Adult-FanFiction.org : Games

Kingdom Hearts: Dark Dawn	By : RotSeele Category: Kingdom Hearts > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 3168 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. I do not make any money from this story.

Chapter List
- 31
- 32
- 33
Thirty-Two - Twilight Town

Kaoru watched as Olette sealed their letter in a white envelope and carefully wrote out Sora’s name on the envelope. She added a few other lines, such as ‘Top Secret’ and ‘Very Important’ to the face of the envelope. By the time she was done with that, Rinally, Pence, and Hayner had returned, their arms laden with items and non-perishable food items. While Olette and Hayner went to put the letter in the mail, Rinally and Kaoru began to pack the items away into their backpacks. Kaoru pushed most of the mana potions toward Rinally, knowing she would need them more than he or Kai would. His pack would hold most of, if not all of, the food Pence and Hayner had bought for them, along with whatever potions Rinally couldn’t fit in her backpack.
When Hayner and Olette returned, the three teenagers were about ready to leave. They had decided that they would return to the hole in the wall and go through it this time. They would then head into the mansion, try and find what Sora, Riku, and Kairi had been looking for, and then they would go from there. The likely plan was that they would return to Hayner, Pence, and Olette and see if they couldn’t get a gummi ship to take them directly to Radiant Garden. Barring that, there was always the World Between Worlds, though Kaoru wanted to avoid the Paths of Darkness if at all possible. Nothing had happened so far, but that didn’t mean something wasn’t waiting in there to eat their faces off when they weren’t paying attention.
Saying good-bye to Olette and the others, Kaoru, Rinally, and Kai headed back through Twilight Town. They moved quickly, whether it was because they just didn’t want to be out in the open or because they were excited about having a new leg of their journey revealed to them. As they approached the break in the wall, Kaoru slowed his pace. Following his lead, so did Kai and Rinally. For a minute, they stood staring at the hole in the wall and the dark forest beyond.
“Are you ready, Kaoru?” Rinally asked, stepping up to her friend’s side.
He glanced at her, and then looked at Kai when the redhead came up on his other side. “Yeah.” Kaoru said after a minute. “I’m ready.”
He was tempted to take Kai’s hand, to hold on tight to the other boy, just to make sure that he wouldn’t disappear when they crossed from light to darkness. But he kept his hand firmly to his side and took a deep breath. Then he led his friends through the breach and into the dark forest.
The atmosphere in this place was far different from what it was in Twilight Town. Beyond being darker, it seemed more oppressive. There was still light coming from the breach in the wall, and from the sky above the trees, but other than those little bits of brightness, it was still closer to true sundown than twilight. Kaoru took a few steps forward, then paused and shivered.
“Yeah,” Rinally said, rubbing her arms as if she were cold. “I feel it too.”
Kai raised an eyebrow at them. “Feel what?”
“Like something’s watching us.” Rinally replied.
When Kai looked at him, Kaoru nodded. “I don’t know if there’s anything actually here, but I really get the feeling that there’s something malevolent out there.”
Kai narrowed his eyes and pivoted, facing in each cardinal direction for a span of a few heartbeats. Then he turned back to Rinally and Kaoru, his eyes starting to become gold. “There’s nothing here. But there was, before we got here. It was probably chased off by Sora and the others.”
“What do you think it was?”
Kai shrugged. “My gut says it’s a lingering resentment. Someone didn’t want Sora coming here, and since he did, they had to change their plans.”
Rinally rubbed her arms again. “Creepy.”
“What wouldn’t they want Sora to find?” Kaoru asked, mostly to himself. He couldn’t think of anything that the Creepy Coats wanted to keep secret. They had been mostly operating out in the open rather than in the shadows, after all. All their machinations had been practically shoved into the limelight. At least, as far as Kaoru had experienced. “It isn’t like they’ve been on the down low.” he finished.
“Who knows how bad guys think?” Rinally replied. She lifted a hand and pointed. “There’s a path through the trees here. It’s pretty well worn.”
