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.

20. Window of Ruthless Reality

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CHAPTER 19:

WINDOW OF RUTHLESS REALITY

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Author's Notes: The pieces for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'Testament,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Original Sound Best Tracks, Disc Two; and after this song 'Another Side -Battle Version-.' Both pieces can be found on KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section, but the second song is referred to as 'RikuBattle' in the KINGDOM HEARTS: THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-EIGHT DAYS OVER TWO GameRip section.

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"It's good to see you once more, Sora," a familiar voice said as Sora finished getting back to his feet after crawling between the low opening through the slightly raised window into Andy's room above, and the window sill below.

Sora jolted violently and rocketed to his feet, calling the Kingdom Key into his right hand in spiraling silver and gold and whirling to look down at the desk with Andy's belongings interspersed on it, that was now below the window sill.

The familiar figure of the Vanitas who was around his age stood there, without his helmet on and his face fully human even though he was the size of a toy. He was looking up at Sora without his Organization Thirteen coat on while just wearing his regular black and red suit, with what appeared to be a genuinely grateful smile.

Woody and Buzz stood on Young Vanitas' left; and another cowgirl with long red hair in a single ponytail and a lighter wide brimmed hat, who Sora hadn't met the last time he'd been here, and who was almost certainly the Seven Heart he'd been looking for; stood on Young Vanitas' right with Rex at her right.

But there was now time to let the relief at this lighten Sora; that this meant that Woody, Buzz, Rex, the other toys, and he were in the real Toy Box and not the fabricated one; that he'd most likely located one of the remaining New Seven Hearts who the Foretellers and Maleficent were almost certainly searching for; and that, if Woody, Buzz, Rex, and the new toy were at Young Vanitas' side, that might mean that Ven and he had reached Young Vanitas after they'd defeated him.

Sora couldn't know that for sure, so he leapt down onto the desk and leveled the Kingdom Key at Vanitas.

"Take it easy, Sora," Woody said reassuringly. "Vanitas told us his history with you and Ven, and he convinced Buzz and I that we can trust him.

"It's actually Jessie, the girl here, who is skeptical about him, but she'll get over it."

The female toy, who had been revealed to be named Jessie, scowled at this, but she said nothing.

"I'll get straight to the point," Vanitas said. "I'm not here to pick a fight this time, though I'm neither friend nor foe, and we'll need to duel each other once more in time eventually."

Sora's knees weakened in anguish and disappointment, but he contained the mixture of tumbling, whirling, roiling, and tossing hope and terror inside him.

"I see the point that Venty-Wenty and you made last year," Sora refused to let himself react further, "But I am still the shadow that the two of you cast.

"When all is said and done, in the end, there will be solely one way that we can complete each other, and connect with each other, and one another.

"For now, though, I arranged for a chain of Video Games based on Yozora's Heartless to be created," Sora started violently at the revelation that Young Vanitas had been able to act by himself for months or weeks before they'd beaten his future self and sent him back into the past to the seconds after Ven and Aqua had first defeated him, "In order to warn you about what Yozora himself," Vanitas sneered in derisive disgust at referring to the heart that had created him, "And Maleficent are alternately striving to accomplish here."

"I hope that you don't think that we're going to believe you unless you, at least, tell us where you've been since Ven and Aqua thrashed you," Donald spoke from where he was now positioning himself in preparation for a potential fight behind Sora and to his right, Jiminy now standing on his head as Goofy moved to Sora's left, and Anna in a similar position to where she'd been standing before behind him and to his left, her gunblade out this time and ready for combat.

Lotso was far back behind Donald, arms crossed in an impatient, angry frown.

"If even that will convince us."

Vanitas snorted and shrugged.

"Suit yourself," he spoke back.

"But as for where I've been for most of the time since Ven pounded me into his Station of Awakening, I'm surprised that none of you figured it out yet yourself," he went on.

"I'm not the sole shadow that Sora casts, and Ven did seek refuge in Sora's heart."

Goofy inhaled, Donald's beak dropped, and reality tumbled and whirled and spun and tilted end over end.

"You've been resting in Riku's heart," Sora breathed in a mixture of too many emotions to decipher.

Then the implications of that registered, and terror and horror emptied him of even the absence of emptiness once more.

"What happened to Riku after he used the power of waking!?" he cried.

"Give me some credit," Vanitas rolled his eyes. "He's in a safe place. Who do you now believe that the person who told Yozora's Heartless to save you when you were first stuck in the Gap Amidst Transparency was, for crying out loud?"

Sora started violently once more.

He didn't care that he at last knew the name of the realm where he'd been trapped for over a year, however.

"That was you, and not your adult version, or Luxu, or one of the other Foretellers?

"If so, thanks, but I'd still like to know why Yozora's Heartless pulled two weapons on me to attempt to do so."

"You're welcome, but there's no time to get into that," Vanitas answered. "Not when I'm going to need to catch you up to speed with a lot of the other issues that I've been up to in order to convince loud beak here that the four of you can trust me about this."

"We don't even have time for even that much," Lotso cut in angrily. "If we don't get back to Sunnyside, my fellow toys will never be pl–"

"You mean that you'll never be played with again," Vanitas interrupted with a condescending sneer. "Don't try to convince me that you care one whit whether a child plays with anyone but you yourself after what Daisy did to you."

Lotso went fully stiff with shaking, shuddering, and trembling fury after what Vanitas had just said.

Jessie's eyes widened, and she gave Lotso an empathetic, sympathetic, and understanding look, but this just appeared to enrage Lotso even more, for he whirled around to put his back to all of them and looked determinedly in the direction opposite them.

Sora needed to ask what they'd both been through as soon as he could.

This also confirmed that Lotso was walking a dark path, and the system that he'd set up in Sunnyside wasn't what he claimed and implied that it was, but they could deal with that.

"As I assumed," Vanitas mocked Lotso derisively. "My heart is composed of darkness more pure than any heart can become, short of Heartless, or what Maleficent was when Ansem stabbed her with the Keyblade of Hearts against all of my efforts to stop him from doing it.

"I know very well how waste balls like you think and feel."

"So you've been trying to assist us since Riku got involved in this?" Sora asked.

"I tried to force him to pass out before he even opened the door to the heart of Destiny Islands," Vanitas responded.

"Though, at that time, it wasn't out of good will.

"I was trying to delay him becoming a Keyblade wielder as long as possible, so that he'd be less able to prevent me from taking control of his body myself when I'd healed enough."

Sora needed to keep his legs from collapsing at the revelation that Riku had been in danger for most of their lives, and the knowledge of how Kairi would feel and think when she found out about this.

But otherwise, the lacking emptiness inside him prevented him from feeling that much.

"I didn't start realizing that Ven and you were right until you taught Riku, through Namine, that he could embrace his darkness while still living in the light."

The emptiness lacking emptiness was gone once more, but his awareness of how Kairi would react when she discovered how long Riku had been in danger without their knowledge prevented Sora from feeling that much lighter, or relieved, or reassured, at the discovery that he'd been instrumental in enabling Riku to surmount one of, by far, his worst sources of pain and terror.

But for the first time since his imprisonment in what Vanitas called the Gap Amidst Transparency had begun to extend too long, to his complete and total and whole and full shock and disbelief and surprise and astonishment, Sora realized that he could believe in himself once more, if just a little.

He'd done nothing but cause Kairi pain since they'd met, but he had carried Riku's hurt, cried in Riku's place, and brought Riku home sweet home out of the darkness.

If that was true, maybe Sora wasn't a serial genocidal mass murderer, and a cosmic puppet weapon of mass destruction.

"I still haven't learned," Sora spoke. "What, specifically, happened the first time that I visited Castle Oblivion?"

"That can wait, too," Vanitas answered, and Sora suppressed a rush of frustration. "All that I'll waste time telling you is that you convinced Namine that all of the feelings inside a heart are genuinely part of it, whatever their source. So she realized from this that her darkness as a Nobody didn't cause her to be an inhuman monster, and that meant that the same was true for Riku."

Sora cringed once more to learn how little faith in herself Namine had had before whatever had happened during their initial meeting had given her the ability to believe in herself, and to look at the light.

He couldn't put it off any longer.

He was going to find out what had happened the first time he'd visited the warped Land of Departure the next chance that he had.

"At any rate, this jogged my own memories of my visit to the future, and what you and Ven had said to me when he, Aqua, and you beat me for the second time," Vanitas spoke. "I have a different perspective on what accepting your darkness while living in the light means that Riku does, and I don't feel like getting into that, this time for personal reasons.

"But for the indefinite future, I'm willing to cooperate with you to repay Yozora, Luxu, the other Foretellers, Maleficent, Pete, and the members of her Summation Organization Thirteen," so that was its name, "for all the grief that they have caused me.

"Pay attention to how I used the word cooperate.

"None of you are my friends."

Sora sighed heavily, and he smiled.

"I'll see what I can do to convince you to have a change of heart about that."

Vanitas snorted in derision and revulsion, and he rolled his eyes.

"In any event, when you started working on the raft," this confirmed Sora's belief that this was when Riku had opened the door, due to what Xehanort's Heartless had said in one of his Ansem's Reports about how corrupting a world's heart took a long time, "I was able to siphon the darkness that began to leak through the door from the heart of Destiny Islands once the Heartless started poisoning it, and this gave me a small degree of autonomy inside Riku's heart.

