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
- 47
- 48
- 49
Forty-Eight - Atlantica

The part of the sea that they found themselves in was barren of anything that remotely looked like it might belong to the Light. There was very little starlight that reached here, but despite that, they could see the outlines of sunken ships and sea rocks that jutted out of the ground like a monster’s sharp teeth. Then, almost in the center of the wreckage, appeared a huge chunk of ice that looked incredibly menacing for something that should be so benign. It was eerily quiet as well. It was the kind of silence that occurred just before a violent storm, Kaoru decided. It didn’t bode well, in his opinion, but he wasn’t about to suggest leaving. They needed to find out what Kai was sensing, and they needed to find out if this particular Darkness was what they were here to defeat or protect.
“I think there’s someone in there,” Rinally whispered, allowing herself to sink a little more as she grew closer to the sunken iceberg.
“Whoever it is, they’re alive.” Kai said, moving to place a hand on the ice. “This is the source of the Darkness.”
Kaoru swam around the iceberg, trying to get a clearer picture of who - or what - was trapped within the ice. It looked like a octopus or a squid with a woman’s upper half. He trailed his hand along the ice, able to feel a faint trembling in his fingertips. It was the pulse of life, but very faint. He wasn’t surprised, considering Kai had been the only one to sense this place. He rejoined Kai and Rinally, his eyes still on the person within the ice. “I have a bad feeling about this,” he said at last.
Kai frowned slightly. “Yeah, me too.”
“Bad how?” Rin asked.
“Light and Darkness are neither evil nor good, they just are. And they seek a balance.” Kai started. He paused, as if gathering his thoughts. “If Light becomes too powerful, then Darkness seeks to find a way to lessen its power. Same if Darkness becomes too powerful.”
“So why do you guys have a bad feeling about this?”
“Because we don’t know if this person is here for a reason or if they’re an innocent victim. We have no way of knowing what will happen if we free them, or if we even ought to free them.”
“And if we free them,” Kaoru added, “we’ll be responsible for any damage they do. Plus, we may have to imprison them again, or outright kill them.”
“So you guys have to decide if it’s going to be worth the trouble.”
“Yeah.”
“I say we leave it.” Rin said after a beat of silence. “I think this is here for a reason, and we should find out more about it before we go around freeing strange people from ice prisons.”
Kaoru looked at Kai. “I agree with Rin, but it’s your call. You’re the one who sensed it, and in all the worlds we’ve been to, we’ve never had Darkness be the one in need.”
Kai was quiet for a long while. He was carefully thinking about the situation, about Kaoru’s words, and Rin’s, and he was considering all the different consequences of releasing a denizen of Darkness that could, potentially, be a hazard to the world. But there was a reason why they ended up on this world, and if it had to do with this chunk of ice and the Darkness it exuded, then who was he to argue with the obvious? And yet... Kai turned his attention to the squid woman encased in the crystalline ice. And yet someone put her in here for a reason. Whether she’s good or bad isn’t what’s in question here; it’s why. Why was she put here? What did she do to get put here? Kai turned that thought over in his mind again and again. He couldn’t figure out an answer for ‘why’.
“If this is the reason why we’re here,” Kai began slowly, “we can’t assume that we were brought here to free this person. We may have been brought here to keep her from escaping. So, yeah, let’s go with your plan, Rinally. Let’s see if we can find some kind of civilization and see if they have any answers for us. Then we can decide what to do.”
“Well,” Rin said, “if we want to find civilization, we ought to head back to the shipwreck and see if maybe we can communicate with the creatures there. I know it’s weird to talk to a fish, but maybe they can understand us now that we’re like this.”
“Once we find someone who can give us answers, maybe we’ll better understand what we’re meant to do here.” Kaoru added. “On all the other worlds it was obvious, and it seems obvious here, but maybe it isn’t as easy as it seems to be.”
Kai couldn’t help the warmth that filled his heart at hearing Kaoru’s words. The smaller boy had said almost exactly what Kai had been thinking, which just confirmed further for him how connected the two of them were. He wanted to pull Kaoru close to him and hug the blonde tight, but refrained, mostly because he didn’t want to give Rinally any more material to daydream with, and because they were likely in a dangerous situation that hadn’t exploded yet. But he reached out and rested his hand on Kaoru’s arm, giving it a slight squeeze. Kaoru met Kai’s eyes with a loving smile, and reached to place his hand on Kai’s. Almost as if the two of them touching was the beginning of it, a deep, sonorous boom reverberated through the water.
