Two more chapters, ladies and gents.

Episode 30: Champion For Real:

Twilight Town – The Sandlot

August 30, 2015

"Ladies and gentleman," the portly man on the center of the stage announced. "Struggle fiends of Twilight Town and the rest of the Daybreak Coalition, it's time for this summer's most sizzling clash!" Fireworks went off above the Sandlot as the cheering of the crowd grew louder. "That's right!" the referee went on. "Today is the day for the Struggle and the Title Match! Who will be the one to break through the ranks and take on our defending champion, Setzer? And who will leave here today as our new Struggle champion!?" All around the makeshift platform, the cheering fans shouted out the names of their favorite contestants that they wanted to win this year's tournament.

In the alleyway leading from the Sandlot to Station Heights, the four contenders who fought their way through the preliminary matches earlier in the summer waited in the wings. Hayner, Roxas, Seifer, and Vivi stood anxiously as the announcer went on to announce their names to the already screaming crowd. When the announcer finished, Roxas and Hayner headed up to the ring for the first match.

The struggle preliminaries were held a few days after the former Nobodies had moved into their house on the terrace, and Roxas had practically sprinted out the door to sign up. He'd convinced Xion to give it a try as well, but she hadn't made it past the preliminaries. She still came to cheer him on though, and Roxas was glad she was there. As he and Hayner took their place on the stage, Roxas couldn't help but smile at how much his life had come full circle. Focusing back on the match, he dropped into a fighting stance seconds before the referee blew the whistle and the duel began.

Little red balls flew everywhere as Roxas landed the first strike against Hayner. The valcro padded armor Struggle combatants wore held the balls used to determine scores, and were specifically designed for the balls to detach from the padding with a single blow. Hayner put up a good fight, and Lea and Xion had given him some sword training to increase his skill, but Roxas had much more experience when it came to fighting with swords. After the sixty seconds of the match were up, the former Key of Destiny was declared the winner and moved on to the semifinals.

"I lost," Hayner moaned as Roxas helped him up from the floor of the arena. "I can't believe it. Guess all that time wielding a Keyblade taught you well."

"I had a lot of fun fighting you," Roxas said with a smile as they walked off the stage to make room for the next match.

"Yeah?" Hayner retorted. "Well I didn't, wise guy."

"Come on then," Roxas replied. "Let's find a way to cheer you up."

"Nah," Hayner said with a chuckle. "That's alright." They joined Xion, Lea, Namine, Pence, and Olette at one of the benches along the side of the stage to watch Seifer go up against Vivi. Roxas mentally breathed a sigh of relief that Vivi had the upper hand. Not that he wanted Seifer to win, but when he'd fought Vivi in the digital Twilight Town, it had been a Dusk in disguise, and that had led to a lot of confusion and pain for him. Given how his time in the simulation ended, Roxas was a little reluctant to fight Vivi again.

Seifer ended up winning his match, pitting him against Roxas in the finals. Roxas felt bad for wanted Vivi to lose. He liked the guy to be honest. Right now he was just afraid of having flashbacks to all the crazy stuff that had happened in the simulation. Roxas blushed when Xion gave him a quick kiss for luck before he walked up onto the stage to face Seifer. Roxas may have only been in the fake Twilight Town for a week, but from what he'd seen of Seifer's fighting style, the guy had proven to be disappointingly predictable in the preliminaries, and in the end, Roxas won the fight by a landslide.

Roxas blushed even more when Xion gave him a congratulatory hug. With only a few minutes to cool off before the title match against Setzer, Olette quickly raced over with a water bottle. As he took a sip of water to rehydrate before the final match, Hayner and the others all offered their congratulations as the referees cleaned the point balls off the ring and reattached them to the Velcro pads worn by the combatants worn in the final match. When everything was ready, Roxas and Setzer stepped into the arena.

"Hey, ruck-sack," Setzer said bluntly as they got into position on the stage. "How about you throw the match for me. Let me win and I'll make it worth your while." Roxas simply glared in response.

"Get real," he retorted before getting into a fighting stance. The announcer went on to announce a few more things, and then finally the whistle blew, and the championship match began. Roxas rolled out of the way to dodge Setzer's first strike before landing a few hits of his own. Setzer swung and managed to get in a few good hits before Roxas parried and countered, evening the score. Roxas grinned as his Struggle bat knocked five more balls off his opponent's armor. It was on.

When the final match ended a minute later, Roxas stood there in shock at the fact that he had won. He was champion of the Struggle tournament. For real this time. No simulations, no dreams. He was really the champion. The cheering of his friends snapped him back to reality. As he listened to the announcer drone on with the usual end of tournament speech, he smiled proudly as he lifted the championship belt above his head triumphantly. When the crowds of people congratulating him finally dispersed, he lead Xion, Lea, Namine, Hayner, Pence, and Olette down to the Tram Common to buy some ice cream so they could celebrate up on the Clock Tower.

After watching the sunset while they ate their ice cream, the group went back to the house the former Nobodies shared and ordered enough pizzas to last the night. As they waited for their dinner, Roxas took the little crystal balls off the tips of the trophy for this year's struggle tournament. Since Hayner, Pence, and Olette already had their own crystals (apparently Seifer had given his old trophy to Sora as a gesture of respect, and he'd given the crystals to them after accidentally dropping the trophy), Roxas gave the red crystal on his trophy to Lea, the yellow one to Namine, and the green one to Xion, while keeping the blue one to himself.

Although he and Xion still had flashbacks and kept coming into each other's rooms in the middle of the night, life had improved for both of them. As he ran his fingers through her hair as they laid in his bed later that night, he couldn't help but marvel once again at how far he'd come. A month ago, he had nothing. He was just a tiny voice in the back of Sora's subconscious incapable of interacting with the outside world. Now he had his own body, his own life, a place to call home, and more friends than he'd ever had before. I'm probably one of the luckiest guys in Twilight Town, he thought to himself as he drifted off to join Xion in slumber.

I know, Seifer was the Struggle Champion in the real Twilight Town in Kingdom Hearts 2. I didn't make a mistake, he was simply dethroned by Setzer between KH2 and The Xehanort War. I wanted to have these Struggle scenes be similar to yet different from the ones in Kingdom Hearts 2 so I borrowed some of the dialogue to help emphasize that. I was originally going to have both Roxas and Xion compete but I decided to just go with Roxas since 1) Xion's personality in the games doesn't seem like she'd really be into it, 2) even if she was into it (which I haven't made up my mind on), she doesn't have as much experience with the bats, so I figured it made sense that she wouldn't make it to the finals. That and I realized that having them possibly fight each other would give them uncomfortable reminders of their fight in 358 Days and a potential flashback, and I wanted this chapter to be happier.

Next chapter: a little bit of focus on Terra and Aqua since they haven't really gotten much in the way of significant introspective page time since I finished The Xehanort War.