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CHAPTER 25:
CHIAROSCURO WITHIN THE FOUNDATIONS OF NIGHT
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Author's Notes: The pieces for this Chapter are: 'Awakening,' from the XENOGEARS Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and then 'Dancing Mad,' from FINAL FANTASY VI; and, lastly, 'Lucia Versus Zophar,' from the LUNAR 2: ETERNAL BLUE: COMPLETE Original Soundtrack. The first composition and the third composition can be found on KINGDOM HEARTS Insider, and the second composition can be found on Zophar's Domain under the name 'Dancing Mad (Part Five).'
Roxas could barely feel or think through his sheer, blinding terror and horror as he broke into a sprint in Xion's direction, Oathkeeper and Oblivion once more in his hands, ignoring how Elsa was reacting to what Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy were doing and the five of them.
Namine had been very detailed about how indescribably deadly Data-Kairi was.
And the Foretellers had just used him against Xion and Axel once again.
And now, Elsa, as well.
He was not going to let this happen to Xion and Axel another time!
Or Elsa.
Flame Liberator appeared in front of his path before he could reach the comet spewing data Heartless, and Roxas barely skidded to a halt in time.
"This isn't the time for recklessness," Axel scolded him.
"And it's time to let Xion die again!?" he cried back, hot tears threatening to push forwards.
A tall, double door ivory gate had swallowed Sora and Riku and their companions, and it vanished now.
Xion leapt into a backflip away from the data Heartless.
Data-Kairi vaulted into a backflip of her own, and she landed facing Xion with her construct of shade resembling a Keyblade positioned for battle once more.
Roxas was barely able to remind himself that he had legs in time to stand.
"You're going to die for what you just did, you know that, right?" Data-Kairi snarled furiously and viciously at Xion.
"You're going to be the first to go if you don't cut it out," Axel responded, and he ran to Xion's side.
Roxas followed, and as soon as he came too close to Xion his stomach heaved violently, and its insides flooded his mouth; though he kept it shut and swallowed them back down.
Never mind Xion, he shouldn't even be this close to Axel!
But he still suppressed the almost hysterical terror and horror as he took up a position on Xion's other side.
Ven, Vanitas, Aqua, and Terra were moving to reinforce them, while Elsa was assisting Anna in hobbling over so Elsa would be in a better position to defend Kristoff, Marshmallow, Olaf, and Sven.
Vanitas looked at Ira.
"Are you leaving, or fighting with us this time?"
Roxas almost lost his food again at the concept of Xion, Axel, and Elsa battling at the side of a Foreteller, but there was nothing for it.
"I have other matters to attend to," Ira answered.
He inclined his head at Xion.
"I thank you for your willing cooperation this time."
Then he turned, held out his free hand, and called up a swirling and moving oval of black indigo shades and black waves.
He walked into it and disappeared along with it.
Roxas could care less whether or not Sora would approve of how relieved he felt that Ira was now light years away from Xion, Axel, and Elsa.
"Leave her to me," Vanitas told them.
"This showdown has been a long time coming."
"If you mean a show where I'm the spotlight and effortlessly grinding your face into the mud and humiliate you, to avenge all the trouble that you and whoever your current allies of convenience have caused me, then yes," Data-Kairi rejoined.
"Spotlights push darkness away, you drama Queen," Vanitas retorted.
He charged her without waiting any longer.
The Heartless of code swung her Keyblade, and a series of tumbling black Keyblades catapulted at him in an arc.
Vanitas snorted in disgust and amusement and jumped onto the one nearest him, then shaped them into a wave to surf on in a shallow rising curve backwards and to the side.
Before he arced around back at her, he launched an outwards expanding spray of chunks of ice, forcing the data Heartless to defend herself by blocking them and batting them away, and then Vanitas had soared back at her and faded into blackness.
The tide of shadowy Keyblades rocketed down at Data-Kairi behind a large roaring crimson corona, and as they reached her, Vanitas appeared above her and swung down in a familiar chop with Void Gear.
Roxas clenched his teeth very tightly when diagonal wisps of darkness ascending and descending in different directions shimmered all around Data-Kairi, and then she lightly flicked her hand and batted away the rushing Keyblades.
Void Gear met the shimmering wisps, and they moved to twist around it and bind it.
"Check," Vanitas informed her.
He faded into darkness, and then reappeared inside the wisps behind Data-Kairi to launch a fast moving large fireball at the back of her head.
She staggered, and then he faded away, reappeared above Void Gear, reclaimed it, and finished the chop.
Just for it to meet air, and then crash into the cracked ground, as Data-Kairi separated into fourteen versions of herself, each with a shade of a Keyblade.
"We are our own mates," Data-Kairi's reverberating voice sounded from all of them, and then all fourteen swung their Keyblades simultaneously and rising shallow diagonals of black Keyblades rocketed at Vanitas from all directions.
To meet Ven as he almost performed eight phantom marble Octaslash Version Five cuts at the same time, at positions that deflected them all backwards.
Vanitas snarled at his brother's assistance and jumped into a pool of flowing darkness, then ripped right back out of it to eject comets of flame in all direction and send all but one of the Data-Kairis staggering back.
