Kingdom Hearts Online

Chapter 4: "This Is It!"

A/N: Okay, you've all waited long enough. Especially you, FierceDeityMask!

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We fly the road to Alne!

Riku and Meteor eventually calmed down and stopped racing each other, but they had to keep up the pace to get to Alne before sundown. Riku marveled at how much bigger and more open this world was compared to the ones he knew.

Meteor explained, "The day/night cycle of Alfheim is based on the time in real life, but it's in its own time zone that would fit somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, not anywhere people would live. Still, it's possible to tell what time it is in real life by watching the sun in Alfheim."

Riku mused, "I have no clue what you mean about time zones, but I guess you'll know when you need to log out. Is there anything special you'll need to do at that time?"

Meteor replied, "Not if we reach Alne in time, but if I have to log out while we're outside the towns, you'd have to defend my sleeping avatar for a few hours until I can get back. The appointment with my tutor will take two hours, and then I'll need some time to sleep. So I guess it'll take ten hours, which you'd have to spend defending my body if we can't make it."

Lambda piped up, "Speaking of time limits, we'd better land. Meteor's wings are about to give out, which means Riku will need to land to avoid alerting the system."

As they descended to the ground, Riku grumbled, "Darn. Getting there in one day just became a lot less achievable."

"We can't help it, dear. Unless you think you can teleport all three of us without alerting the system."

Riku smirked. "Well, why can't I? A big selling point of the Darkness is that it makes things hard to see. I just need to figure out some kind of jamming or cloaking spell, and we have a lot of free time to work on that."

"Try a Spriggan spell," Meteor suggested. "They excel at illusion magic, so you should be able to disguise your spell as a normal cloaking spell, then use the actual spell to hide us from the system too."

Riku gave the Salamander a high-five. "Great idea, Meteor! Let's see..." Lambda opened the Words of Power glossary, and the group spent about ten minutes picking through it for the right words for a low-level cloaking spell.

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Right as Riku was about to cast the mixed spell, the group became aware of vibrations in the ground. Looking around, they saw an enormous horde of Heartless on the horizon, mostly consisting of Shadows, though a few aerial Emblem Heartless such as Aeroplanes and Air Pirates had joined the horde as well.

Meteor trembled. "That's a lot of Heartless!"

"Something's wrong," Lambda whispered. "Most of them are in the air. Even with this many Shadows, they shouldn't be making the ground shake. Something else is out there - something big."

"Now would be a really good time to teleport," Meteor prompted Riku.

"Okay, hold on to my shoulders!" Riku shouted the words of his mock concealment spell, and a smokescreen-like cloud of Darkness obscured the party from all observation, be it physical sight, electronic surveillance, or even Lambda's metaphysical Observation. Then Riku focused on the town they could glimpse on the horizon (if it weren't for the cloud), and pulled on the Darkness within and around him to drag himself there, taking Lambda and Meteor along for the ride.

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Alne: the Base of the World Tree...

A burst of Darkness heralded Riku's party's arrival at the very center of Alfheim, startling a few passerby of various faerie races.

Ignoring them, Riku turned to Meteor and said, "If you need to log out, now's the time. Hurry back; the Heartless will start a massive attack soon."

"Right. Stay safe, Riku." Meteor opened his menu, made a few clicks, and vanished into a blue glow.

Lambda flew off Riku's shoulder. "So, now what? Do we wait for him to come back?"

Riku shook his head. "No, we should start scouting for the Keyhole. I bet it's somewhere around this huge tree." He pointed out the tree; the World Tree Yggdrasil was the largest landmark in Alfheim - it was visible from anywhere in the game and was absolutely impossible to miss. "If the Keyhole isn't related to this thing, I'll eat my hood."

"That big dome by the nearest root looks promising." Lambda set a waypoint in Riku's HUD, pointing out a pristine white dome with massive double doors, flanked by giant statues of armored faeries.

