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CHAPTER 6:
BEYOND THE LAST PRECIPICE
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Author's Notes: The compositions for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'Destiny,' from the FINAL FANTASY XII Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; after this piece 'The Final Battle,' from the CHRONO TRIGGER Original Sound Version, Disc Three; afterwards 'Testament,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Original Sound Best Tracks, Disc Two; and last 'Godsibb,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Original Sound Best Tracks, Disc Two. The former two pieces cannot be Downloaded on KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section, but the latter two can.
Riku knew what Sora's answer was before he said it.
"If that's what it takes," Sora said.
Riku sighed, suddenly so much more exhausted his legs were rubber.
Then there was no other option.
He'd known that he needed to do this since the confrontation between Kairi, Anna, and the Demon Tide had ended. There was likely no other way to restore Marshmallow's and Olaf's and Sven's hearts, or those of the rest of the people of Arendelle, and they were just refusing to face the truth by pretending otherwise to themselves.
Still, Riku had known full well what abusing the power of waking would do to Namine and Sora and Kairi and Mickey and Xion and Roxas, and all his other loved ones and friends, particularly after Sora had just reunited with him.
He'd had around a year of practice with it now, since he'd first learned how to call to the power he'd harnessed during the Mark of Mastery exam in the Sleeping Worlds after Xehanort had been defeated. He was certain that he could restore the hearts of everyone from Arendelle, even though he couldn't repair Arendelle's people's homes and economic structures and other constructs, and he was certain that he could do it without reversing space time and forcing Sora and Kairi and the others to go through another version of what they'd just endured all over again.
But Riku knew what the price would be.
So he'd loathed this answer, and he'd refused to accept the truth, and he'd hoped that, if they put their heads together, they could discover another solution.
But now there really was no choice.
It was the sole way to prevent Sora or Kairi from doing anything else stupid. As much as Riku had attempted to take away Namine's pain, her guilt for what she'd done to Sora was still suffocating her, and Riku was pretty sure that she would do as Sora wanted and sever his chain of memories of the love outside of friendship he and Kairi had shared.
When would Sora learn to stop taking the lazy way out?
But then, that was what made him Sora, and Riku wouldn't let that change.
Riku suppressed the urge to smile sadly pressed his lips together.
The sooner he used the power of waking, the sooner Sora and Kairi could restore him as well, and the sooner he could return to them and Namine and everyone else.
He let go of Sora's shoulder and walked a number of feet back.
"I won't permit you to do it," Riku informed Sora. "The power Kairi used to call you home from The Final World is known as the power of spectral, and you and Kairi don't have a strong enough individual bond with anyone else to use it on anyone but each other without it taking both of you, and a very strong bond, to wield it in unison. In order for Kairi to call to it once more, you'll need to learn it from her and you won't be able to sever your connection any further.
"Since I know that I can't talk you out of being a fool, I'll preempt you."
Sora's eyes widened, and he stepped away from Donald and Goofy and Anna, but Mickey just sighed heavily and nodded at Riku in reluctant acceptance.
Riku gave Mickey a smile of thanks.
"What are you talking about?" Sora asked, and now his voice was alive once more and terrified.
Riku pushed away the stomach-contorting guilt that swallowed him, though he knew that this wasn't how that special strength to protect what mattered was meant to be used, so he couldn't keep all other feelings genuinely away.
"You know what the Mark of Mastery exam was supposed to teach you," Riku reminded him, and Sora's mouth dropped open, and his eyes went wider, in horror. "And you know that I did master it then, though I didn't figure out how to access it until after we beat Xehanort.
"There's no other way to restore the hearts of Arendelle's citizens."
Sora stretched out a hand pleadingly. "Riku, please don't."
Riku forced a smile. "It won't take that long for Kairi to teach you the power of spectral now that she knows what it is. If you're as fast a learner as usual, you'll see me once again in a few weeks, at the latest."
Sora clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut, but then he opened them and nodded once. "Okay."
"Can you please tell Namine I'm sorry for going off on my own once more without telling her first? She doesn't like it when I do that."
Sora smiled reassuringly and raised his right arm, clenching it into a fist, and Riku could tell that the smile and the gesture weren't forced. Even with his heart and hope broken this ruinously, Sora was incapable of ceasing to love his friends.
"Count on it," Sora replied. "See you shortly."
"Likewise," Riku spoke back. "Hang in there."
Drawing this out would just make this more painful.
He raised Braveheart above his head and pointed it upwards, calling to the sensations of the promise of the dawn he'd once awoken to himself years and months ago thanks to Namine, and carefully separated those sensations from his awareness of time and concentrated on the concepts of space.
The giant golden outline of a three-pronged crown flared into being around him on the ground as swirling and rushing grayish clouds appeared to wash in a tide about him and the crown of energies, and a corresponding giant golden outline of a keyhole manifested in the air a number of yards above him, surrounded by writhing and tumbling brown clouds the color of vibrant living tree trunks.
Riku launched a thin fountain in the form of a beam of ebony up into the keyhole, and fractal rays of thinner ebony beams sprayed out in all directions.
Riku had just enough time to feel sharp, tearing agony and tugs in his heart as it came apart, and to see the flesh of his hands and wrists and his clothes flicker and become pale blue outlines.
Then he was standing on a familiar sheen of water beneath a cerulean sky strewn with drifting white.
Hands clapped together behind him in applause.
