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CHAPTER 24:
KEY TO A FLEETING PROMISE
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Author's Notes: The Track for this Chapter is: 'Faraway Promise,' from the XENOGEARS Original Soundtrack, Disc One. This piece can be found on KINGDOM HEARTS Insider.
Sora knew that he should keep his emotions away, and keep tears from interfering with his ability to see while they were in a combat situation, but there was no point now.
He'd murder, or hurt, Jiminy, and Kairi, and Riku, and Donald, and Goofy, and Anna, and everyone else he knew, and everyone else in all existence, no matter what he did.
He just let the walls down and the nothing that didn't have anything at all, even with the knowledge that Kairi wasn't hurting as much now as she had been when he'd last seen her, wash him away, and the tears wash away almost all vision.
Within a minority of seconds, Kairi's left arm was around his waist tightly and securely, and Riku's hand was gripping his left shoulder in a tight, firm squeeze.
"Details or die," Donald snarled furiously at the warped phantom of night that was both him and Kairi.
"Now."
"As you recall, I'm a lot better at surviving than a real Heartless or Nobody," Kairi's voice replied with a reverberating echo more fathomless than the singularity at the center of an infinite black hole. "This isn't a datascape, and I don't, yet, have as much power over the material realms as I have over datascapes.
"But that much hasn't changed, and has gotten a lot better.
"If you want to learn for yourselves just how much better I've become at living through death, be my guest."
"Sora, Kairi, Riku, and the rest of us still need to hear the details," Anna spoke, sounding as though her voice had been broken and cracked with tears since as soon as Sora had dragged Elsa much further back into the darkness as well.
"As would I," Ira put in himself.
"Master Yozora hadn't written for Sora to learn that from us yet, even if no one else had told him. Invi was willing to tell Sora, but we saw no need to inform him of what he did in Castle Oblivion.
"We're saving the worst truths until we can be sure whether, in order to convince Kairi and Sora and Animus and Anima to believe in Master Yozora and his inscribed destiny, we have no other option but to reveal them kindly."
Sora would keep that in mind to try to figure out a means of bringing Ira home s
bringing Ira home.
Assuming that Sora had the most distant hope of doing so.
Every time he'd brought people home out of the darkness, such as Riku and Vanitas and Xion and Roxas and Ven and Terra, his participation in doing so had been fully an unintended accident, or someone else had helped him do it and had played a much larger role in doing so than he had.
Anna and Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy and Jiminy could call people home sweet home.
Sora had never once been able to call them the most minuscule distance home out of the night, far less all the way out of it to a home sweet home.
"On those lines, we wouldn't even need to go to the trouble that we are going through now if you four, Kairi and Sora and Xion and Roxas, would simply trust in Master Yozora, and believe in him and Synchronicity Perceptual.
"If you would just accept your fates, and that there's nothing that you can do to avert them, it would be a lot easier on the four of you, as well as the rest of the people who you care about, and the people of the realms of the cosmos."
Sora wanted to believe Ira.
He wanted to believe that, if he just gave into the darkness now, he'd spare Kairi and Xion and Roxas and Goofy and Donald and Anna and Elsa and the others and everyone and everything else any further pain.
But whether it was darkness if it helped someone or not, if he did, he'd very likely start believing that it was all right to hurt people himself.
And even if he didn't, Kairi and Xion and Roxas very well might.
"Just give it up," Sora whispered back exhaustedly. "We're not going to believe in your New World no matter what truths you throw in our faces."
"When we're done teaching you about these truths, you'll understand why you're naïve to be so sure," Ira said back.
"Data-Kairi, we await your elaboration.
"I refuse to tell Sora myself.
"The sole Foreteller among us who sees hurting others when it's not necessary to do so is Invi."
Sora would keep that in mind as well, for all the good that it would do.
"I'm not telling Sora anything to hurt him," Data-Kairi answered.
"I can acquire far more vitalizing memories by continuing to siphon the chains that Xion has rearranged in the worlds of the realm of light.
"But Christopher, Buzz, and Anna just killed Jiminy, so it's obvious that it's not safe for Sora to leave him with any of you any longer."
Good.
So someone, probably Anna or Kairi, or both of them, could light Data-Kairi's way out of the darkness as well.
Sora didn't have any capacity to do so.
"I told Sora because I want to get him in touch with who he really is, so he can feel better."
"You don't decide what's best for Sora," Kairi's regular voice cried furiously, cracked with tears of her own, from Sora's right.
"Sora does."
"That's why he gave you all up for Namine," Data-Kairi spoke back.
"That is what he has decided for himself, based on what he wants to do with all his heart.
