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CHAPTER 61:
OTHER WRECKAGE
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Author's Notes: The pieces for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'Banquet Of Transmigration,' from the VAGRANT STORY Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and afterward, 'Dismiss,' from the KINGDOM HEARTS: BIRTH BY SLEEP AND THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-EIGHT DAYS OVER TWO Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and after this 'Roxas,' from the KINGDOM HEARTS II Original Soundtrack, Disc One. Both pieces of music can be found on Zophar's Domain.
"Now, Sora! Let's clos"
Sora pushed every remaining trace of sentiment, and remembrance, besides how much he needed to protect Tidus, Roxas, Elsa, and Xion to the side of his heart's perspective, both to keep the Kye-Blade from going haywire, and to keep his terror and worry from affecting him, as he aimed the Kye-Blade at the frosty sculpture that was now Elsa.
A thin white beam emanated from the tip of the Kye-Blade, similar to the one he'd used to pull Riku and the others out of whatever unusual plane Xehanort's Keyblade Armor replicas had cast them into, shooting forward to strike Elsa.
Then he was standing on a clear platform of interlinked polygons he'd seen solely in memory, with Roxas, Elsa, and Xion in front of him.
"Take care of the others!" Sora shouted to Xion.
"I'll take on Maleficent, and the others!"
"Got it!" Xion cried.
Sora let lightness rush through him at the certain confidence back in Xion's tones.
But that was all the attention he could afford to spare it.
"You must see to the tasks before you first."
"The tasks before me? There's so many."
"All the more reason for you to make an effort."
What Faerie would think of him now, whether or not she remembered who she was, was also beside the point.
He traced his connections once more, perceived the ties weaving Maleficent to this transparent platform above the memory, or perhaps even datascape, or even Sleeping, station plaza in front of the Twilight Town clock tower, and he then aimed the Kye-Blade at that location.
An ellipse of shifting blacks manifested, but on the other side of him from Elsa and Xion, still encased in her World of Glass shell.
Why isn't Elsa thawin
Sora pushed it away.
Maleficent appeared, with Tidus in her arms, his eyes open but he was either unaware, or he didn't care what was going on in his vicinity because of the situation Xion was in, even if she'd, at least in part, pulled herself back together.
Roxas didn't react at all.
Xion started violently.
Sora became lighter at the knowledge the terrified worry passing through him stayed outside the walls he'd erected around himself.
"It would not behoove me for you to open that path," Maleficent commented, nothing more than mild annoyance in her own voice.
Sora didn't spend any time.
He leapt into the air once, and then a second time in a Doubleflight, as he traced his connections to Tidus.
Almost before he was done, he was swooping down into a Glide directly at Maleficent with the tip of the Kye-Blade directed at Tidus, Childhood's Laughter up in a block.
Green fire washed outwards as Maleficent's stave manifested in front of her, but Sora merely established the silhouette of a large gleaming light yellowish gold keyhole, a small amount larger than an average sized adult human, in front of him, while he constructed its twin precisely between the inside of Maleficent's hands and Tidus' body as a second shell.
At the same time, the whirling energies of a Magnega swelled above Childhood's Laughter.
Tidus' body flew right through the passageway, and Sora harnessed the connections of the Kye-Blade to send it arcing around the back of the Magnega, and towards Xion.
Xion, both her hands now empty of Keyblades, caught Tidus.
This time, World of Glass itself moved, spinning to face Maleficent even as Xion's human body dropped to its knees, with her back facing Maleficent, and held Tidus securely close while curling herself over him, and it crossed both of its massive swords in a defensive position.
"Let me try to lock the postern Doors with the Keyblade of Hearts myself first!" Xion shouted, terrified worry of her own in her voice intermingled with the most determination Sora had heard in it since she'd told him she could feel that Kairi wasn't totally dead.
"You beat Maleficent!"
Sora didn't waste any time wondering why, yet still, it was as effortless to give her the same grin he had when she'd told him Kairi was still alive as it had been then.
Sora spared no time to worry about how Maleficent had improved her talents on par with Elsa's, or whether he could even defeat her in her ordinary form when even drawing as much power as he had from the Kye-Blade as briefly as he had to defeat Yozora's Nobody was most likely too dangerous in Maleficent's presence until all the postern Doors to Darkness were shut and locked.
He raced in an arc around Xion with the Kye-Blade in a defensive position, as it had the largest reach in terms of both length and width to intercept strikes aimed at Tidus, Elsa, and Xion; and Childhood's Laughter in a striking one.
