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CHAPTER 72:
BARK AT BAY
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Author's Notes: The music for this Chapter is, in order of scene: 'Albedo,' from the XENOSAGA Episode One Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and after it, 'Faraway Promise,' from the XENOGEARS Original Soundtrack, Disc One; and after it, 'Hepatica Two,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Original Sound Best Tracks, Disc One; and after this, 'Dullahan,' from the VAGRANT STORY Original Soundtrack, Disc One. The first three pieces can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section, and the fourth one, on Zophar's Domain.
Anna ran across the wasted brown uneven ground, that was all that was left of the Arendelle she'd cornered someone into ravaging a second time, with her gunblade unsheathed, and at a neutrally ready position, moving fast, but not so swiftly she risked fatiguing herself for what she was about to do.
She reached a steep incline, that rose up to a gentler rising slope with flaking dead tree roots, and a lesser number of stumps, a minority rising into trunks a varying amount of short ways before they came to a halt, interspersed on it.
Another time, Anna considered whether Formchanging into Valkyrie in Knight of the Swan would better pace her stamina, by assisting her in traversing the way to Grandpa, than, if she reserved it to channel against him.
She still didn't feel that winded, from how far she'd made it, on her own. Additionally, she couldn't feel any new stings that meant she'd cut herself on loose rocks, or any of the shriveled vegetation, and fauna, that hadn't been mowed down by the Demon Tide.
She dismissed the idea.
She wasn't Goofy, far less, Sora, but, the minority amount of combat training they'd put her through, and ordinary sensibility, told her she still didn't need to risk giving up what was, very likely, her best chance at defeating Grandpa.
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I ca"
She could do this.
Christopher had been a Station of Awakening present in the material realm.
She'd been able to outwit him to the point she'd created an opening to kill him.
If she could beat him, she could bea
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I can't!"
Sheets of ice shrieked and erupted from her hands and arms and body as her magic spun her around again and Anna felt one plunge through her chest and into her heart and everything was deathly col
Anna had no reason to complete that thought.
beat Grandpa.
"You kind of set off an e"
Anna kept the reflection from completing itself.
A copse of ice cubes, the size of boulders, with a thicket of actual boulders, interspersed with wooden planks, a distance to its right, arched overhead, in the direction of where, if the Arendelle soldiers were maintaining their lines, they should be holding the combatants of the Treaty of Flames back.
"Wait!"
Not in this starscape!
Anna kept jumping from snow spire to snow spire, picking up her pace.
"Whoo-hoo!"
"Slow down!"
Elsa wished!
This was far too much fun; and Olaf was watching her; and Elsa was a whiz with ice, so there was nothing to worry about; and, most of all, Elsa still hadn't cheered all the way up after the sad story Mommy and Daddy had told them about the magic forest weeks ago, so Anna needed to smack her negatude upside the head by having as much fun as possible now, and showing Elsa just how awesomely radical she could really be with her ice talents when she put her mind to it!
No way was Anna going to slow down!
a conflagration of howling and roaring flakes of snow and frigid clouds engulfed the entirety of the chamber Anna held her mittened hands and arms before her face straining desperately in vain to see through the monsoon to Elsa but she could barely see her body and face agonized and contorted and contorting with her dress and cape blowing and flapping to the side as her magic ate her entire existence from the inside out she could barely hear Elsa's footsteps through the tornado
Elsa grabbed both sides of her hands and clutched them and screamed, whirling around to attempt to keep her magic from dragging her as it would and Anna's eyes widened in complete and total all-scouring starfire horror and absolute zero frozen ice terror as she realized where Anna had just directed Elsa's terror and her magic now
Anna couldn't justify shutting out these remembrances.
She didn't pay any attention to them, however, besides acknowledging they were passing within her perspective.
What mattered, was preventing Elsa from living that vacantly unsurpassed nightmare, another time.
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
Anna couldn't know it wasn't, already, not perhaps hadn't eternally lasting, too late.
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
For all she knew, Elsa was giving the order to assault at Grandpa, this instant, itself.
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
Elsa could already be battling him.
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
None, of that, mattered, that much.
If, any, of it did, at any all.
Anna could, reasonably, trust Elsa might have seen a difference, at least, in part, between struggling at the side of allies she didn't command, who were willing to combat Grandpa.
That Elsa hadn't broken her promise to Anna enough she'd caused it to be clear, through the minor tinges of relief she'd let Anna see, she hadn't needed to choose between protecting Grandpa from Sora, and the others, or standing by as they battled him, did not matter, one bit, at a time like this.