"Because of how lonely she was, Namine worked with Lauriam and Elrena to enable them to play Sora as a means of usurping control of the initial Organization Thirteen, and fed him fake memories of having had a close childhood friendship with her that didn't exist and removed Sora's memories of his other ties, particularly his ties to you. So Sora became fixated on bringing her home from Castle Oblivion into the warmth of his heart, to the point that he almost fully forgot about you and didn't feel that Ansem the Wise had freed Riku from the realm of darkness and brought him to Castle Oblivion.
"But even after he learned that his memories of Namine were fake, he refused to throw them away because the feelings born of those memories believed in love and kindness for someone in pain.
"Sora was even willing to lose all of his memories of everyone to protect Namine, and he would have needed to if Riku Replica hadn't protected Namine from Lauriam himself.
"And when the time came for him to choose whether or not to regain his memories of you, and the memories of Riku and his other friends who he'd lost to a slight degree, he was torn between giving Namine a real home, and the rest of you.
"When he learned that Xemnas wished for him to feed his Kingdom Hearts, he had misgivings about continuing to wield the Keyblade, but as soon as he realized people would suffer if he didn't, he chose to follow his heart's guidance and keep struggling for them.
"That's what brings Sora happiness.
"That's what he needs to move forward from Jiminy's death.
"To find whoever needs him a lot."
"In other words, Sora should make the same mistake that I did, and choose to keep just one person safe, or call just one person's heart out of the darkness," Riku responded.
"When there are many hearts and worlds out there who need him.
"Sora was giving Namine home in the here and now.
"Even if he'd kept his fake memories, do you honestly believe that, once he reunited with Kairi and I later and we told him about his past with Kairi, and what little he'd forgotten about the rest of us, that he wouldn't have taken Kairi back into his heart and been conflicted between who to give warmth and kindness to the most?"
"When Sora himself needs love and home and warmth and kindness, who are you to say that he shouldn't think about what he himself needs and wants?"
"Who are you to say what Sora should and shouldn't think about at all?" Kairi cut in.
"If he wants to put us before himself, that is how he wants to live.
"He's not sacrificing his heart, or what he lives for, unless he loves us and gives us warmth and home and kindness in ways that sacrifice our hearts as well."
"You can bark all that you want about how you're trying to help Sora, but you're no different than Terra or Riku when they wielded the darkness for their companions, or any other seeker of darkness who refuses to clue in," Donald snarled.
"Your way is not the only way."
"And Mickey's and your beliefs that directly involving yourselves in the struggles of other worlds, in ways that no other culture but the Disney Kingdom sees as right, might cause as much harm as assistance because other civilizations have different concepts of right and wrong, is any better?
"All that you actually achieve is to turn a blind eye to the suffering of other worlds and let them drown in despair."
"You should be having this discussion with Hades," Kairi responded.
"Mickey's belief in the world order has its own flaws, yes, but Hades just learned the hard way why trying to shove your own beliefs on what constitutes happiness down other people's necks causes them a lot more problems.
"He nearly got Olympus and the rest of the worlds of the Big Dipper Galactic Supercluster, and most of the hearts on them, cast into darkness for good before this finally taught him that, by seeing his own answer to what gives people kindness as the sole answer, he'd been betraying everything that he believed in."
Kairi had protected innumerable worlds from an irreversible eclipse, while Sora had just kept safe, or restored, the worlds of the realm of light from a fleeting darkness.
That didn't surprise Sora.
"Hades knows better than most of us right now why no one has all the answers.
"Go talk to him about this, and leave Sora alone until you're willing to learn the lesson that we taught Hades."
"So you're telling me that you want to convince Sora to let people suffer," Data-Kairi rejoined.
"We're telling you that we want Sora to convince himself of whether or not he sees accepting the dreams of other people as suffering, and whether or not he wants to let people suffer," Riku responded.
"Drop this, or we'll ensure that you do so."
"What about Sora's own suffering?" Data-Kairi countered.
"If Sora continues to let his heart guide him, he'll find a sufficient enough answer that he himself believes in to pull through this, as well.
"It's ironic that you should bring Mickey into this.
"Sora's heart is a lot stronger than any of us can imagine.
"Even Mickey didn't believe in Sora when he wanted to abuse the power of waking to restore Kairi, and he tried to convince Sora that we should look for another way to bring you back, and I needed to remind Mickey to believe in Sora, and not stop him from reviving you with the power of waking."
Kairi's arm and hand around Sora's waist went stiff.
"You did what…?" she breathed in horror, denial, shock, and disbelief.
"Mickey was trying to talk Sora out of very likely killing himself, which is what happened; and you convinced Mickey not to, and Sora to go ahead and do it?"
