The Resolve of All
Chapter 16: No More Delays
Play the KH Friends in My Heart OST on a second tab.
10 years earlier...
"Haha! Tag you're it!"
"Aw, come on... you catch me too fast!"
"That's because you're a slowpoke!"
"Fine. Then you better stop running before I get you!"
"Ahhh! Stop it Brendan!" Mona giggled.
"You're losing your edge." He chuckled.
"Hey guys! What's up?" Skyler approached their game of tag.
"Just having fun, what's going on with you?" She inquired.
"A few new kids just moved into town." Skyler grinned. "Let's go meet them..."
"Okay!" They both happily complied.
The three of them ran for it as they cut through their little mountain village until they made it to a local park where three other kids were playing with each other.
"Hello," Mona introduced themselves to them. "I'm Mona, this is Brendan, and Skyler."
"Hi!" The spiky raven-haired boy greeted. "I'm Mark, and this is Alliana, and little Fate."
"Nice to meet you." The girls waved shyly.
"Hey, you guys want to play a game?" Brendan suggested.
"Sure!" They all agreed.
And the six of them were friends ever since...
9 years later...
"Are you serious Mark?" Alliana doubted. "How is this thing going to fly?"
The two of them marveled at the custom-bulit flying machine which resembled a biplane of sorts. All of them had been working together to make it for the past year, but it seemed now it was air worthy.
"It'll work... we'll be able to see so much more of the world and beyond now..." Mark fantasied.
"And what do you think you'll find in this great beyond Mark?" Brendan stated as he approached from behind them along with Mona, Fate, and Skyler.
"Maybe other worlds..." Mark guessed.
"Haha! This isn't Kingdom Hearts or anything like that." Skyler laughed off.
"Hey, you never know. Right?" Brendan defended.
"Tomorrow, we'll all fly in it, and it'll be a blast." Fate smiled.
"Definitely." Mona nodded.
"I got an idea, how about we make a promise... that the six of us will always be friends no matter what even when we're all grown up." Alliana declared.
"Heh-heh... you've been playing too much Kingdom Hearts." Fate said.
"Come on, we're all playing too much of that game... but nevertheless... that still sounds like a great idea. Friends Forever?" Brendan stated.
"Why not? I could do worse than you guys." Skyler shrugged jokingly.
They all laughed at his statement as they all put their hands together to signify their friendship and their strong bond which would tie them together... forever...
The darkness and the bitter cold... almost seemed familiar now... Why did it have to be this way...?
It seemed like he was drifting in the black abyss for what felt like years, but then suddenly the ground come up hard and a comforting a kind voice guided him towards the light... he knew her...
"Drex?!"
"Mona?"
"Drex!"
It had to be her... it just had to be... but no... It wasn't... it was another he cared about...
"Xion..." Drex slipped out.
"Drex, you're awake..." Xion relieved as she hugged him. "I thought you were gone again..."
"I thought I was too..." Drex examined himself and found that he had been completely healed even the scars and burns were gone... "What happened? Where are we?!"
"We're in Radiant Garden... at our old house..." Xion said sadly as they were both in the middle of a black skeletal framework of where the burned down house used to be...
"...Wow..." Drex took in the destruction. "...How am I still alive?"
"You were pretty much dead when I found you here... and the thing is... I had to give you another life force..." Xion informed him.
"Another life... for me?" Drex questioned. "From who?"
"A friend..." Xion simply put. "Someone who helped me... and he helped you too."
"...I guess he really did..." Drex gave a small grin as he and Xion stood up in the ashes.
"What happened to you Xion?" Drex inquired.
"You first." She defensively responded.
"...Uh... I failed to find the princess, fought one of my best friends twice, fell in love, got captured, then I apparently died for a bit. You?" Drex nonchalantly said.
"Fell in love?" Xion raised an eyebrow. "With who?"
"...A childhood friend who's working with the Organization... it's a long story..." Drex rubbed his head sheepishly.
"I can imagine..." Xion responded with sympathy. "...I really need to tell you something Drex..."
"What is it Xion?" He inquired.
"...I...I killed Roxas..." She confessed with a sob.
"...Wait a second... Are you serious?" Drex wanted to clarify.
"Yes..." She cried.
"...But Roxas and Lea are right over there." Drex pointed behind her.
Indeed when Xion turned around, there was a smiling tall pyro and a shorter spiky blonde with a blank expression waving at them.
"Roxas!" Xion shed tears of joy as she dashed at her boyfriend begging for forgiveness with Drex following suit behind her.
"Hey guys. I found this zombie in the darkness, should we keep him?" Lea jokingly said as he nudged the groggy blonde.
