Kingdom Hearts: The Girl Who Stole the Star

by Lacan Shinn

Sequel to KH: SEOD. Sora is restored from The Final World to find that much has changed since he vanished. Sora's death has devastated Kairi and Riku; Roxas, Xion, Anna, and Elsa are faced with nightmare destinies; and the mysterious Master of the Foretellers, adumbrated by shade, is on the verge of completing his millennia long plan. The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.

11. The Neverending Spiral of Effervescence

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CHAPTER 10:

THE NEVERENDING SPIRAL OF EFFERVESCENCE

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Author's Notes: For this Chapter, the pieces are: 'Decadence Of God,' from the BREATH OF FIRE II Original Soundtrack; and afterwards 'The Darkness Of Eternity,' from the FINAL FANTASY IX Original Soundtrack, Disc Four; and afterwards 'Lavos' Theme,' from the CHRONO TRIGGER Original Sound Version, Disc Two; after this 'An Unfading Dream,' from the FINAL FANTASY X Original Soundtrack, Disc Four; and after this 'Turn Over A New Leaf (Rhythm Version),' from the VALKYRIE PROFILE Original Soundtrack, Disc Two. The last piece is the only one that can be found on KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section, though.

---

Kairi paid attention to where Hades was standing, in his regular unheated state, and then turned her gaze in the direction of the figure standing to his right.

Kairi clenched her teeth.

Zack, or the Angel of Sin as she knew that he now was, didn't look the slightest bit different from the person Ven and Aqua and Terra had told them about; and though flickering rainbows of various ghostly, pallid, simple, regular, neon, and glaring colors were rippling and shimmering out through space and the air, and perhaps time for all Kairi knew, wildly in all directions in front of him and to his sides and behind him, he was still wearing the same armor and garments that Terra and Aqua and Ven had related to them that he'd been wearing when they'd met him.

But Zack was carrying a Keyblade in his right hand.

Kairi knew that she shouldn't have been surprised.

Zack was now the same kind of entity that Cloud was, and Cloud had become what he was when he'd failed to acquire a Keyblade through his connection to someone summoning one for the original time who had undergone the bequeathing ceremony.

Kairi pushed aside all of her terror and worry that Sora might have become what Zack was now, and might still have the ability to become an Angel of Sin in the future, as well as her abhorrence at herself for not having predicted that Zack would now possess a Keyblade.

She was finished with thinking twice.

Zack's Keyblade had a shape identical to Fenrir's. Its colors, though, were a dizzying and haphazardly swirling and spiraling and twisting and shifting array of coral shades; the colors of grass and tree bark and the leaves of summer and fall; the panorama of the rocks of mountains and minerals of all kinds; and the kaleidoscope of the nebulae from which physical stars were born, the cast off layers of a star gone supernova, the lightless vacuum of space, the shades of the stars of globular cluster satellite galaxies, the hyper compact crystalline remnants of dead pulsars, the ejecta of radiation that escaped from a black hole before passing its event horizon, and the dead ashes of black dwarf stars. Its head and prongs, as well, weren't a wolf's head, but the scaled head of a creature similar to a dolphin with uncountable randomly strewn dark purple jeweled compound eyes like those of a spider.

"This is Deifacted Selection," Zack addressed Kairi, seeing where her eyes were resting, and Kairi was relieved that, even though she didn't know whether Zack was talking of his own free will or whether the darkness of the Angel of Sin was forcing him to, he at least sounded like the friendly person Ven and Terra and Aqua knew.

"I doubt it'll work, but I don't suppose that I can convince you to put an end to me while I might still have a tiny chance of restraining the Angel of Sin," Kairi forced herself not to cringe or wince, and suppressed the surge of anguish that rose up to engulf her, "Before I lose the last tatters of my heart to the darkness?"

"You know the answer to that," Kairi replied.

Zack shrugged his shoulders flippantly, but sadly.

"Then I'll just believe in you and the rest of my friends, and let you, and the other guardians Hades has told me about, and the ones who I've met, be my temporary living legacy, and free me from this nightmare yourselves."

He turned to Hades. "I might as well just get this over with and just give into the darkness." Kairi wanted to tell Zack that he should fight until the end, but she understood where he was going with his wish to do so. "The sooner the darkness takes me, the more quickly this will end and I'll stop hurting Hercules and Phil and Ven and Aqua and Terra, and the others.

"So run the opening credits and bring your anti-hero into the amphitheater," Kairi did cringe at Zack referring to himself as an actor playing a role and a puppet, "'Cause this has gotta' be the start."

Zack's face and body language didn't alter, but the rainbow shimmers around him strengthened very slightly for a second, and Kairi knew that Zack was now fully gone.

Not for long.

"Brudda'," Kairi heard Wakka say to Tidus from behind her. "Can you please remember what Kairi and Platina said, ya'?"

"I know, I know," Tidus responded, his voice a mixture of frustration and anger. "But that doesn't mean that I need to like it."

Hades slapped one hand to his forehead. "Gimme' a break here, gang. This fishbone is one of your trump cards this time?"

"That's number one Blitzball ace to you!" Tidus shot back, but Kairi could feel the pain and the conflict in his voice tearing him in uncountable directions.

Not. While. She. Was. Alive.

Now that she'd stopped giving up, she was not going to let Tidus' innocence be ripped to tatters as ruthlessly as Sora's and Riku's and hers had been.

She felt sick that she'd recommended that Tidus become a Keyblade wielder, but she refused to think twice about that, as well.

Hades grumbled something unintelligible. "You know about Blitzball. No wonder you're a trump card. You have the potential to become Vegnablitz."

"Do tell," Kairi spoke.

Hades lifted his chin and turned his head away from her. "Dream on, missy.

"I love wacky Zacky's idea of an amphitheater, though, so without further ado…"

He waved one of his hands, green mists spilled out from it in a swirling, expanding typhoon and tore out over them and the surrounding area, and Kairi felt the cobblestone road below her rumble and shift in small and large ways in a number of places.

When the mists dissipated, she was standing on the central staircase of a huge amphitheater of the same stone colors of Thebes leading down to a semicircular floor of tiled stone and, beyond that, a semicircular stage that Zack stood on the center of, Hades behind him and to his left. Kairi could see the guardians in front of her standing on the surrounding benches on the concentric tiers leading down to the stage, and on other staircases.

"Slimeball!" Platina snarled. "How many people in the homes and structures of Thebes did you just wound or kill in the process of doing that?"

Hades affected a yawn. "Yeah yeah, heard that before tens of thousands of times from Hercules, next please."

"What does it matter?" Zack spoke up, his voice the same but the friendliness entirely gone and replaced by a detached distance that reminded Kairi of Invi, though there was a savagery in it that hadn't been present in Invi's voice the smallest bit. "Mortals exist to provide for the Gods. They were created by Kingdom Hearts for the sole purpose of serving as resources to enable Gods to ascend to a higher celestial sphere, stage of power, stage of being, and dimension of heaven."

"Listen to what you're saying, Za–!" Ven shouted.

"There's no point," Kairi interrupted him, refusing to react to how similar she sounded to her father and her father's Heartless. "Zack's heart now belongs to darkness. Our voices can't reach him where he is any longer."

"Then that means that you still honestly think that you can win," Hercules' voice sounded from to the side and above, and Hades smirked viciously in anticipation. "What will it take to convince you to give up while you still have a small amount of dignity left?"

Kairi looked in the direction of the voice to see Hercules riding in their direction on Pegasus, with Pegasus' jaws clenched around a Phil who had an irritated expression on his face at how he was being manhandled. Meg was behind Hercules with her arms around his waist; a girl with long blonde hair cut similar to Platina's and wearing a brown shirt and brown leggings with a sword belted at her right side, who Kairi knew must be Alicia, was holding onto Meg's waist; a male wearing an orange shirt and leggings with a bow holstered behind him who Kairi was aware must be Rufus was holding onto her waist; and a girl with darker blonde hair dropping to around the middle of her back, a stave with a ruby orb on the top slung diagonally over her back, a wearing a tree green shirt and similarly colored leggings, who Kairi was aware must be Mystina, was holding onto Rufus' waist.

"Right back at you, Jerkules," Hades retorted.

Kairi heard Lezard smother a snort.

Pegasus landed, and Hercules ran in front of Kairi and to her right on the floor of the amphitheater. Alicia got off of Pegasus, turned and helped Meg and then Lezard down, and then ran over to Lezard's right to unsheathe her sword in a battle ready position and angle it at Hades and Zack. Mystina followed, taking Lezard's left, and Rufus took up a position behind and between Alicia and Lezard, bow levelled to shoot between them.

"We finally meet," Mystina called to Hades with exaggeratedly bright cheerfulness. "I've heard so much about you, and I've been waiting impatiently for over a year to thank you for putting the crones and clowns at Coriander out of their misery. Do you have any idea how irritating it was for Lezard and I to learn magic while putting up with year upon year of their blither blather about how we shouldn't try to break past our limits, because a lot of magic is supposedly the province of Gods and Goddesses and therefore forbidden?

"So," Mystina's voice now dripped with venomous sarcasm, "To ensure that everything remains in its proper place and people can continue to live their lives free of the natural order being disrupted – in other words, abandoned to needless impotent suffering when their lives could be drastically improved for the better – Lezard and I must learn our place letting people get hurt?

"Headmistress Lorenta was especially a nag, and I was absolutely delighted when the academy symbol fell on the crumpled prune's skull and popped it like a watermelon.

"I still savor the look on her face when, regardless of her efforts, Lezard graduated at the top of the academy and I was in second place right behind him."

Hades grinned. "I try," he said back. "I don't suppose that I could recruit you as the High Priestess of the new cosmic hierarchy that I'm about to establish? I'm irritated with Zeus' lunacy about keeping a lot of the knowledge of the astral tapestry out of people's hands myself. What's the point of divine wisdom if it's just kept secret and isn't applied at its fullest to benefit people, or even lesser ethereal entities than Gods and Goddesses?"

Kairi didn't care for how it reminded her of her father's, his Heartless', and Xemnas' drive to pursue the knowledge of Kingdom Hearts and other knowledge, but Mystina and Hades did have a point.

If you didn't understand the reality around you as much as you could, you couldn't connect with it and harness it to better connect with the hearts around you.

That was just wrong.

"Thanks, but no thanks, buddy," Mystina shot Hades down. "I know your kind of balloon brain, too. Losers like you prefer to spoon feed divine wisdom and sacred knowledge to the life below them.

"That's the same kind of coddling as trying to prevent people from learning that knowledge.

"I'll take as much pleasure watching Mount Olympus fall on your brainpan and pop it as I did Lorenta's."

