Chapter 16: Safety measures
"He needs help, you bastard!" Axel yelled out, his worried eyes directed towards the codes on the screens, not for one second willing to let his eyes off the small string that was Roxas.
Xemnas lifted an eyebrow, seemingly untouched by the information the codes gave them.
"You can't just leave him alone against that thing!" Axel continued, panic rising as he helplessly had to sit and watch.
"Really now, Axel, you of all should have more faith in the boy, don't you think?" Xemnas mused with a chuckle, his face calm as if he knew something Axel didn't.
Axel gritted his teeth with held back fury. He had very strong faith in Roxas' abilities, but he also knew they had a limit. Everyone had a limit.
"Hold on, Rox…" he mumbled as he wished hard for a positive turn. "Hold on and survive… please survive…"
Zexion gasped when he finally managed to get the second file started and opened on the computer.
The photo that had popped up was hazy and a little bit out of focus, but he recognized the face on it, despite a change of hairstyle and an expression that he hadn't thought the man capable of producing.
The white haired man on the screen was without any doubt a younger version of Xemnas.
The only problem with this was that the file it had sprung from was about Ansem.
"No way…" he breathed out and tried to find something that told him he was wrong, but he wasn't.
When the realization dawned upon him he reacted by starting to run.
On light steps he flew over the floor, turning in and out of the different aisles in between the bookcases as he found the fastest route to the doors of the library.
Roxas had gone to warn Xemnas about treason from the inside of the organization, but if Xemnas in fact was the same person as Ansem, which meant the treason came from the leader himself! This in turn put Roxas in grave danger and Zexion could only hope that the key holder had somehow been delayed on his way to Xemnas, so that he could warn him in time.
Zexion had just got up the stairs to the first floor, when he nearly collided with Marluxia, who grabbed a hold of his arm to stop him.
As he was pulled back, Zexion almost heard the pop as he felt his arm's joints glide apart.
"Ouch!" Zexion yelled out with pain and stared vengefully at the pink-haired man.
"What's the rush, hm?" Marluxia asked him in a purr.
Zexion knew better than to trust him, especially after what Roxas had told him about their last meeting.
"It's none of your business, now let me go!" Zexion grunted and pulled at his arm to get free, resulting in another pop and a new grimace crossed his face.
"Now, is that really a way to talk to a superior, Zexion?" Marluxia purred on.
"What do you want?" Zexion asked in a fiery voice.
Marluxia laughed.
"Me? Oh, I want a lot of things. The question is, what you want, my dear librarian. Maybe you want to know where to find the keybearer, hm? Aren't yu just dying to tell him something?"
Zexion couldn't hide his surprise and swore out loud as Marluxia grinned at him with glee.
"My, my, my… I seem to have a talent for this," he said and twisted Zexion's arm in a move that made the smaller man scream out as his arm with a final confirmation was dislocated.
"Too bad that you've decided to take a stand on the wrong side of this thing. I actually liked you," Marluxia continued without being bothered by Zexion's screaming.
In a swift motion of his free hand, Marluxia presented a sharp, bent dagger that he placed against Zexion's throat.
"Good-bye, Zexion. Nice to have known you."
Just as he was about to slit the librarian's throat, Marluxia's hand was pulled away and Zexion fell to the floor when his harasser turned around to face the newcomer.
"I won't ask you why or what you think you're doing, but you're not getting away with this Marluxia!" Lexaeus' deep voice filled the air as he stared at the suddenly frightened vice president, whose hand he was squeezing.
"He's trying to overthrow the organization… He's cooperating with Ansem…" Zexion managed to say while he tried to get back on his feet, ignoring the pain in his limp arm.
"Ansem? The Ansem?" Lexaeus looked at them both in disbelief, but when Marluxia tried to swing his dagger at him to get away, Lexaeus only made a movement of his free arm and the pink haired VP yelped as his arm broke and the dagger fell to the floor.
"I've got no more time to explain it further; we need to find Roxas!" Zexion said as he finally stood up straight again.
The giant of a man that was one of the organization's anti-virus programmers raised his eyebrows in confusion, completely ignoring the whimpers and thrusts coming from the man he still had a strong grip on.
"Roxas? Why?"
"Because I think Ansem will try using him to get to the Kingdom Heart!" Zexion explained and turned to Marluxia. "Where is he?"
Marluxia glared at him and wasn't going to answer, but as Lexaeus started to twist his still unbroken right arm, the VP gave in to their demand.
"Alright! Xemnas got him already! They're in a hidden room that you can enter through a bookcase in his office."
Lexaeus looked even more confused, but when Zexion started for the elevator, he figured he'd get to know more when the time came for it and followed, dragging the objecting VP along with him.
"Why do you even bother?" Marluxia whined childishly, cradling his broken arm in a try not to make it hurt any more than it already did. "You're already too late to stop him anyway!"
Zexion stepped inside the elevator and Lexaeus followed with his prisoner, none of them paying any attention what so ever to Marluxia.
When they got out of the elevator and started up the steps to the office, Marluxia, who was starting to feel a bit nauseous from the pain his broken left arm was starting to give him, decided it best to be a bit more cooperative and led them to the secret elevator.
