KHO sequel of sorts... Kaze's new role...
Most of the time, I’m just an observer.
A lot of what I do to help Sora and his friends, it’s not obvious just from watching him. I’m just a voice that Sora alone hears. He heard me in his awakening, leading him through to his destiny, but after that, I could have been written off. I told him to trust Donald and Goofy as he first fought the Guard Armor. I gave him courage as he fought Cerberus. I showed him where to strike when fighting Clayton and the Stealth Sneak. I freed the tiger god in Agrabah so he could enter the Cave of Wonders. I told him not to trust Riku while in Monstro’s stomach. I gave him the joy needed to fly in Neverland. But, I’ve never done anything proactive. I’ve been the power behind the hero. Frankly, I like it a lot better. I didn’t do that great when I was a hero myself.
Even those who know about the Keyblade don’t know its true nature. It chooses its master, yes, but they never think of how exactly it does the choosing, or why.
Right now, I’m about to show everyone the how and whys.
We’ve entered Hollow Bastion. I remember this place. I stepped into this canyon when it was still a desert, before the healing rains produced the waterfalls now present. I feel sad at how many times this land has felt the presence of the Darkness.
I look ahead. I’m surprised to see that Riku’s out here. I expected him to be by the castle. Then I see the reason.
Riku is fighting with a massive Beast. He’s gigantic and strong, but as I peer into his heart, I see that the Beast is actually a human inside, and furthermore, a good one at that. Selfish in the past, he was humbled and shamed by his current form. Currently, his heart was filled with anguish… it was tearing in two.
Love.
I knew that emotion well.
Riku fights the Beast with ridiculous ease. The Beast may be strong, but he is distracted. He’s not concentrating on the fight, he’s concentrating on his love, who was taken from him, trapped, and he would go to every extreme to free her. Riku, however, is skilled, focused, and he sends the creature to his knees.
As the Beast falls, Sora, Donald, and Goofy rush forward to confront Riku.
“Stop!” Sora yells. Riku’s selfishness when they met inside Monstro has made him wary of his old friend. It’s a wariness he’d do well to maintain.
Riku looks at Sora, dismissing the Beast totally, “So, you finally made it. About time. I've been waiting for you. We've always been rivals, haven't we? You've always pushed me as I've always pushed you.”
I can feel Riku’s smug superiority. Maleficent has been feeding him half-truths about his own strength and his position as the Keybearer. It’s true that Riku holds the requirements to wield me. He has my blood, however thin, running through my veins.
I wish I knew exactly which one of my kids was responsible for him, in the long run. I need to have word with them when I go back to Kingdom Hearts.
“Riku…” Sora says, not sure what to do. After all, no matter what he’s done, Riku is still his best friend, still the boy who he played with on the islands, still someone he cares about. Rivals they may be, but Sora never took it to the extremes Riku did.
One of the reasons I picked Sora over Riku, actually.
“But it all ends here… there can’t be two Keyblade Masters…” I would have corrected him if I could. Technically, there can be up to three… wait, make that four, since I think Walt’s gonna manifest as a Keyblade for his own descendant. Maybe five if Nanaki ever dies.
But, I digress.
“What are you talking about?” Sora asks, confused.
“Let the Keyblade choose… its true master!” Riku calls, holding out his hand expectantly.
There is a part of me, a REALLY large part, that wants to just do nothing. I really want to just stay with Sora, let Riku look like an idiot, maybe open the kid’s eyes to the fact that he’s just a selfish brat and the universe doesn’t owe him anything.
However, as this happens, I remember Yen Sid. I remember his words that a heart that has experienced loss will either shine bright with Light or delve into the Darkness. And, if a hero never experiences loss, you will never know how he’ll truly react when it happens.
Sora experienced loss, but in all his loss, he had hope. Hope that he would find his friends, hope that he would save the worlds, hope that he could restore his world to its former state. He felt no real loss, because he always had hope. And I was his hope.
I needed to find out what would happen if we took that hope away.
I fly from Sora’s hands and into Riku’s. I wished I didn’t have to do so.
Sora looks on in shock as Donald and Goofy call out, utterly unsure what just happened. Riku’s looking at me with equal parts amazement and glee.
“Maleficent was right…” he says this with growing trust in the witch, “You don't have what it takes to save Kairi. It's up to me. Only the Keyblade Master can open the secret door... and change the world.”
