Oh gods... I love Selenia. I really do.

Anyways, look forward to nightly updates. I have every intention of ending this on my father's birthday, and it will be done, because to be honest, at this point, they all just need uploaded, glanced over for formatting errors makes, and then posted.

Also, from here on out, with exception to Part 121, the story will be told from POV's not Kairi's. Because, to be honest, Kairi spends most of this time unconscious.

"That can't be healthy." –Selenia

Chapter 13.6 – End Game
Part 116

Reighn's POV

I cursed Zion's parentage rather creatively as I stalked back into 'camp' that morning. Jade—and everyone else, I noted—gave me an odd look, and Kairi looked a bit defeated.

"Alright. How bad is it?" she asked reluctantly. I muttered a couple more curses before sitting down and scowling at the breakfast pot.

"It's too complicated for me to break it in any reasonable amount of time, and it doesn't matter who steps on it or how many. We're triggering it one way or another, and I highly doubt whoever's operating the second stage of it is planning on keeping all of us together," I said.

"Wait, what's going on?" Anise asked. Kairi sighed.

"Trap."

That one word was enough to make everyone suddenly look worried. Jade groaned.

"And that's the only path into the next section of Eldrant."

Kairi nodded. "That's why they put the trap there." She huffed. "Alright. What exactly can we expect upon springing it?"

"You've got to be kidding me," Natalia started. Kairi shook her head.

"We have to get to Eldrant's core. Which means yes, we have to walk right into the trap. But the more we know about it, the more we can prepare for whatever we'll have to face afterwards."

I nodded. "Kairi's right... As for the trap... Stage one is fairly simple. It's a fonic glyph, and it'll light up and trap us in place. This is where it gets more complicated... There's a second stage where we all get teleported elsewhere, except this particular trap is designed to be able to teleport multiple people to multiple different locations. I'm guessing we'll get about ten seconds to figure out who's going to be dumped with whom. We're not going to have a clue where we end up, though."

Kairi grimaced here. "Given that I'm the one Zion's after, I think we can assume I'll be sent somewhere else entirely."

No one looked pleased about that.

"On that note, Zion wants her alive... And as Legretta said earlier, Zion only needs Kairi alive. The rest of us will likely be dropped into hostile situations, so either have your weapons drawn or be ready to draw them at a moment's notice," I said. "The only good news is, that glyph can't kill us. Only move us to someplace else."

"So we're going to have to find Kairi once we get out of whatever sticky situation we land in?" Dark said. "If she's the one Zion wants... Oh, hell. How much you wanna bet that's where Ryndor and Rhunön are waiting?"

Kairi sighed. "Most likely. I can't beat those two. Zion by himself, maybe, but not those two." She paused. "Once we all land, I'll see who I can reach. I should be able to connect to everyone, which ought to make grouping up again a little easier... Assuming I don't get knocked out first." Asch gave her a rather sour look to indicate his displeasure with that particular train of thought, while I sighed and finally got myself some of the breakfast I'd been missing out on.

"You're sure there's no way to dismantle the fonic glyph before it can activate?" Jade asked. I nodded, swallowed, and then spoke.

"Positive. Even with you, me, and Selenia working on it, it would take us at least three hours nonstop to even break the teleporting part. As for the trap underneath... That one would take even longer, and if we stopped for more than five minutes to take a break before starting on that... well, it's designed to restore the second level of the trap after x amount of time, so..."

Jade cursed, and Selenia went pale.

"Damn... they had to have been working on that for ages..."

I nodded and went back to eating.

"So we don't have a choice. I don't think it's physically possible for you three to break that fonic glyph, so we'll just have to walk into the trap and hope we can get to Kairi before she gets dragged out of Eldrant," Dark said. He sighed. "I don't like it, but we don't have a choice. We have to stop the fomicry machines here."

I noticed Kairi nodding with an absent-minded look on her face.

"I don't like that look, Kairi," Sync said. She grimaced.

"If I get knocked out, you guys will have to break up. Someone's going to have to come after me, while the others finish this," she said. Asch looked like he wanted to argue, but Luke sighed.

"If that's the case... Asch? You're going to want to leave, so in case we get separated, I need the Sword of Lorelei."

