I do not own Kingdom Hearts or any of the characters.
Near Miss
Tyler ducked back into cover as a laser hit just to the right of him. He regretted not getting one of his own now. The pirates had gotten the hang of avoiding their spells and firing from cover. He held his keyblade up over his shoulder and sent a few fireball exploding on the ground where he hoped there were pirates. Just as he did, Noel stood, sending a more accurate barrage as Lightning sent a few lightning bolts while firing her gunblade. After a moment, they ducked back down, as lasers began to pepper the wall of the building.
"Give up while you're still breathing!" Silver shouted. "All you're doing is wasting your energy!"
"It's not happening!" Tyler shouted, standing and launching a fireball at Silver, then diving out of the way of several lasers.
"Then I'm afraid you leave me no choice!" Silver shouted.
Suddenly, the lasers stopped. Tyler stared at the door, then at Lightning. He carefully stood, looking out through the opening to see the pirates all staying behind cover. He narrowed his eyes, raising his keyblade slightly.
"What're they waiting for?" Tyler wondered aloud.
Suddenly, the back door that Jim had left through, a rotating sphere with a hole in it to allow entrance into the machinery and tunnels within the apparently metal planet, began to turn. He turned, Lightning and Noel spinning toward it as well, Doppler aiming his pistol at it.
"Please let that be Jim," Noel said.
Then, it stopped, the light from below shining up into the room for a moment in silence. Tyler took a step forward, only to stop, throwing himself backward as heartless erupted out of it like a volcano. There were soldiers, shadows, and a few other types that Tyler didn't have the time to recognize. Almost instantly, he, Lightning, and Noel were hacking and slashing at the flood of heartless, only to be swarmed in seconds.
"Lightning!" Tyler shouted, reaching out toward her, only to receive numerous gashes from the heartless' claws.
"Tyler!" Lightning shouted.
Tyler felt cold creeping into him, darkness beginning to cover him, only for a gun to go off and the darkness to evaporate instantly. Tyler felt himself get yanked into motion, then slammed back down, hard, claws pressing against the side of his neck, over his carotid artery. He looked around using his eyes, and saw Lightning lying in front of him, also covered in scratches and with a soldier heartless holding each limb, one heartless that looked like a medieval knight but with spikes for legs below his reverse-bent knees and with a sword that was extended straight out of the handle's finger guards so it ran the same direction as a forearm, was holding said weapon to Lightning's throat. Noel was currently pinned underneath a massively overweight heartless wearing purple clothes with a silver helmet, and was completely unable to move anything but his head. Tyler looked to Doppler and the captain, seeing them being restrained by pirates. To the other side, Silver was standing in the doorway, his still-smoking pistol extended from his mechanical arm.
"Useful, aren't they?" Silver asked.
"You're controlling the heartless!?" Tyler gaped. "But how?"
"Oh, now I wouldn't say controlling," Silver said. "It's more like a partnership. These strange lads said they wanted to go to Treasure Planet. And they offered me a deal. They'll work for me so long as I could get them to Captain Flint. After that, the treasure be mine."
"You're insane," Tyler said. "Do you have any idea what these things are? You can't trust them!"
"Oh don't you worry about that," Silver said. "They understand business."
"No, they understand killing!" Tyler said. "They're monsters!"
"Some say pirates be monsters too," Silver said. "Gag them. Jimbo will be back soon."
Tyler shook his head, the gag falling off his face. "Lightning, we need to get going, now."
"I know," Lightning said, also having worked the gag free. "There were hundreds of heartless when we were caught, now there are none."
"They're all watching, I'll bet," Tyler said. "And I'll bet money that wherever Flint is, the keyhole for this world is there too."
"And Serah," Lightning said.
"Then why are we still sitting here?" Noel asked, Silver twisting around at the front of the boat and glaring at him.
"Because Silver's going to take us with him when he inevitably finds the way to the treasure," Tyler said. "And in exchange, we're not going to kill him. Though, we can't speak for the heartless."
"The only one what should be afraid of the heartless is you three," Silver said. "They seem awful eager to eat you three."
"Yeah, we know," Tyler said. "We've been fighting them for a long time now. You should be worried about what happens if they get into that keyhole I mentioned though. A single one getting inside will corrupt this world, and I don't mean the planet. I mean the entire galaxy. Everything you know will be swallowed up by darkness, everyone that inhabits it being turned into heartless. How much will your treasure be worth then?"