"Glad you guys are still in one piece." Drex smiled as he bro-hugged Lea.
Xion embraced Roxas and captured his lips, hoping to feel the warmth that she got from him at least one last time... And like a fairy tail story, the second the kiss made contact with the two teens, a magical moment happened and all of Roxas's memories came back to him...
"Xion... you're okay..." Roxas whispered.
"You're back, Roxas... I'm... I'm so sorry..." She begged. "Can you ever forgive me...?"
"I already have..." Roxas forgave as they embraced each other again.
"Look at that." Lea smirked. "The gang's back together again."
"Let's hope it stays this way." Roxas grinned.
"...Um... we may need a new house though..." Drex pointed out.
"We can worry about that later." Lea shrugged off. "Let's just finish what we started and get back to old man Yen Sid."
"Sounds like a plan." Xion nodded ready to get back into the fight with her best friends.
Lea then summoned a dark corridor to the Mysterious Tower and he, Roxas, and Xion stepped into, but Drex lagged behind again...
"I don't know how you did it... but you saved me again Mona... I promise to return the favor... and send all of us back home..." Drex vowed.
And then he stepped into the dark portal...
Suddenly, the chamber erupted with hot blue fire and those inside did not stand a chance of surviving... but little did Saix know that Skyler had hastily put up barrier to keep them from being cremated while Mona performed CPR on Drex...
"Come on! Breathe! Breathe! Please!" She begged.
"Mona... I can't hold this up for long..." Skyler cringed.
"No... he won't wake up... please... come back to us... come back to me..." Mona pleaded as the tears dripped down onto Drex's lifeless face... his eyes still closed.
"Do something Mona!"
Mona then used the last of her powers to create a corridor of darkness beneath Drex's body to send him back to his home in Radiant Garden where she knew his friends would be...
Skyler's barrier was then engulfed and the two of them were then surrounded by the fire.
To both of their surprise, snake-like whips of energy spurted form the vortex of flames around them, and they wrapped themselves around their arms and legs.
"Get off of me!" Mona struggled.
"I can't get free!" Skyler resisted in vain.
"Ahhhhh!" They both screamed in agony from the sudden electrocutions from the whips of energy until they both fell into unconsciousness...
Saix calmly walked into the basement of their headquarters which consisted of a variety of machines and pods, from the old Castle Oblivion Lab and The World That Never Was, to perform scientific research. Saix slowly examined the five pods which stood before him, all of them containing one of the later members of Organization XIII...
Mark... Alliana... Skyler... Fate... and Mona slumbered almost as if they were in a coma each submerged in the liquid inside the large white pods...
"...Finally, we can make things right again... No more truancy... no more delays..." Saix coldly stated.
Xemnas then made his presence known and he appeared next to Saix with a stoic expression on his face as his eyes beheld those who were in the pods.
"It won't be long now... soon our goals will be realized and the denizens of light will come forth to spark the war..." Xemnas proclaimed.
"...These... children... will lose their identities; everything that they are will be gone except for what makes them Xehanort..." Saix inquired. "...Will that happen to me as well?"
"All of us will have to make the transformation. With the same heart and mind, there will be no faults within the seekers of darkness..." Xemnas continued. "Fragments of their Lingering Wills might resist the true darkness, but in the end... nothing will stop what is already been put into motion..."
"Then that just leaves the last princess..." Saix responded.
Castle Oblivion looked as desolate as ever as Kairi, Sora, and Aqua approached the late Land of Departure.
"What is this place?" Kairi wondered out loud.
"My home." Aqua simply put. "Ven will be here."
"Why does it feel like I've been here before?" Sora scratched his head in wonder.
"Déjà vu?" Aqua smiled as she opened the front doors of the Castle...
"It's was all white... the floors, the walls... the ceiling..." Kairi said as she took the brightness in.
"Ven will be past a secret door just up ahead." Aqua pointed towards the far doorway.
As the three of them were about halfway across the floor, a sparkle shimmered from within Kairi and in a flash everyone was blinded by a strong light!
"Don't go any further!"
"Who are you?" Sora asked as the light faded away.
"Sora... don't you remember our promise?" Namine smiled.
"Oh! Namine!" Sora realized that he had gained all of his memories from his previous excursion in Castle Oblivion, most likely because he was in the company of Aqua and Namine.
"Yes." She nodded. "I hope you all are ready to fight because-!"
Play the Eye of Darkness Theme on a second tab.
Suddenly, a shockwave of darkness erupted from a dark corridor on the far end of the floor.
"...Oh no..." Namine stated as she witnessed the enemy standing before them.
