#it’s not the communities fault for Kairi not having enough training as Riku has. PLUS! I think Kairi deserves a different role

[kingdomhearts-and-soriku-trash]

Has anybody really said this? I’m really curious and I wanna know because if so then that is so messed up-

Sks: Ugh sorikus want Kairi out of the way for their ship how delusional of them

Also sks: Riku should've died in kh3 and Riku should fail in kh4 so Kairi can come in and save Sora so they can have their happily ever after

[yo-namine]

Okay, I’m not done with this idea, so...

To start off, Riku and Kairi's relationship post-KH3 is a little, uh.... strained. After everything that happened in the Graveyard, Riku really doesn't trust Kairi to hold her own at all. They both want to go search for a way to revive Sora, but Riku's pretty dead-set on Kairi staying safe at home while he does all the actual work. He's already lost one friend, and he's not risking losing another. Kairi argues that if he's going to go chasing the Lich, he needs someone like her who can bring him back, but her argument kind of falls flat because her PoH abilities have been pretty shaky ever since Sora died because, well, her heart's broken. So Riku doesn't budge, and Kairi's left feeling useless and powerless to help her friends. Again. Also, Kairi can tell that Riku does sort of lowkey resent her for being a liability back in the Graveyard. Riku knows it's unfair of him, but he can't help how he feels. And while Riku really does want to keep her safe, Kairi feels that he's also shutting her out as a way to penalize her for costing them Sora's life. Angst ensues. Basically, instead of working together on a way to bring back Sora, Riku and Kairi end up pushing each other away and doubtlessly making things harder than they need to be. 🎉🎉🎉

Obviously, Kairi isn't going to just stay home. She thinks that if she can fully regain her powers, she may be able to restore Sora like she did in KH1, or get some kind of tether on him from the Realm of Light like she did in KH3. So she decides to sneak off on her own to first go find the other former Princesses of Heart to see if they can teach her more about her abilities, and then hopefully get her powers back and use them to revive Sora or at least help Riku. And admittedly, there’s a small, petty part of her that just wants to prove to Riku that she's not useless.

Naminé catches on to what Kairi's planning and wants to come with her to help however she can. Kairi kept her alive for the last couple of years, so Naminé is basically RIDE OR DIE for this girl at this point. If Kairi wants to go save Sora, then dammit, they’re gonna go save Sora. That said, she probably feels guilty enough to leave Riku a note or something just telling him that she and Kairi left together and everything's fine and to please not freak out. Riku reads it and is like "for fuck's sake," decides to go look for them (on top of everything else he's doing).

I'm... not really sure how Xion gets involved tbh. Maybe she initially wants to help Riku find Kairi and bring her home, but then switches sides once she realizes that Kairi's just trying to prove herself? Anyway, Xion is a total badass and (in this story, at least) has some of her Days boss battle abilities still in her arsenal, so after she joins the other girls, they're able to venture into more worlds that they'd had to avoid before because the combat level was too high they were too dangerous. During their journey, Xion gives Kairi lots of pointers that do her way more good as a keyblade wielder than whatever Merlin had her and Axel doing in that time chamber.

There's initially some tension between Kairi and Xion because Xion is supposed to be "Kairi as Sora remembers her," and in this story, Xion's clearly much stronger and (now that she's free of the Organization) cheerier than the real Kairi. So Kairi feels like she's hanging around a better version of herself all the time, and it takes effort to not let her bitterness over it show. It also doesn't help that Kairi's spending most of her time with two people who are like embodiments of Sora's love for her (Naminé being the Nobody that was created from Sora housing Kairi's heart in his, Xion being made up of Sora's memories of Kairi). Theoretically, that knowledge should be comforting, but it really just ends up rubbing some extra salt in that "Sora's dead and it's all my fault" wound.

While they're off on their journey, Riku tries to call Kairi almost every day, but she never picks up because she knows he'll just try to talk her into going home. Eventually Axel calls her, and it's fine until she realizes he's trying to weasel her whereabouts out of her so he can pass the info along to Riku. After that, she keeps her phone off.

Kairi, Naminé, and Xion start to work really well together after a while both because of their skill sets (Xion being the powerhouse, Naminé the healer, Kairi the warrior-still-in-training), but also because they have a lot in common. Xion can empathize pretty strongly with Kairi feeling like she's just a liability. Naminé knows how it feels to be used by people more powerful than you to hurt someone you care about. The trio develops a pretty deep understanding of one another, and they help each other rationalize and work through their problems/insecurities (like Xion has a tendency to get irritated/overly defensive when her judgment's questioned because, well, she also isn't sure if she can trust her own mind sometimes thanks to the Org reprogramming her in the past. Naminé has some pretty deep-rooted abandonment issues that are part of the reason she clings to Kairi as much as she does. Kairi has survivor's guilt in spades.). Character development ensues.

