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CHAPTER 23:
THE MOST ONYX OF HEARTS AND THE FINAL DOOR
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Author's Notes: The compositions for this Chapter are: 'Antipyretic,' from the FINAL FANTASY TACTICS Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and then 'Battle on the Bridge,' from the FINAL FANTASY TACTICS Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and after this one 'FATES ~ God's Destiny,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three. All of these pieces can be found on Zophar's Domain.
Sora started slightly at the sound of another dark corridor appearing behind him.
He carefully lowered Anna to the floor, pushing his anguish and horror and terror and self hatred and despair about Jiminy's death, and everything Christopher had done to Donald and Goofy and Anna, and Woody and Buzz and Jessie and the toys and other people and hearts of Toy Box, as distant from him as he could justify doing.
Then he stood quickly, recalling the Kingdom Key in spiraling silver and gold and raising it into a combat position as he whirled.
Anna and Elsa did not need this now!
"Which Foreteller are you!?" he shouted.
"You have worse timing than the Real Organization Thirteen, so just identify yourself and let's get this over with!"
"You could scarcely be more wrong," Young Vanitas answered as he ran out of the shifting dark and indigo corridor, Void Gear out and his unmasked face and suit covered with matted blood and trails of blood, as well as tears and bruises.
A small rush of relief filled Sora, but he didn't lower the Kingdom Key, and Donald and Goofy, having recovered Save the Queen Plus, and Save the King Plus, took up combat positions at Sora's side.
The Foretellers known as Gula and Ira could be right behind him.
"My timing is even worse than the current Foretellers," Vanitas continued.
"I should have stopped working for them, unknowingly or not, as soon as Xehanort created me.
"Don't worry about Ira and Gula. Months ago, Yozora's Heartless and I worked with a number of associates of the person who Yozora's Heartless is possessing to set up ambushes for one or more Foretellers if they tracked me down, or if I needed to expose myself to them.
"I led them into one of those traps, and Yozora's Heartless and his associates are dealing with them."
Familiar echoes of burning, and slicing agony seared Sora in pulsing throbs, reminding Sora of how indescribably deadly Yozora's Heartless was.
Still, Sora had no idea how good the Foretellers themselves were, and Jiminy, Bo, Bo's sheep, and the Little Green Men had just died, and billions of toys' lives and joy had been eradicated and their entire culture and civilization annihilated, because Sora had dropped his guard.
He was not letting that happen again.
Sora opened his mouth.
Vanitas preempted Sora.
"They'll be fine," Vanitas reassured him.
"Yozora's Heartless doesn't care for the concept of losing a battle, so he's spent the year and weeks since then going to every length he can think of to improve himself during his free time, and searching for external means of improving his capacity to battle.
"As Ansem learned how to become the World of Traverse after you defeated the World of Chaos, Yozora's Heartless has correspondingly improved his abilities in his regular form, and he now knows how to become the World of Dismissal."
Sora didn't care for the name of that Formchange, but what mattered was that Yozora's Heartless and his friends, or companions, should be able to battle to a draw, or defeat, Gula and Ira.
But Sora still didn't drop his guard, and neither did Donald and Goofy.
That didn't mean that they'd been unable to keep Gula and Ira from escaping them, and resuming their pursuit of Vanitas.
"I can figure out from the darkness that I'm picking up what Maleficent's and Christopher's plan was, and I'm sorry that I didn't figure it out earlier."
Sora suppressed the urge to cringe.
"What matters is that you yourself are okay," Sora told him.
Vanitas scowled, as Sora had known that he might, and Sora suppressed another urge to cringe.
"Whether it does or doesn't, I'm here because Yozora's Heartless, and his subordinates in a military that he serves in,"
Sora suppressed a third urge to cringe
"have been trying to figure out why my adult Nobody keeps visiting the city that they live in; the one that you saw when Yozora's Heartless altered your Station of Awakening.
"When I led Ira and Gula into the ambush, Yozora's Heartless told me that, after the last time that I saw him, he found information on a computer network in his home city that his true Nobody almost certainly planted, and that Yozora's Nobody almost certainly wants us to know that he planted, so we're further unsure how to react to it, and thus further likely to play into their hands.
"But, given what the information is, we have no choice but to respond to it."
Sora clenched his teeth so hard that he didn't understand why they didn't crack into pieces.
If they did as Vanitas advised and reacted to the planted information, this would put Goofy's strategy into action even more effectively than hunting for the New Seven Hearts and confronting Maleficent.
But Jiminy, Donald, Goofy, and Anna did not need them to tie themselves up with the Foretellers' strings this much at this time.
But Goofy's strategy was their best chance at defeating the Foretellers, so Sora just sighed heavily.
"Fine," he responded, and Vanitas' eyebrows raised in surprise that Sora had acquiesced so quickly.
