Chapter 15

Castle Raid

When everyone had exited the infirmary, they saw clouds of dust lining the streets. Civilians were running in a panic. Some stumbled and nearly fell, and they would have been at risk of being trampled by the crowd if others had not noticed their plight and helped them to their feet before they continued fleeing. The residents in this district were still in their homes. Some of them had their doors open, possibly in case some of the panicking townspeople wished to seek sanctuary, but more likely in case the danger came near and they decided to flee as well. Whatever was going on, Yuffie's fear certainly appeared to be justified.

Since the streets were overflowing, Yuffie directed the group to sidestep along the building's wall and slip into an alleyway. They ran down the alley in single file without interruption, save for a spilled trash can and a screeching cat. Despite the volume of people stumbling over each other in the streets, none of them sought a shortcut in the gaps between buildings, most likely so that they would not run the risk of getting trapped under buildings that were collapsing on both sides. Yuffie guided them to a ladder and they climbed up to the roof of the building next to the infirmary one at a time. When they were all high enough to see the rest of the town, they saw Yuffie standing with her arm outstretched, a finger pointing to the east. When they saw what she meant, they took a step back in shock.

The monster resembled the Guard Armor that Sora, Donald and Goofy had fought when they first met, except it was easily four times its size. The main part of the torso was blue, with gold braces over the top and bottom, and the top brace resembled a raised collar. The Gauntlets were gold with red bands around the wrists and iron fingers. The ankles of the Hammerlegs were gold with red bands and the rest of the feet were red. The head piece was an orange brass with iron spikes on either side, a gold spike on top, and a golden visor with five holes drilled into it. Its enormous disjointed limbs moved with a speed proportional to its size in relation to its purple cousin, to the point where if not for it towering over the buildings Sora would have had difficulty telling if there was a difference between the two. They could see a speck dancing around the torso, glowing arcs sparking against the armor, as well as a few bolts of lightning, most likely Mickey and Donald doing what they could against the Heartless.

"You guys can handle that, right?" Lea asked, trying to conceal his own fear. In his experience, he had seen giant Heartless, some of them even being larger than this. But they had never moved this fast, and rarely did they come so close to urban areas, so he and whoever he may have been working with could engage in combat without much collateral damage (regardless of if he had the capacity for empathy during his Organization days.

"Yeah," Sora answered. "I've fought bigger. Some of them on my own."

"But the moving limbs are going to be a problem," Riku interjected. "We're going to need to limit the perimeter of combat to minimize destruction and allow the townsfolk to move away without getting hurt."

Ienzo studied the area around the fight. "It appears as though the opponent is too large compared to the architecture for me to set up a barrier enclosing the field. We will need to find other methods to deter it from taking full advantage of its range of motion."

Aeleus summoned a massive axe-sword with a black and red J-shaped block where the blade should be and rested it over his shoulder to support its weight. "Then we must convince it that lashing out would be ill-advised," he declared. "Zexion, Axel, we must take the rooftops and harm it whenever the arms spread out too far."

Lea grinned in anticipation and spread his arms wide. Discs of flame formed just ahead of his hands, spinning wildly until they shifted into a pair of discs made out of rings of red and silver metal with eight spikes all around and a black cross-shaped handle. Half a second after they materialized, Lea caught his chakrams. "I'm in if you are," he said with a cocky glare.

Ienzo held his hand out and a black hardcover book appeared in his hand. He opened it and telekinetically turned it to the desired page. "I believe we should take a shortcut." When he said that, he waved his free hand in a circle, and in a flash everyone present was standing on a rooftop directly behind the Heartless. Sora, Riku, Leon, Yuffie, Aerith, and Lea looked around bewildered.

"Did he just—?" Leon began to ask, confused.

"I need to learn how to do that!" Sora exclaimed.

"Let's worry about that later!" Riku brought them back to focus, pointing his Keyblade at the Heartless. "We need to bring this armor down!"

