Kingdom Hearts Fan Fiction ❯ Kingdom Hearts Route B ❯ The Invisible ( Chapter 8 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, nor any of the Disney Characters in this story. The following is purely fan made. Please support the original work.

 

 

 

Chapter 8: The Invisible

 

 

 

Sora, Donald and Goofy had to resist running up to poke all the contraptions and innovations in the domed convention hall. People in lab coats scurried around, carrying papers and veiled objects, moving giant machines with forklifts, reconnecting wires to electronic circuits, and tightening the bolts on their inventions.

Among all the scientists were people in business suits. They walked around from stand to stand, taking furious notes on each of the inventions on display. None of the suits paid any attention to all the field trip children that had come to the science fair. The inventors, on the other hand, were more then happy to answer any the children's questions.

Wilbur had been leading the way through the exhibition hall. Suddenly he set off at a run toward a stand where several suits were listening to a young boy. His invention looked much more make-shift than anything else in the exhibition hall.

"This," the boy was saying excitedly, "is what I call the 'bully radar.'"

The boy pointed to what looked like a pair of walkie-talkies. A lightbulb was taped to the walkie-talkie's antennae.

"This will greatly lower the rate at which bullying occurs in schools by allowing teachers to put a stop to the behavior as or before it even occurs. Whenever there is a bully or a student that is experiencing extreme negative emotion, the lightbulb on the radar starts to blink and the beeping will get louder the closer the teacher moves toward the target. I'm still working on increasing the radius of effect so that teachers and faculty members can get feedback from anywhere on campus, but..."

The boy trailed off, leaning to the side in order to look just beyond the suits. He noticed Wilbur waving his arms.

"Uh, sorry. Would you excuse me for a second?"

Wilbur pointed to a nearby machine that was big enough for all of them to duck behind. Sora, donald and Goofy waited behind Wilbur for the boy to arrive. When the boy came around the machine, he grabbed Wilbur's ear.

"Don't tell me you left the garage door open again."

Wilbur winced. "I didn't! I swear! I came here to protect you!"

"From what? Did another one of my inventions come back to try and ruin my future?"

"Excuse me," Goofy began, "but are you Wilbur's father?"

The boy finally let go of Wilbur's ear, and nodded. Sora was amazed he hadn't noticed the resemblance before. Young Cornelius Robinson had the same spiky, yellow hair and the same glasses. Although he wasn't wearing a lab coat like his older counterpart, Cornelius did wear the same blue vest over a white collar shirt and the same red shorts.

"Call me Lewis. The name Cornelius hasn't grown on me yet." He extended his hand. "Nice to meet you."

Goofy shook hands with Lewis. After Sora and Donald introduced themselves, Wilbur explained why they were there and what had happened in the future. The more he told his story, the more worried Lewis' eyes widened.

"Wait," Lewis said, "If something happens to me in the past, then how are you still here? Logically, you shouldn't exist."

Wilbur raised his hand into the air and took a deep breathe as though he were about to launch into an explanation tirade, but then he stopped. "That, uh, is an excellent question. How am I still here?"

"Maybe it has something to do with your heart?" Sora offered.

"My heart?"

"A strong heart can push you through the hardest times. Believe me."

Lonely memories of moving through Hollow Bastion after being left behind by Donald and Goofy, of offering his own heart to the darkness in order to free Kairi's, filled Sora's mind. He never would have been able to summon the strength to fight Riku if his heart hadn't grown so much from the adventures he'd had and the friends he'd made.

"We don't have time to talk about hearts." Wilbur faced Lewis. "Has anything strange happened to you? Like, were you followed?" Wilbur waved his arms in the air. "Did you get attacked by these weird, black alien looking monsters with glowing yellow eyes?"

Lewis gave Wilbur a "really" look.

"Alien monsters?"

"They're called heartless," Sora explained. "Weird stuff happens when they're around. Have you noticed anything?"

"The weirdest thing I've seen all day is when Mom started screaming in the middle of a backflip."

Wilbur slapped his palm on his forehead. "Is she on the caffeine patches again?"

"Caffeine patches?" Sora, Donald and Goofy repeated.

The explanation never came. Something made a high pitched, beeping sound. At first it was low, and then the rhythm became faster. The beeping shrieked through the entire room, bouncing off the walls. Everyone in the exhibition hall yelped and covered their ears. Lewis' face twisted in pain.

"That's my bully detector," he yelled over the noise.

The ground shook.

