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CHAPTER 73:
THE BARBARIC APPLE
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Author's Notes: The music for this Chapter is, in order of scene: 'The Battle Of Your Soul,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Original Sound Best Tracks, Disc One; and after it, 'Hunter Of the Dark,' from the KINGDOM HEARTS: BIRTH BY SLEEP AND THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-EIGHT DAYS OVER TWO Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; and after it, 'The Miracle,' from the XENOSAGA Episode One Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and after this, 'The One Who Is Torn Apart,' from the XENOGEARS Original Soundtrack, Disc Two. All four pieces can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section.
Goofy yelped in surprise, as the top of his vision registered the silhouette of the apple plunging down toward them. He hurled himself forward, and to the right, wrapping his off hand arm around Donald, and tackling him in the opposite direction of the closest sidewalk to the four lane, one way street, ignoring Donald's annoyed squawk as he did so.
In the same fluidly performed motions, Goofy unholstered Save the King Plus, and tucked into a roll to rise, swivel on one foot, and push himself up with that leg to vault low over Donald to raise Save the King towards the ghostly fruit impacting with the pavement, keeping his shoulders low for Donald to retain a clear line of sight he could better aim over.
Green fog Goofy assumed was acidic, poisonous, or both, flowed out from the apparition of an apple all along its circumference.
Light flashed from to their right, around the corner of an alley, and Goofy heard the click of a picture taking.
"Dodge all you want, doggie'," a self important male voice commented from the direction of the camera click, a lot of self satisfaction in his tone.
"Once I put this flyer up, she's bound to pay my stand a visit.
"She may be skeptical whether it's worthwhile to wait for my Prince to give her a kiss to wake her back up, but not if she's worried about what I'm doing to you two, to make the apple."
Donald bristled indignantly, at the concept he needed anyone to rescue him from an apple.
From the movements of Donald's body, as he did so, and the set of his shoulders, and beak, Goofy knew it wasn't their assailant's target Donald was most worried would needlessly attempt to save them.
"I'd be worried about whether you can get away from what I'm about to do to you!" Donald snarled in fury, pointing Save the Queen Plus in the direction of the click.
Goofy turned, placing Save the King Plus in a neutral position, at the ready to shift to the side, in front of Donald.
There was no way to know if this was one of Maleficent's servants, or the Foretellers'.
Goofy wasn't perceiving enough darkness, through the limited capacity he'd learned how to utilize, for this to be a denizen of darkness akin to the Xehanorts, or even Maleficent, before she'd improved herself as much as she had.
There was no reason to believe they couldn't beat their assailant, without Sora.
This was further true because, unlike Sora, their weapons weren't as easily misplaced as his.
Sora wasn't here, but Donald's friendship connected enough power to Goofy, of its own.
Goofy could trust he did, for Donald.
The more Sora's trust, and belief, in the people his heart was entwined with, and in his self's capacity to connect anything, fizzled, the more Goofy needed to believe this, as a lantern for Sora's dreams.
Goofy knew Donald was just as determined to hold onto his own faith in hearts, and ties.
Goofy needed to watch Donald's side, so he could do this, also.
Additionally, if they could defeat their adversary all by themselves, or, at worst, convince their opponent the two of them were more trouble than they were worth, and drive him away, a large amount of the despair, and terror, enshrouding Sora would disperse. His terror of losing them, as he had with Jiminy, if Sora so much as tripped the most feather light narrow bit, wouldn't vanish, but he'd be able to truly trust Donald, and Goofy, were pints of their own. That would lift an amount of Sora's yoke from him.
It didn't matter who, or what, they confronted.
Defeating this opponent, by themselves, was how Sora needed them to catch his tears, this time around, and lift him back up to hold him on his strong legs.
"That's puttin' it swell, Donald!" Goofy supplied, with challenging encouragement.
"How beat them apples!"
Something about what he'd said tugged at Goofy's awareness as off, but it didn't make a difference.
Sora, and his torch, were what mattered.
A figure in a loose black Organization Thirteen coat, that identified him as a member of one of the new Unions, raced in a curve around the corner in their direction, a sword clasped in his hand.
By the time he was close enough to slice with it, Goofy was already in front of Donald, with Goofy's shield in a position to intercept the strike.
Donald, though, slid forward under Save the King Plus to kick out with his legs, swinging them in a sweeping kick Goofy knew, from decades of combating side by side with him, was meant to send their opponent falling forward onto Goofy's shield, for Goofy to then launch their adversary into the air, where he, she, or it would be more vulnerable to a spell from Donald.
A locket came swinging out from inside their adversary's opposite sleeve, at the front of a chain that twined around Donald's legs, to hurl him in the direction of the nearest wall with a flick of the figure's wrist while his sword crashed against Save the King Plus.
Donald backflipped onto his feet, aiming his wand by the time he alighted, and stabbing down from above with a flashing Thundaga as their adversary spent time pulling the chain of his locket in a curve back.
With clear darkness charged speed, their foe jumped low, to his right. The javelin crashed into his left shoulder, electric yellows rippling over him as he landed, but he just staggered slightly to the side, and then he corrected his posture into a balanced one.
Goofy didn't feel intimidated by these things, even a little.
Sora needed them to stride as pints by themselves, in order for them to catch his tears, and they were just revving up.
