Hearing voices

Roxas dried the sweat from his forehead with the back of his free hand and spied at his surroundings. He knew there should be one of the heartless left and he wasn't about to lower his guard so it could jump him while he was unprepared.

The vast space of greens and blacks was empty, the silence so overwhelming that Roxas almost imagined he could hear the sound created by his hands movements through the air.

"Oh come on! I haven't got all day!" Roxas yelled out into the nothingness.

A sudden movement seen in the corner of his eye made Roxas turn around to the left, his keyblade raised for battle. And the heartless attacked.

It was big – about two heads taller than him – and it used a magic that kept hitting Roxas even as the heartless retreated. It was airborne and had the ability to transport itself by teleport… In short, it was hard to kill and did its best to kill Roxas.

But the keybearer had already taken out four of its kind. He was tired, muscles aching from the beating as well as from the rough usage of them.

Despite being tired to his bones, Roxas raised the Oblivion key over and over, in both defense and offense. When he finally dealed the monster the killing blow, Roxas fell down on his knees as the vanishing mist of the heartless surrounded him, too tired to stand up any longer.

His arms and legs were shaking from the effort of having to be in a constant use.

Roxas let the Oblivion key momentarily shift into the Oathkeeper, since Sora's memory told him the white key was more efficient in performing the healing spell.

As the green shimmer faded, he got back up on his feet, his sore muscles recovered, but his mind still exhausted. Apparantly the spell had its limits.

The keyhole was visible as a shimmer in the air some steps away from where he was, so without further ado, he got himself closer to it, leveled the keyblade with the lock and concentrated.

The Oathkeeper shifted into the Oblivion and as Roxas turned the keyblade, the lock opened with the familiar clicking sound.

But as he stepped through the portal, Roxas felt something was missing, or rather, that something was different compared to the previous openings he'd passed through. The space surrounding him now was a swirl of white and black thorn covered stripes that constantly seemed to twist and turn together.

"Wait a minute…" Roxas mumbled to himself as the realization came to him that this was the first level he didn't recognize from Sora's memories.

The thirteenth level.

Only one more lock to open and he would be the first to ever have hacked all the way through to the Kingdom Heart.

Roxas slowly raised his keyblade into a ready position. Whatever it was that he was going to have to face on this level, he was sure it was going to take all he had to fight it.

He waited in concentrated silence, watching the swirls of the world as they moved back and forth, creating an illusion of moving him forward despite of him standing still.

After a while, Roxas lowered the keyblade and took a doubting look around himself.

Nothing.

"Come on! What is this, some kind of a test of my patience?" he burst out with annoyance clear in his voice. He waited for a little while longer in the deafening silence, but nothing happened.

With a frustrated snort, Roxas let the keyblade drop completely.

This was going nowhere.

Figuring he could at least try finding the keyhole, Roxas decided to take a look at the place. That's when he realized that he couldn't move his feet.

"What the…?"

Roxas cursed out loud for having been tricked by the program. Another curse passed his lips as he discovered that it hadn't been an illusion that he'd been slowly moving towards the center of the place.

Suddenly the ground opened up in front of him, creating a vast hole that slowly turned, creating a swirl out of the ground that was closest to it.

Roxas felt a slight panic rise in his chest as he observed how the hole slowly, but with increasing speed, grew larger as it swallowed the ground around it.

"Think, Roxas, think!" he ordered himself in a try to break the sudden brain freeze that had got to him at the sight of the hole. "There has to be a way out of this…"

The keyblade…

Roxas blinked.

He'd just thought he'd heard a voice…

Use the keyblade…

Roxas looked around himself, but found no one near him that could have been the origin of the voice.

He turned his eyes to his feet and then brought the keyblade into his vision. A moment of hesitation went by before he shrugged the doubts off his shoulders and pointed the keyblade towards his feet.

Closing his eyes, he thought "release".

With a start, Roxas fell forward as the ground let go of his shoes.

Afraid to get caught again, should he stand still for too tolng, Roxas was fast back up on his feet and started walking around the large, growing hole.

"Now what?" he mumbled as he walked.

