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sailforvalinor · 1 year

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Blindfolds and Treasured Words (Rikunami Fic)

“It appears we’ve come to a standstill,” DiZ said.

Naminè winced, stared up at the large stasis pod, stopped in its purpose like a flower waiting to bloom suddenly frozen over by an unexpected early-spring frost. She bit her lip in dismay. “Yes.”

“This has gone on long enough.” Every word dripped with condescension—she had failed. She knew that. “Riku—I think you know what needs to be done.”

Riku barely hesitated. “Right.”

DiZ said nothing more. He didn’t need to. Without a backward glance, as if she were merely a feature of the room rather than a person he had been having a conversation with, he left.

Riku gave a barely audible sigh.

Naminè hesitated—despite their working together for nearly a year now, she still found it difficult to initiate conversation with Riku. But it wasn’t in the same way that she found it difficult to talk to DiZ. She certainly found him intimidating—the black coat he was forced to wear certainly didn’t help matters—but not necessarily in a negative way. He was, especially of late, of few words, and thus everything he did choose to say felt important. To Naminè, his every word had weight, and it could be said that she hoarded them like a dragon does its gold. He was the only one she had to talk to, after all.

“You…don’t want to do this,” she finally said.

“I wish I’d never looked at her,” he said softly, bitterly.

Right. Because she looked like her.

She moved a few steps closer, wringing her hands anxiously. “Will you still do it?”

Riku’s mouth tightened. “I have to…don’t I?”

Naminè wasn’t even sure what answer she’d wanted. “I suppose so.”

Riku nodded, then reached back to tighten the knot on his blindfold—a gesture of resolve. She sensed he was about to go, but then, seized with a desperate need to keep talking to someone, anyone, she asked, “Do you…really need to wear that?” Without realizing what she was doing, her hand began to reach towards his face.

He caught her hand a couple inches from his nose, somehow sensing what she was doing. She nearly jumped out of her skin. “I do,” he said, still softly. It took her a moment to realize he didn’t sound angry. “It helps keep the Darkness at bay. There’s no real power in it, but it helps me visualize the Darkness still locked inside me, almost as if I’m seeing inside my own heart. If I take it off, well…the Darkness comes out. And so does Ansem. And…I don’t want you to see me like that.” He paused. “How come you’ve never asked before?”

“I…was too afraid to ask.”

“Because I scare you?” He was still holding her hand. “You’ve seen the Darkness in my heart. You can feel it.”

Naminè stared at him, wide-eyed, completely at a loss as to what to say.

He seemed to take her silence as agreement. He loosened his grip on her hand, turned as if to go. “I don’t blame you.”

Naminè grabbed his hand with both of hers before it could slip away. “No, no, it’s not—it’s just—“ She floundered for words. Riku waited patiently. “I…get nervous. I don’t get to talk to a lot of people. But you don’t scare me.”

He picked up instantly on what she wasn’t saying. “DiZ does.”

Naminè bit her lip, but didn’t reply.

Riku didn’t need to say that DiZ was overly controlling, unnecessarily cruel, out of line. They both knew it, and they both knew that there was nothing they could do about it. Sora had to wake up. He was all the help they had. So instead he gave her hand a comforting squeeze, then let it go.

Something else seemed to occur to him, though. “Tell me, Naminè…why are you doing this? Is it because of him? Or…” He seemed to glance towards the pod where Sora slumbered, though he could not see. “Are you trying to…atone? Like me?”

Naminè sighed. “A bit of both, I guess. I don’t know what DiZ would do if I didn’t play along. But mostly…I’m trying to make up for my mistakes. I haven’t been alive for very long, but in that short time I’ve caused so much trouble—for Sora, for you, for…well, everyone.” She looked back at Sora. “I have to fix everything I’ve broken. Just my existence has caused so many problems.”

“That’s not true.” Naminè turned back to him, surprised, and found that, for the first time since he had started wearing that blindfold, he suddenly seemed to look almost schoolboyish. A slight smile played across his face. “It’s been nice…having you around,” he said, scratching the back of his head.

A strange heat spread over Naminè’s cheeks, though she did not know what it meant. “Because I remind you of her?”

Riku chuckled. “Actually, no. You reminded me of her at first, but really, you’re nothing like Kairi at all. Not in a bad way,” he quickly added. She wasn’t sure if she were imagining it, but he looked a little pinker than usual. “In a good way. You’re…different.” He grew serious again. “I think DiZ is wrong. You, Roxas, Xion—you’ve managed to become your own people on your own. I don’t know how, or why, or what that means—all I know is what I can see.” He suddenly gave an embarrassed half-laugh. “Which admittedly right now isn’t a lot.”

Naminè couldn’t help but laugh at that, despite the fact that her head was spinning. Her own person. Did he really believe that? Could she ever be…?

Riku regarded her with a strange look on his face as she laughed. Then, he took her by the shoulders, saying, “Naminè. Do you still think you don’t have a heart?”

Naminè blinked. “Well, that’s what DiZ says…”

“But what do you think?”

She didn’t know. She didn’t know what she thought. All she knew was white walls in endless rooms, people in black coats, and an aching loneliness she wasn’t sure was real or just a product of having a hollow place where her heart should be. What did she know about hearts, really? No matter how much she might want to know what it was to love or hate to feel sadness or joy or anger, she never could—and whatever she think that she felt sometimes was a mere shadow of the real thing, ripples of energy she pretended were emotions because of how much she wanted to feel them…right?

“I…I don’t know.”

Riku frowned, then switched tacks. “What is it you want most?”

“I don’t—“

“—what is it that you’re drawing all the time?”

Her drawings. The drawings of him, of Sora and Kairi, of Roxas and Xion and Axel, sometimes daring to put herself among them, standing on the islands, holding hands. And smiling. Always smiling.

“I don’t think someone without a heart would want something like that, do you?” he asked gently.

Naminè just stared at him, eyes huge, unable to say a word.

He seemed to understand her silence. “I don’t think any of us really understands what Nobodies are—no matter what DiZ says.”

Naminè smiled. “Maybe not.”

Somehow, in his blindness, he smiled back. Then, letting her go, he turned and began to walk towards the door.

“Why did—why did you ask me all that?” she blurted.

Riku turned back over his shoulder, a somber heaviness coming over him. She instantly regretted her words—he had probably been trying to leave her on a lighter note. “…because when I come back, when I see you again, I might not be the same. I might have to give into Darkness to do this. I don’t want to, but if it’s a choice between giving in to Darkness or losing my best friend forever…” He clenched his fist. “…I know what I’ll choose.”

Naminè looked down, clasping her hands. “And…I’ll have to go back to Kairi in the end.” She looked up, staring into his face, getting the sense that he was staring right back, despite the blindfold. “You know that. You…you might not see me again at all.”

A sad, soft smile broke over his face, and she felt the weight of this moment, her breath hanging in her lungs, suspended, like a pendulum at the height of its swing. There was a promise in his words, the ones that she hoarded so. “Naminè…I’ll always see you.”

Then, he left.

She would never see him with her own eyes again.

“Riku…thank you,” she whispered after him. “For talking to me.”

#I HAVENT WRITTEN FOR SO LONG THIS FELT SO GOOD TO WRITE #have some rikunami!!#salt and light #kingdom hearts #kh 358/2 days #kh riku #kh namine #rikunami #kh fanfiction #kh #kingdom hearts fic #kh roxas #kh xion #kh diz #namiku #riku x namine

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daisywords · 9 months

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not joking about the "world's slowest writer" in my pinned post btw like not only can I only get myself to write once in a blue moon, when I do actually write it feels like I'm trying to squeeze frosting out of a bag but instead of cutting off the corner there's just. a hole poked with a needle and what I mean to say is that it's like 20 minutes a sentence sometimes lol

#anyway hooray for the *checks docs* 928 words I have to show for the large swaths of writing time I have taken over the past two days #actually never mind post canceled I got 358 words of that scene in act 3 that's actually not too bad as a total #anyway I cannot stress the amount of story and worldbuilding progress I have made since then #but it's frustrating that um. in my chronological drafting I started act 2 when I was visiting my sister for the birth of her baby #and now I am visiting again and the kid can literally walk #and I'm *still* working on act 2

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nicolefirekitty · 3 days

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putting my thoughts under a cut since my friend who knows nothing about kh will probably see this post:

Thinking lots about Roxas and Xion post Kingdom Hearts 3, though this is more focused on Roxas.

They're both just children who came into the world at (supposedly) fourteen with no memories, and therefore no knowledge or experiences, and now they're thrust into as normal a life a Keyblade Wielder can get after being trapped for so much of their short lives. Xion became almost nonexistent until suddenly becoming two people against her will, only becoming whole when Sora rejoined her minds. Roxas had his ENTIRE LIFE replaced, only to suddenly remember his previous life in a fit of rage.

