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Post by Deleted on Mar 17, 2018 5:33:44 GMT -5
“Should be gettin’ stuff ready for the tournament,” Roxas grumbled good-naturedly, knowing set up for the Struggle tournament would end up a frantic last minute blitz, just like every year. His sandaled feet sank into the dunes, slowing his progress up the hill. A thin crust of sand soon made its grainy presence known between his toes. Stringy dry beach grass crunched under the three friends’ feet as they plied the sandy slope. With a momentary glance back up the pale limestone bluffs they’d descended, Roxas could just barely make out the great bell arches extending out from either side of the Twilight Town clocktower like the antlers of some titanic elk. “Mhm,” Hayer murmured, not bothering to feign interest in an endeavor he was technically partnered in. “Anyway, SO yesterday Seifer was…”Roxas half-listened with a small smile to the impassioned recounting of the myriad sins of Twilight Town’s self-proclaimed protector. They’d find a way to settle things with Seifer’s posse later, but for now Roxas let their own gang’s fearless vent his spleen, nodding gravely in the increasingly blistering narrative where appropriate. Hayner’s tenor rose and fell above the soft sound of the distant surf. The wind brought the smell of salt and tangy seaweed. It’s warm ethereal fingers ran themselves through the both boys’ blonde hair, tossing up stray strands and lightly kissing the skin beneath the thin fluttering fabric of their t-shirts. “We should get one by the waves.” Roxas turned to see Pence rummaging eagerly in his backpack. “Oh oh!” A furious dive into the pack’s depths later, Pence held up a small green sphere. “With our Struggle crystals!”“Why…” Roxas’ protestation as to why they needed to memorialize a random Saturday outing was cut short by Olette’s gentle squeeze on his arm. “C’mon,” emerald eyes brightened to reflectivity in the ever-setting sun bid her friend to play along. “Let him use his new camera.” Roxas’ shrug and nod elicited an approving smile and second squeeze from the their gang’s peacekeeper before she retrieved a translucent yellow sphere of her own. After he’d brought out the azure gem hanging on a leather cord from his apartment’s keyring, Roxas frowned, suddenly overcome by a chill despite the balmy air. A thought came, evoked by looking into the evening-illumined gem like it held a prehistoric insect caught in amber. Wait… There was the memory of a train ride, bitter disappointment, a silver-haired thief.
He’d lost his crystal… “K, we’re racing now,” Hayner decided with his usual imperious abruptness, clearly more then a little peeved that his account of Seifer’s grevious assholery was being ignored. “Go!”
The mystery was forgotten in the slipping and sliding sandy sprint that followed. Losing a sandal somewhere, Roxas resigned himself to resounding defeat as he went back to retrieve the errant shoe from where it’d gotten stuck in the slope. Victory being irretrievable at this point, he took the incline at a leisurely pace. Reaching the top, the boy shielded his eyes to watch the last hundred meters of the sprint towards the surf, but froze. The was no sea! There wasn’t anything! Roxas stared into blank white oblivion cutting off abruptly from the dune’s base, as if the Creator’d gone on lunch-break and left matter and bright formless void to reconcile themselves. “Olette! Pence!” Thoughts raced, reeling before senses-splitting impossibility made horrifically tangible. “Hayner! Wha….”
—————ERROR! DOMAIN NOT FOUND—————
Roxas blearily opened his eyes, trying to focus in the confusing wash of colors coming in below him. His body ached everywhere, a numbing swelling pressure that makes the very bones feel like they’d been bruised. Had he fallen down the dune and hit a rock or something? Gah it felt like… As his vision focused, speculation crumbled away in bewilderment pierced by an haunting sense of recurrence. He was stranding on a perfectly circular platform, a lonely mesa surrounded by darkness so absolute it was almost a physical thing. The sole source of illumination came from beneath Roxas’ bare still sandy feet. Stained glass, vaster and more radiantly exquisite then any terrestrial cathedral extended around him. Along the curve of its outer edge were the patterns of twenty tri-pronged crowns encapsulated within prismatic spheres. These crowns alternated unevenly in shading around the circle’s edge, thirteen black and seven white. Within this halo hoop were more detailed murals, dizzyingly intricate in ways no earthly glassblower could even hope to replicate. Some were incomprehensible, if beautiful, a mouse in black coat, a duck in a sailor hat, a dog (what that a dog?) with buckteeth, so on. They were interlaid between scenes of fantastical castles, tropical islands, and vistas stranger still. One part of the mural he definitely recognized though, a clocktower casting a long evening shadow over a sleepy costal city, Twilight Town. This coincidence hardly merited a glance compared to the more humanoid portraits Roxas spied as he walked around his tiny benighted tower-top. There was young man with a platinum hair and a decidedly stern expression that made an chilly anxiety rise bile into Roxas’ throat, though why he couldn’t really say. Next to this picture was one of a girl, younger but not by much. Her heart-shaped face was bordered by brunette hair and peirced by sapphire eyes a brighter shade then his own. “Kairi,” the name came automatic and without any context. So immersed was he in surreality by now, Roxas didn’t bother trying to justify the knowledge to himself. This numb acceptance would prove fortunate when he found a not one, but two portraits of himself at opposite ends of the circle. One was Roxas sleeping, one hand holding a giant key and the other a spikey green star thing, or something. It was admittedly unnerving. However it was when the second had a familiar (the uncharitable might say ‘scowling’) expression on it's face and was holding a depiction of the same crystal Roxas still had clutched in his right hand, that ‘coincidence’ veered firmly in to ‘creepy’ territory and showed no signs of stopping soon. …ok, had he like snitched Dad’s beer from the garage and just three-second chugged it down before passing out or what? The pivotal figure around which it all was arrayed took a little stepping back to get the full view of, Roxas making damn sure he keep a good five feet between himself and a plummet into dark infinity. The central figure was a boy his own age, with a similarly wiry build and blue eyes, sporting a broad face topped with a haphazard mop of sandy brown hair. He bore another enormous key, a silver pendant similar to the crown shapes around the stained glasses’ edges, and a visage as familiar to Roxas’ dim recollection as his own features in the mirror. He’d never met this guy, definitely not, but nevertheless knew him as well as he knew himself. In that moment that squeezed guts into knots with a bittersweet rush of emotion he couldn’t begin to explain, Roxas suddenly wondered if he knew himself at all. In the right side of the familiar figure's chest was a deep midnight-onyx stain right where the heart would’ve been. It was ugly, vividly raw in a way that seemed out of place with the rest of the glasswork. It was a wound not just in the picture, but in the medium of light itself. Three black fractures weaved jaggedly about from the horrid gash in the boy’s heart, completely trisecting the entire stained glass panorama. Twenty crowns, seven black, three white, and a heart broken into three. What was this? Who was this guy even? “Sora,” again a name came, feeling right in a marrow-deep way. A rush of inexplicable homecoming mixed with raw choking dread in that illumined colorful glaze embraced by nothingness. A sound jolted Roxas from his reverie.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2018 14:06:20 GMT -5
ONE SKY, ONE DESTINY It wasn't by falling from above but instead an instant fading-insertion of his body that marked his arrival.