The hole was growing and that meant the rest of the place was shrinking, leaving him with less space to move on.

It meant trouble.

"How am I supposed to get out of here?" he called out in frustration as he picked up the pace. He didn't know what would happen if he should let the hole drag him in, but he didn't want to find out either, so getting over to the other side before the road there was cut off became a very important task to him. But, no matter how fast he moved his feet, he got the feeling of not moving at all.

He tripped over his own feet and fell roughly to the ground. Forcing himself back up as quickly as possible, Roxas fought down a growing sense of despair.

"Concentrate, damn it!" he ordered himself and started walking again, afraid to stand still.

This level sure was the hardest. No visual enemy, but a perilous environment that worked like a ticking bomb. Roxas subconsciously wiped off the sweat from his forehead as he walked. He was getting nowhere and he couldn't see even a glimpse of the keyhole that should be there.

"What the hell am I supposed to do?" Roxas yelled at the silently swirling strings of black, white and grey that made out his surroundings.

Despite his efforts to keep calm, panic was starting to build up in Roxas' body, like a black slithering animal with sharp claws, making itself a nest inside his chest.

Look up.

Roxas almost jumped at the command, but just like before, there was no one around who could have spoken.

Giving in to the only source of advice that he had, Roxas decided to do as he was told, and looked up.

The ceiling of the place, if it could be called that, wasn't as far up as he'd expected it to be, nor was it as empty as he had thought. In the center, directly above the growing void in the ground, was the keyhole.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me…" Roxas moaned.

He looked once more all over his surroundings in order to find a way up there, but found none.

"How am I supposed to get up there without falling down into that thing?" he burst out in an exasperated manner.

Jump. came the silent, expected answer and Roxas smiled in disbelief.

"OK, so I'm going nuts listening to voices in my head, but there's no fucking way I'm jumping that distance!" he spat out, flailing his arms at the empty space around him.

Jump. the voice calmly repeated.

With a deep sigh of resignation, Roxas made an effort to follow the advice at least half way, hoping to get something more creative out of his invisible self-announced advisor.

He took a leap to his right, and was shocked to find himself way further ahead than he'd expected.

"The hell?"

Upwards. Use the key to hang on. Aim well.

Roxas wrinkled his nose at the thought, but then he shrugged and took a firm, double handed grip on the Oblivion.

"Here it goes…"

He aimed, lowered himself down to collect strength for the push upwards and after a second's hesitation, he took the leap.

The ceiling really was closer than it looked.

The keyblade locked on to the keyhole with a sharp clicking sound and as the world around him started to dematerialize, Roxas shut his eyes hard and hung on to the grip of the keyblade with all his remaining strength.

Sweat was building up in his palms, making the grip slippery and his arms and shoulders were aching from the strain he was putting on them, but Roxas did his best to ignore those details. All he allowed himself to think of was how good it felt to be in the arms of someone who loved him, and that he would feel it once again if he just hung on for a little while longer.

"Axel…"

The sound was barely a whisper, but everyone inside the small room turned towards it in disbelief and wonder.

Zexion, who was the one standing closest to Roxas'head, gave the others a warning look.

"Don't do a thing," he calmly advised them, mostly directing the words towards the redhead sitting on the floor next to Roxas' feet.

"But, he called for me, damn it…" Axel pressed out through clenched teeth. He'd already turned around and gotten up on his feet, his back against the wall of screens they'd all been watching intently for the last ten minutes.

"You saw the coding, Axel, and you saw what happened. If anyone is even slightly close to breaking his concentration right now, he will be lost to us. Do you understand me?"

Axel's green eyes shifted worriedly from Roxas' unmoving body, to the screens, the will to answer the blonde's call for help apparent in his entire posture.

"Just calm down and do what he says," Xigbar muttered and put a hand on each of Axel's shoulders, pressing him back down on the floor. "Have a little faith in the kid, alright?"

Axel didn't say anything, but his eyes were sparkling with held back frustration as he once more turned them towards the screens.

"Hold on, Rox…" he murmured silently to himself, praying that his words would reach his friend.