He clearly remembers both lives at the same time, shown with Sora being sad when leaving Twilight Town and saying goodbye to the real Hayner, Pence, and Olette. As well as appearing in a black coat in the fight in The World That Never Was and the snippets of memories we get to see afterwards. So his mental state must be a disaster, remembering two very conflicting lives and a one of them wasn't even real. But it was real to HIM.

Four kids living in Twilight Town enjoying their summer vacation, but now Hayner, Pence, and Olette don't even personally know who he is. They're willing to befriend him, clearly, but these aren't the people Roxas knew, and so much of his normal, fake life is overlapping his life as an Organization Member, and vice versa.

It's probably also practically impossible for this fifteen year old with one year of TRUE life experience and no real memories to process this to explain the horrors he went through to others. Even his friends. Only Xion would really understand what it feels like to be two people at the same time, surrounded with nothing but reminders of everything he is and isn't. But would she truly?

I headcanon the Days Trio +Saïx/Isa made the abandoned mansion their home, so it must be even more torture to Roxas. Probably to Xion as well, but I doubt as much since she made her choice willingly; though she did kinda force Roxas to kill her but that's neither here nor there. Oh but he definitely remembers her body crystallizing in his arms as she shatters into truly nothing, not even memories remaining, it all being his fault.

Man, can't wait for that Psychology of Roxas video :)

My thoughts on Xion aren't all that organized and I feel I put down the gist of what I have for her so far in my ramblings above. I just really feel bad for her and hope she gets to have a role in Kingdom Hearts 4. I do headcanon she's extremely touch starved and will hold Roxas' or Axel/Lea's hand as much as she can though. Also that she avoids Isa as much as she can, out of fear, anger, and pure spite.

#Kingdom Hearts #kh #kingdom hearts 358/2 days #kh 358/2 days #kh roxas #kh xion #rambling about roxas and xion #because i love them so much #they need therapy #every kingdom hearts character needs therapy #i was writing a fanfic about roxas having a panic attack from his conflicting memories #that's why this post exists

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mirror-to-the-past · 11 months

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I was laughing my butt off on the Day 74 clock tower cutscene, because Xion's character model kept inexplicably switching between the hooded and unhooded one over and over again. She's just "I CAN'T WIELD THE KEYBLADE. I'M USELESS. I'M GOING TO BE MURDERED, ROXAS. TURNED INTO A DUSK. I'LL LOSE MY SENSE OF BEING."

Flips hood flips hood flips hood flips ho-

#it's her coping mechanism for real #Organization XIII members deserve fidget toys too #that or she's seeing how many times she can do it before someone says something #Xion- writing in her own diary: 'Day 55 of Roxas just being 'happy he's with his friends' 'No one is mentioning the hood flipping :('#kingdom hearts #kh 358/2 days #first playthrough #spoilers in notes

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kayzero · 1 year

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I've been exhausted for three days straight so I don't think I can come up with any decent prompts atm but I'd love to know how you write Roxas! I'm compelled to say maybe something between kh2 and kh3? Despite the fact that during that he's y'know

Here’s a personal headcanon: Xion (and other Replicas) had the capacity to grow a heart like other Nobodies should be able to do. Her process was slowed by her function, to absorb Sora’s memories and eventually become a clone of him, and eventually halted altogether as the intake flow increased to an uncontrollable speed.

But the process did start.

As Roxas sank into Sora’s heart and fully disappeared from the outside world, he allowed his (plastic, fake, liar) smile to fall into a frown. Of course he wasn’t content to just fade away for the sake of someone else’s life — even if that someone else was instrumental in dismantling the Organization and saving an untold number of worlds.

Not that he was bitter enough to blame Sora. He didn’t ask to have his heart ripped out, he didn’t know that in order for him to be whole, someone else would have to be sacrificed. Roxas has the feeling that if Sora had known, if the cost of becoming whole was someone else’s life, he would still be walking around with a broken heart.

No, if anything, Roxas blames Riku. Riku, who had turned to the darkness in the first place. Riku, who had let himself get possessed and tore out Sora’s heart. Riku, who resorted to turning back to that source of power, resorted to soaking himself in darkness, in Ansem’s power, just to get the upper hand in a single fight at the cost of his very self!

Riku, who had the privilege of a heart, had the privilege of a self, and threw it all away.

Had the choice to throw it all away.

And then! And then! He gets it all back in a freak fucking accident! Like he didn’t have to sacrifice anything when Roxas had to give up everything! His self, completely irrelevant! His heart, crammed into Sora’s! His friends, dead for Sora’s sake!

He wasn’t bitter enough to blame Sora, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t part of the problem.

…Friends?

Come to think of it, when did he form a self? When had he grown a heart?

Roxas, now sat on the edge of Sora’s stained-glass heart, tries to think.

He remembers…

He remembers being overwhelmed. He was angry at Axel, who was hiding information from him. Who was lying to him. He was afraid of Saix, who barred him from leaving. He was hurt, and exhausted, and victorious, forcing Saix to the side and dragging himself out of the castle.

And then…

He was furious, running through the streets of the Organization’s undercity, tearing through endless numbers of Shadows and Neoshadows. Disbelieving of an unknown who wasn’t unknown, who tried to stop him from trying to free Kingdom Hearts. Shocked by a stranger who was his best friend in another life as he tried to use memories that weren’t his to convince him to give up.

Victorious again. Until he wasn’t.

But…

He wasn’t hurt when he fought Riku.

Think harder.

He was overwhelmed, but by information, not emotion. He was indignant, because that was the proper response. His anger, his fear, his satisfaction, they all felt distant, shallow.

But his rage, his fury toward Xemnas, and then Riku, it was potent and volatile. He relished tearing through Heartless on his way to the castle. His disgust when Riku caught his Keyblade left him nauseous, his shock when Riku got back up left him breathless.

There was a… divide. Something in between. A day, maybe two.

He… dragged himself through a corridor to Twilight Town, bought hi-potions and hi-ethers from a moogle, but not elixirs, because they made him nauseous and dizzy and left him achy after they healed him in a way that potions didn’t. He hid in the train station, in a supply closet that held specific tools and chemicals — too far away for the janitors to bother with, Demyx had told him, a perfect place to hide out and pretend that work took way longer than it actually did.

And then…

Come on. Think.

He brought himself to the top of the clock tower. He stared at the sunset.

He fought on a magical platform that rose and rose until it reached the heavens, that twisted and became other worlds.

Xion.

He had forgotten Xion.

Xion, his best friend. Xion, who was kind and understanding. Xion, who learned from Roxas, and who Roxas learned from in turn. Xion, who fled from the Organization, fearing her self, fearing becoming someone else. Xion, whose fears came true, who begged Roxas to fight her, to kill her, so she could die as Xion rather than live as Sora.

Xion, who was never meant to be remembered.

As if he could forget such an important piece of his heart.

Even if no one else ever did, he would always remember Xion.

#kay snippets #kingdom hearts #kh 358/2 days #one of roxas’ core values is honesty #another is personal autonomy #because he’d been lied to for a year and had never been able to choose for himself #roxas took sora’s memories but xion’s heart dissolved into roxas’ like sutures #roxas kingdom hearts #riku kingdom hearts #xion kingdom hearts #another option was to go sora’s heart hotel but i don’t have experience writing ventus

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hellyeahheroes · 4 months

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youtube

Give yourself permission to be creative | Ethan Hawke by TED

#thought provoking #creativity #poetry #give yourself right to be a fool #life advice #writing advice #art advice #358/365

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strawwritesfic · 1 year

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Roxas x Female!Reader: Run

Summary: Maybe friendships can come in more varieties than Roxas first thought.

Rating/Tags: All (set during 358/2 Days (but exactly when isn’t very clear); Twilight Town; Twilight Town citizen!Reader; referenced Axel & Roxes & Xion; Seifer & Fuu & Rai & Reader; grumpy!Roxas; Organization XIII!Roxas; Sea Salt Ice Cream; meet-cute)

Challenge: “160 Collective Drabbles” challenge by BobaPop on Lunaescence Archives.

Tag List: @imaginesfire

Run

Once upon a time, Roxas had found something comforting about Twilight Town. The sunsets there stained the pavement red, and the smell of sea salt always filled the air. This stirred something inside him that he did not understand–or at least, it used to. Everything had changed now. He wondered if anything would stir him ever again, least of all sunsets and the promise of popsicles after a long day of work. But he had plenty to think about before that hour came: heartless to destroy and information to gather and mission after mission after mission.

“What’s the point?” Roxas muttered as he flexed his empty hand.

