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Kingdom Hearts: Dark Dawn	By : RotSeele Category: Kingdom Hearts > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 3169 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
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Thirty-Six - Halloween Town

“Where is he?” Rinally asked Kai, her voice barely a whisper. In it, Kai could hear her worry and fear for Kaoru. He worried for the small blonde as well, but he was better at hiding it.
He had been right behind Kaoru on the stairs when everything started going wrong. He’d leaped backwards, off the stairs, just in time to keep Rinally from getting on them, but by the time he’d turned around to yell for Kaoru, the opening in the wall to the stairwell was gone. Then the whole mansion began to shake violently, and Kai felt a surge of darkness so powerful, but so twisted and foul, rush toward them. He had shielded himself with his own darkness, and had shielded Rinally as well, but the malignant darkness wasn’t looking for them. In fact, it passed over them as if they weren’t even there, though they had been noticed. They’d simply been ignored. Kai had realized the darkness had come from the mansion itself, a lifetime or more of coalesced hate and fear that gave the place its own sort of sentience. By itself, it was harmless even if it did rail against the light, and would only give someone a feeling of unwelcome. However, someone had been directing it. He had felt that, in the moment the darkness had washed over them. They hadn’t been what the puppet-master had been looking for.
He realized, after it was all over, that the puppet-master had been waiting for such an opportunity. He had been waiting for them to separate, even by a small distance such as a flight of stairs. He’d been after Kaoru the whole time. Which meant he’d either been watching the three of them and biding his time, or he was as sensitive to Kaoru as Kai was, and could locate such a powerful light with just a flick of thought. Kai had a gut feeling it was the latter. But no one should be as sensitive to Kaoru as I am. He’s my light. Unless...
“Kai?” Rinally questioned, bringing him back to reality.
“I think we have a problem.” Kai said, his deep voice rolling through the room.
“You can’t find Kaoru?”
He shook his head. “I can find him. He’s still in the mansion.”
“Oh. Good. So where is he?”
“He’s with the puppet-master.”
Rin’s eyes grew wide. “That is a problem.”
Kai grunted. “Yeah, but it’s not the problem I’m talking about.”
Rinally gave him a curious look, questioning him without actually putting the words to voice. After a moment, Kai continued, “I should be the only one sensitive to Kaoru. He’s my light, right?”
“Right. I guess.” Rinally said.
He ignored her tone of voice that elicited from him the desire to punch her and said, “But there’s someone else who would be sensitive to Kaoru too. His Princess of Heart.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. That darkness we felt, she wouldn’t use that to hurt Kaoru or take him away from us.”
Kai shrugged. He didn’t know this Tae as well as Kaoru did. From how Kaoru had described her, she didn’t seem the type to hurt a fly let alone hurt one of her dearest friends. The light he’d felt from her necklace had been so pure and bright that he couldn’t imagine that she would allow herself to become so defiled. “If not her, then the other option is this Hiromu kid. Kaoru’s other friend.”
Rinally frowned. He watched her eyes as she thought, watched her connect the dots between pieces of information and her own inferences. She tapped her fingers against her chin in a thoughtful way. “Kaoru didn’t think Hiromu would be the kind of person to hurt others, or to use darkness.”
“Maybe Hiromu isn’t the same person now that he was before.” Kai said. “Believe me, tragic loss changes people. Look at it from Hiromu’s perspective for a minute. Say he’s survived the destruction of his world and the only person he’s with is Tae. Wherever he ended up, I’m sure he looked for Kaoru. When he couldn’t find him, he had to either decide Kaoru was safe somewhere else, which would be the likely explanation since Kaoru has Guardian, or Kaoru was dead.”
“But, being his friend, I’d believe the former and do whatever I could to try and find him.” Rinally said. “But I have no power of my own, so I have to rely on Tae.”
“If she isn’t injured because of her world’s destruction. If she is, I have to protect her. Without a Keyblade or magic or anything, I’m just as vulnerable as she is, maybe more so.”
“But she wasn’t hurt. Kaoru saw that image of her in Twilight Town and to him, she seemed just fine.”