Naminé does Not like combat or just hurting things in general, hence why she sticks to healing. She does still have her heart-shattering ability from CoM, but she never wants to use it again (especially considering whose replica vessel she’s inhabiting these days).

Meanwhile, Riku thinks the other masters will help him with figuring out how to either find the Lich or contact Sora somehow, but nope. Yen Sid and Mickey don't want him going after the Lich or "chasing hearts," potentially costing them another valuable wielder getting himself killed. Aqua's more inclined to let him do what he thinks is right, but she's also doubtful that Sora's heart is even salvageable at this point. She tells Riku what she knows from her own training just because she feels he has the right to that information as a master, but that's about it. Beyond that, Riku's basically on his own. Without any real leads, Riku decides to visit different worlds to learn more about their differing concepts of death/the afterlife (so like the Underworld in Olympus, the Locker in the Caribbean, etc.). A lot of worlds have legends of creatures similar to the Lich that ferry the dead and all that cool stuff, so he makes note of that while also scouting the place for Kairi. He might also run into Maleficent at some point and learn something from her (since idk, she commanded the Heartless for a while, so maybe she knows something about the Lich)?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The trio runs into Riku once early on, and it... doesn't go that well. Riku's still not keen on Kairi running off (plus he's probably kind of annoyed that Naminé and Xion sided with her over him despite them both being his friends for way longer, oop), and Kairi's still frustrated that Riku has 0 faith in her and won't let her help him. They basically have the same argument they did back home, only now there's been more time for resentment to build. On top of that, they're both grieving over Sora without really knowing that they are (because neither's willing to even consider the idea that he may not be savable), and both feel like the other's abandoned them when they need them the most. Anyway, their fight doesn't accomplish anything other than hurting each other further. They split up again after Riku tells Kairi to just answer her damn phone every once and a while. She doesn't.

So Kairi meets up with the former PoHs as she travels worlds. She's lucky that Riku's on bad terms with half of these ladies and is gonna steer clear of Wonderland, Agrabah, and Beast's Castle. Kairi gets advice and some training from each of the princesses on how to tune out her own self-doubts and focus her magic on what she wants to accomplish. Her biggest help is probably Belle just because that lady spent SO MUCH TIME in Hollow Bastion's library in KH1 probably reading everything about light/darkness. That, and I think Belle kind of uses a tethering ability in KH1 to bring the Beast to Hollow Bastion (or at least, the Beast says he got there just by ~believing~, so maybe it's a two-way connection or something), so she may have a better understanding of her (former) powers than the others. Anyway, Kairi slowly starts regaining her powers, and they only get better as her confidence/faith in herself improves. Eventually, she starts working Faith/Holy into her combat moves and "tethering" to the other girls just to see if she can. She's able to use the latter ability to sense out where exactly Naminé and Xion are whenever they're separated from one another. Connecting with people in the same world is easy enough, but doing it across worlds/realms is trickier, so she practices reaching out to Riku occasionally with mixed results. She gets to where she can figure out where he is, but she can't communicate with him, and she's not sure if that's due to her abilities being too weak or if it's because she and Riku have been shutting each other out (spoilers: It's mostly the latter.).

The trio has another run-in with Riku later on. He and Kairi have another argument, but it's more constructive this time around. Riku starts to call her out on leaving him to go on this journey (because unlike her, he's been going it alone this whole time, and it's really starting to get to him), but she points out that she only left him before he could leave her. Everything kind of starts to click after that. Riku eventually apologizes for trying to leave her behind, Kairi apologizes for shutting him out for so long. There's still some tension between them, but it starts to ebb once they finally start working together on a plan to bring Sora back.

Kairi finally turns her phone back on to find approximately 34978593487 missed calls from Riku. She also sees that he left her a few voicemails, and while Riku says she can just delete them, she keeps them to listen to later when he's not around.

....I'm not sure how this ends? Part of me likes the idea of Sora just... staying dead and everyone moving forward with their lives because that's all you can do, really. But another part of me really likes the idea of Riku and Kairi finding the Lich and figuring out a way to split the price for Sora between them. Maybe they have to give up a fraction of their hearts or cut time off their lifespans to give to Sora's. And they both agree to just not tell Sora about that once he's back.

I realize I'm leaving a TON of characters out of this story lmao. I don't know what everyone else would be up to. tbh Ven could probably save Riku and Kairi a lot of trouble just by introducing them to his magic cat that apparently knows all about the afterlife, but.......................... whatever.