.
CHAPTER 45:
EPITAPH OF ABYSSAL EMBERS
.
Author's Notes: The music for this Chapter is, in order of scene: 'Last Battle,' from the XENOSAGA Episode One Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and after it 'Demon Spear,' from the WILD ARMS: ALTER CODE: F Original Score, Disc Four; and after it 'The Final Battle,' from the CHRONO TRIGGER Original Sound Version, Disc Three; and after this 'Godsibb,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Original Sound Best Tracks, Disc Two. The third piece can be found on Zophar's Domain, and the others in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section.
Sora had just begun to swing the Kye-Blade in a shallow, horizontal slash at Yozora's Nobody when neon orange coiled about the adult Vanitas' left hand and familiar glaring orange light in the shape of No Name appeared within it.
Both Keyblades swung into a deft x shape and caught the Kye-Blade at the bottom of their scissor.
The Nobody then gave Sora an unexpectedly sarcastically amused smirk.
"Shriek about hypocrisy," he commented with mild and sarcastic derision.
"Aren't you forgetting a wee teeny bitty itty something about what happens to the overall neighborhood if you don't watch what you're feeling when you wield the Kye-Blade?"
Whatever was nagging at Sora as incredibly important grew; and for an unknown reason, he found himself too focused on the slightly brightening crimson and blue lights.
Then the energy No Name came carving in a dexterous slash at the exposed right side of Sora's neck, and whatever was clawing at Sora vanished against the need to protect Tidus and himself by swinging the Kye-Blade up in a quick deflection he then reversed into a carve to attempt to knock Void Gear
or whatever the Keyblade was genuinely titled
out of Yozora's Nobody's hand.
"Sora, he's–"
Whatever Schala had been about to say was cut off when a familiar thin black string of thorns shot out and struck her in the forehead; causing the older girl's eyes to roll up in her head as she fell on her back, unconscious.
Sick rage rose, but Sora ignored the new shriek in his heart and how the light blue became even brighter and the whirling red clouds more furious in order to segue into a Reversal and curve along the vine to swing at the back of Yozora's own neck.
The possible Void Gear blocked it with one hand, as Sora had been hoping.
The younger wielder pivoted on his right heel to slice at Yozora's Nobody's resemblance of No Name; and then as soon as the Kye-Blade met it he angled the larger sword to slide it down the glaring fire towards Yozora's wrist.
Sora was unsurprised when a single rushing light violet ray appeared among cubes of energy beside that wrist to rip at Sora's own wrist, moving too fast to shift the Kye-Blade to block.
So Sora didn't even make the effort.
As Yozora wanted him to give into the darkness, he may as well make use of that in the one way Sora knew it was safe to.
He rearranged the connections in his heart the same way he did when wielding a regular Keyblade; and the next second, he found the black wispy cold of his Anti-Sora Formchange closing around his heart and body, shifting his figure to blackbody photons and letting the ray pass through his morphing form harmlessly during the seconds his heart and body reconfigured.
Sora knew better than to directly throw energy out of his heart against the Nobody of the Keyblade wielder whose Heartless had proven almost too lethal for Sora to even defend himself effectively against, far less defeat.
Why was cold terror now gripping him at how the light blue appeared to be casting a solidifying reflection on the early night grass below?
But Sora knew better than to risk thinking about it, as well.
Or to see if he could move even faster as Anti-Sora when wielding the Kye-Blade.
He stretched out his left hand while tracing the connections in his heart; and relief lightened him a fraction when Childhood's Laughter just showed up in his left hand, confirming Anti-Sora could function like Final Form when he was wielding the Kye-Blade.
The next second, both natural and artificial blades were hovering at his sides and arcing into a focused series of slices at the Nobody much faster than Sora could move his arms.
Yozora's Nobody just rolled his eyes, and then both of his own Keyblades left his hands and began parrying while hovering in the air themselves.
So Sora traced his connections further, and then he clenched his teeth against a rush of hot agony as the cold of Anti-Sora vanished and the silver garb of the real Final Form settled around him, even though he was dueling Yozora's Nobody all by himself.
