#those aren't even all the ships i have. I will pretty much like any piece of fanart if i find it cute ( and most of the time i do!! )

[cindergarten]

what are your kg ships? can be ships you absolutely love or also ships you think are cute.

I absolutely love 🩷Cindix💙 x100000

it grew on me and now it's like my biggest ship! 🫶 But it's also the only "popular" ship I have cuz I like lots of lesser known ships like:

💚Emindy🩷 and 💜Austix💙

( those two coexist in my mind. If I'm not shipping Cindy with Felix, I'm most likely shipping her with Emmy. Same goes for the boys. Listen, you just gotta see the vision )

Now for some that I like but I'm not as crazy about as the ones above: Perla, Bindy, Felonty, oooh and I really like Austemmy!! and a bunch of others. And I mean a BUNCH.

But yeah I'm veeery open minded when it comes to ships, the joy of being a multishipper ^^

[olderthannetfic]

So, you mentioned low standards of research in podcasts. I don't listen to podcasts or watch a lot of videos about fandom analysis, but I have seen error corrections happening in the wild for what I have listened to, so I can only imagine how annoying it is when you know your shit.

Do you have any resources that come to mind as things everyone who likes fandom should be comfortable with, or specific essays on uniquely important fandoms (such as Sherlock Holmes or Star Trek) that everyone should read? Obviously the OTW resources are up there; what else?

Aside from resources, do you think there are any skills that are especially vital for getting to the bottom of fandom trends? Interview skills are probably pretty high up there.

Any pitfalls you see a lot of young fans falling into?

(I do a lot of fandom history research. It is the thing that gives me joy in fandom; other people like shipping or AUs, I like my little mini-anthropology sandbox and watching how ideas spread. I'm not necessarily good at it, but it's fun!)

--

Well... it's the usual things.

For example, a lot of fans claim to love fandom stats, but the ones that get passed around come from like three people. The people doing those stats, including me, don't usually have a statistics background, which doesn't automatically make them bad, but it really seems like people are just trusting anything with a pie chart.

We've recently seen people discover that those year-end AO3 ship stats have a seriously weird methodology. They don't show the thing their fans are actually trying to find out. People were pissed. But most of the time, they don't even bother asking what the methodology is or trying to do anything themselves.

There's far too much sitting back and waiting for some BNF to spoon feed one publicly-available information.

--

The big failings aren't usually the math itself but, of course, not knowing what question to ask, so it pertains to history research, not just stats.

You'll see a lot of stuff on shipping that looks at AO3 because AO3 shipping numbers are easy to pull... But AO3 shipping numbers don't just happen to be easy to pull: that is both an effect and a cause that is directly related to AO3's content. Someone interested in meta shouldn't be asking "What do AO3's numbers show?" as their first question. They should be asking "Why is this metadata available or not available and what does that mean on a sociological level?"

--

Thing two is the eternal I Have Apparently Never Heard of Anime problem. A fuckton of people theorizing about fandom trends seem to know fucking nothing about whole massive sectors of fandom or treat them as afterthoughts. This is okay if you're writing a history of Media Fandom. It is criminally stupid if you're trying to talk about what makes a piece of media have fic when another doesn't, what kinds of websites make fandoms take off, etc. Those kinds of broad questions need a broad understanding of what's out there.

It's not anime-specific, and I'm not asking for a high degree of knowledge.

I have routinely had people tell me that best friend ships and mystery/crime as a genre aren't popular, and that's why AO3 has this or that pattern... Meanwhile, buddy cops are the bedrock of oldschool slash fandom and make up basically all of the longest-running Western m/m fandoms that aren't Star Trek. CSI slop tends to have legions of future canon het shippers, and they make plenty of fanworks. It's just that some of this is more visible on FFN or older places, not AO3.

I'm always seeing things like someone speculating about how this and that anime fandom thing or bit of mid-00s FFN community drama led to this other thing on AO3, not realizing that AO3 came out of LJ Western fandom slash culture. To them, FFN is so central that it must be the main reference point, not the bajillion and one archives AO3 founders ran or Usenet or mailing lists or LJ.

I once saw someone asking on twitter about where a prominent Ranma fic might have been posted in the mid-90s. People claiming "My professor is an authority!" came out of the woodwork in droves to blither about K/S zines and then LJ. Not only was this entirely wrong, but the right answer was blindingly obvious if you knew enough to interpret the google results. I can only assume that the person tweeting had never heard of Usenet and didn't recognize the acronym for the big anime fanfic group that literally everything like this was first posted to.

I'm talking people insisting that fandom only goes for white characters when it's very obvious that fandom goes for majority leads who are not othered. All the bawwing in the world about "People assume anime characters are white" won't get rid of The Untamed or Kpop thirsters or whatever.

I'm talking sweeping pronouncements about gender and fanfic writers where the person hasn't even heard of FIMFiction or SpaceBattles or Dark Lord Potter cheesefests.

I've been in fandom for a long time, but I wasn't in all these parts, and I wasn't around for 80s zines. You don't need deep knowledge until you pick a research topic. But it's shocking how little shallow, broad knowledge a lot of people have when they're writing their Theory Of All Of Fandom History.

--

People are stupid as shit about survivorship bias, and fandom history is no exception. They're also dumb in the opposite direction, assuming that the thing they like now has always existed in this exact form.

For example, someone got mad at Fanlore for supposedly not documenting the history of f/f zines. Others have searched and searched for the zines of their old show they got into last year and are bewildered to not find any. The reality is that Fanlore editors are attempting to document every Media Fandom zine and have combed through old adzines looking for any mention of anything. Because of the methods of distribution—because it was expensive—small fandoms often had no zines at all.

Femslash fandom doesn't seem to have gotten enough critical mass to do much until Xena. The internet has really democratized things, but even the early internet was still somewhat in that old mindset where only certain popular things have a fandom. I think Yuletide itself, which started in 2003, really helped spread the idea of rare-but-existing fandoms being a thing. FFN and perhaps some other multifandom archives like Media Miner played a huge role.

Nowadays, we think of fic as just how you respond to media, any media, even if there are only two fics for that one car commercial, but that isn't how people saw things in every era—or at least it's not how fandom infrastructure worked. A lot of the time, the big hosting spots were single-fandom archives, often with restrictive content rules. Finding somewhere to post a m/m/f OT3 fic used to be hard. Never mind early zines when photocopiers didn't even exist yet and you had to sell out your print run of 500 to make a go of it.

All good research starts with a lot of preliminary investigation to figure out what you're even trying to look for.

Actually bothering to look for fans talking about their own history or casually chatting with your interview subjects before the formal interview will put a person miles ahead of many of the cringeworthy fandom ~papers~ I've seen.

The biggest mistake people make is going "Okay, these numbers aren't perfect, but some numbers are better than no numbers".

Bullshit.

As soon as there's a pie chart of the false numbers, everyone's brain turns off and they never look at the chart subtitle, never mind the research notes.

Bad numbers are often worse than no numbers.

Look at the logic behind the methodology first. Look at the social context. Basic understanding of human nature and familiarizing oneself with the shape and hangout locations of a community will get you most of the way there before you sit down for a specific interview or try to collect any specific numbers.

--

None of this is a fandom thing. Research is research. It's just that most people think "research" means watching a tiktok that the algorithm likes and were never taught how to evaluate a source for reliability.

Evaluating sources is a skill. I had explicit lessons on it in school. Lots of people don't, and that sucks.

Honestly, watching the more thoughtful debunking content on non-fandom topics, like Miniminuteman's stuff on pseudo-archaeology or Dan Olson's... everything, is a good window into critical thinking, and that's most of what's missing from bad fandom history.

--

But more than any of that, more is more. Not the crap stats, but the narrower, more personal accounts, the interviews. The more fans who investigate their little corner that isn't the same old AO3 site-wide "Why is there so much m/m?" ship stats or the same canned "Everything comes from K/S" history, the better.

What I object to is not amateur efforts but efforts that pull from the same small pool of data or that just reblog a tiny handful of supposed authorities.

--

If people are going to read just one thing... hmm... go try to look up a history of rec.arts.anime.creative, not because I think it's the most important fandom history out there but because it's at the nexus of things a lot of current fandom history work miss.

[sonicasura]

Every time I remember an Autobot or Decepticon bitch about being stuck on Earth, Animated and Prime are the most frequent, it makes me laugh thinking how easy they got it. Imagine any iteration ending up on a version that is much more chaotic than the norm. Especially if the dangers are hidden or completely normal to humans.

We got JoJo's Bizarre Adventure where you literally can't trust even a simple POWER OUTLET. From stone masks that could turn people into eldritch vampire, pieces of Jesus Christ could give people powers, and martial arts which either turn the circulatory system into a sunlight generator (Hamon) or using the Golden Ratio to shred even dimensions (Spin).

I'm not forgetting about Stand Users either. Every sentient creature could become a Stand User, someone who can project a psychic manifestation of their fighting spirits that could look like anything with abilities that range from giving positive encouragement to stopping time. That weird individual on the street could dissect Megatron into pieces with fucking zippers through their Stand.

How about Resident Evil where the constant threat is viral infections? I'm not talking about the standard zombie virus either. We got mutant undead creating ones, parasitic worms/insects, to fucking hivemind mold. All guaranteed to least spawn mutants like giant man eating salamanders, evolving fanged blobs and even an eldritch dinosaur.

They have to constantly decontaminate base than just troops as a simple small strain could turn a rat into a dog sized menace. Plus all those zombies guts and blood they have to clean up if an infected did get inside. I'm pretty damn sure humans are no longer the gross squishies compared to that.

Last best addition to add is the 'Kaiju Series' i.e Kaiju No. 8, Godzilla/King Kong Monsterverse, and Pacific Rim. Normal Earth fauna doesn't cause much compared to this as kaiju practically made themselves home here. The bots aren't exactly prepared for megafauna being a constant presence and frequent threat.

Kaiju are territorial so their respective ships will get attacked if spotted too close to the creatures' home. Some may also feed on metal and think either faction are potential food. The humans here could potentially kick their afts like Kaiju No 8's Defense Force or Pacific Rim's Jaeger Pilots.

Never take what you have for granted. In the Autobots and Decepticons cases, that is a normal simple Earth. The other possibilities could be much worse.

[radioapplerevue]

See a lot of questions scattered about regarding "Why do people even ship Lucifer or Alastor? They hate each other/Lucifer's married/Alastor's ace etc etc etc." And while I doubt most people are asking in good faith, I figured I'd give my answer anyway! In part because these two in conjunction with each other fascinate me and I want to talk about it.

First off, you have Alastor, this character whose whole shtick is trying to convince everyone around him all the time that he's the most mysterious and most dangerous person around. And... he's not. We know he's not. Hell, he's not even in tier 3 of "dangerous people in Hell." But it's very important to him that he is perceived that way, and he goes to great lengths to manufacture and maintain that image.

Then you have Lucifer, who is the most dangerous person in Hell, power-wise, by far. But he doesn't seem to give a shit about that at all. His power means little to him, he didn't want the throne, he doesn't do anything with this position that Alastor would do everything to have. Lucifer is a deeply broken individual whose only concern is his family, and he's not intimidated by Alastor in any way, and never will be.

So he was pretty much tailor-made for Alastor to hate. This guy who has everything Alastor wants, but doesn't give a shit about having it, who he can't scare. Ever. The only way he can get under Lucifer's skin is by digging into his emotional sore spots, and boy howdy does Lucifer have a lot of those. And here's the fun thing! Or one of the fun things, anyway. Most people, even in Hell, would never dare to try and upset Lucifer. Upset the King of Hell? That's suicide, right?

But Alastor knows it's not, because he sees two things right off the bat: one, Lucifer wouldn't do anything to hurt Charlie, and hurting Alastor would do that -- and two, it's just not in Lucifer's nature to do so. Surprising for the King of Hell, but nonetheless true. Lucifer's a showy guy, but he's not a violent guy -- even against Adam, he only toyed with him until Adam made the mistake of going directly for Charlie a second time. Needless to say, it takes a lot to make Lucifer get violent, and it's unlikely to be anything that only targets himself.

And thus sets the stage for what is already a really fun and interesting dynamic, and one that can become even more so with time. Because these are two characters who treat each other in a way that nobody else can or will. Alastor can poke and prod and peel back Lucifer's scars and peer directly at his insecurities. Lucifer can give as good as he gets and challenge Alastor and there's nothing Alastor can do to scare him off. In short, they can make each other confront things that right now just aren't likely for other people.

I like to think eventually, once they get over the initial "how dare he, this isn't allowed, I hate everything about this" stage, they begin to actually... enjoy it. Enjoy the back and forth, enjoy hitting the ball to each other's court, enjoy having someone around who won't back down. And Lucifer is, at his core, sweet. How unsettling it must be for Alastor, to see this extremely powerful man who is also just. Good. How over ten millennia of pain haven't changed that, even as they crumbled his heart into little pieces.

I think Lucifer would fascinate Alastor. And I think Alastor, with all his idiosyncrasies, and his ballsy manner of never backing down from a challenge, would fascinate Lucifer too. And there are so, so many ways you could go from there. Darker ways, softer ways. But there's so much potential, and I am finding it an absolute blast to explore.

As for the ace thing, hello, hi! I'm aroace. And on the sex repulsed side, even! I shouldn't have to reveal this in order for people to get off my back, but hey, there you have it. Now please stop expecting people to volunteer their sexual orientations just so you can be sure they have the... what? Right? To ship things? I enjoy this ship in all flavors. A lot of people have been taking the time to explore asexuality in their fanworks with Alastor, and it's been a delight to see! But in the end, fandom is a sandbox, and I don't care how you are smashing your dolls together as long as you're having fun. And if seeing them in a particular configuration is uncomfortable for you, there's nothing wrong with that, either... just back out, and move on to things more pleasant.

And goodness, don't go after real actual people in defense of fictional ones.

[pinkyjulien]

I did not expect hostility over my Flat Chest mod, so I'll half acknowledge it and kill some of the assumption before they take roots in other people's minds

No, I did not make this mod *because* I refuse to support Na's flat chest mod

Initial Mod idea was a working "binder" for Fem, something you'd equip to flatten the chest- like a real life binder, basically. It's part of my To-Do list of June, for Pride

The mod evolved as I got more ideas, I also started working on a body replacer, it's basically ready to ship as well, but I decided against it; not to step on toes and causing confusion with two "flat chest" body mods, knowing there is also another one in the work from a fellow modder

(the binders themselves will come much later, and will be available for both fem and masc body frames!)

Again, the mod started as a "binder"- I mentioned it multiple times, either in servers where I started sharing the idea, and in the tags of my mod post

"Binders" are not costumes. They are gender affirming aid, something a lot of person use; I've made a couple of "wearable" / "switchable" body parts mods in the past already, including a trans masc vagina, I really hope you don't see this as a costume as well?

In the universe of Cyberpunks, implants and synth skin are used by everyone, for all kind of purpose; GNC people, trans people and gender-fluid people would probably use implants and cyberware to sculpt themselves, feel comfortable in their body

Who's to say some rich citizen wouldn't have some fancy switchable body pieces- hell it's even canon in game, Mr.Stud and Mrs.Midnight? Switchable boobs are already a thing, I don't see what's wrong with switching up for a flatter chest

The survey's results aren't out yet, so I couldn't know. But that's beside the point, as my mod isn't a "bandaid" for any issue this fandom may have

If the name is causing trouble, I'm open to changing it; but the main goal, again, was to flatten the vanilla fem V chest, and I think "flat chest" is pretty straight forward for nexus users

Mmmh. Sorry but, no

Everyone is different and handle their own space differently, and I do not want to support people who did me, or my friends, any serious mental health damage. Be it from harassement, witch hunt and whatnot

I won't be dragging in there old drama from 2 years ago, but I simply won't support someone who tried to get a friend of mine fired from their work place, threatening to send a 30+ pages google doc to their leads and boss, and dragging all of their personal beefs to the public on multiple social medias. They ruined my friend's mental health, and I simply won't forgive nor forget.

That is my right. And I wish people would accept and respect that.

I won't tell anyone who to support or what mod to use/not use, NOBODY should tell you what to do, what to support, who to like or dislike; and nobody can control who I must support and what I must do. Simple as that

And I'm glad the flat chest body mod exist for people who wish to use it! I'm offering another option that I'm sure some people will find useful

Thank you :)

People already gave me trouble in the past for "doing work that already exist"

Those past few weeks has been eventful when it comes to "drama" especially involving Zwei, who's notorious for having a modding monopol and gatekeeping ideas in general

Let's not bring that same mindset here, yeah?

Everyone is free to mod what they want, whatever body they want, to refit what they want!

Again, just to point it out, mod isn't there to fix a problem, that's just a mod I wanted to make

It's a brand new mod, meaning it needs refiting; I did not test the flat chest bodymod, nor tried the already existing vanilla refit. And I won't, for the reasons I cited aboved a few lines before.

I'm glad you agree! Nobody has to do things they don't want to

You call it disingenuous, and I call it having principles/self respect; again, crazy how different people are from one another, and how we just can't assume everyone work and react the same as we do

I see, I see, the name is a big issue; I'm open to suggestion, feel free to leave a reply and I'll see what catches my eyes

Cause It's still my mod, so I get to decide

Anyway, hope this cleared up a few things, and sorry this made people upset!

For everyone else, thank you for the support 🧡

[rose-arwen-padme]

The Jedi Council waited respectfully so he could walk down the ship's ramp first.

Technically, the first boots that met the plaza floor were those of his new guard. New to him—not new to the position. Each of these stone-faced men was already tall, but the black plumes jetting out from their helmets added to their imposing frames. Neither the movement of their uniformed march nor the innocent wind could bend the stricken feathers. The uneducated eye would think these virile men in their metallic armor were the more formidable unit, in stark contrast to the variably aged Jedi Masters hanging behind in their soft, unassuming robes.