The keyblade ought to have shone into being, but he simply didn’t care to exert the effort to put it there. Sure, he’d finish his job here, but then what? Another lonely day at the castle with Demyx begging him to take on his work. As if whether or not the work was done even mattered…

Roxas knew he had to get around to to going “home” eventually. Saïx would have something to say if he didn’t. But his desire to put that eventuality off grew and grew, until at last Roxas found himself just standing there, as though he was waiting for the sun to finish setting. Maybe darkness would soothe his restlessness a little, but he doubted it.

One foot lifted in preparation for his walk when he heard the sound of voices coming toward him. He froze.

Heading his direction on a higher level of the street was a gaggle of teenagers, all chattering excitedly. Two were boys, one thin with a thick cap covering his head, the other thick and dark-headed. The other two were girls, one reedy and purple, the other laughing at something one of the others had said. The last glanced his way and her smile faded, leaving her blinking at him for the split second before he darted behind the nearest wall.

As bad of a mood as Roxas was in, he still didn’t want to be caught during a stealth mission. A lecture from Saïx really would be the cherry on top of this lousy sundae.

“Hold on, guys. No–No, go on. I’ll catch up with you, okay? Just go,” he heard one of the girls call.

Roxas huddled down behind his wall. None of those guys had seen him, surely. Maybe that last girl had looked straight at him, but why would she care to investigate him further. No one in Twilight Town ever cared. It was like they didn’t even see the creatures he and his friends spent their time sniping from the dark. Poison Plants and Detonators and Scarlet Tangos all went unnoticed. Surely he would, too.

“There you are!”

Roxas nearly jumped out of his skin, or his coat at the very least. Standing behind him was the girl from before, the one that had been laughing. You were laughing now, too, a wide smile on your face as you rocked back and forth on the balls of your feet.

“Where’s your friend?” you asked after a moment of silence, during which Roxas’s nonexistent heart attempted to burst free of his chest. Apparently you took his shocked silence as confusion, because you soon went on: “You know, the one with the crazy red hair?” You mimed pulling out a long spike of hair as you spoke.

“Axel,” Roxas said without thinking.

“That his name? I see the two of you around here all the time. Wondered what you were doing all alone today.

“You…see us?”

“Yep. All the time,” you said again. “Sneaking around in those coats of yours. Where do you get those? I’ve been looking all over town for one them, and I can’t–”

“I’ve got to go,” Roxas said, abruptly turning in the direction he’d been trying to go before you interrupted. Unfortunately, you did so again by putting a hand on his shoulder and shouting:

“Wait!”

“Huh?”

When he turned once more, he saw your smile for a third time. It made an odd, uncomfortable feeling start up in his stomach, like his intestines were trying to flip around inside him. The reverse spell, maybe? But you looked so mundane, so ordinary, and Roxas could still move whichever way he intended to.

You were moving on before he could work things out: “You can’t go without your buddy, right? Well, I’ll be your buddy!”

Roxas could only stare dumbly at you for several seconds. “I don’t need a buddy,” he said at last. What in the world were you doing, sticking around? Couldn’t you tell that he wanted to be alone? For once, he could be, but here you were ruining that.

“Then why do you always have Axel around?” You stuck your hands on your hips.

“He’s assigned to me,” Roxas said nervously.

All these questions coming every which way, all these observations coming from someone obviously not a member of the Organization–Saïx was going to kill him. Well, that might not be too bad, really.

“It doesn't matter,” he said. “I don’t need him along, and I don’t need you.”

“Fine.”

This distinct groan, Roxas felt, was a good end to the conversation. If he hurried, he could probably still have ice cream on the clock tower alone. Not one block passed before he realized that his footsteps had a distinct echo. Sighing, he came to a stop. So did the second set of footsteps.

“You’re following me, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I don’t have anything better to do,” you said.

“What about your friends?”

“They’ll wait up for me.”

Roxas’s eyes widened. If this was how people with hearts treated their friends, then the idea that anyone in the Organization wanted to obtain a heart was utterly baffling. He would hate to treat Xion–or even Axel–as callously as you treated the three he’d seen you walking with.

“What?” you asked at the look on his face. “All Seifer wants to do is hang around the Sandlot and wait for people to show up so he can challenge them to fights. It gets a little old after a while.”

"I know what that’s like. Heh.”

Roxas hadn’t meant to make that noise; the laugh had simply slipped out. To his surprise, he found that he was smiling as he talked to you. You! Not Axel or Xion or–on some bizarre world–Saïx. Just some random girl with a nice smile and an even better laugh. Maybe you wouldn’t mind going for ice cream when he was done?

Just then he remembered that there was no way he’d get away with that sort of thing without someone finding out about it. He could just see Demyx using it as a way to get him to do his work for him, or Xigbar lording it over his head, or Saïx towering over him as he tried to explain that no, you were just someone nice to talk to.

Oblivious to his tumultuous thoughts, you prattled on. Roxas opened his mouth to interrupt and–

The familiar sound of something ripping through the darkness to a brand new world interrupted him instead.

Roxas only had to glance behind his shoulder to find a Watcher right behind him. Before he could think, before the heartless could take aim, he lunged forward, snatched your wrist, and yanked you after him. Only once this was done did he think to shout, “Run!”

All he heard in response was a yelp as the Watcher sent a blast right where you had been a second before. Roxas turned his head just to make sure that you hadn’t been hurt too badly.

You hadn’t. In fact, you beamed as you pelted after him. Too late, Roxas realized that he was holding your hand rather than your wrist in a vice grip. There was no time to change things now. There were heartless appearing every which way as the two of you raced through the corridor of empty shops in the middle of the town.

He didn’t want to summon the keyblade, not here, not in front of you. For the time being, he preferred to pretend that he hadn’t given himself away and that what was waiting for him back at the castle was not the worst punishment that Saïx could think of. Besides, as you and Roxas rushed hand in hand toward the train station, he thought that he might actually somehow be having fun.

A Shadow appeared at your ankles, and you shrieked. As you stumbled after Roxas, the shriek turned into laughter. Soon the tiny Shadow was left in the dust with all the rest, with spells ricocheting off the walls and exploding in the air around you and Roxas like fireworks.

Roxas’s cheeks hurt; with a start, he realized he was smiling. That certainly wasn’t what he had expected out of this day. The station reared into view just as he had started laughing along with you–and just as a Neoshadow pulled itself up from the dark, dripping pool on the cement.

He gasped and slowed to a stop. The hand in his contracted around his palm. Roxas saw, now, how stupid it had been to run up here where there was nothing but a dead end. The Neoshadow blocked his way inside–as though a train could take him far enough away to flee these monsters, or the ones back home. Turning back was impossible, too. He couldn't drag you again through that mess you'd left behind.

“What’s–” you began.

Too late. The Neoshadow lurched forward, razor sharp claws headed straight for your heart.

Roxas screwed his eyes up and the next second heard a satisfying clang. When he opened his eyes, the keyblade gleamed in his hand. Just short of it shook the heartless’s claws. Its yellow eyes widened near-imperceptibly. He waited for it to strike again. Instead, it disappeared into the pavement.

He held his breath. Was it leaving?

No. The circle of darkness moved until was right underneath your feet. You looked down curiously and bent, fingers outstretched.

“Get away!”

He shoved out of the way you just in time. The Neoshadow erupted from its puddle right where you had stood seconds before. Roxas had no time to see where you had tripped off to. He was already battling the heartless, keyblade ringing as it crashed against the dark body again and again.

Roxas ducked, looped, swung, dodged. It was over as soon as the Neoshadow dissolved underneath his final slash, leaving nothing behind but a swiftly fading golden heart. Scowling, breathing heavily, he threw his gaze back and forth across the station landing, willing any heartless foolish enough to come at him then. He was angry and tired and fed up up with–

“Huh?”

The sound of rapid applause broke through Roxas’s rage. Further still did the cry of, “Bravo! Encore! Encore!” that followed.

He turned on the spot and found you sitting on the steps where you had fallen, clapping your hands. Much to his surprise, you didn’t look at all angry. You only looked exhilarated. This expression did not stop when you got easily to your feet to march over to him.

“You have got to let me hang out with you again soon,” you announced, and went on before Roxas could inform you of how terrible an idea that was: “Let me take a few swings at it, right?” You held up your fists and punched at the air a few times before grinning at him. “Especially if Axel isn’t around to help out.”

Roxas knew he ought to tell you that that was impossible. He wasn’t ever going to see you again, let alone get you into this sort of danger. Then he thought: Why not? If you thought you could take care of yourself, and so long as he still brought home plenty of hearts, there was no reason for Saïx or anyone else to find out what he had been up to in Twilight Town. He smiled back.

“Yeah. I think I’d like that,” he said.

