Kairi Hearts

By Chronic Guardian

Written for Twelve Shots of Summer: DECK

Week 3: Emperor and Heirophant

03 – Keys to Past and Future

Training with Mr. H. consumed the next week. Maybe he wasn't a Keyblade Master, but his mentorship already felt more purposeful than being sent off into the magical time-altered woods with Axel. Nothing against Axel, of course, but he had proven to be just as new to the cosmic guardian perspective as she had.

Mr. H. was essentially the opposite: he knew things—namely what she needed to do to become a competent Keyblade Master—and gave her tools to realize those things. He taught her to use Keyblade Armor and transform her Keyblade into a glider to safely travel off world. By the end of the second day, she had gone to orbit and back before some evening monster hunting. By the end of the fourth day, he'd taught her how to slip between the Underground and the so-called "Realground" in San Fransokyo. Every day after that was an exercise in field confidence as she pressed further and further away from this new home base.

And yet… she still hadn't found another world yet.

She'd found asteroids. There were lots of those in the lanes between. There were even structures that looked like the ruins of lost worlds, but she hadn't found another world yet.

"Am I doing this wrong?" She asked Hanekoma over a cup of coffee. He'd started charging her since the second day, but her training against the local Heartless kept her wallet healthy enough that it wasn't an issue. "Like, is there a system to this that I'm missing?"

"Well..." Mr. H. sighed and kept his eyes on shining up a mug. "I could try to dig out a primer for ya, but there's a bit of a snag in that. See—," he put down his work and ducked under the counter, coming back up with a stack of blank-spined notebooks. "—problem with the worlds is, they keep on changing. 'Specially, now."

She swirled her own mug, watching the foamed milk art on the top jiggle and settled back into place, releasing more of its rich aromas. "You mean with the mergings Mim talked about?"

"Yeah, stuff like that," he nodded and retrieved his former work to continue is idling. "Not quite finished with the latest edition, but I'm workin' on a comprehensive history. Gettin' a little crazy, lately... Mim and her buddies weren't always the big gang in town, but they're makin' the most mischeif now. Lookin' for the Foreteller Relics, right?

"Anyway, point being I'm not quite up to date anymore," he finished with an apologetic smile. "'Course, if you don't mind getting an eye out on the cosmic neighborhood for me, that could go a long way. And who knows? Maybe you'll even get your rematch with the Mad Madam."

He finished the suggestion with a pointed look over his sunglasses. Even indoors in the evening, he kept them on, justified as "an irreplaceable part of the classic ensemble." Kairi smiled down at her drink, thinking of how strange her adventure had become that this man was her standard for normalcy. Still, she caught his drift. This would be a good opportunity to pay him back for his help.

More than that, it would give her something to do while she figured herself out. She wasn't giving up on Sora, but that didn't mean she couldn't work on smaller goals in the meantime.

"Alright," she answered, knitting her fingers closer around her mug. The warm ceramic nestled in her hands like one of Axel's flames he'd given her to nurture. If he'd taught her one thing during their time in the forest, it was how to hold and cultivate fire magic, to build a flame from less than a spark. "I guess someone has to bring back some order out there."

-K-

She started the next day with a single goal: go as far as possible into the Lanes Between and keep notes on whatever she found, whether or not she thought it had to do with Mim. She had a hearty breakfast (courtesy of Mr. Hanekoma), and they toasted the endeavor with orange juice.

Inter-world travel meant engaging her Keyblade armor, which meant a long day with only magically crafted sheets of metal between her and the abyss of space. It didn't press on her the way she thought it would, but it still felt weird. Maybe she would look into getting a Gummi ship further down the line… as long as she could pull together a crew, they would be able to fly it for her while she worked on reports.

The first stretch of the day took her through an interstellar graveyard, past the husks of Gummi ships and titanic skeletons that came from who-knew-what kinds of creatures. She stopped to take notes inside the bridge of one of the derelict ships and even tried the controls to see if she could revive it. No luck. Not even a spark as the buttons softly clicked under her gauntlets.

I guess things have been going on for a while, she mused, pulling open sealed cupboards to see what had been left behind. She found a couple of bottles with faded tags, but for the most part it seemed the wreck had been thoroughly scavenged long ago.

She was just finishing up with her notes when she realized there was activity outside.

It was a long, ridged vessel. It had a bubble helm at the front and mechanical fins, like a fish wearing a small diving helmet on its nose. It moved through the ship graveyard with active search lights combing through the wreckage like spindly luminous bristles of an archaeologist's brush.

As it passed, Kairi could just make out little silhouettes on the bridge. She squinted, then rushed to deploy her glider. It wasn't a Heartless vessel. Those were either formed whole cloth out of Heartless or had the things writhing all across the hull. There were actual people on this one.

And if there were people on a ship, then they had to have come from somewhere.

