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CHAPTER 18:
HEARTS LEFT BEHIND AND TOYS DEPARTED FROM
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Author's Notes: The compositions for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'Orphanage of Flame,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; and after this 'Within the Giant,' from FINAL FANTASY IV; and after this 'Searching For Friends,' from FINAL FANTASY VI. All three of these pieces can be found on Zophar's Domain.
Sora wasn't fully aware, at first, that he was standing on the beach of the play island, facing a broken and cracked violet wasteland of hardened rock that should have been an aquamarine ocean.
But then his surroundings registered, as did the writhing whipping dancing and morphing conflagrations of mammoth Demon Tides shrieking and roaring in place with ebony night and pallid unearthly yellow eyes interspersed all over the sand and huts and water and central mountain of the islet.
Kairi was standing before him at the edge of the beach, facing the violet wasteland as Riku had, ages ago when Xehanort's Heartless had taken his body; her back to him and encased in a much thinner but far taller Demon Tide shelled in a phantasm of incinerated and smeared and blotted shades of white and gray and black that distorted and bent and flickered in contortions.
Riku was standing behind her, Braveheart leveled forwards at it as he'd once desperately and futilely attempted to defeat one of the mammoth Demon Tides now cavorting and careening in various stationary positions over the play island.
Sora tried to summon the Kingdom Key, in the event that he was inside his Station of Awakening, but no silver and gold serpents coalesced in the air before his right hand.
"Why won't you abandon me for Anna, Sora?" Kairi queried without turning to face him, voice broken and cracked and a ghost of sound.
"Why won't you abandon me for Donald and Goofy, Sora?" Riku questioned in a contained, reproving tone without turning himself, or lowering Braveheart, though there was no accusation or anger in it.
All of Sora's insides twisted, and he tried to sprint in their direction, but the sand beneath him became the black and dark gray wisping mists and clouds of the endless abyss, and he had no footing on which to move.
He tried to bend forward into a Glide or Superglide, or call up a corona of glistening yellow pixie dust around him, but it wouldn't appear.
"You're wasting your time," Kairi said in the same tone.
"You don't believe in yourself any longer, not truly.
"You're too frightened of hurting us, and the other people who you love and your other friends, once again.
"By remaining by our sides; by pushing us away as we tried to do to you; by giving into the darkness that you know is lurking in your own heart and waiting to engulf you every amount as much as it was, and still is, in ours; by continuing another adventure; by returning home; and by staying home.
"You can no longer find an escape from your own prison of frozen water, no matter what worlds you seek to cross over into."
"I was wrong to believe Maleficent," Riku spoke himself, his own voice not having altered.
"But she should have been right. You should have replaced me with Donald and Goofy, and you should replace Kairi with Anna.
"I don't understand why you won't. No matter how hard the two of us try, we'll never be worthy of the Keyblade, or the warmth of your light."
Forget going to them.
"That's one of the precise reasons why I won't leave either of you!" Sora cried, and tears clouded his vision so terribly that he could barely see them. "I need to cry the tears that you feel like shedding, so I can carry your pain, and you'll be free of it!"
"What will that accomplish?" Riku spoke back. "Then you'd just leave Donald and Goofy, and Anna, in order to cry for us.
"And it wouldn't enable us to atone for our sins.
"No matter how many tears you cry, you can't wash away our sins; or give us a raft to voyage on the ocean of your tears into a world of tomorrow where they never happened."
"I told you before!" Sora shouted. "I've become a part of the hearts of all of my friends! We can't just choose one person, or one world! We're all pieces of a greater World, and we share the same sky and beliefs and destiny and dreams!"
"You know better than that," Riku said in return. "Best friends, and lovers, don't work that way.
"You can't have more than a few best friends, and you can't have more than one girlfriend or boyfriend.
"You can't love all of us, or protect all of us, or cherish all of us, or keep all of us safe, this time."
Every last syllable of every single one of Riku's words, every shift of air as Riku breathed in and out through his nose and mouth while speak, was a shrieking and screaming coiling whip of a serrated and jagged dagger knife in Sora's heart, and the rest of his body.
"You didn't have that option from the beginning," Riku went on.
"Why else would you have let me give into the darkness, and then put me on a pedestal, and then let me lose my body, and then let me die, and then leave me behind, and then let me die once more?
