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CHAPTER 4:
COUNTERPLOT
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Author's Notes: For this Chapter, the pieces are, in order of scene: 'Star Tower,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; and after this 'Antipyretic,' from the FINAL FANTASY TACTICS Original Soundtrack, Disc Two. However, these Tracks aren't on KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section.
For a number of seconds, silence reigned.
Riku broke it, walking to the side so he could look at all of them, and then saying, "Okay. First things first.
"I just tried to smell the Recusant's Sigil, and none of us is carrying it as you once bore it, Sora, so we should at least be able to talk to each other without being overheard.
"That out of the way, we need to be incredibly careful what moves we take from now on, so we can play into Yozora's and the Foretellers' hands as little as possible from this point forward. With the exception of Kairi's," his lips pressed together and twisted, "role, we can't trust a single word Luxu said. He went to far too much effort to hurt Kairi, so her," his voice cracked with pain, and Sora felt Kairi's hand tense a minuscule amount in his, but he knew measurelessly more than before that if he attempted to alter his grip, he'd just hurt her worse, "bloodline, Ava's roles and presence in her heart, and Kairi's role, are all probably the truth.
"But everything else he said is suspect." To Sora's surprise, an extremely faint amount of admiration flickered within him. When had Riku become this certain of himself? "He could have told you, Sora, Donald, and Goofy, that your roles and Jiminy's are over precisely because they're not and he needs you to think that they are in order to better string you along into continuing them." Less faint, but still faint, illness rose. What else could he possibly do to hurt Kairi? "And he could have said that Mickey's role and my role, and those of the other Keyblade wielders, are still in effect to draw our attention away from the people Yozora and the Foretellers genuinely intend to attempt to use as puppets."
"Does that mean…" Elsa's voice was filled with desperate hope, and desperate hope of Sora's own rose up to consume him, though he could barely believe he was feeling it, much less that there was such a thing as hope, "Anna and I… might not be in any danger?"
"I don't know," Riku replied, and Elsa sagged slightly. "We can likely trust Luxu's story about Faerie and himself, as that sounded personal to him, and, as I said, his revelations about Kairi, but that's all.
"For all we know, Roxas or," his lips compressed together, "Namine, is the 'Recusant of the Sigil,' and not Xion.
"I'm pretty sure the Persona and the Recusant of the Sigil, assuming they exist at all, are one and the same, however. 'Persona' is a term referring to someone who has no identity of his or her own, and just wears masks given him or her by himself or herself, or by others. That sounds a lot like a 'vagrant Riskbreaker' who wanders all reality without a place to belong."
"Then we should begin to attempt to decipher what these," Elsa scowled slightly, "Foretellers want with us there.
"It might be safe to say that the Recusant of the Sigil whose destiny is to craft the Note Blade is the person who will attempt to murder Anna or I. That sounds like another fate that a 'High Seraph of Blood' is destined for."
"I agree, but why bother figuring out their scheme?" Donald put in. "Let's just find them and pound them into the ground. We don't need to waste any seconds finding anyone this time; not His Majesty or Kairi or Riku, or any guardians. We can just take the battle to them and clobber them before they have the chance to yank our tails anymore."
"We might be able to defeat the other four Foretellers that way," Riku acknowledged. "But that won't work on Luxu or Yozora. Luxu can just recomplete himself somewhere unknown if we destroy his Nobody body, we have no idea where to find Yozora's Heartless or Vanitas, and if we do find them and defeat them they'll recomplete somewhere unknown as well. We could need to spend as much time tracking Luxu, Yozora's Heartless, Vanitas, and a recompleted Yozora down as we did Mickey, Kairi, Sora, and the guardians, and that will give them plenty more time to pull on our chains.
"And you saw how hurt Kairi was when she learned that she'd created the Demon Tides, the Lich, and the Demon Towers. What Yozora did to Ava is much worse. So we have no idea whether she did lose faith in everything but her role once she learned her 'destiny,' and gave into the darkness before she entered Kairi's heart or afterwards, and whether she's standing with us or her fellow Foretellers."
Sora's admiration grew, and he forced a smile.
"When did you get this sharp, Riku?" he queried.
"When I couldn't save Kairi and Namine from Xehanort when Namine was about to gain the friendship and the happiness that she'd wanted since her birth," Riku answered, but Sora couldn't wince or cringe at all, and barely felt any pain at the reminder. "You'll recall how quickly I understood Mickey's plan." Sora remembered wondering about that. Up until then Riku hadn't been that fast on the uptake, and their more experienced friends had usually needed to explain things to him further before Riku understood what they were talking about. "Kairi and Namine and you had gone through terrible hurt twice then in quick succession, and Mickey had lost his heart once. I started taking things much more seriously at that point."
Sora forced himself to laugh a little and grin. "Then we've finished switching places. At the beginning, I was the backup. Now you are."
Riku smiled back, and Sora didn't understand how it was genuine. "Hardly," he disagreed. "You were never a true Keyblade wielder, remember? Your power comes from your friends, not light or darkness. Roxas' and Xion's do, and you created them, but, as you know, they're not you, and they're among the friends who give you your power."