"I found you." Sora replied neutrally, devoid of his bursting enthusiasm and driving eagerness. He wasn't awake yet. His eyes were barely open and he gazed forward without strong focus on the figure who called for him. Raising one arm, he was reaching out to grab someone.
"Wait, don't go..."
His heart was reliving it again, that dream within the sleeping realm. But it ended when he couldn't catch anything in his hands. Sora daze ended in him shaking off confusion and replacing it with curiosity. He couldn't remember what he was doing before, just what was happening in this moment.
"Hey, it's you!" He was fully conscious this time. Recognizing Roxas without the black coat, Sora got closer so they wouldn't have to yell.
"Roxas. Do you remember what I said to you? Do you remember that dream?" He was referring to their moment together in the dreaming realm. Sora was at The World That Never Was for a brief time before his capture. The pair had the opportunity to talk but he wasn't even sure if was real or not. He got the chance to say that Roxas deserved to be his own person. He'd say it again if he had to because it was true.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2018 23:09:12 GMT -5
There came a slow numb nod to the guy that somehow knew his name, affirming the Roxas did indeed remember, though how that could be was beyond him. His brain suddenly felt like it was on freakin fire, a raw revelatory heat spreading down his throat and spine. Roxas just stared blinking at Sora as recollection and cognizance tumbled in like horror unmasked behind a slashed shroud. The deluge was too much, it was all coming too fast, too quick to process, but yet he couldn’t look away. Then it came to the misconceived boy then, the memory of a World The Never Was, of being chased by Sora across a chasmal nonexistence of looming monolithic towers and dismal skies. There’d been an insistent hand on his shoulder. Roxas had denied his own individuality, why? I wanted to tell you that…Roxas frowned, sandy blonde eyebrows furrowing, some part of his muscle memory remembering before his brain came to it. That, you deserve as much as I do …Wait wait…what? ..to be your own person. Blue eyes widened with a sharp intake of breath. The words didn't make any sense, none of this did! Yet, the terrible inevitable answer slipped from Roxas’ lips anyway, dream-like in its self-betraying serenity. “Sora, see?” Roxas’ spreading smile was gentle desolation, like a man watching inescapable nuclear fire engulf the horizon in a final blazing sunrise. It was the same expression he’d worn when looking up at Sora for the first time, as the hibernation capsule unfolded to reveal the sleeping savior for whom he was to be sacrificed. Roxas slowly reached as if to take Sora's hands. “that’s why it’s got to be..” The tightness in Roxas’ throat choked off the rest, unable to complete his last confession to Sora in the darkest depths of dreams, proving unwilling to again relinquish his strength, essence, and memories into Sora’s totality. The immensity of what’d he’d just almost done jolted Roxas back to wakefulness, goosebumps prickling up on his skin. Roxas looked down in horror at those hands that’d been reaching to give Sora the totality of himself as if staring at the implements of near suicide. The blonde’s arms fell back to his sides, clenching into fists until the knuckles popped. That there was somehow a lingering longing, an agonizing regret at not embracing the warm self-annihilation into Sora, only made the fury come so much faster. “Who are you!” The demanding question was unnecessary of course, the answers flooding in as if written by an invisible hand onto the back of Roxas’s skull. This was Sora, a boy who’d just wanted to sail but’d received the fate of words instead. His father, their father, would smile down into Sora’s drooping eyes while rowing, a long day of playing with Riku on the island and gentle rocking motion of the boat soothing him to sleep. Sora’d caught a falling star one night, and honored it’s dying plea. He loved people more then they deserved, and a certain russet haired girl far more then he knew. He’d walked hidden roads beyond time and sleep, watched whole worlds burn and then kindled them to life again, humbled gods without himself succumbing to pride, and in the end, slew himself so that love and light might live. But yet in that moment, above all these myriad triumphs, Roxas knew that Sora was also… “S-stop it,” snarled the Nobody, desperately trying to drown out the looming truth in rage. Adrenaline coursed through him like a thought-blotting drug, making breaths come fast and muscles go taut. Yet, nagging notions of being the bastard offspring of Sora’s martyrdom were not so easily escaped, even if it seemed to defy all sense. “Stop screwing with my head!” The boy lunged at the rising sun that cast him as its shadow, grabbing at Sora’s shoulders as if throttling him would bring back the Eden of ignorance. As if Roxas’ wrath sowed the fertilizer for their flourishing, the dark black cracks in the mural beneath their feat broadened and spread like ebon ivy smothering stone. With the blonde’s every seething word, fractures spiderwebbed outward from the stygian gash that would have been the painted Sora’s heart. There came a subtle crackling sound, like thin ice protesting under the boys’ metaphysical weight. But Roxas was well beyond such perception, blazing lapis eyes boring into Sora above gritted teeth. “The hell's happening? Tell me!”{Actions}Roxas attempts to grab Sora roughly
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2018 10:49:24 GMT -5
ONE SKY, ONE DESTINY "Roxas..." Sora let his other shake him by the shoulders. They weren't going to fight. He wasn't trying to hurt Roxas. Sora was confused by this too. It was the third time they met but now the blond wasn't remembering Sora at all like Roxas forgot the bond they shared.