“Either way, I want power. I need it, to protect myself and Tae, to find Kaoru. So someone comes along and offers me that power.”
“And I take it, because maybe I’m just a little bit jealous of Kaoru.” Rinally said.
Kai raised a brow at that. “How so?”
“Because Hiromu ripped Tae’s necklace off. Kaoru gave it to her. That tells me he’s jealous of Kaoru. At first it was just because Kaoru was a rival for Tae’s attention, but Kaoru’s denser than a brick when it comes to that sort of thing, so now the jealousy stems from the fact Kaoru has a Keyblade.”
Kai pressed his lips together and said nothing. If he judged the expression on Rinally’s face correctly, she already knew about him and Kaoru, and he didn’t want to give her any more ammunition with which to fuel her sick fantasies. Especially when, in her sick fantasies, he was getting more action than he was in real life. “So I take this power. Now I have the ability to find my lost friend. And I do find him.”
“But he’s got two new companions and doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to find me or Tae.” Rinally scowled and folded her arms across her chest. “So... so why not reveal myself? Why not just join up with him?”
“If he really wanted to rejoin Kaoru in the first place.”
She shook her pink head, not so much in denial but in favor of another reason. “Because the people who gave me the power to protect Tae got to me before I could reach out to Kaoru, or tell Tae that I’d found him. They know I’m jealous. So they tell me if I join up with Kaoru and his new pals, I’m going to lose Tae. She’ll never look at me like she does Kaoru, who’s saved worlds.”
Kai scowled. “So I accept their help in order to win Tae.” He cursed. “And when Sora and the others showed up in Twilight Town, he panicked. He thought maybe, we were with them. That’s why Hiromu ripped the necklace off. He thought Kaoru had met up with Sora and Sora was helping him look for Tae.”
“You were on point about Tae’s necklace being like a tracking device. Only it wasn’t Kaoru who tracked it, but you.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
Rinally’s lips thinned into a line. “Kaoru’s in danger.”
Kai felt the darkness inside him surge with the intensity of his spiking anger. He forced it down, knowing that if he gave in he would never be able to find Kaoru. He raised his hand to stop Rinally from speaking and closed his eyes. He had to fight through layers of malignant darkness before he found the slightest glimmer of light deep within it. He recognized it immediately. He opened his eyes, seeing the world through the monochromatic tint rather than color. Even though his eyes had been their black and gold since arriving in Halloween Town, it wasn’t until now that he’d started looking through the light-seeking filter. That alone told him how pissed off he was.
He saw Rinally tense as he looked at her. The bright pulse that was her heart began to flash faster, revealing to him her nervousness. He summoned Sanctuary and pinpointed the location of the light again.
“Come on.” he said. “We’re going hunting.”
“You found him?”
“Let’s get our Light back.”

Kaoru opened his eyes and for a moment, thought he had gone blind. There was nothing but solid black around him in all directions, so deep that he couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. He remembered being in the attic room, then the attack that had come so fast and so abruptly. He was waiting for me. Kaoru realized. He was waiting for me to get away from Kai and Rinally. Why? He remembered, just before he’d passed out, that he’d seen someone coming toward him. He thought it had been Tae, but now that he was coherent again, he couldn’t begin to imagine why she would have suddenly turned to darkness, nor why she would have attacked him so violently. He was certain it had to be someone else.
He was also certain he was laying on his back. His fingers explored the floor beneath him and found it solid enough. He pushed himself upright and cried out as he put pressure on his right arm and shoulder. Pain radiated throughout the entire limb, almost excruciating, and he reached to clutch at his shoulder. His fingers encountered a deep slice, one that bled fiercely. It had been bleeding for some time, if he could judge the soaked quality of his clothes right. He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, but he didn’t feel light headed or weak. He didn’t remember being wounded like this, but he did remember a sudden pain when he’d landed on the floor during the first attack in the attic.
He wished Rin was here. Her magic would have taken care of this wound quickly. But he knew he was alone. Wherever he was, he couldn’t even sense Kai.
With his left hand, Kaoru reached forward, focusing his will. Guardian appeared in his hand, a bright beacon in the pitch blackness. It pushed back the darkness in about a six foot circle around him, allowing him to see his own blood smearing the floor where he’d lain, as well as allowing him to see that he was in a cage.
