Kingdom Hearts Fan Fiction ❯ The Keyblade Master's Daughter ❯ Interlude: “It’s Hard Being No-One, Isn’t It?” ( Chapter 4 )

Disclaimer:

 

No, people, I don't own Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy. They rock, though!

 

SPOILER WARNING!!! And yes, there are still spoilers from KH2.

 

Interlude: “It's Hard Being No-One, Isn't It?”

 

While there are some who bask in the light, there are others who dabble in the darkness. The Heartless, the beings of darkness, come in all sorts of shapes. But there are two men that control all darkness.

 

Those two men would be Xehanort and Heartless Riku.

 

Xehanort was a tall, thin man, his white hair flowed behind him, his orange eyes burned with hate. He had been the accomplice of Ansem the Wise, leader of Radiant Garden. When his teacher stopped his experiments, Xehanort continued them in secrecy. This man created the Heartless after he performed cruel experiments on the hearts of people. He artificially created them, too, and destroyed Radiant Garden—all under the name of his teacher Ansem. Once Xehanort became a Heartless, his Nobody Xemnas founded Organization XIII, who wanted Kingdom Hearts to become complete beings again. He seeks to plunge all worlds into darkness to prove that all hearts must return to darkness because that is the heart's true essence. He used his Heartless and his guardian to fight. He wore a large white trenchcoat, with the Heartless insignia on the chest.

 

Heartless Riku was the darkness in Riku's heart and the nemesis of Heart Riku. His hair was silver and his eyes were turquoise, just like Heart Riku's were. Xehanort once possessed the true Riku to have a physical body, and when Sora split the three Rikus, Heartless Riku fled to Xehanort, where he was given a new, complete body made out of darkness. Heartless Riku's weapon was a Black Key. His outfit was blue and black, with a Heartless insignia on the chest.

 

Their headquarters was the ominous Castle Oblivion. The Heartless masters were immune to the building's method of mind-erasing (since the building itself could erase memories, but it took a sorcerer to alter the memories), and it was large enough for all of the Heartless creation and experiments. The white walls did bother them, so the merely darkened everything around them.

 

“Well,” Xehanort said in a deep voice, while looking at an image of Sora, Heart Riku, and Kagiana, “it seems Sora has forgotten our agreement.”

 

“Nah,” Heartless Riku said. “He remembers, just he thinks he can get through a loophole with his daughter going after it too. Well, that's one loophole I'm liable to close up! And while I'm at it, I can get rid of Heart Riku, too! Reabsorb him, maybe.”

 

Heartless Riku always referred to Heart Riku as “Heart Riku”, because he felt that Heart Riku was extremely inferior to him, since he was of the light.

 

“No, keep your little clone alive,” Xehanort corrected. “I want that copy, and then I'll fuse you both. I taint his light and fuse him into you…you'll be more powerful than the real Riku ever could dream of.”

 

Heartless Riku liked the sound of that. “Fine.”

 

“An update on our little prisoner?” Xehanort asked.

 

“Too damn stubborn,” Heartless Riku snarled. “Organization XIII had no problem manipulating her years ago…well, they didn't have to deal with her as an adult.”

 

“Well, check on her, will you?” Xehanort said.

 

Heartless Riku grumbled under his breath as he walked out.

 

:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 :0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:

 

In another room in Castle Oblivion, a woman sat, drawing in her sketchbook. Her blonde hair fell past her shoulders and her blue eyes studied a drawing. She still was rather young, being thirty-eight. She was busy working on her drawing when Heartless Riku walked in, followed by a Soldier Heartless. She ignored them until he walked up to her.

 

“Drawing again?” he asked. “What'd you draw this time?”

 

She didn't respond. Instead, she tore the drawing from her sketchbook and showed it to him.

 

It was a pastel drawing of a Soldier Heartless. The lines, colors, highlights, and shadows were perfect, and the drawing looked as though the Heartless would pop alive from the page at any given moment.

 

“Wow,” Heartless Riku said. “This is amazing…but I do wonder…?”

 

He showed the drawing to the Soldier Heartless beside him. Of course, the Heartless had no capacity for art as it did for light or compassion, since Heartless are bred to destroy light, find hearts, and to fight whoever allies with the light. The Soldier promptly tore the drawing to pieces, while she gasped and tried to pick up the shreds of her drawing.

 

“Oh,” he said mockingly. “It seems that it doesn't think much of your art.”

 

She looked up at him, a snarl on her lips.

 

“You really like to draw, don't you? Is art your…light?”

 

“It's part of me,” she said.

 

“Then it's light,” Heartless Riku said.

 

“What do you want?”

 

“I would think you would be a bit more grateful. After all, did we not give you back your body? After all, you're a Nobody, aren't you?”

 

“I'd rather be there than here,” she sneered.

 

Heartless Riku set his Black Key on his shoulder, laughing. “You serve a better purpose to us.”

