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CHAPTER 3:

DAUGHTER OF THE DREAMREAPERS

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Author's Notes: For this Chapter, the music is, in order of scene: 'Frozen Flame,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; and afterwards 'Dragon God,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three. Neither of these pieces can be located in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section, though.

The lack disappeared once more as the corridor disappeared behind Luxu, but Sora clenched his teeth and snarled, and he grabbed onto the skin of his right arm with his left fingers and twisted it, digging into it with his nails until the pain brought back his awareness of reality and how he felt and thought.

No.

Kairi had just climbed out of an abyssal nightmare to protect his feelings and his heart yet again.

He was not going to fall all the way back into oblivion this time.

Donald leaned up to glare at Luxu.

"Come again?" Donald questioned warningly, raising his staff to punctuate his threat.

"What?" Luxu snorted. "Do I need to feed you a biscuit so you'll be content enough to think with whatever puffy cloud you have between the things you call ears?"

Donald sprang into the air, quacking and waving his arms and hands indignantly.

"Oh, I forgot," Luxu looked over at Goofy. "The bumbling twig over there is the hound, not you."

"And proud of it," Goofy smiled unpleasantly.

Luxu rolled his eyes.

"I see your tendency to ramble wasn't just an affectation of your mask as Xigbar," Donald shot at Luxu. "Start making sense, or you won't have any senses for much longer."

"Hey hey, that's way too harsh for someone who hasn't been recompleted yet," Luxu remarked, clapping one hand over his chest above where his initial heart should have been.

Sora frowned. Luxu had had another chance to regain his humanity, and he'd passed it up a second time?

Was Luxu as much of a puppet as Xehanort?

"But fine, suit yourself," Luxu dropped his hands to his sides, and then he walked back a decent amount of paces. "All of you but the Keyblade Master and the little King have fulfilled your destinies anyway, so it can't hurt to let you know how well a job you did."

"Sora and Riku are not puppets," Kairi bit out between new clenched teeth. "I've spent my darkness, but I've still got plenty of light left, and if you call anyone here a puppet once more I'll prove that to you the hard way."

Luxu rested his hand over his new Nobody heart. "You wound me, Your Majesty. I've been your most devoted retainer from the start."

"You can stop calling Kairi a puppet herself while you're at it," Riku gave Luxu a pointed glare. "Even if you didn't come here looking for a fight, that doesn't mean you won't get one. And if Mickey does return with a lot more Keyblades than he left with…"

Riku shrugged in false unconcern. "Let's just say I wouldn't want to be in your shoes when he does."

Luxu barked a single laugh. "You still don't have a clue, do you? All of those Keyblades belonged to the members of the Unions Master Yozora and the other Foretellers and I founded. Their wielders were willing to work with Sora to defeat a Dreamreaper, but they won't lift a finger against me."

Riku compressed his lips together.

"The Demon Tides and the Demon Towers are Dream Eaters and not Heartless, then?" Riku queried, obviously pushing his frustration aside and moving on. "Would it be right to assume that the Lich is the same?"

Luxu grinned. "Now you're getting somewhere.

"Nope, the Lich is a bona fide Heartless, one of the first ones Faerie fashioned." Hold it. Xehanort hadn't created the Heartless? Someone else had, and the Heartless had been around for thousands of years? "It's one of the nastiest, but it's a Heartless all the same.

"The Demon Tides and the Demon Towers and their ilk," Sora paled. There were other entities out there as horrific as the Demon Tides and the Demon Towers, "On the other hand, are Dream Eaters, right-a-mundo'. They're not Spirits or Nightmares, however, even ones as advanced as the Chirithies." Chirithy was a Dream Eater. Sora had believed as much, as it was obviously not a Heartless or a Nobody or an Unversed. "They're a very special kind of Dream Eater it took Master Yozora and I millions of Keyblade wielders and years of gathering Lux with Keyblades and darkness with bangles to forge.

"They're known as Dreamreapers, and Master Yozora conceptualized them for a single purpose:

Their destiny was to reap the dreams of the hearts of all the people of the realm of light when it first fell into darkness at the end of the original Keyblade War, so when it was reborn he could sow them into the hearts of the worlds as nightmares and scare the world hearts into disconnecting and putting up the Gummi walls."

Sora jolted violently.

The realm of light could have been recreated in its original form by the children who had survived the First Keyblade War, but Yozora had sabotaged this, and every single heart in the whole realm of light had been bottles on a shelf dancing to Yozora's tune for millennia?

Who the heck did Yozora believe that he was?

Riku let a frown show. "I was under the impression that the realm of light wasn't able to be restored as it once was because the First Keyblade War imprisoned the brightest light of Kingdom Hearts in darkness."

"That much was legit," Luxu shrugged. "Master Yozora needed that light imprisoned as much as he needed the worlds separated.

"But when the Dandelions returned to the realm of light to reshape it, they could have freed that light then and there. Master Yozora needed the Dreamreapers to see to it that the Dandelions didn't, by keeping the worlds apart so enough hearts couldn't unite and recall the true light, and one of my roles was to ensure that the history books wrote it down this catastrophe as resulting from the Dandelions' inability to recall the light. Similar to how another of my roles was to ensure that history recorded the era before the original Keyblade War as 'the age of fairy tales,' after his fiancé, Faerie."

Sora winced. He really didn't want to be the person to tell the female who he'd known as the Nameless Star, and whose name was apparently Faerie, the terrible truth about what her betrothed had become.

Assuming Yozora hadn't fallen to darkness before she'd died, and hadn't been the one who had caused her death by attempting to use her as a puppet too.