"What was the planted information?"
"As you might have feared," Vanitas responded, "My creator wanted Xion to steal my superstructure of a new Keyblade of Hearts from me, and he wants her to complete it."
Sora did cringe at the confirmation of that source of terror and horror.
"She can do this," Vanitas went on. "As you know, though she's a replica and not a true Nobody, she's still a Nobody who hails from the edge of oblivion, she's a repeated traitor to both the light and the darkness, and her power over memories and energy enables her to form connections that slightly resemble the connections that Princesses of Heart can form."
New self hatred surged at the knowledge that he'd given Xion these powers, both directly and by creating Namine, but Sora pushed it away.
Jiminy was dead, Anna was even more broken and most of his efforts to take away her pain had been for nothing, Elsa would follow, Sora had forced Donald and Goofy to lose Jiminy themselves, Woody and Buzz and Jessie had lost Bo, her sheep, and the Little Green Men, billions of toys and the entire culture of a world had fallen into a darkness that locking no Door to Darkness could bring them home sweet home from, Maleficent had turned an innocent little boy into a seeker of darkness, and Jessie was now Maleficent's captive and perhaps in a better position for one or more of the other three factions of seekers of darkness to use her as a puppet weapon.
He was not going to let his Station of Awakening, whether he had one or not, be fractured the thinnest amount more!
"He wants her to harness it through her power over memories and her nature as, though she's a replica and not a true Nobody, a Nobody who hails from the edge of oblivion and a traitor to both the light and the darkness; in order to create, and open, something called the Final Door."
Sora felt himself pale, he barely kept the self hatred and despair contained anyway, and new hot tears pushed forward into his eyes and obscured them so much that he could barely see.
Sora blinked them away as fast, and as much, as he could.
"This will somehow feed off of the darkness in Roxas' heart as a result of him killing Xion and forcing her to destroy all memories that she'd existed as she died; and, whether or not he wants it to happen if Xion does this, through an unknown method, this will turn Roxas himself into a third artificial Kingdom Hearts incomparably superior to the true Kingdom Hearts."
If Sora had had blood left in his face, it was gone now, and there wasn't even a gap of even emptiness for a few seconds before he pushed it back.
"This is why Yozora has a more specific destiny for Anna and Elsa than he has for the other New Seven Hearts."
Sora's heart clenched extremely tightly and squeezed in an immovable vise.
But he kept the gap of absence away this time.
That meant that the fated scripts that Yozora had written for Anna and Elsa were directly his fault, and directly his responsibility.
"What they went through was very similar to what Roxas and Xion went through, and Roxas is still on Arendelle with Elsa, serving her as her knight to repay his debt to her for enabling you to give him his heart and life back."
A larger rush of relief washed through Sora.
Then Elsa had someone who could carry her pain with her now, and the same thing was true for Roxas.
Those were good matters.
"I don't know how they intend to do it, but something has apparently just happened that will enable them to hurt Elsa badly by revealing that it just took place, and thus hurt Roxas so much that Xion will feel it; regain her memories of our duel; and finish her new Keyblade of Hearts."
Sora was rising into the air almost before Vanitas was done.
He knew precisely how the Foretellers intended to hurt Roxas, Xion, and Elsa.
Vanitas cried, "Hold on! I already set up a way to get us there quickly!"
Sora stopped moving, but he could barely register anything, and his heart was beating so rapidly that he was certain that it would rip out of his chest and turn him back into a Heartless.
He forced himself to focus as much as he could.
"And before you rush off like a loose cannon and play into my adult self's hands even more effectively, you should know that Yozora's Heartless found Riku and did to him what he tried to do to you, and Riku now has his heart and body back."
Sora barely remembered to keep his subconscious focus on his belief that he could fly, and though he tried to blink back the tears that now kept him from seeing, they just kept coming.
He suddenly ached everywhere throughout his body, and he just wanted to close his eyes and sleep forever and never wake up again.
"Before my former self's Heartless' connection with Riku was fully severed, I drew on this to fashion five temporary wormholes, one to take him to Twilight Town, where Xion is just arriving with Kairi and the other guardians of light after evading a bunch of Hunter Xes Maleficent convinced to fly around in the dimension they'd been traveling through, two to bring them to Arendelle, and two to bring us there."
Kairi would be with him, as well as Riku.
But adult Vanitas had almost certainly planted this information precisely so Kairi and he, and very likely Riku and the others, would be hurt even more, in countless ways, by what they intended to try to do to Xion, Roxas, and Elsa by being there as it happened; than they would be if they found out about this after it had happened.
Sora wanted to retch at the relief he felt at knowing that he'd see Kairi and Riku soon.
If it meant them being hurt even more, they were better off currently away from him, though not indefinitely as Riku, Kairi, and Elsa had attempted to do.
"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.
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.
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."