"Bravo!" an unfamiliar voice cheered even as a familiar stench flooded his darkness-exposed awareness, comprised of whiffs of both Ven and Sora blowing with a wash of smells that were much more acrid and bitter, so indescribably more potent and overpowering than the stenches that he was familiar with his throat ached and stinging tears clouded his eyes. "You win Best Actor in today's Academy Awards for being the first Keyblade wielder since Faerie and I created them to wholly fulfill his, her, or its destiny!"
Riku whirled around, shifting Braveheart into a defensive position.
He was unsurprised to see a grown-up version of Vanitas' face smiling easily and companionably at him from beneath a familiar carpet of wild black bangs, Void Gear in a combat position in his right hand and a familiar black coat on his body with its hood down behind the figure's head.
Riku clenched his teeth, frustration and agony and guilt and reproach surging up to engulf him.
Apparently he wasn't going to be returning to the realm of light that easily, and likely not at any point in the near future.
Unless he actually managed to defeat Yozora's Nobody, but though Sora had attempted to hide it, Riku had been able to tell that Sora had barely been able to pull off a win against Yozora's Heartless, and Riku extremely highly doubted that the tendency of Nobodies to severely surpass their Heartless didn't hold true for a Keyblade Master of Yozora's talent and skill and millennia of experience.
Riku had no intention of giving up without a duel, but he had very scant illusions as to what the outcome of that battle was going to be.
He pushed aside his terror that he'd hurt Young Vanitas if he injured Yozora's Nobody.
If he could knock Roxas unconscious without harming Sora, he could wound or even kill Yozora's Nobody without harming Young Vanitas.
"Do you honestly believe that I'll buy that?" Riku responded coolly, refusing to let the older Keyblade Master's easygoing manner disarm him or relax him.
This was unexpected. Riku had been prepared for a lot from all that he'd heard about Yozora, but a friendly Keyblade Master who wormed his way under and through people's defenses with unassuming wit was a new one.
Now Riku understood one of the chief reasons that Yozora was so lethally dangerous and a puppetmaster nonpareil.
Vanitas shrugged sheepishly and gave an embarrassed grin. "Worth a try."
There was no reason to beat around the bush now either.
"I know that there's no way that I can trust whatever your answer would be if I asked you what you've done with Young Vanitas," Riku went on, "Assuming you care to even give me an answer. So I'll get to the point.
"I take it you're here because you have other plans for me than me seeing Sora and Kairi and Namine and Mickey once more in the near future?"
"Oh, I'd have answered about Young Vanitas," the older Vanitas replied. "But you'd have had a ton of fun deciphering my riddles if I'd done so.
"As for the question you did posit, I won't answer that one because it's waaaaaay too much of a no-brainer."
"As is, I'm sure, that your means of keeping Sora and Kairi from pulling me out of here is to take me to the realm beyond this one," Riku spoke back.
"Aaaand cut!" Vanitas made a slashing motion with his free arm. "The no-brainers are over, nothing more to see here, exit stage left, exeunt alles, thank you lots and lots and have a very fabulous day." Vanitas tilted his head up and sighed in theatrical despondence, and when he talked next, his voice was a melodramatic whine. "You didn't give me one single solitary outtake, never mind a good one to roll on the couch and laugh over."
"I prefer encores," Riku responded, baring his teeth in an unpleasant smile.
He couldn't wait to see how Lea and Donald interacted with Yozora.
But he wouldn't be seeing that any time sooner or later, one way or the other, unless he got down to business.
Riku just aimed his free hand, palm cupped.
"Night Flame's Embrace," he spoke simply.
Comets of roaring fire of mixed, shifting blue-white and purple and white and green-yellow, detonated from his palm outwards and forwards and straight forwards, the comets that had exploded outwards angling their directions into a swirling spiral around the comets that were surging directly at Vanitas.
Vanitas lifted Void Gear, and Riku's stomach heaved and his food rushed into his throat.
He disconnected from his darkness smell before the sheer stomach-writhing putrid odor of Vanitas' darkness scoured all of his senses, and not just his smell, away into emptiness.
Riku could think of no other way to encompass the smell and the feel of Vanitas' darkness as though it was supposed to be wholly wrong in every conceivable or inconceivable way to every conceivable or inconceivable degree, but Vanitas' darkness had been so unable to get even this right that it had done its whole wrongness totally incorrectly in every way that could be conceptualized or that couldn't be conceptualized to every degree that could be conceptualized or that couldn't be conceptualized.
Then Vanitas gave a fake, overdone sob of disappointment and said, "Ash Horizon," and even with Riku's darkness senses restricted to just feeling another person or entity's darkness, his vision swam and he couldn't be sure that he wasn't retching, because blackness was attempting to swallow his awareness and drag him down into its folds.
Riku kept enough presence of mind to hurl himself out of the way of the sickly crescent of energy that rocketed through the Black Flame's Embrace and dispersed it to slash directly at him, flowing with pallid and glaring light colors strewn with chaotically whirling flakes of white and gray and black ash, because he knew that if he'd attempted to block it the force of the strike would have snapped Braveheart in two and fragmented its two pieces into wildly tumbling shards.
The assault hadn't been close to as potent as the Thunder the Demon Tide had used to defeat Elsa, though it still strained Riku's ethereal senses so much that he was barely able to tell that there was a difference and he had no capacity to tell how small or large that distance was.
What had caused all of Riku's blood to drain from his face was that the assault had been endlessly more ethereal emotions and thoughts and senses and perceptions-reeling than an outline that was a maw attempting to consume everything around it, like Kairi's one angelic wing had been when she'd launched Ultimate Break.