Their weapons were on full display. This was about presentation as much as it was about protection. The guards covered as much vertical air as the Neimoidians with their own high hats, yet in their bearing the sentries possessed none of the defeat or cowardliness.

He didn't look at the failed oppressors when he strolled right past them; there wasn't even an acknowledgment of their existence. Perhaps that should have been a sign, but clues are more difficult to spot when you aren't aware you should be looking for them. He was nothing but grins and celebration. Puffed sleeves swung left to right as he traveled forward. This was when he still infused his wardrobe with welcoming blues and browns in the fashion of Naboo's wealthiest—carryovers from decades spent representing them. Long fabrics in charcoal, black, and blood red came later.

I observed from afar as he cordially greeted Obi-Wan. The mild distance and the breeze prevented a clear listening, but I heard him say something about bravery. Then his eyes shifted to the blond-haired boy idling at the Jedi's hip. No amount of space between me and the trio could filter the beaming smile that spread till maxed, nor could I miss the way his eyes went from polite automation to enthralled.

Then I watched—as a pleased spectator to this event, and as a friend—when the new leader of the Galactic Republic placed his hand on Ani's shoulder. The boy was just as worthy of adoration and admiration as anyone, but I recognized what a special moment this was. Though he was so much more than his background, Ani was a former slave from the Outer Rim, only recently indoctrinated into our Republic's fold. Yet the Supreme Chancellor—the most powerful figure in the galaxy; a demon who knew exactly what he was doing—placed a hand of friendship and blessing on the very tunic Ani had worn in his slavery.

Claiming him. Publicly claiming him in front of all of us—the Jedi Council, Obi-Wan, and although I was the unexpected chess piece no one saw coming at the time, he even claimed Anakin right in front of me.

None of us realized what we had just witnessed. When we felt the breeze snake through our ranks, we never suspected it was Fate infiltrating the show. Brushing up against our shoulders. Whispering condolences behind our ears. I remember the weight of my black gown, donned for mourning. I remember the relief I felt at his victory with the Senate, though Naboo had already secured hers without it. I remember the paleness of his hand as it briefly rested next to the boy's tan neck. A bloodless beast touching the sun god heir.

Still grinning, he paraded next towards my group, success at his public and private triumphs electrifying his eyes. Congratulations were exchanged between us like tokens. He smiled at me, and he spoke pretty words for "peace" and "prosperity."

I smiled back and welcomed him inside the palace. Later that evening, we stood side-by-side as Qui-Gon Jinn burned.

If I'd known then what I know now, I would have run forward while Palpatine was still disembarking from the ship, put my body between him and Ani in order to shield the boy, and screamed.

Read more of Suppression, a fanfic telling the story of AOTC from Padmé’s POV, at Archive of Our Own.

[utilitycaster]

"There is zero attempt to extend anything but bad faith."

standing ovation for tidily describing this fandom in a nutshell tbh

Thanks, but I'm talking about a particular subset, the handwringy overwrought appeals to emotion crowd for whom the gods can never under any circumstances be redeemed, so unless you are also talking about that specific small piece of the fandom, I disagree! I actually think the fandom at large has been pretty receptive to the story as it's being told. And honestly, even when I've been in fandoms that frustrated me greatly with widespread bad faith interpretations (Midst and WBN have both had problems here)* they've come around when more obvious evidence came about. Better late than never.

I do think that an issue in this fandom, and fandoms at large, is not so much bad faith but as someone else said, motivated reasoning (though in the case of something the motivated reasoner dislikes, will become bad faith). A lot of people decide how they want to the story to go very early, often in a manner that validates their own existing real-world politics (even if they're not super applicable to the situation at hand) or personal preferences. I mean, that's in the end the source of a good number of shipping bad takes - people decide two characters must be in love and so even if they start dating other people and not talking to each other anymore, the motivated reasoning shipper decides that ACTUALLY this is all a front and the actor's blinks are in secret code and the relationship will definitely break up and the True Love was Always Endgame no matter how many times the creators say "no, it never was our intention to have those characters get together." But even then I think the silent majority of most fandoms are just. vibing and happy to be here. It's just that motivated reasoning people are loud.

And I'm not setting myself apart here; I'm loud and I'm certainly not without bias. My motivated reasoning tends to be based on foregone conclusions that I think are more likely to actually play out, I think, and I try to be self aware about it, but like, I do tend to assume stories will be good and follow some narrative lines and use the hints they drop, and that is itself an assumption because some stories are poorly made. Like, for example, with the gods, I do think that there is very little chance Matt is going to tell a story that's like "hey, Ashley, you know your first ever TTRPG character, who brought you into this friend group and whose life's purpose is to restore worship in the Everlight? Bad news, Everlight's a genocidal cunt and she's gotta die." That's obviously not my only evidence here. We've got the whole opening scene. We've got the fact that the non-Aeorian NPCs who aren't divine companions we've spent time with have been a sickly old man granted peace in death, a gnomish woman granted solace after being cruelly mocked by Aeorian forces, and the beggars who didn't have food despite wagons of supplies going to Aeor, whereas the Aeorian NPCs have been guards, slimy bureaucrats, teens badly beaten for minor crimes, and a drunk cop; the defaced and forgotten temple in a poor neighborhood that is heavily surveilled from afar because its laborers are unwelcome. Hell, as I said before it aired, the fact that the main PCs are gods and not Aeorian mages is a very deliberate and telling choice on its own. But yeah on some level, while I think Bells Hells have the space to decide to kill the gods since they are those same cast members (thought I doubt that is what they will do), I do not think Matt will tell an earlier story that says "hey, everyone at the table except Marisha? your beloved character(s) whom you played for all or most of a campaign followed a rotten-to-the-core lie."

Going off the meta of creators is a bit risky - a lot of dumb D20 discourse is based on assuming Brennan's leftism is the same as Very Online I Do Not Dream Of Labor Leftism and not his actual "the BBEG is the exploitation and undervaluing of labor and the dehumanization of others; labor itself can be deeply fulfilling, you just shouldn't be forced to rely on your capacity to do labor to the exclusion of all other things to be housed and fed" leftism and reasoning from there - but it's certainly more reliable than going off reasoning of "I as a random private individual want the gods to die for whatever the fuck reason and therefore that is the correct thing to happen and any other outcome is bad."

This is very rambly because I just got up and maybe it's that it's a nice morning and I can actually enjoy a leisurely breakfast before going into work unlike most of last week and much of the rest of this week, but for all I proudly identify as a hater, I am very much a lover of fiction and I want it to succeed and I want it to not just validate me. Like, if I hate on something it's because I wish it were better, but I don't hate on something just because it presents a different viewpoint than the one I already held. And I think you have to bring that good faith to fandom as well. If people are being idiots and assholes then yeah you don't need to keep acting like they're valid for that (I mean, they're valid in that everyone has the right to their opinions, but not in the sense that you need to grant those opinions intellectual consideration on par with thoughtful and evidenced meta and theories) but I do not actually go in assuming the fandom is going to be wrong and dumb and disappointing, and I think that's why I've found such enjoyment in it. Most people are chill! Chill people just tend not to loudly say WOW I'M SO CHILL AND THIS STORY IS GREAT.

*one bit of salt to cut the sweetness here but also still weirdly positive: the way I've dealt with that and specifically WBN is that I am trying to write one piece of meta after each episode that doesn't attack people or anything, just lays out my thoughts respectfully. Be the change you wish to see. I think a lot of people in fandom see someone disagreeing with them and go "OH YOU CAN'T LET US HAVE ANYTHING" and frankly this is the cause of almost all fandom unpleasantness I've experienced (in the sense of people seeing me say I don't like something and acting like I shut them down instead of simply didn't vibe), but it's important to remember that isn't how it works. Even if you do think the fandom has widespread bad opinions, you can change this by being thoughtful and patient and putting forth better ones. I mean there's limits, and if a fandom is genuinely hateful, get out, but if it's just surface-level takes for something that should be deeper? Be the one who shows the depth.

[hideawayfairy]

Debunking the Fizz Cheated on Ozzie Theory (Because It Hurts Me 😭)

With any ongoing show, there are bound to be theories that come about and theories can be a lot of fun to read up on. Even if you don't agree with a theory or can disprove one, you're at least bound to find it entertaining. When it comes to Helluva Boss, there was a theory I heard from a couple of people that goes like this: "Fizz actually did make out with Blitzo after they reconciled and feels guilty about cheating." And while I know this show isn't exactly new to having characters who cheat/make questionable decisions regarding their romantic partners, this theory makes me feel uncomfortable. And I'm saying this as someone who ships both Fizz and Ozzie as well as Fizz and Blitzo. But allow me to attempt to ease my own anxiety by making the argument as to why I don't think this theory is possible. This is gonna be long, so strap in.

Let's start by going over the hints people use to support this theory. So we all know the set-up is from this classic line of Blitzo:

For the most part this moment is meant to be taken as more of a joke. But what has people thinking that Fizz actually took Blitzo up on his offer is when we see him do this upon entering Ozzie's office:

Fizz wipes his mouth even though we never saw anything happen to him in the mouth prior to this moment. It's not as if he got punched or was still duck taped. What doesn't help is when Fizz gives this expression as he and Oz are riding the elevator:

This expression has been interpreted in many different ways, but for the sake of this theory, we're going with the interpretation that Fizz looks guilty, especially since he seems to avert his gaze from Ozzie's.

I will grant the theory this in that these aren't bad pieces to use. Again, Helluva Boss has never shied away from showing messy relationships. So what's my counterargument to this theory?

To start off with, I don't believe Fizz would do anything to jeopardize his relationship with Oz. As we see in the next episode, Fizz was too afraid to even not participate in Mammon's Clown Pageant because one of his biggest fears is losing Ozzie.

I would think that if Fizz and Ozzie were in an exclusive relationship with one another, Fizz wouldn't want to cheat on Ozzie because he values him too much. That would be an instant deal breaker to what they have going on.

Furthermore, while Fizz does hide some aspects of himself even with those he loves, it's pretty obvious to tell what he's feeling. When Blitzo comes with him to the pageant, he seems more annoyed than worried about Blitzo's presence.

And to help support this further, we do see how Fizz would react when having Blitzo around could potentially ruin him.

He explicitly calls him out for making fun of his boss. At no point in this episode is Fizz ever worried about what Blitzo could directly do to harm his relationship with Ozzie. If anything, he's more afraid of what Mammon could do to their relationship when Mammon tries to blackmail Ozzie into not letting Fizz quit.

I'm not sure if my counterargument is good or even holds up in fully debunking this theory, but I knew I had to say something for my own peace of mind. And it's not the fault of whoever made this theory or those that believe it. I'm just someone who feels passionate about Fizz and Ozzie and I want to believe the best of their relationship. But I want to know what you think. Do you believe this theory is possible? Do you agree or disagree with my points? Regardless, thanks for reading!

[brisquad-unit-4402]

IM LOSING IT OVER YOUR RECENT IKE FIC. LIKE OH MY GOD. its so sweet and heartwrenching i felt just as nervous and anxious as reader the entire time, and when ike reciprocated my heart MELTED AHHH his freckles!!! how kind and beautiful he is, and his confusion turning into acceptance and his SQUEALSSS AAAA. i cant take it this is my fav ike and probably luxiem fic of all time. all of your hard work paid off so well, it was so well structured and emotional and everyone felt so real!! like they arent characters, theyre actual people!!

ahh, now i wish i knew ike's perspective during those stream moments and his reaction to pen and paper ship content HAHA. i imagine he swiftly bookmarks it on his private account but he keeps blushing and his hands shake whenever he sees any fanart WAAAH. maybe one time he sees pen and paper kissing and he cant properly look at the notifications from reader's chat without FLUSHING RED i love them so bad

i love whenever i'm reading a fanfic and it's so sweetly emotional that you feel your own emotions kicking in. so whenever i hear my work has that effect on someone else it's one of the nicest feelings in the world and WHAT DO YOU MEAN FAVORITE IKE AND/OR LUXIEM FIC EVER. that's super high praise thank youuuuu sobsobsob

i mean this is the kindest most /posi way possible but "they aren't charcters, they're actual people" is the scariest compliment i've ever heard. like on one hand i'm genuinely happy! i worked really hard on keeping multifaceted personalities in mind even for the minor characters! but also Oh No. I'm Writing Vtubers. We Need To Play This So Carefully And So Conscious Of The Creator/Audience Boundary Or My Ass Is GONE

real talk one of my most favorite ike things is when he squeals at something cute or because he's embarrassed ahhhh. and his speaking voice gets so high pitched and soft when he's flustered too like?? it's probably my favorite charm point of his

the ogs remember the poll i ran like a month ago about if ike should have freckles or not. shoutout to the landslide victory, if i remember correctly 97% of voters wanted ike with freckles! so glad that worked out, it works so well with the star theme and the difference between an online friendship meeting irl, and how reader loves them because it's a reminder that they have so much to learn about ike and are ready/willing, and also, freckles are just plain adorable. ike is just plain adorable. put them together and if i were richer and thirstier i'd be commissioning an artist

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

real talk tho i feel like ike goes from 1 to 100 whenever he catches himself simping over reader before the off-collab. either he's really good at acting composed, being normal, just interacting with his best friend like best friends do... or he's a stuttering, blushy mess that wavers like jell-o.

ike's the type of guy to sleepily check twitter before going to bed and whenever he sees pen and paper on his fyp it's like he snaps awake. maybe even squeaks or goes "a!" if it's especially.... you know. sometimes he can't even comprehend that people want him and reader to. well. his mouth goes dry.

and then he feels so dirty and embarrassed just because it's there, but... he's still looking at it. is it bad he's still looking at it? it definitely is but it's captivating, in a way. somehow. the artists are so talented, and somehow they nail your body language to a t, and the way your hair swoops above your eyes, and draw you with the cutest little expressions, and—

ah, who is he kidding.

in moments of weakness it triggers something in him to bury his face a little deeper in his blankets, pretend the screen's light would cool the heat pooling over his cheeks, and search the hashtag himself.

not even three pieces of fanart later, he has to throw his phone face-down on the mattress, cover his blush with a pillow, and now he's definitely squealing. it's healing and it makes him ill. it's... pretty. you're pretty. and he's pretty dumb for letting a silly crush distort itself like this.

the worst part is that some of these line up a little too well with daydreams he wanted to lock away until the end of time. he likes when he takes the lead. the stunned, puppyish expression so rare it only shows up on your face during the biggest plot twists during a stream, but coated in a darkened blush as he pecks them on the cheek, elegant and composed. calm.

ohhhh, this can't be good for his heart. especially when ike himself is so red-faced just thinking of it. calm, his foot.

still with the pillow over his flush, ike feels around for his phone and sets it on his nightstand. he chides himself. that's enough internet for the day, eveland! now quit acting like a shoujo high schooler in love and go to bed already, it's not going to happen!

he sets his face into a determined frown as he lifts the pillow and sets it aside. with any luck, he'd go the rest of the night without thinking of reader and his feelings for them.

the frown eases as he nestles into his blankets and tucks himself in. soft sheets and warm comfort greet him as he shuts his eyes, and he enters the fluffy haze of sleep as he slips into dreamland...

...is what he'd like to say, but not even ten seconds later his eyes snap open and jerks upright in bed. wait, i'm acting like i'm in love?!

he sits with the thought seeping through his brain like a corrosive acid, filing through every little moment he daydreamed about you, and when those don't paint him a picture he likes, he tries to recall the moments he shared with you instead. those are even fonder, and even worse.

he slaps his hands over his face and sighs, and when it sounds lovesick he sighs even more.

✧. ┊ masterpost ✧. ┊ kofi

[sapphire-weapon]

Not to rattle the cages, but for all of their so called, "sexual tension", Leon and Ada have a startling lack of intimacy. Everything they find out about each other most likely is learned from reading sterile, impersonal dossiers and not from any meaningful conversation.

And the only quality time they did have with each other took place completely off-screen and it's not even entirely clear what happened because it was only referenced in a single blink-and-you'll-miss-it throwaway line of dialogue in Damnation. (I'm willing to concede that it's likely they banged, but it's also just as likely that Ada blueballed him and ran off, because her follow-up question of "You're angry with me, aren't you?" doesn't make sense if he actually came LMAO But that's beside the point.)

But... at the same time... I don't think it's that simple. There's more to it than that.

God, I'm really about to make a case for Aeon, aren't I? Damn my dedication to this series's canon. Let's think of this post as the Aeon haters' guide to understanding Aeon, because it's fucking canon whether we like it or not. Goddamn it.

To start off, there's a difference between knowing someone well and being intimate with them. I've talked in the past about how intimate Luis's death scene was in RE4make, and Leon and Luis knew barely anything about each other at the time of his death. But that doesn't take away from the intimacy of the scene.

I feel like a similar principle applies to Leon and Ada.

Ada was with Leon throughout the majority of what was objectively the worst night of his life. Nothing else comes close to Raccoon City in terms of what it did to Leon -- no matter how much greater of a threat he faces logistically, it's still not as bad as what happened to him in Raccoon City. So, Ada knows Leon in ways that no one else in the series does.

Claire got a glimpse of the old Leon -- arguably, the "real" Leon -- but that's all it was. A glimpse. They weren't together long enough for her to really get to see what made him tick or to understand the perspective he was bringing into the city with him -- but Ada got to see all of that. And there's an intimacy to that all on its own -- especially when you consider that, after RE2, Leon starts building walls around himself made of machismo and bad one-liners that eventually wash away beneath a sea of liquor, which then dampens and darkens everything around it.