No.
He was not going to drive a wedge between Kairi and Riku.
Sora pulled out of Kairi's and Riku's holds, dismissed Children's Laughter, and grabbed both their hands in one of his to bring them together and join them.
Riku clasped Kairi's hand, but while she held Sora's back, she didn't even move a single finger to return Riku's hold.
"I trusted that Sora would find a way to avoid paying any penalties for misusing the power of waking," Riku answered, his emotions contained.
"Just because he wasn't able to that time doesn't mean that he isn't capable of doing so more often than not."
"That's beside the point!" Kairi cried.
"It's obvious now that I should have told you this when we discussed how you weren't acting like yourself when you brought me to see… to the Mysterious Tower."
Sora squeezed his eyes shut at the reminder of Yen Sid's own darkness, and the danger that he was in.
He opened them, but he could still barely see through his tears.
"But I didn't want you to lose any of the confidence you'd recently regained by becoming a Keyblade Master.
"It's apparent now that the alternative is hurting you just as much, and Sora along with you.
"I'm very sorry if this hurts you, or bothers you at all, but you need to hear this.
"For your own sake as well as Sora's.
"Sora told me about what you two said when you made up at the Dark Margin.
"You are you, not Sora, and you don't need to be because you have his friendship and can't imitate it.
"You don't need to follow your heart in the way that he does for us to like you.
"You're still putting Sora on a pedestal as he learned not to do to you, and having so much faith in him that you can't see when he needs you."
Riku removed his hand from Kairi's right away, his face pale and his lips pressed tightly together, and though Sora reached for it, he pulled back a number of steps, such a multitude of indecipherable emotions passing through his eyes, and over his face, that Sora couldn't understand any of them.
Sora's stomach heaved and its insides rose into his throat, and all that he could justify drawing on to keep his food down and not retch was knowing that, if he did, it might get on Kairi, or Riku, if he walked close to them once more.
Why hadn't he seen this?
Sora wanted to let out a high-pitched, keening wail.
Because he knew the answer fully well.
He'd spent so much time apart from Riku, for around a year, that by the time they'd reunited, he'd no longer been able to understand his best friend's heart as well as he'd used to, and as well as he could understand Jiminy's, Donald's, and Goofy's.
His dream about how he felt about Riku, Jiminy, Donald, and Goofy; and Kairi and Anna, was right.
He was torn between Riku, and Jiminy, Donald, and Goofy; and Kairi and Anna.
Not that it mattered, if all it took for him to abandon every last one of them and let Riku journey through a living nightmare when Sora hadn't even been aware that it was happening far less gone to Riku's side to carry that nightmare himself and cry in its place was for someone to tamper with memories that he should have kept as close and cherished as he could have and if he had he'd have been able to prevent Roxas and Xion and Lea and Namine from living within the nightmares that had cleansed all of who they were and their existences because Sora had been a worthless hopeless empty headed clueless infant who knew nothing and understood nothing about existence or reality when he could have prevented everything that Riku and Roxas and Xion and Lea and Isa had gone through since then and lessened Namine's and Ansem the Wise's pain as well if he'd just paid a little more attention to other people's feelings and thoughts and hopes and hearts and wishes and dreams rather than doing everything that Riku had accused him of doing and just prancing around swinging his big flashy new Keyblade and basking in other people's adoration of him while he treated Kairi's and Anna's and Riku's and Jiminy's and Donald's and Goofy's and Roxas' and Xion's and Lea's and Namine's and Ansem the Wise's and Isa's torment and despair as though they were just jokes to laugh at
He extremely highly doubted that Kairi and Anna, and Riku and Donald and Goofy, could tell that he was abandoning and betraying and deserting and leaving and failing and stabbing in the back and shooting in the back and crushing the brains and skulls in from the back and decapitating from the back every single one of them now, as much else as was hurting him, so there was no point in trying to hide it now.
Assuming that they, or at least Goofy, hadn't perceived it already anyway, regardless of Sora's efforts to deny it to them, and to himself.
Sora knew that it wouldn't make any difference at all, and that, if he succeeded the most infinitesimally infinitely minuscule bit, he'd almost certainly just render any efforts of his to carry Riku's pain and cry in the place of it futile and all for nothing by abandoning Riku for Donald and Goofy the instant that Sora did successfully bear any of Riku's hurt.
But he didn't agree with Kairi that they shouldn't talk to Riku about this.
As soon as he had a chance, he was having an extensive discussion about how Riku was letting his guilt at the mistakes that he'd made prevent him from being willing to be himself, as Sora had believed that Riku had learned at the same time he did on the Dark Margin.