They weren't the same person but they were connected. Roxas was the vessel for Sora's heart before the boy's brief stint as a Heartless. Sure that made Roxas a nobody, a title that really didn't make much sense, but it didn't make him any less of his own person. Each had something original about them, their own hearts.
"Roxas, stop!" Fear and anxiousness gripped him. The boy felt his insides be crushed under their pressure. He could hardly breathe anymore. Then the pressure turned into a searing fire. He lost focus on Roxas and his eyes met their surroundings. Sora could see the fractures in the floor. It spread out far enough so that the mural was hardly recognizable. He knew that any second it could shatter into a million pieces and they would plunge into the darkness.
"My heart is... aching." He coughed in reaction. The teen tried to understand why he felt this way and why this place was breaking apart. He couldn't guess but he could feel what was that Roxas was hurting, deeply.
Then Sora felt something unpleasant within himself as well. It manifested here too but it was hidden from them. Black vapor seeped through the cracks of its cage, the glass mural. The looming darkness of Sora's Heart was finding its way out, ready to take command. Sora was weakened by Xehanort so it was left alone to fester. For a whole year it waited and grew strong enough to rival the light.
Now it needed only to wait for Roxas. If the nobody pressed hard enough then Sora's heart wouldn't be able to hold it all back. This was it opportunity.
"Don't fight your memories, they're what make you, you." Sora braced himself to share Roxas's pain. The load of negative emotions was a huge burden that Sora would bear long enough would help his other. It was a heavy weight however. Squeezed, the darkness went from seeping to spraying and the web of cracks widened. Sora's own heart couldn't wait forever but it could for just a bit longer.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2018 23:53:00 GMT -5
“No!” growled Roxas as geysers of ebon void erupted through the glass in chill jets of tangible Id. Anger boiled over into a moment of black bitter hate within Roxas, the bitter alchemy of unmoored selfhood taking refuge in jealousy. “They’re what make me you!”
Roxas’ fist drove toward Sora’s pained face, meeting the offer of grace with blind fury, and the brothers' very souls gave way beneath them.
All became Darkness, within and without.
————————
Roxas sat slumped in the void, time made meaningless without sensation. The adrenaline rush long since abated, the quick-tempered boy was left as ever with only his regrets to keep him company. Once again he’d wrecked everything, but this time… Sora’d just wanted him to be human…and he’d acted like an freakin animal…like Nobody.
Despair washed up, choking and cold, and not even self-pity could be a refuge. “Please..I…”Roxas couldn’t even finish the plea before his throat choked up. It was his fault, again.
Yet, into that abysmal umbra there can a faint weight on his knees and a pressure in his palm, reassuring as the touch of an old friend. A gleam split the pitch-blackness, momentarily blinding Roxas as his eyes adjusted. The boy looked down to see a delicate silver key glowing in his lap like fallen starlight wrought in mithral filigree. Two razor edged blades met in an ornamental point evocative of two gilded hearts giving birth to a star cut from amethyst and sapphires. The hilt sheltering Roxas’ hand was formed in the shape of wings. From the handle hung a keychain, terminating in a golden charm whose star-pattern was impossible to mistake.
Roxas didn’t even have time for shock before his heart informed that this blade’s name was Oathkeeper. It was Sora’s promise to a vessel of Light given physical form, passed on to Roxas when Xion had gone cold and still in his hands. With a snarl, the young man jumped to his feet and hurled the reminder of Sora’s chivalrous affection and his own loss into the seeming infinite blackness. Expecting the now distant shining blur to just sink into obscurity, Roxas scowled and turned away, fully prepared to continue stewing in the gloom. Ten seconds later he would be reduced fetal position, holding his throbbing head between his knees as the boomeranged Oathkeeper seemed to glow with smug satisfaction at his feet. As a slight ebb in the red rimmed tunnel-vision pain eventually made thought possible, Roxas rose to a slightly more dignified posture. Eyes still watering, he reached again for the silver candle in darkness.
This time was not just memories of Kairi and Xion’s ebbing life that flooded him, but of a girl with the same complexation and peculiar existence of his own. Yet, with the recollection came something sterner, Oathkeeper reminding its wielder of his promises in a blur of voices and light.
Roxas we’ll meet again…
As long as Sora and Kairi are together we'll...
Roxas’ eyes widened as the magnitude of his error sunk in.
“Naminé…”
As if it’s bearer’s renewed knowledge of his obligations was its kindling, Oathkeeper flared to life in a rush of pallid radiance, becoming not a candle, but a defiantly blazing torch. His surroundings sharpened to clarity, and Roxas realized he was on another tower…unknowingly just a foot from a calamitous plummet over the edge. Yeesh! Thanks Naminé…really saved my but there.
Cautiously circumnavigating the platform by the pale pure light of Oathkeeper, Roxas found a ramp of sorts that descended deeper into the darkness, it’s ultimate terminus imperceptible even with the blade’s illumination. Figuring there to be no other option, the Nobody delved into the depths of the heart he shared with another, increasingly unnerved by what should’ve been familiar territory. His memories and bone-deep knowing of Sora were all radiant indomitability and things coming easy due to being born Chosen, everything Roxas wasn’t. But as he descended spiraling ramp upon ramp of warped ichor-stained glass, carefully crept around gaping fractures that whistled like the wind through a rotting sepulchers, and passed over multitudes of murals depicting Sora being subjected to various torments Roxas would’ve much preferred to remain ignorant of, Roxas had to admit to being shocked Sora carried all this around inside and could still bear to smile.