But no matter how fast he tries to run from himself, or how many walls he tries to put up, or how hard he tries to become someone else, there's still one person in his life who has seen and remembers who Leon S. Kennedy really is, and her name is Ada Wong.

He's allowed himself to be weak in front of her, to fail in front of her, to get frustrated and angry and overwhelmed around her -- and there is a real intimacy in that kind of vulnerability. And not once has she ever judged him for it or held it over his head or tried to harp on him about how he's changed -- because, to her, he hasn't changed. She can see through all of those new defense mechanisms he's put in place and knows that the core of who he still is is still intact. So, she silently allows him to work through whatever it is that he needs to work through while still trusting that he'll always be who he's always been -- and that's pretty fucking powerful, honestly.

And that's why he feels like he can't let her go -- because he's afraid that, if he does, he'll be letting go of the very last piece of himself that's still alive and holding on from before all the trauma set in.

The sad reality of the ship, though, is that that's not true. If Leon were to let Ada go, he wouldn't be letting go of his old self. Because, while Ada has seen the old Leon -- has met and known and spoken with him -- she is not what's keeping the memory of the old Leon alive; she is not the actual bearer of his legacy. Sherry is.

Even though Sherry wasn't around Leon nearly as much as Ada was and didn't get to know him the same way, that doesn't matter. What Leon doesn't see is that he didn't give up who he was because of Ada. He gave up who he was because of Sherry. He did it for her sake -- to save and protect and take care of her.

That's why he almost breaks down and cries when he sees her for the first time in RE6, when he's never done that when reuniting with Ada. It's because Sherry is carrying with her so many of the pieces of Leon that he left behind in order to properly fill the role of a federal agent. Doing what he did for her makes him more of a father to her than William Birkin ever was, and Sherry knows this. That's why she didn't think twice about following in his footsteps and jumping at the opportunity to become an agent herself -- and, to do that, she trusts Derek goddamn Simmons when she really shouldn't have, but she does it because she's still carrying the old Leon's optimism and trustfulness and faith in humanity. Again: she's following in Leon's footsteps, and the old Leon is the only Leon she ever really knew. Even if she didn't know him nearly as well as Ada did.

I think, on some unconscious level buried deep within his psyche, Leon knows this -- but it's a reality that's too painful to face, so he doesn't. Instead, he projects all of that shit onto Ada, because it's easier that way. Besides, he's been doing it for so long already, so why stop now? There's comfort in the familiar, and Ada is nothing if not familiar.

But, to go back to what I was saying earlier about Ada trusting that Leon will always be who he's always been -- that's also why he believes in her in RE6 when no one else does. Part of it is his projections about his past self and all that bullshit, but there's also an element of... "she would do the same for me." Because she has. She's been doing it for years.

And in that specific regard, there is a real maturity to their relationship that doesn't really get enough attention or praise from the fanbase. The whole "sexual tension" thing is stupid, and you're right to point it out in your ask as being stupid, because Leon and Ada's relationship isn't about sex -- and it shouldn't be! And that's why that line in Damnation is so fucking pointless and stupid AND I HATE IT lmao Leon and Ada's relationship is about two people who accept and trust each other without judgement, even when they really shouldn't.

NOW.

WITH ALL THAT BEING SAID.

EVERYTHING I JUST WROTE OUT IN THAT HUGE WALL OF TEXT IS ONLY APPLICABLE TO THE OG STORYLINE. THE REMAKES DO SOMETHING VERY, VERY DIFFERENT WITH LEON AND ADA. And honestly, the massive changes to their relationship are really the #1 major reason why I believe the remakes are a completely different timeline of events -- because so much of what I just said is not fucking true for the remake versions of Leon and Ada. It's just straight up not true.

Remake Leon does not accept Remake Ada for who she is (he literally asks her to fucking change, for god's sake!! LMAO), and he definitely does not fucking trust her. RE4make basically erased the canonicity of Leon/Ada as a romantic relationship. It's not there anymore; it's no longer a canon romance; it's gone. If it's anything still at all, it's one-sided unrequited Ada having fallen for Leon, and him not being able to get away from her fast enough.

But that doesn't mean that their relationship is lacking in intimacy.

We've talked before about how Remake Leon is touch-starved as fuck -- and touch seems to be his love language. And while Leon is greedy and sneaky with the touches he steals from Ashley in RE4make, none of those little touches that the two of them pass back and forth come anywhere close to Ada's touches in RE2make.

The scene between them on the shuttle is very intimate -- and not just because she kisses him. It's the way she sits so close to him, the way she leans into him, the way she keeps a hand on his knee and gently caresses it with her thumb. It's the way they both speak in more hushed tones, the way she tries to be soothing with the tone of her voice. It's how she kisses him -- close-lipped and gentle, meant only to ease his anxiety and quiet his mind (and also get him to shut the fuck up for two goddamn seconds. god I respect her so much for this LMAO).

And not just that scene, but it's also present in the way she patches him up after he gets shot. We don't get to see it, but if you look again at Leon's bandages? She had to strip him the fuck down in order to do that LMAO home girl was sitting there unbuttoning his shirt and going "this sucks he's unconscious this isn't even fun. pain in the ass." And when he wakes up? Sure, she's gone, but he definitely knows that she had to have been all up in his business in order to do what she did -- and she left her coat behind with him as a fucking blanket and I'm sorry but that's so cute. IT'S CUTE. I'LL ADMIT IT. But it was probably a moment for him of "Wow. She really cares." -- because, again, touch is his love language. AND BOY DID SHE DO THAT A WHOLE FUCKIN LOT.

So, basically.

What I'm trying to say is.

Leon and Ada's relationship is poorly written and poorly executed and I hate it for a myriad of reasons, most of which involve the fact that it limits Ada's character and waters her down to a really unnecessary degree, but... I can't bring myself to say that there's no there there. Are they the hot and sexy spy vs spy ship that the director of Damnation desperately wanted us to believe they are? Absolutely fucking not. Is the ship predicated on only semi-resolved sexual tension? Also fucking no.

Does any of that actually matter...? Again... No. It doesn't matter. There is something to it. Even if they are still mostly strangers to each other, knowing facts about each other isn't what's important about their relationship. It's knowing who the other is at their core that's important.

At least, in OG.

In Remake, Leon can't fucking stand her by the time of RE4. And if anyone tries to say otherwise, they're fucking delusional.

Though I honestly believe that if either version of Ada learned more about who Leon was in the day-to-day, she'd probably like him a whole lot less. Leon, shave your face and stop drinking and why are the fucking Beastie Boys playing in your car when you're driving to work and holy shit are you really watching Casino for the third time this week oh my god

[fourseasonsfigs]

Harper's Bazaar Game

I have enough Bazaar figs at this point to fill up more than one fig stand - but I'm still happy to get more. With any luck, I might manage to put together the whole shoot at this rate!

The inspiration for this fig set are these pictures from the official Harper's Bazaar x 山河令 issue:

And since the photos aren't quite enough, here's one of the official videos, featuring our favorite extremely charged weiqi game:

The scene with the crossed arms is at 1.08.

I do feel you need a pic with the full body outfits for fig comparison pics, so let me rustle up another one...

Didn't mind going back to this pic one bit! In fact, the less frequently posted but just as good second pic in this set...

We deserve it! Side note...I do NOT have a fig set of this scene yet, which seems like a grave oversight. That's all. I'm just saying. Please and thank you fig makers!

These two arrived safely in their polystyrene boxes. I have to say at this point, I'm pretty sold on these boxes as a protection mechanism - I've had extremely good look with them. I used to air bubble wrap everything, but these days I don't, which not only dramatically reduces the shipping volume, therefore saving me expensive ship costs, but dramatically increases my will to live when staring down huge boxes of solidly taped shut bubble wrap.

Here's a close up of these figs - please note the Zhehan socks and woven leather shoes combo and Gong Jun's big stompy boots, I love them.

Here's their benches too. The benches are nice and stable, no wobbles here.

And here they are! Look at those FACES. You know how much I love that sideways smile! This is the fig maker that always does the beauty marks on the ears too, which is always a nice touch.

These are just too perfect. I like the poses quite a bit, with Zhehan's hand on the bench and Junjun's on his knee.

Those are some shorter shorts there, gentlemen. I'd say they were at least mid-thigh length.

I ended up gluing them down as they didn't balance at all on the seats. I have learned (the hard way!) that fig stickers only work if the figs are pretty perfectly balanced to begin with.

This is time for my obligatory comment on how much I love Zhehan's hair in this style. Just amazing, my all time favorite.

You can see how the chairs are quite stable here - all four legs on the ground for each one!

I'm so happy these delicate pieces survived shipping intact!

This is a nice shot of Zhehan's curling-up smile.

And we're back around! What cuties. The fig maker did such a nice job with these - the eyes and expressions are just top notch.

I feel like the fig makers have really dialed in the process at this point! We get such good quality and such good detail.

Nice and flat undersides here, so they sit firmly in the chairs - at least once they have a little bit of glue.

Their feet are even posed differently (and cutely!) no replication of body types here.

I'll say once again how much I love Zhehan's hand on the bench. Adorable.

One last shot of them posing in their picture shot - I guess I should have scooted them in a little bit more so their wrists would have crossed!

Our very beautiful fig cards.

Material: Resin

Fig Count: 462

Scene Count: 31 (I already used this little scene before!)

Rating: Our favorite game

[link back to Master Fig Index for more posts]

[atopearth]

Norn9: Last Era Part 1 - Prelude

I have been wanting to play this fandisc ever since I finished the main game, but I had to finish Amnesia: Later first so I literally had to stop myself from dropping everything for it hahaha. Anyway, to say I'm excited is an understatement because I am SO ready. Personally, I'm planning on starting with Senri or Heishi because they're my least favourites but I'll see, I might alternate with guys I kinda like so I don't get bored haha. Nagisa is pretty! I'm actually so glad we're getting more background on Masamune and the island because we basically knew nothing about it in the original game. As for Masamune's uncle, definitely a genius scientist for making the hiyoko-san! Who doesn't want adorable little chicks cleaning and cooking and even navigating a ship?! I mean if it's going to be functional and practical, why not be cute as well?! I believe in the importance of cuteness and I approve. Anyway, it's nice to finally see "adults" in this world aside from Yuiga. Lmao at Masamune being surprised at how many hiyoko there actually were on the ship hahahah. I find it amusing that the Hiyocook wasn't actually good at cooking tasty food until Masamune gave it a cook book haha. It's also interesting but sad to know that the hiyoko actually can't remember too many things and that Masamune actually has to delete recipes if he wants Hiyocook to cook something else. They're robots, but seeing stuff like Hiyocook getting dejected that Masamune didn't like its' cooking and then becoming happy when Masamune said the food is delicious, isn't that enough for you to care about them?

I guess it's nice to know that just as everyone else came on the Norn unsure of what to expect and how to interact with others, Masamune was also worried about talking to people outside of the island. I think it was sweet of him to be considerate towards Kakeru and want him to be able to relax here. Ooh so you have to go through the whole Prelude with all the characters perspectives before you can go to the individual story! I like that because it's very interesting to me right now. Is the sister Masamune is talking about Nagisa, and her brother is Natsuhiko? I never thought about it until now but their hair colour is the same isn't it! I know people aren't that fond of Masamune but I really love him. I love how he prioritises others before himself without any hesitation, and I think it's exactly because of that, that Kakeru can't help but open up and like him for who he is as well. Since there's only nine squares, I assume we won't get to the girls' perspectives, which is sad because I would have liked to see their initial impressions too even if some bits and pieces may have already been shown.

Even though Mikoto is harsh as usual, seeing her so concerned and worried about Sakuya reminds me of how much I liked them together. I can see why Kakeru has always been irked by Mikoto considering her attitude when she first arrived on the Norn, especially when he cooked for everyone and she didn't appreciate it at all and instead said pretty harsh words. I can't blame him for disliking her at all haha😅 Both Sakuya and Mikoto are stubborn, but I like seeing Sakuya who usually dotes on Mikoto and would do anything for her be strict with her and not budge on her ruining her health by not eating. Mikoto is a true tsundere that cares about people too much for her own good even if she doesn't express it well. Honestly, I never really thought too deeply about the story of Rapunzel but I do agree with Sakuya to an extent that the witch was "protecting" Rapunzel in her own way whether those were her true intentions or not. Natsuhiko, Setsu and Ron chilling on the ship together was such a nice CG, I actually quite like their relationship. I didn't expect Ron and Natsuhiko to have known each other for eight years! It's sad to think about how tough Natsuhiko's life was after leaving the island and how his desire to stop the Reset was the only thing fuelling him. Lmao at Natsuhiko being so sweet and packing Ron's bags for him when he leaves for the Norn, it's so funny how he packs stuff like cold medicine haha, he's too cute! Natsuhiko really is like a mother or wife haha, I love how he told Ron to keep his hands to himself and wear pajamas to bed🤣 I thinks it's nice to see that just as Natsuhiko was interested in Mikoto after seeing photos of her during his investigation, Ron was also interested in Nanami even though it's mainly because he knew she had the power to erase memories.

Personally, I will always agree with Natsuhiko's thoughts and feelings towards the Reset because it's ridiculous to control how the world should be, it's egotistic and forces your own ideals on the world itself. Also, in the end, the fact that they keep doing multiple Resets already goes to show it does nothing but merely reset things to a certain time but humans don't change how they act and the decisions they make. If they don't remember, they won't learn and if they don't learn, they will always do the same thing thinking it's the right way. Ron throwing away the bag Natsuhiko so thoughtfully prepared was so sad but so him. I didn't expect Ron's name to come from Mahjong though lol. Lmao, I can't help but love Hiyocook, it's so dedicated to cooking and gets dejected when it's Akito's turn now that he's come aboard the ship hahahaha.

I really enjoy seeing the guys interact and learn things from each other considering their various different backgrounds, especially Sakuya, I'm happy for him that he gets to experience a bit more of the world with Kakeru and Akito teaching him things. Lmao at Akito scared of cracking eggs because he's worried a little chick will come out of it🤣🤣 HAHAHA, Akito being scared of birds because he met a peacock who ended up trying to court him by following him 24/7 and leaving him bugs and stuff on his doorstep is so silly!!🤣🤣 Akito meeting Senri for the first time in six years and not being able to call out his name because Senri didn't remember him broke my heart. It was obvious that Akito was good at cooking because he wanted to cook delicious food for Senri but hearing him say it really warms my heart. He's always done everything he could to protect and love Senri but they were forced to be separated in such a terrible way. It was so sweet how Akito actually talked to Hiyocook and swapped shifts so he could cook for Senri, poor Akito faced his fears did Senri! Even though I do acknowledge that Kakeru can go a bit too far sometimes (also Senri's fault sometimes tbh), when he got Senri to say that the food was delicious louder so Akito could hear it, I was so happy for Akito. And honestly, if Kakeru wasn't so drastic, Senri really might just stay in his room forever being babied by Masamune and them who would bring him food.

I feel bad for Mikoto, can totally understand why she was scared of Itsuki, his first impression is definitely the worst haha. Lmao, I love how Ron's comment about thinking that Itsuki was some sort of prostitute made all the girls avoid him🤣 Legit ruined his reputation with one word. HAHAHA, Itsuki definitely deserved the flying kick from Sakuya when he asked Mikoto to meow🤣 LMAO at Itsuki thinking Senri was a zashiki warashi (child ghost) because he never realised he existed😂😂 I've always wondered about Senri's tattoo on his face but since they never addressed it, I just thought of it as some sort distinction to make him look less plain haha, but knowing that the adults in the village basically did it to brand him and always recognise him so he can never run away just makes me all the more disgusted with them. They tried to kill Akito and branded Senri for their livelihoods thinking that just because they needed them to live, it was all right to do these things because it was a matter of life and death. It was actually pretty funny how when Sakuya wasn't feeling good after seeing the future, Senri got Ron to help and Ron was basically useless and just kept wondering how he should pull himself together and be a proper adult like Senri told him he should hahahha.

I was actually wondering why it felt so quiet, I completely forgot about Heishi! I can't remember if it was ever told, but I really didn't realise that Heishi was part of a travelling entertainment troupe playing the flute before he came on the Norn! I can see why Itsuki cares for Heishi so much in his route now. He was the one who gave Itsuki the push he needed to see his sister's grave and make him realise that there are things more important than just listening to The World and going along with things using excuses like it can't be helped. It's also nice to see Nanami get to break out of her shell with Heishi because he just does whatever he wants. I always felt like Heishi was the one who helped Nanami get out of her shell the most so I was disappointed when I actually didn't like his route, but hopefully this will be better considering I'm really enjoying the Prelude! I really like how the three hour train ride (one way) was how the three of them started playing cards together and getting along haha! I knew Itsuki's sister's body wasn't in the grave but I never thought that it was because her body got incinerated since people didn't know what her illness was and thought it might be contagious. That is certainly something cruel to have to face with every time he visits the grave, it must hurt to think he couldn't stop it and couldn't even save the house or their belongings, that is so terrible. They basically razed everything that reminds him of his life with his sister. I think it was really sweet of Heishi's Grandpa and Seiji to give Heishi so much money in hope that he could run away and live a free life for himself instead of being shackled to The World. It's sad to think that Heishi has nothing important to him so he thinks it's pointless to run away to somewhere he doesn't even know, but I think his decision is right in that by being beside Mikoto and them, there's a chance he'll find a way of life he wants to live, and that by interacting with others who understand and know his powers, he can learn to accept that it's a part of him instead of just calling it an illness. I've always liked how Heishi gave his tie to Nanami, it's so cute. I liked how Masamune scolded them for coming back so late and Kakeru called him a dad hahaha. I think I especially liked it because Nanami, Itsuki and Heishi have never really experienced something like that where their parents would be so worried about them coming home so late and shout at them, it's endearing haha, not everyone gets to experience that normal concern and love.

