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.

17. Outskirts of Memories and Dreams

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CHAPTER 16:

OUTSKIRTS OF MEMORIES AND DREAMS

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Author's Notes: The Tracks for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'Depths Of the Night,' from the CHRONO TRIGGER Original Sound Version, Disc Three; and afterwards 'Outskirts Of Time,' from the CHRONO TRIGGER Original Sound Version, Disc Three. None of these pieces can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section, but all of these pieces, and all of the ones in the previous Chapters that can't be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section, can be found in Zophar's Domain's MP3 section.

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"When the cheetah stays the glass sculpture herself of her memories and vacuum, he shall toll the bells that let slip the foxes and the hounds, deluge the firmament with irons, and with his two summations of the swords, he shall liken himself as the vortex of chaff and rapids, and be reborn once again anew as the most prodigious of all manufacted fervors to rewrite the days of old as scribbles with the feather of himself, for he will have become the throbbing empyrean throne of all celestial spheres and demesnes. That's all that I remember. I'm sorry about that."

Even though Kairi clearly heard those words as her awareness returned in the blackness, what they meant didn't register at first.

Then it did, and she opened her eyes as fast as she could.

Her head throbbed with pain at the sudden movement, but she whipped her hands to her side and forced herself to sit up as quickly as she could, too, and ignored the dizziness that caused the world to swim and the weakness that threatened to send her falling onto her back.

"This is one of the times that you should take it easy," Tidus reproved her, his voice a mixture of relief and terror and concern and worry. "We've got this, as Sora puts it. Focus on your own problems for now."

"You are okay, ya'?" Wakka questioned, and he ignored the glare Selphie gave him for requesting Kairi to speak.

Kairi wasn't certain, but she was sure enough to be able to answer without lying.

"I'm well enough," she informed them.

Then she turned to Xion and Lea, who were kneeing on the floor at her bedside with their arms around each other, tears streaking Lea's face. Surprisingly, while there were tears in Xion's eyes, she wasn't letting them fall, and she looked determined to try to comfort Lea with no evidence of guilt or terror on her face.

Kairi would ask about that later.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but did Zack just say that the Foretellers want Roxas to become a new artificial Kingdom Hearts, and transcend and replace the old one?" she asked.

"I haven't been listening enough to know either way," an unfamiliar female voice broke in from beyond the open door to the chamber. Kairi turned her head in surprise to see a female stranger about Zack's age with short dark purple hair and glasses with lenses shimmering with a spectrum of light rainbow colors; wearing a white bucket shaped helmet with a rounded top that stopped partially down her forehead and that didn't cover her ears the same color as her shirt and shorts; and a gun of an unfamiliar making holstered at the left side of her waist; walking into the room to stop inside the door. "But it sounds like it. So Lucca the Great will say so and become a part of the conversation."

Zack glared at Yuna. "You're still up to your old tricks of leaving important things out, I see," he said. "How long ago did you use your Gummipad to call Lucca?" Was Lucca from Ivalice Zodiac? How did she get here so quickly, even if she'd sailed here on a Gummi ship, particularly if Ivalice Zodiac was separated from the rest of the realm of light as effectively as Mickey had said and implied? "And how much have you told her?"

Yuna gave a guilty, embarrassed smile, and shrugged.

"As soon as Hercules told us that Kairi trounced the Angel of Sin," she confessed. "And I told Lucca everything Hercules and Platina know by now."

"But I didn't get here in the Epoch soon enough to hear anything but your discussion about the great abyss and good old Vayne's prophecy," Lucca said, and she began walking to Zack. "That's why I stayed outside, as you most likely figured. I didn't want to interrupt it."

She reached Zack, brought her arms around his back mostly vertically with her hands just below his shoulders, and pulled him to her to hold him close and warm and protectively and securely with a love and care and protectiveness and reassurance that made Kairi's heart ache and caused tears of her own to emerge in her eyes.

She wished that she could embrace Sora and keep him safe like that.

But that was just a wishful flight of fancy.

Whoever this Lucca was, even with what Kairi now knew about who she had been and who she was, Kairi additionally knew that she could still never be like someone like Lucca.

Lucca released Zack and walked backwards a distance with a smile.

"It's wonderful to see that you're okay," she spoke to Zack.

"Same here," Zack said, and there was a pain and a longing and a resignation in his voice that caused Kairi's heart to twist and squeeze tightly.

Couldn't anyone get any form of love and connection right?

However, she was one of the last people who should be talking about that.

"Zack won't tell us what's going on with Schala," Aqua said without preamble. "But we need to know. You might not have heard much about us, but most of us are wielders of weapons known as Keyblades, and we're sworn to protect the people of all of the worlds of the realm of light from darkness and harm."

Lucca faced her. "Mickey told me an amount about you years ago," she responded. "I'm sorry, but I need to decline. The less you know about her, the less you have the ability to meddle where you shouldn't. I'm aware, yes, that you can be as dangerous from what you don't know as from what you do know, but not with what's going on with Schala.

"Though you shouldn't say that you're just trying to protect the people of all of the worlds of the realm of light. That's an implied slight to the people of the realm of darkness, the realm in-between, and elsewhere."

Kairi grinned, and she meant it, so that she could tell Sora and Riku that she had if she needed to.

She needed to introduce Lucca to them.

They'd adore her.

Lucca inclined her head then.

"I feel terrible about not helping you, however, and a lot more. From what Yuna told me, a number of you have had a lot of bad experiences with scientists and scholars."

Kairi felt a small flicker of unease at hearing what Lucca's professions were, but she pushed it away.

Dad had loved others and the World, as had Even and Ienzo even when they'd been Vexen and Zexion.

They hadn't hated others and the World at all, in any fashion.

It had just hurt them so badly to see the state that others and the World were in that they had given into the darkness in order to endeavor to fix it.

Xion's and Lea's expressions, from where they were holding each other, and Aqua's, Ven's, and Terra's faces, were masks.

"I know the type, and I understand how badly they've hurt you, so whether or not you're willing to believe me, I can assure you that I try my hardest not to be like them.

"I've been taking charlatans like them down for years, and if I can say or do anything to help you shut down the Foretellers and the snobs in Gaes, I'll do so with all my heart and mind and existence and life.

"I learned long ago that the responsibility of a scientist and scholar is to ceaselessly question the truths of reality, continually remain skeptical of them and review them to ensure that her or his or its hypotheses and theories about reality aren't inaccurate and misleading to others and the World, endlessly attempt to push beyond her or his or its current proposals about how reality might work, and forever endeavor to teach others and the World outside of herself or himself or itself with her or his or its current beliefs about how life and the cosmos function while seeking to see if those hypotheses and theories need to be revised and revising them as necessary to attempt to better enable others to live joyful lives free of suffering.

"I haven't once forgotten that the duty of a scientist and scholar is to teach the possibilities that she or he or it sees in existence to others and the World to try to enable others and existence to surmount the horizons of their limitations as unique individuals with hearts and minds and feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams of their own that are different than everyone else's so that they can accomplish their limitless potential as living beings. And to understand that the World is elastic and subjective and plastic and relative, stabilized by nothing more than one's individual feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams and wishes and faith and hope and belief and trust and perception and will, with as many hypothesis and theories as there are hearts, and as many truths as there are memories and feelings and thoughts and dreams.

"Not to irresponsibly treat people and hearts and minds and memories and dreams as beakers in a sterilized closet who can't feel happiness or pain, who are nothing more than numbers and information and data and statistics and resources and byproducts and battle strategies and verbal equations and mathematical equations, who all have similar feelings and thoughts and memories and trusts and wills and faiths and beliefs and perceptions and dreams, and who are limited by life, reality, themselves, how they were born, and how they die.

"To me, people and hearts and minds and feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams are people and hearts and minds and feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams, not samples or definitions on a chalkboard.

"One of my core mottos is that each and every one of us has feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams, and letting them loose without any restraint into the World and existence and reality and the cosmos triggers sustenance and changes in all of the unending present of the connections within space, and the everlasting history of the past and future of time."

Xion's face looked less guarded, as did Lea's and Ven's and Terra's, though Kairi couldn't tell if any of it was forced, but Aqua's mask hadn't altered.

Lucca raised her head and slowly, with an expression and body language that made it undoubtable that she was giving everyone in the room her full attention as equals, swept her visage and gaze over all of them.

"But if you want to tell me I'm the same as Xehanort and Ansem the Wise, or quacks like Even and Ienzo used to be, anyway, for not sharing my knowledge about with you to attempt to improve your lives and take away your hardships, go right ahead," Lucca ended. "It's wholly the truth.