Hades' hair rose in a column of flames and he gave a deep, furious frown and clenched his hands tightly, but then he sneered at Mystina and looked away from her.

Mystina tilted her chin up, looked down her nose arrogantly, and gave Hades a far more condescending sneer of her own back at him.

Hades' hair repeatedly flickered back and forth between fire and its usual color before staying its preferred gray, but otherwise Hades pretended to be ignoring Mystina.

Hades looked at Rufus. "In the event that Jerkules actually manages to pull off a win this time, and somehow threatens my life in the process, I have a failsafe. Goodie goodie, and you for being a two shoes."

"At least you called me a shoe licker, and not a bootlicker," Rufus rejoined, but Hades had clearly suppressed his temper, for his hair didn't flicker once this time.

"It's nice to meet you myself," Alicia now entered the face off. "But I need to warn you. You have no idea what forces you've set in motion by fashioning the Angel of Sin, but Silmeria has seen a number of potentialities that do display how those forces will unravel. Even if you do win today, you yourself are in as much danger as the other Gods and Goddesses.

"For your own sake, Persephone's," Hades' hair did flicker into fire then before he clamped his lips together and the fire died, "and Cerberus' sakes," another flicker and Hades pressed his lips together further, "This war needs to end now. Make peace with your brothers before all of you drown in a river of death."

"I'm the God of Death, little lady," Hades replied. "I swam back to the surface after Jerkules, Stupidra," Kairi suppressed her irritation, "Dumbald, and Goofool dunked me in the Styx Maelstrom the last time, though the hearts there kept trying to make me stick around for reasons I don't have a clue about.

"If I did it once, I can do it again."

"I'm not referring to the Styx," Alicia argued. "I'm referring to the endless rapids of an oblivion lacking emptiness. Immortality and mortality mean nothing in the void beyond death. Everything is wholly negated there to infinite zero."

"Pish posh," Hades dismissed her. "Then I'll become the God of that kind of Death, too. My sights are already on death all over the realm of light, and why should I stop there?"

"I'm sure you found out about the vision I saw myself by now," Alicia answered. "I saw two potentialities then.

"The first was how events came to pass.

"In the other, Sora," just how much did Alicia know? And how much had she told Lezard, Rufus, and the other Einherjar? "Chose to avenge William's death by murdering Davy Jones himself," Kairi cringed at that one, "Rather than to take the path of mercy, and this distracted Maleficent from what she'd learned about Luxu's box at The Caribbean enough that she didn't give up her search for it. This led her to intervene in Terra-Xehanort's initial battle with the guardians, because the initial battle of the guardians against the legions of Heartless, Nobodies, and Unversed was too large of a confrontation for her to be willing to involve herself in. Donald failed to cast Zettaflare as a result, and Terra-Xehanort and Aqua died at each other's hands."

Kairi heard Terra suppress a sound of anguish, Aqua inhale, and Ven give out a cry of agony.

"This hurt Sora even more than in the timeline that did unravel, and Maleficent and Pete didn't pull back during Aqua's duel with Terra-Xehanort, so when Kairi formed the Demon Tide and the Lich, it didn't strike out in search of hearts and went right after Maleficent and Pete. As Maleficent had against Data-Kairi, she refused to retreat even though she was severely outmatched, and this time there was no rift of data within which she and Pete could survive. The Demon Tide took their hearts and lives and the Lich finished both off, and then went after the Real Organization Thirteen as Kairi had created the Demon Tide and the Lich for the purpose of in the timeline that has occurred.

"Sora and the guardians realized that Kairi had created the Demon Tide and the Lich and turned their concentration to defeating it rather than Xehanort and the other seekers of darkness, so Xehanort ordered his other selves to willingly join with the Demon Tide and the Lich and give their hearts to it, thus retaining their memories as Xehanort's Heartless had and enabling them to influence the Demon Tide and take full control of the Lich.

"They harnessed the Lich, and thus, indirectly, Kairi herself, as their twelfth darkness in place of Terra-Xehanort, and this set off the Second Keyblade War.

"The Lich was destroyed at the same time as Young Xehanort, Xehanort's Heartless, and Xemnas were, but by the time Xehanort forged the Kye-Blade and opened the true Kingdom Hearts, his connection with Kairi's darkness through his other selves had enabled him to learn who Kairi was. He returned from the darkness," Kairi didn't know what she felt hearing that, other than her determination not to let Sora discover that he could have lit Xehanort's way out of the darkness if he'd chosen revenge and murder rather than mercy and life, "And engaged the Demon Tide with the Kye-Blade to set Kairi free from her darkness, but he refused to use the full power of the Kye-Blade to the extent that he'd learned to harness it and risk Kingdom Hearts casting the realm of light into a second darkness and thus killing Kairi. Additionally, by this point the Real Organization Thirteen influenced Demon Tide and the controlled Lich had killed all of the surviving guardians save for Sora and Kairi themselves, and it had also killed Xion and Roxas when Sora and Lea were able to give them back their hearts, and Donald, Goofy, and Yen Sid when he attempted to reinforce them."

Kairi suppressed the surge of guilt at hearing that she'd even murdered Yen Sid in a different possible past.

"In the final conflict of the Second Keyblade War, though Sora attempted to take both Kairi's and Xehanort's hurt into his heart; Kairi, now controlled by the Demon Tide as Xehanort's Heartless had controlled Riku, and Xehanort, killed each other, though Eraqus had escaped Terra's heart and entered Sora's and was thus able to provide Xehanort with peace and pass into the afterlife with the best friend who, in this alternate past, was wholly willing to reconnect with his former best friend."

Sora didn't need to know this, as well.

"Sora, however, was left with no option but to abuse the power of waking to restore the other guardians, Donald, Goofy, and Yen Sid to life, and he was able to accomplish this though he needed to protect even more of his friends this time because Xehanort had boosted the power of waking with the Kye-Blade before he died and Sora dismissed the Kye-Blade by closing Kingdom Hearts.

"Kairi was once more in charge of her heart when Sora restored her, and Sora was even able to restore Aqua's and Terra's hearts and free Terra from the remnants of Xehanort's heart fragment within him, which now understood who Kairi was itself and returned Terra his heart on its own." Once more, Kairi didn't know what she felt.

"But Sora still vanished as a result of breaking the laws of nature.

"It doesn't make a difference what road you take when you wage war.

"All paths that you wade through blood to stride just lead you to oblivion."

A violent chill ripped up Kairi's spine as it registered.

If Alicia knew how Sora could have lighted Xehanort's way home sweet home, the Foretellers did themselves, and sooner or later they would reveal this to him in a terrible way, and Sora knew what Kairi did.

There were more than just two possible roads.

There were infinite potential paths.

When Sora learned that he could have given Kairi her father back if he'd chosen death and blood, he would know that Xehanort very well might not have died afterwards.

This was one of the still worse remorseless truths that the Foretellers had in store for Sora to learn.

Kairi took a deep, slow, steadying breath, and then several more.

Invi had told them that it wasn't time for Sora to learn that he was born of pain and death yet. She still had plenty of time to return to Sora and tell him what he could have done for her and Xehanort in a kinder way.

"Girlie, I am oblivion," Hades replied. "Can the rambling. It'll get you nowhere with me."

Alicia nodded and said nothing more.

Hades then turned in Meg's direction, and Kairi braced for what he was about to say, but Hades just snapped his fingers and green smoke rose up from Meg and dispersed into the air.

Hercules' eyes widened.

"You've fulfilled your end of the contract," Hades told her, and Meg went white while Hercules blinked, and Phil's jaw dropped. "You're released from my service."

"What the heck are you on about now!?" Phil shouted.

Hades smirked viciously and sadistically.

"Meg's soul has been bound to mine for years," Hades revealed, and Hercules' face became a mask. He put his hand on Meg's closest shoulder. "She gave it to me when the Paris chump who killed Achilles died." Phil set his jaw. "You know what a charmer Paris was, and they were together then, though he ditched her for the lovelier Helen after I brought him back and she got his attention. She's been working for me since then, and she was actually attempting to recruit the monster Hercules beat up when he first met her to my cause. Since then, after she warmed to him and lost interest in working for me I've thought of using her against Hercules, but I came up with a much better idea, thanks to Maleficent's and Kairi's Daddy-O's Heartless."

Kairi went stiff as a thought came to her.

Had Hades known who she was all along, and just not revealed it to Sora or anyone else because she and Hades hadn't met in person until now, or had he just learned it now from Alicia?

"That's why I took wacky Zacky for his initial walk here as opposed to up Olympus," Hades was going on. "She's free of my service, but I have an encore in mind for the two of you that I'm just dying to tell you about, and that you'll have to live with, if you get it."

Perhaps Kairi should have interrupted Hades, but it would hurt Meg just as much if she found out later, and if Kairi prevented Hades from revealing it now he might use that truth to distract Hercules at a critical point in the coming battle.

"I completed my divine version of a weapon of mass destruction by tracing Meg's connection to Paris through her heart," Meg fell to her knees, but Hercules kept his grip on her shoulder and crouched down beside her, "And Paris' connection to death.

"When the Angel of Sin clobbers you and you at last drop dead at my feet, Meg will have been the one who murdered you."

Hercules clenched his teeth and clenched his free hand into a tight fist.

"Zack won't beat me any more than anything or anyone else Hades has sent after me has," Hercules said to Meg gently. "Don't worry about it. And if that won't convince you, remember that I wouldn't have my strength back, and I wouldn't have lived this long if you hadn't reminded me what one of the key facets of being a hero is."

Meg took a number of deep breaths of her own, compressed her lips together, and nodded.

So Kairi didn't need to relay Platina's advice to Meg, or Platina didn't need to do so herself.

Alicia, however, was pale, and Lezard was giving Hades and Hercules alternate glares of undiluted hate.

Kairi's eyes widened as she got an idea, and she faced Hades.

"If you continue this war, you're betraying Persephone's feelings as you just accused Meg of betraying Hercules'." Hades' hair rose into a tower of flames, and remained flames this time, though the rest of his body didn't follow. "She requested you to go through her and not around her if you needed to, and you refused to go through her."

Hades' expression became a mask for a number of seconds, and Kairi didn't dare to breathe.

But then, as she'd feared would be the result, Hades replied, "Duly noted. I'll be sure to go through her if it comes to it, then. Thank you."

Kairi sighed. "You're welcome."

But then, to her surprise, a small amount of Hades' arrogance and anger left his expression. "But I'll tell you this much, by way of repaying you for preventing me from hurting Persephone, so you can connect with me a little like I know from Sora and Riku that you want to do with hearts.

"Maybe you're right about me a bit.