“You shouldn’t have come here, Kaoru.”
The voice echoed all around him, coming in from every direction. Even still, he was able to identify the voice immediately. “Hiromu?”
Bright lights exploded into existence, blinding Kaoru. He threw up his left arm and Guardian to shield his eyes, and on reflex, a Holy Shield materialized around him. As soon as the light dimmed, Kaoru opened his eyes. They adjusted rather quickly, proving to him that he was indeed in a cage, suspended in the center of a circular room. He couldn’t see what was directly below him, but he could see what was around him. There was a conveyor belt encircling the far wall, but it looked old and rusted, clearly out of use. There was only one door set high in the wall above the conveyor belt, and from it branched a walkway that only spanned that single wall. The room itself had a terrible atmosphere to it. Though there was nothing visibly malignant about the room, Kaoru could sense a deep hatred ingrained into the materials that made the room up. He saw flickers of darkness in the deep shadows. Butter yellow eyes peered out of those shadows, hundreds of them blinking slowly as the Heartless awoke from their slumber.
As Kaoru pivoted, he froze as he saw a girl standing on the broken conveyor belt. Half of her was in shadow, but he recognized her from her outfit and her sandals. “Tae.” he whispered.
The darkness beside Tae shivered and out of it materialized Hiromu. He looked much the same as Kaoru remembered, though his outfit had changed. Rather than wearing the clothes he’d had been in Paradise City, he wore deep black cargo pants, thick-soled boots, and a long-sleeved shirt beneath a long black coat that Kaoru recognized immediately. Hiromu had one hand curled around Tae’s bicep, as if he were simply holding her upright rather than holding her in place.
“Tae!” Kaoru yelled, moving to the bars of his cage. She didn’t respond.
“She can’t hear you, Kaoru.” Hiromu said. He pulled Tae forward gently, and the shadows slid off her face to reveal it. Her eyes were utterly blank, soulless, staring at nothing even though she was looking right at him. Even her face was blank, caught somewhere between emotionless and simply apathetic.
Kaoru slammed Guardian against the bars of his cage. “What did you do to her, Hiromu?!”
Hiromu laughed, a cold and chilling noise. “Me? What did I do to her? It’s more like what did you do to her. After Paradise City was wiped out of existence, Tae and I found ourselves wandering through darkness. She always seemed to know where you were, but each time we found where you had been, you had already moved on. I told her why, of course. Your new friend’s quite a hottie.”
“Don’t call Rinally a hottie.” Kaoru growled.
“Rinally’s her name, huh? I didn’t think you’d move on quite so quickly. I guess that Keyblade of yours makes you quite popular.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t ‘move on’. She’s been helping me try to find you!”
Hiromu continued as if Kaoru hadn’t even spoken. “See, after we reached this jungle-like world, Tae and I got some help. The Brotherhood took us in and sheltered us. When they asked us how we’d ended up on such an unfamiliar world, Tae told them how Paradise City had been destroyed by the Heartless. That’s when we learned what Tae was. A real Princess of Heart, can you believe that? But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“Hiromu,” Kaoru said, “what are you talking about?” A feeling of dread filled his chest. The Brotherhood? Is he talking about the Creepy Coats? Is that why he’s wearing their coat?
Hiromu smiled. “They told us they could help us find you. All we had to do was help them out. Tae refused; she wouldn’t tell me why. But I knew that, on our own, we were basically walking meals for the Heartless. So I agreed to help the Brotherhood, if and only if they could keep Tae safe.”
“Look at her! How is she safe? She’s a doll!”
“Because of you!” Hiromu roared. “Because of you, Kaoru!”
Kaoru shivered. “You’re lying.”
“Am I? When the Brotherhood sent us to Twilight Town to retrieve something for them, Tae felt you. I don’t know how she did, but she felt you. We’d made it to that secret room in the basement, the one with the egg chambers, and she tried to leave me. I stopped her. When she told me you had come, that we had to go meet you, I knew then what I had to do. See, the Brotherhood needs a Princess of Heart, and they need a Keyblade wielder, to help with their experiments. They’ve already figured out how to control darkness. It’s the Light they need to figure out how to control.”
