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CHAPTER 29:
KEYSTONE OF THE COSMOS
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Author's Notes: The Tracks for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'The Jaws Of Ice,' from the XENOGEARS Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and then 'Climax Coming From the Abyss,' from the VALKYRIE PROFILE 2: Original Soundtrack, Volume Two ~ Silmeria Side, Disc Two; and then 'Battle With the Four Fiends,' from FINAL FANTASY IV; and then 'Inner Space,' from the XENOSAGA Episode One Original Soundtrack, Disc Two. The first, second, and fourth composition can be found on KINGDOM HEARTS Insider, and the third composition can be found on Zophar's Domain with the name, 'The Dreadful Fight.'
Pete sneered, unimpressed, at the red shirted and green shirted mice glaring up at him.
"Sorry, but I don't play that," Pete informed Bernard and Bianca.
"The tree hugger isn't the bait, you two are."
Bernard's eyes widened, and he ran in front of the female mouse, but Pete simply bent and brought one hand forward, palm cupped upwards, and he sent a clear sphere of energy with golden dancing and tumbling balls of coherent light inside rolling at the two mice.
Before they could do more than shift, it struck them, and the balls of gold extended outwards like grasping talons, one each encasing the two mice and dragging them inside the globe.
Yellow electricity coursed among and between all of the golden balls, and Bianca and Bernard screamed, their eyes rolled up in their heads, and they slumped, unconscious.
"I suppose you were right," Ursula spoke from behind Pete and to his right.
"They're not royalty, but Rescuers, but they do react the same way that Mickey and Minnie do to people in peril.
"They even appear to have a similar relationship, though I can't tell if they're husband and wife, betrothed, or merely lovers."
"Give me some credit, squiddie," Pete snorted in angry irritation, and he ignored how Ursula stiffened and bristled at the insult.
"I knew that they were lovers, too; though I don't think they're married.
"That's why I convinced Maleficent to hire poach punk.
"The closer these two rats resemble His and Her Majesties, the more that they'll be willing to give us the data in exchange for their safety.
"All that's left is to send them on their collision course with the Castle of Dreams and the kitty of Tremaine's that Queen Cinderella and King Charming are still trying to investigate, and wait for boat boy and musketeer girl to keep them from landing there to defend the world order.
"Then the world data will be in our hands."
Pete rubbed his hands together eagerly.
And, when it was, he'd have at last forced Mickey and Minnie to repay him for all of the times that they'd ruined his prospects and humiliated him.
After that, he'd make Sora, Donald, Goofy, Data-Sora, Data-Kairi, and Vanitas do the same thing.
"Revenge is a dish best served cold, not hot," Ursula reminded Pete.
Pete rolled his eyes.
"Sure it is.
"A trident through the stomach and two Keyblades in the teeth are all of the evidence that you need to prove that one."
"Why is it, then, that I was able to successfully distracted the two Keyblade wielders long enough to fulfill my end of the bargain with Young Xehanort, while you couldn't even steal a single artifact from one Keyblade wielder years before they'd even placed it under guard?"
Blinding fury and rage consumed Pete, and he clenched his teeth tightly and stomped in a rapid walk in Ursula's direction.
"Restrain yourself, if you would," Hans' voice cut in.
Pete snarled and turned to stalk in a fast charge at Hans as opposed to Ursula, but then a large wing of ebony dark obsidian extended out from where Chernabog was resting in his volcanic nest in Monstro's enlarged mouth and shielded both Hans and Ursula.
Pete stiffened, and for several seconds he tried to figure out if he'd been wrong about how terribly deadly the recompleted Chernabog was.
"That is quite enough, all four of you," Maleficent interrupted.
Pete sighed heavily and he deflated, as Maleficent strode calmly over in their direction from where she'd finished giving Solego and Mim their new missions.
Pete looked around to see if Robin, Narissa, Prospector, Turbo, Cheshire Cat, Gothel, and Frollo were paying any attention to what had just happened; but Robin was deep in a discussion with the other six regular members of Summation Organization Thirteen.
"Solego has confirmed that Luxu has begun to scry on us, so it's time for you, Chernabog, to take your position to ambush him and wait for Robin, Solego, and Narissa to join you at their positions."
Chernabog retracted his wing, curved them both around him as though they were parts of a cape, and an eruption of volcano light green flames rose around him. Then he collapsed inwards into it from the front and both sides and the back as though cascading into a singularity and it, and the volcanic crater itself, faded from sight.
"Mim informed me that the guardians have begun to move, so Ursula and Hans need to take their own places themselves.
"Have you had any success in discovering whether Data-Kairi is scrying on us herself, or whether Young Xehanort and Terra-Xehanort are still alive, and scrying on us themselves?"