"I regularly get around the contracts I forge with others, but unlike Zeus and Hera and Poseidon, who forge binding contracts with people and other Gods and Goddesses and then regularly break them if the good of the many calls for it, I never actually break one of my contracts." Kairi didn't know if she could trust that Hades wasn't lying about this, but an uncertain inroad to his light was better than none. "I often considered tricking Hercules into giving up his strength to supposedly protect Meg from me, and I came close to playing that card around the time I acquired access to the other three Titans, but had I done so, if Meg had gotten hurt after Hercules had signed away his strength, he would have gotten it back.

"So if you're unwilling to give up about connecting with me, go ahead and look into that. As far as I'm concerned, it'll get you nowhere fast or lately, but hey, bonds are like that.

"And if you actually prove to me that my head is on as backwards as bolt boy's is, it wouldn't be the first time that I've been taken for a fool, so I'll give you this much of a connection back.

"But do me a favor and don't thank me yourself, unless you feel like signing your own name to one of my contracts."

"As you wish," Kairi said back.

"But not because you're a God and I'm a human.

"Because we're both flawed hearts who need to connect with others to be completed."

Hades shook his head, returned his hair to gray from flames, and smoothed it down uncomfortably with a similarly uncomfortable grimace.

Kairi knew what she needed to say and do next, though.

She'd trace the connection that Hades had given her, but she couldn't give him the opportunity to continue to sink to the Foretellers' depths against Meg and Hercules.

She'd prefer not to resort to combat unless she'd attempted everything she could feel or think of to reach Hades first and failed, but she saw no other choice now.

She'd take Hades and Zack down, and then reach Hades later.

She aimed Destiny's Embrace at Zack in a combat position, and looked around. Aqua's, Ven's, and Terra's faces were pale but determined, and the other guardians', Hercules', the Einherjar's, Lezard's, and Rufus' faces were a mixture of a large number of emotions but determined as well. Even Alicia, who looked as though the concept of committing herself not just to policing Thebes, but to an actual war, horrified her and anguished her beyond comprehension, had her face set determinedly.

Lezard was now standing closer to Alicia, he looked as though he was considering putting a hand on her shoulder, and his glare of undiluted hatred was now directed at Rufus for not having moved closer to Alicia himself.

Kairi probed Lezard's ethereal imprint, and she couldn't sense any more darkness in it than before, but that didn't mean that Lezard hadn't become a less loose cannon in response to Alicia's revelation about what her own vision had consisted of, her torment about battling Hades and Zack, and Rufus not supporting Alicia.

Tidus, Selphie, and Wakka had moved a good distance away, though Tidus had Wakka's blitzball in his hand and Kairi knew that he was thinking of throwing it at Hades or Zack if he felt that the situation called for it.

"Platina and your Einherjar, Lezard, Rufus," Aqua spoke up, adjusting Master's Defender in a combat position of her own at Zack. "I don't know how much of a help you'll be, but if you want to try to contribute, focus on Hades, not Zack. Zack is well out of our league, so you'll just be fruit flies to him, if less. If you want to assist us, support us against Hades, and keep out of Zack's range as much as you can."

Platina and Lezard nodded, and Platina did so in such a way that reminded Kairi of a military officer, confirming that she was the leader of the Einherjar.

"Hercules, what do you want to do?"

Hercules squeezed Meg's shoulder and she began to stand up. He and Phil, Phil's face still a mask, helped her to her feet, and Phil turned to Hercules and gave him a stern look.

"From what Aqua is implying, it sounds like this is your Final Exam.

"Make me proud, champ.

"Give it your best shot, go the distance with all your heart, knock 'em flat, and graduate with highest honors."

Kairi didn't know whether she was surprised or not to see Hercules look uncertain.

But then the uncertainty disappeared and Hercules looked to Meg, who was attempting to hide fear. "I'm not taking back what I said and going back to Dad and Mom as I pass. My home is with you, and that will never change. I'd be saying this even if I hadn't found out about Paris."

Meg gave Hercules a thankful smile, but she didn't say anything.

Then Hercules turned to Phil, and the uncertainty was back.

"I don't know," Hercules said. "If this is it, and this teaches me how to wholly become a hero, while we'll still see each other most days and be friends, I won't have you as my teacher any longer. I don't like the thought of that."

Phil grunted, and Kairi was pleased to discover she needed to keep herself from smiling a real smile at how Phil was hiding his true feelings.

"I have five other wannabe heroes to take under my wing, and two reticent nitwits who I need to break out of the cynical wash ups you broke me out of when we met." Lezard gave Phil a glare of less unrestrained hatred that told Phil what Lezard thought of that concept, but Rufus' visage composed itself. "I'll be dandy."

Hercules still looked uncertain, but he turned to look at Hades and Zack and drew his sword. "I'll take on whichever of the two of Hades or Zack looks like he has the greatest advantage," he told Aqua, "And shift tactics between them accordingly if that changes."

Aqua nodded.

Platina leveled Glance Reviver at Hades in a combat position of her own.

"Come to me, my fellow Einherjar. Battle awaits us."

Kairi twisted to look at Tidus, and to include Selphie and Wakka in her gaze. "We're all going home together. Nothing changes in terms of who is a Keyblade wielder, but the rest of how we connect remains changed, and we're returning to Sora and Riku hand in hand."

Then she turned back to Hades.

"Your gauntlet is accepted," she addressed him, inclining her head, and Hades inclined his in return.

"Here in Thebes, where the heavens and the Underworld intersect upon the Earth, let us bring an end to this spiral of blood."

Kairi pushed away her discomfort at the following words that came to mind.

They needed to be said, and she needed to stop feeling bad or uncomfortable every time she found herself thinking like her father.

Children were supposed to improve upon their parents' ways of life.

"Every light must shine, every heart fly out of the darkness!"

---

Kairi broke into a race at Zack as soon as she'd said that, and Roxas leapt onto one of the benches and segued into a Flowmotion along its edge, clearly intending to jump from bench to bench until he found an opening to exploit.

To Kairi's mixed annoyance and worry, Platina charged Hades, her six angelic wings unfurled again, Leone and Alicia at her sides with their own similar six wings of blue-white angelic feathers spread out.

When Kairi reached Zack, she didn't strike with a move, spell, Shotlock, or Flowmotion.

She launched into a series of feints that she could turn into parries if necessary, hoping to probe Zack's combat style to see how similar and different it was to how Aqua and Terra had described it now that he was the Angel of Sin.

But Zack just looked past her, and Kairi sprang back in a low backwards jump to reposition herself as she realized he was more concerned with Roxas.

Hercules saw what Zack was about to do and ran to interpose himself between Zack and Roxas, but Kairi was unsurprised when he turned out to be too slow.

Zack became a silhouette of pale rainbow colors shooting forward through the air and trailing afterimages of different, neon rainbow colors, before eight apparitions that were dark rainbow versions of Deifacted Selection spread out in familiar positions around Roxas.

Ven's Omnislash Version Five.

But Kairi was surprised when Ven appeared out of nowhere as a corona of pure white, Wayward Wind a similar specter, and launched into a series of eight glimmering precise ivory strikes from differing acute and obtuse angles that nearly appeared to occur simultaneously.

Zack dropped, Omnislash Version Five broken, Hercules grabbed onto Zack's arms, spun around, and smashed him headfirst into the nearby floor hard enough to cause the stone to shatter and to leave a massive crater, and then Kairi fired the jagged white sheet of a Heavenly Peal in Zack's direction and was relieved when Hercules back flipped out of the way and she didn't feel at all tired from casting it even though she hadn't Formchanged.

"Octaslash Version Five," Ven announced with a mixture of anguish and pride from where he was now standing.

Roxas had stopped moving and was charging another Zettaflare, and an amused Hades was deflecting Leone's and Alicia's swords with one fireball encrusted hand as they moved in tandem as though they were two halves of a single warrior, running and sliding and jumping to slice at Hades from alternate directions.

Platina was darting from side to side, throwing Glance Reviver like a javelin and reclaiming it through teleportation each time Hades caught it with his other hand, submerged in a glove of fire.

Then Lea somersaulted above Hades and attempted to douse Hades' blaze by launching a precise series of regular Fires over Hades' hands that drew oxygen from the air and prevented Hades from utilizing it to feed his own flames.

Even so, Kairi was surprised Lea had engaged Hades. Like Riku, Lea had focused on developing ordinary swordsmanship at the expense of special moves, Shotlocks, and Flowmotion assaults, and unlike Riku Lea hadn't taught himself a large number of spells to try to partially make up for the holes his lack of maneuvers, Flowmotion attacks, and Shotlocks left in his combat style.

What was going through Lea's head?

"Double Meteor!" Lezard and Mystina shouted in unison from where they were standing a decent distance apart, and that answered that question.

Lea was a diversion.

The first version of Meteor Sephiroth had cast on Sora, in the Olympus Coliseum, began to form above and between the two mages, and Sephiroth's second stage and deadlier Meteor, that he'd unleashed on Sora in Radiant Garden during their second duel, started descending in fiery boulders around the lesser Meteor.

The satellite Meteors of the inferior twin finished forming, and Hades stepped back out of range and brought one arm in front of his face.

The large central Meteor of the lesser twin became a conflagration of multi-colored flames of its own and shot at Hades, and both strings of the dual tech erupted in an inferno of innumerable dancing colors.

Hades responded by sending giant, leaping tongues of flame arcing like a solar flare in Lezard's and Mystina's direction, but Lea leapt into their path and blocked them with Flame Liberator.

Predictably, Hades had improved still further since his defeat by Sora and Hercules in the championship match of the Underdrome's Hades Paradox Cup.

Kairi waited just long enough after Zack finished climbing back to his feet to confirm her prediction that Zack hadn't been visibly hurt, and then fired Final Eclipse.

"Holyza," Zack spoke.

A gigantic disc of pure opalescent ivory appeared around Zack and began to rotate, shedding rays of white that enlarged the further they extended from the disc washing in all directions around him.

Kairi Dodge Rolled backwards out of the way and Hercules used his divine strength to leap backwards up onto the top of the amphitheater wall behind the semicircular stage, but Roxas fired Zettaflare right after Zack cast Holyza.

One of the rays arced into it and knocked it to the side as though swatting a fly, and Roxas attempted to throw himself backwards into a Dodge Roll, but he was moving too slowly and Kairi knew that he wouldn't have made it in time if Terra hadn't been nearby to grab one of Roxas' hands and yank him in Terra's direction at a higher speed.

Even so, two of the rays still brushed Roxas lightly near his feet, one at the bottom of his toes and another on the back of his leg behind his instep, and Roxas cried out as they sliced deep gashes into both locations.

"Scatheza," Zack then spoke.