It had been a completely and wholly insatiable wormhole singularity glutting itself upon all existence and all denial of existence and a lacuna of that denial and its hunger to drink all reality parched and cracked and its singularity themselves; and it had been a pit plummeting unfathomably deeper than a bottomless infinite abyss that was a gap lacking even its lack or its absence of its lacking gap, inverted inside out upon itself uncountable times upon countless times.
Riku pushed away the faintness and the desire to throw up.
Forget testing Vanitas' defenses. That Vanitas had just launched a crescent at him might mean that Yozora's Nobody used much deadlier variations of Young Vanitas' moves, but that meant little if Braveheart couldn't withstand a single impact. If he didn't give this his all from the beginning he might not even connect with a hit, much less win.
Riku held Braveheart up in front of him with both hands. "Dark Au–"
"Riven Memories," Vanitas spoke from behind him in affected exhaustion.
The next thing that Riku was aware of, something smashed into his spinal cord, wildly spraying filaments of black and white hurling out around it, and he was flying at breakneck speed through the air.
But he'd been ready for the all-consuming incorrect wrongness of Vanitas' darkness this time, so he was still fully aware of what was going on about himself. Knowing what was coming next from Aqua's and Ven's stories of their duels with Young Vanitas and Riku's time watching Cid's facsimile of Data-Sora duel his enhanced data of the seekers of darkness, Riku attempted to twist into a forward somersault, but his body wouldn't respond.
Two more shattering impacts crashed into his body, one against his left ribs, one against his right ribs, each one emitting more filaments of white and black as they struck, and then Riku was on his front.
He attempted to push himself up, but his chest shrieked everywhere, and Riku knew that a number of his ribs must have been broken.
But he didn't need to get up to activate Dark Firaga, Omega Night Flare, Eternal Ashes, or Dark Splicer. His improved Dark Firaga, Black Flame's Embrace, yes; he needed his legs braced against a surface to aim that. And he couldn't unleash his Morgenroete Shotlock or Dark Aura unless he could brace similarly.
His other four moves were a different matter.
"Dark Spl–"
"Reality Equalizer," Vanitas' voice came in a tone of such boredom from above he sounded as though he was absorbed in examining a nail.
Riku rolled desperately to the side, and water erupted upwards as Void Gear impacted with where Riku's head had just been, fissures in the air spider webbing outwards from where Void Gear had struck and causing the space around it to shudder at varying rates, as though time were shuddering too.
Riku was fairly certain that time was also shuddering from that strike.
Riku focused and geysers of green and blue and red surged into him from all directions, each torrent blasted by a single large swinging and clanging copper or silver bell.
Curaja was pointless if one or more of his insides was going to be wrecked every time Vanitas hit him, but Regenja ought to do the trick.
"Imagination's Scab."
Riku was flipping to his feet and launching a Waterza volcano as soon as he heard Vanitas' voice in front of him. As he'd assumed, the assault was a vastly improved version of Young Vanitas' single drifting ball of flames, though these flames were black and guttering and emerging sporadically from a compressed sphere of crystal, doubtlessly a combination of a miniature dead pulsar and a black dwarf star.
But when the Waterza met the skeleton of a star, both burst into hissing steam that ascended in the direction of the clouds above.
Vanitas moaned dejectedly and clapped a hand to his forehead. "You got me," he groaned. "You actually got me.
"Fine, have it your way.
"Cataract of Dreams."
Vanitas became energy of stormy, surging black and white and gray adumbrated by similar flickering tongues of the same colors, and this time Riku needed to clench his teeth and plant his feet against Vanitas' incorrect wrongness. But he was able to stay ready to react as soon as Vanitas attempted to emerge from the surface of the water.
The image of Vanitas compressed into a sheet of black and white and gray lacking of the tongues of flame that refined into a straight line of black and white and gray that compressed to a single dot of black, and then dropped beneath the waves and flowed beneath the surface of The Final World in Riku's direction.
Riku didn't leap back.
He waited for the zero-dimensional dot that was Vanitas to reach his feet, and then he Doubleflighted directly up.
Vanitas emerged in an ascending whirling spiral that launched a volcano of globes of amorphous black blots, outlines of bleached white, and inwardly rippling smears of gray, about him and downwards in all directions, but it was too late for him to correct.
Riku descended in front of Vanitas and inside Vanitas' guard as Vanitas' eyes widened in sheer shock and astonishment and as the volcano stopped spewing, Riku summoned the haphazard curving and straight superstructure of the black and gray Keyblade glider that he still hadn't finished below him in forwards surging coils of ebony; and then he landed on it, pushed away his terror that he'd injure or kill Young Vanitas, and swung a double-handed strike up at the bottom of Vanitas' nose with all his might, seeking to drive the bone attached to Vanitas' nose upwards and inwards into his skull and brain and mortally drop Vanitas with a single blow.
Vanitas went flying uncoordinatedly backwards and downwards through the air, and Riku dismissed his Keyblade glider in backwards surging ebony coils before he strained it too much to land above the water as the last energies of Cataract of Dreams disappeared.
He waited to see if Vanitas had survived, or if one half of Yozora was now on its way to becoming recompleted.
After a few seconds passed, Vanitas gave off a number of unintelligible grumbles, and Riku sighed.
But there was a good chance that that was all that Vanitas had to bring to the table. Vanitas hadn't specifically referenced data yet, but Ash Horizon was probably a reference to the fires that burnt computer hardware, so data had been accounted for. That left the impulses to survive, thoughts, and emotions, two of which were probably tied to Young Vanitas' two Keyblade throng assaults and the third to the data Young Vanitas' ability to launch a cluster of Keyblades from his hand.