"From what I can tell, Data-Kairi is cooperating with the guardians and Elsa and Anna now, and she's resting at Twilight Town with everyone but Elsa and Anna."
Hans' face became unreadable.
"I still can't tell if Young Xehanort and Terra-Xehanort survived.
"Do you think that one or both of them could be en route already, and not scrying on us to see if we look like we're strutting to their strings?"
"It's possible, but I have my doubts," Maleficent answered. "If Terra-Xehanort is alive, he won't want his heart fragment form to spend time in the vicinity of Chernabog until it becomes completely necessary."
Pete clenched both of his hands tightly as he realized that he should have thought of that.
What would it take for him to learn how to think as many steps ahead as Maleficent, Christopher, Hans, and Ursula?
"But, in the end, I don't particularly care if one or both of the Xehanorts still exist, or whether the Cheshire Cat and Turbo can take them captive.
"As long as Luxu is in our clutches by the end of this battle, I will be satisfied."
"And if you're wrong, and the intelligence that Rothard learned wasn't as planted as Adult Vanitas' was, and this is a double blind for the Foretellers to capture me?" Pete challenged, the mixture of rage and fear tumbling inside him once again.
Maleficent frowned.
"If you find your old prison in the Ocean Between a more appealing alternative than taking that risk, you may inform me so at any time," she said warningly.
Pete suppressed another surge of blinding fury.
"I'm not even certain that what Runeard learned about the Princesses, Sora, and Riku was planted," Maleficent continued.
"From what Runeard has told us, the Foretellers are far too assured in their ability to anticipate and pull every string imaginable. It's as possible that they didn't predict that Runeard would betray them as it's likely that he is correct, and they aren't aware of the strategy that it's obvious to us that the guardians are using to parry them. Once Hans and Ursula play their part in luring Luxu into our snare, they'll know that Runeard has betrayed them, but as things stand, Luxu's current intentions might be to arrive after we have engaged the guardians long enough for Sora to gain his best evidence yet at how unusually prodigious he is with the Keyblade, and inform Sora why on his own.
"All of what Runeard learned might have been knowledge that they didn't intend for him to uncover."
The disbelief returned.
"You were right about the Books of Prophecies, but this still sounds like hocus pocus," Pete said. "If Sora isn't a regular person, then he's a Heartless or a Dream Eater. Yeah, they were Princesses of Heart, but even though Sora did–"
"You know as well as I that no regular person can control the powers of Kingdom Hearts well enough to call forth its primeval light," Maleficent cut him off reprovingly.
"Now that we know, it's so apparent what Kairi transfigured him into when she gave him a new body that I am severely disappointed with myself for not realizing this on my own, as soon as I learned of it.
"Chernabog sifted the memories in the world heart of the Land of Departure.
"According to him, Mickey told Riku during Riku's ascent through Castle Oblivion that it wasn't even the light of Ansem's Kingdom Hearts that Sora summoned, but the light of the true Kingdom Hearts."
Pete started violently.
That did remove most of his doubt.
But not all of it.
"Luxu wants Sora to finish up the Note Blade, though, and you told us that one of the central reasons that Yozora is forging it is to create a Keyblade that can entirely control the primitive light, and keep darkness from corroding it if it's harnessed for darkness," Pete reminded Maleficent.
"I still have far too hard a time believing that they q–"
"I have a theory about why they do," Maleficent interrupted Pete, with slight irritation.
She looked at Ursula and Hans.
"But before I elaborate to Pete, you two need to depart.
"Whether Luxu means for the two of you to inform Sora with your own forked tongues, or Luxu meant to do so himself, in order for our net to snare Luxu, Sora must learn from the two of you who and what he became when he cast the finished Keyblade of Hearts, completed and unlocked the Final Keyhole, opened the Door to Darkness to Ansem's artificial Kingdom Hearts, and he was then reborn as a Heartless and then reincarnated a second time by Kairi."
Ursula nodded, and Hans saluted.
A smug, triumphant, vicious, satisfied smirk came to Ursula's face.
"You have but to ask," she spoke back.
"You have no idea how long I've awaited this."
Sora rounded another bend to see the cave like corridor of violet crystal continuing to stretch away from him, to meet a single intersecting corridor to the left a good distance away.
He continued running, and then slid to a halt and positioned his Keyblade as eight black clouds exploded in the air in front of him and three Defenders and five Earth Cores appeared from within them, and the former three Heartless standing on the ground while the five Earth Cores remained partially within it.
Or rather, they had resided there, because Riku leveled Braveheart within seconds and unleashed another series of partially purple and green-yellow comet torrents amidst the spiraling meteors of Black Flame's Embrace at the Earth Cores, and they burst into dark dust.