Maleficent's stave tilted upwards so the green top was aimed at him, and then shot directly toward him with swiftness that surmounted even what Sora had worried he'd need to react to.
Sora had been well practiced in adapting to a greater danger than he'd believed they'd need to even before Terra-Xehanort and the mammoth Demon Tide had redefined for him what that concept meant.
But he needed to end this as quickly as possible.
So, rather than evade or intercept the strike, or potential feint, Sora called out a precise Magnega play of energies right in front of him to yank the stave to a standstill even as he leapt, the magenta of a Flowmotion corona encasing him.
Sora whirled once around the rod as fast as he could exert himself and launched at Maleficent in a corkscrew.
However, she extended her hand below his strike, and green flames washed into the air once more with timing Sora recognized would bring her rod back to her at a precise enough position it would ram into his ribs, and if she cast a spell, very likely break them.
Sora sent Childhood's Laughter away in coils as he segued out of the Flowmotion and somersaulted forward to reach into his own connections.
Good.
Whether it was the Kye-Blade, or the small amount of refreshers with combat he'd gained since he'd returned from The Final World, or wherever he'd genuinely been, he could call upon Ars Arcanum, and to its total capacity.
And, even though he hadn't regained the power of waking, and he could still sense the lack of a sizeable amount of the vitality he'd gained both times he'd failed the Mark of Mastery Exam, he didn't need Roxas to be part of him to accelerate to at least the same kind of rapidity he'd reached to defeat Xemnas when he'd merged with what was left of his Kingdom Hearts.
Sora knew he couldn't connect with his strike before Maleficent's impacted, whatever it was, without opening himself to the Kye-Blade enough it might bring out Kingdom Hearts and corrupt it, but what he could utilize should be enough.
In whirling spirals, Childhood's Laughter reappeared right above Sora's feet as he suspended it in place with another precise Magnega energy array above him.
He then somersaulted forwards while bending his knees to add acceleration and purchase, and then he leapt down at the top of Maleficent's rod to launch into a focused Ars Arcanum thicket of strikes without the kinds of overextensions or energy coronas he'd utilized in his earliest version at Maleficent's stave.
As Sora leapt into the Finis, he registered Maleficent was completing saying, "Black Fang."
A single onyx spire, slightly thinner than the crimson shards that fountained out of Terra-Xehanort's strikes, shifting slightly with pools of rippling blacks that were somehow darker than the rest of the onyx, thrust up at Sora, and passed through the Kye-Blade as though it wasn't there at all.
The second it touched the Kye-Blade, every solitary droplet of vigor inside Sora was no longer present as his awareness swam, and his insides seized up so violently he was almost certain he would have retched if his body had retained the power to do so.
He fell onto the protrusion, which remained in place, and moving his lungs themselves to breathe hurt so much Sora's chest seized, and attempted to hack, but he couldn't even do that.
He could barely even force his lungs to move in gasps, and each breath sent agony searing through him everywhere.
Sora could barely justify keeping the terror away.
Even the two variations of Heartless Angel, Sin Harvest and Descend Heartless Angel, hadn't fatigued him this much, this quickly.
And the cantrips hadn't lasted.
Roxas shifted to move.
Maleficent uttered, in a tone of voice that was no different from ordinary speech, "Biting Cold."
Icy light blue coiled down around Roxas in a reverse turn from how the light of Sin Harvest had revolved about Sora, but rather than a halo appearing above his head, it merely constricted around him to become a transparent second encasing skin of a frozen prism with blade edged jagged insides that carved into Roxas from all directions.
Xion shifted slightly, over Tidus.
Her second body didn't move at all, though.
The ice evaporated around Roxas, leaving him staggering, but by now the top of Maleficent's stave was pointed at him, with a calmly and vengefully triumphant smirk on her face that told Sora, each gasp still almost hacking agony, she saw this as well merited payback for something.
Maleficent announced one simple thing, in an ordinarily unperturbed voice.
"Tidal Wave of Verus Night."
Vanellope swung her fabricated Bad Guy Breaker at Vanitas while she was still in the air, as she began descending from her jump toward him.
Kairi shouldn't even feel guilty at how much she understood how Vanellope was feeling.
With nothing on his face betraying why he wasn't willing to just let himself be sent out of this world, Vanitas merely lifted one arm and braced his feet.
