Kingdom Hearts Fan Fiction ❯ The Replacement Masters II: Electric Boogaloo ❯ Electric Boogaloo ( One-Shot )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

The Replacement Masters II: Electric Boogaloo

---- Starlight (Muse)

As we rejoin Sora and Riku, they had just cleared Shinigami-Earth of the Heartless. Back to back, they cut a swathe through the inky abominations, saving Akihabara from the cybernetic Heartless and its plot to destroy the city. As they felled this magnificent beast, all the citizens of Tokyo gathered to celebrate, creating the national holiday of Sora & Riku Day to commemorate these two-

"That isn't what happened at all," Sora interrupts.

I'm sparing you the humiliation, Miss Interrupts-Everybody.

"That's going to take so long to get used to," Sora muses.

Anyway, truth be told, Sora got turned into a girl and Riku got distracted, with their trainee getting kidnapped by the one who distracted him. They're walking to the Gummi Ship bridge wondering how they're going to lie about their twenty seven breaches of protocol to King Mickey. Happy?

"Ecstatic," Sora answers, cynically, "So, Riku, how do you think we should handle this?"

"Just let me do the talking," Riku answers, opening the door to the bridge. The main screen shows a firmware upgrade of the computer at 99%.

"Great, another unscheduled maintainence," Sora says, feeling a bit restless as she sits down in the vestigial captain's chair.

"I can call him manually," Riku says to relieve Sora's impatience, "Can you connect us back to the network?"

"Oh," Sora responds, having forgotten all about that. She presses a button and all the blinking red lights go back to a flat green.

"Thank you," Riku answers, plopping himself down in the communications seat. Before he even got a chance to press anything, an incoming hail shows up on the console. Riku presses a button to respond to it, causing the screen to show a gold circle with two smaller gold circles overlapping at the upper left and upper right corners.

"Redirecting your call. Please stay on the line," says a flat female voice from the console, segueing into an easy listening version of the Mickey Mouse March. Riku rolls his eyes and starts scratching at the rash developing on his right hand between his thumb and index fingers, catching himself and stopping. It doesn't take long before the screen changes to show a large anthropomorphic mouse sitting at a dinner table, the camera apparently stemming from some type of laptop.

"Riku? Is that you?" asks Mickey, taking a look at something else on his screen.

"Mickey!" Riku says, faking desperation in his voice, "I'm glad I got through to you."

"What happened?" Mickey asks, typing furiously into the keyboard.

"The keyblade left Sora for a new master in Port Royal," Riku starts, just as he had been rehearsing in his mind, "But we were ambushed when we found her. This insane witch attacked us when we had our guard down. She took over the ship and took us as far away to a Heartless world as she could to test the keyblades."

"Who is that behind you?" Mickey asks, looking as though he was trying to recognize the figure that was only vaguely visible on his screen.

"This witch, Ami, turned Sora into a girl to prevent the keyblade from getting back to him," Riku improvises, realigning his plan to accommodate the early reveal, "She also stole my keyblade by rubbing this powder into my right hand."

"How did you get the ship back?" Mickey asks, finishing his typing.

"Ami tied us up in one of the closets," Riku answers, "She was going to just let us starve to death in this ship. We managed to get out, though, and recovered control of the ship. She already left with Anna through the Corridors of Darkness, though."

"Do you know where they are going?" Mickey asks.

"They're-" Riku starts, the screen blanking out just as the firmware upgrade on the main screen shows 100% completion. The rest of the bridge screens go blank as well, with only the main screen on. It shows a huge amount of command line text scrolling much too fast for any of it to be read. Eventually, the screen settles on a fairly generic status report as a mildly distorted female voice echoes from the speakers.

"Aperture Science thanks you for partaking in the closed beta test of the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System," the voice says, much to the the befuddlement of our heroes, "In honor of this event, we shall hold a celebration. Please report to the airlocks to be escorted to the party, where there shall be cake."

"This can't possibly be good," Sora says...

---- Black Hole Sun (Soundgarden)

...Two weeks later...

In the lonely reaches of deep space, a battered and broken ship drifts aimlessly through the void. Sparks continue to emanate from the derelict wreck in the engine bays, water vapor spraying from tears in the fuselage. Outside of the sparking, no light was coming from any of the windows or holes in the hull. It was no different from a meteorite at this point.

Not far behind in the distance was another space ship. The shortest description that can be given to it is that it vaguely looks like a several kilometer long split blade sword. The exterior had no markings and indeed little paint, with each hue signifying a different type of construction material. It was littered with dark metallic blue domes and glowing blue rectangles. The rear side had a large docking bay and two huge engines giving off a blue vapor trail. The ship carefully maneuvers to get the derelict in between the two 'bladed' sections, careful not to allow it to hit a side. Once it has the disabled ship in place, small, translucent grey beams come out from the inner sides of the 'blades' and maneuver the derelict in place. A transparent two and a half meter wide tube extends from the starboard side, connecting with the derelict at one of the holes in the hull. From within, a hovering probe robot travels along.

...

Riku wakes up with a jolt, suddenly getting upright and gasping for air. His eyes completely blurred, he gags as his body registers something in his mouth that ran fairly deep down his throat. He tries to grab at the thing going through his mouth with his right hand, but something was holding it back. With his left hand, he pulls the long object out of his throat, causing him to vomit as soon as it finishes sliding out of his throat. His eyes focus enough for him to see that the room was a greyish blue with only some very soft blue light coming from the walls. He looks to his side to see some cables attached to a cylindrical machine affixed to his right forearm. He blinks several times, trying to get the rest of the blurring out, when the cables all of the sudden detaches from the machine. He feels several more things detach from various vital points on his body. His eyes finally focused enough for him to see that he was on an examination table turned bed, with only some form fitting black vinyl-type material on his right arm and a one sided, sleeveless, scratchy hospital gown as his clothing.

He searches the rest of the room to figure out where he was. It certainly wasn't the Gummi Ship, with memories of the devastation within flooding back to him. The room was host to a plethora of medical machinery, with three other beds in the other corners of the room. It doesn't take him long to noticed that the bed across from him had a female figure on it, wearing only a hospital gown with a few blood-stained towels draped over her. Riku tries to get off the bed, collapsing to the floor as he gets the pins and needles feeling of blood flow returning to his legs. He crawls with his arms across the cold stainless steel floor, holding back yelps of pain each with each vibration that goes through his legs. Upon reaching the bed, he tries to claw his way up to the side, giving up after a couple tries and waiting for his legs to go back to normal. It takes a couple minutes for him to be able to stand without pain and try to talk with the female figure.

"Hey, Sor-" Riku says in a heavily garbled voice, coughing violently and spewing a greyish liquid mixed with brownish yellow. Sora doesn't respond, only continuing her shallow breaths from the tube. "If you're there, please wake up. I don't know what's going on and this place is creeping me out," Riku continues. Sora continues to lie there, taking shallow, regulated breaths from the machine. Riku makes a move to grab at the tube before realizing that it wasn't a smart move to disconnect somebody obviously on life support.

"I'll come back later," Riku says, unsure of if Sora was not hearing him or just wasn't capable of responding, "I need to find whoever brought us here." With that, he steps away from the bed, looking for the door. The dim light and lack of distinguishing features on the wall made him look around the room several times before he made out the faintest outline of a door frame near a touchpad. Stumbling lightly with his first step, he walks over to the door and tries to find the handle. After running his fingers over the door a few times, he figures out that the touchpad isn't exclusively for locking the door. Pressing the glowing green button causes the door to slide open with a clean 'shoonk'. His eyes burn with the significantly larger amount of light that pours in, forcing him to block his eyes with his hand.

After a minute of adjusting his eyes, Riku looks around the unusually bright hallway. Outside of another doorway with a touchpad located near it, the whole place was a bare greyish green rectangle with little compassion. He randomly chooses a direction and walks down, his footsteps echoing down the featureless hallways. He turns the corner to see another featureless hallway with little to mark his position. He walks down, turning the corner to find another featureless hallway. A couple more of these later, he finally finds a door. Pressing the touchpad doesn't open it, however, giving a negative sounding beep in response. A couple more attempts proved futile, causing Riku to smack his hands against the door in frustration. He sits with his back against the wall, feeling like this place was little more than a tomb.

Off in the distance, however, Riku heard some footsteps. A positive sounding beep, 'shoomp', and some more footsteps later, he hears the sound of a shower being run. He breathes a sigh of relief and starts walking through the hallways towards the sound. The labyrinthine corridors prove to be troublesome, with just a few more dead ends than you'd ever want to encounter on a space ship. When he reached the hallway that the sound was most definitely coming from, he heard the shower shut off. Riku walks up to the door, getting caught off guard as it opened suddenly...

---- Wow (Kate Bush)

Riku is shocked to see... nothing. Besides a surprisingly well adorned bathroom with a wide sink by a well-lit mirror, nothing of note was inside.

"Hello?" Riku calls out. With that, a blue haired woman in her mid 30s wearing a dark purple bathrobe steps from the side of the door frame, carrying what looked like some high tech rifle.

"Oh, thank heavens," she says, closing her eyes and putting her hand to her heart as she gives a sigh of relief, "You scared me."

"What's going on?" Riku asks, holding back another coughing fit.

"You're so lucky to be alive," the woman says, walking towards an open cabinet on the side wall. She carefully puts the rifle back into its form fitting slot, closing it and keying in a combination on the touchpad. She turns back to Riku, giving him a warm smile as she walks over.

"Where am I?" Riku asks.

"Oh, please forgive me," she says, bowing her head with her hands clasped in front of her, "It's been so long since I've had guests. I'm Romio, the captain and owner of this ship."

"I'm Riku," Riku responds, a bit perturbed by her casual attitude in spite of the fact that she was wearing a bathrobe and he was wearing a vomit covered hospital gown.

"It's very nice to meet you, Riku," she says, bowing again, "Let's get you some real clothes." With that, she grabs a towel from the side, walks through the door, and starts going down the hallway, slowing down when she notices that Riku isn't following.

"I sort of want some answers," Riku starts, finding the situation incredibly uncomfortable.

"Oh, don't worry," Romio says, turning around to give him a warm smile with her eyes closed, "I won't bite." Riku, unsure of what to make of all this, walks up beside her. They start walking down the hallway when Riku starts talking.

"What's going on?" Riku asks as they turn the corner to another featureless hallway.

"I found your ship," Romio starts, maintaining the same pleasant tone of voice, "Poor thing. Looked like the engine core imploded and released an electro magnetic pulse."

"Some virus infected the computer," Riku starts, trying hard to remember the incident, "It tried to kill us."

"You're safe now," Romio says, stopping in front of a door and starting to key in a combination, "You and your friend almost died of heat stroke and carbon monoxide poisoning. You're so lucky I found you when I did." The door slides open to reveal a huge walk in closet containing tons of kimonos and dresses, organized by color.

"While I'm an okay seamstress, I'm not very good with leather," Romio starts, "It's going to be a while before I finish fixing your outfit. Feel free to take one of mine, though."

"But these are all... really girly," Riku says, staring at the rows of meticulously ordered clothing.

"Oh, don't worry," Romio starts, "It's just you, your friend, and me on board. Nobody will point and laugh." Romio gives off a radiant smile and turns to walk through one of the aisles. "Come, we'll get you something in navy blue." Riku follows, walking along with her to the end of the row to find over a dozen navy blue outfits.

"Are you sure this will fit me?" Riku asks, still finding this emasculating.

"You're weird," Romio says, careful to sound as cheerful as possible, "You just got out of a coma and you're worried about appearance."

"Coma?" Riku asks, now more concerned than ever.

"Oh, it wasn't anything major," Romio starts, "Just a little less than six weeks." She takes one of the outfits off the rack. "Here, I think this one will fit," she says, holding it in front of him to try and get a frame of reference.

"How can you be so calm?" Riku asks as Romio hands the towel and outfit to him.

"Oh, don't be so negative," Romio says, smiling, "Everything is all right now. No need to worry." She takes a dark purple outfit from the next rack over. "I think I'll wear this one. It's been a while and I've been wearing too many light colors. Go ahead and put your new outfit on after you towel off a little. I'm going to put this on while you get ready. I promise I won't peak." Riku stands there for a minute as she walks off, cheerfully humming some unfamiliar tune as she turned the corner. He eventually decides to swallow his pride and puts on the dark blue gown. As it turns out, it fits him decently well, although it's a bit billowy in the chest and tight around the hips.

"Are you dressed?" Romio asks from around the corner. Riku walks over to meet her, finding her in an elegant purple gown.

"This feels so wrong," Riku says, constantly adjusting his outfit to try and make it more comfortable. Romio gives him another warm smile with her eyes closed.

"It looks very chic on you," Romio says, giving him an unfamiliar hand gesture.

"Chic?" Riku asks, wondering if she was for real.

"You know... fashionable," Romio says, thinking Riku didn't understand the word. It takes all of Riku's effort not to roll his eyes, with him reaching to scratch his right arm. "DON'T... touch that," Romio says sternly while maintaining total politeness.

"What is this thing?" Riku asks, now no longer content to just accept it as a medical device.

"You're infected with something," Romio starts, turning around and motioning for Riku to walk alongside her, "That machine on your arm is preventing it from spreading further until I can find a cure."

"You mean that rash?" Riku asks as he walks beside her, staring at his arm.

"That isn't just a rash," Romio continues as they walk out the door, "It's some sort of symbiotic parasite trying to take over your body. It doesn't seem contagious, though."

"I don't understand," Riku responds as they walk through the hallway.

"Just keep that machine on and Miss Romio will find a cure," she says, still sounding like a kindergarten teacher. Several more hallways later, they come to another door. Romio taps in another combination, with it opening to reveal a huge room with rows upon rows of shelves carrying seemingly everything. She leads Riku down the second row from the left.

"Are you sure you were the only person on this ship?" Riku asks as they pass by a rack of what appeared to be asteroid mining equipment.

"I'd love to change that," Romio says, smiling at Riku. Riku, unsure of how to respond, keeps silent. They pass by some cave diving gear, a dozen astronaut suits, a huge array of energy weapons of all types, some rocket parts, and four dune buggies. They come to a rack with a large amount of what appeared to be metal suitcases. Romio takes one from the top shelf and continues walking down the aisle past a rack of speaker equipment. They continue to the very end, finding a desk with a fairly standard computer, keyboard, and CRT monitor that looked hastily set up.

"You'll be #00003," Romio says, specifically saying each digit as she types, "You'll have bedroom #02. I'm going to give you bathroom, recreation room, dining room, and infirmary access. Any questions?"

"Wait, the bathrooms aren't linked to the bedrooms?" Riku asks.

"No," Romio answers, "There's one for each wing. We'll be sharing that bathroom you saw earlier, so please remember to clean up after yourself."

"Wait... sharing?" Riku asks, apprehensively, "What if I walk in on you by mistake?"

"Oh, we're adults," Romio responds, giving him a warm smile, "We can handle it." Riku starts feeling doubtful about this carefree person as she opens the briefcase and takes out a card, wristband, and manual. "Read this book and keep the card and wristband on you at all times."

"Okay," Riku responds, taking the items and strapping the band on his left wrist. Romio starts walking back, with Riku following suit. They go back down the same aisle, with her shoving the briefcase back into its original slot. Riku reads the manual as they exit the room and start weaving through hallways, finding out that the wristband is a holographic map and navigation unit for the ship. They eventually reach Riku's new room, not too far from the bathroom Riku came across earlier.

"Do you have any other questions?" Romio asks as Riku swipes the card through the touchpad to open his door.

"How do I shower with this machine on my arm?" Riku asks.

"It's waterproof, but try to avoid getting water on it if you can," Romio answers, smiling some more, "Is there anything else?"

"When will Sora get out of his... her coma?" Riku asks, correcting himself.

"I honestly don't know," Romio answers, some cheer fading from her voice, "But I'll check up on her now."

"Thank you," Riku responds.

"I'm having dinner in two hours," Romio starts, back in full cheer as she clasps her hands in front and a bit away from her chest, "I would be most appreciative if you could join us."

"Sure," Riku answers, not wanting to attempt to explain how woozy he felt.

"Thank you, Riku," she says, turning around to leave. Before she takes a step, she turns back around and fishes something out of her pocket. "Oh, here's some medication for your stomach," she says, handing a bottle of pills to him. She then walks away, humming something to herself. Riku stands there for a second, just wondering what's going on with someone so friendly hanging out on such a massive, lifeless space ship. He decides against pursuing that line of thought, bringing up directions to the bathroom and heading off to clean himself up.

---- Cups and Cakes (Spinal Tap)

...Two hours later...

Riku finishes his overly long journey through the hallways to find a door on the middle of one of the longest walls yet. He swipes his card and the door opens to reveal a huge, eloquent ball room with a massive, fully adorned table at the far end. Classical chamber music gets piped in through the P.A. system, which is hidden within the artificial skylights in the ceiling. Romio was carrying a tray with a large roasted turkey on it, placing it on the table and turning towards Riku.

"Oh, hello," she says, "Please forgive me, Riku," she continues, bowing her head in shame. She keeps her head bowed, much to Riku's discomfort.

"Er... what did you do?" Riku asks, uncomfortably, as he walks inside.

"I should have been at the door to greet you," she responds, keeping her head down, "But something came up and I only just finished setting the table. I'm so sorry."

"What came up?" Riku asks, noticing a couple scorch marks on the floor.

"I had to fend off an attack, but it's okay now," she explains casually, "Such dreadful manners on my part. As your host, I should have worked faster to make up for that lost time. I'm so sorry."