As he starred down into that stygian abyss of his Other’s heart, it occurred to Roxas that Sora might be a way more complicated did then he’d thought.
“yeah…” Roxas sighed, running a hand through his now sweat-tangled mess of blonde hair. “kinna screwed this up...” A soft warmth from Oathkeeper drew the boy’s eyes to the familiar star-shaped charm hanging from its keychain. “Sorry Kairi.”
How long this descent through the tainted cathedral windows of Sora’s soul continued, Roxas couldn’t really say. It was just Roxas, Oathkeeper’s steady glow, and a crushing cavernous silence seemed to press like a smothering dark cloth when the boy let his thoughts wander. Time’d long since escaped Roxas when an unusual feature in the seemingly never-ending two dimensional depictions of Sora’s suffering brought him up short. Leg muscles a raw ache from the hike down an obstacle course of slippy broken glass, Roxas squinted at a chair so large it was almost a throne. Situated at the center of one of these now familiar circular towers in the darkness, it was surrounded by symbols rather then glaze painting. They reminded Roxas vaguely of the rune the frequently used to depict Nobodies, but subtly different. The marble chair was empty, its overhanging armrests and looming back casting odd shadows.
The sight filled Roxas with a strange dread, like he’d expected to find someone familiar resting there, someone who could’ve helped.
But Roxas was alone in his small circle of Key-light, or so he’d assumed before hearing a strange scrapping against the surrounding glass. The boy whirled at a faint sound behind him, bringing his blade’s brilliance to bear on the source. What the radiance revealed made Roxas stagger a step back, breath catching in his throat.
“S-Sora…!?”
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Post by Deleted on Mar 22, 2018 11:49:14 GMT -5
ONE SKY, ONE DESTINY Roxas...
Smooth ebony and a charcoal aura hid in the veil of darkness like a predator in the night. It tilted back in forth in a sway, interrupted by lurching and jerking every few seconds. It didn't look used to this body at all, more like a puppet with an untrained master. The evil thing had a jagged silhouette that was difficulty to see but by focusing its resemblance was made clear. Sora was underneath its skin, trapped in a coating of darkness.
Roxas...
Reflecting on ambient light, two paired spheres pierced the black curtain fixed on the keyblade. Its amber moons were unblinking, transfixed with the shallow light. With its gaze facing the radiance of the oathkeeper, it took a short step toward Roxas with its body leaning too far forward. Its neck bent to keep its head upright. Onyx fingers grazed the glass surface while it marched closer to Roxas. The evil was ready to pounce. Scrapping on the mural grew into a crescendo with it picking up speed.
In an instant it shortened the distance, racing and galloping on all fours. Once only a couple meters short it leaped into the air with its right arm pulled back. It tried to attack with his claw-like hand coming around for the boy's face. One attempt was not enough successful or not, its momentum revealed another swing with its other arm. Then ending it landed and reached out. It wanted to grab Roxas then force him on the floor.
In its eyes neither ecstasy nor agony could be seen. Yet there was still something hidden, the light that belonged to Sora. It need only be freed.
ROXAS!
Actions -Two attacks & wrestle to the ground.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2018 2:38:14 GMT -5
Roxas looked up into the profane aureoles that’d once been Sora’s infuriatingly identical eyes, now a sickening malarian yellow. The Nobody saw then his subhuman counterpart, the infinite seething night to his own fleeting twilight shadow. They’d both been born in the same desperate sacrifice, conceived by martyrs blood and Hollow Bastion’s abyss recesses serving as their spiritual womb. Roxas had taken on Sora’s flesh and reason, a soulless innocence given human visage like a fey changeling snuck into a mortal’s crib. But there was far more to men then meat and rationality. Roxas had departed his dying Somebody, leaving a vast cavernous hollow behind. In that primeval darkness, what was left of Sora’s heart wept bleeding in the gloom, exsanguinated of the light and hope that’d made a phoenix of Kairi. This was the smoldering bitter charcoal left behind when the Princess arose in glorious defiance of death, the smoking chaff of radiant resurrection.
“Not like this,” Roxas choked as he struggled to pry piceous claws away. Roxas, like his Somebody, was far stronger then his, lets call it ‘unintimidating stature,’ would suggest. But this thing…no, Sora, please let it still be Sora, pushed down like a freaking ox despite looking like it was made of smoke. Roxas’ arms had already started to ache, straining to keep ebon talons from carving out a furrow into his guts. Strength was fading fastest from his right arm that’d lifted to take the blow aimed for his face, before a second impact had knocked Oathkeeper from his grasp. Midnight razors had sliced a deep groove into his upper bicep. The pain was not the usual hot throbbing of angered nerves, but rather a piercing frigidness was progressing into deathly numbness, as if Sora’d scoured him with the emptiness between stars rather then a sagittal edge. He didn’t really havethe time to ponder how serious it was, but from thick rivets of blood trickling down to pool around his shoulder and the creeping loss of sensation, Roxas was gonna go with…bad.
“You didn’t deserve …” What? What didn’t Sora deserve exactly? To be Chosen, the blessings and unconditional love he’d received seemingly without effort? Or maybe all the pain that came with it, being called upon again and again to make sacrifices others didn’t have the guts to make, to suffer a fate as wretched as this, to have a guy like Roxas as his Other?
All of those, his heart answered.