Sora pushed the memories away determinedly.
He'd kept his dream, and what he'd remembered during it, from damaging his connections with Donald, Goofy, and Anna.
He could do the same with Kairi and Riku, whether there would be one or more Foretellers in the vicinity or not.
"I told Riku what's going on, and he's on his way to tell Xion and Kairi, and the people with her, what's happening.
"Whatever the reason is that my adult Nobody planted this information and wants us to know that he did, our best tactic is to face it together."
"I agree," Sora answered.
"Then you should take this with you," Woody said, and he reached into one of his pockets, took his hand out, and threw it up to Sora.
As Sora had hoped, it was a Keychain, with a cowboy's rope lasso for its prongs, a blade roughly the shape and color of one of Buzz's wings, and a handle curved like the crook of a shepherd's cane no doubt meant to represent Bo's the color of Jessie's cowboy hat.
Sora suppressed the urge to cringe at Bo's shepherd's cane's inclusion in its design.
"Buzz, Jessie, Bo, and I made that for you for whenever you returned to Toy Box," Woody told him.
"We call… called it Childhood's Laughter."
Sora suppressed the storm of emotions inside him at Woody correcting himself, and the name.
Elsa wasn't going to be happy to see Anna unconscious, but there was no choice but to bring her back to Elsa before she woke up.
"Let's get moving!" Sora cried.
Riku sighed heavily in relief as he saw the familiar figures of Kairi, Xion, Lea, Aqua, Ven, and Terra appear in rising and swirling light green to the left of the entrance to Tram Commons when looking at the slope leading up to Station Heights; an unfamiliar woman with purple hair wearing a helmet and scientist's or medic's clothing with them, and a glowing and whirling green Throbbeat Pool shimmering into reality beneath them as they appeared.
Kairi's eyes flew wide.
"Riku, you're all right!"
Riku barely had any time to brace before Kairi was colliding with him, her arms were around him tightly, and her face was buried in his chest and soaking his shirt with tears.
Riku lowered one hand and stroked her hair soothingly with it.
"I'm very, very sorry that I didn't listen to you right away!" Kairi cried with broken desperation.
"You came to your senses a lot faster than I did," Riku told her before she could continue.
"But this isn't the time.
"Yozora's Heartless can be trusted, at least for now, he resurrected my heart and body, and he warned me that Roxas is in terrible danger," Riku told Kairi, and the rest of them.
Xion and Lea ran up to him so quickly that they were both slightly out of breath, and, unexpectedly, the stranger wasn't far behind them.
Kairi released Riku and stood back.
"Details," Lea ordered.
Riku suppressed the urge to walk up to Kairi or Xion and put a hand on one or both of their shoulders.
That would take too much time.
"I don't know that much," Riku told them.
"But Xion apparently somehow acquired the beginnings of a Keyblade of Hearts, one that will be much weaker than the one that Maleficent forged from the hearts of the past seven Princesses of Heart if completed, after she returned to Sora at Station Heights before the process was over and she could no longer talk or act in even a limited fashion.
"The Foretellers now intend to hurt Roxas to drive her to finish it, so she can open something called the Final Door and, willingly or unwillingly, force Roxas to, due to the darkness that he carries as a result of killing you, somehow become a third artificial Kingdom Hearts even worse than the real Kingdom Hearts."
Xion's face became a mask of determination and she extended her right arm and right hand to her side, palm curled to summon a Keyblade.
"Aqua, Terra, Ven, can you please help me finish forging it now?" she questioned. "A Keyblade of Hearts isn't as dangerous as the Kye-Blade in and of itself, especially not if it's weaker than the one that Maleficent made, so if I just complete it now the Foretellers will have no reason to hurt Roxas at this time."
Aqua nodded determinedly herself, and she motioned for Lea and the stranger to stand back.
She closed her eyes, as did Terra and Ven, and lastly, Xion herself, and Riku knew that the four of them were looking into Xion's heart and tracing its connections.
"I don't fully understand the principles behind a Keyblade of Hearts, but they're still created from the energies of the heart as other Keyblades are, and your ability to create one likely has something to do with your power over memories and energy, which are akin to how Princesses of Heart can bond with others through strong emotional connections."
Kairi closed her eyes at this and started tracing Xion's connections herself, and undoubtedly her own, as well.
"You're also even more of a Nobody than literal ones," Terra put in, "And you've changed sides from darkness to light more than once. So your heart has forms of darkness that most people don't. I can help you trace that."
Riku wished that he could join in, but they had no time.
"Roxas is still with Elsa, serving her as a knight to repay his debt to her for restoring you, and him," Riku finished. "That's why the Foretellers etched a unique destiny for Elsa and Anna that the other New Seven Hearts don't have; due to your similar pasts.