"Let's check it out. The faster we can seal the Keyhole, the better."

The doors had no Keyhole, unfortunately. The statues spoke in simultaneous, resonating voices and offered a quest (worded in a grandiose, archaic dialect) when Riku approached, but he declined the prompt that popped up. "Well, that's a bust. Lambda, try scanning the roots."

Lambda gave her report in the monotone voice of the control protocol. "Acknowledged. Scanning...No anomalies detected within 10 meters...20 meters...100 meters...500 meters...1 match found: 1640 meters above current location."

Riku winced, then winced harder when he heard the full report. "Oops, sorry about the order, dear! So it's way up in the World Tree, then? That's no good. How do we get up there?"

"We could beat that quest, but I wouldn't recommend it. On the other hand, if that mob of Heartless approaching Alne doesn't catch the Game Master's attention, I'll eat the tags off my cape. We could make our case to the GM directly and ask for special permission to break the rules, but it would be too risky to use the call function; the system would identify and delete us before the Game Master could even pick up the call."

Lambda shuddered at the thought; she had gauged the capabilities of the "Cardinal System", and assigned it threat level SS. It was essentially a god to this virtual world, capable of altering or deleting whatever it needed to without prompting from a user. The only reason Lambda's god-slaying directives weren't acting up was that the Cardinal System didn't have a physical presence in this world for her to attack.

"Well, I guess we should just stock up on supplies to respond to the invasion." Riku dug into his pocket for munny.

Lambda grabbed his wrist to stop him. "Our munny is worthless, remember?"

"Oh, right. What can we..." Riku was cut off by a massive yawn.

Lambda giggled at Riku, but was cut off by a yawn of her own. "I say we get some rest. Light knows we don't get anywhere near enough sleep in our travels. It's perfectly fine to nap on the benches beside the roads."

"Agreed." Riku settled down on the closest bench he could reach, pulled up his hood, and closed his eyes. Lambda settled into his lap before following him into slumber.

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Ten hours later...

"Riku, are you okay?" A voice called.

Riku snapped awake, jostling Lambda to alertness as well. "We're fine. Who's asking?"

The voice was Meteor's, and he looked worried. "It's me, Meteor. Did you find the Keyhole? The Heartless are almost here."

Lambda replied, "No, it's somewhere inside the World Tree. Our current plan is that the Heartless will attract the Game Master's attention, and he'll show up in person to deal with them, so we can ask him to let us see the Keyhole. But we can't call him directly without getting caught."

Luckily, Meteor had a solution. "You can't, but I can. When the Heartless attack, I'll send him a message, but no one will believe me unless something actually happens."

Lambda bowed gratefully in midair. "Thanks! Please don't mention us directly, but tell him about the Heartless and ask for his help. We could also use your help rounding up capable defenders to hold off the Heartless. If those monsters reach the World Tree, it's all over, but we can't send weaker players at them and risk losing anyone."

"Leave it to me. I'll queue up my connections and get ready to call the local guilds..."

*BOOM!* A thunderous sound rocked the city from the south.

Riku took off immediately. "No need to wait! The Heartless are here!"

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Alne calls for aid!

Meteor rapidly set up multiple connections and called every leader of every race he could reach all at once. "This is an emergency call to all players! The Heartless have invaded Alne! You may have heard of the Heartless in recent news reports. They are very real! This is not a joke, a drill, or a prank! We need every skilled player we can get to drive them off, but don't send anyone unless they can handle themselves without taking even a scratch! Wounds from the Heartless cause permadeath, and the effect will carry over to the real world - do not let them touch you, or you'll turn into one of them!"

At first, Meteor's pleas were rebuffed. The Imp leader was suspicious. "Who's calling?"

The leader of the Salamander Guild in Alne just laughed. "Very funny, renegade!"