"I know what you're thinking," Luxu addressed Sora. "You've been in The Final World four times by now. You must have met Faerie. If you won't trust me about anything else, at least trust me on this. Yozora would never attempt to string up Faerie. He gave into the darkness in the first place because she died and vanished, because he made the mistake of entrusting her with forging the first Keyblades rather than doing so himself."

Sora frowned himself now. Yozora had turned into a bag of slime because the woman he loved had died?

How could he dishonor her death that horribly?

"Yozora initially intended to create the first Keyblades himself," Luxu continued his defense of his Master. "But around the time that he did, Faerie's experiments into the heart wound up causing her to create the initial Heartless, fully by accident. Faerie was scared that if Yozora attempted to create the Keyblades before he became as personally familiar with what caused Heartless and Nobodies to be born as she was; he'd end up losing his heart to darkness and become a Heartless and a Nobody himself.

"So she convinced him to let her forge the initial Keyblades, and broke the laws of nature by doing so, and you know what happens then."

That did it.

Faerie had given Yozora her love and life to protect him from falling into darkness, and when she did Yozora had given into the darkness of his own free will anyway?

Sora refused to return to believe in revenge again, but if anyone did deserve to be hurt because he or she or it had been a slimeball, what Luxu had just said about his Master proved that it would most likely be Yozora.

"I believe your," he forced himself not to ridicule the term, "Master didn't try to use Faerie. Why should I care? What's it to you?"

Luxu scowled, and it wasn't his usual smug and self-assured scowl.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, I dunno'," he replied. "Maybe 'what it is to me' is how Master Yozora and Faerie took me in off the streets as a little boy when I almost starved to death after the rest of my family went dragon hunting and the dragon they tracked fatally objected to that."

Sora pushed his anger towards Luxu as far away as possible.

He had to have been wrong.

Luxu wasn't a puppet. He'd refused to regain his humanity because he was extremely loyal to Yozora. Even Yozora wouldn't betray that kind of love and trust.

But after everything Sora had learned so far today about Yozora, he couldn't even be sure that Yozora had that much basic decency left.

How could Sora convince Luxu that following Yozora into darkness was one of the last things Yozora would have wanted for his surrogate son if he hadn't lost sight of the light?

Sora had no idea at this time.

Yet another failure.

"We see your point," Goofy interjected before this could become further uncomfortable. "Can you please return to your tale about the Dreamreapers?"

"Good doggie," Luxu gave Goofy a partially mocking, partially sincere smile, and Goofy returned it with a partially honest, partially unbothered smile of his own.

Kairi's hands fisted so tightly her knuckles whitened.

"Where was I, then?" Luxu snapped his fingers. "Yes.

"I'm sure you learned by now that the Princesses of Heart were first born because the realm of light needed a new stable foundation after Kingdom Hearts' light was imprisoned and couldn't be reconnected with. Yozora's central reason for fomenting the First Keyblade War was to create the Princesses of Heart, hearts of pure light that, because your shadow grows deeper the closer you draw to the light, would also be hearts of the most profound darkness. Then I was to foment a second one after enough millennia had passed that the Princesses of Heart were inextricably bound to the laws of nature of the new realm of light, and I had the best possible chance of ensuring that a Princess would form a connection with at least one Keyblade wielder, and this would drive her to give into the darkness."

Sora was pretty sure all of the blood had just drained from everywhere in his body, and when he dug his fingers into the skin of his right arm and twisted it again to keep feeling and thought and reality from departing, he did so viciously and ruthlessly.

Riku was deathly white himself now, and Braveheart nearly slipped from his grasp.

"You're telling Kairi and Sora and I that Sora's destiny and my fate were to convince Kairi to love us so that she'd eventually give into the darkness to cherish one or both of us," Riku spoke neutrally. "And that you and Yozora tricked Xehanort into giving into the darkness and inciting the Second Keyblade War to fashion a suitable backdrop for this to happen."

"Not quite," Luxu corrected Riku, but Sora was hardly relieved.

Sora needed to chance Kairi feeling uncomfortable with him touching her.

He got to his feet, walked to her side, sat down at it, and lightly but reassuringly took her closest hand in his.

Kairi didn't grip it any amount tighter, but she gave him a brief, wan smile.

"The sole purpose Goofy and Jiminy Cricket and Chip and Dale and Donald, and especially Sora, were born for was to transfigure Kairi into our chief heroine."

Now Kairi did grip Sora's hand tighter, with as much protective warmth and reassuring strength as she could, but even this was barely enough to keep the lack itself from vanishing again.

This was the greater matter that he'd idiotically been convinced he was a little piece of?

To destroy Kairi's life and warp her into a monster?

And to turn most or all of his other friends against her in the process?

If what had happened earlier today hadn't already hollowed him of everything, Sora knew that this would have done it beyond doubt.

Sora was surprised to discover a small amount of last tears were brimming and falling down his face.

He shouldn't have had any tears left by this point.

Not even dreams could save you from emptiness empty of even emptiness?

There was no such thing as dreams in the first place!

Riku was clenching his teeth so hard Sora genuinely believed that Riku was going to chip them.

"But Mickey and I have an additional destiny," Riku continued.

"Yep yep yap," Luxu replied.

Kairi's free hand clenched, but Riku looked back at her with a glance that said that he didn't care what Luxu said about him, he just wanted her to stop hurting.

"All legit Keyblade wielders do," Luxu went on. "Especially the Keyblade Masters. I ordered Lauriam and Elrena to tell you; every heroine needs her sword.

"But to provide Kairi with her blade, you and Mickey and Ven and Aqua and Terra and Roxas and Lea, and even Yen Sid, though he's not a wielder any longer, have an extra special crispy on top role to play. You're all tied to the truest Nobody of them all, though she herself has never been a Nobody and was a replica from the start."