Kairi hoped that Zack was at least making an effort even though he was almost certainly severely restraining his skill and power to use the same layered trump card tactics many extraordinary skilled and strong warriors used to ensure they kept a lot of tricks up their sleeve until it was necessary to use them, rather than set them in motion early and tire themselves needlessly.

Because if he wasn't, and he was willing to cast the Grand Magic version of the highest level of regular offensive magic, save for the unique Meltdown family, Alpha family, and the Apocalypse family, when he was just warming up and testing their capabilities, then Zack was what she'd feared that he was.

The series of randomly erupting columns of silver burst out of the air above and the floor, and this time Xion and Aqua, who had been trying to quietly move around behind Zack and get into position for what was most likely an Exaflare Sword dual tech.

Aqua threw up a shield of interconnected clear hexagons around them both, but it was almost entirely in pieces by the time the Scatheja was over.

Then Zack was in Aqua's face and slicing in a wide, upward arc.

Aqua blocked with Master's Defender, but the kinetic energy of the strike still sent her flying end over end through the air.

Hercules caught her by the legs and turned her in his hands, whirled around once, and sent her flying back at Zack.

Zack sidestepped and cut up with Deifacted Selection, but then Xion was in front of him and lashing at him with the aerial rapid slashes of Dark Splicer.

Zack blocked the first few, and then, because Xion was close enough, he brought his left hand above his head and fisted it, and Kairi's eyes widened.

Phantom pain from the single time she'd been careless enough to get close enough to Lea he could hit her with the experimental technique lanced out from her right ribs, so agonizing that Kairi wondered if they were still partially fractured.

She was the only one close enough to react in time, so she had to allow for the drain, reduced by the Specter in Starfire Formchange or not.

Her familiar erupted back out behind and above her as she once more became Specter in Starfire and she aimed Destiny's Embrace at Zack and fired Ultimate Break just as he activated Costly Punch, an ethereal assault that Kairi could sense wouldn't drain any of Zack's vitality as it did Lea's.

The white, silver, and crimson beam swept over Zack's fist, and Kairi let herself be sent staggering back from the recoil, forced away the exhaustion that rose up to dizzy her, though not as badly as it had when she'd first launched Ultimate Break as Fairy in Tapestry, and placed a foot behind her.

Hercules sprinted in as Zack staggered and swung a vicious double-handed chop at Zack's brow with his sword.

Zack's eyes widened, and he quickly corrected his stagger himself and pulled back, and Kairi knew that, if he hadn't been trying before, he was about to do so now.

Aqua knew the same thing, for Magnega appeared in the air above them, and Kairi let it pull her into its clutches, and the others, including Hercules, did as well, so Aqua could throw up a large hexagonal barrier around them.

"Black Fang," Zack commented.

A single huge pitch curved ebony silhouette of a dragon's fang, similar in shape to a curved bone as well as a dragon's fang, descended from above and smashed through Aqua's barrier as though it were made of tissue paper, and then Kairi was flying backwards in an extremely fast out of control tumble and she barely had enough time to shift into a Flowmotion when her feet were near enough to the far wall of the amphitheater to prevent her head from bursting open when it struck the wall.

Hercules had landed on his feet and Terra had ended up near enough to the edge of one of the benches to activate a Flowmotion of his own, but everyone else other than the three of them was lying on the floor, staircases, or benches.

Then Zack aimed, and twin funnels of ice and lava shot out from the front of Deifacted Selection to spray over all of the downed guardians and encase them in megaliths of merged magma and ice.

"Déjà vu," Hades remarked from where he was exchanging strikes, parries, blocks, and ripostes with Flame Liberator with two hands engulfed in fireballs, while Platina, Alicia, and Leone repeatedly pelted him with their swords thrown as javelins from three directions and Hades clenched his teeth against the pain the assaults were causing him.

Lezard and Mystina fired the large, stormy green, rapidly whirling, oblong sphere energy projectiles about half again Lezard's height, tapering to a point at their tops and bottoms, of Doublehand Blaster at Hades, but Hades locked Flame Liberator in a shoving match with one hand and used the other blazing hand to send out a spray of paler green mist that forced the Doublehand Blaster constructs to the side.

"Isn't this familiar?" Hades continued, adumbrating himself in his indestructible golden corona. "For all your strength, you're still one person, Wonderboy." Hades' tone was sarcastic when he said the last word. "You could barely deal with Cerberus when you needed to protect Cloud, and Sora and his clowns needed to bail you out.

"It isn't just Meg who is your weakness, though she's your worst one. Every time you need to protect someone, you spend far less effort defending yourself. Even when you pulled Meg out of the Styx you left more openings than a porcupine has spines, and if Sora hadn't been there ready to defend you when you freed your Pops, I still consider it anyone's guess whether or not the Titans would have redefined the concept of flaying someone. My best guess is that the future where the Fates saw you beat the Titans involved the element of surprise.

"What are you going to do now that you need to save more than one hapless twerp at the same time?"

"Let me guess," Terra put in. "Zack's about to attempt to hit me with a rock and wind strike."

"Actually, I intended to bind you in a recreation of the Cyclops' rolls of fat," the Angel of Sin corrected Terra, "But if that's what you want…"

Terra took up a defensive position with Earthshaker, but dark brown monoliths dropped down on him from above, sending him flying backwards off his feet, and before he could hit the stone ground, a tornado of black air detonated from the ground and kept Terra in the air.

"We're still here, smart aleck," Lezard remarked. "I have a clear astral skin around me, as does Mystina, so you won't be able to bind us. As much as I'd love to see Hercules gorge himself on his just desserts, Alicia needs us.

"You'll need to kill us to stop us, and I'm further away than the most distant reaches of the celestial spheres from being convinced as to your capability to accomplish that."

Hercules appeared to reach a decision, and he formed a sphere of gold in front of him, then punched it at Hades.

Good.

He knew how to do that without a Keyblade wielder's assistance, now.

Hades scowled and summoned a wide, circular pillar of fire around himself to force Lea away, but the sisters continued to throw their swords at him.

Kairi didn't wait to see if the Angel of Sin tried to ensnare Lea or her, or the Einherjar or anyone else.

She had at least one idea for a spell better than Ultimate Break, but if she used it now she'd have exhausted both darkness or light, and even though Zack was one with Olympus' world heart, his best effort up to this point hadn't been that much more deadly than what the replicas of her father's Keyblade Armor could achieve when working together.

She'd been correct.

Even when he was willing to be serious, Zack was restraining much of his skill and power.

If someone didn't do something drastic, Tidus would need to choose.

Kairi had realized that her dream was to receive darkness and transform it into light.

So, even though the concept of becoming someone or something else terrified and discomfited Kairi in ways she hadn't been scared or uncomfortable before at any time in her life, it was time to see if Riku was correct about the Demon Tides and the Lich being to her as Xehanort's Heartless had been to him.

She traced the dark threads of her heart into the deepest darkness she could sense, and then followed them around until she could remember the most clearly how she'd felt each time she'd unwittingly fashioned a Demon Tide, and the time she'd forged the Lich.

Her memories of the all-consuming sense of futility and helplessness and powerlessness and despair and desperation and frustration brought new tears to her eyes, but Kairi now knew that she wasn't defined or constrained by those emotions.

That reminded her.

Maybe Kairi did have one other trick up her sleeve that she could successfully put into practice to defeat the Angel of Sin without resorting to becoming something else.

She shifted her concentration and traced Ven's, Aqua's, and Terra's connections to Zack.

Riku and the other guardians had remembered enough from their time hovering suspended and disembodied to tell Kairi that the Lich had possessed chains, so Kairi knew that she was as capable of this as Terra-Xehanort had been.

Kairi sent a pool of white and light gray rippling light spreading out below her feet, and launched a dark purple chain formed from those connections in Zack's direction.

Zack swung down at the snaking links with Deifacted Selection, and relief and hope rushed through Kairi as it bounced off the chain before the links wound around him and lifted him into the air to hold him there, hovering in suspension.

"Titans and world heart or not, good luck breaking the chains of your bonds with Ven, Aqua, and Terra when they're not willing to do so," she informed Zack.

She looked at Hades, whose mouth was gaping open in shock. "I'm sure Hercules is ready to accept your last surrender at any time."

Kairi almost threw herself violently backwards as a maelstrom of darkness erupted outwards from Zack that felt simultaneously as though she were standing before an onrushing relentless tsunami of water and fire and mud and wind and flesh stretching as high as the most distant edges of the atmosphere; and as though she were staring into the bottom of the hollowed out cores of hundreds of thousands of supergiant stars combined together and about to detonate into a single supernova that wouldn't expand outwards, but would rather itself collapse into the singularity of a supermassive black hole potent enough to drag an entire galactic supercluster into orbit around it.

Reality all around and behind and in front of Zack became nothing but dancing dots of black like the static of a television screen, but though the links of the chain were forced outwards and strained to stay together, they didn't break.

But Kairi didn't let a sense of triumph fill her.

Her father and his colleagues had taught Sora, Riku, the other guardians, their friends, and her time after time that travelers of the dark didn't go down, or stay down, easily.

Furthermore, it was now fully undeniable that the Angel of Sin had been restricting his skill and power, and if he stopped doing so they had no chance whatsoever of defeating him.

The darkness of the heart of a world itself fathomlessly transcended anything that Kairi had believed that darkness was capable of.

It was no wonder that Kingdom Hearts was an infinite potential perceptual phenomenon when it was made up of lesser hearts like this.

Sora had talked about how Zeus was capable of creating whole sets of stars in the form of constellations himself, but those stars were physical stars that couldn't shine their light upon distant planets any faster than the speed of light allowed.

Witnessing and feeling the darkness of a world heart, Kairi at last understood why the light of worlds could reach other planets as stars of their own without spending thousands or millions of years to get there, and why when those worlds were taken by the darkness or restored from it, the denizens of other worlds could see them disappear or reappear as they were lost or found.

Kairi had been correct.

If the chain of Zack's bonds with Ven, Terra, and Aqua couldn't restrain him, even the darkness that she'd briefly harnessed after she'd stopped it from acting on its own very well might not be enough to defeat him.

So, though Kairi refused to let fear rise, she knew better than to experience victory.

Hades' mouth moved soundlessly, but no words would form.

Hercules gave Kairi a relieved smile and walked in the direction of the nearest magma hill to rip it apart.

Hades finally clenched his teeth so hard it appeared as though they would chip.

"At least it wasn't bolt boy or muscle brat who had the last laugh this time," he remarked. "But don't think I'm leaving without taking the Angel of Sin with me, and in time I will find a way to free him from this chain.

"This will never end. I'm immortal. When a God wages war, it's for keeps."

It might be okay now to try once more.

"That's not what Persephone and Cerberus want," Kairi said. "They believe Zeus is wrong and a better system of divine rule needs to be established, but they don't want endless war. Gods and Goddesses need to connect, and are completed by connections, as much as any other hearts are.