Entering Xemnas' office, Lexaeus pushed Marluxia down into one of the armchairs and used one of the curtain wraps to tie him down to it.
"Now you're going to tell us where this hidden passage is, or you will find yourself missing some important parts, do you understand me?" Lexaeus said in a smooth voice, bending down to look the pink haired man in the eyes.
Marluxia stared at the giant with a hate mixed fear and nodded.
Roxas hurried to roll away as soon as he hit the ground and by doing so escaped, by a second, the threat of being flattened by the monster's foot.
He struggled to breathe properly while forcing himself to remember that what happened wasn't really happening to his physical body, despite how real the cuts and the bruising felt.
"It's all in my mind," he repeated under his breath.
Another thing that he hoped was in his mind, was the way out of this fight.
He gripped the keyblade in his unharmed hand, while he tried to think away the pain of his nearly broken fingers on the other.
Come on Sora – give me something, anything! he thought desperately as the monster turned around to face him again.
Holding the blade in his left hand felt odd, but he would have to do what he could with it for a while until the ache in his right hand fingers faded a bit.
Just as he readied himself for the upcoming attack, he got a clear image of another keyblade – one that was more suited for the task and therefore more powerful. A specialized code key.
In the blink of an eye, the Kingdom Key he was holding gave off a flash of bright light and as it faded, a new key was there in its place.
The body was longer and split in two intertwining ones, forming a star-like head. The golden handles of the Kingdom Key had been replaced with two white wings and the grip itself felt smooth and soft like silk or lace, instead of the rough grip-enhancing pattern that covered the metal grip of his former weapon.
The Oathkeeper gleamed in pearly white and a slight shift of pale blue, tipped with light yellow and shell pink at the prongs of the key head.
Roxas breathed in deeply to steady himself when the beast in front of him started to gallop towards him.
In the last moment, Roxas shifted the blade into his right hand, trying not to mind the pain.
He jumped up in the air, just as his opponent lowered its head to impale him on the nose-horn.
Raising the Oathkeeper above his head in mid air, Roxas made a spinning motion of the keyblade and in the instant he landed on the beast's large skull, he brought down his weapon hard on the broad neck.
The blow shook Roxas' shoulders as it hit the hard armor, but for some reason this spot proved to be the enemy's weakness.
Roaring with pain the monster stumbled and then disintegrated so fast that Roxas didn't even get the time to jump off it. He fell to the ground and landed in a roll, got to his feet in one swift motion and brought up the Oathkeeper in front of him in case there was another enemy taking the fallen one's place.
But as no new threat came forth as he stood there breathing hard, his arms shaking from the effort to just hold his weapon up, Roxas lowered his guard and sunk down on his knees, exhausted.
Roxas beheld his new weapon with a grateful expression in his eyes.
"Thanks for the help, Sora," he breathed out weakly.
Another memory suddenly came to his attention and a bit doubtful as to what might happen if he followed the directions of it, Roxas raised the keyblade with his still shaking arms to hold it over his head in a double grip.
He closed his eyes to focus on the task and then called out the command in a clear voice.
"Heal!"
A bright light instantly poured out of the weapon, enclosing him for a moment, before it seeped into his body and vanished.
Warm energy quickly spread all through his tired and wounded body and even the tears in his clothing were closed.
Roxas slowly moved his fingers, hands, arms, feet and legs as he tried them all in a growing feeling of amazement.
"Well that was useful…" he whispered to himself and got up on his feet.
He raised the Oathkeeper up, performed a series of movements and ended it by forcing the key head down into the ground.
A loud click confirmed the lock being opened and Roxas sent another grateful thought to Sora, before he jumped into the opening that would take him to the next level.
"See, I told you he would make it," Xemnas said, the smile still in place. "he's managed to get half-way through in…" he looked at the timekeeper on one of the screens, "…about one hour's time. That's even faster than Sora. You should be proud."
Axel didn't say anything. He knew how close a call this had been. Had it not been for that healing, Roxas would have collapsed right then and there and died as the wall would have closed over him when the protection he'd broken down kicked back into life.
Sora's memories were probably the one reason that Roxas was still breathing, Axel figured anxiously. He dared to part his eyes from their intensive observation of the coded settings in which Roxas now moved, and studied the real body of the keybearer that was strapped into the other chair.
"Why are you keeping me strapped up like this?" Axel asked as he returned his attention to the screens.
Xemnas chuckled.
"I can't have you running around trying to find a way to break him out now, can I?" he said and then suddenly came up close to Axel, leaning down towards him and lowering his voice into a whisper. "Besides, I tend to learn from my mistakes. Last time I decided that the bait was harmless to let go, the fool killed both the keybearer and himself. We don't want that to happen, do we?"
Axel's eyes widened as he realized what Xemnas was talking about and Xemnas smiled as he went back to the control table.
"I didn't think so," he said in a pleased tone.
Axel muttered something incoherent and kept his eyes on the string of numbers, letters and symbols that was Roxas' digitalized mind.