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CHAPTER 22:
AN EPHEMERAL DREAM
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Author's Notes: The pieces for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'Banquet of Transmigration,' from the VAGRANT STORY Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and after this piece 'Sorrow -Imperial Version-,' from the FINAL FANTASY XII Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; and after this piece 'Ultima, the Nice Body,' from the FINAL FANTASY TACTICS Original Soundtrack, Disc Two. The first piece can be found on Kingdom Hearts Insider, and the other two pieces can be found in Zophar's Domain.
Christopher flipped backwards to break the lock, and while he was descending backwards through the air, he leveled Fractured Night at Anna and launched a spray of droplets of black and gray magma coursing with cracks of molten orange and yellow and red lava.
Anna repositioned her gunblade rapier and channeled her awareness through the strings of the astral tapestry all around them just as Donald and Goofy had taught her to, reshaped them, and light blue white flared out in a circular Blasting Zone shield before her.
The kinetic energy of the impact of the droplets of lava threatened to knock the gunblade from her hand, but Anna kept it in a grip that wasn't too tight.
Christopher landed and sprang into a low rush flying just above the floor, and Anna brought up her gunblade and its shield.
So Christopher swung Fractured Night in an upwards low vertical arc, and a quarter circle of fountaining lava curved up from in front of the shield to pass below it and impact with Anna's stomach in a detonation of anguish.
Anna found herself flying backwards through the air, but she swung her legs back and landed unsteadily on them.
She looked down, and she saw a shallow, bloody gouge inside a small but sizeable tear in her clear ice shirt that was now connected to her clear ice body.
Still, that she could bleed was a problem in and of itself.
She'd hoped that her form was fully ice and water, and that she wouldn't be in any danger of dying from blood loss.
But this at least confirmed her belief that her new form was more durable than a regular human body.
That meant that the same was almost certainly true for Christopher's body, however.
"You put yourself through a Formchange without fully understanding what shape you'd attain," Christopher sighed in new exasperation. "You're learning, but right now you merely qualify for a D Minus."
"If black engulfs every color, what other options do I have but to just take things one step at a time, and do one next right or wrong thing after another?" Anna countered.
"Even if the darkness swallows the light in the end, the light does exist.
"We just need to keep going while the light shines, and cross the bridges of darkness when the shadows fall, and we arrive at those bridges.
"Whether light holds back the most profound darkness, or the deepest blackness devours the colors of the light, if we do the next best thing and walk one foot ahead of the other, we can still find the light that exists in the darkness.
"Whether dreams and hope have value, that doesn't mean that there isn't still always some way to clasp the warmth of light."
Christopher rolled his eyes.
"Wonderful. That's the kind of nutcase who you are.
"Crystal Chime."
A diagonally vertically tumbling roughly oblong oval onyx flecked with lines of shimmering lava, that sang with the chimes of bells in tune with how they shimmered, manifested in the air before Fractured Night and then broke into fragments, sending an expanding rippling tide of air at Anna.
Anna barely remembered that this was what Goofy had called a sonic wave in time to realize that it would expand to too large of a diameter for her to block before it reached her.
However, she leapt up, rather than to the side, aimed her gunblade down at Christopher, and fired a series of penetrating bullets down at the portion of his neck where its artery was closest to the surface of his skin, hoping to break through his skin enough to rip up his central artery enough that he'd bleed to death, or suffocate in his blood.
Christopher didn't even shift as the bullets ripped into his throat.
"I told you, the shape that you see is a form that I'm projecting into your mind.
"You can't see what I truly look like while awake."
To Anna's left, Goofy was driving Zurg back by swinging Save the King Plus as a discus at an extendable turret on his wrist, a purple one rather than Buzz', taking chips out of it while deflecting any lasers that he fired.
Donald was unleashing blast after blast of orange Firaga spheres at Gabby Gabby, though she was repeatedly opening her mouth in wordless screams and swallowing them to cause them to sputter out.
"If you have any body, I can hurt you," Anna replied.