Sora processed the black coated figure darting at a shallow diagonal upwards angle at his underside, from the skyscraper window to his left, cutting a crimson blade adumbrated with sanguine flames toward his neck with a quickness, even with what Sora had confronted from the Keyblade wielding Xehanorts, Xemnas, and Yozora's selves, Sora was, still, nearly too off guard to register the motion of.
Childhood's Laughter coiled into Sora's hand, to intercept the strike, with sufficient time to spare. However, while Sora had been unsure of how much ethereally boosted kinetic energy was present within the lunge, it still impacted with his Keyblade enough, shifting his weight to hold the strike back threw Sora off of his flight path.
"You didn't just make a fool of yourself because you're scared that I'll die, too."
"We're all a lot tougher than Jiminy.
"We're not so easily slain."
"Who says that I want you overly taking care of me?"
"They're Darkballs.
"I can afford to be careless."
Sora suppressed the pinched terror shriekingsearing at him to call out the Kye-Blade, and remove his opponent with no trouble at all, as he pulled to a drifting halt.
He knew what wielding the Kye-Blade for that kind of purpose would do to Kingdom Hearts, and the realm of light, very possibly even if he didn't use it for anything other than ordinary physical combat without increasing its athleticism.
You're still grasping for belief that ma
Too, this was no Darkball.
Donald and Goofy could take care of themselves.
Just because there were no Keyblade wielders with them, or Yen Sid, this time, didn't make enough of a difference.
They'd been fending for themselves, without Keyblade wielders, or Yen Sid, at their side, for years before Sora had met them. They'd done the same thing, countless times, when he'd journeyed with them, each time they'd split up to keep their groups from providing too large a target when a native had accompanied them, before, during the adventure prior to this one, they'd stopped doing this due to their trust in their experience, and the impending Second Keyblade War.
For all the good that did once the guardians were assembled.
Jiminy evaded Kairi's Demon Tide, and look what happened to him.
"Stop the pretense," a male voice, brimming with composedly contained hatred, emitted from beneath the hood of what Sora knew was a hovering Union coat.
"It's been much too late for that for too long, by now."
"Zero.
"Your time has run out."
"Well, it's okay.
"You don't need to have just questioned what had happened to Ven.
"After all, you don't know how Ven died at Xion's hands.
"And you can't know that by sending that much of his light into Boo's, you just killed her, while you forced Kairi and Riku against their intention to participate in the murder of the innocent, helpless little girl you just committed."
Sora removed his sentiments from his face.
He caused his voice to become challenging, but he didn't know if there was a reason to keep all of the agony, and terror, for Goofy, and Donald, and Morgan, and Robert, and the last New Seven Heart, out of it.
"If you heard what Robert said to me about light and darkness, so I gather."
"That isn't what I refer to," the person replied, his voice still composed with hateful wrath.
"I had feared you deciphered this, on your own, by now. Yet it appears these misgivings, at least, were baseless. I can still pronounce the sins you've been an accomplice to unto you as I convict you for them."
Kair
Sora couldn't justify refraining from pushing it away, this time.
Emotionally, and mentally, exerting himself that much, while hovering without needing to even use his legs to remain standing, was so exhausting, at this point, he couldn't be sure he was aching, a tissue brush of an amount, or imagining it as a distant fetched potentiality.
Sora couldn't think of a reason to keep his fatigue out of his tone, as he removed the challenge from it, and he replaced it with protective wariness for whomever this person was directing the essence of his hate at.
"By all means, take it up with me," Sora returned.
"You knew her for the sellsword she was, and who filled her glass with coin and confection, yet you refused to let Yuna molder in Auron's cesspool," the figure responded, with dismissive scorn at how Sora defended Yuna, if not Auron, Paine, and Rikku.
That told Sora enough about why this person enlisted in the new Unions.
"By the same token, you didn't let muck embalm Auron. And you shield the banners to which war has rallied since time first moved. This, too, mars you.
"Quit mewling. At juncture after fork, the Kye-Blade's splendor lay in wait to avail you."
Sora didn't need to suppress an urge to clench his teeth.
It had taken longer than he'd anticipated, for any of his opponents to get around to this.
"If you will not offer penance, then confess your sins!"
The figure twisted to Sora's right, slicing low with a motion he was clearly anticipating Sora had believed would be at the side of his body that didn't hold the Kye-Blade, so it would thus catch Sora off guard.
Sora whirled to the side, inside his assailant's own guard, and he slashed at his adversary's forehead in the unlikely, but still possible, chance, if the strike connected, he could defeat this opponent fast.
The coated person angled his sword up, below Childhood's Laughter, and blocked the arc.
"You will gasp into your sickly pale false light," the figure snarled, with contained viciousness.
Sora let himself start, at hearing that.
"Unless that's a slogan, can I suppose you'll tell me why you're serving the Foretellers?" Sora asked, removing the challenge from his voice, and replacing it with companionability.
Sora didn't pay any attention to the knowledge he yet didn't need to exert effort to do so.
"For my father, Thyodor, who followed Yuna to his death in pursuit of valorous renown when she refused to even admit what she was," the figure spoke back, much of his sentiment vanished from his voice, but with his set tone thrumming with his hatred.
K
Sora had no reason to pay any attention to how he could easily relax, and it took no effort to keep his face companionable.