Silver huffed, turning back to the front, so Tyler rolled his eyes, summoning his keyblade and cutting himself and Lightning free, then Noel. The pirates all aimed at them, but Tyler ignored them, leaning against the side of the boat behind Silver.
"You get us to the keyhole, and maybe our friend, and we'll let you have the treasure," Tyler said. "All we want is our friend, and to protect this world from the heartless you so foolishly made a deal with."
"Fine," Silver said as the ships slowed to a stop. "We go on foot from here!"
They all got out, leaving Doppler, the captain, and one pirate to watch them. Then, they followed the glowing green holographic line in the air over them, gold balls of light streaking along it rapidly, speeding up the closer they got until finally, the stepped out of the forest only to find an empty cliff.
"What is this?" Silver asked just as the map sealed itself. "Where's the treasure?"
"I-I don't know," Jim said, Tyler walking forward. "I can't get it open."
"Jim," Tyler said, dragging his foot through some moss and clearing it, revealing a depression that looked like the sphere. "Try this."
Jim pressed the sphere into it and the sphere lit up, a glowing spherical map of the galaxy appearing over it before glowing lines of color raced along the ground below the cliff to them before shooting into the air, reaching fifty feet over the cliff before stopping, spreading open into a triangle, showing space on the other side. Tyler tilted his head and tossed a handful of moss through it, watching the moss drift away on the far side, freezing as it did.
"It's a portal," Tyler said. "So then...we teleport to the treasure."
Jim nodded. "The treasure is...at the centroid of the mechanism. What if...this whole planet is the mechanism, and the treasure is buried at the center of it."
What few pirates remained with them, a grand total of three, began to claw at the metal beneath them, one of them swinging a pickaxe, only to bend the pick.
"And just how in blazes do we get to it?" Silver demanded.
"We just...open the right door," Jim said, touching the hologram of Treasure Planet, the portal turning green before becoming an image of several tubes extending from a curved ceiling.
They all walked through, stopping inside and staring at the gold before them, formed into a sphere as big around as ten of Tyler and the others' gummi ships. Above them, the inside of the planet's metal shell rotated, the tubes extended from it being massive laser cannons that fired into tubes sticking out of the gold, the energy from the lasers undoubtedly being what was keeping the gold together.
"It's so...massive," Tyler breathed, staring down at the gold prisms mixed in with gold coins. "There's munny."
"There's more money here than you could ever spend," Silver grinned. "We're rich boys!"
"We're gonna need a bigger boat!" one of the pirates cheered as they ran onto the gold planet.
Tyler moved to step forward, only for the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. He spun, seeing the heatless coming. A massive tidal wave of them.
"Shit!" Tyler swore, slashing his keyblade, lightning bolts beginning to almost continually blast down outside the portal, barely slowing the heartless.
Lightning grabbed Tyler, leaping backward, away from the portal just as the heartless flooded through it. The two of them skidded across the gold for a few feet before standing, turning and sprinting away from the heartless to the boat sitting on the gold in the distance. Jim was in it, and Ben was running away from it, the heartless paying him no mind, also not paying Tyler and the others any mind, instead all but hurling themselves down the tubes the lasers were going into, the lasers failing to keep the heartless out.
"We need to leave, now!" Tyler shouted as an explosion rocked the gold planet, a tube falling from above and crashing down into it just as the lasers began to sheer through it, melting the gold.
"Maybe the melted gold will keep the heartless out," Lightning said hopefully.
"Don't get your hopes up," Tyler snorted as cold began to spread through him again. He looked down, seeing a chasm off to one side beginning to leak darkness like smoke. "Told you. This world's finished."
"But Serah might be here somewhere!" Lightning said.
Tyler grit his teeth, looking to the side only to stop, seeing something that wasn't old or a jewel. He walked over, picking the object up and staring at it. "She's not here anymore Lightning."
Lightning turned to him and he tossed her the pouch he had found, Lightning staring at it. "This is Serah's. She was here!"
"And now she's gone," Tyler said.
"Like we need to be!" Noel said. "Jim?"
"Working on it!" Jim shouted, trying to rewire the ship.
