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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.

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Fifty-One - Atlantica

Kaoru slowly woke to a pounding in his head.
As he became aware of his surroundings, he realized he was in a small cave that was barred by coral on one side. The other sides were dark stone, lit only by bioluminescent lichen. One side had a jutting stone shelf that had a pillow and a blanket folded neatly on top of it. Kaoru, however, was on the floor. And he was still underwater.
Slowly he pushed himself up and fought not to whimper as his head protested the movement. He didn’t have any other wounds that he could see or even feel, but he couldn’t be sure. Gingerly, he touched his head, and found a tender lump on the back of his skull. He wished Rin was there, because she could’ve healed the lump. She might’ve given him another for being caught off-guard to receive the first one, but at least she’d heal it.
It took a while for the pounding to stop on its own, during which time Kaoru explored his tiny cell but found no breach he could exploit to escape. He remembered the last thing he’d been doing, and swam closer to the coral bars to try and peer out, trying to see if he could spot Kai.
“Kaoru.”
He followed the sound of his name toward a cell diagonal his on the opposite wall. Kai was there, his red hair gleaming in the light. His green eyes were focused on Kaoru.
“Kai.” Kaoru said, gripping onto the bars. “I’m guessing we didn’t end up with Rinally.”
Kai’s lips twitched. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“Do you know where we are?”
“Prison.”
“That’s not helpful.”
Kai shrugged. “I woke up locked in here. After those guys attacked us at the site of the iceberg, everything’s a blur. I don’t remember being brought here. I don’t remember being locked up. The guards have passed through here a few times. I guess they’re checking up on us. Since they didn’t execute us outright, I guess they want to know what we were doing there.”
“They don’t believe we were there to try and stop those men and Heartless from taking that iceberg, do they?”
“They didn’t stop to chat with me. But I guess so.”
Kaoru frowned and looked up and down the hall. He didn’t remember the attack that had knocked him out, but he remembered the events leading up to it. It had happened so fast, he hadn’t had time to defend himself. “Do you think Rin’s okay?”
Kai nodded. “She’s fine. She’s a smart girl. Whatever they do to her, she’ll figure a way out of it. She’ll probably be the one coming to rescue us.”
“Have you tried getting out of here?”
“Tried, haven’t succeeded. This coral’s like real iron. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is iron and the coral just grew over it.”
Kaoru leaned against the bars so he could have a better view of Kai. “Did you try Sanctuary?”
Kai shook his head. “I didn’t want to go that far until you woke up.”
Kaoru smiled and warmth bloomed in his chest. On one hand, it was a practical statement. Kai wouldn’t make it far if he had to defend Kaoru’s unconscious form while he tried to escape. On the other, it was a statement of love and care. Kai could’ve escaped, but it would’ve drawn the attention of their guards, which would’ve caused a fight that would’ve gotten Kaoru hurt or even killed. Together, they were more dangerous than anyone would give them credit for.
Kaoru pushed back from the bars and summoned Guardian. He looked to Kai then and grinned. “Shall we try now, then?”
Kai’s lips twitched into a smirk and Sanctuary appeared in his hand. Following Kaoru’s movements, he pointed the tip of his Keyblade at the locking mechanism on the bars and focused on forcing the lock to open. A small beam of darkness-infused light burst from the end of Sanctuary and jetted into the keyhole. A second later, there was a click as the tumblers fell into place and the coral barring his way swung open.
Kaoru met him in the hallway. “Which way?”
Kai looked left and right, but he couldn’t see a clear indication of a way out, nor did he see anyone approaching. “I guess we pick one and see where it goes.”
