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CHAPTER 28:
WITHIN THE MAW OF THE MONSTER
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Author's Notes: The pieces for this Chapter are, 'Ocean Palace,' from the CHRONO TRIGGER Original Sound Version, Disc Three; and then 'Field To Tomorrow,' from the LUNAR 2: ETERNAL BLUE: Complete Original Soundtrack. The first piece can be found on Zophar's Domain, and the second one can be found on KINGDOM HEARTS Insider.
Sora became aware that he was looking up at a ceiling of uneven dark violet crystal strewn with random protrusions of blue and green compound gems in various forms and shapes extending downwards as single megaliths or thickets.
The back of his head was resting in someone's lap, and a similar hard, uneven surface was against his back and legs.
"It's about time," Kairi's voice said with a relieved sigh from above.
"It appears that Maleficent turned Monstro into her new, traveling, citadel.
"It must have been sailing in the Ocean Between in the vicinity of the world that you brought us to, or in the skies of that world itself, because the door to the light took us inside her base of operations."
Everything returned to Sora, and he was sitting up almost before he'd been aware that he was moving.
Nothing that was just the absence of anything at all consumed Sora as hot tears filled the eyes of a body that ached everywhere.
All Sora wanted to do was just let himself fall back into Kairi's lap and fall back asleep, and hopefully never wake up for the rest of his life and all everlasting time after that, but it looked like that was going to need to wait.
He pushed the empty pain away as far as possible, blinked away as many tears as he could, and then he pushed himself up to his feet quickly. But as soon as he was standing he registered that his legs were much worse than rubber, and they gave out even though he didn't want them to.
Familiar lanky arms caught him.
"This is one time that you could use a snooze," Goofy said.
"We've been here for a few hours, by my calculations, but other than the occasional band of Heartless that comes looking for a snack on our hearts, no one appears to know that we stowed away.
"You can take it easy for a while yet."
Sora clenched his teeth and hands until the pain of his nails digging into his palms forced sensation back into his legs.
Then he disentangled himself from Goofy's hold.
"That's not an option," Sora argued.
"This must be why Yozora's Nobody planted that information, and why he wanted us to know that he did."
Sora pushed a new surge of anguish away.
Why wouldn't seekers of darkness leave Kairi, Riku, Donald, Goofy, Jiminy, Anna, and everyone else alone!?
He'd been the first of the current generation of Keyblade wielders to take up the Keyblade, even though Riku had been the one to go through the bequeathing ceremony!
Why wouldn't other seekers of darkness talk and act like the Heartless did, and just target him, and no one but him!?
"Ira knew from the start that Data-Kairi was no longer willing to stay on the sidelines, so he wanted to attempt to ensure as well as he could that we'd be there along with Elsa when Data-Kairi attacked them.
"So we'd thus open this door to the light and penetrate Maleficent's new stronghold," Sora spoke.
"She's about to attack this world, or she's in the process of doing so, or she's already won here and there are captives inside Monstro who we need to rescue.
"If we're to apply your strategy, we need to try to save them as soon as possible, the way that we usually fight."
New tears clouded Sora's eyes, and they burned with the same agony that almost kept him from continuing to breathe.
"There was a New Seven Heart on Toy Box, as well, and we need to free her at the same time."
But all five of them were adventuring together at last, and Sora couldn't take the time that they'd dreamed of away from them.
He could collapse after their first journey together was over.
He reached up and scrubbed his tears out of his eyes and face.
Then he tried to force his favored open mouthed, closed toothed smile for when he was really happy, and to his absolute and utter shock, it effortlessly and honestly came to his face, and an uplifting and vibrant and refreshing and vitalizing lightness and warmth engulfed all of his being.
Was Sora still able to love Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy enough to feel as happy and excited and eager and joyful as they needed him to be for them now?
He couldn't be capable of that.
He'd been delirious from the very first beginning of the instant when, confronting the angrily distrustful and bitterly betrayed Riku in the antechamber of Radiant Garden's husk of a castle, that Sora had started believing that he was capable of loving anyone.
Much less that much.
Far less Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy.
That Jiminy wasn't with them to share this time, and the realization of their dream, at long last; and that he'd never be able to share it with them, and that it would always and for forever be too late for him to do so now, was all the proof that Sora needed that his belief that he could love and protect anyone, and give anyone warmth and kindness and home and sanctuary, had been nothing but a feverish hallucination.
But Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy, and whoever was on board Maleficent's new, flying castle, needed him.
Jiminy, and Bo and her sheep and the Little Green Men, had died irreversibly, and billions of toys and the culture of an entire world had been ruined because Sora had let himself feel uncertainty.
What belief that he'd regained in himself had been perhaps the most delirious hallucination of all, but Sora was never going to doubt that his connections gave him power and strength for the most minute instant again.
Warm lips pressed a kiss against the right side of his forehead, and a warm hand took that hand.
"Just don't try too hard, okay?" Kairi asked.
Sora drew what strength and energy that he could from the kiss and her clasp, and then he squeezed her hand once, to try to reassure her pain about herself and her worry for him, and then he released it.
He walked quickly away and moved his gaze over what appeared to be a cavern of the same crystal structure and colors.
The same mineral deposits were strewn on the floor and walls as on the ceiling, and large megaliths various sizes and shades of ruby and black crystal that must be the form that Maleficent had given to Monstro's fleshy internal protrusions were interspersed about it.
The terrain stretching until the cave beyond the opening out of the cavern that they were in bent and disappeared was the same.
Riku and Donald were standing near the opening to the cavern, with Donald keeping watch and Riku looking back at him.
Sora realized that he'd closed his lips, although he was still smiling, and he reassumed his smile and this time relaxed back into the easygoing pose that he'd also practiced over the years and crossed his arms and hands behind his head.
"When I took us on our first adventure together, I didn't realize that the stakes would be this on the edge," Sora spoke with easy amusement.
"But you know what they say, right?
"The thinner the razor's edge, the more unsteadily the dark dullards fall."
Donald muffled a laugh, and Sora forced away the pain that Riku just snorted.
As well as the realization that he slightly wished that it had been Anna's hand that had taken his.
He could worry about this later, as well.
For at least one last time, Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy needed him to believe that life was warm and kind and drowning in clean cerulean skies and simple laughter.
"I smelled the darkness here as soon as we arrived," Riku informed Sora.
"There are fourteen particularly potent odors here.