Asch looked over at him, surprised, but held a hand out. It formed in his hand easily, and he handed it over without a word.

Kairi's smile told me that this was something I was better off not asking about.

"Reighn, do you know how many different places they could send us to?" Jade asked. I frowned and did the mental math using what I remembered of the glyph.

"Five. One's for Kairi... I'm going to guess they'll split the rest of us up based on short-range or long-range, and then divide those groups into two to make them smaller and easier to take out," I said. It's what I'd do, at least, and I was guessing that Star would be operating this, so that meant she'd work much like I would.

"Then Asch's group and the long-range group closest to the exit will go after Kairi," Dark said. He sighed. "Well... Who's ready to go spring it? I don't think we're going to get much more prepared than this."

Sadly, now that I was done eating, Dark was right.

I sighed, put my mess kit away, and stood. It didn't take us very long at all to finish packing up camp, and once we were done, we headed out, hoping that the odds would be in our favor for once.

Of course, as soon as all of us were within the glyph's rather large range, it activated.

I hated it. That feeling of being unable to move.

I glanced at the rings around our feet. Kairi's turned violet. Mine, Dark's, and Jade's turned blue. I noticed that Asch, Sync, Selenia, and Flick were all green before the glyphs activated and I was blinded. Damn, I didn't get to see the other two groups...

The moment we landed, I felt Kairi opening up a telepathic channel, and I glanced around, Gold Wisteria in my hand. No enemies yet...

*Reighn, Dark, Jade, you guys are closest to the exit. Just a few rooms down the hallway, actually,* Kairi said. *Asch, you guys are the next closest, two floors down. The stairs should be somewhere nearby...*

*Once you're on the next floor, it's a straight shot to the second staircase,* Jade said, having pulled out the map. *Good, if we have to go back to get Kairi, this should be easy.*

*Shit, gotta run!*

*Wait, who were the other two groups?* I asked.

*Me, Guy and Seth are one group,* Luke said.

*I'm with Anise, Ion, and Natalia,* Tear added.

*Those two groups are fairly close to each other, though I'm not totally sure where the hell they dumped me. I'm a lot higher up than the rest of you,* Kairi said, though I could tell she was running from the mild exhaustion I could hear in her mental voice. *Fuck!*

The connection broke rather suddenly, and I looked over at Jade. It was obvious what had happened.

"Let's go," he said, taking off for the exit.

Kairi had been right. We were just down the hall from where the trap had been sprung.

Unfortunately, the previously-empty hallway was now flooded with replicated Oracle Knights.

I scowled. "Dark, you and I stick to melee. Jade, stand back and cast. You've got First Aid; use it if you think one of us needs it."

Jade grunted, but I knew he'd do it even if he didn't really like it. The situation was a bit too dire for him to do anything else, after all.

Dark's chakrams were in his hands almost before I started running.

I hated acting as a melee fighter.

With a passion only rivaled by my love for my little sister, if I was being honest.

But I could fight, and I would fight, because I knew that if Zion got his way, Kairi would end up dead. He needed her alive for his plans to work out—that didn't mean he needed her alive after she'd done whatever the hell he needed her for. And she'd pissed him off far too much for me to believe for even a second that he wouldn't kill her.

Assuming the task in question didn't end up killing her.

"Demon Wing!"

A replica tried to sneak up behind me, only for a Blessed Drops to land on it. I smirked and stepped into the field of fonons, watching the foolish replicas follow me.

"Drown! Dryad's Circle!"

The aquatic Draconic Soul killed most of the replicas I'd just attacked, and Gold Wisteria's poison killed the rest, so I moved on to the next group.

Asch, Sync, Selenia, and Flick ran up to us as we finally cleared the hallway.

"Damn, you guys had to fight all over the place out here, looks like," Selenia commented. "We only had to deal with the group in the room... Not a lot of space to fight, but it also meant less running around to get everything killed."

I rolled my eyes. Count on Selenia to keep rambling. "Let's go. They've got the help of Arietta's monsters—by now I'm sure Ryndor's gotten Kairi onto one and is flying off."

Asch nodded. "And we still need to find the damn place... At least we have a general idea of where to look," he said. He then ran across the area where the fonic glyph laid. The rest of us followed, though I watched it carefully, half-expecting Star to activate it again.

