Chapter 8

The next two days I woke up early and just started training all day long with strength I never even knew I had. I found out that I could use magic all along. After an hour or so, I had defeated every single heartless in town and would ask other people to spar with me. I asked them not to hold back on me because I knew Maleficent wouldn't either.

The third day I was fighting Leon in the Third District, preparing to leave. I was doing fairly well when he suddenly shot at me with his Gunblade and I knew that I wouldn't be able to block it in time. But then a fireball came out of nowhere and they exploded against each other.

When the smoke cleared I saw that Leon was knocked out on the ground. I turned around and saw a guy standing behind me. He had a black robe on, like Riku's, red hair and green eyes.

"Who are you?" I asked. He smirked and walked up to me. I took a couple steps back, but not too much. I didn't want him to think I was scared or anything.

"I'm Axel. Nice to finally meet you. I've heard a lot about you." He said.

"What? Do you work for Maleficent or something?" He chuckled.

"Oh no. Maleficent works for me."

"What have you done to Riku?"

"Riku's fine." He answered walking closer to me again.

"Where is he?"

"You ask too many questions." He answered looking bored. He took out his weapons that were two rings with spikes attached to it. "You're coming with me"

"No way!" I yelled.

"Yeah…that's what I thought. Why doesn't anybody ever come voluntarily?" He sighed. Then he rushed at me and tried to hit me with one of his rings, but I blocked it. Then another sword formed in my other hand as he slashed at me with his other ring. Axel looked at it and smiled.

"So I was right"

"Jen!" Someone screamed. I pushed Axel away and did a back flip. I looked up to where the screaming came from and saw Sora with Cloud next to him. Cloud jumped down and started attacking Axel. I ran over to Leon who was just waking up.

"Are you okay?" I asked him. He nodded at me and sat up. All of sudden I felt a terrible headache. Something I had never felt before. It was like my head was being split open. I grabbed my head and screamed. I fell to my knees and looked at Axel. He was smirking at me while easily blocking Cloud's attacks. The pain was incredible. Then it stopped. But not only did I not feel my head anymore, I felt nothing. It was like I was a ghost in my own body. I tried to scream, but there was no sound. I couldn't do anything. Suddenly my body started attacking Leon. He jumped to the side.

"Whoa! Jen, what are you doing?" He said while dodging more of my attacks. I didn't know what to do. How could I tell them that Axel had taken over my mind? Then I got an idea. If I could read people's minds then maybe I could talk in their minds too. So I concentrated on saying 'Axel is taking over my mind, distract him'. Then I tried to send it to Leon's mind. I concentrated as best as I could. Suddenly I saw a look of confusion on Leon's face and then understanding. I wanted to sigh in relief, but then I realized I couldn't. Then I heard a voice in my head. Axel's voice.

'So Riku's your little lover boy, eh?'

'He's not my lover boy!'

'Really? Then why did you cry when he left?'

'How did y-…err…What did you do to him?'

'I didn't do anything.'

'Yeah right. Like I would believe that'

'Look, I'll take you and your friends to him and you can see for yourself…'

'Wh-'

Before I could even finish my thoughts, we were engulfed in a huge white light and I could feel my body being pulled into it. When I could see again I saw that Leon, Cloud, Sora and I weren't in Traverse Town anymore and I could move my body myself again. I looked around. We were in front of a huge castle. It looked dark and had the Heartless sign on it. It felt strangely familiar to me.

"Hollow Bastion" Sora said softly. I ran up to the door, surprised that we weren't attacked by heartless. When I realized the others weren't following me, I turned around and saw that they were all fighting heartless. 'hmm…that's strange'

I ran up to them and they just looked at me and disappeared.

"Now that's what I call weird." I said. "Hey guys, did you ever wonder how I got this thing?" I continued waving with my newfound blade. They looked at it.

"That's a keyblade! Where did you get it?" Sora asked. I shrugged.

"It just materialized in my hand when I was fighting Axel"

"We need to get going" Cloud said no longer paying any attention to the keyblade. "We'll find the answers inside."

"Okay let's go" I said. I tried to open the door by pushing against it with my shoulder, but it was too heavy.

"Jen" Sora said, apparently trying to contain his laughter.

"What?" I asked annoyed that he was laughing at me. He just pointed at a red button on the wall.

"Oh…a button" I walked up to it and pushed it. The door slowly creaked open. I blushed a little in embarrassment. "How was I supposed to know it was that easy." I muttered as I stepped inside. When we were all inside, an old man walked up to me and bowed. He was wrinkled and the little hair he still had was grey. He had brown eyes and looked extremely tired.

"Hello miss. Welcome to Hollow Bastion. You've been expected. Please, follow me." The man said.