They started down the left side of the hall, passing more cells. They were all empty. Kaoru studied the cells as they passed by and assumed there was very little crime wherever they were, as all the cells seemed to be devoid of any of the comforts his cell had contained and they looked quite unused. When they reached the end of the hall, they found two stairways leading down on the left and right of them respectively, and a window ahead of them that peered out onto a city made out of sea rocks and coral. Huge spires reached up toward the water’s surface and smaller buildings crowded around what looked to be a town square. It was a huge, sprawling city filled with people. Kaoru could see men, women, and children going about their lives as if they were in a place like Paradise City rather than deep under water. They didn’t seem to have any idea that two strangers were staring down at them from prison.
“Where are we?” Kaoru asked softly.
“Don’t know.” Kai responded. “Seems to be their capital city. Look. There are guards down there, too.”
Following Kai’s pointing finger, Kaoru could see several mer-people (he couldn’t tell if they were male or female at this distance) moving languidly along what constituted as streets, dressed in armor and carrying spears. There weren’t many of them, but somehow Kaoru was certain that they didn’t need numbers to defeat any danger that might come their way. He frowned. “Do they have other security measures? Because we could swim out of here before anyone even noticed we were missing.”
“I don’t know. But we should assume they do. They were able to catch us with the element of surprise. That tells me they had someone watching that area. Between the time we arrived and the time we were attacked, they had the resources to get from here to there quickly and silently.” Kai scowled, as if he disliked the fact he’d been taken without much of a fight on his part. “We need to be careful, Kaoru.”
“I know. But...” Kaoru trailed off, looking back out the window onto the city. He tried to order his thoughts to be able to continue speaking. “But if we’re here, then they think we know something. What if we can learn who that lady in the ice was? Maybe that will give us a clue as to why we’re here.”
Kai’s expression darkened slightly. “We can’t just go up asking people. They’re going to know we’re strangers, and they’re going to come after us once they discover we’re gone. Besides that, I doubt we wouldn’t draw attention if we went asking complete strangers about the iceberg.”
“Doubt we’d get much information either, that way. But I’m not suggesting we’re gonna go around asking people. There has to be a library somewhere, right? They have to record their own history.”
“Why would there be a library underwater? Paper would rot.”
Kaoru looked at Kai with a skeptical expression. “I don’t know. Why do people with tails of fish and sharks and who can breathe underwater exist? It’s magic. Therefore, the rules of reality don’t apply.”
Kai rolled his eyes and sighed. “Fine. We’ll go look for this library of yours. Maybe we’ll draw less attention that way. Two boys asking people directions to a library would get less strange looks than two boys asking about a giant monster steeped in Darkness and trapped in ice.”
“I can’t tell if it’s sarcasm or just your usual tone of voice.”
“Shut up.”
Kaoru shifted to give Kai a quick kiss on the lips in an attempt to apologize for having fun at the redhead’s expense, then swam past him down the left-hand staircase. Kai followed him, keeping close so as not to get lost and separated but keeping a good enough distance that if they needed to fight, they wouldn’t have to worry about hitting each other. They reached the next landing and ducked behind a statue of a rather impressively-muscled merman as a pair of guards swam by. The guards didn’t notice them hiding in the shadows of the statue, which Kaoru was sure they would because of the way his tail drastically clashed with the darkness, and the pair kept on moving down the hallway. They waited until the guards were out of sight before slipping out from behind the statue and heading in the opposite direction.
Kai reached out to grab Kaoru’s shoulder and pull him back from the mouth of the next hallway. Kaoru leaned back against Kai and kept still, his eyes focused on the opening. Without speaking, Kai pushed Kaoru back toward the way they had come and Kaoru went quietly, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Kai was following. He was, just swimming backwards so that he wouldn’t take his eyes off that juncture. They reached the statue again and started to slide behind it in hopes it would shield them once again when a group of five soldiers turned the corner. For a handful of minutes Kaoru, Kai, and the guards stared at each other, and then one raised a conch shell horn to her lips and blew.
“Run!” Kai shouted, pushing Kaoru toward the opposite end of the hallway. Kaoru shoved off as fast as he could, swimming with all the strength he could muster toward the opening at the end of the hall even as the blast of the conch shell echoed in his ears again.
