Riku: You won't believe it guys! DeadGirlRisen actually got back into a Kingdom Hearts mood! She isn't being a lazy bum who only writes Vani lines! Which means were actually getting somewhere on this story!

Dead: *lurks in the background*

Ch.26

There was a small whoosh from behind them and the three turned around as a voice spoke up, "He's a stubborn old goat, wouldn't you say?"

Before them stood a tall blue man, whose head was on fire. With blue flames. The man wore a black kind of robe that was pinned at the shoulder with a skull. The iris of his eyes were black, but where the whites of the eyes were supposed to be was instead an ugly sickish yellow-orange color.

"Who are you?" Donald asked in an accusatory manner, narrowing his eyes.

The man held his hands up and his fingers ended in sharp points, "Whoa, hold on there, fuzz boy," as he spoke Sora noticed his sharp teeth that were yellow as if they hadn't been taken care of very well, "Wait, let me guess… you want to enter the games, right?"

He walked over to them and grinned as he placed a hand on Sora, who couldn't help but to flinch slightly. "Well, hey, get a load of this," the blue flaming head man held his other hand in front of Sora and with a whoosh of flame a piece of something that seemed like paper appeared in his hand.

"A pass?" Sora questioned.

'Be careful Sora, don't just trust him out the blue.' Ventus said. 'Uh… no pun intended.'

'Ugh, really?' Vanitas groaned and shook his head.

"I don't trust him, but he is offering a pass…"

'That is true… but we can't tell if it is real or not.'

"It's all yours..." The man told them then turned and started to walk away, but paused and glanced back at Sora, "Good luck, kid. I'm pulling for you little shorty."

"I guess we will figure it out then when we try it."

The three shared glances at each other before they went back towards Phil and handed him the entry pass.

"Hey, how'd you get this?" He questioned them, looking over the pass carefully.

"Can we enter the games now?" Sora questioned instead of answering him.

The goat man frowned, but gave a nod, "I guess so. We start with the preliminaries," He shook his head and then looked at them, "Some real weirdos signed up for the games, better watch yourself kid."

"Okay, thanks," Sora said before walking off to prepare himself. "Looks like it was a real pass, but who was that guy?"

'I'm not sure, but… I can sense darkness about him.'

'Plus he does have a head of blue fire… that can't be good,' Ventus added.

"He doesn't seem familiar to you, Ven?"

'No not him… I remember two others that I met when I came here… but I am having a hard time recalling their names…'

"Aw, well maybe it will come to you later," Sora thought back. "But I guess now I gotta prepare for the games, and learn that new spell!"

'Make sure to crush those fools.'

'Don't actually hurt someone too much… unless they are Heartless.'

Sora smiled. "Got it."

He then turned to face Donald and Goofy, who were also preparing themselves. After some discussion on the games, Donald began to teach Sora the spell 'thunder'. And with the help of Vanitas and Ventus, he figured out how to use it fair quicker than he did for the other spells. Sora started to enjoy learning new spells, it was exciting to see fire, or lightning come from his hand. It wasn't something he had seen anyone one Destiny Islands do, and Sora found that he was really good at magic.

Soon they were ready to head into the games. And each round they went through in the preliminaries were just groups of Heartless. But just like every battle Sora had gone through before, he took them out in no time flat. When the rounds were over he headed out, but there were some thoughts he had to say it out loud for everyone to hear.

"How can Heartless sign up for a tournament?"

"Who knows," Donald replied.

"Yeah, it seems weird, but maybe the Heartless wanted to?" Goofy questions, trying to find a logical reason.

'It does seem weird. But at least it makes for an easy way to take them out,' Ventus added in.

"Agreed."

Once they were back outside of the ring area, they meet back up with Phil. He nodded at Sora once he saw him. "You're no heroes yet, but you ain't doing bad. Lucky you came to me for coaching."

Vanitas snorts at Phil's arrogant statement.

'As if that useless goat has actually taught you anything.'

'It's just how he is… he is a bit strange now that I remember. Maybe a bit of an ego, but no ill intentions.'

