Prepare yourselves ladies and gentlemen. We're checking back in with the Kingdom Hearts cast, so prepare for lots of SoKai feels.
Chapter 6: The Question:
Radiant Garden – Marketplace:
The Daybreak Coalition had come a long way in only six years. Worlds that were once isolated and disconnected from each other had banded together to defend each other against the forces of evil like Maleficent. It had taken the combined threat of her and Xehanort to band the Coalition together, and the possibility of her survival held them together, enabling them to share technology, resources, and troops. The Coalition Council had created standardized systems of education, health care, and transportation across the known worlds, and times had been peaceful.
The Order of The Keyblade continued to protect the worlds from the Heartless like they always had. The United Coalition Army patrolled Coalition space, keeping watch for the return of the Hellfire Club. Coalition Intelligence scoured for the known worlds for signs of Maleficent army while scouting for new worlds that weren't yet part of the Coalition. Travel and trade between all the different worlds was more common now. A businessman from Arendelle had even set up an ice rink in the deserts of Agrabah for instance.
The lives of the "Guardians of Light" had changed dramatically as well. Terra and Aqua had gotten married a few months after Xehanort's demise. Roxas and Xion had started dating the following spring. Lea and Elsa had just gotten engaged a few months ago. Namine had gotten together with Pence a few years back, and Riku had been in a relationship with Selphie since he and Sora had finished their remedial Senior Year of High School. Donald and Daisy got married within months of Xehanort's downfall, and even Goofy had managed to find himself a girlfriend in the librarian of Disney Tower Library.
One thing that hadn't changed, though, was how nervous Sora could be where his relationship with Kairi was concerned. They'd been dating for over six years now, but the twenty-three year old Keyblade Master would still feel nervous talking about their relationship. He wasn't like that all the time, but Kairi had noticed that he'd been acting more and more nervous around her lately. Almost like he was hiding something. When she asked Riku, Donald, Goofy, Ventus, his parents, or even Vanitas about what was going on with him, they kept denying any knowledge of what she was talking about.
She had her suspicions about why he was acting this way, but unless he actually told her, she could only guess. Tonight, they were having dinner at a small restaurant in Radiant Garden's marketplace. It had been a crazy week for both of them. After she and the boys had finished high school, they'd travelled around the worlds for a while before settling down to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. As Ansem The Wise's niece and heir to the throne of Radiant Garden, Kairi had moved back to her original home world so that she could get used to being royalty in preparation for her eventual ascension to the throne.
Sora hadn't had any real plans and so had enlisted in the royal guard so that they'd always be on the same world together. He usually schedules his patrols and shifts so that he'd be able to visit her on his days off, but this week had been particularly busy for the both of them. Her uncle Ansem was away visiting Mickey at Disney Town, so Kairi to spend the week meeting commuting to the current seat of the Coalition Council in San Fransokyo to oversee and sign off on some new trade legislation.
As they ate their dinner, Kairi grew more concerned when Sora barely said anything as the meal went on. She could see the sweat on his forehead and the blush in his cheeks and she could tell that he was nervous, and she had a pretty good idea why.
"Sora," she began. "Is something going on at work? You've barely said a word to me since we got here." She didn't share her suspicions of what she thought he was really thinking about, figuring that doing so would only make him more nervous.
"No, no," he reassured her. "It's not that, Kairi. I'm just nervous."
"About what?" she asked innocently. "Sora, we've been dating for six years now and you weren't even this nervous when we had our first kiss."
"I know, I know," Sora replied. "It's just. There's something I want to do, and I think we're ready for it. I'm just worried you might think that we're not." And the likelihood that I'm right just went up exponentially, Kairi thought to herself. She leaned across the table and gave him a brief but passionate kiss on the lips, and this managed to finally get him to calm down.
"Well," Kairi responded. "The only way to find out would be to just tell me what it is you're worried about." Though she didn't voice her thoughts out loud, when she saw him take a deep breath, she could tel exactly what he was thinking. After a quick mental self-pep talk, Sora reached into the pocket of his dress pants and slid off his chair.
"Kairi," he began as he got down on one knee. There was a nervous quiver in the Keyblade Master's voice as he pulled a small velvet box out of his pocket. "Will you marry me?"
"Yes," she gasped before he even opened the box. She stood up, pulling him to his feet as she did so, and gave him another longer, more passionate, and more romantic kiss. The restaurant patrons who were watching the scene unfold (the couple had been famous ever since Xehanort's fall, and the local news outlets had been speculating since they turned eighteen how long it would take Sora to finally propose) broke out into applause as Sora lid the engagement ring onto her finger. "What took you so long you lazy bum?" she teased as their lips parted and they sat back down.
"You know me," Sora replied. "Fear always ends up making me second guess myself." Kairi chuckled and gave him another kiss just as the waiter arrived with a bouquet of flowers Sora had brought with him but been too nervous to bring into the restaurant area with him. The wait staff, having been told the purpose of the reservation by Riku, had been kind enough to store them in the fridge until Sora had managed to finally ask the question he'd been waiting years to ask. As they continued to eat their dinner, the every diner in the building came up to the table to congratulate the two of them.