"You've known all along that you need to choose at times."
"Why else did you let me lose my heart, and then put me on a pedestal, and then let Lea and Isa imprison me, and then let me die, and then let Xemnas and Xehanort hold me hostage, and then let me die again, and then leave me behind, and then let me give into the darkness?" Kairi queried.
"You told Xehanort that you learned from all your failures, when you were searching for how to give Roxas his heart back, that destiny is beyond your control, and that you can't always protect and save everyone.
"Give up your past.
"You have everything that you've wanted for your whole life now.
"Two best friends and a girl who will come to love you sooner or later, and who you can come to love sooner or later in return, all three of who are from the other worlds that you've longed to see since before you can remember; the ability to help and protect innumerable people; the ability to visit countless worlds and universes on a ship; and the chance to unlock all the mysteries of the realms of the cosmos.
"All that we've done for you for your whole life is drag you down and hold you back.
"Forget about us, and look to the brilliant tomorrow that lies before you."
"I can't love Anna the way that I love you!" Sora cried. "She follows her heart's guidance with all of who she is immeasurably more than anyone who I've met in my life, but she does so in the same ways that I do! If I tried to love her the way that I love you, I wouldn't be visiting other worlds!
"Donald and Goofy are the same!
"As amazing as they are, the four of us are too much alike!
"Yes, you and Riku don't give as much of your all to being loyal to following your hearts as they do, but that doesn't matter! You two are wonderful in your own ways! You don't need to give your all to being loyal to your heart's guidance to live by them!
"And you have the potential to let your hearts guide you as much as they do, if you wanted to live those ways, so even if you were supposedly less than them in any way, it wouldn't matter!
"But you're not a worse lover, or a worse best friend, to me, than they are!
"You're not too similar to me!
"As much as I love all three of them, they're the same vitality and vibrance that I believe in!
"They show me new worlds, but they don't show me new chambers of the heart!
"That's what the two of you do for me!
"You two understand both vitality and calmness!
"Anna and Goofy and Donald carry me to new worlds, but you and Riku carry me to both new worlds and rest at home!
"You and Riku haven't dragged me down, or held me back, a single time!
"I am who I am as much because of you and Riku, as I am because of them and my other friends!
"And I still love you, and I still love Riku, and I still need you, and I still need Riku, with all my heart, every fiber of who I am, for it, and for everything that you are and what you've done for me!"
"Then you still know nothing and understand nothing," Riku said.
"Whether Goofy and Donald and Anna live in the same chambers of the heart that you do, and whether we live within chambers of the heart that you don't, you're fully aware that they understand how to bring people home as well as you claim that we do, if not better.
"We've just endeavored to bring you home.
"They attempt to bring you home, and bring home to you."
"What does that matter!?" Sora shouted.
The agony and anguish twisting and erasing everything inside and outside of his heart and existence and being and reality was so excruciating and terrible now that he didn't understand how he even had anything left inside him that could cry.
"I don't need to be brought anywhere as long as I have the two of you! You and Kairi already are my home, no matter where I am!"
"We can't be a home for you any longer," Kairi spoke.
"You need a new one."
"It's up to me to choose that!" Sora shouted in reply.
"And why would I want another home when I already have as much of a home as I need with you and Riku!?"
"Because you have a better home with you right now," Riku replied.
"And you know it.
"You're just refusing to admit it to yourself, because you don't want to hurt us.
"So you're hiding behind clear cut refuges and you won't face those fears with any heart.
"You know that there's more to a heart than vitality or calmness.
"You told Xemnas himself that a heart is full of all kinds of feelings.
"You know that Donald and Goofy and Anna can show you as many new chambers of the heart as we can.
"You've been as attracted to Anna as she is to you as soon as you saw how much she loves Elsa with all her heart; and you have a lot more fun journeying to new worlds with Donald and Goofy than you have the few times that we've been to new worlds by ourselves, because you can laugh and cry and race under aquamarine skies and soar through the cerulean heavens with them.
"We can't love others, or laugh and cry and sprint and rocket, as they can.
"It's time for you to grow out of your childish games, and leave us on the curb as the garbage that we are."
"You're not garbage! Neither is Kairi!"
Sora opened his mouth to continue, but no further words were willing to emerge from his mouth.