Sora, Donald, Goofy, Wilbur and Lewis peeked around the machine they had been hiding behind. Across the room, Lewis' radar was bouncing on the table at it screeched. A man in a suit rushed toward it, to try and turn it off, but he bounced off the air and crashed into a nearby table.

Goofy ran out to try and help the civilians, but the moment he had finished helping the injured man, he was flung across the room himself. He slammed onto the miniature town model, that had been the centerpiece of the exhibition hall, and lay there, a giant among tiny buildings, with stars flying around his head.

The man Goofy had just helped and the people in the exhibition pushed and shoved, running out of the room while an unseen hurricane knocked over machinery, tables, coffee stands, forklifts and whatever else that wasn't tied down.

Sora grabbed Wilbur's shoulder.

"Get Lewis out of here!"

"Be careful," Wilbur said, before running out after the civilians with Lewis right behind him.

Donald raced across the room to help Goofy, and Sora, keyblade in hand, chased after him, keeping his eyes and ears open for a sudden, invisible attack. Something crashed to his right, and Sora sent a blizzard spell careening out in the direction of the noise. The icy particles of his attack hit the wall opposite the room.

He watched the floor, trying to see if he could catch movement in the dust, but the stupid exhibition hall just had to be swept spotless. Behind him, Goofy groaned as regained consciousness. The stars that had been swirling around his head vanished.

Donald helped him off the model and just in time too. In the next second, something, like a giant's foot, squashed the model flat. Donald aimed a spell at the invisible threat, but his attack didn't hit anything that was alive.

The three friends huddled, back to back, watching, waiting for an attack, but the room was empty except for the mess of broken inventions and spilled coffee.

"How do we fight something we can't see," Goofy said.

"Sora, up there."

Looking up, Sora spotted the sprinkler system high on the doomed ceiling. He raised his keyblade with Donald and shouted, "Firaga!"

The fireballs crashed against the sprinklers high above and then the entire room was awash in an artificial rainstorm. Then they saw it. The water from the sprinklers produced an outline of something in the middle of the room. Right in front of them, hunched over like a predator ready to strike, was a creature as big as a school bus. Sora couldn't see any details, but the creature had a long, thick tail that stick out far behind its body. Its back legs and feet were wide and heavy looking, while its head was long and round.

Massive footprints stomped toward them. Sora, Donald and Goofy raised their weapons. Donald threw an ice spell at it, Sora threw his keyblade, and Goofy threw his shield, but it was like throwing pebbles at an incoming boulder. The creature didn't stop charging, and the three friends barely had enough time to jump out of the way before they were trampled.

Sora and Goofy summoned their weapons back to their hands and regained their feet, ready for another round, but the room was empty. They looked down toward the floor, looking for any displaced water, but there was nothing. The only indication that the creature had been there, was the mess left behind from its attack.

Sora looked at the exits around the hall. They weren't distorted or pulled off. If something that big had gone through any of them, there was no way they would have remained in such perfect condition.

Then they realized how silent it was. With the adrenaline of the battle pumping through them, Sora hadn't noticed the beeping from Lewis' bully radar. It had finally stopped. Searching, he found two walkie-talkies on the floor and picked them up. The light bulb was off, but the two radars were completely untouched. They wasn't even wet from the sprinklers.

Sora held the bully radars close to his chest as he ran out of the building. Outside, the sun shined down on their wet clothes. Police officers and ambulance members were helping terrified and confused inventors, children, teachers, and business people alike. Sora, Donald and Goofy ducked away from the uniformed men and women and retraced their steps to where Wilbur had hidden the time machine.

When they reached the alley, Wilbur and Lewis were there waiting for them.

Lewis ran up to them first. "You guys are okay! That's good news."

"What happened," Wilbur asked.

"We don't really know," Donald said. "Was that a heartless? We didn't see a heartless emblem."

"We didn't see anything. It was completely invisible."

"Gosh, could that be the thing that is after Lewis?"

Sora gave Lewis his bully detectors.

"Thanks," Lewis sighed. "Another failure huh. Need to work out more of the kinks in these things. Maybe the voltage was too high? Or I haven't calibrated the sensors to correctly predict angry responses. You think that must be it?"

Sora, Donald and Goofy nodded quickly at Lewis' words, not understanding a thing but too afraid to be look like complete buffoons.

Wilbur winked at them. "Don't worry, I don't understand my dad's mumbo jumbo in the future either."