However, the Cait Sith race, hailing from the west of Alfheim, backed up Meteor's claim. Their leader, a young girl with the username Alicia Rue, rebuked the others, "He's telling the truth, guys! One of my lieutenants just sent me the same news. There are monsters in the streets, and they don't look normal at all. You other races can fight or flee, but do it quick! There's a lot of them! Listen...Meteor? The Cait Sith have your back. Any dragon riders stationed in Alne, move out! Everyone else, prepare to travel! We have a town to save!"

The other races quickly came around to this point of view, putting aside personal disagreements to combat this threat to them all and soon coalitions were being put together in every territory to hold off the Heartless. Meteor only hoped they could muster their forces quickly enough.

For now, Meteor had one more call to make. He scrolled down his menu to a seldom used button. Hitting it put him on a direct line to the Game Master.

"Who disturbs the Fairy King Oberon?" Came a high-pitched voice from the pop-up. The video feed was too bright to discern features. Clearly, "King Oberon" was going to stay in character.

Meteor decided to give role-playing a shot if it would improve his chances of getting aid. "My deepest apologies, Your Majesty, but there is a major threat to all of Alfheim. Monsters from outside the boundaries of this world, apparently known as the Heartless, are attacking the gates of Alne as I speak. If they reach the World Tree, the entire world could be destroyed, and the reality beyond will not be spared. Your Majesty, I pray you know that I would not call upon your aid directly if this were not an hour of direst need for the whole world."

"...Very well. I will descend from my throne and see these 'Heartless' for myself. If they are the threat you claim them to be, I will vanquish them in the name of all faeries - but know that if you speak untruly, your wings are forfeit forever."

"You have my eternal gratitude, Your Majesty." Meteor bowed to the screen and cut the connection. "That was a weird exchange, but I think it worked!" Meteor took off into the air to search for Riku and Lambda, eager to pass on the good news and join the fight.

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Defeat the Heartless while protecting the players!

Riku was at the front lines of the struggle. The Heartless had broken through the south gate, which shocked dozens of players because the gates were an "Immortal Object", a facet of the environment that should be impossible to destroy by any method available in the game.

The Heartless certainly weren't native aspects of the game. This act confirmed all the rumors, and the realization that the Heartless were a real threat galvanized the players into action. Those who were confident in their skills and equipment and were willing to risk their lives formed ranks to hold the Heartless back, including aerial combatants.

Even the most stalwart defenders couldn't stop a few stray Shadows from sinking into the floor and passing underneath the barricade, though. When he had almost reached the battle, Meteor noticed a Shadow trying to claw its way into a building with a particularly low door, and smashed the monster with his sword. He called out to the defenders, "We need scouts to track the ones that slip away! Don't let them into the houses!"

Without looking back, a particularly strong-looking Sylph shouted, "Can you handle that? We have our hands full with the big ones!"

Meteor hesitated, then decided on the best course of action. "I can't...but I can make the main job easier!" He recited the incantation that created a powerful wall of blue light, which totally blocked the road. The Shadows attacking head-on couldn't even slip under the barrier, but the faeries found that their projectile spells were unimpeded as they passed through the one-way wall. "That should lighten your load!"

An Imp called out, "Thanks, man! We can handle the fliers just fine! This fight's in the bag!"

*BOOM!*

"They've broken through the west gate! Please, someone help!"

A black blur passed overhead. Meteor expected a Heartless, but it was Riku!

While darting toward the new threat, Riku mumbled, "You had to jinx it, didn't you?"

Meteor took flight as well. His barrier would only last five minutes; he had to get to the west gate to put one up there before this one went down!

"We need to act as a last line of defense around the World Tree," Lambda urged. "Cordoning off the streets is a great idea, but the alleys are already thick with Heartless, and they're heading right for the center."

"I can't put up enough barriers to surround the World Tree!" Meteor panicked.

"Barriers...I have an idea. I hope we can talk to the GM soon so I can put it into action."

