Xion [AU] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
whereibelong) wrote2012-03-29 11:03 am
whereibelong) wrote2012-03-29 11:03 am
Excerpt from Lost Hearts - Convergence
((Chronologically speaking, this takes place near the end of the second arc of Lost Hearts, which is essentially equatable to Kingdom Hearts II, though a lot more dangerous for Keybearers in general. During the second arc, Riku and Kairi join Sora's group and Mickey continues going where he's needed, though sometimes Sora's group splits up as needed.
Axel, Roxas and Xion, meanwhile, take a similar role as Riku did in canon - fighting and finding out information about the Organization, while helping Sora from the shadows.
Also to give some context: Sora, Donald and Goofy get caught up in the Encoder explosion, end up in the Realm of Darkness but separated from DiZ (who goes off and finds Aqua as per canon), ))
Convergence
Maybe they should have told him. Maybe they should have shown themselves, rather than just given him the pieces and let him come to his own (inevitably wrong) conclusion. They were going to have to face him eventually, and when they did...
She still didn't know what would happen. Would he hate them? Be angry? Or worse, disappointed? They'd put the worlds in so much danger just for their own sakes, the worlds he'd fought to protect. Despite how much they'd tried to keep the Organization from getting the hearts they'd needed, they had failed. And now they were here, trying to pick up the pieces.
Some rational part of her knew that Sora wasn't like that – that Riku and Naminé were right, that Sora would have hated to come back at the price of sacrifices. But at the same time, it felt like what she deserved.
“Xion,” Roxas called a little ways ahead, and she blinked out of her thoughts and shook her head. Glancing around briefly, she realized she'd been falling behind.
“Coming,” she called back, picking up her pace to a trot until she stood next to them.
Axel chuckled wryly, “Now's not a good time to have your head in the clouds.”
“I know,” she said sheepishly, glancing around the landscape, “It looks so different from the last time we were here...”
The ground churned up and broken, exposing jagged, torn edges to the air. Xion already knew what she'd see if she got close enough to look over the edge – between the chunks of land left, you could see down to the artificial world's core, a vacuum of violent magenta light. There wasn't much left of the world – scattered bits and pieces really. They might need to make use of the darkness corridors to make much progress, and if they did that they needed to scout the land out, find the path with the fewest jumps, given how Sora, Donald and Goofy didn't have Black Coats to protect them...
“No kidding,” Axel commented, “And here I thought this place looked pretty bad last time.”
Xemnas – in his attempt to play god – had begun to shape the world itself, from a blank slate into something more his liking. Now, all the progress he'd made – buildings and stone, perhaps the barest beginnings of some sort of plantlife – lay in piles of rubble and mudlike matter, looking almost like the stone and walls had melted or desintegrated. It all glowed white , as if Xemnas hadn't bothered to add color to the world yet, even before the Encoder had shattered the world as it was.
Carefully the three of them wandered among the piles, trying to see something they recognized – some sort of landmark to make sure they were going the right way. They hadn't been able to really make an adequate mental map of the place the few times they'd been here, much less a map that they could still follow with the place in utter shambles, like it was now. But still, they had their objective.
Find a way to Xemnas' stronghold. Find a way to the Organization leader himself. And clear the path for the others to get there, and make sure they know it when they see it. That was the plan, right? And once this was all over, talk to Sora.
Because after that, they'd have no more excuses left.
There was also Heartless, and they came in droves – plenty of Shadows and Neoshadows, even a healthy variety of emblem Heartless running about.
It made for a grueling trek, as the rubble slowly turned from shattered, melted piles to tall, half-broken slabs of buildings, almost as if Xemnas had been trying to recreate the city in the World that Never Was here. Perhaps he had been.
They finally cleared a crosswalk of the last few Neoshadows when Axel raised an arm in half a wave, a silent signal to stop for a brief rest. She nodded, glancing over at Roxas, who looked equally winded. At this rate they really needed to pace themselves, in order to make sure they were able to keep well enough ahead of Sora and Riku and the others.