"So, as soon as he gave into the darkness the first amount and abducted Jasmine from the Cave of Wonders while you were humiliating Jafar, I was able to act independently.

"I was the one who called the Parasite Cage twice to attack Riku, Pinocchio, and you twice."

Sora suppressed the surge of fury and frustration that he might have been able to call Riku home sweet home before things had gotten a lot worse if Vanitas hadn't interfered.

"I didn't want to risk the two of you reconciling and convincing Riku to stop wielding the darkness, Riku winning your likely duel and losing a good amount of his motivation to dive deeper into the darkness, or you subduing Riku and discouraging him from continuing his descent into it."

Sora kept his fury out of his voice as he asked Vanitas his question.

"Were the Heartless born from my Shadows in Neverland your doing, as well, then?" Sora queried. "They weren't born from my actual heart. They functioned like your Unversed.

"Bingo," Vanitas said back. "I fed Riku the knowledge of how to create them in such a way that he believed that he'd come up with the idea himself, in order to try to exhaust him through tricking him into fashioning Heartless in ways that they aren't meant to be formed, in order for Beast to wound him badly when Beast located Belle. I'd felt Beast survive the eclipse of his castle and the surrounding planet through his love for Belle, so I knew that he'd arrive at the current Hollow Bastion sooner or later. I also knew that Maleficent would most likely have enhanced Riku's ability to call upon his darkness before he faced off against Beast.

"So I wanted Riku tired so Beast would give him a run for his money and injure him terribly by the time Riku defeated him, and you'd thus be able to defeat Riku with merely your wooden sword. I believed that this would have caused Riku to feel so humiliated that I'd then be able to reveal myself to Riku, pretend to sympathize with him; and convince him to become pure darkness, rather than darkness itself, so that I'd be the one to take control of his body.

"And with an extra Keyblade to wield in my off hand as fringe benefits.

"But I didn't understand the concept of how love and pain are two sides of the same coin, and people can connect through rejection as much as through acceptance.

"When Riku ran into you in Neverland, and then once more when Beast dueled him, his rage at you for supposedly abandoning Kairi and him drove him to connect with you with as much of his heart as he used to, and went back to doing, as your best friend.

"He forged your Shadow Heartless without tiring himself much, and dispatched Beast with ease and without fatiguing himself more than a small amount further.

"I attempted to stop his plummet into darkness itself at the depth of pure darkness when Xehanort's Heartless maneuvered him out of Luxu's clutches into Xehanort's," Sora started violently once more, "But I still didn't have enough power of my own to affect his heart enough to do that, so Xehanort's Heartless got him."

"Was Luxu responsible for Maleficent's attempt to play Riku?" Goofy questioned.

"That was Xehanort's Heartless' idea," Vanitas responded. "Before Xehanort split apart, he'd learned that Luxu's plans hinged around one or more of the wielders next in line to bear the Keyblade. That was one of the largest reasons that he spent the effort sending Kairi off of Radiant Garden when he could have just waited for Mickey to attempt to do something about the Heartless and then followed Mickey's trial to find whatever new Keyblade wielder or Keyblade wielders he might be working with. Xehanort wanted the next generation of Keyblade wielders in as bad a position to learn how to master the Keyblade as possible.

"As soon as Kairi reached Destiny Islands, Ansem was able to get in touch with Xemnas and identify Riku as next in line for a Keyblade, and Sora as someone with a strong enough heart and connection to Riku to potentially foul up Riku actually starting to utilize the Keyblade if things went wrong when Mickey located Riku.

"Xemnas wanted to just kill Riku, Kairi, and Sora then," Sora felt his blood drain from his face, "But Ansem convinced him that if anyone directly attacked Destiny Islands with Heartless or Nobodies, rather than wait for the Heartless to claim the heart of its world, that would call Mickey's attention to Destiny Islands and accelerate Riku taking up the Keyblade."

Kairi, Riku, Tidus, Wakka, Selphie, their parents, their other loved ones and friends, and the other people of Destiny Islands hadn't been in that much danger then.

Thank goodness.

"So Ansem, and the initial Organization Thirteen, just focused on directing Heartless away from Destiny Islands to keep Yen Sid and Mickey from realizing that someone there had undergone the bequeathing ceremony, and continuing their efforts to fulfill Xehanort's initial new plan for re-forging the Kye-Blade.

"Luxu saw the potential of Ansem's idea to corrupt Riku for making his goals for the Second Keyblade War that much easier to achieve. He knew that a Keyblade wielder walking the road to darkness would have a devastating effect on who I now know are Kairi and you.

"But he didn't realize that Xehanort's Heartless and Xemnas just wanted Riku to have given into the darkness enough that they could trick him into becoming Ansem's vessel, and then an empty vessel as the potential thirteenth member of the Real Organization Thirteen if that contingency needed to be implemented.

"As soon as Riku obtained the Keyblade of Hearts I set about trying to merge it with my heart, as it had once been a half of the Kye-Blade, but you broke it by freeing Kairi before I could make much headway with that.

"When Ansem stabbed Maleficent with the Keyblade of Hearts, I tried to halt Maleficent's descent into darkness at the pure darkness stage and take her body as opposed to Riku's. Due to the additional darkness that Xehanort's Heartless had fed me and how Maleficent was able to keep herself from plummeting fully into darkness itself, I was able to influence that.

"When you beat Maleficent as her improved Dragon, she should have been condemned beyond the Door to Darkness as Ursula and Oogie Boogie were. But my influence stopped that from happening, and set off a chain reaction of darkness that threw her into the past during the age of fairy tales."

Sora started violently another time.

"That's where, from my past creator when he was inside Ven's heart, she learned about the box with the Note Blade before she returned to the future around the time that you met Yen Sid," Vanitas was continuing. "Though she doesn't know that it's the Note Blade.

"And on those lines, before you ask, I have no more idea what the Note Blade is than you do."

Sora clenched his teeth, and Donald snarled.

"This, clearly, was one of my additional destined roles.

"Fulfilling one of my roles for the first time triggered me to begin regaining the memories of my life as Yozora, that I'd lost when Xehanort had taken me out of Ven.

"I didn't understand enough of what they meant though to lose interest in taking Riku's body, so I tried to keep Riku's heart inside his body once he'd drained what light he had remaining by keeping Ansem from very likely slaughtering you, Donald, and Kairi after Sora stabbed himself with the Keyblade of Hearts. But I was too tired from trying to steal Maleficent's body, and I was also trying futilely to force the fragmenting Keyblade of Hearts back together before the Princesses' hearts had fully settled back in their bodies.

"Riku was forced through the Door to Darkness, and even though he protected himself from becoming a Heartless, my Nobody heart would have become a single, really rotten, Unversed anyway, if I hadn't latched slightly onto the Keyblade of Hearts and drained a small thread of its power; enough to shield myself while Riku was struggling to keep his heart.

"I made another effort to steal Riku's body when Ansem wholly opened the Door to Darkness. And with the Door to Darkness at last fully flooding the realm of light with night black and the centillions of Heartless that had been born since Faerie forged the first ones on the edge of racing into the realm of light; I finally had enough darkness moving in my vicinity to apply the same principles that I used to create Unversed to not just take Riku's body; but fashion hundreds of trillions of Dark Infernos, Dark Followers, and Novashadows; hundreds of quadrillions of Orcuses, Neoshadows, and Gigas Shadows; and hundreds of quintillions of Invisibles, Darksides, and Mega Shadows about to rush into the realm of light; into a second Keyblade of Hearts."

Sora cringed once again.

"But you surprised me yourself that time.

"I knew that artificial Kingdom Hearts had as much light at their cores as the true Kingdom Hearts did, but I didn't believe that you'd actually be able to call it out.

"So you forced Ansem out of Riku's body, kept me from accomplishing either goal, and knocked me out.

"I woke up when Ansem the Wise brought Riku out of the realm of darkness with one of Namine's cards, but though I kept trying to hitchhike Ansem each time he tried to take back Riku's body and gain it myself, my efforts to forge a second Keyblade of Hearts had left me so weak that I wasn't able to move the frailest wisp of darkness."

For the first time, Vanitas' face softened, and his voice became kinder, almost worshipful and reverent, and there was a repressed broken longing and wistful despair in his tone now that ripped at Sora's heart and twisted it.

"Then Namine said what she said to Riku, and I remembered what you and Ven said to me before I was sent back into the past and lost my memories of my time in the future."

True hope for Vanitas surged up to engulf all of Sora.

But the belief that Sora had regained in himself flickered a small amount.

If he convinced Namine to try to connect with Vanitas, that might call him home sweet home out of the darkness.

But, if the way Vanitas was talking about Namine meant one, or both, of the two matters that Sora knew that it very well might mean; this would once more force Riku to compete with someone; for a best friend, for a girl's love, or for both.

When Sora told Namine about how Vanitas felt about what she'd done for him, he'd need to try his hardest to make it clear to Namine about what she might get Riku and herself into if she endeavored to light Vanitas' way home.

Neither Riku or Namine deserved this, along with everything else.

Connections; familial, romantic, or friendship; were supposed to be a source of love and warmth and sanctuary and strength.

