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FOREWORD :​

-First, I have to give credit to libregkd, NEGAmanZZZ, Kakumei_no_Kaze, and Kamaya_the_1337 for the possession theory, and to HigherBeing for the Chasers as an organization.
-Second, for the names and abbreviations : X is Xehanort, XH is Xehanort’s Heartless ; Larry is the tall knight (the ES), Ven is the boy knight who gets frozen, and Aqua is the girl knight ; I believe you all know Baldy, but it’s the bad guy with XH’s clothes ; DK (Dark Knight) is the guy “summoned” by Baldy ; Sunset Horizons is KH2’s secret ending, and Fate of the Unknown is KH2FM’s secret ending.
-Third, I know this is a really long post, but it’s got to be long for the theory to be
all-encompassing. To facilitate the reading, I have divided it in “chapters”.
-Fourth, there are probably some errors, loops and things I’ve forgotten (if not many…). So if you see any, post to tell me, I’ll fix the main text.
-And last, don’t be fooled by the boasting title of the topic and the fact I’ll use present tense : this is and remains a theory, it does not nullify any other theories and I may very well be completely wrong. We’ll see when the game actually comes out.

THE AWAKENING :​

So here’s the theory that started the bigger one. When, in Sunset Horizons, the Chasers were evoked, many people assumed it was another special type of being, like the Heartless and the Nobodies. Well it’s only partially true. There is a third special being, but it is not the Chasers : they are the Awakened. First let’s remember how existence works in the KH Universe : there is the body, the mind (intellect, thought and memories), and there’s the heart (emotions, feelings and willpower). Now let’s remember also what happens when you die in KH : your body dies, your mind vanishes and most importantly, your heart joins Kingdom Hearts and is merged in this “paradise dimension” (the one XH talked about in his Reports, and which he searched), where all hearts are born and must return. There, since you have no mind anymore, you lose all self-awareness, all sense of individuality and the only that is left is a feeling of serenity and completion. Like Christian heaven, you lose yourself in Kingdom Hearts/God/Paradise. The heart in KH is like the soul in Christianity.

The Awakening is what happens when a heart becomes powerful enough to exist on its own, without a body or a mind. The Heartless are a form of incomplete awakening : a Heartless is a heart filled with darkness, without a body or a mind, but that can still act physically, as if it had a body ; but since darkness enslaves them, they can’t think and so are not truly awakened. An Awakened is a heart that thinks and acts on the physical level.

Now where did I get this idea, you ask ? Well first, let’s take a look at X, his Heartless and his Nobody : X always wanted knowledge, more than anything ; he experimented on the secrets of the Heart and was determined enough to become a Heartless and a Nobody. XH was always looking for a paradise dimension, for Kingdom Hearts, and for the truth of the universe. And it is said that Xemnas often goes to the Room of Sleep, and a Room of Awakening is mentioned. Then after Axel has died, Xemnas says it is possible that through Sora’s heart, Axel may have “awakened”. This “Awakening” seems to be the purpose of X’s research, and of all his other forms.

This would explain :
-why XH could think and plan. A Heartless is a heart filled with dark instincts, impulses and feelings : without a mind, it can’t think. But XH could, he was intelligent and cunning, but could not act physically, as if he traded the physical power for mental power. To do that, he must have had a great mastery of his heart’s power.
-why the Heartless can act physically even though they’re only masses of feelings and raw spiritual power. The power of a Heartless’ dark feelings gives him physical strength, but anger and hate are confusing feelings, that cloud the thoughts and blind you : a heart that is filled only with them cannot create a coherent mind.
-why Xemnas can speak to Aqua’s empty armor in the Room of Sleep. That’s because she has partially awakened : though her body’s dead, her heart was strong enough to avoid being absorbed by Kingdom Hearts. It also allows her to think and communicate, like it had a mind.
-why Larry can fight Sora and speak to him as the ES : he has completely awakened, so his heart is powerful enough to think, talk and animate his armor. Maybe his armor is empty, like Aqua’s, but moves thanks to the power of Larry’s heart. Or maybe he has created a new body for himself.
-how Kairi suddenly had two bodies and minds : the ones we saw in KH1 and the ones that formed Naminé. Since Kairi is a Princess of the Heart, her heart is strong enough to manage something like an awakening, even though she’s probably not conscious of it. Same thing goes for Sora, who regained a body and a mind after becoming a Heartless, with help from Kairi : his heart “created” new ones, while the original formed Roxas.