The rate he could cut the Kye-Blade and his Keyblade accelerated drastically.
So did that of Yozora's Nobody's own Keyblades.
So Sora shifted forwards to ram his wrist against Childhood's Laughter the subsequent time the energy No Name met it, and he shifted his heart and self into Master Form so the Keyblade automatically fell back against that wrist and left Yozora's Nobody slightly overextended.
The Kye-Blade, still hovering in the air, cut into the opening with as much force as Sora could muster without overextending his own guard, crashing into Yozora's Nobody's forehead and sending him staggering back.
"Master!" the other coated figure cried in a female voice.
Sora's knees briefly vanished as very slight uncertainty passed through Yozora's eyes; confirming the ancient Keyblade Master couldn't shift his offense and defense with the agility and adaptability Sora now could.
Sora had a genuine chance of defeating Yozora, at least if he couldn't Formchange as a Nobody as Xemnas had been able to once he'd coagulated with his K
Then Sora knew nothing but cold as he realized what had been grasping at him.
No way.
Even a small amount of dark impulses could endanger all of the realm of light when he was wielding the Kye-Blade?
Yozora smirked triumphantly.
"Kye-Blade or not, Sore bore still has nothing but parlor tricks at his disposal.
"Unless he wants to risk really delving into the sentiments of the Kye-Blade in his current state of heart and mind, and we all know what can happen then."
"Lastly, you are free to choose which kind of Dreamreaper to target, but I want at least one medium caste or top of the chain Dreamreaper dead; only at the hand of injuries or indirect methods you can reasonably confirm originated from the Kye-Blade, and not a Keyblade."
No.
He'd promised.
He'd find a way to defeat one without endangering the realm of light.
Nor would he now.
Sora took a deep breath, centering what perception he could.
He knew better than to believe he could push all of his terror and self hatred and despair and desperation away; but if even a small amount of dark intent was a danger to the realm of light the Kye-Blade would be almost completely outside of anyone's ability to wield, under any conditions.
As long as he didn't resort to anything akin to Anti-Sora's most lethal abilities, Sora extremely highly doubted battling with the Kye-Blade could imperil the realm of light that much.
Or, at least, so swiftly Sora couldn't end the danger as relatively easily as he had when Xehanort had almost ravaged it.
However, now that the desperate horror and need to protect Tidus were at bay, Sora knew it was even more important he win this.
Yozora's Nobody was here before him, and Sora had confirmed he could create an opening and hurt him by harnessing the Kye-Blade to Formchange at will.
All he'd accomplish would be to recomplete Yozora himself once his Heartless was also fatally beaten, but Sora couldn't let this chance pass by.
Yozora's Nobody needed to fall.
So Sora quickly wove his connections into the tapestry of Final Form and then right back to his prior Form, this time altering which key sword was the one he needed to hold and which was the one that was hovering.
Yozora had anticipated this, though, and he took a long step backwards and assumed a defensive stance.
Or, rather, Yozora had anticipated Sora reverting to Master Form; not the Formchange Sora had learned before learning that one, but in Master Form's garb as opposed to Wisdom Form's.
The Kye-Blade fell to the ground, the small Magnet Sora had cast inside its hilt to hold it in the air out of sight insufficient to keep it aloft on its own for long; and a fountain of sapphire then launched from the tip of Childhood's Laughter to strike Yozora's forehead in the same location Sora had recently struck.
Now Yozora scowled a little.
"You've been fast on your feet in combat since you first picked up a wooden sword, but when did you gain a knack for actual tactics?
"But it doesn't matter.
"This intermission has gone on long enough."
One finger rose, and familiar thorny vines meandered at Sora.
Before they could grasp him in a hold from which he extremely highly doubted he could escape even with the Kye-Blade, at least when it was Yozora and not Xemnas seeking to seize him; Sora gathered his connections up inside himself and Reality Shifted to plunge into a dive, not at the ground as he would have in the Sleeping Worlds when combining his Keyblade into Ultima Buster with Riku, but directly at the approaching vines themselves.