Rinally shifted closer to her friends, both of whom summoned their Keyblades, and whispered, “What was that?”
“I don’t know.” Kai growled softly. “But I think we’d better get away from here.”
The three of them swam as fast as they could away from the captive woman in ice, then ducked behind a jutting rock. Kaoru peered out from behind their shelter to see what had made that sound. At first, he couldn’t see anything, but a glint from above caught his eye. Coming down at a steady speed was a great bell attached to a thick rope. The rope led toward the surface, but Kaoru couldn’t see what it was attached to. He was pretty sure it was a ship, but he couldn’t understand why a ship would be all the way out here in the middle of nowhere. He continued to watch the giant bell until it stopped, suspended at least twenty feet above the iceberg.
“What is that?” Rinally whispered.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Kai whispered back. He started to tense, gripping Sanctuary tighter. “I don’t like this.”
Kaoru said nothing, but then he visibly flinched as a pulse of strong Darkness washed across him, making him gasp as if he’d been stung. Kai caught his shoulder, his eyes blazing their Heartless colors. He stared at Kai. “I think we’re here to stop that.”
Kai ground his teeth. “I think so, too.”
“Wait, what are we stopping?”
As if in answer to Rinally’s question, bubbles appeared from beneath the giant bell, quickly followed by a handful of people. They were naked from the waist up, wearing only pants. They had primitive diving masks covering their faces, which obscured their identities, but did nothing to obscure the lengths of rope they had in their hands and wrapped around their waists. The three watched as the men dove toward the giant iceberg and began wrapping it in the lengths of rope, forming a huge net. Once that was completed, one of the men swam to the top of the bell and detached a thick hook and its accompanying chain from the bell’s rope. Then, he swam to the top of the iceberg and slid the hook under the ropes, securing it there. Then he yanked on the chain as hard as he could. Minutes later, the iceberg shifted out of the silt and began to rise.
Kai snarled. “We can’t let it reach the surface!”
Kaoru and Rinally didn’t ask why. Whether they innately understood, or whether they simply believed Kai, didn’t matter; all that mattered was that they stopped the iceberg from being removed from the ocean.
“I’ll go after the chain.” Rin said, already moving. Her staff was in her hands. “You two keep those guys off me!”
Kai let out a soft curse but didn’t try to stop her. Neither did Kaoru. Together, the two Keyblade wielders rushed out from their hiding place and toward the first of the men. At first, Kaoru hesitated, because if he attacked the hapless human and injured him terribly, then the man would likely drown. But then he saw a flash of Heartless eyes and Kaoru let out a startled cry as the men they had thought to be human suddenly burst into shadowy motes, leaving behind a tentacled Heartless that looked like a cross between a jellyfish and an octopus.
Kai hit the first Heartless with Sanctuary as hard as he could, sending it spiraling into one of its fellows. Kaoru hit a second one with Guardian, ducking under a whiplash of tentacles that sought to remove his head from his shoulders. He looked up as the water suddenly brightened with a surge of lightning, and saw Rinally staving off a group of the jelly-pus Heartless with her Thunder spells. She was frantically working at the chain, but the iceberg was starting to rise faster and faster, and she was going up with it. Kaoru threw Guardian as hard as he could through the water toward one of the jelly-pus Heartless aiming for Rinally’s back, then caught the Keyblade on the rebound. He swam around the huge bell and used it to deflect another attack that came at him.
Kai slid through the water as fast as the creature whose tail he currently wore, Sanctuary striking at the jelly-pus Heartless wherever he could. He was trying to get up to Rinally as well, but the Heartless just seemed to keep coming. Besides the masquerading Heartless, more had suddenly appeared, as if drawn by the Darkness the iceberg exuded. Kai could feel it empowering him, giving him more strength and stamina as long as he was near the iceberg. On the surface, it seemed like a boon, but Kai knew the difference between pure Darkness and tainted Darkness, and he was no longer confused about their purpose here now. The iceberg had done much to dilute the Darkness the woman inside was giving off while it had been still. It had been like a fisherman’s lure, trying to bring someone, anyone, close to it in order for it to get freed. Now that it was moving, Kai could tell immediately that the woman was tainted, much in the way Secundus had been. The Darkness of the world had been calling out to him not to rescue one of its denizens, but to prevent said denizen from being released.
But how had these Heartless found it? How had these Heartless posed as humans? Kai figured it had the Brotherhood written all over it.
“Kai, look out!”