"It shouldn't be expecting reinforcements," Yuffie noted, pulling out her Fuuma Shuriken. "Time to begin our raid on this boss!"

She disappeared in a puff of smoke, only to appear moments later in another puff on a different roof. She charged her Shuriken up with chi and threw it at one of the arms when it drew near.

"Huh. Raid… Armor… You hear that, Jiminy?" Sora asked, patting his pocket.

"I'll put that in my journal," Jiminy said, peeking out of Sora's pocket to get a look at what was going on.

With that, Sora threw his Keyblade, sending it spinning into the torso of the Raid Armor. When it hit hard enough to leave a dent, Sora summoned it back to his hand and threw it again, and again, and again.

Ienzo teleported to another roof and started casting shadow spells from his book. Leon leaped off of the roof and stabbed his Gunblade right into the torso's back. His weight caused it to carve a line through the armor until he reached the bottom, pulled the blade out and fell to the ground, where he promptly slashed at one of the legs. Lea threw his chakrams and launched fireballs at the head and arms. When the Heartless tried spinning its arms around itself, Sora, Riku and Aerith ducked, but Aeleus hit one arm with his axe sword as it came to him, sending it flying right into the other arm. Quick on the rebound, one of the arms grabbed something off of the collar and threw it behind itself. Riku caught Mickey by the hand as he flew by and spun around to drain his momentum before setting him down.

"You okay?" Riku asked.

Mickey groaned and shook his head to make everything stop spinning. "Yep. Thanks," he replied. "Glad you could make it, ah-ha!"

Aerith tapped Riku on the shoulder to get his attention. "I should be down there. They're going to need a healer on the field with them," she said.

Riku nodded. "Okay, but don't get stepped on," he replied. He led her to the edge of the roof, wrapped his arm around her back, and jumped off. He cast horizontal barrier planes to act as stepping stones until they reached the bottom. When she saw that Goofy was on one knee, struggling to stay standing, Aerith ran over to him and cast Curaga. He rose back up, thanked her, and ran at one of the legs, spinning on one foot as he drew near so that he repeatedly hit it with his shield.

Last, but not least, Sora jumped off of the roof. He somersaulted as he landed, then realized he was standing in the shadow of one of the feet. "Reflega!" he shouted. A spherical barrier appeared around him, and the enormous leg connected with the barrier. The applied force caused the barrier to glow white. White orbs appeared around the sphere and exploded with the shield, blasting the leg into the air to crash down on the ground. He saw someone charge in and start slashing and stabbing at the leg. He ran in to join her.

Kairi was wearing a bicyclist's knee- and elbow-pads, as well as a tan-colored shield that extended down the length of her arm from a metal pauldron on her left shoulder. There was a scabbard attached to the tablet case at her hip. She carried a rapier that was slightly longer than the Kingdom Key, and was cutting into the heel of the Hammerleg.

Sora caught up to her and cut a horizontal slash into the base of the leg. "Hey, Kairi," he greeted. "Nice getup."

"Thanks," she said with a smile. "I figured that since I don't have any magic spells like you, I should get some protection." She waved her left arm to show off the shield. "And I figured a sword would be more balanced than one of Donald's hammers."

She slashed at the Hammerleg again but stopped when she noticed it start to wiggle. Sora held his arm in front of her and stepped back. Almost immediately, the Hammerleg leapt into the air. Kairi shoved Sora to the side and ran out of the way before the leg crashed to the ground. She held up her shield brace to block the stones that were sent flying.

The Raid Armor gathered itself back together and turned until Sora, Kairi, Riku, Mickey. It pulled its gauntlets back and started delivering punches at them. The four targets dodged, though Sora guarded against a couple hits, Riku conjured a shield to block some and Mickey parried a jab. A flaming chakram flew in and hit it in the head, catching it by surprise and making it stop.

Kairi saw the weapon and noticed the person who threw it. "Was that…?" But she lost her train of thought when she dodged a punch and stabbed the joint where one of the claws met the hand, splitting it enough for the finger to fall off and fade into nothingness.