The “Birth by Sleep” principle can also be explained with the idea of the Awakening. To be Awakened is to be immortal, obviously, since it’s only the body that dies and the mind that vanishes : the heart is immortal, it never dies, it only changes. There is often this idea in fiction, that the first step to immortality is to accept death. True immortality lies in the afterlife, because it is eternal : the only problem is that when you die, your heart joins Kingdom Hearts and you lose all self-awareness. You only exist as a part of Kingdom Hearts, not as an individual. The Awakening is immortality with individuality. But for your heart to become independent, you first have to let go of your mind and body : you must have the courage to take the leap. And death is always, and I mean always, compared to sleep (Hypnos and Thanatos, for you Saint Seiya fans) : you can’t awaken if you did not go to sleep, and you can’t be reborn as a higher being if you didn’t die. In the Room of Sleep, Aqua’s heart is probably in the process of transcending, already able to simulate a mind, but not a body. In the Room of Awakening, there may be Ven who is near complete Awakening, or has already achieved it and is imprisoned.

This Awakening is the true power of the heart Ansem and Xehanort never truly understood, because they relied too heavily on their mind, not realizing what power emotions, willpower and the heart held. This is kind of like the traditional opposition between science and spirituality. However, Xemnas suggested that Axel may have awakened thanks to Sora’s heart : how could that be since he was a Nobody, without a heart to transcend ? My guess is that it is somewhat possible for a mind to transcend and to create a heart. After all, we’ve all seen that members of Organization XIII had strong personalities ; one of the videos of KH2FM suggests that they act like they have hearts, pretending they feel something ; Saïx also said Nobodies perfectly remembered what it was like to have a heart. It is possible that a mind can convince itself it feels something, and pretend so well that in the end, actual feelings are born. But that could not happen on its own : the mind can’t actually create something just by thinking really hard about it. On the other hand, Axel was linked to Sora’s heart through his friendship with Roxas : they both made him feel like he had a heart. And when he died, and went to sleep, it is very probable that a heart was created thanks to his thoughts and Sora/Roxas’ feelings, and that he managed to awaken.

THE KEYBLADE :​

The question is the asked : how do you reach the Awakening ? By making your heart stronger. And who are the guys whose hearts are always shown as the strongest ? The keyblade masters.

To me, the keyblade is much more than just a weapon : it is a force in its own right, a mystical power. Yet it doesn’t have that much incredible abilities : in fact the only power a keyblade has is to unlock or lock things. But that power can do something tremendous : it is able to unlock a heart’s potential. It can make its master a true hero, if his heart holds this potential, like it did to Sora and Riku. Only those whose heart is strong are chosen to be keyblade masters : Kairi was able to use one because she is a Princess of the Heart.

If you noticed, in the game the keyblade masters always cast their spells through their keyblade : it is the source of their power. The keyblade isn’t just a weapon, it is a focus, something that canalizes the heart’s power ; Final Form is said to reveal the true power of the keyblade : when in Final Form, Sora can move his keyblades without even touching them, only with the power of his heart ; the ES can do incredible things with his keyblade, riding it like a jet bike or shooting great orbs of energy from it : that’s because he is awakened and his heart has revealed all its potential.

