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CHAPTER 20:
SACKCLOTH ECLIPSE
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Author's Notes: The pieces for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'World Revolution,' from the CHRONO TRIGGER Original Sound Version, Disc Three; and afterwards 'U-DO ~ Febronia,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Two Movie Scene Soundtrack, Disc Two. The first composition can be found on Zophar's Domain, and the second one can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section.
Sora experienced lightness engulf everything inside him at the sight of the low, large building appearing in the middle of a parking lot as he whipped around another corner, the one that Woody had described as what the toy remembered from tourist booklets about the town as matching the appearance of the Sunnyside daycare center.
"We have approximately three minutes left, according to my internal clock," Buzz shouted over the roaring air from where he was holding onto Sora's back.
Once more, reality swam and lightheadedness almost closed ebony to swallow Sora, but he forced it away another time.
Then he could take the risk.
He wasn't sure that this was possible, or if he had the skill with the Keyblade to do this if it was, but trying most likely wouldn't hurt Buzz.
Sora traced his connections to Buzz, and then called up all of his memories of how Buzz had felt about his time in the false Toy Box that Sora visited the last time that he'd traveled to this world, and all of Sora's memories of Buzz firing real lasers.
Another of the new tapestries of strings that always appeared in Sora's mind's eye when he felt out how to do something new with the Keyblade manifested internally, and Sora sighed slightly.
He called up silver to swallow the Kingdom Key where it was positioned between his right hand and Woody's body, and then another silver cocoon shone from behind Sora's peripheral vision, no doubt around Buzz's body.
Both faded.
"What did you just do?" Buzz asked.
"Lasers are light, and gun barrels are corridors with doors, aren't they?" Sora questioned rhetorically. "I just altered your extendable laser cannon so it can fire real lasers again."
Sora felt Buzz shift uncomfortably on his back.
"Sunnyside isn't staffed on weekends, but there are humans in this world," Buzz reminded Sora.
That was good news, though Sora couldn't feel relieved about this knowledge in any form.
But if there wouldn't be any people at Sunnyside, it would cause defeating the invading toys to be even easier.
"If you can gun down Heartless, you can avoid hitting them," Sora reassured him.
Then he was over the parking lot and approaching Sunnyside itself.
"The camera station is just to the right inside the front door up ahead!" Lotso called from Goofy's arms.
Sora pushed away more rising night and another swimming existence, but not even the immense relief that, for the first time since he'd visited the Sleeping Symphony of Sorcery, he wasn't too late could lessen how sick he felt at what he was most likely going to need to do.
If Woody and the other toys couldn't call light Christopher's way home sweet home out of the darkness, could he truly do it?
Could he genuinely fight a little boy?
Could any of them, with the very likely exception of Lotso?
But if they didn't, every toy on Toy Box would cascade into eternal night.
"I'll do it, if it comes to it," Goofy said, but he sounded as though he genuinely might have retched if his toy body was capable of it. "My shield is blunt."
"I won't let it reach that point."
Sora tried to sound reassuring, but they all knew that it was pointless.
They'd been able to shine the path for a small but meaningful minority of the seekers of darkness who they'd combated to walk back into the light, but even the ones who they had brought home hadn't returned there until Sora, Donald, Goofy, and his other friends had fought them to a draw, or defeated them, and thus shown them that they couldn't successfully escape into violence.
Sora twisted to arc down at the double glass doors leading into Sunnyside, and he shifted Woody to hang over his left arm so he could aim the Kingdom Key down at it and launch a beam at the doors.
"Don't forget to watch out for potential Foreteller involvement!" he shouted for Anna's and Lotso's sake.
Donald and Goofy, and doubtlessly Woody and Buzz, already knew to. But Anna, as adept as she was at seeing into people's hearts and as smart as it made her, was so inexperienced in a combat situation that she might have forgotten to stay on guard for that.
Lotso had heard their discussion with Vanitas as much as the rest of them, but he might not have realized that the Foretellers might involve themselves in the coming battle directly.
They slid open upon impact, and he rocketed inside.
Unsurprisingly, an attempt at an ambush in the form of an immense horizontal column of orange and red with a conflagration of cloudy blacks and violets howling inside it like the shifting lava of a volcano roared at them from the right as soon as they passed through the doors.
But the surprise strike had easy to anticipate, and Sora, Donald, and Goofy had pulled back into mostly vertical hovering positions with plenty of time to spare to dodge it.
Sora's nonexistent stomach heaved sickeningly, however, at even needing to dodge an assault from a child.
Then he turned to the right to see an ordinary boy their size, with short medium brown hair and wearing a bright yellow shirt and bright light green shorts, looking up at them while hovering in the air before another of the computer banks in an small enclosed room behind a counter that Sora couldn't understand if they weren't on Gummi ships.