Ven charged the sole Data-Kairi who wasn't moved from the blow, clearly the true one, and shifted into a sequence of slashes from different obtuse and acute angles, while alternating the speed of each strike to further attempt to unbalance Data-Kairi's ability to react.
Roxas raced at the the others, and darted into them along with the rest of the guardians, save for Elsa, to attempt to destroy them.
He slashed Oathkeeper and Oblivion in two upwards outward cuts at the nearest replica of the coded Heartless and sent it staggering back further.
Then shadows of Vanitas similar to the ones that Riku had seen Cid's Data-Sora contend with in his virtual space appeared to the sides of the thirteen copies and moved into a series of slices and slashes with their false Void Gears, hammering them until they were dispersed.
The Heartless of code grabbed her Keyblade with both hands and swung a two handed sideways chop at Ven's right ribs.
He moved Wayward Wind to block, but this left him open for Data-Kairi to stomp one foot into the ground and release a shockwave of expanding circular white thicker and taller than a Novashadow's, but of much smaller size.
It rammed into Ven's torso and legs and threw him backwards, and then Data-Kairi spun so her hair was extended back at Vanitas, they grew and morphed into the dreadlocks of her Neo Darkside shape without any neon coding present, and shot at Vanitas and around her head to lash at all of them as a thicket of whips.
Roxas deflected the nearest ones and locked his heart onto one of them to attempt to slide inside the black copse safely in a Reversal, but as soon as he emerged from it a pillar of pearl burst out of the ground below him.
Pain roared through him and he found himself thrown upwards and tumbling backwards through the air.
He attempted to correct, but Axel grasped his shoulders and threw him back into a somersault.
Roxas barely kept his stomach from emptying itself at the warmth and reassuring strength of Lea's touch, and the knowledge that Xion's own warmth and reassuring strength was about to touch him next.
As soon as her free hand pushed against his back and sent him flying forward, Roxas just opened his mouth and let himself throw up violently, while keeping his face turned away from Xion to keep any of it from getting on her, to prevent keeping it from happening from possibly unbalancing the triple technique even more.
He reached the thicket of whipping dreadlocks, and Oblivion became enshrouded in a pillar of light with the initial Organization Thirteen's Nobody symbol on the top, while Oathkeeper became shrouded by a whirling pillar of flame with Xehanort's Emblem Heartless symbol at the top.
Roxas swung Oblivion in a vertical upward slice, and Oathkeeper in a horizontal slice at Oblivion as he slashed it up.
"Fire, breath, and spirit join as one!" he cried.
"Cosmic Cross!"
A gargantuan cross of light orange and red flames flowing through four segments of marble white, each rotating in a clockwise direction, manifested before Oblivion and Oathkeeper and surged into a battering ram of a similar shape and composition to rip into the thicket.
It struck the Heartless of code and erupted into a conflagration of pulses of red, orange, and yellow colors and pearlescent white heat.
When it cleared, the dreadlocks were gone.
"You're outnumbered, Elsa has you outgunned and can join in as soon as she gets an opening, and even if you defeat the rest of us that will just free me from worrying about any friendly fire from Unversed and I'll send a bunch of Unversed your way," Vanitas spoke.
"Your petty temper tantrum is just going to get you liquidated.
"It doesn't matter how many times you evolve or repair yourself, we'll just keep squashing you until you have too little darkness left to do it any longer, and then you'll evaporate.
"If you don't want me to return the favor of the curb stomping you gave me, Maleficent, and Pete the first time we met, I advise you to give up and get lost; until such time as, if it can be done, you've successfully learned how to erase real sets of worlds, or worlds, as you tried to do to Jiminy's datascape.
"And I mean erase, as in kill through causing to vanish, not just eclipse by darkness.
"Maybe we'll start taking you seriously then.
"Emphasis on maybe.
"Or even better, get a clue and follow Riku's, Terra's, and my example.
"Accept your darkness without living by it, and it's yours to do with as you please."
Marshmallow now ran up to them as well and positioned himself near Terra, adding his limbs and bulk to their ranks.
"You robbed me of an opportunity to kill a Foreteller, and give Sora and Riku more reasons to love me," the coded Kairi responded.
"And you took a bunch of memories that I could have gained out of my hands at the same time.
"You knew that you were asking for it when you did that."
"Sora and Riku both have bleeding hearts," Vanitas snorted.
"If you'd ditch the pity party, you'd see that they already do love you, with all their hearts."
A number of emotions chased themselves over her face, but among them was fury that Vanitas believed that she didn't already know that.
"Not enough to help me fashion Kingdom Heartless," she shot back.
"Yeah yeah, they won't help me do it because they love me, but that then makes them hypocrites.
"If they truly believe that I don't get to decide what they want, they shouldn't make decisions about what I want."
"What's your flimsy justification for believing that you do seek Kingdom Heartless, and that you don't just believe that because you're letting your dark feelings rule you?" Vanitas returned sarcastically and derisively.
"The same as your reasons for fighting for Namine," Data-Kairi responded.
Roxas wasn't sure that he was capable of even feeling any relief at the confirmation that Namine had another devoted friend.
He'd just eradicated Xion and Lea again, and Elsa as well.
He should be the one who Vanitas was deriding.
