Consequences of their actions

"…And then just touch the pad and it should do the rest." Aqua instructed. Roxas and Xion followed her instructions and in a flash of light they both were encased in a suit of keyblade armor. For Roxas a khaki colored armor with a red underside, with checkered lines for decoration. For Xion a mostly black armor with a few sections of white.

"Woah! This is really cool!" Roxas said in awe.

"Yeah. Incredible." Xion agreed. "Thank you Aqua. This is a great gift." She added, nodding in gratitude.

"You're welcome. I hope they help you in the future." Aqua said, returning the nod.

"Oh, I'm willing to bet on that." Xion said.

"Come on Roxas, let's go show Axel and Isa!" She added, taking his hand and leading him away.

As they turned around and headed into their camp Aqua looked around herself, taking a deep breath and smiling.

It had been… quite a while now that they had been training. The days blended together here, so it was very difficult to say for sure, but it felt like a long time. But in other ways it felt like almost no time had passed at all. In an odd way both statements felt true. And of course their perceptions here meant nothing for the outside world. They had got proof of that as soon as Ven had left. No sooner had the portal he had passed through than a gummiphone had rung in her pocket. First she had thought Ven had just forgotten something, only to then discover that from his point of view several days had passed.

She wasn't sure if any of them had a good grasp on how time worked when staying here in Avalon. This world had a gentle way of coaxing you to stop counting the days, reminding you that you always had tomorrow. She just had to take Kairi and Lea at their word that no significant time passed in the outside world while they were here. In the meantime she was content to let the days pass as they will and instead measure progress made.

And progress there had certainly been. They had put the time spent here to good use. Every one of them had learned a great deal, improving their work as a team. Kairi in particular had been improving in leaps and bounds. Aqua had in fact begun to wonder if the right time had come. Maybe just a little while longer, and then she could consult with Mickey and Yen Sid about the matter.

During her off duty hours she had been continuing her work on the armors. During their move here she had brought over the equipment from the Land of Departure so she could continue to do so. Roxas and Xion had theirs now, and Lea would not be far behind them. And she was determined to finish the remainder as soon as she was able. In that regard too they were getting readier for whatever was coming.

She headed for the camp as well. When she got there she spotted Terra. They gave each other a smile before awkwardly turning their eyes aside.

A rather… spectacular… incident had occurred last evening. At sunset she and him had been sitting around the campfire at the center of the camp. It had been just the two of them. Tired from a hard day of training the others had retired to their tents. They were planning to follow suite soon. They had been chatting to pass the time. She had actually quite forgotten what they had been talking about. Nothing important. Now and then they had been discussing her health, with him listening to her concerns and helping her work through them, helping her build her confidence. But at that point it had been far too late in the evening for such a heavy topic. So instead it had been small talk, whatever had come to mind.

Somewhere along the line they had just… realized how close to each other they had been. Their eyes had met, their conversation ending abruptly. She remembered absently noting the remarkable shade of blue his eyes had in the light of that evening. And before either of them had known what was happening they had been kissing.

It had been two, maybe three seconds of bliss before their brains had processed what they were doing. Then they had separated, breathless and flabbergasted by what had just happened. They had tried to talk about it, but both of them had been at a loss for words. Eventually they had given up on trying and had retired for the evening.

Needless to say it had been a little hard for them to concentrate the next day, their kiss haunting them. Well… if she had to be haunted by something then she preferred this over the Phantom! Still, they would need to have an honest discussion about this later on.

It was not as if anything wrong had happened. She had liked it, even if it had been entirely unplanned. And it was not as if the emotions that had led to this had not already been there for some time. She just felt they had crossed and important threshold, and wanted both of them to be on the same page on where things were going. Admitting their feelings to one another was one thing. Actually acting on them was quite another.

Earlier… she had been reluctant to embrace this. Because she didn't want to hurt him in case she couldn't manage the Phantom. And to avoid giving her shadow more things it could use to try and hurt her. But now she was starting to realize she was too late in both regard. If something did happen to her then the hurt would be delivered anyway. He had made that quite clear, what with him calling her his light and all. Their feelings were what they were. And if she knew that then so did the Phantom. There was no hiding anything from her dark self.

The more she thought about it the less sense it made to deny herself this. She had been scared that the Phantom would just destroy it, render it all a lie. But at the end of the day… she couldn't do that could she? Even if she did lose and the Phantom took her over again… the love would have still been true for as long as it lasted. And if the pain of loss would be inflicted even if she did nothing… what did she have to lose in enjoying this while she still had the chance?

"I'll talk with him about it tonight." She promised herself.

She came across Kairi and Naminé next the two in the middle of a conversation.

"Master Aqua, hi." Kairi greeted. "You should know, we just saw Lauriam and Elrena."

"They're back? Where are they now?" Aqua asked.

"They went to speak with Lea and Isa. Not sure what about." Kairi said.

"They did sound a little worried about the prospect for some reason though." Naminé added.

"Really?" Aqua said, raising an eyebrow. "I wonder what happened, then."