"There's nothing you can do to break Zack's chains." She hoped. "If you meant what you said about not betraying your wife's feelings by going through her, then you must see how continuing to fight will betray her feelings, too, as well as Cerberus'.

"End this here."

Hades spat in derision and hatred.

"Princess of Heart or not, you are not a God. You do not understand what Persephone and Cerberus have been through, and what they're still going through. I'm the only one who understands. Bolt boy and his fawning bootlickers of a Congressional Parliament don't, mortals don't, even the dead hearts in the Styx Maelstrom don't.

"Because they're all nothing more than a bunch of people-hugging morons with red thumbs, who see themselves as expendable to enable people to live happily, so they don't pay any attention to when their own kind end up in trouble.

"You're a person yourself, girlie. You have no more of a clue what Persephone and Cerberus, and I myself, are going through than bolt boy and his goodie two shoes son do.

"Spout your mantras about connections as long as you want. They don't apply to Persephone and Cerberus and I, and none of us care about them. You're not Gods and Goddesses.

"Nor do you have a clue what immortality is. What's endless to you is the flicker of a candle to us. No matter how long this war lasts, I'm not betraying Persephone's and Cerberus to continue it, because they, and I, will still be alive long after you're gone and dust, and we'll live on for innumerable millennia afterwards. There's a reason the pinnacle of Olympus is known as the realm of the Gods. Deities exist in a space and a time apart from the rest of the realm of light."

Kairi felt sick, and her mouth opened.

But she knew that she had it now.

She had it.

The key to reaching Hades and Persephone and bringing them home sweet home out of the darkness.

Platina and Lenneth were far more correct than they'd realized.

And not just Gods and Goddesses, but all ethereal beings. Genie, Cinderella's Fairy Godmother, Mushu, the entities of Halloween Town and Christmas Town, Tinker Bell, the Blue Fairy, every single one of them.

Why hadn't Kairi seen it before?

"You're just like the original Organization Thirteen and Xion," Kairi breathed in a mixture of horror and anguish and sympathy and terror.

Hades blinked. "What is that supposed to mean?"

But now Lea's eyes were wide with realization, Xion's face was horrified, and Roxas, free and on his feet once more as the others all were now, appeared furious.

Hercules, who had heard a lot about what Roxas, Xion, and Lea had been through now, had an agonized expression of his own.

Then he sighed heavily.

"What they're saying, Hades, is–"

Hercules cut himself off and started once more. "They're saying, Unc–"

"I hope that you're not thinking of including me," Zack interrupted them with a vicious snarl, and there was an arrogance and a new kind of savagery in it that hadn't been there before. "I'm now a triple breed of people, the first Gods who were in charge of Olympus, and the world itself. I'm far superior to even the Gods, to say nothing of the other living beings who inhabit the realm of light. Your perspective makes sense to me. The hearts of Gods and Goddesses are as inconsequential and meaningless to me as people's hearts are, and as the hearts of Nobodies are to regular people."

Lea crossed his arms in irritation, Roxas scowled, and Xion snarled.

"And now my best and most stunning work of art is committing the atheist's blasphemy against me," Hades sighed in irritation. "I really shouldn't have gotten up this morning."

Zack ignored him.

"All hearts in the realm of light," he went on, "God or ethereal being or person, Unversed or Heartless or Nobody or Dream Eater, replica or data construct or toy, exist to provide as resources for me."

Alicia's eyes widened, and she whirled to Kairi. "I warned all of you and Hades. Finish this now, or–"

"Do you honestly believe that you can?" Zack sneered. "Maybe I can't break these chains. But I don't need to.

"I just need to consume them."

Kairi felt the blood drain from her face.

Before she could start to try to figure out what Zack had in mind and how to attempt to counter it, the dots of black around him fanned out and swirled around him as though it was a cloud of soot, and Kairi's legs were yanked out from under her and she fell onto her back as the chain of dark purple was ripped out of the rippling pool of light and the pool faded away.

The chain shot in a whiplashing coil into the dots of black and vanished, and Zack landed lightly on his feet, though the dots remained.

"Who cares if I'm connected to others?" Zack questioned. "I can just turn those bonds from chains into strings to make myself a puppeteer. All I need to do is accept those bonds and feed off of them, and then they can't touch me."

"Stop talking like this!" Ven cried. "This isn't you, Zack! This is the combined darkness of the Titans who now have an intelligent heart and mind to feel and think with! Don't listen to it!"

"He's separated from us by the darkness," Kairi told Ven. "He can't hear us, if he's even awake. The Titan collective has taken his heart as my father took Terra's and his Heartless took Riku's. We're not even talking to Zack." She needed to stop thinking of him as 'Zack' and think of him as the Angel of Sin until they gave Zack back his heart. "We're talking to the joined heart of the Titans with the mind of a human."

"Dead wrong," the Angel of Sin corrected her. "I'm no longer a Titan or a God, or a human or a puppet. I'm one with the very heart of the world from which all hearts and life, Gods or people, are born.

"I'm no longer a deity, I am the World. I'm God Himself.

"Now shut your mouth and stop talking about me as though I'm just the choir, or you'll dearly regret it."

Then Zack shrugged and smirked.

"I take that back. You're going to die anyway. You're friends with Hercules, and there is no room in creation for other Gods and Goddesses once God Himself is among them. All hearts in all the realms of all creation were born for me and me alone to harvest them as resources, so I'll let them stay around so I have grain to thresh, food to eat, and lab rats to pit against each other as predator and prey so they continue to fertilize my World. But it's time for me to deliver my final incontrovertible judgment to all the wicked.

"All Gods and Goddesses and their friends have been judged before my throne and found guilty of sin, and they have been condemned to everlasting death and despair."

---

The Angel of Sin turned in Kairi's direction, and she altered Destiny's Embrace into a guard position.

But before the former Zack could move, Hades caused his flame pillar to fade and ran between Kairi and the Angel of Sin.

Hope rose inside Kairi. Did this mean–?

"Don't get any stupid ideas," Hades said, clearly knowing what she was thinking. "Your naïve concepts of how the cosmos works mean nothing to me, and I'm not just saying that because I'm too stuck up to admit that you're getting to me." Kairi suppressed the urge to sigh once again. "You're not getting to me.

"Zack – and I will call him that, because I refuse to dignify him with a name greater than a person's," the Angel of Sin snarled viciously, "is the one who is getting to me.

"Not in what you consider to be a good way, too.

"Bolt boy and I disagree about most things, but one of the issues that we do still agree on is that selfish filth who exist solely for their own satisfaction and have no loyalty to anyone or anything but themselves; not democratic rule, not oligarchical rule like the Titans did when they were five, not authoritarian rule, not a better future by any means necessary like your dad, not a better past by any means necessary like Maleficent, not a continual state of war like Pete, not adventuring in search of treasure like Hook, not fame like Oogie Boogie, not revenge like Ursula, not ceasing to advise and calling the shots like Jafar; have no place on Olympus.

"I'm the one who altered Zack, partially because Zack believes in enjoying each day as it is and his light and this complements how the old Titans lived for their self-satisfaction while they lived for each other, so it's my responsibility as his creator to take him to task."

"I agree and disagree," Platina interjected, but before she could say more the Angel of Sin doubled over with laughter.

He straightened with tears in his eyes and opened his mouth.

"Zack sought to become a hero because he didn't want to let anyone else endure what Cloud went through when Cloud prevented Scrooge from becoming a Keyblade wielder," Kairi started violently, "During the War of the Skies. Yet he doesn't live in the past. Whatever you say.

"Let's not forget the presumed death of one of Chernabog's replicas, Angeal Hewley, and the confirmed death of his other replica, Genesis Rhapsodos, during the Battle of Bahamut that brought an end to the War of the Skies. Or the matter that Zack and Cloud were among those responsible for Symphony of Sorcery getting consigned to a separate space time continuum than the rest of Ivalice Zodiac, and for how a lot of people from the Disney Kingdom have been stranded on Ivalice Zodiac to this day; and they were directly responsible for Yen Sid's inability to return to being a Keyblade Master once he gave it up, and for everything that Farplane and Sephiroth went through once Cloud created them."

Farplane must be Tifa's true name.

"And I'm betraying the feelings of my creator? Spare me that one. I'm acting more in accordance with the feelings of Kingdom Hearts than anyone has, because I'm a living world heart and thus know them better than anyone else."

"I see no difference between your belief that you have all the right answers and Xehanort's," Terra disagreed.

"There's a humungous difference," the Angel of Sin objected. "Xehanort partially wanted to open Kingdom Hearts to understand it. I already do, because the memories of the heart of Olympus hover within me."

"That doesn't guarantee that you understand them," Aqua spoke back.

"I don't need to. I know what the realm of the beginning is."

Kairi couldn't breathe.

They hadn't just lucked out for once, had they?

"Are you talking about The Final World," Kairi asked, "Or the realm outside it?"

"The realm outside it," the Angel of Sin answered, and Kairi hoped with all her heart that they could find evidence soon that the Angel of Sin wasn't lying.

"The Final World is the realm of the end.

"Not that it matters. The grand experiment will never end, even if it's separated from the realm of the beginning."

Kairi didn't like what this implied, assuming the Angel of Sin could be trusted about this.

And they needed to trust the Angel of Sin about this.

"Would it be correct to assume that Kingdom Hearts itself is a bottle on a shelf, then?" Xion questioned, but her face was empty of all emotion, concealing whatever she was feeling now.

"Not the Kingdom Hearts that you believe is the true one, but the first Kingdom Hearts, yes."

"We are who we are because of our memories and dreams, not because of who or what brought us to this day," Kairi reminded the others of her discussion with Platina. "It doesn't matter how Kingdom Hearts was created."

But Kairi couldn't deny that hearing that all of life and existence had been a bottle on the shelf from the very start didn't hurt a lot.

Especially because they needed to believe that this had a good chance of being the truth, at least for now.

The Angel of Sin smirked viciously and savagely like a predator about to pounce on its prey.

"Except the Kingdom Hearts that you believe is the true one wasn't even created. It, and all existence save for the realm of the beginning, are the unintentional byproduct of the grand experiment centered around the initial Kingdom Hearts."

That hurt far more, but Kairi pushed it away.

Whether what the Angel of Sin had learned by merging with the heart of Olympus could enable them to love and protect and care for and cherish Sora, and defeat Yozora and the Foretellers, was what mattered.

"So?" Roxas asked back. "Whether we were created, or whether we're accidents, that still isn't why we are who we are."

"Of course not. You're not hearts; you're the nightmares of Walura, and then Faerie."