"The whole Summation Organization Thirteen is currently aboard this citadel."
Sora forced away his memory of brown hair and a young boy's face.
He'd cross the bridge of whether or not to fight Christopher if it came to it.
However, no matter what, he refused to allow Kairi or Riku to be the ones to do it.
A new, almost hysterically gibbering terror that Sora had never known for anyone who he loved or called friend before surged through everything that Sora didn't know and knew.
Even though Sora had never stopped worrying about Kairi's and Riku's and Donald's and Goofy's and the others' safety, after how many narrow escapes they'd all had throughout all of their struggles; Sora realized that part of him had started to believe that, in some form or another, they had all learned how to live and battle in a virtually indestructible bubble in one or more ways, and there was no wound or impediment that they couldn't recover from.
Even Terra-Xehanort's unexpected skill and strength, and their near death at the hands of Kairi's Demon Tide and Lich, and Kairi's virtual death at Xehanort's hands, and the true death of Terra's Lingering Spirit and his own, hadn't fully ravaged this underlying certainty and confidence.
Riku could lose his body to Xehanort's Heartless and have his heart sent into the realm of darkness, and he could keep the darkness from fully swallowing it and an artificial Kingdom Hearts could force Xehanort's Heartless into the depths of heart, enabling Riku to retake it.
Sora could lose his heart to the darkness of a Heartless and his body to the darkness of Namine, and Kairi's refuge and kindness could shine his way out of that darkness and give him a new body.
He could almost fully forget Kairi and forget Riku and his other friends a little, and put himself asleep for around a year, and Riku and Xion and Roxas and Namine could share their warmth with him and repair his memory and wake him back up, no worse for the wear.
Riku could change his shape into Xehanort's Heartless, and Riku's refusal to let the darkness rule his heart and life and words and actions, combined with an out of control inferno of light and darkness, could force Xehanort's Heartless fully out of him.
Sora could tire himself to shreds and give up into despairing black sleep, and Ven could encase the exhausted Sora in his armor and let the darkness take that in Sora's place, and then Riku could dive to the bottom of that nightmare and take up that darkness in the place of both of them and afterwards shine Sora's way out of that darkness by fully gaining bright faith in himself as a real Keyblade Master.
Riku's and Donald's and Goofy's hearts and bodies could be shredded to nearly dead pallid blue ghostly outlines, as could Sora's, and Kairi's protectively reassuring trust in Sora could keep him from fading into the void long enough for him to reconnect the pieces of his heart and body and do the same to the others.
Kairi's heart and body could break almost dead into seven vibrant red fragments and coherent pieces of light, and Sora could jump from time period to time period and heart to heart to put them back together as a whole.
Sora could fully die and vanish into oblivion and a solid ocean and drifting sky, and wait there while a seizing and contorting and remorselessly and ruthlessly clawing and harrowing bereft empty longing had grasped at the edges of his perception, as days and nights stretched and blurred together for so long that Sora had lost track of how many times it had happened; and even then Kairi could call him back in a scintillating kaleidoscope of brilliant warmth.
But now, for the first time since the night that Kairi and Riku and everyone and everything else he knew had descended into morphing shadows and brilliant shades of light, one of the people who Sora loved most, three of his other friends, and a small number of friends of theirs, had been lost beyond all and every hope of potential or actual recovery.
The impregnable bubble had been popped.
This time, it might be Kairi or Riku or Donald or Goofy who was lost forever.
Or Tidus or Selphie or Wakka or Mom or Dad or one or both of Riku's parents or Kairi's adoptive Mom or Kairi's adoptive Dad or Anna or Roxas or Xion or Lea or Ven or Aqua or Terra or Elsa or Pence or Hayner or Olette or Isa or someone else who Sora loved or called friend.
Or more than one or them, or all of them.
Or billions of hearts, or a civilization, on this world, or all of the hearts or cultures on this world.
Or the world itself might be lost forever.
Sora might be lost forever himself, though that meant nothing whatsoever.
But if Sora let that get to him, he'd ruin Kairi's and Riku's and Donald's and Goofy's dreams.
So he concentrated on the genuine relieving lightness also rushing through him.
"Then, even if we're doing what the Foretellers want in the process, if we can keep Maleficent, or any of her seekers of darkness, from getting away, we can stop Maleficent for good here and now," Sora said.
Could they win this, though?
Maleficent herself had gotten as good as Elsa was; Hans had been an exceptionally lethal Heartless even compared to Dark Infernos, Kurt Zisas, and Phantoms and he'd no doubt become a lot deadlier now that he'd been recompleted with the knowledge of how to wield darkness; and if he did need to fight Christopher, Christopher was a Station of Awakening and darkness itself without the absence of his heart.
They'd defeated all of the Real Organization Thirteen save for Xion, but they'd begun as seven and had gained five reinforcements as the Second Keyblade War had progressed and escalated, Xehanort had separated his seekers of darkness when they'd engaged the guardians of light and their companions, and the others and Sora had all been familiar with a large amount of how a number, or most, of their adversaries fought.
They were just five now, Maleficent might very well confront them with all fourteen of her seekers of darkness at once, and, unless she'd recruited one or more dark seekers other than Pete and Hans who Sora had battled in the past; none of the guardians of light here, Keyblade wielders or otherwise, had any experience with how any of the members of the Summation Organization Thirteen fought save for Maleficent herself, Pete, Hans, and Christopher.
And they might have more than one or two hostages; Jessie and, depending on whether or not Lotso was willing to let them rescue him or he'd joined Maleficent, Lotso; to rescue this time.
"We can't pass up this chance," Riku said.
"Sooner or later, one or more of the dark seekers here will look into what happened to the Heartless who took us on, and even if we've left, they'll figure out that we have a means of infiltrating them.
"And, if we could be maneuvered into doing it by Ira, we can do it again ourselves later, and return with all of the guardians, Keyblade wielder and otherwise."
Sora hadn't yet thought about what they might be able to do now that they knew how to create a door to light at will, and now he wasn't sure that he'd be able to breathe again for as long as he lived.
He'd opened the door to the light to this world by tracing specific connections in specific hearts.
If they could trace, and travel to, hearts, that precisely, and Young Xehanort was still alive, they could discover if Young Xehanort had survived the same way, and he could take Kairi to see him as soon as this battle was over.