"And you're doing the same thing," Goofy said to Data-Kairi.
"Sora's heart can lead him astray as much as anyone's hearts can.
"If you genuinely want to help Sora, let Sora know that he hasn't created another victim, and either accept your darkness and see the light that lies beyond it and harness it without letting it rule you, or stop wielding it altogether.
"You don't need a false Kingdom Hearts to be real, or gain love and warmth, any more than the Nobodies did."
"Except I'm not a Heartless or a Nobody," Data-Kairi responded.
"I'm not even a replica like Xion or Riku Replica.
"I'm nothing more than synthesized data, a simulated living being.
"I'm fully aware that I have a heart, but I don't deserve to live in a reality of love or a warm home as long as I'm a fraudulent being.
"Don't waste your breath telling me that we can trust in others' memories and beliefs that we're capable of kindness and reality.
"No matter what we do, or how real we are, data will never be anything more than a program written out of coding. I don't have a fated script to play out, I am a script. Whether I obey the coding that I was programmed with and feel and think as I was written to be, or live the life that I choose to live as the Nobodies do, whether I become a full fledged being, everything that I feel and think will have just been the result of something someone else made."
Roxas became deathly white, Xion's face was now pale but still set in determination, and Lea's lips were thinned tightly together.
Xion looked as though she wanted to walk over to Roxas, reach out with her free arm, and place it around him, but she didn't.
She gripped Lea's hand tighter, however.
"Whether I have a heart or not, unless I gain complete reality, I'll never be me, or anything but an unnatural abomination who was never meant to exist."
"You're losing your ability to concentrate on your heart by focusing too hard," Aqua told Xion.
"Calm down."
But then black, silver, and crimson erupted into the air in an extending and expanding beam with coils of silver and crimson dancing around it in both directions.
They vanished to reveal a familiar Keyblade of black, silver, and crimson.
Sora blinked to see that Xion's newly completed Keyblade of Hearts appeared to look exactly the same as the one Xehanort's Heartless had wielded when it had been missing Kairi's heart.
Sora had believed that it would look different as he hadn't seen the finished Keyblade of Hearts because he'd destroyed it by freeing Kairi's heart as he put the finishing touches on it and the Final Keyhole, rather than combine Kairi's heart with the other six hearts comprising it.
It must look the same because Xion's Keyblade of Hearts, though it was finished, was much weaker than a Keyblade of Hearts smelted from the hearts of the seven Princesses of Heart that had been cast with all of its potential realized.
"You have what you came for, so there's no reason for any of us to tell Roxas what you told me," Elsa said with furious, anguished exhaustion from where she was still partially standing, and still partially collapsed, within Anna's arm.
"This is your final warning.
"Be gone, or we will remove you from our borders, or into a dungeon, by any means necessary."
"Once I get Data-Kairi out of my way, I'd be glad to," Ira said.
He faced Data-Kairi.
"If you saw how much time Invi spent on the defensive against the guardians at Olympus, you should know that she was paying a lot of attention to what Hades was doing with the Angel of Sin and Pandora's Box, as they were the greater threat."
Kairi winced.
"If she hadn't been, she'd have been able to defend herself and go on the offensive much more capably, even without her Formchanged Keyblade.
"And, as we told Maleficent, actors who refuse to abide by their roles do less damage to Master Yozora's script dead than alive.
"As you must have surmised, you, too, have a destiny to realize. But if I need to kill you to leave, I'm very capable of seeing you dead."
"Oh, no," Data-Kairi responded.
"You're the one who is going to die here, whether you try to leave or not, and then the rest of the Foretellers, including both of Yozora's selves and Yozora after he's recompleted, will follow.
"After that I'll exterminate the Summation Organization Thirteen.
"Sora has been through enough by this point, and Riku has, as well."
"Assuming that you could somehow defeat Yozora's Heartless and Yozora's Nobody and recomplete him, do you honestly believe that the primal doer of the Keyblades can be undone by anyone?" Ira challenged back.
"Master Yozora himself is the beginning of the truth of the Keyblade, and thus its end.
"He is the Alpha of the testament of the heart and the Omega, the beginning and the end of guiding keys, the first of connections and the last.
"Before Master Yozora, even the never beginning and unending tide of imaginary time, and the eclipse of everlasting infinity and unending eternity and the blinking of all hearts, all connections, all dreams, and all keys must inevitably and inexorably fade away and vanish into the darkness of the inescapable lacuna absent of the void.
"No one and nothing; save for the true Kingdom Hearts, the Kye-Blade, the Empyreal Kingdom Hearts and the Note Blade that we're forging; can surpass him. Not even the Kingdom Heartless that you wish to create, the two artificial Kingdom Hearts that Xehanort's Heartless and Nobody would have fashioned if they'd finished them, the Princesses of Heart fighting as one, and the Keyblade of Hearts."
