The plane turned out to be an ugly rusted out thing tucked in an out-of-the-way hangar near the high city walls. "So this thing does fly, right?" asked Sora skeptically.
Cid gave him a dirty look. "You think I plan on killin' you kids? Just git in." The three of them, with some trepidation, did so. Cid taxied it onto the strip of decaying asphalt that served as a runway. After a tooth-rattling takeoff the little craft did indeed rise smoothly into the sky, and Riku had almost unclenched his fingers from the seat cushion when the air was pierced by a reptilian screech and something heavy slammed into them from below.
"Dragons!" yelled Sora.
Three draconic Heartless looped through the air beside them, and one broke off from the other two, wheeled around, and prepared to ram the plane again. Cid slammed on the rudder but wasn't quite fast enough. The second blow tipped them sharply down, and when Riku felt his stomach attempt to pole-vault over his collarbone he realized they were in freefall. Kairi screamed; he threw his arms around her in an utterly futile gesture of protection. The brown hills were blooming rapidly into the viewport, growing until Riku could just make out the tall clumps of weedy grass on the crests. At the last second Cid gave a heroic tug on the stick and they just skimmed over an outcropping of rock and shot back up into the blue.
Everyone let out an almost simultaneous sigh of relief. "Y'all okay back there?" Cid asked.
Kairi slowly and reluctantly untangled herself from Riku's panicked embrace and gave Cid a shaky "yes". The rest of the trip was mercifully dull, and soon enough they touched down on the verdant island that held the Temple. Even the usually garrulous Sora was awed into silence by the sight. Rising out of the jungle was an enormous ziggurat encircled in a once sturdy but now crumbling wall. Strangler fig trees had taken hold in the nooks and crannies to drape the structure in sinuous gray roots, and tiny jewel-toned birds perched in their branches. Monkeys clambered over carvings worn away by the thousands of years of raindrops beating on the stone. The whole place seemed simultaneously lonely yet bursting with life, haunted by the gentle ghosts of the Cetra as they watched over the myriad animals who had taken their holiest of places as home.
They walked up the bridge and into the darkness of the entry hall. "This is the place," said Sora softly. "But I don't think we belong here. We should find the Keyhole and leave as soon as we can."
"I know what you mean," said Kairi. "The air is almost…heavy in here."
"Let's split up. One of you can take the left passage, and one the right. Com'mon, Sora. There's some things about Shinra I want to fill you in on," said Cid, and hefted his spear.
Sora looked like he was about to object to the matchup, but Cid had already started a good ways down the hall, so he turned around and jogged to catch up. "Guess that leaves us with that one," said Kairi.
"Oh," said Riku, who was only half paying attention. His inexplicable headache, which had ebbed considerably since they left Shinra Headquarters, had returned with a vengeance at precisely the moment he passed the threshold of the temple. "Um…Keyblade. Right." He extended his hand to pull it from the air. Nothing happened. Kairi cocked her head curiously but said nothing. He tried again, focusing harder on the desire hold it in his hand like he had done almost a hundred times before. This time it popped into being exactly as it should have. Kairi raised her wand to the ready and kindled a small ball of blue light on the end. "Shall we?"
They could heard chittering and scraping echo down the stone passageways as they descended deeper into the temple, but nothing was brave enough to venture into their circle of witchlight. Riku could feel a very, very slight tugging at the end of the Keyblade, as if it was pulled by an invisible string, and did his best to concentrate on following it. They had descended through several levels without incident when something dark and gooey plopped down on the end of Kairi's wand, extinguishing the light. "Eeugh…gross!" she exclaimed, as it wriggled down her hand then jumped to the floor.
A sudden rush of air was all that warned Riku they were under attack; he ducked low and felt something pass over the back of his neck that left a few drops of cold slime in his hair. "Kairi, light!" he yelled. She recast the spell and gasped when it revealed a wriggling black mass poised above the archway they were about to pass under. At its center was the emblem of the Heartless, ringed by a splattering of lumpy yellow eyes and countless tentacles ranging in size from as thin as Riku's finger to as wide as his thigh. One of the larger ones darted for his face, and he sidestepped it and slashed downward. The end fell to the ground, but instead of lying there like it should have, it exuded six gelatinous legs and scuttled back to the main body of the creature. Kairi severed another easily with one strike of her heavy silver wand, and again the amputated tentacle did not show the least reluctance to leap up and dive into the shaft of another.
"This could be a problem!" said Riku as he swung his Keyblade around in a futile attempt to keep the things from grabbing hold of him.
"On it," she said, and called and a spray of fire that crisped three of the tentacles aiming for her ankles. It filled the tight space with a horrible smell but seemed effective; once charred the body could no longer split and reform. Kairi sent a wave of searing heat towards its eyes, and most of the tentacles withdrew to protect them, but not all. One snaked out whiplike at Riku's leg and yanked him off his feet. He hacked at it, but the severed ends of the slime arched over the Keyblade and reformed every time he tried, drawing him closer and closer.