Kairi and Goofy raced into the middle of the Defenders and spun into a series of slashes and slices with Save the King Plus and Destiny's Embrace, distracting the Defenders long enough for Donald to send a sheet of crackling yellowish white Thundaja down on them from above, and they exploded themselves.
"Is it just me, or are we too good for most Heartless now?" Donald remarked derisively to the dead Heartless, and the rest of them.
Sora grinned in genuine triumph.
"Taking into account how Riku's and my Ultima Buster literally separated the Behemoth's horn, and the Behemoth itself, into two pieces, in a single strike, I'd argue that we're too good for almost any Heartless," Sora replied.
"If there are any other Behemoths here, we're trying that on the body next time, and seeing if we can now defeat Behemoths without even wrecking their brains."
"Or we'll fly a Gummi ship right up to an ordinary space voyaging Heartless and see how well they can take an Ultima Buster," Riku spoke with assured confidence.
"We're most likely not yet experienced enough to be able to beat Hunter Xes and Hunters with our Keyblades and other weapons, but if we want to keep having fun challenges thrashing Heartless, we'll most likely need to figure out ways to breathe in the Ocean Between and start picking fights Omega Weapons and Colossus Pyramids."
"I don't suppose you're hiding a Dark Inferno or Dustflier around here anywhere, do you, Maleficent!?" Kairi called in the direction of Monstro's mouth, their first target for locating Maleficent and the rest of Summation Organization Thirteen.
But, whatever spell or spells Maleficent and her cohorts had cast to alter Monstro into a living traveling space station, she'd increased Monstro's size and altered his innards enough that Sora didn't even have much reason to believe that Monstro's mouth was still one expansive space.
Maleficent's and her cohorts' version of the Round Room, or the Gray Area, could be anywhere, not even the organs where Sora and Riku had battled the two Parasite Cages or the Char Clawbster, and that assumed that more than one dark seeker was in the same location in the first place.
"We might need to find out," Riku answered.
"The further we travel, the more it looks like we might need to reveal our presence and convince Maleficent to come to us."
"We're not giving up on doing this the old-fashioned way yet," Sora said, and he broke into another rapid trot.
When they were nearly at the intersection, more black popped, and three Darkball appeared in front of, and above, where Donald was standing.
Almost before he was aware that he'd decided to move, Sora was sprinting in front of them so fast that he almost lost all coordination and tripped to fall hard, and he launched Childhood's Laughter was into a series of cuts so quickly that most of the strikes left Sora overextended, even though he knew that he was slashing with them fast enough to keep the Darkballs on the defensive.
The last Darkball detonated into dark mist, and Sora landed, slightly winded.
"You didn't just make a fool of yourself because you're scared that I'll die, too," Donald said warningly.
Sora ignored Kairi's, Riku's, and Goofy's concerned looks, and met Donald's angry glare.
"They're Darkballs," Sora defended himself.
"I can afford to be careless."
"Who says that I want you overly taking care of me?" Donald snarled.
Sora understood what Donald meant, and he ached everywhere once again.
He pushed it away.
"All right, I'm sorry," he said.
"We're all a lot tougher than Jiminy," Riku said.
"We're not so easily slain."
"And I'm getting an idea how I prevented you from fully fading," Kairi spoke.
"Even if any of us do die, unless I'm not paying attention and one or more of you die too fast for me to focus on my faith in you, I should be able to ensure they, and you, can put yourselves back together in short order."
Sora gave Riku and Kairi grateful smiles, but he didn't say that they all knew that they were more likely to lose their hearts if a Heartless dealt them a fatal wound than partially die; that Kairi hadn't said anything about having figured out more about how to intentionally restore them if they became Heartless meant that she wasn't making as much, if any, headway understanding how to do that; and that it was very likely that Kairi couldn't preserve herself the same way and, if they were all thrown into The Final World and delayed from leaving it by needing to patch themselves up, Kairi would be left to fend for herself.
But Riku did have a point about how Kairi, he, Goofy, and Donald were a much tougher than Jiminy.
Sora had forgotten about that.
A small amount of the tension inside him lessened, and Sora continued on his way.
No Heartless, or regular denizens of darkness, ambushed them at the intersection, and there was a large hole in the ceiling above where the passage widened greatly a little ways ahead, so Sora decided to see what was up there before asking for advice about which way to travel now.
As soon as he was below it, however, ebony exploded, and seven Novashadows appeared in crouching, solid positions around them.
Sora's eyes flew wide as Riku surged forward into a magenta adumbrated Flowmotion while skidding along the floor, to flip forwards onto his left hand and then pivot to spin into a cyclone of stormy pink with Braveheart lashing far outside of its circumference while encased in the same magenta.
The Novashadows dispersed into drops of ink.