The strike connected, and Kairi saw Vanitas' face shift slightly enough she could tell the impact had possessed the kinetic, or ethereal, force of something that could genuinely hurt him, if just a small amount.
That meant Vanellope must be boosting her athleticism, perhaps even with darkness.
Kairi shouldn't be feeling even more guilty at that recognition.
Namine inhaled with sharp terrified horror.
"I saw his expressions, and his body language, when I reached him with my kart!" Vanellope's voice was almost a despairing keening wail, and the tears streaming down her face were desperate.
"He ran his fastest, and he tried his hardest, and he couldn't reach Ralph!
"And I didn't understand what his words and actions meant, when Ralph almost died a death as gruesome and agonizing as melting in the equivalent of lava!
"I tried to bail them both out; but it appears Ralph was the only one I saved, and maybe not wholly him; and it's all due to the improvements you gave the Cy-Bugs and Turbo!"
"You have it backwards!" Ralph cried, horror of his own still in his voice, for additional reasons of his own.
"I'm being the putrid brain friend, the same as when I almost let Turbo con me with the medal!
"And I'm the one responsible for my own brick headed choices now as much as the last time, not you!
"I eavesdropped on your conversation with Shank about staying in Slaughter Race when I should have minded my own business, so I didn't want to lose you; you're still the best friend I could think of having!
"I'm sorry!
"There's no one I'd rather you be than you!"
Vanellope's face morphed through more expressions, intermingled rage at herself and Vanitas and Ralph and whoever Turbo was and understanding empathetic sympathy among them, and her Blox blade, and the Blox surrounding them, flickered in and out of sight at altering rapidity as more sheets of crimson light purple and gray spasmed in static intermittently over all of the Blox.
Then, however, she squeezed her eyes shut incredibly tightly.
The rate at which the Blox vanished and reappeared, and sheeted with static, increased so fast it was now too hard to tell the difference between the alternating colors and whether Kairi was looking at Blox, or their surroundings.
"How does that make any other point but the one I'm already saying!?"
She opened her eyes, and there was nothing but tear filled hate in the gaze she fixed on Vanitas.
"You caused the Darkling glitches.
"That's what led to everything going wrong.
"I wasn't able to keep Ralph and Empyreal safe because I was such a clueless dunderhead I asked Empyreal for assistance in making it to the race track when your glitches worsened mine, and kept sending me back from where I was walking.
"I should have met Ralph and Empyreal later by finding a way to the racetrack myself, and then challenged who I believed was King Candy to eat my kart dust to his face in the forthcoming race right in front of his adoring groupies.
"That's all it would have taken.
"If I'd worded it well enough, there's no way he could have backed out of it without losing the thunder he'd striven so long and hard to hold onto.
"Then neither of them would have been dragged into my own mess, and I'd have been in a much better position to befriend them, and be the one to do nothing but back them up."
"You need ta' meet Data-Sora, or we need to tell you about that traipse," Goofy interjected.
"Friends are for gettin' dragged into each other's messes."
"I can just play the records of that conversation from my memory," Mare put in.
"I'll add a sea salt ice cream of friends leaning on each other for the cake of your own, while I'm at it."
She opened her mouth, but when her voice emitted, the words wasn't hers, but Donald's.
"Do you have any idea how worried I was?"
Kairi was surprised to discover it genuinely hurt to hear voices from a conversation during an adventure another Sora had had, without the pain muted at all.
A Sora whose sole Data-Kairi friend had been one of his worst enemies.
A Data-Riku's, as well.
Mare's voice was now Goofy's.
"Sorry, Donald."
"Me too. I dragged you guys into a real mess, and I hardly even know you."
Wet heat was actually pushing against the backs of Kairi's eyes at the voice of the other Sora.
She hadn't even known about what that Sora had gone through until it was too late to protect him.
Or Data-Riku, who had literally been weighted down by the entire journal.
Even after she'd at last gone to their side, well over a year too late, she'd then sat back and laughed the days off while another Sora and Riku all but relived their first two nightmares, and all Kairi had done for the two data versions of the two people she should have kept the safest herself was to deliver their epitaphs to the real ones, and thus desecrate their legacies.
While Mickey had striven to atone for his own failings by making his best effort to be at both their sides the whole time.
And Kairi hadn't given Namine even a gilded cage of a restful home as Sora had Roxas and Xion.
She should have been right there with Data-Sora, when he thanked Namine, so the real one could have heard it.