In between saying thank you to everyone who came to the table (except for Riku, Ven, and Vanitas, who had come to watch. Sora jokingly told them to get lost and stay out of his love life), the two of them discussed wedding plans ranging from the date and location to who to send invitations to. Since they both had friends on several different worlds, they needed to keep the guest list to a reasonable length. Obviously Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and the rest of the Order of the Keyblade were invited. Sora's parents, Kairi's adopted father, her Uncle Ansem, and her Cousin Ienzo all went without saying.
As they finished eating and paid for their meal, they walked back to the castle together. The guards' barracks was just outside the castle (although Sora had risen high enough in the ranks to earn his own private room), while as a Princess, Kairi's bedroom was all the way in the Hollow Bastion's upper floors. The castle's sleeping quarters were normally off limits to civilians, and guards were only allow when they were on duty for the sake of residents' privacy, but since Dilan and Aeleus were part of the castle's security detail, they let Sora be the exception so that he could walk Kairi back to her room after one of their dates.
On worlds like San Fransokyo or Zootopia, they would have been mobbed by reporters as they made their way home. As it was, even with the tourism boom and immigrant influx in recent years, Radiant Garden remained a small tight-nit community after the horrors of The Fall, and so they were able to have some privacy as they made their way back to the castle. Somone at the castle would issue a statement to the press tomorrow morning so that Sora and Kairi wouldn't have to deal with the sudden influx of reporters begging at their doorsteps for interviews.
The paparazzi as the people of Earth referred to it, wasn't really an issue in Coalition space. Even as the number of news outlets grew in the past six years, people's privacy was respected. It helped that very few member worlds had technology and social structures remotely close to modern-day Earth. Nevertheless, between the fame they had both individually and as a couple, reporters would travel from all over the Coalition to get the best scoop on what would probably be blow out of proportion as "the wedding of the century" or something like that. Right now though, neither of them cared about any of that. They could deal with it tomorrow. All that mattered at the moment was each other.
The Kiln – Conference Room:
"Where in Hel have you been for the last nine years?" Loki demanded as a small red monster appeared from a side room and poured him a glass of wine. He accepted the glass and took a sip, making himself look like he was trying not to slam the glass on the table in anger. It wasn't that hard, he'd been friends with the original members of the Hellfire Club and they'd never made any effort to break him out of prison in the last decade. He may have given up his ambitions of conquest, but the abandonment still stung. The least they owed him was an explanation for why they never bothered to at least send a message.
"Technically speaking I was dead for one of them," she replied calmly. Loki blinked. He hadn't expected that answer, and Maleficent went on to explain how after his capture by Thanos, they'd been unable to track his movements, and by the time they learned of his location, a lone Keyblade wielder had managed to decimate their ranks. Ursula, Jafar, and Oogie Boogie had all been killed and Maleficent trapped in the Realm of Darkness, dead to the world for all intents and purposes.
A year later, Maleficent managed to return to the land of the living and begin rebuilding the Hellfire Club, but her efforts had been hindered by the incompetence of that bumbling oaf, Pete. It had taken a further two years to rebuild the Hellfire Club, and six more to accumulate the resources necessary to stage an open attack against Asgard. Taking all that into consideration, Loki couldn't say he blamed her for having to move a prison break down on the list of priorities when having to deal with Xehanort and his Organization. That didn't mean he wasn't still frustrated about it though.
With the elephant in the room taken care of, they moved on to discussing recent events and Maleficent's current goals. He was far from surprised when Maleficent confirmed that she was searching for the Infinity Stones to accelerate her path to conquest.
"Lovely fellow," Loki remarked sarcastically. "Reminds me of a few humans who were a gigantic pain in my arse when I was forced to conquer Earth on Thanos' behalf." The Mad Titan had used the same scepter that the prince had been given for the invasion to compel the Asgardian to do his bidding. Maleficent only chuckled in response.
"Kadaj and his brothers are a bit of an odd bunch among the Club," she replied. "Where most of us want to conquer the universe, they simply want to find a way to bring back their father and take revenge on those who killed him. They call themselves the Advent Children, but Captain Hook gave them the more popular nickname of "The Angel's Bastards"." Loki had been in the middle of taking a sip from his drink and so Maleficent couldn't help but chuckle as he spat his drink across the conference table in shock. Surely she hadn't meant…?
"Are you serious?" he gasped as he recovered from nearly choking on his wine. "Him!? Having children?" He couldn't fathom the idea of Sephiroth having a sex life period! Never mind the fact that he somehow managed to procreate no less than three times. But Maleficent's nod was all that he needed to confirm that his train of thought was correct. Still surprised from that little bombshell, Loki couldn't help but burst out laughing at the situation. As one of the little crimson beasts came in and cleaned up the spilled wine, the newest members of the Hellfire Club leadership filed into the room. It was time to meet the new recruits.