"Maleficent recently did something terrible to Anna," Kairi went white, and her eyes flew opened and she turned to him, "And the Foretellers want to throw this, and a number of other brutal truths, in Elsa's face so Roxas will empathize with her, and this will hurt him badly enough that you'll feel like completing the Keyblade of Hearts."
"What about Sora?" Kairi questioned.
Riku winced, and Kairi said quickly, "Sora and I are fully back together, romantically as well as as best friends, so you don't need to worry about that."
Riku sagged slightly.
"I'm very sorry for hurting you by doing that to Sora, as well," Kairi spoke.
"But do you know what happened to him?"
"I don't know the details," he said. "But Young Vanitas is currently on our side for some reason, as well," Ven's eyes flew open, he spun to look at Riku, and he grinned in relief and happiness before closing his eyes and focusing back on Xion, "And he's retrieving Sora, Donald, Goofy, Jiminy, and Anna.
"Adult Vanitas planted this information for Yozora's Heartless to find, so he obviously wants us to know about it, but whether we're playing into their hands or not, we'll do best to confront this together.
"He opened a temporary pair of wormholes leading to Arendelle, so we need to travel back there as soon as we can.
"Xion, do you want to stay here and work with Aqua, Terra, and Ven to call a full Keyblade of Hearts?"
Xion opened her eyes.
"Roxas will be in less danger if we're at his side, and whichever Foreteller or Foretellers are headed to Arendelle see me complete the Keyblade of Hearts."
"I agree," Lea said himself.
"We'll all ensure that Elsa doesn't memorize whatever the Foretellers want to ramble about to her."
The woman grinned with amusement and determination.
"Or etch it in her dreams," she spoke.
"I'm Lucca Ashtear, a friend of the Radiant Garden Restoration Committee from Ivalice Zodiac."
Riku suppressed the urge to ask if this meant that Ivalice Zodiac had now been opened up to world travel, or if Lucca had a means of leaving it and returning to it that little to no one else could utilize.
"I'm a scientist myself, and I offered to Xion to try to fix the energy drain problems that Even created her with if she gives me permission to.
"Whatever involves her, involves me."
Riku nodded.
"The more, the merrier," he said.
"But leave the fighting to us. If you're a friend of the Restoration Committee, you might know from them how deadly Keyblade wielders and seekers of darkness are."
"I've heard about it," Lucca answered neutrally. "And a close friend of mine; Leon's older sister, Ellone; has had her own brushes with darkness, to the point that she's even considered renouncing her given name and renaming herself with the name Ultimecia.
"Though she hasn't submitted herself to the darkness, and I intend to try to keep it that way.
"I'll keep my distance from any combat, but I will not guarantee that I won't involve myself at all if Xion, Lea, Roxas, Elsa, Anna, or you need me."
That didn't surprise Riku, as irritating as it was.
"Is Anna Elsa's sister?"
"That's correct," Riku spoke back. "And she and Elsa are very close, and she's very protective of Elsa."
Lucca winced.
Riku would inquire about why later.
"If the Foretellers do throw anything in Elsa's face, let Anna try to deal with it."
"I won't argue about that," Lucca said. "I know the feeling."
"I can't wield the darkness indefinitely as effectively as I could when I created the last Demon Tide and cast Ultimate Break," Kairi told him. "But Hercules taught me a Formchange for doing so temporarily," Riku could tell that there was something very important that Kairi was avoiding telling him, but this wasn't the time to ask what, as well, "Though I need a lot of rest between using it or it will exhaust me so much that I won't be able to breathe, or my heart won't be able to beat, or both, and I'll die."
There went one potential trump card, and this meant Anna might be similar.
"From what I can tell from tracing my heart, it will be a number of days more until I can perform the Formchange without it killing me.
"I assume that Anna might be the same."
"That's very likely, from all my experience wielding darkness," Riku confirmed.
"Does anyone have anything else to add?" Aqua queried.
No one answered, so Riku turned and called Braveheart in coils of gray and silver.
He aimed it at an area of the Tram Commons street where no one was standing or walking nearby, keyed what he was about to do to his connections to Kairi and his other friends, and brushed Lucca's heart as carefully as possible to avoid prying into its feelings and thoughts to do the same to her.
No one else could now use the portal that he was about to forge.
He focused, and a magenta sphere with a number of arrays of floating arrows about it grew in the air above the street there.
"That will lead us to the nearest of the two wormholes," he informed them.
"Let's go!"
He raced for the portal and touched it with his left palm, trusting Kairi and the others to follow.
Blacks, dark purples, deep purples, dark blues, and light blues passed in shifting and morphing colors around him, and then he was standing on a familiar wasteland of brown dirt with uncountable igloos around him.
He sagged once more at the sight of people.
He'd successfully restored the hearts of the people of Arendelle.
"You made it back!" Roxas called with surprise and relief from nearby.