Roxas drifted over in Axel's direction, making some quiet observation that made Axel chuckle. Xion meanwhile, drifted a little back the way they'd come. Sora would probably head this way too, and the others.
She really needed to stop thinking about this. Focus on the task at hand. They really couldn't afford to make any mistakes right-
“Hey there, Poppet. Long time, no see!”
Xion yelped in surprise. She had turned to go back to the others, only to suddenly find herself nose-to-nose with Xigbar as he hung upside-down in midair. She took a hasty step few steps backwards, which he only matched, walking on air. Behind him, she saw Axel and Roxas, scrambling around, shouting her name.
Breaking out of the surprised stupor she'd been in, she swung her Keyblade forward, but before it could even connect, there was a flicker, and suddenly he gone. A hand seized her Keyblade arm from behind, making her Keyblade drop to the ground and vanish as he forced her arm painfully up against her back. “Look at you, all grown up,” she could practically feel him grinning against her ear. She tried to twist away, but he grabbed her other arm, holding her fast. Space. She'd forgotten how Xigbar could manipulate space. Cross gaps in the blink of an eye, be there one second, gone the next...
“Let her go, Xigbar!” Roxas shouted as he charged forward with Axel not far behind, both with weapons at the ready, though at the same time she knew – she was in the way; they wouldn't attack, because if they did the might hit her too. Then she blinked, or something shifted, and next thing she knew, she was looking down on the crosswalk from atop one of the half-broken buildings.
“Sorry fellas, but the Superior has a special appointment with this one.”
The Superior. Xemnas. Xion froze for half a second before struggling harder than ever, twisting from side to side and trying to stamp at his feet with her heels. No, no! She wasn't going to go back to Xemnas, ever. She was not going to be used, she was not going to be just a thing, manipulated for some purpose-
For one brief second, her arm broke free. As she tried to twist away, though, it became clear that she may well have fallen for his maneuver, as a scant second later she felt a sharp burst of pain at the back of her neck – so similar to that one time, over two years ago – before darkness overtook her.
Once Xion – No. i – was finally set up in a pod, Xemnas couldn't help but feel a creeping sense of satisfaction (still somewhat foreign and new, having emotion again). Right from the very first month it had been a nuisance, working its way out of plan after plan he'd modified, stretching what should have taken little more than a year into something nearly three times as long. It had deserted, turned against those which had created it, encouraging the Hero's Nobody do the same, and finally, helped to create this, the destruction of the world he'd worked so hard to build.
… no matter. So long as someone out there still held a Keyblade, the damage could be repaired. But not with six Keybearers banging on his doors, seeking the end of himself and his creation.
Narrowing their numbers was a goal worth pursuing, and an easy way to start would be to simply pit them against each other. Xion, with the programming Vexen had started so long ago, made the perfect tool for creating such a scenario. What Saïx had said once, back when they had not existed, was quite true: heartless (so much irony in one word) they may have been, but they knew how to injure one quite well.
Too many of that group would likely find themselves unable to raise their Keyblade against a dear friend, while Xion, lacking a consciousness to know the difference, would have no such qualms. If it could fell any number, that would be acceptable, and even if the others' determination overcame their love of their friend, there would still be one less Keyblade to deal with.
While he had not been the primary researcher of the Replica project, he was more than familiar with most of the data. Certainly enough to do such rather simple modifications to Xion's programming as this.
Pulling up her data on the viewscreens, he was unsurprised to find that her programming had already been altered, though not in a way to their liking. He'd suspected as much, otherwise Roxas would not still be alive today. Idly he wondered who had done the job – there were few in the worlds as skilled with data of this type, and fewer still aware of even the basics of the replica project.
Still, for his plan to succeed, it would first of all be prudent to reverse that particular bit of code, open the vacuums for memory that had been forcibly closed...
For a group of six, they proceeded through the shattered Kingdom Hearts at a fairly quick pace. Not that it helped much. It was so much larger than any planet they'd been to in the past. It was hard to tell if they were going in the right direction, though Riku and the King seemed to think that they were, for some reaon.