"It's not mumbo jumbo." Lewis huffed. "It's science! And I seem to recall that my mumbo jumbo created the future you live in." He looked down at the walkie talkies in his hands. "Still, I can't understand why they would suddenly beep like that. I didn't tweak the speakers in these walkie talkies to make that much noise."

Sora thought back to the attack, and how one of the businessmen had been pushed back when he had tried to grab Lewis' invention.

"Hold on, maybe your bully detectors went off because that monster was nearby."

"What do you mean?"

"It makes total sense! Heartless are made of darkness and your bully detectors can sense negative emotions. That must be why it went off, because it sensed the dark emotions from the heartless."

"But, Sora," Donald said, "didn't the reports we read say that heartless don't have emotions?"

Goofy put a finger on his chin. "Maybe Lewis' bully catchers-"

"Bully detectors," Donald corrected.

"-can sense darkness nearby."

A slow smile spread on Lewis face. He elbowed Wilbur's shoulder and then exclaimed, "This looks like the job for experimentation!"

"Experi-what now?"

"We won't know if my bully detectors sense darkness or not without testing it out. Besides, if there's an invisible monster after me, it might come back. What better way to be prepared?"

Goofy nodded proudly. "Ya know, I think he's right."

Wilbur sighed. "I just knew this was going to result in more work for us. Okay, Dad, what's the plan?"

 

 

 

They walked through caverns that looked like the inside of a melted, crimson candle. The tunnels and pits on the floor opened and closed like toothless mouths caught in between screams and silence. The material of the walls glowed molten hot, but were rock solid to the touch.

Every footstep click-clacked on the floor and the sound echoed through the shifting passage ways, but instead of fading out into silence, the sounds increased in volume, making a stomach-turning, creaking sound like the groaning of metal against metal.

Kairi, Oswald and Pluto walked over the shifting ripples on the floor, each of them holding their breath. Pluto's teeth stuck out from under his lips. He walked with his head low and his tail between his legs. Kairi stuck close to Oswald, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other without losing her balance.

The darkness was thick there. She could see the black dust swirling in the air, could feel it scrapping against her skin and roaring in her ears. Her head had throbbed from the moment they had entered and the pounding was only getting worse the deeper they went.

Every so often, she would feel a tickle of light, and she would direct Oswald toward it, but with the way their surroundings changed, Kairi feared that walking onward would only trap them in the darkness, unable to escape. Even if she wanted to turn back, she knew she couldn't. Every tunnel they moved through closed behind them, making their only choice forward.

Kairi rubbed her temples and for a brief, wonderful moment, she felt a minty breeze wash over her face as Oswald casted yet another healing spell to help her deal with the darkness. Thanking him, Kairi used the momentary clear headedness to pinpoint the light they were chasing.

She pointed to a tunnel, and they squeezed through it before it melted into the floor. They quickly stopped moving before they slipped and fell into the perfect Kairi, Oswald and Pluto shaped hole that was right on the other side. Hugging the wall, Kairi shimmied to the other side of the hole and when they were finally back on flat ground, Oswald's ears stuck straight up.

"Did you hear something?"

"No."

His ears swiveled left and Oswald faced a tunnel that had just appeared right behind him.

"It's in there."

"Is it a heartless?"

Oswald leaned his head into the hole. There was a bark. Oswald screamed, jumping up in the air, his wand raised toward the tunnel, his eyes wide. Kairi sent a water spell rushing through the tunnel and then turned around to glare at Pluto.

The dog was barking into the pit they had just walked around and the echos of his barks were like thunderous crashes down below. Oswald walked over to the dog and poked him on the nose.

"You almost scared my fur off!"

Pluto growled and then pointed into the hole with his nose. Kairi went to stand next to him, and then she felt it. The light was down below and the hole was shrinking. Quickly, before it could close, she leapt in with Oswald and Pluto, and felt the tunnel getting thinner and thinner as they descended.

They squeezed through the icy tube and fell onto a wet floor. Even the water in the waxy dungeon had a oozy, red color to it.

"I hear it again!" Oswald turned toward a tunnel. "I know that voice. It can't be!"

"What voice? I can't hear anything."

But Oswald wasn't listening, he dashed into the tunnel. Kairi and Pluto rushed to chase after him, but after going through the tunnel, Kairi lost sight of Oswald in the confusing mess of opening and closing tubes. Pluto was gone as well.