Accelerating her glider to full tilt, Kairi went about pulling up alongside the ship. It was bigger than she had realized, entirely dwarfing her craft by many orders of magnitude. Was it a warship? She examined the sharp angles and spines along the ridges for clues.

She was just coming to the ships fore when a metal claw shot out and caught the nose of her Glider. Kairi heaved at the sudden change in momentum, but kept her grip even as the claw drew her in back towards the ship. A hatch opened up to welcome her, blinding her with sudden light.

"Alright, alright! At ease, everyone," a rugged, well worn voice boomed as she finished her descent into the beast. "Clear the alert, it doesn't look like a Heartless. Packard, ring up Sweet to run a diagnostic and see if Farnsworth has any leftovers from lunch. I think we can afford to be hospitable with this one."

Kairi, her Keyblade now in its natural form and gripped tight to her chest, ran a quick scan over the assembled crew. They had her totally surrounded and were well armed but weren't, in fact, Heartless. There was a possibility they were Nobodies, but Yen Sid had said that truly human-like Nobodies were a rarity, so it was safer to assume ordinary Somebodies.

"You, uh, sure about that order, boss?" One of the crewers, a supremely non-plussed man with an impressive mustache, gestured at her with his free hand. His other hand, she noted, held a gun, now pointed at the floor. "I mean, you think this tin-suit's gonna play friendly if you feed it like that?"

Lunch? Well, that didn't sound so bad for a first impression. putting Reaching up with her own freehand, Kairi pulled off her helmet and tried to appear amiable. "More than just a tin-suit, thanks," she said to the concerned crewer. "Although, my stomach is feeling pretty empty."

"Oh, a free-loader, then," the man changed his assessment in stride, his face remaining a flat mask of disinterest. "That's a new one. Didn't think we had those in space."

Kairi blushed. "H-hey!"

"Enough, Mr. Santorini," the first voice cut in. The speaker, a middle aged man with sharp, blocky features and a jaw that looked like it could break a coconut, gave her a professional smile. He wore an olive uniform that reminded her of the formal research wear Ansem's assistants employed on Radiant Garden. "She isn't a free-loader, she's a guest. Get me Mr. Thatch and take the rest of the shift off. Today is a good day."

Santorini, for his part, wrinkled his mustache and shrugged. "Alright, you the boss."

"My apologies for Vinnie's behavior, Miss," the middle aged man continued, stepping forward to offer a hand. "Commander Lyle Rourke at your service. Welcome aboard the Ulysses. I hope you don't mind me recruiting your help in exchange for a meal?"

"Yeah, a meal," Santorini—or, Vinnie, as Rourke called him now—pitched in over his shoulder. "Who knows? Might even be edible if you're lucky."

Rourke gave a rueful chuckle and waved off the rest of the crewers. "Well, if you'd like, you can wait until after you've tasted the payment. Our quartermaster is a bit of an acquired taste, but he'll keep us alive as long as this voyage lasts."

"Voyage?" Kairi perked up. "If you're looking for a place to set down, I could take you back to the world I set off from."

"Oh? Well, that's something. Mr. Milo Thatch, our cultural analyst, may be interested in what you have to say."

The deflection, though carefully cordial, left Kairi blinking as she sorted through the implications. Milo Thatch, not Commander Rourke, would be interested in what she had to say. Maybe Rourke was more concerned with the mission than finding safe ports?

Watching Vinnie's retreating back. Kairi wondered whether or not she would have preferred a ship full of Heartless. At least with them, she knew what she was supposed to be doing.

-K-

Milo Thatch, as it turned out, was a pleasantly odd duck on the Ulysses crew. He was only barely older than Kairi herself, curious, well read, enthusiastic about their work, and incredibly loose with his information. He wore large spectacle that gave him a vaguely owlish look, and had a slight, wiry build.

He also spoke like a bottled up lake that had just found a new outlet to empty its waters into. Maybe the other crewmates hadn't been quite so receptive to his research.

"We're hunting Foreteller Relics," he explained excitedly over a collection of books and diagrams. "My father found records in our world referencing back to the Keyblade War that alluded to an earlier civilization. Traditionally, we treat the Age of Fairytales like it's this… uh, mythic, prehistoric explanation for why our worlds formed the way they did. But, twelve years ago, dad found a nearly intact copy of The Book of Prophecies. That explained not just things that have happened, but things that would happen, and also linked our current worlds to how things were in the previous age. And the key in all of this are these things that the writer only mentions, like once. Right before the Keyblade War, the Foretellers make one last ditch effort to maintain and restore the old world, so they each commission their Unions to make these Relics."

"I... think I see," Kairi said, trying to make some sense of it in her old notes for Mr. Hanekoma. "And, if you don't mind my asking, you're looking for the Relics because…?"