"I'm very, terribly, horrifically, horribly, totally, wholly, fully, completely, absolutely sorry."

Kairi cringed.

"Most of us have done more than enough apologizing to go around since hours earlier today, or yesterday, if it's tomorrow yet," she replied. "You don't need to add to it."

"Then that was my mistake." Lucca's face was now understanding and empathetic and sympathetic and knowing, and she didn't even look as though she wanted to incline her head or say that she was sorry once more.

Xion smiled slightly, as did Ven, but no one else did.

Kairi was impressed, but she knew that Lucca would most likely be thankful if someone didn't show her gratitude for giving her further reason to feel bad.

"In the hopes that it undoes my error, I understand how most of you feel myself," Lucca reassured them. "I'd rather not talk about it to people who I've just met, but my feelings are irrelevant, so, since it might enable me to carry you and your pain, here's why I understand.

"When I was a kid, I loved the airships that regularly fly through the skies of Ivalice Zodiac and the journeys their crew took, and I wanted to grow up to be a sky pirate, soaring freely through the heavens in search of adventure and wealth. I loved it so much that I didn't pay any attention to the inventions that Dad, Taban Ffamran Ashtear, the most famous scientist of the Empire of Archadia that Vayne ruled, kept engineering, building, altering, improving, and taking apart. Dad wanted me to learn how they worked because I might one day need to assume responsibility for crafting, maintaining, improving, and deconstructing them myself for the benefit of Archadian society, but I didn't care about Archadian society. I just wanted to selfishly live life free as the sky, on my terms, without needing to be responsible for, or worrying about, other people's feelings or thoughts or happiness or pain or needs or wants or wishes or dreams. I even got fed up with scientific contraptions and science because Dad kept refusing to take me exploring or on his personal skyferry, a present from Vayne and Drace before Vayne gave into the darkness.

"So I buried my nose in books about airship engineering and construction when Dad wanted to teach me how to provide for people other than myself, and as a result, one day when I was eight Mom, Lara Mustadio Ashtear, got one of the necklaces that she was wearing imprisoned in one of Dad's inventions while it was on. I was right there when it happened, but because I'd just cared about my own feelings and thoughts and happiness and dreams, I had no idea how to turn the invention off. I'm not saying what happened was worse than what you went through, but unlike the rest of you, who were in virtual no win situations and feel guilty for making the best of them that you could and coming up short doing better, I hadn't been in a virtual no win situation. I had had the power to make a difference, but I'd been too selfish and apathetic and irresponsible and uncaring to wield it.

"Mom got dragged into the invention at her neck, and it shut down when she jammed it, but before that happened, it ripped her neck apart. She barely survived, and since then, she's needed to live confined to a wheelchair, her spinal cord severed at the neck, paralyzed from the neck down and unable to move any of her body below her neck or feel anything with it."

Kairi was barely aware that her jaw had dropped open, as complete, absolute horror erupted through all of what comprised her.

But, as much as Kairi hated herself for experiencing it, a tiny amount of relief filled her.

Lucca would actually understand.

Sora, Riku, Tidus, Lea, Xion, Aqua, Ven, Terra, Elsa, Anna, Platina, and even Roxas didn't understand.

As much as what they'd gone through, and what they were still going through, was indescribably incomparably worse to what Kairi was going through, abandoning and betraying and leaving and hurting someone who you loved, or other people, when you were helpless and powerless to love them and keep them safe and take away their pain and protect them, as terrible as it was, was still a very far cry from having the ability to do so and choosing to just turn away from the pain and suffering of someone who you loved, or other people, and let that person or those people continue to be tortured and tormented.

That was what Kairi had done since the instant she'd met Sora and Riku, because she hadn't wanted to remember her life as a child on Radiant Garden to prevent the pain of its loss from hurting her at all, when she could have made an effort to recollect it.

If she had when she'd met Sora and Riku, she could have answered their questions about other worlds, Riku wouldn't have opened the door to the heart of Destiny Islands, Sora and Riku would never have become Keyblade wielders, and none of the nightmare that had destroyed their lives would have occurred.

It didn't matter that she'd been unaware that she was a puppet weapon of Dad's and the Foretellers since she'd met them.

She'd intentionally and knowingly abandoned and betrayed and deserted and left behind and stabbed Sora and Riku in the back and shot Sora and Riku in the back and turned blind eyes to Sora's and Riku's pain and turned away from Sora's and Riku's pain and failed Sora and Riku since she'd met them when she'd been four.

She'd told herself, even while knowing that it was lie, that she just couldn't remember her life on Radiant Garden, because she hadn't wanted to inconvenience herself by doing so, even though she'd known that it was just because she didn't want to inconvenience herself, and she had eventually convinced herself that she genuinely couldn't, and let Sora and Riku be tormented by not knowing about other worlds.

But the instant that she'd discovered that the door in the Secret Place was open, the night that their lives had been broken forever a lifetime ago, and the sight of it slightly ajar in a way that Riku often left doors open when he'd been too distracted to fully close them had reminded her of seeing a similar door before she'd arrived on Destiny Islands; she'd known that this was all a lie, that she could have recalled her life on Radiant Garden if she'd just made the effort to go through hardship to do so, and that Sora and Riku and perhaps she herself and Tidus and Selphie and Wakka were almost certainly about to be thrown into the unknown and stranded there, and have their questions about the rest of reality and existence answered in among the worst possible ways, and that Riku had been the one to open the door in front of Kairi a long time ago or just recently because she had let him be tortured not knowing about other worlds.

And Kairi had known then beyond all possible or not possible or actual or not actual or conceivable or inconceivable or potential or not potential doubt then that she'd apathetically and indifferently and uncaringly and selfishly let Sora and Riku suffer for years since the instant she'd met them, and that everything that was now hurting them far worse and that was about to, and that was going to, hurt them far worse in the future had been, and was, her fault.

But Kairi couldn't talk to Lucca about this.

Lucca was the one person who Kairi had met in her life who would understand Kairi's hatred of herself, and horror and terror for Sora and Riku and Tidus and Selphie and Wakka and the other people she loved and others, and guilt, and pain.

That meant that Lucca might be able to take it away, at least a little.

Kairi could never let anyone have the most minuscule, most infinitesimal chance of taking any of that hatred of herself and horror and terror and guilt and pain away.

The others, save for Aqua, looked sick, and Aqua had gone white.

Lea pulled out of Xion's arms and let her go to stand and say something, and Xion stood with her, but before anyone could say anything, Lucca grinned, raised her left hand above her head to the side, posed melodramatically and proudly, though not as much as Lezard had, and snapped all five of the fingers of that hand.

"Lucca the Great, the empyreal genius of science and magic, matter and spirit, hearts and dreams, just had another breakthrough in the history of scientific progress!" she cried.

"I know what the realm at the bottom of the great abyss is."

If that realm was connected to what Lucca and Kairi had done, Kairi needed to hear this not just to know what Sora had been imprisoned inside.

Lucca had just abandoned and betrayed her mom once, and she hadn't known that she was hurting her mother when she was doing so, and then, when she'd discovered that she'd been wrong, she'd learned her lesson.

Kairi had abandoned and betrayed Sora and Riku for around ten years, and she'd known that she was wounding them horrifically the entire time even before things had gotten worse, and she hadn't learned her lesson at any point during that around a decade, and she'd just turned blind eyes to their torment and let them suffer.

Whatever darkness Lucca had lived with in her heart, if the realm at the bottom of the great abyss was connected to Lucca's darkness, Kairi had lived with, and still lived with, a darkness in her heart that existed at the uttermost foundation of the realm at the bottom of the great abyss.

"Even believing in nothing is still believing in something. You're believing that nothing is what you should believe in, and that futility and pointlessness and accidents and causality and destruction and death are what you should teach other people to believe in, and how you and other people should relate to each other and one another, and to yourself.

"You're not loving or hating, or sustaining or exploiting, or causing to laugh or sadistically toying with, someone, or at least yourself, so light and darkness aren't two opposite sides of a spectrum and they swallow all colors.

"But even then you're still trying to connect with others, or at least yourself, and love them and protect them, and you still believe in something.

"The most profound darkness is when you don't care about someone one way or the other, even yourself. You don't care about any other person or yourself in any way, with love or hate or sustenance or exploitation or laughter or sadism or hope or despair, or try to connect with any other person or yourself, positively or negatively, with love or with pain. You just apathetically and indifferently look away from someone else's, or a number of other people's, pain, walk away from it or walk toward it, abandon them to it or inflict it, and let him, her, it, or them suffer in torment or cause them torturous pain, because you don't care how much it hurts him, her, it, or them."