Yet all that they'd appeared to have become, since Sora had returned from the Gap Amidst Transparency, and The Final World, was a maze of crystalline fractures weaving and spiraling through labyrinthine switchbacks and endless shatterpoints that did nothing but cause the people around him torment and agony.

Sora suppressed the urge to look at Donald, Goofy, Jiminy, and Anna.

If he'd betrayed anything in his facial expressions or body language, and one or more or all of them had reacted to it, he'd have seen it.

The gentleness was entirely gone from Vanitas' voice as he went on.

"I realized that you two were right," he said, "And that I was no different than Namine and any of the Nobodies and that I needed to be my own person, so I began wielding the darkness as Namine had taught Riku to, and this gave me a very large amount more autonomy inside Riku and thus a vast amount more darkness to call on.

"Therefore, when Riku defeated his replica for the last time, I put what Namine had taught us in practice to wield the darkness the way that Namine had taught throw him into the realm of darkness rather than let him be returned to Riku's body and everyone forgetting about him, like what happened with Xion."

Sora's eyes flew wide, Goofy jolted violently, and Donald's beak fell open.

Vanitas rolled his eyes.

"Give me a break," he sighed in incredible exasperation and anger, and there was an extremely defensive protectiveness in his voice as he continued. "You honestly believed that Riku Replica shouldn't have returned to Riku's heart, and wiped anyone's memories of him, even though he was born through Even and Namine similar to how Xion was born."

"I'd wondered about that, but I assumed that he loves," Sora refused to believe that Riku Replica was dead now, and not just a prisoner of the realm of darkness once again, "Namine so much that that light kept that from happening.

"While Xion, even with how much she loves Roxas, wanted to return to my heart."

"Okay, you're not a complete idiot," Vanitas said back, and the exasperation and anger were gone, but not the defensiveness and protectiveness. "I assumed that you were surprised because you believed that Riku Replica loves Namine more than Xion loves Roxas.

"That wasn't the reason.

"He'd probably have been able to pull it off if Namine hadn't wrecked his heart before you got through to her. But, though he'd recovered from that enough to fight at his best, with Ienzo's Nobody heart boosting him, during his last duel with Riku, it was still injuring him badly.

"So I needed to throw Riku Replica into the realm of darkness myself.

"And yes, I made sure to be in a position able to ensure that he returned there safely, and not into Riku's heart, after he took his past self down along with himself.

"But he didn't need any help from me to transit back to the realm of darkness that time."

Sora sagged slightly as new relief consumed all of him.

"I did need to thrust his past self back into his heart.

"His past self can be as determined as the real Riku and the present Riku Replica when he wants to be. He honestly pulled off the one thing none of the rest of our future selves did; as Riku was successfully able to keep himself from becoming a Heartless even after his heart was removed from his body, he actually held onto his memories, and kept his future self separate from his past self."

Sora's legs almost vanished as complete, full, whole, total, utter, absolute, desperate hope surged up to consume anything and everything that he knew and didn't know and was and wasn't and had been and hadn't been and would be and wouldn't be and might be and couldn't be; and tears of terrified, disbelieving, sheer, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter, utter relief flooded his eyes and spilled down his face.

"Did Young Xehanort survive the Second Keyblade War?" he questioned. "Is Kairi's last brother, or uncle, still alive as a separate person from Kairi's father, so I have a chance of giving her back one of her family members?"

Vanitas scowled. "How the heck am I supposed to know?"

"Please," Sora begged, ready to fall to not just his knees as he had before Isa and bow this time if necessary, but collapse onto his stomach and grovel if he needed to, "Is there anything, anything at all, that you know about whether or not he's still alive, and still his own heart?"

It was most likely because they'd just been talking about the Riku Replica, and thus Namine, but a little amount of sympathy and understanding appeared in Vanitas' eyes.

"From what little I can tell, it could go in any direction," he said.

Blackness rose up to engulf Sora and drag and yank him plummeting and tumbling down into its depths, and he was barely able to force it away and keep from passing out, or cause his legs to exist beneath him once more and prevent them from giving out.

Even now they were shaking, shuddering, and trembling aching agony indescribably measurelessly weaker than rubber.

This didn't improve Sora's ability to believe in himself any longer, as he had taken Kairi's father, and two of her brothers, or uncles, away from her.

But he couldn't afford not to believe in himself as much as he'd used to now.

He might truly have one last chance to give Kairi her family back after all of the years that he'd kept them apart through his infantile cluelessness, and he was not going to fail Kairi this time.

"If you'll shut up and let me continue," Vanitas went on now that he saw that Sora wasn't going to faint, "I'll get to that along with the rest of my evidence that you can trust the warning that I'm about to give you. It will make the most sense to you if I tell you what little I know about Young Xehanort in order.

"Namine is the person who saved me from the waking nightmare that I lived in since the instant Xehanort created me, but I still owe you this much, along with the warning that I'm telling you all this to give you."

Even though Sora now knew that it might still not be too late to give Kairi her family back, he wanted to say that after what Vanitas had just said, the light of his love for Namine, whatever form his love for her was, was enough to convince Sora that Vanitas could be trusted.

But Riku's love for Kairi had warped him for a relatively short time, and Terra's love for Ven and Aqua had done the same thing.

How much Vanitas obviously now loved Namine wasn't enough to guarantee to Sora that Vanitas wasn't much more untrustworthy than Lotso.

So Sora just nodded determinedly and firmly.

"Thank you," he said about the hope that Vanitas had given him for Kairi.

"For whatever it's worth, you're welcome," Vanitas answered.

"Moving on," Vanitas' voice was its usual contained angry, bitter self now. "Past Riku Replica refused to give up his heart and memories, or even return to Riku Replica's heart as a separate chamber of it, so I needed to force him to do so, and knock him unconscious to make it happen.

"Riku Replica refuses to leave the realm of darkness, though, even though I've repeatedly tried to convince him to go to the side of the real Riku."

Sora would confront Riku Replica about that himself, when he had the chance to, as well.

"But this might be a good thing, because, in order to accomplish the last stages of how they need to set up Synchronicity Perceptual. Yozora, Luxu, and the Foretellers are even causing the realm of darkness problems now."

Sora kept himself from starting this time, even slightly.

"Have they killed any Heartless there, or turned them into something even worse?" Sora questioned in new terror.

"So far as I know, save for the odd Dustflier, Kurt Zisa, Phantom, or other top of the food chain Heartless cocky enough to pick a fight with the darkness that it can feel in the hearts of the Foretellers, who then learns the error of assuming that one or more of those Foretellers will be easy prey in a very painful fashion, the Heartless are fine.

"I'm worried about the minority of people from the time of the First Keyblade War who survived it, and the annihilation of what you believe was the realm of light, to establish bastions of civilization and culture there that have endured to this day."

Sora once again kept himself from starting.

"Before you ask this, I also don't have enough memories back yet to have any better idea what Synchronicity Perceptual is than you."

Sora suppressed the urge to fist his hands, and Donald scowled blackly and Goofy shifted uncomfortably.

"What we believe was the realm of light?" Goofy queried.

"Does that mean that the five realms were once one, and the First Keyblade War separated them as it did the worlds?"

Vanitas rolled his eyes once more.

"It took you this long to realize that?" he questioned rhetorically in derisive exasperation.

Sora didn't know whether to feel indescribably relieved that this meant that a massive number of the Heartless in the realm of darkness were most likely denizens of the original realm of fairy tales when the First Keyblade War had eradicated it, or further anguished and sickened.

"The Final World was always separate from the realm of fairy tales, however," Vanitas elaborated. "Although it was disconnected from the original realm in a different fashion. The great abyss below our worldline's realm of fairy tales was as much a part of it as it it's still currently a part of all of the other realms that haven't split into five tapestries, however.

"I can't risk getting into the details about how Yozora accomplished this.

"All I'll say is that, when the Dandelions recreated the realm of fairy tales, he severed the original realm into five through a similar method to how he separated the worlds inside the realm of light with his Dreamreapers, that Luxu was telling the truth about."

It was good to know that.

"I advise you to ask Chirithy for the details later. Yozora created something called a Nightmare Chirithy, and this was one of the reasons why, as well as another of the central reasons that he supplied the Unions with the bangles that created the Dreamreapers. So Ven's Chirithy, the first Chirithy that used to be Ava's from which this Nightmare Chirithy was later born, might be able to remember something about this."

That fit more pieces together the way that Sora had believed that they might fit.

"In any event, I continually tried to boost Riku's darkness as soon as he took full charge of it in order to better enable him to keep Namine safe, but he had too tight of a grasp on it to enable me to influence it at all. All I was able to do for the next year in regards to Riku was reinforce how effectively he was keeping Ansem suppressed in his heart, which he was doing so well that he didn't need my help at all."

Vanitas' visage masked all emotion, as did his voice.

"For whatever reason, all the time that Riku spent with Namine during that year also made it much harder than I cared for to call on my darkness."

Sora suppressed the urge to give Vanitas a sympathetic, understanding look.

The mask on Vanitas' expression and voice faded.

"However, when Xion tricked Roxas into killing her, as soon as she started assimilating with Sora's heart I knew what would happen to Namine if the process completed itself."

Sora's insides twisted violently.

As he'd been terrified of, Luxu hadn't been lying about that.