Everything that Sora could feel or think washed white onyx for him to tell Kairi what Vanitas had told him now, and try to find Young Xehanort this instant and take Kairi to her uncle or brother, whatever she considered him.
And send Donald and Goofy to tell Mickey about Yen Sid at the same time, so, if it wasn't already too late, Mickey could talk to Yen Sid about his mistakes and warn him about the danger that he was in.
But if Sora did this, and Young Xehanort had lived, Sora would be seeing Kairi's family as more important than the people of this world, and anyone in the realm of light who Maleficent and her Summation Organization Thirteen threatened.
It felt like indefinably indescribably more of a betrayal of Kairi not to tell her what Vanitas had revealed to him and take her in search of Young Xehanort, than even what he'd done to her in Castle Oblivion, and how he was coming to feel about Anna, but if he did inform her and took her to find Young Xehanort, he'd be betraying the people here, and elsewhere in the cosmos.
And of Donald and Goofy, too.
Hating himself even more for doing so, if that, itself, was possible now, Sora forced himself not to lose his awareness of Riku's words.
"Maleficent and the others will know that we can do this, and that we will.
"If we don't put an end to Maleficent permanently now, after this, by the time we come back with the other guardians, she'll have ensured that the Summation Organization Thirteen never stays in the same place for long, if at all, and we won't have another opportunity to catch them all in the same place.
"This is also our first good chance to learn the lines of Yozora's script, and begin figuring out how to rewrite it when we have the ability to.
"Ira wants us to have the chance to defeat Maleficent and the Summation Organization Thirteen in one fell swoop, and even if he or one or more of the other Foretellers try to, and successfully do, stop us from achieving that, they wouldn't have played us against each other if there wasn't a major reason for it.
"We can strike our first blow against the Foretellers, as well, if we see this through.
"Don't worry about Christopher."
Riku's face was a mask himself.
"I've already dabbled in the darkness."
Sora almost forgot that he had legs, but the dual warmth of Kairi's and Goofy's hands were around his once more, and his legs were back.
"Doing so by fighting a boy to disable him won't cause me to drop that much further," Riku said.
"Don't get any noble ideas about fighting him for sure now, because I've decided to do it, or I'll just take him on when you try, and that might create openings in our tactics for Maleficent, or whoever we're engaging, to exploit.
"I'm not going to allow you to dirty your hands, like I did.
"Christopher is mine."
Sora clenched his teeth so tightly that they should have shattered to bits, but then he sighed heavily.
"All right," he said.
"And, though I don't like it, thanks a lot anyway."
"You're welcome," Riku answered.
"We didn't get a chance to show you this on Toy Box, but we've all gotten a lot better during the year that you were stuck in The Final World," Goofy said reassuringly. "Donald figured out how to recall his knowledge of all of his old spells from our past adventures without losing awareness of the new ones that he taught himself. He still can't cast spells like Zettaflare without it tiring him out so much that he'll fall unconscious, but he can pull off an Aeroga shield without it interfering with his ability to suspend Heartless in the air with a Magnega.
"And Kairi has become both thumbs up as awesome with the Keyblade as Riku.
"While Riku has gotten as good as His Majesty and Master Aqua and he's in the process of building Keyblade armor and a Keyblade glider; although he prefers less specific, named assaults, regular or magical or Shotlock or Flowmotion, than they do, as opposed to just fighting with adept swordsmanship; and he's still working on learning how to harness Command Styles and Formchanges to the extent that Master Aqua and you can.
"We can win this; or, at least, save everyone here."
But it would be a lie if Sora said that he was confident of that, or that he even believed that at all, so he didn't.
Retaining his faith in Kairi and his friends was one thing.
Believing that they could defeat fourteen seekers of darkness around the same time, or at the same time, one as adept as Elsa and the other a Station of Awakening and darkness itself, was fully different.
Kairi and Goofy both squeezed his hands, and Riku looked as though he was suppressing the urge to grasp Sora's shoulder himself.
But Sora didn't need either of them, or both of them, to be there for him, to know that they needed to do this anyway.
Even without the issue of Goofy's strategy, and the issue that they would almost certainly not get another chance like this if they didn't defeat the Summation Organization Thirteen today, if Sora ignored this opportunity, he'd be letting people be tortured as much as he would have if he'd stopped fighting with the Keyblade after he'd learned Xemnas' goal.
No matter how many times Sora danced to a seeker of darkness' tune, with his memories of why he needed to cherish people in pain or caring them because of fake memories, if someone was hurting, he couldn't let that person suffer.
"Then there's no time like the present," Sora said back.
"Though one or more of the connections that I traced to bring us here might have involved two mice, or rats.
"We haven't been shrunk to their size, so if they're here; as captives or because they have a stake of their own by traveling here, as people like our two Jack friends do; we need to keep a close eye out for them."
"You can leave that to me," Donald supplied.
"I developed a large number of scrying spells years ago in the event that travelers from the Disney Kingdom needed to avoid being seen by small sized people on one or more worlds, to avoid interfering with their societies.
"I'll set one up and keep it active."
Donald unsheathed Save the Queen Plus, and the air shimmered around him for a few seconds.
"That's done."
Sora felt slightly lighter.
That might decrease their chances of anyone causing another friendly fire incident.
"How are we going to beat Maleficent herself, though?" Kairi questioned.
"I wasn't with you on Arendelle the first time, but Donald and Goofy went into enough detail about what Elsa did then that I'm fully aware what we're up against in terms of Maleficent.
"As I told Riku, a girl named Platina who Hercules is training to be a hero himself," Sora felt truly lighter at the knowledge that Hercules was training heroes himself now, "Taught me a Formchange for harnessing the powers the Demon Tides and Liches can apply, and as light as well as darkness; without giving up my original form as Riku did when he became Dad's"
New tears came to Sora's eyes to hear Kairi call Xehanort, 'Dad'
"Heartless."
Further tears pushed forward into Sora's eyes.
"But I'm too tired from using it the first time to be able to use again for a number of days.
"And Maleficent is a lot more experienced than Elsa, who spent most of her life denying that she's an enchantress until around a year ago; and Maleficent doesn't just cast spells from one element, with the weaknesses that entails, or even just from elements.
"Furthermore, we're just talking about her regular form.
"We have no concept of what she can do as a Dragon now, or even if that's now the sole alternate form she can shapeshift into.
