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CHAPTER 21:
THE COLORS OF THE NIGHT
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Author's Notes: The compositions for this Chapter can all be found in the XENOSAGA Episode Three Unreleased Tracks part of KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section. However, the title of the song directly below the first piece has two of the largest spoilers in the whole XENOSAGA trilogy in its title. For those who are interested in listening to that track, I highly recommend that you scroll down through the pieces to the first track with careful precision and no lower than the first track, so that you don't see the name of the track below it at all. That in mind, the two tracks are 'The Harsh Truth (Piano Version),' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Unreleased Tracks; and afterwards 'Battle Versus Yuriev,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Unreleased Tracks.
Anna reacted almost before she was aware that she'd decided to move.
Her own new self hatred and guilt and agony and despair were now at the barest edges of her awareness, and her left arm and hand was the first around Sora's midsection this time, while she began rubbing his back with every ounce of love and warmth and reassurance and security she could put into her circular strokes.
Goofy's and Donald's hands and arms went back around Sora, Goofy's hands and arms above Anna's arm and hand this time, and Donald's still around his stomach.
Woody's jaw fell open, his eyes wide and jaw slack in horror, and he fell to his knees.
Buzz clenched his hands into tight fists, shaking and shuddering and trembling with anguish and guilt and fury.
Jessie's mouth opened, though not as much as Woody's, and stayed open, and her eyes went wide with horror, and she walked unsteadily over to Woody, put her hand on his left shoulder, and squeezed it with tight and warm and secure reassurance of her own, and kept her grip that way.
"It doesn't matter what you didn't stop from happening," Anna spoke. "None of us, Kairi or Riku or Donald or Goofy or Jiminy or I, are going to stop loving you, or believing in you, the tiniest amount, or hate you or not forgive you or hold you to account.
"I can't speak for any of your other off world friends, but Elsa and Kristoff and Olaf and Marshmallow and Sven will feel the same ways."
But Sora didn't respond, or even shift a millimeter.
Anna looked around him at his face without altering how she was holding him, or rubbing his back, and her heart clenched inexpressibly tightly in a vise and twisted so violently she couldn't understand why it didn't contort itself apart.
Sora didn't even appear to be aware of what was going on at all now.
He was just staring out sightlessly at nothing, eyes wide and his own mouth and jaw slack with horror, as though he was a flesh and blood sculpture of the ice statue who Anna had once been.
Anna yanked her face and head back away from Sora's, in the chance that he was aware enough of what was going on that he was making that comparison, and he believed that she might kiss him.
But Anna knew that no amount of kisses or hugs, no matter how loving and warm, could melt the kind of frigid ice that Christopher had just frozen Sora's heart with.
Lotso was still commanding his Heartless to fire on Christopher, and Christopher was still warping their energy beams out of his cocoon in different directions, but Lotso still snorted.
"Stop being a whiny crybaby yourself," he scoffed to Sora.
"Bo, the Little Green Men, and Bo's sheep are better off the way that they are now. They won't need to go through the heartbreak of their owners abandoning them."
"Except they'll now never be able to feel anything at all once again!" Buzz shouted furiously up at Lotso. "That's no tradeoff for not feeling sad!"
"It works for me," Lotso responded.
"Then your heart is frozen in a different way," Anna cut in. "I knew someone like that."
"On those lines, Hans asked me to send you his regards for having enabled him to become the thirteenth member of more glorious brethren," Christopher spoke.
Anna barely felt any pain, or self hatred, or guilt, or despair even about that.
"Tell him you're welcome, and that I mean it," Anna responded.
"And then, since I didn't get a chance to before, tell him that if he sets one foot in Arendelle again, I'm introducing him to the concept of a defrosting heart by slugging him into the nearest warm body of water that I can find.
"Though you need to warn him that, if he takes things farther than attempted assassination this time and invades Arendelle with an army of Heartless, Elsa and I won't respond to this by deporting him back to the Southern Isles under guard.
"He'll be a clear and present danger to the rest of Arendelle then, and while Arendelle doesn't invade other nations, it doesn't allow other nations to invade Arendelle.
"He'll have committed an act of war, we'll respond accordingly, and he'll be taken captive as a prisoner of war, or killed in combat."
"Do you honestly believe that you have resources to spare to do that, as Elsa is determined to defend you, Arendelle, and its friends with military force?" Christopher asked.
"You know that it's not just the Foretellers that she'll need to worry about once the nearby nations learn that she's declared a war.
"Other leaders, such as Weselton, will use her declaration of war as proof that she, and Arendelle, are clear dangers to them.
"Hans won't need the Heartless then. You know how adept he is at political maneuvering. He'll forge an alliance out of all of the nations that see Arendelle as belligerent, and not waging a defensive war in support of allies, and you'll end up in a two front full scale war against an alliance of fully aware living beings."
Sora shifted very slightly then, and Anna did let a small rush of relief through.
Donald, however, started violently.
"Then you must talk Elsa out of the war!" he cried. "A full scale war between fully aware people is much worse than even a war between an army of fully aware people and an army mostly made up of living beings who don't have complete awareness and a minority who do, or a one small group of people against an army of living beings who mostly don't have complete awareness and a minority who do!"
"I can't," Anna responded. "I've known how Weselton and others would respond from the beginning, and once Goofy figured out Hans had been recompleted I knew what he might do himself.
"But I can't do anything about it, without betraying Arendelle's core values.
"We won't invade other nations, to conquer them or to intervene in their internal affairs to protect their people as Mickey and the Disney Kingdom disagree with, but unlike the Disney Kingdom, we don't let people threaten our friends and allies and not react to this with every means at our disposal.