"I'm the shadow cast by the Heartless, as you are of Ven and Yozora. You seek light by living as the shadow of the person who programmed me. In order for the shadow of darkness itself to regain her light, even fully fashioning a greater heart out of worlds won't be enough to make me whole. For me to return to the light and become real, I need to purge the World of all darkness, and erase every last photon of it to leave nothing but light to guide me."
"The darkness within people's hearts are an intrinsic part of Kingdom Hearts now, as well as world hearts and stellar hearts," Vanitas responded. "Yozora kept the Dandelions from repairing the damage that he did to Kingdom Hearts.
"Before the First Keyblade War, no amount of darkness in anyone's heart could corrupt Kingdom Hearts. Its light pushed all darkness away from it.
"Now, even if you succeed in devouring all of the current darkness in the cosmos, it won't take anything more than a single photon of darkness from one of the countless hearts in the World to corrupt the true Kingdom Hearts for a second time the next fraction of a second afterwards, and you'll need to start all over again."
"You must really take me for a moron," Data-Kairi snarled.
"Kingdom Heartless won't imbibe all darkness just once.
"It will be an ongoing process.
"First it will consume all of the current darkness infecting the World, and then it will keep vacuuming it up as the darkness within people replenish it."
"You're taking me for a moron," Vanitas retorted.
"If you feed that much darkness to an artificial Kingdom Hearts for more than a short period of time, it will go the way that the true Kingdom Hearts did during the First Keyblade War. Then all the darkness that it gobbled up will be unleashed back into the World at once, which will ruin the World almost as tumultuously as the First Keyblade War did.
"Thus, you'll end up with a lot more darkness present at once in the cosmos than you started with.
"You're chasing after a fantasy."
"The First Keyblade War leveled the first realm because the Kye-Blade was aware that it was being harnessed by darkness.
"I just need to become Kingdom Heartless myself, re-forge the Kye-Blade, link it to Kingdom Heartless, and then keep my chain of memories under constant rearrangement to prevent me from remembering that Kingdom Heartless is ceaselessly being bombarded with new darkness."
Vanitas' blood drained away in bone pale fury. But Roxas was so terrified for Xion and Axel that there was barely anything left inside him that, as much as Roxas loved Namine himself, could be horrified at the threat to her.
"You just earned yourself a death warrant for certain now," Vanitas hissed through clenched teeth.
"I'm not even giving you the option of escaping after that comment."
"If she does decide to run if we can give her a good enough beating, that's not your decision to make," Axel put in.
"She's just as much of a victim as Roxas, Xion, Isa, Namine, you, and I."
At the reminder, if Xion, Axel, Namine, or Roxas himself, gave into the darkness as much as Vanitas, they would be able to create legions of Unversed themselves, Roxas' stomach heaved so violently this time that when more of its insides ripped into his mouth, tears obfuscated his eyes so much that he could barely see beyond them, and he almost didn't remember to keep his mouth closed to keep his innards from leaving it.
"Lay off of her."
Roxas blinked away his tears and swallowed his food once again, and kept new tears from brimming.
Vanitas gave Axel a challenging glare, telling him that if Axel or anyone tried to stop him from finishing Data Kairi off, their alliance was over.
Axel briefly glared back, telling Vanitas to try defeating all of them himself, but then he said, "It's a moot point anyway.
"We don't know what will happen to the heart of a Heartless that can't be recompleted.
"For all we know, she can resurrect herself unless we take her into a datascape and kill her there."
The coded Kairi cringed and squeezed her eyes shut, her face screwing in anguish.
Roxas clenched his teeth at the awareness that that meant that she would be able to restore herself if they didn't kill her inside a datascape.
And that meant that it would be incredibly hard to neutralize Data-Kairi permanently, because it would be virtually outside the realm of possibility to return her to one unless she went back to one herself.
Data-Kairi opened her eyes.
"That's another reason that I need to realize my own dreams," Data-Kairi spoke.
"Or, rather, I should call them metempsychotic nightmares.
"Because, once I engulfed the darkness of the Armored Ventus Nightmare, I even lost the ability to die even if I travel into another datascape."
Xion staggered and almost fell at the awareness of what that meant.
Axel's eyes widened in horror.
Ven almost lost his grip on Wayward Wind.
Vanitas clenched his hands tightly.
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
Roxas' food rose into his mouth once more, tears blinded his eyes again, and, though he didn't throw up his insides this time and swallowed them back down, this time the tears kept coming.
He clenched his hands around the handles of Oathkeeper and Oblivion so hard that his knuckles became pale and began shaking, shuddering, and trembling violently.
Where would the depth to which the torture of the victims of the brutalities of the heart plummeted stop?
"That's right," Data-Kairi spoke, her tone drenched with the same measureless hateful bitterness and agony that Roxas heard almost every day in Xion's, Axel's, and Isa's voices, as well as Namine's, whenever they spent time together.
But where Xion's, Axel's, and Isa's voices had increasingly gained a cautious hope, the depthless hatred and bitterness and anguish in Data-Kairi's voice was the same as the hopeless despair and hate that Roxas saw in his own eyes and face every time that he looked in the mirror.
"I was just trying to take my initial steps towards gaining reality, and sating my hunger for light, when I devoured the Armored Ventus Nightmare.
"But, by doing so, I cast myself into an incomparably worse nightmare than the one that I consumed.