Overall, I really liked the Prelude! I kinda hoped to see more of Masamune's part with the scientists but oh well, I still enjoyed seeing everyone's perspectives. I personally enjoyed seeing how Heishi, Itsuki and Nanami's relationship developed from the beginning the most, but I think it was also really cute to see how Kakeru always flusters Masamune and what kind of feelings Masamune had as the first one on the ship waiting for everyone to board. But yeah, I really just enjoyed watching everyone pop up one by one filling up the ship as they all became the rowdy bunch they were when Koharu joined. The extra insight into everyone's thoughts and feelings as they all left things behind once they stepped on to the Norn for their various reasons was interesting to watch and I honestly can't wait to see more of their stories!

[fyx-ation]

A Meandering Ramble on FFXVI

Firstly, if you haven't played the game yet or haven't finished the game yet, I suggest scrolling on. If you want a recommendation to play it, the best I can give you is a 7/10. Worth playing. Not the best thing on the market in the same territory but refreshing (I might use that word a lot going forward) and holds interest very well. Like a page-turner of a book.

That said, the rest of my ramble will be behind the cut to spare spoiling others.

Huh. What a strange little game. I actually just finished it, though I do need to go finish the chronolith things at some point. But I wanted to strike while the iron is hot, so this might be all over the place. I usually try to provide some essay-like structure when I write about a game... But I'm not really feelin' it since I've been working 5am shifts for a while and my brain is fried.

I have not read or watched any other reviews or summaries or impressions of the game. I didn't want my opinion to be tainted by bias because some creator or another loved or hated it.

It is Very Pretty. But perhaps not in a PS5 sort-of rock your eyeballs way. It handles like the Witcher III and Final Fantasy had an off-putting love-child. By that, I mean just the walking around and interacting with things reminds me of Witcher. Casual conversations are overheard from NPCs, and occasionally one that will actually speak to you (Clive) even if they aren't offering a quest or incentive. Facial animations, weather/landscape animations. Very Pretty but maybe a smidge outdated? How is that possible? Everything is lovely! But a little stiff if it's not an important, scripted, you-can't control your character here, sort of scene. The ones that aren't separately rendered cutscenes but still have extra polish? Yeah, not those.

You know what else this game reminds me of? Mass Effect (or Dragon Age). There's no open world to explore. There are pocket maps that you can return to from your Normandy Hideaway, but usually you're just sent there to do a mission quest or hunt or something.

So, let's deconstruct that a little. I think and hope that the producers of this game looked at what has been working and what has landed with the fan-base like a sopping wet diaper. Open world fatigue? Absolutely real. Stamina bars? Fuck right off. Pacing the game out with enormous, unskippable BS like a car ride because the plot is paper thin? Nope!

Does it work for a Final Fantasy game, though? See, this is where the conversation gets choppy. (While I didn't interact with reviews, I did see some plumes of smoke on the horizon in the form of thumbnails and the like). Some people are ride or die "this ain't MY final fantasy." Worse, some are like "this isn't a JRPG q_q."

Personally, I let that ship sail years ago. I loved the old turn-based games, don't get me wrong. I lament there aren't that many on the market anymore. But I've moved on. 16 is probably the biggest departure so far from that. Excluding the online games, they've been moving away from that format since 12. 13 was the last to have party members who you can actually control. (I'm not counting the 7 remake here, either) 16 doesn't have a party system. You can't swap Thane Krios (my space boyfriend) in when you fast travel from your hideaway to the next story beat. It's just the protag and whatever side piece is relevant at the moment, and that side character just does their own thing.

Do I like it? Ehh.... yes and no. Clive doesn't talk to himself or them much, so I feel like a lot more banter was needed. I could see why they left it out on the battle maps ("Hey, Clive, remember when were playing checkers and mom kicked the board because oh hello Mr. Behemoth."). But in city hubs? More banter, please. Even more conversations like the newer God of War games have would be most welcome.

And controlling just Clive? It's fine. I am A-okay with it. Combat's really fun, even when I'm not playing at my best and half-dozing on the couch. It's better than holding down the circle button (15 shaming is my kink). It's all amazingly refreshing in comparison to SE's other departures from turn-based battles. It's the first one so far (again excluding ff7r) to actually succeed at doing something different.

But I would not recommend the game to anyone on that alone. If they were looking for a hack n' slash pew pew magic pew game, I'd suggest the newer God of Wars first.

This is where I'm on the fence about how to judge the game as a whole because it isn't SPECTACULAR. It's good. Combat's good. Story is decent. Side characters are interesting (though some are woefully under-cooked, including Jill, whom I often compared to a piece of cardboard while talking to friends). Pacing a HUGE improvement from previous installments, though the last few hours of the game are weirdly smooshed into sidequests which aren't really sidequests because they are invaluable to the story and the game expects you to do them.

However. The world-building, which is very nice, is padded with lore directories just to clarify shit to people who have no idea what the fuck is going on or who have maybe missed or forgotten details that flesh out the motivations of everyone on the two continents. Did you forget who was fighting who while Clive was was off kicking boxes? Boy, do we have the right solution for that: it's LORE DUMP MAN and his faithful sidekick MAP TIMELINE WOMAN. I'm not saying they are bad things... just... odd. Heavy-handed? I love it when games offer some sort of journal to keep me on track or remind me of things, and yet they feel like they were put in this game because things are a bit blurry for the first third. They throw a lot of names at you, a lot of factions, and a lot of talk of different battles that you don't even witness so the only way to clarify all that is to be given Baby's First Overview. I think that might be indicative of a small failing on the game's part. Lots of telling with little showing often leads to lore dumps in RPGs, because it's critical that you understand for the sake of the story. Weirdly, there actually aren't a lot of exposition dumps in the actual gameplay. I guess they couldn't find a happy medium.

It's late. Gotta get up at 4, so I'll bring this ramble to a close for now. I'll talk about tone and themes later, probably.

Is it worth $70 and satisfying? Mostly. If you like button mashing combat and fantasy, sure. If you're a die-hard FF person, sure, but bolster your expectations as it doesn't really fit that mold. Anyone else that's curious, I'd say wait for a sale or promotion.

TBC

[alovelyburn]

Yhe best berserk meta award is yours and it is mostly because In my opinion you understand the story and you are not delusional I love every content but smtms ppl think too much about Griffith/Guts They are important but not as much as others makes them be They were never great love story They could be but like guts/Casca their potential was wasted long time ago They will never get any valid romantic confirmation ever unless we count possibilty of Griff offing himself for guts which is weak Especially since someone else is now in charge with just the info from Miura Thank you for taking off the shipping glasses while writing analysis

Man, that's a loaded beginning, sdafljknsdf.

Anyway I'm not going to get into how people who aren't me approach things, I can only speak for myself. SO....

I think for me the relationship between those two is the... second most important single thing in the series - the first being Guts himself, the individual, since he's the protagonist. But even though I think it's the most important thing, it's still only one of many different important things.

I also tend to think of Berserk as being... Okay I say that it's about Griffith and Guts' relationship because it's a sort of teal deer version of what i actually think. But I actually think of it as being about a number of larger concepts - all that yinyang and balance stuff, light/dark interconnection and interaction, the nature of humanity, free will vs fate, and cycles both cosmic and earthly, etc etc -- with Griffith and Guts' relationship being the single biggest and most important expression of those concepts.

A lot of these concepts are scales- individualism vs collectivism, rationality vs emotionality, etcetc, and generally you'll have each character embodying certain aspects of a scale and the relationship itself representing the entire existence of the scale.

I probably sound incoherent, so here's an example:

if you have a scale of "trees not forest" vs "forest not trees" then obviously Guts is on one side (focused on the smaller scale) and Griffith is on the other (focused on the larger picture) and their relationship reflects both the potentially complementary nature of those world views (where each provides what the other needs and thus they encompass all of the whole scale) and the potentially conflicting nature of the world views (where the two sides can't reach an equilibrium and end up competing instead.)

And you can just kind of go down the line with these things because they are pretty consistently opposite but complementary pieces forged from the same metal.

But it comes with each of them having their own... set of Things off to the side that reflect and deepen their side of that scale - Griffith and Charlotte (who represents his grand dream to redefine the world - big picture) vs Guts and Casca (who represents his desire for belonging and personal connection - small scale) being a good example of the complementary sideplots to the above.

Anyway that's really where I'm coming from on all this stuff. No one is entirely objective but I try to keep my bullshit out of my understanding of the series as much as I can, because ultimately I'm more interested in what stories are trying to say than what I'd like to hear.

Plus I'm like a super hardcore canon purist.

[acourtofthought]

Sarah said that her favorite tropes are enemies to lovers and marriage of convenience. She's shows us that through her books plenty of time. She might not have directly done marriage of convenience but she does that more with mating bonds -> Nessian could be an example.

Sarah never said anything about couples that have liked each other from the start. She often tells us she loves banter and tension and that.. well, it doesn't happen with El/riel. (I swear to god, if one of them comes out and says "But now they have tension and conflicts because the bonus chapter-" I will slap them with their own words "tHe bOnUs cHapTeR iS iRReLeVaNt")

You could pretty much say elucien have the marriage of convenience (mating bond of convenience?). So between Elucien and El/riel, if we go with what she's said and written- I think it's a pretty obvious answer.

Seriously. No one gives a damn if El/riel like each other for a long time. If they don't seem right to Sarah, she won't take their route. Sjm likes her characters to explore first and see where they take her to. To claim that because El/riel like each other for a long time and Elucien aren't on great times, it will forever stay like that shows us that these people don't know Sjm well.

She never talked about El/riel except for that one Interview when she had legit says she sees El/riel as brother and sister (2017 or 2028 Interview). The clips that they claim as "El/riel proof" are just Sarah talking about Nessian or other couples "She said Sjm hates it when her fav ship aren't endgame! That's El/riel proof because El/riel has been there for a long time!" Did Sjm tell you that El/riel is her fav ship? You assume because she had written romantic scenes for them, that seals the deal? Have you already forgotten that Feylin, Chaoleana, Moriel, Dorleana etc. Where there first? That they had done far more than El/riel? You see what happened to them. She talked about ships that she likes from other authors and also talked about Nessian. If she isn't a fan of one ship she'll either sink that ship immediatly -> Lucien and Nesta. Or she'll wait until the time is right and mislead the readers. That's how she is with her books. She had made heacanons about Elucien and claimed El/riel are like siblings (After acowar was out, mind you).

But yeah sure. If your ship isn't endgame then scream "fanservice" all you like, since you like to believe sinking a ship that has been on great terms is impossible 🤷🏾‍♀️

The fact alone that they have convienced themselves El/riel is Sjm fav ship just because they have romantic scenes... 💀 As if the whole tog series and acomaf doesn't exist? The bonus chapter has pretty much shown us El/riel might not be her fav ship after all, but they've also convienced themselves that only couples that had romantic scenes and sexual tension are winning.. the fall will hurt, I tell you that.

Also.. Sjm is evil. This lady came back after 3 years to drop a book that caused the biggest shipwar and then immediatly pieced herself out again for another... what? 5 years? Like ma'am, please just end our misery.

Not to mention there's a big different between tension and banter and two characters being nearly physical when neither character has let themselves be truly vulnerable to the other versus E/riels POV scene. Elain had done nothing to Az. She hadn't lashed out at him, snarked at him, etc. before their kiss. I'm not saying she was wanting to engage with Az because she has real feelings for him, I don't think Elain knows what she's doing at this point because she still hasn't confronted her losses (and no, even her attempts at moving forward aren't proof of overcoming the past. Until we see her work through those things on page from her own POV, she's not fully recovered because any therapist will tell you processing things inside without actually talking about them isn't the healthiest way to go about it). But she did go into that kiss with more of an innocence than we saw from Nessian's near kiss (not to mention neither Nesta or Cassian needed to get over past LI's yet Cassian STILL addressed his past with Mor before that happened) or even Feysands first hookup scene. And the way Az told her it was a mistake is not comparable and not "snark and banter". He caused her actual hurt considering she was putting herself on the line after Graysen rejected her. Again, I'm not saying she had real feelings for Az but they had a friendship (ish) of sorts and she allowed herself to be vulnerable, opening herself up to kissing someone for the first time after the loss of her fiance (someone who also didn't want her). I so wish someone had a clip of that interview where she said E/riel were like brother and sister. Not saying that she couldn't have changed her mind but it would at least prove to E/riels that E/riel wasn't ALWAYS the plan like they argue. And I would bet money that E/riel is not remotely close to being SJMs favorite ship. Rhys is the thing she said she'd taken to a deserted island and she has been beside herself with excitement over talking about Nessian. I think at one point she actually said Cassian is the kind of male she'd go for and I do know she said Nesta was a gift to her. Those ships have that extra spice that SJM loves in her romances and E/riel is bland in comparison. I'm not even saying that as an Anti E/riel at this point. There is nothing exciting about E/riel, they read as a very YA first relationship kind of pairing and if you really pay attention to every other couple SJM has written about, they don't match up. I'll never understand why people in the fandom try to self insert into the authors preferences. We can all like what we like but what good does it do to ignore what the author likes in order to prove what we want to happen? She has never spoken of E/riel. She doesn't speak of enjoying friends to lovers as a favorite trope. She has never spoken of liking couples who tiptoe around one another and she ALWAYS has her MMC or FMC first address (from their POV) that they are truly over their past love interests before moving on to their endgame person and that alone should be enough to prove to them why E/riel isn't in love, that their kiss was not when either was in the right state of mind and why it's a good thing Az doesn't consider Gwyn a friend at this point.

[dzthenerd490]

Kingdom Hearts: The Brightest of Hearts - Chapter 11: The Darkest of Hearts part 1

Back in Traverse Town, after the Gummi ship landed Sora, Donald, and Goofy quickly got off. They were expecting everyone to be in the town square, but there was only Cloud.

"Cloud? Where's Yuffie and Leon?"

"They all went to help the people of Traverse Town, a lot more people have been showing up due to you liberating their hearts from the darkness. Though we did notice one thing, after your mission at Deep Jungle, Sid asked Chip and Dale to make him a device that shows the location of the Gummi ship, so we'll know you guys are on mission and alright. However, I noticed that right after liberating Neverland and London you immediately went to a place called New York City. Why did you do that?"

"We uh... Well..."

"It was me." Sora stepped forward from Donald and Goofy toward Cloud.

"I was excited to know there was only one world left so I rushed into it and liberated as much as I could but... Things didn't go exactly as planned."

"You didn't liberate the world?"

"I did... but I... saw someone else die, and in my frustration and rage the darkness nearly got me."

"... Yeah, that will do it."

"I... I wanted to kill him, I wanted to go down to his level and make him suffer." Sora started crying again, Donald and Goofy were about to comfort him but Cloud reached out first. Cloud got on one knee and extended his hand gently onto Sora's shoulder.

"Sephiroth destroyed my world and killed almost everyone I loved. He destroyed my hometown and killed Tifa's father. There was also Shinra, they killed Zack who was Aerith's old boyfriend. They basically helped Sephiroth destroy our world and drain it of its resources, killing hundreds, enslaving thousands, and ruining millions of lives. Then there was Maleficent who resurrected Sephiroth after we tried so hard to stop him and RIGHT after we saved the world from the DoomsDay Black Materia, she just opened the skies to the Darkness in-between Worlds. Shinra is gone but Sephiroth and Maleficent are still out there. I can't tell you how much I want them to be right in front of me right this moment so I can slice them to pieces." Sora looked at Cloud as his expression darkened, Sora even noticed Cloud's fists were clenching as if to contain his overwhelming rage.

"But you can't, because it's not, right?"

"... I wouldn't say that Sora."

"What? But my mom and dad always said that violence and revenge never solve anything."

"Well, doing things for revenge can be pretty stupid, yeah. I mean if you just focus on the revenge aspect then it will practically consume your life and leave no room for friendship and love. Me and the rest of the group can attest to that, one way or another we let our fears, our sadness, or our anger control us and make us do some pretty stupid things. But these emotions we feel aren't unjustified, they're just a part of who we are. They're only a weakness if you make them a weakness. And you only make them a weakness by letting them dictate everything you do and ignore everything and everyone that tells you to stop."

"... But if our emotions can control us like that then wouldn't it be better to suppress them?"

"Ah! No Sora, don't do that. Trust me, I tried that once and it never ends well. In fact, suppressing your emotions will actually just lead to a brand new emotion that's even easier to get consumed by and leads to even worse results."

"What emotion is that?"

"... Depression. I'm still dealing with that one and it really got worse when I was separated from the group but I'm slowly recovering and doing better."

"How?"

"The same way you deal with any emotion that's taking over your life. You open your heart to those you care about, and the best source is from your friends." Sora then turned back to look at Donald and Goofy, both of which started smiling at him to show how they agreed with Cloud.

"Our emotions are a part of who we are, both the good ones and bad ones. The only time we really lose to the darkness is when we let them control who we are. Don't ever forget it Sora, you're justified in hating the monster who filled your life with misery. But the moment you focus on nothing but them and how you want them to suffer... that's when you become a monster." Sora felt like he mostly understood, emotions are both a gift and a curse but whether they become one or the other is based on how Sora used them. Sora then wiped his tears away and smiled with determination at Cloud.

"Yeah, I think I got it. I won't ever forgive the Dark Army but I'm not going to let my anger for them change who I am."

"Well, said Sora. really glad you figured that out at a younger age than I did."