Kai spun around to see the giant bell racing up toward him. He jerked to one side and grunted as the bell struck the lower half of his tail, sending him spinning through the water. Kaoru flashed by, racing after the iceberg. Kai sucked in a deep breath to force down the pain and raced after Kaoru, catching up to him in time to see the surface of the water quickly approaching. It was still dozens of meters away, but the sharp light of dawn threw into clear relief the giant shadow of a ship.
“We have to catch up to Rin!” Kaoru called, trying to swim faster.
Kai looked ahead of them, where he could see Rin tangled with the chain of the hook. She was clinging tightly to it, her eyes shut tight. Kai’s heart began to hammer in his chest as fear rushed through his blood. If she broke the surface, she would be gone, and in this unfamiliar world, he didn’t know if they would be able to find her. Not only that, he didn’t know what would happen to her if she was captured. He didn’t know if the entire ship was crewed by Heartless in a human guise, or if there were real people on the boat who would look at Rinally and her shape and think she would make a great display piece. Then Rin opened her eyes and looked down at Kaoru and Kai, but instead of letting go of the chain, she gave them a thumb’s up and clung tighter to the links.
We have to trust her. Kai thought. He caught up to Kaoru and caught his wrist, pulling him to a halt. Kaoru looked at him, incredulous. “She’s going with it.” Kai explained, hoping Kaoru would understand. “She can’t break the chain underwater.”
Kaoru looked away from Kai back to Rinally. There was no hiding the worry and fear in his eyes nor in the way his body was so tense. Kai kept a firm hold of Kaoru, though he wasn’t sure if it was to prevent the other boy from racing after their friend or for Kai’s own need to keep Kaoru close. “Do you think she’ll be all right?” Kaoru asked.
Kai nodded. “She’s stronger than the two of us. If anyone can make it on their own until we can get to her, it’s Rinally.”
Kaoru nodded. “I don’t want her going alone. We can follow the ship from below.”
By the time the two of them started chasing the iceberg, the chain and Rinally had already broken the water’s surface. The giant bell had also broken the surface and was beginning to be drawn completely out of the water. Kaoru saw Rinally vanish out of his sight, but when his head broke the surface, he could see her dangling above the iceberg, clinging to the chain as though her life depended on it. Her head snapped up and her attention turned to the deck of the ship. Kaoru watched helplessly beside Kai as the iceberg and Rinally were swung across the deck of the giant galley. The last sight Kaoru had of his best friend was her being shaken off the chain to the deck below. He could hear her voice shouting, but he couldn’t hear any replies. The bell was brought aboard and secured, and then Kaoru couldn’t hear Rinally anymore.
“Come on.” Kai surged toward the ship, cutting through the water seamlessly. Kaoru quickly followed, and the two came alongside the ship, their hands touching the wood beneath the water.
There was nowhere to grip, Kaoru found, but that didn’t seem to be Kai’s plan. The redhead looked left and right, as if searching for something, then gestured for Kaoru to follow and led the way to the other end of the ship, where the thick chains of the anchor still drifted in the water. Kai caught hold of a link that was thicker than he was, and Kaoru did the same. Then, the anchor started to rise, slowly but surely, dragging them up along with it.
“Do you think she’s okay?” Kaoru asked.
“Of course she is. Besides, she looks like a mermaid right now. I doubt they’d want to hurt her.”
“I can’t believe she just went off on her own like that.”
“Why? You did the same thing not too long ago.”
Since Kaoru didn’t reply, Kai figured he understood the point. The rippling surface of the water was only a few hundred yards above them. Kai’s plan was to use the anchor chain to get them into the ship, where they could then hide amongst the giant chains and cargo and free Rin from whatever prison she was put in. Then, they could sabotage the ship, if not outright push the iceberg back into the sea. If they succeeded in that, then Kai decided he would do whatever he could to drag that iceberg to the deepest underwater gorge he could find and drop it in there, where it would sink to the bottom and remain, forgotten. He couldn’t explain why, but he was certain that letting the squid-woman out of her icy prison was the worst thing that could happen to this world, and if he, Kaoru, and Rin could prevent it, then they’d be off this world faster than they’d gotten away from any of the previous worlds.
Except as all plans were wont to do, this one was quickly screwed.
Kai heard Kaoru call out a warning, but before he could turn to see what his Light was warning him about, something struck him in the back of the head. His hands all too willingly let go of the anchor chain, and his body listlessly began to sink back toward the ocean floor.
Then, all Kai knew was darkness.
- 47
- 48
- 49
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