"I'll just chisel away at it until you're dead."
Gabby Gabby opened her mouth to swallow another Firaga sphere, but this time she kept it open and jumped into a pounce at Donald's head, clearly attempting to bite his head off at the neck.
Anna paid attention to this, as she might need to run to Donald's side.
Donald backflipped low over the floor to evade, and Save the Queen Plus was already raised, almost certainly to strike her with a Thundaga while she was in midair and couldn't move to sidestep, or jump away, from it.
But before he could, a red beam of coherent light soared out of what must have been Buzz's turret to snap one of Gabby Gabby's two front teeth off and send it back into her mouth.
Gabby Gabby crashed into a heap on the floor in front of Donald and began to gag.
Donald wasted no time.
Burst after burst of shifting Waterga liquid crashed down into her until her dress was flaccid on the floor.
Then Donald leveled Save the Queen Plus down at one of the most slack portions and sent a light yellow Thundaga bolt down into the soaked dress.
A curtain of electricity erupted all over Gabby Gabby, coursing and lancing and crackling and dancing, and after it didn't go away after a few seconds, Anna assumed that Donald had soaked Gabby Gabby's dress with enough water that the electricity would be able to continue until it knocked her into a coma.
The next thing that Anna knew, she was being ripped up into the air by an invisible telekinetic hold, and as soon as she had no purchase to more effectively try to yank herself out of it, it began to endeavor to literally tear her limbs, neck, and body apart in simultaneous acutely jarring directions.
Anna clenched her teeth together and forced herself to ignore the pain as much as she could.
"Mirrored Invisibility," Christopher put a name to what he was doing.
"This is the middle of a battle.
"You don't have time to worry about your companions, rookie."
"I'm not worrying about them because I don't know better than to do so," Anna responded. "I'm worrying about them because, as a Princess, it's my responsibility to oversee my comrades in arms."
"Ideals don't have any place on a battlefield, either," Christopher informed her.
"Of course," Anna replied sarcastically. "I should just take care of myself, as I considered doing when Hans unsheathed his sword on Elsa.
"Whether the dead can be kept safe or have a future or not, why fight at all if it's not to prevent someone from getting hurt?
"If you're going to tell me that I'd still be looking out for myself if I fought for myself, don't bother.
"If I battled to protect myself, I'd avoid death, but if I became devoid of warmth by fighting and let everyone else die, and I was the only one left while hollow of a heart; at the end, what would still being alive mean?"
Anna started shifting herself violently, and twisting herself, but though the pain of the hold didn't move much, and nothing was actually ripped off of her, she couldn't loosen herself.
"What warmth can be found by being driven by emotion not being the only one left in the end?" Christopher countered.
Then the hold turned her rapidly onto her head and smashed it down into the floor with jarring force.
Anna clenched her teeth against the agony screaming through her skull and fell forward into a roll as soon as she felt the air release her.
She came back to her feet and rose into a whirl back in Christopher's direction.
She heard the sound of crackling electricity from where Goofy's shield was clanging against Zurg, but after how little trouble Donald and Buzz had had defeating Gabby Gabby, Anna knew that Donald, Goofy, and Buzz should be able to defeat Zurg. So she didn't need to look to see if they were all right and risk more injuries.
"Now you're deceiving yourself," Anna rejoined. "You were the only one left because you didn't know how to free your family from their curse. That doesn't mean that you would have lost them no matter what you'd said or done. You could have saved them.
"Whether warmth and love are swallowed or not, they can help the people who you care about."
Christopher swung Fractured Night in another upward low vertical arc, but Anna didn't fall for the obvious feint and lower her shield to intercept it.
She jumped forwards and ran at him, and she lunged into a focused, but widely spaced, series of stabs and thrusts at Christopher's body, forcing him to parry or deflect them.
"Only if you're not oblivious to how things work when something bad happens," Christopher responded.
Anna suppressed the urge to cringe, while continuing the thrusts and stabs, and now adding different slices to them, while trying to keep herself from falling into any patterns so Christopher could predict her movements.