"Hey, it would have taken me longer if I didn't learn it from you!"

"... ha, you really are a bright and hopeful kid. Alright, I'll stop holding you back. Merlin's back in his old shack, he probably has something else to tell you so you should go ahead and see him."

"Got it. Thanks, Cloud!" Sora then joyfully ran for Merlin's place with Donald and Goofy following him.

"Yeah... don't end up like me. Okay, Sora?"

***

Sora, Donald, and Goofy made it to Merlin's place and entered to find him sipping some tea while looking through another Ansem report. Upon looking at the report Sora realized he didn't get any from either Neverland, London, or New York City. Sora groaned as he facepalmed in defeat.

"Oh? What's wrong my boy? From what I've heard you got back from liberating the last world and are on your way to face off against Maleficent herself!"

"It's not that, Merlin. I didn't get any Ansem Reports. Dang it."

"Oh, don't let such things worry you, my boy. We have more than enough Ansem Reports."

"But what about keeping them out of the hands of the Dark Army?"

"I uh... You don't need to worry about that anymore, my boy. Now then please come in and have some tea." Sora, Donald, and Goofy did as Merlin asked and sat in large and comfortable seats at the round table. Magic tea cups then flew in front of them, and a tea kettle flew over and poured tea for all of them.

"Now then, is there anything else that troubles you, my boy?" Sora thought about this but thankfully it didn't take long for him to remember the voice.

"Uh, Master Merlin, do you know anything about dark voices in people's heads?" Merlin was in the middle of drinking his tea; however, upon hearing this he quickly spat it all out and onto Goofy's face.

"Ugh! So sorry, Sir Goofy! Ahem! now you said... voices in your head?"

"Uh, yeah, it was just an annoying jerk at first but back when we were in the skies of London it attacked us by turning the Heartless into shadow versions of me."

"... I see, hm... When did this start, my boy?"

"When I first showed up in Traverse Town, there was a Shadow Heartless that scratched my back."

"A Heartless scratched your back... hm... "

"What do you think it is, Master Merlin?" Merlin then got up from his chair and started walking.

"That is an excellent question, Sir Donald. Unfortunately, I think I know the answer."

"Don't you mean, fortunately?"

"No Sir Goofy. You see this might be the worst-case scenario. Sora, my boy. Do you remember what I said about what happens when we die?"

"Uh you said your hearts return to Kingdom Hearts to be fragmented and turn into new hearts."

"Yes, but your memories become the inspiration for Kingdom Hearts to create new worlds and new life. This is all part of the great cycle of creation and life itself. But there are those that don't want to die at all and would instead keep their memories forever. Of course, you know that the Dark Army achieves immortality by using the darkness. However, there are those that have taken it a step further, the ancient Masters of Darkness, my old foes who found ways to keep themselves alive even after death. They even know how to resurrect their fallen comrades back from the dead."

"Resurrect the dead?"

"Yes, my boy, they had everything they needed to keep both themselves and others from ever returning to Kingdom Hearts even after death. However, this power was not full proof, some needed vessels, sacrifices, and very complex rituals that took centuries in order to get the spell to work."

"So wait, is that the voice in my head? An old Master of Darkness?!"

"I'm afraid so my boy. He has chosen you to be a piece in the puzzle that will complete his resurrection. But he has made one fatal mistake."

"What's that?" Merlin then smiled, walked up to Sora, then gently poked his nose.

"He chose a kindhearted, brave, and determined boy to be his tool of evil and destruction. Now, his plan might have worked if he chose a foolish boy who wants power and authority. Now tell me, is that what you want, my boy?"

"Ha, no."

"Oh? Then what is it you wish for, my boy?"

"I want to stop the Dark Army and save everyone with the power of light! Including my home and my friends!"

"Hahaha! Then this Dark Master truly made the wrong choice! Hahaha, I'm quite sure you have nothing to worry about my boy."

"But Master Merlin, isn't there a way to remove it?" Merlin's smile then turned into a frown as he sat back on his chair.

"Ah... unfortunately Sir Donald, I am afraid that's impossible. After poking Sir Sora's nose, I was able to find the darkness that infiltrated him, it has united with his heart. Like any magic, there is no removing the darkness from his heart without bringing harm to Sora."

"So, I can't remove it?"

"Not with surgery and not with magic my boy, if you wish for the Darkness to leave your heart you must expel it with an act of great joy, or one of true love. Either one will give your heart the magical energy it needs to expel any magical toxins within it. But again, so long as you have no desire to listen to the Dark Master then you will not have to worry about his influence."

That's what you think! Sora grunted as he heard that voice shouting in his head, but he quickly calmed down and smiled at Merlin.

"Thank you, Master Merlin."

"Merlin is fine my boy."

"I know but besides Donald and Goofy you helped me a lot, so I think it's only fair to call you Master." Merlin chuckled again and offered more tea to Sora, Donald, and Goofy.

***

After they were done with their tea, they went to a place to sleep, surprisingly a hotel owner allowed them to sleep in a luxury room and even gave it to them for free. Apparently, the owner was one of the people cursed as an Emblem Heartless and as such he gave them the room as a "thank you". Though the service still wasn't free, so they didn't order anything. Instead, the three of them just took the room and let themselves fall onto the extremely large bed.

"No offense to the other beds we slept on, but this is the best bed I have ever laid on."

"Ahhh... so tomorrow we're going out to fight Maleficent and the remainder of the Dark Army, you ready Sora?"

"Yeah, I think I... No, I AM ready to fight the Dark Army head on."

"That's the spirit Sora, though there really wasn't any doubt. Every time something pushes you down you always find a way to get back up."

"Haha, thanks Goofy, am I a lot like your son Max?"

"Oh... uh... Gosh, Max is uh... Max prefers to see life, with a little less imagination."

"Huh? What's wrong with imagination?"

"There's nothing wrong with it Sora, Max used to love using his imagination. A-hyuk! We used to have all sorts of fun together, but as he grew up, he started... wanting to take things more seriously and as such he wanted to live life on his own. Me and him still talk... he just prefers we don't talk as often as we used to." Sora could see the growing sadness in Goofy's eyes, and it made him worry about his own future.

"... Am I gonna be like that when I get older?"

"That really depends on what you want to be when you grow up, Sora."

"Oh yeah! Gosh. Don't let us boring adults take all the spotlight, tell us what you want to do after you defeat the Dark Army."

"I... I guess I want to keep being a keyblade wielder of light."

"Really? You won't get paid Sora."

"I don't really want to be paid for it, instead my payment will be the adventures I take Riku and Kairi on! We'll go to new worlds, we can take odd jobs for the cool aliens we meet, and we can find all the bad guys of the multiverse and beat them up, like we did with the Dark Army!"

"Ha! Spoken like a little kid!" Donald continued to snicker at his own joke until he noticed Goofy and Sora glaring at him with disappointment.

"Ahem! I meant that in a good way..."

"Okay, so what do you want to do after we defeat the Dark Army, Donald?"

"hm... I guess I'll take Daisy on a date and maybe finally ask her to marry me."

"Oh?! You're finally committing to her?"

"I've always been committed to her Goofy! I just... haven't been the best at showing it. I was comfortable where we were in our relationship, and I didn't think it was affecting her badly in any way. But after we get home, I'll have a proper talk with her and see what she wants."

"Wow, that's actually really cool of you Donald, hope it all works out for you!"

"Thanks Sora, now what about you Goofy?"

"Yeah Goofy, what are you going to do? Are you perhaps going to go on a relaxing vacation with your wife?" Donald lost all his colors in shock while Goofy just looked at Sora, surprised, leaving Sora confused. Goofy then showed a gentle smile though Sora could see hurt in his eyes.

"My wife died a long time ago."

"Oh... Goofy, I'm sorry."

"Don't be Sora, I don't cry about it anymore. Besides the last thing she ever did was give me Max. It's probably why I love him so much. But I haven't always been the best dad, I guess I smother him too much and don't give him enough space. I was even against his decision to join the Royal Guard. I guess when I get back, I'll give him my blessing to join as both his father and his future captain! A-hyuk!"

"Haha! Well said Goofy!" Sora then yawned and so did Donald and Goofy.

"Alright, then it's a deal. Let's sleep for now but tomorrow we're going to stop Maleficent, save the Multiverse, and spend our lives with our friends and family back home!" Sora raised his fist to show his determination, Donald and Goofy did the same while giving a cheer of triumph.

"But hey, even after we defeat the Dark Army... Let's still be friends, ok? Even if we end up on different worlds, even if we do different things, even if we see different people and make new friends. Let's never forget one another, ok?"

"... Sure Sora."

"We'll always be your friend Sora." Sora then smiled, rested his head on the pillow and slept on the middle of the bed, then Donald scooted to the right to sleep there while Goofy went to the left side of the bed.

***

The next morning the three of them felt well rested but also extremely hungry so they went down to the lunch hall for breakfast. However, after chowing down on a lot of food, they realized they still had to pay for it and didn't have a lot of money. Then ended up having to call Sid for help who was furious despite it not actually costing a lot of money. After eating, they went back to the town square where Aerith, Yuffie, Cloud, Leon, Sid, Merlin, Fairy Godmother, Chip, and Dale were already there.

"You guys ready for your final mission?"

"We'll be cheering you on the entire time!"

"You knuckleheads got this! Give that Maleficent Witch what's coming!" Donald stood proudly at all the praise, Goofy scratched the back of his head while chuckling in embarrassment, and Sora smiled because of all the excitement.

"Thanks, you guys. Today the Dark Army will learn to never mess with ANYONE in the Multiverse!"

"Hahaha! You, my boy, are truly the Champion of Light! The light of Kingdom Hearts shines with hope and victory on you all."

"Thank you, Master Merlin." Sora then looked at everyone with joy but as he did an idea popped into his head.

"Uh hey, this might be too much to ask but, can you guys come with us?" Everyone was then silent as they looked at Sora with surprised expressions. Chip and Dale then went forward to answer.

"Sorry Sora the Gummi Ship can only transport so many people, if too many people ride the Gummi ship and in too little time it could cause disastrous effects to the world." Merlin then stepped forward to continue.

"Unfortunately, my boy, this is correct. unnatural disasters, disease, destruction, and other such chaos. Of course, there's also a chance that the chaos won't happen but it's better to be safe and respect the rules of the multiverse."

"Well, that sucks but no use in complaining! I understand that you all can't come, so just know that I'll be fighting in your guy's honor!" Once again everyone cheered on Sora, Donald, and Goofy. After saying their goodbyes and promises Sora, Donald, and Goofy went off to the Gummi ship.

***

After Chip and Dale started up the Gummi ship and launched them into the light tunnel through the darkness in-between worlds; Sora, Donald, and Goofy were expecting it to be a quick and painless travel from A to B. However, it ended up being anything but, Large Heartless ships were shooting down the Gummi ship. Sora tried using a combo of the laser guns and the Gummi ship missiles but no matter how many Heartless ships he took down, more kept coming. It was getting to the point that Sora didn't take his hand off the fire button for the laser cannons. He couldn't since the entire time the front of the Gummi ship was surrounded by Large Heartless Ships.

Then just like a bad nightmare it was finally over when they reached the end of the light tunnel. As the Gummi ship entered the new world it was practically blackened with all the blast marks and smoking because of all the damage. It landed at the very beginning of the stone steps leading to the entrance of Hollow Bastion. Once it landed the Gummi ship almost fell apart and so did Sora, Donald, Goofy, Chip, and Dale. They all fell to the ground and didn't even move because of how mentally exhausted they all were.

"Ugh... that sucked..."

"Oooh... If it makes you fellas feel better... the chances of us doing that again... are zero..."

"Yeah... sorry by the way... I don't think the ship has ever been this wrecked before..." Chip and Dale then got up and groaned as they walked over to the control pad. Dale pulled out a button connected to the hardware of the ship and Chip pressed it. Suddenly the Gummi ship unleashed a wave of magic outward and back into itself. The magic surrounding the Gummi ship started repairing every large and small bit of damage on the ship. As the magic was done fixing the Gummi ship it then flowed onto Sora, Donald, Goofy, Chip, and Dale; giving them all the energy they needed to physically and mentally recover.

"Ah! That's better!"

"You alright fellas? If that spell worked, it should have fixed you all up too."

"Uh, yeah! That was great! What was that?"

"Just a little pet project we and Sid have been working on!"

"We knew the Dark Army was going to keep hitting harder so rather than increasing our firepower we decided to prepare for what to do when the worst ended up happening."

"And just like you saw, even if they wreck us to the point of near destruction, just like you Sora, we will always get back up!" Chip and Dale jumped and danced around to show their excitement over their achievement. Sora smiled and raised his fist up to them. At first Chip and Dale were confused but once they figured it out, they fist bumped Sora with enthusiasm.

"You guys really are the best Gummi ship engineers in the Multiverse!"

"Aw shucks, thanks Sorry."

"Now don't let us hold you back! Go on and defeat that rotten witch!"

"Yeah, let's go! Wish us luck Chip and Dale!" Sora, Donald, and Goofy then ran out of the Gummi ship. Chip was about to get to operating on the Gummi ship just in case something in the magic spell didn't work but then he noticed Dale looking at the shop console while deep in thought.

"Dale?"

"Hey, Chip. I think I got an idea."

***

Sora, Donald, and Goofy walked up the steps towards the entrance to Hollow Bastion. However, as they finally reached the same floor level hundreds of Shadow Heartless surrounded them. Sora, Donald, and Goofy manifested their weapons ready to fight but ended up standing there confused as the Heartless refused to advance.

"What are they all waiting for?"

"Me." Sora's heart sank when he heard that voice. He felt so conflicted, he couldn't fully feel happy or sad to hear Riku's voice. Yet there he was, slowly advancing while the Shadow Heartless were backing away to clear a path for him. Sora didn't smile when he saw Riku and Riku didn't smile back, how could either of them smile? They both knew how this was going down. Riku stopped when he and Sora were face to face, Sora had Donald and Goofy behind him while Riku had an army of Shadow Heartless behind him. Riku then manifested his Keyblade of Darkness and raised it up toward his head like a knight holding a sword in prayer.

"Sora, I'm gonna ask you one more time, give up your keyblade of Light and join me. Join the Dark Army. Help me take Kingdom Heart's right from under Maleficent's nose and we'll use the power of infinity to fix everything! We'll get our home back! We'll fix Kairi's heart! We'll get our families back! We'll even become Gods! We'll get to go wherever we want, do whatever we want, and never have to worry about anything ever again! We just have to bear with Maleficent for now but when the time is right you and I will take her down! We were a team once Sora, we can do it again. Just drop the Keyblade and take my hand." Riku then extended his hand while giving Sora a gentle smile. A single tear fell out of Sora's eye, he desperately wanted to take Riku's hand, though not for the reason Riku wanted. Sora wanted to take Riku's hand and pull him forward and hug him while he used his own Keyblade to destroy Riku's. But Riku was too fast and too smart for something like that. So instead, Sora just raised his Keyblade and got into a fighting stance.

"You're right about one thing, Riku. I will take Maleficent down! You can either get rid of your Keyblade and join me, step out of the way and don't stop me, or watch me as I kick your butt again. But either way I'm not giving up the Keyblade!" Riku closed his eyes and grunted in frustration, he then glared at Sora full of determination and silent rage.

"Yeah, I was afraid you were going to say that." Suddenly about five Shadow Heartless latched onto Goofy and wrapped around him like restraints, three other Heartless did the same for Donald. Before Sora could react the large group of remaining Heartless were all absorbed into Riku. After Riku absorbed them all, his body was covered in a large dark aura making him stronger than he had ever been before. Sora raised his keyblade to defend but in an instant Riku slashed Sora's Keyblade, breaking it instantly. The fragments fell to the ground, turned to light and disappeared instantly. Sora couldn't believe what just happened, his keyblade was gone and with it, any chance he had of freeing Riku and Kairi from the Dark Army. Sora just fell to his knees, he didn't cry, he didn't scream, he didn't do anything else. He just sat there with the shock still on his face.

Riku saw his friend in despair and tried to reach out to help but suddenly it felt like every atom in his body was being crushed by the weight of the earth. Soon all the Shadow Heartless Riku absorbed were destroyed in an instant and thus Riku could finally breathe again. Doxcrum then showed up and slapped Riku on the back of the head.

"Ye wee eejit, I tell ye that ye weren't duin to handle a spell that powerful. Noo c'moan, we're done here." Doxcrum then picked up Riku and turned back to the castle, but not before giving one final glance to Sora.

"Don't ya be to stonner on yourself, lad. Ye were never aff to beat us in the foremaist steid." Doxcrum then entered the castle of Hollow Bastion while snapping his fingers making the Heartless binding Donald and Goofy disappear. Goofy and Donald quickly went to Sora to check on him and only then did they realize what happened.

"... Sora, the keyblade..."

"It's gone..."

"... guys, what do we do?" Sora looked at them both with hopelessness in his eyes, Goofy and Donald looked at one another not sure what to do. However, Donald stood up while looking at castle of Hollow Bastion with determination.

"Donald?"

"We have to keep going."

"But Sora doesn't have the Keyblade anymore."

"Then we'll go without him."

"A-hyuk! Wha- wha?! But Donald, we need him!"

"No Goofy we needed his Keyblade and now he doesn't have it and without it he's..." Donald then looked at Sora and how hurt he looked while looking back at Donald. Donald then grunted and looked back at Hollow Bastion.

"... We have a mission, assigned to us by the king, protect the Champion of Light and defeat the Dark Army. We already failed one part; I don't intend to fail the other. Now are you coming or not?!" Sora looked at Goofy as tears fell out form his eyes, Goofy then looked back at Donald.