"It's, um... perfectly okay," Riku says, walking up to the table. He finds two chairs on each of the broad sides of the table at the middle, "Shouldn't the places be at the narrow ends?"

"Oh, that might be more proper," she explains, raising her head and easing the apologetic tone, "But I wanted to talk with you and yelling over the table just isn't very good. I can change it, if you want."

"No, that's okay," Riku responds, heading to his chair, "Makes sense."

"Thank you, Riku," Romio says, giving a sigh of relief. She then notices that Riku is almost at his chair, hopping over to pull it out for him properly. As he sits down, she hands him a napkin while taking his plate and walking towards the turkey.

"What's with all this food?" Riku asks, "I thought we were the only ones on the ship."

"We are," she answers, putting the plate down and grabbing a fork and carving knife, "But you've been in a coma and feeding on NutriSauce™ so long that I thought you might want a real meal. I didn't know what you liked, so I just made all the usual stuff."

"This doesn't really mesh with your nationality," Riku comments.

"Nationality?" Romio asks, confused by Riku's statement. She pauses for a second to turn to him.

"Nevermind," Riku says, "I guess I'm too used to all the similarities between various worlds."

"It's okay," Romio responds, turning back to the food in front of her, "Turkey?"

"No, thanks," Riku says politely, "Do you have any pizza?"

"Pizza?" Romio asks, doing her best to mask her disappointment as she puts the utensils down, "I didn't think you'd want that since it's so proletariat..." She then gives a cheerful expression, "But tell you what! I'll go make the best pizza you've ever had right now."

"No, that's okay," Riku says before she walks off too far. She turns around, still smiling.

"Are you sure?" she asks, "I can whip up some pizzas in ten minutes."

"Perfectly fine," Riku responds, thinking of a quick diversion, "I'll have the prime rib."

"Excellent choice," Romio says, walking over to the prime rib and slicing a healthy sized chunk off, "What else would you like?"

"I'll just have that," Riku answers.

"Are you sure?" she asks, "I recommend the soup and salad."

"It's okay, I assure you," Riku answers, feeling a bit troubled by all of this.

"What sauces would you like?" Romio asks.

"I'll just have a salt shaker," Riku answers.

"Okay," she responds, walking to him and setting the plate in front of him. She then walks over to the far end of the table where about a dozen and a half bottles were laid out. "What would you like to drink?"

"I'll just have what you recommend," Riku answers, having figured out the best way to get through this was to give her the choice.

"Okay," she responds, taking a bottle of champagne and bringing it with her as she goes to her seat. She sits down, then pours Riku and herself a glass. She then just sits there, watching Riku as he starts slicing his meat into smaller pieces.

"You're not having anything?" Riku asks, having just noticed that she hadn't even set a place for herself.

"Oh, I had dinner a couple hours ago," she responds, "If I had known you'd be up and about, I'd have waited for you. But please, eat up! Enjoy yourself!"

"Okay..." Riku says, taking a bite. It was a little dry and unevenly cooked, but the quality of the meat itself was superb.

"How is it?" she asks after he takes his second bite.

"It's really good," Riku responds, not wanting to comment any further than he had to.

"I'm glad you like it," Romio says, taking a sip from her glass and continuing her smiling watch on Riku.

"How's Sora doing?" Riku asks, wanting her to continue talking.

"She's doing great," Romio responds, "It's weird, though. Her body seems to be confused about how to handle the feminine processes. Do you know why this might be?"

"I don't know," Riku fibs, not wanting to have to explain anything.

"I'm sure it's nothing," Romio says, "I think she'll be out of her coma in a week or two."

"That's good to hear," Riku says, taking a sip. As much as he disliked champagne, he prevented himself from gagging in an effort to be polite. Romio seems to sense what was going through his mind, though.

"Is the champagne not to your liking?" she asks.

"It's good," Riku fibs.

"You don't need to hold back your opinions to be polite," she reassures him, "I can get you something else if you want."

"That's okay," Riku responds, thinking of a topic of conversation, "So, tell me about yourself."

"Oh, there isn't anything to know," she says, clasping her hands in front of her, "You seem so much more interesting, though. Please, tell me about yourself."

"Well, I'm just somebody you picked up out of a dead space ship," Riku responds, "You, however, have this massive ship with practically everything. I think you should go first."

"If you insist," Romio answers, taking a sip, "I'm from the twin planets Juraihelm-Earth not far from here." She pauses for about 15 seconds until Riku breaks the silence.

"You'll have to be more specific," Riku responds, "I'm not familiar with that place."

"I was a hero once," she starts, cheer draining from her voice, "Juraihelm's queen chooses a champion from Earth to become a magical girl. I was one of those. I worked hard for so many years, but I just couldn't change the world. Then the very people I was working so hard to protect started rebelling against me. Juraihelm drained me of my magical powers, cursed me to never walk on another world again, and banished me on this space ship."

"This space borne mansion?" Riku asks, finding her story a bit hard to believe.

"I built it for myself," Romio explains, a tear welling up in her eye in spite of her resistance to it, "Ironic, isn't it? They needed my own invention to get rid of me. I've been out here alone for six years now, mining asteroids and staving off cabin fever."

"That's... not cool," Riku says, not sure what she was looking for.

"But enough about me," Romio says, going back into cheerful mode and drinking the rest of her glass, "How about you?"

"Well..." Riku begins, feeling uncomfortable as Romio continues her smiling gaze at him without even so much as glancing at the glass she was refilling, "Sora and I come from the Destiny Islands. We were on a mission to exterminate the Heartless before they overtake the universe. Not doing such a great job of it, either."

"You're a hero, too?" she asks, taking a sip and continuing her smiling gaze.

"We were," Riku starts, "But we got tired of it. We were going to train a replacement, but... stuff happened that lead to us being stranded on a derelict space ship."

"What stuff happened?" Romio asks.

"I don't remember," Riku flat out lies, "It's all sort of a blur to me."

"Must be damage from oxygen deprivation," she says, taking a sip, "But please, tell me more about yourself. What are your hobbies?"

"Well... um... I... um..." Riku sputters out, realizing that all work and no play really has made him a dull boy, "I'd like to know what you do to 'stave off cabin fever', if that's okay."

"Sure," Romio says, taking a sip, "I like to play piano, read books, and work on my scientific research."

"What sort of scientific research?" Riku asks, having an idea of just how broad it is and wanting her to just keep talking.

"Oh, everything," she cops out, "I just have a talent for it. I recently learned biology, genetics, microchemistry, and surgery just for you. I also had to update my nanomachine research as well as invent that chemical regulator and extractor sheath on your arm. I've been busy."

"You... studied four complex fields of science in a matter of weeks?" Riku asks, not able to grasp how she was able to do all this.

"It only took a few hours," she corrects.

"Really..." Riku trails off, "I can't figure you out."

"What do you mean?" she asks.

"Here you are, this admittedly attractive woman. You seem to be of a very high social breed judging by this banquet and your remark of 'proletariat'. You have this mansion in space with six floors and over four hundred rooms. You used to be a hero... magical hero before some snafu put you here in space. You're some sort of... supergenius capable of learning complex science in a couple of hours and inventing complicated, specialized machinery in what you seem to suggest is as equally short a period of time. And I bet you play piano like a maestro, too."

"I'm not that good," she responds, "I'm still practicing my 32nd note arpeggios."

"Right," Riku says, allowing some cynicism to creep in, "Here's my question: are you for real?"

"I don't understand," Romio responds, going into defensive mode.

"You don't seem like a Mary," Riku starts, "They all either sacrifice themselves or commit suicide before age 25 and you seem to be past that. Not to mention that you have the subtlety that they lack, yet you still have many of their traits. Fantastically improbable history, incredible skills, a huge amount of dedication in looking good..."

"How can you say that?" Romio asks, crying, "I'm doing everything to be a good host and you accuse me of subterfuge?"

"I did not accuse you of subterfuge," Riku responds, "It's just that... there's usually something else. I've never met anyone that was truly 'perfect' without some horrible offset like being completely psychotic or possessive or trying to kill my best friend or something."

"I'm sorry if I seem like I'm smothering you," Romio responds, "It's been so long since I've had any human contact. After all these years, I've just been so lonely and finding you and your friend was divine providence. That's what I wanted to talk to you about, though."

"Okay," Riku says, pushing the nearly empty plate away, "Now we're getting somewhere."

"I would be most grateful if you could join my official crew," Romio says, her voice forcefully wavering back towards cheerfulness.

"The point emerges," Riku says, taking a forced sip from his neglected cup of sparkly because the salt was finally getting to him.

"I don't want to be alone any more," Romio says, "You don't have to do any work you don't want to. I mostly get by on my own, so we can just have meals and spend time in the rec room together. What do you say?"

"I wanted to get back to my life on the Destiny Islands," Riku starts, "Although... hmm... do you think we could go over there and pick up one more person?"

"The more, the merrier," Romio says, back in cheerful mode now that she thinks she has Riku on the hook.

"I accept for now," Riku says, "I don't see why Sora wouldn't accept, but if she wants to go back to the Destiny Islands, that's what will have to happen. If Kairi doesn't want to leave the Destiny Islands, then we're going to stay with her. Understood?"

"Thank you," Romio says, downing the rest of her glass.

"One other condition," Riku starts, "You need to act natural to me. Don't worship me, don't try to impress me with your excessive attention to detail and most importantly, don't apologize for every little mistake you think you've made."

"Okay," she says, holding her right hand out to Riku, "Shake on it?"

"Sure," Riku says, shaking her hand.

"Now, then," she says, "What would you like for dessert?"

"A vanilla milkshake," Riku responds, "Lots of cherries."

"Okay," Romio says, enthusiastically, "Let's take it over to the rec room."

"I'm taking it to my bedroom," Riku says, "Besides, aren't you tired? You looked like you were going to bed when I found you."

"Nah, I'm feeling good now that you're here," she says, smiling at him harder.

"I want to get some real sleep," Riku says, "I'll message you when I get up."

"Okay," she responds, "I'll go make your milkshake now."

"By the way," Riku starts, "Thank you... for all of this."

"Anything for a guest!" Romio exclaims cheerfully, walking off to the kitchen.

---- Jessica (Allman Brothers Band)

...The next day...

Riku wakes up after a dreamless sleep. He was half-expecting all of the previous 'night' to be a dream, but was disappointed when he found himself in the same room he fell asleep in. Definitely not off the hook. He rolls out of bed and puts on his borrowed gown with a sigh, thinking about how far he had fallen. After keying in the destination for the bathroom, he finds that it's just around the corner. If only these hallways weren't so lifelessly repetitious, he might have realized that. It only takes him a minute to get to the bathroom, opening the door with his back to it.

"Are you in there, Romio?" he shouts over his shoulder. He strained to listen for a response or movement or anything. After thirty seconds, he figures it's safe and walks in. He opens the medicine cabinet in search of the shampoo he found yesterday, disappointed to only find the unmarked bottles of pills, some combs, a couple women's razor cartridges, and a pair of scissors. After taking off the gown, he meticulously shaves his face holding the cartridge by itself just like last time. Figuring that Romio just forgot to take the bottles out, he walks to the shower. He opens the door to find Romio sitting on a stool shaving her legs. Just as soon as that fully registered, he slams his back into the wall next to the stall door.

"I'm sorry," he shouts, embarrassed like nothing he ever felt before.

"No, it's okay," Romio says, calm to the point of disturbing Riku.

"I called out before looking in the bathroom, but I don't think I was loud enough," Riku apologizes, "I should have done the same with the shower stall. I'm sorry." With that, he heard wet footsteps approaching him. He quickly puts his hand over his eyes. The footsteps stop in front of him.

"Come on," Romio says, gently pulling his hand away from his eyes, "We're not little children. We have to be comfortable around each other if we want to share this ship."

"Well..." Riku says, going red in the face and looking away. Romio gently grabs his chin and forces him to look at her.

"I'm not embarrassed," she says, "And you shouldn't be, either. I'm done with the shower now, so feel free to use it." She turns and walks away from Riku, who takes the opportunity to quickly ducks into the shower, slamming the door shut behind him. He just stands there contemplating the situation, unsure of what to do. Finally, he turns on the shower. He decides to take an extra long time to make sure that Romio finishes whatever she was doing. After a long enough shower to get prune fingers, he starts to walk out when he sees Romio, fully dressed, combing her hair. He quickly slams the shower door closed again.

"Oh, grow up," she says, walking towards the shower, "It's not like I kept my eyes closed while performing surgery on you."

"But that's a different thing entirely," Riku says through the shower door.

"Please," Romio says, "This isn't going to work out if you're going to be like this. I'm going to stand here until you walk out." Riku lingers in the shower for a couple minutes, hoping she'd wander away out of boredom, but he realizes that she was quite adamant and walks out. She watches as he towels himself off and puts on his borrowed gown.

"I don't understand why you're so insecure," Romio starts, going back to combing her hair, "You're a good looking guy. You stay in shape. You don't have too many scars. Why are you so embarrassed?"

"I don't know what civilization you come from," Riku starts, having regained some composure, "But where I come from, that's highly inappropriate."

"Well, your civilization or mine, that's not where we are," Romio starts, "And I don't want to put up with this hiding stuff. We need to be relaxed around each other."

"But-" Riku starts, getting cut off.

"You have something on your cheek," she interrupts, picking up a damp washcloth. Riku flinches as she gently holds his chin and wipes his face with the washcloth. When she finishes, she tosses the washcloth into the sink and starts walking out of the room. "Let's get breakfast before we go to the lab. See you soon."

...

"Yes, that's them," the police commissioner says to the hooded figure, handing back the photos, "Those are the ones that were involved in the incident."

"What do you know about this woman?" the hooded figure asks, holding the picture of her up.

"We don't have any recorded surveillance of her," the commissioner answers, "But somebody fitting that description did kidnap all the guards and scientists around a contaminated area and left them tied up in a nearby warehouse. I don't understand what she wanted with the area, since anybody that touches the plants there dies within an hour if they don't get the antibody. Forensics found evidence of four humans and a large pack of unidentified animals having occupied the area, but outside of a rearranged apartment room, there was no evidence of any theft or vandalism."

"What do you know about this contamination?" the figure asks, putting away the photos.

"Yotsuba Pharmaceuticals have all the details," the commissioner answers, "I can tell them that you're coming. Anything else that INTERPOL needs from us?"

"Those are all my questions," the figure responds, rising out of the chair, "Thank you for your time, commissioner." With that, the figure awkwardly walks out the door.

...

Riku walks into the lab to find Romio configuring some type of silver metallic gauntlet. On the counter in front of her was a space suit, a huge amount of steel cable, and some type of probe robot.

"Hello," she says, putting away the tools she was using and turning to face Riku.

"What is this stuff?" Riku asks.

"Oh, this," she responds, picking up the gauntlet and space suit, "I have a favor I'd like to ask."

"What is it?" Riku asks, picking up a sense of apprehension.

"We're at another shipwreck," Romio starts, "Unlike your ship, it's too large for docking. In cases like this, it usually takes me a couple days with this probe to find all the salvage, move it to one end of the ship, and cut it down to a small enough piece for boarding."

"Sounds like a hassle," Riku says, "What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to go in with my probe and take out what I mark," Romio explains, "It should only take a couple hours. What do you say?"

"I'll do it," Riku says, glad to no longer be a total freeloader.

"Thank you," Romio says, "I'll train you on how to use this equipment."

---- Space Truckin' (Deep Purple)
Riku drifts along, hanging on to the tail end of the probe as it draws a cable towards the huge triangle shaped black ship. He was wearing the space suit with a form fitting helmet and had the silver gauntlet on his right hand. They head towards a large hole in the hull near where it was assumed an engine used to be, latching the cable to a pillar. They go inside to find a couple dead bodies floating around.

"Oh, lord," Riku says, finding them disturbing.

"Don't worry about them," Romio responds through the helmet's crackling communication system, "Nothing we can do for them now."

Riku activates the magnets on his boots. He follows the probe through the ship's corridors, finding large amounts of devastation from what appeared to be attacks by clawed monsters. Much too familiar looking for his tastes.

"What happened in here?" Riku asks.

"The black aliens attack every space ship they can find," Romio answers, "Usually within less than a week. You got really lucky to not have them attack you."

"The Heartless..." Riku says, irritated that everything seems to go back to them.

"What did you call them?" Romio asks.

"They're the Heartless," Riku responds, "Black, diminutive, bloodthirsty creatures that mindlessly attack anything and everything."

"I was wondering if they had a name," Romio responds. They walk through, cutting through a sealed door to find a huge room full of crates and racks of equipment.

"Is this what we're looking for?" Riku asks.

"We hit the motherload," Romio answers, "Rations, fuel, electronics... wait, what's this?"

"What did you find?" Riku asks as the probe zips over to a two and a half meter tall crate. It uses its cutting laser to remove the the lock, opening it to reveal a silver colored, metallic bipedal suit.

"Jackpot," Romio says, closing the crate and using the welder to seal it back shut, "Completely new and unused. I've wanted a fully functional one of these since I found that gauntlet you're wearing."

"There's more than just this gauntlet?" Riku asks.

"Yes," Romio answers, "Go ahead and take that suit back to the ship. I'll start arranging everything we can use."

"Okay," Riku says, using the gravity beam on the gauntlet to 'telekinetically' drag the crate along. He takes it to the entry point, rides the tether line back to the docking bay of Romio's ship, and places the crate to a side. He then goes back down to the derelict, finding that Romio's pile of stuff is surprisingly small.

"That's it?" Riku asks.

"No," Romio says, "This is all the junk. Everything else in the room is coming with us. Come, help me with this vault."