"Unless it is possible for a being that is purely a heart to vanish into the afterlife while he, she, or it has no body, I'm now immortal.
"Even becoming a complete living being won't reverse this.
"As Sora discovered in San Fransokyo, the hearts within data are as genuine as all other hearts, and my restorative abilities are a result of how many Heartless minds I absorbed in order to evolve sufficiently enough to carry out my programming.
"Returning to the light will complete me, but it can't alter my heart itself.
"I'll be real, but even then I'll be immortal.
"I had a chance to escape this nightmare, but Vanitas stole it from me, and now, even if Synchronicity Perceptual or Maleficent's New World are brought into being, even this won't give me sanctuary.
"I'll live forever while anyone who I connect to will die sooner or later, and I'll be doomed to live an eternal nightmare of endlessly repeating loss."
"I might be able to fix that," the woman who had accompanied Xion and Axel here spoke up for the first time.
"I don't know how Namine created you, but I'm trying to figure out how to fix the problems with how Xion was synthesized, and if I can, I might be able to discover how to undo your immortality."
Data-Kairi gave off a single, harsh laugh.
"Heartless are different than replicas of Nobodies, genuine Nobodies or not.
"Xehanort's Heartless once resided in a replica, but the hearts of Nobodies are too different from the hearts of Heartless for Even's and Ienzo's knowledge of how Xehanort's Heartless was able to function inside the replica to tell you anything.
"But you don't need to worry.
"The darkness has given me hope for a way out of this, too.
"I can't die, but everyone else can.
"Completing myself with Kingdom Heartless is just the beginning.
"I'll wait for Sora and Riku to die of old age before I fulfill the rest of my dream, but by the time they're both dead, I should have fed so much darkness into Kingdom Heartless without it remembering that I did so that the darkness within it indescribably surmounts the darkness that corrupted the true Kingdom Hearts during the First Keyblade War.
"That should be more than enough darkness to force the true Kingdom Hearts itself to break the laws of nature that originate from it, and that it itself is bound by.
"If Kingdom Hearts itself vanishes, all of the laws that govern reality will unravel, and the abjuration of the cosmos will be so terrible that it won't just imprison the realm of light in darkness.
"All hearts and existence will vanish along with Kingdom Hearts, murdering everyone in all of the realms of reality and reality itself.
"And with the laws of nature in disarray, I will be able to temporarily arrest many of the vanished hearts in The Final World before they finish their journey of disappearance, and hook them up from there to the true Kingdom Hearts, thus corrupting it as too many dark hearts did and killing the true Kingdom Hearts, which alone will survive the death of all hearts and the World.
"Total death through vanishing will then become as much of an intrinsic component of a heart as light or darkness, and one that hearts can achieve without even breaking the laws of the cosmos.
"When this happens, I will be able to trace my connections and heart and die at the same time as all other hearts conclude their deaths; as I should have at Data-Sora's and Mickey's hands, or by sundering Jiminy's first Journal's datascape and dying along with it."
"Hey, Xion, good morning."
"Good morning."
"Listen–"
"Sorry, I gotta' go."
"Roxas. How are you feeling today?"
"Same as always."
"I have an urgent mission especially for you and your Keyblade. There's a Heartless that's surfaced in Halloween Town. I was hoping you might exterminate it for us."
"S… Sure… Leave it to me!"
"Hey, whoa whoa whoa… Roxas, you really wanna' do that?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"It's just, lately you–"
"Shouldn't you already be out on your mission, Axel?"
"Yeah, I need to get ready, too. Let's catch up later!"
"Still no Heartless. Where is this thing hiding, anyway?"
"Wh–What!? How could it get this close to me without me noticing?"
"It's… it's too powerful. I've gotta' finish this now, before it wears me down any further. It's all or nothing…"
"Stop, both of you!"
"Xion!?"
"Roxas? Wh… What are you doing here? The Heartless I was fighting – it was you?"
"This mission was a setup."
"What?"
"It was rigged so you two would battle each other."
"Me and Xion? But…"
"They would do that?"
"Your mind's made up?"
"Why did the Keyblade choose me? I have to know.
"You can't turn on the Organization! You get on their bad side, and they'll destroy you!
"No one would miss me."
"That's not true… I would."
"Xion! Thank you."
"Roxas… I'm out of time. Even if I'm not ready… I have to make this choice. You have poured so many memories into me… given me so much… that I feel like I'm about to overflow. Look at me, Roxas. Who do you see? If you see somebody else's face… a boy's face… then that means I'm almost ready. This puppet will have to play her part. Roxas… This is him. It's Sora. You're next, Roxas. I have to make you a part of me, too. Don't you see? This is why I was created."
"Now you'll see!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Who are you… again? It's weird. I feel like I'm forgetting something really important."
"You'll be… better off now… Roxas.
"Am I… the one who did this to you?
"No… It was my choice… to go away now. Better that, than to do nothing… and let Xemnas have his way. I belong with Sora. And now, I am going back… to be with him. Roxas… I need you… to do me a favor. All those hearts that I've captured… Kingdom Hearts… Set them free."
"Kingdom Hearts… Free them?"