"No, sorry Donald, I can't. Not until I know Sora is safe." Goofy then looked back to Sora, patting his back to try and comfort him. Donald didn't want to leave Sora either, but he felt that the mission was more important. Thus, he simply grunted as he turned back to the castle to walk inside.

"Don't take too long then." Goofy sighed as he tried to continue to comfort Sora but really, he didn't even know what to do. With the keyblade gone there was no way Sora could fight off the Dark Army anymore.

"You should go with him."

"I'm not going to leave you, Sora."

"But I don't have the Keyblade anymore! I'm not the Champion of light anymore I'm just..." Sora then hugged Goofy tightly as he started crying harder, Goofy then hugged Sora back as gently as he could.

"I can't save them anymore; I can't save anyone! I'm just a dumb kid now... Riku was right, I can never beat them." Goofy then sighed, let go of Sora, and got up; leaving Sora still sitting down but now looking up to Goofy with confusion and tears still in his eyes.

"Sora, your so much more than that! Do you have any idea how much you achieved despite where you started! A-hyuk! You were a kid on an island wanting adventure, but you ended up beating the Champion of Light! But even when that isn't what you wanted you still went with it and defeated the Dark Army every chance you got!"

"But I don't have the Keyblade anymore, I can't change that Goofy!"

"No, you can't, but you can keep trying. What about your magic?"

"I..." Sora was about to say he didn't have magic anymore but after thinking about it he wasn't so sure. Sora raised his hand and tried to manifest some fire and sure enough he was able to create a fireball. It was nowhere large as the fireballs he could make with his Keyblade but still it was magic. Sora was still crying but now he stood up while maintaining the fireball in his hand.

"This... this is great! But, it's not enough... without the Keyblade I won't be able to defeat Maleficent and the rest of the Dark Army." Goofy then placed his hand on Sora's shoulder and smiled at him with determination.

"That's why you're not doing it alone."

"Your dang right you're not!" Sora and Goofy were confused when they heard that voice, the two of them then turned to the stone steps in front of Hollow Bastion to see an unbelievable surprise. Sid, Cloud, Yuffie, Leon, Aerith, Merlin, and Fairy Godmother were all there.

"You- You guys? Why are you here?" Chip and Dale then ran forward to talk to Sora and Goofy directly.

"We brought them all Sora; we figured you needed all the help you could get!"

"And for the record we didn't stop at Traverse Town!" Then a web was shot out and Spiderman swung in and stood alongside everyone else. Then Tarzan entered the group as well, and so did Aladdin while holding a sword, Jack Skellington jumped into the crowd, and finally Ariel showed up being carried by Peter Pan who gently flew down. Almost everyone Sora has ever met in all the worlds he has visited was now here. Sora should have felt happy at the sight of all his friends from other worlds but instead he was confused as he turned to Merlin for answers.

"But I thought you said that you guys couldn't come, that if too many people arrive on a world in too little time, it could cause disastrous effects to the world."

"Haha yes I do recall saying that. However, I also recall saying, not all rules are meant to be followed. Rather than following a rule that does not benefit you, try bending it until it does. Is that cheating? Perhaps, but cheating is only bad once you get caught, though you didn't hear that from me." Merlin then winked playfully at Sora, causing Sora to chuckle despite the tears still being in his eyes.

"That's when Dale had the brilliant idea of reengineering the spell, which we made with Sid to give the Gummi ship more magical power."

"Chip then helped me do just that, and with the modifications the Gummi ship is now able to keep the world stable regardless of how many off worlders there are." Sora was still crying but he was now smiling out of genuine joy, he even started laughing because of it. Sora then got up and wiped away his tears, now he was smiling out of determination while facing everyone.

"Thank you everyone for coming. Now this was supposed to be my mission and mine alone. Those are the rules at least, but I'm tired of following them. Still thought I'm not going to force this on anyone, so I'll ask instead. Will you guys help me save my friends, my home, and the multiverse from Maleficent and the Dark Army? There's no shame if you want to say no, but I will be honored to fight beside you if you say yes." No one was hesitant at all, but Peter ended up being the first to step forward.

"You helped save my home, might as well return the favor."

"Ape family safe because of you. Can count on me, always."

"I was a jerk to you in our world so consider this my overdue apology."

"The Pumpkin King will always have your back, Sora!"

"I know we promised to meet again under different circumstances, but you helped me, so let me help you!"

"Come on Sora, I barely got to know you and I could already tell being around you is a ton of fun. What kinda guy would I be to not help a pal like you out?"

"And you helped me find my friends again even after we fought. I think I owe you more than this but for now let's just stick with this for now, ok?" Sora smiled at Cloud then everyone else, now that his friends were here to help, he couldn't help but feel stronger than ever. Sora didn't even notice that his heart was starting to give off a golden glow, but it was so faint that no one else saw it.

"Alright you knuckle heads by the rat's calculations, we have only 5 hours before our presence here starts messing things up so let's move it and show the Dark Army bastards what we're made of!" Everyone raised their fists, weapons, and voices to show that they were ready to fight alongside Sora. Sora then faced the castle gates as the magical platform manifested for them to enter safely.

"Let's go!"

***

In the magical hall of Hollow Bastion, there were several Keyblade Wielders of Darkness operating on magical and evil looking machines. They were all extremely busy, however, they all stopped as soon as Maleficent entered the room. Maleficent was walking casually to the staircase as all the Keyblade Wielders of Darkness bowed to her while she walked past them. She didn't really focus on them, instead she was smiling at all six Princesses of Heart, who were trapped in large crystals of darkness keeping them all in an eternal slumber. Once she reached the staircase there on the top floor stood Riku and Doxcrum. They both bowed to her the moment she reached their level though not once did Riku take his eyes off of Maleficent.

"My loyal servants! The time to obtain Kingdom Hearts is upon us! Bring forth the final Princess!" One of the Keyblade Wielders of Darkness nodded, got up, and walked over to a magical control panel where he pressed a few buttons and like that a seventh dark crystal rose up from a hidden door from the ground. Within the crystal was Kairi.

"Is the draining truly finished?"

"Yes Master Maleficent!"

"Then begin! Reveal to us the Fragments of Light!" The Keyblade Wielder of Darkness pressed some more buttons in the correct order and instantly the process started. Suddenly the hearts of all seven princesses started glowing a pure white and blinding light. After a moment of shining small but powerful white diamonds formed and floated out of the Princesses hearts and toward Maleficent. She smiled and held out her hands as the seven Fragments of Light floated toward her, allowing her to hold them all.

"Good Work Maleficent." Maleficent shuttered for the first time in her life and so did Doxcrum which made Riku confused. Riku didn't recognize that voice, when he looked up out of curiosity, he didn't recognize that man, but he didn't need to feel the same fear as Maleficent and Doxcrum as well as everyone else in the room. That was the true Master of the Dark Army, that was Master Ansem, Seeker of Darkness. Riku didn't even need to use his enhanced magical vision to see that Ansem had an overwhelming amount of energy and was more than powerful enough to crush even Maleficent.

Maleficent knew this as well, hence why she bowed the moment she heard his voice; pride, status, power none of it mattered to her anymore. When in the presence of Master Ansem Maleficent knew she was just another pawn, her hour of glory was over and she was back to being a slave. The other Keyblade Wielders of Darkness knew this as well since they were already pawns from the start. They fixed themselves to bow toward him instead, only now their heads were lower than before. Some of them even smashed their heads onto the ground, not caring how much it hurt so long as Master Ansem knew they were loyal. Ansem then teleported in front of Maleficent, but he was so fast that not even she could see him move. Ansem then held out his hands and the seven Fragments of Light floating over Maleficent, flew into his palms.

"Hundreds of years of planning and hiding are finally over. Kingdom Hearts is finally within our grasp. Doxcrum, you know the ritual, begin now." Doxcrum stood up and held out his hands, Ansem then seemingly tossed the Fragments of Light without actually touching them. The Fragments of Light slowly floated over into Doxcrum's hands and he lowered his head one last time before turning to the gateway. 

However, before Doxcrum could even take a step, the intruder alarms started going off. They Keyblade Wielders of Darkness stopped bowing and went to their respective stations. One of the system managers used his magic to make several holo-screens appear around the room so that everyone could see. It showed Sora leading a group of off worlder's against the Hundreds of Heartless surrounding them. However, no matter how many Heartless kept coming, the group always managed to take them all out. Everyone in the room was speechless because of what they were seeing, Riku was especially shocked.

"Sora?"

"The Champion of Light? He truly lives up to his title. Everyone! This is our only chance to obtain the power of Kingdom Hearts, are you willing to die for the power of infinity? Are you willing to lay your lives for the chance at Godhood? Then prove it! Show these unworthy vermin of Light why the darkness will always be superior!" Half of the Keyblade Wielders of Darkness then ran out of the room to join in on the battle as Ansem ordered. Ansem then turned to Maleficent.

"This area must be guarded."

"Understood, I will get that coward Hades and we will protect this room with our lives." a Void opened behind Maleficent, she then turned to walk inside it. After the Void disappeared Ansem walked up to Riku and Doxcrum.

"Finish it as fast as you can." Doxcrum nodded and quickly ran upstairs to the gateway with the Fragments of Light, Ansem then turned to Riku.

"Finish what you started. Even without a Keyblade the battle is not over until there is a victor." Riku couldn't protest, not like he did with Maleficent, instead Riku just bowed while shaking in fear. Riku then opened a Void behind him and walked in to face Sora.

***

As everyone ran down the hall, Sora cast another ice spell at a Shadow Heartless, freezing it in a ball of ice. Tarzan then ran past Sora, toward the ice ball, quickly grabbed it and threw it at a large group of Soldier Heartless, knocking them down like bowling pins. A Darkball Heartless charged forward but Spiderman shot its mouth with webs and used other webs to catch it like a cowboy catching a horse. Spiderman then spun around while holding onto the Darkball and only letting go once he got enough momentum to throw it at another Darkball Heartless destroying them both. Sora fired another fireball at a Soldier Heartless, when suddenly a Large Body Heartless came in from the ceiling and landed right in front of him. Sora could only use his arms to defend as the Large Body Heartless raised its large fists. But nothing happened instead Sora opened his eyes to see Cloud in front of him having destroyed the Heartless with a single slash of his large sword. However now Cloud was surrounded by a group of Soldier Heartless or at least he would have been if Yuffie hadn't thrown her large Shuriken, slicing and destroying them all.

Sora saw several Soldier Heartless charging toward them, so he quickly cast a fire and ice spell then mixed them together to create a large water bubble. Sora then threw the bubble at Ariel confusing her at first, but she suddenly turned into a mermaid again. Now not only did she have a sword but with the water bubble she could swim in the air easily and quickly as well. It didn't take long for her to swim toward the Soldier Heartless and take most of them out. However, several Shadow Heartless surrounded Sora but thankfully Aladdin slipped by Sora and used his sword to help Sora defeat them all. Ariel was about to get caught by another Large Body Heartless, but Peter Pan flew in to help her slash the Heartless until it was destroyed.

Just as they were about to reach the end of the hall, another Large Body Heartless jumped forward, trying to crush them all, but Sid with his spear and Aerith with her staff quickly swung their weapons toward the Large Body Heartless. Like a baseball the Large Body Heartless flew back towards the direction it was thrown, destroying the Large Body Heartless on impact and every Heartless it landed on. Sora and some of the others laughed at the sight, he was about to keep going afterwards but was zapped by a lighting spell. It was the Wizard Heartless, three to be exact, and they were all charging up fire spells. Thankfully this time Goofy got in front of Sora, using his shield to block the attack. Goofy then overcharged his shield with magic and threw it at the Wizard Heartless in the middle, destroying it instantly. The last two Wizard Heartless tried to retaliate with ice spells but they were suddenly destroyed by Leon whose slash was too strong and too fast for them to survive or even dodge. More Soldier and Shadow Heartless started flooding the Hall, but Jack Skellington jumped forward, unleashed an aura of fire, and roared as he marched forward burning all the Heartless down and forcing the remaining ones out of the Hallway finally clearing the path.

Sora and friends finally made it out however, as they entered the Entrance Hall there were hundreds of Air Soldier Heartless, Large Body Heartless, Darkball Heartless, and even a Crimson Jazz Heartless. There was no way they were going to be able to win this fight without suffering some major damage. However, before Sora could even think of a plan Fairy Godmother and Merlin stepped forward, in front of Sora with their wands out.

"Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo!"

"Higitus Figitus Zumbabazing!" From both their wands orbs of light manifested and quickly expanded until everything in the room was covered by their light. All the Heartless roared in anger as their bodies were slowly being destroyed by the light. Once all the Heartless were gone the light faded too, then everyone just looked in awe as the liberated hearts flew into the ceiling so that they could return to their rightful places in the Multiverse. They were all silent for a short while but then Sid started cheering first and soon the rest started joining in.

"That was awesome!"

"We are unstoppable!"

"I'm gonna be honest, this whole thing is the weirdest thing to happen to me. But I would gladly fight alongside you guys any day!"

"Never thought I would go to an alien world to beat up shadow monsters, but I don't regret a bit of it!"

"Haha! The Dark Army's probably shaking in their boots right about now!" Sora was just as pumped and excited as everyone else; how could he not be? Sure, he lost the Keyblade but with everyone here they might actually be able to defeat the Dark Army. However, the cheering stopped when an explosion was heard at the top of the staircase. Donald was then thrown down and landed right in front of the group.

"Wah- Donald! Are you ok?" Sora and Goofy ran to Goofy, trying to help him back up.

"Ugh... Sora? Why are you still here?"

"Because he still has to fight me." Everyone then turned to Riku who was walking down the staircase while keeping his focus entirely on Sora. He was staring at Sora with a mixture of anger and disappointment, Sora looked back with a similar expression.

"You're not the Champion of Light anymore Sora. give it up."

"No way! I'm not leaving without you or Kairi and even then, I still won't leave till I've defeated Maleficent!"

"You really think your friends can help you? Even if you had an army, it still wouldn't be enough. Face its Sora, without your Keyblade you don't stand a chance." Sora looked down in fear, but Goofy placed his hand on Sora's shoulder. Sora looked at Goofy as he looked back with a smile of determination, Sora then looked back at everyone else who were all smiling and cheering Sora on. Sora then faced Riku again this time with confidence.

"I don't need a Keyblade! My friends are my real power! It's just like Merlin said, when the going gets tough then don't forget who you're fighting for, and everyone in this room is worth fighting for! Whether they are trying to find their place in the world, wanting to unite with friends and family, trying out new things and experiences in life, or just searching for love! They all had unique lives and I got to be there with them to experience it with them all. And every experience only made me stronger! Every friend I gained only made me stronger! Sure, sometimes I wanted to give up and just run away but no matter how hard every battle got, it always ended up being worth it! These guys are worth it, their worlds are worth it, Kairi and the other princesses are worth it, even you are worth it Riku! That's why I'm going to defeat you, because you're my friend and if defeating you is what it takes to get you back then so be it! Because just like with these guys, I'm not giving up on you!" That honestly stabbed daggers into Riku's heart, Riku wanted nothing more than to hug Sora and Kairi right now. But after coming face to face with Ansem he knew that death only awaited them if he failed here and now. As such, Riku cried a single tear from his right eye as he raised his keyblade at Sora.

"You've always been so naive Sora, thankfully I'll always be there to show you just how wrong you are." Sora grunted in frustration but in a way, he knew he couldn't reach Riku's heart with words alone. So, he faced Riku with determination, he wasn't going to hesitate anymore, Riku needed to be defeated right here and now. Sora smiled at first, as he felt energized, but Sora quickly stopped smiling when he was getting too much. Sora then looked down and saw that his heart was glowing with golden light. Suddenly everyone else's hearts started glowing with golden light as well as of them except Riku. The light in their hearts then floated out and toward the light in Sora's heart. Once all the lights were absorbed it flew in front Sora, he was confused but grabbed the light out of a strange necessity too. Once he grabbed it, it slowly transformed back into the Kingdom Keyblade. Sora looked at the Keyblade in awe, besides the golden glow, it looked exactly the same, but Sora felt like he was stronger with it now than he was when he had it before. Goofy, Donald, Fairy Godmother, Merlin, and Riku were particularly shocked at the sight.

"What?"

"A-hyuk! Whaaaa?!"

"He created a brand new Keyblade!"

"But how? The art has been lost."

"WHAT?! HOW?! HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!" Sora wasn't really sure how he did it either, however he was filled with so much positive and magical energy that he couldn't do anything but smile as he raised his keyblade with great pride.

"I guess this goes to show Riku, the power of friendship through light will always be stronger than the power of destruction through darkness." Riku growled in anger as he raised his keyblade toward Sora.

"This ends now! I'm going to prove to you Sora that I'm the ONLY one that can save everyone! Maybe when I take Kingdom Hearts, you'll finally listen to me!"

"Riku, you always thought it was your way or the highway, not this time though. I'll show you the right path. After I kick your butt!" Sora charged at Riku, who managed to block the strike but still felt its full force. Meanwhile everyone was still near the hall watching the fight.

"Uh shouldn't we help him?"

"No, Sir Spiderman. This is a battle between the Champions of Light and Darkness. Only they can decide the fate of the Multiverse therefore it is their battle alone." Riku then manifested large bat wings of darkness from his back as he forced Sora back from him. Riku then flew into the air as his clothes transformed into his Heartless suit. However, as he flew up higher, a beam of light blasted him with the shoulder forcing him back down. Everyone then turned to Merlin with his wand still smoking from the blast.

"But then again what good does it do you youngsters to listen to this old man? Now come on! Let us fight this confused child till he sees the Light!" Everyone cheered in enthusiasm as they all ran forward to stand beside Sora readying their weapons and/or magical powers. Riku then got up, looked at everyone, and growled with growing rage.