Elsa, though, had given orders that could have already placed him in combat with the soldiers of Arendelle.
If a single soldier of Arendelle had been in a position to carry that out, by now, regardless of how that fight had ended, or, it did end, perhaps, shortly, Anna was too late, already.
Anna looked back at the route she'd taken.
The igloos, and a minority of wooden frameworks, or superstructures, that had withstood Kairi's Demon Tide, at least a small amount, were down, and behind, her, now, across what had used to be a channel from the fjord proper over which a bridge had led from Arendelle, to the hills between it, and the North Mountain.
The actual battle was still out of Anna's sight.
Yet, from her vantage point, Anna could see clumps of Arendelle soldiers hefting a number of the remaining large shards of stone they hadn't already gathered that lay in the dry dell where the fragments of the bridge that had weathered the Heartless legion had fallen, and turning to carry them back towards the trebuchets, to add to, or replenish, their artillery.
"You kind of set off an eternal"
"Such wasted flitting," a deep female voice interjected disdainfully.
Anna spun around to see a purple skinned female humanoid octopus, clad in black, behind her, her eight legs arrayed to hold her upright, in a standing position.
"You have no idea what happened to So"
"So, can you please promise m"
Anna paid no attention to the recollection, other than to her knowledge of who this was.
Anna held her gunblade in a neutral position, before her, as steadily as she held her voice in protective challenge, and her breathing from stopping at the knowledge she might not be able to reach Grandpa, now.
At least, before Elsa was forced to choose whether, or not, to duel him, herself.
"Your own chilled heart is a long way from its home waters, Ursula," Anna greeted.
"All oceans are the same to me," Ursula replied with mild amusement.
"That's part of how I learned to reincarnate myself from the realm of darkness at will.
"Now that I've swam the torrents of the Lanes of Ingress along with Maleficent, and Narissa, I've made enough breakthroughs in my studies of how water conducts light and darkness, or, should I say, the emotive crests of the present before they pass into the memories Ahtohallan can conduct, it shouldn't take me too much longer to discover how to utterly discard my physical body when within water, the same way I hear Vanitas' ilk can conduct themselves through electricity."
"Tell me why you're here, or you'll be saying that to Elsa's face," Anna answered, keeping her tone the same, and putting the issue of how far Maleficent's quest in the Lanes of Ingress had progressed to the side, for now.
"Are you Grandpa's loyalty watchdog?"
"I have little interest in keeping an eye on bark that refuses to understand the bite of the cold helpings of revenge, accompanied by someone with the good sense of Hans, or not," Ursula spoke in return with a dismissive sneer.
At the reminder what had been able to reach Hades, whose heart, while it had been an oven of hatred, had still been willing to harbor warmth, very likely wouldn't work on Hans, Anna couldn't justify not clenching her teeth a little, at the reminder of what he'd done, and almost done, to Elsa.
Much of it, because of Anna.
"Vengeance isn't the sole goal of the Treaty of Flames, or, as enthralling as it is to watch Runeard's intolerance dash itself apart, I wouldn't be here, at all. Nevertheless, it's still intrinsic enough to its causes to ward me off, when no officer in the rabble but Hans appears to be willing to offer up their revenge as icicles, and the lower echelons are likewise primarily interested in kindling.
"On those lines, you have my sincerest thanks for providing his plunge into the darkness a watery floor."
Anna couldn't justify not clenching her grip around the pommel of her gunblade, a little, at that one.
After Anna had brought Elsa home, an Arendelle courtier had apologized to her for telling Hans he was all Arendelle had left if they lost both Elsa, and Anna, from guilty fright those words had been responsible for Hans' attempt to assassinate them both.
After spending weeks scrutinizing her memories of Hans' attitude towards her, attempting to pick apart precisely what falsehoods had been what, and what lies might have possessed a ring of truth, if not been wholly sincere; at this point, based on what Hans had told Anna, when she'd initially returned to Arendelle, if the courtier had been correct, she could honestly believe the opportunity Anna had presented him with may not have been enough, in and of itself. But Anna could believe, far more, in her frames of heart, and mind, at that time, she'd have said, not done, not said, or done something idiotic enough to push him the last distance over the precipice, all by her own.
"No, I can't– accept this, from you."
"You've gotta'! No exchanges. No seconding returns! Queen's orders. She's named you, with a title the invention of yours truly, Official Arendelle Go To Ice Deliverer."
"Say what? There's no such true t
"That– is to put it, with how much confidence you're conveying, I can believe the part about you making up the title."