Sora could barely care.
He couldn't defeat a recompleted Master Yozora whether he was as inept as a regular Shadow, or the beginning and end of everything and anything.
"Yozora doesn't testify to anything," Anna interjected.
"He doesn't want to unlock doors or connect anyone, he just wants to seal them shut forever and sever everyone's bonds so they're trapped in eternal lonely cold."
Sora barely felt the slightest amount sick to his stomach at the revelation of what the New World of Synchronicity Perceptual was.
"The New World that he believes in is made up of nothing but the same empty halls and rooms and castle and corridors that I've lived in for most of my life because Mom and Dad didn't want the rest of Arendelle to know about Elsa's magic."
Sora wasn't sure whether or not he'd fully lost awareness of all of his existence and reality for a number of seconds, or whether he was now imagining everything within a delirious hallucination of feverish insanity.
No.
He must have been imagining his self, his connections, existence, and reality, and all selves, connections, existences, and reality within a delirious hallucination of feverish insanity from the instant of his inception, and he had no hope at all of escaping it.
There was no way that he could have just heard that.
Blindingly incandescent loving and radiantly brilliant warm Anna had not spent most of her life in a frozen prison of loneliness.
"There's no other way to end death and torment," Ira responded.
"As long as hearts are capable of giving and receiving love and warmth, they're capable of giving and receiving death and pain.
"The sole way to end the spiral of death and pain, and despair and rejection, is to lock all connections and hearts away from each other, and one another, for as long as space and time endure."
"How will lighting Faerie's way back home to a New World like that fulfill her dreams?" Kairi questioned.
"She'll be the exception," Ira replied.
"All eight of us, including Ava, and Ephemer if she wants him to join us, will be together again forever; and no one will once more be able to hurt us and sever our own connections from each other, or one another.
"The eight or nine of us have learned how to not reject or dismiss each other and one another, so we can still stay together, and reestablish our connections.
"But no one else knows how to do so, and to give them the chance to will put Faerie or Yozora or Luxu or one or more of us in too much danger, as well as whoever else is allowed to live with his, her, or its door unlocked.
"You've all learned by now.
"The warmth of light and the cold of darkness will never disappear as long as hearts endure.
"The sole way to end the spiral of death and despair and torment and futility that does nothing more than transmigrate new death and despair and torture and the oblivion of all hope is to force both light and darkness, and all connections themselves, whether of acceptance or of rejection, to vanish for eternity."
"You know that that won't stop hurting Faerie," Kairi responded.
"Not with the actual means by which we intend to lock and seal all doors," Ira replied.
"Anna realized what Master Yozora's, and our, dream for Synchronicity Perceptual is, but you still know nothing about what our New World consists of.
"Faerie will approve, and she'll wake up from her nightmare back into a warm, happy home."
"Guess what?" Donald cried.
"We don't approve."
"Nor do Sora and Riku," Data-Kairi put in.
"You're not going anywhere."
"Nor are you," Elsa cut in, her voice still exhausted and resigned, but she sounded as though she'd recovered enough from Ira's revelation of everything Christopher had told them and brought about in Toy Box to sound more determined now, and she had raised herself up a small amount more inside Anna's arms.
"We decide who is going to prison, and who isn't.
"If Ira can't leave, you'll join him in a cell nearby.
"Your diplomatic communique has been reviewed for long enough, and Ira's has already been rejected, so it is time for you to leave yourself.
"We have a family, friends, and people to look after, and you are interfering with our efforts to provide for them and their safety in a time of need as much as Ira.
"Depart, or we will do what our people require us to."
"So you can retreat into another cell yourself, and hurt Sora and Riku by doing so?" Data-Kairi challenged. "I think not.
"I'm not leaving until Ira is dead."
"Even if such was our intentions once again, which it is not, you have no authority here, and that is not your decision to make," Elsa
"I offer you the same choice as I did Ira.
"I'm supposed to believe you, given your track record?" Data-Kairi argued.
"If you try to take me captive, I won't kill you or Anna, but you won't enjoy what I do do to you.
"Your parents raised you to conceal your feelings, not freeze them along with your magic.
"If you didn't learn from your parents, how can I trust that you learned from your sister?
"As long as the Foretellers and the Summation Organization Thirteen are a threat to Anna through you, I can't trust you not to abandon her again, and even after I've removed that threat, I'm not holding my breath. I'll be keeping a close eye on you until I'm sure that you're not going to do anything stupid again."