It was one of the last things that he wanted to feel or think about, but, forced to talk about this with Kairi and Riku, the memory of when he'd gazed into Anna's eyes the first time that they'd met flickered through his heart's and mind's eyes.
They'd glowed with such blindingly radiant and pure, heartfelt, sincere, caring incandescent love and warmth and protectiveness and terror and concern and worry for Elsa that he could have looked into them every instant from then on for literally the rest of his life without needing or wanting literally anything else to enable him to feel happy and reassured and safe and at rest.
The memory of when he'd stood with Riku on the shore of the play island at the start of their shared Mark of Mastery exam flickered through his heart's and mind's eyes.
Sora had suppressed a surge of disappointment and pain that, after well over a year of waiting to adventure through the worlds side by side with Riku, now that he at long last had the opportunity to, Riku didn't appear or sound anywhere near as close to eager or excited to set out on the raft that they'd built so long ago as Donald and Goofy usually did when they were about to begin a new voyage.
Sora opened his mouth to try to force the words out to tell Riku and Kairi that these were just doubts because of how worried he was about how terribly the Foretellers could hurt all of them, but Kairi talked before Sora could say anything.
"You need to stop denying to yourself how you really feel.
"It's okay to think about your own happiness at times, especially when you're talking to two people who have never been able to give you any happiness.
"Stop worrying about hurting our feelings, or betraying us.
"Just be yourself, and follow the guidance of your heart.
"If you'd stop worrying about us and turn to the people who can genuinely love you, and give you happiness and a home and warmth and power; you'd recognize that you never hurt us, and we are the ones who have hurt you.
"You'd stop worrying about hurting them, as well.
"Anna and Donald and Goofy love you so much that you could never hurt them more than a little, and that love will just continue to grow the longer that you share your journeys and heart and home and dreams with them.
"We can't say, or do, any of that, for you."
Forget convincing Kairi and Riku that they were wrong about how he felt about Anna, Donald, and Goofy, compared to them, for now.
He could address that later when his idiotic doubts stopped trying to interfere with his ability to speak, and when they stopped trying to tell him that he'd be lying if he told Kairi and Riku that they were wrong.
"When you get down to it, what does what you or Riku can do for me matter!?" Sora asked.
"It's what I can do for you that is important!
"You know that, even if you're right, I could care less what makes me happy!
"If one or both of you are Luxu in disguise; and you're trying to dig into my skin about sacrificing myself and yanking other people to take the fall with me, once more; stop enjoying talking around me at my expense, and just say it!"
"This isn't the Station of Awakening," Riku replied.
"This is a regular dream.
"You're not arguing with anyone but your own heart this time, so you have no way of denying that we're telling you the truth."
That didn't mean that the truth was no more than that all of these were doubts and fears.
Even if he believed that Donald and Goofy and Anna could give him matters that Kairi and Riku couldn't
and he did not
there was no way the most infinitesimally minutely minuscule bit that he would believe that Kairi and Riku had once dragged him down or held him back, far less for all of his life, or anything else similar to that.
This was how terrified and horrified he was about how they did, or might, feel about themselves.
"The pieces of our own hearts don't fit together any more than the pieces of the World do," Kairi said, in answer to Sora's feelings and thoughts.
"You heard Lauriam, Elrena, Luxu, and Anna.
"We're all of us, and all of our worlds, are pieces of a much greater heart and World, but those pieces spend much more time rejecting each other and dismissing each other's feelings and dreams, and thoughts and memories, than accepting each other and one another, and understanding and reflecting who we are and what we seek.
"You know that you can't love and protect and keep safe and care for all of us, through light or through darkness or through both, and that you can't choose all of us without abandoning and betraying and leaving and hurting one or more of us.
"You just deluded yourself into believing that you could in the past; but you started learning better during your last adventure, when you learned the truth behind the pain of the Nobodies in the Sleeping World That Never Was, and began carrying Ven's, Aqua's, and Terra's hurt and pain, as well.
"Now it's time for you to finish learning that lesson, and throw us out as the puppet toys that we are and sail into the grown up World."
It didn't matter that this wasn't really Kairi and Riku.
Sora couldn't allow Kairi to call herself, and Riku, puppet toys without saying something.