“It's quiet... too quiet. You'd think there'd be something here trying to stop us,” Sora commented, looking left and right suspiciously as they leaped over a pile of rubble, “There were a bunch of Heartless earlier. Where are they now?”
“It's almost like somebody's already been here,” Goofy said with a nod. Sora glanced back just in time to see, Riku, Kairi and King Mickey all exchange glances. There it was again. Maybe before, he might not have caught it, but now with what had happened earlier, he kept seeing it - tiny little hints that the three of them knew something he didn't.
Fighting a bubble of vexation that rose in his throat, he waited until they were all back on solid ground, before turning to face the three behind them.
"Sora?" Donald asked, puzzled as to why they were stopping.
Sora took a deep breath, "Guys-"
At that moment, there was horribly familiar-sounding woosh of sound behind them. Sora whipped around, summoning his Keyblade in a flash of light, as one of the black-cloaked figures from earlier stumbled out of the dark corridor, skidding to a halt and breathing heavily, hands on his knees.
"You!" he said, irritably, taking a step forward. If this really was one of the same ones as earlier, something about them just... didn't make sense, which frustrated him, a little. Their actions didn't make sense - why had they let him and Donald and Goofy out of the Realm of Darkness? And here one of them was, worn out and panting for breath, acting... acting like he wasn't an enemy. "What are you-"
He was momentarily shocked in silence, when suddenly an arm was thrust out in front of him. "Sora, stop," Riku's voice was firm. As Sora watched in confusion, Riku turned to the cloaked figure, "What's happened? Where are the others?"
Others? The other two he'd been with?
The cloaked figure straightened up as best he could, reaching up a hand to pull back the hood of his cloak hastily. Sora stared - there was something incredibly familiar about this blond kid, and he couldn't put his finger on it. Of course, all thoughts of familiarity flew from his mind when the kid gasped out his next sentence.
"Riku... It's Xemnas. He has Xion," he stopped for a moment, swallowing, "Axel's... still ahead trying to get to Xemnas' Castle."
"Xemnas has Xion?" Kairi gasped, hand flying to her mouth.
"Xion? Axel?" he asked confusedly, lowering his Keyblade, "Guys, what are you talking about?"
"That's what I wanna know!" Donald demanded.
"We'll explain what we can along the way," Mickey said, running up to the head of the group, "Roxas, can you lead us back to where Axel is?"
Roxas, who'd stiffened a little, glanced up and met Sora's eyes briefly, before he glanced over at Mickey an nodded. "We can take the dark corridor back. We'll need to run, though, seeing as some of us don't have coats."
His words seemed to break through the confused surprise, bringing him back to the task at hand. "We can take it," he said, for some reason determined that this... Roxas, whoever he was, not think less of him.
Roxas turned, smirking slightly at Sora over his shoulder. "Sure you can."
Xemnas continued to work, making the necassary modifications for what he had planned. , realizing something strange. Going back to that same spot of code, he double checked it, then the readings from the replica itself. None of Xion's readings had changed, despite the edits he was making. Frowning, double-checking his work – though he'd never thought himself inclined to carelessness in the first place – he re-entered his changes and watched. Still no change.
As with any code, there were dozens of loopholes, alternate ways of accomplishing the same task, even if they were not the most efficient. Each successive method tried and failed to yield any sort of results, and he felt a mounting frustration that – thanks to his recent practice – he was better at keeping carefully hidden. Why was-
And then almost as if to answer his unfinished question, a text window popped up, and as he watched, words appeared on it.
'With this I begin to atone for my foolish pride and mistakes
I shall no longer meddle with the lives of others
And neither will you, my former apprentice.'
His hands tightened into fists with a surge of annoyance. Ansem. The old fool. So that's who they'd gotten to reprogram the puppet for them. Somehow these people had the knack for wrecking backup plan after backup plan he put into place.
If there was one thing he knew how to do though, it was to take unexpected developments and twist them to his advantage. Xion itself was proof of that. If there was some weakness yet to exploit, he would do it, exploring the wall of protective code he now knew lay around the replica's data. And if not...?
Well, he had an idea.