"If someone is a clear danger to one of our allies and we can defend them with military force, we do that."
Donald knew better than to argue this point at a time like this.
"You can tell Hans that if he makes no attempts at military action, through ethereal beings or material beings, Elsa and Arendelle will see this as sufficient compensation for his previous intervention in our own internal affairs, and the economic compensation Arendelle requested from the Southern Isles for the injuries done to people and property as a result of this will be withdrawn."
"You know that he'll refuse," Christopher responded.
"And even if he actually did accept, do you honestly believe that the rest of his family would?
"He's more indifferent to the concept of familial and national cooperation than the rest of his family because he's the youngest child, but the rest of his family could have easily raised him to believe in cooperation as much as you and Elsa do, with as large a family as he had."
"Even before I learned to grow up myself, I knew better than to not recognize the truths that you believe that you're teaching me.
"I'm a Princess of a nation that believes in cooperation, tolerance, peace and neutrality when we don't need to participate in a war, and defensive warfare when we need to engage in it ourselves.
"I had a lot to learn about individual cooperation, and I still do, but on the national level, my parents taught me well.
"I never once saw Arendelle, or other nations, as my playground."
"Nations are created from individuals," Christopher argued. "If you had a lot to learn about individual coexistence, then you have a lot to learn about national coexistence."
"Individual connections are primarily based on feelings," Anna said back. "Nations can't be governed, or allied with, just through feelings. Practical, pragmatic concerns need to be involved when large numbers of people are involved."
"Then that's what toys can do for children, now that they know that we're aware," Buzz spoke with determined conviction.
Sora shifted a bit once more, Goofy jolted, Donald's eyes widened, and Anna sagged slightly.
But she knew that this wouldn't be enough.
Even if Buzz had thought of a means for toy culture to recover from what Christopher, Prospector, and Maleficent had done to them, and gain a new happiness, it would be an extremely difficult trail to walk until they'd adjusted to it.
Christopher gave Buzz an irritated look.
"What playground are you prancing like a lunatic through now?" he asked.
"Whether or not people know that we're aware, we're still toys," Buzz replied. "We have abilities that humans don't. Even with what you just did to Bo, the Little Green Men, and her sheep, we're very hard to hurt in lasting ways, or kill, because people can fix us.
"We also don't feel physical pain."
Sora, however, just shifted a small amount once more as he realized where Buzz was going with this.
For the first time, Christopher appeared discomfited, though for no other reason than because Maleficent's goal of harnessing darkness from upending toy culture might at last be in true danger.
Donald and Goofy released Sora and moved to stand in front of Buzz, and position their weapons defensively to protect him if Christopher endeavored to kill him, or hurt him.
That Anna had just enabled Elsa, Sora, Kristoff, Olaf, Sven, Marshmallow, and Arendelle to rescue billions of toys comprising a widespread planetary culture from falling apart meant almost nothing to her own her own behalf.
"This enables us to carry the hurt of children in ways that other humans can't.
"For example, we can give children large masses of people who they don't need to befriend practically or pragmatically, and children who want to grow up to lead others a culture that they can govern that is a playground. So they can still connect with us primarily through feelings, and this will enable us to give them refuge from the difficult practical decisions required to provide for many people at once.
"Because we can carry the pain of a child, we can also give them sanctuary from the horrors of war, natural disasters, famine, plague, poverty, and other hardships that affect large numbers of people.
"And from other, individual harships.
"We can even live as literal people to cry on, or listeners, or punching bags for children grieving for, or tormented by, lost or badly injured family members, or other loved ones, who are victims of war or other large scale hardships, or murders by criminals or car accidents," Jessie put in. "We can convince children who have lost parents or siblings, or other loved ones, to hug us and cuddle us at night so we can ease their nightmares or take them away, or talk to us about everything hurting them, or cry into us. Or blow us up with play missiles, or hurt us through other means, and keep putting us together and doing it once more, until they've let out a lot of their hate and anger and are better able to come to terms with their losses or their own hardship."
If Anna had been willing to doubt that Vanitas, and her resemblance to Jessie, didn't mean that Jessie was a Princess of Heart, Jessie's words now would have removed that doubt.
"Or literally treat us as things if parents with power attempt to raise them to feel entitled, or kids become greedy for power themselves, and thus potentially sate their wishes for power before it hurts them and other people.
"The kids' parents will tell them not to do any of this, but traumatized victims of large scale hardship, or small scale hardship, will be willing to let us love them over their parents in situations like that.
"And, in time, this will convince enough adults, or older children, not to raise younger children to not play with toys, and they'll play with us once more.
"There's your bright light in your black that swallows all colors.
"We just need to move forward, accept that people won't play with us for a while, and cherish our memories of the times that we were played with while finding new ways to be played with in the future through giving love to children.
"We can still love children.
"This isn't the end of our lives and happiness, but the beginnings of new ones."
"Even you should be willing to live this way," Buzz addressed Lotso. "Just move on from Daisy."
"Choke on your wishy washiness," Lotso snarled furiously. "Moving on still means losing the person who you're moving on from.
"If it doesn't last forever, it isn't love.
"It's that simple, and final."
Anna opened her mouth, but Lotso cut her off.
"And before one of you misty eyed lunatics tells me that love is about giving love to children, not receiving love from children, giving love isn't love if it doesn't last forever, either.
"Do you honestly believe that the three of you should just shrug off not having been able to love Bo, the Little Green Men, and her sheep, and keep them from dying, forever?"