But before he could even open his mouth this time, Kairi and Riku spoke in unison.
"But no matter who you choose to love and keep safe and cherish and bring home, and whose hurt you decide to carry and whose pain you choose to cry in the place of; you know with all your heart and memories and dreams that we won't let it be us, and ours."
An a-hyuck that Sora knew that he should recognize without any effort, but that was at the same time as indecipherable and unfamiliar to him as the most endlessly distant star that he hadn't yet seen, sounded.
"We're here, Sora!
"You need ta' wake your sleepy face and head up!"
Who was talking to him, and what Goofy was saying, became clear in Sora's mind.
He forced his eyes open and sat up in Donald's seat.
But before he could turn to see how Donald, Goofy, Jiminy, and Anna were doing, sickness twisted all of Sora's insides.
He couldn't believe what Kairi and Riku had told him in the dream, or what his memories of Riku when they'd started their Mark of Mastery Exam; or Anna, when he'd initially met her, could mean.
He'd never betray Kairi or Riku like that.
But if he let even his memory of those lies show on his face, or in his body, even the tiniest amount, Goofy or Anna might see it, and understand what it meant.
And then Donald and Goofy would feel guilty for supposedly coming between Riku and him, and the Foretellers might be able to use that against them; and Jiminy and Anna would blame themselves for supposedly coming between Kairi and him, and however effective he'd been at taking away their pain about four days ago, it might be fully or partially undone.
And that didn't even get into what it would do to Anna if she had any reason to believe that he returned her developing feelings.
Particularly after he'd been able to take away a lot of her pain about how she hadn't been able to reach Elsa for all of those years, and a small amount of her terror that she'd fail to do so in the future.
None of it was true, for Donald or Goofy or Jiminy or Anna
Stop making the effort to tell yourself meaningless lies.
One who knows things can understand things.
but if any of them had reason to believe that there was even the slightest chance that it was, especially Anna, it would be a disaster.
So Sora didn't even mask his face, and he hoped with desperation beyond desperation that if he just talked and acted like himself, without any delays, it would be enough.
He sat up and turned to look at the others.
Donald was still in the pilot's seat, though the familiar sapphire and emerald globe that Sora knew Woody and Buzz lived on drifted before them in the viewport.
Goofy and Anna were already at the door to the hall leading out of the cockpit that would take them directly to the Throbbeat Pool that would take them into Andy's room, with Jiminy standing on Goofy's left shoulder.
All three of them turned to look at him, but no one shifted the slightest amount as though anything looked unusual about Sora's face and posture, so he suppressed the urge to sigh heavily in relief.
"Are you sure that you'll be comfortable taking a form similar to Yozora's, now that you know who he is?" Jiminy questioned concernedly.
Sora forced a smile.
"I'll just think of it as an improvement upon all of his millennia wielding the Keyblade," he said.
Anna and Goofy gave Sora alternate relieved, approving, encouraging smiles.
Sora smiled back at both of them, and then he turned to Donald.
"Unsurprisingly, Anna hasn't been able to land a single hit on Goofy yet, with either the sword of the gunblade or a shot, but she did catch him off guard and put him honestly on the defensive for a brief period of time, around three hours ago, with a clever trick with its Blasting Zone shield."
"I realized that, due to the greater size of my shield, I could lessen Goofy's angles of moving Save the King Plus to assault me," Anna explained with a partially embarrassed and uncomfortable, partially pleased and accomplished, smile. "He didn't need to use that many tactics to fend me off, I waited until he fell into a pattern that I was used to and then repeatedly repositioned my Blasting Zone shield to contain Save the King Plus' movements.
"As I'd hoped it would, that surprised him long enough for me to push him back for a small number of seconds."
Sora smiled at Anna, raised his right arm with his hand clenched in a fist, and gave her a thumb's up.
"Great work!" he spoke.
"I know Elsa and Kristoff, and the others, would feel the same if they were here!"
Sora suppressed the urge to sigh as Anna looked away from him, her cheeks warm.
He did not return her developing feelings, but that didn't mean that he hated how terribly he was hurting her because he couldn't love her in all of the ways that she sought it from him the most infinitesimally minutely microscopically tiny minuscule amount.