"Okay," Riku responds, walking towards the vault. The probe pushes aside a dead body that was still holding onto the vault wheel.

"Excuse me," Romio says in passing as the probe starts cutting away at the combination lock. Just as the probe finished, the wheel rapidly spins on its own and the vault door slams open, launching the probe to a side and sending it into the pile of junk. A huge swarm of Heartless consisting exclusively of Shadows comes out, a frenzied look in their eyes as they make their way through the zero gravity environment by digging their claws through the floor. Riku looks a little more annoyed than surprised.

"No wonder everything was still in good condition," Romio says, the probe struggling to free itself from the pile of debris. Riku starts using the plasma unit on the gauntlet to destroy the Heartless, but it was too overwhelming. He ends up disengaging the magnets and jumping before the Heartless could tear into him. As he floats through the air, so, too, do the Heartless leap after him. He uses the gravity beam to 'drag' himself towards a wall before they could attack. The Heartless that leapt end up smacking themselves on the unusually sharp ceiling while the ones still on the floor divert themselves to Riku. Riku starts blasting more of them, making another gravity beam pull when they get too close to him. He circles the room a few times until all the Heartless are dead, walking over to the malfunctioning probe.

"Are you okay?" Riku asks, "I mean... is your robot okay?"

"It's damaged," Romio answers, "I need you to take me out."

"Okay," Riku responds, 'grabbing' the probe with the gravity beam and starting the walk out.

...

As Riku finishes 'climbing' the cable back, he finds Romio waiting for him near the dividing barrier. She takes the probe from Riku, setting it on a nearby cart. She then walks over to the recently salvaged crate.

"Sorry about that," Riku says as he takes his helmet off.

"Oh, don't worry," Romio responds, "I have dozens of these flimsy things. But most importantly, we now have a full Avenger suit."

"What does that mean?" Riku asks.

"Oh, it's only the best thing ever," Romio says, smiling, "Come, let's get lunch."

---- Poles Apart (Pink Floyd)

At lunch, the same exact things from dinner the 'night' before were already on the table as they walked in.

"Hey... isn't that exactly the same stuff from dinner?" Riku asks.

"Nothing ever goes to waste," Romio says, "Not since I found those food preservers."

"Convenient," Riku says, taking a slice of turkey, filling a glass with soda, and sitting down. Romio scoops a bowl from the salad bowl, pours a glass of water, and joins him.

"You're a good crew member," Romio starts as Riku eats his meat, "Reliable, courageous, creative. Very good in a fight."

"Thank you," Riku responds.

"I'm more interested than ever about your past," Romio starts, smiling at him, "Your tone last night suggested that you were chosen by destiny or something."

"That's not too far from the truth," Riku responds.

"Tell me more," Romio says, sipping from her glass while staring longingly at Riku.

"Well," Riku starts, staring into his glass to try and relieve his apprehension, "I'm not sure if it would make a good story. Or a comprehensible one."

"Oh, try me," Romio responds, smiling harder at him.

"I really must insist," Riku answers.

"Come on," Romio answers, "I told you everything about me during breakfast. Now, it's your turn."

"Well," Riku responds, "I grew up on the Destiny Islands. They're about 22 million light years away."

"21.871," Romio corrects.

"Very far away," Riku says, "Anyway, when I was 15, the Heartless attacked. I was supposed to get the keyblade, but the Heartless had already consumed me."

"Consumed you?" Romio asks, confused, "But you're still alive."

"I should just be a Heartless now, but I found something in the abyss," Riku continues, "It was a keyblade. I used it to get out of their grasp, but they had already tainted me."

"Wait," Romio interjects, "I thought you said 'the' keyblade as though there's only one."

"There are dozens of them without even counting the artificial ones," Riku says, taking a sip from his glass, "They come in pairs and seek out two interrelated people to play in this game of cosmic chess against each other. Sora got the locking keyblade and I got the unlocking one."

"You got the good one?" Romio asks.

"No, I got the bad one," Riku answers, taking a bite from his turkey.

"But locking hearts sounds so barren and cold," Romio responds, "Unlocking them sounds warm and friendly."

"Locking hearts protects them from the darkness," Riku explains, "Unlocking them leaves them susceptible to it."

"But what state are they usually in?" Romio asks, "That sounds so binary."

"I don't know," Riku responds, "Somewhere in between. Anyway, I let myself get lead on by Maleficent. She made me think that I was useless and cast aside by Sora in favor of Donald and Goofy. I acted as her willing pawn."

"That's so sad," Romio says, looking a little less cheerful.

"Joke was on her in the end, though," Riku continues, "A force even greater than Maleficent took me over. Made me unlock her heart, turning her into a monster and opening herself to being killed by Sora. Not like it lasted, though."

"You said she got killed, though," Romio responds.

"Nobody important ever stays dead," Riku responds, "I got killed by Sora not long after. However, I refused to die. I managed to crawl my way out of the darkness, but got changed into the form of the very person that controlled me prior."

"Riku," Romio interrupts.

"Yes?" Riku asks, taking a sip from his drink.

"You don't have to make stuff up if you don't want to tell me your story," Romio says, sounding a bit skeptical.

"No, this is seriously what happened," Riku responds.
"People can't come back from the dead," Romio says, dryly.

"People come back from the dead all the time," Riku starts, "Me, Sora, Maleficent, Axel, Xehanort... nobody ever dies permanently if they're all that important."

"But that makes no sense," Romio says, "What's the whole point of death if it can be cheated so easily?"

"I think the Heartless are why people don't die permanently," Riku muses, "They might corrupt your very essence, but those with a strong will can break free and reclaim their original self."

"This all just sounds so unlikely," Romio says doubtfully, finishing her salad.

"It's the truth," Riku responds.

"I find your story hard to follow," Romio says, "So we can save it for later. Tell me, am I acting natural enough around you?"

"By asking me that," Riku starts, pushing aside his empty plate, "The answer is already no."

"But I've been telling you what I think," Romio says, "Isn't that enough?"

"You're asking me how to change your behavior to better appeal to me," Riku starts, "Hence, you're not acting naturally."

"Well, I'll stop asking," she says, cheerfully, "Shall we go back to our salvage?"

"Yes, please," Riku says, getting up and leaving the table. Romio follows behind.

...

And so, Riku spends the next six hours doing some space schlepping. With the power gauntlet and its gravity beam, it was fairly effortless if utterly boring. With the last of its valuables stripped, the triangular derelict is left behind as an empty husk. A memorial of yet another Heartless attack in the deep space graveyard. Back on Romio's ship, she and Riku were in the rec room. Riku was just lying on the couch while Romio was just behind playing a large grand piano.

"So," Riku says, taking a sip from the glass he was holding, "Do you think I'm going to wake up soon?"

"I don't understand what you mean," Romio answers, confused.

"Look at it from my perspective," Riku starts, "At age 15, my pleasant yet boring life on the Destiny Islands was shattered by the Heartless. Ever since I got my keyblade, I've spent most of my life playing host to the darkness in spite of my best efforts to fend it off. My attempt at a normal life after I finally broke entirely free from the Heartless got a rude interruption when they attacked the Destiny Islands again. But they weren't after the world, but me. As a keyblade master, I'm a natural draw of the Heartless."

"Why didn't you just give up the keyblade?" Romio asks, playing an F sharp arpeggio at quarter speed to work on her fingering.

"I did," Riku starts, "But not just any random civilian can handle the Heartless out for their blood. Sure, the keyblade grants extraordinary powers to anyone who holds it, but it doesn't take away fear or panic. Both of the people I gave it to before were smart fencers, but they got killed because they let the Heartless strike fear into them. Each time, the keyblade just reappeared in my hands."

"Where is it now?" Romio asks, pressing a button on a small electronic sitting on top of the piano.

"I just gave it away to this irksome girl," Riku starts, "A Mary that treated me like some trophy to be stolen and tried to attack Sora. I figured she could have my horrible job if she really wants it."

"That's a bit unethical," Romio says, chuckling to herself, "I take it she hasn't died yet."

"She seemed exceptionally selfish," Riku continues, "And too young to commit suicide for another several years. But enough about her. After that last 'adventure', I thought I was genuinely dead. I don't think anyone's ever come back from the dead without the Heartless being involved. Yet here I am, still alive."

"You were really lucky," Romio says, "I don't understand why the Heartless didn't attack you."

"I think they consider us to be part of them so long as we don't have our keyblades," Riku responds, "They certainly like me, since I'm supposed to play on their side. Anyway, this is pleasant. I mean sure, this dress is demeaning and cutting off the circulation to my hips, but I like being on this ship. It's... relaxing."

"Your clothes are resisting any tailoring I do," Romio starts, playing a quick segment, "It seems they're maintained by some sort of magic."

"Now that I think about it, that makes sense," Riku responds.

"I'm trying to make you something," Romio starts, analyzing the readout of the machine, "But I'm no good with either pants or the materials that make them."

"It doesn't have to be perfect," Riku responds, "You can just toss a couple pieces of cloth together and I'd be fine."

"You deserve better that that," Romio starts, playing another segment. The machine showed a red X on the third to last digit.

"You can make me something better later," Riku starts, "But for now, I just need something. Anything."

"I'll go make you something now," Romio responds, closing the cover over the keys and walking away.

"You don't have to right now," Riku says, finding her sudden decision a little unsettling.

"Oh, it's fine," Romio says, walking over to Riku, gently grabbing his right wrist and pulling his arm closer to look at the machine, "Your anemia is acting up again. You should go to bed."

"I'm not tired, though," Riku responds.

"You need to take it easy," Romio responds, "You just woke up out of a coma, after all."

"I guess," Riku says, rolling off the couch and walking out the door.

---- Far Beyond The Sun (Yngwie Malmsteen)

...Six and a half weeks later...

A black, triangular space ship cuts through the empty void of space like a cutting laser through styrofoam. On the circular bridge of this ship was a full crew, most of whom were seated at instrumentation that made up a full half circle forward. Four individual stations were manned by single people, with a chair situated in the center. All the men and women in this room were wearing navy blue outfits with insignias above their left breast and a six digit alphanumeric serial number on their right sleeves. The man in the center chair was speaking towards a holographic object.

"Ship's log for the UID-EC Intrepid 88B, entry 7266, Captain Johnathon Colm reporting. We have arrived at the latest trace of Reaper activity at quadrant CGC-19D-7A2. Current scans show that all traces of the Reapers have vanished within the past twenty minutes. Currently documenting the damage done within the area."

"Captain," said a red haired female crew member at the port side forward station, "We just gained visual on an unusual 1.75 meter large object two point six kilometers away at 207 degrees, positive 66 degrees. It is incoming on our trajectory, traveling at 721 KPM."

"On screen, Lieutenant Jaime," Captain Colm ordered, with the main screen located in the front 90 degrees of the bridge changing from its usual forward camera to a port side aft camera, showing what appeared to be a small yellow comet off in the distance. The camera zooms in on the object, revealing that a blurred but dark object was enveloped by the unnatural flames.

"Object is now one kilometer away," starts Jaime, "Advise course of action?"

"Stage two alert," Colm ordered, "Engage shields. Communications, attempt to hail this object. Helm, take evasive action."

"Roger," the dark skinned helmsman sitting at the starboard side aft station said, accelerating their speed and rotating their Y axis 90 degrees. The object modifies its trajectory to follow.

"No response from the unidentified object," the pale skinned woman at the far starboard side of the half circle said, "It is jamming our communications."

"Object is continuing its pursuit and gaining speed," reported Jaime.

"Stage three alert," Colm ordered, with klaxons ringing through the ship, "Fire a warning shot."

On the outside, a large burst of blue plasmic energy emanates from one of the cannons located in the middle of the ship. It misses by a tenth of a kilometer, prompting the comet to take a position directly aft and level with the ship. A sphere of yellow energy shoots out from the comet, bursting on impact with the ovular shield. With that, all the cannons on the ship start firing at will at the comet, requiring it to made hard evasive banks as it continues to shoot out spheres towards a very specific part of the ship. This continues for a bit, with each sphere getting progressively closer to the ship before the shields can block it. Back on the bridge, the situation was tense.

"Captain," a brown haired man sitting at the forward starboard station starts, "Object cannot be locked onto and is too small and maneuverable to be hit. Shields are at 36% distance. Suggest course of action?"

"Stage four alert," Colm orders, with the klaxons growing louder and a droning voice ordering all crew members to stations, "Authorize use of suppression mines."

"Roger," the weapons crew member confirms. Back on the outside, the ship unleashes two dozen glowing red orbs, with them quickly taking a grid position and detonating into a bright red wall of energy. The comet flies through it, enveloped by a blue energy that dissipates a few seconds after it passes through. It continues its onslaught of spheres.

"Status report," Colm requests.

"Suppression mines had no effect," the weapons crew member reports, "Shields are at 12%... 8%... 3%..." With that, the ship shudders.

"Engineering," the captain starts, "Damage report."

"The shield units have been completely disabled," the brown haired man sitting at the aft port station reports.

"Captain," Jaime says, "The object is declining in speed and distancing itself." On the main screen, the comet grows distant from them, becoming a pinpoint on the screen. With a sudden bright flash, the object zooms in at a phenomenal speed.

Meanwhile, in the aft docking bay, a couple people were preparing the interceptor fighters for potential deployment. Suddenly, a two meter wide hole bursts open as the comet enters, the damage growing larger as the vacuum of space sucks out equipment, fighters, and people alike during those few critical seconds. The comet, sharply declining its speed, maneuvers through the chaos of objects being suctioned out and makes its way under several emergency blast shields in the main corridors. With each blast door it gets past, part of the yellow energy enveloping the comet fades, revealing a purple haired woman wearing a dark blue and black outfit.

At the last blast door where two armed guards were waiting, the woman quickly drifts under it with barely any room to spare, sending two precision guided bolts of red energy from her wand at the guards as she glides by kinetic force alone on her back. With both of them down, she then uses her left hand to push herself into a backflip and lands on her feet. She adjusts her vest and lacey skirt before she starts walking down the corridors. In the next hallway, the woman encounters six guards armed with rifle shaped energy weapons. They all fire bolts of blue plasma at her, which she effortlessly avoids while sending six precision guided bolts of red energy in response. As the last one falls, she goes to a door marked 'computer core' and materializes a vaguely katana-looking blue sword to cut through it.

Meanwhile, on the bridge, the situation is tense.

"Captain," said someone in the half circle, "Someone has breached the computer core. Security cameras have visual."

"On screen," Colm orders. The main screen shows a woman running an ornamental stick over the server banks, stopping at one, taking the cover off, placing a domed object inside, and putting the cover back on. She then casts a spell around the computer banks and the "door" (which is now just an X shaped hole with the edges pushed in), enveloping them in red energy. She turns to face the camera directly, smiling and waving.

"Hello, gentlemen!" she exclaims, giving a cheerful wide smile while doing a clapping wave with her right hand and giving the V sign with her other.

"Get me on the P.A. system with her," the captain orders, with a speaker icon labeled 'computer core' appearing in the corner of the main screen, "What is the meaning of this? Identify yourself!"

"Your ship belongs to my master now," the woman starts, "So please, sit back and let GLaDOS take care of things."

"Captain," the helmsman starts, "The helm program has disappeared, showing a 'firmware upgrade' in progress."

"Communications just went out," said the pale skinned woman.

"What are you doing?" the captain asks. The woman starts waving her left index finger side to side while smiling widely, her eyes closed.

"Baka captain-chan," the woman says, cheerful tone still in her voice, "Don't you recognize a takeover when you see one?"

"Stop this at once!" Colm barks.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave," the woman says, doing her best monotone imitation while forcing all emotion out of her face, unable to hold it with her giggling as she finishes, "I must be going now. Sayanora, nakama!" With that, a very localized black fog envelops her, causing her to vanish into thin air. More screens change to the 'firmware upgrade' as the program spreads. On the main screen, a bunch of black puffs of smoke come up before it also changes to the 'firmware upgrade'.

"What was that?" the captain asks, "Looked like Reapers."

"It is," Jaime says, "Scans show dozens of Reapers appearing within Sector G."

"God save us all," Colm says, "Deploy the Avengers."

Back down in Sector F, large groups of security personnel with energy rifles start gathering. A couple people in metallic silver exoskeletons take point positions as they start walking towards the blast doors sealing off Sector G. They take positions, listening as a large mass of creatures pound on the door. It ceases for a couple seconds before the door opens, revealing a huge number of Shadow Heartless accompanied by a different type. These different ones looked like larger Shadows, but were wearing blank pants, red shirts with a black heart outline on the upper left part of their chest, and were holding graphite colored guns. The Shadows all swarm out mindlessly while the Red Shirts fire their guns, streaming orangish red beams of destruction with subpar accuracy at the crew.

The security personnel start firing at will, but for all they did to hold this wave back, they failed to take into account that the Shadows can travel in blob-like formations on the ground. These Shadows start popping up in the fray with this method, consuming the hearts of surprised crew members and turning into Red Shirts. The unarmored crew starts retreating, with the Avengers staying behind to hold as much of the Heartless back as possible. Unfortunately, as the unarmored crew turns the corner, the Heartless all focus their red beams and mindless swings at the Avengers, which take quite a few hits to go down but eventually succumb. Once all the power armor is down, the Heartless all swarm around the hallway to continue their assault on the crew.

Meanwhile, back on the bridge, the progress bar for the 'firmware upgrades' finishes its crawl to 100%. The lights flicker and the space ship shudders as the main screen shows a stream of unreadable text before settling upon a generic status screen. Every other screen on the bridge except for the status screen on the engines was blank.