Riku had no idea what purpose Yozora and the Foretellers had had for hacking Cid's computer, but now that he knew how attentively Yozora and the Foretellers had been pulling the realm of light's strings for millennia, he had a hard time believing that Cid's programming had just happened to develop errors when he'd visited.
Everything that the data seekers of darkness had been able to do that Xehanort and the Real Organization Thirteen hadn't been capable of, the Foretellers might know how to unleash. Even the enhanced Xehanort's data replication of the Kye-Blade could have been programmed with abilities that the genuine Kye-Blade had launched before or during the First Keyblade War.
So that meant that Vanitas' remaining ability could be a more perilous variation of the Keyblade cluster palm throw, and Riku might have a rough familiarity with all of Vanitas' tric–
He clenched his teeth more tightly.
"That was why you or the other Foretellers hacked Cid," he said. "You wanted to attempt to trick us into dropping our guard when we came up against the other Foretellers, Luxu, and you, by giving us reason to believe that we knew all your best maneuvers.
"Nice effort, but it didn't work. Holding back until you have a good opportunity to really catch me off guard will get you nowhere now."
Vanitas finished getting back up and shrugged. "Your call. If you're that eager to end up black and blue and read as a loser all over, that's fine by me.
"But before that, since you did rob me of my chance to wow you, I'm going to blast your brain out of your brainpan another way."
Vanitas held out his free hand.
"Defligrate perpetua muri tempi et intervania."
That was the Latin language of the various Earth worlds for, 'Break down the walls of perpetual space and time.' Vanitas was opening a portal to the Keyblade Graveyard so he could call the Keyblades there to his side, or for another purpose.
All that happened, however, was that orange energies spiraled to the side of Vanitas' left hand and an orange energy version of No Name appeared in it.
Vanitas could wield two Keyblades like Roxas. Riku hadn't anticipated this method of Vanitas holding back.
"I'll let you in on an itty bitty teeny wee newsflash," Vanitas informed him. "This thingamajig isn't the Void Gear. It looks like it on the outside, but inside it's another doohickey. My buddies and I have the same regard for the Alpha family of magic spells as you and Sora do with his Ultima Weapon and your combined Ultima Buster when you launch Nightmare's End or Mirage Split together.
"Once you told him about it, I'm sure Sora believed that my Heartless was just using the Omega Weapon when he went after Sora after I told him to save the boyo. He was wrong. First off, that was the Alpha Buster, and the giant Keyblade Armors he sicced on Sora were the Omega Weapons. It was safe to let Keyblade wielders at large know about the Omega Weapon, but it wasn't the culmination of my research. It was the culmination of what I could afford to risk other Keybladers becoming aware of.
"But my Heartless was wielding two Keyblades himself. His other weapon wasn't an arrowgun, as Sora thought it was. It was the Alpha Weapon Keyblade.
"The handy-dandy neutron star my Heartless can launch with the Alpha Buster is the Omega Buster.
"What you believe is Void Gear is the Gran Grimoire."
Riku felt the blood drain from his face.
"This," he hefted his Keyblade of visible energy, "Is the Eschaton."
Riku found he was gripping Braveheart so tightly his knuckles were white.
If Vanitas meant those names literally, and he'd accomplished what Mickey and Chip and Dale had told Riku had been the lifelong dream of countless natural philosophers and scholars and researchers and scientists since the dawn of recorded history, creating two objects that couldn't just harness light or darkness, but were light itself and darkness itself transubstantiated into particulate matter and waveforms, it didn't alter anything in the slightest bit that one was no more than waves and particles and the other was just partially physical.
How in the stars did they have any chance of defeating Yozora's Nobody, far less Yozora himself, with the capacities Keyblades that were darkness and light themselves made matter and waves no doubt held?
Xehanort hadn't had much time to teach himself how to use the Kye-Blade before Sora had defeated him, and they'd separated Xehanort from Kingdom Hearts before taking him out. So they'd been able to deal with him even though no Keyblade could begin to equal the Kye-Blade. Aqua herself had told Riku that Xehanort had believed when he'd written his initial series of reports that the being who re-forged the Kye-Blade would be an entity that the realm of light had never once experienced, but they'd found a way to prevent Xehanort from transfiguring into such an entity, or, at least, to remain in that state for long.
Even if Yozora's Nobody or Yozora himself could be contained in a portal, his Keyblades didn't call on external power. They summoned the powers of Vanitas' and Yozora's hearts, and amplified them.
Could even the New Seven Hearts all battling side by side as a team, if they learned to wholly wield their light and darkness and Kairi became a full Keyblade Master, defeat Yozora's Nobody and Yozora himself?
But even now, though Riku's defeat was practically a foregone conclusion, he wasn't going to give up.
"Hip hip hooray!" Vanitas clapped his Keyblades together a number of times to applaud with them rather than his hands. "So tell me? How far did I blow your brain out of your brainpan with my genius performance? Out the door into the hall, out the window into the yard, or even further? Huh? Eh?" He bent one of his ears in Riku's direction. "I'm waiting very impatiently here."
"Your act was a turkey," Riku told him directly, without any sarcasm in his voice.
Vanitas threw himself into a backwards bend, mouth hanging open in exaggerated abject horror.
Riku knew better than to believe that Vanitas had dropped his guard at all by doing this.
That reminded him of something.