Out of the dark corridor… was a corrupted version of Aqua's Armor as an oddly outside version of a Dream Eater... or the Armored Aqua Nightmare...
"Aqua! What is that thing?!" Sora exclaimed.
"I know exactly what it is... let me take care of it..." Aqua stated.
"No way... I'm going to help out!" Sora declared. "Besides you don't even have a Keyblade!"
"But the thing is that IS my Keyblade and my armor." Aqua revealed.
"Huh?" Sora said with confusion.
"Get back!" Aqua warned Kairi and Namine as a barrier formed in front of the two girls.
"Let's go!" Sora stated as he rushed the Armor.
The corruted metal enemy sank into the floor as Sora attempted to strike it, but then it emerged down from the ceiling above him!
"Sora! Look out!" Aqua shouted before firing a blizzard spell from her hands.
The Possessed Armor took a direct hit form the ice and it was blown back from the impact and into the wall. Because of the crash it sounded like the Armor was hollow...
"Thanks Aqua! I got this now!" Sora reassured.
As the Armor brandished Aqua's Keyblade, it collided with Sora's Kingdom Key. The corrupted metal pushed through Sora's defenses, but the brunette was able to counter with relative ease as he slashed through the Armor's left shoulder piece. But to Sora's surprise, the entire arm was just separated from the rest of the Armor.
"Gotcha!" Sora smirked.
The Armor staggered as it examined its missing limb, but then it didn't take notice as Sora advanced and struck it multiple times and finished it off by knocking the helmet off!
The headless Armor now was no longer moving as it fell to its knees and the black smoke of the Possessor Heartless perished... then the Armor twinkled away into sparkles of light and eventually returned to Aqua as she reclaimed her own Keyblade.
"That wasn't so bad..." Sora wiped away the sweat from his brow.
"Ahhhhhhh!"
Aqua and Sora turned their attention to the other side of the barrier behind them and their jaws dropped in horror as they witnessed Namine and Kairi in the clutches of the Guardian Heartless of Ansem... The Possessed Armor was just a distraction!
"Kairi! Namine!" Sora yelled as he tried to rescue the girls but the barrier between them prevented that.
"That monster..." Aqua realized from a distant memory.
"LET THEM GO!" Sora demanded.
"Sora! Help!" Kairi begged as she and her Nobody was being squeezed into unconsciousness...
Then out of another dark corridor... on the side with the Guardian and the girls... Terranort stepped out...
"Terra!" Aqua cried out for.
"Tch..." Terranort scoffed. "...After all this time... you still do not realize that Terra's light has been extinguished..."
Sora tried slashing and pounding through the barrier but to no avail. "Let them go or I'm going to-!"
"You'll what?" Terranort challenged. "Don't even bother boy. ...These girls will be the final key to opening the Door to Darkness... then all the worlds will be blanketed by the black abyss... and so will all the hearts that populate them! ...If you wish to futilely resist further... come to where war was once waged... and where it will be fought once again!"
And to that end, Terranort snapped his fingers and the Guardian Heartless obeyed its Master and whisked itself, Kairi and Namine into the darkness...
Then Terranort stepped back into his own corridor, ignoring Sora's cries and objections for him to release the girls... and Aqua and Sora were alone in the empty fortress once more...
"No! No... Kairi..." Sora sobbed as he fell to his hands and knees when the barrier finally disappeared.
"Sora..." Aqua attempted to comfort. "I'm so sorry..."
"It's my fault... I-I wasn't there for her... I'm not strong enough to do this..." He sniffed.
"That's not true." Aqua consoled as she knelt down beside him. "If there's anyone strong enough to do this ...To rescue her... it's you... Master Sora..."
"Huh?" Sora looked back up with tears in his eyes.
"You heard me... Sora, with the power invested in me, I dub thee a True Keyblade Master." She declared.
Sora stood back up and wiped away the sadness on his face and focused on his new resolve to save Kairi now as his first duty as a True Master of the Keyblade.
"Thank you, Aqua." Sora smiled.
"Let's go wake up Ven then find everyone else." Aqua returned a small grin.
Then the two Masters stepped forth across the floor and into a secret room where only Aqua would find and there in the middle of the mysterious chamber... was another spiky blonde boy still snoozing away in the white throne with a small smile on his face...
A/N- The Sea-Salt gang has been reunited! But the Second Keyblade War draws nigh with the grave capture of Kairi and Namine. Looks like Xehanort has lost all of his patience with Drex's friends and they will indefinitely fight against their wills on the side of darkness. And with Sora a Keyblade Master now, will he and Aqua be able to awaken Ven with ease? Will the Light prevail over darkness? Find out more next time. :)