"It is a real title if I say it is. It even has a holder for cups.
"Do you like it?"
"Like it? I llaugh uproariously at any figments of thought claiming there's anything wrong with it!
"I could…
go sledding on it, at any time."
It wouldn't have made a difference.
If Kristoff had been about to say the thing, with, his last sentence, Anna had, so many times, been all but convinced he'd been on the edge of speaking, that would mean he'd done more than ensure he kept a careful distance in their closeness, for all this time.
It would mean, with, by now, entire knowledge of what Elsa had done to Anna, he'd shut the door on her, for well over a year.
Kristoff wouldn't do that to her.
She couldn't have razed him that much, to
What did it matter, if, a first kiss had been from the likes of Hans?
Anna had no misgivings not paying attention to those thoughts.
Anna still had no problems keeping her voice the same.
"You understand why I know better than to believe that's common ground we can work from."
"As I recognized, long ago, there's no common land, or sea, between any kind of cultural melting vat that isn't my cauldron, then that's one less bubble of yours for me to pop," Ursula said in return, her own tones now stable with self assurance.
"You kind of set off an e"
Anna kept the reminiscence away, this time.
"Should I just take it you're here to gather Elsa, and I, up?" other than the challenge she brought into her voice for Ursula to make the attempt, her voice still didn't alter.
Anna ignored the unsureness, if that was what Ursula was here form, Anna could defeat Ursula, or fend her off, without wasting her Formchange, even long enough for someone who could beat her, or hold her back, to tell something was wrong at this location.
What mattered, as it had every other time, was Elsa, and carrying her tears, and pain.
"I'll let you worry about that," Ursula snorted in disdain, clearly at Anna's belief she stood any chance against Ursula.
"I will say I've come here with inked scroll that has produced all the lines a poor, unfortunate soul concealing, and not feeling, requires to find a voice."
"The cutting room floor where Sora, and I, just left the majority of the Foretellers' drafts is that way," Anna shot back.
"I have no need to spend my time there after the diversion our progress through the worldlines has enabled Maleficent to see through," Ursula replied, unruffled.
"We merely need to iron out the details, and take our new positions. Then it will be us, not the Foretellers, the vestiges of Xehanort, or anyone else, who founds the New World.
"I'm not going to expend the effort attempting to convince," Ursula's voice became flooded with derision, "you," Anna saw no reason not to let surprise wash through her, and blink, at this, as Ursula's voice resumed its previous intonations, "of this.
"How can the Princess of Arendelle, a New Seven Heart, who has learned much of what those larger responsibilities entail, believe you have any moral high ground, at all, when you know entirely well what to do to stop this whole war in its tracks, and to ensure it doesn't escalate into an interstellar one, while you're standing here letting your people die to attempt to ambush your own flesh and blood?"
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's oka"
"Or have you figured out how to call upon your d"
Anna ignored those reflections, too.
"How about you tell me the actual reason you believe I can?" Anna retorted, edging her tones with challenge once more.
"As you have that little faith in my scruples, you shouldn't have any problems telling I'd have done so a long time ago, if I knew how."
"How can I not?" Ursula responded disdainfully.
"You of all people know what is required. You've but been too frightened to give it thought.
"That you were able to call upon the power willingly, the first time, when even Kairi, daughter of Xehanort, and a Keyblade wielder, couldn't, is all the proof you need."
Don't think twice
Feel don't conceal
There was no time to feel, misgivings, or anything else.
Additionally, calling to this much darkness, when she was summoning a similar amount of light, possessed no rope to her promise to Sora.
There was nothing other than the time to raise her hand palm forward as though she was shielding Elsa from Hans' blade, once again; recollect as much of her love for Elsa, and Kristoff, and Sora, and Olaf, and Sven, and Marshmallow, and Donald, and Goofy, and Roxas, and Xion, as she could; and loose every solitary filament of light and darkness that danced within her heart.
Anna knew the spun thread weightlessness of a swimming vision as she whispered a breath, "Formchange, Cantata Mortis, Goddess in Fire."
Sora stood before the railing on the balcony of Robert's apartment, gazing down at the headlight swept roads, and streets below, for any sign of Donald, and Goofy.
Sora knew his practiced conditioning would bring his awareness out of his mind's eye as soon as one, or both, of them so much as entered his peripheral vision. His perspective was thus on the connections woven between the hearts in this world, and the world itself, as well as the surrounding realm.