Riku turned to see him standing on Elsa's left in front of Marshmallow a distance back, away from the crowd, while Kristoff, Olaf, and Sven were on her right.
"Sooner than I believed that I would, but yes," Riku answered. "But this isn't the ti–"
An oval of moving indigo and black grew to Roxas' right, and Riku felt a familiar presence vanish from his heart completely.
Kairi, Destiny's Embrace now out, went ghostly white, and Riku, barely able to register anything, was sprinting up to the corridor as fast as she was.
No way.
Sora ran through it first, and as soon as he was, Kairi sprinted up to him, and Riku was moving in his direction along with her almost without being aware that he'd decided to move.
Kairi gripped the hand of Sora's tightly and reassuringly that wasn't holding a Keyblade of purple and shades of brown that Riku's preternatural perception told him was named Childhood's Laughter, and Riku clasped Sora's off hand shoulder similarly.
"Welcome home sweet home," Sora told Riku with a smile that Riku could tell was fully genuine and sincere.
Jiminy's irreversible death hadn't broken Sora's already unstable heart so much that he hadn't lost his ability to give all his heart to loving and keeping safe Kairi and him.
That filled Riku with a tiny string of relief.
"Never mind that," Kairi told Sora.
"Riku and I both still love you, and forgive you, and I'm not going to push you away this time because I feel guilty myself for what happened."
Sora sighed heavily in brief relief, though it sounded as if it was just for Kairi and him.
The nearest guards were now herding any nearby people away from the area.
Donald, Goofy, and an injured, blood caked Vanitas without a suit left the corridor next, Goofy carrying an unconscious Anna.
Riku pushed his horror and terror for Sora, Namine, Mickey, and Ansem the Wise, and his own anguish and grief away.
"What happened to her!?" Elsa cried at once, running in their direction now with Kristoff and their other closest friends at her sides.
"I don't know, but whatever it is, the Foretellers want you to find out in the most hurtful way they can tell you about it, to get at Roxas and Xion," Riku told them.
Roxas went stiff, and sprinted himself to position himself approximately in a position to protect Xion and Lea, or Elsa, whoever needed him the most.
Kristoff reached Goofy first, and Goofy handed Anna to him as the oval of darkness came together and disappeared.
Xion now had her eyes closed and arm and hand extended to call her new Keyblade of Hearts, and Aqua and Terra had their eyes closed to trace Xion's heart once more, but Ven had run to a combat position at Young Vanitas' side with Wayward Wind in a backhand ready stance.
Vanitas was avoiding looking at him, however, as well as Sora and, surprisingly, Riku.
"I highly recommend that you focus on not listening to whatever they say, and let us try to drive them off," Riku ended.
"There's also no need to involve any of Arendelle's military forces, or police, in this.
"We can defeat the Foretellers."
Riku didn't know that they could defeat even one Foreteller working together in unison, but they had a better chance of doing so than any of Arendelle's traditional soldiers or police forces.
"I'll do better than that," Elsa responded, and she closed her fingers.
Earplugs of light blue ice grew out of them, and she put them securely in her ears and then then sent them moving into her ears out of sight.
Kristoff was now back at Marshmallow's side, and partially behind him, and Marshmallow moved to position himself somewhat in front of Kristoff while still leaving room for Anna to reach Elsa if she woke up and Elsa needed her.
Olaf was now nowhere to be seen, but Riku knew better than to assume that Olaf wouldn't try to do something ill advised.
And if he did, and Riku or one or more of the others didn't react in time, what had happened to Jiminy would almost certainly happen to him.
Not while Riku had the ability to stop it.
"I have limited medical experience, so I know how the inside of the ears, and eardrums, are set up," Elsa continued. "The ear plugs are now so far inside my ear canals that no one can remove them without risking damaging my ears too badly for me to hear anyway.
"Now I can fight with you."
Riku wished he could believe that that alone would keep the Foretellers from turning Elsa against Roxas and Xion, but he knew just as well that it wouldn't.
Nor could Riku even be sure that Elsa's prodigious command of ice and water would be enough to allow them to defeat even one Foreteller after how easily Luxu had outwitted Elsa until she'd figured out how to counter his lightning magic.
"If the props have all been set up, then let's begin the next act," Ira's voice interjected out of nowhere.
Ira had given Elsa a chance to block her ears.
That boded badly from the start, but it wasn't surprising.
Vanitas looked at where the voice had emanated as another oval of purple and night manifested.
"What happened to Yozora's Heartless and the others?" he challenged.
Riku didn't give Ira a chance to say anything else.
Riku waited to see Ira walk out of the moving blackness, his robes and mask slightly askew with a double bladed and pointed curved silver and white lance held in one hand at the center of its back that appeared to be a real lance, and not a Keyblade having gone through a Formchange.
Then he barreled right at Ira.
