Now for some character development on the end of the former Nobodies. They have some things to do here in getting into the groove of this new situation, and they also have some issues to work out. Enjoy!
Chapter 33
Reunited Researchers
Leon picked up the broken capsules and placed them on top of the bookshelves, making sure that the sharp edges of the broken glass were pointing down. Ienzo had spread fabric over the top face of the bookcases so that the glass would not cut or scrape the surface. Ienzo swept up the dust, glass shards and rubble crumbs and dumped them all in a waste bin.
In the computer room, Even was in the process of running an antivirus software. He was disgusted at the fact that, in ten years of Heartless influence and whatever Xemnas had been doing, so many of the files had become corrupt. Did that fool Xehanort not know how to use a computer? The installation had succeeded with no problem, so now he was waiting for the program to locate malware, which probably included the Program Heartless that he had been told about, and repair the data as best as it could.
"Thank you for allowing us to reclaim our old positions in the castle," Ienzo told Leon. "I will be glad to renew my research. Though, I feel as though we don't deserve it, after all the trouble we caused."
"What do you mean?" Leon asked.
"We all betrayed our teacher, Ansem the Wise," Ienzo admitted. "And we conducted the research that allowed Xehanort to release the Heartless upon this world, destroying your home and forcing you all into exile, on top of helping Xemnas with his plans."
Leon shrugged. "We've all done things that we regret. We all have our failings. And Riku and King Mickey seem to be the only ones who know anything about what you did while in Organization XIII, and they seem to forgive you."
"That doesn't change what I did, what we all did."
"Listen, Ienzo," Leon said, putting his hand on the younger scientist's shoulder. "You did bad things in the past. But you want to make up for everything you've done. That's what matters. Now, you can beat yourself up over your past mistakes, or you can help us out here. We could really use all of you."
Ienzo thought for a moment, then nodded. "Understood. Thank you," he said, allowing himself to make a small smile.
Dilan and Aeleus opened a set of double doors and entered a dark room consisting of a circular area with a rectangular area extending out up to the door they entered. Aeleus approached a torch mounted on the wall. He pulled two blocks of flint out of his pocket and hit them together to create sparks until he ignited the torch. He took the torch off of the wall and walked around the perimeter of the room, lighting the other torches until the chapel was lit once again.
This place of faith has been poorly maintained," Aeleus observed, noticing the heavy coating of dust and the signs of damage, some of which being burn marks from Sora's battle with Maleficent.
"This place would have been of little good in a barren waste of despair," Dilan commented. "A domain of darkness that none who had any faith would call home."
Aeleus shook his head. "Every place deserves to be a home for faith," the stoic soldier argued.
Dilan placed his hand against the back wall, feeling the air flow through the room. He quickly regretted it as he realized that he was covering the palm of his glove in ash and dust. "I feel a draft through the cracks in the wall. There is a room beyond here," he said.
"Of course. Don't you remember the botanical garden in the chamber beyond?" Aeleus asked. Dilan shook his head. "High priest Marcel Funebris maintained the plants and sometimes held sermons in there."
"To be honest, I was never a very religious man in my old life," the lancer lamented. "I would presume that this new player would not have been hiding out in here for so long."
"If this man were as secretive as he seems, I would argue that he would have been found already if he were in there."
"We are nearly at the top of the castle, and we have yet to locate this man's hiding place," Dilan growled.
The former castle guards had taken it upon themselves to search the castle for the residence of the mysterious character who had allied with Maleficent. The men who were once apprenticed to Ansem the Wise had concluded that, if he were to have known about the files kept on Ansem's computer, then he would have to have lived within the castle walls. However, even though they were searching every nook and cranny for a hidden entrance where they could find his seclusive residence, their search had yet to turn anything up, and the guards were becoming increasingly frustrated. What sort of secret passage had any right to be concealed from the people whose job was to defend the castle from any threat, external or internal?
"Perhaps it is not to be accessed by traditional means," Dilan finally said after a long silence, realizing something that they had not yet considered.
"What do you mean?" Aeleus inquired.
"You recall how there was no traditional passage by which to enter the Round Room in the Castle?" Dilan asked. Aeleus nodded. "We simply wrapped ourselves in a dark pod, and materialized upon our thrones."