Finally, the ship's thrusters came alive, firing up and allowing the ship to finally lift off as the last of the gold fell away, revealing a massive metal planet, which was opening and separating into pieces, darkness racing through the molten liquid in between the pieces and rapidly spreading over the pieces themselves.
"Yes!" Jim shouted as the ship began to move in earnest. "Morph we are so out of here!"
"Ah, Jimbo, aren't you the seventh wonder of the universe?" Silver said, dropping onto the ship, Tyler, Lightning, and Noel pointing their weapons at him, making him raise his hands.
"Get back!" Tyler snapped. "This entire universe is going to be completely swallowed up by the heartless, because of you! Take another step and I will gladly stab you and leave you here to die!"
Just then darkness swarmed onto the ship, forming up around the skeleton of Captain Flint. Tyler's shoulders sagged.
"Of for the love of Christ!" Tyler said, swinging his keyblade around. "Give me a fucking break!"
He blasted it with a ball of wind, sending it spinning off of the ship as the darkness began to solidify, turning into black skin, a massive purple set of bat wings, and massive claws and fangs, the heartless almost double the size that the skeleton was.
"Fuck!" Tyler shouted.
Then, suddenly, a laser exploded into the side of the ship from below, hurling them. Tyler's head began to ring from the explosion, but he knew he heard someone scream. Then, he hit something and grabbed on, feeling it flail and writhe. He shook his head, seeing he was clinging to the heartless of Flint's back and instantly drove his keyblade into it to anchor himself, looking around as he did. Lightning was lying on a slanted piece of metal below him, unconscious but unharmed, Silver was standing over her, holding the ship away from the laser that was pulling it in, and Jim was hanging from a wall across a chasm from the platform Silver and Lightning were on. Tyler looked around. He couldn't see Noel.
"Noel!" Tyler shouted. "Noel!"
"Here!" Noel shouted back, Tyler looking toward the source of the sound and seeing Noel limping toward the portal, darkness following him, slowly gaining.
Noel's left arm was horribly burned, but he was alive. Tyler shouted for him to hurry, then ripped his keyblade out and drove it back in again, this time shoving it forward, the heartless diving. He yanked it to the side and back, the heartless turning and leveling out. He grinned, steering toward Lightning and Silver just as Silver let the ship go, the ship swinging into Tyler's path. Tyler jumped, the heartless crashing into the ship and Tyler flipped, landing on the platform and stopping, picking Lightning up as the ship exploded, the heartless shrieking as it fell into the molten metal below, its wings shredded from the explosion and unable to save itself.
"Let's go!" Tyler shouted, Silver and Jim both nodding and leaping to one of the metal plates with Tyler, who had Lightning over his shoulders.
They sprinted across the metal plate, leaping to the next, then the next, before reaching the stairs to the exit. Darkness surged up in front of them, but Tyler summoned his keyblade, the keyblade glowing with pure light, as it had when they were in Peter Pan's world, and he slashed, an arc of light shooting out and hitting the darkness, clearing it for them. They passed through, Tyler letting his keyblade disappear before they slowed to a stop beside the map, Noel lying on the ground, beside it, panting and resisting the urge to clutch at his wounded arm.
"Now what?" Tyler asked.
"Ahoy there Jimmy!" Ben shouted from above, the Legacy descending toward them.
Tyler grinned and Jim picked up Noel, all of them scrambling onto the ship before Jim and Tyler hauled Silver up after them. Then, the ship took off again, heading away from the portal. Tyler stared back at it, then at Ben, who reported they had two minutes before the planet exploded, though the explosion was the least of their worries. Suddenly, an explosion went off below them, a chunk of debris hitting the mast and shattering it, dropping it onto a thruster and making them all start to fail, leaving them at thirty percent, according to Ben's immediate report.
"Thirty percent?" Doppler asked. "But that means...we'll never clear the planet's explosion in time."
"Turn us around!" Tyler said. "Back to the portal."
Jim stared at him, then at a thruster lying on the deck of the ship before nodding. "He's right! Turn us around!"
He dropped down, ripping a chunk of wood shaped almost like a surfboard off of the railing and quickly began to attach it to the thruster. As he worked, Doppler began to turn the ship around.
"Can you do it?" Tyler asked. "Remember, once we're out of here, the explosion won't be the only thing. This entire galaxy is going to be consumed by darkness."