Ira's lance was in position to block Riku before he could swing at him with Braveheart, so Riku jerked his head back at Sora with a look that he knew that Sora would remember from their battle against Kairi's second Demon Tower at the Dark Margin.
He raised his hand, Sora raised his, and the two phantom Ultima Weapons shimmered out of nothing to meet and join together to form a single dual part ethereal Ultima Buster and slash down at Ira's lance.
Elsa sent one hand forward and launched an arc of ice with a sharp point at the end at Ira's foot farthest from the handle of the lance, forcing him to choose between defending himself more effectively against the Ultima Buster's combined Reality Shift or Elsa's strike, or performing a less effective defense against both directions of assault.
The next second, Riku found himself flying through the air as Ira twisted the lance into a vertical diagonal to block both assaults, batted the Ultima Buster away with an easy swing of one end of the lance, and deflected the ice blast with the other.
Riku felt arms that he recognized as Roxas' around him, catching him, and he looked back to see that Kairi had caught Sora.
As soon as Sora was on his feet, he ran up to Riku's side, with Kairi on one side and Donald and Goofy on the other.
"This is the first time that Kairi, Riku, Donald, Goofy, and I have all fought together when throngs of Heartless, Nobodies, or Unversed weren't splitting us up!" Sora spoke.
Riku felt a little bit lighter at the reminder of that, though he wasn't sure that he agreed that their three battles in the Keyblade Graveyard before Xehanort had split them up, even with as much of a disaster as the second two had been, didn't constitute all five of them battling together.
With Jiminy as well, and that he wasn't present for what Sora saw as, and what might truly be, their first genuine battle together, prevented Riku from enjoying that this might be the case more than a small bit.
"If you think that you're going to win a battle where this is happening, you can forget it!
"I advise you to give this your all from the beginning, or just give up and leave."
"I don't toy with my enemies like Luxu does," Ira answered, his emotions and thoughts concealed, "But I have no need to even wield my Keyblade against naïve rookies who believe that a small number of people can alter the course of fate."
Riku jolted.
"We'll do what we can to make you regret that decision," Ven said, taking Kairi's other side with Elsa on his right while Lea took Riku's left, and Roxas at that side.
Aqua and Terra were still working with Xion to finish and call the Keyblade of Hearts.
"There's no purpose to this battle.
"Xion has already agreed to complete, and call, a new Keyblade of Hearts.
"You can just wait peacefully for her to do it to assure yourself that she was successful, and then leave."
"I learned long ago not to leave destiny up to the chance of a fool's hope succeeding," Ira answered back. "There's no guarantee that Xion will be successful any time soon, or at all, without additional motivation, and Master Yozora requires her to finish forging a new Keyblade of Hearts now that Maleficent has given us the means to do so.
"If you don't want to fight, stand aside and let me talk to Elsa.
"Otherwise, Norn will keep you from interfering."
"As well as whatever tricks or backup lurking in the shadows that you have, to also ensure that Elsa hears what you have to say," Lea put in.
"We all know that that's what you really mean.
"But fine, if you and any potential ambushers lurking in the shadows would rather be sent packing with a bunch of scrapes and bruises to memorize, or a lot worse, be my guest."
Lea slid his eyes at Riku in an eye signal that they'd developed months ago.
Riku returned it, to acknowledge that he knew that Ira's, and anyone else's, true targets were almost certainly Anna and Elsa's other closest loved ones, so they could try to blackmail her into listening to them.
Kristoff must have realized this himself, because Anna was now in Marshmallow's arms, where she'd be better protected, and Kristoff and Sven were standing in front of her.
Riku sagged slightly when he saw that Olaf had realized that, due to this, he was safer with them than elsewhere, and he was now standing between Marshmallow's legs.
Ven took a more proactive approach and charged Ira.
"Svartalfheim has loosed its legions," Ira spoke, and he pointed one end of Norn at Ven.
"Ratatosk's Ascension."
A pool of ice sailed out from below Elsa's left foot to extend below Ven and raise him up and backwards in an arc, and a ghostly pine tree with whipping and writhing and lashing branches with sharp, twisted thorns interspersed on them rose out of the ground to cause its branches to extend upwards and outwards like a fountaining volcano and lash out in all directions.
Ven wasn't far enough back to be out of range, but a giant globe of hexagons appeared around all of them, courtesy of Aqua, to block the strikes from impacting with any of them, even Vanitas, who was further back from them and to the side.
Riku chanced a glance in her direction to see her eyes were still closed and she was still focusing on Xion, but Rainfall was now in her hand.
As soon as the phantom tree faded, Roxas ran out of the sphere at Ira and slid behind him in a Reversal.
But rather than strike at Ira, he hurled Oblivion, and then Oathkeeper, at Vanitas.