"Grrr, annoying old man! Fine then, I'll take you all on!" Sora backed up and shot a lightning bolt at Riku but even on impact Riku, just bit down the pain and charged at Sora. Cloud jumped in front of Sora and slashed down on Riku, but Riku's dark wings covered him like a shield canceling the attack. Riku then threw Cloud out of the way and continued running forward. Goofy charged his shield and Yuffie her shuriken with magic and threw them at Riku. This time Riku was unable to dodge or block and ended up getting pushed back by the combined force. Before Riku went flying back Spiderman caught him with a web and pulled him back but at the same time Spiderman was swinging toward him. Once close enough Spiderman punched him in the chest, making Riku fall hard onto the ground.

Riku coughed in pain but quickly got up only to see Tarzan run up to him. Tarzan punched Riku several times, the first seven punches ended up landing on Riku's face, but Riku caught the eight one and punched Tarzan back. As Tarzan flew back Peter Pan caught him and after gently letting him land on the ground, he flew toward Riku with his sword and alongside him was Ariel who was still in her water bubble and still had her sword. However, Riku shot an ice spell at Ariel, so Peter Pan flew in front of her taking the hit, thus both freezing him and making Ariel crash into his frozen body. Thankfully Donald cast a fire spell to free Peter Pan and managed to quickly cast a lighting spell, aiming at Riku. However, Riku managed to throw his Keyblade at Donald, knocking the staff out of Donald's hand. Like a boomerang the Keyblade came back to Riku and right in time for Aladdin and Sora tried to slash him at the same time. With great speed Riku deflected both their attacks and even knocked Aladdin back.

Once again Sora and Riku were at each other's neck, with their Keyblade's clashing after every slash towards one another. Sid and Leon tried to help by ambushing Riku but once again he used his dark wings as shields to completely block out their attacks. All he had to do was extend his wings to push them both away. He then slashed at Sora's keyblade with all his might, finally pushing Sora away. Jack Skellington roared as he charged at Riku with an aura of fire, Riku slashed Jack Skellington making him fly away while injured. However, Riku was still caught by the flames, they did burn but after unleashing his dark aura they were quickly extinguished.

Finally, Merlin stepped forward and cast a beam of pure light, blasting it right at Riku who only barely managed to block it with his keyblade. Riku then stomped on the ground and a barrage of pillars started going towards Merlin. Thankfully Fairy Godmother got in front of Merlin and blasted a barrage of pure light, vaporizing the earth pillars and burning off Riku's wings of darkness. Riku tried to recover but before he could Donald got his staff back and started shooting fireballs, then Sora got back up and started doing the same. Riku was getting tired and slow, thus he couldn't block all the fireballs. Now Riku was burnt, injured, and exhausted; so too were most of Sora's friends but thankfully Aerith cast a spell allowing her to heal them all thus leaving Riku the only one injured. Riku tried getting back up, but Sora stopped him by pointing his Keyblade right at Riku's face.

"It's over Riku! You lost, please just give up. You can't beat us, but together we can beat the Dark Army!" Riku just glared at Sora while he stared back in disappointment. Sora then sighed as to everyone's shock, he threw his keyblade away and just held out his hand.

"Please Riku, I know you think the Dark Army is unstoppable. Yes, they are powerful. Yes, they have hundreds of members. Yes, they have millions of Heartless. But look at what we have! Everyone in this room was originally a stranger to one another but now they are all here willing to fight the Darkness! And we're winning! If we can beat you we can definitely beat Maleficent. But! We'll have an even better chance if you fight with us, so please Riku. Let's stop fighting, help me save Kairi and our home. I don't want to do this without you." Riku thought that maybe it was true, maybe Sora COULD beat the Dark Army. Maybe now Riku could finally be with Sora and Kairi again, and he wouldn't have to wait to get Kingdom Hearts to fix anything. Riku then took Sora's hand but as he did everything suddenly went cold as he heard a voice behind his head.

You cannot escape your destiny; the Multiverse will never be at peace until one Champion has defeated the other. If you can't do that then the Dark Army will never stop, and your friends will never be safe. We will always find you. We. Are. EVERYWHERE!

Riku then got away from Sora with terror on his face, leaving Sora confused.

"Riku? What's wrong?"

"We... We can't escape! We have to keep fighting! No! I don't want to keep fighting!" Riku then quickly jumped up toward the second floor and ran out of the room.

"Riku! Come back! No!" Sora then slammed his fists on the ground with frustration, causing the floor to crack. Goofy and Merlin then walked up to Sora, and each placed a hand on one of his shoulders.

"Sora?"

"Are you alright my boy?" Sora wanted to cry but he managed to fight back the tears. Instead, Sora just got up, looked at everyone and smiled with determination.

"I will be once we stop Maleficent, if Riku won't help us now, then maybe he will once we stop her and the rest of the Dark Army! What do you say guys? One final push?!" Everyone cheered with excitement and determination, all except Donald who walked up to Sora with guilt on his face.

"Sora... I'm sorry."

"hm... Hey Donald, what's that?" Sora pointed at something behind Donald making him turn around, however Donald saw nothing. Instead, his butt started getting warmer and he looked back to see Sora using a fire spell to heat his keyblade as he was pressing it onto Donald's butt making his tail set on fire. Donald then started quacking around while his tail was on fire leaving most concerned at the sight but others like Sora laughing at the sight. Once Donald finally put the fire out, he fell to the ground and looked up at Sora with a hurt expression.

"I told you if you left me behind again, I would set your butt on fire." Donald then looked at Goofy, annoyed to which Goofy just smirked and shrugged.

"Ugh... Alright! Alright! I was being a jerk and really shouldn't have abandoned you guys. I'm sorry." Goofy then gave Donald a healing potion to help him back up.

"Apology accepted Donald, now come on! Let's go!"

***

Riku ran down the halls and didn't stop until he was sure that he was alone. Riku then finally caught his breath, or at least he would have if he didn't feel a presence around him. It was like something made of shadows was quickly shifting between the walls and corners. Riku tried looking around but could never see it clearly, but then, despite having his wall to the back, he felt a presence behind him. Riku then turned around to see a shadow with four goat horns on its head with evil looking crimson red eyes.

"Who are you? I've never seen you before!"

Oh, my adorable little Knight, as much as I'd love to answer your questions, I'm afraid your main issue is with the King.

"What?" Riku then turned around to see Ansem standing there looking at him with disappointment.

"You failed your task."

"Wait please, just give me another chance! I can do better!"

"I know you can, but not without my help. So as your Master, it seems only fitting that I give you my power!"

***

Sora and friends made it to the Castle Chapel where Maleficent, Hades and several Keyblade Wielders of Darkness were. Everyone on both sides quickly got ready to fight, Cloud and Sora were especially fixated on Hades.

"Oh, great you two again. All we need is the Wonder Boy and we'll have the whole parade of pathetic."

"You won't even need to worry about him if you ever bothered to handle things yourself."

"Ugh, there it is the annoying tough guy persona you got going Storm boy. You know you're not so much of a good guy yourself you-"

"Enough of the useless dialogue you fools! Besides, in a few moments it won't matter anyways. Soon we will have Kingdom Hearts and you all will be nothing but horrible memories as we conquer your worlds as well as the infinite other worlds of the multiverse."

"Yeah, so you see kids, even without baby boy Riku we can still crush you like the... uh... I'm trying to think of a word that's not offensive... Bugs, you are. literal vermin. tiny pathetic worms that squirm under our feet as we crush you slowly! Yeah, I'd say that was pretty child friendly." Just then the room shook as a magical pulse of energy flew through the room making both Maleficent and Hades smile.

"Doxcrum is almost finished with the spell! The time is now! Destroy the fools who dare stand against the Dark Army!" The Keyblade Wielders of Darkness yelled in unison as they charged towards Sora and his friends. Sora then raised his keyblade and charged first while everyone followed, eventually causing a clash between the two forces. None of the Keyblade Wielders of Darkness ended up clashing with Sora, Donald, or Goofy, which was perfect, now Sora could focus only on Maleficent and Hades.

Sora jumped at Maleficent with his Keyblade ready to strike her, but she used her staff to not only block his attack but to also push him back. Hades then unleashed a barrage of fire, to burn the three of them. Donald quickly cast an ice spell on Goofy's shield, then Goofy enhanced his shield with magic making it larger. Goofy's large shield, combined with the ice, was able to nullify the Hades attack. Hades growled in anger, unleashed his dark aura, and manifested six large arms of darkness. The dark arms stretched towards Donald and Goofy, but Sora jumped in front of them, manifested his Three Wishes Keyblade, and slashed at the arms, making Hades get punched in the face six times.

As Hades flew away from the force of his own punches, leaving Maleficent alone and grunting at Sora with anger. However, rather than attacking head on Maleficent made Sora's shadow into a large circle surrounding him. Out of the shadow manifested several chains of pure darkness, they latched onto Sora binding him while slowly crushing him. Thankfully Donald expected a heavy attack, so he powered up a triple core spell of ice, fire, and lightning. While Maleficent was distracted with her assumed victory Donald shot Maleficent with the spell. It did hit, however Maleficent simply looked annoyed as flames, ice, and electricity covered her. Instead, Maleficent simply shook the elements off of her and proceeded to cast dark lighting on all three of them, making them all yell in pain.

"Sora! Hang on!" Spiderman managed to shake off the Keyblade Wielder of Darkness he was fighting, swung by Maleficent, and punched her in the face as he passed her by. Tarzan saw what Spiderman did, he ended up grabbing his web and using it to wing like a vine toward Maleficent. Once he swung by her, he kicked her in the stomach making her grunt in anger and annoyance. Now the dark lighting stopped, and Sora was free. Donald then walked up to Sora and charged up an ice spell; Sora smiled since he understood, he then started casting an ice spell as well. They combined their spells to create an even stronger ice spell and shot it right at Maleficent. Maleficent was now covered in ice now, but she could still move only very slowly as the ice was both hindering and slowly damaging her.

"Come on! Now is our chance!" Sora charged at Maleficent and slashed her with his Olympia Keyblade. Goofy then charged his magical aura and it shot out as a light construct clone of him and ran toward Maleficent bashing her with the light construct shield. Donald then put more magic in his staff than normal to cast a lightning spell stronger than before, unleashing it on Maleficent.

"Hey! Let us help!" Cloud and Leon jumped up toward Maleficent and slashed her as they slowly fell to the ground. Maleficent screamed in anger as she broke all the ice off her body, falling to the ground due to the overwhelming pain and damage she received. However, she wasn't done, instead her eyes ignited in green flames as black smoke started spreading everywhere around her. Soon growling could be heard from within the smoke and not long after, Maleficent rose from it as a large dragon. Hades was only seconds from rejoining the battle but once he saw Maleficent he made a disappointed expression, opened a void behind him, and simply walked in to be transported back to his own world while holding two peace signs in the air.

"Lady Maleficent has lost her mind!"

"Everybody run!" The Keyblade Wielders of Darkness all quickly ran from the room leaving Sora and the others to deal with Maleficent. Maleficent herself rose up tall and roared at everyone, fully displaying just how powerful she was.

"Uh, ok this is going to be hard." Maleficent lowered her head toward Sora so that she could blast him with fire, but thankfully Donald countered with an extremely powerful and long-lasting ice blast. Donald ended up yelling with all his might while casting the ice spell as Maleficent was blasting him back with her fire breath. It was an amazing sight at first but after a while Sora, Goofy, and the others started looking at Donald in confusion, they all wondered how he was still able to yell for so long.

"Uh, Goofy? Is Donald going to be, ok?"

"Well, he's not called the Head Wizard of Disney Castle for nothing." Eventually Donald became the one victorious when Maleficent couldn't breathe fire anymore. Donald, however, could keep going and his ice blast ended up going all the way toward Maleficent, filling her dragon mouth with ice.

"Now!" Cloud, Leon, Ariel, Aladdin, and Peter Pan charged toward Maleficent's front legs causing her to rise up and stand on her hind legs.

"Sora!" Sora saw Spiderman swinging across the ceiling while holding out his left hand for him. Sora smiled, manifested his Fairy Harp Keyblade, and flew up to Spiderman to take his hand. Once Sora grabbed his hands, Spiderman let go of the web he was swinging with, used Sora's weight to spin around and once they were going fast enough, he let go of Sora. Sora was now flying toward Maleficent and once he was close enough, he slashed her with the Olympia Keyblade. With the combination of force and damage, Maleficent was pushed to the ground and landed hard on her back. This did stun her for a while, but it also broke all the ice in her mouth, though thankfully even that did some extra damage.

Once Sora landed on the ground, he tried to charge at Maleficent again in hopes of slashing her until she was defeated. However, Maleficent proved to be faster and used her wings to blow Sora and everyone else away. Maleficent used the chance to get back up and destroy them, but thankfully Merlin and Fairy Godmother stepped forward to stop her.

"Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo!"

"Higitus Figitus Zumbabazing!" from both their wands concentrated beams of pure light shot right towards Maleficent. The dragon tried to use her wings to defend herself, but the blasts of pure light were two strong and Maleficent's wings ended up getting blasted clean off. Maleficent roars with a mixture of pain and anger. However, Maleficent unleashed her Dark Aura and used it to manifest dark tentacles from her back with sharp blade ends. Sora just smirked at the sight of them all aiming for him as he manifested his Three Wishes Keyblade to deflect the attack. However, to Sora's shock Maleficent anticipated this and redirected the tentacles toward everyone else.

Yuffie, Sid, Aerith, managed to use their weapons to block the attack but Peter Pan had to get Tarzan out of the way and Spiderman did the same for Ariel. However, despite dodging the tentacles, they kept chasing everyone to slice them into pieces. Sora kept trying to slice off the tentacles, but they were moving too fast for him to slice them properly. However, suddenly his keyblade started glowing and transformed into a red and blue keyblade with silver spider web details around it. The ring guard was silver and shaped like the outline of a spiderweb and the bit of the key was a silver spider. Sora had no time to figure out what this keyblade did, so he just pointed it at the tentacles and hoped for the best. Thankfully, on command, it tied them all together with spiderwebs keeping them all still and together. However, before Sora could cut them all, Maleficent wrapped all her tentacles together and used them all to crush him into the ground.

Despite being a dragon Maleficent started laughing thinking that she was victorious, all while everyone was silent at the sight of Sora being crushed. However, Sora suddenly started growing while holding his Lady Luck Keyblade. He then used his Keyblade to slice the tentacles off and with his big size he punched Maleficent in the back with all his might, crushing her to the ground.

"Ha... I really gotta stop forgetting I have this Keyblade." Sora then manifested his Crabclaw Keyblade and shot Maleficent with gallons of water while he fell to the ground. Once Sora was getting dangerously close to the ground, he manifested his Fairy Harp Keyblade to slow down and charged up a lighting spell. With Maleficent covered in water and after being hit by the lighting spell, she was instantly electrocuted with five times as many volts due to the water. Sora wasn't done and manifested his Pumpkinhead Keyblade and shot as many Jack-o-lantern missiles at Maleficent as he could before running out of magical energy. Sora then fell to his knees out of exhaustion while the jack-o-lantern missiles blew up Maleficent. Forcing her back into her normal form. Maleficent slowly got up and weakly tried to leave but before she could Aladdin ran up to her and pointed his sword right at her neck.

"Where is Jasmin? What did you do to her?!" When Sora heard Aladdin's question he got up and walked over to him with confusion.

"Wait, Jasmin? But I thought she was safe." Maleficent started laughing at the two of them despite having no energy to defend herself.

"You fool, no number of worlds we destroyed would have gotten us the power needed to obtain Kingdom Hearts. That's why we were really after the Princesses of Heart. Just like your useless friend Kairi, we have imprisoned them and drained their hearts of its disgusting light! With the Fragments of Light, we created as a result, Kingdom Hearts will be within our grasp! And you're already too late! Soon the gate will be opened, and your Princesses will be lost forever!" Aladdin yelled in anger and slashed Maleficent's head off, as Maleficent just smiled sinisterly and continued laughing as her head and body slowly faded into darkness.

"Aladdin! Calm down!"

"I'm sorry it's just... I thought we were safe, and those monsters just took her, they probably took others too."

"We'll get them back, all of them! No matter what!" Aladdin looked back at Sora and smiled but then his body started glitching out and a small earthquake went off. Sora then looked back and saw everyone else in pain as they're bodies started glitching out as well. Chip and Dale quickly ran toward Sora with distress on their faces.

"Sora! We have to hurry!"

"The magic of the Gummi ship is going to wear off and when it does the results are more unstable than we thought! If we don't get these guys home within an hour then not only will this world start suffering unnatural disasters, but these guys will get weaker and weaker until... they won't be strong enough to take a single breath." Sora was afraid to hear the stakes were now even higher, but he shook his head and looked to the staircase with determination.

"Then we better get moving! Come on everyone! This is the final push!"

***

Following Sora, everyone charged into the main ritual room where all seven princesses were being held.

"What the heck?"

"Oh wow, this is messed up."

"Who are all these girls?"

"Hey! There's Jasmin!" Aladdin then ran over to the dark crystal where Jasmin was being held, Sora watched him only to see that Alice was being held in one as well.

"Alice!" Sora ran to her but as soon as he touched the crystal it felt like touching hot coal, so he backed away.

"Augh! I don't understand, we saved Wonderland."

"Actually lad, ye saved ONLY Wonderland." Sora looked around in confusion to see where that voice was coming from. He ended up finding the room right next to the chamber where there was a wide space with a small staircase leading up to the floor where the gateway was. And right in front of the gateway Doxcrum was using the seven Fragments of Light to create the portal to Kingdom Hearts.