Sora apparently still had blood left to pale with as well.

"You're talking about Xion," Riku responded.

It wasn't a question.

Riku's voice became tighter and more taut.

"What about Namine?" he inquired. "Is she a part of this too?"

"Not unless she decides to take up a Keyblade like Roxas did," Luxu answered, and Riku sagged slightly. "Her role was over when Sora and Roxas and Lea gave Xion her heart back." Riku scowled, but Luxu waved it off. "She's a wild card now. Don't worry about her.

"I'd ask her whether she's feeling a little under the weather yet, though."

Riku's knuckles went skeletal pale.

"What do you mean?" he questioned.

"Xion – or 'The Recusant of the Sigil,' as we call her – affects the memories of every heart that so much as gives her a passing glance anywhere in any of the realms, and her identity is built from Namine's power over memories. As good as Namine is, you didn't really think she'd get off scot free from Xion using Namine's abilities for something this big, did you?"

Sora wanted to cry even more at what Luxu was implying, but his eyes burned too much to do so.

"Xion is draining Namine of energy as she once did Roxas."

Once more Riku wasn't asking a question.

Luxu laughed. "Xion is still draining Roxas." Why couldn't he cry? "They're both replicas now, so the effect isn't as drastic and it will take a lot longer for Xion to murder Roxas this time, but Xion's vacuuming abilities didn't go away because she lost her first replica body. They come from her heart. So long as Xion has a heart of her own, she'll be a parasite."

"Pot," Donald quacked furiously. "Kettle. Black."

Luxu ignored Donald.

"Sora's okay so long as Xion doesn't do anything stupid with her heart again," Sora was supposed to be relieved to hear that? "She didn't copy anything from him, he gave her the memories that turned her into a parasite."

"Shut! Up!" Kairi hissed, but Sora could barely care even about this any longer. It was all becoming numb now, save for the warmth of Kairi's hand around his.

"But I wouldn't push things," Luxu went on, ignoring Kairi as well. "If she returns to Sora's heart one more time without his say so and drastically alters their connection that way a second time, she might begin siphoning Sora, too."

Good.

Kairi must have known how Sora felt, or she must have picked up on something in his posture, for her grip became even more warmly reassuring and strongly protective.

Luxu must have picked up on something himself, for he sneered at Sora.

"Kairi, as well, of course," he added.

In other words, every heart Sora formed the slightest connection with, he endangered.

That was no surprise.

"I'm less than a second away from blocking your voice box up close and personal with my staff!" Donald shouted. "Stop enjoying this!"

Luxu ignored Donald once again.

"That is," Luxu continued, "After all, why, in addition to Roxas and Namine, she's now siphoning Ven."

Sora did react this time, with a gasp of surprise, but just because he hadn't seen that one coming.

"And, since Ven isn't a replica and it's not power over memories that she's draining from Ven, she's siphoning him at the rate she used to drain Roxas. There's a really good reason Ven hasn't been able to master how to transfer his heart yet. He's already so weak he's losing his hold over the Keyblade. Roxas and Namine have plenty of time left, but give or take a few more months, Ven will be a husk, and then he'll be dead.

"Xion's sacrifice was one of the few things that we didn't see coming, and that wasn't in any of our scripts, but it goes to show what happens if you attempt to defy your destiny.

"And Xion's fate is to be the High Seraph of Blood who slakes her thirst so long as she but exists in reality, the Riskbreaker Bloody Sin destined to wander light, darkness, the all and nothing of the in-between, emotions, thoughts, dreams, memories, data, the heart, and the oblivion of emptiness empty of even emptiness as the vagrant assassin past infinity and beyond and beyond no beginning and no end."

Sora didn't need Luxu to tell him that emptiness empty of even emptiness was true.

"Xion was initially just siphoning Roxas," Luxu went on. "If she hadn't cost everyone their memories of her when she first went back to Sora's heart, her existence would have weakened Namine, but it wouldn't have siphoned her. Once her death wiped everyone's memories of her, it caused too great of a strain on Namine's power, and Xion began siphoning Namine as well, even though staying in Sora's heart kept her from draining Roxas. When Xehanort forged a new replica body for Xion and Xion's heart leapt out of Sora into it like a moth drawn to a flame, it accelerated the process of her draining Namine. When all the other people outside of the Real Organization Thirteen – save for me, of course; I pretended otherwise, but I never forgot Xion. There are plenty of tricks you can learn with the Keyblade to shield yourself from a memory rub if you have enough time to teach them to yourself.

"Back on track, when all the other people outside of the Real Organization Thirteen got their recollections of Xion back, it made things even worse for Namine."

Luxu gave Sora a gentler amused grin. "That one actually isn't your fault. Xion was already on the verge of regaining her identity thanks to Lea when you sped it up. All the people outside of the seekers of darkness regaining their memories of Xion was on Lea and Xemnas, not you."

Like that made any difference. He was still partially responsible for it, and saying it would have happened in a few more minutes if he hadn't caused it to happen sooner was like saying, if you ran over someone's legs on your bike and crushed that person's legs, it wasn't your fault because someone else might have done the same thing later on.

"Xion returns to you again without you having a say in the matter, she might begin siphoning you and Kairi, and she'll further speed up how quickly she's draining Namine and she may even accelerate how fast she's siphoning Roxas.

"So, you see," Luxu continued, now looking directly at Kairi, "It's a bad idea to fight fate. Challenge your destiny, and you make things a lot more horrible for the people around you and yourself."

Kairi met Luxu's eyes. "I'll keep that in mind," she responded evenly. "Your point?"