"You believe that there is a hidden room that is completely sealed off, only accessible by some mode of teleportation?" Aeleus began to understand. It would make sense: if someone were living in the castle and wanted to make sure that nobody would ever have any chance of finding him, he would make sure that no one could access his chamber by any traditional means.
"But if the room exists and is simply closed off…" Dilan began, leaving an opening for Aeleus to finish.
"Then it can be found in the architecture" Aeleus gasped in wonder. "And if I am not mistaken, the computer has a copy of the architectural layout."
Dilan sighed. "But I'm afraid that was one of the many corrupted files that the Restoration Committee has tried and failed to access," he said resignedly.
"But Even is in the process of repairing the damaged files," Aeleus reminded him.
"Are you certain that he will succeed? We cannot be certain as to the extent of the corruption. Some of the data could be lost forever."
"I am confident in his coding skills, almost as confident as he is."
"Then let us return to the study and share what we have found," Dilan decided. Aeleus agreed, and together they walked down the chapel's hall back to the doors. Dilan raised his arm and clenched his fist, causing a powerful gust of wind to extinguish the candles.
As they were leaving, Aeleus turned and gave one final glance to the darkened chapel. "It has been too long since any of us have been here," he mused.
"Perhaps," Dilan agreed. They stepped through and closed the doors behind them.
"About time!" Even shouted. Ienzo entered the computer room to see if the academic had discovered anything. "The files were repaired as best as possible, and we can finally access all of them. Now we can figure out what we're missing."
"Well done, Even," Ienzo commended. "While we're figuring out what Maleficent and her new allies are up to, how about we uncover some other secrets?"
"What are you suggesting?" Even asked.
"You know what I want to know. Braig knows things about the Organization's plan that we have been locked out of the loop on. Even Saïx… Isa… he didn't know. Xemnas kept things from us. For ten years he had been manipulating us. I want to know why."
Even nodded. "I do not like when people keep things from me. I end up feeling as though my vast intellect is wasted on falsehoods, questioning if my confidence in my brilliance is misplaced. It makes me feel like…"
"A tool?" Ienzo finished. "A trinket to be thrown away once its use has been dealt with?"
"Yes!" Even brought his fists down on the keyboard. A message box appeared, saying PLEASE DO NOT DO THAT AGAIN. The academic glanced back and forth in embarrassment. "Sorry," he muttered.
"I'm still trying to wrap my head around that," Ienzo admitted. He clicked the X to make the message disappear and then began typing into the search bar. "Let's try something we have heard about and see if we find anything there."
Aeleus and Dilan appeared from the passage. "Hello, Ienzo, Even," Aeleus greeted. "Where is Leon?"
"Mister Leonhart returned to the town to oversee construction efforts," Even answered. "Have you uncovered anything?"
"I'm afraid that we were unable to find any hidden room," Dilan replied. "There were no hidden doorways."
"But we believe that there still is a secret room that he has been entering and exiting without using a door, by way of teleportation," Aeleus added.
"Well, isn't that a coincidence," Ienzo said. "We were just in the process of seeking out a hidden room as well."
As he spoke, he finished typing "chamber of repose" into the search bar and hit ENTER. Only one result came up. Ienzo clicked on it, and a window with a text box opened up.
"Hmm… Only one text box. If I recall correctly, the original password to the DTD server was the names of the seven Princesses of Heart. But this one is for Xehanort only. What could he have made the password to be?" Even wondered.
"Try 'Another'," Dilan suggested.
"Pardon?" Even asked, having no idea where that idea came from.
"It is 'Xehanort' rearranged but without the 'X'. It is a worthy guess, considering when we became Nobodies, he rearranged the letters in our names and added an X. It would be easy for him to remember, and it would indicate that it was something that he was keeping from us, by disconnecting it from the pattern of our names. 'No Heart' would be to a similar effect but I doubt that spaces are permitted. Along with that, he was obsessed with finding the Chamber of Awakening for years, and this, the Chamber of Repose, is 'another' hidden room. It's worth a try," Dilan explained.