Kairi stopped caring about how Kingdom Hearts and life had originated.

The Angel of Sin couldn't be lying.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kairi questioned.

"The realm of the beginning, or Gaes, the Earth of Maaseh Beresheth, is an incredibly advanced civilization, and its inhabitants live for millennia, though none of them are naturally immortal. But for all its technological successes, it didn't discover the ethereal powers of the heart until a very late stage in its advancement. It knew, of course, about what causes a person to be a person, but it didn't discover that the heart literally has power until many millennia after culture began on Gaes.

"When it did, of course, it started researching the heart, and the technology of Gaes is light years past anything that any of you have run into outside of the Deep Space hive world.

"After a few decades of this research, scientists in a nation ruled by a military dictatorship proposed an experiment, named Kingdom Hearts, where someone would be put into indefinite slumber for millennia, his or her heart would be separated from his or her body so it could be directly studied, and that person would ceaselessly be injected with drugs; dangerous, potentially fatally dangerous, or not; that would cause him or her hallucinations and flashbacks while he or she slept. The goal of this was to better understand the relationship of emotions, thoughts, memories, and dreams to light, darkness, positive emotions and thoughts, and negative emotions and thoughts, so, while the experiment of Kingdom Hearts was proceeding, the scientists could create weapons of mass destruction, biochemical weapons, conventional weapons, and poisons for the government."

Kairi couldn't justify pushing the pain of that revelation away.

She didn't care how she had been born.

That Sora, Riku, and the others, and everyone and everything else was alive as the accidental byproduct of experiments that put someone through millennia of suffering in order to create agents of death, hatred, pain, and rejection was different.

Yet Kairi knew that even this wasn't among the most remorseless truths that the Foretellers intended for Sora to confront.

As horrific as it was, it just enlarged the scope of what Invi had said had supposedly made Sora and Kairi who they were.

Whatever the worst truths were that the Foretellers had written into Sora's script, they involved Sora's, and doubtlessly hers, loved ones and friends, and his and her, connections.

"The donor who was accepted for the experiment was named Walura, and when he was placed in indefinite sleep, the Kingdom Hearts you know was born as an unintended byproduct of the darkness and light of the nightmares, dreams, hallucinations, and flashbacks that the drugs caused Walura.

"Millennia later, however, a human woman named Faerie was sent to Maaseh Beresheth.

"I don't know how, and this irritates me immensely.

"It shouldn't be possible for me to be unable to learn how, and that means that one or more people are blocking me from accessing this knowledge, and that breaks most or all of the laws of the astral tapestry that I'm aware of."

Kairi didn't need another reminder not to underestimate the Foretellers.

"She discovered the experiment of Kingdom Hearts soon after she arrived, and the millennia of weapons that had been created since its inception. She was furious about how we and our realms were being exploited as byproducts to create agents of slaughter, so she fled the nation and exposed the truth of the experiments to less belligerent, democratic nations. She didn't want to start a war, but she saw it as the sole option she had to protect her tapestry of realms. Ending the grand experiment wouldn't kill us." Kairi felt a small amount of the tension leave her. She hadn't even been aware that she'd been worried about that. "It would just leave our tapestry of realms in a different space time continuum.

"So Faerie was willing to start a war, and she hoped for a quick series of campaigns that would end in a matter of months."

Hades grimaced. "I see where this is going. The war didn't end, so in a desperate attempt to forge a ceasefire or a peace, Faerie signed an armistice, and one of the terms was that she became the new donor, correct?"

Kairi let herself cringe.

"I don't want to say you have a mind, because you're an idol," the Angel of Sin responded to Hades, who snarled challengingly back, "But you figured it out.

"The Creator God, Domain of Tales, who created the realm of the beginning, is the one entity in all of existence who truly has no heart, and who can't grow one."

Hades' jaw dropped open, further confirming Kairi's belief that she knew how to reach him. Xion turned to Roxas, who was standing next to her now, put a hand on his shoulder, and squeezed it warmly and protectively, and all the blood drained from Lea's face.

"He's an entity of waves without photon particles, so He possesses no light, yet because He lacks all particles, He's bereft of even the capacity to exist as an opaque entity, and possesses no darkness as well. Because He has no heart, He can't even bond, so He's empty of even the concept of others or individuals. He's nothing but a transparent drifting waveform without a home eternally drifting in the silent void outside all creation, a lacuna who can't even be mirrored by others and see Himself as they remember Him and thus understand what a heart is through their memories and His memories, because He himself isn't even a mirror, He's completely transparent."

Kairi wanted to retch, and Roxas was sagging into Xion's grip. Xion looked as if her legs wanted to give out, and Lea appeared torn between going over to Roxas and Xion and staying where he was so he could try to contain Hades if necessary.

"No one knows why Domain of Tales eventually created people's hearts," Kairi sighed in relief so powerful that she herself wanted to fall to her knees. She understood why, so there was hope for Domain of Tales, "And the world heart of the realm of the beginning, and thus existence and reality. But when He did, the people of Gaes became aware of who He was and developed religions devoted to worshipping Him."

"Domain of Tales created people's hearts and a world heart because He at last realized that something was wrong with Him," Kairi told the Angel of Sin and Hades, and anyone else nearby who hadn't realized what she had. "So he created hearts in an effort to understand connections and be completed by loved ones and friends and be defined by them, even though He wasn't aware what connections were at that point."

"Whatever," the Angel of Sin dismissed this, but to Kairi's relief, Hades clenched his teeth very slightly at this word.

"The point is that the nations of the realm of the beginning didn't discover the powers of the heart for millennia because they followed Domain of Tales' example, and it took them eons to develop codes of moral conduct that valued anyone outside of themselves. Even the most democratic nations that believed in the value of the individual weren't that much better than the authoritarian or oligarchical nations, and Faerie was too much of an idealist to see this.

"The war she started swiftly escalated into a full-scale worldwide conflict involving extermination and genocide through weapons of mass destruction and other harbingers of death and bloodshed and pain, including the very ones that she wanted to halt the production of. So yes, she signed an armistice requiring her to become the new donor of Kingdom Hearts.

"Walura died from withdrawal from the drugs, but this didn't dissuade Faerie. If she died a second death, it didn't matter. Ending the war did. Additionally, Faerie believed that by becoming the new donor, if she went under loving the people of this tapestry of realms, that if the hearts of her tapestry of realms discovered their origin, they could at least be reassured that all of the new hearts and worldlines being added to them outside of Kingdom Hearts' process of actualizing infinite potential phenomena were the intentions of love and not byproducts; and that she'd go through less darkness while asleep and thusly create less dark entities and realms.

"But this was in vain. The armistice lasted for less than an hour and the war has continued for millennia to this day, and the scientists in charge of Kingdom Hearts worked around Faerie's attempted sabotage by leaving the infinite potential phenomena of Kingdom Hearts alone as the control group and focusing more on the threads in the tapestry that were directly affected by Faerie.

"Faerie's efforts were all for nothing, though Faerie was asleep before the armistice fell apart and the scientists evaded her sabotage, so she herself doesn't know this."

Kairi clenched her teeth tightly and fisted her free hand even tighter. If the Angel of Sin was telling the truth, they had unlocked new hope, because they now knew a lot about what had happened to Faerie, but this told them nothing about how to actually restore Faerie to the realm of light.

"This is one of the reasons that I hate idealists," Hades said. "They cause more problems than they stop."

Kairi ignored that.

The Angel of Sin shrugged. "Idealism, cynicism, it's all the same. Of equally no point. We're all just accidental haphazard waves and particles born of fickle chance, so there's no meaning to having a heart other than to prey upon others to survive until you die.

"I'm the sole existence in all reality who can break this spiral of slaughter and stay true to the intentions of the Creator. I'm unending, so I don't even need to believe in survival. All life and reality were born from the starting singularity of Domain of Tales for the sole purpose of existing in order to surge to the confluence singularity of the instant that I evolved into the almighty being and the supernal dimension, but I have no need to concern myself with singularities.

"I can just believe in literally nothing and toy with others as prey forever because it's fun as all get out."

"You wish," Hades snarled. "I put you together, so I can still take you apart!"

Hades brought up his hands, and his entire body heated into the orange, yellow, and crimson wraith of flames it became when he was giving his all.

"Do your worst," the Angel of Sin replied. "I'm more than capable of defending against tricks like that now. The sole entity who I'm weak to now is Vegnablitz."

Horror erupted through all of Kairi's being.

She would not let Tidus' innocence be shredded as Sora's and Riku's and hers had been.

She started retracing her connections to her memories of the Demon Tides and the Lich. She couldn't risk Tidus' feelings and memories and dreams on the chance that Hades could separate Zack, the Titans, the Ice Colossus, and the world heart.

"Leave Tidus out of this!" she shouted.

The Angel of Sin grinned like a cat about to spring on a badly wounded animal in severe pain.

"Now why would I do that?" the Angel of Sin replied. "He is a threat to my life, even if he's not much of one, so I have more reason to toy with him than anyone else.

"Maybe Riku or you can find a way to return to being Vegnablitzes yourselves, though Sora can't unless Roxas and Xion die, and I mean die, not just return to his heart. The Keyblade can be given up and the bequeathing ceremony can be undone, as Cloud and Tifa undid Yen Sid's, but Sora can't return to being someone who was never meant to take up the Keyblade while two true Keyblade wielders who have directly or indirectly originated from his heart exist.

"Furthermore, Selphie and Wakka aren't Vegnablitzes. Selphie refuses to form romantic connections because she's afraid that they'll damage her ability to focus on friendships; and Wakka is too focused on his connection to his younger brother, Chappu, due to Chappu dying in the fishing wreck that orphaned Selphie and Wakka and killed Tidus' mother, to connect with friends or a romantic love as much as he connects with his lost family. Even if Selphie and Wakka have a change of heart, they can't strengthen their willingness to form all forms of connections quickly enough to become potential Vegnablitzes.

"Tidus is the last one left of the four of you; Sora, Riku, him, and you yourself; who can wield a Keyblade."

"So Tidus is the sole person currently on Olympus capable of the Vegnablitz Formchange, and the only threat to me."

"What is the Vegnablitz Formchange!?" Tidus shouted, voice a mixture of agony, frustration, and countless other emotions.

"'Memories and dreams of connection amidst unfriendly and friendly rejection,'" the Angel of Sin responded. "A Formchange that is only accomplished by calling a Keyblade from the heart of another wielder, such as myself, who wasn't supposed to take up the Keyblade. People who can't become Vegnablitzes can't acquire the Keyblades of those who haven't undergone the bequeathing ritual, and people who have the potential to be Vegnablitzes can't obtain the Keyblades of those who have gone through the bequeathing ritual if those wielders are successfully able to summon the Keyblade the first time that they do so; Sora was able to regain the Kingdom Key from Riku because he'd taken it from Riku before Riku first fashioned it.