"While you're talking, would you mind telling me if you or Luxu or the other Foretellers have any connection to President Luther Lansfeld's Sphere Corporation?" he queried, and Vanitas straightened back up as Riku talked. "I believe that you know about the three largest mega corporations in Radiant Garden and Twilight Town, so I won't waste your time by identifying them. Scrooge told me a few months ago that, no matter how hard he tries, he can't figure out why Sphere is getting so much revenue from its games, video and computer or physical. He's still grateful to them for buying most of Rufus' Twilight Town stock market shares and putting Shinra out of business in Radiant Garden entirely when Blair realized that Rufus was dating her to try to trick her into spying on her brother, but they're really getting on his nerves, and when Scrooge gets up in arms about a business rival, he has really good reasons for it.
"Sora first heard about Yozora in a Video Game.
"Do you have strings tied around Luther and Sphere?"
"You should be asking Leon this question," Vanitas replied.
That told Riku all that he sought to know.
"Question him, in particular, what the terms 'Symbol of Zetta Graviton' and 'Aeterna Sphere Space Time Axes Compression' mean; why he gained his scar; why he refused to continue to use his real name after Radiant Garden fell; why the Gullwing fairies keep hanging around Radiant Garden when there's little treasure to score there; what happened to his parents and surrogate older sister; and why he won't have any contact with another woman who got yanked into that debacle, named Rinoa Heartilly, outside of letters.
"Oh, right, I forgot. That's if you see him once more, and that's not going to be for a good amount of time, if at any time in your future."
"Are you willing to drop any hints about what the realm beyond this one is, so I know what you want to get me into?" Riku asked back.
"It can't hurt," Vanitas replied. "Have you heard about a philosopher from one of the variations of Earth known as Berkeley? Even Sphere, whose company policy is to publish newspaper articles denouncing Scrooge almost to the point of libel if he makes the smallest reference to the Earth philosopher Descartes', 'I think, therefore I am,' philosophy to try to make them look bad for their inroads in the visual entertainment industry in one of his advertisements, finds Berkeley a bit much.
"For that matter, why do you feel that there are so many variations of the world of Earth in the realm of light anyway? No other world has nearly as many variations.
"You should also consider asking questions around about how the Radiant Garden moogles' Mognet was established, around the time Luxu turned someone named Xande into a serial murderer, as a minor part of his efforts to drive Ansem to research the darkness of the heart by fomenting a rise in Radiant Garden's crime rate.
"While I'm on it, Xande wasn't involved in the mugging that sent Kairi's mom packing for the afterlife," Riku fisted his hands so tightly the knuckles of both hands whitened this time, "So that road of inquiry won't take you anywhere.
"Fourthly, I chose the words 'expired,' 'vanish,' and 'disappear,' and the phrase, 'fade into darkness,' when I wrote the passages in the Book of Prophecies about what would happen to light during the two Keyblade Wars, for particular reasons. The reasons are related to how you talk about how information on a computer network expires, and how you say that dreams 'vanish,' 'fade,' and 'disappear.'"
Riku doubted that the realm past the edges of The Final World was a datascape, or a Sleeping World. As deceptive as Vanitas was, it was conceivable that he'd go to these lengths to keep issues like those hidden, but if one or both of those things were what the realm outside The Final World was, there might not be as much reason to keep its nature secret.
"Last and least, since none of these clues will get you more than a smidgen warm, including this final one, look up what synchronicity and perceptual phenomena are."
"Synchronicity Perceptual is tied to the realm outside The Final World." It wasn't a question.
Vanitas' expression lost all its companionability and cheer and twisted into a contained snarl, and his left hand clenched around the hilt of Eschaton, shaking with barely restrained fury and hatred.
"Are you that oblivious? If it didn't, I'd have brought Faerie back to the realm of light months after she vanished, and none of this would have been necessary."
Suddenly, it all made sense, and Riku's stomach heaved once again, though not as badly as when he'd felt Vanitas' darkness.
Yozora's darkness was inexpressibly deeper than Xehanort's because Xehanort had given into the darkness to attempt to avenge the people he loved, people who he believed were already dead and whose legacies were all that he could protect.
Yozora had given into the darkness to save someone who was still alive, in one sense or another, and who he could protect.
For Xehanort, as much as he'd raged and hated, it was all futile in the end, because Kairi and his wife were supposedly lost beyond recovery, and he couldn't bring them back regardless of how much he accomplished.
But Yozora could bring Faerie back, if he plummeted deeply enough into the darkness he could cherish her, so there were no lengths he wouldn't sink to in order to do so.
Xehanort had walked a warped spun glass reflection of the way to twilight, and had sought to condemn.
Yozora walked a distorted wrought glass mirror of the way to the dawn, and sought to spare.
Was this what Riku would have become if he hadn't learned to refuse the darkness and Sora hadn't found a way to give Kairi her heart back himself?
Attempting to reason with Yozora's Nobody was almost certainly futile. Riku was in no position to talk about Faerie and Yozora as though he knew about what they were going through, especially because Faerie had died thousands of years ago, and doing so would likely just infuriate Vanitas enough he'd be dispatched a lot sooner.
But almost certain futility wasn't total futility, and even though Yozora's Nobody and Yozora's true form caused him to be a dark stained glass mirror twin of Sora and not Riku, the fact that Yozora had given into the darkness for the same reason that Riku had and that Riku knew Sora was now considering doing so himself, caused Yozora to be a fogged pane glass reflection of Riku in his own way.