Even and Ienzo could only stare in amazement, surprised that Dilan worked through such thorough logic so quickly. Even typed it in and hit ENTER. The window changed so that there were now six text boxes. This was not at all mentally taxing to figure out. In each box, not caring for the order but expecting that it was probably the correct one if there was one, he typed the names of Ansem's six apprentices, in the numerical order of what Even considered to be their rank of authority in the Organization: 'Xehanort', 'Braig', 'Dilan', 'Even', 'Aeleus', 'Ienzo'. When he switched to the next text box each time, a line extended from the box and connected to a circle in the middle. After typing in the last name, he hit ENTER. The text boxes and circle disappeared and a message appeared, saying "SYSTEM START".
Even was confused when nothing seemed to happen. Aeleus looked out the window into the Heartless Manufactory. He saw a shape light up on the floor down below. "Down there," he said, calling their attention to it.
They all looked out and craned their necks to get a good look. They traded understanding glances.
"Doesn't that lead to our old secret laboratory where we studied the Heartless?" Ienzo recalled.
"Let us hurry and get down there!" Dilan said. The four researchers ran through the door to the right and entered the elevator. The elevator brought them down to the lower level. When they stepped out, Even stood on the glowing shape. When he did so, a large rectangle briefly lit up on the floor in front of them and two halves of the shape receded, revealing a hidden level beneath the floor. A ramp appeared in front of them, prompting them to descend. Once they had all gone down the ramp, the hidden door closed above them and the ramp vanished behind them. They found themselves on a path that spiraled around a wide circular shaft, going down so far that they could not see the bottom.
"I always hated this walk," Ienzo quipped, shrugging. They walked, following the path for several minutes until they finally reached the bottom. To their right, they saw a set of double doors, which slid to either side once they stood in front of it.
They entered a white hallway lined with a row of metal cell doors on either side, each one having a diamond-shaped window with iron bars sealing the only view inside. Next to each door was a device with a screen and a keypad, requiring an entry code to open the door. Ienzo grimaced, remembering shamefully how he was the one who persuaded Ansem to construct the laboratory with which to research the darkness in people's hearts, which Xehanort had repurposed to perform experimentations on innocent people and create Heartless. Even turned his gaze to the floor, not wanting a reminder of how their pursuit of knowledge had caused so much suffering.
At the end of the hall, they finally reached a set of doors decorated with black chain designs. As they drew near, the doors quickly slid apart, opening the way in less than a second.
The circular room was designed in a way very reminiscent of the Castle That Never Was, with sections of the wall and floor cut out to expose pipes. There were chain designs going up and down the wall and across the floor, sometimes connecting to a black version of the Organization XIII sigil. The room was empty save for a white metal armchair with three spires on top.
"Curious. Xigbar told me that, while he had been eavesdropping on Xemnas, he heard him talking to a 'friend', even though his was the only voice he heard," Ienzo mused. "But there is nothing here."
"Perhaps whatever is in here is meant to appear only when he has taken a seat," Even suggested. "Notice how the chains are black when they are usually white, as if the mechanics of this room are inactive?"
"In that case, would you do the honors of testing your hypothesis?" Aeleus asked.
Uncertainly, Even stepped in front of the throne and sat down upon the metal seat. Instantly, a circle surrounding the chair lit up in a bright white, and a similarly white light extended from the circle along the chains. A panel against the opposite side of the room vanished, and a platform rose up to take its place.
Everyone gasped when they saw what rested on the platform. They saw a pile of blue armor with some silver, black and purple parts. The armor was dusty, cracked and rusted from disuse. Judging from the shape of various pieces, they guessed that it had been worn by a woman. Next to the helmet, a uniquely-shaped weapon, made with the same color metal as the armor, stood up, the tip embedded into the floor. The general shape seemed reminiscent of a certain other weapon that they were rather familiar with.
"I recognize that armor. Master Ansem, Braig and I found it at the same time and place when we first found Xehanort, in the central square on the day after the storm," Dilan said.
"So, this is Xehanort's 'friend'," Aeleus muttered. "If so, then who was she? Who was Xehanort?"
"Would Braig know what this was?" Ienzo wondered.
"Well, we are not going to get an answer out of him," Even asserted. "But this is quite intriguing."
"We should tell Leon and the others," Aeleus suggested.
"I believe this would be more suited to Sora and Riku's inquiry," Even argued. "For now, we should leave the armor here for safekeeping."
The other researchers nodded in agreement. Even stood up, deactivating the mechanism and causing the armor to descend back down into its hiding place and become sealed off by the floor panel. They exited through the sliding doors and proceeded back up to the study.