Kairi pushed anything and everything within her to the side as far as possible, about how much that fashion of pitch ebony night was her, and about how wholly and totally terrible and horrific what Lucca was talking about was.

She'd been correct about how she belonged at the uttermost foundation of Lacuna, but that wasn't important.

Sora and Riku and Tidus and Wakka and Selphie needed her to hear this.
"You do believe in something; yourself," Lucca was going on. "Because you believe that you shouldn't be kind to someone else, or more than one other person. But you don't care about yourself any more than you care about another person. You're not apathetic and indifferent to another person, or other people, and let, or cause, him, her, it, or them to experience death or torment because you selfishly want to be happy, or even just to survive, yourself, or because you believe in something outside yourself and you want other people to be happy, or just survive; and you believe that, for one or more of these reasons, because you believe in one or more of these things, that justifies abandoning other people to agony, or forcing them to know it. You're apathetic and indifferent to another person, or other people, because you just believe in avoiding going through any pain, no matter how slight; and that another people or other people, and life, and existence, and reality, and yourself, are completely and absolutely pointless and meaningless, but since you're alive and here in existence and reality, you might as well stay that way, and not make any effort to change that, for another person, or for other people, or for yourself.

"So you don't even seek happiness for others, or for yourself, through nothing or through death and pain. You do nothing but apathetically and indifferently turn blind eyes from another person's, or someone else's, pain, run away from that person, or other people, run towards that person, or other people; and you abandon that person, or other people, to death or to live through torment, or inflict death or torment on another person, or other people; not to be happy yourself or to cause other people to be happy, or to survive yourself or to cause other people to survive, but because you don't want to know any pain."

Lea thinned his lips pressed tightly together.

"I see where you're going with this," he spoke. "People who love others and care for them and cherish them and protect them and keep them safe and who are there for them give themselves to causing those who they love to be happy and carrying the pain of those who they love. People who hate others or seek to exploit them or toy with them sadistically or convince them to give into despair have lines that they're not willing to cross in how far they're willing to go to murder or hurt others, because they still have a heart to cry with, so they're still attempting to connect with others and improve their lives in negative ways, even if their solution is mass murder or genocidal murder. They still have the capacity to selflessly care, even if they lie to themselves that they don't and that they just want to hurt someone or a number of people, and they still selfishly don't want to drive other people so far away that they can't connect at all.

"Even the Angel of Sin and the Cheshire Cat," Kairi's eyes widened slightly, "are like that. They talk and act as though they just care about themselves, but they want other people to follow their example because they believe that that's what will cause other people to be happy, and they're lonely and don't want to push others fully from them."

Kairi should have realized that.

She shouldn't have rejected the Angel of Sin's feelings, and severed his connections.

She'd needed to prevent him from rejecting the feelings of, and severing the connections of, others, but she should have accepted and kept safe his.

She wanted to retch.

The first time she'd murdered a fully aware person, she hadn't just murdered him.

She'd forced him to die alone, though not forgotten.

Was Platina right about her?

"But people who don't care one way or the other, even about themselves, and just keep an apathetic and indifferent emotional detachment and distance from everyone and everything, deny their hearts and feelings and memories and dreams and don't even believe that this is the proper way for others to connect with each other, one another, and the person who doesn't care. They don't accept or reject, extend or sever, connections. They don't connect in the first place, even with themselves. They just do whatever they selfishly feel like doing; or what they believe is for someone else's, or a number of other people's, well being; not because they want to cherish others or convince others to cherish them, or even because they want to teach others to be happy that way or be happy themselves, but just because they want to flee from pain and sadness, even if the price for doing so is that they don't know happiness and laughter themselves.

"There are no connections of light, or severed connections of darkness, in Lacuna at the bottom of the great abyss. Connections themselves don't exist there, or even not exist there, and not because you don't understand them, as I believed Roxas and Xion and Isa and Namine and I didn't, but because you're not rejecting others or yourself, you're rejecting connections."

Lucca smiled approvingly, though Kairi knew that that wasn't what Lucca was feeling. "Got it in one," she spoke.

"I understand now why Vayne gave into the darkness, too," she went on. "Whatever he saw in Time's Eclipse involved this, and this way of living life is one of the ways that he loathed most of all.

"So did I.

"Even before Vayne turned the Empire of Archadia from a democracy into an autocracy and this encouraged people to turn away from others with even worse manners of apathetic indifference, many of the people of Archadia lived this way.

"I was in a position to do something about it because of who Dad is, so I refused to put up with it and I put a stop to it whenever I could. The Judge Magisters and Judges of Archadia took greedy, or altruistic, criminals to task. I targeted the cowards who sought to run away from the concepts of selflessness and selfishness because they believed that both discomforted them.

"I'm not talking about people who do care about other people but who want to live ordinary lives. I don't, and I've never had, any problems with them. Everybody isn't required to be responsible for his or her or its fellows; communal societies are just as flawed as any other societies because they don't allow for individual happiness and laughter, and if you don't have individual wishes and dreams, no one has any way to cause you to be happy, so they'll continue to feel pain because they can't cheer you up.

"I'm talking about people who selfishly care about themselves, not to connect, but just because they're frightened of inconveniencing themselves or being inconvenienced by others because that might discomfort them, a little or a lot. Or because they believe that it's the right thing to do for one or more other people without thinking about how the other person feels about it not because they believe that the greater good is more important than the individual good, but because they just want to remain comfortably away from other people's suffering so that they aren't inconvenienced in any way by a reminder of what harm is like.

"If someone hoarded supplies after a natural disaster, not out of greed, but because he or she or it lied that people's first feelings and thoughts should supposedly be for themselves when there's a problem, otherwise they'll supposedly drag their fellows down, I arranged for sky pirates to steal them and spread them among those suffering. Common sense proves that you don't need to take care of yourself to be able to take care of others and the coward was just lying because he or she or it didn't want to be bothered by someone, or multiple other people's, suffering;

"If someone refused to give food to his or her or its fellow or fellows during a famine because he or she or it lied that survival impulses are supposedly more important than experiencing emotion and thought and memories and dreams himself or herself or itself and considering someone else's, or other people's, feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams; I reported him or her or it to the Judges, or Judge Magisters, or even Emperor Vayne himself if I could, and I had him or her or it arrested on charges of negligence and condemned to lengthy public service on a farm.

"If someone refused to spend time with his or her or its fellows if someone or multiple other people were badly ill from a contagious plague in order to try to raise those people's spirits by having someone there for that person, because coming too close to a sick person might cause the person who does to catch the disease, I arranged for a lot of very sick people to camp out near that person's house for weeks or months.

"If someone refused to give money to a poor person because the democratic laws under the Archadian Imperial democracy gave that person the freedom to choose how to distribute his or her or its food; I reported him or her or it, and I had him or her or it arrested on charges of negligence as well, and sentenced to lengthy public service constructing houses and apartments. Freedom is no justification to leave others in torment.

"If a doctor or nurse refrained from giving a patient personal, and not clinically distant, care; informing someone of the risks a medical procedure might cause him, her, it, or his or its unborn baby; or saw a person, adult or adolescent or young or old or a baby or unborn, as a potential medical risk to one or more other people or himself or herself or itself, without having gotten to know well who that person was as an individual and having become in a position to tell whether that person already was a medical risk to one or more other people or himself or herself or itself and couldn't just potentially cause harm and had committed no crimes, because he or she or it wouldn't take his or her or its medicine precisely as prescribed; or because that person's condition or lifestyle defied a medical statistic; because the doctor or nurse didn't want to be responsible for the person's health on a personal basis because it might stress the doctor or nurse out, so he or she or it just wanted to follow procedure; I reported the doctor or nurse, too, and I had him or her or it arrested on charges of corruption and sentenced to lengthy public service working with hazardous materials.

"If someone committed violence, or threats of violence, against another person because that person had said or implied something negative about him or her or it or multiple people, quietly or loudly; or because that person had quietly or loudly reproved, verbally or through implication, another person or multiple people for assaulting, or threatening to assault someone, or saying, or implying something negative; or said or done something that was different than how the majority talked or acted, without having assaulted, or tried to assault, one or more other people, because a politician or economist or doctor or nurse who wasn't close to the person who had said or implied something negative or talked or acted unusually and didn't understand him or her or it and just made assumptions about that person from distant ignorance and that person had committed no crimes, and said that he or she or it had committed or threatened to commit violence because negative words and implications supposedly hurt people and you supposedly can't support others unless you treat them with far off detachment, I reported him or her or it to the Judges or Judge Magisters or Vayne, and I had him or her or it arrested on charges of unprovoked assault, and I didn't make any effort to influence his or her or its sentence. If a Judge or Judge Magister even condemned him or her or it to jail, I didn't approve of it, but I didn't try to stop it from happening. It's further common sense that words and implications, critical or insulting, quiet or loud, can't do the slightest amount of harm to anyone, and those who object to them just want to run away as cowards into comfortably sheltered lives where their egos aren't offended even a little, and that you can't be there for others unless you know that person or people and understand how that person or people feel and think and remember and dream.