Your grin widened as you stuck out a hand. “Nice to meet you…”

It took him a few moments to realize what you were doing. Once he did, he quickly grabbed your hand and gave it a firm shake. “Roxas,” he finished for you.

“Nice to meet you, Roxas. I’m [Name].”

“Nice to meet you, too.”

Releasing him, you began to walk backward toward the slope leading to the rest of the town. “I’ll see you around, then. Fuu’s probably furious I left her all alone with Rai and Seifer.”

With that, you turned and headed back to your friends, the friends you had despite running off to have adventures with strangers in dark cloaks. Roxas’s lips turned quickly into a frown. He had no such people to return to once his work was done. Maybe…

“Hey, [Name]!” he shouted, running to the end of the station front. Though you were almost around the corner, he saw you pause. “When I’m done with work, do you want to go get some ice cream with me?”

“Love to! You know where to find me!”

That he did. The smile returned to Roxas’s face as he watched you wave and disappear down a ramp to some lower part of Twilight Town. It was about time for him to do his job anyway.

The sun was low and the bricks beneath his feet were red. From somewhere beyond the wall drifted the smell of the ocean. Twilight Town really was beautiful–and so full of nice people. To think that earlier that day he had been prepared to dismiss it as a world altogether.

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legitimatesatanspawn · 1 year

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Can I write a summary of Kingdom Hearts after 11 pm?

Answer wound up being yes and no. This ended up being a lot longer than I planned but here's the list, with the full info under the cut.

Kingdom Hearts, the nightmare that started it all.

Chain of Memories, the second worst card-based RPG I've played about 4 different times.

Kingdom Hearts II, the Third Game which will confuse you if you skipped CoM.

Kingdom Hearts 385/2 Days, or the Cult's FF7 Crisis Core spinoff.

Kingdom Hearts: Coded, the phone game that no one outside of Japan got to play until they did.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, the Prequel that you have to play three times to beat.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, or KH with Pokemon.

Kingdom Hearts X (Chi), or the MMO we wanted and regretted getting.

Kingdom Hearts III, the grand finale that said "screw you" to everyone.

Kingdom Hearts, the nightmare that started it all.

The prophesized hero turns out to be a self-absorbed shounen rival character, Riku, who dooms the world to escape his humdrum life and allows the eldritch demons into the global soul on the advice of a sketchy mysterious cloaked figure, Ansem. His idiot best friend Sora goes on an Adventure to save their best (female) friend Kairi and try to find one another. Mickey Mouse is a king, Donald Duck is a wizard, Goofy is a knight, and Pluto is slightly sketchy.

You hop between planets to get their plots back on the traintracks to their happily ever after in spite of the eldritch soul-consuming hell monsters called Heartless that can only be killed with the Mythical Weapon called a Keyblade and Magic (and apparently allies du'jour of said Keyblade).

Disney Villains are all in the know of the Heartless and use them for their own purposes. Except the Queen of Hearts. The Queen of Hearts is not enabling the Heartless to plague her world. Also Gaston. I think Gaston doesn't even exist in the series, honestly.

Finally you reach the hidden world where the Heartless plague is spreading from but Donald and Goofy go off with your now Asshole Rival Ex-Best Friend Riku who claims that he deserves the magic sword not you. So Sora and Beast (aka Prince Adam) get to fight your way through the crazy castle until you reach the place where Riku is dressed in the weirdest outfit seen on a teenager in a Square-Enix game (at that time). Turns out he's been possessed because the creepy shadow person talking to him was Bad News All Along and now seven Disney Princesses (one of which being Kairi because OF COURSE it is) are going to have their souls extracted to create a mega portal to Disney-RPG World Hell in pursuit of Disney-RPG World Heaven "Kingdom Hearts".

In order to keep Kairi safe, Sora have to destroy his own soul with the Keyblade. But she heals your Heartless so you're okay again. Why she never does this again is never explained.

You defeat the possibly Ancient Evil Ansem who turned into a giant hellship monster and then are forced to seal Mickey Mouse (what are you doing there?!) and Riku into Disney-RPG Hell to save the universe.

Chain of Memories, the second worst card-based RPG I've played about 4 different times.

After sealing your friend in Disney-RPG Hell, Sora walks along a lonely road with Donald and Goofy and I think Pluto in a randomly existing grassy field. Eventually you reach a three way fork in the road where some guy in a sketchy looking cloak is all "to lose is to find, to find is to lose, you may find your missing best friend here". Like the world's most obvious cult member.

And of course you go along with it because deep in your heart you know that they're really here.

Except this place is called Castle Oblivion and it works on Card Logic and Memories. No, really. It's kind of like Neverending Story II. Your memories are used to make special cards that either make weapons, allies, or full on locations.

The creepy coat cult do their mysterious villain thing and yell at a innocent girl with blonde hair named Namine and call her a witch. She live-edits your memories so that Namine copy-pastes herself over Kairi. It's a Relationship Sue plot but taken advantage of by the bad guys who all look like anime villains. Because her editing Sora's memories are actually being damaged and for meta-soul reasons it also effects people who've met your character.

The villains are killed off one by one and one of them, Axel, actually sets another on fire before he can spill the beans on why one of the memory locations is somewhere you've never been to. There's also Riku who seems to be having memory troubles too and is back in the dumb weird suit and you fight him because he wants to be the blonde girl's best friend and hero.

Meanwhile on the reverse side of the castle, turns out Riku is here after all and isn't the guy you're fighting with since they also fight while NotRiku insists that Darkness is Super Cool. Riku can now inexplicably smell the evil in the place and has to fight the lingering traces of Ansem - the guy who possessed him - and at one point Mickey Mouse left him for hecking dead over the dark evil magic in his soul. But its okay because Friendship.

Eventually you both reach the top floor where the master of the castle Death McFlower Reaper Marluxia wants to turn you into a puppet that'll only do what they want you to, but you are so determined that even if you don't remember what's real or not you will stop him.

And you do. Also, since I forgot to mention it, the copy of Riku died at some point and was revealed to be a imitation puppet made from memories of the guy.

Sora is sealed in a magic crystal pod to help stabilize your body as Namine reassembles your memories because she feels really bad about it.

Kingdom Hearts II, the Third Game which will confuse you if you skipped CoM.

The weird dreams from the first game are back but its some random school kid named Roxas dreaming about Sora. He looks very little like your guy, is dressed some kind of bandkid weird yet cool black-white-gray outfit with checkerboards everywhere.

He and his friends get into some really weird situations as they look into Japanese Urban Legend Mysteries of the city like haunted houses, eldritch locations, and strange reflections. Partway through strange monsters start invading your town and make a mess of things. They aren't Heartless but something else.

Roxas chases them into an abandoned mansion and finds a crack in a wall that leads to an exact copy of where you were. Turns out that your town is a simulation of a real town. That can magically be physically entered by outside forces. Don't think too much on it since its not the only digital world in this game. The other one is Tron.

It also turns out that you're the awake but missing soul, or a Nobody, of the first character who was used by the creepy cult from CoM's larger organization for... reasons. Unclear reasons but it involves your keyblade. And you don't remember it because of reasons. Also Roxas is forced to merge back into Sora, who wakes up with all his stats nerfed. The other Nobodies either look like anime pretty people or the new creepy eldritch monsters based on how much strength of will they have.

You spend the game doing KH1 plot again but this time the worlds have this big to-do regarding memory being a tangible force and the Disney villains are secondary to the evil cult. Of which Axel - guy who murdered the one about to spill-the-beans last game - is obsessed with getting his best friend Roxas out of your soul while Riku is determined to kick his ass because no that's HIS friend's soul, hands off. Also everyone thinks you're an idiot... even though you spent a whole year recovering from shattered memories.

The guy whose mansion you woke up in, DiZ (Darkness Within Zero... also DIZney, don't get me started on this), hates Namine and treats her like garbage, as well as hating Riku for falling for the dark evil magic, all because he is the actual supposedly evil science-king Ansem whose name was stolen by the endgame villain from the first game. Meanwhile Fantasia film Wizard, Yensid aka Disney Backwards, also has Problems but its more to do with relying on a kid. The only sane and kind adult in the know of the Keyblades is Disney's Merlin I swear.

Throughout the game you not only deal with the cult and the Heartless but also the surviving members of the Disney Villain group. Maleficent has become her own villain doing things across the worlds instead of sticking to one place. For some reason she has a bumbling sidekick minion in Pete the Cat.

You finally invade the husk-world that the cult uses as its base where the leader Xemnas is obsessed with the holy moon forged from millions of stolen souls freed when you and Riku murdered the Heartless the past three games. This moon is an artificial path to Kingdom Hearts built on murder. The cult believes that they can only get their souls back by reaching Kingdom Hearts. You kill their members one by one and then Real Ansem blows up the moon while trying to turn it into digital data.