"No you don't," said Kairi, and this time chose three long lances of ice from her repetoire and threw them at what she guessed passed for this monster's brain. Its charred appendages useless, it couldn't shield itself properly, and its bubbling shriek melted away as it dissolved like fog under the hot sun.
Riku levered himself up to a sitting position, holding his head in his hand. "You're not hurt, are you?" asked Kairi anxiously, and offered him a helping hand up. "You really don't look so good."
"It's just a headache. I'm fine" he snapped at her, and rose without her assistance.
Kairi looked taken aback and withdrew the offered hand to place it on her hip. "You don't have to bite my head off. I only wanted to be sure you were okay."
"I am, so let's just go, alright?"
They reached the room that held the keyhole about ten minutes after Sora did, who was sitting on a broken pillar fiddling with the charm on his Keyblade. "Bout time you came by," he said smugly. "I wasn't expecting it to be this easy."
"Easy? That's because you left the hard work to me, like always," Riku said.
"What's that supposed to mean? I wasn't—" Sora started.
"Just shut it, okay, Sora? And let's get out of here. This place gives me the creeps."
Sora dropped back a little to confer quietly with Kairi while they retraced their steps back to the entrance hall. "Kairi, do you have any idea what that was about?"
"We found a giant blob of killer snot on the way to the Keyhole. It took a little while to dispatch," she replied.
"No, I meant why Riku went nuts over it."
"Oh, that part. He told me he had a headache…you know how snippy he gets when he's not feeling well."
"Mmmm…that makes sense, I guess. I'll see if Aerith can fix him up with something when we get back to the city."
'Back to the city' ended up taking nearly an hour longer than the outbound trip thanks to a strong headwind, and it was past midnight when the plane touched down outside Midgar. Riku couldn't manage to fall asleep on the uncomfortable seats and was completely exhausted, his head still hurt, and he was angry at himself for snapping at Kairi and Sora but couldn't bring himself to apologize. In addition to the revelation that morning he was probably some kind of evil mutant freak, one that Cloud seemed itching to rub out if given half the chance, it had been a uniformly terrible day. Then it got worse.
"So this is the Keyblade Master?" said a voice from the darkness. "The Heartless have told me so much about you, though I must say, I was expecting him to be a little…taller." Riku caught sight of two green eyes above him that flashed in the dark like a cat's. In a few moments his night vision resolved the shadows into distinct shapes, and their owner was revealed to be young man in black lounging on the nose of one of the planes, kicking it idly with the heels of his boots like a bored child. He felt a strange surge of recognition for this boy, almost seeing a slightly younger version of himself in the green eyes and silver hair. But no…it was more than that. It was deeper, in a way that he couldn't put into words, something that he found both fascinating and repulsive all at once.
"Get off my goddamn plane, Kadaj!" yelled Cid.
He giggled. "Or you'll what, Old Man? You couldn't possibly take me on all by yourself. I'd worry for your heart."
"You're Kadaj?" said Sora. "Why are you doing this? Whatever this 'Jenova' is you're searching for, the Heartless aren't the way to find it. They'll turn on you as soon as you slip and destroy this entire planet!"
"And what gave you the impression that I care? This planet is a tool, like the Heartless. A simple means to an end—to reach the Promised Land that Mother has been seeking for so long."
"Whatever that is, it's not a fair trade. Nothing could possibly be worth that many lives," said Kairi.
"A 'fair trade'. Really. Do you know what Shinra Electric Company actually does? You must have seen their reactors. Do you know what they burn?" Kadaj asked, and didn't pause for an answer. "The energy that makes life itself possible. They've pulled out the lifeblood of their world so they can use it to power their scheming and their petty wars, their lust and their vice. These miserable ants you are trying so desperately to save from me are doing exactly the same thing. They're a poison."
Cid ground his teeth but said nothing to contradict him. With dawning horror, Riku realized it must all be true. It was Kairi that spoke up. "Even if some of them are like that, there are always people who aren't, people who create instead of destroy, who try to fix things when they've gone wrong."
"Of course there are, of course there are. But they are so few, and so weak, always eventually crushed. Your naiveté is really quite charming, but I have other things to attend to tonight," Kadaj said, rising to his feet. "I only wanted to meet you. Now, if you like, you can play with the dogs." He raised his hand, and five enormous animals that bore only the slightest resemblance to something canine coalesced from the dust in the air. They were huge and skeletal, with longs spines rising from their shoulders, and had the black and red Heartless crest emblazoned on their chests. Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Cid, exhausted as they were, had little trouble fighting them off, but by the time they were done Kadaj was long gone.
-----
Everyone but Tifa was asleep when they returned to Seventh Heaven. "Did you find it? Is it sealed?" she asked anxiously.
"Yeah, no trouble there," Sora said, and yawned. "We met Kadaj, too. He really does remind me of Sephiroth. They're both crazy."
"Can we talk about this in the morning, Tifa? I'm ready to drop," said Kairi.
"Oh, of course," she said. "You boys can have my room if you want, though one of you will have to sleep on the floor since we're tight on space. Kairi can have the couch in the living room, and I'll take the one in the office."
"And I'll bunk in the Highwind, thanks for offering," Cid snorted. "G'night."