A larger black cloud detonated inside the hole above them and a little ways up, revealing a giant bird Heartless with a bone's head and a large treasure chest composing part of its beak that Sora recognized from his visions of Roxas' memories as a Ruler of the Sky, and a second large black cloud exploded on the ground below it to release a partially dark gray, gold, and blue Heartless that Sora recalled the same way was a Land Armor.
Kairi led Goofy in the direction of the Land Armor as soon as it appeared, and the two ran around its two sides to repeatedly chop into its back.
Sora raised Childhood's Laughter, Riku raised Braveheart, and they formed their phantasm of Ultima Buster once more out of Nightmare's End and Mirage Split, raised it into the air in front of the Ruler of the Sky as it dove down at them, and slashed downwards.
The Ultima Buster tore it into two approximate halves in bright flickering yellow shades of fire that then became dark fog, and continued on its path to cleave into the Land Armor.
The thickness and toughness of the Ruler of the Sky's armored body absorbed too much kinetic energy for the Ultima Buster to do the same thing to the Land Armor, but it still staggered back and fell on its posterior, and a simple Blizzard chunk from Donald to its face turned it into night black smoke as well.
Two more clouds erupted, revealing two Angel Stars, but Sora and Kairi were upon on each, slicing them to shreds before they had a chance to fold their wings in front of them and defend themselves.
"You have got to teach me how to perform an Ultima Buster with each of you," Kairi said.
"And an Ultima Engine triple tech with both of you, as well."
"We'll be glad to," Sora assured her.
Kairi grinned.
"Which way?" Donald queried.
Sora considered, and then he started slightly as he realized something.
"You discovered that we're inside an altered Monstro with your darkness smell, right?" Sora asked Riku.
"Indeed," Riku confirmed.
"Then, rather than search for Maleficent and her thugs with it by searching for stronger, smaller darkness, can you sense where Monstro's predator's darkness is being pushed back by anything?"
A grin came to Riku's mouth, and his perception turned inward.
After a few seconds, he spoke, "I can smell two darknesses down the passage to our left."
He winced as though recalling something unpleasant.
"I can't tell who they both are, but one of them is Ursula."
Sora clenched his teeth.
With the exception of Christopher and Prospector, due to what her interference at the beginning of the Mark of Mastery Exam had ended up doing to Riku and everyone else, and Sora himself, Ursula was one of the last dark seekers who he wanted to run into first.
Sora had known, however, that, if Maleficent had discovered that they were here and she was a member of Summation Organization Thirteen, that made her one of the dark wielders who Maleficent was most likely to deploy against them.
That most likely meant that the second wielder of darkness was Christopher, Prospector, or Hans.
Sora hoped that it was Hans.
Even with what Hans had done to Anna and Elsa, and even though his presence with Ursula would very likely mean that they were going to try to ramble their ears off as Luxu and Christopher had, Hans would be less agonizing to face off against than Christopher or Prospector.
If it was Hans, though, two silvery tongues were two too better.
Forked tongues worked both ways.
The more that they flitted, the more that they were prone to slipping.
"Should we charge in Keyblades blazing, or approach cautiously?" Goofy queried.
"I recommend that we take the careful approach," Kairi answered.
"We can't be sure that Maleficent didn't know that we'd arrived as soon as we did, and she hasn't had a lot of time to set up a trap in that chamber."
"I agree," Donald replied.
"Then we wing it, not spring it," Sora said.
He pushed aside his unease at facing Ursula, and whoever else was waiting for them, and led their way into the corridor.
An opaque door of jagged crystal with the Emblem Heartless symbol emblazoned on it waited a long distance down it.
Riku walked to Sora's side. Kairi positioned herself behind Sora, currently the weakest link on their front line, while Goofy positioned himself behind Riku, the stronger, to balance out their back line. Donald walked into the middle of all four of them, where he would be the best protected so he could cast spells without interruption.
Then Sora stepped forward into an alert walk towards the door, and Riku began moving right after Sora did.
No Heartless interrupted their journey down this cave passage, and when they reached the door, something clicked and it slid into the ceiling of the doorway without Riku or Sora unlocking it, so Kairi must have done so with Destiny's Embrace.
Wasting no time, Sora led the way in, with Riku at his side.
Sora sighed in relief to see the familiar finery wearing figure of Hans standing in the circular cavern with the same composition as what they'd seen of the new Monstro so far, on a circular platform of smooth, very dark gray crystal, to the right of and slightly behind Ursula, who was standing on all of her tentacles at the center.
For the first time since his return, things had taken a positive turn.
Kairi took Sora's other side, Goofy reinforced her on her left, and Donald took Riku's right.
"Did Flotsam and Jetsam decline to join this party, or did Monstro turn them into chew toys?" Sora questioned mildly.
Ursula bared her teeth in an unpleasant part grimace, part smile.
