CHAPTER XI
Hold On, Hold On To Me
(NOTE)
Again, this might be a shorter chapter, but twelve and on will be back to normal length. I suppose I could have put ten and eleven together to make a normal sized chapter, but this way I get more chapters in. Heh. Don't hate me.
(/NOTE)
"They were nice, I think." Naminé mentioned sweetly as she attempted with all her might to sketch while the Gummi Ship was still in motion. Sora wasn't all that smooth of a driver yet; he always blamed the road bumps which really don't exist in space.
"That one girl liked my keyblade." Charity smiled proudly.
Broden laughed. "Doesn't mean she liked you."
"Shut up, I bet you wanted her to like you." Charity smirked.
Broden shook his head. "No, the only one for me is my dear Exie." he seemed to float on nothing, and Charity couldn't help but to snicker.
"To ruin your hopes and dreams, she's gonna be returning to my body soon. And just for that comment, I think I'll remind Roxas of your first ever encounter with him."
At this, Broden gulped. He was, after all, just trying to freak the group out when he made sexual advances towards Roxas. Roxas, however, grimaced, and held out both Oathkeeper and Oblivion where he sat.
"Heh. That's... not necessary." he waved his hands in the air as if nothing was wrong.
"Okay, let's not tip the Gummi Ship with all this." Kairi suggested to them.
"I swear this is the longest ride ever." Nessa complained as she lied down on the seat. "I want Hayner here." she complained.
"I thought you'd want Quince here." Broden said airily.
Before he knew it, he was slapped in the face.
"Don't talk about him like that, he was a braver fighter than you'll ever be, stronger, too. You don't have the right." Really, she just didn't want to be reminded of him so soon after his death.
Broden snorted, and looked back over at Charity, who was just giving him a face. Turning away from Broden, she set her sights on a slightly gentler face as she rested her head on Riku's shoulder. It seemed almost like a puzzle piece for her head nowadays at how tired she was constantly becoming.
"We're almost at Destiny... oh... wow."
xxxxx
"All set up." Calypso said smugly to Vexen, pulling her creation out of her drawer, and stuffing it in her silver cloak pocket.
"And what do I do?" he asked her.
"Anton will be rid of the group before they even make it up here, but in case they do, you have to destroy them. It's a false trap, of course." she smiled. She was still inwardly angry from the news that Anton had to deliver about Yatsuyo's death; just when she thought that she had found a warrior that could destroy Charity. But she still had Anton, her weapon.
"And you go recline at a spa?" he asked her.
"Spa? Quite the opposite." she hissed back at him.
"You." the taller man said, starting towards Charity, "You destroyed every member of the Organization because you thought that they weren't good enough fighters. You leave somebody that you had given a heart to die at the hands of one of the strongest keyblade wielders to ever exist because you're so deadset on destroying this girl and living a life of your own instead of settling on a life with her. You have had the ability to create hearts this whole time, and I have only been your most loyal companion, and not out of fear but out of—!"
"Greed!" Charity blasted right back at him. He stumbled backwards. "You're doing all this just so I can give you a heart. You tell me what a horrible person I am for feeling betrayed by all of those members when you don't even know what it is to feel. But that's what you want, isn't it?" she asked, screwing up her face in anger, "You just want to feel. You don't help me out of loyalty, you help me out of your own greed and the hope that it will earn you a heart."
"I deserve that heart more than Roxas, Axel, or Naminé did combined!" he shouted.
"I didn't give those to those traitors!" Calypso retaliated.
"They got them nevertheless!"
"Shut UP!" Calypso cried to him, pointing Moonlight Radiance right at his face. He stood in utter shock; how much Calypso sounded just like him right now was scaring him; she certainly was taking on his way of thinking, which was not always the best idea.
"You're becoming..."
"More like you."
The two looked at each other, eyes locked in a spiritual stalemate between which one was wrong of the two of them.
Calypso held out her separate hand. A heart flashed in it in a second. A beautiful, shining heart. She threw it at Vexen, who caught it quickly.
"If she's as strong as you say she is," Calypso murmured, lowering Moonlight Radiance until it disappeared in her hands, "then she will just have to be rid of you as a Somebody, and you can't come back from the darkness at all."
This was the last straw. Vexen crushed the heart in his fist and replied, "If I go down, I'm going down the same way that I came here; as a Nobody. This way, if I ever come back I'll have another chance at destroying you."
"Somehow," Calypso started, and disappeared to her location. The rest of her sentence echoed in the room as if she was still there. "I highly doubt it."