 

“I won't be your slave of darkness!” she said. “I won't do it!”

 

“Oh, come on,” he said. “Haven't you already worked with Sora before? Rewriting his memory, twenty-four years ago? Used his memory of Kairi to think that he was your friend?”

 

“I regret what I did,” she said.

 

“Naminé,” Heartless Riku said to the girl. “That's a lovely name…proper name for a witch…”

 

Naminé clenched her hands. “I won't do it. I've caused him enough pain!”

 

“Well, technically, you're not hurting Sora directly,” Heartless Riku clarified. “You're physically hurting Kagiana, but Sora will only feel the emotional pain.”

 

The Black Key swung and caught her cheek, where a drop of blood spilled. It was below her right eye.

 

“It's hard being no-one, isn't it?” Heartless Riku swung the Black Key. “But you've been no-one before, haven't you? Until Axel convinced you to betray Marluxia? Then you grew a damn conscience.”

 

“I'm glad I did!” she yelled.

 

He lashed the bracelet off of her arm, where a welt from his lash had been a week before.

 

“Do you need any more convincing?” Heartless Riku knelt before her. Suddenly, black and purple bonds shot from her chair, tying her up. She struggled but to no avail. While Heartless Riku grinned vampire-like in front of her, she responded by spitting in his face. He simply wiped this away and put the tip of his Black Key to her throat. “You are going to do our bidding, Naminé. Regardless of how you feel.”

 

“You'll have to kill me.”

 

“No, I couldn't do that…you're too important to us…but if you don't…”

 

Heartless Riku flipped to her sketchbook, to a page with a picture she drew of a man. Heartless Riku didn't know the man, but knew Naminé's attachment to the man.

 

He turned the picture to her. “…You will never see him again.”

 

“NO!” Naminé yelled.

 

He grinned. “That's what I thought…”

 

He threw her sketchbook down. “You don't do what we say…he dies. Your choice.”

 

He threw a dagger to her feet. “You know what to do.”

 

Heartless Riku walked out with the Soldier Heartless and closed the door behind him.

 

The bonds on Naminé's chair loosened and eventually slid off. She stood, eyeing the dagger. Heartless Riku's words rang in her mind, and she shuddered. Finally, after much thought, she picked it up and unsheathed it.

 

Tears started to flow down. “Sora…Sora, I'm so sorry…”

 

And, with tears in her eyes, she pricked her finger on the dagger. As the blood welled up, she felt the pain within herself…and in the body she affected.

 

:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 :0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:

 

Meanwhile, as that went on, others were scheming as well. This scheming was not from the darkness, but from, simply, nothing at all…from a world of white and gray…

 

The room was a large circular room, within it thirteen thrones, from the highest to the lowest in a circle. The first man on the topmost throne lowered his head to look at the twelve who were looking up at him, eyes showing no presence of hearts. But some were grinning wolf-like, as though they hungered for hearts. But emotion was something they feigned…desperately.

 

One day, we'll discard these coats, the day we have hearts! This will be sooner than we think!

 

:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 :0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:

 

The man stood in a different room, looking at the heart-shaped moon. Their moon…a figure stepped in, the hood covering the eyes.

 

“Thought I'd find you here.”

 

He turned.

 

“When will we have the Haven of Souls? We cannot wait much longer…”

 

“The more pure hearts, the better. I have a plan to speed up the process…but first, we must retrieve our subject from Xehanort and the Heartless…”

 

The figure nodded in understanding. “It better be soon. We're growing restless.”

 

“We can't grow restless, you're exaggerating,” the man said with a slight laugh. “But I understand. It will be soon…more hearts the better.”

 

“It will be a great hour,” the figure said.

 

:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 :0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:

 

The figure then walked into a room, an old room in the world of white and gray. Except this room was red, and thirteen markers stood crumbled, titles inscribed on them. Twelve of these markers were red, but the very last one, number thirteen, was blue. The figure stood at the blue marker. It read: The Key of Destiny.

 

“He's the only one left of the old Organization XIII,” said another figure who had just entered. “And now he's the Superior of us.”

 

“I'm number thirteen,” the figure said. “Ironic, isn't it? Considering our true names. You remember yours?”

 

“Mine? Yeah! It's…” the figure that had just entered trailed off indefinitely.

 

“That's what I thought. But you'll remember when the Haven of Souls is ours…”

 

The figure kneeled at the marker, and ran a hand over the engraved name under the title The Key of Destiny. The figure grinned and whispered the name.

 

“Roxas.”

 

:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 :0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:

 

No translations here, I don't think.

 

Notes:

IL at the beginning of a chapter means Interlude.

 

Kathryne DeTamble's Current Thoughts:

 

This won't make much sense until later, I promise. I like these Interludes because it gives me a break from writing the same plotline all the time. So…I guess…Sayonara for now!