The pounding in her head had returned. Kairi sat down, helplessly watching the cave around her stretch and melt as her head felt as though a nail were being hammered into it. Then there was a whisper of a voice against her ear.

"Kairi?"

She stood, looking around the tubes for that sound.

"Kairi?"

The tube to her left was closing, but that was where the voice had come from.

Kairi jumped in and slid all the way down into another cavern. Her shorts and socks filled with water that somehow wasn't cold or wet, but felt like metal sand that nicked her skin. When she stood, she found out that she wasn't alone in that room.

A boy stood across from her. Though she couldn't see his face, she knew that silver hair, recognized the bulky shape of his shoulders. The boy turned around, and his light, blue eyes were like an icicle through Kairi's heart. There was no light in him.

"No way," Kairi moved across the room. "Riku? Is that you? What happened?"

The boy didn't respond. His face was angled toward the floor. On his black, sinewy chest, there was a heart shape. It was much like the emblem of the heartless, except it did not have the black thorns that made an X across the heart.

"Riku? Can you hear me?"

Kairi reached out to touch him, to make sure he was real, but then she felt her guts twist with freezing agony. She jumped back, summoning the mental image of water.

"You're not Riku."

The boy in front of her melted and out of the black puddle he left behind, a muscular arm reached out. The body of the heartless followed. First the dark, blue horns that crowned the heartless' head poked out of the floor. Then its lipless face appeared. It ground its teeth at her, raising its other arm. A sword was in its other hand.

The heartless flew up from the ground, stretching its muscles in the air. Its long, thin tail stretched behind its thick thighs. Then it turned and pointed its sword at Kairi.

The heartless flew across the cavern.

Kairi ducked into the nearest tunnel just as the sword pierced into the wall where her head had been only a second before. The tunnel shrank and Kairi bent forward, and then ducked, and then crawled. The opening was just a few feet away and Kairi threw herself out just as the tunnel completely closed behind her.

Gasping, Kairi had to press her hands to her temples. The darkness was getting worse and her fear was growing with it.

"Oswald? Pluto? Anybody?"

The only response was from the darkness. A ring of black fire swirled around Kairi's feet. The ring began to shrink, getting closer and closer to her legs. Kairi leapt out of the circle of shadows. She watched as the shadows reattached to each other, and the heartless with the sword had returned.

"Water!"

Kairi's spell hit the heartless right between the eyes, throwing it back against the wall. The darkness was thick, and the heartless was quick to recover as soon as the water faded from its body. The heartless flashed forward and then was jerked back. Its tail was caught in one of the tunnels. As the heartless moved its tail to get free, Kairi ducked into another tunnel.

"Oswald! Pluto!"

There was no answer, and soon the heartless was back, but this time it wasn't alone. More of its kind had joined it and Kairi's head was ready to split in two. The darkness beat down on her shoulders, making her crumble to her knees. She gathered magic from deep within and pointed at the army of heartless that were filling the shrinking space of the cavern.

"Water!"

The entire chamber flooded, and Kairi fell through yet another tunnel as she was washed away by her own spell. She landed in another part of the cave, and collapsed against the wall. The anger of the darkness screamed in her head, and her heart was being crushed under its power. The heartless found her again, and Kairi was out of magic.

The army of heartless were coming closer and Kairi bit her lower lip to keep herself from screaming, from sobbing, from letting everyone know that she had let them down. She hadn't given the king's letter to Sora, she hadn't found Riku, she hadn't done anything but wonder the darkness and she was all alone and no one was going to save her.

And yet, somewhere nearby, there was a tiny, butterfly of light. It touched her forehead gently like a mother's kiss during a fever.

Kairi wobbled to her feet.

"Fine," she panted, "if it's light you want, it's light you'll get. I came here to find a way to my friends and you're not going to stop me!"

The darkness punched her head from the inside, but Kairi focused on the tiny sliver of light in her thoughts.

"I'm a princess of light! I may be alone, but my heart is not! As long as the light exists here, I will fight! Come on!"

She raised her hands up in the air and summoned every last bit of strength she had. Water pooled around her ankles and Kairi sent it crashing into the heartless directly ahead. It pushed back the heartless to the other side of the room and Kairi collapsed back onto her knees, unable to defend herself as one of the shadows got free and dashed at her.

Pluto jumped down from a hole in the ceiling and bit down on the heartless' head, throwing it aside. Oswald's cure spell sprinkled over Kairi and her head cleared for a moment. Oswald landed next to her and held her hand. Together, they faced the heartless.