Whatever they were, they weren't concentrated nothingness, and Sora could barely focus his perceptions around them.
But, with the Kye-Blade, Sora could see the connections they had to Yozora's heart, and reality; just enough to know he had a small chance at pulling this off.
He concentrated on every pulse of trust he had in Kairi, Riku, Roxas, Anna, Tidus, Selphie, Wakka, Elsa, and everyone else he knew and loved; and he threw them with all the distilled belief he had in them and love and friendship and connections and a hearth at the vines that were almost upon him, and he hurled himself forwards into a combined Faithline Reversal.
His mind shrieked with disjointed clangor as his awareness appeared to separate, but he clenched his teeth through the anguished lava as he found himself rocketing along the underside of the vines and swinging around into a Reversal far faster than he'd accomplished one in his life.
The next instant, Sora discovered he'd actually performed a full spiral around Yozora and the Kye-Blade was colliding with the front of his neck with so much ferocity the Nobody went sailing backwards through the air so rapidly it was clear he'd reach the small islet with the fallen paopu tree before the play island all the way across the sound separating it from the town proper.
Sick self hatred contorted Sora inside and outside at the knowledge of where Yozora was headed, but he had no time to waste.
The agony in his head was gone as existence was real anew; and Yuna nodded at Sora once to tell him she could bring the four wingless people here to the play island where they'd be closer to him, and thus safer.
The two Union members were already retreating into two dark corridors, and Sora could faintly see their twins opening on the play island beach.
Sora wasted no time, and he alighted into the air to fly after Yozora.
When he drew close enough; he saw the Nobody had alighted on both feet on the fallen paopu tree trunk itself, in the very location Sora could remember sitting the day he'd vanished; crimson flowing down his neck and clear pain on the ancient Master's face and in the clenched, but determined, set of his face.
Sora pushed away the new wash of self hatred and landed to Yozora's left, although farther away than Kairi had sat the last day the World Sora had believed he'd known, even after what he'd lived in the Sleeping World That Never Was, had been there for the two of them; and he assumed a neutral stance with both the Kye-Blade and the Keyblade.
"If you can Formchange like Xemnas, now would be a good time," Sora said to Yozora with guarded friendliness.
"I'd like to agree," Yozora's Nobody replied with companionable warmth Sora knew was mostly or totally falsified, however sincere it sounded.
"We're standing upon the last sapling in the garden I planted to create the Wayfinder of Journey's End, after all; and even Xehanort at least had the decency to roll over and give us a Princess who can recite that role."
Reality flickered, but retained itself beside new resignation.
"So what better place would there be to bedazzle you, if I could do it?
"And I know what you're kicking yourself for not seeing; but, believe it or not, yours truly and Luxu didn't actually begin the legend of the paopu fruit; or invent the fruit."
Sora was surprised to realize a small amount of real lightness was endangering his guard at hearing that, even though he couldn't trust the truth of a single syllable Yozora was pronouncing.
"We just ensured a lot of paopu would sprout on a planet drifting close to the realm of darkness, and Strelitzia's cozy slavish cultists harangued it out to dry from there.
"Luxu was more than happy to help that myth get passed down, and spread throughout the stars, though.
"The Dark Margin, on the other hand; is one of the parts of the garden I've been seeding for Synchronicity Perceptual while keeping the Dandelions from infesting it.
"You can also ruffle your hair proudly for feeding Maleficent her Jessie biscuit.
"It won't give us too much trouble when the time comes to perfect the formula that caused the Kye-Blade to be a resounding failure, and smelt the Note Blade's Keychain; but she actually will be a little harder to get at with the crybaby guarding her who Maleficent has dislocated her shoulder by now congratulating herself for successfully scouting."
That claim sounded a small amount more trustworthy, given how a Keychain sounded like a good way to fix the flaws inherent within the Kye-Blade that prevented it from entirely mastering Kingdom Hearts, but Sora still knew better than to believe the purported Wayfinder of Journey's End itself was anything more than a lie.