Additionally, whether it was futile or not, if Riku was able to reach Yozora here, he could stop this new conflict before most of it got started, so it's likely futility was irrelevant.
For Namine and Sora and Kairi and Mickey and Xion and his other friends, he had no choice but to give the effort.
He opened his mouth.
"Luxu told Sora to ditch the party slogans," Yozora's Nobody said before Riku could talk. "'Deep down, there's a light that never goes out,'" Vanitas continued, voice dripping with absolute, utter sarcasm, derision, revulsion, and disgust. "I've heard it all before, over and over. Faerie believed that she understood that as well as you and Sora do.
"What Faerie didn't realize, what you and Sora are too clueless to pick up on, and what I learned when Faerie died; is that, if there's a bright light in the deepest darkness that never goes out, the corollary is also true. Because light by its very nature casts shadows where the light doesn't reach, the most incandescent light must cast a profound shadow of measurelessly greater depth than the brightest light."
Riku's legs felt weak.
Sora might have been able to think of proof that Vanitas was wrong, but, as much as Riku wanted to deny it, Vanitas' words made too much sense to him.
If the light was genuinely as radiant as Sora believed, why had it been so easy for Riku to lose sight of it?
Why was it so easy for most people to lose sight of it?
Why hadn't the original light of Kingdom Hearts pierced the darkness and fully restored the realm of light after the First Keyblade War? Why was it still imprisoned in the darkness?
But that didn't mean he was going to act on Vanitas' words, if that was what he wanted.
Riku opened his mouth to talk a second time, and once more Vanitas preempted him.
"I extremely highly doubt that you'll believe this, but I'm not attempting to convince you to return to the darkness," Vanitas rolled his head backwards and his eyes as well. "There's no point. You're fine as you are. You never stopped letting the darkness rule you. For that matter, neither did Namine," Riku staggered and needed to keep standing, "Or Kairi, or Xion, or Aqua, or Terra, or Roxas, or Lea, or Cloud. Sora will understand that he doesn't need to give into the darkness, and Anna most of all."
Riku clenched his left hand so hard his nails drew blood from his palm.
It didn't matter that he'd be playing further into Yozora's hands by saying this. Namine and Sora and Kairi and Xion and Aqua needed him, and he could consume the darkness that he was inviting in and return it to light later.
He hoped.
"Elaborate," Riku demanded.
"Sure thing," Vanitas gave Riku a partially mocking and condescending, partially genuine and approving, smile.
"You like to believe that you just look at the darkness and don't act on it, but think about one of your primary motivations for wielding the Keyblade.
"You want to feel as though you have value, as though you're worth something since you're supposed to be a small segment of something greater. You want to feel as though there was a significance to your birth on the Destiny Islands and not on another world, like there's a point and a purpose to you being around in reality, and you look for that value and that proof that there's a point in the perceptions of others by attempting to prove yourself special and worth being admired.
"You're still deluded with power," Riku couldn't breathe, "And you still want to affirm your identity by being better than others. The sole differences now are that you want others to confirm your existence of their own free will without attempting to force them to praise you.
"Roxas told Namine that people see themselves the way their hearts reflect each other, but it doesn't work like that. When people see themselves the way their loved ones and friends and fellows mirror each other, they're parasites gorging themselves on the blood pumped by others' hearts."
Riku regained his ability to breathe. "Namine isn't a parasite! She was lonely at the start, but she lear–"
"Then why was she willing to keelhaul Xion and Roxas through the blender to wake Sora up?" Vanitas interrupted him, and Riku's left nails dug into his palm again. He still couldn't think of a way to take away Namine's guilt about that. "For that matter, why were Namine and Xion able to convince you to drag Roxas through the wringer, even though what drove you to do it was Roxas' desire to commit suicide?
"For the same reasons. Sora was Namine's first true friend save for maybe Lea, and as much as she's aware that they won't have a connection different than friendship, she's still grateful to him for enabling her to feel as though she has value and a place in the World and for forgiving her, so she gluts herself on his approval and forgiveness and the proof that this gives her that her heart and life has meaning like a locust feasting on a Sunflower.
"You've lived for a similar–"
"That doesn't matter," Riku cut Vanitas off himself this time. He knew what Vanitas was about to say now, and he didn't care. "Namine learned from that, too. She just wants to atone for her sins now and ensure that she hurts people as little as possible, like I do. You're right, I still live in the past, but I don't take it as far as I did when I captured Roxas. But Namine is different. She went to a lot of trouble to rearrange Sora's chain of memories in Jiminy's first journal to teach Sora how to carry hurt."
"By creating a series of cut scenes," Riku stiffened at that phrase, "That forced Mickey, the King of the Kingdom built upon the foundation of the Cornerstone of Light, to yank a data version of Sora through the blender, too?" Vanitas retorted derisively. "That's a joke, correct? She turned Mickey into DiZ and she herself forged data versions of Kairi, you, and Roxas.
"Sounds like Xehanort's modus operandi of treating hearts as bottles on a shelf for the greater good to me."
Riku accepted that he was furious and then ignored it.
"She put a data version of herself through heck as well," Riku disagreed. "And she told me that she chose me as the wielder of the hurt in the journal because she knew that I would be the most willing to carry it for her, and because she trusted me more than anyone else to carry it effectively. That's not parasitism, that's symbiosis."
"Without your permission," Vanitas reminded him mildly. "And she created someone for the sole purpose of living a life of suffering. That's no different than why Xehanort and Xemnas gave birth to Xion."