Anna barely kept the agony and self hatred and despair away this time.
Sora shifted slightly, once more.
"Christopher is a spoiled brat, but he's right that black swallows all colors.
"You can pick up the pieces of your former playtime and move forward into a new one, but the old one is still irrecoverable. What Christopher just did to Bo, the Little Green Men, and her sheep should prove that.
"No matter how hard the heart tries to not let go, there are some connections that will always slip through your fingers."
Buzz, Jessie, and Woody said nothing, though Buzz opened his mouth several times and then closed it.
Lotso snorted derisively. "Goodie.
"At least you have a small amount of common sense.
"Now stop bothering me. I have a spoiled crybaby to spank here."
"Good grief, you're persistent," Christopher replied. "It should be obvious by now that your Heartless can't hurt me."
"Wake up and borrow your breakfast berries, brat," Lotso retorted. "I'm continuing the fire to figure out precisely how I'm doing it so I can pound you to a pulp myself."
Donald tensed. "If he figures out how to wield the darkness, toys and humans will very likely be caught in the crossfire. We need to knock him out now."
A large portion of the hovering Heartless and standing Heartless stopped blasting Christopher and turned to face them, ready to battle them if Lotso needed to risk losing them by sending them against their group to defend himself.
"That's attacking someone for a crime he hasn't committed," Anna admonished Donald. "Even if he figures it out, he'll still be a novice at wielding the darkness. We can just disable him then if he unleashes friendly fire."
"You have no idea how deadly darkness is, even when wielded by novices!" Donald retorted. "Kairi's Demon Tide was exceptionally dangerous even for wielding darkness, but even the most inexperienced wielders of the darkness are forces to be reckoned with!
"Or have you figured out how to call upon your darkness like Riku does a second time by now, now that the initial rush of harnessing it for the first time is over?" Donald questioned what they'd left unspoken since she'd let Kairi defeat her.
Anna barely kept the self hatred and despair separate from her at the reminder that she'd discovered that she couldn't protect Elsa, Sora, Kristoff, her other loved ones and friends, and the people of Arendelle and elsewhere and Arendelle and outside of it, as soon as she'd tried to call upon that darkness to provide for the people recovering from the Demon Tide's strikes, with little difficulty.
"Just enough to use my familiarity with Elsa's ice magic to figure out how you cast the Blizzard spells that you sent at me when we were training," Anna responded.
"Then we need to take care of Lotso," Donald argued.
"I suggest that you care about yourselves," Christopher cut in. "There's no way that I'll let any of you leave Sunnyside alive now, with the exception of Jessie.
"Toys need to grow up, and Maleficent needs their darkness."
An expression of determination came to Jessie's face.
"I don't know what you want me for, but I'm hardly combat capable, so I'll just surrender to you," she said.
Buzz jolted violently, and Woody at last planted his hands on the floor and pushed himself to his feet.
But even now Sora just shifted slightly, and a violent chill tore up Anna's spinal cord.
Sora couldn't have actually given up as Elsa had when Hans had used the ice curse Elsa had inflicted on Anna to erase her will to fight.
"As Buzz convinced me, toys can love children and carry their pain even if children hurt them.
"So I'll just let you hurt me, in the hopes that I'll be able to give you an outlet for your pain."
Before anyone could react in time to stop her, she broke in a run in Christopher's direction.
Christopher's face flickered for a fraction of a second, but then he grimaced and a droplet of honey grew at the bottom of his corona and fell in the shape of a tear to splash around Jessie and enmesh her.
Sora went a little tense, but whether he'd given up or he just knew that it was too late, he said and did nothing.
"Why isn't a Foreteller here when we actually need one!?" Donald snarled.
"If you're listening, Luxu, we could use you throwing a monkey wrench into this so we can keep Jessie safe!"
But no oblate purple and black energies appeared, and none of the Foretellers who Anna had met so far, or Lauriam or Elrena, walked or ran or flew in their direction from around a corner.
"You do know that I can just let someone else guard you, correct?" Christopher asked Jessie.
"It doesn't matter," Jessie responded. "You're still the one who took me captive, so you're directly responsible for it, and the longer that I'm in captivity, the more that that will give your hate and anger an outlet."
"Suit yourself," Christopher spoke. "I was taught long ago that knights in shining armor just char themselves. I learned that lesson years ago, when Merlin took my family and I on a camping trip into a different world's forest, and a quack troll who fancies himself a doctor of magic, named Grand Pabbie, deflected the ice chunk into my family's hearts."
Anna forced every last single fragment of feeling and thought that she could perceive as far away as she knew how to do so.
She could let what Christopher had just said torment her later.
Right now, Elsa needed her in the same way that she had when she'd unleashed the eternal winter on Arendelle and Hans had attempted to murder her.
And this time, Sora and Kristoff did as well.
And the sole person who had believed that she could love Elsa and bring her home out of the cold into the warmth of her arms, and who had convinced her that she had been able to give Elsa love and warmth and home and sanctuary for all of the years that she'd believed that she hadn't been able to reach her, was in her arms right now.
Sora sagged forwards against her left arm, and Anna clenched her teeth at the knowledge that what Christopher had just said, and what it portended, had caused him to pass out.
She knelt carefully, and lowered him just as carefully to place him on the floor on his stomach, and then roll him onto his back so he could breathe better.
Christopher started violently, and his mouth dropped open.
"That was Elsa's icicle?" he queried in shock and disbelief. "The one that she struck you in the head with?"