"For my younger sister, Elsie, who withered to her own grave from starvation when Yuna sped from the crows glutting themselves upon the field he gave his life up to, to thereafter fly toward baubles, rather than compensation."
Kair
Sora pushed it away.
He ignored how little lighter he felt at the knowledge he needed to keep wet hotness behind his eyes, so he wouldn't anger this opponent.
"And for my mother, Margot, who followed them both into a coma from which she wakes into naught but times long gone."
K
Sora ignored that the weightlessness lightened further at the knowledge he needed to push his thoughts about Kairi back.
"Once my partnership with the Foretellers has served its purpose, I will cast it away. However, it's too hard to find effective patrons of their ilk. While less conspicuous allies who show mercy from an unwillingness to mete out condemnation to those who have demonstrated their reservoirs of loyalty beyond clutching doubt would stay my wrist.
"By my hand, I, Wylfred, will see the pennants of war washed from the fields, and forests, when the last Princess of Heart, and Yuna, die at the edge of this Angel Slayer!"
Sora couldn't justify ignoring the threat to Kairi, Anna, Elsa, and the other New Seven Hearts, so he pushed this back.
Something familiar, and inside out, pressed against Sora's awareness as he did this, but that, too, was beside the point.
"For now, though, you will suffer my pain.
"Grim Vengeance!"
The next second, Wylfred rocketed at Sora, coats of violet flames washing out from both edges of the Angel Slayer that tapered into dancing tongues of fire shaped like demonic bat wings, and feathered angelic ones, as sheets of crimson rippled and whorled along the top, and bottom of the sword from its pommel up to its hilt, and he cut at Sora's neck.
Knowing there was a good chance this was the beginning of a combination strike, Sora blocked the swing, and he remained alert for anything subsequent.
Wylfred proceeded to take a single stride to his left, without moving back, and slice low at Sora's stomach from there, the flames still enshrouding his Angel Slayer.
Sora intercepted that assault, so Wylfred strode back across Sora's front, to his other side, once more without pulling back, and sent a blow at his forehead Sora blocked, then Wylfred strode behind Sora, while staying in close, to Sora's side, to arc another low swing at stomach height. Sora met that, for Wylfred to continue to stride around Sora, staying in close the whole time, to send a sequence of slices at his torso at differing heights, the corona around the Angel Slayer remaining.
Without warning, as Wylfred was in front of Sora, the burning tongues at the ends of his fire wings extended into bands of curving black that arced counterclockwise at different angles into the silhouette of a globe about Sora, and the red flames wavering on the top and bottom of the sword rushed forward to fan into curtains of shifting shades of violet surging haphazardly in all directions that extended between all of the bands.
Wylfred arced the Angel Slayer once, in a single cut along the equatorial band.
Sora Airstepped onto the railing of a nearby balcony as the globe of indigo, and black, condensed into a pinpoint and detonated in indigos and black, and he alighted facing Wylfred with Childhood's Laughter in a neutral position as the blaze completed vanishing.
"If we don't fight 'em, the Heartless'll keep on hurtin' folks."
Sora could at least trust there was a purpose to attempt to light a lamp for Wylfred, when Sora was face to face with his pain.
Could he be sure of any of this, any longer?
If all the things he'd learned about light and darkness, upon as many worlds, and within as many realms, and their dimensions, as he had, were misplaced, was Sora in any position to say what was in his mind?
Could he hold sure anything he'd believed he'd known, about light, and darkness, any further, in any semblance?
"If we don't fight 'em, the Heartless'll keep on hurtin' folks."
That, too, Sora could at least trust.
If he didn't, at least, believe what he was thinking of maintaining, he'd have less of a chance lighting Wylfred's way home, home sweet home or not.
Sora didn't change his inflections.
"Even if you're successful, killing all the Princesses of Heart will give people something else to struggle over. As you yourself acknowledge, darkness is all over the worlds."
"The flags of other conflicts don't matter to me, as long as Yuna, and the Princesses of Heart, no longer have standards to raise," Wylfred responded scornfully.
He shot at Sora before Sora had the chance to begin to think of something to say in return.
Wylfred was correct about this much.
Sora couldn't afford to spend the time wielding this ordinary Keyblade.
Sora hadn't attempted to activate a new Keychain, for the first time, in a combat situation, a single time before.
But Donald and Goofy could diediediediediediediediediediediediediediediediedie at any solitary last one of a sole single instant
One of them, or both, could already be lying motionless on the cold, unyielding cement, gasping desperatelyforbreathsthatwouldn'tenterbloodfloodedlungspleasedon'tgoperforatedtoshredsbythepointspleasedon'tandsharpedgesoftheirbrokenribs
Sora tossed Childhood's Laughter to his left hand, and he reached into his pocket with his right one, closed his fingers around his newest Keychain, and he removed the Childhood's Laughter Keychain with his left fingers from muscle memory to then slide the new Keychain between those fingers and latch it onto the Kingdom Key in its place as the contours of its weight and heft were in the midst of shifting into its ordinary arrangement.
The Kingdom Key reversed its shifting.
Sora had enough time to process he was holding a Keyblade of unremarkable length with the estimated width of the outermost circular segment of an ordinary steering wheel that was mud brown in color; that held two rectangular prongs resembling small, thin red bricks; and that hosted a light blue pommel in the shape of a short, thin telephone pole with a pattern throughout a total spectrum of icing shades that reminded Sora of a cake created as congratulations, or a medal, curling up its shaft.