"I was able to redirect the exit point of the Throbbeat Pool to Andy's front yard, below the front windows, so we'll be out of sight in the event that we're now connected to the actual Toy Box and we're at risk of showing up while Andy's in his room," Donald informed them.
"I couldn't alter its strobe pattern to remove every byproduct Throbbeat Pool from what we're assuming are the real planet locations that they showed up in the fake Galaxy Toys, however. But unless something bad is happening there, all of the toys there should know to avoid it and thus incite it to mend any injuries that they might have, and thus potentially expose that they have hearts to people who aren't toys."
Anna blinked.
"The toys on this planet don't tell the people there that they're aware?" she questioned.
"They didn't say as much, but that's the impression we got," Goofy said back. "If they did, people would, for clear reasons, refuse to treat them as toys, and the toys wouldn't be able to be happy enabling people to play with them and being played with."
Anna pressed her lips together tightly at that.
"On those lines," Donald put in, "I have a spell in place around us that adapts whenever we gain a new traveling companion, and that is meant to ensure that our forms shift if our real bodies endanger the world order.
"When we transport down to the surface, you'll look like a toy yourself, and I have no idea who, or what, you'll be."
Anna grinned.
"Then I can hardly wait to find out," she said eagerly and with excitement.
Goofy's lips were curling up in a grin of his own at Anna's reaction, and Sora discovered that his own lips were doing the same.
Sora finished the grin, and Goofy followed.
Donald puffed up his chest.
"When it's safe for you to go home, make sure to tell Elsa every detail about the spectacle that my magic turns you into, so she can know that I can still beat her at transformation magic," Donald said to Anna.
"Marshmallow has nothing on the figures that I can craft."
"She created Olaf, too, you know," Anna replied with an amused, triumphant, smug smile.
Donald jolted violently.
"As I recall, the three of you were very impressed with him."
"As I remember, he falls into pieces on a regular basis," Donald squawked challengingly and defiantly.
"That doesn't happen in the water this beak, and my magic, swims in."
"We've arrived at the place that we wanted to reach," Jiminy scolded them, "So we can save the argument for whether Elsa, Olaf, and you flock together; or whether you're unique birds of a feather, for later.
"Toys, and other living beings, might be in trouble on the world in front of us."
Donald started, and then he glared at Jiminy and scowled.
But then he jumped down from the pilot's seat, stomped up to the door, and yanked it open.
Goofy moved to hold it open, but Anna ran to the handle facing the cockpit and did so first.
"Unless a girl or woman actually is in no condition to hold a door open herself," she said, "I consider the concept that males ought to hold doors open for women or girls an insult to both genders.
"It coddles females, and implies that males are inferior to women or girls, because they're supposedly required to defer to females.
"Both genders are equal.
"Whoever can most afford to hold the door open holds the door open, whether that person is male or female.
"As you four need to be on higher alert, that's me."
Jiminy nodded in approval and gratitude.
"I'll keep that in mind to add to my code, and make a note about doing so as soon as I have the time," Jiminy spoke.
"Which we don't, so let's get a move on," Donald said.
"Indeed," Sora agreed.
He moved into a quick stride to the door and through it.
"Anna," Sora said as he walked, "Goofy typically combats at close range with his shield, Donald with magic, and I vary between both methods as the situation requires. However, Donald isn't as skilled at defending people in his vicinity as Goofy and I am, and I need to pay more attention to adapting to a combat situation than Goofy because I battle through both methods, so I recommend that you stay as close to Goofy as possible if or when we get into a fight."
"I've gotcha'," Anna replied.
As soon as they were all through the door into the hall beyond, she closed it and moved to walk as close behind Goofy as she could without crowding him.
At the end of the hall, in a circular cul de sac, the shining light green of a Throbbeat Pool glowed.
Sora led the way into the center and turned to wait for the others to arrive.
"Over the last few days, I've tried to consider carefully whether I'd be a liability, or whether I could contribute, if I got involved in a battle," Jiminy said.
"I realized that I should probably stay out," Sora felt a frown try to assume itself on his visage, "But if I can find a way to get involved, I'll give it a shot."
Sora felt slightly lighter.
"I'm with Kairi as far as killing fully aware adversaries goes, though," Jiminy said. "I'll kill Heartless, Unversed, and Dream Eaters if I can discover any means to, but I'm not going to kill any Nobodies, human form or not, or any regular people."