It wasn’t me. We arrived later, after they had already left. It had to have been Sora Tae sensed. But why would she say it was me? Unless all Tae felt was Light and assumed it was me. She’s never met Sora, so she could have confused us. “I won’t let them use Tae, and I won’t let them use me!”
“You? You!? Don’t make me laugh, Kaoru. They already have a Keyblade wielder.” Hiromu extended his left hand and splayed his fingers. Shadows coalesced and swirled around his hand, elongating and solidifying until Hiromu held tight to a blood red hilt. The guard flowed out around his hand like a flame frozen in time, and a long tail that looked strangely like a phoenix feather dangled from the end, mimicking a keychain. The blade portion was about an arm’s length long, and colored a rusted gold. It closely resembled a pipe shape, much like Kaoru’s Guardian, but the end flattened out into a spade shape and thick barbs protruded from the inner edge of the spade. “You’re not the only one who has a Keyblade now.”
Kaoru stared, feeling the dread that had been growing in his chest suddenly expand tenfold. He leaned against Guardian and his cage, staring at Hiromu’s Keyblade. “You used it on Tae, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did. I couldn’t have her go running to you. So I sealed her heart. It was easy. Of course, since she’s sealed away, she’s useless to the Brotherhood, but it’s fine. I don’t want them using her anyway.”
“And you tore off the necklace I gave her.”
“I couldn’t have you finding us. I was certain that was how you found us in the first place. I see you have it.”
Kaoru glanced at his headphones, where he’d tied Tae’s necklace. The silver charm gleamed in Guardian’s radiant light. He looked back at Hiromu. “If you’re a Keyblade wielder, then you have to know the Brotherhood aren’t the good guys. They don’t want to help you, Hiromu. They want to use you! They’re controlling the Heartless, seeking to destroy worlds! They’re seeking to ruin everything Sora and Riku have tried to protect!”
“They’re seeking to protect everything Sora and Riku are trying to destroy!” Hiromu retorted. “You don’t get it, do you, Kaoru? There’s a war coming. A war between Light and Darkness. Only one side is going to survive it. You think you’re all high and mighty because your Keyblade is a manifestation of the light inside your heart, but in reality you’re terrified that I just might be more powerful than you. I have Tae. I have the Princess of Heart. She chose you, but I’m the one who ended up with her.”
Kaoru slammed Guardian against the bars of his cage. “What are you talking about, Hiromu? Haven’t you seen what the Brotherhood has done to the worlds they’ve been to? The chaos and destruction they’ve caused? I’ve fought to stop that! My friends and I have fought to stop them from destroying good people! Why would you help them? This isn’t you!”
“Your friends? You mean Rinally and that redhead who’s so steeped in darkness he might as well be a Heartless himself?” Hiromu laughed. “They’re your friends now? Did you even think about me, Kaoru? Did you even think about Tae? Or did you just start worrying about us when you found Tae’s necklace?”
“I’ve looked everywhere for you! On every world I’ve been to, I’ve looked!”
“The Brotherhood was right about you. The great vaunted hero of Light, with one of the rarest Keyblades to ever exist, easily forgets the reason why he got a Keyblade in the first place. It was us, Kaoru. It was me and Tae who let you summon Guardian the first time. Because you wanted to protect us, remember? But now look at you. You replaced us.”
“I didn’t replace you!”
“You replaced us in your heart with your new ‘friends’. You gave up on us, just like they said you had.”
“I haven’t given up on you!”
“Not that it matters,” Hiromu continued, as if he wasn’t even listening. He pulled Tae close to him, wrapping his free arm around her waist. “I’m the one who’s going to protect Tae. I’m the one who’s going to help the Brotherhood win the war. Sora won’t stand a chance against me. You won’t either.”
“Darkness can’t exist without Light! Destroying one means destroying the other! The Brotherhood can’t win this war! Even the Keyblade wielders can’t win this war!”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying!” Kaoru cried desperately. “It’s true! Darkness and Light are the same thing! One exists because the other does. They exist for each other! Hiromu, don’t let them convince you otherwise. Free Tae! Let her heart go!”