As much as new heat pricked the backs of his eyes at the awareness he had no genuine evidence whatsoever to begin piecing together the exact reason the Note Blade wielder needed to be Xehanort's daughter; or even whether his latest journey with Donald and Goofy to investigate whether the other New Seven Hearts had any ties to Yozora's fate for Kairi was anything more than a wild goose chase after dead ends.
What was the point in even thinking about it, by now?
Sora had never been able to say or do a single thing for Kairi.
She'd always been the one who needed to clean up his messes; without him able to do a single thing for her but drag her down; even after all she'd done for him, and Riku as well, and how many times she'd done it for them both.
Maleficent needed the New Seven Hearts, and researching if Kairi was in any danger from the Foretellers through them outside of their scripts for Anna and Elsa was a core component of Goofy's own plan.
But that didn't make Sora any less capable of doing anything more for Kairi than repeatedly drag her down, and endlessly force her to pick up his slack.
Whether he escaped Yozora's destiny or not, Sora had no hope at all of being able to change that for the rest of his life, and any afterlife he did or didn't drift in so he had a better chance of ceasing to cripple her.
Sora blinked at the realization he genuinely felt a small amount calm, but so much that even the resignation wasn't that present.
Maybe that was the result of at last accepting that there were some things where love and friendship, and light and darkness, just didn't matter, one way or the other; because there couldn't be any hope there, and there never had been, no matter what the conditions were.
Don't think twice
Feel don't conceal
Did even that matter when there was no hope, or lack of it; for it to be worth feeling anything about it, love or pain, light or dark; in the first place?
"Thing is; while, without a Kingdom Hearts at their disposal; Nobodies, unlike Heartless, can't Formchange into anything other than a step down from the forms resembling their real ones; since you have made it clear I do need to lift a finger to keep you, and Tidus, captivated as an audience; I need to a lot less now."
Everything but Sora's guard was now firmly to his side, and he ensured he wasn't tensing too much to react to whatever Yozora was now about to endeavor.
"Not unless you happen to have an honest to goodness over and done Keyblade of Hearts rolled up your socks somewhere."
"In that case, can you stop posturing and get this over with?" Sora asked back, and shock rushed through him at how none of the calm was there any longer, and he still didn't need to try to sound like his old self.
"I really don't have all day this time."
Sora blinked when Yozora genuinely melodramatically pouted.
"Spoilsport," Yozora replied in a real whining voice.
Sora started violently at the realization he almost wanted to grin now.
Even through the heart squeezing certainty of what this meant about the kind of heart Yozora should have had, and Sora practically certainly lacked the ability to shine Yozora's way back home to.
Yozora raised both of his Keyblades in the shape of a kye.
Then he said a single phrase in a language Sora barely remembered Donald had identified as Latin.
"Defligrate perpetua, muri tempi, et intervania."
Within the space of a second, large neon orange keyhole silhouettes resembling the ones the Kye-Blade could forge manifested in a tapestry all around them; and within another minority of seconds, throngs of Keyblades began rocketing through them and curving to arc in a corona around the true Vanitas.
The first Vanitas vaulted into a high somersault backwards into the air, and the swarm of Keyblades continued to arc and grow until he was adumbrated by a familiar globule of ancient ornaments.
Yet where Young Vanitas had halted his own globe at this size, the one around the true Vanitas just kept swelling, and larger amounts of Keyblades after continually larger amounts of Keyblades surged faster and quicker through new portals that began snapping open in a widening morass extending all around them and higher and higher above.
Sora suppressed the urge to clench his teeth and flipped backwards himself off the paopu branch to land and aim both of his Keyblades at the phantasms surrounding them and launch twin beams of light blue he expanded into mazes as soon as they struck the portals to the Keyblade Graveyard, snapping the silhouettes closed in groups.
However, as fast as Sora sealed the keyholes, new ones ripped open in the air around them, and the pace and amount of Keyblades that tore out of them solely accelerated and sped up.
For the first time, terror for Tidus Sora could sincerely experience removed Sora's breath from his neck with the realization of precisely what was happening.