"And so on. I could list the types of cowards that I've thwarted for days.

"Vayne, and I myself, loathe cowardice, and its prevalence in the World. Living free isn't about doing whatever you want when you want to do it, and running away without feeling or thinking from anything that causes you problems. It's about not being restrained from having the liberty to take responsibility for the happiness and pain of others however and whenever they need it and want it, and about not being kept from standing weak or strong on your own legs as your unique individual selves living your own different lives while taking responsibility for your own happiness and pain.

"Among other things, Vayne must have been so terrified that all his efforts to ensure a democratic Empire of Archadia looked after its people would fall apart, that he believed he didn't have any choice but to forsake a democracy for an autocracy, in order to keep his people's well being and safety from being disregarded by an even worse form of rule.

"And in the process, he forgot that, while feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams are what move the World, all people and hearts are imperfect and have flaws. That, if you have too much faith in how you alone feel and think and remember and dream, you're living by a mistaken conviction that your heart can never lead you off the right path and astray, that you feel and know and remember and dream better than others, that you know answers to the World's problems that most or all other hearts and minds haven't perceived, that people should just trust your truth of cherishing and safety without questioning or disagreeing with what that testament of care and protection are; and thus, that anyone who feels or thinks or remembers or dreams differently than you do should have your connection with him severed."

As Dad had.

But Kairi now understood why, and she was now partially okay with what he'd said and done, and had striven to say and do.

"That's blind arrogance," Lucca went on speaking.

"Each and every one of our hearts possess both light and darkness, and we choose one or the other or both with every single choice that we decide upon."

Lucca stopped for a few seconds, clearly considering something.

Then she gave an apologetic smile.

"It's not relevant to this discussion, but while this is a topic of discussion, my family and friends need me to digress in their defense.

"I don't even put up with the people who take violent issue, or threateningly violent issue, with those who say something negative about others, criticism or insults, or imply criticism or insults, quietly or loudly, because they object to it for selfish or misguided altruism.

"I make it a point to stop them, as well, if they take it too far.

"You have no idea how many of my friends and co-workers, and Dad's and Mom's friends and co-workers, have been attacked, or threatened with violence, by politicians or the upper classes or merchants or the middle classes or the lower classes, merely for scolding or insulting someone for saying or doing something harmful; or because we use our hearts and minds while much of the rest of the populace of Archadia just prefers to live lives of pointless and unthinking, shallow and superficial, quick and unfettered emotional, mental, and physical pleasure and gratification that disregard other people's feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams. If you attack, or threaten to attack, someone for saying or implying something critical or negative, quietly or loudly, about you, you're a thug and a brute. If you attack, or threaten to attack, someone for saying or implying something critical or negative, quietly or loudly, who hasn't committed a crime and has no reason to be disliked or distrusted, that's even worse.

"If you violently, or threateningly violently, object to my family or friends or co-workers, or I myself, reproving you for chasing food or drink, sleep or casinos, drugs or wine, money or finery, estates or lawns, boys or girls, you will answer to me."

Xion grinned, and it looked genuine. "So you try to be a big sister to all the people you know, and who are around you, huh?" she queried. "I know the feeling. I don't have any blood siblings, but I do have two sisters in a sense," Kairi forced herself not to feel anything about what Xion had just called her, "And I'm the youngest one, but I try to be the big sister."

Xion turned her grin on Kairi. "As does Kairi. You haven't met Namine, but she usually tries to be the younger sister, and just let us take care of her. She has a lot of reasons for it, though."

Lucca's face betrayed nothing.

"You should be telling that to Leon's," she looked at Zack with an expression that made it clear that, whatever he thought of how Leon deserved to be called Squall, Leon himself wanted to be called Leon, so Zack should accept that, "sister, Ellone. Not me. Zack used to tell me over and over that Ellone picked up her personality from me, but Ellone didn't abandon her responsibilities for selfish whimsies."

"Because Ellone leaving her entire family to foment a resistance and a revolution against Vayne; and, in the process, severely damaging Leon's confidence in his ability to take care of his parents and his friends until he met Rinoa; wasn't abandoning her family." Kairi cringed, and Zack rolled his eyes. "Sure."

Before Lucca or anyone else had a chance to say anything, Aqua broke in. "Lacuna also possesses a dream realm of a place where the nearly dead and vanished are imprisoned within.

"Can you figure out why it does?"

"I've been trying, along with trying to decipher everything else," Lucca answered. "But I'm more concerned with what Yozora's 'Synchronicity Perceptual' is about. He's lived long enough that he must know that stratified utopias don't work, and fall apart after a short period of time, or stay together while causing more problems than they solve. Countless reformers throughout history have tried to improve a village, or a city, or a country, or a continent, or a planet, or a galaxy, or a galactic cluster, or a galactic supercluster, or the World, by forging what they will believe an ideal society, and they've ended up with it blowing up in their faces, to the detriment of the people who they want to love and cherish, and to their own detriment.

"The New World of Synchronicity Perceptual must be something extremely atypical even to misguided utopias, and that means that it's almost certainly hopelessly blind and thus flawed in ways that make the worst societies space and time have come up with look like everyday family squabbles, romantic squabbles, or friendship squabbles.

"Even Vayne's oblivious concept of a World where Schala and Larsa erased everyone's memories of having known anything but happiness and laughter any time they experienced pain, including the lack of those memories,"

would a World like that genuinely be that bad?

"and removed everyone's memories of any time they so much as felt or thought of disobeying one of his laws or mandates,"

a World like that would be terrible, but not a World where all memories of pain, and even the absence of those memories, and nothing but all memories of pain and the lack of those memories of pain, were wiped out every time someone suffered.

But Kairi knew that, if she brought up why, it would hurt the others, so she didn't

"but that can't be the New World that Yozora wants to create. Vayne might be the first person who became close to making it happen somewhere, because I doubt anyone else in history has pulled off what he did to Schala, or we would have heard of it, in part or in full.

"If it was, Yozora wouldn't have bothered to trick Vayne into trying to fashion such a New World to oppose him, and Mickey and Minnie and the rest of us would have dealt with Yozora and Luxu and the other Foretellers along with Vayne. Maybe a World where all memories of pain and defiance, and their absence, are obliterated, are parts of Synchronicity Perceptual, but even if it is, it's but a tiny tassel of the tapestry.

"Yozora sure as heck wouldn't most likely be backing Luther, Odine, and Sphere," Lucca scowled blackly, and Kairi started. She should have thought of that from all the things Scrooge had told them about Luther and Sphere. "I get that he likes playing people and organizations against each other, but if even something as extreme as annihilating all reflections of pain and disobedience was the entirety, or a portion of, the story, he would not be perhaps supporting Sphere."

Kairi needed to pitch into the conversation.

This was her responsibility as much as the other guardians'.

"Scrooge told us that they have much less scruples than even Shinra," she said. "But before Reeve assassinated Rufus' father, Lial, the Shinra Kinetic Power Company regularly used its Magitek soldier program to, in the literal sense, invade markets that it wanted to dominate if they refused to let it have enough inroads into their civilizations, sack those markets, and then rebuild the markets mostly as they see fit. And, without permission of most of the people it wanted to force to work for it in these ways, it often scooped up its own employees and the civilians in the markets it dominated, in order to experiment on them to improve its military products and services. Rufus is a lot worse; he doesn't offer you goods and services to try to convince you to buy from him and then attempt to intimidate you into doing so if he wants your market enough and you don't want him there. He attempts to intimidate you into buying from Shinra at the get go, up to and including even invading your market in the literal sense without even giving you a chance to think about it, and threatening to take military action against you if you won't utilize his products and services.

"Sphere, for all its corruption, at least provides economic aid to the destitute, and it doesn't invade markets that don't want it there or threaten its employees into working for it as research subjects."