"I'm very sorry," Anna told him.
"But yes.
"Are you going to try to avenge your baby sister, older brother, and parents by murdering Elsa, and anyone and anything else important to her, including me?"
Christopher clenched his own teeth in exasperation and anger.
"What do you think?" he questioned back.
"And I'm not going to try."
Anna sighed heavily, and she let Sora go as carefully as she'd lowered him to the floor and turned him over, and stood up.
That Sora hadn't woken up right away, which his love for his friends and others and his determination should have driven him to do, told Anna that his mind had partially retreated from reality, and that he was now thus in a deep slumber, but Anna also knew that that devotion to his friends would ensure that he didn't fall into a catatonic coma.
So they'd be able to wake him up later, or he'd wake up himself.
Then she unholstered her gunblade from her back and took a defensive position.
"I know that I can't convince you not to attack Elsa, Grand Pabbie, Olaf, and me," she said. "But leave Kristoff, Sven, and Marshmallow out of it.
"They weren't involved with Elsa striking me in the head, or Grand Pabbie making the mistake that he did when he broke its curse."
"Now that I know what happened, Kristoff was the reason that Grand Pabbie failed to break it."
No.
Not Kristoff, as well.
But all three of the people who she loved the most now needed her to keep them home and warm, or bring them home and warm, so it was even easier to block her own pain and self hatred.
"What's that supposed to mean?" she questioned.
"So Kristoff hasn't realized the truth by now," Christopher said.
"He pushed people away and isolated himself in the woods because, though he hasn't yet put the pieces together about who you were, he saw your parents bring Elsa and you to Grand Pabbie, and Grand Pabbie heal them."
This did prevent Anna from breathing.
"He pushed people away to protect them, just as Elsa did," Anna inhaled in horror and terror and self hatred and guilt. "He was terrified that, because he knew Grand Pabbie and the trolls and ran a business based around ice, he'd do to someone else what Elsa and Grand Pabbie did to me. So he refused to have any contact with others, just as Elsa did, until I showed him love and warmth and kindness for the first time by giving him food and water after the storekeeper threw him out, and then by protecting him from the wolves.
"After that, and after we grew closer, my love and warmth became as vital to him as to Elsa.
"Without me, Elsa is imprisoned in ice.
"Without me, Sora is imprisoned in the empty vacuum.
"Without me, Kristoff is imprisoned in the forest.
"And he's not an extra in the background.
"The Foretellers intend to try to use him as a puppet weapon, as well, to turn Elsa and Sora and I against each other, and one another."
"I couldn't say about the Foretellers," Christopher responded. "Every time Maleficent attempts to investigate them she runs into a labyrinth of wards that she can't probe her way around, so we know much less about what they're up to than Data-Kairi.
"But you're right about how Kristoff is as much Tief im Schwarzvald as Elsa and Sora.
"Don't endeavor to convince me that you didn't see that Kristoff was the same as Elsa all this time."
"I knew that he was very similar to Elsa," Anna responded.
"I perceived a lot of it.
"I was already trying to figure out a way to open the doors that he'd closed, and convince him to trust himself once more.
"All I could come up with was to let him successfully catch me if I needed to let go of a cliff on the North Mountain while climbing it, and then directly tell him that I'd trusted him to do so.
"But I intended to at least try that, if I had the chance to.
"But then I met Sora, and though I did get a chance when I went ahead to Elsa to let Kristoff catch me, and I told Kristoff that I'd trusted him to afterwards, I'd become too enchanted by Sora that. Thanks to Olaf's friendship, I figured out how Kristoff felt about me after Hans betrayed me, but I didn't realize precisely how desperate for love he was.
"Then, after Sora left, I was scared that I'd hurt Sora if he actually did feel about me the way that I felt about him if I chose Kristoff, so I felt so guilty that I wasn't giving Kristoff the specific kind of love and warmth that he wanted from me that I didn't entirely see how much love he needs, as much as Elsa and Sora do."
"As I keep saying, no matter how hard you try, someone or something always rips it all down afterwards," Christopher said.
"You know that you can't keep how Elsa murdered a baby girl, an adolescent boy, two parents, and what she did to the billions of toys in this world, and me, from her.
"If you don't tell her, you know that I will, or the Foretellers will, and we'll be much less considerate about how we do it."
"You k"
"I don't just know that, I can tell that you're refusing to tell me why Kristoff redirected Grand Pabble's magical medicine, so that you can tell him yourself in a very cruel way," Anna said back.
"But I've learned from my mistakes."
"You k"
"Kristoff redirected it because of how terrified he became of himself when he learned what Elsa had done, and what Grand Pabbie was about to do.
"He doesn't know any magic, ice or medical, but his heart is as warm as Elsa's and Sora's, and Elsa's ice magic is affected by connections, for better or for worse, so his fear still influenced Grand Pabbie's treatment spell."
Christopher's face betrayed nothing, but Anna knew that it was the truth.
But even now Anna couldn't accept Kristoff's heart without risking hurting Sora, no matter how much more she now knew that Kristoff needed it.
When Kairi heard what Sora had let happen, she might take it as meaning that she couldn't care for Sora and sever her romantic connection with him once more.
Assuming that Sora himself didn't push her away this time, and Riku, Goofy, Donald, Jiminy, and everyone else who he cared about along with her.
And if Kairi or Sora did any of those things, this time, after what had just happened, though Anna knew that Sora would refuse if she made the offer, Sora might need Anna to at least offer to love him that way.
She couldn't do that if she chose Kristoff.