Kaoru realized too late that his last words were the wrong thing to say. As soon as he said them, Hiromu’s expression changed. It went from gloating and pleased to deadly serious and cautious. “He told me you’d say that. I wasn’t supposed to underestimate you, if I chose to face you. Your voice can still reach her, if you cried loud enough, is what he said.”
Kaoru stepped back from the bars of his cage, suddenly wanting to put distance between him and Hiromu. His knuckles hurt from gripping Guardian so tightly, and he raised the Keyblade, as if the weapon was the only thing that could protect him now.
Hiromu scowled. “I might have sealed her heart away to protect her from the Brotherhood, but you... It’s always you, isn’t it, Kaoru? The one who got to meet Sora. The one who was chosen to wield a Keyblade. The one who was chosen to be the champion of Light. The one who survived and had the luck of the devil himself. I should’ve killed you then, while you were lying on the floor.”
“You... you’re the one who attacked me?” Kaoru said, his voice filled with disbelief. His shoulder twinged in sympathy.
Hiromu shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. “I missed. I guess a part of me really didn’t want to hurt you. It would make Tae sad, after all, if you died. But... screw it. I don’t care anymore. If your voice can reach her, then you’re only a danger to her.”
Tears stung Kaoru’s eyes. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, especially from his friend. If he were facing an enemy, some stranger that he hadn’t known for years, maybe the words wouldn’t hurt, but he wasn’t. Guardian shimmered in his hand, then exploded out of existence in a shower of sparks. His legs couldn’t hold his weight anymore and he slid to the floor of his cage. “Hiromu, what... Do you even hear yourself? We’ve known each other since we were little. How could you say that?”
“What? That I’m going to kill you? Easy. I’m. Going. To. Kill. You.” Hiromu pushed Tae behind him and leveled his Keyblade at Kaoru’s cage. Tae went passively, swaying only a little bit. She stood there and watched with that blank expression as Hiromu’s Keyblade began to glow with a sickly light.
A pale beam shot from the end of the weapon to the cage’s door, and Kaoru heard a snap as the lock popped open. He knew he should try to run, but he couldn’t make his legs obey him. He wanted to blame the wound in his shoulder, the fact he’d lost so much blood, but he would only be lying to himself. He was locked in place because of Hiromu, because of what Hiromu had said. The knowledge that his friend had been taken in by the Creepy Coats, the Brotherhood, and had been twisted and manipulated so much so that he would use his Keyblade to hurt someone he loved rooted Kaoru in place. The knowledge that it was partially his fault for not trying harder to find Hiromu and Tae, the knowledge that he hadn’t fought harder for them, and the knowledge that there was nothing he could do or say to convince Hiromu otherwise, kept Kaoru from even trying to rise. Guardian wouldn’t come to his hand.
Hiromu stepped into the cage. His Keyblade had a bloodthirsty gleam to it as he shifted it to a readier grip. “You don’t have to make this easy for me, Kaoru.” Hiromu said. “Put up a fight. Show me how you’ve grown. Ennio told me how you destroyed the monster Gaston had become, and how you killed John Smith. Where’s Guardian, huh? Not so much a guardian anymore, are you?”
“I didn’t kill them.” Kaoru whispered.
“You destroyed the darkness inside them. That’s about as close to killing them as you can get without actually taking their lives.”
“I didn’t destroy anyone!”
“You set Ennio back by months because you interfered. But the data he gathered was pretty decent. With what I’ve gathered here, the army the Brotherhood will create will be unbeatable. Sora won’t stand a chance.”
Kaoru watched, feeling stunned and hurt and helpless, as that tarnished gold Keyblade rose above him. It cast its shadow over Kaoru’s face, looking more threatening than it should have, had Kaoru felt capable of summoning Guardian to defend himself. But with guilt from Hiromu’s words hammering at him, he couldn’t even make himself move. Hiromu grinned, a terrible, monstrous, mad thing. Then his arm blurred.
The wall opposite them exploded outward, showering them with debris and darkness.
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Kingdom Hearts: Dark Dawn