But at the same time, she felt slightly lighter, and tears returned to her eyes.
There was still hope.
That was it.
Christopher was as determined as he was to believe in the adversities and coldness of life and existence because he knew that, if he'd been aware of how to protect his family, he could have done so.
So he was now determined to embrace the cruelties and frigidities of reality as much as possible, because he believed that that would ensure that a tragedy like that never again took place.
She'd been able to learn to understand Christopher.
She might still be able to end this without murdering him.
"Look at how I saved Elsa," Anna said.
Christopher scowled.
"Give it up, will you?
"You kept her safe because you got lucky.
"If the curse hadn't finished running its course then, Hans' sword would have torn up your hand so badly that you'd have had little use of it for the rest of your life, if not part or all of your arm.
"It might have even taken your entire arm clean off, or killed you.
"I assumed that one of those things would happen," Anna replied. "I told you, I wasn't that naïve."
"Really?" Christopher replied, his voice now filled with unexpected sarcasm.
"You do know that if you'd given your hand, arm, or life for Elsa, she would have just felt much worse because you'd needed to permanently sacrifice something to show her how much you loved her; so she'd have hated herself a vast amount more because it was her fault that this had happened, as she hadn't seen that for all of those years?"
Anna was barely aware that her current swing had overextended itself.
Or that Christopher had snorted in disgusted amusement, and that he was now hammering away at her, sending pain washing through her body with each blow.
Red bursts of light, due to Buzz, forced him back on the defensive.
Anna knew that the sole reason that she was still this much aware of reality was because of the walls she'd put up before, but now she could barely justify using them to push this everynothing and nothingevery erasing total and complete horror and terror away.
"Elsa still would have seen how much I love her," Anna responded. "She'd have known that I forgave her then.
"Things wouldn't have turned out as well as they have, but she'd have been on a slower road to recovery."
"In other words, you don't understand how much Elsa loves you," Christopher rolled his eyes.
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I can't!"
"Y"
This time, Anna kept the agony mostly away, but she needed to blink tears away to see once more.
"If you'd lost your hand or arm, she'd have committed suicide.
"If you'd died, she'd have named Hans her heir under the condition that he execute her for abuse of monarchical power as lingeringly, slowly, excruciatingly, and agonizingly as he could think of doing so; and you know that Hans would have accepted those terms."
"Then why hasn't she?" Anna forced herself to speak, but her horror had now shrunk it down to something tiny and very, very young.
But Anna already knew the answer.
She knew that she was just denying it now.
Why hadn't she seen this!?
How could she have abandoned and betrayed and left and deserted and failed Elsa and stabbed her in the back and shot her in the back when Elsa needed her this much!?
"She knows that Mom and Dad died because of her, and that I'd have died at the same time if she hadn't hit me in the head," Anna needed to say
because it couldn't be true
she hadn't left Elsa when Elsa needed her even more than when she'd cast the eternal winter and Hans had played Anna against Elsa
she hadnha
dhadhadhadhadhadhadhadh
"but she hasn't committed suicide, or tried to convince someone to execute her for abuse of monarchical power."
"To answer your first question, it's because the fact that her magic ending up protecting you from Hans, when he'd otherwise have crippled you or killed you, further gave her confidence in her powers and herself.
"But she already has decided to die," Christopher spoke aloud what Anna already knew.
Anna still had time to love Elsa and keep her safe.
It would take a couple, or a few, more weeks for Arendelle's military to be ready to deploy.
Even though Anna knew full well that how much time she had to return to Arendelle made no difference, because she couldn't keep Elsa from traveling anywhere that she chose to head no matter what Anna said or did.
She'd just intentionally abandoned Elsa when Elsa needed her unspeakably unimaginably more than at any time she had before in her life.
Anna wasn't going to make the mistake of believing that Elsa would keep her promise not to shut Anna out once more after not realizing fully how bad Elsa had taken what Lauriam and Elrena had revealed to them.