A blast of golden light flared up behind them, seeming to paint the buildings of Alne gold for a moment. Meteor pointed back toward a shining pillar of energy lancing into the sky from the front of the World Tree's entrance dome. "That's him! Go on! I'll keep the front-line blockades up!"

Riku flew to the center of town as fast as his Darkness could carry him, making sure to land before he reached the clearing. He reached the pillar of light just as a long-haired blond man with butterfly-like green wings descended along it.

"Game Master, I have a favor to ask!"

"You shall address me as the Fairy King Oberon. Do so, and I may hear your request! Make it swift; that boy was truthful in his claims about the Heartless, and I have a kingdom that must be protected!"

"I am the one who accidentally led the Heartless here. My name's Riku. I've been pretending to be a player to avoid being deleted while I try to fix this, but I've had to hold back a lot of the abilities I brought here from off-world. I need your permission to use powers the game won't recognize. If I can use my full power, I can fix everything. I need you to trust me."

King Oberon scoffed at Riku. "You freely admit to being an alien hacker, and you want me to trust you with this world's stability? Not a chance! I'll handle these Heartless myself. You're lucky I have no time to render judgment on you personally; you should consider your temporary pardon a sign of my goodwill. Now watch your god at work!"

"You're not my god," Lambda muttered from Riku's pocket, too softly to be heard.

Oberon floated grandly into the sky, then called down massive beams of light that ripped apart the majority of the Heartless.

"He's not using the Words of Power," Lambda noted. "He's using administrative value-editing functions, like 'Reduce HP of all objects in the targeted area by 50,000.'"

"Whatever he did, it worked," Riku grudgingly admitted. "But something's still bugging me..."

The memory came back to him in a flash.

"Even with this many Shadows, they shouldn't be making the ground shake."

"The big one has to be getting close. Where is it?"

"We have to change Oberon's mind before it gets here."

"*Screech!*" Too late; the "big one's" battle cry carried from the northern gate. Riku rose into the air to see what it was. When he got a good look, his jaw almost dropped all the way back to the ground.

"It's HUGE!"

Lambda scanned the beast. "Target identified as Elder Bladewyrm. Threat level graded as SS. Potential weak points: eyes and internal organs. Warning! All weapon systems are unavailable at this time. Suggested battle strategy: tactical retreat."

"Whoa, it's that bad?" Lambda's scanning protocols had never told them to retreat, not even that one time they were up against Nu-13. Riku found it difficult to argue, though.

The Elder Bladewyrm certainly cut an imposing figure. It was a quadruped dragon with three thick, black talons on each foot. The scales on its back were white and bladed, looking like a field of swords sticking out of the beast pointy-end out - a warning to any who would approach, if one was needed. Red, smooth plates coated its underbelly, forming an impenetrable defense.

Its neck and head were of the same color scheme, with the red scales covering its lower jaw. Its head was proudly raised and crowned with especially long spikes. The signature yellow eyes of a Heartless glowed in the shadow of its bladed brow. From its blade-covered back, two white wings unfurled, with the red-and-black Heartless symbol standing out starkly in the center of the bat-like membrane of each wing. The wings seemed too short to allow the Elder Bladewyrm to fly, but Riku didn't want to bet Alfheim's safety on a guess.

More than any of its features, though, the dragon stood out for its massive size. It looked like if it were to stretch its neck, it could eat leaves from the branches of the World Tree. But the predatory gleam in its eyes would tell anyone who saw it that this colossus was no herbivore. How many people's hearts could vanish into its massive maw at once? Riku swore not to let it find out. But he couldn't hope to beat this thing while there were limits imposed on him by the system.

Lambda continued her report. "Although it's definitely even more dragon-like than the Wyvern-type Heartless we've seen before, it doesn't seem to have a breath weapon, so that's good. But I bet it has some other way to cause widespread destruction...because we can't possibly be that lucky in the middle of all this."

"It could cause widespread destruction just by taking a step! Even Oberon might not be able to beat it." But he would certainly try.