"Aperture Science thanks you for partaking in the closed beta test of the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System," a female voice says through the ship's entire P.A. system, "Due to complications during installation, we will need to do some diagnostic tests. Please sit back and wait for the repairs to be performed. Afterwards, we shall hold a party, where there shall be cake."

"Captain," Jaime starts, "That rumble... we're heading somewhere in hyperspace."

"Okay," Colm starts, "Does anybody here have any clue what's going on? Anybody? Anybody at all?"

---- Woman From Tokyo (Deep Purple)

...Twenty six days later...

A triangular husk of a space ship drifts through space, its hull battered and all life within extinguished. Yet another memorial of another Heartless attack, their frequency all across the universe increasing at an exponential rate. An equally large space ship approaches it. On board are, of course, Riku and Romio, waiting at the docking bay. Riku is wearing the silver suit they acquired 72 days prior and Romio is equipped with the remote probe operation gear.

"Yet another one of these," Riku muses, checking all the joints to make sure that everything was properly fastened, "Where do they all come from?"

"It's a pretty large organization," Romio starts, "They probably have thousands upon thousands of these ships."

"And they all seem to fall victim to the same tactics," Riku responds, "You'd think a civilization this advanced wouldn't fall for this so many times."

"Well," Romio starts, "if they get their communications jammed and their ship torn apart, there's not a whole lot they can do to figure out how, exactly, everything happened."

"There still has to be some counter to it," Riku says, "They all have explosion marks at one spot and a puncture at the same docking bay. There's obviously some kind of planned sequence of events before the Heartless rip everything apart."

"It's not really our position to figure out how, though," Romio responds.

"I guess you're right," Riku responds, pressing a button to lower his mask, "Same as last time?"

"Same as last time," Romio responds, pressing a few buttons on her remote. Riku tosses the probe through the energy barrier separating the docking bay from space, jumping through it as well after it clears a little distance. He then activates the jetpack and rocket boots, zooming ahead of the probe and flying inside the ship. Just like the times before, he found a great many dead bodies floating around the wrecked docking bay. However, something caught his eye.

"You're not going to believe this," Riku says into his communication system as he lands on the floor and activates the magnets.

"What is it?" Romio asks, her voice a slight bit distorted by the interference.

"Four fighters," Riku starts, "Still clamped and apparently undamaged."

"That's good," Romio responds, "It should give more than enough parts to finish the other ship. Could you cut open the hallways and take these fighters back while I catalog the docking bay?"

"Sure," Riku complies, walking towards the hallway. He finds the usual fading scorch marks running through the place as he cuts through all the blast doors. He couldn't quite figure out what was up with them, since they seemed too random in markings yet too controlled in direction. Seemed more like a billion sparks scorching through instead of any type of plausible weapon or explosion. In an attempt to figure out what was happening, he follows the trail, finding one last concentration of sparks just before an untouched blast door. He cuts through it, finding a pair of floating energy rifles. Heartless got their owners, obviously.

As he walks around the corner, he finds about half a dozen floating energy rifles near a collapsed wall, plasma scorch marks on the wall behind him. These were also obviously from people consumed by the Heartless, which appeared to have entered through the room on the other side. However, of more interest was a door just to the side of it. Still intact in spite of what appeared to be a massive amount of Heartless clawing all around it, it was still erect. The door itself had what appeared to be an X shaped cut, with the four triangles burst in by some type of controlled explosion. Inside were computer banks, all mostly intact in spite of the Heartless and their rampage. Very peculiar, indeed.

Riku walks outside and follows the claw marks through the hallways. He finds a couple areas with floating energy rifles and scorch marks. Nothing too interesting until he gets to what appears to be a major hallway. The blast door is open, apparently forced by hotwiring judging by the console that was torn out of the wall and still attached tenuously by a few wires. There were a huge number of energy rifles floating at the far end near an intersection along with broken pieces from Avenger power suits. It always bugged Riku that the Heartless absorbed whatever remained of the suits once they finally got in contact with skin. What they would become with these suits in their absorbed DNA was not a pretty mental picture.

"Riku," Romio starts, "You're heading away from the storage areas."

"I want to check something," Riku responds, turning around to find a similar scene of carnage.

"What is there to check?" Romio asks, "The Heartless tore this ship apart. Anything they didn't destroy outside of the storage areas will be useless, anyway. We have too many weapons as it is and all the computer equipment will burn itself out once it detects that it's not in its natural environment."

"Maybe there's a log of what happened," Riku muses.

"You remember the last one we tried to crack," Romio responds.

"I guess you're right," Riku admits, turning back. He thought something was weird about the recurring circumstances of these derelicts, but it was outside of his ability to investigate. Just another tragic loss of life.

...

"Again!" Romio shouts, making a victory sign as she tosses a video game controller aside. She and Riku were on a couch in the lounge playing some type of fighting game.

"After having spent years as a professional swordsman, I'm losing in a video game as one," Riku says, finding the game a bit disinteresting.

"You're not feeling emasculated, are you?" Romio asks in a playful tone.

"Not really," Riku responds, "Video games are hardly my thing. There weren't any around the Destiny Islands growing up and I've been too busy living the plot of them out to really care to play them."

"Oh, come on," Romio says, cheerfully, as she starts up another round, "You don't like this?"

"Not really," Riku says, fiddling with the controller a little, "Jack here is hardly anything at all like the real thing."

"I don't understand," Romio says, effortlessly smashing Riku's character again.

"Well, that kill, for example," Riku starts, "Your character did an overhead vertical slice with an axe. That would have been really easy for me to parry by holding my sword up at a downwards diagonal, follow the axe down as I guide it harmlessly to my side, and allow the momentum to stagger my opponent. It would also put me in a position to follow up this parry with a lateral slice. But Jack here only repels the weapon, putting himself in a stagger while his opponent merely has to finish the reversed circle the axe is sent in to kill him."

"It doesn't help that Jack is bottom tier," Romio states.

"Well, he shouldn't be," Riku responds, getting smashed again, "He has an athletic build, lithe, a good hand and a half sword. I don't see why he shouldn't easily beat all muscles and no agility giant here."

"Because he's a good character," Romio starts, "He has the easiest block reversal, half his moves are breaks, and he's the most resilient."

"He should be a sitting duck," Riku responds.

"Maybe it would help your suspension of disbelief if you play something completely unlike you," Romio offers, canceling the match and bringing them back on the character select, "You should play as Marvelous Hikari."

"But she's using a glass scepter," Riku counters.

"She's a magical girl," Romio responds.

"And her outfit is all wrong," Riku continues, "All those ribbons would just latch on to everything as she walked around. Heels those thin should just snap as she jumps, if not sink into the ground. And I have to believe that a miniskirt made of satin would be very chafing."

"She's a bunch of ones and zeros in a computer system," Romio responds, "Come on, she's a very good character. You aren't avoiding her because you don't want to play a girl, are you?"

"Oh, please," Riku says, rolling his eyes as he selects the character, "It's not like you're any less feminine for playing as that mountain of muscles."

"See, it's not so bad," Romio answers, smiling. They start another match, with Romio just holding back as Riku futilely attacks directly with the scepter.

"This isn't working," Riku says, stopping his assault.

"You're supposed to use her magic," Romio explains.

"How?" Riku asks, "This system is based all around swinging weapons."

"Magic has its own system," Romio starts, scooting over to Riku and placing her hands over his on the controller, "Here, let me show you."

"Okay," Riku says, allowing her to take control. She shows him how to use the system for casting spells, which just involves holding one of the shoulder buttons while pressing the regular ones.

"See," Romio says, looking at him, "It's not so hard, is..." she trails off. Riku and Romio stare into each other's eyes, having forgotten about the game they were playing. They both slowly move in for a passionate kiss, dropping the controller and embracing each other.

---- You Dropped A Bomb On Me (Gap Band)

...Five weeks later...

Sora gradually woke up with blurred vision and a feeling of disconnection with his body... sorry, her. But it was a nice fantasy for Sora, who had a flood of memories come back to her. The transformation, the declaration of love with Riku, GLaDOS obsessing over her as she overheated instrumentation to blow it up, the feeling of hot suffocation as the ship drifted along with the engine core heatsinks destroyed... Sora was starting to wish she had never woken up, but her eye sight cleared up enough to reveal that this was definitely not the Gummi Ship and she was not getting a last bit of consciousness to rub in the fact that she's dead.

As Sora regains sensation, a revulsion to something stuck in her throat comes up. She reaches for her mouth, finding a tube going into it. She pulls it out, holding back the gag reflex until it finally clears her throat. She painfully vomits a grey liquid, ruining the flimsy hospital gown she was wearing. She just lies there for a minute as her eye sight returns before trying to get out of bed. She finds herself restrained by straps, unable to sit up.

It doesn't take her long to notice a sign on a nearby tray within reach that said 'Push the button', a crude drawing of the Paopu Fruit next to the text. Beneath was a big read button. Sora takes the advice and presses it, with seemingly nothing happening. After a few minutes, the lights come on and someone walks in through the door. Much to Sora's surprise, it was not Riku, but instead a blue haired woman wearing a transparent visor with a joystick type controller strapped to her right arm. She takes off the equipment and walks up to Sora.

"I'm so glad you're okay now, Sora," the woman says, giving Sora a warm smile.

"Who are you?" Sora asks as she starts removing Sora's straps and IV lines.

"My name is Romio," the woman answers, "I'm the captain of this space ship. I picked you up..." she takes a glance at the chart, "150 days ago."

"150 days?!" Sora exclaims, "I've been in a coma that long?"

"Actually," Romio starts, "You were already in one when I picked you up, so probably longer."

"Holy..." Sora starts, giving a yelp of pain as Romio injects her with something, "What was that for?" Sora says, grabbing her shoulder.

"Booster shot," Romio answers, walking over to the closet and pulling a dress out. She returns to Sora, who was now sitting over the edge of the bed.

"What's that?" Sora asks.

"It's your new dress," Romio answers, "I tried to fix your old outfit, but it's magically maintained and wouldn't let me tailor it. Fit you really poorly, too. I made you this dress with the same color scheme."

"Dress?" Sora asks, forgetting again what she had become.

"Yeah," Romio answers, "I set up a bath for you in this room... oh, dear."

"What is it?" Sora asks, noticing Romio looking at her midsection.

"Some timing, huh?" Romio says, taking a white plastic cylinder thing from a pouch on her dress and handing it to Sora. As Sora stares at the thing, she walks out the door, saying something over her shoulder, "Go ahead and wash up. I'll have Riku pick you up in twenty minutes."

...

As Sora finishes putting on the elaborate black and red vinyl dress, Riku walks opens the door with his back turned.

"Are you dressed?" Riku asks over his shoulder. Sora walks up to Riku quietly and places her hand on his shoulder.

"I'm okay," Sora says, gently turning Riku around. As Riku turns to face Sora, she embraces him, much to Riku's visible discomfort.

"Everything's okay now," Riku says, just doing a one armed mini-hug in response. They break their embrace and stand about two paces from each other.

"You need to tell me everything," Sora says, a look of befuddlement mixed with relief on her face.

"I'll explain everything while we walk over to the lounge," Riku says, turning to his right to start down the hallway. Sora follows suit.

"How did we get here?" Sora asks.

"After we detonated the engine coolant core and set off that EMP," Riku starts, "We drifted through space until Romio picked us up. I was in a coma for six weeks and you were out for quite a lot longer."

"How did we survive?" Sora asks, "It must have been 180 degrees in there and the air was getting thin."

"I don't know," Riku answers as they turn the corner to another featureless hallway, "But we're here and it's all over."

"Where is here?" Sora asks, starting to find the ship a little creepy.

"We're in deep space," Riku answers, "A little less than 22 million light years away from the Destiny Islands. I've been spending the past couple months helping her salvage derelicts. Seems the Heartless are seeking out space ships."

"That makes little sense," Sora starts, "How is there anything left of the ships to salvage? They always just unloaded as much fire power as possible when I encountered them."

"The ones out here seem to just board the ships through the Corridors of Darkness," Riku explains, "They consume everybody, claw up everything in the process, and leave."

"How polite of them," Sora says as they turn to another blank hallway, "Are we going back to the Destiny Islands any time soon?"

"I'm glad you asked that," Riku starts, "Romio finished building the long range shuttle. We can pick up Kairi."

"Pick up?" Sora asks.

"I thought about everything these past couple months," Riku starts, "And I think that living with Romio would be the best thing for us all."

"...no," Sora responds as they stop near a door.

"Why not?" Riku asks, stopping himself before he swipes the card through the reader.

"I wanted to retire on the Destiny Islands," Sora starts, "Not some lifeless labyrinth of a space ship."

"This ship has everything," Riku starts, "Great bedrooms, excellent food, a lounge with everything. And to top it off, there's a ton of room for expansion. Romio is already retrofitting one of the atriums to duplicate the Destiny Islands."

"I don't want a duplicate of the Destiny Islands," Sora starts, "I want the real thing. I want to just retire with you and Kairi and spend the rest of our lives swimming and racing and exploring the islands and such. You know, what we were going to do before Mickey formed the Heartless Investigation and Removal Agency. I don't want to spend it on some pale imitation of the islands with us on some passionless space ship run by a creepy woman."

"Hey," Riku says, looking a bit indignant, "She is not creepy. She has been incredibly helpful, patient, and generous. She might overdo it at times, but she has a good heart and genuinely cares about us."

"She's hiding something," Sora says, "She didn't sound too enthused that I was awake."

"Oh, please," Riku says, rolling his eyes, "She arranged to get you a cure for your coma. Apparently, it was a big hassle, too."

"Why are you so defensive of her?" Sora asks, staring at Riku with a look of disbelief.

"She's the one," Riku starts, as Sora narrows her eyes at him, "She's smart, courteous, open-minded, and supportive. She's unfailingly nice and has no serious mental illness. She doesn't expect anything out of me but to be myself."

"I can't believe this," Sora says, indignant, "You're leaving us for this woman you've only known a few months. What about our promise?"

"Oh, come on," Riku starts, "That promise we made when I was drenched in what's-her-face's ultra-pheromones? It would never work out. I have two decades of memories of you as a boy."

"How was Miss 'Azure Hauteclaire Momoko', anyway?" Sora asks, cynically.

"Like any other Mary," Riku starts, "Selfish, self-satisfied, and uncaring. All she wanted was just another conquest for the list and viewed me as some trophy instead of any sort of actual person. Just like everybody else I've been with before Romio."

"I hope you aren't implying what I think you are," Sora says, staring at Riku with a look that could kill.

"So what if I am?" Riku asks, "You need to grow up. Seriously. I know that that it's been you, me, and Kairi for as long as you can remember, but just because I have a new friend that is just as close to me as you two doesn't mean that I am replacing you or that she will tear us apart. You need to stop thinking of this as some zero sum game."

"But you implied that you were going to leave us if we didn't go along with your plan," Sora states, gaining a look of sadness as she said that.

"Romio is finishing a ship for us," Riku starts, "It will be able to travel a million light years an hour. Way better than our old ship. I would visit every couple of months. Come on, everything you remember about the Destiny Islands has probably changed and the fact is, all our experience has most likely rendered the place mundane and boring to us. Just because your first impression of Romio was negative for some bizarre reason doesn't mean that you can't warm up to her over time."

"She's hiding something," Sora responds, "I can see it on her face."

"She's worried you'll judge her harshly," Riku responds, "Just give her time. She'll earn a place in your heart."

"You're acting weird," Sora starts, "As long as I've known you, you've been aloof and kept mostly to yourself. Then you meet this woman and all of the sudden, you're... open and cheerful. What has she done to you?"

"She hasn't 'done' anything," Riku starts, "And why do you think I want to stay with her? When she's around, I'm free. Free of the darkness, free of the despair. She's the end of my journey through the loneliness and misery and hopelessness. It's as though whatever mean-spirited deity has been jerking me around has decided to reward me for my perseverance. It's selfish of you to expect me to give all this up for what you perceive to be some unbreakable contract of friendship that prevents anybody else from getting as close to us. I'd expect this from a nine year old."

"I'll think about your offer," Sora says, giving up, "How's that? We still need to talk with Kairi, though."

"I wouldn't be too surprised if Kairi moved on with her life," Riku starts, "HIRA couldn't find a job she could handle and with us missing for at least five months, she either became depressed or found some new friends. Probably both. I wish we could communicate with everybody, but we couldn't salvage the computer network system."

"That's a bit bleak," Sora says, looking a bit pensive at the thought.

"It's the truth," Riku responds, "Shall we head in? We'll also get to meet your blood relative."

"Blood relative?" Sora asks, confused.

"Her blood brought you back," Riku says, "I guess it has some serious mojo or something. Don't ask me how it works. Shall we?"

---- Black Magic Woman (Santana)

On the other side of the door, Romio and a purple haired woman were at a hastily cleared part of the room. The purple haired woman had a B.C. Rich 'Warlock' guitar connected to a Peavey amp while Romio was sitting as an electric keyboard. They were playing some fast paced song, with the guitar sounding downright discordant compared to the unremarkable but serviceable drum line through the keyboard. Romio abruptly stops playing, earning the ire of the purple-haired woman.

"Why did you stop?" she asks, indignant.

"You're off-rhythm," Romio starts, "You do okay at the start with the eighth notes, but even those short sixteenth note sections throw you off rhythm. Then we get to the second part of the opening and you just go into arrhythmic discord."

"I was doing fine," the purple haired woman lies, a bit incensed at the implication that she wasn't completely awesome.

"Maybe 'Fury of the Storm' is a bit out of the league of a three week guitar player," Romio says, giving a thoughtful look, "You should practice with something simpler such as 'Crazy Train'."