Luxu shook his head in a façade of disbelief.

"I guess that means you don't care, then," Luxu spoke, "That when Xion returned to Sora's heart is also when she began siphoning Ven, because her connection to Ven became much stronger then. If not for her, Ven's Keyblade Armor wouldn't have turned into a Nightmare when it protected Sora, and it would have successfully done so and Sora wouldn't have lost his power and failed to attain the power of waking at the end of the Mark of Mastery exam. But alas, she refused to accept her reason for being here in reality, and by the time the dust settled and Sora had regained his strength and the power of waking, a bunch of more people had suffered on a grand total of seven more worlds and Aqua had nearly died two times in short succession."

Luxu smirked amusedly at Sora. "You have Xion to thank for your inability to protect Zeus and the other Gods from Hades and the Titans, or Buzz from Young Xehanort, or Eugene and Rapunzel from Gothel, or Anna and Elsa from each other and themselves and Hans while all you could do was keep falling off the mountain, or William and Elizabeth from Davy Jones, or two thirds of Big Hero Six from the darkubes, and you could have ensured that Boo returned home hours sooner than she did before she needed to go through repeated perils that threatened to turn her laughter into tears."

"I'm still awake, you filth," Elsa cut in, and Sora looked to the side in surprise to see her standing in front of Anna, struggling to form an igloo around her that would shelter her from Luxu, but failing to cause it to extend up past its first nine vertical layers of blocks more than at a trickle of cold water.

Kristoff was sitting inside the igloo at Anna's side.

"If you've been paying this much attention to Sora's travels, then you know how much his friendship means to Anna. And Kairi is the most important person in Sora's life, as I am in Anna's. Arendelle is my Kingdom, whether it's in need of repairs now or not, and the last I was aware you don't have a visa. Kindly deport yourself before I regain enough concentration to genuinely wield my magic, or pay the price."

"Thunder," Luxu remarked in a bored voice, and lightning crackled in another arc over Elsa, sending her back to the ground with a cry and causing the trickles flowing over the top surface of the igloo to stop.

Great. Luxu could cast spells without wielding his Keyblade.

"Let me know when that happens," Luxu finished dismissively, and turned back to Riku and Kairi and Donald and Goofy and Sora.

"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted–"

"Then I'll be rude," Goofy cut in, and he alone didn't sound that angry. Determined to be there for his friends, yes, but not that angry. "You're avoiding one of the key – pun intentional – issues.

"We all have a destiny to live for, yes.

"But what that destiny is isn't for you or Yozora to decide."

Even now Sora found a genuine smile coming to his lips.

As it had never failed to before, Goofy's ability to see through all the trappings and get straight to the heart of a matter amazed him.

Luxu scoffed derisively. "There's no room for strays in this theater, cur. The whole realm of light has been Yozora's history to write since the First Keyblade War. That's another reason he fomented it. He needed the Princesses, yeah, but he also needed a realm of light that he could write scripts for as he saw fit; to further increase our chances of convincing a Princess of Heart to give into the darkness. Like Xehanort didn't, we don't leave fate to chance. For century after century, millennia after millennia, our destiny and our history and our civilization and our culture and our lives have been inscribed by Yozora.

"The next time you see her, ask Maleficent about something called the Book of Prophecies. They were one of Yozora's first and best deceptions. He claimed that they revealed the future as it was inevitably going to unfold, but they genuinely wrote the future as Yozora wanted it to unravel. Yozora used these Books to trick the other Foretellers into causing the Keyblade War and recreating the realm of light in a fractured state. Then he attached one of his eyes to No Name so it would travel into the future as Xehanort could and reassure Yozora that he'd succeeded in bending time to his will, lied that he was going to vanish so he had a cover to hide inside Ven, and the rest was Master Yozora's history.

"A lot of the problems many of the worlds you've been to have faced were first inscribed by Yozora into the Books of Prophecies, and it was my job to nudge and tweak things around here and there in the worlds to ensure the scripts that had been written in the books happened at least close to the way they'd been written, so that the lot of you would prepare Kairi for the stage and Xion for her blacksmithing."

Goofy turned to look at Sora, and nodded.

Sora grimaced. Regardless of how worthless he was, he shouldn't have forgotten this.

"Be that as it may," Sora said to Luxu, echoing his words to Xehanort in Scala ad Caelum. "A real leader knows that destiny is beyond his control, and accepts that."

"Which is why Kairi should accept her fate," Luxu rejoined.

Sora clenched his teeth. "You did not just compare Kairi to Xehanort."

Luxu snorted and shook his head. "You still haven't picked up on the kicker.

"Xehanort had another role to play besides assisting me in fomenting the Second Keyblade War. Like I said, Master Yozora is no more willing to leave destiny up to chance than Xehanort was. Master Yozora is almost certainly far less willing to do so than Xehanort was."

"We can tell," Donald interrupted sarcastically.

This time Luxu rolled his visible eye.

"Whatever the case, Master Yozora wasn't willing to take the risk of maneuvering just any Princess of Heart. He wanted us to have as many hands on our strings as we could.

"Kairi never went through a bequeathing ceremony, but she can wield a Keyblade. Don't tell me you've never wondered why. It's not because she's a Princess of Heart; Anna was wrong about how all Princesses can wield one."

"How does that justify you comparing Kairi to Xehanort?" Sora returned.

"Here's a clue," Luxu responded. "Xehanort was more knowledgeable than most Keyblade wielders about the initial Keyblade War, and it wasn't because he was a scholar. It was because his mother was very well versed in ancient lore, and he spent his childhood on Destiny Islands listening to her tell him stories about the age of fairy tales, the First Keyblade War, the Dandelions, and how the true light still shines in the deepest darkness. These stories are among the central reasons Xehanort became so inspired to travel to, and eventually, to create, a New World."