Sora's heart perceived his new Keyblade was named Medallion Mud.
Wylfred was right in front of Sora, slicing up at the underside of his right shoulder in a strike clearly meant to remove his sword arm from his body.
Sora slid both prongs of Medallion Mud around the top, and bottom of the Angel Slayer's flat, then, while utilizing their better leverage than that of the prongs of Childhood's Laughter to keep Angel Slayer locked, he rammed them down into Wylfred's fingers, wedging them back against the hilt of Wylfred's own blade to aim the tip of the Keyblade up at Wylfred's face.
The threads of a Ragnarok spheroid coalesced before Medallion Mud, to loose their storm into Wylfred's face at close range.
Wylfred fell backwards, and downwards.
Another person in an Organization Thirteen coat soared out from around a corner to Sora's left, on the opposite side of the street at a height above Wylfred, and swooped down to extend two arms, one similar to Cloud's when they'd first met, but on the opposite side from his, and silver, the other human, and catch Wylfred under his shoulders.
Humiliated aggravation passed over Wylfred's face as he floated up, and diagonally forward in Sora's direction, out of the grip, that appeared to be at how a fellow combatant had rescued him, but not from anything approaching defeat.
"At least you've stridden in directing Galian Chaos as a human," Wylfred commented, clear envy the newcomer was in more of a position to accomplish something he still couldn't simmering just below the surface of his voice, along with his anger at having been bailed out.
"The hour of my own vengeance, upon Ceodore," Wylfred shifted, so imperceptibly Sora extremely highly doubted he'd have caught it if he hadn't been paying close attention at that name, to see if Wylfred's light reacted, "for my Prince, hastens," a female voice replied, proud achievement, and a contained rage to match Wylfred's, present in her intonation.
The accomplishment, and anger, left her voice, for it to become nothing but professional unreadability.
"But I didn't back you up, Wyl," too many things to process passed behind Wylfred's eyes, but he scowled blackly, "because I doubt the power of the Angel Slayer, or the Plume."
"You overstep, Jote," Wylfred replied, no emotion in his own voice now.
"If I must suffer that name in the barracks, so be it, but refrain from calling me that in the presence of one of Yuna's most distinguished protectors. Doing so will neither vindicate Joshua," unconstrained hate appeared in Jote's eyes at that name, to vanish as quickly as it showed up, "nor Elsie. And by now, I have no breath left to waste on Clive."
"I backed you up because our bait is refusing to be snared itself," Jote continued, as though Wylfred hadn't said anything.
Sora was so light, at what that very likely meant, he barely remembered he was floating in the air.
Wylfred scowled furiously, another time, looking as though it was as much at Jote avoiding his request, as at discovering Donald, and Goofy, were very possibly holding their own against their own opponent, or opponents.
His expression set itself with determination.
"Then the wizard may not recognize this until his ensorcellment has manifested in a fullness irreversible by a sage of his reserves," he commented, his voice thrumming with contained furious hate, but with an emptily chasm traced, hopeless resignation now beneath it.
"Donald, and Goofy, once fought at the side of the Atkaschas, and the Plume has been crusted."
"They're Darkballs.
"I can afford to be c"
"You didn't just make a f"
Sora almost didn't process he needed to keep his guard up at the confirmation Wylfred, and Jote, were referring to Goofy, and Donald, even with the knowledge they were supposed to bait Sora, or one, or more, other people, into a trap.
Frightened worry appeared on Jote's face.
"It's too dangerous, because it's now the Angel Slayer, Wyl," she remarked, her tone frayed with that worry. Wylfred scowled a little at the nickname, and he raised the Angel Slayer to extend with its point directly up, and the air started bending in a rising column eddied with ripples of black of different thickness. "You can't know what it will do to you, if it even works."
Wylfred ignored her.
"Pinion o'er the killing fields, un–"
A shorter figure in an Organization Thirteen coat, and wider of girth, came sailing diagonally upward at Wylfred's side, the Save the King Plus jammed into its own side, Goofy propelling it.
Sora didn't understand why he didn't want to blink wetness out of his eyes that could still find purchase there.
He did, regardless.
Wylfred was moving backwards in midair as the shorter Union soldier pushed up, and off of, the shield into a backwards somersault, but the column of a Thundaga stabbed downward at the Angel Slayer, striking it and disrupting Wylfred's attention enough the energy around it dispersed.
"Recognize it, no," Donald quacked indignantly, from the skyscraper balcony above, and behind Wylfred.
"Know how to keep it from charging, yes."
By now, the shorter, fat figure was upright, and shifting to Wylfred's opposite side from Jote, Wylfred's left, clasping a locket at the end of a chain in his right hand in a position for him to swing it as he held a sword in a neutral posture in his left one.
Wylfred's guard was still up, but his left eye slid a minuscule amount in the direction of the new arrival.
"There's nothing to worry about, Wyl," the shorter figure announced, sounding slightly gleefully full of himself.
Wylfred's lips shifted in annoyance, and his left eye fixed itself back on the adversaries in front of him, but he didn't scowl, this time.
"Is this still on, now that we've evened the plane field?" Goofy asked, now hovering vertically on Sora's right as Donald arced in the direction of Sora's left.
