Kingdom Hearts: The Girl Who Stole the Star Chapter 58: Crossing the Threshold of Havoc, a kingdom hearts fanfic

CHAPTER 57:

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HAVOC

Author's Notes: The music for this Chapter is, in order of scene: 'Roxas,' from the KINGDOM HEARTS II Original Soundtrack, Disc One. This Track can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section.

didn't need to push

feelings to the side this

As soon as Anna stepped out of the dark corridor to see the rocky wasteland that had once been Arendelle, they were so far away she couldn't even be sure she could feel anything past the empty, exhaustingly fatiguing ache that was draped like a shroud over everything, yet one without any weight or definition at all.

Even if she'd wanted to conceal anything, Anna wasn't sure there truly was anything to conceal.

Was this what a Nobody, as Xemnas had defined them, was genuinely supposed to live as?

Nothing but this ache that wasn't even gone, or a mistaken recollection, or inside, or a potential future, or concave, or a separation, or without, or there, or herself, that was so empty its absence wasn't just there, it was inextricably interchangeable with complete ordinariness.

She knew she should still be attempting to cry.

But her heart, if she still had one, didn't appear able to connect the concept she could totally understand with the means to seek to do so.

It was then Anna realized she wasn't actually standing on the ground of what was left of Arendelle itself.

She was standing on top an extensive, wide light blue platform that led to a short walkway of moderate girth passing over a very long drop down to what appeared to be a city of similar light colored structures, looking through the shimmering outline of a large keyhole out at the igloos Elsa had created to give the people of Arendelle shelter until the restored citizens had dwellings to live in, and work at.

Smooth walls of differing light colors to her sides, while a large door led into a corridor with the words 'Slaughter Race' in dim shades of green atop it, as though something inside was currently resting.

Almost directly across the expanse of Arendelle's ground was a thick, giant white door that Anna realized she'd heard close just as she emerged from the corridor of darkness.

A wisp of terror, but one that was almost hysterical, passed through Anna.

Was she too late, or just in time?

Seconds ago, Anna would have chosen to see it as just in time.

Now she knew it wasn't even a lack of differences, just an inexorable inevitability of corridors of eternal night where the sole choice anyone could make was which path to walk down.

Yet the one thing she could never do was to just abandon Elsa, and let her die or be tormented.

Anna began striding quickly in the direction of the entrance to Arendelle, and the door on the other side of it.

She wanted to sprint, but she knew what might happen if she barreled back into Arendelle, and plunged into something she wasn't aware of headlong.

Then Anna couldn't tell where she was, or when.

Memories and sounds amorphed together into such a vivid corridor Anna couldn't tell if she was just visualizing them in her mind's eye in the space of a short, or longer, period of time, or if, wherever this location was, she was actually witnessing them.

And she couldn't take the time to make the distinction.

The tapestry washed over her, flowing about all of her perspective juxtaposed off and on with the sights of her location itself.

"To return to the former problem, before I say anything else, I won't think less of you if you admit that you're considering giving into the darkness, or even if I can't convince you to stop considering it. That in mind, what you also need to know is that it's a bad idea.

"Riku, and another one of my friends, Terra, tried that. Even when you believe that it's okay to hurt someone to help someone else, you're still losing faith in connections, and you're still taking your eyes off of how to help people in one or more fashions. So you'll lose your full awareness of how to consider their feelings and your own, and keep hurting them and yourself because you don't understand how to avoid doing so, or increasingly isolate yourself from them and have no recourse left but to focus more and more on your own feelings. You won't help Elsa that much, if at all. Or Kristoff or I. You'll make things worse for all of us. To apply Riku as an example, say that you use the darkness to cut down people, friends or allies, or enemies or opponents, to learn a skill that will enable you to keep someone; not Elsa; safe. You'll have kept that person safe, but the person you protected will feel terrible that one or more other people were put through pain to keep her or him or it from being hurt.