I want to shout out, “You may be right, pretty boy, but the Keyblade Master AIN’T YOU!” Of course, that would have shattered the illusion. And the illusion was necessary for the test…
“But that’s impossible! How could this happen? I’m the one who fought my way here with the Keyblade!” Sora, of course, doesn’t understand. Neither does Riku, actually, Riku just THINKS he understands.
“You were just the delivery boy. Sorry, your part's over now. Here, go play hero with this…” And with that, Riku tosses a wooden sword in front of Sora.
Riku walks off, and as he does, I seethe in the fact that I’m doing this. I need to make sure that Sora can really do this. The hard part is just beginning and I do not want to find out that he’d fold, or worse, snap, under the pressure of an actual, truly horrific loss. I need to know that his heart is as worthy as I have judged it.
But I wish that didn’t have to align myself with HIM. No one who would force me from his so-called best friend’s hand and leave him to the Heartless could ever be considered a Keyblade Master.
He walks off, but he stops for a second as he overhears the conversation among the three friends. Sora has sunk to the ground, his entire world shattering around him. I wait to see what happens next.
“Goofy, let’s go…” Donald says a bit too forcefully, as he walks off after Riku.
Goofy looks confused at Donald’s words, then realizes, “Oh! Well… I know the King told us to follow the Key and all, but…” he looks to Sora, obviously torn. He doesn’t want to abandon his friend, but he doesn’t want to go against his other friend, his king’s orders. Finally, with a heavy heart, he leaves, walking alongside Donald.
Donald, for his part, is trying to hide how much of a jerk he feels like. He says, “Sora… sorry…” and leaves, not even looking Sora in the face as he says this.
Riku looks at this, feeling utterly vindicated. He doesn’t care one way or another about the duck and the dog, but he wants to rub in Sora’s face the fact that Riku is special, so special that it erased everything that made Sora special…
As we walk away, Sora still on the ground in disbelief, I suddenly hate myself for doing this.
******
I rest in Riku’s palm. He’s grasping me like a lifeline. To him, I’m the proof that he’s worth something. He thinks by my presence, he’s more than just Maleficent’s lapdog.
I’m going to enjoy his disappointment.
Riku could have been a halfway decent Keybearer. Not the best, but not the worst. Too bad he has a selfish streak a mile wide and an entitlement complex that makes me want to gag.
Using what powers I still have, I check up on Donald and Goofy. They don’t know it, but I’m testing them along with Sora. If there’s anything I’d learned as a Keyblade and a Master of one, it’s that a Keybearer is only as powerful as his friends.
I feel a sense of perverse glee as I see their reactions. Goofy is the most obvious. Normally, the hound was laid-back and cheerful even when everything could be falling apart. Sometimes I even wondered if he saw the same things everyone else did, he was so optimistic. Now, he was sullen and cautious. He didn’t like any of this. He hated being in this dark imposing castle, so different from that of his home. He hated that the Heartless he had fought so many times now crawled around him unchecked. He looked at Maleficent with distrust and at Riku with resigned displeasure. But most of all, he looked sad…
I could tell he felt horrible about leaving Sora behind. His orders were his orders, but he didn’t like them one bit.
Donald was better at hiding it. He was always somewhat bitter, so this was more easily masked. He tapped his foot incessantly and glared, but to the casual observer, nothing was out of the ordinary. What most people didn’t realize was that, unless something really ruffled his feathers, Donald was usually calm and friendly. Now, his grumpiness is all he shows.
He wasn’t as emotional as Goofy, but Donald felt as badly as his friend for leaving Sora behind, if not more.
Riku is flaunting their presence in his own mind. As far as he’s concerned, this is vindication. To him, he was the one actually looking for his friends, and meanwhile, Sora was traveling along with some ridiculous looking animals, having the time of his life, not caring about anything.
I want to smack him upside the head, but now is not the time.
The doors are opening, and with a flush of pride, I realize that it’s Sora. It’s amazing… he took that dinky little wooden sword and teamed up with the Beast and now, he’s gone through the doorway, ready to storm the castle.
Riku prepares for this, of course. The Beast smells something off. He sees Belle in a hallway behind him and leaps towards her. As he approaches, though, her image turns into a Heartless. Enraged, he rends it into mist, but by then, the door has closed behind him. He pounds on it, roaring in fury, but it is no use.