'Hmpf.'

As they talked, someone entered the arena. He had blond spiky hair, one of the spikes seemed to stick up a half foot in a gravity defying manor. His eyes were a bright electric blue that scanned the arena for threats. A red scarf covered his mouth and extended back like a cape. As a breeze picked up Sora noticed that the end of the cape was tattered. The blonde had a giant sword, like it was as tall as the blonde was, and just as wide as well. His hands were gloved in fingerless brown gloves. One shoulder was armoured in a metal cap with screws coming out of it. His shirt and jeans were both a dark navy blue and he had on brown hiking boots that matched his gloves.

As the guy walked closer to Sora, he saw that the boy had a ton of belts criss crossing his waist. Connected to one of the belts was a wicked looking dagger. The blonde even had belts over his ankles. A gleam caught Sora's eye and he glanced at the blonde's hand to see that he had gold claws on one of the gloves. "That looks cool."

'They do look awesome,' Vanitas agreed.

"Something tells me he'll be a tough one to beat. Who knows, if you make it far enough you might end up facing him," Phil spoke, though Sora didn't pay much attention to him as he instead spoke with his brothers.

"Think I can get something like that?"

'Yes, we can get claws.'

'Really?' Ventus questioned with a sigh, if he had hands he would be facepalming right about now. 'Where are we even going to get something like that? I doubt we can just ask him and have him tell us. Besides they probably cost a lot of munny.'

'We don't have to buy them. We can just make them,' Vanitas replied, chuckling softly.

"We can?" Sora questioned surprised, "you mean… like a spell?"

'Exactly.'

'And witch magic can we use to do that? Sora's only learned, fire, blizzard, and thunder so far.'

'Don't forget Dark Firga, but we can try it with darkness first, so he has another dark spell. If we can't get it to work then we can try light,' Vanitas paused. 'Even if we do get it to work, we should try to make a light version since it might be useful against different enemies.'

'Hmmm well I guess we could do that,' Ventus started to say, trying to gather his thoughts. 'And hey… you suggested using light. I'm surprised at you Vani.'

'Hmpf, I knew you would suggest it anyways, I figured I would just do it so you wouldn't have to waste your breath.'

'Hey! So you were just talking about the light because you didn't want me to?'

'You would have rambled on about it for awhile uselessly. I just summed it up quicker.'

'Well! I… fine… but I do think the claws sound interesting at least. And using dark and light feels better to me.'

'Yes having the two different types will be useful, but we will start with dark, since he currently knows more light spells than dark spells.'

"I'm ready to learn it!" Sora exclaimed, finally interjected himself back into the conversation.

Vanitas chuckled. 'Let's learn it then.'

With that Vanitas started to instruct Sora on wielding the darkness and forming it so that it does as he wants it to, unlike light spells darkness required more control and knowledge of what you wanted to do. While light spells were more instinctive.

It didn't take Sora long to be able to make claws come out of his fingertips. At first they were just small stubs. But as he improved they became longer and sharper until they looked truly wicked. The claws were dark, basically pitch black and it seemed as if the darkness came of the nails in a smoke like effect.

"These are amazing," Sora thought with a wide grin as he slashed at the air.

"Hey Sora," Donald said, taking note of what Sora was doing. He looked confused as he tried to figure out what he was seeing on Sora's hand. "What are you doing?"

'Say this…'

"Well, I saw those claws on that boy and thought it was cool, so I figured why not try and do that myself only with magic."

Now Goofy had taken notice, looking particularly curious at Sora's new darkness claw. "But I've never see ya use that kind of magic before. How did you do it?"

Sora gave a dismissive shrug, "I just did." He wasn't going to tell them that he had learned from his brothers who happened to live in his head. He didn't need his new friends to think he was crazy.

Donald and Goofy glanced at each other, exchanging confused glances. Neither of them really knew what to think of Sora's rather vague response. But he seemed perfectly fine doing what he was doing.

Sora noticed there reactions and frowned slightly, but decided not to bring it up. If they questioned him further then he might accidentally let slip something that he shouldn't know.

