And as if by some miracle, I managed to crank out this chapter in a day. Well, I am so taking a break from this for the rest of the week. Goodbye writing... er, until next week anyway. And then we come back with more CotP, and yes, that other fan fic you've been waiting for.


Chapter 16

Escape From the Realm of Darkness

He had nothing to prove to Astra, only himself. Whether she hated his guts or not was inconsequential right now. Sora only had to prove that he still had the power to protect those he cared about.

His untameable passion came out in the weirdest way: a battle cry that would have made him feel embarrassed and stupid had he not been so angry. He held the Kingdom Key tightly and ran forward to Luna before casting Reflect the exact moment he reached her body. A flash of light smacked against the shield and rebounded, turning into black smoke and eventually turning into black smoke and then gaining a physical body once it hit the ground.

The end product was a large chunky beast that reminded him of an enlarged Darkball. Actually there was something much more similar to it. Sora recalled fighting a similar enemy in Beast's Castle at one point—except this one was much faster and as Astra had pointed out, smarter. At least he could take comfort in knowing that it showed no signs of being a Chimera.

"Well how do you like that Astra? Come on, gotta give me style points for that one." Sora remarked with a cheesy grin.

"I'll give you a five. I think I can do better." Astra replied before cloaking her Keyblade in thunder magic. A strange light surrounded her as she moved forward with incredible speed to make quick slashes on the Heartless boss, pushing him back a fair ways from the unconscious Luna and Sora. Her style was directly reflective of the style changes he knew Riku, Aqua, Terra and Ven used.

Yuna, Rikku and Paine flew in and though Yuna and Rikku provided as much help as they could by distracting the Heartless, it was really Paine's Gravity magic that helped to stagger the Heartless and keep it in position while Astra smacked on it.

Meanwhile, Sora looked back at Luna and gently shook her. "Come on, you couldn't have picked a better time to have a nap sleepyhead? Well, at least you're not alone now. Well, I suppose you were never alone, but you knew that." he said taking in her warm smile as she slept. It was so inviting that he almost wished he could… wait… what?

"Urgh, would you stop ogling my friend for a sec? I could use some help here." Astra muttered as she tried to pull her Keyblade out of the Heartless' mouth. The Gullwings had moved into to help but were immediately met with a spinning attacking that not only knocked them away, but also sent the tacked on Astra dancing through the air. She landed back on her feet completely dazed but had surprisingly managed to keep hold of the Keyblade's handle.

How did she lose an advantage like that? Guess she isn't as smart as she thinks she is. Sora almost wanted to grin at this little victory but the time was hardly appropriate. Just like that he forgot about (and rather conveniently at that) whatever he had just been thinking about and fired off a couple of Firaga spells. The first of these spells hit the giant Darkball and caused it to release Astra's Keyblade from her mouth. The rest knocked it farther back to where Astra could feel safe in continuing her physical attacking.

This started the repeated cycle of the lightning-imbued physical attacks administered by Astra, and the cast of Ice magic produced by Sora. Whenever the Heartless tried to back away, it constantly found its back against a wall of ice preventing it from escaping.

In retaliation it turned invisible once more, Astra's Keyblade flying through the air and hitting nothing. Maybe then it wasn't turning invisible, but was rather too fast for the eye to see. Whatever the case, as Astra had mentioned in her little story earlier on, this being was a dweller of darkness and had made the shadows its home. It was perfectly in tune with its environment in contrast to the out of place Sora and Astra.

Astra backed away to the point where her back hit against Sora's. The two looked around closely with but ultimately their gazes were always lingering on the unconscious girl in the middle the longest.

On first sighting of the Heartless, Sora bent rotated and shot a Thundaga bolt under Astra's waist. The spell came into contact with the charging beast but deflected off it instead. Astra disappeared from Sora's side and warped into the air to knock the bolt back at the creature from the side. This time the lightning spell hit the Heartless at an odd angle sending it out of its charge just before it could hit Sora and knocking it into a spinning motion instead.