Vanitas' eyes widened slightly as he realized what Roxas must have in mind.
Riku positioned himself, and Braveheart, to perform Mirage Split once again.
Vanitas caught Oblivion in his free hand and sent it in Ven's direction, followed by Oathkeeper.
Ven threw them one by one to Kairi, who sent them on their way to Sora, who had now thrown Childhood's Laughter to Roxas.
Roxas seized Childhood's Laughter and positioned himself to follow up the Reversal with a strike.
Ira turned into a defensive stance facing all three of them.
Sora grabbed both Oathkeeper and Oblivion and aimed them in a position to perform Nightmare's End, with his own power bolstered by four of the five hearts who had once been connected to his.
Riku lost the ability to breathe as he realized that Vanitas' darkness was coursing as Riku and Terra directed theirs, and that it was rushing into the darkness that Riku was feeding into Mirage Split.
That could only mean two things.
Knowing that Namine very possibly had a third friend as devoted to her as Riku Replica, and Riku, were, if not more or far more, given everything that Vanitas had been through for so long, should also raise her spirits slightly.
Riku was under no illusions that she'd been told about everything that had happened over the past around four days, with the exception of how Xion might be siphoning her, and she, too, needed something to cheer her up as much as she could possibly be cheered up.
Riku would figure out how he felt about the revelation that Vanitas had been inside his heart for almost as long as Ven had been inside Sora's later.
Sora summoned his half of the Ultima Buster, which was now adumbrated with a shining and shimmering and flowing and washing corona of light rainbow currents, and Riku summoned his, which was now awash in flowing and cascading tides of obsidian and ebony and onyx and other shades of black.
Sora and he joined them into the Ultima Buster and sent it chopping down at Ira, as Roxas lunged into a vicious swing.
Ira deflected Roxas' slash with enough force to send him staggering back and brought up Norn over his head in a two handed block, but the enhanced Ultima Buster smashed into Norn with concussive wrath and forced Ira's hands and arms down and the Norn into Ira's head, and then the Ultima Buster continued downwards to connect with Ira and detonate into a blaze of golden and silver and white and black tongues of flame.
Ira staggered back and corrected his stance.
But before Riku or anyone else could move, ice trickled out of Elsa's ears, and Riku clenched his teeth together as he realized what she was about to say.
Roxas and Lea raced over to Xion, whose eyes were now open and whose face was a mask, and Roxas moved to stand close to her, though not too close.
Lea clasped her open right hand protectively and comfortingly, and he placed his other hand on her opposite shoulder and squeezed it tightly and reassuringly.
"We're all right here with you this time," Roxas said.
"We'll carry this as best friends, and as one."
Sora whipped his head around to Kristoff.
"Wake Anna up now if you can!" he yelled. "What Ira has to say is very, very bad!"
Kristoff's eyes widened and he started shaking Anna gently.
Elsa's face became a mask at this.
"Now that you know that we can keep our sister, our friends, and our people safe from you, we give you permission to deliver us your message," Elsa spoke formally.
She gave the rest of them a warning look that told them that if anyone tried to stop her, she'd erect as tall and thick an ice wall between them, and Ira and herself, as she could.
"We refuse to allow our sister to endure the weight of delivering it.
"So give us the message about what you waited for Maleficent to do to hurt Anna, as it was no doubt your intention to wait for this to endeavor to force us to choose to let her bear the burden of letting her tell us or learning for ourselves.
"And then either surrender to our custody to be tried for war crimes against Arendelle and her people, or be gone."
Ira inclined his head in regard.
"As we assumed," he replied. "As angry as you are with us, you're still as much of a diplomat as you have been since you took the crown.
"Water can carry memories, and I'm the most skilled of all the Foretellers at spreading doubts, so I know how to form memories of painful experiences into stories that can be fed directly into someone's heart for him, or her, to experience them as though he, or she, had been present during those events himself, or herself."
Sora jolted violently, and he went ghostly white, while Kristoff shook Anna slightly harder.
"Anna, come on, this is a bad time to take a nap," Kristoff said.
"I recommend that you take it later, on Sven's back so that you can snooze in the Sunlight."
"Then cast your spell and be done with it," Elsa spoke, and she braced.
"Very well," Ira answered, and he extended his free, left hand, palm outwards.
Light, flickering blue rippled forwards and outwards in all directions before Ira's hand in a flower of energies.
"The last time that I did that, Sven…" Anna spoke sleepily.
Then her eyes flew open and she sat up.
She went deathly white and tears appeared in her eyes as she realized what was going on.
"Elsa, don't do it!" she screamed, leaping out of Kristoff's arms and moving to sprint to Elsa as fast as she could run.
But Elsa didn't move at all as ripples of light blue rushed from the energies before Ira's hand into her head and continued to flow into it.
She stood there for several seconds, and then the ripples and the energy in front of Ira's palm disappeared.