"It's too late… for me to undo my mistakes. But you can't let Xemnas… have Kingdom Hearts. You can't. Goodbye, Roxas. See you again. I'm glad… I got to meet you. Oh… and of course, Axel, too. You're both my best friends. Never forget. That's the truth."
"Roxas, don't be sad. I came from you and Sora. I am you… the same way that I am Sora. You'll forget me, but the memories themselves will never go away. Memories of you and me will always be together… forever, inside him."
"Roxas. All right. Fight fight fight. You really don't remember? It's me. You know, Axel."
"Axel?"
"Talk about blank with a capital 'B.' Man oh man, even the Dusks aren't gonna' crack this one."
"Wait a sec', tell me what's going on!"
"This town is his creation, right? Which means we don't have time for a Q and A. You're coming with me, conscious or not. Then you'll hear the story."
"Uh-oh."
"What's going on!?"
"Number Thirteen. Roxas. The Keyblade's chosen one."
"Okay, fine! You asked for it!"
"That's more like it!"
"Not bad, Roxas."
"So it was you."
"Roxas, this man speaks nonsense!"
"Roxas, don't let him deceive you!"
"Roxas!"
"Roxas!"
"Simply amazing, Roxas."
"Axel."
"You really do remember me this time? I'm so flattered. But you're too late!"
"Two!? Come here. I'm make it all stop."
"Roxas…"
"Axel…"
"Let's meet again in the next life."
"Yeah. I'll be waiting."
"Silly. Just because you have a next life…"
"It's no use!"
"Don't stop moving, or the darkness will overtake you!"
"Get goin'!"
"Why?"
"Don't ask. Just do it!"
"You okay?"
"I kidnapped Kairi, but she got away from me. After that, Saix caught her. He's a member of Organization Thirteen. Saix. Got it memorized? Now go save her!"
"Leave us alone!"
"I think I liked it better when they were on my side."
"Feeling a little… regret?"
"Nah… I can handle these punks. Watch this!"
"Whoa!"
"You're… fading away…"
"Well, that's what happens when you put your whole being into an attack. You know what I mean? Not that Nobodies actually have beings… right? Anyway, I digress. Go, find Kairi. Oh, almost forgot… Sorry for what I did to her."
"When we find her, you can tell her that yourself."
"Think I'll pass. My heart just wouldn't be in it, you know? Haven't got one."
"Axel, what were you trying to do?"
"I wanted to see Roxas. He… was the only one I liked… He made me feel… like I had a heart. It's kind of… funny… You make me feel… the same… Kairi's in the castle dungeon. Now go."
"Axel…"
Roxas couldn't even throw up now.
His insides couldn't move.
He couldn't breathe.
His blood couldn't pulse.
The heart that he did have couldn't beat.
It was happening again.
Almost before Roxas was aware that he'd decided to do it, he whirled Oathkeeper and Oblivion backwards through tears that he nearly couldn't perceive beyond and pointed them at his heart.
"You do not need to die!" he shouted.
"You're already darkness, as Terra was when Xehanort stole his body, and I'm both light and darkness!
"Your face isn't Sora's and your name isn't Data-Kairi!
"Your face is whatever you want it to be, and your name is Mare, after a dark lunar sea in a celestial body hovering in the blackness of space that can still reflect the light of other people as they see and remember that person!
"I know how Xehanort sent his heart into Terra's body, and if you don't stop talking and acting like this right now, I'll send my own heart into yours and your own body without taking control of your heart and body, giving into darkness itself and passing into the dark realm, or even leaving my mind as a Lingering Spirit in the Keyblade armor that I'm constructing!
"As Terra told me, hearts inside the hearts and bodies of others don't fall asleep under those conditions, so I'll be awake and able to be together with you as soon as I arrive in your heart, and that will never stop for a single instant, and because my heart will be part of yours, I'll be as immortal as you!
"I promise you, with all my heart!
"If we can't find a way to cure you of your immortality and you keep living and losing, I'll always be there with you to give you love and light!"
Mare's eyes flew wide and her mouth opened.
Xion's jaw dropped and her own eyes widened, and her face went deathly white.
Axel sent Flame Liberator away and strode with a furious expression to Roxas, no doubt intending to take Oathkeeper and Oblivion away from him.
Roxas gave him a glance that told him in no uncertain terms that, if he tried to seize Oathkeeper, or Oblivion, or both, he'd send his heart wholly into Mare's even if Mare didn't walk out of the darkness, rather than take the chance that Axel succeeded in taking Oathkeeper and Oblivion away.
Mare looked as though she wanted to say something, but she didn't appear to be able to figure out what to say.
Axel clenched his teeth so tightly that they appeared as though they would chip, and then he glared at Mare.
"He'll do it," Axel told Mare.
"He got his determination from Sora, and Xion, and Namine, and yours truly.
"None of us make promises without meaning them, so the same is true of him."
Tears brimmed in Mare's eyes, but they didn't fall.
"What about your promise to always bring Roxas, Xion, Sora, and Kairi back, then?" she questioned, but Roxas sagged slightly to hear a suppressed, disbelieving, terrified, desperate longing beneath the farthest depths of the hatred and bitterness in her tone.
"If Roxas does this, in order to keep your promise, you'll need to pull him out of me as Sora, Ven, and Aqua pulled Terra out of Xehanort's heart fragment."