Four of the guards gave chase, swimming after them with speed gained only by those who were born naturally to a place such as this. Kaoru and Kai had gotten quite a bit of practice swimming, and somehow their bodies seemed to naturally know what to do, but they couldn’t navigate this place as well as the guards could. Only by the miracle of split-second decisions to take sharp turns were they able to stay ahead of the guards. And that conch shell continued to blow in warning to anyone else who might be listening.
Kaoru realized that they were going downward in circles, often taking loops on the same floor of the building that would eventually get them caught. He caught Kai’s wrist and pulled him into an alcove, pushing back as far as they could go. Each of them held their breath as the guards chasing them swam by, leaving bubbles in their wake. He held his breath for a second longer before releasing it as slowly as he could. Kai did the same.
“We have to blast our way out,” Kaoru whispered. “We can’t keep going in circles like this.”
“Blasting our way out is the surest way of getting too much attention.”
Kaoru shook his head. “Only one of us has to get away.”
“Sacrifice the slower of us two so the faster one can get away?” Kai said, his voice indicating he clearly didn’t like that plan, because it was clear which one of them was the faster.
“If you can reach the surface, you can see where you are. If you can reach Rin then, you can come back for me.”
“I don’t like this, Kaoru. What if they kill you?”
“I don’t think they will. If they wanted to kill us, they’d have done it instead of putting us in those cells.”
Kai scowled, then braced his hands on either side of Kaoru’s head. His eyes slowly changed from green to Heartless gold and black, his lips drawing back from his teeth as he focused on his Light. “I don’t like this, Kaoru, but to save this world, I’ll do as you ask this once, got it? You do what you can to get away.”
Kaoru lifted his hands and cupped Kai’s face, staring straight into those Heartless eyes. “I promise.” he whispered to his Darkness.
“Then lets get the hell out of here and find our Shadow.”
Kaoru smiled and summoned Guardian to his hand. He swam out of the alcove and headed straight for the nearest wall. The quickest way to get anywhere, he knew, was a straight line. He only hoped that he had enough strength stored up to provide a powerful enough blast to get out of there. As he reached the wall, he swung Guardian out to his side and concentrated on forming Cascade. He held the spell for as long as he could, charging it up more and more, until he couldn’t hold it anymore. Then he threw Guardian as hard as he could at the wall in front of him, releasing his power as he did so.
The Keyblade struck the wall and exploded. The concussive blast hit Kaoru and flung him backwards, spinning him through the water. A shadow rushed past him, one he innately recognized as Kai, and he saw a flash of darkness as Kai burst through the hole he had made in the wall. Kaoru forced his body to move toward the hole, shoving himself out of it and into open water just as the guards flooded the hallway. He angled himself down and sank as fast as he could, hoping he had the guards’ attention was on him and not on Kai. Guardian reformed in his hand, trailing a streamer of golden light for half a second after its reappearance. Kaoru continued to swim as hard as he could down, down, down, leveling off before he got too deep. He could still sense Kai somewhere above him, growing more distant with each passing heartbeat. Kaoru looked up to see half the guards following him and the other half chasing after the fading blur that was Kai. If Kai got away, then Kaoru didn’t care if he got caught. That had been the plan in the first place. He just had to draw them all away from Kai.
So he changed his angle, and started swimming upwards, forcing the guards to chase him that way. He could see Kai now, so close to the surface but still so far away. The closest guard was only a few strokes behind, and he wielded a two pronged spear that nearly pincered shut on Kai’s tail if he hadn’t been as fast as he was to suddenly change direction. Kaoru hauled back on Guardian and threw the Keyblade as hard as he could at the mer-man in the lead. The Keyblade glanced off the spear, spinning the man halfway around from the sudden shock of the blow. Most of the guards halted at that and turned their eyes on the boy who’d dared to attack them. Kaoru recalled Guardian and dove deep, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the guards had decided to chase him instead of Kai. A few had, but the rest still chased after Kai. Except it didn’t matter now; Kai had a big enough lead on them that he could disappear into the darkness of the waters. They wouldn’t be able to find him then. But Kaoru...
