Songs to listen to this chapter:
Stay Alive from Hamilton (not the reprise)
Warriors by Imagine Dragon
Not Gonna Die by Skillet
Chapter 6: Out of Distress:
"Sora, snap out of it!" Kairi yelled as she struggled against the bars of her cell, looking out at her fiancé. "This isn't you. You need to fight this. I know you can." But for some reason, Sora only looked confused.
"Why would I need to fight?" he asked. "For the first time in my life, I'm finally at peace."
"That's just what they want you to feel," Kairi retorted as she grabbed his hand through the cell. While she expected his eyes to just look blank, he simply looked sad. "Sora, whatever the Legion did to you, this isn't who you are."
"Kairi," Sora replied softly. "I haven't changed. I'm still the same guy. All the Legion's done is give me a purpose. All my life, I've just wandered around, ignorant of everything going on around me. The history of the Keyblade, Organization XIII's plans. Just look at what happened in Castle Oblivion. And after what Vanitas did to me, I was lost. But the Legion has helped me move on and be a better person. I can't change the fact that my powers have been corrupted, but I can still do what I can to make the world a better place."
Kairi's heart sank as she began to piece together what was going on in her mind. Tron had once told her about how the early versions of CLU's repurposing program were crude and left very little of a victim's personality intact, but that later versions left the program with their personalities completely unchanged except for a near-fanatic loyalty to CLU. She had hoped the Unchained Legion's brainwashing techniques were more suited to the former, but it was becoming clear that it was more in line with the latter.
"And you really think that conquering the worlds will make things better?" she asked sadly. "That all the people the Legion is willing to kill justifies their misguided utopia?"
"I do," Sora replied. And it broke Kairi's heart because the brainwashing meant that the line between what the Legion had brainwashed him into believing and what he actually believed were blurred. And she had no way of knowing. She blinked away the tears as she let go of Sora's hand and returned to the back of her cell to think. Sora looked almost heartbroken as he half-heartedly told her she'd understand eventually before leaving the room. Once she was certain he was out of earshot, she pulled out her phone and pulled up the information she'd saved on the Legion's brainwashing program from Black Widow's intel packet.
Let's see, the Princess of Heart thought to herself as she read. Cognitive recalibration not possible, but early versions of the program had failsafe codes in case someone ever subjected a Legionnaire to the Faustus Method and they needed to get them back. Activation passcode must be repeated in reverse… Got that. Okay, it says that once the password has been spoke, the subject requires a catalyst to trigger a chemical reaction in the body in order to completely purge the Faustus brainwashing. A smile crept onto Kairi's face as a plan quickly formed in her mind. All she had to do now was escape from her cell.
Thankfully, that proved to be an easy task, all thanks to a critical oversight that made her glad Sora had been the one to bring her here himself. Since one of the powers of the Keyblade was its ability to open any lock, only a dungeon built without locks could actually keep a Keyblade wielder contained. The Unchained Legion rarely took other Key Bearers prisoner, and so hadn't had the time to actually prepare a Keyblade-proof cell for her. Sora, being new to how the Legion ran things, didn't realize this and simply took it for granted that all cells were designed to prevent her from getting out with her Keyblade (either that, or he was fighting from the inside. She wanted to believe this, but she also had to be realistic about it).
Fortunately, she was able to just pull out her blade, unlock the door, use a Vanish spell to avoid the cameras, and just walk away. Once she was out of the brig, she pulled out her phone and activated the tracker she had planted in one of the gaps in Sora's Unchained armor as he was taking her to her cell. With a determined grin and the passwords for the Faustus Method memorized in her head, she set off through the ship. She had no chance against them on her own, but she knew from experience that only the X – Blade could permanently destroy an Unchained. And Sora was the only one who could remove it from its resting place inside Kingdom Hearts. Once she was far enough away from the prison, she dropped the invisibility spell and marched confidently through the corridors. She wanted these Legionnaires to know she was coming for them.
While the Novus Imperator and her inner circle kept a tight reign over their flagship, the rest of the Unchained war fleet was not faring as well. Seven carrier ships were already crippled and sinking thanks to either the Ulysses or artillery fire from the Earth navies, while the Secret Warriors were making short work of the crew aboard the Vulpeus. Daisy and her team fought tooth and nail towards the bridge of the massive Gummi Ship, dispatching Unchained along the way. Since the Unchained would just reincarnate if killed and return in two decades with a vengeance, everyone was going out of their way to defeat the immortal Keyblade wielders without killing them. Even the sinking warships had enough air and supplies to last the crew several weeks. Just long enough to finish the battle and come back to apprehend them.
Unfortunately, winning the battle with minimal enemy casualties was easier said than done, although the Inhuman strike team was having an easier time of it than most were. Part of that was thanks Yo-Yo's super speed and Joey liquefying floors, walls, and doors to disorient their opponents before restraining them with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s magnetic handcuffs developed after the battle of Sokovia back in 2015. Black Panther's strike team aboard the Daybreak was able to easily take the ship and restrain its crew thanks to the stash of Wakandan technology that T'Challa had brought with him for the battle, and quickly began turning the warship's cannons against the other Unchained vessels. This also had the side effect of focusing most of the remaining fleet's attention on them as the Legionnaires decided they would rather destroy the ship than allow it to remain in the Avengers' hands.