A bubble of shimmering and shifting watery dark purple and light blue shades was encasing the computer, obviously Christopher's Teardrop Prism.
Sora led Goofy and Donald to fly between it and Christopher.
"Don't tell me to wait," Christopher spoke to them. "Do I look like a waiter?"
Goofy moved forward through the air to position himself to intercept Christopher if he tried to start playing the recordings when the Teardrop Prism had finished neutralizing Vanitas' Photonegative Strobe.
"You look like the sad, scared boy who you are," Woody answered.
"Don't try to deny that you're still scared. You've lost all of the family and the toys who love you, and I assume that no toy has tried to be there for you when you needed one since then.
"I intend to change that.
"But you also need to look at how, if you go through with what you intend to do, the majority of other boys and girls all around this world are going to go through what you have, and what you're still being hurt by.
"With how badly you've suffered, can you honestly tell me that hurting all of those other kids, when they're currently not feeling the pain that you believe is necessary to learn to live without torment, will enable them to grow up into a life without too much harm involved in it?"
"If I don't enable those children to grow up, along with the toys on this planet," Christopher answered, "Someone else will force them to in an even more agonizing way.
"If you yourself care about the children, and toys, of Toy Box, as much as you claim that you do, you won't try to stop me from enabling them to become mature adults."
The Teardrop Prism faded, and Sora forced the illness that once more might have truly caused him to throw up if he had a biological body as much to the side as he could.
Please don't force me to do this.
Kairi.
Riku.
Donald.
Goofy.
Anna.
Please, someone keep it from coming to this.
But before he could, Lotso snarled, "News flash, crybaby.
"I don't care one fuzz whether the kids on this world get hurt, as long as it doesn't happen to me."
Then Lotso grabbed onto Goofy's head, yanked himself onto the top of it, leapt onto the top of the computer banks, and turned to raise his arms in front of him with his hands clenched into fists.
"If you want to throw a temper tantrum about that, you can go ahead and bring it."
A partially transparent yellowish gold aura the color of honey began glimmering and flickering around Christopher, and Sora could barely keep the illness from returning.
"We're all right here at your side," Anna spoke, her tone reassuring, but her visage a mask. "If you need to do this, you won't be doing it alone."
Sora tried to arrange his own face into a mask, and reply in as reassuring a voice of his own as he could, but he couldn't tell if he was successful.
That almost brought the sickness back.
"That's true for you yourself," Sora responded.
"The rest of you, as well.
"Even you, Lotso."
"I'm not a charity case," Lotso snarled, but Sora ignored that.
"We're not going to do this," Woody spoke determinedly and firmly.
"Don't try to tell me, Christopher, that you wouldn't prefer to cuddle your stuffed animals yourself once more if you could. Don't try to tell me that, if you still had the ability to do it, you wouldn't snuggle up to as many stuffed animals in your bed every night, and bury your face in their fur and cry until you let all of your grief over the death of your family out.
"That's why toys have hearts and minds.
"We exist to give love and warmth and friendship and comfort to children when the people who love them can't, until children grow old enough to walk on their own legs and stride with confident shoulders in a harsher world.
"You, and other children, don't need to grow up quickly when you have us."
"So you can hurt yourselves by giving us all of your warmth, and then watching us leave you behind when we can function without it?" Christopher responded.
"You know what happened to Jessie and Prospector. Lotso's the same. The girl who loved him," Lotso's face became a complete mask, "Named Daisy, forgot to take him home with her one day when she was visiting a park, so she assumed she'd lost him and bought another Lotso."
Sora suppressed the urge to clench his teeth at the revelation of precisely what a lost toy was.
He should have realized that toys needed to go through this the last time he was here, and felt of, or thought of, something to say to Woody, Buzz, and the other toys, in the event that they needed to deal with this in the future, or they knew any toys who did.
"Zurg is no different," Christopher was continuing. "He still talks and acts like he's not a toy, but that's just because, as he can't be a friend to a kid, he prefers to live in accordance with the story for why he's an action figure. What really happened to him is that he and another Buzz Lightyear woke up in a toy store and failed to realize that they were toys, so they returned to their boxes. The following morning a child saw that their boxes were damaged and informed the store owner about it. They were thrown in a recycle bin and, when they were taken away to be broken into scrap, they saw other Buzz Lightyears and Zurgs being broken into parts and learned who they were. So they combined themselves into a single action figure with two minds in order to more effectively hide themselves, and escaped the facility where they were slated to be recycled.
"Gabby Gabby is similar. No one even took the time to truly play with her before moving on from her, because her voice box was broken.