"Destitute that Sphere has ground into poverty," Lucca snarled, and Kairi's eyes widened, while Xion clenched her hands into fists and clenched her teeth. "If you don't want the Sphere Electric Energy Company providing you products and services, it pretends to be willing to stop advertising, but then it foments wars in the vicinity of your markets to leave you impoverished and lets you suffer poor and hungry and diseased and homeless for years so, unlike Shinra, who rebuilds your markets right away before they can fall into destitution, when Sphere offers to give you jobs and products and services, you're so desperate that you won't negotiate terms with them at all and you're so grateful to them for having saved you from disenfranchisement that they didn't know that Sphere caused, they don't think of trying to get rid of you. They keep you there, and they do what they can to improve your standing in their markets.

"Sphere also regularly foments wars in markets that haven't even heard of it, or that are willing to buy from it, in order to supply all the sides involved in the feud with weapons and SEED soldiers.

"In addition, when Sphere incites wars, in markets that don't allow it inroads or markets that do or that haven't heard of it, it incites the participants to wage battle not through military strategy, tactics, supremacy, and engines of combat; but to target vital symbols of a market's civilization or culture. Or to not incinerate your family and loved ones and environs or shoot them and you for objecting to the military incursions; but to abduct you, and, without successfully torturing you or manipulating you to convince you that you should stop caring about your family and loved ones first, the markets that it has incited to engage in war put your own hand on the trigger of one of their engines of war, fire arms, or close range weapons, and, while you still love your family or loved ones, force you to shoot or stab your family or loved ones or the environs yourself."

Kairi felt sick once again.

That was what Yozora and Luxu and the Foretellers did.

Xehanort and the Organization Thirteens had used intimidation and emotional blackmail to attempt to coerce Sora and Riku and Lea, and the other guardians and their companions, into not challenging them, and they'd disabled Sora before attempting to force him to carry a piece of Xehanort's heart.

Maleficent had tricked Riku into betraying Sora, but she'd convinced him to partially stop loving Sora before she'd maneuvered Riku against Sora.

Yozora, Luxu, and the Foretellers had played Sora and Riku and Tidus and Lea and the rest of them, and Kairi, against each other and one another, while they still loved each other and one another.

If Lucca had enough reason to believe that Yozora and the Foretellers were involved with Sphere, this was very good evidence that Lucca was accurate.

"It doesn't scoop up its employees to experiment on them to improve its military products and services without permission," Lucca was continuing to speak, "And go on doing so while they endeavor to escape or defy your experimentation.

"It releases barely noticeable long acting contagious toxins and long acting contagious diseases into its various headquarters and the surrounding populace so horrible that, when it approaches you to offer your poisoned or sick family or loved ones medical aid, you sign contracts willingly pledging to assist them to the best of your ability in not just physically experimenting on you, as Hollander and Hojo do. Under these contracts, Odine and Nabaat feed you horribly agonizing long acting mind altering drugs that wreck your body, put your life in danger, cause you hallucinations and flashbacks, and dampen your emotions.

"As Shinra has a minority of principled directors that have limited influence in Shinra because they're so useful, Sphere has one principled director that we know of, Luther Lansfeld's older sister, Blair, but she told Scrooge plenty of times that Luther would have murdered her a long time ago and donated her remains for Odine and Nabaat to experiment on, even as useful as she is, if Luther didn't need her to remain his employee because she's friends with Ellone and Luther wanted Ellone back working for her until recently, when he somehow convinced her to become his employee a third time.

"I haven't told Scrooge about most of this, because if he knew, he'd have told Mickey, and Mickey has enough to worry about without feeling the need to put Sphere out of business.

"But it's all true.

"Shinra has a decent amount of principles. Lial and Rufus were and are skinflints, but Lial had the good sense to run Shinra in ways that kept it functioning as an effective interstellar megacorporation, and Rufus is willing to connect with employees who he has things in common with and see them as friends, such as Reeve and Vincent and Cissnei. Hollander and Hojo even bonded with Sephiroth, the late Genesis, and the presumed dead Angeal, who all went to Hollander and Hojo and sought employment under them as research subjects of their own free choice for a number of months, and in the process, Hojo came to see Genesis and Sephiroth, particularly Genesis, who he was kindred spirits with, as surrogate sons in a sense, though in warped ways. Hollander did the same to Angeal, though he stopped caring about Angeal after Angeal went Missing In Action; but Hojo is determined to somehow remove Genesis' heart from Ivalice Zodiac's afterlife and restore him to a new body, and he's repeatedly gotten on my nerves bugging me for news about how Sephiroth is faring.

"Luther, however, has a tendency to take Sphere's products and services off the market, even ones that provide him and Sphere with vital sources of revenue and that would cause Sphere massive losses if removed, if they cause him or Sphere to look bad just by a small degree. Odine and Nabaat, furthermore, don't see their research subject employees even as specimens to experiment on to improve or maintain their own standing in the company and in the eyes of their existing or potential buyers; they just maintain a clinical distance of scientific curiosity from their research subject employees and see them as not subperson cattle, but literal not living resources such as equipment or soil, and they don't care about them one way or the other.

"Luther severs connections by exploiting them to extents that even Lial and Rufus don't but Odine and Nabaat are scientists and scholars who are people who we're talking about, hearts who neither accept or reject connections.

"I'm going to shoot them both dead with Prism's Rocket if doing so are among the last acts that I perform in my life."

Lucca frowned.

"I'm actually more concerned about a couple of charlatans who keep attempting to hack McDuck Enterprises' mainframe, Oswald, however. Sphere and their con people are known quantities in the field of bad science, as are Shinra and their cons.

"But there are two natural philosophers, and one other megacorporation, who Scrooge and Larsa and I don't know as much about as we would prefer to.

Their names are Professor Lantis and Professor Fuhito, and they work for a company in Archadia's greatest military rival, the Rozarrian Empire, known as the Memoria Auralith Crystal Corporation. I'd believed that, when Radiant Garden reopened as a market for Scrooge, Larsa and his allies in the Rozarrian Empire had at last been able to put them out of business, but it appears I was wrong. Memoria, owned by the Lucavi family and jointly operated by Feolthanos Ultima Lucavi and his wife, Remedi Zodiark Lucavi, is a reactionary environmentalist megacorporation.

"They're almost as bad as Sphere. They believe that all people are nothing more than the animals or plants or other organisms from which we evolved, that people are required to live their lives in harmony with, or bound by, nature and the law of the savage jungle, survival of the fittest. They see anyone who defies that belief as a danger to nature and the environment, and even people who want to donate their hearts and minds and bodies to science and medicine of their own free choice, while they're alive or while they're dead, to attempt to improve the lives of others and the state of the World, as an aberration against the natural order and worthy of death, so that evolution can continue in symbiosis with the World without war or economic exploitation or all the other bad facets of society.

"They should talk. I haven't been able to confirm it, but from what Larsa and Dad have discovered, I'm fairly sure that they've deployed their own military force, the Maenads, to markets on verdant worlds and committed mass genocide against the civilizations there, not to try to force them or trick them into buying from Memoria, but to clear them out of those ecosystems. Then they can plant dreamstone devices they name auraliths there that unleash a series of extinction level events on the environment to endeavor to force the organisms there to evolve by natural selection into superior species, that they call Wise Genomes, that can potentially supplant feeling and thinking species and return them to hunting and gathering, or fully wipe them off of whatever world they're on.

"As Lantis loves to harangue about it, the way to end feeling and thinking predation is to give up on all artificial civilization, constructs, culture, and bonds; and become one with the natural world and environment and obey the trappings of survival of birth, life, reproduction, and death.

"I'm shooting Lantis and Fuhito dead, as well, regardless of what I need to do to do so. I'm a scientist. Charlatans who believe that people shouldn't love and understand each other and one another; and that they should just selfishly and inconsiderately thank their progenitors, their parents or ancestors or one or more deities or nature for giving them life or creating them, loyally serve them and obey them and their edicts; and snobbishly and apathetically live cowardly and sheltered lives where they stop feeling and thinking as individuals and do nothing more than focus mindlessly and slavishly as a net species on having been brought to life, not dying, reproducing, and worshipping deities so that they stay alive in the afterlife and a part of them remains in the living reality; at least believe in survival; but they still betray anything and everything else hearts and minds, and science and scholarship, stand for in the same ways that cowards who believe in nothing or run away totally do.

"Science and scholarship are about loving and cherishing and caring for and supporting others in learning how to love and cherish and care for and support other people's feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams, not about attempting to teach people to just think without feeling about not dying and being happy that someone or something brought a person to life in the first place.

