Nexus HWR 2.0 Sora and Kirito:
Sora snapped up on his hammock, panting and sweating all over. "Ah haa ahh haa," he breathed in and out a few times before looking around him. Damn, what a crazy dream.
He lay back down in the dark room, but there were too many snoring figures around him, and his bad dream was still on his mind. After a few minutes of rocking back and forth with the waves while on his hammock, he sighed and hopped off. He landed lightly on the floor, and treaded softly to the door leading up to the top deck. The eighteen year old would rather not wake up his friends all around him.
He tiptoed past a hammock with a teen around his age lying on it, with a black cat nuzzled up on his chest. He crept past Rin's bed, and finally made it to the stairs without causing a lot of noise.
Sora stepped out on the top deck and closed the door behind him. He looked around at the empty deck of the Thousand Sunny, anchored in the middle of the Great Ocean. He glanced up top to the crow's nest, and could faintly make out the form of Usopp who had watch for the night. He thought about going up there to keep the long nosed man company, but he was not really in the mood to hear one of Usopp's tall tales which he knew would come out of their conversing. Maybe later, he thought, and turned, walking around the outside of the kitchen towards the stern of the ship.
When he got back there, he stopped and adopted a surprised look as he was not the only other person awake besides the current watch. There was a boy in a black cloak looking out over the back of the ship, staring over the open ocean. "Sup?" Sora asked, walking over to the edge where Kirito was standing.
Kirito was so focused that he did not notice the other eighteen year old's presence until he was right there. He got startled and jumped a little, but calmed down instantly as he did recognize the voice of the person walking towards him. "Sora," he greeted softly. Sora walked right up next to him and put his elbows down on the back railing, looking out over the open sea as well. Kirito smiled a little as he looked back out there as well, "How's the married life?" he asked.
Sora chuckled a little, "Not married yet."
"Alright, how's being engaged?" Kirito corrected himself, still smiling softly as they looked over the ocean together.
The spikier haired teen smiled too. "It's great. I bet when we do get married everything is even better."
"It is," Kirito replied in a quiet voice.
At this, Sora became pretty surprised and he turned his head to the black haired boy next to him. "You're married?"
Kirito's smile faded, turning into a frown as he looked out behind the ship. "I was," he replied, emphasizing the past tense. "She died," he stated bluntly, expecting the conversation to end there as he tried making the situation awkward.
"What was her name?" Sora asked, not getting the hint at all.
Kirito sighed. "Her name was Asuna," he stated.
"What was she like?" Sora asked.
With that one question, Kirito's mind flooded with images. He always tried to forget about her, to leave her out of his mind. He didn't tell Liz what happened because he did not want the girl to cry, but also because bringing it up reminded him of the good times too much. This was a harsh world, and if he wanted to live he couldn't get caught up in the past. Thinking of her face again though, watching her cook, yell at him, fight next to him, it made the smile reappear on his face.
"She was strong. More beautiful than any girl I've ever met. Kind. She was a born leader..." Kirito listed off everything he loved about her, and Sora just smiled as he listened along with the other teen. The two of them had not spent much time together since Metropolis considering Kirito ran off a few days after the battle. A lot had happened since that time, but this was truly the first real one on one conversation they'd had with each other.
"She sounds amazing," Sora stated.
This time, Kirito didn't even frown, he just nodded still with the soft smile, "Yeah, she was."
Sora stood there for a few seconds longer, staring out over the water in silence. His dream came back to him and his smile wavered for a second, but he kept it on his face as he whispered, "I ever tell you what world I'm from?"
Kirito turned towards him a little, and shook his head 'no.' He knew that Sora, Riku, and Kairi were all from the same universe, but he never asked, and never really cared to know. They didn't speak much on where they came from, even when the others brought up their old worlds in conversations.
The slightly older boy with brown spiky hair continued to look out over the waves as he spoke. "I came from a place called Destiny Islands. There was the larger one, where all the people lived, and then there was the Children's Island. Me and my friends were in-charge there, running around doing whatever we wanted."
This was not sounding like a normal Earth to Kirito. Then again, he did not expect any of the people on the ship with him to have come from a similar Earth as his own. His world was the norm for people he met in Metropolis: calm, logical, and many with similar histories. This boy seemed to come from somewhere stranger, though, it did not sound as crazy as he thought it would considering the boy's powers. Then again, his own powers were all developed on this planet, so he knew not to judge just by looking.