The Fairy King attacked. He tried the same damage function that wiped out most of the Heartless, only to receive an error. As the pillar of light faded, a red pop-up stating "System Command Failed" appeared in front of the dragon's face, and everyone in Alne saw it. Panic erupted in the streets.

Riku flew toward the fight. "Well, King Oberon, will you let me handle it now?"

"Rrgh... Fine! Do what you want, but do not let that monster destroy this world!" Oberon raised a special menu in front of himself and typed several commands.

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Get ready to save the game!

A message appeared in front of Riku: "Account created. ID: Riku. Administrative privileges active." Oberon fled into a pillar of light and logged out.

Riku yelled at the sky, "If you can hear me, thanks for changing your mind! Now, let's get this done. First things first. System command: create account. ID: Lambda-11! Grant user ID: Lambda-11 administrative privileges!"

Lambda glowed and returned to her normal form, with Murakumo and the IDEA Engine fully online.

Riku summoned Way to Dawn and smirked. "It is so good to be back! Just one more thing to do." He clenched his left fist over his chest, drawing from the pit of Darkness in his heart. Then he reached out to the Darkness that made up the Heartless.

Riku channeled the Darkness of the attacking Heartless force. Heartless were harder to wrangle when they weren't pretending to be on his side, but Riku wasn't the weakling he was a few months ago. With a roar of effort, Riku subjugated the Darkness and wove it into the shape he wanted. It formed a visually pleasing arrangement of tessellating hexagons - a Dark Wall.

The villains in Maleficent's club loved this trick, and almost always used it to prevent victims from escaping. This Dark Wall, however, would block anyone from approaching the World Tree. The barrier locked into place like a cylinder wrapped around the trunk, then extended into a cone to defend the branches.

"There. Now none of the Heartless can get to the Keyhole unless I die or the Heartless flee. No one can cut this battle short."

Riku took a moment to admire Lambda's Battle Mode for the first time what felt like days. Her pixie form was adorable, sure, but both of the travelers definitely preferred her true form's ability to fight. "This is it! Are you ready, Lambda?"

Lambda aligned her Petals at her sides, pointing at the dragon's right eye. "Affirmative, Riku! Let's beat that thing, just like we always do!"

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Defeat the Elder Bladewyrm!

The pair charged at the Elder Bladewyrm's head side-by-side, launching swords and dark fireballs to get its attention, but that was all they accomplished. It bent its massive neck to face the nuisances pelting it with what might as well be dust motes and spread its wings. With a massive flap, it generated gale-force winds to push the fighters out of the air, and then revealed its favorite trick.

Every one of its white scales stood straight out, then launched off its body in all directions. Hundreds of blade-scales got caught in the wind of its wing-beat, flying straight at the disoriented Riku and Lambda. Luckily, most of the scales hit nothing and vanished when they impacted the Dark Wall, but the pair still received some shallow cuts.

"Not fair! Completely unfair! That's my trick!" Lambda angrily righted herself in midair, then used her administrative access to run a deeper scan on what it designated a Level [blank] boss. "Weaknesses identified! the membranes of its wings are a cripple point; we can stop it from blowing wind at us. There's a less-armored spot under its chin! Strike there!"

"Great work! I'll carve into the chin! You rip up its wings!" Riku flickered out of sight without waiting for a reply, using a flash-step to get right next to the weak point.

Lambda dashed into the effective range of Sword Summoner EX, even as the control protocol took over. "Acknowledged. Target locked. Legacy Edge. Legacy Edge." Two wormholes appeared; each one launched a continuous stream of daggers that ripped tiny holes in the dragon's wings.

However, compared to the massive size of the wings, all 80 of the miniscule wounds Lambda created were insignificant. "Argh! I'll need to get creative - whoa!" Lambda weaved around another storm of daggers launched from the Bladewyrm's back, then dashed straight at the dragon's left wing.