Vexen pulled out his shield; the last thing he really wanted to do right now was sit around and wait for a group to show up. Then again, that was exactly what the blond boy, what was his name? Anton. That was exactly what Anton was doing at a lower level of the mansion. Just waiting to go destroy that group. But why wasn't he more direct?
Did he have something he needed to settle with them?
Or did they have something that they needed to settle with him?
It was all too confusing. To pass the time, Vexen sat down in Calypso's chair, and began reading some of her reports. It's not like she would ever be back anyway; she could never show her face to them after that huge round.
"Azure Daybreak..." he muttered as he read the reports aloud.
xxxxx
"It's gone?" asked Charity. She ran up to the cockpit, followed closely behind by Nessa. Sure enough, where they were floating in the random space of Kingdom Hearts, Destiny Islands was shrouded in the same black mist that used to be so heavy around The World that Never Was.
"Calypso must have done this." Nessa decided.
"What're we gonna do?" asked Sora, putting his hand to his chin to think.
Charity looked out the main window, "How bad is the darkness around The World that Never Was?" she asked.
"Pretty much gone," Sora told her, "but still enough to corrupt anybody that wanted to go through it. It must all be damage from the Keyblade War. I knew that whole thing should have never happened, but there've been so many..."
"Gimme that." Charity decided, practically pushing Sora out of his seat. Standing by his moral ethics not to push girls around, he scowled from out of the seat. Charity took the controls, and Sora immediately became frightened.
"Oh no. Oh, no, no, no. What are you doing with that?" he asked warily.
"We're going through The World that Never Was."
"Are you crazy?" came Roxas from farther inside of the vessel. He pushed his way to the front, and Nessa sat back down with an angry glare on her face. "Some of us that have already been in the darkness once could go back."
"I doubt it," Charity said, who didn't seem to be as preoccupied as the rest of them were, "the first cut is the deepest, after all." She took a sharp turn, and almost everybody slammed into the person next to them on the seats in the center of the Gummi Ship. "If anybody gets lost in the darkness, we go and find them before moving on. But getting through right now is the most important thing because once we're through, we won't have to try again. All for one and one for all, right?" she asked. She slowed the Gummi Ship down simply to look back at everyone.
Sora nodded. "That's what we decided."
Roxas seemed to have similar views.
Naminé, on the other hand, seemed a little worried. "Charity," she said, putting her hands together and walking up to the keyblade wielder, "we all know what it's like to have been in the darkness, us Nobodies. It's different when you live in the dark realm and reside there; the darkness is easier to get through. After you've left it and made an oath to leave it, whether or not you still embrace it, that darkness could be strong enough to break somebody's heart."
"That's true." came Axel's voice from inside the Gummi Ship.
"Axel?!" asked Charity, confused as she looked farther back into the ship. Surely enough, Axel popped out from underneath a seat.
"I was going to keep my presence here unknown until we got to the next world, but you gotta hear this. It's dangerous going through the darkness. Like Naminé said. Got it memorized?" he asked the new driver.
Charity looked up; somehow Naminé's explanation was more enticing. Still, she looked at everybody behind her, "The whole idea of all for one and one for all is to be altruistic. That means giving up yourself to help those around you. We're all risking something by going into the darkness. Riku could be sucked in for the fourth time, you all could lose your hearts, and we could go for the first time, the deepest cut. But the only reason that I'm risking this is because there's always a way out. We've figured this out, through all of the years we've known each other and grown together; there's always a way to the light."
Naminé first, sat shocked at this, but then she nodded at Charity. "That's true. You're right. I'm in this." She felt quite odd to say something so... Sora-ish. She put her hand in the center like they had done only days before.
"All for one and one for all." Charity spun around in her seat and put her hand in the center.
Everyone repeated this, including Nessa, who was a bit hasty, "Great, Charity, could you grab the controls now?" she practically begged her friend, "We've been sitting here stationary blowing up ship after ship waiting for you to move."
"Crap!" Charity exclaimed, picking up the controls. Although shaky, maybe Sora was just the tiniest bit safer on the road. Charity was fine at driving back at Twilight Town, but a Gummi Ship was a whole new deal. It wasn't just forward, sides, and reverse; it was up and down you had to worry about as well. She nervously maneuvered her way through.
"Turn right," Sora told her, "left... forward a little longer..."
After a while, they finally made it to The World That Never Was. It surely did look different with the small bit of darkness that was surrounding it, but still, with all of her might, Charity drove the ship full speed through the atmosphere.
Static! Glitter! Crash!
xxxxx
"Nn?" Charity rubbed her head. Her vision was swimming; as she pulled her hand back, she felt warm, sticky blood. Thankfully, it was just her hand that was bleeding, and not her head. Pushing herself off of the cold, hard ground, she asked herself where she was.