Sora turns to see Riku preening in front of him, Donald and Goofy in tow.
“Quit while you can,” Riku says offhandedly, unable to contain the smirk in his voice.
Sora tenses up, “No, not without Kairi.”
I wish I had a face again, so I could show off my grin.
Riku shimmers with light, and he transforms into his dark form, the Heartless emblem proudly affixed to his chest, “The Darkness will destroy you,” he said smugly.
Again, I with I had my old face, but now it’s to show my grimace of disgust.
Sora stands strong, “You're wrong, Riku. The darkness may destroy my body, but it can't touch my heart. My heart will stay with my friends. It'll never die!” A bit naïve, but more and more I love this kid.
“Really…” Riku sneers, “Well, we’ll just see about that!”
With little warning, he warms up an orb of darkness in his hand and fires point blank at Sora. I remain in Riku’s hand, wanting to jump forward. I hold fast, though, not yet ready to shatter Riku’s illusion that he’s still in control of the situation. I remember that Sora’s not the only one being tested.
I am not disappointed.
The dark energy is blocked, and it scatters. After the flash subsides, I can see Goofy, shield raised, standing in front of Sora, determination in his eyes.
“Sora ain’t gonna go anywhere!” I shouldn’t have doubted for a second that Goofy would interfere. And he explains why…
Riku asks condescendingly, “You’d betray your king?”
“Not on your life!” Goofy says, with an unusual edge to his voice, “But I’m not gonna betray Sora either, ‘cause he’s become one of my best buddies after all we’ve been through together!” and as he says this, I know that for all his klutziness and ignorance, he’s the best person to stand beside a Keyblade Master.
The litany he just said was not addressed to Riku, it was addressed to Sora. He ended it with a thumb up. Sora’s head is downcast, but I know his heart. Sora may have felt like dirt, being left behind without his friends or his Keyblade, but I knew he’d forgive them… the kid’s just too GOOD to do otherwise…
The last member of this group to be tested is still standing awkwardly behind Riku, as Goofy yells, “See ya later, Donald! Could ya tell the king I’m really sorry?”
I turn my attention to the duck, and feel a brief tension before he calls out, “Hold on, Goofy! We’ll tell him together!” and runs in front of Sora. Rather pathetically, he almost mumbles out his next words, “Well, you know… all for one and one for all…”
“I guess you’re stuck with us, Sora,” Goofy says, with a bit of a grin.
“Thanks a lot… Donald, Goofy…” His head is still held down, and his voice is heavy with sadness, but I can sense beyond what humans see or hear. I know the words are sincere.
Riku can sense he’s lost something here. Maybe not consciously, but he’s competitive in his very nature, and even losing something he didn’t want is a loss he can’t deal with. He retorts with, “How can you fight without a weapon?” trying to show off that he was still the one holding the precious Keyblade.
For now at least.
Sora responds, “I know now that I don’t need the Keyblade. I’ve got a better weapon… My heart.”
If I still had a corporeal heart that could beat, it would have skipped.
Could… could he understand? Even I didn’t understand at first, it took me my entire life as a human and a good deal of my existence as the Keyblade to finally get it…
Riku, true to form, scoffs, “Your heart? What good will that weak little thing do for you?” Obviously, he doesn’t truly understand what constitutes strength.
“Although my heart may be weak, it's not alone. It's grown with each new experience, and it's found a home with all the friends I've made. I've become a part of their heart just as they've become a part of mine. And if they think of me now and then... if they don't forget me... then our hearts will be one…” Sora tensed, wielding his feeble toy sword, ready to take on Riku, “I don’t need a weapon. My friends are my power!”
By the Door to the Light itself! He did understand!
I was so flabbergasted that, for a second, I couldn’t react. He knew… even if he didn’t know that was the secret to my power, he understood that that was the key to the true power within him, the power of the light.
I suddenly became giddy, because I had been in the hands of many, many Keybearers. Sora… Sora had the makings of a true Keyblade Master.
We were going to win, and we were going to win very soon.
With a brilliant flash, I dissolve from Riku’s grasp and return to Sora’s hands.
My only regret right now is that I’m not human at the moment. I’d have liked to beat Riku up with my own hands.
Hey, he’s technically one of my grandkids. Well, true, there are about fifteen greats in front of it, but I’d be allowed. And, well, you gotta be firm…