The Gullwings were back in the game to finish the fight off with Paine sending another Gravity spell at the large Darkball. This temporarily flattened it before returning it to its 3D shape and stunning it once more. Sora quickly moved in and performed a Zantetsuken, swiftly cutting the Heartless in half.

"Hmph, show off," Astra said as they watched the large Darkball wither away. Sora scratched his head before walking back over to Luna. "We'll carry her together."

"Don't trust me to do it on my own?" Sora asked, aiding in helping Luna up and putting one of his arms around his shoulders while Astra had the other.

"With your twig arms? No, no I think I'm making the right choice here." Astra replied transitioning to a hushed tone at the end.

"Ouch. I can tell someone's been preparing that one all week." Sora said cringing, though now he couldn't help but look at his free arm every now and then as they walked back to Riku and Aqua. He just hoped their way in, and out, was still there.


"Just looking at this place, you wouldn't think it to be so bad," Aqua said listening to nothing but complete silence after the storm. It had been ten minutes or so since Sora and the Gullwings had left them and the Heartless-filled tornado had since then dissipated. Riku could certainly understand what she meant. His first time here was as quiet as it was now, filled with longing and the thoughts of his friends. "But we've both been here. We know the solitude it provides only exists in its madness."

"Yeah. Now I know what they mean when they say that no one ever comes out of the Realm of Darkness. We both did, but we came out two completely different people. Leaving this place was the start of the journeys that would change us. We both accepted that you can't have light without darkness and vice versa." Riku agreed.

"So I suppose the question now is… what will Luna learn? This may be the start of her journey, and in her current state I've no doubt that it'll be a difficult one. Just what could drive a man to experiment on an innocent girl like that?" Aqua asked cuddling her knees together.

"There are some things in this world I suppose we'll never understand. Why do people like Sora and you choose to live a simple existence while others like me and Xehanort seek so much more than what we need? If there is a right choice then why do we ignore it and pick the wrong ones? Why are we even able to pick the wrong ones in the first place?"

"It's what makes us human I suppose. We're able to define who we are and can choose whether to act out our hearts' wishes or not." Aqua theorized.

"Hearts are… independent of us?" Riku asked, unsure of how to phrase the question.

"Well, Ven's heart was taken in by Sora's right? I doubt Sora was conscious of the fact. I think a reason he was able to save us was that he's so in sync with his own heart. There are only so many who are able to listen so well to what their heart has to say. While Sora's talent came naturally to him that's not to say it can't be learned. You're proof of that Riku, and I'm so proud of you two." Aqua said attempting to ruffle Riku's hair.

"Hey hey hey, you can keep that stuff exclusive to Ven thank you very much." Riku slid away slightly blushing while Aqua let out a snort of laughter.

"Well at least we came in with each other this time. And we're leaving with an additional person. But you know why I'm saying all this right? From the moment we see her, Luna's going to need all the moral support and encouragement we can give her. I dread to think of what damage this place has done to her," Aqua said. Both pairs of eyes looked away from each other at the sound of slow and pronounced footsteps. Astra stood up from her spot and was at Sora and Astra's side in a heartbeat. "Is she alright?"

"Unconscious I think. She's not waking up but I think we can look into that more once we get out of here and back on the Gummi Ship." Sora said.

"Yeah. Any trouble getting her?" Riku asked while looking at Astra suspiciously.

"Oh, like you wouldn't believe, but me, Astra and the Gullwings handled it pretty comfortably." Sora said raising his free hand and possibly expecting Astra to high five him back with hers. It was clear she was just going to leave him hanging however, but before he could put it down Aqua reached in to do it instead.

"Er-"

Looking at the perplexed expression on Sora's face, Aqua quickly raised her hands and tried to justify her action. "Wasn't that meant for me? I mean I was a bit late in responding but I think I made up for it. Oh, th- that wasn't for me… was it?"

"Well… it could be…?" Sora said with a similar level of stunted dialogue.

"Talk about awk-ward! Can we please get out of here now? I think this place is messing with my tan." Rikku complained.

"She worked so hard to get one back in Kauai, you know?" Yuna said pinching Rikku's cheeks much to the latter's disapproval.

"Are you sure you're not just saying that because you're scared?" Riku teased.