Figures right? Ever since he’d come to awareness of himself, Roxas had longed to be Chosen. He’d craved to be the one sought after and exalted rather then just a malformed afterthought, an interesting but ultimately inconsequential byproduct of Sora’s accumulated karmic force. Roxas liked praise, loved winning, and adored the heady adrenal rush of a good throw down, all things his heroic counterpart thought were just alright. Guess it was wan’t isn’t any secret he sometimes wondered if it wouldn’t be more fitting if things were the other way around, Roxas the Light’s graced champion, Sora the aberration cursed to eternal liminality. The young man contemplated the surprising bittersweetness of suddenly getting his wish granted while gauging with a glance the distance between where he was getting beat to hell and where Oathkeeper lay shinning just out of arm’s reach. The blade seeming to float in a sea of red and white with how its illumination cast a glare across marble stones now slick with Roxas’ spilt blood.
“It’s gotta be you though,” Roxas admitted, now in belated fullness, to the misshapen vaporous mass that hopefully had enough of his twin inside to comprehend. Sure like, it was accompanied by a mean southpaw at an ashen temple to try and knock Sora off-balance a little. But c’mon let’s be honest here, this was hardly atypical for Roxas and the people he cared for. “I still want it…a lot” came the second confession with a hint of a rueful smile beneath the face-full of bruises, honest with envy but not entirely unrepentant. “But …Kairi,” his breath growing ever more ragged, Roxas spoke each name slowly, as if their memories were a sacred invocation, “Riku…Donald…Goofy…Mickey…the worlds.” The Unchosen sighed before tensing, like a sprinter gathering all he had for those last desperate hundred meters.
“They don’t need me,” those words hurt, liking sticking a knife through his own kidney, but the boy got them out anyway.
With a swift curl of the abdominals and thighs Roxas could thank years of skateboarding turn for, he brought his feet up and tried to push off against Sora’s chest. The comparison to a kangaroo wasn’t exactly flattering or elegant, but if it got him free of those swiping claws for a few seconds, so be it. “They need you,” Roxas managed, knocking the wind of his own chest a little as he delivered the propelling kicks. Gritting his teeth in cold agony as his weight fell on his injured arm, Roxas used the momentum to roll a few feet back. With an instinctive kick up to his feet that would’ve amazed the Twilight Towner himself in a less life and death situation, Roxas began to reach down for the fallen keyblade only to find it was already in his one still functional hand.
Oh well, ok then…
Oathkeeper sensed it’s welder’s purpose before he spoke, flaring to brilliant life. Roxas’ Light, all the brighter for Death drawing hungrily close, brought a small dawn to the tower-top. Pale marble refracted key-light at harsh angles, the grooved symbols and cryptic iconography casting stark shadows across the great Throne. For a moment Roxas just faced his Other, his captor, his idol, his regret, his brother, in the empty tomb where fallen starlight once slept. It was a place of hidden unnamed strength they’d taken for granted since boyhood. But now that Wayward Wind that’d protected them from the Darkness within themselves was gone, its abiding purity more keenly felt in sepulchral absence.
“and I guess," Roxas glanced at the empty chair before settling into a guarded stance, no longer questioning how automatically the footwork came. Lifting weary blue eyes and mithril blade to what remained of Sora, Roxas gave his final confession with a grudging frown as he slowly advanced.
“…So do I.”
Actions 1) Struck by both blows, (Heavy damage due to wearing only a t-shirt and jeans) became staggered and prone, dropped Oathkeeper 2) light attack 3) Attempted to roll backward and re-summon Oathkeeper
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2018 23:17:30 GMT -5
ONE SKY, ONE DESTINY The blond's adrenaline driven kick launched the anti a distance longer than their battlefield permitted. Failing to recover in time it plummeted into the vast openness, a suspiciously swift ending for the malignant evil. All was silent until the pillar drummed with rapid, thundering booms. The dark one climbed over the sharp edge by slamming its hands into the stone and glass.
Its flaxen eyes locked with the blue iris of the keyblader. Gazing wordlessly in this solemn moment of silence, it delivered a nonverbal taunt. Their battle was only beginning, no further chances for rest. The throne warden faced a pernicious creature bearing an undying wish for freedom.
Marching in the guardian's direction it began to wobble then it started to hobble then finally it fell flat with its back swelling up. A bulbous hump ballooned to the size of beach ball then it burst through the sable skin of the malignant manifestation. Inky tendrils thick as the anti's neck lashed about while an ebony haze spewed from the opening of its back. Violently vibrating, it literally could not contain itself.
Carrying new weight, it creepily crawled with its face sliding on its side, its vision vexed by the only other soul in the room. Once within a few meters of the boy it flopped its forehead over to touch the ground. Gripping its shoulders and squirming under pressure, pain was the product of its transformation. It extended the wagging tentacles so that the waving limbs each reached the length triple the measure of their owner. They swayed together in sync and pulse with the writhing monstrosity at their base.
The anti spun its head around to see but its perception was blocked by its awkward positioning. In tandem the tendrils flared out, reaching as far as they could to jab and anything and everything. The black anti resembled a ashen chrysanthemum in full bloom. However sickly beautiful it would appear, this wasn't merely for presentation. Each sharp tip lusted for the flesh of the light bringer.