"Alice, however, belongs to a different world so getting her was easy. Meanwhile sure ye did snib up Agrabah bit that only keeps th' heartless 'n' wee rank Keyblade Wielders o' Darkness out. Someone lik' me, however, getting in is as easy as crushing a caber."

"... Don't you mean as easy as crushing a grape?"

"I ken what I said, lad." Doxcrum then split in two with one of his copy continuing the spell while the other walked down the staircase and towards Sora.

"Now then, I ken how come you're 'ere 'n' let me tell ye, yer ain't getting it. So, give up, right 'ere 'n' now. Do that 'n' I'll ensure that ye git a piece o' th' infinity bridie that is Kingdom Hearts." Sora looked at Doxcrum with disappointment, he refused the offer of joining the Dark Army so many times, why would he want to accept now. Instead, Sora just shook his head as he manifested his Keyblade to fight. Doxcrum ended up laughing at the sight.

"Hahaha. Yer funeral, lad." Doxcrum kicked Sora in the stomach, making him fly back, forcing Jack Skellington to catch him to break the impact. Jack Skellington then glared at Doxcrum and yelled like a war cry. This time Goofy led the charge and everyone followed him toward Doxcrum.

"Well, isn't this dowie, I bet I could beat ye all wi' one hand." Doxcrum then raised his left arm while holding his right behind his back. Cloud ended up being the fastest and jumped up toward Doxcrum as he descended, he swung his sword downwards at Doxcrum. Doxcrum ended up holding the sword with just his bare hand, but Cloud wasn't done, he held out his hand at Doxcrum's face and used his magic to unleash a lethal amount of electricity. However, Doxcrum was unphased and even managed to flick Cloud's sword away and punch him in the face with both ease and incredible speed.

Leon tried to ambush him with a stabbing strike but not only did Doxcrum use his speed to catch it he also forced the sword back, making the handle of the sword hit Leon in the stomach with incredible force and speed. Yuffie threw her Shuriken at Doxcrum only for him to slap it away, Yuffie grunted in anger as she kept running toward Doxcrum. She started punching him at high speed, or at least that was the plan, but Doxcrum proved to be faster and dodged every single punch with ease. Once Yuffie was done Doxcrum turned around and did a back kick at her stomach making her fly away like the others.

Aerith ran toward Doxcrum and hit him hard with her staff, she managed to hit him several times and it was clear from the impact it was heavy damage. However, Doxcrum didn't move an inch from any of the hits, instead he took them all and once she was done, he flicked her forehead making her fly away as well. Sid tried to back her up with his spear but once again Doxcrum caught the spear, lifted it up and used it to hit Sid in the face three times with the butt end. Doxcrum then forcefully took the spear and used it to hit Sid like a baseball making him fly toward the wall of the room. Doxcrum then threw the spear at Sid just barely missing his head, scaring Sid but also making him grow with anger.

"Is that all ye got, bairns?" Sora was shocked at the sight, he thought that after Maleficent there shouldn't be anyone stronger other than the mysterious Master of the Dark Army. But here they are with someone entirely different who was so strong and fast he literally beat everyone from Traverse Town with one hand. However, Sora still had his other friends, and they weren't out of the battle yet.

"Not even close!" Sora manifested a fire spell but didn't fire, instead he also manifested a lighting spell and just barely did an ice spell. The triple core spell didn't do anything to Maleficent, but he had to try. He shot the spell at Doxcrum who just stood there as it flew toward him. But once the spell was close enough, he raised his left hand but strangely it morphed into three arms with each hand blocking off each of the cores of the spell.

"What?!"

"Haha! all right, looks lik' I was wrong lad!" Doxcrum then opened his arms wide and from his back several other arms started sprouting out.

"I do need more than one hand to beat ye!" More hands sprouted out until Doxcrum he had thousands of arms grown out of his back, each one of different sizes and lengths. Spiderman then swung forward and tried to web up as many of the arms as he could, but Doxcrum combined several arms into a single large one allowing him to grab Spiderman. The large hand then crushed Spiderman and flicked him toward a wall leaving him incapacitated. Jack Skellington unleashed his fire aura and charged at Doxcrum only to be crushed by another large arm. The arms then started stretching and swarming around, Aladdin, Ariel, Tarzan, and Peter Pan tried to fight off the arms or at least get away from them, but the arms were everywhere and grabbed them quickly. Doxcrum then retracted all of his arms except for the ones holding those four, instead he raised them all in the air and slammed them all into the ground. Both Merlin and Fairy Godmother tried to cast more spells to stop him, but his arm split in two and both copies stretched out to punch both their stomachs, leaving them both stunned on the ground.

Suddenly, just in time Donald and Goofy got in front of Sora to help him out, Donald made sure to drink lots of mana potions filling him with lots and lots of magical energy. Donald then started firing consecutive and powerful fireballs at Doxcrum. However, Doxcrum ended up slapping away, each and every fireball away from him with ease. Donald kept firing but Doxcrum wasn't stopping and still getting closer. Donald was no longer yelling but instead getting increasingly scared as Doxcrum just kept getting closer while slapping away all the fireballs with incredible speed. Eventually Doxcrum reached Donald, grabbed him by the face and slammed him hard on the ground. Goofy tried to shield bash Doxcrum but within a second, Doxcrum punched the shield with such incredible force. The recoil forced Goofy to go flying and hit the wall of the room hard, knocking him out.

Now Sora was alone but not out of the fight, Sora charged at Doxcrum while yelling in anger. At first, he tried slashing at Doxcrum, aiming for the waist, head, and legs but once again Doxcrum dodged with great speed. Eventually Sora was getting frustrated and started swinging mindlessly. Doxcrum then slipped past Sora and hit him in the back of the neck making him fall to the ground in pain.

Sora grunted in frustration, got up, and manifested his Spider Web Keyblade to shoot webs at Doxcrum's legs, keeping him still. However, after Sora tried to charge at him Doxcrum kicked Sora in the face after freeing himself with his strength alone. Fairy Harp Keyblade bit down on the pain and used his Fairy Harp Keyblade to fly away from Doxcrum aiming for his copy that was finishing the spell. But the real Doxcrum grabbed Sora by the leg with one of his stretching arms and used it to pull Sora back and slam him hard onto the ground. Sora, still on the ground, manifested his Crabclaw Keyblade and aimed at Doxcrum while charging up both an ice and lighting spell. The combo as well as the Keyblade's power to make water both froze and heavily electrocuted Doxcrum. Or at least it should have, but Doxcrum seemingly took no damage and kicked Sora away from him.

Sora was getting in more and more pain, but he refused to give up, he manifested his Pumpkinhead Keyblade and shot six jack-o-lantern missiles at Doxcrum. Doxcrum took all the missiles head on and just waved away the smoke as if it was more of an annoyance than actual damage. Before Doxcrum could do anything else, Sora manifested his Jungle King Keyblade and shot out a vine at Doxcrum quickly commanding the jungle vine to crush Doxcrum. Instead Doxcrum simply grabbed the vine and ripped it off of him. Sora grunted in frustration, manifested his Olympia Keyblade, and charged at Doxcrum. Again, Doxcrum did nothing to dodge the attack but once he was hit, the intense force didn't seem to damage him at all. Doxcrum then punched Sora in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.

Sora couldn't help but whimper in pain but rather than start crying he just looked up at Doxcrum with anger. Sora then manifested his Lady Luck Keyblade, grew very large and stomped on Doxcrum. Sora didn't stop at just one stomp; he kept stomping and didn't stop until he was sure that Doxcrum was down. When Sora finally stopped, he lifted his leg to see a small puddle of darkness left there. Sora felt guilt consuming his heart as he thought about the horrific crime he just committed. However, the battle wasn't over, Doxcrum's arm stretched out of the puddle, grew larger, and grabbed Sora by the neck. Soon Doxcrum's whole body grew out of the puddle and when he was done regenerating, he ended up being larger than Sora, to the point he could barely fit in the room. Sora couldn't help but look in defeat, he tried everything and so did his friends and it still wasn't enough. Doxcrum was unbeatable.

"Had enough Lad?" Sora dropped his keyblade making him shrink to normal size, Doxcrum made sure to shrink himself as well so he could keep his grip on Sora. Once they were back to normal size, Sora started crying.

"Och don't cha start greetin' lad. Soon it will all be over, now that yer done fightin' ye can instead help us get Kingdom Hearts." Sora was still crying but then wiped his tears and looked at Sora with a smirk. Doxcrum was genuinely shocked and confused by this, even more so when Sora's heart started glowing.

"Sorry old man, but I'm too stubborn to give up." Sora then punched Doxcrum and for once not only did it land but it actually made Doxcrum grunt in pain. Sora wanted to cheer knowing he finally found something that hurt Doxcrum but right now he needed to run. Sora ran over to the other room where the other princesses were being kept.

"Augh! Ye wee besom! I'll rip ye to pieces!" Doxcrum stretched his arm out to grab Sora but suddenly stopped and started acting like something was talking to him.

"What? I'm kinda in th' middle o' something! Hauld yer horses- what?! ye serious? but we... Ugh! braw! hope ye ken what yer doing." Doxcrum then widened his arms and several keyblades manifested around him. Doxcrum then held out his hand and Wayward Wind Keyblade came forward and placed itself in his hand. Once Docrum had it all the other Keyblade disappeared, he then raised the keyblade like it was a throwing spear and aimed it right at Sora who was so close to Kairi's dark Crystal.

Thankfully, Sora managed to reach Kairi's dark crystal but now that he was here, he wasn't even sure of what he should do. He just knew that without her the Dark Army's plans wouldn't work and he would get her back after freeing her, so it was a win-win. Sora had this in mind because he forgot about Maleficent telling him that they already harvested the Fragments of Light. Regardless, that didn't deny the fact that Sora still didn't know how to get her out. Though, Sora's heart was still glowing with the golden aura so he thought he could somehow use the power to wake Kairi and the other princesses up so he could get all his friends and get out of here. However, before Sora could do anything suddenly the Wayward Wind keyblade stabbed Sora in the chest. The force from the Keyblade ended up pushing Sora closer to Kairi and unfortunately made her stabbed by the keyblade as well.

"Whoops! that wasn't supposed to happen. This is definitely comin' back to bite us." Sora grunted in pain as his body started to glitch out of existence and so did Kairi's. Though the good news was that her dark crystal started breaking because of it. Once her crystal shattered Sora caught her and held her in his arms as he collapsed to the ground with his body and Kairi's both glitching.

"Ugh! Kairi get up! Augh! Please we have to get out of here!" Kairi remained unresponsive while she continued to glitch out of existence. Sora was barely holding on, but then he noticed his body was starting to stabilize as the light in his heart glowed brighter.

That annoying power does have its perks.

"Wha- what do you mean?"

That power of heart those old geezers gave you. It works especially well since you're such an annoyingly sweet brat.

"Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

Shut up and listen, the power is protecting your heart and body, but your friend will continue to fade until she becomes an extremely dangerous Heartless.

"... How do I save her?"

Use your power on her instead, it will drain your chances of recovering but it will save her.

"What about the others?"

Forget about them, nothing can save them all now. Sora looked at the other Princesses of Heart, he only knew Jasmin and Alice; he had no idea about the others. But just because they were strangers didn't mean he was just going to keep them here to rot. And the same went for everyone else who came here with him, they all risked their lives to save him. He didn't know how or if he even could, but Sora did know that he wanted to save everyone here with all his heart. Suddenly his Heart started glowing brighter than ever before and from it several tendrils of light sprouted out. One touched Kairi and her body started stabilizing and six others touched the hearts of the other princess, slowly destroying the dark crystals they were trapped in. Then even more tendrils of pure golden light manifested and reached out to all of Sora's friends. Donald, Goofy, Merlin, Fairy Godmother, Sid, Yuffie, Aerith, Cloud, Leon, Tarzan, Aladdin, Jack Skellington, Ariel, Peter Pan, and Spiderman soon started recovering from their injuries and were getting massive boosts in power.

... Well, I'll be damned, you're so full of surprises little rook, but remember what I said. Everything has a price. Sora could feel himself weakening and everything around him fading from vision. Sora then looked at his hands and saw them turning into light particles that slowly faded away as his body slowly disappeared. Sora should have been scared at the idea of him dying but instead he smiled that he got to use his power to save everyone just like he wanted to. To make it all even better, Kairi started waking up and so did the other princesses as they were breaking out of their dark crystal prisons.

"Welp, jobby juist skelp th' fan!" However, the gateway was finally finished and transformed into a portal of magical light. Doxcrum's copy then quickly returned to him and so did the Seven Fragments of Light.

"Well, I got what I wanted so I'm out. See ye losers!" Doxcrum then opened a void as everyone around him slowly got up thanks to Sora's magic. Kairi was now fully awake and saw Sora holding her in his arms. She wasn't aware he was slowly disappearing, so she just smiled warmly at him.

"My knight in shining armor, you did it. You saved us all."

"Yeah, I'm sorry I made you wait so long."

"Don't be, I knew you'd show up eventually. That's what I love about you Sora, no matter how long it takes you always keep running toward your goal." As the other princesses started waking up Merlin, Fairy Godmother, Donald, and Goofy quickly started helping them. Soon everyone else started trying to help. Aladdin ran up to Jasmin, hugging and kissing her out of joy now knowing she was safe. The other princesses were confused but not Cinderella once she saw Fairy Godmother. Fairy Godmother then told the other princesses that they were here to get them all home, allowing the confused princesses to calm down from all the confusion. With their time running out and the princesses finally free everyone was slowly getting ready to leave Hollow Bastion. Kairi noticed this and got up with a smile on her face knowing not only was she and everyone else free, but she was with Sora again. Kairi then grabbed Sora's hand to help him up.

"Come on Sora, thanks to you we can get out of here!" However, Sora's hand fell out of Kairi's grip making her look back at him in confusion. Kairi then covered her mouth in shock as she saw bits of Sora turning into sparks of light and flying away until they faded into nothing. Slowly but surely Sora was falling apart but despite that he kept smiling at Kairi.

"Sorry Kairi, I think you'll need to go back on your own, I... I won't be able to go with you." Once all the other princesses were free, everyone gathered around Sora as they all started to see the bad news.

"What's happening to him?"

"Is he dying?"

"No! Not Sora, no!"

"Someone help him! Master Merlin, can't you do something?"

"I cannot Lady Yuffie, he used the light directly from his heart to save us all, I'm afraid there's nothing that can be done to reverse the effects." Kairi, like many others, started crying as Sora continued to fade away. She then hugged him tightly and Sora weakly hugged her back with all the remaining strength he could muster.

"Sora! Please don't leave me!"

"I'm sorry Kairi... I guess you'll have to go on adventures without me."

"Sora you don't deserve this!"

"Neither did you, I'm glad I had a hand in helping you all. I don't regret a bit of it."

"Sora... I'll find a way to bring you back! I promise! Just like how you brought me back! I don't care how long it takes! I will bring you back!" Sora then smiled as a single tear left his right eye.

"I'll be waiting." Kairi then started crying harder as she hugged Sora even tighter than before, not wanting to let him go. Sora and Kairi continued hugging until Sora was completely gone, all that was left was his heart which slowly floated into the air and faded away as well.

"Well, isn't that unfortunate, but I suppose a win is a win." Everyone then turned to see Riku in his dark suit walking toward them with an entourage of at least twenty Keyblade Wielders of Darkness.

"Riku?"

"Not quite my dear, but I guess you could say he's in safe hands. So frankly I would be more worried about yourself. I find it quite interesting that you're awake despite the fact that we drained your hearts to get the Fragments of Light. But it seems a new form of light has made you all whole again, interesting. Perhaps there's some value in keeping you here." Riku then snapped his fingers and all the Keyblade Wielders of Darkness started running forward. Cloud, Peter Pan, Tarzan, Spiderman, Leon, and Sid all ran to the front of the group to fight them off. The plan was to keep them back while the others got the princesses out but soon their bodies started glitching as a result of the Gummi Ship's magic dwindling.

"Ugh! We can't fight! We have to retreat!"

"Come on everyone! Follow us to the Gummi ship!" Merlin, Fairy Godmother and the Traverse Town group were escorting the Princesses out of the room and everyone else followed. Donald and Goofy were about to follow but they stopped when they saw Kairi. She was still sitting there looking at where Sora once was, wishing he would come back. Then Donald and Goofy helped her up and tried leading her out.

"Please... I want to be with him a little longer."

"I'm sorry Kairi, but he did it so that you could wake up again."

"It's not fair, we just got back together. Why does he have to lose everything just so I could come back?"

"Sora would do it again if he could, he never stopped talking about you and Riku. You were both worth it to him."

"I never got to even share the paopu fruit with him, like I always wanted too." Kairi then stood up and looked back at Riku who was smirking at her as his Keyblade Wielders of Darkness were getting closer.

"... I'll come back and save you." Kairi then looked back to where Sora was before he disappeared. Her eyes shed one more tear before she wiped it away and deeply breathed in and out with determination.

"Both of you. I promise." Kairi then nodded to show she was ready to go. Goofy and Donald then escorted Kairi as they followed everyone else out of Hollow Bastion. All the While the Keyblade Wielders of Darkness followed them, slowly getting closer.

***

Once everyone was out of the room a dark tendril shot out from the ground and into the ceiling. Soon it started pulling down Sora's heart. Once Sora's heart was low enough a shadow with four goat horns and crimson red glowing eyes manifested on the ground. It looked at Sora's heart and started laughing with sinister joy.

Everything has a price, my adorable Rook. Everything. Soon Sora's heart was slowly being consumed by the most powerful and concentrated form of the darkness. 

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Part 12

Part 10