, rushing off. As I followed him, I pulled out my phone to text Luke.
Huge Heartless in the gardens. Related? Either way, I'll be there, not the plaza.
With that, I put my phone away and picked up the pace - Sora had gotten quite a ways ahead of me while my attention was divided. But before long, we reached the gardens and saw it.
A giant Heartless, similar to the Guard Armor, but instead of arms, it had a huge blade and a massive shield. Its legs appeared to fold out into another form, but I couldn't tell what. And all four limbs (plus the head), while free-floating, were visibly tethered to the body by red beams of some kind of energy.
"Why is there always a giant animated armor?" Sora lamented.
The armor's head immediately rotated to face Sora, and the blade brandished... uh, itself.
"Ooh, touchy." Sora summoned his Keyblade. "Kairi, I'm here! Let's take this thing down!"
Immediately, a barrage of light missiles blasted from a cluster of overgrown vegetation just outside the reclaimed area of the garden, and Kairi leaped out of her hiding place, Keyblade in hand.
The head turned again, and the shield swiped through the air in an attempt to block the attack, but only caught a few bullets. The rest mostly struck the body, causing the Heartless to stagger backwards, and a handful struck the head, setting it spinning wildly.
While the foe was disoriented, Sora leaped at the body and started swinging rapidly, and I summoned my Keyblade and began channeling an attack spell.
"Stone!" A chunk of rock tore itself out of the ground and flung itself at the body, knocking it about.
Suddenly Sora jumped back. "Watch out!" he shouted, as the armor's parts retracted to the body, and it began spinning wildly in place. After a moment it stopped and the limbs popped back out.
"Is this working?!" I shouted. Without Scan, I couldn't tell if our attacks were having any effect.
"It's not taking damage..." Sora said, as Kairi blasted the back side of the shield, sending it flying and pulling the body behind it.
"It's... pulling?" Kairi said.
"That's it!" I exclaimed. "Try breaking the tethers!" They both nodded.
As Kairi charged up another blast, Sora circled behind the armor and I started channeling another spell. Kairi unleashed her attack, getting the shield's behind again, and Sora smacked the body with the flat of his Keyblade.
Sure enough, the opposing forces overcame the tether's attraction and it snapped, releasing little sparks. Without its connection to the body, the shield plummeted to the ground, only able to twitch ineffectually.
Seeing that it worked, I released my next spell. "Break!" Rivulets of stone formed on the body - either it was partially resistant, or my unfamiliarity with the spell meant I hadn't cast it properly. But a partial effect would do, and the stone coating was slowing it down as it tried to retrieve its lost body part.
"Now, break the shield while it's down!" Sora started wailing on the shield with his strongest attacks, while Kairi blasted it with more magic.
I was about to join them when my phone went off, and the extremely unexpected distraction caused me to trip over what could only have been a shadow. Not even a Shadow Heartless, just a regular shadow.
"Who the hell is calling me in the middle of a boss fight?!" I picked myself up and jabbed the 'decline call' button, not even checking who it was.
When I looked up, Sora and Kairi had destroyed the shield, and the armor was retracting its limbs again. And then it... fell down.
"Wh...?"
"Don't drop your guard!" Sora said.
He was right, of course. One of its legs apparently had a rocket concealed in it, and it blasted at full thrust, sending the armor - and its outstretched sword - spinning through the gardens.
"Holy frick-" I got half a curse out before the spinning armor flew in my direction, and I quickly brought up my Keyblade to deflect it.
After a few seconds of this ridiculousness, it slowed to a halt and stood up. Its limbs popped back out, still connected by a green tether of energy.
This time, though, something was different. The sword flew at me, swinging... itself, wildly. The rocket leg hopped toward Kairi and started spewing flames, and the other leg fired some kind of energy pellets at Sora.
"The tethers are definitely looser now!" Kairi said.
"We can't snap them like this - do we just endure it?" I asked.
Sora rolled past the energy pellets and took an opportunistic swing at the body. "We'll think of something."
I cast Break on the body again, slowing it. Kairi blinked. "Did you see that?"
"See what?"
Kairi blasted the body again. "The tethers! They're changing color!"
I looked, and sure enough, the tethers' green had gained a barely-detectable tinge of yellow.