"She knows that your parents died seeking Ahtohallan, and she remembers your mother's warning not to dive too deep into it as much as you do.
"As soon as she can trust that Arendelle can protect you, and the other people who she loves, as well as her people, from the Foretellers and the neighboring nations without her, she's going to travel there herself, and die by casting herself as deep into it as possible."
Out of the corner of her eye, Anna saw Zurg reach up, grab Goofy's shield, and yank it into the space between his turret and arm, and then slam his turret down on it to trap it and fire a shot from close range at Goofy.
He twisted to keep it from puncturing a lung, but it still ripped into his right side, and he staggered.
Zurg lunged and grabbed him inside his free arm, turned him to position him forward as a living shield between himself and Donald, and then Zurg began launching salvos of coherent crimson at Donald, forcing him to evade.
But Anna knew that Donald could deal with this
as Elsa could have
No, Donald was an experienced traveler.
He knew how to get Goofy out of this situation.
Correct?
Didn't he?
Her aches from Mirrored Invisibility throbbed, and Anna realized that she'd stopped paying attention to the battle.
Elsa's self hatred and guilt were different from Donald's combat experience.
She could trust him to protect Goofy.
"What does it matter if love and warmth can surmount hardship?" Christopher questioned. "If you love someone, or give someone warmth, in the wrong ways, you'll hurt the person who you love and want to keep safe even more than if you just let that person suffer.
"Take one step at a time, and do the next thing that you believe will cause things to work out, for worse or for better?
"The light is still there, so all questions and problems in life have answers, and fighting or struggling from the reaches of the heart for your dreams does have merit?
"Just give it up, will you?
"Would you agree that my demonstration about Hans shows that that nonsense about how to overcome adversity is what it is, Jiminy?" Christopher queried.
She felt Jiminy start slightly against the inside of the wrist of her right sleeve, where he must have cut an opening in and hidden inside because he could fit there while her shirt was attached to her body.
He must intend to try to knock her gunblade out of her hand if it looked as though a fatal strike would succeed.
Reflexively, knowing that it was very possible that Jiminy might have been hurt badly by one of Christopher's assaults, Anna's eyes looked down in his direction to ensure that that part of her shirt, and body proper, hadn't been harmed, and Jiminy was all right.
New, total and complete horror and terror cleansed her of anynot, lacunathing, everynonexistence, and emptything, as Anna realized what she'd just done because she had taught herself to react to care for others automatically, and what was about to happen.
"You two, and Buzz, just focus on Gabby Gabby and Zurg, and keep Lotso from causing any friendly fire incidents."
Anna didn't even have time to begin to shift her arm the thinnest barest margin before a beam of coherent crimson that Buzz had fired, deflected by Christopher, sailed into that part of her shirt, incinerating it in flames and leaving an opening within which the ashes that were all that was left of Jiminy rested.
"Jiminy!" Donald screamed.
There was nothing at all this time, not even emptiness absent of emptiness.
"Jiminy, no!" Goofy screamed himself.
As though in a delirious fever dream, Anna was barely aware that she was moving to interpose herself between Christopher and Buzz's position, gunblade up, in the event that Buzz had now dropped his own guard because of what his laser blast had just done.
But Christopher didn't deflect any beams back at Buzz before she attained that position, so he must not have.
"There's always an answer to how to live by following the guidance of your heart?" Christopher asked.
"Love and friendship can overcome adversity?
"As the saying goes, friendly fire isn't friendly.
"And by living for love and warmth and kindness and sanctuary with all your heart, even after I hurt you due to you keeping an eye on Donald, you've become so used to living through caring for people that you reflexively revealed Jiminy's location.
"To say nothing of why Buzz was firing on me due to how much you love Elsa.
"Cut it out, why don't you?"
"Gather!" Donald screamed, and a sphere of whirling grays and silvers rose up from Save the Queen Plus to yank the distracted Zurg up into the air.