The hand, short a finger, swung to the side, hitting Sora and knocking him across the street. He brought himself to his feet, feeling a sharp pain in his side, probably a cracked rib. He raised his Keyblade to the sky and shouted "Heal!" Just as the green pollen appeared above him, he heard a raspy voice call "Sora!" Another Cure spell fell over him.

Sora turned around to see that it was Donald who cast the spell, using up all of his mana as well to heal the same wound that Sora just repaired. "Donald! Come on!" he yelled. "I mean, thanks, but—" He rolled out of the way before one of the legs could stomp on him. He retaliated with a flurry of thirteen slashes, breaking heavy dents into the armor with each bash. With the final strike, a jumping finisher, he shattered the Hammerleg into dozens of pieces, which disintegrated into black smoke.

He collapsed in exhaustion, having burned out all of his stamina with a bone-mending Curaga spell and a powerful attack combo. He reached into his pocket and grabbed an Ether. The blue-tinted liquid sloshed inside of the cube-shaped bottle. He downed the contents in one gulp and within moments felt reinvigorated.

He saw Riku on the other side of the square, having difficulty keeping the fast-moving limbs at bay, swinging his Keyblade and shooting Dark Fire blasts, but mostly dodging or blocking attacks. He ran over to meet him. "Riku! We need to bring this thing down to size!" he called out.

Riku locked eyes with him and nodded in agreement. When Sora reached Riku, the remaining Hammerleg tried to crush them, but the duo locked the tines of their Keyblades with one another. A gust of wind blew them upward and they started to float. They countered the Hammerleg's attack with a rapid flurry of stabs.

"Is that all you got?" Riku taunted. He and Sora followed it up with a series of Dark Fire orbs at the leg, vaporizing it. They delivered some more stabs to a Gauntlet, which Mickey had knocked off balance into the air with three shots of Pearl. The arm fell to the ground, and Donald finished it off with a Thunder spell. An "I'll take 'em" from Riku followed by another series of dark orbs and the other arm was sent flying. Aeleus responded to it by clubbing it with his axe sword. It flew over Ienzo's roof, and the illusion-caster trapped it in a sphere of light that floated above the center. He then conjured five duplicates of himself spaced around the sphere and they all fired lasers into the sphere. When the sphere exploded, the second Gauntlet was no more.

The Raid Armor clearly did not take the destruction of its limbs well at all. It flipped its torso so the bottom was pointed at Leon, Donald and Goofy, with the head peering over the lip of the bottom opening. A red light glowed from the opening, and the three combatants were barely able to get out of the way before the Heartless shot an energy beam that blew a hole in the pavement.

Sora flourished his Keyblade and summoned a circle of thirteen blades made out of light energy. He and Riku spun in midair toward the boss as it was starting to charge up its next shot. Thirteen blades carved twenty-six gashes in the armor's hull, then faded into sparkles. The sparkles formed into gold and silver auras around the Keyblades, which they stabbed into the cannon. The blast exploded, absorbed mostly by the Master Hearts blades and otherwise divided and dispersed harmlessly through the gashes. They struck again with the thirteen blades, this time cutting pieces out of the armor. The falling debris forced the fighters beneath to run once again, but the pieces dissipated anyway. They swung back with their aura-lined Keyblades, cutting the rest of the torso into three pieces, leaving the head floating all alone.

Sora and Riku glared at the head with all of their rage. They spun around the head to catch it in the center of a whirlwind then leapt away, throwing their Keyblades to point directly at each other with the head in the center. "You're gonna lose it all!" Riku screamed at the top of his lungs. A white aura surrounded the Kingdom Key and a black one surrounded the Way to the Dawn, and the Keyblades fired force blasts that pushed against each other, with the Heartless' head taking the brunt of the attack.