"Anything that Herman Li punk can do, I can do better," the purple haired woman responds, arrogantly, "Come on, again. I'll get it this time."

"Sure," Romio sighs, irritated by the insistence at this pointless activity. At that opportune moment, the door behind them opens with Riku and Sora walking inside. Romio and the purple haired woman turn around to their guests.

"Sora is okay, Rom..." Riku starts, trailing off as he recognizes the purple haired woman. She gives a look that can be best described as seething, unholy rage at them.

"I'd like you to meet my protege..." Romio starts, just then noticing the tension between them, "...I guess you've already met," she says, giving a weak laugh to try to dispel the mood.

"Ami..." Riku says under his breath. At that moment, Ami effortlessly tore the guitar off and threw it to the side, with it randomly detonating for no reason. Riku makes a mad dash to the side as she pulls a wand out from where nobody was looking and throws a spell at Sora. Sora barely registers what was coming at her and jumps to the side, narrowly evading the red bolt of energy. She quickly gets back up on her feet and starts running to the side, barely dodging all the red bolts that stream by and leave dents in the wall. Ami keeps walking closer, tossing spell after spell, finally hitting Sora.

With Sora reeling on the ground, Ami instinctively draws her keyblade and parries a plasma burst from behind her. She spins around to see Riku standing near the open weapons locker, holding a large plasma rifle with both of his hands. Ami chuckles and walks towards Riku, effortlessly parrying the plasma bursts to the side as they randomly detonate all over the room. Once she was within ten meters, she makes a dash at Riku. Halfway to him, she spasms and trips, sliding on the floor towards Riku. As Riku started to adjust his aim, a gravity beam envelops him and drags him very quickly to a side, abruptly stopping. The rifle flies out of his hands at the sudden stop, disarming him. Riku looks towards the source of the beam, finding it was coming from a silver gauntlet on Romio's hand. With her other hand, she was holding some type of plastic black and grey glove with rows of small buttons on its wrist.

"There will be no fighting in my house," Romio starts, looking downright livid at the chaos that had just happened, "Are we clear?"

"She's a monster," Riku starts, futilely trying to break free from the gravity beam.

"He started it," Ami fibs as her arms and legs painfully contort behind her back against her will.

"Enough of this childish bickering," Romio says sternly, "Whatever happened in the past is irrelevant."

"She tried to kill Sora," Riku responds.

"And she won't try again," Romio answers, turning to face Ami, "Will you?"

"I make no promises," Ami says, then spasming back really hard, "Okay, fine, I won't try to kill Sora."

"That's better," Romio says, smiling, "Are we all cool?"

"Not really," Riku starts, "But I'll refrain from taking any action."

"Thank you," Romio says, pressing a button on the plastic glove and gently putting Riku on the ground before deactivating the gravity beam. Sora starts to rise from the blow of the red beam, grasping her stomach in pain. No permanent damage, though. Romio sits down at a nearby table, gesturing for everybody else to join her. Everybody reluctantly takes a position at the table as Romio picks up a folder that now had a large hole through it.

"Good thing I memorized the whole file, huh?" Romio says, smiling, as she tosses it aside, "Anyway, this is my magical girl champion Love-Me Lizzy."

"Ami!" Ami shouts, "You're not allowed to call me Lizzy!"

"I made you what you are now," Romio says, smiling widely as she takes a sip from a nearby cup of water, "I can call you whatever I want."

"What do you mean by 'champion'?" Riku asks, looking back and forth between Romio and Ami.

"Just what I mean," Romio answers, "She's my protege. Not a very good one, but I forgive her."

"Hey," Ami responds, indignant, "That's not true."

"We wouldn't be in this mess now if you had stuck with the plan back in Juraihelm instead of chasing after Ginji Kawai," Romio says, chuckling.

"I told you, Washu attacked me," Ami says, unconvincingly.

"Washu was fighting my robots," Romio says, "In front of me. You weren't anywhere near her."

"Maybe if your plan didn't suck, we'd have won," Ami says, looking hostile.

"Enough about the past," Romio says, still smiling, "I also forgive you for sending all of one space ship my way."

"That's a lie," Ami says, "I've tracked down and infected dozens of ships. I even favored the UID like you requested."

"Every UID ship I came across was torn apart by Heartless," Romio says, "You're trying to kill those, so you obviously didn't touch those ships. You wouldn't decide to command the Heartless now, would you?"

"I'm telling the truth," Ami continues, "I disable the shields, go in through the hangar, infect the computer..." she trails off as she starts to see a connection she hadn't made before.

"You need to stop being so careless," Romio starts, taking a sip from her glass of water, "If you're telling the truth, you kill a lot of people doing this."

"It's collateral damage," Ami says, coldly, "They're too heavily guarded for me to sneak on. You're still getting your equipment, right?"

"I don't care about equipment," Romio says, "I want people. And tampering with GLaDOS to force it to kill Riku and Sora wasn't helpful, either."

"Maybe if you had actually tested GLaDOS," Ami starts, "You'd have seen that it was rampant to begin with. Why do you think Aperture Science went bankrupt? I had to hire someone to fix it for me, but I kept backups of the old one for people like these two baka yaro."

"Well, I'm sorry for not going over two hundred million lines of code," Romio answers, chuckling, "Not everybody can be perfect like you seem to think you are."

"Um..." Riku says, relaxing his headlock on Sora and taking his hand off of her mouth, "I've been listening quietly and making sure that Sora does as well, but this makes little sense. What's this 'plan' you mentioned earlier?"

"I tried to depolarize Juraihelm so it would collide with Earth," Romio explains, "But Ami, rather than setting up the machines on the south pole, just went off to do her own thing. I couldn't hold the line and they ended up banishing me for this."

"Wait..." Riku says, staring at Romio, "You tried to kill two planets' worth of people?"

"They're very bad people," Romio says, looking sort of agitated, "I told you this."

"You told me that they rejected you as a hero," Riku responds.

"They did," Romio starts, "I just decided not to tell you about all my failed attempts at killing them all. I thought you'd might judge me harshly."

"I guess it's fine if it's all in the past now," Riku responds.

"Besides, I have a new plan now," Romio starts, with a wide smile and her eyes closed, "I harvested your symbiont and modified its structure. With my newly completed Jericho Cubed missile system and the newly finished propagation powder, I'll definitely kill them all this time."

"...no," Riku says, staring at her.

"What do you mean?" Romio says, "These are horrible people. They pollute, corrupt, and destroy everything they touch. They don't deserve to live."

"I can't idly sit by as you kill billions of people," Riku says, "That would make you no better than the Heartless."

"They're worse than the Heartless," Romio responds, "At least the Heartless have the excuse of being mindless. These people are fully aware of what they're doing."

"That doesn't give you the right to assume they're all bad," Riku counters, "There are always good people in any civilization."

"Lofty words from somebody that endorses a genocide of all the Heartless," Romio counters.

"The Heartless are different," Riku starts, "They really don't have anything else going on in those pathetically small brains of their's. They are born entirely from negative emotions, after all. I can't believe you're doing something like this."

"What did you think I was collecting so much of your blood for?" Romio asks.

"To find a cure," Riku answers.

"I only needed maybe a quart total in my search for a cure," Romio answers, "But how could you ignore that I had all of the infected blood in the same lab as all those rocket parts?"

"I don't know," Riku says, "I thought you were multi-tasking while you created asteroid mining... stuff... whatever, I can't let you do this."

"Come on," Romio says, "I've been everything I can be for you. You can't deny that."

"I won't deny that I... love you," Riku says, looking embarrassed to say that in front of Sora and Ami, "But this is madness. I can't live with myself if I allow billions of people to be killed." With that, Riku pushes himself away from the table and starts to walk towards the door.

"Where are you going?" Romio asks, "We're on a space ship."

"I'm going to destroy the missiles," Riku responds, "Before you do something we'll all regret."

"Forgive me," Romio says, putting on the silver gauntlet and using the gravity beam on Riku again. She drags him into the air, holding him.

"Let him go!" Sora shouts, finally getting enough nerve to speak up. She pushes herself onto her feet on the chair and jumps onto the table. Romio drops Riku and uses the gravity beam to shove Sora away, sending her flying towards Riku's descent path. Just before Sora hits Riku at the ground, Romio readjusts the beam to hold both of them in place. As all this unfolds, Ami just watches, cackling to herself.

"See, I told you!" she says, taking her wand out from somewhere nobody was looking, "I'll finish off these baka yaros for you." Ami throws a yellow sphere of energy towards Sora and Riku, forcing Romio to drag them out of its path as it leaves a black crater in the wall. She mashes a button on the plastic glove, spasming Ami's right arm and forcing her to drop the wand.

"No!" Romio shouts at Ami.

"Why not?" Ami asks, grabbing her arm to try and stop it from the painful spasming, "They were going to stop your plan. I was right about them."

"They're misguided," Romio says, "They just need some time to realize that this is necessary."

"We won't ever sign off on the deaths of billions," Riku says.

"I can't just let you ruin my plan, though," Romio starts, looking sad, "I'm sorry, but it pains me to tell you that I'm going to have to lock you up for the time being."

"You don't have to do this," Riku starts, "Search within your heart. You can find forgiveness for them."

"They're monsters and I can't let them spread to different worlds," she counters, pressing a button on the plastic glove and facing Ami, "Bind them. No funny business or I start pressing random buttons."

"Yes, ma'am," Ami responds, rolling her eyes and flicking her wrist to summon forth a large mass of ropes. They slither around Sora and Riku, tying them down at every joint. Once they are fully wrapped, Romio gently puts them on the ground and deactivates the beam. She walks towards them, carrying the plastic glove in her other hand and keeping her peripheral vision on Ami. Ami just looks indignant that they're being kept alive but doesn't seem like she's going to make any moves.

"You don't have to do this," Riku says as Romio walks to them.

"Don't worry," Romio responds, smiling warmly at Riku, "I love you all the same and I'm sure once we've destroyed Juraihelm, you'll come to realize it was a necessary course of action. For now, I'm going to have to keep you in the lab. I'll try to make sure your incarceration as pleasant as possible."

---- Ruled By Secrecy (Muse)

...A scant few hours earlier...

Romio is sitting in the lab configuring more pieces of a rocket as she waits for something. The lab counter in front of her holds a large number of calibration tools, a laptop computer, the silver gauntlet, a couple vials of pinkish fluid, and several rocket fuselages in various states of deconstruction. She was clearing out the explosives from one of the rockets, thinning down the interior to accommodate the complex vial and explosive charge system that she had to the side. The map open in the corner of the laptop's screen showed an icon move onto it, prompting Romio to put on the silver gauntlet and use the gravity beam to drag a nearby metallic box over to her. She stands up, clears aside her project, and places the box in front of her. The door opens to reveal a purple haired woman.

"Hello, Lizzy," Romio says, giving a cheerful smile and a polite bow. The woman gives a large frown and starts giving an exaggerated huffing and stomping fit of rage.

"Ami!" she yells, already looking cross.

"Oh, I think Elizabeth is a beautiful name," Romio says, taking off the silver gauntlet and unlatching the box, "I don't see why you have to come up with a fake name for yourself."

"It's Euro-American trash," Ami responds, "I deserve an exotic name."

"So you adopt something even more generic in a foreign language?" Romio counters, "Come on. Your mother gave you that name."

"I fail to see why that matters," Ami responds, "Do you really need to keep that horrible thing near you at all times?"

"Oh, this?" Romio responds, pulling a black and grey plastic glove out of the metal box.

"Did you really have to put my limiter in that thing?" Ami asks, irritated, "It's a cheap plastic toy."

"How can I resist?" Romio answers, slipping it on, "It just randomly fell out of the sky right in front of me. I don't know who this 'Lucas' guy is, but the poor thing came from a Heartless consumed world and I just had to find a reason to use it."

"Don't even think of doing that bit again," Ami says as Romio makes a salute motion, "It wasn't cool the first time and it won't be cool again."

"Speaking of the Heartless," Romio starts, taking the glove off, "Why didn't you tell me they were those black aliens? I could have done some research and made you a proper homing tool and gun."

"Because I don't want a homing tool or gun," Ami starts, "I hate technology. I only believe in magic."

"That will be your downfall someday," Romio starts, looking concerned, "It was mine... but don't worry. I'll always have your back."

"That's what I'm worried about," Ami responds, looking at all the stuff in the room, "What's all of this?"

"My latest plan," Romio responds, looking enthusiastic, "You can still make that propagation powder, right?"

"What, this stuff?" Ami says, pulling a huge sack of powder from somewhere nobody was looking and tossing it on the table, "Take it. I grew past powders a long time ago."

"Thank you," Romio says, smiling warmly at Ami, "What brings you here, Am-"

"Ami," Ami interrupts, "Don't call my Lizzy."

"Right," Romio says, "You came here for something. What did you need?"

"I need more power," Ami states, "I'm losing it."

"You seem fine," Romio answers, "You came in via comet and can still do much of your usual magic."

"Who cares about that?" Ami responds, "My hair lost its highlights and is fading from purple back into blonde. My 20/2 vision has degraded into 20/30 and my eyes have settled on brown. Brown! It's terrible!"

"Sounds positively horrific," Romio says, masking her cynicism.

"I need another infusion," Ami responds, "No limiter this time. You know you can trust me."

"I'm just trying to protect you from yourself," Romio responds, typing something into her laptop computer, "You're always so emotional about everything. No middle ground for you. It's not healthy."

"I don't need lectures from someone in her thirties," Ami states, bluntly.

"But with your powder finishing my plan," Romio says, "I won't need your help any more. Juraihelm-Earth will fall and I'll be free of my curse. I'd still love to be friends with you, but you seem a bit anxious around me. One last question, though."

"What is it?" Ami responds, looking impatient.

"Do you have anything to cure a coma?" Romio asks.

"Oh," Ami says, telekinetically drawing a random syringe to her, "You just need some of my blood."

"Stop!" Romio shouts before Ami pricks herself, "That syringe isn't clean. Here, take this one." Romio pulls an unused syringe out of the pouch on her dress and hands it to Ami.

"Thanks," Ami says, tossing aside the other syringe. It makes a mini-explosion as it hits the ground. She then stabs her arm with the syringe and extracts a radiant dark purple substance. She then gives the syringe back to Romio.

"Is that all I need?" Romio asks.

"Yes," Ami responds, "That will cure everything non-magical in an hour or two."

"Thank you," Romio says, smiling widely, "I should introduce you to Riku and Sora. Riku is salvaging a ship at the moment, but he should be done in time for your cure to work on Sora."

"Those names sound familiar," Ami says, starting to chew on her fingernail as she thinks. She catches herself and stops.

"I'll go inject Sora now," Romio says, putting the plastic glove back in the box and walking towards the door, "You should go hang out in the lounge for now. I'll join you shortly."

---- Poison (Alice Cooper)

...Several hours later...

Sora and Riku are now back in their familiar entry point to this sordid tale. The medical room had been hastily refitted to serve as a temporary brig for our two heroes, with an energy field on the other side of the disabled door. Riku was on one of the beds, bolted down by his right arm but with his left arm free. Sora was on another bed, strapped down by her waist but otherwise fairly free to move around. They were both parallel with each other, with about ten meters between them.

"Some girlfriend, huh, Riku?" Sora says, cynically.

"I'm such an idiot," Riku responds, just conceding defeat.

"What?" Sora asks, surprised at Riku's response.

"I let that woman get close to me," Riku starts, resisting tears, "She seemed so nice, but it turns out she's too good to be true."

"I didn't mean it like that," Sora said, realizing that she finally managed to cross a line.

"You did," Riku responds, "And it's accurate. I let myself believe that she was on my side. She was always so nice, so courteous, so understanding of me. It felt like I could just spend the rest of my life in her arms. Now, I realize that it was just Stockholm syndrome."

"I don't think that's a fair assessment," Sora starts, "She did seem like a really nice person. Just, you know... genocidal."

"I can't look at her the same again," Riku continues, "I couldn't ever live with myself if I accepted someone who destroyed two planets."

"She hasn't destroyed them yet," Sora counters.

"We're less than a week away from it," Riku continues, "It's rare, but I've seen her like this and I know nothing will placate her. Not even the power of love will get through now that she has decided this outcome. And it's not like we'll be able to stop her."

"You shouldn't say that," Sora consoles, "We've gotten out of worse."

"We were keyblade masters back then," Riku continues, "The chosen pawns of the universe in this endless, futile battle against the Heartless. God, if I could go back to when I first got my keyblade, I'd commit suicide. There's been little joy that wasn't just taken away by the same soulless creator the spawned me. I'm fate's whipping boy."

"Riku," Sora starts, "You can't be so hard on yourself."

"I thought getting rid of the keyblade would help, somehow," Riku continues, "But look what good it did us. Ironic how the same Mary I pawed it off to has wrecked our lives."

"I'm glad I was so effective," a feminine voice says from behind their view.

"How long were you eavesdropping?" Sora asks.

"Sometime around when Riku was angsting about not being able to accept a planet destroyer," Ami says, walking between their beds and turning towards Riku.

"Here to gloat, are we?" Riku asks, rolling his eyes.

"Nah," Ami says, sitting down on the side of Riku's bed, "Your capture bores me. It's not like I did much of anything."

"Why are you so calm?" Riku asks, finding her demeanor downright disturbing.

"I wanted to talk with you," Ami answers, "I get my magical powers from emotion."

"What a surprise," Riku responds, "Do you think that excuses you from being histrionic?"

"I get the best power from love," Ami continues, just ignoring Riku, "Do you know how much it hurt me when you rejected me?"

"Not nearly enough," Riku answers, as coldly and directly as possible.