"The same matter is true for a lot of the toys here.
"Lotso set up his system here because most of the toys here sympathize with his belief that toys should be played with by visiting kids staying here for the day, not children in a household who form personal connections with their toys.
"The sole way that I can set both you and the children of this world free of their pain is to cause this to happen to every toy one final time, in a way that will ensure that it never happens again.
"A lot of people will fear you and hate you for your differences from humans, and hurt you because of it, but as on any world, there are plenty of people who will accept you as well.
"You'll still be able to take care of kids."
"Not as effectively as we can when they believe that they don't need to reciprocate what we give them," Woody returned. "Toys can provide kids with the love that we give them because we never ask for anything back."
Anna's eyes widened in shock, disbelief, and surprise, and admiration and awe came to her face while the corners of her lips twitched up a fraction in a smile.
Sora felt a tiny amount lighter seeing that.
"And, as they don't even know that we need or want anything back, they don't feel the need to take care of us to the same extent that they take care of other humans. They do believe that we merit receiving their love, but not as much as another person does.
"Kids can tell toys anything, and go to us in any way, to attain happiness, or to cry on our shoulders or into our fur.
"Children need that kind of unconditional love.
"Anyone does.
"We can still give it to them if they know that we have feelings and thoughts of our own, and the kids themselves might still be willing to accept it, and continue to treat us the same way as they have before, if we asked them to.
"But older people won't tolerate it.
"The older children, adolescents, and adults who don't fear us and hate us will see us as pets at best, or as other people at worst. They'll teach their siblings or kids to reciprocate the love that we give them, and that will be the end of our ability to do so.
"Don't lie to me that you don't want to have a friend in someone who is there for you without once actively asking for anything back, and who you don't know needs or wants it."
"You're right about how Woody knows what I went through," Jessie put in. "But that just means that he has a different idea of how toys can cope with their owners growing out of them, and he keeps finding new answers to how to come to terms with our owners leaving us behind.
"For example, you should try thinking of kids growing out of us as similar to how kids grow out of their parents at the same time.
"We should feel happy and accomplished that we enabled the kids who we love to face hardship without us, and move on from them ourselves to ready ourselves for when another child ends up with us, sooner or later."
"I used to believe the same thing as the other Buzz Lightyear," Buzz contributed. "That I wasn't a toy, and that I was as much of a flesh and blood human as the people here.
"It was a lot harder to find a place in this world then. I saw myself as stranded on an alien planet in my galaxy, so I didn't realize that I could love Andy just by being myself. If you reveal who we really are to the world, they'll end up in a worse situation. Most toys do know that they're toys, so they won't just need to try as hard as I first did to live meaningful lives, they'll need to do so while seeing much of what they are as fake trappings that will get them nowhere.
"You won't just sever our connections with kids, you'll leave us struggling to even find ways to pick up the pieces of our old lives and build new ones."
"Oh, no," a double voice, one hollow and metallic, the other the same as Buzz, interrupted over a speaker. "Don't tell me that you were the Buzz who woke us up when we were in our boxes and got me in this mess in the first place, and that this is why you tried to convince me that I'm a toy."
Buzz's eyes widened.
"I'm one and the same, Space Ranger," he spoke back, his voice a mixture of guilt for what he'd done to the two components of Zurg, and approval that they now knew that they were toys. "Or should I call you Dad?"
The combined toy must be calling himself Zurg because the Buzz portion of it was deferring to him as his parent.
"So you've read up on our backstories," Zurg responded. "But I'd prefer Space Ranger. Toys have no children."
"Yes, we do," Jessie replied. "They're the humans who we raise to grow up into strong adults, one by one."
"You mean, the humans who give us the chance to," another female voice entered the conversation over the speaker, most likely Gabby Gabby. "Zurg and I weren't even bought by anyone. Zurg was consigned to be recycled, while I was stuck in an antique shop. The rest of the toys working for Prospector and Christopher are friends of mine from that very antique shop; we all didn't last long with our owners, if we even got any."
"If we reveal ourselves to the world, less people will play with us, and no more than a tiny minority will continue to do so the same," an old person's voice supplied.
Jessie scowled.
This must be Prospector, then.
"But we won't be left behind. We'll be recognized as who and what we are, and loved for it, even though it will be with far more reservation.
"I joined Maleficent and Christopher because they convinced me, if I assisted them in enabling her to siphon the vast darkness that the hearts of the toys of this world will generate if they lose their children, they would give me recognition even better than fame as a toy.
"Don't tell me that you don't want to be loved in return."
"We get plenty of love in return," Woody spoke back. "But last time I looked, friendship has nothing to do with reciprocity. If people learn who we are, that will become part of the bargain."