In answer, before Donald was close to reaching the position Sora knew he was aiming for, Jote reached into her sleeve with her left hand to pull out four kunai between each of her fingers, while she pulled a sai out of her right one.
She hurled the kunai low, at Goofy's stomach, and then shot at his neck with her sai aimed.
With fluidity that was second nature by now, Save the King Plus was boomeranging in the path of the kunai, while Sora dove to intercept the slash with the sai with Medallion Mud.
Wylfred, and the newcomer, were rushing at Donald to attempt to catch him between them, but Donald pulled up to launch a splash of a Waterga down at the vertice both of the Union soldiers were approaching.
The shorter combatant halted, while Wylfred curled up to swing at Donald, but by then Goofy had reclaimed Save the King Plus to deftly hurl it at an angle that sent it between Wylfred's rising slice, and Donald.
Wylfred pulled back and down, to position the Angel Slayer at a neutral guard.
"Until you all fall at my blade," he replied, his composed voice edged with determination.
"Including the Keyblade Hero who is missing," Jote contributed, and her voice was now an unfettered savage snarl of distilled hate and jealousy, but sounding as though it was for someone other than herself.
Why wouldn't whatever concave thing was pressing against Sora's awareness leave him alone?
Wylfred's face, and eyes, shifted repeatedly.
"For what Anna's perseverance accomplished, while my Prince's efforts were for naught, thanks to Ceodore," Jote continued.
She hurtled at Sora, stabbing at his neck with her sai as she kept her other hand low, four more kunai between her fingers.
Discomfort appeared on Wylfred's face, but he charged at Sora's center, and the shorter Union member began curving to the side, hefting the chain of his locket, and readying his sword.
Goofy slid in front of Sora, adventures of practice anticipating Goofy, and how loosely Goofy was gripping Save the King Plus, once again telling Sora what Goofy intended. By the time he was in position, Sora had moved to his side, Medallion Mud extended out from Sora's body with its prongs far away so Sora could perform a windmilling Flowmotion sufficient to corkscrew through both of Jote's weapons.
With surprising limberness, the locket wound around Sora's waist, and the shorter figure yanked him back just enough he couldn't activate the Flowmotion.
Angel Slayer curled in a gash through the bottom of the webbing of Donald's feet to cut into the underside of Sora's wrist, below his palm, sending pain rushing up Sora's arm.
Sora could feel the cut wasn't deep, though, and he was in no danger from blood loss.
"You can mouth off all you feel like to magnificents as decorated as Xehanort, and Maleficent," the unnamed Union member crowed.
"There's no way, where there's a will.
"Where there's a whip, is where there's a way."
Wylfred snorted in amused disdain.
"You and that biscuit of yours would know, I'm sure."
"He's fulfilling his fealty," Jote interjected, a mixture of both defensiveness and doubt in her voice. The shorter figure shifted, as though he was now embarrassed. "Whatever else you're willing to say about him, up to and including what I remind you is currently sensitive information," Wylfred's face became another mask, as Sora knew that meant the fat, short figure was perhaps their most important target, "his dedication to his oaths is to be lauded.
"Or is this another challenge to mine?"
Goofy gestured below his feet with Save the King Plus, as he slid it there, turning his head in a circle, once.
Sora didn't understand why he still wanted to grin, as he took his position on the back of Save the King Plus, on one of Goofy's sides, while Donald did the same on the other.
It had no point, and it never a single time had.
He could at least say this much, for Donald's, and Goofy's sakes, though.
Even without Jiminy here to hear it.
The fat Union member, Jote, and Wylfred had pulled back into a defensive position, but Sora could honestly hope it would be enough.
"As it goes, there's a will where there's teamwork!" Sora cried, and then he traced his connections to Goofy's sincere talents, Donald's magic, and his own connections, and, for the first time, he launched them into a midair Trinity Sled.
Wylfred caused a second, ordinary sword, to manifest in his off hand, and he moved both of his weapons into a defensive position, as the fat Union member, and Jote, did the same with theirs.
However, as Sora had anticipated, they didn't think to draw close together, and when Sora sent the Trinity Sled whirling at them, curving a slice with Medallion Mud at the hand of Jote's that held four new kunai, Donald, Goofy, and Sora himself moved as though they were complementary thirds of one combatant.
Jote deflected the strike, with the kunai, for a chunk of a Blizzaga launched by Donald to hammer into it, right afterwards, and then Goofy kicked with both legs to wheel Save the King Plus itself into the back of Jote's nearest ankle, before whirling it on its way in the direction of the fat Union member.
He swung the locket ball and chain at Save the King Plus, but Donald fired a Waterga at the hand holding it, causing its grip to become slick, and Sora followed up by slashing at the short Union member's blade.
The Angel Slayer, adumbrated in a casing of crimson traced with veins of purple resembling the center of feathers, ranging from an amount lighter than the pale violet of the comets of the total Dark Laser of Xehanort's Heartless, to shades darker than the indigo of the parched oceans of the play island when the Heartless had held Destiny Islands captive, cut smoothly up through the center of Save the King Plus as though parting butter.