Elsa's brow furrowed. "Sora has no power of his own, either light or darkness, it's drawn from others? He wasn't supposed to wield a Keyblade? And he gave this 'Xion,' who does have power of her own, the ability to draw energy from other people and it's not an innate capability of hers? Lastly, Sora once carried the Recusant's Sigil?
"Could he be the Persona and the Recusant of the Sigil?"
Kairi and her hand inside his went absolutely stiff, Riku went ghostly white, Goofy emitted a keening howl, while Donald clamped his beak tightly together and gave Elsa a look that told her she had just become his newest least favorite person in the cosmos.
But, as much as blinding shock rippled and ripped through him, could barely focus on this.
He knew that Elsa was almost certainly right, and he knew how Kairi and Riku were probably taking this latest revelation, endlessly more horrific to them than what they'd yet heard before.
"Kairi!" he cried. "Riku! Please! Promise me that you won't give into the darkness because of this! Please! Promise me!"
Kairi nodded slightly and briefly clasped his hand tighter before loosening it once more, but, though Sora could tell that it was unusually forced even for how she was acting now and that meant that she was actually thinking about it a little now, relief caused him to sag a bit.
Kairi didn't break her promises.
Riku nodded firmly, though he looked angry that he couldn't entertain the option.
"I know better than to go down that path again," he replied. "If you come to your senses once you've walked that road, you've learned from it enough that you know better than to step back onto that street.
"I'm more worried about you and Kairi." It barely meant anything to Sora that Riku had said he might choose to give into the darkness. Kairi was another matter wholly, but who cared if he did at this point?
"You haven't been down that street willingly before. As much as you understand what's wrong with the darkness from your standpoints separate from it, you don't have firsthand experience of what it's like."
Good. Riku didn't break his promises either.
Sora let the emptiness empty of emptiness swallow him once more, and this time he was barely even aware that Kairi's hand was there, much less capable of feeling it.
Riku looked at Elsa, and he gripped Braveheart
When had he recalled it to his hand?
Sora couldn't remember, if he'd even seen it happen
more tightly, clearly ready to fight Elsa if he needed to.
Sora didn't even have the ability to believe or feel that Riku should just let Elsa kill him. Even that was too much at this point.
"What are you going to do about the likelihood that he is?" Riku challenged. "Queen of Arendelle or not, you have no authority to condemn someone for crimes that he hasn't committed yet."
Elsa met Riku's glare.
"I'm aware of that," she spoke back. "I have no intention to. I'm simply going to stay on my guard around him, and keep a close eye on Anna when he's around her."
The emptiness empty of even emptiness was gone again, or maybe even it couldn't dampen the exhaustion now, as the last pieces clicked into place.
Sora sagged, and to his surprise, a small amount of broken tears were still able to brim in his eyes and fall down his face.
"I'm not the threat to Anna," he said, appalled that his voice wasn't as dead as Kairi looked, appalled that he couldn't be appalled that much that it wasn't. "You have a supposed 'destiny' too. It's to become so fixated on waging war against the Foretellers to bring them to judgment that, by doing so, you endanger Anna yourself again," to her credit, Elsa just thinned her lips together and made her face a set mask, "And then, when I attempt to incapacitate you in order to protect her, you try to turn one of my disabling blows into a killing blow to ensure that you're no longer a danger to Anna, causing Anna to need to choose to let me murder you or to die herself at my hands."
Elsa lifted her chin.
"Then put an end to me now," she said. "If I do it I'll leave a trace, and Anna will know that I'm dead, so I can't do it myself. But I saw what your Keyblades can do. I'm certain that you can end me without leaving a trace of me behind, and then you can keep my death from Anna for a while, and just tell her that I left on a journey to gather resources for our people once you 'give them back their hearts,' until she's better equipped to face it.
"So do it. Before Anna wakes up and needs to choose. Strike me down here and now, without 'costing me my heart,' as Kairi put it, and do so lethally. And set all of us free from our destinies in the process."
Sora felt Kairi grip his hand with very strong, very tight warmth and reassurance.
Riku shifted his combat stance slightly in Sora's direction, and Sora knew why.
Because, though Sora hadn't thought of this method of setting them free from their destinies himself, it was honestly a good idea, and, to his slight horror, he couldn't think of that good of a reason why he shouldn't do as Elsa advised.
If it helps someone, it's not darkness.
Riku shook his head, telling Sora that he knew what Sora was feeling and thinking, and cold, though not strong cold, drenched Sora from head to toe.
Sora forced himself to smile, and Kairi relaxed her grip and Riku shifted his posture away from Sora, though Kairi's grip didn't become as weak as before and Riku didn't fully shift his stance from Sora's direction.
"I have a better idea," Sora forced himself to say in a joking way. "Don't damage the world order and wage an interstellar war. I'm not the one you need to worry about. Donald is."
