ENCOM's Secret
Sora and his friends made it to the Computer Room. The doors had not even had a chance to open when Sora kicked them down. "Hurry guys! We don't have much time before they come back!"
Do you think Ax---Lea made it out safely against Nexumair? Roxas asked. I could sense that he was really strong.
"Lea's strong too" Sora said. He ran over to the computer controls where Donald and Goofy were fiddling with the buttons.
"I've almost got it" said Donald. "All we have to do is hit a few more things and—wha?! The duck was zapped by a beam of white light from the computer. He disappeared in a flash of light. Sora and Goofy were about to say something when they were hit by the same flash of energy.
When Sora opened his eyes, he was standing in a strange room. It was dark blue and green, and energy bolts zapped across the walls. "Donald? Goofy?" he asked.
"Here we are!" said Goofy. He walked over to Sora. They looked at themselves. They were wearing the strange, luminous suits that seemed to go with the digital world, so they were obviously inside the computer. But beyond that, nothing looked familiar and Tron was nowhere to be seen.
"Where do you think we are?" Sora asked. He felt the walls. "This doesn't look like anywhere we've been before."
"We've gotta find him before Nexumair gets inside the computer too" said Goofy.
Don't say that! said Roxas. That would mean that Lea lost! Sora, tell him not to say stuff like that. I'm jittery enough as it is.
"Could you not say stuff like that, Goofy?" Sora asked, rubbing the weird hat he had developed in this world. "It makes Roxas kind of nervous."
"Oh, sorry" said Goofy. The three of them continued out of the room and into a bright pink hallway. The change was so sudden that for a minute, all they could do was stare at the walls.
"What the heck is this?" Donald asked. He felt the walls around him. "It feels like taffy!" he exclaimed. Sora felt it too and jumped back. The walls felt warm and gooey, and they were sticky too.
"Let's get out of here" Sora said. "Maybe we should find Tron after all, huh?" the words were not out of his mouth five seconds when the walls began to morph and stretch all around them.
Suddenly Donald screamed and Goofy cried out in surprise. Sora looked at what the two were pointing at and jumped back. A face was forming in the walls. They all stared. It was Tron's face.
"T…Tron?" Sora asked.
"I AM NOT TRON" a booming voice said all across the room. "I AM MARCO, THE NEW N.C.P. PROGRAM IN CHARGE OF THIS SPACE. WHO ARE YOU, INTRUDERS. HOW DID YOU COME TO THIS PLACE?" the pink walls began to glow an ugly red color and it began to get hotter inside the place.
"He's gonna burn us alive!" Goofy said.
"THAT IS CORRECT, IN A WAY" said Marco. "IF YOU DO NOT PRESENT A REASON FOR BEING HERE IN THE NEXT TEN MINUTES, YOU WILL BE DELETED AND YOUR DATA WILL BE THROWN IN THE RECYCLING BIN. I REPETE, YOU HAVE TEN MINUTES. There was a nasty snigger of electronic sounding laughter. "BY THE WAY, A LITTLE BIT OF INFORMATION. THE DELETION PROCESS IS NOT PAINLESS."
"We believe you" Sora said in a trembling voice. He summoned the Keyblade. "I'm Sora, they Keyblade Master! My friends and I were looking for Tron. We…we want to create a virus to put in the computer system of the Castle That Never Was!"
The burning feeling of the room heating up did not stop. If anything, it grew worse. "YOU…YOU USERS WANT TO CREATE A VIRUS?!" computer voice of Marco sounded enraged. "SO YOU ARE INDEED A THREAT TO THE PEACE OF THIS SYSTEM. NOT ONLY DO YOU WANT ME TO CREATE A VIRUS, YOU WANT ME TO TRAVEL IT TO ANOTHER SYSTEM?! ONE WITH THE MOST ADVANCED FIREWALLS I HAVE EVER SEEN?!"
"We have no choice!" Donald called. "What sort of program are you?! Where's Tron?!"
"Yeah" said Goofy, backing away from the red walls. "Forgive me, Marco sir, but you look just like him."
Marco's face disappeared from the wall in front of them---and then appeared on every wall around them. His voice, already loud, made their digital bones rattle as he spoke. "I AM THE NEW UPGRADE OF THE 'TRON' PROGRAM. WHEN I WAS GRANTED THE TITLE OF NEW N.C.P. BY MASTER CID IN THE PLACE OF THE CORRUPT ONE, I GAINED THIS NEW NAME. HE THOUGHT IT SOUNDED BETTER. I HAVE KEPT THIS SYSTEM FREE OF BUGS EVER SINCE."
"So you…are Tron" Sora said.
"INCOMPETENT USER" Marco thundered. "WHAT DID I JUST TELL YOU? I AM NOT THE TRON PROGRAM. I AM AN UPGRADE, MARCO."
"Please don't delete us!" Donald begged. "We're your friends, Tr---I mean, Marco! We helped you beat the N.C.P.!"
"ALL PATHWAYS TO THE MEMORY OF THAT WHEN ARE OBSOLETE AND DELETED. I SEE THREE BUGS WHO ARE SOON GOING TO BE DELETED."
"Please, listen to us!" Sora said. "We have to stop Organization XIII. If we don't, then the universe will be destroyed by Xemnas. We have to prevent that. You'd be helping a lot of users if you helped us create this virus."