"You overlook that we are now aware how our connections to a family who loves us, and who we love, have taught us how to master our powers.
"As much as we regret what we have caused before discovering how to do so, the past is still just the past.
"Even should our sister and our people require us to take an ill advised course of action once more, it will not be through isolation.
"We are no danger to Anna, or our people, now that we have grown into our magic."
"I beg to differ," Data-Kairi responded.
"Your magic was never the greatest danger to Anna.
"You yourself were."
"This argument is over," Anna interjected.
"For your information, Elsa isn't the sole person capable of taking you, and Ira, captive, or throwing you out of Arendelle."
"In your condition?" Data-Kairi responded.
"I'll be keeping an eye on you, too.
"You're as much of a butterfinger as Elsa, and you don't even need any magic to be one.
"She uses her magic to run away from problems, and you recklessly run into them without even needing it to help you do so."
Anna blinked, and her face became a neutral mask.
Everything had been, and was, real, although filled with nothing but nothing.
If it wasn't, he couldn't protect Anna.
But Elsa spoke before Kristoff, or Olaf, or anyone else, or Sora, could, and now there was a lethal, contained fury of her own in her voice.
"This is why we are the Queen, and not Anna.
"We are as capable of teaching Anna how to grow out of her own flaws as she was of ours.
"Anna is no more of a danger to me, or her friends, or our people, than I am."
"Then why didn't your mother and father tell her the truth about your ice magic?" Data-Kairi responded. "Why didn't they take her on the voyage to Ahtohallan with them?
"They didn't go themselves, and you didn't end up not killing her, because you hit her in the head.
"Anna had proven herself more than capable of knowing the truth by then. Your parents had intended to tell her as soon as they returned, whether they'd learned anything that would help you or not.
"They didn't tell her the truth before the voyage, and bring her on it, because they know how reckless she is, and they knew if they told her, she might order someone to try to take her to Atollahan so they wouldn't need to risk themselves taking the voyage.
"Anna isn't alive because you hit her in the head; she's alive because she has her own issues.
"Shut up," Anna warned Data-Kairi through clenched teeth.
"Whether I can beat you or not, I can still sock you enough for it to hurt."
"I'll just freeze her mouth closed if she doesn't wind down shortly," Elsa said to Anna, and she glared with unrestrained fury at Data-Kairi.
"You're avoiding the matter that mother and father did believe in Anna.
"I will now give you the same warning that I have to anyone who has caused problems for their fellows in this time of crisis.
"What is your decision?
"Will you leave, or will violence be required to end this?"
"What's your answer?
"Are you going to abandon Anna a second time, and hurt Sora and Riku in the process?
"I see you as a lot more dangerous to Anna through yourself, and not your magic.
"You must recall that, prior to their voyage, the current Duchess of Weselton had currently leveled economic sanctions against Arendelle; as a result of Grand Pabbie and his trolls catching, and subduing, a band of foreign provocateurs that they'd sent into Arendelle to try to arrange for your parents' assassination due to how they objected to your parents consorting with non humans.
"If Arendelle hadn't needed both of its Princesses there at that time, from what I've learned, your parents felt so sorry for Anna about how lonely she was that they would have, for certain, taken Anna on a voyage as dangerous as the one to Ahtohallan was after all the years that you'd hurt her by not spending any time with her."
Apparently even true nothingness could become absent of itself, if absence existed in any forms.
Elsa, her face totally devoid of expression, stood up out of Anna's arms before she could risk Anna following through with her threat to Data-Kairi and stabbed her left hand with her fingers extended in a knife at the facsimile of a Heartless, causing a sheet of thin ice with a wide, flat, razor sharp edge at the front to sail at Data-Kairi.
Spirals of serpentine smoke as dark as night coiled in front of Data-Kairi's right hand and coalesced into energy coils of ebony that swirled forwards to form a pitch obsidian facsimile of the Kingdom Key that Sora could feel wasn't a true Keyblade, and that was just solidified shadow.
Data-Kairi cut at the ice sheet and separated it into two parts, but Elsa directed them back together to wrap around the Keyblade in thick strands and attempt to rip it out of Data-Kairi's hands.
Data-Kairi rose with it, and once she was in the air she bent herself, and the Keyblade, forwards into a sphere of pitch dark shadow tumbling end over end in place identical to the ones Neoshadows could form, yanking the fabricated Keyblade out of the ice extensions at the same time.
"Are you about to leave, or are we required to ensure it happens, one way or another?" Elsa questioned, her voice a costume of cordiality.
"I'll try another tact," Data-Kairi answered.
"If I can't get through to Sora, what about you, Riku?