No matter how precisely he reached, or how distant he looked, he couldn't perceive anything different from this world, or realm, than any other in the realm of light. He could, somewhere a good ways away, feel eddies of light and darkness that drenched him as though they were placid liquid, as though something was damming them up. So he knew that, most likely, was where Goofy, Donald, the woman, and he had arrived in this world.
There was an indecipherable sensation, at the tinges of his awareness, that reminded him of The Caribbean.
Though, Sora couldn't discern anything different from what he was used to perceiving, displayed before him, or thrumming through him, different from any other world in the realm of light.
There was nothing to let Sora know if this was Lacuna, or another part of the realm of light.
"I'm not going to be able to do much for you, as my client, if you're willing to treat any, and I do mean any, kind of wrong in the world as a scary thing that goes bump in the night."
"Let's discuss this further once I've made those calls around, or I lose my reasons to."
"Day to day citizens, no different than I am, do nothing more than go on joking, and smiling, with the people close to them, and their fellows, within hearing range of the shifting gears of suppression, and genocide."
"I'm saying these imaginary creatures are the kinds of people who populate anywhere you go, at all."
Robert hadn't turned Sora down, verbally, and his expression had been a mask.
Based on Robert's responses to the woman, Sora knew he had a chance, however small, of Robert hiring him.
If the most profound infinities of darkness were what Robert claimed, Sora's inability to feel anything different about this world may, itself, confirm this world was Lacuna.
That meant, however, there was no way for Sora to tell this world was Lacuna.
Voices wafted up from the sidewalks, below, and nearby.
"How is your promotion going? Does your manager believe turning the front lawn into an outdoor movie theater has attained enough consumer interest to be soluble?"
"I'm still working on it. I just let go of more hawkers who won't do their pitches with enough gusto, and others who used so much, in so many wrong places, to my ears, they sounded too cheesy."
"How did your daughter's first concert go?"
"Her music teacher agrees with me, wholeheartedly, she's a natural at the accordion. But she's still thinking of changing to the trumpet."
"I'm not taking that Economics course to sit through my Professor drone on and on about the history of the Dow Jones average."
"Now that I'm handing out leaflets about the forthcoming renovations to our exhibits, things have become much livelier."
"You'd need to drag my eardrums out of their canals for me to go to that musical. What tone deaf scammer got it on Broadway?"
"It's about time that nutcase got evicted from the complex. The day an apartment policy maintaining people who decorate the outside of their privately owned apartment doors with signs asserting their cultural beliefs are attempting to oppress ethnic diversity is declared legal is the day I begin boycotting living in apartments."
"You said it. Morons, though, who, incessantly and frequently, commit noise violations by going all over the apartment grounds to yell through apartment windows, or doors, how public awareness purportedly needs to be raised about this supposedly atrocious oppression, and the inhabitants of the complex ought to unite to take a stand against this, up to, and including, at the oddest hours of the night, are a different story."
"It's one thing, when my manager vents about her paperwork. But does she really have any reason to keep running her mouth off about how stores all the way at the far end of Long Island won't ship her morning coffee with the precise flavors she likes, or, if they do, she doesn't get them in time to unwind as much as she wants before the cubicles begin filling up?"
"Give it a few more weeks, and you'll have learned to tune that kind of thing out."
"My son just turned seven, but he still believes there really are alligators living in the city sewers, including newborns, and the young, who are starving, and suffering. He's still determined to find a malnourished baby alligator, and bring it home with him to pamper it with love and food, and cuddle it while he sleeps in bed at night."
Sora started, a little, as he became aware the edges of his lips had curled up, a small amount, from hearing the last one, without him knowing they had.
As pointless as anything was, Sora couldn't justify ending the smile.
Even if everything he'd learned about darkness, and light, throughout the worlds, and realms, until now, had been wrong, even though Aqua had been crawling and clawing her way through the realm of darkness as they'd done it, that didn't mean, eons more ancient than memory, and numberless lifetimes ago, Kairi, Riku, and he hadn't careened gleefully as they splashed each other with the Sun beam foamed waves of the water on the shore of the play island beach, grinning under the unbounded cerulean of forever.
"I still can't be sure the blonde haired teen was talking about Saint Nick. What was the other name he used? 'Zanza Klaus?' 'Sandy Claws?' His accent was so strange I'm still inclined to assume, 'Saint Nick,' was something such as, 'Saint Lassie,' or, 'Saint Nikol,' and I overheard the, 'Saint Nick,' part wrong, too, but I understood that phrase clearly."
Something about the names, 'Sandy Claws,' and 'Saint Nick,' were familiar, as though he'd heard them in passing, the former from someone Sora had spent a good amount of time with when that person hadn't been talking to Sora.