"So?" Sora questioned back. "That still doesn't tell me why you're comparing Kairi to Xehanort."

"Here's another clue," Luxu again evaded Sora's question. "When he left Destiny Islands, he first did so himself, but after he'd been a Keyblade Master for years he went back home and set his mother up in a better life on the world of Radiant Garden.

What in the worlds? Other than the fact that Kairi had been born on Radiant Garden, he couldn't follow where Luxu was heading with this this time.

Goofy frowned deeply. Something about Luxu's words must be worrying him, but he clearly couldn't put his finger on what it was, or he would have said so.

"Sora is correct," Riku put in. "Even I don't see any way not to think of this as rambling."

Luxu sighed in exasperation. "Xehanort's first attempt to re-forge the Kye-Blade was around four years before Ven drifted into your heart, when he attempted to convince Ven to give into the darkness. Haven't you wondered why, even with all Ansem's influence, Xehanort didn't actually begin to wield the darkness until then? He scarred Eraqus, but Xehanort didn't initiate that scrap. Eraqus began it, by rushing at Xehanort and attempting to strike him in the back; Xehanort was just walking off to mind his own business."

"Get to the point," Sora spoke. "Your usual methods of talking in riddles are irritating enough, but you're not even talking in riddles this time, and this is about comparing Xehanort to Kairi."

Luxu tapped one foot impatiently. "Here's clue number four.

"The event that actually drove Xehanort to give into the darkness around four years ago was that his wife," Good. So Xehanort had once had true connections, "Died in childbirth giving birth to his daughter, as a result of a group of petty crooks seeking to gain a reputation for themselves – though, as I'm sure you did see coming, one of these crooks was yours truly, and he was the one who encouraged the others to do this, too – mugging her when her pregnancy was almost over. His daughter barely lived through the birth and the doctors all told him that she'd die before twenty-four hours were over, so Xehanort gave into despair and hatred and fled into darkness. As Xehanort no doubt told you, one of his chief motives for creating a New World was to keep weak people from poisoning it with darkness."

So Xehanort had been acting partially out of loyalty to his deceased wife and daughter. Sora wished Xehanort had told them that. Maybe then Sora would have been able to keep things from becoming as bad as they'd gotten.

Goofy frowned even more deeply, and now looked very disturbed, but he still clearly couldn't put his finger on what was bothering him.

"Xehanort's mother was a skilled healer, however, so she saved his daughter's life and raised her as her own child, but Xehanort never discovered that his daughter had survived, so he remained lost in the night."

"If you're attempting to convince me it was my fault for not pulling Xehanort out of the darkness, I'm already aware of that," Sora responded. "I tried, when it was all over, but before that I was too busy fending for my life and heart and the lives and hearts of my friends.

"And even at the end, he still wouldn't listen to his heart. Eraqus told Xehanort that he was still there for him and gave him back a connection, but Xehanort would still rather have kept striving on to create a New World. Even with his body broken, he attempted to ambush me and take the Kye-Blade back, and Eraqus needed to catch him when he fell.

"So I'm very acquainted with the issue that I tried and failed.

"Nor does this tell me why you're comparing Kairi to Xehanort."

"Use your head, dunce," Luxu snapped. "I showed you Kairi's form in the Sleeping World That Never Was when you wondered how Xehanort and Xemnas and I knew you'd be taking the Mark of Mastery Exam.

"One of the reasons I showed you Kairi is because she has Ava's heart resting inside her."

Sora started at that, and he could feel Kairi's hand tense in his. But clasping Kairi's hand tighter had even more of a chance of torturing her further now, so Sora didn't alter his hold.

"Ava refused to resign herself to her fate and submit to the darkness," the last Foreteller hadn't forgotten the light. Thank goodness, "So Yozora nailed her with the Recusant's Sigil, and you know how effective a way that is to keep an eye on someone."

Kairi tensed much further, and Sora wanted to clasp her hand more supportively with all his heart, but especially now he couldn't.

Luxu grinned in pleasure. "You're not a dunderhead after all. Yep yep yap, Kairi's been enabling us to endanger you and Riku and everyone else since the first instant she arrived on Destiny Islands.

"Oh, and I just wanted you to know that, in order to put Ava in her place and to teach her what happens when you fight your fate, Yozora further assigned Ava the destiny of being the treacherous flashpoint that actually set off the First Keyblade War."

Kairi tensed a lot more.

Sora knew that he couldn't grip Kairi's hand more supportively, but he clenched his teeth so hard that they hurt. Yozora had tricked one of his closest friends and apprentices into obliterating the whole realm of light with darkness merely because she wouldn't listen to him or do what he wanted her to do and had refused to lose sight of the light and give into the darkness? Even if Yozora wasn't using Luxu as a puppet, Sora wasn't sure now that that said anything about how much basic decency Yozora had left.

"So you'll be thrilled to know that Kairi's heart is connected to, and one with, the heart of the genocidal mass murderer of everyone in the entire original realm of light, too.

"But how Ava bears the Recusant's Sigil isn't the sole reason that I showed you Kairi's form to tell you why we knew, in detail, about yours and Riku's lives and that you were taking the Mark of Mastery Exam."

I told you, as well, that you need a part of yourself at your destination to travel through time. Master Yozora's Gazing Eye was sufficient for him to see into the future. You don't need a full bodily version of yourself at your destination to travel through time. You just need a small portion of yourself, such as your blood."

Sora sighed. Luxu had returned to rambling, so he'd had enough of this topic.