"You didn't honestly think the bows you took for the Demon Tide qualified as a Union Cross, did you?" Yozora questioned in mild and happy reasonableness.
"You weren't even wielding one Union, and far from an Unchained Union or the real Union Cross.
"But that's beside the point.
"Why settle when you can have them all back?"
Sora was certain all of his blood had drained away, but he knew for a fact it was terror that kept him from feeling it.
He dropped Childhood's Laughter and raised the Kye-Blade with both hands, casting around for a connection that would enable him to lock all of the keyholes at once, and prevent the real Union Cross from being established and then bulldozing him into paste or forcing him to risk corrupting the true Kingdom Hearts for the third time.
"Allow me to demonstrate for you another reason for the Union Clash."
Reality itself then simply separated, as though cleanly carved apart, and bulged back into itself in a concave horizontal abyss behind and about the true Vanitas; after which it distorted into an inside out eye and gouged of all color into a single amorphous blot of bleached onyx jet night so solely black dark it incinerated his eyes chalk skeletal.
And the Keyblades from the Keyblade Graveyard Yozora was gathering weren't just plunging into the globule.
They were beginning to form the shape of shoulders and arms comprised of Keyblades; and as they did, what Sora knew was a literal shadow of existing reality itself began surging down the shoulders and arms.
Yozora was constructing a mammoth suit of Keyblade armor, and almost certainly a similarly colossal Keyblade glider; out of literally every single Keyblade the ancient Unions had left behind in the Keyblade Graveyard when their wielders had fallen in the First Keyblade War.
No.
Don't.
Leave Tidus alone.
Get away from him.
"Your new hip hop Kye-Blade fad isn't going to do you any favors now, class clown," Yozora smirked with self satisfactory and smug triumph.
"Not unless you want to chance bringing the realm of light down along with me.
"My two Keyblades, the Gran Grimoire and the Eschaton, are light and darkness converted to particulate form. I can alter matter and energy as I see fit, and in every way but the material one I'm the legitimate Yozora with a hive heart split betwixt two bodies."
Sora suppressed the urge to start violently at that confirmation.
"I founded the Keyblade academies; while you're nothing more than a washout who decisively flunked the Mark of Mastery Exam twice, once formally and the second time literally on home study.
"And while I myself chose you for the Keyblade, you didn't see me lowering myself to perform the Bequeathing Ceremony on you any more than Terra or Aqua did.
"Both had the chance, and both didn't even spare you a passing glance.
"You're nothing more, or even less, than a washout; so just drop out.
"Or, preferably, dead."
"I don't believe that. I believe that thinking with your heart enables you to perceive other people's feelings and thoughts with much greater depth and in much greater detail than you can if you waste the time to think about it with your mind detached from your heart. I believe that you're by far the smartest one of the three of you."
"You're a whole pint by yourself, Sora."
"But that's a formality, right? I already proved myself."
"Maybe I do need to be tested."
"Then count me in. Put me through the test!"
No.
Keyblade Master of Masters Yozora was right.
Donald and Goofy and Anna were wrong.
Sora was solely a washout.
If he wasn't; he wouldn't just keep dragging Kairi and Riku, and now Anna and Tidus and Selphie and Wakka and Mom and Dad and Elsa; down all the time.
However, even this changed nothing.
Washout or not, Tidus still needed him.
Sora was not going to let him plummet into darkness as he had Kairi and Riku so many times, solely to follow them every single time he attempted to light their way out of it and repeatedly compel them to return to it to be the ones to light his way home even though he'd just abandoned them.
He wasn't going to abandon Tidus.
Even when Keyblade Master of Masters Yozora was the beginning and the end of the truth of the Keyblade, the founder of the legacy with more ageless experience and learning in it than every other Keyblade wielder throughout all of the worldlines of history put together.