"There's no meaning or purpose in thanking anyone, progenitors or deities, for giving birth to a person or creating a person, or in commitment and faith and obedience to them for doing so; and a person owes a progenitor or deity who gave a person birth nothing, and has no reason to be grateful to a progenitor or deity for doing so. Faithfulness is about loving others because they need kindness and to be kept safe and warm; not gratitude to someone or one or more deities or reality for giving a person life, keeping a person alive, or enabling a person to live on. Thankfulness is about gratefulness to the people who love you and care about your feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams; not appreciation to progenitors or deities for providing someone with life and sustenance, and the ability to reproduce and an afterlife where a person can live on even though he or she or it is dead. Nor is there any meaning or purpose in running away from reality and ceasing to feel or think for oneself and make her or his or its own choices while just focusing without any unique identity on how a person was born, how a person is still alive, how a person reproduces, and how a person survives death; birth, reproduction, death, and an afterlife are empty and pointless paths that accomplish nothing and lead nowhere and don't give anyone happiness or laughter or remove any hurt or sadness. Feeling and thinking and memories and dreams are about becoming what people who need one and want one and love one and protect a person and give a person a home and hearth need one to become and want one to become and choose for one to become, and what one oneself with different qualities from others needs to become and wants to become and chooses to become; not self-centeredly and indifferently doing no more than concentrating on a person's own birth, reproduction, death, and afterlife. Hearts and minds are, as I already said, about needing to and wanting to and choosing of one's own unique feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams to assume the responsibility that others need a person and want a person and choose for a person to take up in order to enable others to experience happiness and laughter, and carrying the pain of others and catching their tears; and walking on a person's own legs, weak or strong, while free to live the life that a person needs to live and wants to live and chooses to live while taking up responsibility for a person's personal needs and wants and choices. Not apathetically and self-centeredly abandoning and betraying and discounting and disregarding the feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams and identities and differences of other hearts and minds and those of a person herself or himself or itself, while putting an end to feeling and thinking and remembering and dreaming to do nothing more than care about selfish and indifferent and pointless and futile birth, reproduction, death, and afterlives.

"Charlatans who believe this also say that people are supposedly inferior to those who created them, or nature, in a continually descending chain stretching back to the origination of existence where the instant of the inception of all reality is the supreme state of being, and where the purpose of all life and reality after this origination is just to provide for mere brief instants of the subcreations of later lives and reality in a continuing falling series of links.

"That's a distortion of almost everything that science and scholarship stand for.

"Science and scholarship are about enabling people to transcend their current state of life and the World, and enabling the World to surpass its current state, by understanding how the World is made up in order for people and the World to know how to reshape themselves and how the World is made up and the World; so that people and the World can live in a gradually better future. The instant of the first creation, and the later instants of later subcreations, are not the supreme form of life; they're the most insignificant and meaningless relative to what comes afterwards. It's what happens after the instants of creation and subcreation, as people love and connect and enable each other to grow and continue their lives and the World, that matters. Additionally, people who create others, and ecosystems that create others, whether they're Gods and Goddesses or lesser ethereal beings or material or characters in a story or data, are not superior to those who they create, and what they create, and those and what they create are not here in the World as increasing lower castes that serve their creators. All people, and all of existence, are equal, and have the ability to, and the potential to, limitlessly grow; and each time people love and connect with each other and one another, they have the capacity to realize those potentials and those capabilities, for themselves and others to improve upon further in the future."

Lucca tilted her head and face up and rolled her eyes.

"Finally, the last time I looked, feeling and thinking organic beings did evolve from other organisms, cellular or unicellular, and the materials that organic beings use to live their lives are material resources from the terrain and the ecosystem themselves; so any civilization, constructs, culture, and trappings that we bond with others through, and predation that feeling and thinking beings inflict on others or the World, are natural.

"That's something that still bugs the heck out of me. Soil and gravel are natural substances, and sentient beings acknowledge them as such, but iron and steel are also natural substances, and organic beings see them as artificial.

"I beg your pardon?

"If a substance can be formed by nature, it's a natural substance. You don't even need brainpower, much less mine, to know that.

"I need to figure out, or uncover, what Memoria's stake in Scrooge's business war is."

"Can we at least help you with that?" Aqua questioned. "Or in putting Sphere or Shinra out of business, or containing one or both of them? From what Scrooge has told us and you just implied, they're not based on Ivalice Zodiac."

Zack opened his mouth, but Lucca shook her head, and her brow creased in thought.

After several seconds passed, Lucca sighed in reluctant resignation and acceptance.

"As long as you leave Ellone to Larsa and Squall and I, and keep your hands and feet away from Ivalice Zodiac, I don't see the harm in it."

Kairi refused to clench her teeth.

Sora had told her before he'd vanished that he'd learned that you should be together with someone you love, and share space and time with him or her or it, if you could be. But that was just if you could be, and he'd know as well as she did when he heard about the adventure that she was about to embark upon that they couldn't be together directly now.

Staying separate from him wouldn't hurt him as soon as he heard that she'd rejoined her heart and mind with his.

It certainly wouldn't hurt her this time.

It shouldn't have the first time after Sora had won his first major victory.

This time she was the one who had forced Sora to wait for her, not the other way around.

She had no justification to feel any pain that she'd need to be with Sora while apart this time.

"What about asking the Fates to research our potential futures?" Lea questioned.

"That will put them at risk, remember," Platina spoke up.

Kairi suppressed the urge to clench one hand into a tight fist.

"We'd just be trading the Foretellers' destiny for theirs if we did that," Kairi said. "It wasn't that good of an idea. It's no loss."

Kairi hoped desperately that she was right.

But she herself had a concern of her own.

"Our strategy is to give the Foretellers what they're anticipating until we've learned their tricks and know how to stop them from playing their hands," she reminded the other guardians and the rest of them.

She hated the concept of what she was about to say, but it wouldn't be that bad. It would be subterfuge this time, not genuinely becoming a deadweight once more, and as soon as she was behind enemy lines she'd get out of it the first opportunity that she had to do so.

"Maybe the rest of you should go after Scrooge's rivals without me. Perhaps I should try to trick the Foretellers into taking me captive, as they're used to me adventuring, and then escape once I'm behind enemy lines and attempt to do what I can to sabotage them from within."

"They're overconfident because of their wits and millennia of experience, so they'll be predicting something subtle and not the obvious, but it won't matter if we're too clear about what our strategy is," Terra advised. "If we're overly obvious, they'll realize our plan. We've split up the best that we can in accordance with that strategy by sending Sora, Donald, and Goofy adventuring through the worlds to look for the other three Princesses and," he clenched his teeth, "Leaving Gaes to Riku to explore from the side lines. And yes, we know that Riku is in the best position to investigate Gaes."

Kairi felt hot tears send knifing pains through her eyes, but she clenched her teeth together so tightly that it was as though they would chip, fisted her hands so tightly that her nails drew blood from both palms, and refused to let them fall.

Unlike the first two times, and unlike when Sora had vanished, they knew that they'd see him once again this time. That didn't make that Kairi had forced him to sacrifice his life for her as she'd forced Sora to, that she'd murdered him, as she had Sora, and twice now, as she'd just murdered Sora once, any less agonizing for Riku, or justifiable at all, but this time they knew that they'd see him again.

The question was whether Riku should see her once more.

Sora was one person.

Riku was another.

It didn't matter that it could be undone within weeks.

Murder was murder.

Death was death.

Just because she'd done it in a reversible manner didn't mean that it was the tiniest bit less horrific, or okay, to kill someone, in one of those ways, than it would be to kill someone in an irreversible form.

You could take the death itself back, but you couldn't take back that you'd rejected someone's feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams and severed your connection with him or her or it in the most abominable and ruthless fashion that it was possible to do so.

"As much as we don't want to admit it, we know that he was the best person to restore Arendelle's people their hearts, and how he needed to do it. We need to stop hiding from truths that we don't want to look at."

Xion, to her credit, didn't have tears in her own eyes this time, but she looked extremely anguished.

"Did Riku vanish like Sora?" Selphie questioned, and tears were in her eyes, and cascading down her cheeks.

"I'm sorry," Kairi said. "I didn't do something that I should have until it was a lot later than I should have done it, so he's stuck in another realm, as he was the first time I came home."

"It never fails to be fun to swim into a sphere pool where you haven't blitzed off before," Tidus smiled for all three of them, but it didn't reach his eyes even a small bit.

---

"Sora, Donald, and Goofy will find the remaining three New Seven Hearts," Aqua summed up. "Riku will learn what he can about Gaes. Mickey will halt or contain Elsa's interstellar war and prevent that time, whatever it is, from coming to pass. The rest of us will thwart Scrooge's business competitors."