"...We would fight with wooden swords, have races around the island..." Sora faded off and continued with a nostalgic look in his eyes. "Then one day Kairi came to our island. No one knew where she came from, but me and Riku went and made friends with her. Since no one had ever come from outside of our islands before, we realized at that moment that there had to be other worlds out there." Kirito raised his eyebrows at the terminology Sora used. 'Worlds' instead of other places or islands, and when Sora continued with his story, he found out why.
"So we built a raft," Sora said. "We were going to set sail, just the three of us. Whatever we found, whatever world we landed on, it was going to be together." His smile lowered a little, not fully into a frown, but a somewhat sadder smile. "It didn't happen that way though. Though, it still was a fun journey, and if not for what happened, I would not have been to so many worlds, you call them 'universes.'"
"You went to other universes?" Kirito asked with growing eyes.
Sora paused, but then nodded his head. Sorry Donald, sorry King Mickey, but I don't think the already screwed-up balance of this world can be upset by anything I say. "When I first got here, and heard other people talking about travel between worlds, it sounded a lot different from what I did. See, some people knew about space travel in their worlds. They treated it like a common thing, but everywhere they went, the, physics, of the universe remained the same."
Kirito nodded his head, wondering what Sora could mean by that, but staying quiet as he was far too interested to interrupt. "See, I've been to worlds where I could fly, just by believing in fairies. There was a world full of the living dead. I climbed up floating castles, and traversed between different worlds in minutes. But, I never got to do any of that with Riku or Kairi. This, is the first real adventure we're having, all three of us together." Sora stared up at the sky, a smile coming to his face, "But all those adventures I went on, I wasn't alone. Donald and Goofy were with me from the start."
With that, Sora stayed quiet and just stared up into the stars for over a minute. Finally, Kirito couldn't take all the questions he had on his tongue and asked, "Why weren't you three together?" Sora looked back down at him, and turned to lean his back on the railing. "I mean, did you set sail on your raft?"
"Haha," Sora chuckled as he thought about the raft. It really wouldn't have gotten us very far, he thought, now that he knew how hard travel between worlds really was. "No," he whispered. "The night before we were going to set sail," his voice grew quieter and his mouth lowered back into that sad smile he had on from before. "Our world got swallowed up by the darkness." Kirito felt chills shoot up his body as Sora spoke those words. Much of what he had said up to this point had been pretty normal; kids wanted to go have an adventure, go explore away from home, but this, this was new. Sora continued in his low voice, "A man appeared, he showed up right before the Heartless. He said our world was about to be eclipsed. I didn't know what he meant at the time," Sora whispered, his mind flashing back to that final day on Destiny Islands. "But, when the world was sucked into the dark void. When Riku sank into the darkness, and Kairi fell right through my arms. When the entire planet around me was sucked up into the sky, ripped to pieces before my eyes, I understood what he meant."
Kirito watched as Sora continued to look forward, with the same small smile on his face that made it impossible to tell what he was really thinking. The fact that he could keep a smile on, even after talking about all that dark stuff, it was confusing to the other teenager.
Sora could see the conflicted look on Kirito's face out the corner of his eyes, and he turned to the other boy who was looking at him. "What is it?" he asked.
"Well," Kirito began, then stopped himself.
"It's fine, really," Sora said, seeing that Kirito was holding back. "We're nakama right? Friends. Comrades. If you want to ask me something-"
"How are you so happy?" Kirito asked, his voice actually laced with a little bit of anger. "I mean," he softened a little, but still had a harsh look on his face. "Doesn't it hurt, thinking about all those dark things? All of the people you lost?"
Sora shook his head. "I saved everyone from the darkness," he stated. Kirito looked surprised at what Sora said, but Sora lifted up his right hand and a yellow hilt appeared in it, with a long silver blade extending from it and a key at the end. "This was the Key, and using it I stopped Xehanort's Heartless, the one who went by the name 'Ansem.' I fixed the balance of the worlds, saved my home, and rescued Kairi. She went back home, but I couldn't follow her." Sora looked down towards the cabin below, "See, Riku had to stay behind in the darkness, along with the King. So, I went on another journey with Donald and Goofy..."
Kirito stood there and watched as Sora went over his journey. The boy with brown hair talked and talked, about losing his memories, about skipping a year of his life and not remembering any of it. He talked about new enemies, and an organization of them. "Organization 13?" Kirito questioned as Sora seemed to glance over them.