"Wait, weren't they red before? When did they turn green?" Sora said.
"The shield tether was definitely red when we snapped it." I said.
"So that means -"
"Focus on the body!"
Slash, swipe, blast, stone... After a few moments of this, Sora spoke up. "Its health isn't going down."
"No, but the tethers are changing." At this point, they were yellow with just enough red to not quite qualify as orange, and getting visibly redder with every hit.
Once the tethers turned fully red, the limbs suddenly snapped back to the body. "It's gonna spin again!" Sora shouted.
This time, in addition to the spinning blade, the other leg used its (machine gun?) ... previously mentioned projectile weapon of some kind, to spray energy bullets everywhere.
Kairi immediately put up a Reflect shield. Sora got behind it and started reinforcing it with his magic. I did the same.
"It's gonna hit soon," Sora said. "On three?" We nodded. Carefully tracking the armor's movement, he counted. "One... two... three!"
On his count, all three of us forced as much magic as possible into the shield. An instant later, the armor hit it, and the shield blasted it across the gardens.
Somehow, it skidded to a halt in midair. Then it righted itself, and its limbs popped out, the tethers still bright red.
"Snap?"
"Snap."
... Um, I'm gonna gloss over a fair chunk of the battle here. We just did the same thing four more times. Nothing new happened til that was done. I don't want to write it all out longhand, and as interesting as it might hypothetically be to watch, I imagine you don't want to read it.
Once it was out of appendages, the body dropped to the ground, motionless.
"... Don't they normally explode when defeated?"
"Yes. Yes they do."
We stared at it for a few moments. It still didn't move.
"Scan is showing its health at zero..."
A few moments more.
"All right, this is getting silly." Kairi pointed her Keyblade at the motionless enemy and an orb of light formed on the tip. "There's a simple way to make sure it's really defeated."
Sora and I glanced at each other and shrugged. If it wasn't moving, Kairi could charge up as much power as she liked. So we stood back and let her.
After an absolutely preposterous amount of charge time (during which the armor did in fact remain motionless), Kairi unleashed a seemingly endless barrage of light beams, in seemingly every variety. When the dust cleared, the armor was definitely gone.
"Well, that's that. I'd better check who called me..." I pulled out my phone. Several unread texts and a lengthy voicemail from... Luke. Uh oh.
Skimming the texts and listening to the voicemail revealed that they all contained the same basic message, with varying degrees of intensity:
Don't let Kairi land the final blow.
"Uh, hey, does anyone else feel that?" Sora asked.
"...Feel what?" I certainly felt something, but I was hoping I was imagining it.
"A sort of rumbling, but like... perpendicular to reality, if that makes sense."
That was exactly what I was feeling. "Shit."
Kairi blanched. "I feel it too. What do we do, run?"
"Possibly evacuate? I don't know how big this is going to be!"
"Tempest! Sora! Kairi!" Luke shouted suddenly from the garden entrance. "Minimum safe distance is here, so move it!"
Sora used Flowmotion to slide up a rail, while Kairi used something that looked like Collision Magnet to swing herself over. I, lacking fancy movement techniques, just ran full tilt.
The four of us got just past the exit when the ground shook. We braced ourselves and waited for it to stop.
Luke took a deep breath. "I told him, we needed to explain everything as soon as possible..." He seemed to be talking to himself. "It's not the worst case scenario. We can still salvage this. But no more deep secret bullshit." Another breath, and he looked up. "All right. You all need to be briefed on why that just happened. I'm not letting him do his little controlling secretive just-in-case act any longer." He summoned his Keyblade Glider. "Come on."
Bewildered, Sora and Kairi looked to each other, and then to me. "Um..."
"Do we have a reason to just go with what this guy is saying?" Sora asked.
"Well..." I said, "that Heartless came from Maleficent, right? I wonder if she knew that would happen."
Kairi nodded. "It would definitely be part of our mission to find out, then."
Sora thought about this for a moment. "Works for me."
One upside to getting distracted writing multiple things at once is that I can tell you in advance that there will be a small update next Friday, and it'll actually be true.
Also I added some notes to chapter 1, because I'm persnickety about having my facts documented. If this chapter was already published when you first read that chapter, you've already seen them. If not, go and check. Or don't, if you don't care.