The keyblade is also said to bring both chaos and order ; it isn’t a force for good or evil : that depends entirely on the master of the keyblade. A bit paradoxical when you remember KH1 : the keyblade was shown as a weapon of light, locking keyholes and defeating Heartless. Well it’s more subtle than that : a keyblade draws its power from the heart. That is why it is able to free the hearts of the Heartless it destroys. What the keyblade fights is not darkness itself : it is the fact that excessive darkness confuses and enslaves the heart, making it lose control and actually weakening it. The darkness holds great power, but it is a dangerous power that can overcome you : when a heart is filled with darkness, it cannot achieve complete Awakening. And it seems the keyblade’s purpose is to unlock a heart’s potential. Whether keyblade masters fight for good or evil doesn’t matter to it : what matters is that his heart doesn’t give in and lose control. Darkness is not a wrong road, it is only a risky one : Riku is a good example of keyblade master who uses darkness without losing his heart to it.

THE CHASERS AND THE KEYBLADE WAR :​

The keyblade thus seems to be the fastest way to the Awakening. And in my opinion, that is why there were so much keyblade masters in the past. Because many people were searching for the Awakening at the time : maybe they did not know exactly what it was, but they were looking for something, as we all are. For truth, for illumination, for power, maybe for the ability to retrieve the heart of a dead loved one from Kingdom Hearts…They were all chasing this power of the heart’s potential, and their determination enabled them to use the keyblade. They were Chasers of the Awakening. And like always when two people look for the same thing, they will probably compete over it. So what do you think that makes when there are so many people looking for the same thing ? Bingo, a war.

The Keyblade War was a conflict between all the Chasers ; it may have started because of enmity between them, maybe because Baldy set up the war to have to power all to himself, or maybe because there could be only one that would achieve the Awakening. But in the end, they all killed each other ; their keyblades remained because their hearts were all partially awakened, lingering in existence and refusing to fade in Kingdom Hearts. All died but four : Larry, Ven, Aqua and Baldy. Three heroes and a man so hell bent on obtaining ultimate knowledge that he was willing to do the vilest things. A mad scientist. An evil seeker of knowledge. And then Fate of the Unknown happens.

XEHANORT :​

First off, do you remember how Nomura said all characters in Fate of the Unknown were completely new ? Well going from that, I tell you : X is not part of those characters. He’s not Larry or Baldy. X doesn’t really appear until Ansem the Wise finds him in the streets of Radiant Garden. To me, X is Baldy’s heart (and maybe his mind) in Larry’s body. There are two ways of explaining it.

The first is the possession theory (insert image). The idea is that Baldy considers his body too old and frail (like XH, who cast off his body to embrace the darkness, like he said in his Reports), and wants another, younger one. His first choice is Larry’s body, probably because he’s the best of the three knights. The idea is that he takes the body by transferring his heart and his mind into it, while locking away or suppressing Larry’s heart and mind. Now let’s remember XH wanting Riku’s body as his own : the only way he achieved the possession was because Riku gave in to darkness. So how does Baldy do it, since Larry is his enemy and will probably resist ? Well either he uses the power of Kingdom Hearts, or he takes advantage of Larry’s hate and anger (feeling that spawn darkness). But something goes wrong ; it could be that Larry was resisting. The consequence is that Baldy’s memories are erased during the transfer.

The second theory is very similar. The idea is mainly that Baldy had already tried to possess Larry (which explains his hatred for X, for Baldy’s heart and mind, they have a past enmity when Fate of the Unknown happens), but it is not his purpose in Fate of the Unknown. His purpose is to access Kingdom Hearts in order to transcend and reach the Awakening : to do that, his heart must separate from his body and mind. But in this process, Larry tried to stop him by actually doing the same thing. And somehow, while they fight it all gets messed up and topsy-turvy : Baldy’s heart ends up in Larry’s body, and his mind as well, only without the memories. This explanation may be better because of this simple fact : if Baldy’s plan was to obtain Kingdom Hearts and to transcend, why did he need a new body ? Hence this theory, which is pretty much the same as the former, except the transfer happened by accident, not because of a plan by Baldy.