"If we work together to forge Kingdom Heartless, you'll be able to stop feeling as though you can't do anything for anyone unless you live as Sora's shadow, and the greatest Nobody of all."
That was it.
Sora wasn't going to let someone start breaking Riku's heart as well, now.
Data-Kairi was right about one thing.
Giving other people love and sanctuary could bring the people who gave it to them happiness.
Kairi, Riku, Donald, and Goofy were no exception.
And Kairi wasn't in as much pain as she'd been in when she'd returned to Destiny Islands almost a week ago.
It wouldn't matter to Sora.
He had no justification to feel the most infinitesimally minutely slightly minuscule bit happy once more for the rest of his life and afterwards, if, for some entirely imperceptible reason, he still wasn't sentenced to be uncreated when he died.
But Kairi, Riku, Donald, and Goofy were a different matter.
If Sora found another array of connections to keep safe or mend, and hearts and a world for them to keep safe and home, the four of them might be able to begin moving forward from Jiminy's death.
The concept of leaving Anna once again, now that he knew the nightmare that she'd truly lived for all of these years, caused his insides to twist so sickeningly that he extremely highly doubted that they could function enough for him to throw up.
But he could leave her now for the same reason that he'd been able to leave Arendelle the first time, over a year ago.
Anna and Elsa had each other.
Kairi, Riku, Donald, and Goofy had no one else who they were as close to.
And Sora would endanger Anna as much, by staying at her side, as he would by leaving her a second time, if she realized that he genuinely did return her growing feelings.
She couldn't leave Elsa again at a time like this, as well, and Sora extremely highly doubted that the Foretellers were ready for her, and Elsa, to fulfill their fates to position Xion and Roxas to fulfill theirs.
Aqua and the other guardians could defeat Data-Kairi if they needed to, and Ira wasn't currently a threat to Anna and Elsa.
Kairi, Riku, Donald, and Goofy needed Sora now.
And he'd just forget all seven of them, and Jiminy, and abandon them and betray them for someone else, anyway, so if he was going to hurt the people who loved him, and who he loved, he might as well do it in the least painful way that he could think of.
Data-Kairi would almost certainly intercept any attempts to leave Arendelle that she saw coming, but there was one method of world travel that Sora extremely highly doubted that she'd anticipate.
Kairi's arm was still around his waist, and Riku would still be holding his shoulder if not for what Kairi had said.
He'd created a door to light twice now, without knowing how.
With the connections among the three of them much stronger than they'd been the first time that Kairi had unintentionally worked with Sora and Riku to open one, as Sora hadn't weakened their connections, or torn them to pieces wholly, yet, he might be able to open a third one.
"Riku, can you please come here?" Sora questioned, and he extended his hand.
Riku blinked, but his face became a mask, and he took Sora's hand and squeezed it as tightly and protectively and reassuringly as he'd squeezed Sora's shoulder before.
Sora cast out into the Ocean Between the same way that he did when opening a regular path, and traced his connections in search of a world with a strained, or severed, strong connection, terrain and weather similar to the beach of the play island and the clear cerulean skies where Kairi and Riku and Tidus and Selphie and Wakka and he had once raced and laughed endless lifetimes ago when life had still held hope and laughter.
As well as, in the chance that there was one and that; even though hope had failed Kairi and Anna and Riku and Tidus and Selphie and Wakka and Jiminy and Donald and Goofy before Sora had even known what it was; despair hadn't yet, and Maleficent was operating the way that she usually did at least this much.
There might be a world where he could still give Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy hope through mending a strained or severed strong connection, with surroundings and weather similar to that of the play island, that Maleficent and her Summation Organization Thirteen were interested in.
Sora slid his eyes at Donald and Goofy in an eye signal that they'd developed if he needed to tell them that he believed that they should leave the current world without anyone knowing that they were about to.
Riku must have realized what it meant, for he started, realizing what Sora had in mind.
'Thinking of you, wherever you are,' he mouthed as Donald and Goofy ran in their direction.
Kairi started herself, and then she joined in.
'We pray for our sorrows to end, and hope that our hearts will blend.'
Donald and Goofy reached them, and Sora traced his connections.
Two furry figures standing on two legs and rodent's tails, one with a red shirt, and another with a green shirt, flickered in front of him.
Then he saw a bird with large wings flying under a cloudless sky above a canyon as light brown as the sands of the play island of Destiny Islands, and a young boy with hair and clothes that Sora couldn't perceive looking up at it with concern that didn't appear to be faked or tainted by darkness.
Lastly, a tall male with a rifle passed in front of Sora.
Mice or rats?
Falcons or eagles?