Hades and Captain Hook he recognized. The woman with black and white hair and an extravagant fur coat was unfamiliar to him. He recognized Maleficent's shape-shifting raven familiar among the crowd. The other two members of the inner circle he had never seen before, but was able to recognize on sight based on reputation and descriptions. Well this just got more complicated, Loki mused to himself as Malekith and the Red Skull took their seats at the table. As the meeting got underway, Loki prepared himself to mentally notes on the Hellfire Club's plans and began preparing his next message to his family. This was going to be more dangerous than he'd thought it would be.
"Now that we're all here," Maleficent began as she gestured around the table at the members of her inner circle. "It's time to get down to business. Our last two campaigns to conquer all of reality failed. Xehanort was manipulating us into acquiring the Princesses of Heart for his own ends, and our ranks were crippled by the time the truth was revealed. Going after the Book of Prophecies was a failure as well. We could always attempt to acquire the Princesses and the Books again, but a certain Nordic deity once advised me to "never repeat the same trick for the same audience twice."" She, Hades, Diablo, and Hook glanced at Loki with sardonic smiles on their faces. To keep up appearances, Loki answered with a satisfied smirk.
"Therefore," she went on. "If we are to achieve our collective dream of conquest, we need a new approach. We have spent the last six years quietly rebuilding our resources away from the prying eyes of those who would oppose our plans. No more. It's time we went with Plan B. We will assemble the Infinity Gauntlet, and with it, all of reality will bow to our will." Loki noticed that no one commented on the fact that Maleficent would still be the one in charge wearing the gauntlet. The command structure of the Hellfire Club had evidently been restructured in his absence, with Maleficent now clearly at the top of the pyramid, and her inner circle directly beneath her.
"Thanks to Malekith's reconnaissance reports," Maleficent continued. "We have confirmed the locations for two of the remaining five Infinity Stones, and solid leads on the hiding places of two more. We know exactly where to find the Mind and Power stones, and we know at least where to look for the Time and Reality Stones. Only the location of the Soul Stone continues to elude us. With Thanos and Xehanort out of the way, we will have no competition in our quest for power." The group continued to discuss their battle strategy for locating the missing stone for the next hour.
The Red Skull advocated for retrieving the ones they knew of now, but Loki had played chess against the Mistress of All Evil enough times to know how she thought. She never committed to a move until all the unknown variables were known. She wouldn't make a move until she'd at the very least narrowed down their options for the location of the Soul Stone. Although he had already figured out where the stone was, he declined to share it in order to delay the Hellfire Club's plans for as long as possible. When the meeting concluded, Maleficent announced that she needed to pick up her daughter. Loki was still trying to process the fact that Sephiroth had kids when Maleficent dropped her own parental bombshell on him, and sat dazed in the room for another five minutes as everyone else left. Everyone that is, except the one he'd quickly deduced to be the father of Maleficent's child, if the matching wedding rings to go by.
"She's clearly been busy for the last six years," Loki said to Hades once the rest of the council had filed out of the conference room. "Congratulations on your marriage by the way. I assume Maleficent left to collect your child from whoever was hired to babysit during the meeting?"
"Correct-o-mundo," the now-former lord of the underworld answered with a smirk. "Maleficent's a little overprotective about Lily, but after what happened to her first kid, who can blame her?" Loki nodded in understanding and sympathy. He was one of the few people to know that much about Maleficent's past, having deduced it after his arrive in Hollow Bastion all those years ago based on his own brief experience with parenthood. He shoved those tragic memories to the back of his mind as Hades asked if there was anything he needed to be caught up on.
"Well there is one thing I'm still confused by," the Norse god of magic admitted with a chuckle. "When did Sephiroth ever find the time to, as the mortals say, get laid?"
I know, I know, Sora and Kairi's proposal scene was really cheesy towards the end, but they've always been a cheesy couple, so I ran with it.
Goofy having a girlfriend is a reference to An Extremely Goofy Movie.
Yeah, the Remnants Of Sephiroth are in this story. Only in this unvierse, instead of being clones (or whatever they technically are) of Sephiroth, they're his actual children. I thought that it would be an appropriately KH-style twist to have them still be connected to Sephiroth without having them be his Heartless/Nobody/Unversed or something. More simpler to just say their his children and leave it at that.
There was never anything in the actually games that actually supported this, but whenever I speculate on a potential romantic partner for Riku, I keep thinking of Selphie for some reason, so since this is fanfiction and not canon, I decided to just go with it.
For those of you who wanted to see more KH couples focused on besides Sora and Kairi, the next story in this universe after Connected Worlds will be a prequel titled The Calm, which will show things that happened in the six years between The Xehanort War and Connected Worlds. The reason I'm not writing The Calm first is because it will have extensive foreshadowing/spoilers for this story, so I wanted to do Connected Worlds first.
The "Never do the same trick for the same audience twice" comment was a quote from The S.H.I.E.L.D. Codex fics.
Lily being the name of Maleficent's daughter is another shout out to Once Upon A Time, since that was the name of her daughter on that show.
Loki having lost a kid like Maleficent is another reference to Child of the Storm. I figured Loki would probably empathize with Maleficent's overprotectiveness if he had a similar backstory.