It mattered endlessly and eternally more than Anna could convey that she'd been able to bring Elsa home, but in uncountable ways, what good was that if she couldn't keep, or bring, the two other people who she loved the most home as well?
"You k"
"You k"
"You k"
"You k"
"You k"
"You k"
"Thank you for telling us this, directly or indirectly," Anna told Christopher sincerely. "You just put me in a better position to protect Elsa, Sora, and Kristoff from the Foretellers."
Christopher said nothing.
Anna hated that she needed to do this as much as Sora, Goofy, Donald, Jiminy, Woody, and Buzz did, and Jessie had, but she already had so many new reasons to have nightmares now that uncounted more wouldn't make a difference.
"But I'm sorry to tell you that you won't have a chance to enact vengeance on Elsa or Kristoff," Anna spoke.
"Donald and Goofy must have beaten plenty seekers of darkness at Sora's side by now.
"We can defeat you ourselves without him, as well as Prospector, and any other toy still willing to fight at your side.
"Your sole contact with Elsa and Kristoff will be from an icy cell in an igloo in Arendelle, or wherever else we choose to imprison you."
Donald puffed up his chest challengingly, his own visage masking his feelings, and Goofy gave a similar masking confident smile.
"And Sora believes that Maleficent is the one with the short memory," Christopher replied with an irritated grimace.
"Prospector was just part of a ruse. We knew that Sora is used to Maleficent assigning her seekers of darkness to fight on the terrain that they know the best. And that, as we need to do things differently this time with what the world order has now become, one of our best options to catch Sora off guard when we did this was to stay true to our old strategy so Sora wouldn't know what our new ones were.
"So Maleficent deployed Prospector here specifically so the toys of Sunnyside would pay attention to him and not me, they thus wouldn't know that I was a kid, and Sora wouldn't have advance warning that I was a child until he had almost no time to come to terms with it.
"Our tactics here were based around Sora faltering from the start."
Anna clenched her teeth at that.
"Prospector should have returned to our headquarters by now.
"Yes, Maleficent has the new castle that she longed for, but you know better than to believe that I'll tell you where it is."
Goofy thinned his lips.
"But I wouldn't even need Prospector, or Zurg, or Gabby Gabby, to defeat you even if Sora was awake.
"I'm a Station of Awakening manifested in the material realms, do you recollect?
"This means that, among other matters, I was able to harness my nature as a Station of Awakening to become darkness itself, while retaining my natural form and not becoming a Heartless."
Donald went stiff, and Goofy jolted violently.
Anna refused to let this intimidate her, however.
"What does that mean?" she asked Donald and Goofy.
"It means that, however the bloody heck Maleficent did this to him, he might be right, and even with Sora awake, we might be biting off more than we can chew," Donald replied.
"The one time that we fought a seeker of darkness who was on the brink of diving so deeply into the darkness that she lost her heart, it was Maleficent herself, near the end of Sora's first adventure.
"She hadn't actually lost her heart, though the state that she was in then must be one of the core reasons that she figured out how to enable Christopher to keep his if he plummeted that deep into the darkness.
"But she still dove deep enough that she severely improved her ability to shapeshift into a black dragon, compared to the black dragon that Aqua later told us she confronted a decade beforehand when Maleficent first allied with Xehanort. And in this improved Dragon shape, Maleficent repeatedly came very close to barbecuing us, and if we hadn't had a human who had been altered into an animal who called himself Beast, and who knew how to fight like the predator he'd named himself extremely well, I'm not sure that we'd have been able to beat her.
"Christopher gave in a lot deeper than this, and he furthermore has a lot of unique capabilities that most seekers of darkness very likely don't, because he's a Station of Awakening."
Anna still refused to be discouraged.
Elsa was already losing a lot of her new faith in herself, due to what Lauriam, Elrena, and the Foretellers had told them.
Anna wasn't about to let all of Elsa's newfound confidence be fully undone, what confidence Sora had left be fully undone with hers, and Kristoff join them.
"You know ice magic, and you're an accomplished wizard," she told Donald. "Can you cast the ice curse that Elsa struck me in the heart with?"
Donald's beak dropped.
"You have got to be kidding," he replied. "I don't know what method you have in mind for channeling that curse to wield your darkness, or light, or both, better, but whatever it is, I refuse to believe that it's a good one. I am not going to put you through that again.
"The ice will melt within a minority of seconds as soon as you harness the curse to take care of Elsa, Sora, and Kristoff, as Sora is right here with you, but those are a minority of seconds too many."
"If you don't want me to follow Elsa into cold ice again, then don't ask me to let someone lock her up in cold ice again.
"Or Sora and Kristoff, for that matter.
"Just do it, or I'll take the risk of trying to cast the spell myself, with my flimsy experience with ice magic, or any magic, and who knows what will happen if I end up casting a different curse."
Donald flattened his beak tightly together, and he clenched his hands into tight fists.
"Fine," he snarled.
"But this is a one time deal."
Anna didn't respond to that, because they both knew that they couldn't guarantee that it would need to be.
Donald aimed Save the Queen Plus, and Anna braced for the familiar spreading cold to claw out from her heart.
Light blue coalesced in front of Save the Queen Plus and launched a pale blue white fragment of frost at Anna's chest, and she felt a chill pass inside her skin and sink into her heart.
As she was paying attention to it this time, Anna felt the cold begin spreading out inside her heart right away.
She wasted no time.
She knelt, clasped Sora's closest, left hand in her right hand, hoping that Sora was still slightly conscious and able to feel the warmth of her hand, and raised it inside her right hand into the same position that she'd blocked Hans' sword with to bring Elsa home to love and warmth and open doors and kindness.