"There's a light right behind them."

"Then we had better make this quick."

"I don't have much energy left."

"Yes you do. You have all the light you need. And mine too."

Kairi squeezed his hand. "Thanks!"

Oswald threw fire spells at the heartless as Kairi closed her eyes.

She imagined the ocean, the sky, the stars, the heart-pounding feeling of Sora holding her close after she cured him of the darkness, Riku's laughter whenever he caught the two of them lazing off, and the paopu tree where all three of them would watch the sun set. She imagined the way Pluto wagged his tail, the way Oswald's eyes filled with excitement whenever she did magic with him.

Oswald's hand grew warm in hers and together, the two of them raised his wand. Pluto came to stand behind them, pushing on Kairi's thigh and Oswald's hip as though cheering them on. The light in Kairi's heart only grew from Pluto's support.

She sang the spell with Oswald.

"Holy!"

A sword of light slashed through the heartless, through the cave, through the realm of darkness itself. The red cave disintegrated and Kairi felt a rush of wind sweep her off her feet. She flew off the platform with Oswald and Pluto.

Up above, there was a moon, and the wind was pushing them toward it.

But it wasn't a moon. It was light, a way out of the realm of darkness. Pluto didn't fight the pull, scurrying through the air, up toward the light, but Kairi hesitated when she felt Oswald's hand slip from hers. Turning, she watched in horror as he fell back, letting go.

She tried to swim through the air, to catch him, but Oswald shook his head.

"Wait," Kairi begged, "I can't leave you!"

"I told you before. I won't leave the realm of darkness without Ortensia. She's down there, I know she is."

"No! Oswald!"

He put his hand on his heart. "We will meet again! I know we will! It's a promise! And you had better be a full fleshed mage when we meet again!"

Kairi's tears fell into the darkness. "And you better have found Ortensia when I come back!"

She was pulled through the gateway. Too exhausted to stay awake, she let herself fade into the white light.

 

 

 

Lewis ran from one end of the room to the other, gathering metal. He was so caught up in his work that Wilbur, Sora, Donald and Goofy could only hand him tools. They watched as Lewis hammered into a ribbon of metal, curving it into a ring. Then he wielded a metal disk onto the ring. Finally, he connected wires from his bully radars to the ring and added some padding on this inside.

When he was finished, he put his contraption on his head, making him look like a doctor with an extra large stethoscope on his forehead. The wire from his new headband connected to the bully detector on his belt. With a screwdriver, he opened up the other bully detector, and tweaked the inner machinery with some fine tools.

"It's finished! I had planned to make a better sensory tool after getting funding from the businessmen at the inventor's showcase but this will have to do for now."

Lewis walked up to Wilbur and put a flat screen in his son's hands. Turning the screen on, a green grid appeared. Then Lewis gave the other bully radar to Sora and instructed him to move about the room. Shrugging, Sora walked around as instructed.

Wilbur whistled and pointed. "Is that Sora?"

On the screen, there was a yellow dot that matched Sora's movements as he walked around.

Lewis grinned. "It works! Hah!"

He turned up the radio frequency on his walkie-talkie.

"What works?" Donald tapped his foot. "I don't get it."

"I've re-calibrated my bully detector and connected it to this screen. If any darkness pops up, it will appear on this screen and I'll be able to direct you toward it, using the bully detector that Sora has."

"I get it," Wilbur said, "the bully detector was originally a walkie-talkie. You're going to use it to communicate and guide them toward those heartless things?"

"That's the plan."

"But will the bully detector's be able to sense the darkness," Goofy asked.

"We won't know until we try." Lewis tapped the big disk on his forehead. "I've increased the sensory range. It should be able to sense things from Wilbur's time machine. We're going to be guiding you guys from the air through the city and exterminating anything we can find. This is going to be fun!"

Donald and Goofy gave each other a dubious look, but Sora came up to Lewis and gave him a high five.

"That's genius!"

"They don't call me the 'Father of the Future' for nothing."

Wilbur twirled the time machine's keys on his finger. "Well, 'Father,' let's go darkness hunting."

 

 

 

Jiminy's Journal

Lewis (First Appeared in Meeting the Robinsons, 2007): An intelligent boy who loves to experiment and invent. He doesn't give up even when his experiments don't work on the first, second, or one hundredth try. Lewis will eventually grow up to have a big family and become Cornelius, "The Father of the Future." That is, if he survives whatever came to the past to destroy him.