"And in the off chance leaving you to mull things over while I put the Sigma Glide Armor together"
the calmness was back at the revelation the Keyblades, of which there must have been well over at least one million bleached black by now and arranging themselves, now constructing the tops of kneecaps and wrists; would shortly fashion a Keyblade glider, as well
"does give you the time to come up with something dancy fancy, so you don't think I just twiddled my pinkies while Xemnas and Xehanort's Heartless were having little looksies at the best the darkness of Heartless and Nobodies have to offer…
"You think lasers can brighten the nighty night?
"Kick back, and take your load off into a nap; while curling up cuddly crispy beside these."
Without anything heralding their forthcoming appearance; a labyrinth of purple globes of flame, the same size as the fabricated planetoid worlds Xehanort's Keyblade armor had launched against Kairi and Sora when he'd manipulated her into finishing her all but helpless father off; appeared hovering all about him inside new, much larger, neon orange keyhole silhouettes.
Similarly without warning, the curling plumes of solar flares started curving out at Sora from all directions, a number one at a time in sequence, and plenty in groups of two or more.
Without Riku, Donald, or Goofy to assist him in enduring a Dark Laser or laser legion; Sora just at last clenched his teeth tightly and sprang into a sequence of jumps, somersaults, Dodge Rolls, and whirls to evade Yozora's version of a Heartless and Nobody thicket of death.
Was this the calmness Riku had known since Sora had dragged him down with Kairi for the second most recent time beyond count?
"Believe it or not, you really should give up this time," Yozora said companionably, the star flares not ceasing or slowing.
"The time has come.
"I'll let you worry about whether it's Anna's and Elsa's act or not."
Sora's heart was empty of even frost, but his own evasions didn't falter.
And the calmness just increased.
Riku was there with him, darting and leaping and dashing and springing as they worked together to repel Xemnas' drastically more deadly version of Xehanort's Heartless' complete Dark Laser; a throng so innumerable and relentless that Sora knew a second's misstep would end them both incomparably more decisively than even the violet cometoids and gravity well that finished the true Dark Laser would have claimed his heart if Donald and Goofy hadn't been flying there at his side through the conflagration.
But Riku was there, so Sora knew they could endure this.
Nobodies and Heartless
Ice melted and evaporated Sora as the horror of what his misuse of the power of waking had done to Riku at last refined itself within his sentiment and sensations.
Riku was attempting to turn himself into a Heartless and Nobody of accepted darkness for chosen light, as the emotionless dark seekers the fake and real Ansem's had maintained them to be.
Very likely the tumultuous imprisoned turbulence of an Unversed and Nightmare and Dreamreaper, as well.
And, given how Riku had just called upon a dark corridor; very likely perhaps no longer metaphorically.
"But, even though Young Xehanort doesn't see what even you aren't so cluelessly oblivious to grasp, the heroine is about to at last step into the spotlight.
"You know better than anyone by now who the Union wielder is who lies in wait for Kairi in Scala ad Caelum."
Breath drawn terror cleared anywhere; and the next thing Sora knew; he was tumbling back and forth through the air, searing molten anguish after shrieking lava agony roaring through him as plume after plume of purple death crackled over garb and skin Sora quickly altered into the more durable Final Form, scorching them into char and cauterizing what blood they drew.
"While Roxas is ready to pay his insurance fee."
Somewhere out of sight, Sora heard Tidus inhale with slack horror; clearly distantly far past measure more for Xion than for Roxas.
How much the undiluted and uncontained terror and horror and desperate need and hope for the girl who had lived in the shadow of literally every other single heart in all of the realms for as much of her life as Tidus had his father Jecht's; far more torn between unconditional sacrificial love and the determination to win at all costs than almost anyone else Sora had met in his life other than Anna, even th fairies and Wakka and Chappu and Jecht and Tidus themselves; reminded Sora of Anna's ruined distilled unrestrained love for Anna; ripped new terror to shreds outside of Sora's innards and inside all of the chambers of his heart.
"However, the potential cost to Roxas is irrelevant at the nonce.
"One way or another; after millennia and centuries transcending the opacity of historical records themselves; Abyssal Aether, the Note Blade, will be cast before the next Sunrise."
Sora knew he should have felt something as everything that meant, and implied, etched themselves indelibly into all and little and perhaps and nil of him.