Sora kept his guard up enough to flip backwards off the broken armament, and alight, as did Donald. But Wylfred continued with the strike, angling it to ram one of the broken halves of the shield upward with enough torsion to flip it partially over, and send its sharp edge slicing cleanly into the inside of Goofy's right leg below his knee, and he pushed it in with lethal precision as he reached up with his other sword to slice up from just above Goofy's left ankle, on the outside of that leg, and shear off an entire lengthy strip of flesh almost up to his waist in a geyser of blood Wylfred thrust the Angel Slayer vertically up into.
couldn't perceive anything other than the black spotted sanguine light surging inward toward the Angel Slayer, dragging the fountaining blood about the Angel Slayer in a funnel that parted into curtains of red spraying in all directions
the remaining blacks, and indigos, of a corridor of darkness faded behind the drops of blood descending out of sight
Anna didn't spend any time paying attention to what shape she now was.
It didn't make any difference why she was so sure there were no other words than the ones she'd known in her heart to be true to define what she now was.
It didn't matter why she'd known those words in her heart.
It was irrelevant why there was any question about what she was.
don'tfeeltwice
don'tthinktwice
don'tconcealtwice
Feeldon'tconceal
Here and now, in this single scintillating mote of glass suspended apart from all the endlessly forever vastness of the infinity of the universe, with a howling kaleidoscope of rising colors of any last rainbow shade of incandescence imaginable by the fanciest flight of dream or a waking mind, the sole existence of any wasn't or reality or could perchance be or can have might were the horrors strewn before Elsa, regardless of where she turned, and the peril to the hearts, and people of Arendelle, they clapsed dear and close.
Anna knew the words of the cantrip that would fountain upon every array of combatants in the vicinity of Arendelle, if not inside it by now, and end the battling by sending all the people fighting into what she knew, as well, in her heart, was a sleep so deep it would cross over every single line dreaming wakefulness could blur.
No one would need to suffer any longer, or die.
Anna could just put all their opponents to sleep, and the Arendellian soldiers could round them up, and imprison them, before they woke up.
Anna couldn't justify shutting out her awareness of how much the tears were stinging her eyes.
She could at last do it.
She could for real, genuinely, do so.
She could catch the tears of Elsa's hurt, and cry in her place so she no longer needed to.
Sora's, as well.
And Kristoff's.
He'd kept her at a distance they'd established by mutual unspoken agreement, but he was the one person she could trust had never shut a door on her, or kept it closed.
At finally, she could open another door, for him.
And Olaf's, and Sven's, and Marshmallow's, and Roxas', and Xion's, and everyone else she loved, or who laughed, and loved, in Arendelle, right down to the legendary Matthias, whose exemplary military service under Dad had by now become the stuff of Arendellian folktale, but who she'd never gotten the chance to know.
If Mattias was watching this, somewhere, for the first time, she could believe he was gazing with an approving smile upon what she was about to do, as a worthy heir to Arendelle, not just a flighty moth who didn't have a clue how reality worked.
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay."
"I can"
And for the first time, it was.
Anna knew better from her mistakes, now, and she remembered who the real monster had been all this time.
She knew who, and what, she was risking by jumping off the snow pillar.
Anna laughed breathlessly, lighter than the thinnest air, and she spoke two plain words in a whisper more weightless than giddiness.
"Ultima Mortar."
Her breath hitched, as a small amount of fatigue rubbered her legs a little.
That, and what sounded like a large twirling fountain of surging energies, or liquid, along with large, and distant, impacts colliding with something, told her the incantation had been successful, and some kind of dancing fount was launching a rain of energy all over their surroundings.
Anna knew better, by this point, after what had happened with Elsa, and Sora, and her murder of Jiminy, and so many other times, to believe her daydreams had come true, until she could see what her enchantment was doing.
But she was beholden to Elsa, to say this much.
"You can do the magic now, Elsa," Anna said, not letting any of her doubt into the sure assuring reassurance of her voice.
"From now, I'll carry your tears."
"You've got that part right," Ursula commented with sarcastic scorn.
Anna couldn't shut away her knowledge tears were pricking her eyes, at that.
So what, though?
She'd tapped into her talents, now, so she could fix this one before she made too much of a mess.
Anna told herself to feel she wanted the spectral curtain surrounding herself to disperse.
She could see her surroundings, once more, and a smugly smirking Ursula, arms crossed in front of her as though she was waiting for something from Anna.
Anna, however, just paid attention to the gigantic pirouetting and leaping bands of iridescent light constructs, woven from every fractal Anna knew of, arranged as though they were intertwining and bending boughs of coral extending outwards in a maze of vertical, and horizontal directions, from a massive central stalk. Each opening in the phantasm was loosing silhouettes of a large dodecahedron that all burgeoned the farther they got from the hole until they were the size of average fireplaces, most in the directions of the pass to Arendelle where it was locked in combat with the Treaty of Flames, but a minority in any other direction. Their faces of the polygons didn't appear to shimmer with differing shades of spectral light as much as reflect them, as though they were mirrors.
One of the polygons was sailing in the direction of a smaller amount of Arendelle's forces that were still near the rubble in the dell, attempting to push one last large piece of stone up over its lip near a catapult, and it swooped beneath a thin sheet of ice Elsa may have erected high in the air that a torch of Airstep light was bulleting to at a faster rate, a glow that stopped just above the soldiers.
The orb of light resolved into Ephemer, his Keyblade already pointed downward, and a globe of interlinked transparent hexagons constructed itself around the soldiers.
"Oh, no," Anna breathed, too numb to even attempt to take in what kinds of things could, or couldn't, be added to her voice, or whether there was any purpose to knowing what words were, and what fanciful whim had faith they could bring about.