"And Selphie, Wakka, Yuna, Paine, Rikku, Auron, and I will keep these Foulplayers," Kairi forced herself to grin a little, "From scrambling Schala into the sphere pool."

Kairi looked at Platina.

"What about you?" she queried. "We told you about the world order and why it needs to be maintained, but you've known Auron, Paine, Riku, and Yuna long enough that you might not damage it that much by traveling off world. Hercules, Meg, and Phil, too."

"We'll stay on Olympus for now," Platina responded. Mystina looked as though she wanted to open her mouth to disagree, doubtlessly because she wanted to look for Lezard, but she stayed quiet. "We might be able to help Hercules, Meg, and Phil smooth things between Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, the other Gods and Goddesses, and Hades, Persephone, and Cerberus more effectively. As well as aid Meg in becoming set up as Hades' High Priestess, assuming Hades accepts her offer to go back to worshipping him.

"Depending on how things go, though, we might ask if you'll take us with you."

Platina looked at Hercules.

"My place is here even when matters settle down," Hercules spoke. "I'm Thebes, and Meg's, and Phil's, and Dad's, and Mom's, and the rest of my Godly family's, and the human family who raised me, and Olympus', true hero now. I'm not leaving unless there's no other way to try to protect them."

He turned and smiled at Phil. "And you once told me that your dream was for Dad to create a constellation of one of your graduate students and that at least one person would say, 'That's Phil's boy.' I'll see what I can do to make your own dream come true."

Phil crossed his arms, but Kairi could tell that the satyr was hiding the smile of joy and gratitude that he wanted to let on his face. "Tell your Dad he better make that constellation extra shiny, or I'll sue him for slanderous art misrepresenting my school and me."

"Sure thing," Hercules grinned in amusement.

Zack glanced at Lucca.

"Do you have a Gummi ship?" Lucca questioned.

"Indeed," Xion contributed. "We have more than one. But I'm of the impression that your Epoch, whether it's a Gummi ship, is a lot faster.

"We left a few other friends behind us on Destiny Islands, including my second oldest surrogate sister, who I'm pretty sure Riku was about to confess his love for before he needed to travel elsewhere, or vice versa. Namine has a lot of insecurities so it might need to be an on again off again relationship,"

Kairi didn't want to think about the possible necessity of needing to have one with Sora.

She was okay with that, but she wasn't sure that Sora would be.

All bonds took effort to establish and maintain, familial or romantic or friendship, and all bonds had their struggles and hardships, but Sora had enough problems now without needing to deal with so many pitfalls in a romantic relationship that it needed to be on again off again.

"But she needs to know what happened to Riku, and Roxas' and Lea's and my mutual friend, Isa, need to know what Meg figured out about the Organizations that we worked for. Riku might have wanted Sora or Goofy or Donald or Mickey or Roxas to tell her, though, and Riku might have specifically said something that one or more of them needs to relate to Namine.

"That means that we can't tell her what Riku did, and Roxas can talk to Isa, Olette, Hayner, and Pence. So we don't need to return to Destiny Islands.

"If you're willing to take us as far as Twilight Town, would that please be okay?"

"That's fine by me," Lucca answered. "And it's a Gummi ship.

"But I've rigged it to be able to cruise outside of the Ocean Between by enacting a little something I like to call Pocket Demesne. Pocket Demesne is accomplished by punching a wormhole at a given set of coordinates, then another through that wormhole to a distant location the approximate length of a comet belt from a planetary system's star away, and then sending a virtual space through the first wormhole to the other to separate a corridor between the two wormholes. Then I set off a localized phase transition inside the virtual space and alter the state of the cosmos' natural laws within that phase transition into an imaginary number domain to carve a reduced scale Big Rip, tear off a chunk of the space time continuum at the opposite side of the phase transition, and use the conditions of the imaginary number domain to accelerate through the Big Rip, and thus outside of the Ocean Between, through interspace," so the interspace Sora had voyaged through during his first adventure when the walls around the worlds were down was present surrounding the Ocean Between, "And into ordinary imaginary time.

"The astral tapestry isn't as thick in imaginary time, and it doesn't exert any external pressure against the Epoch, so I can rocket through it to another world a lot faster. Once I reach the world that I want to visit, I generate another Pocket Demesne imaginary number domain within a virtual space in front of the Epoch, cut a second Big Rip into the dimensions, slow down the Epoch inside this imaginary number domain, and pass through interspace to reenter the Ocean Between at the world that I want to land on."

Lucca threw her head back and laughed arrogantly and elatedly.

"Indefinably radicool, if I say so myself. Which, of course, Lucca the Great does."

Kairi really needed to introduce Lucca to Sora and Riku.

Particularly because she doubted that she'd be introducing Lezard to them any time soon.

Kairi wanted to ask what virtual space, phase transitions, imaginary number space, and the imaginary time that she kept hearing about were, but that would need to wait until later.

Xion grinned once again, and this time, it didn't just reach her eyes, there was a lot more life and vibrance in her grin, her eyes, and the rest of her face, than Kairi had seen in it since before she'd met Xion.

Kairi felt herself sag slightly.

At least someone had been able to love and protect and be there for and support Xion.

"You've got to show me if you're skilled with computers," Xion said. "I'm good with computers myself, and I like finding my way around them and inside them, and within their data and external communication networks, but I doubt I could pull off what you can, if you know how to make them work for you."

Lucca frowned.

"I know my way around computers, both stationary and laptops, and Pad computer inventions and Phone computer inventions, but there's no need or reason for you to have so little confidence in yourself," Lucca responded in a reassuring, understanding, optimistic, and soothing tone. "You have awesome, and I mean awesome, gifts. I'd trade my scientific genius for your memory and energy transference abilities in a heartbeat." Xion blinked and frowned, her face a mixture of anguish and uncertainty. "This looks like as good a time as any to point this out to you and Lea.

"I get that you don't care for how you can take and remove memories, and energy transference abilities. But the corollary to those flaws in your ethereal and biological composition are, as biological functions worth both ways, you should be able to reverse all of those processes and feed people – and not just hearts connected to Sora's heart or Sora himself – but, as your memory transference abilities affect anyone, even natural or unnatural people who see or hear or smell or taste or touch you briefly; any person who is tired or weak, or injured or dying, energy to keep them alive, heal them, revitalize them, and boost them."

Xion's mouth dropped open, her eyes widened, she went totally and wholly still, and tears brimmed in her eyes and fell down her face, Lea froze, and Tidus' eyes widened and tears of his own came to his eyes, but he didn't let them fall.

Desperate hope rushed up to engulf everything that Kairi knew.

"You should also be able to, if someone gives you permission to do it, feed someone who are in pain, or who are sad, memories of the happy times that you've been through, and cause to them to have flashbacks and hallucinations of those times as literally experienced them yourself, in order to cheer them up.

"And, unlike what I hear Namine can do, who can just alter Sora's memories and the memories of those connected to him, my hypothesis is, because you can remove the memories of anyone who touches or hears or smells or tastes or sees you for a minute fraction of a second, you can do this, too, to anyone, natural or unnatural.

"You are who and what you choose to become, and it's up to you to choose who and what to be, of course, but that doesn't change that you do have amazing talents that you could apply in fantastic ways if you wanted to.

"You're a walking, talking, literal, ethereal and biological miracle given form.

"If I meet Even one day, I'm going to sock him in the mouth as hard as I can, and hopefully send him crashing without any dignity into one or more of his samples, equipment, or contraptions, but I'll need to pump his hand enthusiastically afterwards.

"He was a rotten charlatan for years, make no mistake about that, but he is still an honest to goodness master of his fields of study. In the event that you're unwilling to separate your association with him enough to stop feeling guilty and ashamed to call him your creator, you shouldn't feel guilty or ashamed of it.

"You should feel proud, for his sake and his alone, not for yours at all, to call him your creator."

Xion now looked as though the sole amount of reasons that she could still stand was because she might need to help Lea down to the floor once more, Lea looked similar, and Tidus looked as though his own legs were about to give out, though not as much.

Xion opened her mouth, but no words would come out.

She tried a number of other times, and then spoke.

Her voice was a denying, disbelieving, desperate threadbare string of a whisper.

"But doesn't that mean that I can absorb energy from anyone, not just hearts connected to Sora, or Sora's heart, too?

"Or even tear energy and memories out of my own heart and mind and body and scatter them into the surroundings?"

Lea and Tidus didn't react to this question.

They'd clearly been aware of it as much as Xion had.

Lucca scowled blackly.

"Not while I'm on the job, you won't," she spoke fiercely and vehemently.