Goofy sprang up in the sphere's direction before his feet could leave the vicinity of the ground, sending them into it so quickly that when Zurg entered it, and he began to be pulled around in an orbit, this unbalanced Zurg's concentration enough for Goofy to tear Save the King Plus free of the turret.
Now that Zurg was open, Goofy turned the front of Save the King Plus to face Goofy, himself, and smash it into Zurg's head and hold it there, preventing him from seeing.
Donald ended the Magnega, Zurg fell on his back onto the floor, and Goofy dug the top edge of Save the King Plus above Zurg's head into the floor.
Then Donald ran up to Save the King Plus and rammed Save the Queen Plus tip first through the top of its handle and diagonally sideways beside Zurg into the floor, too, locking it over Zurg's head.
That meant that no one but Buzz and Anna was left to defeat Christopher, and Buzz couldn't get that involved in the battle, because he was a toy, and if a single strike from Christopher connected with him, he'd very likely die.
It was all up to Anna now.
"It's not your fault!" Goofy screamed to Anna as he got back to his feet. "Christopher could have done that to any of us!"
That was like saying that it wasn't your fault if a horse drawn carriage ran over someone because someone else might have done so.
By worrying about Elsa, and then Jiminy, Anna had just murdered one of Sora's longest, best friends who he'd known for well over two years by now.
This had to be a dream.
Because if Anna woke up once more for the rest of her life, that meant that she wasn't witnessing the nightmares of those who were resting eternally, or hallucinating the visions of the deranged in an inescapable catatonic coma.
Yet for all that the love and warmth that she'd believed in for all of her life, even before Olaf's words had taught her how much she truly did, had just shattered Elsa and Sora and Kristoff so unendingly now that even the lack of a beginning and an end of time and the boundaries of space couldn't contain it; for whatever revolting, despicable reason; it was keeping her from crying too hard to see Christopher, and cause her to lower her guard another time.
Sora and Kristoff might recover from this, but Elsa genuinely might literally never be able to live with herself for having driven an innocent little boy to murder one of the longest and best friends of one of the three people who Anna loved the most, as a result of murdering a baby girl, an adolescent boy, and two parents through a horrifically slow torturous death.
Anna might need to spend every day and night for the rest of her life ensuring that Elsa didn't kill herself once she learned what she'd done.
"Do you understand yet?" Christopher questioned.
"There's no room for love and warmth and kindness and safety and home and sanctuary in a reality and a World with death and torment and sadness and hardship.
"Love and warmth don't make anything better.
"They just make life and the World much worse."
Why did Anna still feel like arguing this?
Because Elsa and Sora and Kristoff, and Olaf and Sven and Marshmallow, and the people of Arendelle, and so many others and Arendelle and so many other places and homes, still needed her.
Even if everything Sora had told her about four days ago meant nothing, in so many ways that Anna would never be able to count them even if she wasn't dead, and could justify living the rest of her life and forever in an afterlife.
That she had been able to l
ook after Elsa for all of those years still meant an incredible amount, but just barely as much as Sora believed.
"How is a life of frigid suspension without kindness any better?" Anna responded.
"If you live without feeling kindness, you'll never know any joy at all."
"If you live without knowing warmth, you'll never have any kindness to lose, so you'll never be hurt," Christopher responded.
Anna wasn't sure whether it was a good thing, or bad, that she was able to keep this from sickening her.
"You aren't searching for any form of kindness and laughter, are you?" she questioned.
"For others, or for yourself?
"You're not even dreaming of light or darkness, or connections to others, or only yourself, at all.
"Or even the heart itself.
"You don't want to feel anything at all, for others or for yourself.
"You don't even dream.
"You just want to live in a cold corridor of shut doors, so you'll never be hurt once more.
"And that is what the New World of Synchronicity Perceptual is.
"That's why it's an abomination to even people who search for darkness.
"Not even feelings or dreams of selfishness or rejection exist within Synchronicity Perceptual, whatever it is.
"It's an everlasting frozen prison within which doors are always closed and sealed tight, so no one will be hurt again forever."