"Then we'll find a way to enable Roxas' heart to fully, and not just partially like with Xehanort, dwell inside two pieces at once, so he can stay in your heart and stay in his body," Xion said, sounding as though she hated herself with everything that she was for saying this.
Roxas' stomach did heave then, and more of its insides felt like they were going to be rejected out of it, before they settled down.
Roxas wanted to look at Xion and Axel, but Mare needed him the most now.
He locked his gaze with her as he had with Elsa, to talk directly to her heart.
Mare, unlike Elsa, ripped her head to the side and broke his gaze.
"If you want to be that stupid, go ahead.
"Whether my being is fabricated and fraudulent like yours or not, I wasn't just born as a farcical existence with abilities that could enable me to become a puppet weapon and taught how to live as one.
"Even Xion, who was synthesized to siphon memories, murder Heartless to create a cosmic weapon of mass genocidal murder, and who ended up being able to siphon energy from the heart itself as well, was created to realize the lie that Luxu and Xemnas told the other Nobodies and enable them to return to hearts and home.
"Because Namine wasn't aware that data can have hearts, what she did when she fashioned me was much worse than even what Yozora, Luxu, Xehanort, Xemnas, Even, Ienzo, and Ansem the Wise did."
Mare's voice became a broken, keening wail, she clenched her hands, started to shake and shudder and tremble, and her tears fell free and cascaded down her face in hopeless, shattered trails.
"I was created to do nothing but teach Data-Sora and Data-Riku, semblances of the two people who my own fabricated memories recollect loving the most, and the real Sora through them, about hurt.
"Xion imbibes and wipes away memories and energy in order to fight for a happier future for you, Lea, and all Nobodies.
"I forged throngs of bugs to hurt Data-Sora, Data-Riku, and Jiminy's Journal's datascape and his and their memories inside of it.
"Then I siphoned their minds back into myself to improve my own capability to hurt Data-Sora, Data-Riku, and Jiminy's Journal's datascape so I would gain the capacity to not just take his mind, but to force them and the datascape of Jiminy's Journal and even his and its memories to vanish and die; not to fight for a happier future for them but just to hurt them, murder them, and erase all of their memories and all other memories in the Journal.
"And unlike Xion and Lea and Namine and Isa and you, I wasn't even meant to succeed in realizing my programming of leaving the Journal and opening a path to the material realm of light.
"Namine created me to murder and hurt Data-Sora and Data-Riku and other people, and their memories, as much as possible, and then die myself in the end at Data-Sora's, and perhaps Data-Riku's, hands.
"I transcended what Namine believed that I would become and, if Mickey had stayed out of it, I most likely would have actually been able to realize my fated role, murder Data-Sora and Data-Riku and their memories and the rest of Jiminy's datascape Journal and its memories, and survive myself and not die myself and gain a form of reality.
"But I still would have murdered and hurt Data-Sora and Data-Riku and Jiminy's Journal's datascape and all of their memories, and I still would have opened a keyhole to a fabricated reality.
"And then I would have gone after the Armored Ventus Nightmare anyway when Sora took the Mark of Mastery Exam while less prepared to carry hurt and thus much easier pickings for Luxu, Young Xehanort, and Xemnas; so he would have given up and fallen into darkness anyway and Ven would still have shielded him from it. I would have therefore replaced a destiny of eternal death where I died at the end myself with eternal loss and loneliness.
"Nor are Heartless even supposed to be capable of full awareness, unlike Nobodies and replicas.
"The five of you are special Nobodies and replicas, with qualities and traits that most Nobodies and replicas don't own.
"I'm an anathema abomination aberration to even Heartless and data.
"I am a puppet weapon itself.
"Anna, and Lucca Ashtear, who accompanied Xion and Lea here, believe that the deepest darkness is to be found in rejecting both light and darkness and not even believing in selfish happiness or pointless happiness through survival, but seeking merely an escape from hurt.
"I disagree.
"There's one last foundation of darkness that they refuse to see.
"The deepest darkness at the foundation of onyx night isn't to be found by seeking to escape hurt by fleeing from pain; but by escaping pain through making death and hurt minutely easier to run from by embracing it as much as you can with all your heart, not as a means of dreaming for love and warmth and home and happiness, but to flee from pain by taking hold of despair itself.
"Death and pain and despair are all that I can hook myself up to.
"Because there never were such things as links or ties or bonds or connections or trust or belief or wishes or faith or hope since before imaginary time never started, and there never will be even a single barest tattered thread of a blink or eclipse of them for as long endless space and unending dreamed of time never cease to unravel."
Roxas forced the tears away and shifted Oathkeeper roughly horizontally so Mare could touch it.
"Then take my heart into yours yourself, so you can dream of love and warmth and home and kindness yourself, and create a bright tomorrow rather than one of pain.
"And do it in the most hurtful and painful way that you can think of doing it.
"Don't just take it out of my body, do it slowly, so I lose one finger after another, one toe after another, one hand after another, one foot after another, one arm after another, one leg after another, my brain and then my head, my arms and then my heart, and I feel the physical pain of all of it happening.
"Whatever it takes for me to carry your pain and hurt."