"I know," Jim said. "So I'm going to be selfish. Do you have a way to escape the darkness?"
"Yes," Tyler nodded.
"Then I'm getting my mom before we go," Jim said.
Tyler nodded as Silver welded the thruster to the metal board for Jim.
"Good luck," Tyler said. "You'll have one chance."
"I know," Jim nodded. "I've got this."
Then, he was off. He sped on ahead of the ship, massive chunks of the planet rising and crashing into one another rapidly as he shot past, dodging around and between them. Doppler followed with the ship as best he could, he and the captain yelling at each other the entire time about how well he was or wasn't flying. Then, Tyler saw Jim's thruster give out and Jim fall into a chasm. He held his breath, gripping the railing tightly, just as Lightning stepped up beside him, looking confused and afraid.
"Hang on," Tyler said. "We'll be out of here soon."
Lightning nodded, not bothering to ask what was going on for now. Then, they passed over the trench just as Jim shot out of it, flipping around and streaking past them, touching the same spaceport where Tyler and the others had arrived just before he and the ship slipped through the portal, the explosion following them through for the briefest of moments before being cut off as the portal was destroyed. Jim cheered, steering over and leaping onto the ship, letting the board spin away instantly.
"Jim, lead us to your home so we can get your mom and leave," Tyler said. "There's no time to celebrate."
"But we're halfway across the galaxy," Jim said.
Just then, they heard a clap of thunder and turned, seeing a massive cloud of blue and black darkness, dark lightning flashing through it rapidly, approaching from far off to the right, rapidly approaching the spaceport, screams reaching them even from where they were.
"Shit!" Jim swore. "There!"
He pointed to the planet and read off exact coordinates, Ben punching it into the computer on the back of the compass that was usually his chest.
"Can we make it?" Tyler asked.
"Barely," Ben said. "Full speed ahead!"
Doppler steered toward Jim's home and they all began to pray silently. As they flew, the darkness began to creep closer and closer. They weren't fast enough to outrun it, even at full speed. However, if they could just make it to Jim's home, they could all be picked up by Fang and the others. Finally, a large fancy house came into view, Doppler crashing the ship into the ground just beside it, everyone leaping off, Tyler with Noel over his shoulders. Within seconds, a brunette woman ran out of the house, throwing her arms around Jim just as thunder rumbled yet again, everyone turning seeing a wall of darkness rapidly speeding toward them.
"Everyone grab on!" Tyler shouted, everyone complying. "Fang now!"
Then, light blinded them before they crashed to the ground on the bridge of the gummi ship, the ship lurching into motion and speeding away from the world they had barely escaped as it began to mutate, rather than a group of planets, now becoming a sea of debris and darkness.
"What happened?" Jim's mother asked. "Where are we? What was that?"
"Darkness," Tyler said, pushing himself up and healing Noel, who groaned. "Your world's gone. I'm sorry."
"Our world?" Jim's mother asked. "So, are we going to the spaceport?"
"No, it's not just the world," Jim said. "It's then entire galaxy. We're going to a different one to start over. It's just us. We're the only survivors."
"It's just...so then...everyone else..." his mother trailed off.
"They're all gone, mom," Jim said. "They're all gone."
She sat back against the railing, staring blankly ahead and Tyler sighed, helping Lightning up before walking over to Fang and Vanille.
"Please tell me they weren't there," Tyler said.
"They weren't," Fang said. "Based on what we were able to see happen while we were watching you, we believe they were hidden inside that treasure room. Being near the keyhole made her residual energy spread over the entire world the way it was. However, about a day before you arrived, the energy suddenly started to weaken, and a new ht was located."
"Where?" Tyler asked.
"Hollow Bastian," Fang said. "But something's going on there. Darkness has been concentrating around Hollow Bastian."
"Okay," Tyler nodded. "We'll see if we can help them while we're there. But we need to drop them off somewhere."
"They can stay here until we find someplace safe," the pilot said. "For now, we're heading to Hollow Bastian."
Tyler nodded and looked around. They others didn't look to be getting ready to fight any time soon.
"How long will it take?" Tyler asked.
"Eight hours," the pilot said. "Go and rest. You'll need it."
Tyler nodded and he, Lightning, and Noel all complied, heading to their rooms and passing out almost instantly.
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