"I know how to use Terra-Xehanort's chain binds, but from what you've told me, Maleficent doesn't need to move to incant when she's not the Dragon, so they won't make much of a difference against her unless she does shapeshift into the Dragon, and she most likely won't do that unless we give her a good reason to.
"Do we have a chance at defeating her, as just the five of us; especially while taking on an unknown number of the rest of the Summation Organization Thirteen?"
"Not being sure that we could win has never stopped us before," Riku countered.
Kairi's eyes flashed.
"Three of us didn't permanently die before," she responded.
"First Terra's Lingering Spirit, then Sora, and now Jiminy; and while we resurrected Sora and there might still be a way to restore Terra's Lingering Spirit,"
Sora refused to give up hope that there was a way to do so, though he hadn't come up with the slightest idea of a means for doing so yet even though he'd often thought about it while trapped in The Final World
"Jiminy is past saving.
"We've had the risks driven home to us now.
"We can't be as reckless as we used to be any longer."
"If you're worried that I'm being blindly faithful in Sora, I'm taking what you said into account," Riku answered.
"But I had this choice when I could have asked Namine to lock away my memories of my darkness, and I chose to duel your father's Heartless by myself with full knowledge of how skilled he was, even though his greater command of the darkness had moved my body like a marionette with ease a number of times by then.
"And I still pulled through.
"You brought us through your Demon Tide.
"Even without your Formchange, you know how you did it now, so there's a good chance that you can actively do the same thing if any of us are mortally wounded this time, whether or not we lose our hearts in the process, as long as you think about believing in us before we actually die from the injuries."
Kairi started violently.
Sora hadn't thought of that, and that greatly increased their chances, but now his heart was beating so fast he was certain that it was going to rocket out of his throat and neck and rip open his windpipe and jugular and its artery as it did.
If Kairi tried to do this, that meant that she would become Maleficent's and the other dark seekers' primary target, because she'd need to be defeated for any of the rest of them to be taken down permanently, unless Maleficent or one of her associates inflicted an instantly fatal wound on one of them while Kairi's attention wasn't on trusting in that person's ability to pull through.
Kairi would be the one who had the largest chance of dying this time.
He could do this.
His friends were his power, and all four of his best friends save for Jiminy and Anna were here with him this time, and he had a dual connection of love and warmth and safety and kindness with Kairi, both the bond of best friendship and the bond of romantic love.
"So you can keep not just Sora, but all of us from vanishing this time, at least for long enough for us to put ourselves back together in The Final World, and if it happens to Goofy or Donald, one of us can open a path back here for them.
"Have you figured out specifically how you gave Sora a new body when he became a Heartless?"
"Outside of refusing to forget about him, no," Kairi answered.
"Then you should try to figure that out before we find Maleficent and her goons, in the event that one or more of them turn one or more of us into Heartless.
"If you can counter that at will, it will be even harder for them to keep us down, whatever the odds.
"And I advise you to try to figure out if you can identify where any Nobodies will be born if this happens, so we can retrieve one or more of them if any of us become Heartless again."
Sora's insides twisted, but Goofy smiled.
"Don't look at it that way," he said.
"Think of it as meaning that, if it happens, we might have one or a number or a lot of new friends before today is over."
"Assuming the Foretellers or Maleficent don't recover one or a number of them first," Sora replied.
"No one is going through what Roxas, Xion, Lea, Namine, Isa, and Xemnas did again.
"If I'm on the verge of losing my heart and Kairi knows for sure that she can keep us alive, I'll finish myself off and let Kairi keep me partially together in The Final World, before I form another Nobody."
Kairi's hold became much more secure and protective, and Goofy's grip became much more soothing and reassuring.
"It won't come to that," Riku spoke in no uncertain terms, but Sora couldn't reply to that without lying, as well.
"But how to restore us from Heartless might be one of the things that the Foretellers want us to learn here, by playing Maleficent and us against each other this way.
"It's possible that something, or a number of things, went wrong when Kairi restored you when you were a Heartless, or when she kept you alive when you almost died.
"Even if nothing did, whatever the reason is that Ira tricked us into coming here, I know that I can speak for what all of us know when I say that Luxu was waiting for Jiminy to die to pit us against Maleficent this directly, so whatever the reasons are that they want us to take each other on this way, it's the first set of news that the Foretellers consider bad news," Riku went on.
"Are the four of you up to confronting it at this time, whatever it is?"
At that reminder, Sora gripped Kairi's and Goofy's hands more tightly and securely and protectively before they could do so first to his, and then he waited briefly until they'd returned the gesture.
He drew in air in a slow, steadying deep breath.
Then he took another stabilizing, gradual deep breath.
And then he took another, and another, and another after that, and still another, and he continued to do so until there were no more tears in his eyes.
Everything had gone wrong since he'd felt Roxas' hurt in the Sleeping World That Never Was; but Christopher was at least correct about one thing, and Riku had been partially right himself when he'd accused Sora of just running around swinging his flashy Keyblade during their first adventure.
Sora hadn't once seen hurt and torment as fun, but, due to his optimism and trust in the light, he had optimistically and idealistically been treating hurt and hardship partially as a thrilling game.
He knew better now.
Jiminy's irreversible death had driven how remorseless existence and reality were home beyond all conceivable or perceptible refutation.
Sora could carry Kairi's, Riku's, Donald's, and Goofy's hurt and pain this time.
Therefore, he would.
If he didn't, Jiminy's death would be inexpressibly immeasurably more pointless and meaningless than it already had been.
Whether or not Kairi, Riku, Donald, and Goofy needed to face here, this time he was successfully carrying their pain in their place.
Kairi's visage became set, determined, and resolved, as did Goofy's and Donald's.
"I'm up to it without a second feeling or thought," Sora said.
"Ditto'," Goofy put it.
"I feel the same," Kairi spoke.
"Three is company, and four's more, not moping," Donald interjected.
Sora grinned, and he felt even lighter that it was genuine as well.
Kairi reached up with her free hand and ruffled Sora's hair playfully, and Sora's mouth opened.
Tears pushed forwards into his eyes once again, but this time he didn't care.
Kairi was showing happiness once again, and it didn't appear to be a forced act.
"I don't know," Kairi grinned, and Sora's legs and knees almost gave out once again at the sight of Kairi smiling a true smile for the first time since he'd seen her once more around five days ago.