Kai and Kaoru fell into step behind Rin, giving her a small lead as they followed her down the path. Kaoru kept glancing into the shadows, trying to see if maybe there was something - or someone - hiding there. He wasn’t sure if the shadow he’d seen had been Hiromu or something else. He didn’t want to be caught unawares either way, considering he didn’t want Kai to kill Hiromu and he didn’t want to suddenly find a Heartless trying to chew on his face.
Kai’s fingers encircled Kaoru’s wrist and held tight. Kaoru looked up at the redhead and noticed that Kai’s irises were solid gold. He was beginning to recognize that the shifting colors of Kai’s eyes didn’t always necessarily mean Kai was in a bad mood. Sometimes, it was just to allow Kai to see in darker environments, like in the Paths or in the tunnels in Lumina Cross. Kaoru didn’t think that the forest here was dark enough for Kai’s eyes to adjust, but maybe it was just because it was a dark-rich environment that forced the change. Kai gave Kaoru a little shrug and a tiny smile.
Kaoru smiled back. “Are you okay?” he whispered.
Kai shrugged again. “I’m fine. I just... I don’t know. I have a feeling. I can’t decide if it’s good or bad. It just is.”
“Like Rin’s and my feeling about being watched?”
“Kind of. It’s more like being able to feel a presence but being unable to decide if it’s dangerous or not.”
Rin paused to look back at them, half turned toward the beginnings of light at the end of the path. It threw her into sharp shadow, her mulberry eyes being the brightest part of her. “I get what you’re saying, Kai. There’s something weird about this place. Not bad weird, but not good weird either. It just is. Just like Kaoru and I could sense someone watching us.”
Kai nodded. He tugged on Kaoru’s wrist. “Let’s hurry up and see what we can find. I don’t want to get caught off guard.”
Kaoru smiled and let Kai pull him along, passing Rin with a tiny little smile. She returned it with a knowing one, and fell into step beside him. Kaoru reached back to take Rin’s hand, and felt her relax as their fingers curled around each other. For whatever reason, just holding onto his friends comforted Kaoru. It seemed to comfort Rin as well.
They continued through the forest on that path, emerging out into a wide, walled courtyard that was overlooked by a giant mansion. The courtyard was partitioned by a wrought-iron fence that looked shiny and well-oiled despite being, supposedly, out of use. Kaoru stepped up to the gate and realized that it was slightly ajar, as if someone had tried to close it but hadn’t really given it a hard enough push for the latches to catch. With Rin and Kai behind him, Kaoru reached for the gate, wrapped his fingers around one of the bars, and pulled it open. The gate didn’t even so much as squeak.
“I feel like that’s anti-climactic.” Kai muttered.
Rin chuckled. “What, you want a Heartless to come out and chew on your face?”
“No, but I mean... With all these mixed signals we’re getting, I’d rather something happen that makes them go away then us walking blind into something that’ll get us killed.”
Kaoru stepped through the gate and stared up at the mansion. The huge white building looked ominous on its own, and he could see why Pence had claimed it was haunted. There was just something about it that warned people that they were unwanted here, and if they entered, it was at their own risk. The windows were all shielded by curtains, which, if you looked at them out of the corner of your eye, seemed to shiver and shake as if someone was pulling them back to peer outside and then letting them fall back into place. Kaoru stood halfway between the gate and the front door to the mansion, craning his head back as he studied the building from left to right and back again. He couldn’t sense anything amiss about the mansion, couldn’t sense anything hiding within the building. But there was still a feeling of uncertainty that gripped his heart. Taking a deep breath, Kaoru steeled his courage and started forward.
Rin and Kai followed him. He didn’t miss the fact that Kai had Sanctuary in his hand and Rin had her staff. He was the only one who was going in unarmed, and figured it was probably better he did. He could move faster without the weight of Guardian in his hand, and anyway, if he was attacked, Kai and Rin would be in a better position to counterattack than he would be.