Wait.
Cold, hard ground.
Using her other hand, she rubbed her eyes free of all sleep that she might have gone through while lying unconscious on the ground.
It looked like a city. She smelled the air. "Definitely The World That Never Was." Charity only said this because the world had no scent. Glance to the left, glance to the right. "Nobody's here?" she asked, worriedly.
Surely, not all of them could have gone in the darkness without her.
"That can't be it." she decided. "I was probably just separated from them when we crashed. I'll just look for the destroyed Gummi Ship," she said, a bit too cheerfully, "and they should be there. Right?" she wasn't sure who she was asking. Under normal circumstances, Exie would have given her a witty combat, logical answer, or some combination of the two. But lately, it seemed as though 'normal circumstances' were her over with Calypso.
Sometimes Charity couldn't help but to think that maybe Calypso wasn't the dominant one between the two of them. What if they were co-dominant? What if Exie provoked some of these feelings in the new Somebody?
She shook her head as she tried to walk; what a strange thing to think about. Her Exie? Maybe at one point, but how again? Then again, The World that Never Was might have brought back some feelings for that.
"I can't think of that right now." Before Charity knew it, she found herself surrounded by at least twenty Dusks in the area that she stood. "What the...?" she asked herself. After all, Nobodies only came when they were bade to. She forgot that she still had Vexen from the Organization to deal with, as Larxene had gotten herself destroyed at the hands of Nessa.
"What's going on?!" Charity finally got herself to shout.
"Charity." That voice. So familiar, but so distance.
"Who is it?!" she asked, looking around. No sight.
"Calypso would get suspicious and kill innocent people on the spot if she found out that I went down without a fight." Through a black portal, a strawberry blond boy whose hair was flat in the front but spiky in back stood in front of her. He was wearing basic clothes, and surely Anton had gotten much taller since the last time they met that he was presumed dead.
Charity growled, "If I have to fight you, I will. Nessa killed you once."
"Technically." Anton muttered. "Didn't you get Yatsuyo's note?"
"What does this have to do with any—..." Charity gasped. The part of the note that read: He is not your enemy rang in her head.
"I know what you're thinking." he half-smiled at his cousin's best friend. "You know where I want to go. So make this last battle count, okay?" his half-smile turned full.
Charity grinned as well, whipping out Savior of Balance.
xxxxx
"I knew it!" Nessa complained, "I knew from the start it was a bad idea to come through that darkness." she muttered. She and everyone else except Charity were standing by their broken-down Gummi Ship, with minor injuries.
"That's ironic." Broden muttered, "The one that seemed so positive that nobody would get hurt and had to go all 'altruistic' on our asses was the one that got lost to the darkness."
"Don't say things like that!" Kairi told Broden. He was certainly getting on Kairi's nerves, but had been from the second that he joined the restoration committee.
"I don't think she's in the darkness." Nessa said quietly, for once not allowing her temper to get the better of her, "Let's face it. If Charity were here right now, she'd want us to go on and find Calypso. Besides, Sora's the one with Ultima Weapon."
Sora's eyes widened. "That's right!" He fumbled through his pockets to pull out the Ultima Weapon keychain, and stuck it at the end of Kingdom Key. Before he knew it, the beautiful, silvery, ultimate keyblade shone in his very own hands. It seemed so delicate to the touch, but so strong to the senses that Sora just wanted to destroy Heartless on the spot.
"Let's go, then!" Naminé suggested to all of them. After she had tried to talk Charity out of going to the world, she decided it was best if she stayed optimistic for all of them while Charity was back in wherever she was.
"Sure." Roxas smiled at her.
"I wonder if we've still got those tacos in the fridge..." Axel mumbled, obviously thinking of their headquarters in The World That Never Was.
xxxxx
No wonder Riku had been so strong; the darkness must have been some kind of ecstasy; it did things to you. Anton used to be very strong, but now he seemed downright unbeatable. Both of them, though, found each other to be equally challenging.
Taking the final stab with her keyblade, Anton fell backwards. Charity walked up to the boy, and looked down at him from above.
"It's not over." As if he had completely regained his strength, he shot back up and began fighting again. How much longer could Charity last before she found herself unable to go on?
Author's Note: Short, again. But I have big promises for the next one! This fanfiction, I have decided, will be thirteen technical chapters long, and then the epilogue, making it fourteen. Besides the credits, there will be an extra chapter stuck in there at the end, but you'll just have to guess exactly what I'm planning for that. See you next chapterrrr!