Then he realized that Kairi's grip had just slackened to the point she was barely holding onto him any longer, and that the hold she had retained, though it was still mostly comforting, now felt like a drowning person clinging onto a life raft with complete and absolute desperation, as though it was that person's sole tie left to life and love and light and hope, and that tie was rapidly fraying and slipping away with each tiniest fraction of a second.

Riku, for some reason, was shaking, and Braveheart had fallen to the floor beside him.

Donald's beak had dropped open, and Goofy had his eyes squeezed closed in agony.

Sora had no choice now. He gripped Kairi's hand more tightly and squeezed it, and he scowled at Luxu. "Now you're upsetting Kairi a lot more. Can the rambling and get to the point, if you even have one. Kairi obviously doesn't have the same blood as Xehano–"

All reality was emptiness empty of even emptiness once more as he became aware of what Luxu was all but directly saying with horror and terror that, even with reality gone, scoured the feel of Kairi's slack, completely and totally desperate grip so pitch white and blinding black into the bottom of his heart that Sora was absolutely certain that, even if Namine were the one to wipe his memories as completely as Lauriam had said that Anna's death would wipe Elsa's, he would never forget this.

He would never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never forget this.

He was completely and wholly helpless and powerless again, even though he was right next to Kairi and holding her hand, and after what Luxu had just said, if Sora did have anything of his broken heart left, its light had become so shot through with crystal fractures that there wasn't even room left for darkness inside it, for his heart was now sand.

Luxu smiled in satisfaction.

"You got it at last," he spoke.

And then, with nine simple words, he finished shredding Sora's existence forever.

"I'm comparing Kairi to Xehanort because he's her father."

Reality reasserted itself.

Once again almost before he was aware he'd moved, Sora turned, careful not to let the hand that Kairi was holding move at all so she wouldn't believe that he was pulling away from her in revulsion the most microscopic, infinitesimal amount, and brought his other hand below Kairi's chin to turn her face to him.

He couldn't tell if any of the tears on her now practically dead eyes or on her face below them were in response to Luxu's latest, all being shattering revelation, but he leaned forward and placed a kiss with his lips on one of the tears on the left side of Kairi's face, then on one of the tears on the right side of Kairi's face.

Kairi didn't react.

She barely even appeared to register that he was there.

It was almost as though she'd lost her heart again, and for all intents and purposes, Sora knew that that just had occurred once more.

Sora wanted to moan in despair, but he forced it down and leaned forward so his forehead was resting against hers and he was looking directly into her eyes.

"I still love you," Sora told her, and to his surprise and relief, he didn't need to struggle to sound more sincere and heartfelt than he could recall sounding before in his life. "Just as much as before. That will never change. No matter what."

Kairi still didn't react.

He wasn't even sure if she was looking back into his eyes.

He wasn't even sure if she was aware of reality at all, and if not for the weak flickers of life in her eyes, he'd have been terrified that she had fallen into a catatonic coma.

"Riku's the same," Sora continued.

"So are G–"

At last, Kairi reacted, cutting him off in a voice that wasn't a whisper but that was now fully inflectionless of emotion and dead.

"I don't need or want to hear it," she said. "Can you please stop?"

"So that's why you came here." Riku's voice was very low and deadly, and another chill ran up Sora's spine. Riku wasn't considering giving into the darkness again, was he?

"To break Kairi further," Riku went on, "When she was at last beginning to get back on her feet. And to ensure that, yet again, Sora and Goofy and Donald and I assisted you in doing it."

"Got it in one," Luxu shrugged easily with a relaxed smile.

The blinding black and the ebony white were back, washing and wiping away everything that even now somehow still remained but Kairi's pain and her slack body against him, and Riku's and Donald's and Goofy's and Anna's and Elsa's pain.

Though Sora was almost certain this time that most of the blinding hatred

yes, it was hatred, and Sora no longer cared enough to refrain from admitting that

was directed at himself and not at anyone else.

He could have prevented almost all of it.

He probably couldn't have forestalled Xehanort from consigning Eraqus to Terra's heart, Ven into sleep, Terra into his own heart, and Aqua to the realm of darkness. Sora had just been four then–

–though Sora wasn't fully convinced those tragedies hadn't been his fault as well. He'd been four then, but he'd still had a mind, even though he'd never had a heart. And there were plenty of precocious young girls and young boys who had the wits to make a difference in the reality around them at that age.

But even if Eraqus' and Ven's and Aqua's and Terra's pain hadn't been Sora's fault, everything else was.

If he'd just paid a little more attention to how other people felt around him, rather than running around with his head buried in a rat hole in the sand or stuck in the empty fluffy candy clouds, he might have put two and two together, and realized that the person and his mother who had left Destiny Islands for destinations unknown years ago were the grandmother and the father of his new best friend of mysterious origins.

At worst, Ansem had been hiding on the islands since long before Sora had been b

no, he hadn't been born, because no one as abominable as him could have been born, he was almost certainly just a science project Yozora or Luxu had synthesized from out of nowhere, and even that gave him infinitely surpassing all comprehension or negative incomprehension too much value

and if Sora had just asked around and asked the right questions when K

he couldn't start to feel or think her name any longer

his new best friend had entered his life, Ansem would almost certainly have heard about those questions and put the pieces together himself.

If Sora had found out himself, he might have then learned about the mysterious hooded figure lurking on the islands

for surely one or more people had seen Ansem from time to time

had reason to believe the hooded figure was connected to his new best friend, gone in search of Xehanort's Heartless, and asked him if he knew Sora's new best friend or his new best friend's father or grandmother.

Or, if Ansem had figured it out himself, the result would have been the same.