"That's a small price to pay for not being thrown out like garbage," Prospector answered.
"So you'd prefer that the children be the one to pay the price?" Buzz queried. "You're the one who needs to grow up.
"Stop whining. You have no valid reason to complain about a toy's lot.
"Toys are friends. It's who we are, and the reason that we were created. And unlike the spoiled brat who really did strand us on an alien planet last year, who kept talking and acting like everything he said and did was a duty who he was required to fulfill, toys don't have any problems with fulfilling our destinies.
"Because all that we need to do to fulfill them, to give love and to receive it, is just to be ourselves, without sacrificing any happiness to do so.
"The destiny of a toy is one of the most merciful around.
"We don't need to strive through infinite toil to fulfill it.
"We have an infinity and beyond right here with us the entire time.
"You can't tell me that you'd rather be stuck on a shelf somewhere where people just look at you all day without you meaning anything genuine to them, when you could be bringing giggles and grins to a little boy as easily as staying in one place and letting him swing your arm and pickaxe up and down."
"Not all toys have pickaxes," Gabby Gabby put in, with anguished irritation and anger.
"That's another good thing about not being played with," Buzz said in return. "It gives us leave to pass around our parts to toys in need of them. That means that we ourselves might not be played with in the future, but another way to get around having a damaged box or part is to just find an owner who is willing to play with you even when you're not fully in one piece.
"Andy is a good example of this. We had a neighbor called Sid where we used to live, who loved to wreck his toys while playing with them. Andy got me too soon before he moved to a new house for me to learn his opinion about Sid's methods of playing, but I found out later that one of the many reasons that he was upset that we'd moved was because he couldn't gather up any of Sid's toys that ended up in his yard intact enough for him to repair them and return them to Sid."
"Is this for real?"
Sora jolted violently, and tears of so much desperation that he didn't know if he'd be able to think of a way to put it into words for the rest of his life pushed forward into his eyes.
Gabby Gabby now sounded hopeful, and excited.
Had they actually called Gabby Gabby home sweet home without a fight?
And if they'd been able to reach her, could they end this without battling Christopher?
And Prospector, and the other invading toys, too?
Was this actually going to turn out to not be just the first mostly full success that Sora had had since he'd visited Symphony of Sorcery, but the best success that he'd had in any adventure that he'd been on?
Sora couldn't dare to hope, however.
Not when he might need to battle a child.
There was also Lotso to worry about, but Sora couldn't afford to pay him any thought now at all when faced with the very likely possibility that he'd need to combat a young boy.
"It's for real," Jessie told the other toys. "There's no need to continue squabbling. We can take you, Zurg, and the other damaged toys to see Andy."
"Go ahead," Prospector sneered. "They were helpful in taking over this place, but Christopher and I just wanted their help so we wouldn't need to strain ourselves that much.
"We're fully capable of shattering your idealistic hearts into chunks."
"Give me one good reason why," Woody challenged. "You and Christopher aren't doing us, or yourselves, or anyone, any favors. Yes, the connections and lives of toys aren't ideal, but all connections and lives have their ups and downs."
Woody looked at Christopher. "If we can't talk you out of it, then I'll ask one or more of the toys who Andy, or his sister, Molly, no longer wants to play with if he, she, or it is willing to let you play with that toy, or those toys."
Christopher's eyes widened slightly, and Sora's heart stopped as his insides twisted so terribly that it was too painful even to cry, much less breathe.
He felt himself start to drop through the air.
He'd descended a few feet before he was able to force himself to breathe and recall more glittering yellow pixie dust to trail off from his body.
"Then we'll be able to convince you that toys can bring you happiness through the ways that we're friends now," Woody was continuing.
"I know just the toy.
"Her name's Bo Peep, and Molly might give her up this very night."
"No, thanks," Christopher answered, and Sora now felt so sick that he wasn't sure his insides would have moved enough to retch if he'd had a biological body.
"But I'm grateful for the offer.
"As well as for how you still care about me so much because I'm a little boy that, even though I'm an adversary who you should be contending with without reservation or mercy, Sora just fell out of position and left me an opening to play the video."
Sora jolted violently, terror surging through him, and he moved to rocket back up to where he'd been floating seconds ago before Christopher could exploit the opening.
But before he could regain his previous position, a single fleck of honey, shimmering like amber sap in the first rays of dawn, launched in an arc out of Christopher's corona over Sora's head with the speed of a bullet to strike a single button on the keyboards behind Sora.
"Welcome to the world, toys," Christopher spoke with a smile that was both genuine and agonized, bitter, sad, and angry.
"It's much too late to stop the video now. I routed it to a different terminal on the other side of Sunnyside before Vanitas disabled it.