Donald puffed up his chest in exaggerated proudness.
"We have passed our royal edict," Elsa responded cordially. "The Foretellers are a clear and present danger to Arendelle, and we have the freedom to respond to that danger by any means necessary, including the use of force. Their wishes for our crown do not concern us. Now that we are aware of their intentions, they cannot compel us to bow to them."
"You're vastly underestimating them," Riku disagreed. "You heard what Luxu said about how effectively he and Yozora have been pulling everyone's strings not just in Arendelle, but everywhere in the universe, for millennia. If you go through with this, they will find a way to turn you against Anna and Sora against both of you; and that's assuming that they don't already have a specific method in mind for accomplishing this.
"And you know this very well. You're not as sure as you sound, or you wouldn't have requested Sora to kill you."
Elsa winced, but she drew her chin up once again.
"Then take Anna with you when you leave Arendelle," she spoke back.
A very tiny amount of the empty emptiness left at the knowledge Anna would be with him for a long time, too.
Kairi's hand tensed around his, though and Riku gave a tight, unhappy frown. Donald and Goofy looked uneasy.
Why? Whatever had driven Anna to attack Kairi when she was no longer a danger, there was no possible way that she'd fallen as far as Riku, or would in the future.
He'd been wrong that Princesses of Heart didn't possess darkness, but Anna was as good a person as Kairi. All he needed to do was convince Anna to promise that she wouldn't give in to the darkness, then Riku or Kairi needed to teach her how to ensure that her darkness didn't act on its own, and she'd be fine.
"I can't be a danger to Anna if she's no longer in Arendelle," Elsa finished, "And the Foretellers can't manipulate me into harming her if she's not nearby."
"That's a bad idea," Riku warned. "Anna attacked Kairi because she feels a lot more helpless and powerless without darkness backing her up than Kairi does."
The tiny amount of the empty emptiness that had gone away was back, and along with it deathly ice lashed up his spine like a ribbon.
How, even now, had something become so wrong with him that he hadn't realized this?
Anna's love for Elsa was the blinding core of the brightest star. As terrified as Anna was now, maybe K–
No.
It didn't matter how dark your shadow became if you had a bright light.
If you were capable of loving someone as much as Anna loved Elsa, you were not in true danger from the darkness.
He'd convince Anna to promise not to give into the darkness, and she more than anyone he knew wouldn't break a promise.
And that would be the end of it.
"She's desperate now and not thinking rationally," Riku continued. "If she's not at your side to watch over you, even if you're safe from the danger that she knows about, there are countless other ways that you could become endangered. So not being around you will cause things to become much worse for her. She needs to stay here, and you need to give up on your plans for sending an army after the Foretellers."
"Sora will be with her," Elsa countered. "And Kristoff can accompany her, too." Donald bristled. "I'll have Marshmallow once you recover his heart, and he's my bodyguard." Riku blinked. "Anna trusts him to protect me. Once Anna learns that I'm safer with her elsewhere, she'll feel better so long as you've healed Marshmallow before you leave."
Riku didn't look fully convinced, but before he could say anything, Donald quacked a few times to get their attention.
"Did any of us agree to her coming with us, though!?" Donald shouted. "You're shattering the world order lousily enough as it is! I'm not letting her do the same thing, especially not with someone who isn't even a New Seven Hea–"
"In my constitution as a King providing friendly advice to a fellow monarch," Mickey's voice broke into the conversation, "I believe that, if Anna accompanies us, it won't do that much harm." The others turned eyes or heads in Mickey's direction, but Sora saw no point looking. Whether Mickey had come back with millions of Keyblades or not, his return made no difference now. "But I agree with your," Mickey's voice became disapproving and scolding, "diplomatic recommendation," Donald hung his head, chastened, and Mickey's tone returned to its former friendly, but formal, voice, "That it's best that Kristoff stay here."
Kristoff glared determinedly at Mickey. "As you said yourself, you're not the ruler here. That's not your decision to make."
Mickey looked guilty and uncomfortable, and Riku spoke up for him. "Taking you to the worlds we know, however, is ours. If you or Elsa don't like it, feel free to declare war upon us, too."
Elsa turned a challenging expression on him, and Riku met her stare.
"How long have you been listening, Your Majesty?" Donald questioned irritatedly. "Did you bring back any other Keyblades?"
"And do you know about Sora and Elsa?" Goofy added, sounding scared and concerned.
"I heard enough to put the pieces together." Mickey replied, and for the first time since Sora had known him, Mickey sagged exhaustedly, the skin on his face wrinkled, and he looked very much the King he was, tired and careworn and weighed down by years upon years of a heavy burden and extremely difficult decisions. "Though I didn't want to interrupt until I had a good place to join in.
"But, if you believe that I should attempt to write Larsa," Donald hesitated, but he nodded, though Goofy made his face a mask, "You're right. For more reasons than you know. I'm certain now that the 'Undying Ones' Vayne referred to are the Foretellers."
Goofy's eyes widened in shock and dismay. "You mean it?"