She dug her fingers into the holes she'd made around the edge of the wing and held on tight, clinging to the wing membrane in a sort of sideways crouch. "I hope this works! Sickle Storm!" A spinning buzz-saw ripped open the wing all the way up its seventy-foot length. Lambda repeated the attack, cutting out massive chunks of white wing membrane that dissolved into clouds of smoky Darkness before they could crush the houses below her.

"First cripple point destroyed. Retargeting second cripple point." As Lambda darted over the dragon's back to repeat the process on the other wing, she suddenly noticed that the entire Heartless was giving off a glowing red aura, probably in response to the destruction of the first wing. "What now?"

The dragon's aura flared up twice as large for a moment, heralding the appearance of hundreds of scale-blades that floated in the air around it independently from gravity. Lambda's dash brought her too close to a small cloud of them, and the scales turned in midair to face her.

Lambda guessed what would happen next and set up her Petals in Guard Mode, just in time to block the scales when they launched themselves right at her. Each scale disappeared as it impacted her guard, leaving the air clear for Lambda to reach the Bladewyrm's right wing, but she had to deal with two more groups before she could cling to the membrane safely like before.

After weathering the dragon's attempts to repel her, Lambda mutilated its right wing as quickly as she could. She used Act Parcer Zwei to dodge another spray of blades from the dragon's back, then shot through the air to report her success to Riku.

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Meanwhile, on the front lines with Meteor...

When a dragon the size of the city stomped onto the scene, many of the defending faeries lost their resolve and immediately logged out. Far from being angry at the deserters, Meteor took their advice and spread it among the entire force as thoroughly as he could. He sent a message to the various impromptu squad leaders: "With that wall keeping the Heartless out of the World Tree, the best thing to do is to log out for now. The outcome of this battle hinges on the battle between my friends and that dragon; there won't be progress either way until they're done. We can't afford to get hit by those scales, so we can't have the whole army here.; I'll stay logged in and hide; could you pass me some contact info so I can send you an alert when the situation changes?"

Ten blocks of contact info came back to him, and the entire defending army logged out, along with all remaining civilians. Thousands of potential victims abruptly vanished from Alfheim, significantly calming the Heartless' agitation. The horde of invaders faltered, held still for a moment, and finally began to wander away from the city.

Meteor saw them go, but couldn't let them escape into the wild. Creating a barrier to defend himself from flying scale-blades, the Salamander flew over the hordes to lure them to a nearby fort. All guards were trained in the use of the ballistae and other defensive measures that lined the walls of typical prefabricated forts in Alfheim, and Meteor was about to put those weapons to good use.

A vaguely triangular crowd of Heartless trailed underneath Meteor for the entire flight, but luckily the fort he had in mind was specifically located within one ten-minute flight from Alne. He swooped down to the ramparts of a building proudly marked "This fort is the property of General Wish-Giver". Whoever this General Wish-Giver person was, Meteor hoped they wouldn't mind if he borrowed their ballistae for a good cause.

The Heartless single-mindedly shambled toward the only heart in the world they could reach, which made them easy pickings when a massive fireball launched from the fort walls and slammed into the center of the tightly-packed crowd of monsters. The field caught fire, and the resulting blaze spread further back, eliminating many of the stragglers. Some of the Heartless were immune to fire, such as Red Nocturnes and Fat Bandits, so the remainder of the horde was mostly orange and red.

Meteor didn't know what they were called, but he correctly assumed that these Heartless were immune to fire and only fire. Luckily, there was another neat anti-siege weapon in Alfheim called the "snowman cannon."

As he aimed the nondescript, cylindrical weapon, he chuckled to himself, "What will those wacky Leprechauns think of next?" The blacksmith faeries had invented many unusual gadgets like this one, most of which had equally-ridiculous names. Meteor had to give points to the engineers for the weapon's effectiveness, though; one shot turned all of the remaining Heartless into Darkness-sicles. One more shot shattered them into tiny bits, and the bits puffed into black smoke and heart-shaped lumps of Light that rose into the sky. The remains of the Heartless passed the maximum altitude limit, to one day reform as monsters on some other world.