"Dark impulses and thoughts themselves aren't bad. Riku and Kairi both know how to wield it by just accepting that it's there and looking past it to the light, thus harnessing those inclinations to help, not to hurt.

"But if you wield those impulses and thoughts to hurt someone, for any reason, it doesn't help people, or hearts, or connections, or even your ability to care about yourself.

"I've run into a lot of forms of darkness that look like they can at least teach you how to take care of yourself better by enabling you to become special and thus deserve people's regard or praise, but even those forms of darkness lead nowhere. People don't need darkness to be unique. They already are. Forms of darkness that you wield because they believe that they can improve your capacity to take care of yourself, and that appear to enable you to become special, just cause you to push others away and become alone, and that's all.

"Forms of darkness that appear to improve your capacity to take care of others mean doing so by choosing one or more people over one or more other people, whether in the ways that I just brought up, or others. It's also selfish; it's saying that the people you yourself value are more important than the people others value.

"There's always a way to a better answer. You don't need to hurt people to help people, no matter what's going on.

"So, can you please promise me that, no matter how terrible the danger of the Foretellers or Maleficent's Successor Organization Thirteen become, and whether or not you harness darkness in the future; you'll just accept it and look through it to the light and not hurt anyone with it, and you won't give into it and let it rule you?"

"I promise you that I'm not going to stop arguing about this with you until I've convinced you to change your mind. And if you do tell me that you've made a self-destructive choice, I won't strike at you, but you will need to strike me down, or otherwise go through me, in order to hurt yourself, or anyone else."

"Do you understand yet?"

"Love and warmth don't make anything better.

"They just make life and the World much worse."

"How is a life of frigid suspension without kindness any better?

"If you live without feeling kindness, you'll never know any joy at all."

"If you live without knowing warmth, you'll never have any kindness to lose, so you'll never be hurt."

"You aren't searching for any form of kindness and laughter, are you?

"For others, or for yourself?

"You're not even dreaming of light or darkness, or connections to others, or only yourself, at all.

"Or even the heart itself.

"You don't want to feel anything at all, for others or for yourself.

"You don't even dream.

"You just want to live in a cold corridor of shut doors, so you'll never be hurt once more.

"And that is what the New World of Synchronicity Perceptual is.

"That's why it's an abomination to even people who search for darkness.

"Not even feelings or dreams of selfishness or rejection exist within Synchronicity Perceptual, whatever it is.

"It's an everlasting frozen prison within which doors are always closed and sealed tight, so no one will be hurt again forever."

"What happened to the baby sister who believed I could just twiddle my fingers and defrost an entire country?" Elsa asked with her voice at a regular volume.

Anna forced a smile.

"She's trying to figure out how to do that for you herself, this time," Anna replied in the same volume, but it was far too hard to force much humor at all into her voice.

And new tears pushed into her eyes and fell onto her face along with what lightheartedness she could bring out.

Elsa held up one hand and gently brushed them away with her fingers.

"If you could even convince me to pull through and find a solution, finding one yourself should be a piece of cake.

"And I have two of the best friends I could hope to have now, thanks to you.

"Thank you, with all of my warm heart.

"I love you."

Elsa replaced that hand on Anna's shoulder.

"If anyone can help her, it's you."

Sora turned a face towards her smiling with fully confident belief and faith, warm trust and understanding and empathy, and pure, sincere, heartfelt, honest care and concern and exuberance and cheer, holding up his right hand in a closed fist to reinforce how much he believed in her with just as pure and heartfelt and honest bright, optimistic enthusiasm.

Then his smile grew and he nodded at her while sliding his eyes shut and reopening them in an expression of utter contentment and happiness for no other reason than because he was that overjoyed at how much she loved Elsa and at how capable he believed Anna was at conveying that to her sister in a way that would take away Elsa's pain.

"You don't need to ask," Kristoff said, giving her an extremely irritated but genuine smile, and Anna forced a smile of her own. Kristoff was being as supportive a friend as he usually was.

