Chapter 15: Breaking down barriers
Roxas heard the message as a voice out of the empty air. It was Axel's voice, the coding making the words come through a medium that Roxas' memories would respond to in the correct way.
Roxas nodded as the message ended.
Ansem was a fool.
Xemnas was a tad smarter and Diz had been dangerous in his anonymity. All of them were the same person, he knew that now, but this person himself was a split personality. Ansem's hunger for power brought forth the cunning patience of Xemnas and this in turn created the practical observer and actor that was Diz.
Roxas started walking and with a swift movement of the keyblade, a portal opened to let him through to the other side of the vast space of nothingness that this place was.
He looked about and reached out his arm carrying the key, turned it in the air as if putting it into a lock and twisted it just a bit to the right.
A clicking sound was heard and another portal was opened.
Roxas stepped through it and by doing so, he had passed through the first wall of protection.
The first out of thirteen.
As he entered the second zone, the greeting committee of heartless soldiers came towards him the very moment he put his foot on the ground.
Roxas raised the key and gripped it with both hands.
"Let the fun begin then. Game on!" he said, calling out the last words as he raised the keyblade over his head in a pattern of motions that created a swirl of shimmering light around him.
The end of the keyblade started to glow with white light and just when the first heartless reached within his parameter, Roxas once more directed the key to be in front of him.
The heartless jumped.
Fully loaded with power, the key fired off another beam of light like the one he'd used before to save Axel in the first zone.
Within the blink of an eye, the second zone creatures were history.
He turned the key on the spot where it was, and another clicking told him that the second wall was down, another opening appearing where he had the tip of his keyblade.
Now that was easy, Roxas thought warily to himself. Too easy.
The procedure was the same at the third level: load, aim, shoot and loot.
As he entered the fourth zone, leading to the fifth wall, he finally met with some solid confront.
He fought them off easy enough, but he noticed that they didn't die as easily as the ones before them.
When he found the keyhole of the sixth wall, he had to try twice before it was unlocked.
"So this is how far the organization's firewall reaches…" he mumbled to himself as he heard the click of the lock.
From now on it would actually be a challenge to get through.
"Five done, eight more to go," he said with a sigh and stepped through the portal to the sixth level and the seventh wall.
He barely had the time to react before a flash of electricity whipped past him, missing his right cheek by a hair.
Roxas raised the keyblade in a counter attack and caught the next bolt with the blade.
It bounced off to the side and hit something in the pitch black darkness that caught fire, lighting up a small part of the surroundings.
Tensing his muscles, Roxas waited for the next blow while trying to figure out a way to get past this enemy.
Two more electrical surges sent off to the sides gave Roxas two more sources of light, which proved to be enough to let him see parts of his opponent, still hiding in the shadows to keep it's movements unseen and unpredictable.
The next blow Roxas managed to redirect like a boomerang, and his surprised attacker found itself hit by its own weapon, squealing with pain as it fell to the ground. But Roxas knew better than to think it defeated so easily, so he performed a combination of movements with the keyblade, representing a string of hack codes on the keyboard of his armrests in the real world. He ended it with a blow of blue light thundering down on the heartless, pulverizing the black and yellow shape until nothing remained of it.
Roxas swung the keyblade over his head and heard a loud click as the seventh wall lock opened.
"That's new…" he mumbled as he entered into the next level.
As soon as he heard the opening close behind him he felt like hitting himself for having thought for one moment that this was going to be just as easy for the rest of the way.
"Welcome to dinner, the wolf said to the sheep," he muttered, remembering a story he'd liked hearing as a child.
This was a flycatcher system: the guarding program lures the intruder inside, only to lock it in, cage it, with a stronger lock, before it slowly broke down whatever had landed in the trap.
Roxas heard a rumbling growl from inside the walls of shifting colors and felt a slight panic rising in his chest.
This thing sounded BIG, as in BIG trouble.
He tightened his grip around the keyblade and closed his eyes in concentration. He was going to need some help to deal with this thing.
Sora, please tell me you know how to beat this thing, he thought in a try to trigger the other keywielder's memories in his mind.
With a weight that made the ground tremble, the gigantic beast stepped out of the farthest wall and Roxas felt fear tickling his legs, caressing his mind gently with needle-covered gloves and squeezing his chest hard.
This thing was enormous and it looked just about undefeatable, with a heavy muscular structure and armor as thick as a dictionary.
Roxas gulped and squeezed the grip of the keyblade with sweaty hands.
It's only a bunch of numbers and letters on a screen, I can do this, he thought to himself in a try to make the fear in his body go away.
Then the beast roared and locked its eyes onto his, glowing yellow orbs meeting icy blue.
"Oh, I'm so screwed…" he said as the monster of a heartless started to walk towards him.