Kingdom Hearts: Kingdom Hearts: Light Chaser

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"One, Master Gero doesn't seem to like you so much... No offense. I imagine he would have sent someone else to come get me to talk to him." And he's not the same man I knew growing up, Aria thought to herself. That was apparent with the previous interactions she had with him before going off to find the supposed last Princess of Heart not in the LC's personal collection. She blamed that partially on the Mirror Relam that Master Gero seemed to have ended up in all these years. Either that, or he just wasn't the man she thought he was. "Two, yes, yes I did. Thank you," Aria ran her hand through her side ponytail, smiling as she did so. "My old hair was kind of trashed from battles. And three," Aria playfully shoved Torrin in the shoulder with her elbow. "Don't call me princess. Otherwise I'm going to address you as Prince Torrin," she teased, curtsying to add to the mockery. She then stood straight and rubbed the back of her head. "I'm okay," she said quietly, looking out of a window. "I get random waves of cold air here and there, but I think that's just my head playing tricks on me. I'm ready to do something to take my mind off of things..." She lowered her hand and stared at the friendship bracelet that was on her wrist, clenching and unclenching her hand as she stared a moment. "Maybe some training?"

 

The first thing Kâlïk' noted when he approached the voices was the male eyeing him. It felt like he was being scrutinized heavily already and he had done very little to provoke such a reaction so soon. He regarded the female with a brief glance and nod. The other male's departure drew his attention. Gone already..and Kal was still left with very little if any information on his situation..perhaps another time. He was about to greet the female properly when she left in a hurry as well, leaving him standing and gazing where they vanished around the corner"...Was it something I said?" He wondered aloud.​

 

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Take was in a strange middle ground. He was well aware he overreacted when this wasn't all necessarily Qamar's fault. But before he apologized Boreas had come up and reaffirmed another feeling, one where he wasn't fond of the idea of being coddled. It eventually just resulted in Take zeroing back to the status quo and letting his keyblade disappear as he held his head and said,"It was a risk we chose when we decided to work with your powers and use keyblades. I'll admit I overreacted a bit." he rubbed his head and felt something wet and looked at his hand which had some blood on it. Not enough for him to really be concerned about it as he said, "I'll be alright without a heal. But maybe more of a warning as to the limitations of the duel? I wasn't even aware keyblade transformations or anything like that was fair play. Especially considering all I was doing was guarding." he walked to grab his water bottle and took a sip and looked over at Boreas and smirked a bit and said, "I know why you overreacted to the comment about royal crests now. Well, some of it." his smile faded quickly and he admitted, "I do have a kind of random question though... since the more I hear about little details the more confused I get." he sipped his water and put away the bottle and asked, "In your homeworld... is the war against heartless? Or is it against other people?"
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Illiana looked over to Torrin as they greeted the trio. Apparently a new person had joined up in their ranks. Illiana didn't pay to much attention to him as Torrin and Aria were chatting. Before the girl could say anything, Aria immediately left Chrono and Illiana. "Hey!" Illiana reached out a bit before sighing. She crossed her arms as she was a bit annoyed. "Yeah right." She rolled her eyes before turning to Chrono. "I'm gonna get some fresh air before I get too pissed off. Not really in the mood to be angry right now. A calm mind leads to a calm body. Don't know if you wanna join but you're free to join me if you want." Illiana started making her way to the courtyard. As she walked out, she saw Take and Boreas talking with one another. As she got closer, Take had asked Boreas a question she found quite interesting. "In your homeworld...is it a war against heartless? Or with other people?" Illiana walked over to the two. "Ooo. Now this I have to hear. Pardon the intrusion." Illiana placed a hand on her hip as a curious smirk had appeared on her face.

 

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With Torrin's arrival ironically bringing the small group to an end, Chrono looked to the new guy who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. "Don't worry about it, he's always like that." Solid first impression, but he doubted Torrin really cared for that. Actually, given his own first interaction with Torrin, he knew the didn't really care for that kind of thing. "Anyway, who are you?" He'd thought he had seen everyone here who wasn't a master and yet here this guy was, an unfamiliar face Chrono had no idea about.