And that most likely meant that Xion was siphoning Ven, and Roxas once more, and that she might be able to siphon Kairi, as well as him.

"I anticipated that Roxas would be a reckless idiot and I knew that Riku most likely wouldn't be able to contend with Roxas without directly utilizing Ansem's power. So I waited for the dying Xion spoke to Riku to plead with him to stop Roxas from getting himself killed, and then I used the connection that she'd briefly established with Riku's heart to enter your Station of Awakening, throw her into the realm of darkness as I had Riku Replica, and thus protect Namine and her.

"She refused my offer to keep her alive, because she was terrified that she'd just end up draining Roxas a lot more rapidly if I tossed her into the realm of darkness even though she'd then be far away from him, so I harnessed what I'd learned over that last year about wielding the darkness and tried to eject her from your heart, and into the realm of darkness, by force."

Vanitas clenched his teeth tightly, starting to shake and shudder and tremble, and he clenched his hands into such tight fists that the palms of his fingers would almost certainly have drawn blood if he hadn't been wearing gloves.

Ebony, flowing wisps of fire rose to adumbrate him, and within them were contorted morphing and contracting and shifting and extending Floods and a number of other familiar creatures that were doubtlessly Unversed; including a large number of five different armored Unversed that partially resembled Guard Armors and Opposite Armors and Sora assumed would turn out to be similar in size if Vanitas fully fashioned them; and a relatively smaller number of imitations of Vanitas wearing helmets and suits of shades of white, gray, and black clasping Void Gears of similar colors.

Sora shifted into a guard position, doubting that Vanitas intended to set them free and trusting that Vanitas knew how to keep them from separating from him without his permission for them to do so, but not willing to take any chances.

Particularly because the phantom Vanitases might be entities similar to Terra's Lingering Spirit, and just seeing them was enough to cause the memory of the aches and anguish Terra's Lingering Spirit had inflicted upon Sora the first time that they'd met to manifest themselves.

Lingering Spirits were every amount as capable as genuine Keyblade wielders.

If many of them got loose from Vanitas, or he set them free; and if Sora didn't defeat them all here; Maleficent's likely associate would become one of the least of this world's concerns.

But none of the Unversed coalesced out of Vanitas as he continued to speak.

"However, the abilities that Xemnas had enhanced within Xion from the memory channeling devices that he'd planted in Wonderland, Halloween Town, and Agrabah hadn't fully settled back to normal. So she called on them for a second time, used their memory channeling abilities to steal what fragments of the second Keyblade of Hearts that I'd woven together and forge them into a spun glass fragment of one as a Keyblade of her own, and then reassumed the World of Glass Formchange that Roxas had struck her down in, and prevented me from removing her from your heart."

Vanitas cringed, which meant that Xion must have hurt Vanitas badly in the process.

"Very rudely."

Then Vanitas smirked bitterly, though with agony and self hatred and guilt and despair that Sora couldn't even begin to fathom. "Driving me out of your Station of Awakening cost her what memories she had that I was in Riku's heart, however, though it shouldn't be too much longer until she has them back. It also strained what was left of her enhanced abilities so much that, when the battle was over, she'd lost all of the capacities and Formchanges that the memory channeling devices had granted her beyond any natural recovery.

"But I don't want to hear any further drivel from you about the power of connections.

"My thankfulness to Namine for what she did for me meant literally less than nothing.

"At that time I had years of experience being taught how to harness the purest darkness that it's possible to feel without risking losing your heart to it under Xehanort's tutelage; another around a year teaching myself how to utilize it wholly under my command; I'd regained enough power to call Void Gear and battle at my best with all of my new experience fully channeling the darkness; and I had the ability to forge throngs of Unversed, including legions of Lingering Spirits all as combat capable as I am, to reinforce me."

Sora's eyes flew wide, and he barely remembered not to start in surprise.

Xion had somehow defeated countless Unversed herself, including throngs of Lingering Spirits; at the same time as she'd defeated a Vanitas wholly able to battle her with his Keyblade after spending around a year teaching himself how to fight with it, and Void Gear, even better than he had before?

How in the cosmos had she accomplished that?

"As Riku had just Formchanged into Ansem's regular body, I could even call upon Ansem's darkness myself to Formchange into the World of Chaos that you defeated in the endless abyss, and the World of Traverse that Riku outfought in the Sleeping World That Never Was, and use my greater experience with the darkness than Riku and Ansem to utilize all of Ansem's regular abilities in either form.

"But whatever she did with my pieces of the Keyblade of Hearts when she forged her silhouette of it, it was enough for her to defeat every last Unversed that I fashioned to back me up, and throw me out of your Station of Awakening and heart."

That confirmed what Sora had been afraid of as soon as he'd learned from Lea's Gummiphone summaries how exceptional the Keyblade forged from the earlier seven Princesses of Heart had been.

What Xehanort's Heartless had done with the full Keyblade of Hearts to Maleficent, what he'd tried to do with it to Sora, and what Sora himself had done with it, with the possible exception of finishing the Final Keyhole and opening it along with partially opening the Door to Darkness, just brushed the surface of what the Keyblade of Hearts could accomplish.

It was a weapon second solely to the Kye-Blade, and whatever the Note Blade would be if Sora completed it.

And once Xion remembered that battle, she'd know at least a small amount of how lethal the Keyblade of Hearts genuinely was, and most likely remember how to summon her barely cast shade of it.

"All I achieved by trying to protect Namine from Xion was to give Ursula a means of escaping the realm of darkness herself and keeping herself from even being returned there the second time that you beat her; as well as unintentionally creating a bunch of Unversed phantoms of the former and current members of the first Organization Thirteen on Hollow Bastion and other worlds, and an Unversed Lingering Spirit of Riku in the vicinity of Xemnas' Lingering Spirit; because a part of me knew that, if you ran into that one, you might not be able to live through the encounter without a second Keyblade wielder watching your side."

Sora could think of no way to convince Vanitas not to lose faith in connections because he hadn't been able to keep Namine safe from being drained by Xion.

How could he, when he couldn't understand why his connections hadn't enabled him to protect Kairi, Riku, Donald, Goofy, Anna, his other loved ones and friends, and so many others, so many times; and he kept causing them more pain?

But Sora still said, "That's what probably would have happened, yes.

"Your Xemnas Unversed was able to partially mimic the powers the real Xemnas had gained when he merged with the remains of his fake Kingdom Hearts. I wasn't prepared for the Lingering Spirit version's thorn prison when he first used it on me, but even though I knew World of Twilight could most likely try to trap me with one himself, when he launched it at me I still couldn't react fast enough to avoid it.

"So, even if I'd been ready for the Lingering Spirit's one I doubt that I could have dodged it. If not for the Unversed Riku I'd most likely have died then, so thanks for that.

"That should show you that the power of connections isn't fully incapable of cherishing others."

Vanitas just made his tone and face a mask, recalled the black corona and the Unversed inside them, and uncurled his fists and stopped shaking, trembling, and shuddering.

"Whatever," he spoke.

Then he was his regular angry, bitter self.

"Then I forgot who I'd been trying to protect Namine from, and was reduced to futilely attempting to watch Riku's back without being able to affect how he harnessed the darkness externally until Ansem the Wise's contraption went critical, and, as I'm a Nobody and not a natural sleeping heart, it cast me out of Riku's heart along with Ansem."

Sora had assumed as much, and that Vanitas wasn't still inside Riku's heart, otherwise he almost certainly wouldn't be here, but relief still filled Sora anyway.

"The Ansem you defeated before Xehanort killed Kairi is actually from shortly after this time.

"As soon as the artificial Kingdom Hearts broke, he tried to harness the darkness being emanated by all the freed hearts reverting to Heartless to call what he still saw as supreme darkness from Xemnas' Kingdom Hearts, as he'd tried to call supposed supreme darkness from his fake Kingdom Hearts before its light forced him into the depths of Riku's heart. Ansem didn't believe that you'd be able to beat Xemnas and Xemnas would need to resort to becoming one with it, and even if it did happen, the initial Organization Thirteen was in such tatters by that point that he knew that he wouldn't become a walking target if he defied his role any longer.

"Yet by then he'd given into the darkness so much that he believed defying his destiny as a Heartless by refusing to live through darkness would just hurt him further, so he decided to try to gather new world hearts for a second artificial Kingdom Hearts born of world hearts himself, and then thus research what he still saw as the omniscient secrets of the cosmos concealed within Kingdom Hearts on his own terms, without recompleting Xehanort and enabling him to achieve his own goals for opening the door to the real Kingdom Hearts.

"He intended to use Xemnas' supposed supreme darkness to create a new body for himself, recapture Kairi, and then use that supposed supreme darkness to trace Kairi's connections through Namine's widespread power over memories and locate and take the six New Seven Hearts captive all by himself before you could finish annihilating Xemnas' Kingdom Hearts. Then he wanted to cast a second full Keyblade of Hearts and set enough hearts free from the throng of Shadows that they'd just reverted to en masse, thus repairing that Kingdom Hearts and enabling him to, at the cost of using up all of the power of the hearts comprising it and leaving none to form a Kingdom Hearts themselves, convert it into a second Door to Darkness with a corresponding Final Keyhole in The Castle That Never Was.