"As well, if and only if you give me permission to do so, and not because I see you as a research sample, but because I see you as a person with a problem that needs to be analyzed and solved, I'm willing to see if I can teach you how to stem your memory transference and energy transference capacities, or teach you how to reverse them and wield them in no other way but to heal and sustain other people."

Xion pressed her lips tightly together, and Lea made his face a mask.

"I'll think about it," Xion spoke back.

But Kairi, and all of the rest of them, knew that Xion felt, thought, and believed that she had no choice but to accept.

Kairi also knew what Tidus was about to say about that.

"Don't do it because you believe that you should do it," Tidus said to her. "Don't do it unless you want to do it as well. There might be another way to stop you from hurting anyone, and even to keep you from taking memories, or potentially wiping them away from people a second time if you die from natural causes or due to an external cause."

Kairi cringed.

They'd all known that Xion, Roxas, and Lea had been terrified of that happening since Xion had been restored, and that that was one of the reasons that they were so protective of her.

It appeared that Tidus had realized it himself as soon as she'd told him about Xion's past and skills.

"If you do decide to take me up on my offer, you'll be in good hands," Lucca assured her. "I know my way around any and all fields of science, and I regularly challenge established hypothesis and theories in as many ways as I can come up with doing so.

"For example, one of the sets of hypothesis and theories that I'm determined to debunk as flat out wrong are the theories of relativity common to a large number of worlds in the realm of light, particularly the Earths. They posit that, among other humdrum, that the speed of light is constant and can't be altered, so that means that light is one and the same as time and gravity. That atomic clocks can run slightly faster in space as opposed to within a gravity field on a planet, and other research, have supposedly proven this as not just a hypothesis, but a valid theory.

"Among my counter hypotheses to the theory of relativity are that atomic clocks have proven this just because they are and aren't inside and outside fields of gravity, because, as astronomers and astrophysicists know, even if the speed of light can't be affected, the path of light can. Black holes consume light all the time, so light particles and light waves can have their paths altered. Planetary gravity fields probably do the same thing, to a much lesser degree, as do the gravity fields of stars and other bodies with large masses.

"As gravity is thus, as I see it, unrelated to light, there's no proof whatsoever that the hypothesis that time is itself related to light and gravity is anything more than a hypothesis.

"Another tenet of the theory of relativity is that, if you look at an object approaching you, it appears to speed up or slow down based on its distance relative to you. My counter hypothesis to that is that these differences are nothing more than a matter of how fast your sight, and field of vision, react to the position and the acceleration of the object, and the concept that your individual perspective has anything to do with the speed of movement is arrogant personocentric or humanocentric anthropomorphic barking.

"As, for that matter, is the concept of the thought experiment. It doesn't matter if an experiment makes sense in your heart, or in your mind. If you haven't tested a hypotheses enough to prove that it might hold true, it's not a theory, much less a probable law of the cosmos and nature.

"Truth, and natural laws, are relative and elastic and subjective and plastic, this is undeniable. But not in the ways that the theory of relativity maintains that they are.

"I'm also determined to debunk the theory that light can't escape black holes. One of my counter hypotheses to this is that black holes just alter light particles and light waves into a form that we haven't yet been able to detect, and then when they leave the vicinity of a black hole, an amount of them contribute to the radiation ejecta that is also created by the light that didn't pass a black hole's event horizon, and an amount of them contribute to the invisible dark matter, or dark energy, or both, that scientists haven't identified, but that is present in the universe and affecting its composition, efforts to research it, or accelerating its expansion more than the current theories of gravity can account for.

"Current theories of gravity that are partially based around the theory of relativity that I see as a flawed hypothesis, I'll add.

"So, though Gummi ship research has proven the existence of wormholes, and this means that white fountains might be real themselves, and not just hypotheses or theories, the theory that light can't escape black holes is also nothing more than a hypothesis. Not one that I see as as irretrievably flawed as I see the theory of relativity, but still nothing more than a hypothesis."

"I've read up a small amount on the current theories about black holes and the theories of relativity," Xion replied. "And I know what a thought experiment is." She scowled. "You're right. Whether the current theories of black holes and the theories of relativity are right or wrong, the concept of thought experiments are arrogantly personocentric or humanocentric, and thus anthropomorphic."

Lucca grinned.

"But you don't need to prove yourself to me," Xion said with a weak, uncertain, but genuine and reassuring smile. "You're extremely heartfelt, and that tells me that you have the will to try just as hard to cause what you remember needs to happen, and what you dream of bringing about, to happen."

Lucca looked away.

"If you say something insecure, I'll make the effort to endeavor to convince a part of your glasses that you don't need, in order to continue wearing them at their full capacity, to research the tip of Flame Liberator," Lea told her. "Got it memorized?"

Kairi knew that the reassurance, protectiveness, fierceness, and anger in his voice weren't just because Lucca was feeling badly of herself, and thinking badly of herself, in regards to Xion.

It was also because Lea, as Xion was, was very worried about Lucca himself.

Perhaps even more than Xion, due to how similar Lea was to Lucca, in that they both tried hard to be an older sibling to the people close to them, and others, and how emotional and devoted they were.

Lucca looked back at Lea, and gave him a partially arrogant, partially confident, challenging grin. "You're on," she replied. "Etch it into your dreams."

Lea's eyes widened, and then he grinned back, and now there was a large amount of vitality, and life, in his own grin, gaze, and the rest of his visage.

Xion, Lea, Tidus, and Lucca said nothing more after a number of seconds had passed, and nor did anyone else, so Kairi looked back at Platina and Mystina.

"We'll bring Lezard back to all of you," she assured them. "And we'll find a way to free Alicia from her dreamstone prison without destroying Kingdom Hearts.

"We've been doing this for a long time now." Kairi was not going to doubt that they could do this. "Trust us."

Platina nodded. "I'm honored to," she replied.

Kairi was not going to feel complimented from those words, as well, however.

Did that mean that she was apathetically indifferent to both love and pain, and thus entirely incapable of forming or severing connections?

Kairi was almost certain that that was the case.

But, to her shock, she still experienced a surge of giddy excitement at the knowledge that she was at last to set out into the ocean of stars to other worlds, not just one world in the form of Radiant Garden or Traverse Town or End of the World, or Twilight Town or The World That Never Was, or the Mysterious Tower or Radiant Garden or the Secret Forest or the Keyblade Graveyard, at the same time as Sora was adventuring through the cosmos with Donald and Goofy.

And that sooner or later she might adventure through the ocean of stars to other worlds along with them.

If was terribly selfish of her to feel this way after everything that she'd not done and done, but Tidus had taught her that she needed to attempt to be a winner as well as to attempt to be a little piece of something larger than herself.

Sora and Riku and Tidus and Selphie and Wakka and Lea and all of the others would be horrified if she didn't let herself feel happy that her dream was at long, long last coming true.

So Kairi wasn't bothered at all that she could smile a true, wide smile of true eagerness and excitement and exhilaration and joy and delight and impatience.

"Starting this journey isn't going to be hard," she spoke to Sora and Riku, even though she knew that they couldn't hear her. "I just can't wait. Once we set sail, it'll be great."

Even if their strategy for defeating Yozora and Luxu and the Foretellers didn't work.

But it needed to.

Sora and Riku and Tidus and Wakka and Selphie and Lea, and everyone else, needed her to win, so this time she could intentionally and actively, not just unintentionally and passively, love and keep safe and care for and protect and cherish and carry the hurt of and be there for and take away the pain of and support and cry in the place of him, and them.

It was that simple and clean.

And that complex and a sanctuary of purpose.

And it was final and with fears in need of being faced without thinking twice.

She'd decided to love Sora and Riku and her other loved ones.

So she would.

And they'd, and she, would be a winner.

Right?

Sora?

Riku?

Tidus?

Selphie?

Wakka?

Lea?

Platina?

Dad?

Kairi forced herself to believe that she could, and would.

"You keep saying that we're actors on the stage of your play," Kairi said, this time to Yozora and Luxu and the Foretellers.

"In that case, light, photonegative of darkness, action."

.

"With your gentle fingers

When they reach in the end

Only now only you

Won't that be all you can believe in

.

"Everyone is breaking down

Searching too long for a wish

You're falling looking for a place to land

.

"Wounded and unable to stop shaking

If these whispered feelings are our reality

.

"We break each other down

Until we can't move

Our lonely wings overlap

.

"We've not found the light

Just the glare of this era

.

"I'm not afraid of the power to change

In the deep rumbling that lies ahead

Painted with the shared flames

Carry your destiny"

'Ignited'

GUNDAM SEED DESTINY