 

Take was going to be fine as he had predicted there was something however that he was curious about. "Qamar's powers? What do you mean with that?" He asked, considering what she had asked him not too long ago there was probably only going to be one answer, but he wanted to be sure. The head wound that Take had sustained was bleeding a little but if the kid said he was fine then he wasn't going to do anything about it, as he had pointed out he was a tough kid and it was just a little blood, he'd be fine. Boreas looked a little bit confused at Take when he mentioned the crest thing again, Boreas had put it behind him and carried on, he took it that he had spoken to Torrin or just based it off the fact that the Light Chaser had made a point of Torrin's position. It was only part of the reasoning as Take implied but that was fine with Boreas he didn't need to explain it to him especially considering it entailed explaining the intricacies of the Realm of Darkness which he didn't feel like doing, much less to an outsider.

His question however wasn't something he had expected, he figured the boy was just trying to make sense of it all. He was aware that Qamar was still there and while he considered brushing off the question like he had most of Qamar's, Illiana's arrival put him on the spot, perhaps not the boy's intention but that's how he felt. And as Take himself was a soldier and had told him what they fought back home Boreas figured it was only fair that he gave the boy an honest answer. In addition if Iliana's claim of being some member of the upper echelons of command she'd be a soldier too, and thus someone he'd have a measure of respect for. He sighed before speaking up. "It's a civil war, well if you can call it civil. We fight against other people, sometimes the Heartless force us to abandon hostilities, but we fight other people." Boreas explained, he knew Take fought against dragons and he wondered what Iliana if her claim of being a soldier was true fought, whether it was other people or something else entirely. He didn't forget that Qamar was still there and she would hear what he had to say but it didn't matter too much to him not right now. "And good morning, Iliana." Boreas said almost as an afterthought realizing he hadn't really seen her at all today before this point.​

 

“Master Kidemonas? That other master said Master Kide did something to my room... that’s how they knew I was in trouble this morning. I couldn’t even scream or call out...” Aria trailed off as she hugged herself, following alongside Torrin. She listened to his explanation on how they were to train, and she couldn’t help but raise her eyebrow a bit. “So it hasn’t been tested... is it safe?” Aria stopped at the top of the flight of stairs leading down. “I’m... not so sure about it...” she said. Honestly, she didn’t want to go “underground” where the stairs were leading to. She had a hard enough time on the boat and the Horned King’s Castle and their tight spaces.

"Huh? That's...kind of creepy." Torrin commented, scratching his cheek. "Safe? It should be. The guy seems to know his stuff...probably...I actually don't know. This kind of tech is beyond my understanding." He shrugged and slowed down after taking a few steps when he noticed that Aria had refused to go down the stairs. "What's wrong? I've heard of people being scared of basements but this looks like the rest of the castle. Less windows and more artificial lights but..." He looked downstairs and yet more similar hallways stretched out. Thankfully this was as far as they needed to go. "Still...I guess it is kind of creepy that this place looks so...so...samey." Torrin frowned slightly at the basement level. "Is that what's bothering you? Or is it the whole dangerous untested training room thing?"

“I don’t like to be in places I feel I can’t get out of easily,” she admitted. “That’s all...” she sighed and made herself walk down, taking in a few slow deep breaths. “I’ll be okay once we get training started,” she decided. She looked down the hallway once she reached the bottom, seeing that indeed it did look the same as the upper half. “Maybe they got tired of trying to make it look unique?” Aria suggested while waiting for Torrin to lead the way.

"Hm. I don't either but that's an issue of paranoia more than anything." He began to walk ahead. "Maybe. It just makes me wonder what all the other rooms are for."

"Mostly storage these days." Around the corner the two were heading towards stepped out Kidemonas. "In the past there were times all these rooms were used for housing refugees from other worlds." The man looked at Torrin then Aria and then back at Torrin again with a disappointed expression on his face. "Why did you bring her? Master Gero would be furious if he knew she was participating. Maybe she should-"

"Leave? That's a little counterproductive." Torrin interrupted. "Just don't throw the biggest baddest thing you can make at us and it'll be fine." Torrin suggested.

"Hm..." Kidemonas scratched his chin. "Fine. I can't do a beta test myself and run my analysis at the same time. But there will be no word of this to Master Gero, agreed?"

Not tell Master Gero what was going on? Oh boy... She could figure out a few reasons why it wouldn't be alright to go through with this. Still, she wasn't a child anymore. And if she was going to face the Light Chaser again, she needed to be ready. "Not a word...." Aria repeated, glancing at Torrin for confirmation of her choice before looking back to the master. "So... what's going to happen exactly? I guess I mean, what should we expect?"