"That's fine," Sora reassured Jiminy.
"It's going to be the same with me," Anna interjected, and Sora sagged a small amount.
If he'd forced, and let, someone as loving and kind as Anna to become a murderer, more fragments of him would have died every time she killed someone.
Goofy gave Jiminy, Anna, and Sora empathetic, sympathetic, understanding looks.
Goofy joined Donald and Sora in the glimmering Throbbeat Pool, and, last of all, Anna, who moved close to Goofy's left.
"Jiminy, Anna, do either of you have anything else to say or ask?" Sora inquired.
Anna shook her head, but Jiminy preempted the last thing was that he knew they needed to do before they could land.
He took out his Gummiphone, dialed a number in it, and held it to his ear.
But Sora knew better than to hope, and a few seconds later Jiminy confirmed, "There's still no signal."
Kairi had traveled through a complete adventure when searching for a way to light his way home sweet home from the most recent darkness that had engulfed him.
She had far more combat experience than the simulated training she'd put herself through with Lea while he'd been searching for how to give Roxas his life back.
She'd be fine.
If Sora kept telling himself that enough, he'd believe it in time.
Maybe.
But, as Jiminy had said, they couldn't delay any longer.
Sora tapped into the familiar pulsing threads of what he now knew were energies extracted by a Gummi ship from the corona of power emitted from a world's heart, and shaped them in order to discorporate all five of them and send them plummeting forwards and down to the world in front of Radical Dreamers, Unstolen Jewel.
The light green vanished to be replaced by the familiar sight of a well cut lawn extending down a gentle hill to a street with cars that appeared to be many times too large for people to drive or ride in, but that Sora knew just looked that way because of how small they'd become.
Was this the genuine Toy Box, or was it still in two parts, and were they in the false one?
Then he registered Anna's appearance, and his heart stopped and robbed him of breath.
Her current appearance could only be the result of the presence of a Princess of Heart on this world, confirming that they'd been correct to look for one of the New Seven Hearts on Toy Box.
But, after all that Anna and Elsa had already gone through, and what she and Elsa were still going through, she did not need to have been turned into a stuffed toy with a dark brown, wide brimmed cowgirl hat and hair that was now the same red color as Kairi's.
Other than these changes, Anna still looked the same, and her clothing was the same, too.
But the ways that Anna had been changed were horrific enough.
Donald opened his mouth to apologize to Anna, but before he could, an unfamiliar voice called from the street, "What landfill did you four just climb out of?"
Sora's guard went fully up, and his forced all of his feelings and thoughts about what Anna's new form must be doing to her as far away as possible.
He turned in the direction of the driveway to see a purple furred stuffed bear a lot less pudgy than Pooh looking at them from where he was standing on the side of the mailbox nearest to them.
Now that Sora was paying attention, a faint scent of strawberries was wafting through the air, doubtlessly from the direction of the bear.
"Mind your own business, and give us yours!" Donald shot back furiously.
The purple bear blinked, and then he scowled furiously back at Donald.
"This neighborhood is my business, you stuck up excuse for a reject," he responded.
Donald hopped into the air and landed with loud, vehement quacking and other sounds of fury, rage, and anger.
"My name is Lotso," the bear went on. "I'm from a daycare center named Sunnyside."
The air around Lotso shimmered briefly with familiar black and purple flickers, and Sora started.
With well practiced ease, the Kingdom Key appeared in Sora's grip in spiraling silvery gold; Goofy moved into a frontal neutral combat position to Sora's left with Anna, uncertain what was going on, a little behind him and to his own left; and Donald took Sora's back and right and leveled Save the Queen Plus at Lotso.
Sora suppressed the sick exhaustion and pain and irritation that he'd lost his Keychains along with his powers yet once more.
The aura hadn't been there for long, but Donald, Goofy, and Sora all knew what they'd seen.
Lotso started himself at the sight of the weapons now greeting him, and Anna, though still uncertain, unholstered her gunblade from her back and placed it in a ready position of her own.
"I'm just searching this neighborhood for a residence with two cowboy and cowgirl toys named Woody and Jessie," Lotso told them quickly. "Sunnyside has been occupied by a group of toys who have taken all the toys there but me hostage, and I was ordered to convince Woody and Jessie to meet them, or my fellows would suffer the price for them not doing so."