"Are you okay doing that though?" Donald finally asked after a moment.

"Yeah? Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well what I think Donald means is that it kind of looks like you're using darkness do make that claw thing there. We just didn't know something like that was possible to do," Goofy answered.

"Err…?" Sora didn't really know what to say to that and just shrugged at them, pretending he didn't know that he was using darkness.

'Just tell them it was something you figured out on your own. And that you thought it would be something to try. But you should also make the light ones so you show them that you are at least using both sides if they are still hesitate to darkness.'

"Okay."

"It was just something I figured out, I wanted claws kind of like that guy had, so I made claws," Sora told them before he concentrated a bit. He knew how to do the spell in dark, and it shouldn't be too difficult to get the same effect as a light spell. It took only a few seconds before the claws became white with wisps of white smoke trailing out.

"Wow," both Donald and Goofy chimed in at the same time.

Sora gave them a grin and then with a small bit of concentration he made one hand have darkness claws and the other light claws.

"You're really good at that, Sora," Goofy replied with a smile.

"If you are that good at picking up magic, we will have to practice some more when we get the chance," Donald said, happy to see that Sora was better at magic than he originally thought.

Sora gave a smile, "That would be nice, magic is awesome."

Donald gave a nod at that and the trio continued to wait for their turn. After a bit more of waiting they were called up to fight again. When they were Sora grinned and made his claws appear one of each, it took a bit of getting used to, fighting by slashing at his enemies, but he found that it was quite a fun way of attacking. He kinda felt like a superhero from a comic he read, Wolverine.

It felt like no time had passed at all before they had finished their matches and went to speak with Phil again, "Say, you're better than I thought, kid! You have some interesting moves as well… man I wish he was here to see this."

"Who?" Sora questioned wondering what the weird goat man was talking about.

"Hercules," Phil said and Ventus gasped loudly at that shocking Sora slightly. "He's a hero if ever there was one. Too bad he's off visiting his father."

"Why did you gasp Ven? Do you recognize the name?"

'Yeah… Hercules… I met him before, I'm sure of it.'

"What do you remember of him?" Sora asked eagerly as he went to sit at the bench. Other matches were currently going on.

'Not much… just that I know him,' Ventus hesitated, 'I think he was pretty lanky, with auburn hair? Erm…' Ventus paused again, 'I don't think he was a hero yet though… I think he was still training.'

"But that was a while ago right? Like before your heart found me?"

'Yeah… I guess now he has become a hero. It has been a long while after all. Though I still can't quite remember the other boy… but I know he wanted to be a hero too…"

It wasn't long before they start the final match against the blonde boy, whose name turned out to be Cloud. Seeing the giant sword, Sora decided to use his keyblade. The round started but Sora held back standing in a defensive stance as he eyes Cloud. He knew from Vanitas and Ventus that rushing in would be a foolish move.

Cloud returned his stare for a moment before he charged forward, easily knocking them back despite their defensive stance. Sora eyed him for openings, but couldn't find any, so he decided to see how the boy responded to an attack. He rushed forward and tried to strike, unfortunately Cloud easily dodged by jumping backwards. As he came down he slammed his sword down and the shock wave flung Donald harshly knocking his companion out.

Goofy rushed over to try and heal Donald, but Cloud easily intercepted him and knocked him out. Sora scowled and managed to barely dodge a few attacks, but Cloud was good, and it was easy to see that he must have been training really hard for years. His eyes flickered over to Donald and Goofy and he decided that he should forfeit. Just as he was about to call that out Cloud managed to get a hit on him sending him down to the ground and knocking the air out of him.

Cloud raises his sword and Sora clenches his teeth and braces himself against the hit, he wouldn't close his eyes though. If this was to be his end he would face it with dignity.

Sora blinked in surprise though as Cloud lowers his sword and is staring at something behind him.

Hearing footsteps he turns and sees a giant snarling three headed beast staring at him with blood red eyes.

So we continue in Olympus, having Sora start using darkness more :O And next the upcoming fight against Cerberus!