"Unbelievable. First you get our hopes up with talk about that mirror. Then you went and broke it as soon as you found it. Why would you do that? Jerks." Lea complained.

"The mirror was not particularly cooperative when we managed to wake it. It only agreed to a single question. Then it insisted we destroy it. Even we didn't get all the answers we were looking for." Lauriam explained.

"We tried to ask the mirror to wait so you could ask your questions too, but it wouldn't play ball. Odds are you wouldn't have gotten the answer you wished from it anyway. At least not by any means you would have been willing to attempt." Elrena echoed.

"Perhaps, and perhaps not. I guess we will never find out now. Because you rushed the decision. That was a lousy thing for you to do. We might have lost our best chance to find our friend because of you." Isa accused.

"I know, and I am very sorry about that. But I had given my word. I could not go back on it." Lauriam tried.

"Oh yeah? And what about the promises you gave to us? Just how do you think this is for us? What if this was the other way around? What if we had made promises to you and then we went back on our word? How would you feel about that?" Lea demanded.

"Considering how important my sister is to me I would be very upset about such a thing. And as such I do get your point." Lauriam said. "This wasn't at all what I had in mind when I talked with you about this. My offer was an honest one. I hope you can believe that much. The situation just went in a direction we had not expected. But I do realize we wronged you with this stunt. And as such I promise we will find some other way. Your missing friend will be found, and we will be helping you do it."

"More promises from you? Come on." Lea scoffed.

"He is telling you the truth. You can trust in that much." Elrena said.

"Of course you'd say that, Larxene. You'd say whatever he wants you to say. But he let us down already. He is not going to get out of it with more empty words." Lea countered.

"What… hey! My name is Elrena!" She said, now turning irritated.

The tense exchange might have continued, but just then Roxas and Xion emerged from the forest right in the middle of them.

"Axel, Isa! Look what we've got!" Xion said enthusiastically. Then she noticed the ongoing standoff. "Oh…"

"Um… did we come at a bad time?" Roxas asked.

Isa paused, then smiled. "No, not at all."

"We'll, uh… continue with this another time." He said to Lauriam and Elrena.

"My name is Elrena. I'd have you use it from now on. Larxene is not who I am anymore, and you will remember that." Elrena said to Lea, giving him a hostile glare before leaving with Lauriam.

"Having trouble with them?" Roxas asked.

"No more than usual. Which is to say… yeah. They played a rather nasty trick on us just now." Lea said. "Tell you all about it in a moment. But first… it looks like Aqua finished making your armors for you."

"Yeah! Pretty cool right?" Xion said, showing off hers.

"It's very impressive. Hopefully it will help you out the next time you have to do some fighting." Isa said.

"It should. That and the extra training we've gone through. It ought to go better if we have to face Aced again. Or the other Foretellers." Roxas said with optimism.

"It had better. I don't want to watch you ending up like last time." Lea said.

"Don't worry. We are working as hard as we can to make sure that doesn't happen. Trust me, we want it even less than you." Xion said.

"Oh, by the way, Aqua is making good progress on your armor too. She said she thinks it will be ready in a few days." Roxas said.

"Sounds good." Leas said. Then he turned his eyes to Isa. "Still kind of wish she could make a set for you too. It's not fair to exclude you."

"I know. And I agree. But what can you do? I'd need a keyblade to make use of that gear. And I don't see myself getting one of those anytime soon."

"You might get one in time. You never know." Lea consoled.

"Well I suppose anything is possible. But somehow I don't think my heart is meant for that. But no matter. I'm sure I'll get to do my part even so. If Donald and Goofy are any indication sidekicks can prove very useful." Isa sad.

"Sure. And you've already helped us out a lot with training." Roxas said.

"Yeah." Xion echoed.


"Still insisting on using my Nobody's name? And he calls us jerks? What a piece of work." Elrena complained elsewhere in the meantime.

"Well… on the other hand maybe that was just a slip up. We still look exactly the same and he has called us by those names most of the time he has known us. So maybe he just…" Lauriam tried.

"That was no slip up. I could hear it in his voice. That was deliberate." Elrena interrupted.

"Yeah." He sighed. Truthfully he thought so too. He was just trying to avoid further conflict. "I didn't realize this would bother you so much."

"What, like it wouldn't bother you if someone insisted calling you Marluxia?" She replied. "I'm not her anymore, and I've put a lot of effort into leaving that part of my life behind me. Then this one just comes along and acts like nothing has changed. Like all of my effort doesn't mean anything. Super annoying."

"I've half a mind to remind him what Larxene was really like so he can tell the difference. Maybe he won't be so keen to pick on me once he realizes how easy he has had it so far." She added.

"I'd rather you didn't. We still need to work together." Lauriam said.

"I know, I know. I wasn't serious. Things need to stay civil. Still… no one ever said I have to enjoy working with everyone here. Pretty sure I' not going to have a pleasant time working with him." She said.

"As long as you can avoid killing each other and are willing to fight together if needed that's good enough for me." Aqua said, walking to the scene. She smiled and shook hands with Elrena.

"I heard you were back. Sounds like you had a rather tense discussion with Lea and Isa." She said.