"After this he'd have fully opened that door and dodged the light inside it, then let the Heartless in the realm of darkness invade the realm of light and create a third artificial Kingdom Hearts out of world hearts without too much trouble, which he could then enter and research to unlock all of the mysteries of the World.

"He was threatening Namine to do this, however, so I informed him of my opinion on his new objective in the way that he'd taught me to do so before he'd split into two pieces.

"I knew that this would recomplete the true Xehanort and ensure that my past self would threaten Namine in the future on my own, but after I'd failed to protect Namine once, I just cared about removing the danger to her that was right in front of her.

"While you, Riku, Mickey, Kairi, and the others beat Xemnas the first time, I defeated Xehanort's Heartless for the last time, with the exception of his two future defeats.

"During the course of this confrontation, I regained most of the memories that I've currently recovered of my original life, but that would take too long to get into.

"Then I released a large number of Unversed known as Iron Imprisoners, Mimic Masters, and Trinity Armors into The Castle That Never Was to assist Maleficent and Pete in holding off the Shadows and then drive them out of it to prevent them from acquiring the new base of operations that they wanted. After this I locked the Iron Imprisoners, Mimic Masters, and Trinity Armors to their coronas and ordered them to hide in The Castle That Never Was and ambush them and drive them out of it if they tried to come back.

"By this time, you and Riku had defeated Xemnas, so Namine wasn't in any current danger and I started looking into how to remove her from Kairi's heart and stop whoever was draining her from doing so.

"But when Mickey created Data-Namine and her datascape from Jiminy's Journal, I made the mistake of hitchhiking on the path that Data-Riku opened to bring Mickey, Donald, and Goofy into it at the same time as Maleficent and Pete did. Maleficent decided to try to take revenge on me by ambushing the data versions of Radiant Garden's former residents at the Olympus Coliseum and sending Heartless versions of Data-Sephiroth, Data-Leon, Data-Cloud, and Data-Yuffie after me along with the Data-Rock Titan, and you know how good Sephiroth is.

"By the time that I'd beaten them all, Data-Kairi had finished evolving.

"I refused to risk Data-Sora and Mickey being unable to defeat it and the thing opening a path into the realm of light, so I assisted Maleficent and Pete in trying to beat it.

"But I was so fatigued from contending with Data-Sephiroth and the Data-Rock Titan that she pulverized me without much more trouble than she pulverized Maleficent and Pete, and I ended up creating a data rift that Maleficent and Pete were able to keep themselves alive in and that also accomplished the very matter that I'd been trying to prevent."

Sora started violently, and the emptiness absent of even its lack was back among new all engulfing terror and horror.

"Data-Kairi was able to survive her defeat by Data-Sora and Riku by retreating into the rift herself, and then she journeyed into the realm of light?"

Vanitas rolled his eyes yet once more.

"Namine should have figured that out as soon as she heard about something that happened with the data of the Real Organization Thirteen when Riku visited the Restoration Committee, a minority of weeks before Kairi brought you back.

"When he visited them, Cid was trying to analyze that data to see if it had any clues about what had happened to you. The Foretellers had their own purposes for maneuvering Data-Kairi into doing it, but she hacked into the data of the Real Organization Thirteen and combined their data with fragments of her.

"She severely enhanced them, anticipating that Cid would contain their bugs with a Data-Sora version of his own and stopped the analysis and wanting to field test her new abilities by deploying them against Data-Sora. She learned what she needed to from the battles, and when the analysis of the data ended inconclusively and Cid ended it, she assimilated that Data-Sora and recombined with the thirteen pieces of the Data-Real Organization Thirteen. After this, she added my eighteen Unversed Lingering Spirits of the initial Organization Thirteen to her form, along with that Unversed Riku. Then, as the finishing touches to whatever her goal was then, she gobbled up a Lingering Spirit that I'd unintentionally created in the Keyblade Graveyard around twelve years ago when readying myself to become the Kye-Blade, and then a Heartless that had merged with Xehanort's original Keyblade Armor around the time that Aqua trapped herself in the realm of darkness and that she took apart shortly afterwards; but that lived, though barely alive, through the duel."

Sora suppressed the urge to reveal how worried he now was.

Vanitas' Unversed Nobodies had been as deadly as their real counterparts, the Riku who had fought at Sora's side against the Unversed Xemnas in his World of Twilight form had been a Lingering Spirit in his own right, and Lea had said in the Gummiphones that the Heartless Aqua had defeated in the realm of darkness had fought on par with a Lingering Spirit itself.

If a Heartless as horrifically lethal as Data-Kairi had combined those nineteen Unversed with two other virtual Lingering Spirits and severely enhanced versions of the Real Organization Thirteen, she was a force as terrible as a mammoth Demon Tide in her own ways now.

And Kairi would be hurt even more terribly when she found out about that.

"As soon as she reached the realm of light, she started stealing hearts, regular and from other Heartless, to repair her near fatal wounds at Data-Sora's and Mickey's hands. Once I recovered enough and forced open a path back into the Disney Kingdom and the realm of light with Void Gear and my memories of how datascapes worked during the age of fairy tales, I tried to hunt her down in the event that she went after the real Kairi, and thus Namine.

"She finished healing herself by assimilating the Armored Ventus Nightmare that protected you when you almost fell into darkness."

This was yet another way that Sora had caused Kairi, and others, more pain.

"This told me where she was and I tracked her down into the remains of the dream Traverse Town as she was finishing assimilating a really nasty Dream Eater version of Pete there who called himself Julius," Sora let himself cringe this time, "But though she couldn't fight as effectively outside of a datascape because she wasn't a true Heartless, she had enough deadly power over darkness from the Armored Ventus Nightmare and Julius to defeat me.

"I met the Dream Eaters you and Riku raised then when they healed my wounds after Data-Kairi beat me once more, and because Namine had inadvertently taught Riku how to become a Dream Eater, I've remained with them since."

Sora had been almost certain that Meow Now, Komory Pat, and the other Dream Eaters had survived indefinitely after he'd left the dream Traverse Town, as it had remained in an unknown form after it had been freed from its sleep, but hearing it confirmed for certain sent more slight relief through him.

"I knew from my memories of the future that Xehanort would most likely be successful in reforging the Kye-Blade this time, so Luxu was now about to become a far greater threat to Namine. So we first set up a dummy corporation and flooded as many networks on other worlds as we could with Downloadable Video Games about Yozora, in the hopes of providing you, the other guardians of light, and your allies with clues about what the real Yozora was trying to accomplish."

Sora clenched his teeth tightly.

Then the Video Game that Rex had been playing was a dead end.

"Then we hunted for Data-Kairi once again, and located her in the Keyblade Graveyard on the verge of ambushing Young Xehanort as he used the data from his experiments in Toy Box and past Riku Replica's at San Fransokyo to give Xion a new heart.

"This was around the time that you were tied up defeating the Heartless, Nobody, and Unversed legions that the Xehanorts and my past self in the future initially sent against you, and then pulling off a comeback against Kairi's Demon Tide and Lich. Xehanort didn't anticipate you finding a way to the realm of darkness without the power of waking; one of the reasons he tried to weaken you or acquire your hearts with two legions and Terra-Xehanort was because Xion's new heart hadn't fully been constructed."

Sora could barely tell what emptiness lacking itself even was.

That meant, if Kairi hadn't created the colossal Demon Tide and the Lich, they might have reached the cemetery at the nexus of the Keyblade Graveyard in time to defeat the Real Organization Thirteen without launching the Second Keyblade War, and Xehanort would have failed to re-forge the Kye-Blade.

If this had happened, Kairi might not have been taken captive and died to drive Sora, Riku, and Mickey to finish smelting it, and Kairi might still have her whole family and she wouldn't hate herself for Sora's death and imprisonment in the Gap Amidst Transparency and The Final World.

Could he justify feeling and thinking as though he still had as much faith in himself as before?

"She wanted that heart for herself to become a true Heartless, but with Meow Now and Komory Pat fighting at my side, I was able to defeat her at last and drive her off of the Keyblade Graveyard.

"I considered preventing Young Xehanort from partially restoring Xion, and you and Lea from finishing the job later, for Namine's sake, but I doubted that I could keep you from giving Xion a new form indefinitely and I knew that I'd likely just end up dead and returned to my adult Nobody's heart if I tried. So I didn't interfere with Xion's restoration, though I guarded Demyx from the shadows once he acquired Namine's replica body and watched over it until I saw you free her heart from Kairi's.

"Since then we've been researching how to stop Xion from draining Namine from the remains of the Sleeping Traverse Town. As Luxu successfully fomented the Second Keyblade War, I knew that my older self has enough pieces in place to truly bring together his means of initiating Synchronicity Perceptual, so I started traveling the realms trying to reconnect the remaining links in my missing chains of memories to improve my chances of keeping Namine safe from it.

"This is when I met Yozora's Heartless, shortly before the process of you vanishing into death ended. He had very few of the memories of his complete self, so he didn't know who I was and I was able to convince him to try to protect you, as well as to keep an eye out for Riku to show up, because Riku also knew how to use the power of waking.

"My adult Nobody keeps poking his nose into the homeworld of the person Yozora's Heartless has possessed, though, so I couldn't afford to spend much time there.