A hunter like Clayton, or a poacher; working for the Summation Organization Thirteen and deployed on that world or on his own initiative, or from it, while another seeker of darkness had been deployed to that world?
'Now I will step forward to realize this wish,' Sora added to Kairi and Riku in unison.
He couldn't take looking at Roxas and Xion, and Anna and Elsa, and the others, to see how they'd react if this was successful.
He wanted to apologize to them in the silence of his mind, but there was no point, when he'd just hurt them even worse later, and freeze and undo all of the warmth and kindness that he'd given them absolute zero and to ruined tatters, anyway.
'And who knows: Starting a journey may not be so hard or maybe it has already begun.'
"Oh, no, you don't!" Data-Kairi yelled in recognition and fury, as she at last realized what was going on.
Sora looked up, avoiding looking at Roxas and Xion, and Anna and Elsa; to see the obsidian sphere that was Data-Kairi rocketing at them through the air with a globe of infernal roaring and shifting shades of dark and deep violet rotating in a counterclockwise positioned mostly downwards diagonal direction around her and spraying small light indigo comets in all directions.
Xion was in front of it with the Keyblade of Hearts raised to block with her left hand bracing it near the prongs, and when it rammed into her, she dug her heels into the ground and almost fell backwards.
But she corrected her stance and held Data-Kairi, and her assault, at bay.
"Oh, no, you don't!" Xion shouted.
"You're not taking away their first chance to go on a journey and adventure with no one else but each other!"
Sora hadn't even thought of that, and to his surprise, even now, he felt slightly lighter knowing what he was doing for Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy.
"This is where they belong, and what they've dreamed of, and you are not stealing that from them!"
There was no reason not to say the last words from Kairi's letter out loud, then.
"There are many worlds, but they share the same sky – one sky, one destiny," Sora spoke together with Kairi and Riku.
Familiar ivory opened inwards around them like two double doors, thankfully preventing Sora from seeing Roxas or Anna or Elsa without even needing to try.
He let himself sag boneless with incomprehensible everything and anything aching relief that he could somehow still feel.
Kairi added her other arm to the one around his waist to keep him from falling, and Riku caught Sora with his other arm.
Sora felt loving, warm, soothing, comforting lips press against his forehead.
"Thank you for bringing me with the rest of you this time," Kairi said.
"I love you."
Sora could barely feel any lighter at hearing Kairi say that in a romantic way for the first time.
"We all do," Riku spoke himself.
"That will never change, no matter how many mistakes you make, or believe that you've made."
Sora wanted to tell them that, even though they must have known what he'd done to them in Castle Oblivion all along, they wouldn't feel that way for much longer when they found out that he was abandoning them and betraying them a second time, this time without his memories having been obliterated.
And when they found out that he was abandoning and betraying Anna, and Jiminy and Donald and Goofy, as well, by not having already abandoned and betrayed Kairi and Riku for Anna and Jiminy and Donald and Goofy a long time ago.
But, though Sora couldn't comprehend why, before he was aware of what was happening, he knew nothing but blissful blackness.
.
"What's wrong, my dear? Your mission is to restore the Blue Star. Why do you hesitate to abolish me and complete it? The goal is within your feeble grasp. Take it! Just as I foretold. You're not fit to carry out your assigned task."-Zophar
"Liar! That's not true!"-Lucia
"Then destroy me and accomplish your mission."-Zophar
"What are you waiting for?! Cream his mega-ugly b-tt, Lucia!"-Lemina
"I got twenty silver that says you can take him!"-Ronfar
"Lucia…"-Hiro
"Or do you believe in the power of humanity after all, as Althena did? Before you bet on them, remember… They enabled my return with the power of their dark side. Yes, my dear. Destroy me with Althena's power and decimate this miserable world in the process."-Zophar
"Lucia never told me that. He must be lying."-Hiro
"You fools don't understand anything. Althena's power is the power of creation. There can be no new creation without destroying the old. Unleashing Althena's power on me will reduce this world to ash… just like the Blue Star."-Zophar
"Althena didn't do that. You're lying!"-Hiro
"Mmmm. You only wish I was lying. Then it would make it easier to delude yourself into believing in a happy ending."-Zophar
"Zophar, it was the only way to stop you from destroying everything! Your evil… it had permeated every corner of the Blue Star."-Lucia
"Ahhh… but after Althena saved the Blue Star, it was nothing more than a cinder. And for what? For the hope that one day, you could return the humans to it? Have you forgotten that the same power of humanity Althena believed in is the one that revived me?! Come, my pet. Why do you hesitate? There is no need. Destroy me and everything you've come to love. Complete your mission!"-Zophar
LUNAR 2: ETERNAL BLUE: COMPLETE