Mickey looked even more weighted down and careworn. "Regrettably, yes."
His voice became official. "Donald, Goofy."
Both of them stood ramrod straight and at attention.
"I was wrong when I ran off to seek the Keyblade of Darkness myself, and asked for help from you and whoever was next in line to wield the Keyblade rather than helping others myself. But this time," though Mickey's voice became uncertain with that word before becoming official again, showing that Mickey wasn't fully sure that he wasn't repeating his past mistakes, "I know what I'm talking about.
"If you bring Sora to Ivalice Zodiac, keep him away from all myths and information, official or street gossip, about the Angel of Blood and the Riskbreakers." Sora jolted, Kairi stiffened again and her hand stiffened inside Sora's another time, and Riku's face tightened and then he glared at Mickey. "And, if Cloud or Tifa or Sephiroth leave it once more, or already have, do not let them, and especially not Sephiroth's Masamune or Cloud's Einlanzer, anywhere near Sora."
"You're keeping one or more things from Sora as I kept the truth about Kairi from her," Jiminy sprang up from inside Goofy's collar again, looking very guilty. "I wouldn't do that. Look what happened to Arendelle and its hearts because I was an idiot."
"This is different," Mickey replied, but again his words were uncertain. "This isn't about your darkness acting on its own.
"But yes, I know, if I don't tell Sora myself, the Foretellers will ensure that he finds out in among the worst possible ways. So I have advice for Sora."
He looked at Sora. "I'm saying this not as a King, or as a Keyblade Master, or as a Keyblade wielder, but as a friend who cares about you and who wants to be there for you."
Sora forced himself to meet Mickey's eyes, and found that it was easier than he would have believed it would be.
Sora wasn't sure that it should matter to him any longer, but he couldn't bring himself to believe that his connections with Kairi and with his friends were as pointless as everything else.
And he knew that whatever Mickey was about to say, it was as vital to those connections as Hercules' advice to cherish Kairi and his friends with all his heart.
"I won't tell you what happened with Larsa on Ivalice Zodiac, but I will tell you that, at the end, Minnie and I, and a number of other people that I won't name, confronted Larsa's older brother, Emperor Vayne Solidor, atop a floating fortress known as the Sky Fortress Bahamut with Larsa at Vayne's side. While Cloud and his friend Zack and others faced off against Vayne's mother, Empress Mother Zeal," Sora started. Did she have a connection to Schala? "In her artificial giant Keyblade Armor that Vayne called an Omnigear, named Opiomorph; and Judge Magister Dalton, in his artificial giant Keyblade Armor that Vayne named a Gear, called Dora; aboard a floating fortress assisting it named the Black Omen. And Sephiroth and Tifa and other people faced down the military officers commanding Vayne's Riskbreakers, Grand Inquisitor Harle, in her Omnigear, Regulus; and Knight-Captain Lynx, in his Gear, named Achtzehn; aboard a third floating fortress, the Terra Tower.
"I'll reveal this. Our goal was to prevent Vayne from harnessing the heart of his and his separated – though not divorced – wife's, Judge Magister Drace's, infant daughter, Schala," that answered that. It genuinely was such a small world, though the Foretellers likely had something to do with this one, "To attempt to combine two Dreamstone swords, known as the Masamune and the Einlanzer; and a giant Dreamstone suit of armor, named Lavos; into an artificial Keyblade named the Grand Devourer of Dreams, and an artificial giant Keyblade Armor that Vayne calls a Xenogears, named Crescens. If you can't keep away from Sephiroth and Cloud and Tifa, do not touch them or their weapons. Cloud is the Assassin of Time, the Chrono Trigger, and Sephiroth is the Assassin of Space, the Chrono Cross. Don't touch Tifa, too. She's not who you believe she is, as well, and her fists are her weapons. I can't tell you who she genuinely is, but her true name is the Frozen Flame.
"But if or when the Foretellers reveal to you what Vayne's goal was and who and what the Angel of Blood or the High Seraph, and the vagrant Riskbreaker or the Bloody Sin, are, never forget this.
"Before Minnie and I clashed with Vayne in combat, he spoke these words to me:
"'Permit me to ask: Who are you? An angel of blood and vengeance? Or, perchance, a vagrant saint of salvation?'
"Before I could think of my answer, Minnie responded on my behalf. With his approval, she quoted advice given me by someone named Ramza Beoulve, who was standing with us in the final battle.
"'Lo', God-Blade Bearer.
"'Do not sleep. Dream. For reality and illusion are a duality, parts of a whole. Only the mirror of dreams reflects what is true.
'Know you: Your destiny challenges the sky. 'Ware the Watchers, the Wards of the Three Gates. Heart-hungry, unsated. He without power, want it not. He with power, trust it not. He with sight, heed it not. Rend illusion, cut the true path. In bond, Ramza.'
"This taught me what my answer was, and I said this to Vayne.
"'I am simply myself. No more and no less. And I wish only to be free.'