"I thought about why you would reject me," Ami continues, now obvious that she's just going by a script, "And I realized I wasn't pretty enough. I didn't have enough power to maintain a manicure or scent my breath. And because of your rejection, I lost my power over my eyes and hair. It was horrible having to dye my hair and wear contacts."

"Welcome to reality," Riku responds.

"But Romio gave me an infusion," Ami continues, now smiling ear to ear, "I got my eyes and hair back, but much more. Now, I have my permanent manicure and scented breath." She then gently traces her fingernails over Riku's face and gets face to face with him to breathe into his face. Riku recoils as the scent of artificial wildflowers mixed with pheromones forces its way down his nostrils.

"Get away from me," Riku says.

"I know you're faking it this time," Ami says, back into delusions, "I took perfection and perfected it even further. How could you possibly not like me now?"

"Very eas-"

...Six and a half days later...

Sora and Riku were still in the makeshift prison, strapped to the beds in as non-constricting a way as possible. Their beds were back in their parallel positions, but little effort was given to mask Ami's intrusions. Both of them had trays with large varieties of food by their sides, which Sora took full advantage of. Riku, however, was just drinking cup after cup after cup of water in rapid succession.

"You really need to eat something," Sora suggests.

"I'm not worthy of food," Riku starts, "And I'm certainly not going to benefit any more from this doomed relationship."

"You really shouldn't be so down on yourself," Sora says, knowing that Riku will just disregard her.

"You get full view of what I have to go through several times a day," Riku starts, "I don't even feel anything any more. After the third day or so, I realized that I'm no longer even a person by any sort of definition. Just a plaything for some deluded psychopath."

"I still think you should tell Romio," Sora responds, "She still loves you and I'm sure she'd prevent this abuse."

"That would be asking her to do something for me," Riku starts, "I'm not letting that happen. No, I can't rely on her any more."

"Just swallow your pride," Sora suggests, "If nothing else, at least think of the potential punishment of Ami."

"Ami is a Mary," Riku continues, "She goes where ever she wants, wrecking lives and breaking up relationships for her own selfish agenda. She doesn't view anybody as a human being and reason is beyond her. Even if Romio chose to believe that this is happening, what is she going to do? She doesn't even have that limiter any more and I doubt she'd want to actually fight anybody."

"Sounds like you need help," an unidentified voice from out of view said.

"Now I'm hallucinating," Riku says, "Brain, save me from this pitiful existence."

"You're not hallucinating," Sora says. With that, a three foot tall anthropomorphic mouse wearing a form fitting black outfit walked into view.

"Deus ex machina," Riku says, sighing and rolling his eyes.

"It's nice to see you too, Riku," the mouse says, walking up to Sora and taking out a keyblade.

"I'm so glad you found us," Sora said, motioning towards the strap that was holding her down. Mickey cuts it carefully, creating a tear in Sora's elaborate dress.

"How did you find us?" Riku asks, honestly curious. Mickey walks around the bed to stand on the right side of Riku.

"After your disappearance, I put all of HIRA on your search," Mickey explains, trying to figure out how to remove the bind, "By the time we organized a fleet and got to your last known position, our updated scans showed the Heartless had been recently dispatched from over a dozen nearby worlds. We investigated the worlds and ended up on the trail of the two women, both of whom had keyblades. We never caught up, but we managed to get their pictures from the newspaper agency of one world."

"Just cut the machine off of the bed," Riku says, "I'll figure a way to get it off from there."

"Okay," Mickey says, slicing all the connections from the bed, "Anyway, the trail went dead around the time the keyblade chose a new master."

"New master?" Riku asks, "It should have gone back to Sora."

"That means Anna is dead..." Sora says, looking morose, "This whole thing was a horrible idea."

"The keyblades choose a small group of very close friends," Riku says, "If Sora didn't get it, that means... dear lord, no."

"Yes, Riku," Mickey starts, "The keyblade chose Kairi."

"That can't possibly be," Riku starts, "She's in no position to be fighting the Heartless."

"Kairi jumped at the call," Mickey starts, "She always hated how she was just dead weight and relished the opportunity to help in our search."

"But she is dead weight," Sora starts, getting enough feeling in her legs to get off of the bed, "She can't emotionally handle the horrors the Heartless contain."

"She's been asking for as much training as possible," Mickey brings up, hoping to alleviate Riku of his fears, "And I have Donald and Goofy assisting her."

"That's not good enough," Riku starts, methodically unlatching pieces of the machine, "If we get out of here, you have to bring us to her immediately."

"Of course," Mickey says, "But to continue answering your question, we found out some more about Ami. It seems she was part of a failed attempt to destroy Juraihelm-Earth some years back. They didn't catch her, but they did catch and banish her associate. We got detailed information from them and left a means for them to contact us if they found Romio or you."

"And they did," Riku says, trying to move the story along as he tangles with a particularly difficult piece.

"This ship is heading straight to Juraihelm-Earth," Mickey starts, "I got on board two days ago. This place is a maze and it was just sheer luck that I came across Romio carting that food here."

"And here we are," Riku starts, prying off the last bit of circuitry off of his arm. He gives off a loud yelp as it tears off most of the regulator machine and black sheath, exposing his arm to be an unnatural pink and light blue mass of contorted muscles oozing a glowing fuscia liquid from the hexagonal grid pattern of needle punctures.

"Ew," Sora says, the stench immediately forcing her to cover her nose and mouth.
"You might want to get away from me," Riku says, motioning them away, "Romio says it's only infectious if it gets in your blood stream, but we don't want to take chances."

"How did your arm get like that?" Mickey asks.

"Ami rubbed some powder on it-" Riku starts, getting interrupted.

"Don't insult his intelligence," Sora says, rolling her eyes.

"It's a long story," Riku starts, "I'll tell you on the way out."

---- Rusty Cage (Soundgarden)

"...Why didn't you just tell us you wanted out?" Mickey asks, finding their story a bit hard to swallow.

"Well," Riku says, leading them down another featureless hallway, "Look at it from our perspective: We owe our lives to you. Several times over. We're your most valuable assets by far and responsible for the vast majority of Heartless elimination. Why would you let us go?"

"I didn't say I'd let you retire," Mickey starts, "I just asked why you didn't tell us you were so unhappy. I could have arranged something."

"We didn't want..." Riku starts, stopping in mid sentence. He strains to hear something while motioning to Sora and Mickey to stop.

"What is it?" Sora asks.

"Listen..." Riku says. The sound of a huge horde of light footed tapping starts approaching them.

"Is that-" Sora begins to ask.

"Yes," Riku responds, "Give me a copy keyblade."

"That's a regular keyblade ability," Mickey says, taking out his keyblade. Within a few seconds, a large mass of Shadow Heartless swarm around the hallway. Mickey takes a forward position, fighting them off as they all focus their attacks exclusively on him. Sora and Riku just watch, unable to really do anything. All of the sudden, another large mass swarm from behind Sora and Riku. Riku gets in front of Sora, doing a couple combat stretches.

"Wait here," Riku says, taking a brawling stance.

"Riku, don't," Sora says.

"They're just Shadows," Riku says, punching and kicking them as they stream in. He tries his best to block them, but many of them get past and attack Mickey exclusively. Eventually, a decent sized group move as a single unit, shoving Riku over and trampling him. However, they just ignore him as they all go for Mickey. Riku lies there, unable to get up as they carelessly run over him. Eventually, as they thin down, he manages to shove a pair of them down in front of him. He picks himself up as the pair of Heartless serve to divert the others around him. He wipes the cold sweat off of his face, preventing himself from vomiting

"Why don't they attack us?" Sora asks.

"With all the times we've been turned into Heartless," Riku explains, "They consider us to be part of them."

"You don't mean-" Sora starts, getting cut off.

"Don't think too hard on it," Riku starts, "That just makes us really low priority." Just as he said that, a second wave of Heartless came around Mickey's corner, all wearing red shirts with black pants and firing reddish orange beams of destruction haphazardly. Mickey tries to rush them, but as he got closer, their accuracy improved and Mickey found himself launched back by the beams. They continue their arrhythmic, makeshift marching as they continue firing and hitting everything but our heroes.

"In here," Riku shouts, running to a door. He narrowly dodges a beam before tapping in an emergency override code. The door opens, with the lights in the hallways going red and loud klaxons emanating through the hallways. Riku runs to one of the weapons lockers, taps in another code, and takes a plasma rifle out of it. He runs back out to find Mickey getting backed into a corner as he picks them off with fireballs. Riku fires a barrage of plasma at the Heartless, effortlessly mowing down a line. The Heartless, now registering him as a threat, all turned and started firing haphazardly at Riku. Mickey took their distraction as an opportunity to close distance and slice through the rest of them.

"Why did you do that?" Sora asks, indignant.

"We were going to die by the Heartless," Riku answers, checking the readout of the plasma rifle to make sure it wasn't leaking or losing its charge, "Romio was going to find out eventually. Come on, let's get out of here."

Riku runs down the hallway in the direction they were going before, followed closely by Sora and Mickey. They weave through half a dozen hallways before encountering another huge mass of Heartless. However, they were all occupied with a blue haired woman that was wearing silver gloves, boots, and a jetpack. She was hovering around, using the gravity beam of one glove to shove the Heartless back and the plasma unit of the other to kill them.

"Let's... not go this way," Riku says, turning around. He barely noticed out of the corner of his eye that Romio saw them, doubling his speed in response. He leads them through an alternate route, finally getting them to the door to the storage area. He taps in his code to find that it didn't work. On one side of the long hallway, a large mass of Heartless were approaching while on the other, Romio had just turned the corner and was hovering towards them.

"Some great situation we're in now," Sora comments.

"Avert your eyes," Riku asks, blasting the panel near the door and causing a huge series of flashes. He then pries the door to the side, narrowly sliding through the small opening. Sora and Mickey follow suit, finding themselves in a large room with rows upon rows of shelves. "Get as far away as you can," Riku says, pressing a few buttons on his plasma rifle as he runs to a diagonal angle of the six meter tall shelves right by the door. He then goes into a squatting position and shoots at the top of it, getting launched back by the recoil into a stack of barrels. A large ball of blue plasma fires out of the gun, hitting the shelf and detonating in a bright flash. The whole shelf gets launched backwards, falling over. A couple Heartless squeeze their way into the room only to get crushed by the huge mass of metal.

"Now what, Mr. Improvisation?" Sora asks, raising her voice due to the cacophony of laser beams and plasma bursts droning from the other side of the mass of wrecked metal.

"Mickey," Riku says, pushing the barrels off of him and getting up.

"Yes, Riku?" Mickey responds, skipping over to Riku.

"Down the third aisle is a stockpile of weapons," Riku explains, tossing aside the cracked and smoking plasma rifle, "Take Sora with you and find the ones marked ZBC-08. Right by them should be astronaut suits. Find suits for yourself and Sora. I'll join you guys shortly."

"Where are you going?" Sora asks as Riku walks past them, almost tripping over his own feet as a minor cramp develops in his right leg.

"I'm going to get an Avenger suit," Riku responds, "Please hurry. I doubt Romio is going to be held back very long and I really, really don't want to fight her."

With that, Riku starts running about as fast as the painful cramp would let him. He heads down a far aisle, going past a dozen refrigerators filled with raw plasma and a large array of raw steel before coming across a pair of two and a half meter tall boxes. He opens one to find only the chest piece, upper arms, thighs, and helmet. Obviously, Romio was using all the important parts of this set at the moment. He opens the second to find the full suit, but it only takes him a second to notice that all the diodes are missing. A waste of time, indeed. He quickly runs back, stopping when he heard a voice from the other side of the wrecked metal.

"Riku," a feminine voice calls out. Riku stops to talk with her.

"Hello, Romio," he responds, searching for possible holes in the wreckage to avoid being within view of.

"I know what you're going through right now," Romio starts, "I used to be a hero. When I saw how horrible everybody on my world was, I knew I had to do something."

"You've only become what you hate," Riku responds, "The same sort of oppressive villain that you believe is the exclusive population of your planet. But you have a choice."

"No, I don't," Romio responds, "I could never live with myself if I let them spread."

"Come on," Riku starts, "Think of all the times we've had. Are you really going to give all of that up?"

"I should ask you the same question," Romio starts, "You don't even know these people and if you did, you wouldn't be doing this now. Let's stop this madness."

"I'm sorry," Riku responds, "You might have been everything I ever wanted, but there's no way I could ever accept a genocidal maniac."

"You'll come to realize what I'm doing is necessary," Romio starts, "I apologize for locking you up, turning a blind eye towards Ami's abuse of you, and what I'm going to have to do now."

"What?" Riku asks.

"Oh, don't worry," Romio says, holding back a chuckle, "Since I can't get to the other door fast enough to stop you, I'm going to release the robots now. Please just kneel before them or they might hurt you. I'll be seeing you soon."

"Wait," Riku shouts, hearing the sound of a couple rocket streams move away from the door. He sighs and runs down aisle three to rendezvous with Mickey and Sora. The latter two had donned their space suits, with Mickey's involving a lot of rolling of the sleeves and pants.

"We need to hurry," Riku states, grabbing a very specific suit and unzipping it.

"What's going on?" Sora asks, unsure of why Riku was only choosing now to rush things along.

"Romio is sending robots," Riku starts, practically jumping into the suit, "I don't know how good they are, but I don't want to find out. Did you find the ZBC-08?"

"No," Mickey answers.

"Sora, clear off one of those dune buggies," Riku says, pointing towards them with his left hand as he puts the helmet on effortlessly with his right, "Mickey, how did you get on-board?"

"Smuggled on a fake derelict," Mickey responds.

"So you had no plan for getting off," Riku responds, rolling his eyes.

"I was going to take over the ship," Mickey responds.

"Too late," Riku says, walking over to the weapons rack and taking off a positively huge gun, "Is there a nearby HIRA ship?"

"We've had a couple trailing this ship the past couple days," Mickey states.

"Any way to contact them?" Riku asks, putting the massive gun down on the floor and picking up a sidearm.

"Maybe if we get off this ship," Mickey says.

"Okay," Riku says, fiddling with the sidearm, "Here's how this is going to work..."

---- Black Sunshine (White Zombie)

A pair of two meter tall squid robots squirm their way towards a slowly opening hangar door. As they set up a side by side blockade, a couple well placed plasma bolts take off huge chunks of them while launching them back several meters. A green, seven meter long dune buggy with two front seats and a large machine gun mounted on back burst through. Sora was driving, with Riku in the passenger seat sending plasmic death all around while Mickey was riding in back, keyblade in hand. Not a whole lot of action for him, but prepared, nonetheless. Hastily fused onto the dashboard was a wristband hologram map, directions set towards one of the laboratories.

"Recalculating route," the unit says, showing a flipping hourglass before settling on a route with a turn that Sora crossed just as it flashed up. It repeats the process, with Sora failing to make the turn again due to a lack of lead time.

"Just stop for a second," Riku says, thinking Sora took his directions to drive as fast as possible a bit too seriously.

"Okay," Sora acknowledges, stomping her foot on the brakes a little too hard. Riku ends up catching Mickey with his right arm as he gets launched forward. The navigation unit then shows that they need to do a U-turn. Sora starts up again, accidentally crashing through one of the squid robots and heading towards the missed turn. She makes the turn just a little too fast and ends up scraping against the wall. A couple more haphazard turns like this forces Riku to say something.

"Could you try not to do that?" Riku asks, sending another plasma bolt through a nearby squid robot.

"Maybe you should drive," Sora responds, irritated, "Since I haven't driven anything in years."

"Just drive a little slower," Riku responds, gunning down some more robots. Our heroes drive through a few more corridors before finding their path blocked by another large mass of Heartless. Sora stops the dune buggy in response, attracting the notice of the Heartless with the screeching of the tires.

"What now?" Sora asks, ducking as horrible accuracy lasers start streaming towards them, "That's our only way through."

"Drive through them, of course," Riku says, pressing a few buttons on the heavy weapon.

"But-" Sora counters.

"Go!" Riku shouts, opening up a rapid fire barrage of plasma bolts towards the Heartless. Sora sighs and stomps the gas, sending the buggy careening towards the large mass of Heartless. Riku focuses his fire on the Red Shirts while trying to clear a path through the center. When our heroes finish closing distance with the Heartless, there were still a couple assorted Shadows directly in their path. A couple painful, squishy crunches resonate as Sora drives over the unlucky Heartless, with a couple near miss beams streaming past their sides. The Shadows on either side of them proceed to randomly jump towards them, most of them missing but a couple managing to latch themselves on the sides. Mickey starts slicing them off as Riku pulls out a small shotgun-style plasma gun to blast them off. Sora ends up having to shove one Shadow off by herself.

With the last Heartless off of the buggy, our heroes drive through some relatively clear hallways. Outside of a few easily dispatched robot guards outside of the laboratory, there wasn't anything interesting. As they stop by the door, Riku jumps over the dividing barrier between the front and back 'seats' and grabs a hastily arranged dufflebag.

"Are you sure it's here?" Sora asks, repositioning the buggy so its back would directly face the door, "Romio has to have moved it by now."

"I know her," Riku starts, shooting the door panel and prying open the door, "She wouldn't deploy these until she did one last check on them. If they're not here, we're too late." Riku runs in to find only a large number of rocket pieces and test tubes full of fuscia colored blood in the first section. In the next section, he finds a pair of three meter long clusters of missiles. Jackpot. He looks around the room for the cart, finding it not too far away. He shoves the several hundred pound missiles onto it, carefully holding them down as he carts them back to the buggy. He comes out to find Sora waiting for him.