Sora's hand was intertwined with Kairi's, so even though it might be a friendly grip and even though seeing it caused new pain to manifest inside her, that was reason to believe, if Anna had a chance to ask Sora a number of carefully worded questions before he left, she might be able to confirm that there was no possibility that he returned her feelings and she could at last give Kristoff the love that he needed from her.

"It's just the run of the mill," Anna braced herself internally. Elsa, Sora, and Kristoff didn't need her too horrified to be there for them about this, "Deceptive twerp shows up when Kairi's feeling better to tell everyone that he and his buddies want Kairi to be their leading lady and swing around the Note Blade sword that will cut everyone to bits, they've been tricking Sora and his friends into grooming her for the stage since she met them, Kairi's late dad has been ruining Sora's life and the lives of Kairi's friends and Kairi herself for years to try to make a New World before Sora put a stop to it by killing him without knowing he was Kairi's dad, and they want Elsa to attempt to toss herself on Sora's Keyblade to try to back you into choosing to let her do it or be the one stabbed in order to annoy Sora enough he'll put the finishing touches on Kairi's sword and she'll then lop off everyone's heads."

On second thought, maybe Anna should let herself be sick to her stomach anyway. Elsa and Sora and Kristoff might feel better seeing how much their pain hurt her.

No, if she did, Elsa and Sora might believe that meant she was revolted by them.

That wasn't an option.

"You know how it goes," Kristoff finished with a small shrug that Anna knew masked just how deeply he was anguished and infuriated by this.

"And you?" Anna questioned.

"I appear to just be an extra in the background," Kristoff reassured her. "Don't worry about me."

"You can still protect them, one more time, and bring all of us home, while running through the light with your love and laughter echoing between each other, and one another, under the cerulean ocean of the sky and the scintillating stars.

"If the light has no rhyme in this World, if you don't lose your trust in it, and in the warmth of love, then, with all my heart, I believe that you can still be an incandescent beacon to give it purpose yourself.

"I understand that you can no longer see why I'm holding on so tight to that belief about you because your vision of the cosmos and history is now obscured by your tears.

"But if you didn't believe in your dreams of a reality of warm love, a secure hearth, bubbling grins, and verdant laughter as incomprehensibly as you do, you wouldn't be able to cry when other people are cast away from it into the darkness."

Yet Anna's stride through the memories of warm embraces and apathetic frost, bubbling laughter and frozen emptiness, remained unbroken.

There was nothing whole to break from the very beginning, because it was even a hallucination to believe things had been put together, but Anna couldn't let the last shreds of herself crumble into the abyss until she was sure she'd freed Elsa from both prophecies, and Elsa was safe from the kinds of snares people usually fell into when they sought to oppose fate.

And Sora and Kristoff along with them.

And Olaf and Sven and Marshmallow and all the other people of Arendelle, and elsewhere in any World, and any World, and anything outside it.

Until she learned how to be everything for everyone, and she successfully saw it t

Not this time.

She wouldn't abandon Elsa to death and torment this time, if she could stop it.

"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."

a conflagration of howling and roaring flakes of snow and frigid clouds engulfed the entirety of the chamber Anna held her mittened hands and arms before her face straining desperately in vain to see through the monsoon to Elsa but she could barely see her body and face agonized and contorted and contorting with her dress and cape blowing and flapping to the side as her magic ate her entire existence from the inside out she could barely hear Elsa's footsteps through the tornado

Elsa grabbed both sides of her hands and clutched them and screamed, whirling around to attempt to keep her magic from dragging her as it would and Anna's eyes widened in complete and total all-scouring starfire horror and absolute zero frozen ice terror as she realized where Anna had just directed Elsa's terror and her magic now Sora was wrong Kristoff was right they had all been right she hadn't had the power and the strength and the capability and the ability to love and to protect and to cherish and to help Elsa she should have never gone to Elsa's side she should never have set out on this journey she hadn't just hurt Elsa and driven her from her home she'd obliterated Elsa and all of Elsa's awareness of what warmth and home even were this time and as it always had been since foreverneverneverforeverneverforeverforeverforeverneverneverneverneverforeverforeverneverforeverneverforeverforevernever since before Anna had been born and always would be for neverforeverneverforeverneverforeverneverforeverneverforeverneverforeverneverneverneverneverneverneverneverneverneverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforeverforever it was all her fault

Elsa's magic dragged her back around in Anna's direction like a marionette roped constricted to and asphyxiated against a wildly tilting and whirling gyre and she flung her arms and hands before her face and bent her head in one last denying desperate effort to keep her magic from turning her against Anna but Anna knew it was no use Anna should attempt to evade what was coming but she knew that would be completely and wholly futile as well Elsa was too skilled and powerful and Anna had no chance of dodging or otherwise defending herself

"I can't!"

Sheets of ice shrieked and erupted from her hands and arms and body as her magic spun her around again and Anna felt one plunge through her chest and into her heart and everything was deathly cold

"Childhood is real.

"If it wasn't, there wouldn't be any toys."

Hans stood over Elsa, sword naked and unleashed in the air and a triumphant smile on his face and Anna was the one who had fallen for his pretenses and let him distort and twist her into a puppet toy weapon for him to wield against Elsa she was the one who had led him to Elsa she was the one who had abandoned and betrayed and deserted and left and failed Elsa and stabbed Elsa in the back and strangled Elsa from behind and cut off Elsa's head from behind and smashed Elsa's head from behind and shattered Elsa's trust and fragmented Elsa's faith and fractured Elsa's belief and broken Elsa and Elsa's will to defend herself against Hans and now Elsa was going to die and Anna was going to die and Arendelle was going to fall into the grasping clutches of someone who cared nothing for the hearts of Arendelle's people and who just exploited and distorted and warped and twisted their feelings and dreams and wishes and hopes and belief and faith and trust for his own selfish gratification and it was all Anna's fault and Anna knew why Sora wasn't here to kiss her and just Kristoff was because it was all her fault and even Sora didn't believe in her love for Elsa any longer or her ability to protect and be there for and cherish and help Elsa and now Elsa was going to die broken and abandoned and betrayed and alone and it was all Anna's fault

"So I should just allow Elsa to walk a living death for a second time, and Sora and Kristoff at the same time as she does?" Anna asked back.

She saw no reason to respond to Donald.

They knew the cost of underestimating Christopher by now.

Now that he knew that Christopher could wield a Keyblade, there was no other choice left.

"I'll die an infinite number of times by freezing to death in horrific excruciatingly slow anguish for an endless number of unending eternities before I let that happen."

Christopher's eyes settled out of his surprise, and he gave Anna an approving smile.

"At least one person is willing to grow up today."

"Or perhaps there's no such thing as childhood in the first place. Just blindness to the remorselessness and ruthlessness of life and existence.

"But this is the end of my little girl's whimsical daydreams.

"My own warm dreams and hope have now passed the point of no return into cold, hard, relentless reality.

"So let's just do this."

But people weren't even haphazard matter and particles.

They were the hilarious deranged fanciful insane cavorting fickle farces of wavelengths that couldn't even be frozen into photos as Elsa's experiments with her talents after her encounters with Sora and the others, and from the repeated skirmishes with the Heartless, had taught her to.

Particles could never be put together to be taken apart in the first place.

Anything, and everything, was nothing but a tunnel of unending night without even the ability to trust in haphazard causality.

It was Anna's childish dreams of skipping through tinkling and trickling brooks and soaring through puffy fluff clouds and dew bedecked rainbows that had obliterated anything that Elsa had believed in as though it was nothing more than the most infinitesimal mote, hurling her to the foundations of a tunnel of unending onyx night that, to this day, had fragmented even the possibility of putting together any more whimsical joys and laughing grins.

And every time Anna believed she'd brought Elsa, or anyone else, back home to the warmth of loving hearth where Elsa, Sora, Kristoff, and Olaf could curl up and dream, sound and laughing, all she did was discover she'd just dragged them even deeper beneath the undertow that was foundation of all flights of wishing dreams.

"Wow! You really are alive! What's making you walk?"

"Keyblade Heroine Number Four, welcome home sweet home to the team of half-pints!"

Anna found herself staggering, almost across the walkway.

She looked up, surprised to discover there actually were tears pricking her eyes, and now she could distinguish these were just unusually vivid reminiscences, and they'd passed in the amount of time it had taken her to almost reach the door.

And Vanitas was running through the door, Mare at her side with tears falling freely down her face.

Anna blinked the tears away, and she moved to the side.

Darkness was so intertwined with light there were no delineations that could separate them at all, so it took even less effort than at any time, if that was possible, to keep her voice steady.

"What's going on?" Anna queried.

Mare had broken into a sprint as soon as she saw Anna, and she now staggered to a halt.

"Runeard took a detour through this datascape to arrive at Arendelle, obviously partially to attempt to ambush us, but almost certainly also to seek to scare us into investigating whether he'd taken Arthur out of it and stumbling upon Arthur ourselves," Vanitas answered, gripping Mare's arm as she attempted to move to block Anna.

Terror spasmed through Anna, seeking to steal her breath, but she just picked up her pace.

Mare scowled with unrestrained vicious savagery, and she appeared to want to take Vanitas' arm off her limb, if not his own body, but she said nothing.

"He officially declared Elsa a usurper who had no claim, very rudely,"

Anna found herself staggering, a small number more tears pricking her eyes, and she picked up her pace even more,

"Without making an official declaration of war, almost certainly to leave Arendelle jumping at shadows whether a strike force will follow, or just one, or more, assassins."

Vanitas' face shifted.

"He has Xion now, and Elsa; Roxas, back to himself, and Sora are in pursuit on the other side of the door."

A small amount of lightness filled Anna.

Then she was just in time

"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."

"I can't!"

Sheets of ice shrieked and erupted from her hands and arms and body as her magic spun her around again and Anna felt one plunge through her chest and into her heart and everything was deathly cold

Anna picked up her pace almost to a run.

Vanitas blinked, a kind of honest uncertainty she'd never seen before on his face.

"I believe I recall once saying, 'I simply am,' or, 'We simply are,' or something similar.

"But you–"

He shook his head.

"Never mind.

"It has nothing to do with me.

"Leave this to us.

"I know this place better than anyone, and I know Mickey and the others are already readying themselves to follow me."

Worry passed over Vanitas' face, but then it was replaced by a scowl of determination.

"That's all I myself have to tell you."

Mare at last tore her arm free from Vanitas, and while she turned her head to look at Anna as much as him, Anna knew the derisive sneer on her face was meant for him.

He held out one hand, and another elliptical mishmash of flowing dark colors swelled behind Anna, to her right.

An unfamiliar adult female's voice exited it.

"–have the same dreams."

Vanitas pressed one hand to his forehead, and then hate spasmed over him.

"You," he hissed through clenched teeth.

"I've been very much looking forward to this reunion, you pint sized pestilence."

"You can wait to ask Mickey for the details, but Elsa left Kristoff in charge," Mare supplied.

Anna felt her stomach heave, not much, but violently enough it could have literally flipped upended.

Elsa had no reason to believe Anna was in any position to follow.

But she'd still promised not to shut her out any more.

And now faint, but unmistakable, sheening sheets of drawn and coiling serrated terror tore through Anna from every origin point possible without and upon and inside her, in all directions, threatening to consume her and carve her into fragments.

And this time, she wanted to cry so much she registered her eyes were so raw the tears wouldn't push out.

Even though she wanted to so much she was imagining the shimmering air around the portal back to Arendelle gathering in such a way it reminded Anna of condensation shaping into a large hand to close something.

At the same time, however, a small amount of lightness and warmth brought sensation back, although it was still very muted.

Sora had picked himself back up, and Roxas was back to himself.

And she knew her responsibilities as Princess of Arendelle, even under these kinds of conditions.

Kristoff was better equipped than the Royal Chancellor to administrate in this situation, but Anna knew Elsa had left him in charge because, while she didn't believe Anna was in any position to follow her, she was also taking into account the possibility Anna could back Kristoff up.

Even now, even faced with an enemy Elsa knew was one of the very last people she could contend with herself,

even though she'd shut Anna out once again this time to do it

Elsa was still attempting to be the one there for her.

And she'd entrusted Arendelle to Anna to show her how much faith she had in her.

But it had been too late before Anna had even been old enough to have even genuinely begun her education in her responsibilities as the Princess, if not Queen, she'd one day grow up to be.

She could not abandon Elsa to be left behind, if there was anything, anything at all, even the most threadbare speck of a chance, she could say, or do, something for her sister.

As soon as she talked to Mickey, she was following Elsa through the door.

"If I wasn't the most skilled, and experienced, of all of us in datascapes, I'd be following," Mare added.

"I don't know how much a glitch who was programmed into a datascape from the very beginning," Anna blinked as what may have been a surprised intake of breath sounded on the other side of a corridor that must be a lot shorter than the flowing night she'd traversed, "Can do if this datascape is what I believe it is, even though I should have full access to all my abilities here, but I'm our best chance at discovering whether Runeard, or anyone else, already has Arthur without falling into any set ups that will ensure he attains it.

"Do not let me down."

"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."

"I can't!"

Then a young girl, who was shorter in stature than even Donald, with black hair in a ponytail tied back by a red ribbon, brown eyes, and wearing a green sweater and pants that were primarily a lighter green interchanged with white stripes, ran out of the corridor.

"Did you just call yourself a glitch, sister?" she asked with eager excitement, but also something guarded below her voice.

Vanitas stiffened violently.

Mare's mouth fell open in so much shock her feelings actually left her face, and for an unknown reason, small Blox began to flicker in and out of the air around her.

The shorter girl jolted violently, and a number of expressions passed over her face.

"We meet personally, at last," he spoke with stiffly edged wariness.

"I'm sure it's been just a minority of years since this place was rebooted.

"Nevertheless, unwell met, Princess Vanellope von Schweetz of Sugar Rush."

Vanellope frowned deeply.

"So that's the name of the root source," Mare breathed, too many emotions in her voice to decipher any of them.

"We'll let you leave if you use a corridor of darkness to do it, but you're not getting out of Vanellope's heart with any kind of light."

"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."

"I can't!"

Anna let herself cringe violently.

As soon as she knew Elsa was up for it, Anna would tell Sora what she'd done.

And did this mean Vanellope was the sixth New Seven Heart?

"Who are you supposed to be?" Vanellope questioned with wary, skeptical guardedness.

Vanitas drew himself up.

"Is that any way to greet the person who guided you to learn your birthright, and who even introduced you to the other piece of coded wreckage?"

The next second, prominences of black wafted out from behind him to spread upward and outwards and around him, and inside it, Anna saw the shapes of what appeared to be larger Blox with wings, and giant mechanical insects, appear before dispersing back into darkness.

Vanellope somersaulted backwards, raising her arms and hands into fists.

"So you want some more, do you!?" she yelled with so much defensiveness it by itself would have revealed the guilty pain Anna recognized below the surface.

"Did you trick Ralph into creating the new track, specifically to have another go at unplugging Sugar Rush!?

"Too bad for you we have things just as in hand now as we did then, you moldy tube of garbage alley gang flea paste!"

Vanitas snorted in derisive amusement, and he rolled his eyes.

Mare's lips twitched slightly, and there was a wistful longing there Anna hadn't even seen in how she gazed at Roxas, Xion, and the Nobodies that Anna couldn't place.