"By the time that you find that terminal and stop the video, you'll have long since become world famous."
Goofy's arms slid around Sora's sides to encircle his chest, Donald's arms slid around his sides to hold his stomach, and Sora barely registered past every and any unendingly distant edge of what had never been, wasn't, and wouldn't be his perception that the two of them had just caught him from colliding with the floor, and that they were now lowering him to it.
Why had he been falling?
What was a floor?
What was falling?
What was colliding.
Endlessly beyond doubt something not agonizing enough.
"You spoiled crybaby!" a voice that Sora should have recognized yelled in complete and total unrestrained hatred from somewhere above and behind Sora.
Goofy's and Donald's arms didn't release Sora, and their grips and that of their hands became soothing and reassuring and protective and secure.
Why?
For an unknown reason, it felt as though a shadow had fallen over Sora's heart from where that voice had emitted, and then large, wide humanoid toy robots of red, purple, and blue started erupting from nowhere in clouds of black and violet all around them on the floor while giant elongated helmets of different colors with symbols of black and red hearts on their front appeared in the air.
The ones in the air charged a hovering boy encased in honey colored light and started firing thick lasers, single and dual, from before their central bodies or arms at him, while the humanoid robots raced in the boy's direction along the floor and began launching various projectiles and forms of energy up at him.
The air around the boy shimmered with distortions and then became a bubble of orange and red around cloudy purples and night colors, and every projectile and wave of energy that entered it curved inside it to exit the bubble in a different direction before impacting with the boy.
A third pair of arms and hands, from Anna, slid around his sides above Goofy's to enclose his chest above Goofy's, soothingly and reassuringly and protectively as well.
At the awareness all three of his closest friends currently with him were holding him, all awareness returned.
The Guardians and similar Heartless; and Gigases; continued to fire; but Christopher continued to redirect their energies and shells as soon as they penetrated his armor cocoon and curve them away from him, and out of the corona in other directions.
"We all still love you and believe in you," Anna spoke. "And we all forgive you, and don't hate you or hold you to account for what just happened.
"When Kairi and Riku find out about this, they'll feel the same ways."
Who cared what any of them felt?
All that mattered now was that Sora could never let himself feel anything but hatred for himself, and never feel the love and belief in him and forgiveness for him and lack of hatred for him and lack of blame for him that they had for him even infinitely zero.
He'd just irreversibly and eternally ruined the lives of billions of toys.
Why wouldn't any of them just let it be?
"You didn't do anything wrong," Jiminy spoke up, from wherever he was standing out in the open now, or from wherever he was hiding. "Just because Christopher did something wrong doesn't mean that you didn't do the right thing by caring about how he's just a little boy."
"This is Christopher's fault and responsibility," Goofy said firmly. "He's the one who launched the assault."
"If you hadn't cared about Christopher, you'd be no better than him," Donald said.
Sora was already so immeasurably worse past the ability of language, sound, expression, or movement to convey that that comparison was totally futile.
"Now do you understand what I'm trying to teach you?" Christopher questioned.
But Sora knew why Donald, Goofy, Jiminy, and Anna weren't letting it be, and even now he couldn't stop believing in connections.
Nor could he let Maleficent harness the darkness that the toys of this world would now give off; or further hurt the minority of toys whose owners would disobey their older family members, or receive permission from their family members to do so, and continue to treat their toys as toys at their behest.
"Why won't you understand that light never goes out, no matter how much torment and sadness hearts and existence bring about?" Sora cried, though it was as though the voice wasn't his own, and was coming from somewhere separate from him and distorted.
"Kingdom Hearts, real or fake, is light.
"Hearts don't spring from darkness, and just strain to futilely endure the night and return to darkness in the end. They're born from light, endure the darkness, and return to the light.
"So if we can show enough people how to live by their heart's guidance, eventually, we'll create a tomorrow of love and warmth and dreams and kindness, not of death and pain and despair and cold.
"Hearts and existence may be harmful, and people and reality might break them and freeze them sometimes, but the foundation of the night, there's a light that never goes out.
"Kairi and my friends and I, and the people who we've met all across the worlds who we haven't befriended, have given people like you enough evidence of that by now."
"Did I say that I didn't believe that there's a light in the depths of the darkness?" Christopher asked back.
"That was Xehanort and his selves, not Maleficent and I."
Sora was somehow still able to feel shocked.
"Then why have you given up to it?" he shouted.
"Because it doesn't matter how brightly the light shines," Christopher responded. "You also know full well that the darkness will never go out either. You learned that during your second adventure.
"No matter how many people you cherish or keep safe, darkness will remain in people's hearts and drive people to reject others and prey upon them."