"We are NOT scared!" Rikku countered brashly.

"They're scared."

"Oh, way to have our backs Paine," Yuna huffed in response to the stoic Paine before turning to Sora and pleading with both hands clasped. "But seriously, don't you think it's time to go home? Pleeeeaaaaassssseeeee?"

Aqua nodded and flashed a smile at the three pixies. "You're right. Let's go home," she said before looking at Luna. "All of us."


Kairi waved her hand backwards and forwards through the fog, feeling her hand immediately become denser and slightly numb as it sifted in and out. She felt that her actions were mainly motivated by boredom rather than intrigue. It had been half an hour or so since the others had left her by her lonesome. Right now she would have taken even the Dwarves as company.

Taking her hand out one final time, she summoned Destiny's Embrace and started practicing with it. She swung it up and down, slowly increasing the speed of her swings and occasionally jumping backwards to perform a thrusting motion.

I can't believe I'm doing this. What if they're in danger? I wouldn't know because I'm… being left out to dry here. Kairi stopped swinging ferociously and took a deep breath thinking of her training with Yen Sid. While she had been learning Curasa magic, she had been taught to associate different elements with different emotions. As the image of still water entered her mind, she felt her body relax and a smile form on her face.

She opened her eyes to see someone in front of her. It was a woman in a familiar looking blue dress. Kairi had only gotten a few brief seconds to look at her back in Quasi and Esmeralda's world but now she was able to take in a more accurate picture. With long, platinum blonde hair sported in a French braid, light freckles among rosy cheeks and icy blue eyes, Kairi had to admit that she was beautiful.

"You're the one that helped Kefka escape. Tell me, who are you?" Kairi asked. She watched carefully as the woman moved closer to her while admiring the encrusted golden walls covered in beautiful, sparkling jewels of all kinds. Such a thing could easily make on rich, Kairi imagined. Perhaps that was why she was here?

"They call me the Queen of Winter or the Snow Queen. As for what I call myself? Elsa." she eventually said. While her eyes stared coldly back into Kairi's, the redhead could sense something completely different coming from her heart. This feeling coming from her heart is unmistakably… sadness.

"You don't look like the type who would hang out with people like Kefka." Kairi pointed out.

Elsa opened her mouth to respond but ended up closing it. Kairi could see the muscles of Elsa's mouth twitching as if she was formulating carefully her next words. "Well appearances can be deceiving." Elsa said eventually.

"Oh come on, you don't really believe that. If there's anything worse than lying to other people, it's lying to your own heart. You're uncertain and scared about something aren't you?" Kairi pressed.

"As if you would know about what my own heart wanted? I don't need someone like you to tell me who I am." Elsa yelled. Her voice bounced and echoed off the walls causing it to have a lingering presence.

"Ooh, insecure are we? Yours is the heart that just keeps on giving. It's like a Tempest of different emotions. Hm, isn't that a play?" Kairi mocked playfully. As she had expected, Elsa hadn't taken it lightly. She didn't need to read a heart's feelings to know that the Snow Queen was determined to prove that Kairi was wrong.

"My orders were to capture Snow White but since another Princess of Heart is here, why waste my time on a disappearing act?" Elsa reached out and slammed both her hands on the ground. A slew of icy shards formed from the ground making their way over to Kairi who rolled to the side before throwing off fire projectiles.

Elsa jumped and formed an ice path underneath her which she used to dodge the projectiles and travel around the room. She disabled her ice power temporarily and landed on the floor before firing another set of shards at Kairi.

She can't fight in such a small area like this. She's only closing the distance between the both of us, Kairi thought noticing the ice filling the room and enclosing them both. The more Elsa tried to use it in an indoor space, the more she would become limited by it like an adverse effect. The only problem was that those rules also applied to Kairi, so she would have to be careful about where she stepped.

Kairi side flipped over the projectiles before flinging her Keyblade. Before she could pull off another attack, the Keyblade struck Elsa's wrists causing her to yell and clutch it with her other hand.