What had been the point of sending the real Sora and Riku a letter that brought them home, when all she'd done afterwards was desecrate Data-Sora's and Data-Namine's eulogy, and pass on all of Data-Riku begging for assistance to the real Sora and Riku?
Additionally, given the conditions under which Data-Sora's adventure had begun, she could have been fighting at his side during his whole adventure.
And that wouldn't have just kept him safe, and put Kairi in a position to look out for Namine, and Axel, and Roxas, and Xion, and Mare, and Vanitas, and Aqua, and Ven, and Terra, and the others, better.
Kairi would have gotten a lot more real combat experience.
"Now just wait a second!"
It was Donald's voice once more, and an amount of the pain was gone.
"Huh?"
It rushed at the voice of the Data-Sora, but Kairi kept it from building as much, this time.
"We kinda' like getting dragged into your messes."
"Um… why?"
"It's no fun watching from the other side of the computer screen!"
Kairi couldn't breathe.
The tears were now in eyes that barely registered the contours of the features of Vanellope's face were becoming less stark and hard.
For the first time since she'd learned what she'd done in Radiant Garden, something sick and brokenly despairing with hateful anger was inside her, constricting her insides and lungs.
Something must have passed through her ties to Vanellope as a Princess of Heart, because the Blox now began spinning so quickly they were almost a blur.
Vanitas must have picked up on something, because his eyes became a little wide.
"I know it's risky. But if a friend needs me to be there, I'll be there – to help!"
Vanellope's visage became less drawn, and set.
A sheet of gray static blinked over all the Blox at once, and remained there.
Mare staggered, and she repositioned herself.
Roxas' voice sounded from them as though through loudspeakers.
"Hmm."
Vanitas stiffened a little.
He snorted then, though, as though he'd been getting tired of waiting for whoever the new arrival was to have showed up.
"I guess you've seen through the last illusion. …Me. I'm data, just like the rest. Not even worth the effort, right? No point in destroying what never really existed… Heh."
Mare went entirely and absolutely stiff.
Ralph's mouth fell.
Namine inhaled once more, in anguished guilty pain.
Vanellope's eyes flew wide, and her mouth moved silently.
"You can still be free of the hurt. Just tell yourself you forgot them because they don't really matter. You'll have no one to miss. No cause for loneliness. No hurt to keep eating away at your heart. It's your call, Sora."
Kairi couldn't see through the tears in front of her eyes now.
"What do you care? They're all strangers, and illusions at that. Just empty bits of data. They can't tell what's real. They'll look at this castle and see the world they call home. Anyway, the truth would be wasted on them. They're only there until they're not. See where I'm going with this? You can break the little hearts they don't have, and forget right away. No hurt feelings, no baggage. You don't have a heart. It's one hundred percent guilt-free."
"No."
Vanellope
nother
couldn'tbeKairi
wasaPrincessofHeart
PrincessesofHearthadasmuchpotentialfordarknessaslight
thiswasn'tKairi
thiswasn'tVanellope
thiswasPrincessofHeart
thiswasemptybitofPrincess
"I'm not unfeeling and apathetic!"
"The Keyblades of Darkness."
Vanitas
his voice sounded as though he was suppressing pain from repeated impacts
"Of course.
"Too bad, all parties involved, I don't need datascapes, or darkness, to surf those!"
Sora attempted to move as Maleficent's head altered into that of her night dark dragon's maw, she opened her jaws, and then the space in front of Maleficent bleached into nothing other than pitch entirely total black that moved swiftly in his direction, and that of the people behind him.
World of Glass was in front of it within seconds, its swords crossed defensively before it and its feet braced.
The tsunami of cascading night collided with World of Glass to snap its arms like thin brittle twigs and drive both blades back into the shoulder pauldrons of its armored body, breaking them into shards that flew in all directions while picking up the gigantic body as though it were a thing of sticks itself and throwing it back in Sora's direction, and the wall of black didn't even slow down the most scant amount in the process.
The next second, Xion somersaulted between the wall and Sora to crouch on braced knees while still holding Tidus, dropping the Keyblade of Hearts behind her in an upright position to then wrap her arms around Tidus and pull him as curled close over him as possible while a clear dome of interlinked hexagons appeared between her back and the surface of the Keyblade of Hearts, its diameter large enough to encase Roxas and Elsa inside.
The wall of pure night struck the side of the Keyblade of Hearts and wedged it against the barrier, and Xion's back, sending jagged fissures over it, but Xion clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, and now Sora was struggling to breathe against the waves upon waves of displaced air and ethereal energy he could perceive coruscating outwards from the Keyblade of Hearts.