However, all there was was an unusual emptiness that wasn't even calm, and Sora could best compare to a literal blot of all dark, light, grays, and spectrums that suspended all of his comprehension frozen.
And a distillation of something Sora couldn't put a name to that keened at him to ask a single question.
Sora became aware he was lying on his back, aching and numb with throbbing flames all over and gasping for breath; and a Keyblade glider was now putting itself together in chalk obsidian and shards below a titanic form of featureless night lacking even eyes of energy.
"What do you mean?
"Who is this wielder you're talking about?"
As though that question had unlocked something, the blot was gone; and solidified determination to successfully prevent the completion of the Note Blade, by Kairi's hand or Roxas' or Anna's or Elsa's or anyone else's; flooded quietly into place beside his terrified concentration to safeguard Tidus.
Why, then, was Yozora snorting with particularly amused derision now?
And why was he now so crystalline horizon aware he was lying near the tree where he had at last shared a paopu fruit with Kairi, and its taste was now so acidic he couldn't believe he had a throat or neck or mouth or head any longer?
Sora's eyes widened.
Paopu fruit.
There was one way he may still be able to defeat Yozora's Nobody.
Sora knew better than to even attempt to hide he now had a plan from someone with the millennia of experience Yozora had, though; so he just rose to his feet, aimed the Kye-Blade, and gave Yozora a confident grin that told him he was lucky Sora had the honor to let him finish putting his Keyblade glider together before getting himself pulverized.
Then he spread his feet apart into a balanced stance and waited for the single chance Sora knew he'd have.
Yozora just snorted once more.
"Bring it on, washout," the ancient Keyblade Master retorted with simple sharply set challenge.
Sora carefully reached out, and traced his connections to two other paopu fruit nearby, pictures of chalk on the walls of the cavern of the play island; and then he traced three more connections until he'd assembled all five of the people Kairi loved the most at the five corners of a gigantic paopu fruit Wayfinder he visualized in front of him.
Then Tidus inhaled in incredibly uncertain, but desperate hope of his own, from wherever he was standing out of sight that Sora couldn't risk identifying unless there appeared to be a direct danger to Tidus.
"I just figured it out, from this stodgy decrepit yesterday's stiff referencing Heartless twitching their thumbs!" Tidus cried.
Yozora made a revolted sound at being referred to as an old fashioned stuff shirt when he believed he was about to defeat a Keyblade wielder who he had correctly identified as a washout.
"I have a real idea about how to stop Xion from siphoning everyone but Namine!"
Why was the acid just growing now?
"As soon as you show this has been antiquated coot who the real washout is,"
Nobodies weren't totally real, though; so that altered nothing whatsoever
Why was Tidus' certainty Sora about to win lightening Sora a little, then?
"Xion is siphoning everyone but Namine because she's pulling on their memories; and Heartless who don't give up their hearts willingly lose their memories, while their Nobodies don't gain any if their Heartless get themselves back fast enough!
"If someone Xion is siphoning becomes a Heartless and Nobody against his, her, or its will; and that person then recompletes before either the Heartless or Nobody really begins to gain any new ones; that should temporarily sever all connections Xion has to that person's memories, and a Keyblade should then have a short window to lock that tie down!"
Sora could barely feel for totally different reasons now.
But he shifted, because he was all but certain how Yozora would attempt to exploit the chance this had caused him to drop his guard.
Moving almost too swiftly to follow, the last legion of Keyblades rushed through the neon glaring fire to array themselves into a glider less streamlined than Aqua's but thicker than Ven's.
In the second before the shadow of reality covered the remaining Keyblades Sora could see at the front tip of the Sigma Armor's protrusion, Sora threw all his heart into the warm light of the connection Kairi and he had in the picture of them sharing the paopu fruits in the Secret Place; and, thus drowning in the same light he had when he'd locked the true Kingdom Hearts, he opened his heart entirely to the Kye-Blade, just long enough to fire one single brilliant prismatic rainbow as thin as a string at the tip of the foremost Keyblade in the Union Clash.