Kairi held up her hand to claim Destiny's Embrace once more before pointing it at Elsa. "I don't want to hurt you. I can tell that you're not a bad person regardless of what you'd like to make yourself out to be. Just tell me what you know. Why are you searching for the Princesses? Because of Kingdom Hearts? And Alice, did you take her?" she inquired.

"Why are you asking me? Aren't you hiding her?" Elsa asked. So, they don't have Alice? That can't be right. Then who does? Moira's Crescent maybe? As Kairi became entrenched in her own thoughts, Elsa twisted her wrist around to inspect it before clenching her fist and dropping it to the side. "As for your first question, why don't you read my heart? I'm sure it knows better than I."

Elsa started to back away. "Stay where you ar-AGH!" Kairi tried to yell but an abrupt blizzard came out of nowhere forcing her to close her eyes and shield her face. When it stopped, Kairi opened her eyes to see Elsa gone and light sparkles of snow filling the room. The temperature in the room had also dropped forcing Kairi to rub her arms.

"Hey Kairi, we're baAaAawha?" Sora trailed off and blinked rapidly. "What… happened?"

"Yeah, you had one job Kairi. ONE JOB!" Yuna criticised. She turned around to see pairs of eyes all staring her way. She tilted her head while pretending to shrink away. "Uh, too soon?"

Kairi looked away from Yuna and expressed the same worry both Riku and Aqua had upon seeing Luna. After finding out from Sora that she was alright, Kairi relayed what little information she had gathered from Elsa to the others.

"She could be lying. I think we should treat someone who's out to collect the Princesses' words lightly." Riku suggested.

"That's the thing. I think she was also confused, and besides why would she have any reason to lie? She knows we know that they're after them so it would naturally make sense to think that they had Alice in the first place," Kairi said. "And if they aren't behind her disappearance. There's only one other group I can think of, Astra?"

"Oh, I love a good conspiracy theory," Astra said jumping around and clapping ecstatically like a giddy schoolgirl. "Of course they always let me down because they never turn out to be real, just like this one. Kairi, sweetheart, there are things in this world that simply cannot be explained. This is not your Saturday morning cartoon show where the group suddenly and conveniently have an idea to catch the bad guy just before the show ends. I don't know what kind of game you, those guys, or Moira's Crescent are playing here and I personally don't care but what I do know is that truths aren't always so in your face as you might like to think. It may be easy to explain something away by pretending it's one and the same with a current problem, but most of the time, what is easy isn't always right."

"You know, you could have just said they weren't behind it either instead of wasting our time with a monologue." Sora said.

"Coulda. Woulda. Buuuuutttt didn't feel like being lazy just then. I guess being with you guys just broke a habit." Astra replied.

"But why so defensive then? You say you don't care for Moira's Crescent and yet you're convinced they didn't do it. So you should have no problem with us investigating then?" Paine said. When all eyes fell on her she gave an exaggerated sigh. "Forget I said anything."

"By all means, feel free to investigate. I'm just telling you not to make a judgement simply based on what you want to believe. I've seen enough of that before," Astra said briefly glancing at Luna before hoisting her up slightly higher. "Let's just get moving before this 'Snow Witch' calls for backup."


Sora had only felt truly comfortable when he had taken the place of the front seat of the Highwind. He slouched into the pilot seat and watched his fingers crawl up and down the armrests like two spiders.

They were in the sea between worlds now and Sora could only think of that unique twinkle that would take over Luna's eyes when she woke up to see the colorful great sea that surrounded the worlds. When he had been back on the islands, he could only have ever seen such a thing from a rainbow. Now, he was free to see those seven colors and more whenever he wanted to. He let out a yawn. Today had certainly not been a bad day for an adventure.

The spiders stopped crawling up the armrests before jumping over to the drawer and opened it, pulling out a journal. Inside contained pages of entries Luna had written on her last trip in the Gummi Ship. Sora had taken the liberty of filling it in after her last entry, providing as much detail as he could on the worlds he, Riku and Kairi had travelled and what they had found, which is to say not much until they had found Astra in Lilo's world.