"Be a stray and a friend, Sora. Not a ruler and a servant, or a traitor and a vagrant. That's how you'll light the way to the warmth of home for the people who you love."
Sora nodded.
That was all that he could do.
He didn't know what he felt, if anything in reality, about Mickey's advice.
"Did that convince Vayne to step out of the darkness?" Riku questioned, though from his tone and his expression, Sora could tell that Riku knew the answer as well as they all did.
Mickey squeezed his eyes shut briefly in remembered agony.
Then he opened them, and for a few seconds Sora saw the closest things to despair and hatred that he'd seen in Mickey's eyes, though the hatred just directed at Mickey himself.
"It didn't," Mickey confirmed.
"He was disgusted and amused. He responded:
"'Such a skittish mouse is not fit to bear the burden of rule. Weep for the Disney Kingdom, for she is lost.
"'The Eclipse is sundered, Age of Stones complete. From the Undying Ones the World is freed. No longer do they hold a claim on history's reins, seated on thrones immortal, rent from time.
"'Larsa, you shall not tread this path alone. Together we go.
"'Come. Observe well. Watch and mark you the suffering of one who must rule, yet lacks the power. Be pleased to learn what has happened here.
"'History begins anew.'
"This was the final straw for Larsa. He raised his sword, the Rainbow Dreamseeker, and his Xenogears, Weltall, against the older brother that he still loved even then." Riku's eyes widened, Sora's mouth opened and a violent child ripped up his spine, and Kairi's hand tensed around his another time and her body tensed once more. Donald and Goofy both closed their eyes in anguish this time.
Maybe, just maybe, things still would turn out okay in the end, if he took Mickey's advice to heart.
Mickey had already been through this.
"Larsa spoke, 'No. No, Brother. I will not. I refuse to accept your testament, and I reject the history that you would weave. Should I clasp your lanthorn, I see, in my dreams, a ruthless tyrant with tainted hands, which would choke the World. And we would be the only ones blind to our folly.
"Then the Rainbow Dreamseeker steadied, and he finished betraying his brother with, 'Though I lack your power, I will still persist.'
"If not for him, I'm not sure that we'd have been able to defeat Vayne.
"But I made sure that he, or Minnie, weren't the ones to deliver the final blow and murder Vayne with his or her own hands. I landed the final blow that defeated Vayne, who had by then cast off his physical body and merged his heart with his Xenogears, Uroborus, myself."
Riku grimaced, and then hurried on.
"Schala goes to our school," he revealed, and Sora started, because Mickey's eyes widened to display true horror and true terror for the first time.
"Then she's a part of this as well," Mickey answered. "She has her own role in Yozora's destiny. I doubt that she's one of the New Seven Hearts for reasons that I won't talk about, though I can't be sure, but I'm convinced she has her own fate to play out.
"We need to keep her from playing into the Foretellers' hands in addition to the rest of us.
"I'll ask Larsa if he can locate Ashley and Alma and Sydney," Donald jumped, and Goofy's head whipped up, "Too, when I write him."
"You told us Ashley and Alma and Sydney were dead," Goofy said.
Mickey looked very apologetic. "That was a cover to protect them. They're vagrants of their own now, wandering Ivalice Zodiac without a destination. They will not die, not unless that time arrives."
"'That time?'" Donald questioned. "What's 'that time?'"
Mickey slid his eyes closed. "The reason that we need to keep Schala safe herself. If Sora is the Persona, Xion and Roxas are Anima and Animus, though I'm not sure who is which, and Kairi is the Archetype. Schala's destiny is most likely to support a fifth person among you," Sora could see Riku pale once more, and he knew what he was thinking, "Who is the Scala of Scala ad Caelum, the Stairway to the Sky, the Mirror of Dreams who reflects the truth of the heart.
"I doubt that this person is Namine or you," Mickey went on quickly. "Namine's power is over memories, and you were once a Dream Eater, but that has nothing to do with your abilities as a Keyblade Master."
Riku clenched his teeth. "Then I know the identity of the Mirror of Dreams. We don't need Schala to identify Scala. Kairi is the wrong direction to look. All of the key actors are hearts connected to Sora's,"
No. Not Ven, too.
"Or Sora himself, and we know who the fifth heart connected to Sora is."
Mickey grimaced himself. "That figures.
"Still, I have very good reasons to believe that Schala has a destiny of her own. Trust me on this. She wouldn't have ended up on the Destiny Islands and met Kairi and Sora and Riku if she didn't. We need to watch out on her behalf as well as the rest of ours."
Sora frowned. A number of things were bothering him, but he couldn't put his finger on what.
But there was no way that he could figure out what. He was an irrecoverably clueless idiot.
"I don't believe that," Anna responded. "I believe that thinking with your heart enables you to perceive other people's feelings and thoughts with much greater depth and in much greater detail than you can if you waste the time to think about it with your mind detached from your heart. I believe that you're by far the smartest one of the three of you."
Kairi and Riku and Roxas and Xion and Ven were in danger.
He had to try.