"A group of Nobodies," Sora replied, then saw that Kirito took it the wrong way and laughed. "I don't mean they were like losers or anything," he explained. "When someone with a strong heart loses it to the Heartless, their body reforms. These bodies without hearts are called Nobodies, and the ones who keep their bodies rule over all the lesser ones of people lost to the darkness whose hearts weren't strong enough. My Nobody kept his form," Sora continued, putting a hand up to his heart, remembering the feeling when he lost it.
"You fell to the Heartless?" Kirito asked.
"No," Sora replied. "I found out that Kairi's heart was inside my own. From the very beginning of our journey, she had her heart trapped somewhere. When I learned that I was the one who had it there was only one thing to do." The boy smiled wide as he remembered the moment, when he saw her eyes open, right before he himself vanished. "I opened up my heart, and," Sora faded off, now thinking of turning into a Heartless, and everything that had happened because of that moment. "And that's what made my Nobody," he just stated, not going that far into it.
He quickly changed the conversation from the deep stuff, and just talked about some of the fun worlds he'd been to. "One world the animals ruled over, so as soon as I got there Donald transformed me into a lion. In another I became a merman," Kirito chuckled at the other boy's amazing stories, but then his laughs caught in his throat at Sora's next one. "I was even put inside a computer program."
"Wait, what?" Kirito asked.
Sora turned to him with a smile, but saw the other boy's intense look and continued a little confusedly. "I got turned into coding, and sent inside a computer. I made a friend with one of the programs, his name is Tron. When we finally defeated the evil Master Control, we had to leave." Sora looked genuinely sad for the first time since he started speaking, but then smiled again quickly after. "But, Tron had to stay behind. He said he was sorry to say goodbye, we hugged, and then, he left." Sora shook his head, "For a little, I thought he might be gone for good, but when we got back to the User world, we heard him speak to us through the computer."
Kirito just nodded his head, thinking about someone he left behind in the computer world too. Yui, he thought, his adopted daughter who turned out to be an AI inside the system coming to his mind.
"Why did you seem so interested?" Sora asked, making Kirito turn to him. "That I got sent inside a computer. You seemed like it was the strangest thing out of everything I've told you. Haha."
"No, it's not that," Kirito muttered. He thought for a second, but Sora was telling him all about himself, and he was pretty much staying quiet. There was no reason for him to keep secrets to this teen, who he was pretty sure was his closest friend. "It's just, on my world, we had virtual reality. You weren't actually put inside the game, physically, but your mind was put into the system, and you could interact with people all over the world."
"That sounds cool," Sora exclaimed.
"It should have been," Kirito replied, making Sora lose the wide smile he gained from the tone in Kirito's voice. "But the first game that came out for VR, Sword Art Online, I was one of the ten thousand people who entered the virtual game. Once we went in however, there was no logging out." Kirito's voice became dark and Sora listened closely as Kirito told his story. "...Kayaba trapped us in the game. He installed microwaves into the devices that allowed us to go into the virtual world, and if someone tried to take us out forcefully, the chips would fry our brains. If we died in the game, the chip would fry our brains. The only way out, was to beat the game."
"Did you beat it?" Sora asked.
Kirito closed his eyes, then nodded. "Yeah," he muttered.
"Wow, so you saved ten thousand people huh?" Sora smiled, having expected this teen had done great things too. When he finished his amazed question though, he instantly regretted asking.
After a few seconds of a dark look on Kirito's face, he muttered, "No, by the time I won, it had been two years." Sora's eyes opened wide. Kirito continued, "Almost four thousand people had died in the game, and died in the real world too."
Sora nodded his head, but put a small smile back on it and leaned back on the railing, still smiling. Kirito looked at him darkly and asked in a harsh tone, "Why are you smiling?"
"Well, you still saved so many," Sora replied. "There are thousands of people, no tens of thousands who you helped. All of those people, and all their families, they're all indebted to you."
"But I couldn't save so many," Kirito growled. "Two thousand people died in the first month, and we hadn't even cleared the first floor of the game. My entire guild died in front of my eyes." He was spouting out everything like never before, but in such an angry, guilty tone. "Your stories all sound like fun and games. You talk about the end of all the universes like it was a game. You smiled when you talked about losing your friends. You can't understand what it's like to watch people actually die in front of you. How could you?"