Marco was silent, but the heat of the deleting process began to get worse faster.
"Please!" Donald yelled. "We don't want to die!"
"THAT IS NOT MY PROBLEM" said Marco. "I AM ACTING ACCORDING TO MY PROGRAMING." There was another wave of that terrible electronic laughter.
"We have to get out of here" said Goofy. "He's not listening to us. And it's getting hotter and hotter in here by the second, and---yowch!" Goofy broke off as his arm began to disintegrate. From Donald's scream, he had noticed his doing the same thing too.
"Oh no!" said Sora. He looked at his body to see if it would do the same thing. But weirdly enough it didn't. An odd golden aura surrounded him. It was the Keyblade.
"WHA…WHAT IS THIS?" asked Marco. "THIS USER…I CANNOT DELETE HIM?!"
"Stop this now, Marco!" Sora said. His voice was louder, darker, hardly his own at all. "You have forgotten your purpose! It is to protect the system! What do you think would happen should Xemnas win over Kingdom Hearts? This world would be destroyed as well! It is time you helped us, we who can save the universe and bring this madness to an end!"
Abruptly the walls began to cool down to their original pink. Marco's face faded to the one wall. When he spoke again, his voice sounded vaguely apologetic. "PERHAPS….PERHAPS I MISJUDGED THIS PARTICULAR GROUP OF USERS…" he mused to himself. "FINE THEN. I WILL CONSIDER HELPING YOU. COME TO THE JUNCTION OF THE PROGRAMS AND I WILL HEAR YOUR REQUEST. IF I AM IMPRESSED…I GRANT YOU THE HELP OF ENCOM'S GREATEST SECRET."
"Sora turned to the others. "Well" he said. "We better get going." The three of them headed off, still jittery from their near death by a power mad computer program.
"He's what?" Xemnas said, looking at Nexumair's stone in the Proof of Existence. With this specialized graveyard, Xemnas could tell of a member had been killed or injured in battle. He watched in horror as the blue of Nexumair's stone was consumed in red. Suddenly he noticed something more intriguing than the death of the Confident Fencer. Axel's stone was glowing with the colors of a heart. Could it be…? No, Axel was….dead, Xigbar had told him this. Either the Freeshooter was lying or he hadn't been paying attention to the stones. Most likely the latter. Axel had gotten his heart back? How? Had the mission to Agrabah proven more adventitious than planned? Xemnas walked around the place, taking in the stones of the other members. Larxene's was red, confirming her death. He wondered who had killed Nexumair. He wished he had the power to see a member's last moments. That way, he could tell who the member's killer was. He walked over to his own stone, sitting at the head, bigger and grander than all of them. "You won't ever turn red" he murmured to it, and he began to stroke it. "I will make sure of that. The denizens of this universe will be enumerated by these stones in a massive chamber one day." He spun around, his black robe whirling around his legs. He looked up at the pipes crisscrossing the ceiling. "Tine…I know you are out there somewhere…I was so happy when I discovered you. And now, I can barely contain my rapture, knowing that soon, I will taste your holy power!" he began to laugh, the soulless sound echoing off the cavernous rooms.
In the basement of Yen Sid's tower, Maleficent went through stacks of books. "Useless!" she snarled to herself. She hurled a book at the wall. Pete, being in the path, ducked down to avoid it.
"But, Maleficent, we already know about the balance, and how to keep it in line. Just beat Xemnas. That's all there is to it."
Maleficent whirled on her henchman. "No that is not all there is to it!" she raged at him. She walked closer and pulled Pete up by the front of his armored shirt. "Do you think" she said darkly, "that I am going to lose all of what I have worked for to some little brat with an oversized key? No! I know of the balance and I am prepared. I still think that Tine could be a powerful fighter. Pete, don't think that just because of all that's happened I've lost sight of my goal. I intend to reprogram Tine back into what she was meant to be."
"But…I thought you would feel some kind of…well, connection to her." Maleficent stopped breathing and the hand holding Pete's shirt gripped even harder. Still, he continued. "When you looked at Tine in Merlin's house, you looked just like a mother gazing at her child."
Maleficent slapped Pete across the face, the force making his head snap back and her long red nails drew blood. He staggered back in surprise. Maleficent stood before him, a black figure against the darkness her yellow eyes glowing with anger. "If you ever…ever even mention motherly feelings and Tine in the same sentence…I will keep my earlier promise to banish you to the lowest of all hells." She began to search through the books again. "Roman Numeral Thirteen was the greatest of my experiments. I will not let it go. It thinks of itself as a person, but it will get a rude awakening. It is Kingdom Hearts, and more importantly my property. I finally have Kingdom Hearts like I wanted. We could rule, Pete! Think about it!"
Pete did think about it, but he didn't voice his real thoughts. If he had, he would have said that it was a great act, that Maleficent was making herself sound harsh and cruel so that there could be no hesitation, that she really did care for her daughter, and that they should just stick to the truth. But he said none of those things because he wasn't strong enough to. Instead, all he said was "Sounds like a good plan to me!"
Okay guys, don't hate Maleficent. She's not a complete bad guy…well, yeah she is. Okay never mind. How did you guys like Tron's new upgrade. Sora and the others almost got fried! Aw, that was bad.
----Mechanist out!