"It was Xigbar," Roxas panted as they ran, "He can control space, right? By the time we even saw him-"
"It was too late to do anything," Riku finished, keeping pace.
"Right," Roxas replied, "He said Xemnas... wanted her for something. Then he knocked her out and left."
They slowed down briefly through another bright light, out of the Darkness corridor and onto a clear crossroads, surrounded by tall, broken buildings. At that point they stopped, waiting until all of them got through. Roxas was leaning over again, hands on his knees.
"Roxas, how long have you been running?" Riku asked, frowning.
The younger boy shook his head and refused to answer. Riku sighed, "Let's take a short break."
Roxas's fists tightened on his knees, "But Xion-"
"Roxas, you won't be able to help if you're too tired fight," Kairi said quietly as she stepped closer, leaning forward and putting a hand on his shoulder, "I'm worried too, but we have to be ready for what's coming."
"I know, but-"
"We could always just walk," Goofy suggested, "That way we aren't running, but we're still moving forward."
Riku looked from one to the other and sighed, "Roxas, does that work for you?"
Roxas sighed then straightened up and nodded, stiffly.
As they got moving again, Sora looked around at them all and asked,"Hey, you guys said you were going to tell me what's going on?"
"Sora, Donald, Goofy," Mickey said, "Axel, Roxas and Xion were all members of the Organization. About a year after you were put to sleep, however, they left it, and came to help us."
"Wait, you left the Organization?" Sora asked, stumbling to a halt in surprise.
The others slowed down as well, and Roxas slowly turned to face Sora. He nodded, "We've been keeping on the move ever since, trying to slow the Organization down and stop whatever they're planning."
"You're the ones who've been helpin' us this whole time, aren'tcha?" Goofy asked.
Roxas paused for a moment, then nodded.
"But... why didn't you just tell us...?" Sora asked, after a pause, "I mean, if we're all on the same side..."
To his surprise, Roxas stiffened a little, looking away. "... it's a long story," he said, finally, "The Organization's after us too though. If all of us had gone together... it would've been too dangerous."
"What I don't understand is why Xemnas wants Xion, now," Kairi commented, frowning, "Ever since Kingdom Hearts was completed, he's just been trying to destroy you three."
"Hm..." Mickey frowned, putting his hand on his chin, "I don't know, but I don't like it. We should keep moving."
Axel, Roxas and Xion, meanwhile, take a similar role as Riku did in canon - fighting and finding out information about the Organization, while helping Sora from the shadows.
Also to give some context: Sora, Donald and Goofy get caught up in the Encoder explosion, end up in the Realm of Darkness but separated from DiZ (who goes off and finds Aqua as per canon), ))
Convergence
Maybe they should have told him. Maybe they should have shown themselves, rather than just given him the pieces and let him come to his own (inevitably wrong) conclusion. They were going to have to face him eventually, and when they did...
She still didn't know what would happen. Would he hate them? Be angry? Or worse, disappointed? They'd put the worlds in so much danger just for their own sakes, the worlds he'd fought to protect. Despite how much they'd tried to keep the Organization from getting the hearts they'd needed, they had failed. And now they were here, trying to pick up the pieces.
Some rational part of her knew that Sora wasn't like that – that Riku and Naminé were right, that Sora would have hated to come back at the price of sacrifices. But at the same time, it felt like what she deserved.
“Xion,” Roxas called a little ways ahead, and she blinked out of her thoughts and shook her head. Glancing around briefly, she realized she'd been falling behind.
“Coming,” she called back, picking up her pace to a trot until she stood next to them.
Axel chuckled wryly, “Now's not a good time to have your head in the clouds.”
“I know,” she said sheepishly, glancing around the landscape, “It looks so different from the last time we were here...”
The ground churned up and broken, exposing jagged, torn edges to the air. Xion already knew what she'd see if she got close enough to look over the edge – between the chunks of land left, you could see down to the artificial world's core, a vacuum of violent magenta light. There wasn't much left of the world – scattered bits and pieces really. They might need to make use of the darkness corridors to make much progress, and if they did that they needed to scout the land out, find the path with the fewest jumps, given how Sora, Donald and Goofy didn't have Black Coats to protect them...