"Darkness still isn't the source of feelings and thoughts and dreams and memories that drive hearts," Sora rejoined. "We can't destroy the darkness, and if we tried we'd just fill ourselves with as much hate and impulses for revenge as people who harness the darkness. But if we remain true to our real selves, and keep accepting the darkness and just refusing to let it rule us, one day sooner or later, the darkness is what people will grow out of."
Christopher grimaced slightly.
"I'm not Data-Kairi. I'm not fighting to forge an artificial Kingdom Hearts that will create a World of nothing but pure light, through enabling her to consume all of the darkness in all of the realms wholly enough to eradicate all darkness."
Sora started violently, and he drew as much love and warmth and comfort and support from Donald's and Goofy's and Anna's hands and arms as he could to keep the insides warping and stomach distorting emptiness lacking absence and agony at what Christopher had just said now from sending too much horror and terror and anguish and self hatred and despair from engulfing all of his being, and all that was.
"How?" he asked.
Christopher shrugged.
"I have no idea. All we've discovered by this point is that she calls her own guiding light of Kingdom Hearts Kingdom Heartless."
Sora clenched his teeth together very tightly, and clenched his left hand into a fist tight enough to draw blood with all five of his nails once more.
"But as I said, we're not Data-Kairi," Christopher was continuing. "We're aware of this too.
"It's because darkness will never go out that we'll never grow out of it. It doesn't matter whether hearts were born of light or darkness, and whether or not the core feelings and thoughts that drive us are fashioned from light or darkness.
"As long as darkness remains, it's still a part of our hearts. Following our heart's guidance and staying true to who we really are means that the darkness will forever lead us astray."
Sora could barely feel Donald's and Goofy's and Anna's hands and arms, now becoming far more loving and closer and tighter and secure, now.
He couldn't believe that.
There was no way in all of the endless forever not beginning and boundlessly eternal never ceasing tides of everlasting time, and the eternally unfolding reaches of the present of space, that that could be true.
But his words just came out of his mouth in a cracked, broken, disbelieving, thread of breath.
"Following our heart's guidance means journeying along the paths that destiny has laid out for us. Not the fate that we try to inflict upon others, the World, and ourselves, but the destiny of the road home.
"Whether or not we lose our bonds or hearts or worlds, love and belief and trust and warmth and kindness and protection can still safeguard our connections, or intertwine them with the hearts of others once more, so our heart's guidance will still lead us back home in the end every time.
"So, no matter how far or how long we wander or drift, sooner or later, we'll be able to come home and keep, or return to, sharing our feelings and thoughts and dreams and memories, and selves and lives and reality and the World, with our loved ones and friends.
"If we follow the trails of the darkness, we can't do that.
"They'll take us nowhere.
"While the light will never stop bringing us, and leading us, home.
"This is why people will one day grow out of the darkness, and fashion a brighter tomorrow with hands clasped together."
Christopher rolled his eyes.
"Nor are we Yozora, Luxu, and the Foretellers," he spoke. "There's no such thing as destiny.
"The future hasn't been written yet, so it's just not possible for anyone, Kingdom Hearts or stellar hearts or world hearts or personal hearts, to know what lies in the future."
This time, Sora kept the doubt and misgiving from reaching him.
"Or, for that matter, in the past, or in the present.
"People have said that they'll learn from their mistakes since the inception of the World," Christopher was going on, "Yet no matter how many times they say that they will, they forget their mistakes, and repeat them.
"The hearts of the past leave light behind to inspire the future, and as a foundation for the future to build upon. But darkness inspires hearts and people to forget the mistakes of the past, and prevents them from learning from the sins committed when the hearts and the people of the past lay down cobblestones to build roads for the hearts and people of the future to walk on.
"What you saw happen in Halloween Town and Christmas Town, The Land of Dragons, The Caribbean and Port Royal, the Pride Lands, and Monstropolis, should have demonstrated this to you.
"Hearts and cultures beyond counting in the World have vowed to live peacefully and never to wage another war, or stop engaging in crimes and other forms of predation; merely for another war, or murder or theft, to happen a few years later because, as time passes and people grow older and change, the sins of the past vanish into the darkness of hearts' memories, so people don't recollect not to commit them all over once again."
Sora could barely feel Donald's and Goofy's and Anna's hands and arms once more, but they were still enough to keep the horror and terror and uncertainty and despair away.
"The light of the present?
"Fighting to love and keep safe brings about just as much death and pain as fighting for any other reason. This is why Mickey and the Disney Kingdom believe in the world order. They could easily solve a lot of problems on other worlds if they sent knights or other military forces there. But if they did, they'd just end up waging war or bringing about harm for the sake of connections, and peace and prosperity. This would result in as many horrific tragedies, and as much torture, as waging war for any other reason.