Vanitas had a point, and Riku loathed himself for needing to acknowledge that, but that still didn't make enough of a difference.
"She didn't need my permission," Riku objected. "Friends are there for each other.
"As for my data self, Namine didn't have as many options as she would have preferred. The realm of light is fine as it is," Vanitas lifted a hand to his neck, bent over, and pretended to violently retch repeatedly, which Riku ignored, "And Xehanort didn't need to do rewrite it. Namine, on the other hand, didn't have much of a choice. Our paths were limited."
Vanitas straightened up and grinned, snapping his fingers.
"Elementary," Vanitas remarked. "That's another one of my points.
"Connections are powerful, yes, but they're not omnipotent. Nothing is an infinite potential phenomenon, save for Kingdom Hearts itself, and even it has boundaries as defined by the realm outside of here."
Riku's eyes widened.
What could constrain even emotions and thoughts and memories and dreams and creative force incarnate?
"I'm wholly aware that what I'm doing is wrong," Yozora's Nobody went on. "Faerie won't approve when she finds out what I'm doing, if she doesn't already know, though she'll probably forgive me for all of it even though she shouldn't. Luxu will be very angry when he discovers that I'm using him as much as anyone else." Riku's free nails drew blood once more and he clenched his teeth together tightly. "The other Foretellers are supposed to be my friends and students, not chalk to write their feelings and thoughts on a chalkboard with. And Faerie forged the Keyblades to safeguard the light and the people who bask in it. Wielding them and the hearts of the realm of light to extinguish it betrays most of what she lived and strove and died and disappeared for.
"But I have no choice. It's either shred all reality to threads and sew it back together in a different tapestry to set Faerie free from her nightmare," horror and terror engulfed all of Riku's identity. Did that mean, if Vanitas took him to the realm beyond The Final World, there wouldn't be any way for him to return home to Namine and Sora and Kairi and everyone else unless someone took similar extreme measures for him? "Whether she approves of my methods for doing so or not, or letting her suffer in eternal torture."
Riku opened his mouth and Vanitas cut him off ahead of time for the third time.
"Don't tell me I'm being selfish by valuing her heart over everyone else's, as well. I found a way that I can still safeguard everyone else's hearts in addition to Faerie's. It's flawed, I know, but as I said, so too are all hearts and the rest of existence.
"When I'm done, hearts and connections and memories and dreams won't be constrained. I'm going to set every heart, not just Faerie's, free of the everlasting spiral of reincarnation of life and pain and loss and terror and rejection and death, the endless despair of history's weave, and the gaes of destiny."
Riku knew what he wanted to say now, but Vanitas likely knew himself.
"Good," Vanitas nodded. "You're not going to attempt to tell me that all I'm going to accomplish is to replace one script with another.
"There won't be any scripts when it's all over, in any form, way, or shape."
Riku decided to try a different tactic. He could consume the darkness that he was attempting to invite in by saying this, too, and return it to light.
"Then by all means," he allowed, "Go ahead and try to convince me to join you. Tell me what the realm that restricts even Kingdom Hearts is, and what happened to Faerie."
Vanitas barked a harsh, sharp laugh.
"So you or Sora can go off on your own in a pigheaded effort to 'find a better way,' and cause things to become even worse for Faerie and all existence in the process?"
Riku winced, anguish surging through him, but he knew that he shouldn't be surprised. If the realm beyond The Final World bound Kingdom Hearts, it wasn't unexpected that it was a threat to the rest of reality in addition.
"I'd need to be the most oblivious twit anywhere to not know better than that," Vanitas sneered derisively and disgustedly. "I grew up a long time ago. I haven't been the hopelessly naïve children you and Sora and Kairi and most of the rest of you are for millennia. I accept existence for what it is, unlike you idealistic simpletons, and I know my limits.
"To revisit my initial argument, though, symbiosis is as much lunacy as anything else. Hearts assert their existence by hurting or murder those around them, or letting others murder or torture themselves for you. Yeah yeah, you and Sora and Namine and Kairi don't live that way, but you're naïve dunces who deny the testament of the Keyblade and who refuse to be true to yourselves. You'll finish learning what you've begun to perceive today soon enough. That all your bonds, all the times that your hearts mirrored and reflected each other and proved to each other that you're here in existence, all the purposes that you chose to live for or die for yourself and the purposes others gave you for living and striving on, all the effort, were all meaningless and for nothing and a waste of time and in vain.
"No matter how sweet, all dreams must fade into the harsh, remorseless light of day. True love, completing each other through connections, defining each other through your bonds, unity through understanding each other, and all the rest of the corrosion are the hallucinations of madness.
"Every time that someone else carries your pain in your place, though it can bring multiple people closer together, it doesn't heal the individual person who carries it himself or herself or itself. It hurts that person."
Reality whirled and spun and tilted. This time Riku couldn't think of a good counter argument.
"Every time that you receive something that someone else gives you, you're putting the person who gave it to you through torment. Hearts are born and endure and grow and thrive and vanish and drift by giving up or taking. It's impossible to do both at the same time."
Reality continued to whirl and spin and tilt, but Riku kept his guard up.