"That's what we assume," Christopher responded.
"But if Maleficent plunges the whole World into dark sleep before it began, it will reverse time and keep my family from having died in pain, so even though her dreams do involve rejection and hurt, I remained loyal to her."
If Anna opened the door to Kingdom Hearts herself, with the Kye-Blade or the Note Blade, could she create a New World that was the opposite of Synchronicity Perceptual?
One brimming over with nothing but l
iking and warmth?
Anna refused to think about that.
She couldn't guarantee that she wouldn't do it, but she still refused to wield the darkness in any way but how Riku and Kairi did.
"How many more demonstrations do I need to show Sora, and Donald, and Goofy, and you, and the toys, before you're willing to step out of my way and let me kill Woody and Buzz?"
"That's the last demonstration that you'll give us," Anna spoke.
"I'm putting an end to this now."
Christopher gave Anna a skeptical look, but he moved Fractured Night into a neutral position.
Anna repositioned her rapier gunblade in a similar one.
"I'm supposed to believe that?" he questioned.
Anna just ran at him.
Christopher cut Fractured Night in another low cut directed up, and another curving geyser of lava arced upwards in her direction to intercept it.
Anna wished she was melted glass and not ice glass, so she could ride it upwards to increase her momentu–
She started and jumped backwards, as the method to murder Christopher revealed itself.
Christopher fought with lava, magma, and fire because he was a Station of Awakening, an ethereal figure that must be directly connected to the warmth of the heart.
He was true molten glass.
An ice curse on his heart, of sufficient power to freeze even a Station of Awakening present in the material realm that was darkness itself, would fracture him into shards of ice upon impact.
And, although Anna had broken a frigid curse on her heart for the second time, it was still intrinsically entwined with her Valkyrie in Knight of the Swan Formchange.
She should be able to inflict an ice curse on someone's heart herself now, one powerful enough to shatter Christopher.
Even under these circumstances, Anna refused to murder anyone, much less a grieving little boy, through the means of death that hurt him the most, and that he was the most terrified of.
But she'd endured an ice curse on the heart twice now.
As a Valkyrie in Knight of the Swan, now that she was thinking about what she needed to do, she could perceive the strings that wove the curse together well enough to know how to alter it into a curse that was slightly directed at the head, so she could just weaken Christopher enough that a single following strike would kill him.
It was time, then.
It was best to just get this over with.
She raised her gunblade with its point up above her head.
"Whatever burst of inspiration that you just had, you do know that you're fighting for a friendship that isn't even a real connection, correct?" Christopher queried.
"Children don't even know their toys have hearts.
"So how can you believe that your burst of inspiration is grounded on anything stable?
"The love that children's toys give them is no more than imaginary."
Anna just ignored Christopher's words this time.
"Frigid Starfall!" she shouted.
"You're entirely wrong!" Woody shouted, as though he'd just realized something important.
A threadbare flicker of something faint that might have once been hope rose within Anna that Woody had just realized a way that might wake Sora up, and that she wouldn't need to do this after all.
But hopes were for children, and childhood was nothing more than a flowery word that had been created to justify casting yourself into the deepest foundations of the insane hallucinations of the deranged.
She couldn't risk waiting to see if Woody had learned anything, and let Christopher murder someone else.
Six vertically counterclockwise rotating stars, each one brilliant with not fire and arcing flares but ice and curling frost, representing the six colors of stars in the prime of their life, appeared in a forwards facing crescent above her gunblade rapier; one red, one orange-yellow, one yellow, one green-yellow, one white, and one blue-white, in sequence from her right to her left.
Christopher's eyes flew wide as he realized what she'd just done, and terror appeared on his face.
"Dark Meltdown!" he yelled, aiming his left hand up, and another enormous horizontal pillar of orange and hurricanes of purples and blacks appeared in front of him to rocket at the cursed comets of frost.
Anna, however, just sent the six miniature comets into a quickly moving shallow sloping descent.