Whatever she'd been through on Olympus, she was partially, if not mostly, herself again, even with all of the horrific torture that he'd put her through since he'd brought her with him to the Keyblade Graveyard.
She wasn't the hollow, dispirited husk of the girl who he'd known and loved for most of his life, who she'd been when they'd reunited after she'd shone his way home for the fourth time.
Sora would need to thank Hercules, and whichever of his students had done this for Kairi, for this, as fervently and vehemently as he could, as soon as he saw them once again.
Sora forced himself not to worry too much about how Riku might not be feeling any better himself, afraid that if he let any of this show, he'd dampen Kairi's spirits once again.
"Sora's a mop head whether he's moping or not, wouldn't you agree?" Kairi questioned.
Riku grinned himself, but Sora was too relieved and overjoyed for Kairi to feel any disappointment that, as sincere and warm as it was, it wasn't as heartfelt as Donald's and Goofy's and Anna's were.
"I believe the term is half liter that needs to be mopped up, not mop head or half pint."
Sora didn't know whether it was his relief and happiness for Kairi, his farcical love for all four of them, or whether he was just selfishly absolutely, fully, totally, wholly, utterly relieved that he could joke with Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy all at once at the same time for the first time, but he couldn't see through his tears.
He'd just established a romantic love relationship with Kairi five days ago, but he knew her well enough to anticipate what she was going to do next before she could catch him off guard, disrupt how he was partially breathing through his mouth as it was still open, and thus cause him to struggle for air.
He closed his mouth before he felt her lips on his.
He returned the kiss briefly, and then he pulled his mouth back from hers.
He lowered his head and lightly flicked her nose with the front of his hair.
"You're as predictable as Donald and Goofy," Sora grinned, and further light relief filled him that this smile was as genuine as the others had been.
Fabricated love and home or not, maybe he could fulfill Kairi's and Riku's and Donald's and Goofy's dreams.
That meant that he needed to stop worrying about whether or not he could, and believe that Kairi and his friends had given him the power to do so with all his heart.
The total emptiness where Jiminy had once rested in his heart caused Sora's heart to ache with agony.
Jiminy should have been with them, and sharing this with them, and part of this, and Sora should have been able to fulfill his dreams as well.
But if Sora paid too much attention to that, he wouldn't be able to fulfill Kairi's and Riku's and Donald's and Goofy's dreams.
Jiminy was still a part of this as long as Sora kept him in his heart and dreams and didn't forget him, so if there was an afterlife, wherever he was, Sora could still fulfill his dreams in a sense.
Sora would believe in Kairi's and his friends' beliefs that an afterlife might be real, and that Jiminy was still connected to this and sharing this time with them.
Sora turned to look at Donald and Riku and grinned.
"Kairi's predictability being what it might, it looks like the three of us liters-and-a-half have you two half-pints out drenched.
"But moping hair, feathers, and fur can clean up any amount of liters of water.
"What do you say that we remind Kairi and Riku of that?"
Riku crossed his arms challengingly.
"Do your worst," he responded.
"Or, should I say, fail your best."
"Go ahead and bring it," Kairi challenged herself.
"As you demand, My Lady," Donald said, and he raised Save the Queen Plus, though they all knew that he wasn't going to cast anything at Riku or Kairi.
"I'd rethink that," Riku said easily.
"As Kairi's Dream Eater guardian, it's my sworn duty to consume all darkness headed their way, turn it into light, and hand it to her as an armor coating of liters, not pints."
"And, as a Princess of Heart and a New Seven Heart, it's my sworn duty to receive your darkness, and transform it into revitalizing liters that will keep Riku on his feet," Kairi contributed.
Sora started violently at the knowledge of what Kairi was fighting for now, and he squeezed Kairi's hand with loving, warm approval at what she was now living for.
Kairi squeezed it back in thanks.
Riku turned and raised his chin to Sora, and Kairi smirked at Sora.
"Then we'll both send those liters back at the three of you pints-and-a-half until you're soaked to the bone, and your mop feathers, fur, and hair are giving every single one of you really good reasons to mope," Riku shot back.
Maybe the dream was wrong.
Riku wasn't as directly heartfelt as Donald and Goofy and Anna, but Sora hadn't had this much fun since he'd piloted the hovering bike at the true The World That Never Was against the draconian remains of World of Order Xemnas at Riku's side.
Then why did he feel a little disappointed that Kairi's grin and the light in her eyes weren't as fervent as Anna's?
"We carry people's hurt for a living," Sora replied.
"No matter how badly you plaster our fur, hair, and feathers to us, you'll discover that we don't even have a word for 'excess baggage' in the dictionary."
"Then Riku and I will just blot that dictionary out with our liquid," Kairi retorted.
Goofy raised his snout and mouth, and he emitted a melodramatic, mourning canine howl.
"In which case, I'll slurp it up, and you two flapping fishies who are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of your league, and your mucky bog, along with it," Donald rejoined with an exaggerated sneer.
"You might be a Dream Eater, but I don't see Meow Now anywhere in the vicinity to lick up your drivel first."
"Who says that we need him?" Riku shot back, tapping his foot to show that he wasn't impressed with the threat.
"Says the three pints-and-a-half who has the two half-liters outnumbered," Donald answered.
Goofy raised an eyebrow to Sora.
"Who's it going to be?" he questioned.
"Will you side with the two half-pints, or the two half-liters?"
Sora already knew his answer, but he tilted his head to the side and affected a befuddled look as he pretended to consider it.
Then he smiled another open mouthed, closed toothed smile, and it was even more effortless than before.
"How about all of you?"
He extricated his hands from Kairi's and Goofy's.
"Who wants a group hug?" he asked.
"You, too, apparently, as you asked," Goofy replied.
Then Kairi's and Goofy's arms were around him, and their bodies were against his, and Kairi's right cheek and hair was against his right cheek and hair, while Goofy was nuzzling his left cheek.
Sora couldn't understand why, after everything that he'd done, and not done, and said, and not said, for so long, but he couldn't hate himself at all, or feel truly guilty, at the light and warm happiness and security that engulfed him at the shared embrace, even though he knew the comfort and relief and reassurance and happiness was for his own sake as much as for Kairi's and Riku's and Goofy's and Donald's.
Donald ran forward and wrapped his arms around Sora's right leg and pressed his own body against that leg; and Riku, though slightly awkwardly, walked around behind them and slung one arm around Sora's neck and the other around Kairi's.