Mare's jaw went slack, and her eyes stared at him sightlessly. She began shaking and shuddering and trembling so hard now that it appeared as though she was about to fragment into innumerable microscopic grains of black glass sand, she didn't run.
Xion started shuddering and trembling herself now, violently, and broken tears of her own spilled down a face that was so pale it was as though it was transparent.
Axel shook and trembled, though none of it violently, and his own face was deathly white now.
Roxas told them both with a look that if they tried to stop him, he'd put up an orange neon Keyblade prison around himself and Mare.
Then Roxas attempted to meet Mare's gaze, but, this time appearing as though it took everything that she could summon to wrest her eyes and face and head from his, she twisted it away.
Roxas walked up to her as carefully and non threateningly as possible.
He reached her and placed Oathkeeper beneath and against one of her hands, and he reached up and clasped that hand in the process.
She recoiled violently as though she'd been struck, but she didn't pull her hand free of his grasp, or take it off of Oathkeeper.
"In your hand, take this key," Roxas began.
Mare choked down a sob, and her legs started shaking and shuddering and trembling so hard it appeared as though she was about to fall to her knees, so Roxas gripped her hand tightly, though not in a restraining way, in the event that he needed to hold her up.
"So long as you have the makings, then through this simple act of taking… its wielder you shall one day be.
"And you will find me, friend – no ocean will contain you then.
"No more borders around, or below, or above, so long as you champion the ones you love."
Roxas experienced a surge of energy shooting out from his heart in the direction of Mare's that temporarily robbed him of breath.
As soon as it was back, though, he squeezed Mare's hand gently, but tightly and warmly and comfortingly and encouragingly.
Then he curled her fingers gently around Oathkeeper and released it, and her hand.
"Now you can strive for, and fight for, something other than death and hurt and pain.
"But if that's still what you dream of, and believe in, go ahead and devour my heart, as painfully as you need to for me to carry your hurt and give you what love and warmth and home and sanctuary and kindness and happiness and laughter that I can."
Roxas dismissed Oblivion in spiraling black, slackened out of a battle posture, and waited, though he knew better than to try to meet Mare's eyes for a third time.
Mare didn't say anything for a number of seconds.
"There's only one way that I won't do it," she spoke, voice ruined and shattered and ravaged and tear broken and cracked and so hopelessly desperate that Roxas' insides twisted so sickeningly that he couldn't believe that he wasn't going to asphyxiate.
But that Mare had a condition meant that he'd reached her.
He hadn't caused, or let another, Xion or Axel or Namine or Isa or Elsa happen.
Something wrenched loose inside him, and he could barely stand on his own violently shaking and shuddering and trembling legs and feet and knees and body now, or see Mare once again through his own blinding tears.
"Can you please name it?" Roxas asked gently.
"If it looks like you won't be able to find another way to undo my immortality and give me a reality that isn't just farcical and something that Namine created, I want you to promise me, right here, and right now, that you won't force me to fight you when I return to my original plans for freeing myself from those nightmares.
"I won't ask you not to fight me at all, but I at least want your promise that you'll let me walk away without needing to murder or hurt you, or Xion or Lea or Isa or Vanitas or Sora or Riku or," Mare's voice briefly became indecipherably fathomlessly more bitter and brimming with hate, "Namine," the new bitterness and hatred was gone, "or anyone else, at the actual time that I abandon you and betray you, and Xion and Lea and Isa and Isa and Vanitas and Sora and Riku and," this time Mare's voice was just a mask, "Namine," the mask was gone, "and the others.
"I don't care how hard that we fight with each other and one another afterwards, as long as I don't need to murder or hurt any of you if I do need to abandon you and betray you to have a better chance at taking hold of salvation."
Roxas reacted without the tiniest delay.
He utterly and fully refused to attempt to kill, or hurt, anyone for crimes that he, she, or it hadn't yet performed.
Eraqus had done that with Xehanort, and he had raced at Xehanort to cut him down from the back as he had; and Xion and Axel and Namine and Isa and Sora and Riku and countless other people and hearts and worlds and realms had all paid the price.
And if they let Mare walk away, as Eraqus hadn't with Xehanort, maybe that would be enough to reach Mare and encourage her not to give up once more.
Even if it wasn't, it might not be that hard to track a darkness as profound as Mare's if trying to convince her not to give up indefinitely didn't work, so they could very well let her walk away and then be waiting for her, and block her the first time she tried to kill or harm anyone, or a world or realm.
It was very far from certain that they could intercept Mare if they needed to let her walk away.
But Roxas absolutely and utterly and totally and completely refused to not endeavor with all his heart to bring Mare into a home and sanctuary of love and light and trust and hope and care and safety because of sins that she hadn't yet committed.
Roxas turned to look at Xion, Axel, and Vanitas.
Vanitas looked away, but Xion and Axel, both of their faces tear streaked now, nodded to tell Roxas that they were with him.
"If you try to hurt Mare at all, you'll need to do to me what I offered to let Mare to do me to enable it to happen," Roxas warned him.
Vanitas didn't answer, but Roxas knew that he'd made his feelings and thoughts clear.
Roxas turned back to face Mare.
"I promise you this as well, with all my heart."
Mare gave off a broken wail almost totally forsaken of all hope, but there was a fully and wholly and utterly and totally and absolutely and completely disbelieving desperate hope in it now.