"As soon as I returned myself from the realm of darkness for the second time, I went looking for them," Ursula revealed. "But, though they survived again due to their own darkness enhancements, Triton has them under heavy guard.
"I was considering who I wanted to take revenge on first that time around, as I didn't have the option of going after all three of my largest sources of ire at once then, as Triton had at last fully dispensed with his pompous blindness, Ariel was now a permanent human and living in another Kingdom, and you had returned home.
"But then Young Xehanort spoke to me, and he told me what his future self had in mind for you and Riku during the Mark of Mastery Exam, and that, due to the same abilities that I'd utilized to cross back from the realm of darkness on my own twice, he could send me into the past after you and I could make that happen even if I lost again.
"So I decided to risk the humiliation of a third defeat, as you were the easiest target, and the rest, as they say, is the rewritten history."
Sora let the worry that had flooded him as soon as he'd discovered, in The Caribbean, that he could Heartbind to Ariel in her mermaid form, through.
"Did you do anything to Ariel or Triton again?"
"After I returned home for the third time, I made a likewise third effort to trick Ariel, this time by pretending that I'd reformed, as I knew that even a contract almost certainly wouldn't be enough to trick Ariel into trusting me after I'd proven false twice."
Ursula snarled with savage fury.
"But she didn't just refuse, she'd assumed that I'd restore myself again and she had been waiting for me to show myself to her again.
"Triton had left her with a magical conch shell that she could use to contact her father if I spoke to Ariel once again, and Ariel carried it with her in her pocket all the time.
"As soon as she saw me, she stuck her fingers in it in a given sequence, and Triton warped before me in a floating bubble of water and imprisoned me in a cage of true, contained bars of lightning.
"I was tried for high treason against the Septet Ocean, and attempted assassination of Prince Eric in the Kingdom of the Seashore, before a joint trial that both Triton and Eric's father presided over, and both Ariel and Eric testified at, and I was sentenced to imprisonment for life and locked in the Dark Margin by Triton's trident, so I couldn't save myself from the realm of darkness yet once more.
"Anti-Aqua had different ideas about that, though, and then Maleficent found me and convinced me to reestablish our alliance."
Kairi winced.
"I'd be more concerned about the Anti-Aqua that you created at the nexus of your Demon Tide in the Keyblade Graveyard," Ursula informed Kairi smugly.
"Sora defeated it when he resurrected you before he crossed through the tear, and that wasn't undone as the rest of space time at that location was when Sora rewrote it."
Kairi's face became neutral.
But this sounded like as good a place as any to try to provoke Ursula's, or Hans', tongue, or both of their tongues, into ceasing to ramble, and let things slip through what they did or didn't say, or they did and didn't.
"We have a Dream Eater of our own who can tell us a lot about what I did to Kairi's fourth Demon Tide," Sora responded evenly.
"But if Young Xehanort told you what he wanted to exploit the Mark of Mastery Exam for, I take it that you know better about that than we do."
Hans laughed a single, harsh bark.
"What, precisely, do you believe that a natural being who loses his, her, or its heart without becoming a Heartless is?"
But Sora didn't let that fill him with any relief, even though he wanted to kick himself violently for having overlooked this.
"So I've just been a Dream Eater from the instant that I almost became darkness itself," Riku said back, no relief of his own in his voice.
"But Xehanort's Heartless didn't know this, because he hadn't met Chirithy, so he didn't know that Dream Eaters can be born outside of the Sleeping Worlds."
"You're not a Dream Eater," Ursula corrected Riku with arrogantly condescending triumph.
"You're the dreamed for Dream Eater.
"One of the largest reasons that Yozora conceived the Dream Eaters was to enable you to fulfill your destiny."
Riku went deathly pale.
Everything that was Sora shrieked and writhed for him to hold Riku's hand or shoulder, or touch his back, but he couldn't afford to lower his guard.
But this meant that Riku was no different than Kairi and Sora himself.
Countless people had died over millennia to enable Riku to achieve his fate.
"Kairi and I are both here with you," Sora told Riku.
"We both still love you ourselves, and Kairi receives pain and transforms it into light, while I carry people's hurt for them."
"I don't doubt that," Riku answered.
"And death and pain isn't a question of numbers.
"This is just more of what I've already done, and for a lot longer."
Sora's insides twisted, and his stomach heaved with sickening horror and terror.
Even after what he'd heard, Riku didn't sound that disturbed.
Kairi summoning another mammoth Demon Tide and revealing that there was a part of her that might hate Riku, Riku abusing the power of waking to restore the hearts of the people of Arendelle, Jiminy's death, Data-Kairi telling Sora what had happened in Castle Oblivion, the recognition that Riku might be a Heartless or Nobody or both rejoined with Riku undergoing recompletion, and now this.