“No kidding,” Axel commented, “And here I thought this place looked pretty bad last time.”
Xemnas – in his attempt to play god – had begun to shape the world itself, from a blank slate into something more his liking. Now, all the progress he'd made – buildings and stone, perhaps the barest beginnings of some sort of plantlife – lay in piles of rubble and mudlike matter, looking almost like the stone and walls had melted or desintegrated. It all glowed white , as if Xemnas hadn't bothered to add color to the world yet, even before the Encoder had shattered the world as it was.
Carefully the three of them wandered among the piles, trying to see something they recognized – some sort of landmark to make sure they were going the right way. They hadn't been able to really make an adequate mental map of the place the few times they'd been here, much less a map that they could still follow with the place in utter shambles, like it was now. But still, they had their objective.
Find a way to Xemnas' stronghold. Find a way to the Organization leader himself. And clear the path for the others to get there, and make sure they know it when they see it. That was the plan, right? And once this was all over, talk to Sora.
Because after that, they'd have no more excuses left.
There was also Heartless, and they came in droves – plenty of Shadows and Neoshadows, even a healthy variety of emblem Heartless running about.
It made for a grueling trek, as the rubble slowly turned from shattered, melted piles to tall, half-broken slabs of buildings, almost as if Xemnas had been trying to recreate the city in the World that Never Was here. Perhaps he had been.
They finally cleared a crosswalk of the last few Neoshadows when Axel raised an arm in half a wave, a silent signal to stop for a brief rest. She nodded, glancing over at Roxas, who looked equally winded. At this rate they really needed to pace themselves, in order to make sure they were able to keep well enough ahead of Sora and Riku and the others.
Roxas drifted over in Axel's direction, making some quiet observation that made Axel chuckle. Xion meanwhile, drifted a little back the way they'd come. Sora would probably head this way too, and the others.
She really needed to stop thinking about this. Focus on the task at hand. They really couldn't afford to make any mistakes right-
“Hey there, Poppet. Long time, no see!”
Xion yelped in surprise. She had turned to go back to the others, only to suddenly find herself nose-to-nose with Xigbar as he hung upside-down in midair. She took a hasty step few steps backwards, which he only matched, walking on air. Behind him, she saw Axel and Roxas, scrambling around, shouting her name.
Breaking out of the surprised stupor she'd been in, she swung her Keyblade forward, but before it could even connect, there was a flicker, and suddenly he gone. A hand seized her Keyblade arm from behind, making her Keyblade drop to the ground and vanish as he forced her arm painfully up against her back. “Look at you, all grown up,” she could practically feel him grinning against her ear. She tried to twist away, but he grabbed her other arm, holding her fast. Space. She'd forgotten how Xigbar could manipulate space. Cross gaps in the blink of an eye, be there one second, gone the next...
“Let her go, Xigbar!” Roxas shouted as he charged forward with Axel not far behind, both with weapons at the ready, though at the same time she knew – she was in the way; they wouldn't attack, because if they did the might hit her too. Then she blinked, or something shifted, and next thing she knew, she was looking down on the crosswalk from atop one of the half-broken buildings.
“Sorry fellas, but the Superior has a special appointment with this one.”
The Superior. Xemnas. Xion froze for half a second before struggling harder than ever, twisting from side to side and trying to stamp at his feet with her heels. No, no! She wasn't going to go back to Xemnas, ever. She was not going to be used, she was not going to be just a thing, manipulated for some purpose-
For one brief second, her arm broke free. As she tried to twist away, though, it became clear that she may well have fallen for his maneuver, as a scant second later she felt a sharp burst of pain at the back of her neck – so similar to that one time, over two years ago – before darkness overtook her.
Once Xion – No. i – was finally set up in a pod, Xemnas couldn't help but feel a creeping sense of satisfaction (still somewhat foreign and new, having emotion again). Right from the very first month it had been a nuisance, working its way out of plan after plan he'd modified, stretching what should have taken little more than a year into something nearly three times as long. It had deserted, turned against those which had created it, encouraging the Hero's Nobody do the same, and finally, helped to create this, the destruction of the world he'd worked so hard to build.
