Chapter 35—Maleficent, the Warring Witch
Roxas was thoroughly confused by the new 'friends' that he'd gained. They weren't like anything he'd seen before. These weren't like his friends Hayner, Olette or Pence. They were battle hardened warriors. That he could tell from the thick calluses on their hands and the sinewy muscle that lined their arms and legs. They made him nervous, because they looked like him. Roxas tried to cut his musing as he led them to the Usual Place and got them to all sit around.
"So… have you thought of finding a place to stay?" He asked conversationally.
"Is there a hotel in town?" The black haired woman, Tifa asked and he nodded numbly. He didn't want to speak for fear that Olette would jump down his throat, but the woman was beautiful. Though she wasn't the one that really caught his attention. His eyes kept coming back to the red head, to… Axel.
"Then we'll probably stay there. We don't plan to be here for more then a few days." Sora replied as he idly rocked back and forth staring up at the ceiling with his eyes closed. He looked rather like he was missing someone. Roxas was sure that he knew the feeling.
"You'd better be here Roxas!" Hayner's loud voice echoed through the room as the curtain was thrown aside. "You'd better have some munny to contribute to the beach fund!"
"Um… well…" Roxas reached in his pockets and cursed when he only came up with about eighty munny.
"He's got plenty." Sora reached into his pocket and pulled out a pouch and tossed it to Hayner. "About five or six hundred."
"Whoa…" Hayner's eyes practically bugged out as he stopped and stared down at the pouch, which caused Pence and Olette to crash into him and crated a rather comical scene as they all failed their arms before they fell to the ground.
"Who are you?" Olette's eyes were narrowed as she sat up and looked at the assembled group.
"Sora's my cousin… and this is his group of friends." Roxas quickly introduced and Pence and Hayner nodded with uncaring acceptance as they took up their usual seats but Olette wasn't done.
"Oh? And where are they from?" She asked as she took her usual place.
"We're from Traverse." Sora said as he remembered the other town that had inhabited the world that Twilight Town had been on.
"Oh." She muttered, apparently the 'other Olette' hadn't known that they visited the real Olette in Twilight Town because she was the Oracle.
"Wow… so you're from the big city." Pence seemed amazed. "I plan to go there one day. Try my hand at college and all that other good stuff."
"Aa." Demyx replied slightly bored. He was of the mind that they should just take Roxas and go but he had a feeling that no one else liked his straight forward plan as much. He just hoped they wouldn't end up spending too much time here.
Roxas jerked awake. Since last week when Axel and the others had appeared his dreams of the red head had escalated. Almost to the point that they seemed more like memories then dreams. They spoke about things he didn't understand like 'nobodies' and names he didn't recall like 'Saïx' or 'superior.' He shrugged off his pajamas and pulled on clothes and snuck out the window. His mother would be pissed when she realized that he'd left before she woke but he'd deal with that when the time came.
He shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked towards the hotel and looked up at the dark, late twilight sky. That's the one thing he really hated about Twilight Town. There was never any true darkness or any true light. Just this stagnant center that never really changed.
He shuffled his way through the hotel and onto the elevator. He was pretty sure that everyone would be asleep but they probably wouldn't kill him. It didn't take a genius to figure out that he was their focus. He just wondered what kind of can of worms he was opening by doing this. He lifted his hand to knock on the door but it opened for him and he saw Sora fully dressed watch him with wary eyes.
"We were actually waiting for you." The brunette admitted as he opened the door further back Roxas could see that in fact everyone was awake an dressed even though it was three in the morning.
He shook his head and walked in further an decided to start with his first big question. "What the hell is a nobody?"
The assembled group stared around at each other for a few moments before Demyx and Tifa started in on a long explanation that left Roxas with few questions and even fewer answers. The thought that was left circling in his mind, the hardest one to take was Do I have a heart?
"So… what—What?" Roxas tried to form a sentence that wasn't forthcoming.
"Don't worry so much about it." Axel shrugged his shoulders indifferently. "You're safe from those kinds of things here."
"For how long?" Roxas asked turning to glare at him.
"What?" This cause the chakram wielder to sit up.
"How long until they invade this place… My home… My—" He didn't know what else to say to make them realize how important this place was to them. After all, did they even have a home? Or did they just wander on into eternity. Could they understand the suffering that he and his friends would go through? Hayner, Ollete and Pence weren't warriors.