But their eagerness vanished when they reached the center of the pillar. The aura of the throne rebuked darkness, burning a short length of one tendril unlucky enough to meet its invisible border. Reacting in agony, the whole of the atrocity retreated to form a seed surrounding the blight. Shuffling and wrapping tightly, the evil being entered its next stage of metamorphosis by creating its cocoon.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2018 4:54:54 GMT -5
That the Darkness wasn’t defeated was no surprise to Nothing’s thirteenth son. The agonizing writhing pestilence that it returned with on the other hand, straight up gave him the heeby jeebies. What the? In a rare move of willing communion, Roxas delved into his and Sora’s shared memory, skimming that silvery sea of anamnesis with an osprey’s eyes, searching for something, anything, that’d him where the fresh hell this new screwery was coming from. But he came up with nothing. There came the grim certainty that this eerie excrescence transcended his collective experience with Sora. Well…that’s no good Suspicions were painfully confirmed as writhing appendages poured from the vacuous innards of the thing like prehensile intestines. The entire thing exuded a umbral redolence the reminded Roxas’ unpleasantly of plant spores, skin itching at the thought. Maybe it showed he was even dumber then Braig’d thought, but Roxas wasn’t really ready for the tumorous thing to send out that many pincushion points. Those vine-like protrusions proved spiked and interdependently graceful. The weariness of blood-loss made his guard clumsy, and the ensuing fighting retreat before the relentless tide of serpentine scorpion barbs more like an aggressive stumble. Grazed deep above the right hip, the keblader crumpled as his world exploded in pain, shoulder banging and sagging against imperious marble. Fate showed her taste for lyricism when that same empty edifice then spared Roxas from mortal impalement. The slithering spear meant for the boy’s jugular was seared the point amputation merely inches from finding gory purchase. Roxas slumped against the fallen star’s seat of slumber, too busy with deep breathing to really question from whence Providence came. It nagged Roxas. Blooming…cocoons…this was the Heart, everything meant something. Ugh! He wasn’t good at this kinna thing! Fine like, ok, Marluxia’d tried to use Sora as weapon his ‘deadly bloom’ or whatever? Yeah but, Sora’d taken down Roxas’ most painfully glamorous sibling down hard in Castle Oblivion. Roxas gritted his teeth as he inched his way back up to standing by using Oathkeeper as a support. A second of staring at thrashing evil weed brought an uncomfortable connection. There was one who’d succeeded where Marluxia had failed, who made Sora the seed of his own blasphemous propagation. The geezer with golden eyes had done something to Sora. That sickness, the feel of that guy inside of them…the memory of utter soul-deep violation made Roxas grimace in nausea…of being ripped out of Sora like a wolf wrenching out a deer’s viscera, were Roxas’ last memories of being One. Blue eyes narrowed at the silkworm undulating in its samite of shadows, perhaps gaining an inkling of what was gestating in Sora’s spiritual dross. Yeah no At first he was staggering toward the quivering aberration, then he was running, and after that he wasn’t even touching the tower-top. When his free hand had began the somatic invocation of forces Roxas’ scarcely new existed ten minutes ago, the boy couldn’t guess. But his nervous system remembered what the mind had forgotten. Roxas’ will reached out to the scarce photons in the room, bending their paths and wavelengths like shining rivers diverted to nourish starving lands. Leashing particles of radiant radiation to him on gossamer strands of mana, a shift of intentionality sent luminosity into a kinetic frenzy. Roxas became merely a blazing blur, traversing the tower’s surface in a manner measured in lumens rather then feet. He impacted the proximity of the larval horror in an thunderous ignition of incandesce, Oathkeeper’s shining trail upward the blazing slit of a dragon’s opening eye. @dungeon Action: Used Comet Charge (only one strike due to having only one keyblade) {Comet Charge}Comet Charge: Roxas attempts to blitz his enemy by rocketing forward in a blaze of light. After closing the distance at incredible speed Roxas attempt to slash the target with both blades for two Heavy Holy and Physical damage hits and potentially knock the enemy back. However this reckless charge leaves Roxas’ stance open. Roxas takes an additional teir of damage from the enemies next attack if this charge is guarded or evaded. (Cooldown 2 Posts, Self-debuff duration 1 Post)
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2018 12:26:56 GMT -5
ONE SKY, ONE DESTINY The black bulb busted open to the abrupt strike of the light bearer. Two uneven cuts of the cocoon cowered away from each other to reveal an igneous, violet shard. Radiating navy and crimson hues, the sweltering viciousness at the core of the being writhed and burned with greater peaks of angered aura. Exposed in this short aperture of vulnerability, the flaring crux breathed a veil of darkness around its ripped coating. Twining and torquing the Anti underneath, the seed resumed its transfiguration no longer resembling Sora. It sat festering in a nest of black, coiled mesh.
In an instant the pieces liquefied and reconstructed around the kernel as twisting pillars forming figures. Condensing and reshaping the two masses fabricated humanoids. Their mismatched outlines held blank expressions for the bearer of the oathkeeper. Anti Sora was a black mirror reflecting their light as shade. These were his wardens now, protectors of the Anti's core.
In a flash, the true visages of familiars were made clear. The taller one was the dancing flame, Axel. The shorter creature was the faded receptacle, Xion. Both raced for the boy. Anti Xion was going to ensnare the him with both of its licorice arms while Anti Axel summoned a false chakram aimed for the boy's head.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 1:21:47 GMT -5
Blue eyes went wide with the light of forgotten sunsets, of laughter and secrets in the abandoned heights with only the endless sky as their confessor, of those gentle evenings that’d taught him what meant to be human, and how life itself was a form of grace.
…and then promptly paid for it with a serrated slash across the forehead.
He was lucky really, a second slower on the vault backward and that’d been a can-opener to a helping of Roxas brains. But that was poor comfort as searing ache spread from where heated metal had carved a scalded furrow along one eyebrow and up into his hairline. It took a great effort of will to resist the panicked animal urge to check the injury with his fingertips. Nauseatingly pale subcutaneous tissue was ringed in red agonized nerves exposed beneath ragged strips of black-charred flesh. Last thing he needed to do was touch it. Guess he should be thankful it was cauterized so the head-wound didn’t blind him with blood.
The thing wearing Xion’s funerary mask as its face surged forward. The delicate shoulders Roxas had held as her life flaked away distorted, quivering with a boneless liquidity. Though Roxas was used to the extra-dimensional contortions of Shadows and Dusks (or so his alien memories bizarrely informed him) this slithering in the form of a friend proved freshly unnerving. Still reeling from pain and feeling muscles begin to stiffen from the Anti-flower’s previous bloody purchase in his side, Roxas’ hasty guard proved not match for his former friend’s python grip.