… no matter. So long as someone out there still held a Keyblade, the damage could be repaired. But not with six Keybearers banging on his doors, seeking the end of himself and his creation.
Narrowing their numbers was a goal worth pursuing, and an easy way to start would be to simply pit them against each other. Xion, with the programming Vexen had started so long ago, made the perfect tool for creating such a scenario. What Saïx had said once, back when they had not existed, was quite true: heartless (so much irony in one word) they may have been, but they knew how to injure one quite well.
Too many of that group would likely find themselves unable to raise their Keyblade against a dear friend, while Xion, lacking a consciousness to know the difference, would have no such qualms. If it could fell any number, that would be acceptable, and even if the others' determination overcame their love of their friend, there would still be one less Keyblade to deal with.
While he had not been the primary researcher of the Replica project, he was more than familiar with most of the data. Certainly enough to do such rather simple modifications to Xion's programming as this.
Pulling up her data on the viewscreens, he was unsurprised to find that her programming had already been altered, though not in a way to their liking. He'd suspected as much, otherwise Roxas would not still be alive today. Idly he wondered who had done the job – there were few in the worlds as skilled with data of this type, and fewer still aware of even the basics of the replica project.
Still, for his plan to succeed, it would first of all be prudent to reverse that particular bit of code, open the vacuums for memory that had been forcibly closed...
For a group of six, they proceeded through the shattered Kingdom Hearts at a fairly quick pace. Not that it helped much. It was so much larger than any planet they'd been to in the past. It was hard to tell if they were going in the right direction, though Riku and the King seemed to think that they were, for some reaon.
“It's quiet... too quiet. You'd think there'd be something here trying to stop us,” Sora commented, looking left and right suspiciously as they leaped over a pile of rubble, “There were a bunch of Heartless earlier. Where are they now?”
“It's almost like somebody's already been here,” Goofy said with a nod. Sora glanced back just in time to see, Riku, Kairi and King Mickey all exchange glances. There it was again. Maybe before, he might not have caught it, but now with what had happened earlier, he kept seeing it - tiny little hints that the three of them knew something he didn't.
Fighting a bubble of vexation that rose in his throat, he waited until they were all back on solid ground, before turning to face the three behind them.
"Sora?" Donald asked, puzzled as to why they were stopping.
Sora took a deep breath, "Guys-"
At that moment, there was horribly familiar-sounding woosh of sound behind them. Sora whipped around, summoning his Keyblade in a flash of light, as one of the black-cloaked figures from earlier stumbled out of the dark corridor, skidding to a halt and breathing heavily, hands on his knees.
"You!" he said, irritably, taking a step forward. If this really was one of the same ones as earlier, something about them just... didn't make sense, which frustrated him, a little. Their actions didn't make sense - why had they let him and Donald and Goofy out of the Realm of Darkness? And here one of them was, worn out and panting for breath, acting... acting like he wasn't an enemy. "What are you-"
He was momentarily shocked in silence, when suddenly an arm was thrust out in front of him. "Sora, stop," Riku's voice was firm. As Sora watched in confusion, Riku turned to the cloaked figure, "What's happened? Where are the others?"
Others? The other two he'd been with?
The cloaked figure straightened up as best he could, reaching up a hand to pull back the hood of his cloak hastily. Sora stared - there was something incredibly familiar about this blond kid, and he couldn't put his finger on it. Of course, all thoughts of familiarity flew from his mind when the kid gasped out his next sentence.
"Riku... It's Xemnas. He has Xion," he stopped for a moment, swallowing, "Axel's... still ahead trying to get to Xemnas' Castle."
"Xemnas has Xion?" Kairi gasped, hand flying to her mouth.
"Xion? Axel?" he asked confusedly, lowering his Keyblade, "Guys, what are you talking about?"
"That's what I wanna know!" Donald demanded.
"We'll explain what we can along the way," Mickey said, running up to the head of the group, "Roxas, can you lead us back to where Axel is?"