"Err…Right…Okay" I looked at the others. They looked as surprised as I was. We went up some stairs and down a long hallway, up with some elevators and again down a long hallway. It was all dark and there were portraits of really ugly men and women on the walls, all resembling Maleficent. It was rather scary actually.

"Oh so that's why Maleficent's so ugly" I said. Sora laughed. "But why are they here? It's not like Maleficent's parents ruled this place, right?" I said as an afterthought.

"No" Leon said. "Ansem did."

"Wait…what? As in the-guy-that-possessed-Riku-Ansem?" I asked amazed. Sora looked sad.

"Yeah…That one. Fortunately, he's gone, I think." He said. I stopped walking.

"You think? What do you mean you think?" I demanded. Sora rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.

"Well…uh…I defeated Maleficent too, right? And she came back. So there might be a…possibility that…eh…Ansem's back too."

"But-…"

"Excuse me, Milady." I blinked and looked at the grey-haired man. I forgot that he was here too.

"Yes?" I asked. He pointed to a HUGE door that went all the way up to the ceiling, which was really high.

"We've arrived at Milady Maleficent's room" he said.

"Okay…And what exactly are we doing here?" The man gave me a confused look.

"Surely you must know. Milady Maleficent wishes to murder you and take the keyblades."
That took me by surprise. I mean…of course I knew Maleficent wanted to kill us and take the keyblade, but I never expected such a…dignified man to say it like that.

"Then why didn't she just catch us by surprise. Like when she was coming to get Riku. She could've easily taken us out then." The man cleared his throat.

"Milady Maleficent can only kill someone when Milady Maleficent has been challenge by said person. Else she would cease to exist." He said.

"And how is that a bad thing?" I asked. The old man glared at me. He actually glared at me.

"You shall not say those things about Milady Maleficent." I laughed.

"What are you going to do? Use your super strength on us?" I taunted. He glared at me even more and opened the huge door. He threw us in with a big gust of wind. Leon and Cloud landed neatly on their feet, Sora landed on his back and I…I flew against a wall face first…I fell backwards onto the ground and groaned.

"Oww. He did that on purpose…"

"You think?" Leon retorted. I stood up and dusted myself off. I walked towards Sora who had gotten up by then.

"So what do we do now?" I asked.

"We wait" Sora answered. "Maleficent will show up soon.

"Good." I looked around the room. It was huge! Just like every other place in that castle. And, of course, dark. There were big windows that were open. Wind flew through it. It was like someone was whispering. I shivered, it creeped me out. Wait…there was someone whispering. I turned around and saw Sora look at me and quickly stop talking.

"Talking about me, are you?" I smiled. Sora looked away uncomfortable.

"Err…no. Just…discussing our strategy."

"Right…sure." I decided to leave it at that. I looked at the room again. It was fairly empty. There were two black chairs in the left corner. A bed was placed in the middle of the room with black covers. The wall was painted a dark brown and the carpet was also dark brown. It didn't fit together, but it was still exactly what I had expected of someone like Maleficent. What surprised me was that there was a door across from us. It was, strangely, white. On it was written in graceful letters: Veni, Vidi, Vici. 'You wish' I thought overconfident. I had been my old self again: overconfident and always happy. Though that didn't last long as the white door opened. Maleficent stepped through. She looked tired.

"Ah Jen. Nice to meet you. Though I wish it were under better circumstances." She said to me. "I assume my husband has told you why you're here?" If it were possible my jaw would've dropped to the ground at that comment.

"That was your husband? He seemed more like your servant to me. By the way, from the stories I've heard about you I didn't even know you were capable of loving someone, much less any other emotions besides hate. Unless you don't love him of course. Maybe you're just using him as your slave. Do you even know his name? And why does he keep calling you Milady? And-…"

"Jen!" Sora yelled. I blinked at him and then realized what I had been doing.

"Right…Sorry." All this time Maleficent was just standing there seeming more tired by the minute.

"Are you done?" She asked me. I nodded. "Then let's get this over with. I don't ever want to see your ugly faces again."

"Hey! I'm not ugly! Right?" I said as I looked at the others. They were giving me a who-cares-let's-just-kill-her look. I stepped forward a bit so I was in front of the guys and pulled out my new keyblade. I got in fighting position.

"Are you ready to do this, guys?" Sora said. I was about to respond that I wasn't a guy when something hard hit me on the back of my head. I started falling backwards. I only heard Sora say "Sorry Jen, we wanna make sure you don't die before…" and then I blacked out.

And another chapter done. I hope you liked it. Tell me what you think. The story will probably be about 10 chapters total. I'm not sure if I'll do a sequel, though.
Anyway: R&R as always!

SilverHearts