Then he and Kairi completed the group hug by Riku pressing his own body against Sora's back, and Kairi wrapping her free arm around Riku's back.
Sora brought one arm of his own around Kairi's back, and the other around Goofy's back.
Then he slid his eyes closed, and let himself become immersed in, and revel in, the close and secure shared love and warmth, knowing that all four of them needed him to.
He could barely feel guilty that he wanted to do so for his own sake, this time.
"Are you sure that you're up to this?" Riku questioned.
"Kairi spent weeks in the Secret Forest between the end of the Mark of Mastery Exam and learning that Yen Sid had concealed Aqua's sacrifice from me, but for you it's been almost nonstop heartache since you learned how much Roxas and the others had suffered in the Sleeping World That Never Was.
"And, even compared to what you've grappled with since then, this is most likely going to be bad.
"You believed that you were ready to face hurt when you took the Mark of Mastery Exam, and the pain of others has been increasingly crippling you since then.
"How can you be sure that you'll be able to carry this?"
"Because this time, I have all four of you with me, and we're fulfilling our dreams of journeying and adventuring all together after years of waiting to do this," Sora answered.
"No one and nothing are getting to me too much this time.
"I'll save any new tears for after we've finished this quest."
Sora suppressed the urge to cringe at the concept of Kairi believing that she'd have any reason to cry any more.
"It's the four of you that I'm worried about."
"I'm feeling better," Kairi said with soothing reassurance. "Platina provided me with the newsflash that I needed.
"And, during the later confrontation, I was about to intentionally protect someone, so I have my confidence back.
"I'll be fine.
"You can trust in me, as I do the four of you.
"However much what's waiting for us here hurts, I can take it this time."
Sora wanted to argue, but if he did, he wouldn't believe in Kairi.
That was something that he'd never be able to do, so he needed to let that reassure him.
"You're the one who we're worried about, Riku," Kairi said what they all knew.
"We know what the Foretellers want with Sora and I, and Jiminy's death was almost certainly meant to try to sow doubts in Donald's and Goofy's hearts as much as further doubts in Sora's, but we still don't have any idea how they want to try to turn you against us, and yourself."
"Then let's figure that out now," Goofy said.
"Outside of what we already know about your weaknesses, past and present, what other flaws do you have, and what other mistakes have you made, that the Foretellers might want to bring up to cause you to lose confidence in yourself?"
"Sora becoming a Heartless is a good place to start," Riku answered, his voice neutral.
Sora felt Kairi shift to pull Riku closer and tighter.
"I've assumed all this time that I pulled back from the horizon of becoming a Heartless once I passed through the Door to Darkness.
"But, even with all of the evidence to the contrary, particularly that one of the first two Organization Thirteens would have scooped him up if I'd formed a Nobody, we don't know that for certain.
"Maybe I did become a Heartless, and then I changed myself back, and I abandoned my Nobody for all this time."
A violent chill shrieked and screamed up Sora's spine as another possibility occurred to him.
Whether he was a regular person or not didn't matter as long as he had a heart, but that didn't mean, if this was true, that he wasn't a potential danger to Kairi, Riku, Donald, Goofy, Anna, and his other loved ones and friends in ways that he hadn't yet been aware of.
"Or maybe Kairi didn't give me a new human body.
"Maybe my current form is that of a Heartless who wields the light."
Kairi pulled him closer, and tighter, to her as well.
"We might at least be able to figure out if I gave Sora a new body, or whether he's still a Heartless, before the Foretellers can throw that in our faces in a cruel way," Kairi said.
"Should we risk taking the time to try to find this out?"
"I'd prefer that we save that for later," Sora said.
"That might take too long to figure out, and Jessie and the people of this world, and perhaps Lotso, need us sooner, as opposed to later.
"And if Luxu wants us to learn this by adventuring here, we'll find out the hard way anyway by engaging Maleficent and her other dark seekers.
"We've come this far without whatever my form is hurting anyone, and even when I get stuck in a dark Formchange, the dark emotions were never so bad that I've been worried about letting them rule me a single time, so I haven't even needed to accept them.
"If the Foretellers hurt any of you, or me, enough that I feel like letting them rule me, I'll just accept them as Riku and you have, and that will be the end of that."
"Maybe warning you about a couple of things; that a Foreteller who we ran into on Olympus, and another of Hercules' students, Platina's younger sister, Alicia, told me ahead of time; will keep you from believing that you need to make the choice to wield darkness to that degree," Kairi said.
Sora pushed his emotions away.
Kairi's arms and hold became more protective and reassuring.
"You're really not going to like these ones, so just remember that Riku and Donald and Goofy and Anna and I still love you and forgive you, and that won't stop forever, and that Jiminy felt the same way, and still does, wherever he is."
"Can you please just tell me?" Sora asked.
"Okay, but I'm very sorry about what I need to say," Kairi said.
"First, the one that Invi says that you've already picked up on, but that you're denying to yourself.
"And before you ask, I've come to terms with this, as well.
"Mickey said in his letter that we are who you are because of other people, and what they did in the past to enable us to become who we became, but Platina taught me that our own feelings and memories and thoughts and dreams played as much a part of that as anything else.
"We're not just the result of the Foretellers toying with our fates and hearts since Terra gave Riku the Keyblade and we met.
"We're the results of who we wanted to be, and used to be, and wanted to be, and can be, as well.
"Do you see my point?"
Sora wanted to argue that, while he did see her point, that didn't change how many people had died, or been hurt, to enable him to become what he was.
But Kairi didn't need to be reminded of that when she was carrying that guilt and pain now.
"Yes, I do," Sora said.
He felt Kairi sigh with relief against him.
"But what does Invi believe that I'm missing?
"Luxu didn't hide anything about how many of the people who I'm c–"
Even the lack of Jiminy couldn't keep the emptiness absent of even a lack away now.
New hot, broken, ruined, hopeless tears flooded his eyes behind his closed eyelids.
Warm, soothing lips pressed against one closed eyelid, then the other, and four sets of arms tightened and became closer and more secure around him.
"It's not just the people close to the two of you," Riku spoke, voice filled with controlled fury.
"Sora is overlooking, and you at first did, the issue of how everyone who has suffered and died since Yozora set his plans for Synchronicity Perceptual into motion, even during the First Keyblade War and the loss of the first realm of light, suffered and died for all these centuries to bring us to this point."