Then he turned his heart and mind's awareness to nothing but Kairi's five closest connections, and how the incandescent tapestry of her own love and light radiated among them.
The string spread without any delay into a labyrinthine latticework kaleidoscope of spectral splendor throughout every single Keyblade at the same time as the shadow stopped closing together.
It didn't damage the Sigma Armor at all, or Yozora himself, but Sora hadn't sought to.
Sora had sought merely to directly expose millions of ordinary Keyblades to the light of a Princess of Heart long enough to disrupt their tie to a heart of darkness when they were all trapped inside a husk that was as much a prison as it was a shelter.
So swiftly Sora needed to suppress the urge to start violently, the blackness became motes; and the millions of Keyblades that had now rocketed violently in all directions decomposed in spirals of uncounted shades of dull and faded light.
Yozora's Nobody, every visible surface of his skin now a welter of crimson, dropped to his feet and collapsed to his knees; and the same flecks of light that had drifted off of Yozora's Heartless when Sora had beaten him began flickering up off of him.
Sora clenched his teeth at the knowledge this meant that the Nobody was still alive; and the next time they battled, he wouldn't fall for the trick Sora had just used a second time, and whoever took him on would almost need to confront the Sigma Armor in all of its towering potency.
The glaring orange keyholes all blinked out at once.
Sora could barely see Yozora through still new tears.
"Fine," Yozora commented in an actual petulant voice, his mouth set in a new pout.
"Be that way.
"Tidus can pay for his ticket later; and I'll give up my own reserved chair where I'd intended to applaud when Kairi and you, or Roxas; smelt Abyssal Aether.
"However, I am not giving a washout an E for Even Effort."
Yozora's body was wholly white light, and then it was gone.
Sora was now aware he was struggling to breathe, but he turned a protective, warning gaze to search for wherever the other two Union leaders were standing.
They were currently backing into dark corridors on the far side of the bridge leading to the islet; behind Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie; who stood on the near side below the hovering Yuna, Paine, and Rikku, respectively.
Then those dark corridors contracted, bringing all audibility to quiet.
.
"Look at them. So blissfully ignorant."-Darth Maul
"Care to tell me what this is all about? Or would you rather save it for the Council?"-Ahsoka Tano
"Oh, no, no. You are the one that I wish to speak with. Were you not cast out of your Order?"-Darth Maul
"I left voluntarily."-Ahsoka Tano
"Yes, but you were motivated to leave by the hypocrisy of the Jedi Council. We were both tools for greater powers."-Darth Maul
"I am here to bring you to justice."-Ahsoka Tano
"Justice is merely the construct of the current power base. A base which, according to my calculations, is about to change."-Darth Maul
"And Darth Sidious is behind it?"-Ahsoka Tano
"He is behind everything. In the shadows, always. But soon, very soon… he will reveal himself."-Darth Maul
"With your help, the Jedi can stop Sidious before it's too late."-Ahsoka Tano
"Too late for what? The Republic to fall? It already has, and you just can't see it! There is no justice, no law, no order, except for the one that will replace it! The time of the Jedi has passed. They cannot defeat Sidious. But, together, you and I can. Every choice you have made… has led you to this moment."-Darth Maul
"I will help you. But you must answer one question."-Ahsoka Tano
"You have but to ask."-Darth Maul
"What do you want with Anakin Skywalker?"-Ahsoka Tano
"He is the key to everything."-Darth Maul
"To bring balance to the Force?"-Ahsoka Tano
"To destroy. He has long been groomed for his role, as my master's new apprentice."-Darth Maul
"You lie."-Ahsoka Tano
"I'm afraid not. In fact, I was so certain of his fate that I orchestrated this war to lure him here with Kenobi to kill him. Thus, depriving Sidious of his prized pupil."-Darth Maul
"I know Anakin. Your vision is flawed."-Ahsoka Tano
"I see the Padawan needs one last lesson."-Darth Maul
STAR WARS:
THE CLONE WARS:
Episode 131: THE PHANTOM APPRENTICE