The barrier shook, but it held.
Roxas' expression at last showed total desperate terror.
Tidus shifted slightly.
Sora's stomach was able to lurch now.
"Not… this time!" Xion's voice was a strained cry of desperately determined exertion through clenched teeth.
"I won't… leave you!
"Any of… you!
"No one else is… going to die… again!
"No one… is leaving anyone… another time!
"I may be an empty puppet, but that just means there's no bounds to the room inside me I have to catch tears, and carry hurt!"
The disembodied voice of woman resembling Maleficent sounded, laughing derisively.
"How many roles do you intend to futilely strive against fulfilling before you accept reality?
"You've just bitten more than you can chew out of the largest poisoned apple of all.
"The dwarves, the pets, the court officials, the Princes… they can defeat the stepmother.
"The actual stepdaughter can never do it herself."
"Jaq and Pascal aren't pets, they're friends," Xion responded, and her voice wasn't a cry this time, but it was no less strained.
"And I'm an imaginary number.
"The first thing I'll ensure Roxas, Axel, and the others never forget is how I go down in history as the first stepdaughter in all the World who becomes a fictional fairy, and who pulls off that win herself!"
"Fairy?" Runeard's voice now guffawed derisively.
"Try 'freak.'
"But by all means, go ahead and do your worst, filth.
"It will save me the trouble, once I've gotten Arendelle back on course.
"But in the event you're under any illusions you'll even have the worth of lacking a place in my Arendelle, before you're the first monster to meet her end, let me make myself wholly clear."
If Runeard's words, and his angrily pompous bald reiteration of his stance on a royal lifestyle, and leadership, were offending whatever morality remained within Maleficent, she spoke no evidence of this.
"I'm not tossing you monsters in the muck because you're not worthy to have a place in the true Arendelle; Luxu and Jafar are still giving the detritus of the realms they believe in better treatment than they deserve by regarding them that way.
"It doesn't matter how, or how much, you live or die by the right of might, as devoted as they are to keeping their dominions populated by nothing but people who merit living in it, no monarch I've heard about, as glorious as he, she, or it wields his, her, or its power, totally sees it as it is.
"But Yozora did, as did those worst detractors of the settlement Lunawreah told you about."
"But among the worst detractors, many of them people who had lost family members or other loved ones or friends during the war, were the detractors who believed that, while seeing themselves as the brightest and most pure lights in Radiant Garden to claim this; because a sizeable minority within the province had participated in the gangsters' confidence schemes, the heart of every single inhabitant of the province was filled with nothing but the deepest darkness. Thusly, for the sake of all of the people of Radiant Garden, they increasingly maintained that every last person there needed to be murdered in the name of peace and justice, so as to ensure no one there attempted to commit further crimes, or perhaps even cause a war to break out."
"The people who we murder and hurt while fighting to cherish and protect our loved ones, friends, other people, the worlds, and the World can no longer be protected and kept safe, and they have no present or future."
"Fighting to love and keep safe brings about just as much death and pain as fighting for any other reason. This is why Mickey and the Disney Kingdom believe in the world order. They could easily solve a lot of problems on other worlds if they sent knights or other military forces there. But if they did, they'd just end up waging war or bringing about harm for the sake of connections, and peace and prosperity. This would result in as many horrific tragedies, and as much torture, as waging war for any other reason."
"I'll give some of my people a place, and the least filthy beasts infesting my Arendelle will have leave to live or die without any allowances from me.
"But for people such as the Northuldrans, or you Nobodies or replicas, you don't even merit being kept from rising up to become my foes, and slaughter if you do; while you're also far more than undeserving of having resources spent on you even if you stay in line.
"You, Roxas, Axel, the Northuldrans.
"Above all, my cesspool of a granddaughter who corrodes everything Arendelle stands for.
"I'll just send out my soldiers to cut you all down in droves until there's no longer anyone around to cause us problems."
Kairi
Riku
Donald
Goofy
Roxas
Anna
keep it away
Sora drowned himself in every memory he could call up of the secure and warm quietly restful safety of Kairi's arms, feeling her lulling heart beat against his as she held him where the pain and terror could never reach him once again.