Roxas was dragged forward to looked up into those blue eyes, Sora’s yes, but he’d known them as Xion’s first, always would. It was even harder up close, seeing that unfeeling gaze, knowing he’d beat her lifeless and devoured all that she was. A numbness swept over him, half from constricting pressure, the other that enervating dread that comes when a murder meets the avenging revenant meant for him.
I can’t … not again…
“Xion… “ Joints popped audibly, breaths became labored and his vision tinged with darkness. “….please.”
There came a sudden weight into his left hand, a grim length of jet-black iron. The key was a cruel thing, all harsh edges and jagged protrusions. There was something distinctly medieval in its construction, a somber severity that reminded one of high piercing steeples above hushed catacombs. Its hilt was set with an opaque amethyst, from which unfurled chiropteran wings. A familiar crown hung from chain at it’s pommel, blackened as by fire.
Roxas’s Heart told him its name was Oblivion. It was all Sora had lost to Darkness and forgetting given a cutting edge. Oblivion had been forged in the act of having to strike down a friend, having to surrender even love on the relentless altar of the future. Roxas had inherited this blade as well when Xion’s heart stopped. Oathkeeper was the blade of promises, bright cords that weave our lives into one another. Oblivion was the blade of severance, the dissolution that brings freedom in the wake of loss.
“Thank you.”
With a shifting of weight and downward hewing of Oblivion, a deathly embrace became a dance of blades. Twin keys left paths of light and darkness through air and false flesh cords, lingering like strips of silk in the air. In seconds Roxas had painted the night sky with whirling motions of violence, engulfing all in void streaked by slashing stars.
@dungeon 1) Roxas takes a chakrum straight to the noggin and is staggered 2) Roxas is grappled by Anti-Xion 3) Roxas summons performs Eclipse Whirlwind, attempting to deal Medium Light/Dark damage to nearby foes
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Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2018 16:50:42 GMT -5
ONE SKY, ONE DESTINY Noon-white star sparks and midnight-black moon stamps peppered the swinging trails of a whirlwind assault on Roxas's false friend. Oathkeeper struck down dark Xion's left arm while Oblivion lifted the right arm of that rubber ruffian. His eclipsing foe was wedged off. Too riled to gain a new grip, the female monster fell on her back then her uncontrolled tendrils flung apart like the ends of bow after firing an arrow.
Her right arm slapped the other warden squarely in the chest.
Anti Axel bucked backward, rolling and nearing the centered throne. Fear was not in the repertoire of its expressions but it reacted out in desperation like creature cornered by hunters. Vicious effort to get a grip was wasted by its silky gloves. The right knee grazed the side of the chair. In an instant the form's leg dissolved. The bonded visage returned to its rightful form as an abstraction with a red-hue haze lifting from its fading form. Finally, his memory was at rest.
Grown from a sphere into a sapling, evil essence squeezed the pillar with vines tethered and threaded to reach around the full circumference of the station. Its metamorphosis then shifted from anchoring around the pillar to arching up and over it. The stem sprouted at a slight angle from the curved, glass edge. Spiky twigs poked out, gradually expanding and thickening.
Two branches burst from two sides of the trunk and then vines braided the lip of the trunk as protruding shoulders on a barrel chest of black flesh. Mass moved upward. A bud bubbled at the top of the trunk then blossomed as a short column of twisted veins. The head spun clockwise, unraveling slowly while a cavity in its core carved through in the shape of a heart. Two light rays of amber set down on Roxas from the face of the malignant blight.
With its focus on transformation, the dark beast was only guard by the puppet. Unfazed by her part in the vanquishing, Anti Xion was back up on her feet. Her arms retreated to proper proportion in defensive position held away from her legs. Protecting the precious puppeteer was her purpose. With sacrifice came opportunity. The false Xion used is appearance as a barrier, daring the keyblade bearer into striking her.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2018 3:26:56 GMT -5
Roxas stood from the quick roll backward. The movement only further exacerbated the tendril-stab wound above Roxas’ right hip. The growing trickles of blood made his pant’s leg cling uncomfortably to his skin. No smoke rose from where the amber lights had struck the spot he’d been standing seconds ago. Rather, the marble and glass was warped in ways that subtlety unsettled the eye. Roots pulsed like veins across the Station’s surface, harbingers of a spiritual sickness taking to seed. Between Roxas and the diseased verdure was Xion, serene and ready to die all over again.
“I was always so scared of losing you an’ Axel …” Roxas confession came slowly as he stumbled with the words, remembering his first admission of true emotion. Fear had been Roxas’ first conscious feeling, the inevitable dread of loss that follows in the wake of love finding purchase in the heart. It was impossible. Nobodies couldn’t feel. It’d pass, his friends had assured him. It was just a reflex, a neurological quirk left from over from the guy he’d been. Yet, the fear remained. In fact it’d grown apace as Axel and Xion become ever more precious and irreplaceable. Roxas was still unsure how he came to feel that fear. Was that even something you could learn? Yet, somehow, he’d become human, one laughter filled sunset at a time.
Being human was apparently synonymous with screwing up.
Seeing an opening in Xion’s guard, Roxas hit the vine-covered glass, vaulting into a summersault. Tucking blades, knees, and ignoring his wounded body’s agonized protest, the young athlete rolled around the synthetic guardian, leaping up into a headlong sprint towards the malevolent growth. But Xion’s reflection wasn’t disoriented by maneuvers learned through countless sparring sessions in the Castle the Never Was. Roxas found his path to the cancerous tree blocked again within seconds.
“It was my fault,” he admitted to those empty eyes. “Axel tried to warn me.”
Xion’s shadow didn’t react the affirmation of fault, impassively mirroring the warrior’s repeated attempts to side step her.