Riku shows how cool he's gotten, Maleficent actually holds off enemies for you to go further in, you team up with Riku to kick Xemnas (real name Xehanort)'s ass, and then you learn that Namine is actually a missing soul fragment of Namine from when her soul was inside Sora and could only be created when freed from a soul with some measure of darkness which the Disney Princesses all lack... somehow.

Riku and Sora get temporarily stuck in Disney-RPG Heartless Hell only to get a way back to the real world thanks to Kairi. Somehow. Something something Friendship and Heart. Its all happily ever after as you all return to your homeworld. Only to get a mysterious letter from Mickey Mouse once again.

Kingdom Hearts 385/2 Days, or the Cult's FF7 Crisis Core spinoff.

So remember the cult from CoM and 2? This time you get to see your missing soul fragment's life during his one year of existence. The title is weird and hints at how much time you're playing around in in the game. Unfortunately there's a lot of timeskips in the plot.

Basically Roxas is running around from world to world murdering Heartless for company bucks which you then use to get better stuff to kill them harder with. Sometimes you get even harder special enemies. Mostly you're supposed to avoid the locals because they're not supposed to know you exist.

By being Working Salaryman Monster Hunter, your life is supposed to be so boring and so disconnected from people that you never learn the cult's purpose founded on a carefully build set of lies.

Shortly after Roxas does some missions with the cult members as support/mentors, you get a mysterious new member who you never heard of in the previous games. A girl named Xion who looks exactly like Kairi but with black hair and blue eyes. She also has a keyblade exactly like yours which is supposed to be impossible. Your murder friend, the red haired assassin Axel from CoM and 2, slowly warms up to both of these idiot children. Everyone else also slowly does although there's hints that everyone is seeing something different with the girl whose hood randomly goes up during cutscenes.

Turns out that Xion is a clone puppet just like Riku's in CoM. Except she's a girl when some people look at her and exactly like Sora to others and one guy sees a guy who looks exactly like Roxas but in clothes that look kind of like his amnesiac civilian outfit but are wildly different. Others see just a blank doll shape which is why sometimes her hood is up.

Xion is also slowly siphoning your strength because of magic reasons and she tricks you into killing her so not only do you have the strength to break free from the cult but also help save your other self. But because she was made from stolen memories, memories of Xion fade away leaving everyone super confused and making Axel EXTREMELY obsessed with Roxas due to all that friendship packed into one guy.

You fight against Riku who kicks your ass while blindfolded and drags Roxas to the mansion from KH2 because DiZ/Ansem has convinced him that the only way to help Sora's self is to glue the missing pieces back inside.

Kingdom Hearts: Coded, the phone game that no one outside of Japan got to play until they did.

Kingdom Hearts 1 but its a weird block puzzle game... except its not just the plot but you're all Tron-like NPCs running around trying to save the data from the digitized journal.

The journal is apparently sapient and chose an avatar based off of Riku. Maleficent's henchman Pete the Cat somehow Tron'd his way into the journal because Maleficent thinks that its a magic book she's trying to find and they apparently corrupted it with databugs to take it over. Mockery causes the AI Avatar of Sora to Pinocchio his way into having a REAL copy of the magic sword.

Over time Data Sora also repeats the plot of Chain of Memories and apparently the databug glitches were made by the journal's mystical connection to the real kid.

Mickey reverse-Trons himself back into the real world and some of the data people delete themselves and the whole game explained why Mickey sent the main character a letter at the end of 2.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, the Prequel that you have to play three times to beat.

Soooo remember the guy that looked a lot like Roxas but clearly wasn't him?

Game starts off with a flashback sequence where an old man dressed like the first game's villain (but with a shirt on) is watching him die because something happened that should've killed him. Instead his half-living corpse is tossed to the old man's best friend Master Eraqus or SquareEnix Backwards who looks like a wise if stern samurai dad.

Turns out that the keyblade people use to be a Jedi order of paladins with magic armor and some thing that could turn their magic swords into space-bikes. Now you're jealous of them.

You get to pick one of three characters to play as who have slightly different storylines while still running around the same worlds trying to solve problems for Disney characters and fix the inexplicably similar but different eldritch soul monster invasion. They're now called Unversed.

The shortest character is the happy carefree boy who looks exactly like Roxas. Ventus holds his keyblade backwards, plays the most similar to Sora/Roxas, and uses air magic and blitz strikes. The girl character Aqua looks vaguely but not really like an adult version of Kairi, is more of a mage than a swordsman so let's just call her a spellblade, and is closer to a shoujo hero (minus the romance plot) and just wants everyone to be happy and safe even if she has to kick their asses over it. The third character, Terra (not to be confused with FF6 Terra), is a very tall and buff offensive-heavy swordsman who favors earth magic. He is the shounen/seinen hero of the cast and a bit of a naïve doof.

The two older students take a test to prove their mastery of the keyblade and that they are ready to be called a master and roam the worlds helping them. There's three thrones but the other old master Yensid is not present and I don't know whether Merlin has a magic sword... probably not actually. But you have Master Dad Eraqus and Master Obvious Villain and guess who makes the test harder just to mess with you?

Master Obvious Villain, who is dressed like the Ansem and shares a name with the KH2/385 cult leader's real name from before he usurped Ansem's name and titles. Master Xehanort. The super obviously evil guy.

Aqua passes, Ventus cuts in to help save his friends, and Terra fails because he accidentally taps into the Dark Side of the Force.

They hop between worlds, doing the thing but with a new set of monsters and some new worlds. It's a case of each of them trying to catch up with each other and talk sense into one another over going home or getting help or finding the other one. It doesn't help that Terra keeps meeting the Disney Villains and and believes their takes on everything while Aqua and Ventus are being good heroes and occasionally lost but helpful nice people.

While Xehanort eggs people on, you run into the cult members while they were still alive and generally happier. You also run into a mysterious boy who's dressed almost exactly alike the time Riku was possessed by the soul-ghost of "Ansem". But with a helmet on to hide something. Vanitas keeps insulting people and is pretty much KH1 Riku all over again but with less reasons to be a jerk.

It turns out that Xehanort originally had Ventus spit his soul in half to make Masked Boy Vanitas who, without his helmet, looks exactly like an evil Sora instead because TURNS OUT that the reason why this Ventus looks Roxas is because when Sora was a literal baby, his soul offered to help heal the damaged soul of Ventus and that's why Ventus didn't die like Xehanort thought he was going to. Ventus and Vanitas are being set up to fight by Xehanort to make the ultra special holy magic sword keyblade "the XBlade" (read: ChiBlade, which sounds like Keyblade) in order to make a path to Kingdom Hearts. Yes its here again.

Also the monsters in this game are the soul-damage bleeding out from Vanitas since his half of the soul wasn't nursed back to health beyond making sure it didn't fall apart. Good job, Xehanort, you ruined one now two perfectly good boys at this point in time.

Now because this is a prequel you know this doesn't work. But because this is a prequel, I'm sure you wonder why you've never heard of any of these people.

Murder. The answer is murder.

Terra is tricked into killing Jedi Dad Eraqus, whose soul hops into him to help protect him from the evil magic slowly corrupting him. Terra is then possessed by Xehanort making him now look exactly like KH2/358's cult leader Xemnas... and loses his memories because Terra's soul is being already possessed by Eraqus so there's a constant war in his soul for control leaving the body with no idea who he is. It takes an already partially possessed cult member to help set things up in addition to all the nonsense going on in the background to keep the plan on track.

Ventus's soul gets damaged again and is lost, but actually goes off into Sora's soul to heal. This is why Sora has a keyblade at the beginning of the series because it turns out that the reason why everyone thought that Riku was the prophesized savior was because he was intentionally blessed with a keyblade by Terra for... some reason, probably to do with his desire to protect his friends. Sora has no idea he even has a keyblade until his world is torn apart by Riku out of impatience because he's been waiting for Terra to show up and teach him how to keyblade. This is how Fake Ansem convinces him to break the world.

Aqua meanwhile accidentally blessed Kairi with a keyblade, but she's so busy looking for Ventus and Terra that when she sees Possessed Terra nearly murder them, she ships off Ventus's soulless body to their home world which gets turned into Chain of Memories memory-card castle Oblivion for his body's protection. Then she goes to fight Terra and free him, only to get tossed into Disney-RPG Hell where she spends the next... ten years? Something like that, of nonstop fighting and struggling to survive there. It's implied to only have Heartless so your guess is as good as mine how she ate or if she ever slept. (Turns out Time is nonlinear in Disney-RPG Hell so some people spend long amounts of time there and others spend days but come out years later.)