Xehanort's Heartless, and thus his heart, would have then known that his daughter was still alive, and, assuming the discovery didn't cause Xehanort to be recompleted then and there, Ansem would have gone directly to Xemnas – and Young Xehanort, if he'd been wandering this set of times yet – and the first Organization Thirteen. Ansem and Xemnas would have recompleted themselves back into Xehanort, which would have sent Xehanort's heart out of Terra and back into his first body – and if it hadn't since Xehanort wouldn't have been recompleted against his will, Xehanort would have left Terra's body shortly afterwards on his own initiative – and then Xehanort would have restored Terra's heart.

Then Xehanort would have apologized to Terra for his sins, told the other Nobodies the truth and apologized for his sins to them as well, gone to Mickey and apologized for his sins to him, convinced Mickey he'd found his light once again, and the two of them and perhaps the Nobodies who now knew the truth and might have been recompleted would have found Ven and Aqua and all of them would have worked together as real friends to defeat Maleficent, her cohorts, and Luxu.

Ansem the Wise or Ienzo or Zexion might even have been able to create a replica body to enable Eraqus to live freely outside of Terra's heart once more.

Lastly, when Mickey and Xehanort and Ven and Aqua and Terra and perhaps Eraqus and Goofy and Donald had defeated Luxu and Maleficent and her colleagues, locked the Door to Darkness, and released the personal hearts and the world hearts from the two artificial Kingdom Hearts that Xemnas and Ansem had started up, and there was no reason to fear spending time with Sora's new best friend would call the wrong sort of attention to her and put her in danger, Xehanort would have returned to his daughter and regained the true happiness that he'd lost, and Sora's new best friend would have had a genuine family again.

Maybe even two uncles or brothers, if someone had found a way to enable Ansem's and Xemnas' hearts to dwell in replica bodies separate from Xehanort after Xehanort had recompleted himself of his own free will.

But because he'd been a clueless and oblivious infant, it had all ended with his new best friend's father using her as a weapon to force the two people she loved the most to endanger the whole realm of light, those two people she loved the most then murdering her two brothers or two uncles before her very eyes as well as a younger version of her father, then her father murdering her by shattering her to pieces by cutting her down in the back to further use her as a weapon against the two people she loved the most, and then the person she completely and totally idiotically loved and believed in and had faith in and trusted the most of all had abandoned and betrayed and deserted and left her to suffer alone and in pain so he could murder her father with his own hands while she was unable to stop him from doing it and she hadn't even been aware he was doing it, and only then did he bother to take the time to go to her side and take away her pain and protect her, and even then what he'd already done to her and everyone else for years and years and years and years hadn't been the most microscopic, most infinitesimally outline of a flicker of a silhouette of a phantom of a shade of a shadow amount close to enough and he'd fought at her side, and had even performed combination strikes with her, to break the armor that her father had used to preserve his life and that he otherwise could have donned once again when he was on the verge of losing the true battle that he was waging to protect himself from lethal injury and to keep fighting, and to damage her father's concentration at a vital period in that true battle thusly ensuring that he'd lose the battle and die, thereby turning his new best friend who loved and believed in and had faith in and trusted him above anyone else she knew or had known in her entire life into her very own father's murderer by her very own hands as well.

But who cared who he hated the most?

What was the point of not hating himself or others?

What was the point of not taking revenge?

He was already a sadistic and remorseless serial genocidal murderer and a ruthless and apathetic cosmic weapon of mass destruction.

So what was the point of not taking revenge?

It was too late for Xehanort and Young Xehanort and Ansem and Xemnas.

But the murderer of the mother of the girl who loved him was right in front of him.

And it wasn't revenge if he didn't beat the stuffing out of Luxu too badly, or if he just attacked Luxu with hate and fury but he didn't actually wield the power of darkness in the process.

Sora began to pull his hand out of

he had no choice but to feel and think her name, he couldn't refer to her as the girl who loved him or one of his best friends any longer, those were unimaginably measurelessly unfathomably immeasurably worse ways to start to feel or think about her

K…

Kairi's…

grasp.

Kairi's hand tightened.

"Remember what Riku told you," she spoke, and this time there was emotion in her tone and it wasn't dead; terror and fear and concern and worry. "Even if you attempt to justify it, it's still darkness."

Sora closed his eyes in new despair that he shouldn't have been able to feel.

He couldn't even protect Kairi's parents' legacy.

"Not when I'm the Queen," Elsa broke into the confrontation a second time, a contained anger that wasn't hateful but that was absolutely and utterly determined in her voice.

Sora opened his eyes, removed his forehead from Kairi's, and turned in her direction.

Elsa was standing, and this time pale blue was glowing around her hands and her eyes were glowing pale blue and a furious whirling blizzard was cascading around her as though it was a tornado.

"When I'm the Queen, it's not revenge," Elsa went on. "It's judgment."

Luxu was attempting to mask it, but there was worry in his eyes now.

"Thunder," he yawned, but his boredom was definitely faked this time.

A current of lightning appeared over Elsa's head, but a roiling gray storm cloud hurling fist-sized chunks of ice around and about and above Elsa coalesced beneath it and above Elsa's head, and when the electricity coursed into it, it emerged seconds later from the portion of the cloud facing Luxu as many forks of crackling, jagged bolts that rocketed in his direction.

A globe of interlocking hexagons enshrouded Luxu and deflected the bolts while No Name manifested in his right hand in swirls of black and blue energies, but Sora could clearly see most of the hexagons chip.

Elsa smiled unpleasantly. "In case you've forgotten, lightning and blizzards both come from storms.

"That trick is not going to work again."

Luxu began to raise No Name, and then his lips twisted in consternation.