Then the wind stopped. Kairi brushed her hair out of her face to see what happened in the aftermath. Sora and Riku landed on their feet, standing back to back. "Time's up!" they both said, bumping the bottoms of their fists together, then they jumped away from one another. One second after that, the Raid Armor's head crashed to the ground, crumpled into an unrecognizable mass. A heart rose out of the top, floated high enough for it to be at eye level with Yuffie, Lea, Ienzo, and Aeleus, then vanished in a cloud of darkness. What remained of the monstrous Heartless faded into nothingness.

Everyone just sat down, exhausted and glad the battle was over. Several minutes later, some curious townsfolk entered the remains of the square, then shouted to their friends and neighbors, letting them know that the monster was vanquished.

Zeromast and Maleficent watched the events unfold from the parapets. Zeromast carried a black cinch-sack slung over his shoulders by thin ropes, the contents making the bag take on a rectangular shape. The witch had trouble reading the scholar's expression.

"Did you find the test to be satisfactory?" she asked. "It had better have been enough. It took far too much to unleash something of that size and power, and I will not be able to call upon any more Heartless in this world for a while."

"It must have been a significant enough distraction. By now we should have what we need," Zeromast answered monotonously. "And I am satisfied with the data gathered from the display. Sora and Riku have not grown too strong in the intervening months." He noticed her expression turn sour at the mention of Sora. "Of course, I would have accepted if they had fallen to the Heartless' onslaught, though I would be disappointed. And besides, wouldn't you prefer to get your revenge on him personally?"

There was a brief pause before her answer. "Very," she growled.

"And they brought the princess," Zeromast noted. "I was wondering if that would be happening anytime soon."

"Hmph. The powers of the Princesses of Heart are of no use to me," Maleficent seethed. "But I will enjoy crushing her beacon of light and bringing them all pain."

"Have you ever considered visiting a therapist?" Zeromast asked dryly.

Before Maleficent could lash out at him, he drew a chalk line on the floor in front of him and stepped across it. As he did so, he vanished as if passing through an invisible door, which is exactly what he did, as he had just transported himself back to the fortress in the Vale. The witch grunted and walked through a Corridor of Darkness of her own.

Twenty minutes earlier, Pete and Hämsterviel entered the computer room. Pete was satisfied to find that the flash drive remained undisturbed in the USB port. He logged back into the computer and the search bar popped back up.

"Hurry up, you enormous oaf!" the alien complained. He crossed his arms, tapped his foot and swished his tail impatiently as he looked up at the obese feline, unable to actually get a look at the computer screen.

"Hey, these things take time, okay?" Pete shot back. "I barely even know what I'm looking for. Why don't you go mess around with the whoozy-whatzits in the lab or downstairs while you wait?" He scrolled through the search results and opened a file. Deciding that it was related to what he was looking for, he closed the window then clicked and dragged the file over to the flash drive window, copying the file to the USB.

"Disgraceful. Demeaning. The fiendish scientist and inventor Doctor Jacques von Hämsterviel dismissed and instructed to 'amuse myself'," he muttered to himself. Pete simply ignored him.

After a few minutes, Pete moved one last file into the flash drive, then turned around and knelt down to look Hämsterviel as closely in the eye as he could. "I think I got all of them. You want to look through the files and see if there's anything I missed?" he asked. Hämsterviel grunted and Pete cupped his hands for him to step onto. When the gerbil was standing on Pete's palms, the large cat stood back up and let him step onto the counter. As soon as he reached the keyboard, he started scrolling through the search selection rapidly and inputting specifications in the search bar. Within a minute, he had finished the search, ejected the flash drive, and removed it from the console.

"Now, let us show that Zeromast the fruits of my labor!" Hämsterviel declared proudly.

"Uh, you mean our labor?" Pete corrected.

"Right, of course," the scientist brushed him off.

Pete shrugged and opened a Corridor of Darkness, through which they exited the premises and returned to the fortress.

Well, that was quite the battle, wouldn't you say? I figured I'd throw in a grandiose boss battle before wrapping things up in Radiant Garden this round. What did you think of the team-up?

Read and review, and please don't be afraid to offer constructive criticism. No flames, though; I think there was enough ravaging in this chapter:)