There was no reason to believe it was important, though.
Regardless of what the light of people's hearts in this world was comprised of, if this wasn't Lacuna, could Sora find it?
He knew better than to promise anything to anyone, now, far less someone who needed a hearth to guide him as much as Empyreal, but that didn't mean Sora could go back on what he'd uttered.
And, even though it wasn't a promise, this time, Sora would do so, intentionall
Sora's insides heaved, but as little of a point there was not retching, violently, including dry heaves, Robert could do without cleaning it up, and Sora had already dragged the woman through enough.
"I'm not going to be able to do much for you, as my client, if you're willing to treat any, and I do mean any, kind of wrong in the world as a scary thing that goes bump in the night."
"I'm saying these imaginary creatures are the kinds of people who populate anywhere you go, at all."
Sora grasped no way to flee from it, now.
He could have kept his promise, to Kairi's brothers, to cry in her place, and carry her hurt.
If he'd shrugged off what he'd done to Boo, and he'd forced Kairi, and Riku, to help him do, though, he'd have, at the least, become as callous a murderer as Xemnas, or Maleficent, if not Yozora, or Luxu.
But Robert wasn't wholly correct.
Sora did know what unfeeling indifference was.
He could have harnessed it, at least, long enough to pass through the Doors to Light, along with the others, and fulfill his vow.
Sora had broken a promise to catch Kairi's tears, and pain, because, he had called out, with all his heart, without concealing, without thinking twice, in response to his sin.
Wetness was in his vision, but that didn't matter, itself.
He couldn't leave Empyreal cast off, in the darkness.
If he wasn't staying here, for Empyreal, Sora would attempt what Elsa had.
He knew that wasn't a solution.
How could that, too, matter?
In a present reality where he was a Kye-Blade who murdered two to three year old little girls, while coercing the person who was supposed to be the most important to him, and one of the other people who was almost as important to him, into cutting the sword along with him, whose entire heart was the very essence that broke a promise, and to the person who he'd hallucinated he held the closest in his heart, regardless of what decision he took, black resided at the end to devour any shade of light.
Pushing Kairi, and Riku, and Donald, and Goofy, and and Anna, and Roxas, and anyone else away, or not; whether this was Lacuna, or not; once Sora had brought Empyreal, and Riku Replica, home, if not the drifting hearts from the distant past; perhaps Sora, with heartfelt forthrightness, should wholly sever himself from all connections, and endure as an immortal divorce lawyer to safeguard the Note Blade for the rest of time.
A gigantic silhouette of an apple, with green fog wafting out from it in all directions, appeared far in the distance, so far to Sora's left, even with all his experience, his first impulse was to dismiss it.
After so much combat, and journeying, however, Sora knew what he'd seen.
He remembered to work his lungs.
"You didn't just make a fool of yourself because you're scared that I'll die, too."
"They're Darkballs.
"I can afford to be careless."
"Who says that I want you overly taking ca"
Sora was rocketing through the air in the direction where the arcane apple had plummeted almost before he was aware he'd decided to alight.
Roxas took in, through his self hating terror for Namine, Kairi, and Ava, his mouth was falling slightly open.
A single worn metal Keyblade, that, scant fragments of time ago had rushed, black and featureless, out from Yozora's Nobody's Keyblade armor in front of, and slightly above, the diagonally ascending white, and blue silhouette of Photon Lance, did nothing more than fall in front of a thrumming column of the province of Kingdom Hearts itself, mastery over the waveform and particulate fabric of space time itself condensed into a small region of reality.
What even the living embodiment of celestial resplendence that could glow throughout the whole universe at fathomless speeds surpassing that of physical light, capable of hurling a globule comprised of hundreds of thousands of stars that were real in any way but their minute size with little to no strenuousness, had been helpless before, impacted with an ordinary Keyblade no longer tied to darkness, or light, that descended downward.
The hologram of a lance shimmered, and dispersed, and Bifrost, congealing back into the contours of Destiny's Embrace, fell to the surface below, and clattered onto it to stop moving, as the ordinary Keyblade was once again encased in featureless black, to shoot backwards to rejoin the Keyblade armor.
Kairi was motionless, and Roxas was close enough to where she lay he clearly saw her chest was unmoving, with no rise and fall of breaths.
"Master Yozora himself is the beginning of the truth of the Keyblade, and thus its end.
"He is the Alpha of the testament of the heart and the Omega, the beginning and the end of guiding keys, the first of connections and the last."