"Because?" he gave a disbelieving laugh and ran his hands through his hair. "Because they're the greatest lost wonders of age? Maybe because each of them is described as having unimaginable power? I mean, look at this one: Ira's Cauldron. Said to revive fallen souls from the Sleeping Realms and Unreality itself. Or-or this! Ava's Garden, a mobile training center and bunker meant as an ark to shelter souls from the Keyblade War. I mean, these aren't just concepts, we're talking about things they actually made happen! Isn't that just incredible?"

"It's…" Kairi sucked in as much tact as she could muster and bit her lip. "Yes, I think incredible is a good word for it," she finished as tactfully as she could.

Still, incredible or not, these were the things Mim was after. If a weirdo like her gained the power to revive the dead, there would probably be literal hell to pay. Even when Milo wasn't talking, sitting in the midst of all this was almost making her head spin.

"And on top of all that," Milo went on, "here you are with a real-life Keybalde, so it looks like my father's calculations were correct!"

Kairi cocked her head. "His… calculations?"

"Well, yeah! See, he realized that Keyblades, as these sort of anchors of light in the old world, were tied to these Unions that were also tied to the Relics. So he made a theory, right? He says as Keyblades become more common in the current age, they'll be drawn towards the Relics as the world tries to reform itself. If you're a real life Key Bearer, that means you could help prove this theory. Do you know anything about a guiding key of the Heart?"

"Sort of… I know it was something my friends said," she answered, clasping a hand over her sternum. Yen Sid in particular had made it a mantra in those final days, but the others had picked it up, too. She opened her mouth and repeated it for herself: "'May your Heart be your guiding key'."

It was honestly still something she didn't really understand all the way. Sora's Heart had led him into oblivion, hadn't it? Even before that, Yen Sid said Sora failed his Mark of Mastery exam specifically because he kept following his Heart further and further into the Sleeping Realms to the point that he nearly lost himself. Was the Heart really such a reliable guide when it led to such destruction?

"Say, Milo?"

"Hmm?" Milo, who had reabsorbed himself in the reading materials strewn across the floor, blinked back at her. "Ah, sorry. What's up, Kairi?"

"What if our Hearts or Keyblades—or even these Relics—what if they… what if they don't lead to good things?"

"I… huh," he frowned and puzzled over the suggestion. "I guess… I mean, why…?"

After a few false starts, he fell silent and went back to the books.

"The Foretellers had the Relics, but it didn't stop the Keyblade War," Kairi pressed. "We've had our Hearts, but they don't always keep us out of trouble. Don't you think we might be in danger of making the same mistakes over again if we don't check ourselves? If we put our faith in the wrong things, then maybe we'll bring ruin to the worlds again."

"Well… that's part of being on a team, isn't it?" Milo offered, taking off his glasses to wipe them on his shirt. "I mean, if we don't all do our jobs and look out for everyone around us then of course we'll run into trouble. There's always someone in the next department over you should be talking to if you wanna keep your perspective straight."

Kairi pressed her mouth into a thin line. Even from her admittedly limited perspective, that was sounding a bit stubbornly optimistic. "Is that what your team does for you?"

For a moment, Milo didn't say anything. Kairi waited, wondering if she should apologize or just let the statement stand. Honestly, she was feeling a little annoyed with how the rest of the crew had treated her, but that didn't mean she should take it out on Milo.

"I hope I do it for them," he said at last. "I mean, there's gotta be a reason they're taking me along on an adventure like this, right?"

Kairi studied him, then nodded. It was a matter of choice. People had done things intentionally, for a reason. Maybe things didn't always pan out the way they were meant to, but that didn't mean intentions weren't important.

Sora hadn't meant to disappear, he'd only meant to save her.

"There's a reason for all of this," she said quietly. Maybe she didn't like where she'd ended up, but that didn't mean the universe was entirely random. There were still patterns in it for those who chose to see them.

"Yeah… too bad not everyone kept records on those," Milo sighed, turning towards a porthole in the wall. Outside, the ruins of ancient ships still floated in space. "Sure would be nice to know what happened here… some of them look like they took damage, but others are basically whole, like they were abandoned or their systems just gave out."

"Well, whatever happened to them, they helped me meet you," Kairi offered, and tried to smile at one more person in the universe who hadn't brushed her aside while she attempted the impossible.

"That's not what I—that's not what they're meant for."

"I know," she said. "But sometimes things don't do what they're meant to. And that's alright."

Chapter Closed

A/N: So, I know this one is very rambly and mostly connective tissue as Kairi just thinks her way through, but I wanted a snapshot of Kairi both getting to explore and stretch her understanding as well as keep away from putting all the villain stuff on the table too early. Count it as filler if you like; the worlds don't have to be in peril every minute of every day for the story to progress.

Hopefully next week, we can jump into a scenario with more merging worlds as we visit "The Bayou".

That's the plan anyway…

Thank you for reading, and may you continue to enjoy this season of Twelve Shots of Summer! If you're looking for more shots of various fandoms to enjoy, you can always search up the tag "Twelve Shots of Summer" or "TSoS" to find entries from myself and many other writers as we strive to make this summer a great one.