Kaoru pushed open the mansion door. It gave a throaty, wooden creak as it swung inward, revealing an open plan front room. Despite the obvious emptiness, there was no dust collected on the floor, no signs that any time had passed between its abandonment and the rare visit by Sora that had occurred only hours before. There were no decorations, though there were empty places where Kaoru thought paintings or photographs once must’ve hung, and there were empty vases situated where people would see them. Kaoru figured they had once been filled with flowers, but now they sat like hungry mouths, open and waiting for food that would never come. Near the back of the foyer was a twin staircase that led up to the second level. There were doors on either side, no doubt leading into other rooms.
Kaoru stepped further in. Nothing leaped out at him, so he continued in to the center of the front room. His footfalls echoed in the empty space. Behind him, Kai and Rinally came through the door, staring around the front room with varying expressions of disappointment and relief. Kai dismissed Sanctuary and put his hands on his hips, his eyes flicking from left to right toward the stairs and then to the ceiling. Rin dismissed her staff and trotted toward the left of the foyer, opening the door to stick her head into the room behind it and look around.
“I don’t see anything.” she said. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here for some time. I mean, I don’t see any reason why anyone would come here to hide, or whatever else.”
“There’s got to be some reason.” Kai said.
“Maybe. I mean, this place is creepy on its own. Maybe Pence is right. Maybe it is haunted.”
“Don’t be stupid. There’s no such thing as a haunting.”
Kaoru smiled at Rinally’s scoff. “Maybe we should split up? We could search faster and see what we can find.”
Reluctantly, Kai and Rinally agreed with Kaoru’s plan, and they each separated to check out a different portion of the house. Since Rin was on the left, she continued through the left room; Kai and Kaoru went to the stairs, heading right and left, respectively. They took them two at a time, heading to the second floor.
What surprised Kaoru the most was that there were no extra rooms in the mansion. It seemed to consist only the front foyer, whatever room was on the left through the door there, and the two staircases that led to separate wings of the second floor. He followed the hallway around until he came to a closed door. He slowly opened it and discovered the only room that seemed to have seen any recent use. It reminded him of a meeting room, though he wasn’t sure why a mansion would have a meeting room decorated all in white. It was filled only with a long white table and two white chairs, which were half pulled out, as if someone had been sitting in them had had gotten up suddenly. The big bay window overlooked the front courtyard and allowed sunlight to stream into the room through sheer white curtains. The walls had once been bright white, but had faded to egg-shell by the bright light that streamed through the window. The only flaw they had were evenly-spaced, brighter-white, square spots, as if something had once hung there long enough to keep the spaces pure white.
Kaoru ran his fingers over those bright spots, feeling a little jolt of electricity run up his fingertips. In response, his armor materialized over his right shoulder and forearm, glowing bright with prismatic light. Though it was years old and much faded, Kaoru could almost see a glimmer of light in those bright squares. He recognized it as hope. Faded and old, but hope nonetheless.
He felt Kai coming toward him. When he thought about it, he really wasn’t surprised. Kai was sensitive to him, after all. If he felt a flicker of distress from Kaoru, he would be at his side as fast as he could in order to either deal with the threat himself, or help Kaoru deal with the threat. Kaoru wasn’t sure if he had felt distressed, but he sure had been surprised by the little jolt he’d received from the bright spaces on the wall. Still, he knew that he didn’t want this room destroyed, which Kai might just do since he wasn’t sure what kind of situation he was running into. So he headed for the door and opened it just as Kai appeared at the end of the hall. The redhead stopped halfway down the hall, staring at Kaoru. Kaoru smiled sheepishly and closed the door behind him.
“You okay?” Kai asked when Kaoru approached him. The redhead’s green eyes flicked to the armor that encased Kaoru’s right arm, then back to the door.
“I’m fine.” Kaoru answered. “I didn’t find anything important. Just something that made my armor react, that’s all.”
An elegant eyebrow rose almost to his hairline. Kai glanced at Kaoru’s armor again, then nodded slowly, as if he accepted Kaoru’s words at face value. “I felt...” he started. Then he stopped, tried to order his thoughts, and spoke again. “I felt a flux in you. I couldn’t tell if it was surprise or fear. So I just...”
“I know.”
Kai visibly relaxed. That’s what he liked about Kaoru; the smaller boy always seemed to know what he was trying to say, especially when he couldn’t get it out. He nodded. “Shall we go find Rin? I wasn’t able to find anything on my side. Just more of the same. No one’s been here for a long time, even if it is really clean.”