Meanwhile, Captain America's team couldn't reach the bridge or engine room of the Invi, and settled for irreparably destroying the ship's weapons instead and damaging the engines, leaving the flagship a sitting duck as the Avengers abandoned the ship and headed for shore. Across the bay from the crippled warship, the Sokovia was beginning to sink beneath the waves under heavy fire from the Milano. As the ship's upper decks began to dip below the water line, a lone silver-haired figure raced through the blood-stained corridors of the ship, desperately cradling a battered, caution-tape marked box in his arms. Tears of desperation and relief streamed down Kadaj's face as he reached the ship's escape pods and jetted for shore, searching for a safe place from which to bring back his family.
On the island, the tide of battle was starting to reach a stalemate. Violet, Cloud, Zack, and Vanitas, Coulson, May, Piper, and a small army of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents swarmed into the palace's back entrance armed with Destroyer class laser cannons and began to decimate the Dark Elf ranks. In the fortress' courtyard, hundreds of elven families swarmed out from the tunnel connecting the castle to the mines. Concerned for the safety of the children, Algrim had ordered the mines evacuated until the battle was over. Now if only he could just convince his liege to have the Nathalis take them into orbit where they would be safe. Unfortunately, the king of the elves didn't sound like he was in a very agreeable mood right at this moment.
"ALGRIM!" Malekith roared as he emerged from the dragon palace. "WHY HAVE YOU ORDERED THE MINING CREWS TO ABANDON THEIR POSTS!?"
"We have no choice, my king," Algrim replied as more and more families flowed into the courtyard behind him. Their movement onto the ship was held back by the fury in their king's voice. "We are being overrun. We must evacuate the island now or we will all die."
"NEVER!" The Dark Elf king snapped. "WE WILL FIGHT UNTIL OUR REVENGE IS COMPLETE!" This caused a murmur of concern to sweep through the Dark Elves scrambling into the citadel's courtyard as warriors and their families made a push for the Nathalis. What was the point of staying if it only meant the extinction of their race. Was Malekith really that desperate for vengeance that he no longer cared about his subjects' well-being?
"And what of our people?" Malekith's lieutenant whispered angrily, holding a tight lid on his thoughts to keep himself from shouting. "Our families? Our children? If we do not withdraw now, they will be slaughtered, and our people will be driven to extinction."
"I DON'T CARE!" Malekith answered with mounting fury. "WE WILL GET OUR REVENGE OR DIE TRYING! IF THE ONES WHO CANNOT FIGHT MUST BUY US TIME WITH THEIR LIVES, THEN SO BE IT!" Those words were the straw that broke the camel's back. Tired and weary after nearly a decade as refugees, the faces of the Dark Elf civilians and children finally hardened into the anger and sorrow of betrayal. Algrim looked to his daughter and his heart broke as he realized that his king had lost his mind in his quest for justice.
"Then you are no king of mine, Malekith," Algrim said with a hint of tears in his eyes as he mourned his oldest and closest friendships. But determination and anger soon took priority, and he moved to stand with the terrified civilians, declaring his choice with this stance. If Malekith wished to sacrifice his own people to achieve victory, then he was no longer fit to lead the Dark Elves. He felt a surge of pride as over half the warriors of Svartalfheim came to stand by his side, declaring their allegiance even now. Within minutes, only the most fanatically loyal soldiers still stood by Malekith's side.
"KILL THEM!" Malekith snarled at his loyalists in rage as he whirled around and strolled towards the Nathalis to use it's guns to obliterate the betrayers in one strike. Behind him, a firefight broke out. Corridors of Darkness emerged along the back wall of the courtyard as families siding with Algrim scrambled through the conjured portals to Svartalfheim, carrying whatever they could with them. Food, clothes, tools, anything that they could use. The warriors defecting from their king's crusade provided cover fire against Malekith's loyalists so the civilians could get to safety while Algrim charged at his former king.
Algrim's betrayal. I've been building up to this moment ever since I decided to include the Dark Elves in this storyline. Since Algrim was a hero in the comics but Malektih's loyal-to-the-end lieutenant in Thor: The Dark World, I needed to come up with a believable reason for him to turn his back on Malekith, and when I created the backstory I came up with for the Dark Elves, the idea of Malekith being willing to sacrifice unarmed Dark Elf civilians, both adults and children, to achieve victory seemed like it would be the ideal tipping point where Algrim realized how far gone his king was.
The weapons being used by S.H.I.E.L.D. against the Dark Elves are indeed the same gun used by Coulson in The Avengers against Loki. And I forgot to mention last chapter, Steve jumping out of a Quinjet without a parachute is a deliberate callback to Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The way Sora was brainwashed by the Unchained Legion is a lot like how Culter was repurposed in TRON: Uprising. The personality is still the same, the only thing that's different is their fanatical loyalty to the group that brainwashed them. Rest assured, Sora will be getting out of that situation one way or another in the next few chapters. In the meantime, I always planned on having Kairi being more proactive in the story when he got captured, and that'll continue for the rest of the saga.