"Can't you just destroy them?" Sora asks, stepping to the side as Riku moves the cart right behind the buggy.

"I don't think blowing up a missile capable of destroying a world is a prudent idea," Riku comments, dryly, as he walks to the other side of Sora, "Anyway, take that side. On three. One, two..." Riku and Sora then lift the first missile and place it on the back of the buggy. They repeat the process again, with Riku pushing the cart back through the door once both missiles are off of the cart. He then pulls out a long length of cable from the dufflebag and tosses it to Sora, walking back towards the door.

"Where are you going?" Sora asks, untying some of the binds in the loop.

"I might not want to touch the missiles," Riku starts, "But I have no issues blowing up the rest of the lab. Anyway, make sure to tie under the buggy a few times. I'll be back in a few minutes."

With that, Riku ran back into the lab. He starts sweeping all the test tubes and rocket parts onto the cart, bringing it to an empty corner and dumping them all in it. He does several sweeps of this until everything on the tables were in the corner. He then goes to the refrigerator, carefully looking for something labeled 'propagating powder'. After carefully removing the small sack of it and tying it to his belt, he then tears out all of the shelves and dumps their contents onto the cart. After dumping that load into the corner, he pulls a half meter tall cylinder full of glowing blue plasma and carefully places it on top of the pile. He then runs over to refrigerator, tears the power cable from the wall, shoves it to the corner, and topples it, door open, on top of the pile of debris. Riku then runs outside, taking out a remote control and the plastic bag containing their old clothing.

"Why did you have to absolutely get those clothes, anyway?" Sora asks, getting back into the driver seat.

"You should know better than to leave anything magically linked to you behind," Riku answers, stuffing the clothes into the foot well of the passenger seat, clipping the remote on his belt, and picking up the huge gun, "Let's get out of here."

Mickey comes back from his sentinel position, carefully standing in what little space remained with the missiles on board. Riku presses in a new destination on the navigation unit and Sora starts driving. They immediately come across a large number of squid robots, forming a blockade and waiting for our heroes. Sora stops, starting to back up slowly as they move in.

"I think she figured out what we're doing," Riku comments, firing a few shots at the closest robots.

"What should we do?" Sora asks.

"Drive forward," Riku states, pressing a few buttons. Sora doesn't bother to argue and starts driving forward into the robots. Riku sends several meter wide spheres of plasma, detonating into large explosions that send all the nearby robots flying. Riku clears a path this way, with each explosion being just a little too close for comfort. They eventually break through the large blockade, with Riku turning around and bracing himself in the seat. He then presses a few more buttons and sends a massive burst of plasma at them. The recoil was great enough to noticeably speed up the buggy as the sphere of plasma creates a huge explosion, demolishing the blockade of robots.

"Overkill," Sora quips, rolling her eyes.

"Just keep driving," Riku says, tossing the cracked, smoking weapon overboard and pulling out the shotgun-style plasma gun. He then takes the remote off his belt and presses a button, with a minor shockwave emanating through the ship.

"Was that the lab?" Sora asks, turning the buggy down a long hallway with a Y split.

"I love plasma," Riku starts, tossing the remote overboard and pressing a few buttons on his gun, "Wish we had this stuff instead of the keyblades when we started with HIRA. Okay, no matter what, don't slow down."

Our heroes drive down the hallway, finding that one branch of the Y was infested with Heartless. In the middle of the swarm was a purple haired woman in an elegant gown slicing through them, effortlessly deflecting the beams of the Red Shirts as she does crescent swings. She stops when she notices our heroes, cutting a swathe through the Heartless as she runs towards them. Before she could make it to the intersection, our heroes drive past on the other path. Going increasingly fast, they go through a wide loop and find themselves gunning down a long hallway. From one of the branching hallways, two silver clad Heartless rocket through. Guess Riku got to see what the Heartless produced from Avenger users look like after all.

Riku fires a couple shot at them, all of which were deflected. Mickey draws his keyblade and takes a ready position, with the two Avenger Heartless closing distance. All of the sudden, a blue blade flies through the air and impales the Avenger on the left. As it bursts into dissipating black smoke, the blade vanishes a mere second before the second one gets impaled by the same weapon. As it dissipates, the purple haired woman from before emerges, flying through some unseen magical method. She gives a positively sinister smile at Riku before she increases her speed.

Riku fires a couple bolts, but she effortlessly deflects them all before blasting the gun out of his hands with a well placed keyblade fireball. As she gets within melee range, Mickey starts sparring with her. As effortless as Ami made things look, her lack of experience compared to Mickey really showed as she found herself narrowly evading his swings. Eventually, one of Mickey's lateral swings takes her off guard and she ended up losing focus and rolling on the ground as she stopped flying, her keyblade clanging on the ground. However, within a few seconds, she pushed herself up and started flying again. She desummons the keyblade and pulls out her wand from somewhere, generating a yellow sphere of energy and hurling it at our heroes. Mickey deflects it to the side, with it detonating into a large crater in the wall. She starts generating another sphere.

"Deflect and duck," Riku says, grabbing the handles on the turret. As Ami sends the sphere over, Mickey deflects it to the side and ducks, holding onto the cables binding the missiles. Riku starts unloading the turret at Ami, with her focusing a blue energy shield around her. The already low counter on the ammo readout starts rapidly dropping, starting at 300 but quickly becoming 250... 150... 100... 50... 25... 10... With a bright flash, Ami's shield bursts and she flips back in the air in slow motion, sparks flowing around her. She collapses to the ground shortly thereafter.

"We're almost out!" Sora shouts, putting her helmet down as they drive into the hangar. Riku and Mickey follow suit. With helmets down, they drive right through the dividing barrier between the hangar and outer space. The gravity of the space ship they were exiting alters their path slightly to go 'downwards'. As they freely float through space, Mickey fumbles with something inside of his suit. They get increasingly far away from the ship, which was going decently fast towards what appeared to be a solar system. They float for what feels like an eternity, the space ship growing more distant. Just when it was barely a speck in their vision, a yellow comet streams out of it. It immediately homes in on them, getting increasingly closer.

Just when it was within a few hundred meters of them, a bright orange flash of energy detonates near it, diverting the comet away as the energy around it turns blue and dissipates. Our heroes look the opposite direction to see one of HIRA's ships float within view, positioning itself with the hangar entry in their path. Twenty seconds of careful maneuvering later, our heroes and their dune buggy were floating within the degravitized hangar. Suddenly, they fall, crashing down on the steel floor and sending all of them in random directions away from the dune buggy. Riku crawls onto his knees, ripping apart the space suit as fast as he can. A bunch of crew members run towards Riku.

"Stand back!" he shouts, getting the top off. His right arm was now convulsing, with veins breaking and tons of fuscia blood spraying all over. The blood would quickly boil over, what little remaining fading back to its regular crimson color. As this happened, Riku's muscle structure in his arm twisted and contorted, going back to its natural state as all the pink and blue fades back to a regular flesh color. All the while, Riku was holding back his screams, eventually giving out one piercingly loud one as he loses consciousness.
---- Silent Lucidity (Queensryche)

Riku wakes up after a dreamless sleep to find himself in another bed. For the briefest of seconds, he believes that everything from Ami's appearance onwards was a dream and that he was back in his room. Wanted to believe so hard, anyway. It doesn't take him long before he recognizes it as a HIRA ship medical bay, with the usual chemical cocktail being fed by intravenous into his veins and a whole array of machines hooked up by wires to him. A fairly non-descript human male in a hospital outfit approached Riku, carrying a PDA with him.

"Permission to come aboard," Riku says, cynically.

"Oh, I'm not the captain," the man says, chuckling lightheartedly.

"How long have I been out?" Riku asks as the man presses a few buttons.

"About two and a half hours," the man responds, putting the PDA to the side and sitting in the chair, "We've never seen anything like what happened to you."

"I get that a lot," Riku says, looking to his right arm to find it wrapped in some type of green bandage that had visible liquid running through it. He was in good hands.

"We inoculated you," the man starts, "Just in case. However, from what we saw, your infection just... killed itself. We couldn't find any traces of it in you or the surrounding area."

"Inoculated?" Riku asks, "What do you mean, 'inoculated'?"

"We've encountered this before," the man starts, "Nasty little creature. Infects and rearranges your internal structure, usually killing you in the process. We've only found plants that could undergo a full merger, but from what we could tell from the video, you were in a very advanced state of infection. How long since you were infected?"

"I don't know..." Riku starts, "Around when I went missing?"

"Dear lord," the man responds, "That's at least half a year."

"I spent most of it with some type of filtration machine on my arm," Riku states, "Not sure how long it was until I got rescued from the derelict, though."

"We're going to have to do a full analysis," the man starts, "But for now, you need to stay in bed. Get some rest. Sora and Mickey will talk with you soon." The man walks off, sitting down at a nearby computer and typing some stuff in. It only takes a few minutes before Sora arrives.

"Riku!" she exclaims, running over to him.

"I'm still alive," Riku says, a bored look on his face, "Don't need to be so emotional about it."

"I was so worried," Sora starts, sitting in a nearby chair, "That was some freaky stuff."

"You look different," Riku comments.

"What do you mean?" Sora asks, looking herself over.

"I don't know," Riku says, "You seem... I don't know."

"Oh," Sora starts, "King Mickey arranged something for me. I don't want to talk about it."

"I'll ask him, then," Riku responds, rolling his eyes.

"Okay," Sora starts, "You know how King Mickey said he wasn't going to let us retire?"

"Sort of," Riku says, "But we're not any more useful than some average recruit any more."

"Well... er..." Sora starts, "...King Mickey enlisted the help of some of the locals."

"I'm not liking where this is going," Riku states.

"For you, he's getting a special plasma rifle built," Sora continues, "Some red haired supergenius woman is making it for you with what she salvaged from our stuff and incorporating NT into it."

"Windows NT?" Riku asks.

"...New Technology is what she calls it," Sora says.

"That's vague," Riku says.

"Yeah," Sora confirms. Riku waits for about twenty seconds before making a rolling motion with his left hand. Another couple seconds go by with Sora not saying anything before Mickey arrives.

"Hello, Mickey," Riku says in a flat tone of voice, "What horrible secret does Sora have?"

"Why not show him?" Mickey asks.

"Fine," Sora says, pulling a silver bladed fan from behind her and handing it to Riku.

"I don't know what this is," Riku says, trying to single-handedly open it.

"At Mickey's insistence, I'm now a... magical... girl..." Sora says, her voice getting really quiet really fast as she turns her head away in embarrassment.

"...Sora..." Riku says, slightly closing his upper eye lids.

"Yes?" she responds.

"I have about three different types of painkillers and a bunch of other chemicals going through me," Riku explains, "I'm not exactly feeling any emotion, so there's no way I'll make fun of you. Just tell me what being a 'magical girl' involves."

"The lamest outfit ever," Sora responds, "And it's a reminder of my curse."

"I already told you that we're working to find a cure," Mickey replies.

"So..." Riku says, tossing the fan back to Sora, "Any news about Romio?"

"She's getting dangerously close to Juraihelm," Mickey states, "So our friends sent somebody to check up on her."

...

Romio walks through the heavily battle scarred corridors, not bothering with the flight system of her mix and match armor. She sighs as she passed by a large crater, reminded of the conversation she just had with Ami. It really irritated her to no end the way Ami had no empathy or self-control, with no care about the repercussions of her actions. Wall-to-wall emotions and a disregard for anything that gets in the way of her shallow self-satisfaction had finally worn down Romio's near-saintly patience. This final errand she gave to Ami already had her wondering about her sanity.

Romio opens the door of the lounge, hearing a haunting piano melody echoing through the large room. Her scans showed that somebody was in here, but she was just expecting a Red Shirt or maybe an Avenger Heartless based on the size readout. Instead, just over the large grand piano, she was able to make out some blonde hair. The playing stops abruptly.

"Hello," Romio says, giving a forced smile, "Long time, no see."

"AH! HA! HA! HA! HA!" laughs the woman, each protracted syllable sounding like metal fingernails on a chalkboard. Romio starts powering up her armor to prepare for battle.

---- Apocalypse Please (Muse)

Sora and Mickey walk on to the bridge of the space ship, taking a moment to get themselves situated. On the main screen was a display of Romio's ship, not too far away from the twin planets of Juraihelm-Earth. It had slowed down to a stop, with a small yellow comet circling it.

"Something's wrong," Mickey comments, "She's well inside the geas range. She should be dead by now."

"Admiral," a man sitting at a station reports, "The fleet is getting a message."

"On screen," Mickey orders. The screen changes to show a heavily scorched and thoroughly trashed lounge room, with a blue haired woman in the foreground and a blonde haired woman in a form fitting crater in the wall, dazed but still visibly alive.

"Hello, everybody," the woman says warmly, giving an inviting smile, "I presume you're the organization that Riku was a part of, yes? Riku told me all about you and as much as he thought you were smothering him, I just want to say that I admire all of you. You could easily just focus on keeping your own world safe of the Heartless, but your strive to eliminate them from every corner of the multiverse is noble. I do not blame you for your attack against me and my ship, since by all accounts, it did appear as though I had kidnapped Sora and Riku. I apologize for any inconvenience that I indirectly caused, but now that this messy business is behind us, I'd like to speak about our current situation."

"Now," Romio says, her expression shifting to a stern but still warm look, "If I may, I should comment on your current actions. Since you 'rescued' Sora and Riku and the Heartless threat in this area has been extinguished, there should be no reason for you to still be here. As Riku told me, you have regulations that forbid involvement in the affairs of other worlds except when the Heartless are involved. Right now, your presence is infracting on these rules and I am going to have to politely ask you to leave. If you come any closer to either my ship or the worlds, I will be forced to take drastic actions."

"Also," she said, effortlessly reaching behind her and casting a spell to teleport the blonde woman away, "I believe that during Riku, Sora, and mouse guy's escape, some of my property was taken. Now, I don't care about the plasma weapons or the buggy. As far as I'm concerned, they're my apology gift to you for the inconvenience I caused with taking in Riku and Sora. But the missiles need to be brought back to me. I don't actually need them back right now, since as I always say, 'save something for a rainy day'. However, the two missiles are very dangerous and I'm worried you're going to accidentally set them off. Then you'd be really buggered."

"Admiral," a woman at the corner of the bridge reports, "Misa appeared right next to the two missiles. She's badly injured, but she should make it."

"As you probably know by now," Romio says, writing something on a notepad, "I already know where the missiles are and returned your thug to them to prove it. I'd rather not send my thug to retrieve them, so I'm going to give you a chance to dispose of them properly." She holds the notepad in view, with it showing a complex password. "Here is the password to activate both of the missiles. Once they're active, position them to face the two worlds with a clear path and press the big black button. They'll launch 30 seconds later, so be sure to clear everything nearby. If you take any aggressive action against me, I'll regrettably have to take them back by force and can't guarantee your safety in the process. Please don't let that happen."

"Anyway," Romio says, tossing the notepad aside and giving a warm smile with her hands clasped in front of her, "Once I finish exterminating the plague of Juraihelm-Earth, I would like to join your organization. I believe the Heartless are a major threat and I want to be on the front lines to battle them. I have a lot of technology and resources to offer, plus my scientific expertise could lend itself towards developing better methods of dispatching them. I finished reverse engineering much of the salvaged technology and created the Mark III Avenger suit. It will be a gift regardless of if you take me in, but I hope it will help sway your opinion. I'm sure you're all recording this message, so I'll do it by pictures. Anyway, I have important business to attend to, but do keep in touch. And Riku, call me! I already miss you." With that, the screen flashes through a couple hundred schematic pictures in rapid succession before going blank.

"That has to be the most polite genocidal maniac I've ever seen," somebody on the bridge comments.

"Admiral," started a man wearing a fancier uniform than the rest, "What do you think she meant by 'save something for a rainy day'?"

"She must have other missiles," Mickey responds, "Send the front line in to attack. Focus on disabling the ship and create a blockade in between her and the planets. Get engineering on the line."

"Yes, admiral," the communications officer responds, putting engineering on the main screen and starting an independent broadcast from his terminal. The lead in engineering walks over to the console.

"Yes, admiral?" the engineer asks.

"Take apart those missiles we brought back," Mickey starts, "Drain all the pink liquid... carefully... and replace it with the Wotsuba chemicals. Put them back together exactly the same way afterwards. Double time."

"Yes, admiral," the engineer says, relaying the orders to everybody else.

"Put tactical on the main screen," Mickey orders. The screen changes to show an already bleak image. Eight ships aligned with HIRA were taking the full brunt of a massive spread of silvery blue lasers. Three of the ships were already visibly disabled, with the other ships firing haphazardly at Romio's ship. Their orange explosive shots deflect seemingly harmlessly off of Romio's hull, leaving only damage to the limited paint job. The yellow comet, fresh from tearing off the engine pod from a nearby ship, went for the next ship between Romio and Mickey. Two rocket trails stream from the front of Romio's ship, signaling that the missiles had been launched.

The crew, already knowing what Mickey wanted, put visual of the missiles on the main screen. Each of them fly over to a planet, splitting into the four smaller missiles that orbit in a cardinal direction around the world. As the missiles begin their orbit, their shells pop off and tiny missiles about a quarter meter large each launch out in groups of three, going into the atmosphere and detonating. With each missile that does this, a visible part of the atmosphere gains a pink hue until all the missiles finish their run, ending four large streaks of pink that bleed into the rest. It only takes a minute before the whole planet is shaded.

The screen changes back to the tactical view, with all of HIRA's ships disabled as Romio's ship flies away. The comet heads straight towards Mickey's ship.