After the two of them agreed to his terms Kide led the two down the hall he had come from and almost immediately there was a sudden change in design. The white walls were no longer covered with doors but remained plain and the farther the three walked the more the walls diverged from each other opening into a larger circular area lined with heavy-looking metal doors each with an electronic display affixed on the wall beside the handles and a large number glowing green over the doors going from 1 to 15.

"Those numbers are green when their room is not in use and red when they are." Kide explained. "The control panels are--H-hey what are you doing?" Kidemonas's eyes widened as Torrin walked ahead and started fiddling with the panel to test the interface for himself.

"How did the Council obtain records of what we fought? There's some stuff here too that looks unfamiliar to me...and some stuff that doesn't look totally accurate..."

"Don't mess with that!" Kidemonas nudged Torrin away from the control panel and nervously inspected the device to check if Torrin had somehow damaged it. With a sigh of relief Kide turned to answer him. "Atmos and Thallasa filled us in on what happened and as for other sources...well...just be glad you guys will have a new way to train, alright?"

"Yeah...and what about those sensors installed in our rooms? Should we not ask questions about them either?"

"Moving on! To answer your question, Aria, expect to see Heartless that you've fought before and other familiar foes. None of it is real in the sense you're familiar with but you can get knocked unconscious if you're not careful. Nothing here is supposed to be lethal but treat the simulations as if they were nonetheless. For some of the simulations like that clown I've programmed some responses to keep battles from going dull but none of the enemies who might have spoken during battle will be nearly as talkative as they once were."

"Good to hear. My battle banter isn't what it used to be." Torrin commented.

Aria smirked at Torrin's remark and then looked to the man. "Treat it as if it's real, but it really isn't real... Got it. So, once we start this thing, how do we stop it?" she asked as she tilted her head looking at the door. "Do we have to defeat all the enemies that come our way before we can tap out?"

"Just shout End Program and the simulation will end if you're not feeling up to it." Kide answered. "Though doing that or getting knocked out will reduce your medal count severely."

Torrin blinked in confusion and looked at Aria as if she had any answers.

"Oh! Right. You wouldn't know that. I came up with a way of quantifying the increase in skill a person gains after training. I have since dubbed this quantified experience as Medals." The man explained simply.

"Why not just call it experience? Experience Points maybe?"

"Did you spend months building this?" Before Torrin could answer Kidemonas shook his head and continued speaking. "No. I thought not. Medals are what they will be called and that's that. Anyway, let's get this started, shall we? Let me load up the first round." The master turned away to tap the control panel by the first door a few times and after a few beeps and boops he nodded in a satisfied manner and opened the door. Beyond was an empty white room that, when the two stepped through the threshold, changed the scenery around them so that it appeared as if they were on the outskirts Eventide Town in an open field. The only noticeable difference between it and the real thing was the fact that a rectangular opening where Kide still stood remained allowing the two to have a glimpse of the room behind them.

Aria listened to the banter back and forth, shrugging her shoulders when Torrin seemed to look to her for answers. She waited patiently as the room was loaded, and then saw what was beyond the door. "Eventide," Aria breathed out. She hesitantly stepped inside the room, gawking at the scenery around them. It had so many details and little things that this almost looked real. She remembered when she first came here how her and Illiana teamed up, and she called her bread girl because she didn't know her name.

This was also when I was separated from... Her thoughts trailed off as painful memories came to her mind. Trying to hide her discomfort, she summoned her keyblade and waited for Torrin to join her on the other-side of the door.

"Even the breeze feels the same." Torrin spoke as he stepped into the simulated world and took a deep breath. He looked up at the sky almost expecting to see Quietus above them but there was nothing but the wispy clouds overhead. Looking to see that Aria had already called for her keyblade he followed suit and summoned his own in his left hand.

"Alright. I need to shut the door to commence the first match so just call out End Program if you feel it's too much. Got it? Good. Good luck you two." Kide spoke quickly and closed the door without so much as waiting for a response.

"Well...I suppose this wouldn't be the worst place to get trapped in if that door doesn't open again." Torrin joked.

Before them in giant bright white letters appeared the phrase "Round 1". A few seconds passed and the words disappeared and soon they were replaced with "BEGIN". The instant the word vanished from sight a small group of ten Shadow Heartless materialized before them. Torrin lowered his keyblade not amused by their sight.

"Sorry! Loaded the wrong test! Let me get the real thing in here!" They could hear Kide on the other side of the room call to them. The Shadows remained frozen in place and after a moment of silence they simply popped out of existence and in their place a Darkside instantly materialized stuck in a strange pose that caused Torrin to stifle his laughter. The Darkside stood upright with its arms spread wide out apart looking like a giant T. "Aaaaaannnnndddd there! Fixed!" As soon as Kide spoke those words the Darkside came to life and began to move, bringing its fist down at the two keybladers.