"We've also been trying to keep tabs on Data-Kairi before the Foretellers play her against anyone, or she launches her first true assault on a world, or other location, of her own volition.

"But as soon as I felt Kairi create her latest Demon Tide several days ago, I knew that she'd brought you back for the fourth time and that Synchronicity Unlimited was at last nearing completion after all these millennia, and that I couldn't keep Namine safe without your help any longer.

"I felt it when Young Xehanort threw you into one of our Games in Toy Box last year, so I knew that you, or someone else, would most likely be back here sooner or later, and I left Komory Pat, Meow Now, and the other Dream Eaters to continue researching how to stop Xion from siphoning Namine and to keep looking for Data-Kairi.

"And now here you are, and here I am at what I know about Young Xehanort."

Sora suppressed the urge to hope for too much, and he pushed as many of his feelings and thoughts as he could as distant as possible now.

He couldn't afford to risk forgetting literally a single syllable of what Vanitas was about to say.

The emptiness lacking itself disappeared as a result of Sora distancing himself from his feelings, but they were far enough away that the pain just caused Sora to ache an amount all throughout his body.

"While Komory Pat, Meow Now, and I were engaging Data-Kairi, Young Xehanort finished restoring Xion's heart," the younger Vanitas was going on.

"Then he left to confront you inside Kairi's Demon Tide for reasons that I'm unaware of.

"However, he left Ansem to get Xion ready for combat, and your defeat of the Lich, your reversal of space time, and the following defeat of the Demon Tide itself prevented the realm of light from being erased for a second time, as Yozora had written would happen during the Second Keyblade War to give the guardians initial incentive to gather and thus participate in it.

"This at last convinced Ansem that he didn't need to resign himself to his destiny as the first seeker of darkness after Xehanort, and during his conversations with Xion in the vicinity of our confrontation with Data-Kairi, I heard him talk about a number of matters.

"Firstly, if Kairi's Demon Tide actually had won, Young Xehanort was supposed to take over the role that Yozora had initially written for Xehanort during the Second Keyblade War, and bring it about through the seven fragments of Kairi's heart."

So Sora had been right.

Young Xehanort, and Xehanort's Heartless, knew more than Xehanort and his other selves had.

He kept his feelings about learning that Kairi would have had an additional role in Xehanort's script had the light faded then, away, along with everything else.

"Secondly, Xehanort knows about someone named Vayne Solidor, who knew about Yozora's plans himself to an extent, and who had tried to harness the darkness to keep Yozora from enacting them years earlier. Vayne was defeated by Mickey and his companions, but he has a contingency in place that Xehanort intended to combine with a final contingency of his own if he failed to re-forge the Kye-Blade for the third time, and thus fashion a failsafe contingency that he was all but certain would re-forge the Kye-Blade and create a New World, even if he was no longer able to do so himself."

Anna shifted.

Sora barely kept his feelings and thoughts about this, and what it might mean for Kairi and Anna, away.

"Thirdly, he killed Kairi and hid her heart fragments to ensure that she couldn't be easily revived, not just to spur you, Riku, and Mickey into putting the finishing touches on the Kye-Blade, but to put the pieces in place to set his failsafe contingency in motion in the event that one or more of the guardians and their allies defeated him."

Sora kept his feelings and thoughts, and the emptiness absent of its lack, from returning, as his worst terrors about why Xehanort had hid Kairi's heart fragments, in what had become the ethereal Scala ad Caelum, were proven accurate.

But his legs still disappeared from his awareness, and he barely kept them on the top of the desk.

"Fourthly, from this and what I remember of Ansem's and Young Xehanort's conversations with the other Xehanorts and the rest of the Real Organization Thirteen while Xehanort was deploying us into the cemetery, your defeat of the Demon Tide didn't inspire him to defy his future self's destiny as it did Ansem. But it did give him enough faith that Yozora, Luxu, and the other Foretellers could be defeated, that he sounded as though he was personally going to ensure that Xehanort's failsafe contingency succeeded if Xehanort was defeated for good this time."

Sora did keep his legs from weakening this time.

"I've seen no evidence that he didn't return to Xehanort's heart and lose his memories for good after you, Riku, and Mickey struck him down. But Xehanort was all but certain that his failsafe contingency would succeed, and he must have known by then that I no longer saw him as my Keyblade Master after Namine protected Riku and I, and all of the other survivors of the Second Keyblade War would be similarly unwilling to see it through. So he must have had his own means by which he intended to convince Young Xehanort to give up hope that Yozora could be defeated, as he didn't see Kairi's Demon Tide coming or he'd have ensured that someone knocked her out when Terra-Xehanort assaulted the nine of you.

"Therefore, I'm convinced that he didn't return to his past self's heart, and that he's now using Yozora and the Foretellers, Maleficent and the Summation Organization Thirteen, and Data-Kairi as much as the three of them are using each other and one another, in order to accomplish Xehanort's final failsafe contingency."

Sora could barely see through the tears in his eyes.

Then he did still have a chance to give Kairi back her family.

This also meant that the other guardians of light, their friends, and he needed to defeat no less than four factions of seekers of darkness jockeying to open the door to the true Kingdom Hearts, in order to end the conflicts of the Keyblade for good.

But in light of the knowledge that he still had a chance to give Kairi her family back, even that didn't feel intimidating, even after how many millennia Yozora and Luxu and the Foretellers had been implementing their plans, and how horrific and how widespread the damage was that they'd already done to the World.

Vanitas grimaced.

"I've told you all that I believe that I can afford to.

"Whether that's enough to convince you to trust me, you need to know not to do what Prospector wants."

Woody and Jessie jolted violently, Buzz's eyes widened, and Woody and Jessie spun to look at Vanitas.

"You know Prospector?" he questioned. "Why didn't you tell us this?"

"Because you were already having a hard enough time believing that a human knows that toys have hearts," Vanitas spoke exasperatedly. "If I'd told you precisely why I wanted to talk to Sora, you might have found a way to keep me from meeting him.

"Buzz can't fire real lasers now, but I've learned not to underestimate how resourceful strong hearts who walk in the light are.

"At any rate, before coming here, I discovered that Maleficent intended to deploy Prospector to this world, to assist him in taking revenge against you two for what you did to him by harnessing the darkness that would result if the connections between toys and their owners were severed by revealing that toys have hearts and mind to human society."

Jessie staggered back violently, Woody's jaw dropped, Buzz's mouth dropped open, and Rex started shaking and shuddering and trembling so violently it appeared as though he'd come apart into a number of pieces.

Woody and Buzz ran over to Jessie, and Woody clasped one of her hands while Buzz gripped her opposite shoulder.

"We told you what Sora did for us during the time that we were gone," Woody said reassuringly. "What you went through is not going to happen to every toy on this planet.

"I can promise you that."

Sora hoped that he could guarantee that after how many times he'd failed since his visit to the Sleeping World That Never Was, but if Prospector genuinely was serving in the Summation Organization Thirteen, he wasn't as worried about being able to keep the toys on this planet safe as he was about defeating Yozora, Luxu, and the Foretellers.

Maleficent and her associates were formidable adversaries, but compared to what Xehanort and Yozora had accomplished, Sora hadn't had that many problems cherishing and keeping hearts safe from them.

He could defeat Maleficent and her Successor Organization Thirteen.

And this time he'd ensure that she'd been beaten in a way that lasted.

"I wouldn't make that promise," Vanitas advised them. "Prospector has occupied a nearby daycare center named Sunnyside and he has sent Lotso, someone who he knew how to play because he's a fellow lost toy," Sora cringed at the revelation of why there was so much darkness in Lotso's heart, "as angry that he was abandoned as Prospector–"

"I could care less," Lotso interrupted furiously. "I get all the playtime that I need from the children at Sunnyside."

Vanitas talked through him without even raising his voice or stopping briefly.

"–is, to you, as bait to lure you and Jessie, as well as any toys willing to accompany you, there.

"Though Maleficent has an additional plan in mind for Jessie."

That all but confirmed who Jessie was.

Lotso jolted violently himself.

"How did that geezer play me for a fool!?" Lotso snarled.

"All of Sunnyside should have been rigged by now," Vanitas informed him straight out. "As soon as you approach it, you'll be caught on camera, and this footage will appear on national television shortly afterwards. You leaving Sunnyside by yourself wasn't sufficient; people could easily dismiss you moving as being the result of an animal having crawled inside your body and moving you.

"The toys who occupied Sunnyside themselves won't be enough. They're inside a daycare center, a valid target for an invasion by an enemy army, and enough people have seen the Heartless when they assaulted Toy Box last year that the toys who live at Sunnyside can later just doctor recordings from safety cameras inside Sunnyside supposedly proving that those toys were being moved around like puppets by the Heartless, so the Heartless can use the toys as shields in enemy territory. That would undo Maleficent's and Prospector's efforts, because most or all other toys will know that the Sunnyside toys can reverse their success, so they'll keep pretending to be inanimate long enough for Prospector's claim that toys are alive to be shown as the hoax that people would be inclined to believe that it is.

"But if all the toys who I'm sure that will be willing to accompany Woody and Jessie, and the two of them themselves, travel there; it will be too hard for Sunnyside's toys to later believably doctor external safety camera recordings of their arrival. There's no easily apparent reason for invading forces to go to the trouble of shielding themselves with toys when they need to worry about dangers, such as cars, running them over. So Maleficent and Prospector will acquire enough footage to obliterate the happiness of every toy on the planet forever past them regaining it; and Prospector will have his revenge.