Sora stayed quiet, not once losing the small smile on his face that Kirito desperately wanted to smack off of him. After a little while, Sora turned to look at the back of the kitchen cabin, though Kirito could see the corner of his lips still curved up. "I don't think you understand what it means to lose your heart to the Heartless." Sora thought back to Traverse Town, back when he first got his Keyblade, when he was too weak to save people. "The fear as the Heartless chase you down, as they steal your heart. They don't even let you die, turning you into a Heartless too, so as to increase their numbers. I had to release those hearts, by destroying the Heartless." Sora whispered quieter, "So every time I was killing a Heartless, I was ending someone's life. I know this because I was a Heartless for a small amount of time. I kept more control than most people, but I think those people are all still conscious inside the Heartless."
The boy getting mad at him lost the harsh gaze, but still shook his head, not thinking Sora understood what he was feeling. "But, I also saw people die," Sora stated. "I saw a pack of hyenas rip through animals on the world where animals were as intelligent as people. In Agrabah I saw people screaming as Jafar's Heartless chased them down. In The Land of Dragons, I fought alongside Mulan and Mushu, and a lot of people died as the Huns tried to take over China..."
"What?" Kirito asked in a deadpan voice. Sora tilted his head at the boy, wondering why he was stopping him during such an emotional speech. "You, you've been to China?"
Sora nodded his head, "Yeah, was there a China on your world?" Kirito nodded at him and Sora smiled, "Did it have an emperor?"
Kirito opened his mouth and hesitated, then said slowly, "It did once. That was long in the past though from when I come from." He fought the Huns? What the…
"Hmm," Sora mumbled. "Well, yeah, I joined the Chinese army. We fought the Huns, and the Heartless that came with them." Sora faded off a little. "It was sad," he whispered, losing his smile as he thought about something. "When we fought the Nobodies," he continued. "They were causing so much damage, but, all they really wanted, was to get their hearts back. Every time I ended one, I tried to remind myself that they didn't have a heart. But each time the died, they cried about their hearts, how all they wanted was to feel whole. I had to fight them. I was the only one who could save everyone a second time, but then Axel saved me. Axel didn't have a heart, he was a Nobody just like the rest of them, but, but he sacrificed himself to help me, Donald, and Goofy. As he faded away, he talked about his best friend. How could a Nobody have friends, if they didn't have hearts?" Sora shook his head, grabbing his own chest as he talked about it.
He and Kirito stayed quiet for a while after that. Sora knew about Kirito's guild dying, his wife, the game where he was trapped for two years. And Kirito knew about different worlds, the wars against the Heartless, and the Nobodies. It was a lot of information for him to process all at once, but after about ten minutes, Kirito whispered, "Who are Donald and Goofy?"
Sora had brought them up a lot, in most of his stories about different worlds, the two of them were by his side the whole time. This question made Sora smile wide and look out towards the bow, almost as if his eyes were looking through the cabin in front of them, past the water, and to the continent ahead. "They're friends of mine. As close as Riku and Kairi." Kirito was surprised as the three of them were closer than most people he'd ever met. "Donald Duck, and Goofy, a great magician and strong knight. They grew more powerful with me through our journeys, Donald's magic getting even stronger than mine, while Goofy got stronger than me with physical attacks..."
Kirito expected Sora was probably being humble as he lifted up his friends' reputations. He continued to listen though as the boy the same age went on about the duck and dog who became his closest friends. "...I still haven't seen them here yet. I'm hoping to find them on Aebrith. I know they'll be surprised to hear I proposed to Kairi," he laughed imagining the shocked looks on Donald and Goofy's faces. He looked back at Kirito and smiled, "So Kirito, how did you get to be so strong? It sounds like your real world turned out to be just a regular old Earth."
"It was," Kirito replied. "I had a lot of teachers since I got to this world. Naruto, Marco, even Sting tried helping me out with magic a little, though he was pretty bad at it. I had some others before I joined an Underworld base, and learned some things from Akuma who I was convinced was the strongest martial artist in the world. That was when I met Goku. He's also given me some help, though he's kind of against being a teacher."
"Yeah, I can't really imagine Goku teaching," Sora said, and both of the teens started to laugh.