"I'll begin by defenestrating my granddaughter from the highest window of that landfill she calls a castle of ice after I've broken Anna's corpse into as many fragments as possible, so when Elsa lands from her fall she breaks her body on the shards of her sister's bones, and Elsa's last sight before she dies in total helpless futility is of Anna's dismembered and mutilated corpse and all the odd angles of the pieces of Anna's bones sticking out of it Elsa is about to die by landing on."
Sora removed all memories of Kairi, and the safe security of her close embrace, from his mind, knowing what part of the terror surging through him meant.
Christopher's voice sounded, laughing in unbridled and victorious delight.
"Clasping your trust in love, friendship, bonds, home, dreams, the light, and oaths close, with reverberating hope, and without skepticism, does what, perchance?
"Well, it's okay.
"You don't need to have just questioned what had happened to Ven.
"After all, you don't know how Ven died at Xion's hands.
"And you can't know that by sending that much of his light into Boo's, you just killed her, while you forced Kairi and Riku against their intention to participate in the murder of the innocent, helpless little girl you just committed."
"One…
"Zero.
"Your time has run out.
"And your meaningless existence along with it."
"That won't be necessary, King Runeard.
"I already scryed this from Luxu, and as a Station of Awakening, even he couldn't deceive me with planted information.
"Don't forget what this place is, Runeard, precisely what condition Merlin is in while he's currently attempting to telepathically talk to the other four spirits for directions through the Northuldran forest, and Roxas' current state of mind along with his own ties to Merlin's condition.
Sora was a little lighter at the knowledge Merlin was still okay.
"Elsa has begun thawing, but due to the strain on Ahtohallan and her abilities, how long it took for it to begin should have already told you the curse is unstable.
"And she just heard what you said, while she's already filled with hate and fear for the Foretellers.
"Are you listening to this yourself, Anna?
"Do you want to know why Elsa is the last lost heart Sora is destined to bring home?
"Just keep wishing upon your twinkling star that true love, yours for Elsa, and for everyone else dear to you, could overcome any hardship, and it will show you how to be everything for everyone.
"Luxu will give you this, he's honestly fairly certain the Foretellers really didn't see Goofy's plan coming, and you really have demoralized them by leaving them unsure which remaining prophecies they already haven't begun bringing about are still trustworthy."
Sora felt light enough it took slightly less effort to breathe.
"Their faith has been shaken, along with their ability to corroborate what's been happening since to tell what timeline of fated events history is now onrushing down."
"But remember what happens when you attempt to defy destiny.
"You bring it about.
"Checkmate.
"And check.
"When Elsa needed you the most, in the same way you can't save Kristoff without sacrificing Sora, by saving Sora, as soon as the remaining traces of the curse are catalyzed when the last conditions of the prophecy have fit together, Elsa will now die by freezing back into ice at the hands of her own grandfather, a family member, and one who hates her more than anyone, or anything, else."
"The people who we murder and hurt while fighting to cherish and protect our loved ones, friends, other people, the worlds, and the World can no longer be protected and kept safe, and they have no present or future."
"Clasping your trust in love, friendship, bonds, home, dreams, the light, and oaths close, with reverberating hope, and without skepticism, does what, perchance?
"Zero.
"Your time has run out.
"And your meaningless existence along with it."
nononononononono
nonowaynono
there was no one, and no warm hearth at home, left for Sora to call out for
Roxas' footsteps were staggering back as though he'd just been violently struck
Xion became slack, and more large chasms than Sora could number appeared in the hexagonal hemisphere.
She reassumed her former position.
"Nothing but one act of true love from you can break the remnants of the curse now, when the appointed time for that road at last winds before your feet."
.
"The people who live here laugh and weep like you. They live the same. And die the same. There's one thing I've wanted to ask you. Why did you start this attack!? I thought the point was to use weapons of this world to conquer your own world! So why would you launch war here!?"-Edward Elric
"I have to. This entire world must perish!"-Dietlinde Eckhart
"For what reason!?"-Edward Elric
"Because I fear it! Opening a door to a new world was thrilling at first. A utopia that could make us greater. But then I realized how different it was from our own. I got scared. This world is far too strong to be trusted. I have to destroy it now before it conquers us!"-Dietlinde Eckhart
"That's ridiculous! The people of this world would never try to conquer yours!"-Edward Elric
"How do you know that!?"-Dietlinde Eckhart
"Because we're humans, like you!"-Edward Elric
"No, you aren't! You may share the same skin as us, but inside, you're different! You're monsters!"-Dietlinde Eckhart
FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST: THE CONQUEROR OF SHAMBALLA