Don't think twice
Feel don't conceal
But this time, rather than treat the curse as pain to carry, she reflected on every memory of attempting to give love and warmth to Elsa and Sora and Kristoff that she could recall, focused on how much she loved them in the here and now and the warmth of her hand that she hoped that Sora could feel.
Then she yanked the frigid cold as deep into her heart and as far in all directions throughout her body as she could concentrate on doing.
For a few seconds, all that she knew was indefinable indescribable ice incomparably colder than the frost of the first curse had been as it had at last swallowed her awareness.
Then she was weightless.
Looking down, she could see that her idea of tracing the powers in her heart, by reliving the time that she'd at last loved Elsa and brought her to warm home, had been successful.
Her clothes and hair and skin, and all of the rest of her, had become clear ice as transparent all throughout her as glass, and shimmering and glowing and glimmering and shining with a kaleidoscope of haphazardly morphing and shifting colors.
The cold was gone, as well, so Anna knew that her act of true love of friendship for Sora had been just as successful at breaking the curse as her act of true sisterly love for Elsa had been.
Vibrant energies also danced all throughout her, though they were much calmer than the washing of partially giddy vitality that had filled her when she'd first utilized the darkness.
That was partially because Anna had just been able to harness a minute fragment of the darkness that she'd called upon then.
And partially because she'd called upon light as well, so it was soothing the restless energy of the darkness and providing her with calm of its own.
The words of her Formchange appeared easily in her mind.
"Formchange, Cantata Lumen Nebulae, Valkyrie in Knight of the Swan."
Christopher rolled his eyes.
"It doesn't matter how resplendent your armor is, there's no such thing as a knight," he said in irritation.
"A knight is defined by who she keeps safe," Anna responded.
"How many years that I've protected Elsa, most of all in a form similar to this, says otherwise."
"Protection and aggression are two polar opposites, whatever hypocrites love to babble about it. You can't keep people safe by hurting people or murdering them; once you're hurt or dead, it's too late to keep them safe.
"And my form was born from the event horizon of sleep and dreams.
"You can't wear out someone who fights by wielding darkness. Hurting us doesn't cripple us, the matter that we haven't won the battle quickly just drives us to fight harder. Even though Sora and his companions have beaten seekers of darkness more often than not, he can attest to how well we can put up a fight even when badly hurt.
"You'd need an exceptionally high quality prison to keep a seeker of darkness captive, particularly one like me, and you have no means of creating one without a Keyblade.
"And unlike other seekers of darkness, because I'm a waking dream, you can't knock me unconscious.
"Even if I can't contend with your Valkyrie in Knight of the Swam Formchange, which I highly doubt that I can't, you won't be able to defeat me without killing me, thus turning whichever of you three does so into a murderer of an innocent boy."
Donald snarled.
"We can still keep you from hurting Buzz and Woody until Sora wakes up," Donald responded.
"We've seen Aqua and Terra erect spheres of chains to trap enemies or objects with their Keyblades a number of times, and Sora was a genius at tracing now ways to use the power of the Keyblade long before he realized that he's not a slouch in any other way mentally.
"Vanitas should be along sooner or later to back us up, as well, and then he can trap you in one of those prisons."
"Vanitas is on the run from Ira and Gula," Christopher informed them.
Donald clenched his hands into fists.
"You're still in blind denial of reality," Christopher continued. "You should have realized that one or more of the Foretellers was trying to, or had, captured him as soon as his Photonegative Strobe failed and Prospector's and my operation on this world was no longer that useful to their goal of convincing Sora to lose faith in anything but darkness.
"Otherwise he would have arrived here through a dark corridor a long time ago."
"That doesn't mean that we actually need him!" Donald snarled.
"We can keep you from silencing Buzz and Woody ourselves."
Christopher raised his left hand, and two roughly oval storms of purple and black grew out of the floor.
A figure walked out of the right one clad in mostly purple armor with a glass helmet the same as Buzz's over a mostly purple helmet with a monstrous face, the same two wings on his back that Buzz had spread wide from his back.
A large doll many times the size of the rest of them in a yellow dress with many white dots interspersed on it, and brown hair tied back in two thick pigtails at the sides of the back of her head by two yellow ribbons, walked out of the other one.
"Zurg, the rest of your allies, and I, have talked it over," Gabby Gabby said right away.
"You and Prospector are on your own.
"As long as we have a chance of being played with, we're not giving up any more than the other toys have."
Gabby Gabby looked up in Lotso's direction.
"Oh, no," Lotso said. "Leave me out of your wishy washiness.
"I have been played with, and I know what you two don't; that you're cutting off your noses and your ears and mouths and eyes to spite your face.
"If you don't stop trying to convince me to go back to believing in fluffy puffy clouds, I'll clobber all of you as well as Christopher when I'm done researching the darkness, whether you attack me or not."
"Bring it!" Donald cried at Lotso.
"All in good time, if I need to," Lotso answered.
"As Gabby Gabby just said, I concur with her and the others," Zurg said.
"You may consider this our official resignation."
"So be it, but I'm not accepting it," Christopher replied, and then black fire rose out of Gabby Gabby and Zurg in moving tongues.
"How, specifically, is calling up the darkness in our hearts against our will supposed to convince us to continue to work for you when we've lost interest in utilizing it?" Gabby Gabby asked with pointed skepticism.
"I'm not trying to convince you to work for me," Christopher replied.
"I'm ordering you to play with me."