No matter how terrible the event was that happened, Riku took it as though it was no more than an everyday, ordinary adversity.
In uncountable ways, how Riku was talking and acting was fathomlessly incomparably worse than the husk of a shell that Kairi had become.
Sora had believed that, as terribly as it had wounded Riku, he'd at least taken Sora's death through disappearance relatively better than Kairi had.
But Riku's continual refusal to treat hardship, no matter how agonizing, as anything more than an average day to day difficulty was so much more terrifying and horrifying than how horribly Kairi had fallen apart that it was like measuring a microorganism against one of the most enormous space voyaging Heartless who Sora had come across during his third quest on Radical Dreamers, Unstolen Jewel.
What had he done to Riku?
"In the end, no matter how bright the light is, the onyx black night will always devour all colors."
But if Sora even worried about this, he might ruin one of his last opportunities to give Riku back at least a small amount of the laughter and joy that Sora could now see that he might have stolen from Riku inconceivably unimaginably more than he'd stolen it from Kairi.
"Assuming that we can trust what you're telling us, what I am and how many people died or suffered for me is partially beside the point at the time being," Riku went on.
"Furthermore, whether or not I've had too much faith in Sora, both he and Kairi are bearing this weight, and that means that I was wrong about how he'll be able to cope with what I learned at Gaes."
Sora pushed his emotions away, ready to carry this, too.
"So that gives me the liberty to remind you that, whether or not you know this yourselves, I'm already aware that Kingdom Hearts itself, and thus all of the cosmos and history that we know, were born of uncountable death and torment."
"In the end, no matter how bright the light is, the onyx black night will always devour all colors."
Sora's eyes flew wide, and his heart couldn't beat for a few seconds, but he knew better than to ask Riku for details about something terrible that he'd gone through after what Ursula and Hans had just claimed about Riku.
Goofy jolted violently, and Donald's beak dropped open wide, but Kairi just paled a lot without her eyes even widening, so that meant that she must have learned about this on Olympus.
But, as Kairi had said that Platina had taught her, how you were created didn't matter as long as you were yourself.
Whether Christopher was right about black devouring colors, or whether the brightest light always repelled the bottom of darkness, Kingdom Hearts was still the most incandescent of all lights.
Ursula just smirked condescendingly at seeing that they were bothered about this, while Hans rolled his eyes derisively.
They themselves had already found out.
"What about Sora?" Riku asked.
"Is he the same?
"When Kairi restored Sora, did she turn him into a Dream Eater himself then, or give him a new body, or is he still a Heartless?
"If it's either of the former, what happened to his Heartless?"
"What happened to his Heartless is our concern, and ours alone," Hans replied.
"If you want to find out, I advise you to ask Data-Kairi, or Mare, as Roxas has now named her."
Even though Hans might be lying, Sora let himself sag then, for Mare's and Roxas' sake.
Mare needed a friend who loved her as much as the Nobodies, and Riku Replica and Xion, had.
Whether this meant that his Heartless was still a different person than him, and what Maleficent's purpose for him was, and how it connected to her objective with Oathkeeper, paled in comparison to that.
"Mare might be able to connect the dots, given what she did to the Armored Ventus Nightmare.
"But, to answer your question about Sora himself, that's why Maleficent sent us here.
"If you believe yourself capable of becoming a hero able to save the realm of light all at once, who are we to deny you the knowledge that you need to ride your white stallion with your head held at its highest."
"I'm going to do the honors," Ursula spoke.
"Sora beat you once.
"I have three debts to balance, and technically, four, as Ariel fought at his side two of those times, and she defeated me the fourth time."
Hans shrugged.
"As you wish," he said.
"Anna will have less reason to take issue with me, then."
Hopefully, that meant that Hans did genuinely care about Anna on some level, but Sora would worry about trying to bring Hans home after he learned who Maleficent intended to claim that he was.
If he could trust it, and trust their revelations about Riku, he could search for Young Xehanort much sooner.
"Do you honestly believe that you'll balance any debts with what you say?" Riku rejoined.
"Whoever, or whatever, Sora is, it doesn't matter.
"As long as we accept the dark parts of who we are, they can't rule us.
"That's held true every single time we've run into that problem, with the exception of Xion's energy drain, and if she'd had the time, I'm sure that she'd have a found a similar solution to the one that Ariel and Eric, Anna and Elsa, Aurora and Philip, and I, found.
"Look at the light beyond the darkness, and the darkness can't hurt you, or anyone else.
"Maleficent, and the two of you, have all the proof that you need of that by now.
"You couldn't have kept Ariel mute if Eric kissed her, because the light of sincere love and warmth keeps the darkness at bay unless we fear it.