A dismissive snort sounded from within the titanic Keyblade armor.
"An oaf playing hookie is one thing, but I was honestly under the impression I'd trained Ava a lot better than this."
Namine's glance turned in Yozora's direction.
Ill hate for himself seared through Roxas at his awareness he knew better than to throw up, for there was a familiar ruined, guiltily exhausted resignation in Namine's eyes he'd at least been able to believe he'd seen the last of.
Even that, it now appeared, had been as insubstantial a torch as a moth's flutters.
Her face, and her gaze, were nevertheless a mask of quietly defiant challenge.
"You would have hurt her a lot less if you had," Namine said, her voice flecked with weary guilt, but thrumming with determined defiance.
"Now that the chains are dangling before me, there's no mistaking it.
"Not where my power over memory, and art, actually stems from."
"A heart isn't something you put yourself first and gain, or regain, remember?
"By guiding Sora to us, you taught Anna that, and then she taught me.
"It's something you give.
"Just as you taught X"
"Because Axel went to Castle Oblivion, you mean.
"I've been informed long since Isa pointed out Axel didn't actually begin to change until he met S"
Roxas pushed the recollections back.
"Not what you did, or what Ven, and Strelitzia did to her, the night their duel with the Kye-Blade began the First Keyblade War," Namine continued.
"Vanitas positioned Ven to murder Strelitzia because, after all she'd already gone through, and caused, she was merely in the wrong place at a bad time. Ven could have drenched his heart in enough darkness by assassinating any Keyblade wielder."
"A heart isn't something you put yourself first and gain, or regain, remember?
"By guiding Sora to us, you taught Anna that, and then she taught me.
"It's something you g"
"Because Axel went to C"
Roxas pushed the reflections away.
"At this point, I believe I can safely assume Vanitas was angry he wound up with Strelitzia. Whether or not Ven was wording things carefully because he didn't want us to know what he'd really done, or he was claiming his perspective was fact, from guilt; otherwise, Ven wasn't just wrong Vanitas sent him, out of all the other Keyblade wielders who felt left out, after her, due to his past sins, or because he himself had nothing but ill fortune by encountering Vanitas. Vanitas must have been able to perceive Strelitzia's heart, and the resilience she refuses to believe it carries; he must have known there was, to him, a little enough chance he couldn't defeat her, he was better off ambushing, say, Brain. But Vanitas must not have been able to risk, with her past history with the Kye-Blade, she'd leave the warehouse aware of his presence.
"If Ven had murdered anyone other than Strelitzia, your first other, or Ava, I'm now in a position to guess Vanitas would have been able to keep Ven from discovering Vanitas resided in Ven's heart, or, at least, what Ven had done, to this day.
"It was Strelitzia's loyalty to you, Empyreal, that caused Vanitas to fail at hiding within Ven," Namine directed her words to the familiar still twined around her.
Roxas couldn't tell, from this distance, if the familiar reacted at all, even with any tiny movement, or motions.
"If Vanitas had merely picked Ven, for different reasons, Ven's light should have assured Vanitas couldn't hide his self, or wrongs.
"But Vanitas picked Ven because he felt he measured up to others so badly he'd sought to misuse the Kye-Blade, not to merely erase Ava's memories, but to seek to rearrange their chain into a fabricated history where Ava believed she'd lived what he saw as the life she deserved, one where his absence from it was just part of the reorganization of her recollections."
Roxas let himself blink, at hearing that.
Empyreal's voice, remaining emotionless, lost much of the ordinary inflections they'd retained.
"Strelitzia willingly returned to the darkness, to endeavor to harness the Kye-Blade to do this, not just to Lauriam, or Faerie, but, as with Xion, anyone who so much as knew about her in passing, and this is what created the first twelve Darknesses," Empyreal spoke, in tones that clearly weren't a question.
There was nothing, in their façade, that told Roxas how Empyreal had discerned this, or when, and how Namine now was aware of these issues.
"Or, I should put it, to complete what her Heartless, and Nobody, initially chased as their own greater heart to return to," the mask that was now in Empyreal's voice didn't ripple.
"Vanitas selected Ven because of the lattice inside Ven's heart woven with the chains of memories he, and Strelitzia, had tried to rearrange. Vanitas knew that was such a good hiding place, even Ven's heart couldn't light any embers there. However, even with how important Strelitzia was to Ven, the risk of her knowing he'd been in the warehouse, or nearby, was too large.
"Furthermore, Strelitzia's earlier selves became close enough to succeeding, Ven believed this was enough of a pretext to gain recognition by playing fast and loose with the Kye-Blade, the one artifact the realm of fairy tales had at its disposal for really dire emergencies.