Gabby Gabby blinked.
Zurg started.
"Galaxy Toys," he explained.
Donald snarled, and Goofy fisted his own hands.
"After the toys lost from it returned there, a number of them spread the word that after the mysterious entities invaded Toy Box, they'd been forced to move even when they weren't pretending to be inanimate.
"Our darkness is playing with us."
Gabby Gabby gave Christopher a furious glare.
"Just until we beat it out of you," Jiminy reassured them. "And, as Buzz and Jessie said, toys don't feel physical pain, and they can take a major beating.
"Just hang tight."
"I'm sorry for any injuries that we end up inflicting on any of you, regular people or toys," Zurg spoke to all of them.
"Don't worry about it," Goofy said back. "We've been through a lot worse than what toys being played with by their darkness can dish out."
Gabby Gabby looked unconvinced, but she gave Goofy a fake smile to try to claim that she was all right with what was about to happen.
It didn't fool anyone, however.
"If you seriously think that leaning on two crutches is going to convince us to stand aside, so that you can kill Buzz and Woody, you genuinely do have a short memory," Donald sneered.
"After how many times, by now, that we've needed to struggle to find a way to vault a wall when things looked bleak and we've successfully climbed a gossamer thread, the phrase 'give up' doesn't exist in our vocabulary."
"Does Sora still feel that way, I wonder?" Christopher asked back.
Goofy's face became a full mask, and Donald glared at Christopher furiously.
"You k"
"Regardless, they're not my sole backup.
"Because Yozora could create Keyblades once, it could be done again, so there's more ways than the bequeathing ceremony, or a connection to someone who underwent it, to acquire one.
"A Station of Awakening rests at the edge of The Final World and the Gap Amidst Transparency where Sora was trapped within it, so I've been all but one with it on a constant basis from the instant that I assumed this form.
"I could thus afford to commit Faerie's sin against nature, and I simply opened a dark corridor out of the Gap Amidst Transparency afterwards."
Donald's and Goofy's eyes flew wide as they realized what Christopher's last reinforcement was.
"Y"
Anna emptied herself of everything, the lacuna absent of itself and anything and everything else that she knew.
It had been good to have a small amount of faith in herself for a small number of days, but keeping Elsa close and warm, as well as Sora and Kristoff, was what was important.
Not the issue that there'd never be able to be the most boundlessly distant chance that she'd be able to live with herself once again if she accomplished this.
Worrying about how much she'd hate herself with all of her heart, self, existence, and reality after this was selfish.
All that mattered, all that had mattered from the beginning, was just giving Elsa as much love as Anna possessed in her heart, as well as anyone else who she loved.
And now, all three of the people she loved the most were in danger of withering and vanishing into despair in everlasting frozen suspended onyx.
This was especially one of Elsa's worst nightmares.
That her power wouldn't just murder someone, but most of an entire family, including a baby girl and an adolescent boy, cause the surviving young child to fall into so much despair that he eradicated his own capacity to give and receive love and warmth and home and kindness, and ruin billions of other people's lives and joy and warmth and laughter, as well.
Anna knew that she could trust Elsa's promise that she'd never shut Anna out once again, but whether Anna could be there for her about this or not, as soon as she found out, she wouldn't just lose all of the faith in herself that she'd at last gained.
She'd lose so much of herself that this time, even though she wouldn't lose warmth in the process, she might never be able to get any of it back.
Learning what she'd done to Kristoff and Sora with the misfired ice chunk would hurt her forever more.
Almost everything that Anna had done for Elsa had turned out to be as worthless, in vain, pointless, and futile as Christopher believed that everything was.
As Christopher said, no matter how comfortable the stuffed fluff of childhood was, and no matter how beautiful the grass and bushes and trees and flowers were, someone would always tear them to shreds, or freeze them to wither and die, in the end.
Black truly did devour all colors.
Hope was apparently the same as dreams.
No matter how sweet or promising, all hope, too, must eventually be abandoned and betrayed and departed and left, entirely alone in the darkness past the point of no return, into the brutal, empty, absent, lonely, unending, forsaken night.
Anna could barely see the spirals of clear air coil around Christopher's right hand through the tears obscuring her eyes, as a construct of shifting black glass sand in the shape of a plain key, with a circular open handle as a grip, manifested in it.
"Fractured Night should be more than sufficient for a living Station of Awakening to overmatch you with barely any trouble."
There was no reason to beat around the bush.
"Not when I am going to kill you," Anna spoke, voice a broken gap in all of space and time engulfing all of her that had been and hadn't been, was and wasn't, and that could now never be or not be.
Goofy whipped around in her direction, eyes wide in inconceivable horror, and Donald jolted violently and then spun around even faster.
Buzz spun in her direction as well, mouth open in similar horror, and Jessie endeavored to react physically, but the honey around her refused to let her face, or body, move.
Gabby Gabby's mouth fell slack and open, and Zurg's helmet mouthpiece, obviously his actual mouth, pressed together and his face became devoid of anything.
Lotso whistled in surprised approval.
Woody was the sole person who didn't react.
He just started violently, and didn't turn to face her.
But that meant that Anna needed to do this even more now, because Woody himself was now desperate for love.
That Bo's death had hurt him this much could solely mean that she was a close surrogate sister to him, he was in love with her, or she was a dear friend.
"What part of 'the phrase "give up" doesn't exist in our vocabulary' doesn't make sense to you!?" Donald yelled.
"You said that you just want to punch Hans into warm water!" Goofy cried. "You're the kindest and most forgiving person who I've met!