"Anna loves Elsa so much that she thawed her own curse, without Elsa or Sora or Kristoff actually doing anything for her. And Elsa applied this selfsame true love to master her spell casting talents.
"Philip broke Aurora's curse after Fauna lessened it through a similar means, with a kiss.
"I harnessed my own darkness by accepting it, and looking past it to the light.
"As long as we don't fear it and thus give it power over us, there's no darkness that can fully break our hearts, or even break them a little, if we don't let it."
"Is that so?" Ursula questioned back, not betraying how she felt about Riku's accusation that she wouldn't have been able to prevent Ariel from regaining her voice even if she hadn't written Eric kissing her as the terms for Ariel getting it back.
"You learned long ago of one form of darkness that, though it can't stifle the light, the light itself can't overcome it either. A form of darkness that, like Xion's, will inflict horrible death and murder and torture and torment whether we will it to, or we don't."
A slow, deathly absolute zero frigid chill crawled up Sora's spine, and the emptiness lacking anything and the absence bereft of emptiness flickered through him, and it returned and returned continually.
"In the end, no matter how bright the light is, the onyx black night will always devour all colors."
He'd said that he'd carry this, though.
As Riku had said, just because Xion hadn't found a means for love and warmth to stop the energy drain didn't mean that she wouldn't have been able to, if she'd had the time.
Whatever Sora had done to himself by impaling himself with the Keyblade of Hearts, they could still find a way to reverse it through the same method.
"In the end, no matter how bright the light is, the onyx black night will always devour all colors."
Right?
"A darkness that we're supposed to trust that Sora possesses why?" Kairi responded, but there was now suppressed terror and agony in her own voice.
"Trace my connections," Ursula spoke back.
"If you do, you'll be able to tell whether or not I'm lying."
Sora focused on Ursula's heart almost before he was aware that he'd chosen to.
There was no deception in what she and Hans had revealed about Riku, or in what she was talking about now.
"In the end, no matter how bright the light is, the onyx black night will always devour all colors."
At the knowledge that innumerable people and hearts genuinely had died to make Riku who he was, as well, the lack of everything and the gap of emptiness remained for several seconds, before they resumed flickering swiftly and endless.
"You'd still be telling us what you believe to be the truth," Riku rejoined.
But Sora couldn't take the chance of believing that Ursula was wrong about Riku.
He could risk believing that about himself, but the anguish that Riku was now in because of what Ursula and Hans maintained, in addition to everything else that Sora had said and done to him, made it incomparably too indescribably vital that Sora mostly not doubt the validity of their claims about what Riku was, and the fate that he was being prepared to achieve.
"That doesn't mean that you yourself haven't been lied to."
"If that's the case, Yen Sid has been fooled, too," Ursula replied, and she still wasn't lying.
Sora could perceive that the rest of what she was about to say was what she saw as the truth.
"As has anyone who knows the legend of what happened to Kingdom Hearts,"
Sora's awareness of whether there was such a thing as reality now flickered ceaselessly, too
"and the darkness that devoured and purged all of the cosmos against the will of even Kingdom Hearts, the origin of all being; and that has since imprisoned the most profound and brilliant of all warm lights beyond all hope of recovery by love and connections."
It didn't matter how Yen Sid was connected to this.
If Sora still possessed the most distilled darkness imaginable, Kairi wouldn't have been able to return him to his human form.
Maybe he had the potential to give into darkness that deep, but it couldn't happen unless he lost his heart again, or chose to give himself up to it.
Ursula wasn't lying, but there wasn't any way that she could be correct.
"In the end, no matter how bright the light is, the onyx black night will always devour all colors."
"What does Kingdom Hearts have to do with this?" Goofy queried, true terror and worry to match the horror that was now consuming all of Sora, and making it difficult to breathe.
"Because, when Sora defeated Ansem, he did so by calling upon the light within Kingdom Hearts.
"How do you believe that he accomplished that?"
"Because he understood Xehanort's Heartless' artificial Kingdom Hearts better than Xehanort's Heartless did, and he's a Keyblade wielder," Goofy answered.
"What other reason can there be?
"Xehanort's Heartless himself tried to pull darkness out of it, and Xemnas was able to combine with his artificial Kingdom Hearts.
"Sora is a prodigy at the Keyblade, because of how kind he is, and how welcoming he is to anyone's and everyone's hearts and pain and happiness.
"If you want to bring Yen Sid into this, in his own words, he said that Sora can summon magic whenever he's in need, and cause miracles to happen."
"Then why aren't Kairi, or Xion, or Roxas, as adept with the Keyblade as Sora?" Ursula questioned.
"They're all as soft hearted as he is, and they all have the same strong hearts and the ability to welcome people into the same strong connections, and Kairi is even a Princess of Heart of the purest light.