"The people who we murder and hurt while fighting to cherish and protect our loved ones, friends, other people, the worlds, and the World can no longer be protected and kept safe, and they have no present or future."
Sora couldn't feel Donald's and Goofy's and Anna's hands and arms any longer, though at the farthest reaches of his awareness he knew that they'd become even more loving and even warmer and even more soothing and even safer.
"You learned during your second adventure that the concepts of fighting for peace and justice are nothing more than flowery armor fruitlessly endeavoring to cause conflict and vengeance to look bright and shiny.
"You know wholly well by now that no one deserves to be hurt, and all pain should be carried and cried in the place of, and for.
"This means that fighting to love and protect and cherish and keep safe is nothing more than another means of slaughter and torment, and it's a delirious prayer no different than the wishes and hopes of people who reject others and refuse to learn to understand them.
"This also means that, because there are both kind people and uncaring people and hearts and the World can extend love and home, and not just hurt and despair, fighting to love and carry existing hurt and keep safe from new hurt and protect, at a warm home or through bringing someone home sweet home out of the darkness and death and pain and hopelessness into light, grasps as much death and torment as fighting for any other reason or purpose.
"And even the people who you do help won't acquire lasting warmth and kindness and happiness and laughter.
"People will just forget the mistakes of the past and repeat them, and sever connections and warmth and kindness that you've safeguarded or restored.
"I'm fully aware that hearts are born from light, and that they're intended to live in it eternally and return to it.
"So is Maleficent.
"But the future has not yet been written, so it's ours to shape, and maintaining that hearts are destined to return to the light from whence they came is to believe in a destiny that is nothing more than a lie.
"Nothing happens for a reason.
"Bright light will always and forever create profound darkness by casting shadows; because living by following the guidance of our hearts means accepting darkness and not rejecting it, so therefore darkness can forge paths from the past, through the present, and into tomorrow as much as light.
"Darkness is a corruption of light, but that doesn't make the light any better than it.
"The form of Christopher Robin who you see before you isn't my true form. It's no more than a perceptual phenomenon that I'm bending particles and waves of light to cast into your hearts and minds."
Sora was somehow still able to blink in surprise.
"I have no true form.
"The physical and ethereal body that you see before you, and I myself, am actually a Station of Awakening brought into the material realms from the horizon of dreams that divide sleep and birth or renewal, and death and despair."
Sora understood why he started in response to this.
"So I can trace the connections and currents of light and darkness more effectively than almost any heart.
"From this, you can be assured that I'm in all the position that I need to be to say this.
"Darkness is not the absence of light.
"Shadows appear to be cast by light, but this is no more than an illusion.
"It's the opposite end of the spectrum of the colors of light.
"Darkness, as much as light, is the energy of emotion and thought that gives hearts vitality and enables them to beat and live and surmount hardship and struggle and grow; so living by following the true guidance of your heart means that darkness guides your heart, and thus you, as much as light does.
"No matter how hard you try or fight, or for how long you strive or endure, people will never stop fraying or severing connections, and people and hearts and dreams and flowers will never stop fracturing and breaking, or freezing and withering away.
"It's time for you to throw away, and cast aside, your childish beliefs in daydreams, and grow up at last, Sora.
"Put an end to your dreams of living in a fairy fantasy where all hurt and pain occur for a purpose, and struggle and effort will sooner or later, in time, turn out to have had meaning and merit and a point and be worth having gone through. And even if you succeed in keeping love and warmth and home and kindness safe for the people who you don't murder or harm while you do so, or renewing it, once or a number of times, people's hearts will just commit the sins that they didn't learn from and shred or flay connections just as they did before. The happy ending and the shining tomorrow that you've fashioned for the people who you did love and keep safe while robbing others of connections and futures and warmth and home and hearth and kindness are just ephemeral dreams of sweet deceptive promise that vanish into the ruthless and brutal and remorseless and relentless light of day.
"Yes, hearts and people and love and life and dreams and hope are born from the light, and they and light will never stop existing inside the deepest and most abysmal darkness no matter how many times a heart gives into the darkness, or how weak it is.
"However, that doesn't change the incontrovertible and irrefutable truth that they've still been taken into, and imprisoned within, and consumed by, and snuffed out by, the darkness.
"In the end, no matter how bright the light is, the onyx black night will always devour all colors."
"Are you willing to accept my testament now, or do you need another demonstration?"
Whole awareness of existence and reality returned almost before Sora was aware that they had, or that he'd carefully removed himself from Donald's and Goofy's and Anna's hands and arms and that he was now standing with the Kingdom Key at the ready.