"My Master began the Keyblade arms race, because, in the second confrontation, Strelitzia did, fallaciously, succeed."
Namine picked up the tale, and there was now a slight spark of hope in her voice, and less defiance, at how Empyreal was exerting a façade, however little.
"Vanitas was able to join the Darknesses, because what Strelitzia smelted, initially, was the first incomplete Keyblade of Hearts."
Roxas let himself start, from this.
The vigor remained in Namine's tone.
"The thirteenth segment, however, rather than true Darkness, was the light of her love for Lauriam, and the other people she kept the closest.
"Strelitzia, thus, was far more unsuccessful at creating a Keyblade of Hearts than Maleficent, or Sora at creating a whole one that lasted for more than seconds.
"Ven could perceive Sora's newborn heart held the potential to complete the Keyblade of Hearts, however briefly. That, as much as how Ven, while he was still years older than Sora was, when Ven returned to him, was a young child, when he took up the Kye-Blade,"
"A heart isn't something you put yourself first and gain, or regain, remember?
"By guiding Sora to us, you taught Anna that, and then she taught me.
"It's something you g"
"Because Axel went to C"
Ven hadn't visited anywhere such as the Secret Forest, or a space time locale with a different passage of time, between wielding the Kye-Blade, and becoming a Union leader.
Roxas ignored the urge to clench his teeth, slightly.
Was Roxas responsible for this, too?
If Roxas hadn't been a defective Nobody, without most of his memories of his time as Sora, would Sora have been able to forge a lasting, finished Keyblade of Hearts, when he'd created Roxas, and defeated the Xehanorts with a lot lower adversities to hurdle?
At the least, it was indelible Roxas' birth hadn't prevented the Xehanorts from attaining a position to endeavor to commandeer an entire, enduring Keyblade of Hearts at the time the Final Keyhole had been opened.
"is what enabled Ven's heart to seek out Sora, both times."
Namine turned her visage further in the direction of Yozora's Nobody, and the defiant challenge was, totally, back in a voice that retained its greater vitality.
"I doubted you're willing to stop at decontaminating the control group sample of Kingdom Hearts, and you're leaving the other specimens be, and the chains of memories I can now glean confirm it.
"Merlin's task, tutoring Arthur, as well, was practice, for Ven, and Ava, for the same reason I possess my talents with artful reminiscence.
"You set Strelitzia up to die, because she'd once been clad in the body of a Nobody."
Once again, Roxas couldn't tell if Empyreal responded.
"You wanted her heart out of her body, so Ava's, and her Darkness', could take its place, and the body of the Foreteller Keyblade Master guiding the most adept Union Keyblade wielders was available to, through a variation of the method by which Nobodies create new hearts I will unravel, contain Domain of Tales long enough for you to construct it a heart of its own."
Roxas let himself start, another time.
"What you ended up enacting, was to successfully place the will of Domain of Tales in Ava, and then Kairi, as you arrested its semblance of a form into what we know as Symphony of Sorcery."
Roxas processed an amount of blood had drained from his face.
His voice cracked, with hoarsely pinched terror, so drawn the words nearly wouldn't sound, as, knowing to keep his belief this understanding was very possibly what had caused Empyreal to negotiate with Namine out of his tone, Roxas questioned, "Have the other sheaves of your body begun returning to you?"
Every droplet of vitality deflated from her visage, as though Namine was a balloon that had just expelled all of its helium.
She opened her mouth.
Her eyes enlarged, as a card with what Roxas could vaguely make out was most likely a world appeared above Empyreal's familiar, to radiate a white spotlight down on Empyreal, and Namine, bright enough he lost sight of them within it, as a tall wall of rotating ordinary sized cards with pictures of Dark Infernos, Dustfliers, Cybug Darklings of different makes, Iron Imprisoner Flours, and others of the most lethal denizens of darkness Roxas was familiar with, manifested in front of Yozora's Nobody's Keyblade armor.
Roxas was already reacting.
Roxas took hold of the connections of Fae in Vacuus he could now clearly understand, and this time, he wove them into what little he understood from his time beside Ven's heart of how Vanitas had generated the Unversed.
Two Flood arms extended out from Roxas' chest, over his heart, and elongated with the same quickness Floods could dart through surfaces, for one to wind around Kairi's body as the other passed into the spotlight fractions of a second before it, and the card, dispersed, taking them all along with it.