She had no way to know whether attempting to halt a spell in the middle of its progress would be successful, or make things worse, so Anna knew she couldn't try.
The dodecahedron impacted with the sphere of transparent hexagons, and the sphere simply vanished.
But the polygon phantasm did, itself, and Ephemer was already Airstepping in the direction of another thin arc of ice above the direction toward Arendelle another dodecahedron silhouette was rushing, as Yggdrasil was curling and circling at breakneck speeds over, and nearby, the pass to Arendelle, globule after globule of connected transparent hexagons appearing in front of what could have been hands, or turrets in front of its body to fly before, after, the array of polygons that were rocketing in the direction of the combatants.
Now that she knew what to look for, though, Anna traced the path of one of the fireplace sized polygons as it fell onto a throng of running Arendelle troops, and when the energy body disappeared, there wasn't any evidence Anna could see, from this vantage, the soldiers had even been there.
Anna would have needed to intentionally weave the spell to target the hearts of any of her targets, to claim, shatter, or anything else.
Every solitary loyal soldier sworn to serve Arendelle Anna had murdered, and who would die before the ensorcellment had run its course, all of them not one amount less a citzen than any other inhabitant of Arendelle, and every foe troop Anna had believed she'd successfully aimed the enchantment at with how she'd framed it in her heart, or who would die, was, or would be, as irrevocably dead as Jiminy.
"Well met, Granddaughter," a voice Anna had never heard before, but she couldn't doubt the identity of, spoke from behind her, grudgingly sincere, and regally intoned, approval in its voice.
Anna doubted its author was much of a danger to her, now, so she kept her eyes tracing the polygons, searching for any signs of its past victims, and anyone else who they may be about to mow down.
No one else appeared in the path of any of the washing dodecahedrons, and Anna processed strands of throw up had just been expelled into her mouth in a single, throbbing aching retch.
She hadn't even seen anyone but the soldiers in the single group die, or fatal danger to anyone but two groups of Arendelle's sworn protectors.
Every other death had happened, and was looming, from a removed, impersonal distance.
There was no reason to attempt to feel anything as she turned to look at the crags over which a small number of last polygons were arcing.
"Unlike your grotesquerie of an older sister, you've proclaimed your value as a true scion of Arendelle."
Anna couldn't see any further polygon mirrors soaring through the air, so she turned away from them to face the gray and black haired male in armor as red as Hans' official garb had been, standing before her, in front of the fading wisps of a dark corridor.
Ursula was behind him, and to his right, out of his peripheral vision, but Goofy had taught Anna enough about reading her opponents, and prospective opponents', positions, to know Grandpa was keeping his guard up.
Anna started at the knowledge tears were blurring her sight of the tiny aspects of the set of Grandpa's face, and position, telling her how he was holding his guard.
She was meeting Grandpa,
Grandpa Runeard,
someone she'd thought dead for most of her life, and she couldn't sprint up to him and hug him tight and tell him how glad she was
youshouldn'tbe
still
am
thatwill
not
change
he was still alive and she had a chance to get to know him.
His was a door that had been closed, and locked tight, to her, before she'd even been born.
Anna started at her awareness she could see an ordinary, peach human hand holding her gunblade loosely at her side.
When she'd been Cantata Mortis, she'd barely been able to discern the outline of her hand, and arm, through the shades of resplendent white upon it, and over the rest of what she could take in of herself.
How sick could she be?
After what she'd just done, how could it make the threadiest edge of a difference whether, the first time she met Grandpa, she was her ordinary self?
Gran
R
Grandpa
must have seen something in her expression, for he nodded firmly.
"Indeed," he said.
Ursula crossed her arms, another time, as though she wanted to wait and see how this played out.
"Your other form was much more regal, and befitting of our station, while you have no need to regret your actions," Grandpa went on. "Usurper though the pretender is, this is war, while soldiers who are unwilling to give their lives on the field of battle, should friendly fire call for it,"
"As the saying goes, friendly fire isn't f"
Her insides knotted at the concept of not pushing that one away, even though that hadn't been friendly fire, because she'd specifically framed the spell to target anyone battling someone, so she pushed it aside.
"have no feet to place upon it.
"You conducted yourself as suited not merely their station, but the nobly high blood that once flowed in our veins before the scullery witch who bore you, and her demonic craft, diluted it."
Anna refused to dignify the insults to Mom, and the rest of that, by acknowledging any of it.
She kept her expression from altering, as she kept looking at Grandpa.
"You just mowed down most of my forces, but I'm willing to show magnanimity for that," Grandpa continued, unruffled. "If not for what the wench named you, my investigations into whether or not the late Thadalfus Dowager of Rosfield on Ivalice Zodiac could glorify Arendelle's throne further as my new Queen wouldn't have revealed to me a more distinguished heir than Hans; her brother, Argath."
"I'll pass," Anna retorted, coolly.
After everything she'd encountered since the Heartless had first invaded Arendelle, Anna knew better than to believe a winnowed army meant they were that much closer to ending the war.
Or, that the Foretellers still hadn't intervened, at least discernibly, and directly, was enough of a reason to honestly believe they wouldn't.
Anna indelibly understood how much what she had just done had escalated things.