If there was still something left of his heart and him remaining even now, Sora had no concept of how it could survive this, but he had no choice now.
"That demonstration won't happen!" he cried determinedly.
He had no idea at all if there was anything left for him to believe in even within connections now, but he still couldn't afford to not believe in them.
If he didn't, Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy and Jiminy and Anna and everyone else who he loved and cared about and called his friends and his home, and innumerable other hearts and people, might still die or be hurt.
Whether he'd been fighting for a sham all this time didn't change that much.
"I'm sorry, but even though you're a little boy, I'm going to do to you what I did to Maleficent, and trap you in the darkness."
Christopher sighed with a lot larger disappointment, and now irritation.
"You're starting to get on my nerves.
"Don't forget that little girls and Little Green Men have hearts as much as little boys."
He snapped the fingers of his left hand, and a wave of rippling and morphing ebony and dark shades of violet shuddered through the air over their heads and out through the window as though it was a whiplashing rope.
A violent chill shrieked up Sora's spine.
"What did you just do?" Woody questioned from the floor behind Sora, boundless and fathomless horror and terror and worry and concern in his voice.
"As I said, I'm a Station of Awakening given shape," Christopher explained.
"And I have the ability to trace connections more easily than almost anyone.
"And Little Bo Peep's and her sheep's connections to Molly are all but frayed apart, while the connections of the Little Green Men to Andy, who initially had no bonds with children, are badly strained because they understand what Bo and her sheep are going through.
"I just traced their connections and, while they were caught fully off guard from my ambush and in no condition to defend against it, stopped Bo's heart, the hearts of all three of her sheep, and the hearts of all three of the Little Green Men from beating.
"They have now died without losing their hearts as they did; so I killed them in a way that no power of waking, or power of spectral, or any Keyblade or power that exists, can resurrect a single one of them from; and they're now dead for endless eternity."
.
"Why did you kill her!?"-Kira Yamato
"You can cry all you want, but it's too late, boy!"-Rau Le Creuset
"You're wrong!"-Kira Yamato
"Aiming GENESIS. Target: Earth, Atlantic Federation Capital, Washington."-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier
"Stop this! What exactly are you fighting for!? Why are you fighting!? Do you people really want to kill the Earth, and everyone on it!? But why!?"-Athrun Zala
"Because they fired the first shot!"-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier
"My brother was stationed on Boaz!"-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier
"D-mn!"-Athrun Zala
"This is our destiny! It's a path that you took knowing where it was headed all along!"-Rau Le Creuset
"Shut up!"-Kira Yamato
"People have faith in justice, and run from problems! They never learn, and never understand! This is what lies at the end of your path! There is no longer any way to stop it! And humans will become extinct! As they should be! As they deserve to be!"-Rau Le Creuset
"I won't allow it!"-Kira Yamato
"Fourth squad, send out your mobile suits!"-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier
"Miyakawa! Say something!"-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier
"Hurry!"-Cagalli Yula Athha
"What are you doing? Fire! It will all be over once we fire!"-Patrick Zala
"Mister Chairman! We have already won this battle. Sir, if we fire, we will kill half the life on Earth! We have already had enough sacrifices!"-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier
"Where's the Freedom!?"-Murrue Ramius
"I don't know! The Eternal and the Kusanagi are missing!"-Miriallia Haw
"Kira!"-Sai Argyle
"Your logic is completely twisted!"-Kira Yamato
"That's how people think, Kira!"-Rau Le Creuset
"You're wrong! You will learn! People have hearts and dreams!"-Kira Yamato
"And who's going to accept your path!? Where's your proof!?"-Rau Le Creuset
"Mister Chairman!"-Anonymous ZAFT Soldier
"This is a world where people think with hearts and dreams of hatred! Where fingers pull triggers! Why have hearts!? And why dream!?"-Rau Le Creuset
"You were brought up learning nothing else!"-Kira Yamato
"Of course I learned nothing else! All people truly learn about is about themselves!"-Rau Le Creuset
'So tell me. You're a Coordinator? What are you doing with the Earth Forces?'-Mu La Flaga
'You used to say that you hated the very idea of war!'-Kira Yamato
'But you're a traitor to your fellow Coordinators.'-Gerard Garcia
'Because you're a Coordinator, too, you didn't make any serious attempts to fight!'-Flay Allster
'Is that voice also a result of fiddling with her genes?'-Sai Argyle
"Don't commit yourself to: Change. Eventually. Some day. How long have you been fighting, with your thoughts clouded by that brand of sweet poison?"-Rau Le Creuset
GUNDAM SEED:
Final Phase: TO AN ENDLESS FUTURE