"The power of connections? Hypocrisy so severe that it's not a pot naming a kettle black, it's a vat calling a cauldron ebony. If connections are so strong, why do people who fight for them still feel accomplished when they hurt someone to protect their loved ones or friends?" Riku clenched his teeth, because he'd seen no reason to not let himself feel those ways a lot of the time. "Why does a life sharing laughter with others while standing on your own strong legs lead to terror of losing them and dying weak and alone? Why does growing close to each other cause people to cry and feel even more lonely if their connections with their loved ones or friends are impaired or severed? Why does an unwillingness to let go of former or current bonds lead to hatred for those who have ripped apart a person's former bonds or who endanger a person's bonds in the here and now? Why do people believe in the power of connections and give all their heart to friends and others, and attain fully nothing for the people who they care about after all the struggles and hardship, or, at best, a limited and ephemeral happiness for those who they cherish? Why do love and connections put loved ones and friends and altruistic philanthropists who serve society through more death and torture and despair and pain than anything else can brush with the most feather light stroke?
"The most incandescent light doesn't cut through the darkness, it creates the darkness. Light is an incinerating conflagration, not a welcoming warmth.
"You need to wake up and be true to yourself."
Even as much as reality was Riku understood all of where Yozora was coming from with his cynicism, but Riku believed that there were answers to all of Yozora's questions. Riku just didn't see them now.
Still, it was apparent now that he wasn't going to be able to reach Yozora's Nobody.
Maybe if it was the recompleted Yozora himself, Riku would have a better chance, or maybe Faerie or Sora or Kairi or Namine or someone else could reach Vanitas, but Riku could tell that the longer he tried, the more that he risked enraging Yozora's Nobody so much that he dispatched Riku before Riku could further defend himself.
If there was any chance remaining of Riku returning home sweet home, rejection and violence was most likely what was going to cut it this time, not understanding and friendship.
He adjusted Braveheart into a better attack position and ran at Vanitas.
Riku could think of one strategy that might honestly work.
If he gave Vanitas the opportunity to use his special Keyblade abilities, he'd almost definitely lose, but if he kept Vanitas stuck in regular combat, Riku might still be able to win.
He had no idea how he'd trap Vanitas in regular combat when he could warp away quickly at any time, but he might be able to develop a method of doing so.
Vanitas rolled his eyes exaggeratedly, though he didn't roll his head back this time.
"Psyche," he spoke, and raised his left fourth finger a tiny amount off the hilt of Eschaton.
A single thread of shifting light grays and jagged, twisted, serrated black thorns launched in Riku's direction.
Riku clenched his teeth and threw himself to the side, but he knew it was too late.
The thread touched Riku in the torso, and a sphere of shifting, pulsing light gray strings each strewn with more serrated, jagged, twisted thorns expanded around him, enclosing Riku in a globe of space rippling at various rates, and lifted him into the air.
He forced down the surge of all-consuming terror as much as possible.
He hadn't created any Keyblades. What had happened to Faerie might not happen to him. He could still make it back to Namine and Sora and Kairi and the others.
Vanitas lowered his finger, but the rough globe enclosing Riku remained.
"It's over," Vanitas said.
"You had enough decency not to attempt to 'knock sense into me,' so I gave you the dignity of at least lifting a finger to defeat you.
"But that's as far as it goes."
The surface of The Final World became blinding light, and large fireflies of white rose up out of them all around Riku.
"Welcome to the realm of Planck scale, the final numerical digit of Pi, and infinite zero.
"Welcome to Gaes, the Earth of Maaseh Beresheth."
Riku attempted to move, to shift Braveheart, but he couldn't alter the position of his body a single millimeter.
"Boooooooooooooooooooooredom," Vanitas dismissed Gran Grimoire in coils of orange energy and lifted his right hand to his mouth, now yawning exaggeratedly. "That's not nothingness; you're inside a different phase transition from the rest of The Final World's dimensional space time, and the strings are domain walls."
"Which means what, precisely?" Riku challenged. He'd heard Chip and Dale use the term 'phase transition' before, though he hadn't questioned about the specifics, but the term 'domain walls' was fully new to him.
"You have plenty of time to read up on that while you're here."
Vanitas moved his right hand to the side of his head and flapped it up and down wildly in an overdone wave goodbye as the sky of The Final World vanished into total blackness.
"Laterz and toodle-loo and stuff."
Vanitas was gone right away without any change in the surroundings at all, and the globe, or whatever it was, vanished seconds after.
Riku brought his feet beneath him, bent his legs, and landed in a crouch.
He regained a standing position as the white and the fireflies faded.
It took Riku a few seconds to process what he was seeing, and then complete, total shock and horror swallowed all of who he was, the blood drained from his face, and he staggered back, dizziness causing his vision to swim and his head to ache and a broken giggle escaping from his mouth.
So this was what had happened to Faerie, and why this realm constrained Kingdom Hearts itself.
But Riku caught himself with his left heel and steadied himself, and the dizziness disappeared.
What the true form of Kingdom Hearts was didn't matter that much.
Since what had happened to Faerie wouldn't happen to him, he could still return home to Namine and S–
Riku was no longer aware if he was dizzy, and his mouth dropped open and went slack, his eyes widened, he lost his grip on Braveheart and it vanished in coils of silver and black, and he was barely even aware of his knees impacting on the surface below him.
This was Sora's destiny, the shatterpoint that would fracture everything that was, had been, and would be Sora's existence into black glass sand, turn him against Anna and Elsa, and drive him to cast the Note Blade.
Yozora had etched Sora into Faerie's place.
Night closed around Riku and he tumbled backwards and downwards into it.
.
"This is my reason? This is my proof? Don't make me laugh. I regret absolutely nothing. I am here precisely because I have finally accepted myself and this world! Those of you who reject this world, you could never understand!"-Lieutenant Luis Virgil/Blue Testament
XENOSAGA: Episode 3:
ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA