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CHAPTER 59:

AN ARCTIC NIGHT ON THE PRISMATIC GLACIER

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Author's Notes: Happy Thirteenth Anniversary for KINGDOM HEARTS: THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-EIGHT DAYS OVER TWO!

The musical pieces for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'Testament,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Original Sound Best Tracks, Disc Two; and afterward 'Promised Pain,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Original Sound Best Tracks; and afterward 'The True Nature Of All,' from the VALKYRIE PROFILE Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and after this 'Moonlit Night Theme,' from the SUIKODEN II Original Soundtrack, Volume Two, Disc One. The first three compositions can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section, and the fourth on Zophar's Domain.

As he cannoned down the tunnel, Roxas wouldn't have paid attention to anything other than what Xion needed him to do if he'd trusted himself to be able to do so.

But he couldn't.

There hadn't been any question of that before he'd heard what Yozora wanted Xion's destiny to be.

All the additional hindrance he'd been to the ruination of the Gazing Eye had shown him was that he needed to rethink where, and when, he could best protect Xion and Axel and Mare and Elsa and Hayner and Olette and Pence and Sora and Namine and Isa and all the others.

But how all he'd accomplished by attempting to do what Riku had stopped him from before things turned out even worse for Xion, and Axel, this time around, was to give Merlin and the Northuldrans borrowed time, was no surprise.

So what if he couldn't even genuinely die right?

Accomplishment and futility were as interchangeable as anything else.

Roxas rounded a bend to see the glacial tunnel before him open into a large cavern as opalescent as diamond, and he slowed enough he took in his surroundings as he rushed through the tunnel to discover he was in a giant hemispherical cavern with the sigils of a snowflake at the center.

Runeard was standing at its near center, with

"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"

"Now you'll see!"

standing motionless behind him with its swords hanging slack and unmoving at its sides, Xion in her ordinary form now dangling at the center of its torso in a position that made it appear she was being held up by the neck as though by a hangman's noose that would tighten if she took a single step forward, with her eyes open, but her gaze directed downward, and she was unmoving other than to breathe herself.

"Now you'll see!"

"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"

"Now you'll see!"

"No… It was my choice… to go away now."

"Now you'll see!"

"Am I… the one who did this to you?"

"Now you'll see!"

"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"

"Now you'll see!"

"No… It was my choice… to go away now."

"No… It was my choice… to go away now."

"Now you'll see!"

"Am I… the one who did this to you?"

"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"

Pete was standing to Runeard's left, and an unfamiliar woman wearing garb arranged similarly to how both Maleficent wore hers, and Roxas had been told Snow White's Queen stepmother had worn her finery, was at Runeard's right.

Tidus was laying in front of Runeard, but with his face turned in Xion's direction, Roxas couldn't see whether he was still conscious.

"Am I… the one who did this to you?"

"Now you'll see!"

"No… It was my choice… to go away now."

"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"

"Maleficent, they're here!" Pete called into another opening on the opposite side of the domed chamber.

A wall of dancing tongues of emerald rose in front of it.

Roxas heard a sliding sound behind him as familiar wisps of darkness adumbrated Pete.

He turned his head to see a thick layer of frost above the opening into the tunnel slide down.

Sora cleared it with a Dodge Roll a decent amount of inches before it reached his body, and a small pinnacle of ice resembling the one slightly akin to parts of Elsa's ice palace Sora used to Formchange Crystal Snow ascended to thrust into it and keep it from dropping any lower.

The woman clad like Maleficent snorted, and a wide bolt of jade lightning of her own extended from her outstretched hand to connect with the minaret, and then a slowly rotating polyhedron constituted of lines of dancing swarms of white specks akin to frigid fireflies appeared around the pinnacle.

The surroundings themselves morphed into an opaque ellipse of solid black.

"Stay put, Queenie!" Pete guffawed into a mocking cry.

"You won't be alterin' the temperature in this area when nothin' can git pass that blackbody but soundwaves, nosiree now bob your head if you know what's good for ya'!"

"Since when do I need to when I'm tied to Ahtohallan?" Elsa shot back with mildly but determined cutting challenge.

"Says who?" Pete laughed.

"Last a ways I heard, four buddies of yours you really oughta' meet are still amblin' 'bout the vigilance Ahtohallan is even given ya' a looksee into now.

"Ya' sure ya' wanna' risk peering deeper, and spy any more with those Elsa eyes?"

Roxas wondered why he even wanted to clench his teeth.

All that mattered was getting this over and done with.

He wondered if there was any way he could convince Elsa to just lock him in an ice statue unless she had a mission for him to fulfill, and then blast him in the heart each time it was done until she needed him the next time.

He had no proof anyone who totally froze could be restored, or even lived through it, but that would be a suitable true, and irreversible, death.

No.

Even if it was really possible for him to becoming the nothing he was the most distilled purity of any time there was no mission to go on, even if he could convince Elsa even that was more of a position than he deserved at her court, as her knight, doing that would mean he'd need to deal with the warmth and kindness of whoever broke him out of the statue each time.

And for all he knew, since he was once more reconsidering giving into the darkness, with as many reasons as he had to now, willingly wanting to be cursed like that, at least repeatedly without end, might qualify as

just endeavoring to begin to think that word at all caused Roxas' stomach to heave so violently his eyes watered.

he had a heart, yes

that was why he was Nobody, and nothing

the curse wouldn't even work.

Sora walked to Roxas' side.

Before he could say anything, the stranger talked first.

"We've come too far by now to waste any more time with your happily ever afters," she intoned, her voice as politely arrogant as Maleficent with a vacant disinterest that Roxas hadn't heard in hers.

"It doesn't matter whether, or not, you're a Heartless, or anything else; you don't belong any less in the darkness than Nobodies.

"Hearts and all the ethereal filaments of the World are nothing more than conglomerations of photon wavelengths residing in varying excited states of energy that can't remain as stable particles all at once for a steady length of time long enough to rest in the material dimensions, if at all; while all of the matter altered by these astral strings are themselves nothing more than particles at a lower state of energy, that themselves possess enough energy at rest, if they're put through specific processes, they can burn as hot as stars while casting palls of poisonous mushrooms of darkness more corrosive than the most verdant plant."

Sora's mouth opened slightly.

Roxas felt nothing for himself.

If this member of Maleficent's Summation Organization Thirteen was a nihilist, it didn't matter any more, or less, to him than belief.

Though, he didn't know whether it was understanding and anguished pain for Sora he felt, or a stabbing and serrated anger.

"Light and darkness aren't just present in these filaments.

"Light is literally everywhere," the woman continued.

"As if I should stand with light."

The evident reference to Luxu, and his own determination to live as a nihilist through the laws of nature as the very dragon his family had died hunting so he could enjoy the trappings of luxury for boundless time, for a false light, and not darkness, meant nothing to Roxas.

Roxas' insides contorted as he saw new tears come to Sora's eyes at the memory of what he'd done at the Altar of Naught, and what had happened to Kairi's mother.

"You can't keep yourself alive without the safety brought about by power.

"Spending any time yapping about that would be as much a waste of time as anything else, so kindly dispense with your solipsism about how you're supposedly the center of the universe and all of reality is nothing more than what you believe in, save us any more trouble, and hand us Oathkeeper."

Uncertainty moved inside Roxas.

He'd truly become a castaway in darkness for good sooner, or later, anyway.

So, if it would protect Xion, perhaps he should, at least, just do that much.

"Save us the trouble of your rambling," Sora shot back.

"You know we're not going to do that, so let's do it to it.

"Or how about you stop attempting to get under Xion's skin, and leave her out of this for good?"

Runeard then laughed with condescending derision.

"So now you don't want her to be home?"

"No… It was my choice… to go away now."

"Am I… the one who did this to you?"

"Now you'll see!"

Roxas struggled to breathe.

Runeard was just referring to the darkness, not this place?

right?

nowwhatnopleasenotanythingelsenotsomethingelse

"Are you referring to the darkness, or here?" Sora asked, his voice and expression now guarded.

Pete rolled his eyes up at the ceiling.

"We're used to your addle pated bumbling, but this is too far even for you puff eyes.

"Roxas, you heard what Xion offered to do herself."

Roxas suppressed the urge to clench his teeth at Pete's comparison of Xion to Monstro.

Runeard gave Pete an irritated look.

"For once, imbecile, you're the person who needs to stop running your mouth off.

"Ephemer didn't tell them, even though no fiber of her reflection should have remained for the Gazing Eye to tie her to any of the events between her first disappearance and return, even when this shouldn't have been able to come to be, the Book of Prophecies was yet able to store memories of her, and her talents and skills, from memories the Gazing Eye sent into the past prior to her recreation."

Sora saw no reason not to clench his teeth this time.

"Axel and Roxas and Namine, and that other girl. I felt what Roxas felt and… they laughed together, got mad, and they grieved. You have to have a heart to cry."

"This could have been the other way around."

"Huh?"

"But it really has to be you."

"What do you mean?"

"There are so many hearts that are connected to yours. You're me, so you can feel what I felt."

"No. Roxas, you're you. We're not the same. I wanted to tell you that. That you deserve as much as I do to be your own person."

"Sora, see? That's why it has to be you."

"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."

"Carrying around a little hurt can't be all that bad. Hurting is part of caring."

As long as he could still bring people home to curl up and rest at a hearth of light, safe and warm, the light meant something.

Correct?

Or, if he couldn't believe in it anywhere other than inside himself, did that mean he really did believe he was supposedly the center of the universe?

No.

He still trusted Kairi had it.

And Riku, and Donald, and Goofy, and Roxas, and Anna, and all the rest of his friends.

"Which is it going to be, then?" Sora questioned.

"Are you going to make another effort at cutting us out of your treasure hoard, or are you going to make one to let us in to the darkness?"

Runeard glared at the woman, and then he turned his face back to Sora.

"And pass up this chance to better put you in your place?

"Not a chance."

Runeard pretended to think back.

"How did it go that day, when you found Xehanort's Heartless production engine?" he queried.

"Ah, yes.

"Ones born of the hearts and darkness, devoid of hearts, ravage all worlds and bring desolation. Realize the destiny: The realm of Kingdom Hearts. The great darkness sealed within the great heart. Progeny of darkness, come back to the eternal darkness. Seven hearts, one Keyhole, one key to the door. The door of darkness, tied by two keys.

"End of the World primarily fluctuated within the realm of darkness, as The World That Never Was, and Castle Oblivion, largely did in the realm in between.

"But, even though you had just visited the abyss below the realm of darkness itself, far from Traverse Town or the bond to it in the World Terminus, you were nonetheless left at the road to dawn in what was left of the Land of Departure leading in the direction of Twilight Town between the trails to light and darkness, with the altered castle that had once belonged to Eraqus directly ahead, and you even chased Pluto there when you must have surmised by now he caught up with you from Twilight Town to lead you to Yen Sid.

"And it took one key to open the Door to Darkness, but two to close it.

"Most Keyblade wielders learn how to unlock paths, and fulfill their duties doing so.

"You, however, are more familiar with locking paths than most Keyblade wielders, yet you appear to have not attempted to discern the reason for this.

"Lastly, there is how you were able to catch up with Xehanort's Heartless in time to prevent him from opening the Door to Darkness all the way, even though he had been exploring End of the World for the better part of six days by then.

"You wish to know what Chernabog is?

"Before the last battle of the First Keyblade War, the Book of Prophecies projected five worlds within which the Keyblade wielders of the time were tasked with gathering shards of light from Heartless lured to their confines, purportedly to concentrate enough light in one location it would keep the darkness at bay, but actually to stockpile enough for Keyblade wielders to have something to strive amidst themselves over for the means of calling Kingdom Hearts.

"Even with the worlds connected then, Yozora believed traveling to worlds themselves to defeat Heartless there would take too long, so he expedited the process of setting up the Unions to hoard light by projecting worlds from the Book of Prophecies, taking care to not let the ordinary wielders know about the deception to ensure the efficiency of this method.

"However, because the Gazing Eye foretold Maleficent could be a valuable asset if she could be maneuvered into traveling to the datascape of Enchanted Dominion in the Book of Prophecies, Yozora needed a means of luring enough Gummi Heartless to besiege the real World location that would, millennia later, become known as the Enchanted Dominion they would effectively function as a wall to ensure Maleficent couldn't travel there, and to accomplish that, he needed a Gummi ship.

"Not even Mickey realizes it, but, on two separate journeys, Dale, Goofy, Donald, Chip, and himself visited Daybreak Town twice before the First Keyblade War, and they supplied the Foretellers with the Gummi Heartless they need."

Roxas' eyes opened a little more.

Xion at last shifted a bit, although she didn't look up.

Shock and surprise did manifest inside Sora when he heard that.

Something else passed through him, as well, and Merlin's face appeared in his mind's eye.

But Sora couldn't place it.

"When he first visited Symphony of Sorcery, Yen Sid acquired a Gummi block he altered into what he called a star shard, and during his apprenticeship under Yen Sid, when the rigors of his Keyblade training became too strenuous, Mickey was fond of stealing it to go on his own journeys throughout the planets.

"Whoever, or whatever, else was involved with each specific journey into the past, it was that star shard that allowed Pete to travel into the past, and you to follow, without the need for waypoints.

"That leads me to Chernabog.

"As you know, even when memories are completely suppressed, they don't vanish.

"The same thing is true of their darkness.

"I won't spend any of this time informing you of what we know of how, or why.

"But Chernabog is the sole recorded seeker of darkness known to anyone's history the Foretellers, or Maleficent, or anyone else we're aware of, have uncovered, or scryed, who totally locked away his memories, yet gave into darkness present within them.

"As a result, Chernabog descended into a night where any attempt to comprehend, or even remember, what that night consists of, leads to him able to grasp just enough fleeting memories to act on nothing more than blind sentiment, but before he can formulate any of that sentiment into conceptualization, those memories vanish, and thus does any true awareness."

Roxas paled slightly at that.

Xion shifted once more, but she still didn't raise her head.

"Unlike what Xion just attempted to become, he has a nightmare in its sincerest form, but it's as obscure to him as it perhaps is to anyone who isn't someone still alive, at least in The Final World, who once knew him before he became as you know him.

"Yen Sid discovered the star shard the first time they met, and as it was already rigged to transport Mickey into the past, and then ensure any Gummi ship that came into close enough contact with his star shard around that time made at least one return trip, the Gazing Eye began sending its knowledge of Xion into the past, where it would then be safe, through Chernabog's selves as soon as it became aware what Xion really was.

"The Heartless of Chernabog you met, however, possesses one other exceptional trait, and the wish to discern all he could about it is what delayed Xehanort's Heartless until he perceived the three of you were gaining on him."

So Sora had been right about how the two Chernabogs they'd faced hadn't been the complete him.

"Although he was not separated into a Heartless and Nobody by his choice, his darkness was already so profound he retained his form although even his darkness hadn't been darkness itself until then."

Roxas didn't react at all.

Xion shifted a small amount more.

Sora started a little at this, but he didn't even feel a small bit of surprise he did.

"As you know, the Replica Program was an offshoot of Xehanort's experiments into developing a heart from scratch.

"Xemnas thus waited until the precise period during which you investigated the quantum furnace from which all of Xehanort's Emblem Heartless sprang to put the last touches on Xion."

Roxas himself jolted violently at hearing that.

Xion began to raise her head.

Then, however, she let it descend back to its previous position.

Too many feelings flooded without and inside Sora at hearing that for him to be able to process any of them.

"And, even though you hadn't even known there was such a location as Castle Oblivion to begin with then, it was Roxas' acceptance of his place in the first Organization Thirteen, and Xion's very birth, that split Chernabog into a Heartless and Nobody, thus preventing you from catching up with Xehanort's Heartless long enough you were deposited in the altered Land of Departure, and you first set foot in Castle Oblivion to lose your memories."

Xion could take in therehadfromnotneverunendingforeverlasting burning aching in eyes that were attempting to cry so hard they were burning.

"Wonder what this thing even does…

"Heartless! They must be after the device."

I'm the device.

I'll never let you be, once again.

And the knowledge she was landing, and sprinting forward as fast as possible to arc around Runeard before she even saw Roxas shift to begin barreling at a seeker of darkness who would have died decades ago if not for someone with the same false light as Ansem the Wise.

"What am I doing? Getting worked up over some device. Like I've got any clue what the Organization even uses it for… Everything's a mystery."

But I'm the one seeing the memories, and I do know what you're going to do.

Because I made you into this.

The Keyblade of Hearts was once again in her hand, but she didn't know when she'd called it.

She just knew how it hummed in synchronized symphony with chimes she was mostly sure no one but she could hear tinkling below the surface of all the walls of Ahtohallan around and below and above her.

"They didn't even tell me about Xion."

And I promised to live for you, this time.

"Hmph, the biggest mystery is me – the idiot who keeps doing everything he's told. Why am I doing this? Why am I going back to the castle? There's nothing there for me."

There's no other way left I can protect you.

"Have I got anything left?"

Always.

"Any place I really belong?"

Here, with me.

"Any friends… I still belong with?"

Forever, not in vanished memory, but for everlasting tomorrow.

She altered her grip to thrust the Keyblade of Hearts into her heart just before she intercepted Roxas' Oathkeeper and Oblivion, both flying in Strike Raids, so close by each other's sides they were almost intercepting each other's flight paths, at the artery in Runeard's neck faster than she knew even Sora could react, and fulfill her first duty to Maleficent by sending her heart directly into Ahtohallan's font.

Elsa didn't need to see what was going on to know how both Roxas and Xion had reacted.

She just sped up altering the temperature within the various shades of visible light she'd refracted through the bent photon wavelengths using the same principles of condensation that created rainbows as fast as she could without letting the procession of the spell she was casting leave her charge.

"Crowns don't sit on the heads of the mighty.

"They rest on the heads of monarchs who understand, when we've reached the top of the stones leading to our thrones, and we're sitting on them for the first time, or we're back where we belong, we don't crush those stones.

"Whether they obey our will or not, we dump the rocks that never had a role to begin with into the swamps where they belong until they crack into brittle chalk and their last breaths stop gasping for the air even merit and servitude can't give them a place in."

All the walls she'd begun erecting to keep the debilitating and withering self hate and guilt away since she'd first heard Luxu, Elrena, and Lauriam threaten Anna were still shaking aches, and this time, no matter how much she wanted them to ward off even the knowledge she really had brought about what she'd been most afraid of when she'd struck Anna in the head, the far too familiar fatigue wouldn't disappear.

But that no longer mattered.

"Feel free to throw all your penitence or puissance, negotiation or warmongering at me you want, it won't make a difference any longer.

"For soon, so very soon, for the preservation of our green and verdant land, the trumpets of Arendelle will once more resound their clarion paeans to herald the return of its one true and undoubted, eternally and forever indisputably renowned King, Runeard the Magnificent!"

Luxu, and Grandpa, could believe in whatever backwards archaic notions of castes, lives determined by dint of birth, speaking your values with the point of a sword rather than your mind, and lese Majeste they wanted to, Elsa knew what it meant to love people.

Love was placing the needs of others before her own.

"It wouldn't do for the rightful ruler of Arendelle to be denied our long anticipated reunion with our literally inhuman monster of a granddaughter who usurped what should never have stopped being ours; and our opportunity to introduce her, and the banquet hall of Ahtohallan, and to the repast that was just laid on the table of its deepest sound by her new squire, Arthur; now would it?"

And the glitter and comforts of luxury weren't even needs.

They were just the petty entitlements of fops.

Arendelle's small militias had provided all they had at their disposal to her people by now, so they were mostly underfoot at this point.

She wouldn't get to see Luxu brought to justice for attempting to take the happiness Elsa had fragmented from Anna's life for so many years and attempt to replace everything Arendelle stood for with authoritarian belligerence, and outdated notions of bloodline and heritage of legacy, or defend any of her other friends, if she did this.

"Your Majesty, you look like you could use a friend. Don't you want to talk?"

No.

I looked like I needed to learn how to be a friend.

And, above all, a sister.

Whether she was capable of learning how to love Roxas, or anyone else, in the remaining possible way to do so, or if she even had any willingness to attempt to form that kind of connection, to begin with, was no longer relevant.

What mattered was what Roxas and Xion needed from her now.

Elsa felt her cantrip shift, and she realized the last filaments of the prism were dispersing.

As they did, the same familiar exhausting weary aching that had been clawing and pressing against her since she'd first reunited with Xion in Scala ad Caelum returned.

Sights and sounds flooded in.

"Oh no! There's a little girl caught in the fire!"

"Let's go!"

"Wait. Running's too slow!"

"Then what's the other choice?"

"Get on that."

"Uh-oh! Now it's all four of them."

"So what? There are four of us too."

"Actually, I think I can make it five."

"Nooo!"

"Thank you, my boy."

Thank you for all of it, Anna.

Kristoff.

Olaf.

Marshmallow.

Sven.

Roxas.

Xion.

Sora.

As she altered her feet to break into a run of her own, she called up the same strings of ethereal talent she used when she created photographs in order to shield her mental vision from anything too personal, or painful.

"Dad's King of the Gods."

"Whaaat?!"

"Whaat?!"

"Whaat?!"

"His father is a God? But doesn't that mean Herc is a God too?"

"I think it does."

"No wonder he's so strong!"

"Then he'll be okay."

"Won't he?"

"No. Organization Thirteen's here. He'll need our help."

"Good point. We gotta' go!"

"'Cause heroes never quit."

"We fight with all our heart. C'mon!"

However, as she brought to mind every judgment she'd made of just how adroit and potent Roxas', and Xion's, own unique talents were with all her months of learning how to feel, and stop concealing, and she then fed it into the most durable incantation she had recuperated enough by now to form, she knew she needed to see this much now.

"Rapunzel… You were my new dream."

"And you were mine."

She'd spent so much of her life attempting to keep everyone around her safe from her talents.

It was time to ensure another dream of hers came true.

"Our probability of success is–"

"You don't have to crunch the numbers, Baymax. It's not the sum of our parts. It's the sum of our hearts."

Elsa knew what Maleficent's Organization Thirteen hadn't yet found a place to attempt to demoralize them with by remorselessly throwing in their faces.

She didn't even need to be whatever kind of hybrid she was to be a puppet, because if hearts were nothing more than lamps for wavelengths of light and darkness that could ebb and crest back and forth between matter, and recede and intertwine with it, then that meant she was just as much of a vacant shell as Roxas and Xion were no matter what her heritage was, or what talents as an archmagus she possessed.

"Remember – our hearts will always be connected to Andy's. No matter what you do!"

"And that's something you'll never understand, because you're hollower than any toy."

But that was irrelevant.

That was just showed, even more, that no one was more worthy than anyone else, or any less capable of loving others in every possible way, and giving them a warm home, or understanding how to do so.

Ripples of white coruscated in front of Elsa's outstretched palms, and she turned them both to aim them directly at herself, and her heart.

Then she launched a single, small, roughly spherical shard of the most compact ice she knew how to concentrate right towards her own heart.

"My guess is no one's ever loved you before. Because you know nothing about hearts and love."

"There are hearts all around us, trying to connect. Your 'loneliness' only made Woody and Buzz's connection stronger. That's the heart's true nature – to never, ever let go."

Almost before the cold even registered, she was sprinting as fast as she could move.

Anna was nowhere nearby.

She hadn't stopped paying attention for that for the most infinitesimal instant.

She could intercept a strike tied to recollection.

"Nooo!" she yelled without thinking twice about not concealing any of her love for both Roxas and Xion in her voice, as she whirled between them at the same time as the far faster motioning ice curse reached her hands, grabbing Roxas' two Keyblades with one hand and the Keyblade of Hearts with the other.

"You have been yourselves at home all your lives!"

Elsa's vision then became encased in pitch onyx.

Before she could no longer hear anything, a little boy's voice she'd solely heard in the memories Ira had shown her sounded in amusedly calm satisfaction.

"No mercy.

"No quarter.

"Literally.

"Checkmate."

.

"You're risking your own life for something as pointless as revenge?"-Zolf J. Kimbley

"And what is it that you're killing for?"-Scar

"Nothing."-Zolf J. Kimbley

"Nothing!? You mean to say you slaughtered all these people for nothing!?"-Scar

"At the end of the day, the human being is not much more than the components used to create a common bomb. If you think about it, we're not that special. Not you. Not me. We're all empty. We're all worthless."-Zolf J. Kimbley

"I might be empty. But not worthless!"-Alphonse Elric

"Cut me some slack, Al. I'm just a State Alchemist trying to do his job. Just like your brother."-Zolf J. Kimbley

"You're just a murderer! And you've got to stop this! It won't solve anything!"-Alphonse Elric

"Stay out of this, Al! You don't understand!"-Scar

"What will you accomplish but shedding more blood!? Please, just walk away."-Alphonse Elric

"How do you like that? It looks like I was able to get rid of both of your arms, old boy. Do you smell that? It smells like defeat. Any minute now, your arm will begin to absorb oxygen from the air, and then, kaflooey."-Zolf J. Kimbley

"You said humans have no impact. No meaning. So tell me, how much of an impact do I make on you!?"-Scar

FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST:

Episode 41: HOLY MOTHER