Kaoru spun around, making sure whatever light was in the water reflected off the scales of his tail. He jerked left to avoid one of those pincer spears and blocked another from his right with Guardian. He was going to be caught soon, he knew it, because the numbers were starting to add up against him. He was also starting to slow down, simply from exhaustion. So he decided to make one last stand, in hopes that it would be long enough to allow Kai to get even further away. He stopped swimming and turned to face his pursuit, lifting his Keyblade into a defensive position. He took a deep breath and prepared to fight for as long as it took for the last whisper of Kai’s presence to fade from his immediate consciousness.
He never got the chance.
A bright bolt of lightning crashed into Guardian, the shock going straight from the Keyblade to his arm and the rest of his body. Kaoru couldn’t even scream with how his muscles seized. He thrashed around in the water under no control of his own until the electricity finally stopped, and his fingers became limp around Guardian’s hilt. He watched the Keyblade slip from his hand and start to sink to the bottom of the ocean.
A powerful masculine hand grasped Guardian’s hilt before it sank completely to the bottom. The Keyblade then burst into motes of light, and Kaoru felt it return to him. Then Kaoru felt a huge hand take hold of his upper arm. A man appeared in his peripheral vision, stately and grandfatherly, with long white hair and a long white beard. A crown topped his head and in his now-free hand was a golden trident. The guards surrounded them with their weapons pointing toward Kaoru as if he still had the strength to fight. The man holding him lifted his trident slightly, and the guards backed away, but only just.
“I never thought I would see another Keyblade in my kingdom, not since...” he trailed off. “It seems I was mistaken about you.” The man’s deep voice boomed through Kaoru, making his bones rattle. Then his attention went from Kaoru to the dark waters around them. “I know you’re out there, boy. You have a decision to make. I give you my word that you will not be harmed should you surrender. Nor will I order your imprisonment. It seems my world needs the help of Keyblades once more.”
Kaoru finally remembered how to breathe and sagged in the man’s hand. Blue eyes focused on Kaoru’s face in mild concern, but he still didn’t let go, nor did he offer Kaoru any help. Kaoru hoped Kai wouldn’t come, wouldn’t surrender, but he knew in his heart Kai would.
And he did. But his arrival was presaged by a pulse of pure Darkness that washed through the guards and the man with the crown and Kaoru. Kaoru felt the huge hand around his bicep tighten out of fear. Kaoru could see it in the eyes of the guards as Kai seemed to materialize out of the darkness, his eyes burning black and gold, Sanctuary held in his hand. Kaoru saw the king’s eyes go wide at the sight of another Keyblade, and his hold on Kaoru’s arm slightly loosened, but didn’t release.
Kai said, “I have your word.”
The king nodded. “It seems we have much to talk about.”
“I want my friend back.”
“Dismiss your Keyblade, and I will give him to you.”
Kaoru saw Kai’s eyes return to their normal green, and Sanctuary vanished in a burst of violet motes. Then the king released Kaoru and pushed him toward Kai. It was hard for Kaoru to swim, but he somehow managed it, and felt strength return to him when Kai’s hands closed on his wrists and pulled him close. The guards surrounded them both, keeping them separate from the king.
“You should’ve kept going.” Kaoru whispered. “You promised.”
“You’re more important.” Kai responded. “Besides, I couldn’t leave you behind. Rin would kill me.”
That drew a short laugh from Kaoru. The guards shifted uncomfortably.
“Escort them to the palace and see that they are fed.” The king ordered, his voice booming and deep. He focused on Kai and Kaoru. “We have to talk, and I fear we have little time to do it in.”
Kaoru and Kai glanced at each other, then followed their crowd of guards back to the city they’d just tried to escape, and to the palace looming high, illuminated by light from below.
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Kingdom Hearts: Dark Dawn