"Yeah… we certainly have our differences, them and us. And we had a rather unfortunate development. But we'll sort it out with them, no worries." Elrena said with a nod.

"Did you get what you needed at least?" Aqua asked.

"We found a clue of sorts. Potentially a very important one. Perhaps you can help us make sense of what we learned." Lauriam said.

"Of course. We'll help you if we can." Aqua said.

"We also made a bunch of other discoveries while out there. But we'll get back to you on those. We still need time to process them ourselves." Elrena added.

Aqua cocked her head at Elrena, a puzzled frown on her face. Something about how Elrena had said that bit…

"Okay. Take time with that if you need to." She nevertheless said.


Gula moved in a blur almost too fast to see, destroying a dozen heartless in a heartbeat. As they vanished in to nothing he scoffed. Bloody pests. To someone like him they were not an obstacle. These days his true struggles were within him. That was not to say these foot soldiers of the true enemy posed no threat at all. They might not be a match for his blade, but fighting them provoked emotions that the darkness in his heart could feed on. The very act of fighting was thus dangerous. Yet he had no choice. The Heartless mindlessly attacked anything living they came across, and if he allowed them to overcome him, then stealing his heart would also release the Darkness trapped within him. And he was quite sure that monstrosity would have liked nothing better than to escape from its cage.

He supposed those were tactics Darkness had employed for as long as this war had been going on. A dual approach, without through the Heartless, and within through the darkness lurking in the hearts of people. Then it was just a matter of applying continuous pressure until something broke.

Feeling sickly, he reached for a light vial, pouring its contents into his heart, feeling his condition improve slightly. Afterwards he took a shaky breath. How he loathed this means of survival. Each time he had had to use one of the vials, it always left him feeling so utterly disgusted with himself. Knowing where that light came from continued to be a torment of its own.

This had been the last of the vials of light that had been given him. He would have to head back to get more. It seemed that he needed the vials more and more frequently. And every time he used one it felt a little less effective in easing his discomfort. He did not want to think about what it might mean for his health.

He knew that even with light he was not going to last forever. He just wanted to find Ava before that. Fortunately he had now managed to think of a plan to locate her. He had learned of the mirror in these ruins. It would be able to answer all the questions he had. It could tell him where she was and whether he really needed to search for her, or whether he would get to see her again just by waiting for her to come to him. Just a little bit more effort then…

In no time at all he made it inside the castle walls, then inside into the main hall. He had just gotten past the doors when he froze on the spot.

"No…" He gasped, running the rest of the way to the mirror.

"No, no, no." He whispered, kneeling down and scooping up shards of glass from the ground, not caring at all that he got wounds on his hand as a result.

The mirror… was destroyed. Who had done this? Why?

That was when he noticed footprints in the dust. Different from his own, looking to be a bit older, a light sprinkling of dust speckles covering them already. He waved his hand over the footprints, casting a spell. Moments later shimmering images of people appeared, echoes of what had occurred, brought to life by his magic.

He saw ghostly visages of two people moving in the hall, their feet moving where there were footprints on the ground, speaking in indistinct voices. He could not understand what they were saying, but they looked to be talking with the mirror. Then one of them summoned a keyblade and struck at the mirror, destroying it.

The one who had struck the blow, the pink-haired man… he was unfamiliar. But the other one unexpectedly struck a chord of recognition. He had seen her, only a lot younger, from a long time ago. That's right. The stray Invi had picked up. The one that had lived in their tower for a little while, before they had started forming their unions. But what was she doing here? How come she was in this age too?

The Master. It had to be part of his schemes. There was no way someone from the past could be here in the present unless he had designed it to be so. And if that was the case he must have known this was going to happen. Perhaps it was even part of his plan.

It was not enough that the Master had tricked him into committing horrible atrocities, causing the death so many innocent wielders. An entire world. It was not enough that all along his Master had intended for him to die to get rid of his old enemy. No, he just had to come and deprive him of this as well! The one thing he wanted before he could let his miserable, cursed existence come to its destined conclusion, and he couldn't even be allowed to have that! He had put so much faith in this mirror when he had realized its existence. And now it had been robbed of that chance. He would continue the search of course, because what else was there for him to do? But frankly the odds were not good, particularly as he might be running out of time. And if finding her was against his Master's wishes, then there truly was no hope. No point in even trying…

He fell to his knees, a quiet sob escaping from his lips. "Ava, where are you?"

Something cracked within him, deep within the recesses of his heart. It caused a surge of something foul. To Gula it felt like he was about to vomit, except the sensation came from his heart and through his chest rather than rising up his throat. The feeling grew and grew until he couldn't hold it in anymore. Turning his face toward the ceiling he let out a loud howl, his frustration, anger and sorrow pouring out of him. Only… once started the outflow did not stop. The Darkness within him latched onto those emotions, feeding on them, and immediately turning the strength gained back around to amplify those emotions even further. A riot of emotions being manipulated that rapidly escalated out of all control.

A gale of shadows washed over the castle as the entire world shook. Within the dark swirl spilling everywhere multitudes of yellow eyes began to glow…