Her awareness of how, even if there had been any chance of this working before, after she'd just slaughtered most of their foes, and by massacring most of their own soldiers to do so, little to no one would feasibly trust any offer like this, from her, at this time, also couldn't be effaced.
It still wouldn't stop.
Even after what she'd done this time, the paths she could see before her meant nothing other than diving headlong into another flit of whimsy, with the latest proof of how much of a prancing loon she'd been evaporatingblindingaway hervisionself in the chalk charred soot right before her, in the now, and here.
None of it would stop.
Not the crazy eternal darkness everywhere.
Not the mad everlasting light anywhere.
There was no way to make any of it go away.
Anna shouldn't have left Elsa alone up there, in her ice palace.
But should she have convinced Elsa to appoint Kristoff her successor, and stayed up there with her?
Was that the answer?
Would that have spared Elsa the rest, and what still had an unbounded chance of coming?
Would Kristoff be happy, with people who loved him, and who he could love, in his life, that way?
Would Kristoff have been able to find a way to confront Xehanort without violating the world order, and spared Sora his torture?
And Roxas, and Xion?
What about Olaf, Marshmallow, Sven, and the others?
She tried and tried, but even if she didn't turn one way, or another, for an answer, there wasn't any.
Nevertheless, however much further futile she knew it all but surely was, Anna refused to refrain from extending it.
Anna took a deep breath, and she removed any combativeness from her tone.
"A compromise, or surrender, is a different story," she said.
Grandpa shook his head in disappointment.
"The part of that you were courtly about was the first segment," he answered, his tone angrily affronted, but with genuine grandfatherly remonstration present in it.
Anna started violently, as she processed her lips had just twitched upward.
What was she doing?
There were countless ways to avoid an actual battle with Grandpa.
She'd seen Sora's Keyblade prison, firsthand. Grandpa wasn't a Station of Awakening given physical form, so there was no way he could get out of it himself. Regardless of how she'd done it, and that she had, Anna had just winnowed the ranks of the Treaty of Flames, so one, or more of her Keyblade wielding companions had more room to back her up.
They could lock Grandpa up, without any violence other than establishing the Keyblade prison, and keeping it up. Then, given enough time, maybe Anna could find a way to melt his own frozen heart.
The same way you thawed Hans', you m
At least there was no reason for Anna to pay attention to that one.
She should be paying attention to all the ways any road she took but combat would be for nothing, and how even dueling Grandpa was futile.
Grandpa's features became approving, once more, but there was an honest hope he was having a conversation with a granddaughter who might be accounting for his advice present on his expression, now.
Was that it?
Was that how she could bond with Grandpa?
By slicing through his own whimsies?
It was deluded to believe Anna could work from this to connect any tie to his heart.
If she attacked Grandpa, when he hadn't struck at her first, right, after smiling at him, that should also remove any remaining traces of doubt from Elsa's heart, and mind, who the monster was.
f
Anna's hold on the hilt of her gunblade spasmed open violently, and it fell out of a hand, and fingers, that were no so slack she couldn't move them.
She had no problems understanding what breathing was, but she couldn't register how to cause her lungs to work, or her horror slack mouth to shut.
The contours, and colors, of the courtiers, and citizens, attending Elsa's coronation, and the coronation hall, were as crystalline solid about her as Grandpa, Ursula, and the terrace they stood upon were.
Pleasewaydon'tno
How could she be thinking this way?
What she'd put Elsa through; what she'd put Kristoff through; what she'd put Sora through; what she'd put her people through; what Grandpa was attempting to do to Arendelle; what he'd already almost done to it through Hans, and the Foretellers, and Maleficent; what she'd done to Jiminy... all of it was beside the point.
The person standing in front of her was Grandpa, who was still alive, and that did matter.
She couldn't do this.
She couldn't raise a weapon against him a single measurement.
Grandpa's lips twisted into a frown of disgust, and sincere pained anger.
"I didn't have any misgivings of my own, in the first place," Grandpa commented, true dismay, and hope for her, in his voice.
"But now that it's apparent I can bring a smile to my granddaughter's face if I do so, I have no reason to further delay completing your instruction in the most sterling method of communication."
He ran at her, and beams of Sunlight danced off of his blade as he drew it from its sheath.
Kristoff was before her, wrapping both arms around her and holding her against him as he threw himself forward into a roll in the direction of the edge of the embankment
it was the same arm
steel sheened through Kristoff's right shoulder, separating it
the gout of sanguine that splashed onto Anna's face obscured nothing
anything end over end down tumbling down down end over falling end down falling tumbling down falling down tumbling down down
"Nooo!"
Kristoff's visage was skeletal white as he exerted the effort to cry it while adjusting her against his body with his intact arm he clearly wanted to just breathe it if that
her own fissure parched whisper reached her from any there that wasn't not
"But... you and I... can just... unfreeze it."
hardness crashing into the left back of her head
.
"Matthew. Always in fantasy land."-Na'el Vandham
"What...?"-Matthew Vandham
"You can't keep every bloody person happy! How can you not understand it's impossible?!"-Na'el Vandham
"The only true end is the moment you give up. Isn't that what Grandad taught us?"-Matthew Vandham
"...Then show me already! This world of peace... where nobody has to die... Make it come true! You think you can do that, do you?! You think you've got what it takes?!"-Na'el Vandham
XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 3: FUTURE REDEEMED