"But they can't, as Maleficent found out Riku once said in the Sleeping Symphony of Sorcery, 'pull off miracles as though there's nothing to it.'
"No, there's a particular reason for this.
"It's the same reason that Mickey perceived that Sora alone has the ability to open the door to the light when they met in person for the first time, and why Sora can actually open doors to the light.
"And why Sora alone can cast the Note Blade.
"And while Xehanort's Heartless and Xemnas could wield the powers of two artificial Kingdom Hearts, Mickey told Riku, when he spoke to him inside Castle Oblivion from the realm of darkness, that Sora summoned light from the heart of the true Kingdom Hearts."
"Should I take it that that's due to the connection that I fashioned with the Keyblade of Hearts when I wielded it, and then completed it?" Sora questioned.
"Now you're catching on."
Ursula smiled with arrogant, totally assured victory like a predator closing in to pounce on prey who she'd been hunting and toying with for years.
"Xehanort was unaware of the true extent of the Keyblade of Hearts' power.
"The Keyblade of Hearts was forged from six hearts of pure light, and when you finished it, you added a seventh heart to it.
"Because that Keyblade was cast from the purest hearts in the cosmos, the shadows that they cast can amplify the darkness in the hearts of anyone connected to it.
"It amplified the darkness within the Queen of Hearts when Alice became a component of it, and then Jafar's when Jasmine joined it, and after this, because you were a Keyblade wielder and you had met two Princesses of Heart while the heart of a third one resided within you, it added Clayton's, mine, Oogie Boogie's, Anti-Sora's, Hook's, Riku's, Maleficent's, and Ansem's. Then, when you joined the seventh pure light to it, it clashed with Roxas', Namine's, and your own Heartless' darkness.
"You have been able to create miracles whenever you're in need since Kairi transmigrated what the heart inside your Heartless had become back into the semblance of a natural human person, and you were able to call forth the light of the true Kingdom Hearts that day, because you'd just begun to tap into the energy that you'd forged within yourself during that hour.
"Energies that have continued to grow with every instant, every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every night, whether you wield a regular Keyblade or not.
"As soon as you first called to the power of waking, that energy became yours to harness as you will, though you haven't yet learned how to bend it to your heart, and channel it deeper than the barest feather light brush of its surface.
"Energy that sings with a vacuum so empty that no light, no matter how brilliant or loving or warm or kind, can escape its prison, or prevent that lacuna of total night from drowning anyone and anything that it knows no matter what the light of that heart wills.
"Surely, you must know now of what light and darkness I speak, and what your heart became when you unlocked it with the Keyblade of Hearts, and why you were able to control the true Kingdom Hearts.
"The Keyblade of Hearts amplified the darkness within all thirteen of these dark hearts that the pure lights of the seven hearts of the Princesses of Heart clashed with into pure darkness."
There wasn't even nothing this time, or even horror or terror, or even the uncertainty of whether he existed or existence was real or emotion and thought and memory and dreams and hope and despair and light and darkness and love and pain were real or didn't exist.
Kairi fell to her knees, jaw slack and eyes wide and unseeing and covered with falling tears and fully engulfed with nothing but horror and terror.
Riku staggered back violently as if struck, and almost lost his balance and fell, before he corrected his stance.
Goofy staggered back even more violently, and he did fall onto his back.
Donald recoiled as though he'd touched molten iron.
Ursula's lips curled in smug triumph.
"You know as well as the rest of us that there is but one stage of existence that is capable of channeling the true form of Kingdom Hearts at the behest of our feelings and wills.
"As Kairi's heart dreamed within yours the whole time, so too was what Xehanort sought within his grasp all along.
"When you unlocked your heart, though it created a Heartless to bear it as all hearts that give into the darkness too deeply do, your heart itself became the very thing that Xehanort first failed to fully cast, and then he did completely forge only for it to be broken once more shortly afterwards.
"Once Kairi fashioned a new body for you from this, and threw off the shadows that had enmeshed you, the Heartless that had been restricting you could no longer contain you, and you wholly awakened into the heart that you had forged for yourself, with your own hands.
"You, your heart, your mind, and your body, are not person or Heartless or Nobody or Unversed or Dream Eater.
"You are what all life, all existence, all reality, all of the World, all of the cosmos, all stars, all worlds, all people, all hearts, of light and darkness, most yearn and reach and fight brutally and ruthlessly and remorselessly and cruelly and strive and dream and long for.
"You are the Kye-Blade."
.
"You are the dream of humanity. The Ultimate Coordinator. It was in pursuit of that dream that Doctor Hibiki created the artificial womb. And you were the only viable child it ever produced. For that result, a very large number of your siblings were sacrificed."-Rau Le Creuset
GUNDAM SEED:
Phase 45: THE OPENING DOOR