Mare's long practice with picking and choosing from the potent furies and doubts of the Data-Heartless she'd devoured, as she Downloaded them when she'd lived in Jiminy's Journal, and afterwards, as she'd first attempted to live as a person of her own while filtering the sentiments within the darkness of others, data and otherwise, she didn't care to feel at the time, enabled her to wall off the shrieking screeches of terror, and keep her breathing from becoming stymied.
For good measure, to ensure the terror wouldn't constrict her, as it had the last time, Mare drowned herself in as much unfettered fear, and anger, at something attempting to hurt her, from the Data Heartless, as she could think of, and she drenched herself with a lot of their unblemished hunger, wishing to gulp in air, rather than hearts.
If this was how it felt to possess connections, perhaps Mare should have kept rolling over on command for Namine.
At least, if Namine had even the most mote of a capacity for it, she'd possessed the mercy to shield Mare from much of the hurt residing in the Castle Oblivion partition.
Now that she could trust her ability to endure the anguished fright, Mare ignored the impulse to strike at Elsa, while her guard against Mare was further down, and she stopped her hack of the Epoch's databanks for what her experience with Namine, Namine's data variation, and the minor alterations in Lucca's eyes, expression, and posture told her Lucca was leaving out.
Mare clenched her teeth together tightly enough they should have chipped at her knowledge she'd need to trust Elsa, the others, and, most of all, a scholar such as Lucca, with Xion, and she redirected her Blox's connections to seek whatever code had alerted her of Xion's peril to begin with.
Mare suppressed the urge to shift one of her hands back into a fist, and clench it tightly enough to draw what passed for her blood, as one of her warning flags tripped, alerting her there were firewalls infested with Trojans nearby.
"Those would be my safeguards in the unfinished Xenogears I brought with me, Crescens," Larsa spoke up from nearby, something he was carrying clearly having alerted him the giant artificial Keyblade armor was on guard for Mare.
"From matters Yuna, and her friends, have informed me, I believed it prudent to place it under my personal oversight."
Elsa's face smoothed into a mask, at the knowledge unfinished, and an inability to deploy it, were two different matters.
Larsa's own voice was careworn with fatigue, now.
Elsa, clearly an experienced enough politician to know when to take an opportunity before her, looked away from Mickey, and Lucca, who were turning about in search of Xion, the Kingdom Key White at the ready, and she lifted her chin in challenge.
Nothing of the terror she must be feeling, for Xion, was present in her voice, although her face was still a large amount pale.
"You question Arendelle's policies of providing her allies with military aid, but what do you propose to do if your niece, regardless of how she must have been registered as a citizen of Archades upon her birth, unleashes darkness upon the foreign soil of the Destiny Islands?
"You take your position while, with full knowledge of our reasons to see you as potentially hostile, you bring an Ivalice Zodiacian armament onto Arendellian soil without leave, or informing us, we might add."
Before Larsa could respond, or opt not to, Mickey shouted in happy surprise, "Riku!"
Joy.
At least this way, there was a greater chance Namine would hear Mare had attacked Elsa, and Namine would live in a lot more terror Mare might avenge herself upon Namine's wrongs at any time.
Riku somersaulted down from above, to land before them with Xion, unconscious, but otherwise with no discernible wounds, in his arms.
Mare did congeal her Blox back into hands, and fist them hard enough to draw blood, as Elsa sprinted in Xion's direction, like Mare did.
"Xion has regained so much confidence in herself, and her talents, she discovered the location where Synchronicity Perceptual will be founded," Riku spoke.
Elsa's visage broke into a gladly approving smile.
Mickey grinned happily.
The sides of Larsa's lips curved up.
Lucca grinned.
Through the elation flooding Mare she was willing to grin at, she saw Lucca's glasses shifting in a way Mare knew meant Lucca was keeping her eyes from moving, giving Mare reason to believe there was something bad about Xion Lucca wanted to reveal even less, now.
Mare began to move her lips.
Mickey's head whipped in the direction of the ruined embankments across where the bridge connecting Arendelle with the mainland had once been.
"Oh no!" he yelled in agonized terror.
"Anna!"
.
'A machine graveyard removed from man? Seems fitting. It will be peaceful there. No one to trouble me. No one to trouble myself with. "Sleep" for hours. Still not enough power. No. I made it this far. I will make it. Made the choice to leave. I did. Made the choice to travel. I did. Made my choice to die here. I will. Made my choice to live as I wanted. I did.'-Blues/Protoman
MEGAMAN Issue Eighteen:
PROTO-TYPE PART TWO: THE LONELY ROAD