"But people who are Vegnablitzes can steal the Keyblade from other fabricated wielders.

"Doing so, however, causes such a strain on the Vegnablitz's heart that it fragments ethereally and physically, and murders the person who took the Keyblade and went through the Vegnablitz Formchange in the proccess.

"It's too late for Tidus to choose to wield the Keyblade himself."

Every single drop of blood drained from Kairi's face, her stomach plummeted out from under her, and she was no longer fully aware of reality once more, though she could tell that this time she was capable of enough emotion and thought that she was shaking violently.

Tidus inhaled, and Kairi wanted to whirl to look at him, but she couldn't take the risk of taking her eyes off of the Angel of Sin.

No.

Tidus was a bridge.

He didn't belong in a reality of pain.

He needed to remain loved and kept safe and cherished and protected in a reality of warmth.

She was not going to let this happen to him.

Assuming that hearing his sole choices left were to die or let others be hurt and die themselves hadn't broken his heart the way Sora's and Riku's and hers had been broken in and of itself.

She suppressed the urge to panic and focused further on tracing the threads of her heart to her memories of the Demon Tides and the Lich.

"He lost his chance when Zack surrendered to me," the Angel of Sin was going on. "He spent too long being indecisive, and no one else on Olympus is a prospective Keyblade wielder, bequeathed or overlooked. He could still have become a wielder if he'd taken it from Zack when Zack hadn't fully become one with me and I and he weren't fully Keyblade wielders, but after that it was too late.

"If he wants to stop me before I devour Olympus as my first divine banquet, all he needs to do is reach out to Deifacted Selection here and now, call it to his own heart, and return to the ocean of quantum dust from which he sprung."

---

Kairi couldn't afford not to look at Tidus now.

She turned, terrified so horribly that she couldn't breathe of what she would see, but though Tidus' face was a mixture of anguish and horror and tears were in his eyes and falling down his face, he wasn't shaking much and he was holding his tears back.

Part of that reason might have been because Wakka's hand was on his shoulder and Selphie was stroking his hair, but he was keeping it partially together.

Kairi wanted to run to Tidus herself, pull him into her arms, and hold him close and safe and away from the nightmare that was now consuming him as it had consumed Sora and Riku and her, but the Angel of Sin had just threatened to toy with Tidus' feelings and life.

She might have a better chance at protecting Tidus by not heading over to him.

Hercules, however, stepped in front of Tidus.

"Don't let him get to you," Hercules said. "Warmongers and criminals do this all the time. They try to get under your skin and destroy your will to fight so they can beat you a lot easier."

The Angel of Sin rolled his eyes. "Of course. As it always goes, the sacrificial offering takes the civilian's place because the civilian is too much of a coward to stand up on his or her or its own."

Lezard rose an eyebrow. "Oh?" he questioned. "I didn't think of Hercules' lack of lucidity this way. What do you mean?"

"It's simple," the Angel of Sin spoke back. "Heroes are puppet weapons in their own right.

"They're in their position because most people are cowards who want others to bring them happiness and safety rather than standing on their own two legs and striving for it themselves. And, as you know, they accept the roles as sacrificial offerings that the people of the World had assigned them willingly. If Zack had given up on his dreams of becoming a hero, he wouldn't have sacrificed himself to the darkness to try to end this sooner. Rufus wouldn't have lost his ownership of his body, Meg wouldn't have lost her soul to Hades, and Hercules wouldn't terrify Meg and Phil and the other people connected to him by repeatedly playing fast and loose with his life and safety."

Hercules' eyes widened and his mouth opened.

Lezard obviously hadn't confronted Hercules about Lezard's issues with him before.

"There's a reason that Hercules can become a God once again if he completes his hero's journey.

"Heroes are the puppet weapons of the World, and of Kingdom Hearts itself."

"Then what should we use our altruism, talents, skills, and strength for?" Hercules replied. "If we just turned a blind eye to the hurt of those around us when we have the power to make a difference, we'd be no better than people like you or Hades."

Tidus staggered back as if struck, and Hercules' eyes filled with horror as he realized what he'd just said.

"'I don't admire one guy leaping into danger if it means someone else might have to jump in to save him. You're all just lining up to lose out. Dooming others to take the fall with ya'. Oh, and you can spare me the usual party line. Yes, hearts are powerful when they're connected. But if you put too much of that power in one place, some of those hearts might end up breaking.'"

"Get up and retake Sora's hand now. You don't get to decide what will hurt Sora the least. He does."

Kairi knew that Sora had already forgiven her, and she'd give her heart back to him, but she wished with all of what she was that Sora hadn't forgiven her and would be angry with her for what she'd done to him, and what she was doing because she hadn't gone back to his side yet.

He turned to Tidus. "That's not what I meant," he attempted to reassure Tidus, but they all knew that it was too late.

Selphie's strokes became more soothing and reassuring, and Wakka's grip became tighter, but new tears were brimming in Tidus' eyes.

To Kairi's unease, Rufus' expression became defiant, however.

Lezard's eyes flashed with hate and anger, and he opened his mouth, but then Hades' own eyes flashed in irritation.

"Not like this they don't!" he snapped angrily. "They're mine to kill!

"Hercules, Zack is targeting Meg and Phil to prove his point!"

Existence, and Kairi's existence, froze into absolute zero frigid ice.

Kairi traced her connections to the Demon Tides and the Lich with all the heart that she could hurl into doing so, she wanted to run in front of Tidus to shield him from what she knew that he was about to see, she wanted to close his eyelids with her hand as he turned horrified and terrified eyes of his own in Meg's and Phil's direction, she wanted to sprint at the Angel of Sin blindly, something at all, anything at all to prevent what she knew was about to happen.

Hercules had no such reservations.

He ran at the Angel of Sin with his sword ready to slice, but Kairi knew that he knew as well as she did that he couldn't prevent what was about to unfold.

Thin wisps of pale green the same color as the Styx Maelstrom coalesced around the fourth finger of the Angel of Sin's free hand.

Thicker wisps enshrouded Meg and Phil, and their ethereal glimmering hearts erupted from their chests, rocketed into the dots adumbrating the Angel of Sin, and disappeared.

Hercules' legs gave out and he crashed to the stone floor of the amphitheater on his knees to slide to a halt, shaking violently, and he let his sword drop out of his hand and clatter to the floor itself.

Forget not sprinting to Tidus.

Kairi ran to him as Tidus' own legs gave out, dismissing Destiny's Embrace and her familiar in coils and wisps of energy as she did so, caught him and turned to the side as she did so so that she could keep her eyes on the Angel of Sin and Hades, pulled his head to her shoulder with one hand, and used that arm and her other arm to rock him back and forth from side to side.

Selphie and Wakka turned with them, continuing to rub Tidus' back and hold his shoulder, but Selphie's strokes and Wakka's clasp were uncertain now, Selphie's eyes and face were streaked with tears of their own, and Wakka was shaking.

This was too much for them, as well, in its own way.

But Kairi knew, while this might make it a little easier for Tidus to deal with his knowledge that Meg and Phil had just lost their hearts, if not their lives, because he hadn't chosen to die, he was no more capable of fully recovering from this than Sora or Riku or she had been.

She'd tried, but Tidus' heart had now been shattered as well, and his innocence shattered forever as Sora's and Riku's and hers had been.

Why was it wrong to give into the darkness?

But Tidus' own desperate grasp as he wrapped his arms around her and held himself to her and her to him as though she was the last lifeline that he had remaining, shaking so violently that it was as though he'd literally fall to fragments and causing her shoulder to become wet with anguished, broken tears, was all the answer that she needed.

If she gave into the darkness, she wouldn't be able to cry herself for Tidus at all.

Kairi kept part of her attention on attempting to comfort and protect Tidus, but she returned the rest of her attention to tracing her connections to the Demon Tides and the Lich.

"They're not Heartless or Nobodies," the Angel of Sin revealed. "They'd live on in a sense, then.

"But nor are they dead.

"Their hearts are suspended within me as Sora's hearts were, and where they will provide me with new sustenance and power for all unbeginning and endless time."

"Then I can still get them out," Hercules clenched his free hand into a fist, gripped his sword, and got back to his feet, though his legs were shaking so badly it looked as though he'd fall back to his knees any second.

"How do you propose to do it?" the Angel of Sin sneered. "I assume that you intend to sacrifice yourself for them in one way or another.

"Don't you see yet? I might not have been able to take their hearts into myself if Zack hadn't sacrificed himself to try to hasten my defeat. Sacrifice leads to nothing, just further pain and torment because you're no longer around to protect the people who you claimed to love and your absence leaves behind the injury of your loss.

"Nor can you even protect everyone. You failed Megara and Phil because you were protecting Tidus; as Hades said himself, you're impotent when others are actually in danger around you.

"And even if you do recomplete Megara and Phil without losing yourself in the process, then what? The life of a hero is a ceaseless and vain burden, and you'll just need to keep sacrificing yourself. Heroes spend their entire lives waging battle after battle, fight after fight attempting to protect the people nearby while innumerable others drop dead or fall into despair all over the realm of light elsewhere, so your altruism and talents and skills and strength will get you nowhere. All you end up accomplishing is increasingly breaking your back under your burden and fading into the dark emptiness at the end of your life aware that you'd given everything you had and it was all futile, frail and completely alone and forgotten by those around you and future generations because you haven't left behind a single meaningful mark on reality to prove to others and to yourself that you exist and had existed.

"Heroes are nothing more than the sacrificial offerings of the World, and spirals of death and bloodshed and pain and despair incarnate."

Hercules let his sword arm and his sword fall, but he remained standing, though he was still shaking.

"I don't believe that," Hercules responded. "Heroes aren't just part of the astral tapestry, Dad and Gods and Goddesses have faith in them. There's more to heroism than just altruism and strength.

"That's the final lesson that I need to learn.

"I just don't know what it is, yet. But I can go the distance and connect with it. I'm certain of it."

"Inform me when you learn it."

The Angel of Sin shrugged and turned back to Tidus, and his smile became shrug.

"So, what will you do, Vegnablitz? Now is the time to choose. Die and cause others pain, or live and drown in sorrow? Now is the time to shape your tale. Your destiny is in your hands."

"You don't need to," Kairi assured Tidus. "I can still beat him myself.

"And I won't leave you, or Sora, or Riku, or Selphie, or Wakka, again in the process."

Even after what Platina had taught her, Kairi couldn't believe that she was saying this once more.

"Don't doubt yourself, and don't doubt me. Believe that we'll pull through. Our hearts may be weak, and we may fade into the darkness in futility without leaving behind a legacy, but we are not alone, and we're strong when we're together."