"Fine, fine, whatever," he spoke, and No Name vanished in further swirling blue and black. "Our leading actress knows enough about what her reason for being here in the World is now. I'd prefer to say at least a small amount more, but there's no real purpose to stick around.

Luxu held his right hand out, and a new corridor of darkness sprang into being.

"Didn't you hear me?" Elsa questioned mildly. "We are the Queen of Arendelle. We don't know all of the details about who Yozora or Xehanort are, or what they did and want to do.

"But we do know this. You just used the girl one of my sister's best friends loves to launch an unprovoked assault against our people, our nation, our capital city, and our people's homes. As far as we are concerned, that constitutes an act of war."

Donald's head whipped up, and there was a surprising deathly terror in his eyes.

Now what?

"Sora and Kairi implied that they can heal our people's wounds," Elsa went on, "But you've completely destroyed their houses and vehicles and jobs and livelihoods, so even when my people's injuries are mended, they won't be able to resume their lives for a very long time.

"At this point, no economic sanctions that Arendelle can level against Yozora and you and the other Foretellers will enable you to provide us with sufficient recompense. Furthermore, you and the rest of the Foretellers have proven beyond all doubt that you are a clear and present danger to the safety and security of Arendelle's people and Arendelle itself.

"Therefore, this is a declaration of war.

"There is nowhere that you or Yozora or the other Foretellers can run. Arendelle, and we ourselves, will not cease our efforts to bring all of you to judgment until you have been tried and convicted as criminals of war for crimes against Arendelle's civilization.

"This declaration is effective immediately, and will not cease to be in effect until Yozora has given Arendelle, and we ourselves, his complete and total and unconditional surrender, or, if he is unable to speak for himself, you do so in his place."

Donald clenched his hands into fists and stomped towards Elsa.

"This is hardly the time," Riku interjected.

"Clamp down on your tongue!" Donald shouted back. "Fighting people who are already violating the world order with a relatively small group of people is one thing! An interstellar war is another!"

Sora realized what Donald was saying, but this time he truly didn't care at all.

Sora was just empty even of emptiness and numb to all reality now.

"This is one of the primary reasons that Disney Kingdom implements the world order in the first place! To prevent interstellar wars!"

Elsa looked Donald pointedly in the eyes. "Then your nation is welcome to practice its own isolationism."

Donald's beak dropped open and moved soundlessly for a number of seconds in so much fury that he obviously couldn't find the words to talk.

"As for Arendelle and we ourselves, we will practice our own beliefs in mutually beneficial alliances and an interconnected World, and defend our friends and allies."

"Do your best," Luxu rolled his shoulders and head unconcernedly.

Goofy looked very worriedly at Donald.

Donald pressed the top and bottom of his beak together.

"I'll warn His Majesty that he needs to get in touch with Larsa," Donald said, and Goofy's mouth dropped open. "Don't give me that. I told you, Larsa forgave His and Her Majesties for Vayne and Ashe and Delita and Ramza a long time ago. Larsa will hear us out."

Sora couldn't even care enough to feel any interest in what Donald and Goofy were talking about and to want to share this discussion with them.

"But how will you get in contact with him?" Goofy questioned skeptically. "I'm pretty sure that the reason Cloud and Tifa and Sephiroth were able to return to Ivalice Zodiac was because Sephiroth had recently tried to rob Sora of his Keyblade, so that gave Cloud a small amount of influence over Sora's Keyblade because Sora was there and Cloud used it to open a path.

"Not one single Heartless was able to penetrate the wall around Ivalice Zodiac after Larsa reinforced it, much less reach all the way to Ivalice Zodiac's world heart. What causes you to believe that His Majesty has a chance of getting through?"

Donald held a hand to the bottom of his beak and tapped his foot.

"Yuna and Rikku and Paine might know a way," Donald said hopefully, though there was doubt in his words. "It was a few months before we met Sora and it's been a lot longer than but a few months since we met Sora, but they told me then that they regularly keep in touch with Vaan and Penelo. I doubt that that's changed after such a relatively short time, due to the professions they share. If anyone knows how to get back in touch with Larsa, they do."

Goofy's ears drooped low to show how unconvinced he was.

"Let's see what His Majesty believes we should do."

"Fine," Donald acquiesced in a very grudging tone.

Elsa turned her head away from Donald and Goofy and held it high.

Luxu glanced at Kairi for what Sora discovered he had room to genuinely hope was the last time.

"You are the daughter of the true Dreamreapers, Your Majesty," Luxu spoke. "Master Yozora's script is the destiny that you were born to become. I advise you to embrace it with all your heart. Then take up your Note Blade, the Abyssal Aether, cast in the inferno of Persona, Anima, and Animus' confluence; conduct the threaded glass of all memories and space and time and feelings and thoughts and hearts and life and dimensions and dreams into the symphony of Synchronicity Perceptual; and attain to your birthright."

Kairi didn't react or respond at all, and her eyes were practically dead once more.

Luxu turned and sauntered easily into the portal of the corridor of darkness, and it closed behind him and dispersed.

.

"I know what you have seen. It is your futures that slumber in this hall. Destiny, in its essential form. All the dreams that might have been. All the happiness, and sorrow, you might have known. Your tomorrow, as it has been witnessed. The Black Omen transcends time and space, drifting through the all and nothing, waiting for Lavos to awaken. Destiny has led you here, and here you shall remain. Unless you can defeat me and bring down the Omen, there is no future for you! Come, children! Lavos slumbers. I will guide you into the depths of his dream. Did I say dream? I meant, of course, his eternal nightmare!"-Queen Zeal

CHRONO TRIGGER [Nintendo Double Screen Version]