"I don't know how Prospector did it, but he's somehow sealed Sunnyside off from dark corridors, so I can't take you there past the range of the cameras.

"We need to think of a very stealthy plan to get in there before night falls in a few hours."

Woody drew himself up. "We'll do that," he said, any fear or worry that the happiness and life of every toy in this world was in extreme danger absent from his expression and body language. "There's a storm on its way."

Woody's expression became a mixture of pain and fear for different reasons now, as well as resolve and determination.

"Andy's younger sister has also been talking and acting like she's about to give away one of my best friends, the toy Little Bo Peep, soon, so this is a bad time for any of us to leave the house. It might even be tonight.

"But plenty of other toys can say goodbye to Bo, and she'd rather that I was fulfilling my duties as sheriff.

"Let's figure this out."

He turned to Lotso.

"What are you willing to tell us about how Sunnyside is set up?"

Lotso glared angrily.

"I didn't say that I was going to have anything to do with your rescue operation," he snarled.

"I just want Prospector and his goons out of there so my fellow toys and I can go back to being played with in contentment."

"Why do I not believe that this has anything to do with any toy being played with but you yourself?" Jessie interjected with skeptical partial sarcasm.

"It's your word against mine, lady," Lotso sneered at her.

"As well as my history with how toys like Prospector operate," she shot back. "As far as I'm concerned, you're as dangerous to the toys of Sunnyside as he is."

Lotso bristled violently. "Even if I was, what do you think that you can say or do about it, little girl's stuffed trophy?"

Jessie stiffened, and then she ripped her hand and shoulder out of Woody's and Buzz's grasps and strode furiously in Lotso's direction.

But Woody interposed himself between both of them with one hand held out in each toy's direction.

"Settle down," he implored them. "Whatever our personal motives, we're all concerned about evicting Prospector from Sunnyside.

"Let's just focus on solving that problem, and worry about whether Lotso is one afterwards."

"Lotso has already solved every toy's problem," an unfamiliar voice that was too toneless for its gender or age to be placed, if it had one, interrupted from inside Lotso.

Sora spun to look down at Lotso.

"Nanites," the voice continued. "You know that you gotta' say a monology about nanotechnology as long as we scream loud for ice cream."

Woody started, as though something about the mysterious figure's speech had disturbed him an enormous amount.

Rex's mouth was now open in horror, and he appeared to be shaking and shuddering and trembling for an entirely different reason now, while Buzz's mouth was hanging open without closing and Jessie recoiled back a step as if struck.

Even Lotso looked slightly sickened.

Sora blinked.

What did they know, or believe or suspect, about this mysterious person that he didn't?

"It really was worth joining the Summation Organization Thirteen as its fourteenth seeker of darkness."

Sora clenched his teeth at the revelation that the Summation Organization Thirteen did have a fourteenth member.

"This is one adventure that I never believed that I'd experience, even with all the books that I read."

"I'm familiar with the phrase 'we scream for ice cream,'" Woody said. "Andy and his friends say it a lot.

"How old are you?"

This time, Sora was just aware that his legs and knees had never existed and didn't exist and wouldn't exist and couldn't exist as he landed on knees that couldn't be real because nothing had been or could have been or should have been or hadn't been or couldn't have been or shouldn't have been or might not have been or was or wasn't or would be or wouldn't be or could be or couldn't be or may be or may not be or should be or shouldn't be or potentially was or potentially wasn't or might be or might not be or possibly was or possibly wasn't real or existedreal realexisted existedexistedexistedexistedexistedexistedexistedexistedexistedexistedexistedexistedexistedexistedexistedexistedrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealrealreal

even Maleficent and Xehanort and Luxu and Yozora wouldn't go this far

no one could be willing to go this far

no one no matter how dark his or her or its heart could be this inhumane

no one nothing anywhere nowhere unending before never beginning endless outside of eternal boundlessness everlasting after not ending was the most infinitesimally minutely microscopically barest frayed threadbare gossamer string most tiny slightest smallest minuscule bit capable or willing to do this

Donald recoiled back violently and almost staggered backwards onto his back.

Goofy reached for one of Anna's hands to keep from falling to his own knees, and she grabbed it as though she was clinging to not even a life raft floating amidst tempestuous tsunamis, but a brittle dead leaf cracking and slipping away between her fingers.

When the mysterious person answered, the voice was now that of a young boy.

"My name is Christopher Peregrine Robin, and I'm an eight year old boy."

Donald scowled viciously and savagely and blackly and snarled, Goofy gave out a kneeing howl of agony and anguish, and Anna almost lost her grip on her gunblade.

Woody turned and gripped Buzz's shoulder while Buzz grasped his arm, Jessie planted her hands on Rex's back, Rex looked as though his legs would have given out if his limbs had been capable of doing so and as though his body would have fallen apart if he could have shook or shuddered or trembled potently enough, and Lotso actually looked like he wanted to retch.

But Sora didn't react because there hadn't been, wasn't, and wouldn't be any Sora to react.

His Station of Awakening wasn't black glass sand pierced with a labyrinth of crystalline fractures and shatterpoints.

He was the shatterpoint that fractured all of existence and reality into so many crystalline threads and knots that it had always forever been, always was, and always would never be black glass sand, because he had let someone turn an innocent little boy into a seeker of darkness.

"I used to spend most of my free time playing with as many stuffed animals as Andy plays with toys, until, a number of years ago, some idiot neighbor deflected a chunk of accursed ice that had been fired at some neighbor kid's head and its pieces hit Mom and Dad, my big brother, and my baby sister in the heart. The five of you from off world should know by now what happens then."

Anna cringed.

"But unlike with what happened on Arendelle, the shot hadn't been meant for anyone's heart. So I didn't just get to watch them freeze solid in slow, excruciating, lingering agony. As soon as they became statues they shattered and died, and by the time a wizard we knew told me that I could have defrosted them; and I wouldn't have lost my whole family; if I'd just given them a hug or a kiss, or both; it was too late to save them.

"But we all need to grow up and accept the real World for what it is sometime.

"So I did that, and Maleficent found me, and taught me how to grow up even more by teaching me about the darkness.

"I didn't want to give up my age, and be reminded of how Mom and Dad and big brother had died, so I suspended it.

"But since then Maleficent has been teaching me everything that I need to know to serve her as her ace in the hole.

"I won my first diploma a few weeks ago, and I'm now ready to teach people everywhere, and their own stuffed animals and toys, what I've learned, so that they can grow up themselves.

"I unleashed billions of robots the size of atoms with a hive mind to crawl inside Lotso through his pores and reassemble into a camera with lenses tiny enough to see through his eyes. The conversation between Woody, Jessie, Buzz, Rex, and Lotso has now been recorded, and no doctored recordings can provide a better explanation for what you five just talked about. I now have all the footage that we need to prove to this world that toys are alive."

---

Vanitas raised his right hand, and Void Gear manifested in it in coiling black.

A second later, black and shades of violet and amethyst radiated about it in a corona, and they remained there.

"That should buy us enough time," he said. "I just traced Lotso's connection to Prospector, and through him to Christopher, and reversed all of the videos on Christopher's camera into photonegatives.

"The spell should hold for long enough for us to reach Sunnyside."

Sora didn't know how he could still move or know what awareness and the knowledge of awareness and anything else were or weren't, but his hands were on the desk below him almost before he was aware that he'd decided to move and push himself to his feet.

A little boy had given into the darkness and become the trump card that they'd feared Maleficent had, and Sora had come a microscopic beam's length away from allowing innumerable hearts all over an entire world from cascading plummeting into a nightmare from which they'd never be freed no matter how many hearts or people or worlds or realms were healed or reborn.

"I'm sorry to tell you, but we're waaay too well practiced with pulling off last ditch wins to be caught in a trap like that," Donald snarled, but there was an uncertainty and guilt and terror and anger in his voice that Sora had never heard before.

Christopher laughed a single laugh.

"And Maleficent is waay too experienced with hypocrites with delusions of grandeur such as yourself doing so.

"One of the reasons that she keeps warning her associates not to get too carried away was because she knew that this was likely to happen if they did that.

"I took that lesson to heart years ago, and I already had a countermeasure in place if Vanitas endeavored what I predicted that he would."

Now even the need to protect the toys of Toy Box from eternal despair and suffering almost couldn't keep Sora aware of what reality was.

He'd been doing this for over two years now.

He hadn't defeated as many seekers of darkness as he had, and touched, caught, carried, and mended the pain of innumerable hearts and worlds, to abandon and betray and fail and leave behind all of the hearts of an entire world eternally beyond recovery now.

"Don't be sad," Christopher addressed what Sora wasn't saying.

"We can't win them all.

"That's not how it goes.

"You refuse to accept the truth, but you should know this better than almost anyone by now, even your fellow Keyblade wielders. Few Keyblade wielders have needed to confront as much darkness as you have.

"I feel very sorry for you, and for your friends, and for Andy, and for the toys here.

"That's why I'm serving Maleficent and the Summation Organization Thirteen.

"I'm trying to teach you the lessons that I learned, to stop living in a storybook, before your fairy story ends the way that mine did.