Anna felt her eyes widen slightly, and as much of a demented joke as it was, a small amount of hope rushed up to flow through her, intermingled with sympathetic understanding for Vanellope.

Did that mean that Vanellope was something similar to Mare?

"Because I recall just how good a job Empyreal, and Almost Wrecked Himself, did beating King Candy even when they worked together against his Darkling and Heartless enhancements, because they refused to dump you in the ditch where you belong, anomaly," Vanitas responded with cutting, dripping derision.

Mare stiffened violently.

Anna opened her mouth.

But before she could, Vanellope leapt up into a spinning kick directly at Vanitas' mouth.

Vanitas snorted with further amusement, and he lifted one hand to effortlessly block Vanellope.

That didn't deter her, however.

As soon as she landed, she leapt to punch at Vanitas' jaw.

Vanitas lifted his other hand, blocking this as well.

But even this didn't deter Vanellope.

She leapt into a series of increasingly furious punches and kicks, and even though Vanitas just kept moving his hands to block every single one of them without any effort, Vanellope just kept speeding up, almost as though she was intentionally attempting to work herself up as much as possible.

After a number of seconds passed, she pushed herself backwards from one of Vanitas' blocks of one of her kicks to slide back, as though she was attempting to give herself as much momentum as possible.

Then she smirked.

"Thanks for making it this very much easier to stop your own Turbo kart from even leaving the starting line, smarty flea brained dead black dwarf star."

Vanellope then broke into a sprint.

The next second, green cubes appeared over her form.

Then she was past Vanitas' block, right in his face, to deliver a whirling roundhouse punch with one hand that itself shifted into green cubes as they impacted.

This was very clearly the result of Vanellope gauging the resistance Vanitas was exerting against her with such mild effort, for he actually staggered back a step, a small amount of blood flying from his mouth.

With Vanitas caught off guard, a tall, large construct of spinning green cubes shaped like a wide 'u' with corners appeared around the black fire of primordial Unversed soup to close so tightly around it it left only millimeters of room between Vanitas' back, sides, for the prominences to move.

"The process of clearing the Heartless, and my recent lessons in how fast coding is transmitted from place to place here works, taught me a teensey amount of things, weensey just got his, and all his bytes, bit," Vanellope smirked triumphantly from where she'd landed.

"Make one wrong move, and you'll find yourself back in Game Central Station, with a clear notice of, 'Warning To All Surge Protectors: This Character Has Gone Turbo,' literally hanging off that smirk of yours, and turning it upside down.

"I'd like to see you set a single foot inside anywhere, then."

Mare appeared caught between the urge to scowl, and smother a snort.

Vanitas' face was locked in a snarling and mortified scowl of hatefully wrathful blackness in such a precise way his visage told Anna this wasn't the first time this had happened to him.

It was indescribably more hatefully infuriated and humiliated not just because this was happening a second time, but also because he'd regained a sizeable amount of the talents and skills he hadn't recalled he'd had, and the Unversed he had at his disposal, that he may have been able to apply to successfully defend himself against whatever had happened to him the first time around, so he'd believed there was now no way he could go through another instance of anything similar to whatever had happened the first time.

And not just due to that, but, additionally, Anna could tell from the set of his eyes, and expression, at her, it was also because Anna, specifically, had just missed the first instance of whatever had happened to him, merely to end up witnessing this instance of him being defeated, and humiliated, anyway.

Vanellope then cocked her left thumb, and blew on it as though she was blowing smoke away.

"There's a new sheriff in Sugar Rush, folks!

"And she's not wearing a crown!"

Vanellope bowed exaggeratedly, and repeatedly.

"I just rounded up this here criminal; who, even after he saw, when this executive gone green branch of this democracy is on the job, King Candy melted in die it soda faster than someone can lick a bite sized candy cane at turbo rapidity, honestly thought that he was such a goon he could not just make a clean getaway not just once, but even return to the scene of the crime and get away with another when I'm on patrol!

"Thank you.

"Thank you all!