Aria tilted her head as she saw the shadow heartless freeze, and then disappear. Only to have Darkside suddenly appear and be frozen in place too in a weird position. "Well this is amusing." It then came back to life and Aria dodgerolled out of the way of the first blow. She then sent a Thunder spell at it, trying to get some damage off of it. "You know, the Light Chaser had me fight this off with Chrys! To help me train? I'm not sure." She moved back away from the Darkside, waiting for the next wave of attacks to come.

Torrin had leapt backwards to get out of the Darkside's reach and transformed his keyblade into a bow to fire at the Darkside's head several times before it stood back up. "Really? Well it's a good thing you're in better company now." He spoke, not referring to himself but the entire group they were a part of. "These guys aren't much of a challenge compared to everything we've seen lately. Still better than Shadows." Torrin shrugged and eyed the Darkside as it leaned backwards to begin firing off dark energy orbs from the hole in its chest that tracked them down. Torrin sidestepped one and cut another with his keyblade sending it flying back at the Heartless.

Aria split her keyblade into twin katanas, ready for action. She moved out of the way of the orbs, zig-zagging left and right. She finally sent off another wave of electricity, letting the currents take care of the darkballs heading her way and then dropping back to a defense position.

The Darkside hunched over after having been struck again by Aria's magic and Torrin took the opportunity to move in and attack. He sprinted forward and slid under a an orb of darkness the came down at him and when he recovered he leapt up into the air holding his keyblade high. Torrin brought his keyblade down right at the Darkside's head and just like that it blinked out of existence...before his keyblade ever made contact with it. Torrin crashed into the ground with a hasty roll to recover from the whiffed attack. The room returned to its previous state and the simulated Eventide Town disappeared leaving the two in an empty white room.

"Oops!" Kide called out from outside. He opened the door to let the two out. "Thanks for the assistance. Caught a bug during your battle and the training rooms should be ready before the end of the day."

"You could've warned us you were ending the trial." Torrin glared, calling off his keyblade to rub his knee. "Couldn't have spared us a few more seconds?"

"...No." Kidemonas answered simply. "You guys are free to go back to whatever it was you were doing."

"And just like that, our training got ruined by someone else." Torrin sighed.

"That's okay, we'll have plenty of time to train, yeah?" Aria unsummoned her keyblade and followed out of the dark room with Torrin to head back to the outside world. "Thanks for letting us give it a spin Master Kidemonas." Aria bowed politely to the man before heading to the stairs. The faster she could be back in the open, the easier she would feel. "I wonder what the others are up to by now... I hope Illiana isn't mad for me ditching her all of the sudden..."

"She'd probably be more upset with me for dragging you away. Though she did hear me say Gero needed you so...maybe she bought it." He hadn't thought about how Illiana would have felt for having Aria suddenly pulled away but even after considering it, he still couldn't find reason to be too concerned about it. Though the thought did serve as a reminder about the other reason he wanted to pull Aria away in the first place. As they went up the stairs Torrin had remained silent for a while as he considered telling Aria what he had kept to himself. The only people who knew what had happened were Boreas and Choma. "Aria? There's something..." He hesitated. 'I killed Mika. Just the same as the me from the other world did. Oh but that was just her Nobody so you don't have to worry about me being the same!' He shook his head knowing that whether he was blunt about it or not, there was no way it could have sounded good. He trusted that Aria would have kept it to herself but even then. How would she look at him after hearing what he did? He decided to keep quiet about it for now. "Uh. Never mind. I forgot what I was going to say. Let's just get back to the others and see what's up."

 

Chrys inwardly winced at the mention of the trial run. The master had already mentioned Torrin's incredibly likely reluctance to accept her presence. She was honestly in no hurry to get along with him either. However, the fact that many of the keybladers here could turn violent at the mere sight of her practically ruined her chances before she even got started. Still, she had known this wouldn't be easy. She still had to try though.