He furrowed his brow and traced the feelings in his heart.
After several seconds, he – he ho no not hoped because there was no hope left he just trusted that Kairi and Anna and his other friends were right about this – had it.
"Kairi isn't the Archetype," Sora corrected them. "I don't know what 'Anima' and 'Animus' mean, but I've heard about Archetypes before and I have a small concept of what they are. They're the foundation that the rest of the heart and the mind are built upon, such as the impulses of sleep, so Ven is the Archetype."
Riku's eyes widened and then he gave Sora a delighted and approving smile. Kairi smiled weakly herself.
But their approval meant nothing at all to him, too.
"Kairi has a…" he refused to use the word 'role.' What was a better term? "Task… that we don't understand yet. Young Vanitas is a sixth heart connected to mine, and he's a heart connected to Yozora – " even remembering that his heart was connected to Yozora meant nothing to Sora, "Creator of the Chirithies and the Dreamreapers and, for all we know, the Dream Eaters themselves – as well as to me, so he's Scala.
"Kairi isn't a chamber of the heart. She's the heart itself, save for its foundation, because the heart shapes or excludes survival impulses and they're not a genuine chamber of the heart. She's memories and feelings and thoughts and data and dreams and their lacuna, and the adventurer who journeys within, and outside of, all of them.
"Kairi is connections. She's the sky. She's Caelum."
Tracing his feelings.
That reminded him.
He was completely incapable of doing this, but Kairi and Riku and Roxas and Xion and Ven and Young Vanitas, who Sora refused to believe wasn't his own separate person from Yozora's Nobody, were depending on him.
The seven guardians of light were protectors of the New Seven Hearts, and Kairi's heart had fractured into seven fragments.
"I traced the connections of the guardians of light when I restored Kairi through the hearts of seven guardians to seven fragments of Kairi's heart," Sora plunged on, though he couldn't bring himself to do it with all his heart. "So we should be able to analyze those fragments to figure out who the last three New Seven Hearts are and cut as many strings that Yozora has bound them with as we can."
Kairi's mouth opened and now her eyes widened a little, Riku's jaw dropped, and Donald and Goofy looked at each other with shared nudges and grins, but Sora ignored all this.
"The first guardian that I connected with was Ven. He's the Archetype while Kairi is Caelum, but the New Seven Hearts are given their destinies by Kingdom Hearts, not Yozora, so the difference doesn't make the following any less true, nor does it for any of the other guardians or fragments. I recovered Kairi's first heart fragment from an unusually durable Shadow Heartless in the central quarter of the Scala ad Caelum city, Ven is connected to Yozora, and Kairi has been assigned Yozora's most important tasks, so that fragment was a manifestation of Kairi herself.
"I found the next four heart fragments in the Breezy Quarter of Scala ad Caelum to the left side of the central quarter.
"One was in a fountain, the second guardian who I connected with was Aqua, and I once ran into a Darkside with water characteristics in my Station of Awakening. Anna is my friend and thus bonded to my heart as well, and Elsa wields water magic, so that fragment was Elsa's.
"The third guardian who I entered was Terra, and I discovered a third fragment in the Breezy Quarter by traveling through an underground waterway and up a tower. That fragment was a manifestation of Rapunzel, who spent much of her life imprisoned in a tower.
"The fourth fragment that I'm talking about is a manifestation of one of the New Seven Hearts who we don't know of. I retrieved that one from inside a gaming machine, and the fourth guardian I entered was me," his love for fun felt like it had happened to someone else a lifetime ago, now, "So the fifth New Seven Heart might enjoy having fun. But I haven't met anyone like that. One or more of us should return to Toy Box. Maybe one of the toys who Young Xehanort separated from Woody and Buzz is a girl or a woman.
"The fifth guardian who I bonded with was Roxas, and I retrieved that one from a Darkside with fire characteristics who was more durable and who put up more of a fight than the watery Darkside." Sora didn't want to recall this, but he remembered that it had also been the most skilled and powerful, and the deadliest, Darkside Sora had run into in all his travels, much more lethal than even the Dark Follower that he'd glimpsed Roxas battling in The Beast's Castle in one of Roxas' memories in the Sleeping The World That Never Was. But that did not mean that Anna was in any more danger of giving into darkness than Kairi or Riku or he himself. "I'm better friends with Anna than with Elsa, so that fragment was a manifestation of Anna's heart.
"I recovered the last two fragments from outside Scala ad Caelum, in the Keyblade Graveyard, as you two, Riku and Mickey, and our other companions, confronted," Sora clenched his teeth together as agony ripped and twisted through the empty emptiness, "New replicas of Xehanort's Keyblade Armor.
"I retrieved the sixth fragment directly from your heart, Riku," Riku thinned his lips together and composed his face into a mask, "and the seventh fragment directly from your heart, Mickey."
Mickey frowned concernedly.