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, or KH with Pokemon.

It's time for Sora and Riku to take their Master Jedi test! To do this, they are told by Yensei to enter a magical dream world where all worlds that are still trapped in darkness as they recover from the Heartless invasion are 'sleeping'.

For some reason this means there's magical monsters that look vaguely like Heartless but are actually some kind of Nightopian Nightmaren setup of magic soul fragments called Dream Eaters. Also The World Ends With You cast are running around the dream worlds like it is UG Tokyo. Which raises questions in my head about the Reapers and whether this means Joshua is an avatar of Kingdom Hearts.

For some even stranger reason, their test is a lot harder than the one given to the Birth by Sleep students. Like a lot. Terra and Aqua just had to prove their skill and self-control while slapping magic light with their keyblades. These guys are told they have to save seven sleeping worlds instead. In spite of all the times they've saved the entire universe as well as directly saved the worlds.

This is the game where I start to hate Yensid.

Sora and Riku now in addition to running around the forgotten worlds and sleeping memories have to fight Fake Ansem, Xemnas, Master Xehanortt, and some mysterious teenager who are all there to gatecrash the test once again because it worked in Birth by Sleep. While fighting them, it turns out that the Xehanort has access to time travel magic and that's why every version of himself was working towards the same goal of reaching Kingdom Hearts off the deaths of every single being in the universe if necessary. The teenager is his past self. Young Xehanort.

The real goal of the cult is to make perfect host bodies for pieces of Xehanort's soul. To this end, this requires a weakened will and/or incomplete soul that he can suppress and fill with his own. He plans to turn Sora into his latest host since Riku has been successful in keeping him out.

Meanwhile in the living world, it turns out that murdering the Heartless that has someone's soul and then murdering their Nobody makes their real self alive again. So the cult's members who you killed are back to their real selves. Most of the fans' favorites are alive and looking for the missing members. Also Queen Minnie Mouse was kidnapped by Maleficent to blackmail Mickey Mouse into giving her access to the Journal again only for her to get inexplicably beaten up by the Revived Axel who had zero business on that world.

Mickey gets into the dreamworld in time to help stop the resurrection of Xehanort because at this moment he's still kinda-sorta dead. The plan with the hosts is to create the holiest of keyblades by forcing hearts of pure evil and hearts of pure light to fight in the hopes that that will make the holy keyblade appear and thus lead him to Kingdom Hearts because he wanted to see the super keyblade having heard stories of the keyblade war. We all want to see the Keyblade War but he took it too far.

In spite of doing nothing wrong and being in a coma during this whole encounter with Xehanort, Yensid claims that Sora screwed up and doesn't deserve the title of master yet gives it to Riku. Also it turns out that the Assassin Friend Axel now has a keyblade. Because of course he does.

Which is perfect because they need seven keyblade users to fight the thirteen superdark hosts of Xehanort. Which... just plays into the villain's hands.

Kingdom Hearts X (Chi), or the MMO we wanted and regretted getting.

We always wanted three things: To see the keyblade war because it sounded really really cool. A game where keyblade players got to fight. An MMO where we got to explore the worlds with friends. We got it. As a gacha mobile rpg where we were told that one of the five player factions was led by a lying traitor to Ancient Past Keyblade Jedi Leader and pitted against each other to see who got the most light fragments.

The fact that each of the faction leaders were all named after the Seven Deadly Sins while also taking design cues from our favorite Keyblade Characters did not help one bit.

Leopard was led by a boy named Gluttony who looked like Roxas/Ventus. Unicorn by Not-Riku whose name sounded like Wrath. Snake by Aqua "Envy". Fox by Kairi "Greed". And "Sloth" Terra leads Bear. Since one faction being led by a villain would've made at least a tenth of the playerbase complicit in villainy, instead the traitor was a mysterious sixth apprentice Luxu or Light or maybe a reference to Lucifer and the whole thing was arranged on purpose by the master whose keyblade looks suspiciously like the Xehanort's right down to the evil eyeball.

All faction members (who are all children) are given a magic not-moogle cat monster that help them as they run around fighting monsters that should not exist at this point in time.

It turns out that suspicion has caused the apprentices to turn on each other an that there's a whole Puella Magi setup with the monsters you're fighting being fallen corrupted members of the factions whose hearts have been consumed by dark magic.

It also turns out that the Keyblade War was fought between the factions over who was the traitor. The player character is offered a chance to go to the future in the hopes that scattering a few selected faction members whose loyalty and skill have been proven can help save the future from destruction.

Fun fact: it turns out that the player character, regardless of what faction you're in, is reborn as Xehanort. Some members are tossed into the future but become the villain's cult members such as Marluxia. Also the whole game is a data copy preserved in a different magic book that seems to be the one Maleficent has been seeking this whole time.

Kingdom Hearts III, the grand finale that said "screw you" to everyone.

Because I don't have a PS4/PS5, I've yet to play this one. That said I know some key facts anyway because of spoilers.

Sora is treated like crap and taunted by everyone because he was almost possessed by Xehanort, in spite of him doing more than anyone else to save the worlds while everyone else who did get hurt or possessed by Xehanort were also played by Xehanort so that's a weird hangup to have. The Grande Finale involves everyone involved in the main plot, although most of the Final Fantasy cameo characters are no longer in use for some reason. Sora, Riku, Kairi, and multiple ex-cult people all have keyblades. Aqua gets pulled out of Heartless Hell but she had turned Dark for a moment, Terra's willpower possessed armor the optional boss from KH2 who we see form in BbS shows up to bodycheck his villain possessed body, Ventus wakes up, Vanitas is still around.

By the way since Heartless Hell is nonlinear, this means that anyone chilling out in it - Riku, Mickey, Sora, Real Ansem, Xemnas, Roxas - could've saved Aqua at literally any point in time. Its not even a question of keeping the timeline secure since characters can and do abuse time travel. Mainly Xehanort but there are a couple bits by the heroes like in KH2 when they hop between Disney Castle World and Steamboat Willy River. Sucks to be her.

Actually all the characters who supposedly died or were lost are back. All of them. A lot of them are possessed by Xehanort as his new host bodies. Others are brought back from the dead at the end of the game even when they already exist (ex: Axel and his original self Lea, while Xion and Namine and Roxas all gain their own existences).

Xehanort turns out to have been Good All Along and has had good reasons for trying to destroy the universe. He and Eraqus go off to Kingdom Hearts or some other happy afterlife hand-in-hand.

Sora, meanwhile, pretty much kills himself saving everyone so he's even more of a Messianic figure in the series than shounen protags tend to be. Goofy almost dies and Donald whips out Zettaflare - a power that outstrips anything seen in any Final Fantasy game before.

In the end it also turns out that the character helping keep Xehanort's plot on track was Luxu all along. Also the Union Faction Leaders are back, thus setting up the next arc of God knows how many more games. Which begins with a music-based rhythm game and possibly also Super Smash Bros Ultimate.

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complicatedandstained · 2 years

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8/13 WIP snippet

Because I have promised myself to try and stick to only one fanfic WIP at a time this year, I'm not working on anything akuroku at the moment *BUT* I was home sick today, so in honor of 8/13, I wrote a rough draft of their next scene for the next chapter of my pirate fic, The Poker Night That Never Was:

silent treatment

Jim Hawkins, the bartender, is momentarily torn between gaping, fish-mouthed at the magic wielder in front of him and cleaning up the splintered glass and pooling burgundy wine at his feet. Practicality wins out, with a pained grunt, as the dry liquid wafts up to his nose and begins to soak into the crack of the sole of his overworn boot.

Roxas lets out a sigh of relief and sets his forehead on the cool, if questionably cleanly, polished yet scuffed countertop of the long bar, his hat flopping behind him.

“Hey.” Axel automatically reaches to adjust it over his head, and pats the base with long, drumming fingers, “There, there, buddy. Crisis averted. You’ve dealt with bigger, scarier baddies than that sack,” brows arch as tone lilts, “right?”

Roxas’ shoulders lift, and the hat slumps forward in a nod.

“Atta boy.” Axel nudges Roxas’ shoulder with one hand and raises his tankard, which continues to dribble out the side as it is still a little too full for such enthusiastic maneuvers.

Roxas lifts his head, quirks his brows, and grimaces, but raises his head and his glass in return. He’s been to enough poker nights to understand the basic custom of clinking beverages together, if not the reasoning behind it.

Luxord had tried to explain that it had to do with good will and luck, and Roxas’ reply that Saix says hard work is the only real luck in the worlds went unappreciated, both by Luxord, and by Axel who told him if that were true Saix would smile more.

After their drinks are set down, Roxas’ arm is nudged again by Axel who is craning his neck to survey the room more thoroughly, cat eyes narrowed and focused.