"But I'm still me, and I have things that no one else does, because you love me, Kairi, and the other five of you are my friends," Sora said, and he pushed the lacuna of even nothing away, leaving behind just complete emptiness once more.
"I can live with that, without feeling inclined to let the darkness rule me."
He could, and he would, but did he have the justification to?
He'd let the darkness rule innumerable people and hearts all throughout the cosmos for untold millennia even before his inception.
But Sora pushed back further tears nonetheless.
As he'd said, he'd save the tears for later.
"What's the other thing?"
"Alicia has a limited ability to see the future, and she told Hades that if you'd avenged William's death by killing Davy Jones, this would have distracted Maleficent from her search for the Note Blade enough that she'd have interfered with the first battle with Terra-Xehanort.
"And that this would have changed it enough that, though Aqua would have died then killing Terra-Xehanort and I'd still have forged the Demon Tide and the Lich and you'd still have needed to abuse the power of waking to revive Aqua and the rest of us and I; even including Roxas and Xion and Terra and Yen Sid as different flashpoints led up to the Second Keyblade War and the Second Keyblade War itself was waged and escalated differently"
Sora cringed violently, and he couldn't justify not letting a number of other tears through
"that the tensions rose and the war was waged differently would have taught Dad who I was, and he'd have died sacrificing himself, his heart and the rest of himself, fighting with the Kye-Blade to free me from the Demon Tide, then controlling me as Dad's Heartless had Riku."
Everything and nothing and all and anything was as gone as Jiminy, while something vital that Sora knew had used to comprise him gave out and vanished beyond and past any possible restoration.
Sora was just aware of Riku going stiff at the furthest margins of his awareness.
He might have been able to give Kairi back her dad, as well as four brothers or uncles, if he had given into the darkness, just once?
Then what had he been fighting so hard and so long for, for all of this time?
He wasn't sure whether he was imagining or feeling Kairi's lips against one eyelid, and then the other, this time, or four sets of arms close further around him, but they were jagged knifing lances of discordant cacophonous tumultuous savage vicious coiling contorted serrated daggers now rather than warm or soothing or secure.
The tears refused to even come now.
"Even if it helps someone, it's still darkness," Riku's voice
was it Riku's voice?
Because Sora could never have known a Riku, or a Kairi, or had a lover, or a best friend.
Or any best friends, or friends, or family, at all whatsoever in any fashion, shape, form, or way
sounded somewhere unendingly distant and distorted and belonging to someone else who Sora had also never known.
"Don't forget what I did, and Terra did."
But that he could have given Kairi her dad back, and one or two or three or four brothers or uncles, if he'd given into the darkness and taken revenge, didn't mean that he couldn't at least give Kairi one brother or uncle, and if he let this get to him now he'd deny Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy the chance to take hold of one of their most precious dreams.
So Sora pushed even this away as far as he could justify doing so in order to be able to carry it, and the full absence disappeared.
To Sora's utter and complete shock, even now the lightness and vitality and warmth and eager and excited happiness returned.
But the word love didn't not just exist in any dictionary that he'd read, looked at, or that he was aware of, or in his vocabulary, his Station of Awakening and mind couldn't even comprehend the concept at all.
So how could he still feel this way?
But as long as Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy and his other friends, and other people, needed him, whatever the answer to that question was, it didn't matter to any degree.
"I know," Sora said, and at the further shock that he didn't sound as dead as part, or perhaps all, of him had now died along with Xehanort in the true past and the other past, his ability not to worry about whether or not he could enable Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy to take hold of their shared dreams with him faded once again.
He wished that he could tell Kairi that Young Xehanort might be alive, but if he did that and he was wrong, he'd raise her hopes for nothing.
He also knew better than to tell Kairi that Xehanort might have known who she was since long before either variation of the Second Keyblade War and the rising tensions leading up to it, and that it might not have been learning who she was, but seeing firsthand what his sins had done to Kairi, that had shone his way back home to her.
"That's me, then.
"What other weaknesses can we think of that you have that the Foretellers can attempt to exploit?"
Riku considered for a number of seconds.
"The Lich went after my heart first," he finally said.
"That might just be due to my connection to you and Kairi, or because I put up the greatest fight against the Demon Tide, but it also went after Lea's last. Lea also has the strongest other connection to Kairi with the exception of you and I, both Lea and I also have the strongest ties to the Dream Eaters that Demon Tides are among, and the Sleeping Worlds.
"We also have the strongest ties to Namine, Xion, Riku Replica, and Roxas with the exception of anyone but Kairi and you yourself.
"How much of a fight I put up, or my connection to you and Kairi, might not be the only reason that it went after me first.
"For all I know, I even became a Heartless then, or I'm the one who has been a Heartless for all of this time, since Xehanort's Heartless took my body, or since the Demon Tide seized me.
"Thinking about it more, if either of the two of us is a Heartless with a human form, it's actually more likely that it's me, and not you.
"Kairi is a Princess of Heart, and her pure light could have given you a new body with little to no problems.
"I was an entity of nothing but a heart until Xehanort's Heartless' Kingdom Hearts forced him back into the reaches of my mind, and let me return to it, and I did briefly become darkness itself."
Sora felt Kairi's arms become closer and more protective and tighter still around him, and shift to do the same to Riku, as the blood drained from his face.
Why hadn't he realized this before?
But now was no more the time for terror than it was for any other reason.
Particularly if this was right, and unlike with what Kairi had done to him, it very well might be.
To Sora's knowledge, if your heart separated from your body, unless it almost died in the process or you were almost dead when a Heartless took it, you became a Heartless.
And, though, if Riku had been a Heartless for all this time, that he had lived as a being of just a heart for long enough that the Nobody who Xehanort's Heartless had possessed would have had all of his memories, it still would have had as separate an identity from his Heartless as Xemnas had had from Ansem.
And Riku's heart self and his body still hadn't been annihilated, so neither his Nobody or his Heartless had been recompleted.
Was the Riku who Sora had known since he'd defeated Xehanort's Heartless for the first time Riku's Heartless or Nobody, or a reintegrated Riku with the identities and memories of both who had been all but recompleted, but who was still just the heart of a Heartless in a Nobody's body?
And, if so, what did this mean that the past and present Riku Replicas were?
They couldn't wait any longer.
They needed to confront Maleficent and Summation Organization Thirteen as soon as possible, so they could research this as soon as they could.