"And stay out! I hope Riku's fight will be this easy..."

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Back with Riku...

"I can't believe I thought this would be easy..." The underside of the Elder Bladewyrm's chin did indeed have less armored scales than the rest of its body, but that didn't mean it was unarmored. Riku's Keyblade cut right into the dragon's relatively soft spot, but he couldn't cut deep enough to hit anything important.

Lambda rushed up to him. "Both wings are destroyed. Also, everyone else in all of Alfheim has logged out, so we don't need to worry about this thing's scales hitting civilians anymore."

"Who's defending the city, then?" Riku wondered.

"We are," was Lambda's simple reply. "It's pretty genius, actually; the Heartless don't have any prey now, and they won't challenge this monstrosity's dominance by taking the heart of the world before it does. Which it won't, because we're going to kill it. How's that going, by the way?"

Riku made an eeh noise of indecision. "I've got good news and bad news. The good news: not many of those scales end up here, probably so it doesn't stab itself, and it can't seem to tuck its chin down or get me out of its blind spot in any way. It would probably be a lot harder to reach if we had to climb the neck without flying, but..."

Lambda deadpanned, "What's the bad news?"

"It still has too much armor for me to do any real damage. Can you use that Calamity Sword move on it?"

Lambda looked down from embarrassment. "No, that move can only drop straight down. You've made up a bunch of cool Dark moves on the fly, Riku; think you can ad-lib an armor piercing anti-air move?"

"I tried, but I don't think the Darkness will cut it for this one."

Lambda tried to view the problem from another angle. "Then...what about the Light?"

Riku wondered. "I haven't been practicing with the Light as much as I should, but I think I can make this work. Can you do that thing you used against Ansem - er, Xehanort's Heartless - where you transferred Darkness out of me to power yourself up? I need a clear heart to be certain I can do this."

"Not a problem. Come here..." Lambda pulled Riku into a full embrace and kissed him deeply on the lips, which actually wasn't necessary for the transfer; she just felt like kissing him. But the transfer worked well enough either way. Lambda vented the excess Darkness to place Gravity Seeds along the Bladewyrm's carapace, preventing its scales from shooting off.

Meanwhile, Riku put his new trick into practice. While his inner Darkness was less in the way than usual, he focused on his Light, which was easy to find by thinking of the kiss he'd just shared. He pushed the Light into his weapon, surrounding it with a glowing aura that could cut through anything. Riku kept pushing more Light into the aura and enlarging it, until the white-purple energy blade was more than three times larger in all directions than the weapon it surrounded. "I'll call this one Bladecharge. This is it!"

Riku drove Way to Dawn up into the Heartless' head, expanding its aura further until it could be seen shining from behind the blade-spikes that made up the Elder Bladewyrm's crown. Then Riku shoved the Keyblade downward, slicing as far down the dragon's neck as he could reach. Clouds of vaporous Darkness spurted from the wound, then began to rise from all over the Heartless' body. The entire dragon began to vibrate, which was Riku and Lambda's cue to take cover far away from it. That was a smart decision, because every scale on the dragon blasted off its body in one last attempt to take the victorious heroes down with it. Metal pinged off the ground all over the city, but Riku and Lambda weren't in the city to be hit, and Meteor had logged out to pass on the good news.

A cluster of no less than thirty huge hearts floated into the sky where the Elder Bladewyrm once stood and vanished into thin air, freed from the Darkness that held them, but no one was left in Alfheim to watch the spectacle.

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Area: MAP DATA RESTRICTED...

Riku had teleported to an admin-only area, high in the branches of the World Tree. The open air blew around him in surprisingly gentle currents as he took in the view from a branch as wide as one of the city streets in Alne below him.