"I've been through this myself, so I know what this will do to you!
"The first time that you take a life, a mammoth part of you dies along with that person!
"If you kill anyone, far less a young boy, you'll die yourself!"
"So I should just allow Elsa to walk a living death for a second time, and Sora and Kristoff at the same time as she does?" Anna asked back.
She saw no reason to respond to Donald.
They knew the cost of underestimating Christopher by now.
Now that he knew that Christopher could wield a Keyblade, there was no other choice left.
"I'll die an infinite number of times by freezing to death in horrific excruciatingly slow anguish for an endless number of unending eternities before I let that happen."
Christopher's eyes settled out of his surprise, and he gave Anna an approving smile.
"At least one person is willing to grow up today," he said.
"Or perhaps there's no such thing as childhood in the first place," Anna responded. "Just blindness to the remorselessness and ruthlessness of life and existence.
"But this is the end of my little girl's whimsical daydreams.
"My own warm dreams and hope have now passed the point of no return into cold, hard, relentless reality.
"So let's just do this."
"Childhood is real," Woody spoke up for the first time, now facing her, face a mask.
"If it wasn't, there wouldn't be any toys."
"Then can you please protect what's left of Sora's childhood innocence?" Anna asked.
"I refuse to believe that it's all gone, even after all of what just happened."
Anna wished that the same thing could be said about her.
Woody said nothing for a number of seconds, but then he nodded with unexpected determination.
"Very well," Woody said, with the same determination.
Anna knew what that determination meant.
Woody was determined to wake Sora up so he could use the Keyblade to imprison Christopher, and thus keep her from needing to murder a young boy.
But Anna couldn't take the risk of believing that he would succeed.
Not after what had happened so far as a result of underestimating Christopher.
If Christopher killed Anna here, and Elsa found out what she'd done from him or the Foretellers, she'd very likely commit suicide.
And if she didn't, she'd die in every other way that it was possible to do so.
Who knew what would happen to Sora if Kairi pushed him away again, or if he pushed Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy and Jiminy away himself now.
And now that Anna at last understood how desperate for love Kristoff was himself, when he learned what he'd done, he himself might very well cascade plummeting back deep into the black forest and live a walking death himself.
There was nothing left or not left now, and there never had or hadn't been; but to give up on a warped fabricated empty headed rainbow strewn childhood that she'd never had; walk through a present that had forever always been and would always never be unable to even be distorted correctly and that was the next distorted thing; and clasp a future of everlasting onyx frigid frozen night devoid of all color and that devoured any bright colors left inside it and lacking even lacunas, within an existence and reality and the World and worlds where she'd forever abandoned and betrayed Elsa and Sora and Kristoff and Olaf and Sven and Marshmallow and everyone and everything else who she knew and loved and cherished and sought to keep safe and close and tight and warm and sound and secure and protected and home and who she didn't know eternally beyond every possible and potential point of no return.
"I'll murder Christopher myself," Anna said. "You two, and Buzz, just focus on Gabby Gabby and Zurg, and keep Lotso from causing any friendly fire incidents."
Donald and Goofy spoke nothing back.
Anna blinked when Jiminy didn't jump or crawl from wherever he was hiding.
That meant that he was most likely going to attempt to directly interfere in the battle with Christopher to try to disable him, or stop her from murdering him.
Anna would need to be on guard for that, to protect Jiminy whenever he made any attempt, or attempts.
Anna turned to Christopher and shifted her gunblade to an attack position.
She could at least give Christopher the warmth and kindness, for whatever it was worth, of passing official judgment on him, as one leader and knight to another.
"I, Princess of Anna of Arendelle, condemn you now to oblivion!"
Christopher smiled in approval and hovered down to land on the floor, and Lotso finally stopped ordering his Heartless to fire rays at him.
Christopher dispersed his cocoon as soon as they did, and then he spoke himself.
"I, Christopher Peregrine Robin, welcome your growth into the remorseless light of waking from sleep into the sackcloth black morning that devours all delirious childish dreams!"
Anna nodded, to attempt not to reject Christopher's feelings and thoughts and existence and reality and World and memories and what he believed in and his own truths and dreams, as broken and ruined as they were, even though she now needed to reject him in almost every other potential or possible form.
Then she broke into a run at Christopher and sliced at his right wrist behind Fractured Night, attempting to knock Fractured Night out of his grip.
Christopher raised it and cut back at her.
Anna's gunblade and Christopher's Fractured Night Keyblade collided together, and Anna's gunblade reflected the lava strands rippling in waves off of Fractured Night's black glass in all directions with shimmering threads of clear transparent ice.
.
"We're supposed to destroy the Minerva, right? Then let's go!"-Captain Todaka
"Now you die!"-Shinn Asuka
"Stop it!"-Cagalli Yula Athha
"Lady Cagalli!"-Murrue Ramius
"Cagalli!"-Kira Yamato
"Kira!"-Athrun Zala
"I know what you're saying. I know what you're saying, but it doesn't matter. Because at this moment, Cagalli is crying hard! She's crying because this battle is exactly what she fears! Why won't you understand that!? And now, you're saying that these battles, that these sacrifices, couldn't be avoided!? That all of this is because Cagalli didn't return to Orb!? When you say that, you are attacking the very thing that Cagalli is trying to protect!"-Kira Yamato
"Kira. Don't do it."-Athrun Zala
"If that's how you feel, then I must defeat you!"-Kira Yamato
GUNDAM SEED DESTINY:
Phase 28: SURVIVORS AND SACRIFICES