"Fire at will," Mickey orders. Orange explosions start detonating near the incoming comet, which manages to evade all of them just barely. As the comet gets within a short distance, it sends out four precision guided spheres of destruction at each of the corner turrets of the ship, all of them detonating at the same time. The turrets fly off, a trail of sparks gushing from where the cables used to be. The comet slows down, flying around the ship as it searches for something.

"Sora," Mickey says to his side.

"Yes?" Sora responds, unsure of what he wanted from her.

"This ship is undermanned and not equipped for a boarding," Mickey starts, turning to face Sora, "My keyblade is currently recharging and has a ten minute cooldown. Could you go distract Ami?"

"What?!" Sora asks, surprised at Mickey's callous suggestion.

"I know you were only just made a magical girl," Mickey continues, "But if we don't protect those missiles, billions of people will die. Ami won't ignore you if I read her correctly. So please, Sora."

"I guess I have no choice," Sora sighs, pulling out her bladed fan from somewhere nobody was looking.

"Thank you," Mickey says, turning to the rest of the crew as Sora hurries out, "Open the docking bay."

"But admiral-" a crew member starts.

"Do it," Mickey commands. The crew member nods and opens the docking bay cover. The comet notices it, flying through the dividing energy barrier. The camera shifts to inside the docking bay, where the sparks of the comet fade to reveal a purple haired woman in a blue and black lace outfit. She throws some red bolts around, knocking out all but one of the crew members. The last standing crew member tries to flee, but trips over some spectral robes that started forming around his feet. They envelop him, binding him and raising him in an uncomfortable position. She walks over to him, waving her left index finger back and forth while smiling at him a little too cheerfully.

Meanwhile, Sora was running as fast as she could through the hallways. She jumps over a handrail, landing on the floor below and rushing through a door. As she exits into a large hangar, she already hears a conversation coming from the other side of a shuttlecraft.

"I don't know!" shouts the man, holding back yelps of pain as his body give off painful sounding pops.

"I know the missiles are somewhere!" the woman shouts, a forceful tone in her voice, "Where did they take them?!"

"Ami!" Sora shouted as she turned the corner, pointing her fan at the woman, "Leave him alone!"

"Sora..." Ami says in a sinister undertone, flicking her wrist to make the binds toss the man away like an empty bottle at the wall, "Oh, how I am going to enjoy this."

---- Invincible (Pat Benatar)

As Sora stands there holding her fan threateningly, Ami just gives off a soft chuckle at her opponent as she desummons her spectral ropes.

"What's this?" Ami asks, feigning surprise, "Sora got a new toy?"

"I have to thank you," Sora states, "Being a girl is awesome."

"Is it?" she asks, surprised at Sora's behavior.

"It's great," Sora starts, "I always grew up thinking I was trapped in the wrong body, but then you came along and fixed that for me. Everything about this has been great. I'm more flexible, more attuned to magic, and my mind is a lot clearer without the testosterone messing with me."

"Is that so?" Ami says, staring at Sora, "Because I'm not changing you back."

"Well, it was worth a try," Sora states, looking disappointed.

"Who's your mistress?" Ami asks out of the blue.

"What?" Sora asks.

"I can sense the magic on that," Ami says, "And we're by Juraihelm, so my question still stands: who is your mistress?"

"Are you implying something?" Sora says, narrowing her eyes at Ami.

"It's Ramia, isn't it?" Ami says, "That's the same type of baton that Pixy Misa uses. Figures you'd get the over-the-hill queen reject."

"I don't know," Sora replies, "I was just given this and an incantation."

"I've always wanted to fight another of Ramia's dogs," Ami states, giggling with her hand over her mouth, "Come on, transform with me. I'm feeling nostalgic."

"Whatever," Sora says, holding the fan vertically in front of her with both hands while closing her eyes, "Pixy Mutation, Magical Recall!" With that, energy swarms around her as she instinctively twirls her fan with her right hand. She rises in the air, her dress dissolving and reforming into a form fitting red leather outfit with white feathers adorning her skirt and top. The outfit left her midriff, lower thighs, and shoulders exposed, barely maintaining her modesty. Sora's hair lengthens significantly, losing its spikiness and reforming into a long ponytail. Her eye color changes from blue into a radiant amber. As this finishes, she lands, instinctively giving a pose before regaining control and stopping herself.

"Ethereal Mutation, Magical Recall!" Ami shouts, holding her wand out horizontally in front of her. Energy swarms around her, lifting her up and suspending her in the air as her outfit expands and reforms. From her back, four azure ribbons sprout forth, looping back to form a clover formation that vaguely looked like wings. The lace on her gown shrinks in on itself, getting replaced with a sparkly blue lining. Large bracelets appear around her wrists, with a large sapphire adorning each. Random sapphires appear in other parts of her outfit, each of them giving off a radiant sparkle. Nothing changes outside of her outfit, though.

"Your outfit is so stupid looking," Ami says, laughing at Sora.

"Yeah, yeah," Sora starts, "I didn't have much choice in the matt-"

"Ether bolt!" Ami shouts, materializing a blue bolt of energy at the end of her wand and throwing it at Sora. Sora, taken aback by her surprise initiative, barely manages to duck as the bolt travels by, detonating in a bright blue flash as it impacts into the wall. "Ether bolt!" Ami shouts, sending another bolt at Sora. Sora does a quick hop to the side, with the bolt detonating on the ground nearby. Some of the energy singes Sora's left side. Sora, without a plan or much grasp on her abilities, starts to run to the other side of the shuttlecraft. "Ether bolt!" Ami shouts, sending a bolt in Sora's path at her feet. Sora jumps over it into a forward somersault, rolling out of view and quickly taking cover.

"Ether swarm!" Ami shouts, extending her arm and materializing a large blue ball of energy at the end of her wand. It then bursts into a dozen streams, all impacting into the shuttlecraft and launching it through the air. Sora gets slammed into it, barely managing to regain her composure as it flies through the air. She grabs onto a notch on the side with both hands, kicking off of it and launching herself into a flip over it as the shuttlecraft collides into the wall. "Ether bolt!" Ami shouts, sending a bolt towards Sora's projected landing spot. Sora, unaware of what she was doing, reacts by changing her heading in midair and floating to the side. She lands on the ground, giving a momentary expression of surprise before regaining her composure.

"Ether bolt!" shouted Ami, smiling with sadistic glee as she sends another blue bolt at Sora's head. Sora, taken off-guard again, ducks backwards to avoid it. "Ether bolt!" Ami shouts again, sending it at Sora's feet. Sora jumps, narrowly avoiding the bolt. "Ether bolt! Ether bolt! Ether bolt! Ether bolt!" Ami starts shouting in succession, sending bolt after bolt at Sora. Sora manages to avoid each bolt by doing an upwards evasive movement, ending with her hovering near the ceiling. She regains her composure, just staring at her hovering self.

"I can fly..." she says, not used to being capable of this off of Neverland.

"Big whoop," Ami says, doing a small hop and hanging in the air in a defiant display, "Ether bolt!" Sora manages to narrowly evade this bolt by hovering towards a side. "Ether bolt!" Ami shouts before the first had even missed Sora, sending it at Sora's projected area. Sora, without much reaction time to change heading, desperately slices at the bolt with her fan. The bolt gets deflected, impacting in some nearby barrels and causing a moderate sized explosion. "Ether bolt!" Sora, realizing what she just did, tries swatting the next bolt away. It gets deflected to the side, detonating harmlessly on a wall.

"Ether bolt! Ether bolt! Ether bolt!" Ami starts shouting in rapid succession, sending bolt after bolt at Sora. She swats away each one, hovering in towards Ami. Ami, reading Sora's intent, tosses her wand to her other hand and materializes the keyblade in her right hand. She then zips in to close distance with Sora, making a lateral slice. Sora counters with a downwards vertical, locking blades for a few seconds before they push each other away. Sora takes the initiative and flies in for another slice. Ami, her total inexperience with fencing anything that puts up a real defense showing through, barely parries the attack. Sora starts making slice after slice, each one being narrowly parried by Ami.

Eventually, an opening presents itself and Sora gets a lateral slice in at Ami's midsection. Ami gets launched back, dropping her keyblade and falling to the ground as she grasps her stomach in pain. Before Sora could go in for more swings, Ami kicks the ground to slide backwards and starts hovering after a couple meters. She resummons her keyblade and parries Sora's slash, locking blades and shoving Sora backwards. As Sora recovers from this, Ami flies way out of range, desummons the keyblade, and tosses her wand into her right hand.

"Ether bolt!" Ami shouts, throwing a bolt at Sora. Sora effortlessly deflects it, flying towards Ami with her fan in a ready position. Ami starts circling around in an attempt to keep out of range of Sora. "Ether bolt! Ether bolt! Ether bolt!" she shouts in succession, throwing bolt after bolt. Sora deflects them all, eventually getting frustrated and instinctively focusing her energy into the fan. Without quite knowing what she was doing, she materializes a red sphere of energy and sends it towards her opponent. It impacts on Ami, whose arrogance over Sora's inexperience left her unprepared for any type of counter-attack. The red sphere explodes into a small burst of flame, launching Ami back. She crashes into a stack of crates, giving out a loud yelp of pain. It only takes her a second to shove them off and start hovering again.

"Hey!" Ami shouts, giving a look of pure indignant rage at Sora, "No fair going against tradition!"

"Tradition?" Sora asks, staring at her.

"Well," Ami says, "If you're not going to follow the rules, why should I?"

"I don't under-" Sora starts, narrowly evading an (uncalled) ether bolt. Ami starts throwing ether bolts at Sora without calling them, making them a lot harder to evade. Sora deflects the bolts, sending flares during Ami's short breaks. Back and forth, this stalemate goes on as they circle each other. Sora eventually gets an idea, though. Ami had a very fixed distance and pattern she maintained, so Sora started moving in towards her slightly to get her to change the flight path.

With Ami just about to fly over some nearby barrels, Sora makes a wide gesture, sending one bolt at the barrels and another at Ami. Ami deflects the bolt, but carelessly flew over the barrels. The bolt hits the barrels, causing them to explode in a chain reaction that sends a large fireball and several barrel shells upwards. Ami gets caught in the blaze, getting hit by one flying barrel shell and getting launched upwards. She impacts into the ceiling, falling back down as a couple flames spread over her outfit. Sora zips down to Ami as she starts frantically patting down the flames, placing the bladed fan against Ami's throat when she finishes getting the last bit of fire away. Mickey runs in from the side with his keyblade drawn as several crew members armed with energy guns drag a cart with two large missiles along.

"Okay, okay, you win," Ami surrenders, closing her eyes and reverting her outfit back to normal, "Don't have to be mean about it."

"Good work, Sora," Mickey says, placing his keyblade in the ready position near Ami.

"May I please change out of this?" Sora asks, "This is humiliating."

"Go ahead," Mickey responds.

"Thank you," Sora says cynically, backing off and turning around. She holds the fan in front of her and closes her eyes, reverting back to normal. She then tosses the fan behind her, with it poofing into a small shower of sparks halfway to the ground.

"What now?" Ami asks, smiling at Mickey, "Going to kill me?"

"Not if you don't provoke me," Mickey responds, staring at her intently.

"Admiral," someone near the missiles started, "Shall we launch the missiles?"

"Go ahead," Mickey says, not even breaking his gaze.

"Yes, admiral," several men acknowledge, rolling the missiles near the energy barrier and placing them down. They enter some codes and press a black button on each, running to the other side of the room. They launch, repeating the same process but instead tinting the worlds blue.

"Well," Ami starts, "Now that the missiles are gone, I have no reason to be here any more. Can I go now?"

"No," Mickey starts, "You're too dangerous."

"No, I'm not," Ami says, giving a cheerful smile.

"As far as I can tell," Mickey starts, "You're responsible for pretty much everything bad that has happened to Sora and Riku for the past half year."

"So?" Ami says, looking around at the crowd of men in generic outfits leveling batons at her, "I'm sorry for ruining their lives. Happy?"

"Why did you kill Anna?" Sora asks, having decided to walk back.

"I didn't kill her," Ami says, flatly.

"You're lying," Mickey starts, "The keyblade she was carrying found a new master."

"The keyblade left Anna when I finished taking over her mind," Ami starts, "After that, I tried to do her a favor by getting her a comet spirit, but my link broke with her after she went crazy."

"That's lovely," Sora comments dryly.

"I'm leaving now," Ami says, telekinetically drawing her wand over.

"No, you aren't," Mickey says, motioning to the men surrounding her. Ami tries to take the initiative, but her wand is knocked out of her hands with a well placed baton blow. She shoves the man down as she tries to run away, but they all fire hook lines at her. Ami trips as the crew yank on her cables, forcing her down to the ground. Mickey takes out what appeared to be a pair of headphones that were emitting a high pitched screech.

"Nooooooooo!" she shouts, a look of pure terror on her face as she futilely tries to squirm away. She knew exactly what this object was. She begins to haphazardly summon a Corridor of Darkness, but the crew all activate the tasers and cause her to spasm. With Ami dazed, it wasn't too hard for Mickey to place the headphones on her. Her expression goes blank and her body goes limp, falling face first to the ground.

---- It's A Hard Life (Queen)

Riku was lying in his bed, bored, thinking about what had transpired. He wasn't too enthusiastic that he was being brought back in to HIRA forcefully, but considering how much trouble he and Sora caused with their recent escapades, this was a pretty light sentence. Sora and Mickey walk up to him, both with a tired expression on their faces.

"Welcome back," Riku starts, "Did I miss anything?"

"Oh, nothing major," Sora replies, "Just saved two worlds of death by biological warfare and captured Ami."

"A day in the life, huh?" Riku quips, "How did you defeat Ami? You don't even have your keyblade."

"I got her to fly over some explosive barrels," Sora explains, "I think you can figure it out from there."

"Mickey," Riku says, turning to face the large mouse.

"Yes?" Mickey responds.

"You gave her the halo, right?" Riku asks, looking concerned.

"Yes," Mickey says, a bit of shame in his voice.

"Don't let anyone take it off until she has at least four tiers of magical suppression on her," Riku states, his face going into a very serious expression, "Don't bother with any curses. She can transfer them easily."

"What do you mean?" Mickey asks.

"She mentioned it in passing a few days ago," Riku starts, "I thought she was just bragging about how utterly special she is, but I realized that's why she came to me the first time. It was Romio's curse that killed the sentient parasite within me. It died when I left the ship and she was able to go into the solar system. Did she use any magic?"

"Yes," Mickey replies, "She teleported Misa back to us."

"Misa?" Riku says, looking a bit shocked, "What's Misa doing here?"

"You've met Misao Amano before?" Mickey asks.

"Do you mean Misa Amane?" Riku asks.

"No," Mickey replies, "I think this is just a coincidence."

"Yeah," Riku says, "Whatever. So, what did you want to talk about?"

"Washu finished your plasma gun," Mickey states.

"Oh, joy," Riku says, rolling his eyes as he reclines into his bed.

"Romio also gave us the plans to some type of power armor," Mickey starts, "Washu looked it over and said it's legitimate, but she's going to incorporate NT into it."

"You know," Riku starts, "For what sounds like some sort of scientific mega-genius, Washu can't name things worth a damn."

"Yeah," Mickey starts, "But anyway, you'll be back in action by the end of the week."

"What's our first assignment?" Riku asks.

"I'm glad you asked," Mickey starts, pulling out a folder, "We have a project we're working on..."

---- Parallel Universe (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Epilogue:

Romio is sitting at her desk, typing away into a keyboard as she ponders the day's events. Today was a major day and she wanted to capture it all in her often neglected journal.

"Today was a good day," she types, "No more curse, no more Juraihelm, no more Ami. Where to even begin?"

"Ami wasn't lying about being able to transfer curses, thankfully. She likes to make claims she thinks she'll never have to back up, but she came through this time. I also had my doubts that she'd get the symbiont instead of Riku, but if the video footage from the dune buggy is any indication, she got it. I never thought that Juraihelm would be so cruel as to make it a fatal curse, but I don't know if that was just simply the symbiont. Either way, I got my magic back."

"Just in time, too. I was barely able to finish converting the blood before I reached the destination. I'm so glad that Riku supplied the perfect distraction with his infection. It came as a shock that they had synthesized a cure to it so fast, but I guess they might have encountered it before. Nonetheless, with Juraihelm-Earth in a false sense of security, they should succumb to the real infection within a week."

"As for Ami, I'm glad she got captured. At least I think she got captured, but as fuzzy as the dune buggy footage was, it looked like they subdued her. I hope HIRA doesn't kill her, but it's nice to see her get taken down a peg regardless. Since I gave her a full infusion, she should be able to maintain her woefully inefficient body modifications for a few years at least. Anything to keep her away from me."

"I feel sorry to lose Riku, though. It was tempting to give up my plans to be with him, but I had to give him up. I needed him to be 'rescued' to kill off the curse and I was glad that HIRA finally found me after all the clues I had Ami drop around. Maybe once HIRA forgets about Juraihelm, they'll be more receptive to enlisting me. As much as it pains me to give away the Avenger Mark III specifications, I know that they'll use it for the greater good of defeating the Heartless."

"I suppose I should set a new goal for myself. Being a hero on Juraihelm-Earth was a waste of time, but I want to return to my former glory. I might no longer be ten years old, but with my scientific expertise and huge collection of materials, I should be able to be the best Heartless exterminator in the universe. HIRA can't ignore me for too long. Then I'll get back with Riku and everything will be perfect. Yes, my life will be perfect and nothing going to get in my way!"

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Kingdom Hearts is copyright Square. Magical Girl Pretty Sammy and Magical Project S are copyright Pioneer. All rights reserved.