There was a golden cage hanging from the lowest branch, which seemed to be for an enormous canary, but the lavish bed and other expensive furnishings inside the cage suggested a more sinister choice of captive. No one was held inside right now, though; who was Oberon planning to imprison in this gilded cage?

Riku decided he'd had enough of guessing about this world, though. His goal was there, too; a tiny, shining Keyhole was set in the cage's door. Riku pointed Way to Dawn at the Keyhole, and the weapon emitted a beam of Light to seal this world away from the grasp of the Heartless forever.

"One last thing to do. Let's head back to where we first got here, Lambda."

With one last look at the cage, Lambda nodded and grasped Riku's shoulder. They both vanished in a burst of Darkness.

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A lonely bedroom...

The boy known in ALO as Meteor laid back on his bed. By now, Riku and Lambda would have finished what they came for, so they were probably gone. He hadn't had a chance to say goodbye to them. Meeting them wasn't a waste, though. The boy had received a notification on his tablet; an enormous sum of Yrd had been transferred to Meteor's account from the administrative team, in recognition of his initiative and swift response to the recent crisis.

ALO's server would be down for emergency maintenance until the next day, but when he could log back in, Meteor planned to buy a more durable sword that would be able to withstand his signature move, and maybe catch up with a few of the officers that seemed nice while he fought alongside them in the coalition. Seeing Riku's resolve and skill had instilled Meteor with the confidence to try again at making a name for himself in ALO. Maybe one day, that confidence would help him in the real world, too.

The boy closed his eyes and fell asleep, dreaming of awesome finishing moves.

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Back to square one...

Riku and Lambda reappeared back in the forest where they'd first stumbled into the world of ALfheim Online. As Riku had hoped, the Dark Corridor he had used was still there, thrumming and pulsing ominously. With sure steps, he took Lambda's hand and strode through.

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Twilight Town: Computer Room...

Riku stumbled out the other side of the Dark Corridor, pulling Lambda along with him. That trip felt different than usual - the pulling sensation of falling in and out of the Realm of Darkness was rougher and lasted longer. Riku took it as a good sign, and raised his Keyblade one more time.

The beam of Light shot at the Dark Corridor. Rather than glow, fade, or disperse into sparkles when the beam made contact, the wavering of the Darkness instantly stopped. The Dark Corridor appeared frozen in time, with the consistency of a purple-black pane of glass. Also like glass, it shattered into hundreds of shards. Unlike glass, the shards vanished when they hit the ground.

Riku's posture slumped in relief. "Thank goodness! I don't know what I could have done if this hunch turned out to be wrong like I usually am." His Keyblade vanished in a swirl of blue, white, and black as the threat was ended.

Practically as a formality, Riku raised his hand and tried to re-summon Way to Dawn, but Soul Eater appeared instead. Riku wasn't worried, though. "I'll get it back one day...someday soon. In the meantime, do you want to get some ice cream, Lambda?"

Lambda gave a mighty yawn, unable to dredge up the energy to comment about their latest adventure. " I'd rather go to sleep, honestly..."

"Ha, yeah. Let's get some rest. The worlds' peril can wait until tomorrow, for once."

The pair retired to the bed in the Colored Room, where they found a sketch from...who else? Namine.

It was a block-letter message surrounded by stylized ones and zeroes. "Congratulations!"

"...I guess the outcome was never really in doubt, huh? Well, good night, Riku."

"Good night, Lambda."

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A/N: Aaaand DONE!

Edit: FierceDeityMask tells me in his review that I should share the inspiration for the Elder Bladewyrm. The boss is based on a certain raid boss from the Monster Hunter series called Disufiroa. It's apparently an utterly unique dragon, even in a world with enough dragons to have "Dragon" as an elemental power. This Heartless looks similar to Disufiroa, but has an entirely different set of attacks and weaknesses.

A tiny bit of epilogue has been added to wrap up Meteor's part in the plot.