"Let's clap a resounding ovation, votes in the next election not included!

"Thank you very much, with a moogle's pompom on top of my cake, long live President Vanellope von Lassovulturefeathers!"

"Wow! You really are alive! What's making you walk?"

"Keyblade Heroine Number Four, welcome home sweet home to the team of half-pints!"

Anna's eyes flew wide as she felt her own lips twitching repeatedly through the new tears that the aches in her strained eyes couldn't keep back.

The tears spilled free as she realized her lips were attempting to twitch out of a smile, and she let out a laughing grin of so much relief she was so light headed she wasn't sure she wasn't going to pass out.

Sora wasn't here with her, right now.

But he'd still been passing right through the door when she'd arrived through the corridor of darkness.

Whatever he, Donald, and Goofy had done to Vanitas the first time, this time, it had been Keyblade Hero Four that had done it.

Mare's eyes were alit, and she then broke into laughter.

Anna's eyes went further wide as she saw what might have been the slimmest twitch in Vanitas' own scowl.

Then an unfamiliar voice, guarded and pained, spoke from somewhere out of sight.

"I was right there.

"But no matter how fast I ran, Ralph was going to fall into the soda and die, and I couldn't reach him.

"You needed to do it.

"After I couldn't even ignite the beacon to protect you.

"Why couldn't I do it?

"I've always been right there, and I can never save anyone.

"Why?"

Vanellope's eyes flew wide in recognition.

Mare jolted violently.

Vanitas stiffened another time, and a different kind of edged and guarded scowl assumed itself on his face.

A wide, elated grin came to Vanellope's face, but one with tinges of irritation in it.

"What kind of a, It's radically awesome to see you again, is that, you giant clown?

"Why–"

But before she could say anything, Anna heard a familiar rolling sound.

She spun to see none other than a single troll who must be Granpabbie tumbling through the door.

Vanitas jolted violently, something sick passing over his face at the sight of Namine with them.

With her were Kairi and Donald and Goofy and Mickey and–

Anna felt her own eyes grow wider at the sight of Kristoff with them.

Then Granpabbie unfolded and, before he was even upright, he cried, "Anna, do you remember how angry the spirits of–"

Before he could complete his sentence, what Anna had believed to be imagined tears condensed into a thick, solid wall of ice in front of the portal.

Nothing but completely adamantine diamond impenetrable ice that was inextricable from even any kind of divisions between solidly there and nothing gone washed through her as Anna realized she'd been far, immeasurably far more correct than she'd known about how there was no difference between being too late, and just in time.

As Elsa had entered the door, she'd seen Anna exit the corridor of darkness.

However both portals were constructed, the cantrip had been slowed down, but that was all.

Whether her older sister had genuinely entrusted Arendelle to her, or not, made just as little difference.

Elsa had actually done it.

She had really done it.

To protect Anna from Runeard, Elsa had just done the one thing she'd vowed a simple and clean oath with all the sanctuary of not concealing anything in her heart she would never; no matter what happened, no matter what challenges or hurdles they needed to surmount, no matter the obstacles they needed to confront or how unrelenting they were, no matter the length or breadth of the channel of crazy eternal winter everywhere or insane neverlasting darkness anywhere, no matter the odds, no matter the deaths, no matter the torments, no matter what may come in all the imaginary and real World or the existing nots and selves; once again do.

Her sister had just broken her promise.

For the second time in Anna's life, Elsa had just shut, and locked, the door on Anna.

"I wanna' go to a place where I can say

That I'm all right and I'm staying there with you

I wanna' know if there could be any way

That there's no fight and I'm safe and sound with you

"And every time I look

"I thought you were there

But it was just my imagination

I don't see it anymore 'cause I see through you now

"What's stopping me? I get stuck again

Is it really okay? It's never okay for me

What's got into me? I get lost again

Is it really okay? It's never going to be"

'I Wanna' Go To A Place… – Version Two'

GUNDAM SEED DESTINY