I personally assume that Larry’s heart is cast aside, and that Ven and Aqua are killed. Some time later, a man wakes up in the streets of Radiant Garden, with Larry’s body, a heart which lacks moral compass like any villain’s and a genius mind, but without any memories. The name he gives himself is Xehanort : take “Another” and add an X for Unknown, you have this guy who’s in substance a new man who doesn’t know anything about his past. This explains :
-his yellow eyes, which are the mark of someone who has been tainted by the power of darkness. Xemnas and X had yellow eyes, as had Xigbar and Saïx, and also Ansem the Wise, who said in one of his reports that using the Corridors of Darkness too much was dangerous, as it tainted you. When Larry’s eyes become yellow, it shows him using darkness because he’s ready to do anything to stop Baldy. Unfortunately, that will be his downfall.
-his inhuman talent and eagerness to learn, which he inherits from Baldy, who was apparently the same “mad scientist” type of guy. But we’ll come back to that later.
-the fact Larry said he hated X before attacking Sora, even though his body greatly resembles X’s. Well that’s because it is his body, but not his mind or his heart. What you fight is only his empty armor and keyblade, animated by his heart.
-Xemnas’ frequent talks with Aqua who’s locked in the Room of Sleep, and why he calls her “friend”. He’s trying to recover his memories so he can again try to achieve the Awakening, but at the same time it seems he recovers some of Larry’s memories : when he calls her friend, it’s both sincere (for Larry) and ironic (for Baldy).
-the fact that Xemnas said he did not remember what it was like to have other feelings than anger or hate : first because the heart X had was Baldy’s, a heart already very tainted by darkness and negative feelings, and because of Larry’s memories, which are filled with thoughts of hate and grudge for Baldy. Xehanort is also an anagram for “No Heart” : X’s heart was already filled with darkness to begin with, always on the edge of becoming a Heartless.
-why Xemnas was seen with an armor similar to the three knights’, in the final battle. That was probably a reminiscence from Larry’s past.

TALES OF FUTURE PAST :​

Nomura said that Sunset Horizons and Fate of the Unknown happened both in the past and in the future (that’s why the knights’ armors look both medieval and futuristic). How can that be ? Because it shows a situation, a conflict that has happened in the past and that will repeat itself in the future. After all, Fate of the Unknown said “All the fates have been set”. What happened in the past will happen again in the future.

Like I said in the chapter about X, it is possible that Baldy had already tried to possess Larry before. In fact, he had nearly succeeded, by making Larry open his heart to darkness and then transferring his own heart into Larry’s body. Only Larry managed to free himself in the end ; but for a moment, he was a creature of darkness, on the brink of becoming a Heartless, and a slave to Baldy, a man who had mastered darkness without losing his heart to it. And years later, when they met again during Fate of the Unknown, Baldy taunted Larry by “summoning” something that looks like Larry when he was nearly possessed : a being with a helmet that reminds that of a knight, but with clothes associated with darkness, as well as a keyblade which bears the symbol of the eye( maybe the evil eye), which we’ve already seen on Riku’s Soul Eater and Way to the Dawn (a keyblade that represents balance between light and darkness). Seeing this, Larry charges first, and when facing his dark reflect seems to hesitate : he takes a lightning spell in the face but remains there, only staring at his enemy. And in the end, to defeat his nemesis (Baldy), Larry will again use the power of darkness that nearly destroyed him before ; this desperate move will in the end lead them to the creation of Xehanort and the death of Aqua and Ven. Now doesn’t that whole mess remind you of someone ? Riku, of course

In the future, it will happen again. XH said that Riku and him were very similar : they are in a way, since XH is related to Larry, and if you followed my version, Larry had a fate very similar to Riku’s. He also said he would return, since darkness was still there, creeping inside Riku’s heart. In the future, XH will actually return for a last battle against Riku, Sora and Kairi, who have grown up to become experimented Keyblade masters. And the same thing that happened to Larry will probably happen to Riku. Doesn’t that dark knight from Fate of the Unknown remind you of the Riku Replica ? Maybe it is him revived, or simply a Heartless summoned by XH.