“Speaking of bigger and badder,” he turns around on his stool entirely, perched backwards and Roxas follows suit, “you see the rest of the crew skulking about anywhere?”

“Nuh-uh.”

They hop off the stools entirely, sloshing drinks in hand, and begin to make a loop about the tavern, poking their heads into corners and crowded backrooms.

Roxas sees a fresh brawl by the dart boards, a being with iridescent scales along his cheeks he is almost certain is part fish, and the massive pirate he had bumped into earlier carrying three massive trays mounted with baskets of beer bread from out of the kitchen.

But nowhere amidst the cramped tables and raucous, bumping crowds does he see familiar faces or shadowy black coats.

“Nobody,” Roxas murmurs to himself. “Literally.”

“Yeah, you can say that again.”

Roxas clasps his hand over his mouth and shakes his head.

Axel gives a tired, but not unamused sigh. “Oh we’re not really playing that game, are we? You barely speak much as it is.”

Roxas plants his feet purposefully and gives a more adamant nod, but Axel is already looking around again for their coworkers.

“Feeling kinda stood up.” Axel glances to Roxas again pulling him out of the way of a rogue, swooping parrot, and closer to his side. “We can’t have gotten here that late, and we can’t have gotten here first. Maybe they had to change the locale and we missed the memo. Maybe Saix finally busted ‘em. Tragic really. Of course if he busted them, our asses our busted too.”

Roxas quirks a brow, and shifts his hand, drawing soft, cold whirls of darkness around his glove, the beginnings of a portal.

Axel sees what he intends and gently bats his hand down, lip pulling into a smirk. “Yeah, we could RTC or check another world… But I mean, we’re already here. And we can tell Luxord we tried… not really our fault things didn’t go to plan. And Saix would be growling at us either way, and honestly, when isn’t he? I think we should make the most of it.”

Roxas frowns, arms crossing. Saix already runs him ragged with missions and bonus missions and simulation sessions to understand how he could have achieved perfection had he just tried a little harder.

“Aw c’mon. Think of it as bonus time off. We deserve a night out, don’t we? I thought you liked it here with all the riff raff. I’m betting here we can get away with all sorts of things we couldn’t back at the castle. Unless you don’t think you can handle it?”

Roxas looks around. Axel had only just said this place wasn’t safe. Not that Roxas can’t handle that, but why would Axel choose something dangerous over sleep? Axel loves sleep.

“C’mon. I’ve got your back, partner. And don’t tell Luxord I said this, but there are far more interesting things to do around here than play cards.”

Roxas considers for a moment, but not a long one. He wants to see more of this colorful lively world than Luxord’s dull, smoky poker tables. Roxas points to the dart boards and then summons a stroke of lightning into his palm.

“Whoa, Zeus. Be careful where you’re summoning that stuff. Yeah, Larxene did used to love annihilating people at darts and knife throwing. Tell you what, little zombie. I’ll make you a bet. If I can beat you at darts, you have to talk to me again.”

Roxas pouts, brows furrowing. Yeah, Axel has good aim with his chakram, but Roxas has been getting stronger everyday. He hadn’t been planning on giving Axel the silent treatment all night but it would be fun to have a chance to show him up, and he likes Axel trying to persuade him to talk like he had back in his first days on the clocktower, but maybe with more kissing this time.

Roxas laughs and nods, reaching out to shake Axel’s hand. “You’re on.” His brow furrows with determination, and then he frowns again, hand dropping off limply. “That didn’t count.”

#akuroku #kingdom hearts #axel #roxas #potc #pirates #the poker night that never was #358 nights #my writing #wip #silent treatment #akuroku week #akuroku week 2022

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yzafre · 1 year

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just promise you won't let me go | epilogue

AO3

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Three hundred and fifty-seven says after Roxas joined the Organization, Xion found Roxas at the top of the clock tower. The sun was setting. Her face was not her own.

Their Keys clashed, a stellar collision, the orbital decay of a binary star.

They shattered.

There was a girl.

She had collapsed, and now laid cradled in his arms, ice-like crystal creeping up her legs as she whispered to him between labored breaths. Something about Sora and going away – about Kingdom Hearts and setting it free. There was something about her – Roxas felt like he should know her.

His head hurt.

“Goodbye, Roxas,” she said, and her fingers whispered across his skin, the softest kiss before she shifted to cradle his cheek, “See you again. I’m glad I got to meet you.”

He stared down at her, confusion painting his face, and she just smiled wider, softer and sadder, and he hated it, she shouldn’t look like that, her smile should be, should be –

She curled her head in, that smile pressed to his shoulder, “And of course, Axel, too. You’re both my best friends. Never forget; that’s the truth.”

Her hand shook, tremors against his cheek, before falling, and he caught it without thinking. Warmth sparked where their hands met, a shock to the system traveling through his veins, star-to-star, hello, goodbye.

“No,” he remembered, “Xion!”

He pulled her in close, begging as she stared up at him through heavy eyes, “Xion – who else will I have ice cream with?”

She smiled, eyes slipping fully closed. He clutched her, closer and closer, until she shattered into light in his arm, his embrace coming to rest on only himself.

For a second, he was left alone in the quiet. At this point in the day there should have been sounds around him: the soft murmur of afternoon crowds echoes up from the square and the clinking rumble of the trains hum behind him and the wind across the trees.

He inhaled once, choked on it. His next breath fed a pressure in his chest, and on the exhale it exploded outward, ripping up and out from his back. Heat speared through his veins, out his limbs, supernova in his chest searing and numbing every inch of them.

He couldn’t breathe – he couldn’t breathe. There was this ringing, blurring out the world until his body caught up and forced a gasp, only for it to start all over again. The ugly, roiling mass in his chest writhed against his lungs, and he tried to push it away, outoutout, pain bursting from his spine, but it only left him feeling empty, wrung out and weak. The release of pressure did nothing for the weight upon him, and each new breath only brought more tears.

Roxas didn’t know how long he knelt in front of the station. Eventually, he managed to stop heaving up sobs so that his vision could clear to show more than the blurred, blinding lights of the eternal sunset.

As he blinked the last of the tears from his eyes, he felt something sharp pressing lines into his palm. He turned his hand, finding a seashell tucked inside. Another small shudder passed through him, and a flurry of feathers stirred around him, brown and shimmering blue-black. He stood, a heavy weight dragging him down. The feathers danced around his feet as he swayed in place.

From the corners of his eyes a shape behind him caught his attention. He twisted one way, then the other. Through the remaining fog in his mind, it took a minute to realize the shadows were attached to him, and the weight pulling at him was very, very real.

Two pairs of wings drooped behind him, one a soft, pale brown and the other a sleek blue-black. It should disturb him more than it did, he thought, but they looked as sad as he felt, scraping across the ground as he moved. It seemed right, that he should be transformed when a fundamental pillar of his world has been lost.

The sun dipped below the horizon, the world going dark.

Turning, he found two keys laying abandoned on the pavement, mirror images of each other in pink and yellow. When he picked them up, they hummed, fizzled, the energy inside him roiling, alternatingly begging to get out and pushing them away, magnets at opposite poles. He reached down, magic coming stronger and smoother than it had in weeks, twin stars in his chest jumping to answer and the keys shattered, new forms taking their place.

The key on his left, a long lance decorated with dark, sharp points, a perfect weight in his hand, and the other, a long silver blade with a yellow guard and sunburst decoration running along the edge, hummed quietly to him, a song he knew to his bones, the words just out of reach.

She asked him to free Kingdom Hearts.

If that’s what she wanted, then that’s what she’d get.

Axel woke up. Grass tickled his cheek, and everything ached – his back, his limbs, his head. He had lost.

Xion was gone.

That was – not great. Well, it was bad, actually, very, ridiculously bad, but if he started going down that line of thought, he’d never get anything done, so.

Xion was missing, fully willing to let the heroes destroy her. Not great.

He heaved himself to his feet, craning his head around to get a better look at the sky. It was hard to tell, in Twilight Town, but it looked like it was heading toward true sunset, now, meaning most of the day had passed.

Again: not great.

Right, okay. He could do this. He reached out with his senses, looking for any lingering traces, any clue on where she went.

Most didn’t realize, but if you got to a dark corridor just after it closed, you could trace its path. Time was working against him here, but he was the best, so maybe, just maybe, if he looked –

There were two scars left in the air. Two rifts that had been torn open at the front gate. One went somewhere else in town. The other went to Castle Oblivion. He couldn’t tell exactly where they went, not from here – he’d only be able to follow it if he opened the corridor and traced its full path. By the time he did that, whatever lingering thread remained of the other would be long gone.

There were two paths; only one of them would lead him to Xion.