Lotso could be lying, but it was also possible that he was being honest about what had happened to the other toys at Sunnyside and other dark impulses were driving him, or he didn't know how much darkness was in his heart.
So, staying on full alert, Sora walked in front of the rest of them, shifting slightly to his left to be in a better position to cover Anna, as she was the group's greatest weakness right now.
"We know a Woody," Sora told Lotso, and he smiled, but now that Sora was watching Lotso's face and body closely, he could tell that Lotso's relief that the toys who he knew at Sunnyside might now be okay was fully or partially fake.
"But you'll need to convince us to trust you, at least a little, before we're willing to take you to see him," Sora finished.
"What can a fuzzy bear who smells like strawberries have to hide?" Lotso asked, in feigned or real uncertainty.
"Oh, I dunno'," Donald said sarcastically. "Such as why other toys would feel like picking a fight with the daycare center where people play with him in the first place."
"Bite off half of your beak and choke on it," Lotso rejoined, and Donald went entirely stiff, but this time he couldn't afford to leave himself open by jumping. "I'm in charge of the toys at Sunnyside, and we've set up a system to ensure that all toys are well played with in a way that prevents any toy's heart from breaking due to neglect.
"It's been successful for years."
"I bet," Donald sneered.
"Like you said, rubber ducky, mind your own business," Lotso snarled.
Donald stiffened wholly once more.
"We were discussing what the toys who attacked Sunnyside want with Woody and Jessie," Jiminy, who Sora could now see was a Lego version of a six legged cricket, tried to defuse the tension from where he was now standing more out of the way on Goofy's head.
Lotso blinked, noticing Jiminy for the first time.
"Why should I know?" he challenged Jiminy.
"All their leader, some geezer who calls himself the Platinum Prospector, would tell me is that Woody and Jessie robbed him of his chance at going down in toy history almost two years ago, so he's now determined to assimilate the system that I set up at Sunnyside for his own purposes, and warp it to make them pay for that."
Lotso gave a black scowl that Sora could tell was honest, as well as consumed with a depthless bitterness that might have something to do with why there was so much darkness in Lotso's heart.
"He somehow found out that I took charge of the Sunnyside toys because I don't care for the concept of being passed over myself."
That very likely meant that, given the darkness in Lotso's heart, however Lotso controlled Sunnyside, it ensured that no toy was passed over when a child wanted to play with toys in ways that hurt the toys.
But Sora would deal with Lotso's jealousy at other toys having been chosen to be played with, rather than him; when the more immediate danger, if it was real, had been removed.
"So he offered me a choice.
"Find Woody and Jessie and convince them to turn themselves into him at Sunnyside as hostages by the end of the day."
Then Lotso clenched his hands into fists and began shaking with barely restrained fury.
"If I fail to do that, or they don't show up, he's going to go on public television and reveal to the town, and thus the planet, that toys have hearts and minds of their own; and thus ensure that no toy anywhere in the world will be played with by any child, anywhere, once more, for as long as this world lasts."
Sora felt the blood drain from his face, but he whipped his head to look at Anna, to see how she dealt with at last confronting before her very eyes how ruthless and apathetic denizens of the darkness could be to whole worlds, and not just a minority of people or one Kingdom on a world.
Anna nearly recoiled, face ghostly white, but she steadied herself and made her visage a mask of all emotion.
Sora felt like he wanted to retch violently, but this wasn't the time.
If this Prospector was willing to go that far, it was very unlikely that this was just a toy rivalry that was getting out of hand.
Prospector might be the darkness that Maleficent had deployed to this world.
Maleficent's best option for preventing them from anticipating how she'd assign her seekers of darkness was to utilize her old strategy of deploying dark seekers to their homeworlds, and thus send one who had been born on one or more worlds that they visited to fight him, Donald, Goofy, Jiminy, and Anna. This would prevent any of them from knowing whether she'd changed her strategies and tactics until she was ready to reveal that to them the hard way.
So that Prospector was a toy made it even more likely that he was a member of Maleficent's Successor Organization Thirteen.
He turned back to look at Lotso.
"Is there anything else that you can tell us about these invaders?" Goofy questioned. "Are they accompanied by any creatures that aren't toys, is anyone besides this Prospector commanding them, and does he talk or act like he's taking orders from anyone else?"