As soon as the column touched them, Christopher winced, and he staggered as though he was now dizzy.
The Dark Meltdown dispersed, and the comets continued on their way.
Christopher tried to steady himself, but the small amount of the curse that had ripped into his head was keeping him too dizzy to do so.
Or to attempt another counterattack.
The crescent continued on its relentless march of death.
Anna braced herself to sprint forward and cut Christopher down as soon as they hit.
"I'm a toy, so I know that you can hear me in your sleep, because toys were created from the dreams of imagination!" Woody shouted.
Anna suppressed the new rush of hope.
"Remember what you taught us the last time that you were here, Sora!" Woody shouted. "The heart never lets go, so that means that you can still hold onto what you believe in regardless of whether light creates a sanctuary amidst the darkness, or darkness engulfs all of the colors of light!
"Children don't know that toys have hearts and awareness, and feelings and thoughts, but that doesn't make their love for toys any less genuine and sincere!
"Because, even though they're loving people who they just imagine are connecting with them, they still believe that the love we give them, and the love that they give us, are real!
"It doesn't matter how unforgiving and cruel people and reality are!
"Buzz, Jessie, Bo, her sheep, and the Little Green Men were able to establish, maintain, and repair connections with children even through the darkness that devoured them, as easily as just having faith in a connection that one side hadn't learned was true!
"Bo, her sheep, and the Little Green Men believed in those kinds of connections to the end, so even when inescapable darkness took them, the light still guided them until it was all over!
"Dreams don't need to be based upon reality! They can be based upon your imagination as well!
"If they couldn't be, they wouldn't be called dreams!
"So you don't need to stop trusting in them!
"Keep living through them, for the people who you love and for the world that you dream of, and keep trying to love those people, and everyone else, and bring about that world!
"So you can still hold onto, and not let go of, your dreams to the very end!
"Whether you can or you can't create a better world, as long as you keep believing in your dreams and striving to grasp them, you can give people enough hope to keep their eyes on the world that you imagine.
"And you can still connect them to the sanctuary of your love and warmth and kindness and brilliance; and the warmer, kinder, more joyful, laughter filled world that you dream of!"
Anna's eyes flew wide, and tears obscured her vision.
Then she'd do the same thing.
She shifted back, blinked away her tears as best as she could, and brought her gunblade into a defensive stance as the crescent of frigid starfire collided with Christopher and detonated in an inferno of radiant roaring colors.
She wasn't surprised at all to see a sphere of orange with moving, flowing brighter neon orange chains surrounding the now steadying Christopher when it vanished.
Agony rose at the sight of the trapped Jessie on the floor inside its range, no doubt pulled there by Christopher as the spherical prison had formed.
But Anna couldn't let the barriers keeping the pain back down yet, so that meant she needed to keep the relief away.
Lotso and his Heartless were still a danger to them.
She reached into the astral tapestry around her and within her and wove their strings back into her human form.
She felt briefly light as she became herself again, and then unexpected dizziness of her own caused reality to shift very painfully and black spots to dance before her eyes.
The Formchange must have taken a lot more out of her than she'd believed that it would.
But she couldn't let it cause her to pass out herself.
She forced it back, walk to the side and turn so she could keep everyone in her vision.
She gave Sora a brief smile as soon as she saw him standing with a set, determined face, his own emotions pushed aside and the Kingdom Key pointed at Christopher.
But, additionally, it was a smile that she wasn't surprised was genuine.
"Jiminy's dead, isn't he?" Sora questioned Donald, Goofy, and Anna.
Anna ached everywhere to sprint to him, throw her arms around him, pull him as close and warm and tight and loved as possible, and sing another lullaby to him while rocking him back and forth as she had the first time, but she could do that after they'd defeated the Heartless and ensured that Lotso wouldn't hurt anyone.
"The place where he used to be in my heart is just… gone."
"I'm sorry," Goofy spoke.
Sora's face twisted a little in a bottomless abyss of anguish and despair beyond all of Anna's capability to brush the barest surface of, far less comprehend the foundations of, before returning to its set determination.