Roxas, who'd stiffened a little, glanced up and met Sora's eyes briefly, before he glanced over at Mickey an nodded. "We can take the dark corridor back. We'll need to run, though, seeing as some of us don't have coats."
His words seemed to break through the confused surprise, bringing him back to the task at hand. "We can take it," he said, for some reason determined that this... Roxas, whoever he was, not think less of him.
Roxas turned, smirking slightly at Sora over his shoulder. "Sure you can."
Xemnas continued to work, making the necassary modifications for what he had planned. , realizing something strange. Going back to that same spot of code, he double checked it, then the readings from the replica itself. None of Xion's readings had changed, despite the edits he was making. Frowning, double-checking his work – though he'd never thought himself inclined to carelessness in the first place – he re-entered his changes and watched. Still no change.
As with any code, there were dozens of loopholes, alternate ways of accomplishing the same task, even if they were not the most efficient. Each successive method tried and failed to yield any sort of results, and he felt a mounting frustration that – thanks to his recent practice – he was better at keeping carefully hidden. Why was-
And then almost as if to answer his unfinished question, a text window popped up, and as he watched, words appeared on it.
'With this I begin to atone for my foolish pride and mistakes
I shall no longer meddle with the lives of others
And neither will you, my former apprentice.'
His hands tightened into fists with a surge of annoyance. Ansem. The old fool. So that's who they'd gotten to reprogram the puppet for them. Somehow these people had the knack for wrecking backup plan after backup plan he put into place.
If there was one thing he knew how to do though, it was to take unexpected developments and twist them to his advantage. Xion itself was proof of that. If there was some weakness yet to exploit, he would do it, exploring the wall of protective code he now knew lay around the replica's data. And if not...?
Well, he had an idea.
"It was Xigbar," Roxas panted as they ran, "He can control space, right? By the time we even saw him-"
"It was too late to do anything," Riku finished, keeping pace.
"Right," Roxas replied, "He said Xemnas... wanted her for something. Then he knocked her out and left."
They slowed down briefly through another bright light, out of the Darkness corridor and onto a clear crossroads, surrounded by tall, broken buildings. At that point they stopped, waiting until all of them got through. Roxas was leaning over again, hands on his knees.
"Roxas, how long have you been running?" Riku asked, frowning.
The younger boy shook his head and refused to answer. Riku sighed, "Let's take a short break."
Roxas's fists tightened on his knees, "But Xion-"
"Roxas, you won't be able to help if you're too tired fight," Kairi said quietly as she stepped closer, leaning forward and putting a hand on his shoulder, "I'm worried too, but we have to be ready for what's coming."
"I know, but-"
"We could always just walk," Goofy suggested, "That way we aren't running, but we're still moving forward."
Riku looked from one to the other and sighed, "Roxas, does that work for you?"
Roxas sighed then straightened up and nodded, stiffly.
As they got moving again, Sora looked around at them all and asked,"Hey, you guys said you were going to tell me what's going on?"
"Sora, Donald, Goofy," Mickey said, "Axel, Roxas and Xion were all members of the Organization. About a year after you were put to sleep, however, they left it, and came to help us."
"Wait, you left the Organization?" Sora asked, stumbling to a halt in surprise.
The others slowed down as well, and Roxas slowly turned to face Sora. He nodded, "We've been keeping on the move ever since, trying to slow the Organization down and stop whatever they're planning."
"You're the ones who've been helpin' us this whole time, aren'tcha?" Goofy asked.
Roxas paused for a moment, then nodded.
"But... why didn't you just tell us...?" Sora asked, after a pause, "I mean, if we're all on the same side..."
To his surprise, Roxas stiffened a little, looking away. "... it's a long story," he said, finally, "The Organization's after us too though. If all of us had gone together... it would've been too dangerous."
"What I don't understand is why Xemnas wants Xion, now," Kairi commented, frowning, "Ever since Kingdom Hearts was completed, he's just been trying to destroy you three."
"Hm..." Mickey frowned, putting his hand on his chin, "I don't know, but I don't like it. We should keep moving."