“It looks like, at one time, someone did live here.” Kaoru replied, falling into step with Kai. “But not for a long time. And Pence and Hayner said that Sora searched this place from top to bottom but even he didn’t find anything.”
“I was thinking about that. He didn’t find anything he was looking for. We don’t know what that was. But we know what we’re looking for, right? We haven’t found anything yet, but then, we haven’t looked everywhere yet.”
“What do you mean?”
Kai started descending the stairs with Kaoru on his heels. “I mean, this building is far too large to just be two floors. So there’s either an attic, which you would have found while exploring upstairs, so I don’t think there’s one of those, or there’s gotta be a basement.”
“A basement?”
“Yeah. This big a building, I doubt all its weight could be sustained by just two floors without a strong foundation. And if anyone’s going to hide, it would be in a secret room in the basement.”
“You really think there’s a secret room?”
Kai shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. If there is, Sora probably already searched it.”
Kaoru made an agreeing noise. Just as they stepped off the stairs, Rinally appeared out of the left hand room, frowning. Her eyes brightened as she saw them and she hurried over to them.
“Did you find anything?” she asked.
“No.” The boys answered simultaneously.
“Did you?” asked Kaoru.
Rin shook her head. “Just a dining room. It doesn’t look like anything has been used and there’s definitely nothing of use in there. I couldn’t find any secret doors or anything like that. I tried, believe me. Did you have better luck?”
Kaoru shook his head. “All I found was a white room. It looks like it’s the only room to really have been used, but not for a long, long time.”
“And you, Kai?”
“Just a library.”
Rin tapped her fingers against her lips. “It doesn’t make any sense then. Why would Sora come search this place if this was all there was?”
“Like I said to Kaoru, there has to be a basement.” Kai said. “This building is too big for there not to be a basement.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t find a door leading to a basement in the dining room.” protested Rin. “And as you can see, there’s no extra door around here.”
“And I didn’t find anything in the White Room.” Kaoru said. “Not really.” he added, when Kai looked at him sharply.
If Rin caught the look she said nothing about it. She said, “So there has to be a door somewhere.”
Kai scowled. “But where would it be?”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it?” Rin tilted her head to the side for a long time, her eyes narrowed slightly. Both Kaoru and Kai thought about the question posed as well, trying to figure out what they had missed.
I’ve taken the time to hide something and I don’t want anyone to find it. So where would I put it? I only have a few choices. Kaoru thought, turning halfway to look upstairs at the hall behind him. I’ve got a dining room, a white room, and the library. Someone would definitely search the dining room for valuables if nothing else. They could find the door inadvertently. Same with the white room. So that leaves... “The library.” he said abruptly.
“What?” Rin and Kai said at the same time.
Kaoru looked toward them. “The library. Think about it. If I wanted everyone to be able to access the basement, I would have put in a door that makes it easily accessible. But I didn’t. That means I wanted to hide something. The dining room would be searched from top to bottom in an instant. So would the white room. But the library wouldn’t.”
Understanding dawned in Rin’s eyes. “I get it. If I were a thief, I wouldn’t give the library a second look. I mean, who in their right mind would want to carry around books that wouldn’t be easy to fence, if be fence-able at all.”
Kai made a soft noise. “If there’s a secret passage, it’ll be there. It’s protected because it would be easily overlooked.”
“Exactly.” Kaoru said, beaming. He turned to start taking the right hand stairs as fast as he could. Rinally and Kai were right behind him.
The three raced through the hall as fast as they dared, entering into the library. It was much as they had expected, filled with books of every shape and size and title and subject. They ignored all of it, pushing against bookshelves and tapping against the walls in hopes of finding a secret passage. It wasn’t a big library, and so they exhausted their options pretty quickly. Kaoru wandered toward the stairs and ran his fingers alongside them, trying to feel for anything that seemed out of place, like that little spark of hope he’d felt in the White Room. It was a long shot, he knew, but it was all they had at this point. He especially didn’t want to return to Hayner, Pence, and Olette without something to tell them.