"I'm going, too," Christopher interjected.
Sora sighed heavily with resignation.
"You can even create dark corridors out of a Keyblade prison, because you're a Station of Awakening," he said what was clear to all of them out loud.
An oblong construct of shifting darkness and indigos grew behind Christopher inside the sphere.
"As well as latch onto hearts with enough darkness, and take them with me," Christopher answered.
Donald and Goofy whirled and flew into the air in Lotso's direction, but they weren't fast enough.
A thin stream of blacks and shades of violet shot through the air to surround Lotso in an ebony dome of differently sized tongues of night with clear portions, and when Goofy and Donald reached it, they rebounded off of it as though they'd rammed into steel.
The Heartless surrounding them disappeared into incorporeal swirling black, purple, and blue shades of smoky energy.
Flames of night rose from Lotso, no doubt the result of Christopher capturing him spurring him to at last master his darkness, and clouds of wafting purple smelling like sulfur emanated from around him to push into the dome from the inside, but it didn't waver the smallest bit.
"As soon as you let me out of here, you're the one who's going to be played with, violently!" Lotso roared at Christopher.
"And if you so much as dare to show me the tiniest amount of pity, I'll do the same thing to you!" he yelled to Jessie.
Christopher ignored Lotso, but Jessie gave Lotso a challenging glare that told him that she had no intention of doing what he was warning her to do.
"Lotso doesn't possess the darkness of billions of hearts throughout an entire world, but he does have the potential to compensate for our failure here, through different means than we'd intended to apply the darkness generated from this world," Christopher told the four of them, Woody, and Buzz.
"I look forward to see if you've grown any further by the time of our next meeting; Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Anna."
Then Christopher turned and walked into the corridor of darkness, and the honey sap encasing Jessie moved into it along with him.
"Take care of Andy!" Jessie shouted to them. "As soon as he knows the truth, if he doesn't already, he's going to feel terrible!"
"We will," Woody assured her.
"We'll need to help Woody and Buzz with that sometime later," Sora told him.
"Anna's sister needs her as soon as we can bring her home to Elsa."
"I believe in you four as much as Woody does," Jessie reassured them.
"And Buzz, friendly fire doesn't mean that you've stopped being as sweet as any cowboy."
Buzz nodded in response, his face hiding everything that he was feeling and thinking.
Wonderful.
That was another strong connection that Anna had severed.
Then the oval of blackness closed, the dome imprisoning Lotso vanished as well, and Anna felt
Anna had intended to drop her gunblade and sprint to Sora, but before she could move at all, ebony rose to engulf her, and her gunblade slipped from fingers that wouldn't respond to her commands.
She tried to force it away, and turned to try to run to Sora, but then everything that was anywhere, and she herself, were blackness.
The last things that Anna were aware of before the night took her were warm arms holding her and pulling her to a warm body, and wet drops splashing on her face.
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BOOK TWO: THE SUNNY SIDE OF TOY BOX
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Fin
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Begin
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BOOK THREE: OUT BACK IN THE SAVING FIRMAMENT
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"It's obvious that you dislike Orb and its policies. May I ask why? I thought you used to live there. If you're looking for some trivial excuse to drag the Representative into an irrelevant fight, I won't stand for it."-Athrun Zala
"Trivial!? I won't allow anyone to call it trivial! And you're wrong about it being irrelevant, too! My entire family was killed because of the Athhas! My family believed in the nation, and we believed in your so-called ideals. And in the end, my family was killed at Onogoro! That's why I will never believe in you again! And I will never believe in the nation of Orb! And I will never believe in any of your idealism again! When you said that you were going to uphold justice, did you ever think about the innocents who were going to die because you insisted on fighting for your values to the end!? I don't want someone who doesn't have any clue to talk like she knows the answers to everything!"-Shinn Asuka
GUNDAM SEED DESTINY:
Phase 5: SCARS THAT WON'T HEAL