Hercules started.

"That's it," he breathed, and a golden aura began to flicker around him that was much brighter than his usual gold aura as a Demigod.

"That's the answer."

---

Hercules raised his sword into a combat position.

"So what if I die frail and in futility?" he questioned the Angel of Sin rhetorically. "So what if I fade into the darkness having failed to accomplish anything truly meaningful and I'm forgotten forever by the current and future generations? I'm not fighting to be recognized or remembered, and whenever I die, I won't vanish alone.

"Meg and Phil and my other friends, including the true Zack, will be with me then, and, even though it's not important that they do, they will have remembered what I did and convey it to a small number of people in future generations.

"And when I die, it won't be because I've left them behind sooner than I should have. You're correct. Sacrificing yourself is reckless and just causes more pain and sadness, and it's not just reckless, it's as selfish as what Paris did to Meg. Because when you've become a part of other people's hearts, so long as they remember you, your life isn't just yours to throw away as you choose.

"It will be because I know that I've done all that I could, not dying, but living for, Meg and Phil and Zack with all my flawed and incomplete heart, without betraying their feelings by leaving them, while strengthening their connections with me as Meg and Phil and Zack strengthened mine in return and completed its weaknesses.

"That is what it means to be a hero."

The golden aura around Hercules stopped flickering and flared in all directions into a blinding brilliance brighter than the Sun.

"Heroes don't connect with the people who they love through the size of their strength.

"They connect with others through the strength of their hearts."

The gold brilliance receded, but it remained around Hercules, as bright as Zeus' and Hades' golden auras were, and Kairi knew that Hercules had regained his Godhood at last.

A grudging, but approving and genuine smile, came to Lezard's face, but to Kairi's further unease, Rufus frowned deeply.

Lezard noticed this, and his smile disappeared and was replaced by a frown.

Hades scowled blackly, clearly not just at how one of his four greatest enemies had returned to being an immortal and indestructible God, but at Hercules' idealism.

"You're still wasting your life," he disagreed with Hercules. "Idealism just blinds you to the suffering of the people around you. You need to accept the testament of weakness, that the people who you love," Good. Hades was willing to use the word 'love,' "Will die and suffer unless you stop wielding your strength for others and sharing your power, and become stronger and greater than anyone else so you can lead them away from hurting the people you love and themselves, and kill all dangers to the people who you want to protect and they themselves."

Kairi hadn't realized that.

Hades didn't hate everyone but Persephone and Cerberus.

He loved them, even Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and Hercules, and the rest of Olympus, as much as Zeus and the rest of his family loved the people they were connected with and all other hearts.

Hades, and Persephone and Cerberus, were just so broken that seeing the form that their family and loved ones, and the world around them, were in, was driving them to make it a better place through giving into the darkness.

Her father had lived for a similar purpose, and for the first time since Luxu had revealed that Xehanort was her father hours ago, Kairi wanted to feel and think of Xehanort as Dad, and was glad to do so.

The Titans, and the Angel of Sin, truly knew nothing but hate.

They just saw others as a selfish source of sustenance.

Hades was the same as both Organization Thirteens, and other ethereal beings were the same as the original Organization Thirteen had been.

Kairi needed to understand where Yozora, Luxu, and the other Foretellers had a place in all this.

"Not when Meg and Phil and Zack are keeping my eyes on the hearts and the world around me, it won't," Hercules disagreed.

Hades crossed his arms and looked away from Hercules with a disgusted and derisive sneer.

Hercules turned to the Valkyrie sisters.

"I'm sorry that I didn't understand your pain and hurt all this time, or your dreams."

He bowed his head to them in a student's bow to a teacher.

"I clearly passed my Final Exam, but I refuse to graduate," he said. "Once I've lit Meg's and Phil's ways home, I'm going to stay Phil's pupil so I'm continually reminded of what it is to be a pupil and learn your dreams from you as you learn from me."

Platina and Alicia smiled, but it was Leone who spoke.

"We forgave you at the beginning," she reassured him, and Hercules sighed in relief. "We'll be glad to share our dreams back and forth with a God."

Then Hercules turned to Kairi.

"But you yourself don't fully understand Platina yet."

Kairi started.

"Now that I'm a God once more, I can sense that you're tracing how to sacrifice yourself and become someone else. That's sacrifice in its own way."

Kairi winced.

But Hercules was correct.

Kairi wanted to slap her hand to her forehead.

She should be using the light as well as the darkness to trace her memories of the Demon Tides and the Lich.

Then she wouldn't become someone else.

She'd just temporarily Formchange.

At that realization, the connections refined into clear threaded glass, and she saw how to access the power that she'd summoned in Arendelle, and wield it as both light and darkness.

She sighed heavily in relief.

Maybe they genuinely could win this.

She gently and carefully removed Tidus' arms from around her, but she didn't raise his chin so he was looking in her eyes.

She didn't know if he'd feel comfortable connecting that deeply with someone when he was this engulfed in guilt and self-hatred.

"It will be okay now," she assured him with a confidence she still couldn't fully feel.

She'd be fighting the Angel of Sin side by side with Hercules once she Formchanged, Hercules was wholly a God now, Hades himself might back them up, and all three of them had the talent and skill and years of experience that utilized strength and were the keys to winning a battle, not strength itself.

But the Angel of Sin, though it was the compound heart of the five Titans, had a human intelligence now to enable it to use its own millennia of experience in tactical and strategic ways that would enable it to fully harness its unimaginable power at its best, and it possessed all the strength and powers of five Gods, the Ice Colossus, and most of all, the heart of Olympus itself.

Which also gave it access to the same powers over the heaven, the ocean, and the Underworld that Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades wielded, and Zeus was such a powerful God that he could cast thunder spells that the Titans were terrified of and forge entire constellations of physical stars.

Kairi still didn't know if they had that good of a chance of defeating the Angel of Sin.

But they did have a genuine chance now, so that would have to be enough.

"Let me keep you safe," she requested to Tidus, "As I have to Sora and Riku a lot of times by now. You don't need to fade away."

Tidus nodded, brokenly, but it was a nod, so Kairi stepped away from him, recalled Destiny's Embrace to her hand in coiling red and blue, and then furrowed her brow.

Wildly spraying bursts of light of a kaleidoscope erupted in haphazard directions around her as she felt her shoulders and back shift a small but significantly painful amount, and this time she perceived that six wings of shimmering and glimmering angelic feathers similar to Platina's emerged from each side of her back, the ones on the left light blue like Platina's with arcing currents of iridescent ivory coruscating upwards over their fronts and backs, and the ones on the right a deep red with arcing currents of pitch ebony coursing upwards over their fronts and backs.

Amethyst armor with thick ornate silver linings accenting it closed around her torso and upper legs, a dress of white with a tall, thick silver pattern above the bottom rim and a large number of medium-sized silver tassels dangling from it, and likewise colored amethyst boots with similar thick ornate silver linings enclosed her boots.

An amethyst helmet with raised portions at the front swirling like coral in the ocean and no rear of the helmet; a light blue sigil of a phoenix with wings spread wide to the sides and upwards in the center of two concentric circles surrounded by the rest of the sigil, emblazoned in the helmet on each side at the back; and four physical golden angelic feathers similar to a bird's fanning out from spaces at the top of both sides of the back of the helmet above and behind the sigils, completed the assembly.

And for the first time, Kairi felt Destiny's Embrace itself Formchange in her hand, and it shifted into a lengthy but light and well-balanced javelin patterned with the same flowers Destiny's Embrace was, as well as lilies and irises, that Kairi knew was named Bifrost.

"Formchange, Cantata Aeterna," Kairi announced, "Valkyrie in Rainbow Bridge."

She turned and walked to Hercules' side, moving and swinging the javelin to test its weight and maneuverability, and when she believed that she had a decent, although novice's, sense of it, she moved it into a neutral combat position that she could change to defense or attack as she needed to.

Hercules looked at Hades. "Are you going to stand with us, Uncle Hades?"

Hades scowled viciously and blackly at being called Uncle, and said, "Oh, no way. I'm staying out of this as long as you're combating Zack."

Hercules sighed, but he nodded in acceptance and repositioned his sword.

He turned to face the Angel of Sin, and Kairi mirrored his movements as best as she could.

"I recommend that the rest of you keep back," Kairi said to the other guardians, Lezard, the Einherjar, and Rufus. "This is probably going to get very ugly."

"I agree," Aqua nodded, and Kairi knew that the other guardians would follow her example.

"Fine," Platina acquiesced, but she didn't sound happy about it.

The Angel of Sin shorted derisively and turned back to Kairi.

"So now you want to be a heroine yourself, huh?" he mocked her. "That road will just lead you into my One World and up to my divine banquet where I can feast upon your and Hercules' sacrificial offerings as much as anyone else in Olympus, the realm of light, the realms of this thread of the tapestry of reality, and all the realms of all the tapestries of all existence."

"I'm not a hero," she responded. "But nor am I a villain. Sora wields the light, and Riku wields the darkness.

"I wield both, as the connection between both sides of the heart, ethereal beings and people, with regular hearts or without, astral and data, love and pain. To bring all of them together into a rainbow of reality and dreams that mirrors the way home upon those lost in pain and despair who can't find their way to the safety and the warmth of home themselves."

Platina nodded, and she smiled at Kairi with further relief and approval.

"Now dismiss your Keyblade and surrender."

The Angel of Sin gave off a harsh laugh.

"Not while my maw slavers."

"So be it, then," Kairi nodded in resignation.

Then she broke into a sprint at the Angel of Sin, and Hercules accompanied her.

"There are many worlds, but they share the same sky!" she shouted. "One sky, one destiny!"

.

"Use all the power for yourself. Try to protect the others and you will only guarantee your own death. Cry not my beauty. You and I are one and the same."-Loki

"I hear them."-Lenneth 'Platina' Valkyrie

"What?"-Loki

"The voices of all the living souls of Midgard."-Lenneth 'Platina' Valkyrie

"…"-Loki

"And I feel them. I feel all of their pain!"-Lenneth 'Platina' Valkyrie

"What? What is this power!?"-Loki

'Odin used to be a rather weak God indeed. In other words, Gods do not grow, but are static. However…?"-Lezard Valeth

'Odin was different, because he's a half-elf.'-Mystina

'That's right. Because Odin's divine blood was mixed with mortal, he has the ability to grow, just as we humans do. Do you know what my homunculi are crafted from? Correct. My homunculi are essentially half-elves. If I were to shift my soul into the body of a homunculus… might I not become a God?'-Lezard Valeth

"This power… It is from all of you."-Lenneth 'Platina' Valkyrie

VALKYRIE PROFILE