She didn't. That meant one of two things.

Either she was confident that we wouldn't make it to Kairi in time to stop Zion from using her for whatever the hell he was trying to do...

Or she'd left to go fight one of the other two groups.

"Asch, can you warn Luke that they may have to fight Star?" I asked. He glanced over his shoulder.

"Why do you think they'll have to fight her?" he asked. I bit my lip, and then cursed softly when my teeth broke skin, because I really shouldn't be doing that when I'm running.

"That trap was supposed to be able to active multiple times... That it didn't go off when we ran across just now means that Star, the most likely operator, either thinks we won't make it to Kairi in time, which is a possibility given that we have to backtrack what took us a day and a half to traverse before, or she's preoccupied with something else..."

"Like fighting one of the other groups..." Asch said.

"Oh no... Ion! Star said she might let Sync live, but she was gonna kill Ion because he stole Zion's place and name!" Selenia said.

Asch was silent for a while as we ran. "Luke said they met up with the long-range group. Sorylle's sticking close to Natalia for now rather than trying to catch up to us," he said. Dark sighed in relief. "And I warned them that Star might be after them for Ion."

"Thanks, Asch," Sync said. I glanced over at him, and had we not been running, I'd have reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.

For about a month and a half, Sync and I had travelled together with no company but the Dark Wings... when we didn't ditch them to walk off and talk about things we didn't really want them overhearing. The kid had become something of a little brother to me, too, and every time I saw Aerith, it felt like a betrayal, because seeing Aerith always reminded me of Matthias...

I'd failed Matthias. I'd failed Aerith so many times, as well.

It hurt, but I was determined not to fail Sync, too.

And that meant we had to get to Kairi, preferably before Zion killed her. Because the dead really couldn't come back to life.

Unless...

"Does Kairi know how her doppelganger thing works?" I asked. No, Selenia and Flick didn't know about it, but it wasn't like we had Kairi's telepathy to use for a private conversation, and, well...

Kairi had said Zion knew she was from another world, and if I knew Zion, he would try to use that to make us hesitate. Better than the two of them got told the basics now before it could be used against us... I'd warned her at Tataroo Valley, after all.

"Kairi's gonna kill you, you know that right?" Asch said, sounding rather amused. I huffed.

"I warned her back at Tataroo Valley. And Zion knows... He'll likely try to use that information against us in an attempt to stop us from saving her if we arrive before..." I trailed off, not wanting to finish that sentence. I didn't need to, anyway. The expressions the others wore told me I'd said more than enough.

"No, she doesn't," Sync said. "That's what I'd been banking on when I nearly died in Keterburg... But she told me later she didn't know how it worked."

I scowled. "Then we can't count on her coming back if Zion decides he's finished with her before we reach them."

Flick gave me the strangest look. "What the hell are you talking about? Doppelganger thing? Coming back... Like, from the dead? But that's impossible."

Sync sighed and glanced back. Flick and Selenia were both looking totally baffled. "Kairi's existing on two worlds at the same time right now," he said. "And she's been doing it since the night she landed in a snowdrift in Keterburg a year and some months ago."

"That can't be healthy," Selenia said, almost casually. Sync forced a laugh.

"Well... it means that if she dies here, she'll snap back to her other body. Unfortunately... As we mentioned, she doesn't know how to do it consciously, so there's a very real possibility that she'll never come back if she does die," he said.

"Wait, that's why you guys were laughing when Anise made the comment about other worlds!" Flick said. "You knew Kairi was from another world!"

Asch nodded. "She told me, Sync, and Dark just a month after we met her, not long after Dark started working for Natalia. She said she told Jade just before the peace conference, she told Reighn after we lowered the Outer Lands, and I had to tell Luke because he overheard Zion talking about it and blabbed to Father."

"That sounds like it was an amusing conversation."

Asch just snorted at Jade's comment.

Fun Fact: Originally when I wrote this, Asch didn't know when Kairi told Jade and Jade informed him it was after eavesdropping on them in Sheridan. However, as I started posting again, I found that Kairi told him about it within a couple chapters. Whoops... So the last couple lines here got edited.