"So Sora," Kirito began, his smile lowering a little. The two of them had gotten closer in this conversation, and Kirito decided to ask something that had been on his mind for almost two months now. "What was that, in Lelouch's base?" Sora's smile lowered a little, but he managed to keep the corners of his lips up, still stunning Kirito who could not see how he did that.
Sora knew exactly what he was referring to, and he sighed. "You know when I said I was turned into a Heartless?" Sora asked, making Kirito nod. "Well, not many people are able to come back from that. My heart was strong enough though, that with Kairi's help, I was able to come back. A piece of me was still in the darkness though, but I buried it deep down inside, because Donald and Goofy told me I could only travel with them if I was smiling. See, our ship ran on happy faces," Sora turned and smiled wide, showing all of his teeth in a ridiculous smile that had Kirito cracking up. "So no matter what happened, I liked to keep smiling. It wasn't hard keeping down the darkness like that, and I didn't even notice I had it until it seeped out occasionally when I tried to use Drive Form."
The taller boy because of his brown spiky hair reached up his hand again and rubbed the center of his chest with it. "In Anti-Form, I was still able to perceive friends from enemies, but, I couldn't speak, it was like I was a Heartless all over again." He paused for a long time, then continued, "And long after I got here, about six months ago," he could not keep the smile on his face any longer, a look of fear, regret, and anger mixing on his face now. "These men came up to me and Kairi. Their leader, Rider, he tortured me for hours, telling me that if I fought back he would kill Kairi who had a gun to her head. He cut piece after piece of me away, put a knife through my eye, all while forcing Kairi to watch and do nothing."
Kirito was silent, unable to say a word as Sora spoke. He had actually stopped breathing without realizing it and sweat was coming out of his pores. The other boy continued with a snarl on his face, "But I didn't get that mad at them. I managed, to hold out... But, when he realized I wasn't going to tell him what he wanted to know, which I didn't know in the first place, he turned to Kairi." Sora's eyes darkened, "He told his men they, he let them go at her. They weren't men anymore, not as they tore off her clothes, as she screamed for my help."
The black haired teen said nothing, because he was in shock that such a thing happened to the perfect couple on the ship who were now engaged, because even after something so horrible, the two of them showed no signs of it happening only months before. Sora continued, "That's when it happened for the first time. I didn't let it happen. I killed all of them." Sora finally remembered who he was talking to and smiled, putting an arm behind his head and scratching his spiky hair. "Umm, well, that's how it happened," he finished, chuckling forcefully. He had no right to talk about how bad that was, especially to this teen who told him some sad things himself just a few minutes before.
"I'm sorry," Kirito whispered.
"It's fine, really," Sora waved both hands in front of him. "Haha, it's all in the past now. Let's look towards the future! Maybe those friends of yours you lost inside your virtual reality world will show up here somewhere."
Kirito smiled too, "You're right." Sora tilted his head at him, and Kirito explained, "During the battle for Metropolis, and after that, I found a bunch of my friends. My whole guild who died in SAO were back. They came back to life."
"That's amazing," Sora told him. "You know, despite how horrible this world can be sometimes, it really is amazing."
"Yeah," Kirito mumbled, a nagging doubt in the back of his mind arising. It's almost as if this world isn't real. Like virtual reality. As if you were trapped inside and had no idea how to escape... Kirito stared ahead with a faraway look in his eyes for several seconds, before shaking his head and getting back to his senses. No, of course this is all real. This is my life now. I can't become like Lelouch, thinking that nothing around me is real except for me. No matter how much I wish it sometimes.
Sora yawned as he stood next to Kirito, and then thought back to why he was out here in the first place. He started laughing and the black haired boy next to him looked his way. Sora saw the other teen look at him and he said, "Sorry, it's just, I forgot all about my nightmare that kept me up. Thanks Kirito. I'm going to go get some more sleep before breakfast."
Kirito looked at the boy smiling back at him, and his own mouth curled up into a smile as well. "You know what? Me too," Kirito said, and the two of them walked back to the cabin to get some more sleep.
Little did they know, they were going to need that sleep a lot. Later that day, the two of them would be fighting back to back, struggling to survive.
A/N Hope you enjoyed the chapter! A lot of talk between Sora and Kirito, some nightmares and fears revealed as well. As the Thousand Sunny continues east towards Aebrith, the crew of the Thousand Sunny is gradually getting closer together. What kind of battles will be happening later in this day? Find out in the following few chapters of Nexus: Heroes Will Rise!