"Especially you, Sora, because you've met a number of people who I did once see as friends, and you befriended them after I was no longer able to be there for them."

Blackness almost swallowed Sora's awareness once more, and he pushed it away, but he was aware that he was swaying on his feet.

He'd abandoned friends of his on one or more worlds to let a little boy who they loved cascade into the night?

"So I want to thank you for what you've done for them by keeping you from hurting as much in the future," Christopher was going on.

"Therefore, ask yourself these questions.

"How many people have you allowed to die, or be terribly hurt, each time that you visit a world, before you found a way to protect them or carry their pain?

"How many times have you saved one set of hearts or a world, just for another set of hearts or a world to be devoured and you to arrive at the location of that other set of hearts or that other world to find out that countless people have already been lost, and countless others are in jeopardy?"

Sora wasn't even sure if he was seeing blackness now, or if existence was swimming through clarity or ebony.

"How many times have you won battle after battle, but almost lost the whole war because you've played into one or more of your enemies' hands by winning the battles?" Christopher was going on.

"How many times have you defeated a dweller of the darkness by now, just to position him or her or it, or his or her or its allies, to bring about more death and pain in the future; or hurt people in even worse and more widespread ways than before through recompletion?"

Sora was shocked to discover that he was still conscious.

"So what if you've won in the end more often than not?

"You need to grow up yourself.

"Childish dreams can't make the World a better place.

"They're nothing more than delusional prayers for an ephemeral hope that will vanish into ashes in the incinerating beams of the unforgivingly revealing testament of the dawn.

"Who cares if you and your loved ones and friends live by your heart in ways that others don't?

"That's an essential point.

"People reject each other, and they murder and hurt each other, because they feel and think differently, and have different dreams and beliefs. You've seen this on every world that you have visited, whether the disagreement is about how to work together or disregard other humanoids or gorillas, or lead a nation or society, or validate your past or present or future, or raise people's spirits during a festival, or to care about other people or yourself.

"This is why people can't understand each other, or learn from each other.

"Because each and every one of us sees our feelings and thoughts and memories and dreams through in manners that other people and hearts don't.

"Struggling and battling to accept and protect is just another way to reject others, no different than the majority who battles to avenge or exploit or not care or hate.

"That you and your companions are so unique will just change the cosmos through bringing about more death and conflict, not less."

Sora must still be on his legs, because the walls hadn't risen, but he couldn't believe that he was, and his head and existence were night and swimming even more unsteadily now.

"No matter how far you travel, or for how long you adventure, no matter how hard you strive, no matter how determinedly you struggle, we're all just tiny pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle that repulse each other and one another every time they attempt to fit together, and that can break at the slightest whim.

"Hearts and worlds are either murderers or victims, devourers condemned to torture or the sinned against who sentence those who prey upon them.

"For each person or heart, or world or realm, that you save, uncountable others are lost.

"No matter how many times someone stuffs a toy or plants flowers in the summer, someone will always tear the stuffing apart or freeze the flowers and force them to wither and die.

"The concept that this is great wide World, brimming with love and laughter, and smiles and happiness, is a preschooler's fancy told to encourage children to learn their lessons.

"But it doesn't matter what lessons we learn, or how much of an effort we make to surmount hardship.

"We're not almighty and all knowing.

"Hearts are nothing more than worthless, pointless, meaningless, insignificant hollow husks who can't even save one baby girl, one adolescent boy, one adult mom, and one adult dad.

"Not even with a Keyblade.

"Childish daydreams lead nowhere but regret. To have hope in the future is to dream for despair and death. Hearts and worlds merely exhaust themselves struggling without relief, or wither until they're brittle and shatter.

"Why do people and hearts dream, when your hopes will just be torn down? Why do hearts strive without cease, when the future that you've grasped won't last? Why do hearts create a bright tomorrow, when you're aware that it will just be destroyed in the end? Why do people and hearts cling to love and life and warmth and kindness, when you know with all of who you are that they won't last forever? Once this happens, they will all have come to naught.

"Love and kindness are illusions. There's no other way to overcome suffering than to embrace the way that reality functions.

"You've been striving and journeying and straining and fighting with your hearts struggling to beat while suffocated by all of this honeyed nectar for too long.

"You need to wake up from your fleeting daydreams.

"It's time for you to let go of your childhood, and take sight of the one single tomorrow that can lessen the amount that you get hurt.

"Can you at least understand my dreams for you now?"

"Do you honestly believe that dreams like that will enable you to bring your friends happiness?" Woody questioned before Sora could answer, his tone a mixture of sympathy, agony, understanding, and challenge. "Just because there's pain in the future doesn't mean that the joy friends can give children or adults before hardship forces them to move on is any less worth providing them with.

"You said that you used to play with stuffed animals. Didn't they make you happy when you did?

"What good is a fleeting kindness?" Christopher responded. "My stuffed toys couldn't save my family in the end.

"But I'm talking to Sora more than you."

"And I'm not going to answer your questions," Sora was somehow able to move his mouth to form the words. "Because you want Woody and Buzz and Jessie and the rest of the toys on this world to cry the way that you have.

"You don't understand.

"If you believe in hurt because you have a heart to cry, then you'll be the one who causes people to cry."

Christopher sighed with what sounded like genuine sadness, anguish, disappointment, and empathy.

"Tears can wash the scars left by pain away," he said. "Daydreams just lock them in cold ice that will shatter in the end.

"If that's your answer, then this discussion is pointless.

"Tears can also refract the colors of light, and the blackness at the end of its spectrum."

Christopher said nothing for a few seconds, and then he spoke once more.

"I just activated one of the functions of my Teardrop Prism.

"After approximately twelve minutes have passed, they'll have finished bending the wavelengths of darkness freezing my video away from them.

"Then all of the toys and children of this world will be able to grow up."

Sora rocketed into movement faster than he could recall doing at almost any time in his life.

Whether Christopher had a set of points or not, he was not going to let billions of hearts within toys be broken forever.

He whipped around to Woody.

"Do you know where Sunnyside is?" he questioned quickly.

"If I remember, yes," Woody confirmed.

"All right, then," he said.

"Goofy, you take Jessie and Lotso.

"Donald, you take Anna.

"Woody, Buzz, you're with me."

"What are you talking about?" Buzz questioned.

"During our first adventure, we met a pixie named Tinker Bell who sprinkled us with pixie dust and taught us how to fly for limited periods of time. If you still want to accompany us, we're going to take the three of you to Sunnyside."

"I'm in," Woody said firmly and determinedly.

"Christopher isn't Andy, and he knows that toys can feel and think, but he's still a child who needs a toy to play with, so it's my responsibility as a toy and a friend to remind him about a toy's love and the kindness and joy of playtime, and how to hug a toy and fill him, her, or it with love himself."

Buzz and Jessie nodded to say they agreed with Woody.

Lotso snorted derisively, and he rolled his eyes.

But he walked over to Goofy.

"With things this bad, if I don't help you, I might never get another kid's hug.

"So fine.

"I'm in.

"But I won't be cuddling any of you if we win this."

Goofy didn't waste time with words.

He picked up Lotso in his arms and turned to let Jessie climb on his back, while Sora picked up Woody and let Buzz climb on his back.

Donald picked up Anna in his arms.

"I need to stay where I am to keep Photonegative Strobe directed," Vanitas said.

"Then let's move it!" Sora shouted.

Rex ran up to the window, jumped onto the sill, and braced with his physical composition to force the window up enough for them to pass through it more easily.

As soon as the way was clear, Sora jumped into a horizontal dive, called up scintillating yellow pixie dust, and shot forwards to soar out into a sky that gray clouds were now gathering in as rapidly as he could will his body to move.

He couldn't even afford to spend a single instant paying attention to whether Donald and Goofy had followed him.

They'd been adventuring for long enough now that he no longer needed to look to see if they were moving as a team.

He needed every fiber of his concentration on flying as past as he conceivably could.

"Make a left!" Buzz shouted from Sora's back, over the air they were rushing against.

Sora did so without saying another word back, and now that he had was soaring down a street and he had a lengthy clear stretch of terrain to fly down, he accelerated to rocket at such a swift speed that it felt as though his head, arms, and legs would be ripped off.

But it had never mattered whether his own head, arms, and legs were ripped off.

Now it perhaps mattered endlessly unfathomably less than at any time that it had before.

If he failed this time, there would be no hope at all for any of the billions of toys who lived and loved and laughed and smiled and played and cuddled and hugged and cried on this world.

Unlike with Roxas and Xion and Namine and Lea, and Ven and Aqua and Terra, and Zeus and the other Gods and Goddesses, and Andy's toys and Andy the first time, and Rapunzel and Eugene, and Sully and Mike and Boo, and Anna and Elsa continually, and William and Elizabeth, and Hiro and Baymax One and Baymax Two, and Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy and Mickey and Yen Sid ceaselessly, this time he couldn't be too late!

.

"It's such a pity. I truly did enjoy your songs."-Rau Le Creuset

"Evade! Hard to port!"-Andrew Waltfeld

"What's happening?"-Lacus Clyne

"But the real world isn't kind, like some pop song!"-Rau Le Creuset

GUNDAM SEED:

Final Phase: TO AN ENDLESS FUTURE