"I doubt that the last New Seven Hearts are Namine and Minnie, though. Namine used darkness as well as light to enable me to duel Terra-Xehanort after Terra's Keyblade Armor drove him off, and if Minnie had been a New Seven Heart, Maleficent likely would have picked up on it when she went after the Cornerstone of Light–"
Desperate hope drove the breath from Sora's lungs and the empty emptiness went away.
"That's not an option," Mickey said firmly. "Merlin destroyed the door to Timeless River after you defeated Xemnas, and even if he was willing to recreate it – which he wouldn't for the reasons that you want to go through it – the Foretellers might want us to change the past. That, too, could be part of their script. We don't have any better chance of cutting our strings by traveling into the past then by remaining in the present, and if we endeavor to improve our present by altering the past, we might make our presents worse."
The empty emptiness was back yet once more, but Sora plunged on. This wasn't the time for that.
"We still need to research Timeless River, though," Sora pointed out. "Maleficent and Pete got to the Cornerstone of Light through a door into the past, and Xehanort and his colleagues didn't have the ability to travel through time without," more anguished tore and contorted through the emptiness empty of even emptiness, "alternate versions of themselves around. At best, Luxord and Young Xehanort could change the flow of time, not journey through it. That means that one of the Foretellers, or perhaps Yozora's Heartless or adult Vanitas, was responsible for the door Maleficent and Pete used, and the Cornerstone of Light has a place in their script."
"I agree," Mickey nodded. "I'll look into that as soon as I return to Disney Castle."
"That doesn't give us any idea who the sixth New Seven Heart is, though," Riku brought up. Then he gave Sora another delighted, approving smile, and it turned a little into a frown when Sora didn't react to it. "I'm not saying you're not on the right track, however. I'm just pointing that out."
"I know," Sora reassured him.
"Still, you're connected to Namine, and she's a Nobody, so that might give us a clue. Perhaps a girl or a woman who's existence is rejected by her world in a different way.
"The last New Seven Heart might be a world traveler of her own, perhaps someone small, or perhaps a world traveler connected to someone small, or perhaps someone small connected to a world traveler, or perhaps someone who isn't small and is just a world traveler."
Sora shrugged. "I don't have any better ideas than that about the last Princess of Heart."
"I might," Mickey supplied. "I've heard rumors of a world called Andalasia that is beginning to experiment with creating artificial magical pathways through the walls between worlds. I'll see if I can find out more about it, and where it is, when I go home, too."
Riku forced a smile. "Good. That's two potential leads. Toy Box and Andalasia.
"But we're still missing a lead to the sixth New Seven Heart."
Sora traced his feelings again.
"Eight-Bit Blast," he said. "Wreck-It Ralph. The sole way I can think of that a world could reject someone like both darkness and light reject Nobodies, without that New Seven Heart actually being a Nobody, is if that world is a datascape or something similar and it follows its own natural laws.
"I'll call Wreck-It Ralph and then see if I can trace his heart."
He used his free hand to reach into his pockets, and then grunted in irritation.
"The Heartbinders are gone," he told the others. "Losing my powers from abusing the power of waking," thankfully, Kairi's hand in his or Kairi herself didn't shift, "Must have taken them somewhere or destroyed them, similar to how I lost my Summons the other times I lost my abilities."
"Still, Wreck-It Ralph is a lead," Riku spoke. "As is Toy Box. You told me when we were returning to the Destiny Islands that the toys knew a Yozora character in a Video Game. You should attempt to learn why Video Game developers from Toy Box know about Yozora or if that Game is truly a Game and isn't a kind of datascape." Sora started. He hadn't considered that possibility. "It might even have a tie to the mysterious 'world beyond The Final World.'
"But, whether or not it does, one way or another, it's not a regular Video Game any more than Wreck-It Ralph is a regular Video Game character. It might point you in the direction of the sixth Princess."
"You should go," Sora disagreed. "The Foretellers are familiar with me doing most of the adventuring in the open. They might want me to adventure again. I'll stay on the side lines this time as you did two of the last three times and let you quest in the open."
"That the Foretellers are familiar with us adventuring is precisely why we should be the ones to adventure in the open," Goofy put in.
Sora felt a little lighter, and a small amount of the empty emptiness once more retracted, at Goofy's use of the word 'we.' To his surprise, his lips curled up a little.
Three half-pints together once more.
"What do you mean?" Riku inquired.
"That's the one thing that the Foretellers won't be ready for," Goofy elaborated. "We spent most of our questing against Xehanort and his underlings endeavoring to defy what they wanted out of us. So the Foretellers are used to that. This time, save for with Anna and," he gave Elsa a brief look of disapproval, which she paid no attention to, "The interstellar war, we accept our roles. We give the Foretellers what they want, with all our hearts, without them needing to damage our spirits further to convince us to do so.
"They won't have seen that coming, so they won't know what we're going to do next or how to react to keep us dancing to their tune."
The emptiness empty of emptiness left fully once again, save for a gap where he could feel Kairi's hand in his and see her beside him.
As usual, Goofy hit the nail right on the head.
That really sounded like it could work.