At least she had her powers back. If nothing else, she could toss up a protect spell should anyone think her back a nice looking target. She followed after the master silently, not really in the mood to say much in the first place and admittedly growing more anxious as they went further. ​

 

Another chime in brought him out of his current musings. His gaze turned, resting on the other male who addressed him. As much as he entertained the idea of giving Torrin another shot at interacting, he was here for a reason. To seek others like him..others who could help him."If he intends to act snooty, that is his burden to bear, not my own." He then turned fully to Chrono."My name is Kâlïk' Hî'ionKætân. Call me Kal for short..most people do."​

 

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He was glad that he had some way of shortening his name, otherwise, he could easily foresee the troubles he would have in pronouncing his name. "Okay Kal, that saves some trouble. I'm Chrono." His hand was held out for him to shake. "Might be a rude question to ask, but what are you doing here?" Chrono didn't mean it to come off as rude as it possibly did, but curiosity had gotten the better of him in this regard.

 

Qamar jerked her head around and saw Boreas. He walked over and told her to just leave Take alone. Not wanting to hurt him more or make him any more upset, Qamar backed off to stand beside Boreas. She stared at the ground, a sullen look upon her face. Take spoke up and Qamar looked onwards. Right, a risk they both chose to take. Whether or not he overreacted was up to debate, he had every right to be angry when he got hurt. Qamar would have done the same thing. Qamar saw him look at his hand and figured that he must have ben checking for blood. She didn't push him for whether he was bleeding or not. "Yeah we should have talked about what was and wasn't allowed..." she said.

Take then asked if on their homeworld was the war against heartless or people. Qamar scratched her cheek and wasn't sure if she should answer for Boreas. Then again, Boreas would probably have more tact in this instance. Especially considering he lived this war and Qamar was basically unaware of the war for the most part. Illiana made her way over and Qamar was sure the girl didn't even bother to notice her. Boreas answered Take and Qamar just shrugged. Soon enough, a new man came and addressed the wielders who had gathered in the courtyard. Behind him was that one girl who was on the Light Chaser's side.

Qamar frowned and was curious as to why the girl was there all of a sudden. The girl had the Council's protection and Qamar was not as angry as she probably should have. She was still angry that the girl was a part of the Light Chaser's students, but there had to be a reason to this. Qamar stepped forward and bowed to Master Fost. "Good morning, Master Fost. Hello newcomer. I hope we can get to know each other, hm? My name is Qamar, by the way."​

 

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"Hm...? Oh. Alright then.” Aria wondered what Torrin was going to talk to her about, but she didn’t want to push it. His mood seemed to drop a bit, so she assumed it wasn’t her place to pry.

As they walked, Aria perked up to see Chrono still there with the new guy. “Hi there!” She called with a wave. She then glanced to Torrin and shrugged before bounding to the pair, stopping a short ways from them. “Sorry for earlier,” she said with a bow. “Leaving like that in a rush. I’m Aria, this is Torrin,” Aria introduced them both to the new guy. “And it seems like you and Chrono already know each other.”

 

His brow rose. A lot of people here seemed so foreign to him. It was crazy to think there were other worlds..if he was at least ten years younger. The male introduced himself and Kälîk nodded his head. He was about to answer when the familiar couple approach them."Perhaps that is a conversation for another time, no?" He said and regarded Aria with a slight incline of his head."...Hello." He greeted."It seems you're back." He said, directing his chiding more towards Torrin than his female friend.​

 

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Take had not expected a sudden crowd when he asked that question, but Boreas seemed to go ahead and answer it. So it was a civil war. This made Takehiko have several more questions that he wanted to ask, but then even more people joined the courtyard... then some master he didn't recognize came in with a girl he didn't recognize. But he introduced himself and... kind of introduced the student. He mentioned something about a change of heart which made Take wonder if this girl was one of the Light Chaser's students or something? It could have just been they were trying to convince more kids to fight while they stayed all cozy in their castle, but he wasn't exactly getting that impression. Especially once he mentioned her being a former enemy and if she was under their protection he wondered if they had run into her before? He didn't hear anything about it a girl on the Light Chaser's side.

Either way, he'd never seen this girl before, so he didn't have any particular contempt for her. And since everyone seemed to be focusing more on Fost and glaring daggers at the girl... Take just decided to walk on over towards the blond haired girl and he held his hand out towards her,"I don't think we've met before anyway. My name's Takehiko, you can just call me Take. Good to have you on board."
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"If you say so." Chrono said, his attention turning towards the returning duo. He hadn't been expecting to see Torrin or Aria back this quickly as they hadn't even been gone for all that long. "Already done with whatever Master Gero needed you for?" There had been some doubt in his voice when he asked that, and it wasn't like he was prodding for an answer, thus there wasn't a response he was trying to get or anything like that.