Elsa clenched her hands into tight fists and she sighed heavily with a broken, complete and entire and resigned and tired exhaustion that Riku could barely even begin to even brush with the weakest flicker, never mind comprehend, but that still twisted his insides.
Anna reached Elsa, and Elsa sagged back exhaustedly into Anna's arms and let her hold her on her feet.
Anna looked as though she wanted to say something, but she knew that if she did, Roxas and Xion might suffer for her doing so.
Elsa reached up, and gripped Anna's arms and held them to her more tightly as though they were a life raft.
"We have received your message," Elsa spoke with similarly exhausted, tired, resigned exhaustion without leaving Anna's arms, "And we are grateful to you for providing us with information about the magic at Arendelle's, and our, disposal, that will surely enable us to better provide for our people.
"Now surrender unconditionally, or depart."
"Not until one of us tells Roxas and Xion what I just told you," Ira responded.
"Who do you want it to be?"
Elsa glared at Ira furiously, but before she could say anything, a voice that was identical to Kairi's but that echoed and trailed off as though rebounding into the endless depths of the walls of a bottomless abyss, spoke.
"With all the memories currently washing through the astral tapestry of the World and this planet?" she questioned.
A cloud of onyx and obsidian as black as the most lightless reaches of the vacuum of the interstellar void roared into the air, shaped like the clouds that Heartless manifested from, and erupted to disperse and reveal a falling ebony living shadow of Sora similar to the shadows of Sora that Riku now knew that he'd drawn on Vanitas' pure darkness from which Unversed were born to forge.
Riku wasn't paying attention to his darkness scent, but even without him actively utilizing it or something assaulting him with darkness, tears flooded his eyes and he barely kept from staggering back at the reality end over end tumbling and whirling and spinning stench of rotting decay that flooded his nostrils from this Heartless.
It was as though he was looking into the core of a supernova so ivory obsidian that it was inverted through unendingly endless inexpressibly compound switchbacks entirely scoured and erased and washed and gouged clean blindingly pitch white.
Whoever, or whatever, this Heartless was, it was something much worse than even Yozora's adult Nobody, and the Demon Tide that Kairi had created here less than a week ago.
Riku could think of just one Heartless that fit that description, an entity that was no more genuinely a Heartless than the Demon Tides and the Demon Towers were, and every bit as terrible.
Data-Kairi landed on the brown ground.
"So, you decided to pay me a visit yourself this time," Vanitas said.
"Good.
"We have a long overdue score to settle."
"You're the datascape's me, aren't you?" Kairi questioned.
Data-Kairi ignored him, and looked with eyes glowing with phantasmic, ghostly, pallid, infernal yellow flame at Ira.
"If you, or anyone else, leaves this world through a dark corridor, or any other means, you'll disrupt the tides of memory and prevent me from taking them into myself.
"I can't allow any of you to do that.
"Otherwise, I'll never be able to extinguish all darkness and create an artificial Kingdom Hearts of distilled light that I can return to and complete the darkness that gives me being."
Riku clenched his teeth tightly.
They had a third enemy to keep out of Kingdom Hearts.
"Should I not do this," Data-Kairi went on, "I'll be unable to acquire the reality of heart and life, and existence and self, that I thirst for, more than the Nobodies to which Xemnas promised his own artificial Kingdom Hearts could start to imagine in their most farfetched fever dreams.
"You understand that, right, Sora?
"I've wanted to meet you for so long.
"When you met Namine for the first time in Castle Oblivion, you left Kairi, Riku, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy for her; even though Riku was in Castle Oblivion along with you the whole time that you were there and he needed you to feel his presence and run to his side to cherish him during all the time that he was suffering.
"So will you please answer my plea for you to love me and give me the reality that you gave Namine, and help me open the door to Kingdom Heartless?"
.
"The VKP saw the opportunity to turn your guilt to patriotic zeal. They twisted your very soul, Ashley. Your despair at losing your 'family' turned to hate for the lawless jackal that killed them. Hate that should be reserved for yourself."-Sydney 'Losstarot' Bardorba
"You… lie!"-Ashley Riot
"Do I? Are your new-found abilities not proof enough? You believe Lea Monde responsible? You are remembering the killing arts you learned in a past life."-Sydney 'Losstarot' Bardorba
"Nooooooooo!"-Ashley Riot
"What is memory? Men forget that which pains them… create new memories to please themselves… lie to themselves, believe their own lies. The VKP may have wielded the brand that burned your soul, but you… you wanted it. You wanted them to burn your guilt away."-Sydney 'Losstarot' Bardorba
"What do you want, Sydney? What are you trying to do to me?"-Ashley Riot
"Truth, Riskbreaker! I just want you to know the truth."-Sydney 'Losstarot' Bardorba
VAGRANT STORY