He stepped close to the north wall and felt something shift under his feet. It wasn’t exactly the spark he’d felt before that raced up through his shoes, but it was something curious. So he stepped back and knelt on the ground, running his fingers over the space where the floor had shifted. When he felt the jolt this time, he actually yelped, which brought both Kai and Rin running to his side. Kaoru sat back on his heels and rubbed his fingers, which tingled and tickled like they would if he’d gotten an electrical shock. Kai knelt beside him after making sure Kaoru was okay, then hovered his hand above the floor. He hissed softly and snatched his hand back.
“You felt it too?” Kaoru asked.
“Light. It burned.” Kai spat, rubbing the palm of his hand. “I’ve never felt anything like that before.”
Rinally knelt on Kaoru’s other side and reached for the floor. She flinched but didn’t draw her hand away. “There’s something under here.” she said.
It took all three of them to lift up the trap door. As soon as they got it up, they found a staircase that descended into the darkness below. Summoning Guardian, Kaoru took the lead to provide a little light for them all to see by. Rin followed him down first, with Kai bringing up the rear. Sanctuary was in his hand, emitting its own soft dark light in response to Guardian. Kaoru’s heart was hammering in his chest as he continued down. They had finally found something that might be of use.
When they hit the floor, halogen lights flickered on. The lights revealed a giant computer in a rather small room with only a single door leading out, besides the stairs that led back up to the library. It was clear that this room hadn’t been used in a number of years, and there was actually more dust in this room than there had been in the mansion upstairs. But they could see where someone had walked. There were three separate sets of tracks, two larger and one smaller.
“Sora was in this room.” Kaoru whispered, feeling that his voice was loud anyway in the silence.
“So were Riku and Kairi.” Rinally said, pointing at the other tracks. “They must have come down here with him.”
Kai approached the computer and studied the keyboard. “They accessed the computer. Or tried to.” He reached to tap a few buttons, but the screen remained black and blank. “Looks like the power got cut off.”
Kaoru followed the tracks back to another door and pushed it open. The short hall led into an open room that was a huge square that only had one other hall leading off it. He felt Kai and Rin at his back and they continued into that hall, following it to the end. It was a dead end.
“This feels... silly.” Rin said at last.
“We’ve searched everywhere at this point.” Kai said, a complaining note to his voice. “There’s nothing to find. That, or Sora found it already. I don’t see any point in staying here. Let’s go back. We’ll go back to Hayner, Pence, and Olette, let them know what we didn’t find, and then we’ll go get on a gummi ship and head to Radiant Garden.”
Kaoru stepped close to the wall at the end of the hall and lifted his hand to press it against the wall. It wasn’t fair, he thought. It wasn’t fair that they had come so far only to hit the same dead end Sora must have. He didn’t know the history Sora had with this place, or what exactly had driven him to search this place, but there must have been something important for Sora to come here. He and Riku and Kairi had been down into the basement. They had been in the computer room, had come down this hallway. There had to be a reason why they had come down this far into the mansion. It wasn’t just to hit this dead end and turn around again.
“Kaoru.” Kai put his hand on the little blonde’s shoulder and gave it a tight squeeze. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
“Yeah.” Kaoru said lamely. He pushed away from the wall and turned to follow Kai and Rin back into the basement room. He glanced back longingly, as if blaming that wall for stopping him in his tracks.
He jerked to a stop as he saw her. Kai and Rin continued for a few feet more before they realized Kaoru wasn’t following them. Kaoru’s eyes went wide as he watched her glide toward him, and he reached out for her, whispering, “Tae?”
His fingers went right through her. Tae ghosted right through Kaoru, making him jerk in surprise. He spun around and watched her ghostly form stop at the wall, look up and to the left as if she was looking at someone beside her, and then glance backwards toward Kaoru.
“Tae!” Kaoru yelled, hurrying after her despite the fact there was a solid wall at the end of the hall. The ghostly image of his best friend slid through the wall.
And then, so did he.
- 31
- 32
- 33
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Kingdom Hearts: Dark Dawn