"Then I, as Mare,"
Roxas' legs and knees almost gave out once again that she'd accepted the name that he'd given her.
"want to go home with you and Xion and Lea, so I can actually dream.
"Of you.
"And Xion, and Lea, and Isa, and Vanitas, and Sora, and Riku."
Oathkeeper vanished from Mare's hand in coiling pearl.
Mare's body rippled and shifted and altered in color until her hair was arranged the same as Xion's and the color of a dark lunar sea, she had a human form and skin and a female body the same age as Xion's, she was wearing a gray Organization Thirteen coat with the hood down, and her eyes were a dark, deep blue many shades darker than Xion's.
Then her legs gave out and she fell forwards with a broken, high-pitched wail, and Roxas caught her in his arms.
Xion and Axel were at his side then, their own Keyblades gone and tears streaking Axel's face now in addition to Xion's, and Roxas suppressed the urge to brace for Xion and Axel to touch him, terrified and horrified that Mare would believe that meant he was revolted by her, and he gave them both a look that told them that he was okay with them touching him for now.
One of Xion's arms and hands was around Roxas' midsection right away, and one of Axel's arms and hands was around his shoulders, and Xion's and Axel's other two arms and hands were around Mare's back and rubbing it with hopefully soothing and comforting, warm, firm strokes.
Roxas kept one of his own arms around Mare, and he began to rub Mare's back with his other hand in similarly hopefully comforting and soothing, firm, warm circles.
"I'll buy you as much sea-salt icing on the cake to celebrate you gaining the ability to cherish and protect people, and you being blessed with the bequeathing ceremony, and your success at becoming a Keyblade wielder, at the first opportunity," Axel told Mare softly, through a tear choked voice of his own.
"And I'll introduce you to Isa, Olette, Pence, and Hayner," Xion spoke to Mare, her tone broken and cracked and a mixture of desperate despair and hope itself.
"They'll love you, and welcome you home sweet home to warmth and hearth and sanctuary, as much as we do, and are."
"With all of that kept close and secure in the foundations of your heart, and in the furthest reaches of your mind," Roxas said, keeping as much of his own desperation and despair and agony and hopelessness as he could out of his voice, and trying to cause it to be as loving and welcoming and warm and kind as possible as well, "Welcome home sweet home."
.
"Stand aside, ser! You are defeated! Surrender the Princess, and no more blood must needs be spilt!"-Anonymous Knight
"Do you so enjoy the taste of lies? Your orders are to see the Princess dead! And once I've watched you feed the falls her blood, I'm to believe you'd let me live, a witness to your crime?"-Delita Heiral
"What foolishness is this? We came to save the Princess, not to kill her! What could we possibly gain by Lady Ovelia's death? We wish only to see her freed from the Black Lion's claws!"-Anonymous Knight
"Your Highness!"-Agrias Oaks
"Agrias!"-Princess Ovelia Atkascha
"Hmm. It seems we are no longer alone. Gaffgarion! Kill them all!"-Anonymous Knight
"A change of plans… but a contract is a contract, after all!"-Goffard Gaffgarion
"You would now betray us!?"-Agrias Oaks
"Betray you? You have a viper's tongue, milady. I betray no one. I am in the Order's employ, and they are of it. My task was to see the Princess safely abducted. And theirs, to see the one responsible silenced."-Goffard Gaffgarion
"You mean to say the kidnapping was a ruse?"-Agrias Oaks
"The Princess is an obstacle to the throne. So long as she lives, the threat remains that someone could assert her claim above Prince Orinus'. Two heirs are one too many!"-Goffard Gaffgarion
"If her death is certain, then let it least not be in vain. Kill her if you must, but let it be held she was taken by Goltanna's men. Do that, and the stroke that fells a problem Princess at once brings down a rival Lion. That was no doubt Larg's plan all along… Or was it his? Such a plot has more the feel of Dycedarg's thinking. Would you not agree, Ramza?"-Delita Heiral
"That one has the right of it, Ramza. Come, let us earn our pay!"-Goffard Gaffgarion
"No… not again. I will not watch as sacrifices are made of the weak and innocent. She will not be another Tietra! Delita! You live!"-Ramza Beoulve
"So I do. And you, ever your Lord brothers' faithful hound?"-Delita Heiral
"Are you mad? I knew naught of any of this! What of you, Delita? You now play party to their plot?"-Ramza Beoulve
"Surely you jape! I came to rescue the Princess! I would not see her made a tool for others to use to their own ends!"-Delita Heiral
"If you would lie, boy, at least lie well! You are no knight errant! You were paid to take the Princess. Do not play the fool with me! Name the man who bought your sword!"-Goffard Gaffgarion
"I sell my sword to no one! Do not count me among your lot!"-Delita Heiral
"Spare me the lecture, I ask for a name! You'd have me believe some bright-eyed pup caught wind of this plan and rescued the Princess in the name of justice!? Who gives you your orders? Who told you of this plot!?"-Goffard Gaffgarion
"That is not for you to know!"-Delita Heiral
"Tell me, ser – are you friend or foe?"-Princess Ovelia Atkascha
"I am a human being, no different from you."-Delita Heiral
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS: THE WAR OF THE LIONS