Lotso clenched his teeth together.
"If you're referring to those hideous things that were skulking around over a year ago when a large number of toys temporarily disappeared from Galaxy Toys, I don't know one way or the other.
"But you better believe that we've been endeavoring to figure that out.
"Prospector has gone senile in his old age.
"If your owner grows out of you, into adulthood or otherwise,"
"Now it's time for you to finish learning that lesson, and throw us out as the puppet toys that we are and sail into the grown up World."
"you ensure that you're played with in such a way that it doesn't happen again.
"You don't give up, resign yourself to never being played with again in any manner, and look for a happy life that isn't a joke by being immortalized as a relic by the populace."
Sora wanted to ask why Lotso believed that being played with by children under regular circumstances was a joke, in the hopes that he might be able to bring Lotso home to a child and out of the darkness, as Kairi had Hades, but this, too, wasn't the time.
He pushed his feelings and thoughts about this, and what Lotso had just revealed about what he meant by being passed over and how it reminded Sora of his nightmare, as far away as he could justify.
"Prospector is a disgrace to all toys, discarded and played with, and if he's already revealed that he has a heart and mind to beings that aren't toys, as far as I'm concerned, that constitutes a declaration of war. The toys at Sunnyside and every other discarded toy that we can recruit to our cause will thusly treat it as such."
"That won't be necessary," Anna spoke up right away, obviously having been as reminded of Elsa's declaration of war against the Foretellers as the rest of them were. "We'll introduce you to Woody, and we'll have Prospector and the toys who he leads out of Sunnyside and locked up in storage somewhere, and therefore no longer a threat to any toy being played with anywhere on this world, by the time dawn starts early tomorrow morning."
Sora wanted to tell Anna that Maleficent's associates weren't that easy to thwart, but this wasn't the time for that, too.
Lotso's eyes widened, and then he grinned savagely.
"You can rest assured that I'll hold you to that," he answered.
Then he faced Goofy.
"As for your other two questions, he has three toys working directly under him who assist him in managing the other toys.
"One is some lunatic named Emperor Zurg from the Buzz Lightyear merchandise who appears not to have clued in that he's a bloody freaking toy, not a galactic conqueror.
"The second is a doll who calls herself Gabby Gabby, who Prospector recruited from an antique shop miles away from here. She actually sounds like she has her head on straight about how to achieve happiness, so I've tasked a number of my own chief administrators to try to convince her to ditch Prospector and his nutcases and join us."
Sora extremely highly doubted that would make Gabby Gabby any happier.
"I'm not sure who the remaining one is, but he, she, or it is the answer to your third question.
"From how Prospector, Egnorant Zublivious, and the other toys serving them act and speak; he, she, or it might actually be the toy in charge of the occupation.
"None of us can tell.
"Nor do we have any idea who he, she, or it is.
"Is this enough to convince you that I'm not spraying lies?"
"Your story is so out there that, if you were lying, you'd most likely have told us a more convincing fib," Sora answered.
"So we'll trust you.
"About this much."
Lotso scowled blackly, but then he walked in their direction.
Donald tensed, but Goofy shook his head.
"Then what are we waiting for?" Lotso queried. "That you clambered out of some sewer below this yard onto this explicit lawn; and that you're this confident that you can introduce me to Woody, if not Jessie, and send Prospector and his goons packing; tells me that this is actually the house where someone plays, or used to play, with Woody."
Lotso was smart, then.
They needed to be even more careful not to underestimate him; as much as they needed to ensure that they didn't underestimate the Prospector or whoever was truly leading the occupation of Sunnyside; whether one or both of them was or were a member of Maleficent's Organization Thirteen, or not.
"We're not waiting for anything," Sora responded.
"Please, if you'll follow us."
.
"Forget that which pains you… You cannot reclaim what is lost to time. Let it go. There is only regret here. What difference does it make? Whether you lost a wife and child or killed an innocent family, you cannot bring back the dead."-Romeo Guildenstern
"! !"-Ashley Riot
"Your hands are tainted with blood. Truth or no, your sins are eternal. Release the past, look to the future! Join us, Ashley! Come home…"-Romeo Guildenstern
VAGRANT STORY