It may even be possible that the Keyblade War will happen again : 20 years after KW1 (Keyblade War 1), Keyblades appear again and choose masters, and someone is once again looking for the Awakening, namely X, then XH, then Xemnas. After all, how do we know the keyblades we’ve seen so far are the only ones ? We don’t know if there’s even a limit to their numbers. We don’t know anything about the origins of the keyblade. And if there are more and more keyblades, that means more and more Chasers, and that could mean KW2 (Keyblade War 2). Maybe that’s what Mickey’s letter is about : other keyblade masters appearing.

Besides, we’ve seen how characters from the present time are on their way to Awakening ; one may wonder : when will they actually start looking for it ? Or maybe they won’t be looking for it. We’ve seen how XH may return, to once again search for ultimate knowledge : if a war happens, maybe our heroes will only enter it to stop XH, and inherit the armors from the hero predecessors. Maybe that is why Larry, Aqua and Ven were in KW1, maybe that was what made them heroes. How ironic right ? The guy desperately looking for a thing never achieves it, even in decades and with 4 separate existences (Baldy, X, XH and Xemnas), while the guys who never actually wanted it obtains it. Well, that’s heroes for you…

To me Fate of the Unknown happens in the past, and Sunset Horizons in the future :
-at the end of Sunset Horizons, we don’t see who the mysterious figure approaching is. It could be XH, not Baldy.
-at the beginning of Fate of the Unknown, the three knights don’t have the keyblades their Sunset Horizons counterparts took at the crossroads.
-the three knights in Sunset Horizons (Sora, Kairi and Riku in my opinion) come from three different roads, and pick three different keyblades. Those roads and keyblades correspond to three different realms : Sora’s Kingdom Chain is the keyblade from the realm of light ; Mickey’s Kingdom Chain is from the realm of darkness ; Riku’s Way to the Dawn represents balance between light and darkness, so it’s probably the keyblade from the realm of twilight. Which means the enigmatic figure comes from the fourth road, the realm of nothingness : no heart, no keyblade. But there I have a problem : if Larry corresponds to Riku, Ven to Sora and Aqua to Kairi…then Riku picks up Sora’s keyblade, Kairi picks up Mickey’s, and Sora picks up Riku’s…that is one of the only things I can’t include in my theory. I could use some help on that.

The presence of Mickey in Fate of the Unknown is also problematic. There are several options :
-he has somehow traveled to the past and witnessed Fate of the Unknown. He did this because he discovered clues to what happened exactly in the past, and has seen that it is beginning to happen again. X’s, XH’s and Xemnas’ researches are probably reminiscent of Baldy’s, and the appearance of Keyblades and Chasers points to an upcoming KW. When he returns, he sends a letter to Destiny Islands to warn Sora and Riku.
-he witnessed Fate of the Unknown himself 20 years, just when he had finished his training with Yen Sid (that’s why he has the Star Seeker, which Yen Sid gives you in KH2) ; maybe he was a keyblade master that was not a Chaser, and that did not know much about the Awakening and the KW. But now that history repeats itself, he understands and warns Sora and Riku.
-the Mickey we see in Fate of the Unknown actually belongs in Sunset Horizons. He hasn't traveled to the future, but witnesses himself the battle in the future, between XH, Sora, Riku and Kairi. He is about to join the battle, and brings a new keyblade, maybe the one from the fourth realm.

I believe Nomura also said that the next game will happen both in the future and in the past : maybe we will see separately what leads to Sunset Horizons and what leads to Fate of the Unknown (namely the Keyblade War).

CONCLUSION :​

Well that’s it for now folks. Any comments or developments ?