He went backwards this time, admiring Luna's slightly messy handwriting and his even worse. He paused somewhere near the middle of the journal to look at Luna's drawing. Her, Sora, Donald, Goofy, Kupopo and Jiminy were all there, and above them, a title: MAY THESE BE THE MEMORIES THAT LAST. When Luna had last shown it to him, she couldn't explain why she had chosen this title or why she had capitalised all the letters. In the end, he felt that it was because she had been afraid of becoming a different person if she regained her memories but that fortunately hadn't come to pass. Sora drew a single finger across the words several times. Oh how he wanted these words to be true.

He was so absorbed by the picture that he failed to notice Kairi's head swooping down from above. He screamed and let the journal escape his grasp and fall onto his lap.

"You know, even Namine's a bit more composed than you when I usually do this, and that's saying something," Kairi said before frowning. "We can't get her to wake up. She might be in a coma in which case all we can do is wait for her to wake up. But I'm no expert, I mean Master Yen Sid might be able to help her more than I can." she added quickly.

"I trust you Kairi." Sora comforted, knowing that Kairi had done the best she could and that her judgement on Luna's condition was a sound one. He placed the journal back in the drawer and got up before walking down the hallway. He stopped at the already opened door to the left and went in.

Luna was lying on the bed as peacefully as she had been in the realm of darkness. Next to her, Astra had pulled up a chair and had taken Luna's left hand into her own hands, caressing it gently. Aqua stood staring at the two thoughtfully while Riku leaned against the wall with his eyes on the metal floor.

Sora wanted to tell them how everything was going to be alright and that she would eventually awake, but he chose not to risk being blamed by Astra for this happening in the first place.

No, I don't care about whatever Astra says. Luna's my friend too and I know she'll awake because… there's no way she'll let those memories end.

With that Sora deliberately walked over to other side of the bed where Astra could see him and gently took hold of Luna's other hand. "Take all the time you need to figure things out Luna. We'll be right here, fighting alongside you."


Pots and pans clattered and clanged in almost every possible direction, a result of the desperate Palom attempt to clean Merlin's cookware quickly. Porom heard the sound of metals hitting against the floor several times from the bathroom and raced into the living room to see the colossal mess that Palom had made.

"You complete dunderhead. How did this happen? Actually, I don't have to even ask. You thought you could use teleport magic as a shortcut to save time on cleaning. Of course you would." Porom snapped.

"Well you could always help and make this easier. I'd appreciate that." Palom argued back.

"I'm sure you would, but why would I neglect my duties just to help you? I think I know why the elder back home referred to you as a… troublemaker. Incompetent. Arrogant. A fool."

"Huh? Who called me that?" Palom asked.

"Oh, the last one was me. But I'm not far off. It was just used by them in an indirect way," Porom said pompously before looking around and hanging her head lowly. "But I suppose I'll have to help you just this once since you'll probably somehow find a way to make this worse if I leave it to you. I don't need a powerful wizard such as Merlin ranking us on par with the Gullwings thank you very much."

"I ever mention you were best little sister one could ever have?"

"First, we're twins, with me being a few seconds older than you at that. Second, flattery will get you nowhere little brother." Porom laughed at the scowl that had manifested on Palom's face. She was about to head over to the sink when she heard a knock on the door.

"Uh oh, I didn't think he'd be back so soon. We're screwed!" Palom exclaimed clutching his head in fear.

"You have a brain Palom and no matter how little it may be I expect you to use it. Merlin wouldn't even have to knock. He could just pop in with teleport magic. It's probably just Cid or Yuffie." Porom said rolling her eyes. She approached the door and opened it however the person on the other side was neither of the people Porom had mentioned.

"Ah, hello. I suppose the kid over there is Sora? A bit young to be wielding the Keyblade but if the old bat says he's special then…" The woman bent down and offered her hand. "The name's Neuge… and that's not Sora, is it?"


So I'd advise going back to Dual Destinies here and looking at the secret ending if you haven't for the backstory on this new character and hope you look forward to her and Luna's recovery (let's be honest, there's no way she won't wake up unless I'm feeling incredibly sadistic while writing). For now I wish you a very happy holidays be prepared for a wedding!