Axel took a deep breath and made a choice.

Axel had been up and down Castle Oblivion what must be a hundred times at this point; the place didn’t get better with familiarity.

The corridor let him out on a landing between two floors of the castle – impossible to tell which one exactly, of course, with the way every floor looked the same. It didn’t matter; all he had to decide was: up, or down?

A quick pause and a bit of a listen lead him upwards, towards the slightest buzz that indicated some sort of active magic – in this place, that should indicate a room in use.

He reached the hall just in time to watch the main door to the floor crack open, a small figure in a red cloak slipping out. Through the opening, he spotted a dimly lit room, a sliver of a long table covered in notes – and he’d seen that room before, where was it? – and at the end, two tall chambers, a body floating in each with them. Replicas, he thought. Only one door was open, so most of the right pod was cut off, but if he squinted he thought he could just make out the one on the left –

Oh.

The door slammed closed just as he recognized the face. Riku. Or, he suspected, the Riku replica.

“You know, there was this one thing I could never figure out,” Axel said, watching as Naminé startled, turning to him with eyes wide, gaze flickering between him and the door behind her. She had a small, black-haired doll clutched to her chest.

“Axel.”

“See, when Xion first tried to break into Castle Oblivion, she told me she had memories of me, here, in this castle,” he said, prowling forward, grim satisfaction creeping over him as she pressed herself back into the door, “Not too odd, though. I did meet Sora here, even if you’re making him forget about all of that. But then she said something odd – do you want to make a guess?”

Naminé didn’t answer; but then, he didn’t exactly leave her much room to answer.

“She said she had memories of me chasing her down. Capturing her. It seemed impossible, so I tried to ignore it, of course, but there’s only one person who would have a memory like that.”

“Hitoshi,” the word spilled from her on a strangled sigh, seemingly against her will.

“Your Replica,” he agreed, “But I just couldn’t figure out how she got the memory, you know? But now… well, I suppose I’ve found my answer. So, this was your plan all along.”

“That’s not true!”

“No?” he asked, “So you didn’t convince her you were her only option? Didn’t tell her to come to you, so you could take her apart?”

“She was falling apart already!” Naminé argued, “And I’m the only one who could fix it.”

“Fix it?” he sneered, “This is what you call fixing it? The last time I saw her, she was ready to try fighting this – and then she sees you, and she comes out ready to die.”

“I had a plan! One that would have saved her, if she came with me. It wasn’t supposed to go like this! How was I supposed to know she run off to – why would she - !”

She cut off, and he had half a second to wonder why before pain spiked through his head. The world flickered, his vision blinking in and out as the floor swam benath him. Across from him, Naminé had slumped back, nearly sliding down the wall.

“What,” he blinked slowly, swaying, “What was I….”

“It’s over,” Naminé whispered, face screwing up, “She’s… she’s gone. It’s all fading.”

“She?” That’s right, they were fighting about – about –

Why couldn’t he remember?

“I have to go. I have to place a reminder, before I,” she cringed, holding a hand to her head for a long moment before slumping, “Even I can’t hold on for long.”

“What are you talking about?” he growled. He flickered his eyes around the room, trying to figure out how he got here, why he came here. Castle Oblivion – a mission? No. Naminé watched him, something sad in her eyes. She was clutching a black-haired doll to her chest. He squinted, tried to make out more details – there was something, something about the shape –

Another lance of pain stabbed through his head, and he collapsed, knees slamming to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, reaching towards him.

The world went dark.

Axel woke up. His blankets tickled his cheek, and everything ached – his back, his limbs, his head. He had lost everything.

Roxas was gone.

Drawing in a sharp, bracing breath, he pushed upwards, scrubbing at his face. A flash of bright white against the gray of his room caught his eye and he paused, twisting around.

It was an envelope, sitting on his bedside. Curious, he picked it up, turning it over and over. No name, no note. Well, nothing for it – with a shrug, he flipped it open, feeling inside until he could pull out it’s contents.

A stick, mostly dry but with a bit of sticky residue left on the end. The text on it said “WINNER”.

The breath punched out of him, something in his chest aching. Roxas was gone.

How did this happen?

Roxas advanced towards Kingdom Hearts.

He didn’t dare open a corridor straight into the Castle. Instead, he stepped out into the City, stalking through the streets, taking out the heartless that seeped from the asphalt. Rain fell from above, soaking through his coat, making the ground slick, filling puddles in every divot and groove.

The heartless didn’t stop coming.

He met another boy in a black coat – the Imposter, he thought – as he was overwhelmed, who slammed down beside him, summoning a Key of his own – what? – and joining the fight. When the heartless finally cleared, they turned, leapt away and faced each other.

“Who are you?” he growled.

The stranger tilted his head, silver hair spilling over his shoulder, “What does it matter? I’m here for you.”

“Why are you trying to stop me?”

“Because I want back the rest of Sora’s memories.”

“Sora,” he muttered. Sora, Sora, Sora, that was all he ever heard from people these days, “Enough about Sora!”

“Do you have some kind of plan?”

“I’ll set Kingdom Hearts free – then everything will be the way it was. She’ll come back… and the three of us can be together again!”

“You mean Xion,” the imposter said, and Roxas hissed, because how dare he, what right did he have to say her name, “It’s a struggle just to remember the name, now. Either way, I can’t let you go doing anything crazy.”

“I’m freeing Kingdom Hearts, and I’m going to find Sora!” Roxas shouted, “I want Xion back. I want my life back!”

“If you try and make contact with Kingdom Hearts, the last thing you’ll get is your life back. The Organization will destroy you.”

“Enough!”

Roxas leapt, barreling into him. Pressure burst from his chest, his spine, heavy weights falling behind him, strengthening him, propelling him forward.

“What?” the Imposter gasped, but Roxas pressed his attack, and he had no room for anything more. The fight passed in a blur, nothing but the pounding in his ear and the swing of his Keys, striking again and again until the enemy fell, gasping in desperate breaths.

“Why,” he panted, “Why do you have the Keyblade?”

Roxas paused, just a hitch of his breath, his gaze jumping involuntarily to his weapon, because – why, why did he have the Keyblade, why wouldn’t anybody tell him?

He shook his head, “Shut up!”

The Imposter twisted, managing to swing his Key up in a swift deflection, sending him flying. He hit the ground and rolled, head throbbing, the feeling of something slipping lose.

What was he doing? He was… he was going to… to free something? To fight something? He…

He staggered to his feet, eyes meeting his opponent across the street.

He’d defeat his enemy. Surely, he’d be able to remember from there.

He lost.

Riku stared down at the prone form of Sora’s nobody as DiZ’s footsteps fade away into the rain. He stared and took a moment to remember before the truth faded away.

He owed it to her, after everything.

Here’s the thing about naming something: It changes every person who hears it, every voice who says it, every life that it touches.

If you name something, you get attached.

To name something is to give it a unique identity, and you can no longer deny its existence as separate from all others.

Feathers scattered the floor, brown and sleek blue-black. The wings had been a surprise – the two pairs even more so. Where had they come from? From Sora? From the Nobody? Neither pair were white, like the pair he last saw Sora sporting, but then, Sora had always insisted those weren’t his.

That accounted for one pair, but the other? Where did that come from? The Nobody? No, impossible – they were creatures without hearts, remains of their Somebodies, his wings would be Sora’s. Then who - ?

Here’s a secret: Just because you have a heart, it doesn’t mean you make the right choices.

No matter what he saw, he chose Sora. He would always choose Sora. He fell back into darkness for Sora.

So, he ignored the wings, because they wouldn’t matter anyways.

He reached into his pocket, rubbing along the crease of the paper tucked away there. The drawing was – odd. A blonde, one that looked like the Nobody unconscious before him, but surrounded by two unfamiliar figures – a woman with blue hair, and tall man that almost –

Naminé said she found it in Sora’s memories, certainly coming from him but still somehow foreign. And Mickey’s reaction to it was strange. He hadn’t been able to piece together what was happening there, and the King wasn’t sharing.

It was a long shot, but maybe there was an answer hidden somewhere in the mystery. He supposed it didn’t really matter for what came next. Sighing, he pulled his hands free, reaching down to lift the Nobody over his shoulder.

The rain faded away. The silence rung heavily; if he stretched his senses, he could almost hear echoes of the Nobody’s screams. Strange, how real they had sounded.

If the grief is real, then –

Shaking his head, he opened a corridor, stepping swiftly through to Twilight Town. The world was dim, only the barest hints of pre-dawn light illuminating the horizon. Morning had come; it was time to get to work.

Sora would awaken, soon.

#kh #kingdom hearts #fanfiction #wingfic #wrap your wings au #roxas #axel #riku #Yza writes a thing #358/2 days

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