"Brilliant!" Mickey grinned widely, and Goofy ducked his head, embarrassed. "As history shows, one of the surest ways to fulfill your destiny is to attempt to escape it. So rather than reject it, we embrace it in all the ways that we can so long as we don't need to take our eyes off the light while doing so, and play along with the Foretellers until we've learned the ropes of their script enough that we're sure that we can tear it into shreds.
"That's what you're getting at, right?"
Goofy scratched one of his ears. "Yup," he said sheepishly.
Kairi shifted, and, to Sora's further surprise, fresh tears came to his eyes and fell down his face as she looked a little alive now. "Then Sora, Donald, and Goofy will go to Toy Box and investigate it, Yozora's Game or datascape, and then, if they and you can locate it, Y... Mickey… Wreck-It Ralph's world and Andalasia. As well as any other worlds that they need to adventure in to get to Wreck-It Ralph's world and Andalasia.
"I'll investigate the realm beyond The Final World." New tears pushed forward when Kairi squeezed his hand reassuringly. "Without traveling to The Final World or past it. Even applying both light and darkness, I'm not going to rush into realms like those without knowing better about what I'm getting into.
"But we do need to learn what the realm outside The Final World is. I don't want to talk about how I did it now," the empty emptiness was back a small degree. Sora should have known that even this wasn't the end of everything that had gone wrong because he'd abandoned and betrayed Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy and Jiminy, "But there's no reason, at face value, that Yozora needed to fall into despair and hate when he lost Faerie. He could have pulled her back into the realm of light as I pulled you back.
"The Faerie you met in The Final World must not be all there is to what happened to Faerie. Something much worse than death by vanishing must have happened to her, and I bet the realm past The Final World is a part of it.
"If we learn what that realm is, maybe we can resurrect Faerie and she can be Yozora's and the Foretellers' light in their darkness and call them home sweet home."
Donald crossed his arms and scowled. "I'm still going to have a lot of fun rearranging Yozora's and Luxu's hair and faces with magic if she does."
"I might join you," Kairi responded, sounding as though she was joking, but Sora knew better.
He cringed, though no empty emptiness reemerged.
Mickey gave both Donald and Kairi a stern look. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves." Donald winced and composed his visage into a neutral expression, but Kairi didn't acknowledge Mickey in any way, and Sora cringed further.
"I'll see if Namine and the rest of the guardians save Xion, Roxas, and Lea will accompany me to Olympus," Riku supplied. "There might be Gods or Goddesses there who can see potential futures and worldlines. If there are, they may be able to give us advice about how to better follow Yozora's script and, if we can risk asking them, how to shred it when the point arrives to do so.
"I recommend Xion, Roxas, and Lea go with you," he turned his head to Kairi, and then to Mickey, "Or you."
"They should travel with Kairi," Mickey recommended. "If the Dreamstone wall around Ivalice Zodiac can be penetrated, Larsa might journey Disney Castle and bring company or arms that Xion and Roxas don't need to be near. Or…" he closed his eyes another time in brief pain Sora couldn't fathom the depths of. "…I'll take the Aquaelie there."
"I'll say it as many times as I need to," Goofy said. "The Atkascha sisters, especially, weren't your fault. And, while I still believe you're right, that Ashe died when she shielded Ramza, Delita, Mewt, and Sydney from Time's Eclipse, now that we know what happened to Schala, I'm even more convinced that Ovelia survived since Llyud and Ritz were with her then."
Mickey just looked away from Goofy with a smile of sad gratitude.
"Marche and Doned said that they saw Ovelia's body on the Aquaelie," Donald glared at Goofy.
Goofy looked right back. "We've been through this before. Ashley had a different opinion on the matter, and you know it."
"You're right," Donald objected. "We have been through this before. I don't care what Joshua was doing. Ashley was still too busy watching Alma's back."
Goofy sighed in a mixture of sadness and frustration. "What will it take to get you to see that Ashley trusted Sydney to do that much more than he trusted himself to be able to? We've adventured with Sora three times by now, and once that we can't recall but that we still feel deep down. You can't believe that I'll accept any more that you don't understand Vaan."
Donald crossed his arms and tapped his left webbed foot impatiently. "Too bad for you, then, because I still don't!" He threw his arms in the air. "Vaan's not even a vagrant like Ashley and Alma and Sydney! He's a str–"
"That term is one of the best ways to prai–"
"You're right! I can think of a large number of wor–"
"Yet even now I know that you won't say them about P–"
"Because I'm certain that by now she keeps her head on straight not just more than half the time, but all of the ti–"
"What difference does it make? Since we now know that what really happened to Schala was likely th–"
A familiar turned inside out agony screamed inside him, and the empty emptiness was back anew.
"Cut it out," Sora interrupted Donald and Goofy. "Anna's waking up."
.
"These roles we play. I must admit I find it… weary."-Prince Rasler Heios Nabradia
"I will play mine."-Princess Ashelia 'Ashe' B'nargin Dalmasca
FINAL FANTASY XII