Or, though Sora would prefer that this didn't inform Kairi or Riku or Donald or Goofy or Anna or any of the rest of them of anything, and they couldn't trust anything that Luxu and Ira and the other Foretellers, and Maleficent and Pete and Christopher and Hans and the other members of Summation Organization Thirteen told them; they could at least perhaps gain clues to the answers to these riddles from what Maleficent and the Summation Organization Thirteen, and any Foretellers who involved themselves what was happening here, did and didn't say and do.
With any luck, if Young Xehanort was alive, he would involve himself in a major confrontation like this himself; or at least spy on it and enable one or more of them to perceive that he was.
Sora couldn't ask Riku to watch for Young Xehanort with his scent, however, without risking Kairi false hope, so he was the only one who could stay alert for Young Xehanort spying on them if he didn't choose to become directly involved.
If the other guardians hadn't defeated, and just driven off Data-Kairi, or fought her to a draw and she'd retreated, she might involve herself in this, too.
Perhaps she knew about Young Xehanort, or who and what Riku and Sora were, and could give them clues through what she said and did, and didn't say and hadn't done.
Sora wished that he could believe that what Data-Kairi had revealed about his first visit to Castle Oblivion was a lie, but how Riku and the others had reacted after what Data-Kairi had said confirmed that it was no lie.
It was all true.
Sora had abandoned and betrayed Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy, and left Riku to struggle and suffer alone.
He was never going to leave Kairi or Riku or Donald or Goofy to be tortured again!
Even though you just let Jiminy die, and you just abandoned and betrayed Anna to try to protect Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy?
Sora pushed the feelings and thoughts away, and he removed his hands and arms from Kairi and Goofy to let them know that he wanted to end the group hug.
Kairi pressed one last warm kiss against his forehead, and then she was the first to do so.
Donald was the next person who did, and then Goofy, and then Riku.
Sora reached to clasp one of Riku's hands, and squeezed it with tight and protectively secure warmth and reassurance of his own.
"We'll learn what happened," he said.
"We'll fix Maleficent's short memory pointedly enough that this time, she won't forget where searching for darkness takes you, and then we'll learn what you did to yourself before the Foretellers can exploit that, at all or too much."
"It's not that big of a deal," Riku said.
"I can just recomplete myself, and then Even can forge new replicas if my Heartless and Nobody have separate selves.
"If you're still a Heartless, we can just send your own heart into a replica body, until we figure out how to finish recompleting you.
"The form isn't important.
"What's important is what resides in our hearts."
But Sora knew that that Riku was just putting on a false front.
If he was a Nobody or a Heartless, he'd been seal his other self in the same imprisoned slumber that Sora had trapped Roxas, Xion, and Ven in.
If he was an integration of both, as his Heartless had been as aware as his Nobody, as soon as he recompleted himself, he'd lock both his Heartless and his Nobody sealed away and asleep.
"What about Sora's Heartless?" Goofy questioned.
Sora pushed away a new all engulfing surge of self hatred, terror, and guilt at what that meant, and he held out one hand to ask Kairi and Goofy not to slow them down by touching him again.
"As Sora himself told Kairi, he did almost forget who he was when he became a Heartless, so that means that, because Sora didn't know that he'd become a Heartless, Ansem the Wise was wrong about how Sora retained his memory.
"But there's no guarantee that, by choosing to separate his heart from his body, Sora's Heartless doesn't have a separate identity.
"Vanitas was inside Riku, and we realized that there might be a place in the genesis of Synchronicity Perceptual for five hearts connected to Sora's.
"The fifth heart might not be Vanitas, but Sora's Heartless.
"Another possibility is that, through his bond with Ven, Sora's Heartless was sent inside Vanitas' heart, or your heart, Riku, when Kairi gave Sora his new body."
"Then we need to stop wondering about this and give ourselves time to find out," Sora said.
He held out his hand, and summoned Childhood's Laughter in circles of purple and light brown.
"Thinking about our scrap with the big Demon Tide and the Lich, there's one last thing that I can think of that we need to be prepared for finding out the hard way, or at least learning clues about," Donald said.
"Young Xehanort told you, Sora, that Liches try to take hearts into the most profound depths of the darkness.
"We still haven't figured out what this means yet."
Sora kept self hatred, terror, and guilt from even rising this time.
"Then let's see that we do learn this."
"There's another issue that we haven't considered," Goofy said.
"Maleficent knows about the Note Blade.
"If she knows this, it's possible that she and Summation Organization Thirteen have gotten their hands on one or more trustworthy, or partially trustworthy, Reports, or Secret Reports; from the Foretellers, Ava, Luxu, one of Yozora's selves, or even the original complete Yozora himself."
Agony lanced through Sora as though it was an all swallowing white hot molten spear, and he let a number of last tears into his eyes.
If Yozora, or any of the Foretellers, had written any Reports or Secret Reports; or even just Diary Reports, or Diary Secret Reports, or Letters; Jiminy should have been with them to keep track of them.
But this wasn't the time to dwell on the past.
He wasn't the heartbroken Sora that he'd been since the Sleeping World That Never Was right now.
One last time, he was going to be the Sora whose faith in laughter and smiles couldn't be stifled by anyone or anything.
It was now time for Sora to make Kairi's, Riku's, Donald's, Goofy's, Jiminy's, wherever he was, and his shared dreams come true.
"We know what to do about relieving writings like that from the clutches of dark dolts," Sora said.
He clasped the handle of Childhood's Laughter and twirled it through a seamlessly fluid multifaceted sequence of clockwise and counterclockwise whirls and spins while continually shifting the directions that it was twirling in, and he ended it by arcing Childhood's Laughter into a flourishing raised diagonal upwards thrust.
Then Sora ran towards the opening out of the cavern, and into the cave past it.
"So let's pancake another group of heartful phonies!
"Let's sally forth, Keyblade Hero Six!
"May our wands and shields never be snapped!
"May our keys never be tarnished!
"Mosey does it!"
.
"Ah… now then. What brings you to my inner sanctum? Have you come to beg for mercy? Or perhaps to halt my glorious plans? Oh, but then, it really doesn't matter. You haven't the slightest chance of stopping me now. My new age of supreme darkness has begun. Watch now as I mold this world to my taste."-Zophar 'Omni-Zophar'
LUNAR 2: ETERNAL BLUE: COMPLETE