"Never." It was Demyx that spoke now. "They will never invade this place."
"But how?! Why?" He stared around at them and then it was Sora who spoke.
"We came on this search to find worlds like our own. Those that had been attacked by the Heartless or the Nobodies… And try to stop them from going through the near destruction that out world has gone through." Those sky colored eyes hardened as he spoke as if resisting the urge to cry and Roxas felt his heart wrench.
"This world won't be attacked because… because it has oracles that protect it from most outside presences. Only the keyblade wielder can make the journey." Tifa explained with a brief pause.
"Keyblade master?" Roxas asked quietly.
"That would be me." Sora admitted. "That's how we travel between worlds."
Demyx wanted to give them all and himself a round of applause for being able to bullshit so well. He was about to add more when Roxas stumbled suddenly.
"You're lying." He whispered almost deadly soft.
"What?" Axel asked sitting up further.
"You're lying!" Images were flashing before Roxas' mind of sitting in a destroyed building… of fighting Axel… of meeting Sora… of threatening Axel with returning… save a spot for me. "You're lying because—because!" He stopped suddenly as the re-forged Kingdom Key and the Oathkeeper appeared in his hands before he passed out on the spot.
"I think that just made our job a hell of a lot easier. Can we leave now?" Demyx asked as he stood up and stretched his arms.
"Are you sure that's a wise decision?" Tifa asked with a raised eyebrow.
"We might as well leave. He's starting to remember. The sooner we leave the soon Leon can seal off this world." Sora replied as he watched the two keyblades disappear.
"And if Roxas regresses?" Axel asked as he looked at the prone form lying across the floor.
"We'll have to do this one step at a time I guess. We're running out of time though. It's only so long before Maleficent and the others attack." Demyx interjected and they all could concede to that point.
"Then we'd better get going." Tifa murmured as she lifted up her wrist to contact Leon through the 'communicator.'
Leon stood along Riku as they glared down the monster that was currently standing in the second district of Radiant Garden. Behind the hulking heartless was a green woman in black robes: Maleficent. Behind her was a cowering creature that was apparently her only lackey but probably formidable enough in his own right. But Leon drew himself back into focus. They had to deal with the Heartless first.
"So… I'll take the head and you take… the other head?" Riku asked as he looked over at him. "After all, we just have to keep it busy until Yuffie shows up with the reinforcements, right?"
"Right." Leon muttered before lifting his weapon and shooting the monster in one of its gigantic eyes.
The slovenly creature cried out in anger and swung its tail. The giant deformed dragon managed to knock Riku into a wall but got serious retaliation when Riku managed to freeze off one of its legs with an ice spell.
"Shoot it Leon!" He called and the gunblade master immediately responded causing one of the legs to shatter.
"Having fun without me?!" Yuffie called as she came followed by most of the border patrol.
Maleficent glared at the fighting force that now faced her. She sighed softly as she realized that ultimately her monster would be defeated. The creature took deadly blow after deadly blow and though it managed to injure and even kill some of it opponents it was unlikely that it would win.
"We will have to regroup Pete. In fact… I think I have a better plan. We shall leave them to take on Xemnas and get that thorn out of our side. Once that is done… Things will get much, much easier for us." She turned and opened a portal of darkness.
"Wait!" Leon skidded to a stop in front of the portal. "Who said you could leave?"
"Insignificant." Maleficent muttered and lifted her hand to call on her powers.
"I'm not going down that easily." Leon hefted his weapon and went running at her, a hand lifted that easily absorbed her fire attack before he ran the long blade of his weapon through her stomach.
She glared at him with hard yellowed eyes before she wrapped her hand around the revolver that comprised the 'gun' part of his weapon and pushed him backwards slowly removing the blade from her body. In this span of moments all sounds faded away, including the battle that still raged around them. She pushed the blade to the side once it had exited her body and called on a particularly devastating attack. Ultima.
Shots of black, insidious light attacked Leon faster then he could block, faster then he could think. No screams emerged from his mouth, which didn't really matter because they would have been absorbed in the dark dimension that he was contained in. He held on through, through the horrific pain. Waiting for the light. The light that seemed as if it would never come. Finally, it appeared, small, barely there… but enough. He didn't find it odd at all that his last thoughts were of Cloud.