“But I didn’t wan’ to hear it y’know?” Roxas grimaced at the ragged ache his best friend’s chakrum had seared across face. With the pain came the memory of hateful words, spoken so easily in anger to a guy who’d never once let him down. It’d all just come out. Why was it the stuff that screwed up things forever always happened so damn fast?
Roxas suddenly swung Oblivion in an arc that left trailing umbral wisps in its wake. It’s path ascended with deadly insistence up over Xion’s shoulder. But the puppet didn’t even flinch. Twin unsurprised doll eyes coldly observed Roxas as he stopped Oblivion inches short of that delicate neck. Her silence seemed to chastise the timidity behind the feint as sweat slid down from his hairline to drip in stinging droplets into the head-wound.
“You died cuz I wouldn’ listen to him.” Hindsight was brutal in its bitterness, guilt suffocating in its inescapable weight. He swallowed and looked helplessly up at Xion. “I killed you.” The words came faster as memory mercilessly resurfaced. Flaking crystals were cold as they dispersed Xion’s fading flesh into the twilight. She'd died so cold.
He tried to run hard to the right, holding Oathkeeper up in an horizontal guard between him and Xion while trying to make another break towards the tree. The hope was that a screen of serrated mithral would deter interference. But the simulacrum called his bluff again. She pressing herself up close into his path, forcing Roxas to pull away the blade lest she shred herself.
“Then Axel tried to save me.“ The memory of the blazing laboratory seemed to sting his eyes, fire, choking smoke, fritzing wires, the sting of betrayal, the scent of death. “But I killed him too.”
Anti-Xion registered no shock at the inevitable conclusion, as if Roxas being the reaper of those he’d most feared losing were simply fated. The remnant of Sora flourished in a writhing mockery. Loss was like the void stretching out beyond this overgrown station, never-ending and incurably empty. But into that hollow came another memory, that of a soft caress on his face, gentle words amidst the blood, and that final charge she’d given. ‘Set them Free’ Roxas swallowed.
Oathkeeper swept outward in a deadly pale sweep, but Roxas kept his eyes lifted to the one he could still save. “Im sorry Xion.”
@dungeon 1) Roxas fails to dodge roll past Anti-Xion 2) Roxas fails to catch Anti-Xion in a feint 3) Roxas makes an attack on Anti-Xion
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Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2018 17:14:34 GMT -5
ONE SKY, ONE DESTINY Xion glared as Roxas. Hers was an empty expression devoid of pain. However, she was not hesitating because she was no longer strung up by her master's hands. The limp pulp of her head sunk forward. The cutting flash of light seared through her black flesh. Satisfyingly clean. The anti-creature split at the new seam, her edge blurring into dust. The body destabilized and the form rebelled structure. In one last moment she looked up using the face of the real puppet. Xion smiled at Roxas then returned to nothing. The burden and pain vanished back into depths of Sora's heart once again. She was free of the black mirror.
As for the titanic tree. Its palms were held up and overhead in praise. A monotone note lower than any voice could muster vibrated from the core of the heartless. It sharpened and lightened to resemble a voice, one not too different from Sora's. It was laughing, taunting Roxas.
"Ventus... why do you protect this weak heart?" The Sora voiced said. It permeated the air not from the face of the heartless but through the bond of more memories hidden within Sora. They were a mere glimpse of another time when Sora shared his heart with another.
Ventus the one who resembled Roxas and Vanitas the other who resembled Sora.
From the two palms of the blight energy formed small pillars of red and black fire. Churning smoke rose and then formed a sphere as wide as the glass mural. A red core was wrapped in hues of violet and indigo, beautifully iridescent but clearly deadly. Pressure surged from its center, pressing down on everything below like gravity. This was an attack to destroy the royal seal. It rammed its hands down to push the energy into the pillar. The throne was the target.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2018 7:01:19 GMT -5
Roxas, who normally had a real short fuse for mistaken identity, normally would’ve protested that Ventus wasn’t his name. But he demurred in part because bleeding, burned, cracked on the inside from having to go through the motions of killing his friends over again, there really wasn’t enough fire left for anger. This was also a pretty bleak situation, getting grimmer by the moment. This Thing was waxing in strength and Roxas was ebbing, not the time to get distracted by the little stuff. Yet honestly, those were safe rationalizations away from a more simple feeling, as basic as it was starkly incorrect.
Roxas wasn’t angry because Ventus felt …right, in the manner of a nickname someone called you by a long time ago. It brought back memories of crisp mountain air and laying down smiling and sweaty on the grass after training to watch the stars plummet down. Towers with bright golden steeples had glistened in the dawn that’d followed, anchored by titanic keychains to the surrounding stone spires. It’d always seemed so unshakable and safe, like its guardian, his Master.. He’d taken that security for granted, just assumed that home and a firm hand would always be waiting…until both were gone forever.
How could something so trivial get him thinking of home again at a time like …
Wait…what?
The Wayward Wind’s echo swallowed, blue eyes widening as resonance built between himself and Sora. It was something new, no, something older…older then them both. How was that even possible? Yet, a lifetime flowed in within the span of seconds, answering his question like an ocean pouring down on a man asking for a drink. It was a strange story, an inverted play upon his and Sora’s lives. This time is was Roxas, named differently, but otherwise similar of aspect, who was hero raised in paradisiacal ignorance. Happy on his little slice of the universe, Roxas had nevertheless incessantly wondered what lay beyond. Then one day, a stranger with obscured visage had appeared, implying his best friend and world were not what they seemed. Roxas had set out into the great unknown to prove him wrong.
This time is was Sora, named differently, but otherwise similar of aspect, who was the half-formed being molded into a weapon by a greater power. Told he was less, incomplete, simply an asset to be utilized until his Other came into their own, Sora had let resentment fester into a poisonous wound. Ever wondering why the Other was chosen, loved, and made even his victories seem hollow, Sora had hounded Roxas’ steps until the final inevitability. They had to become One. This time around, it has been Roxas as Ventus who had shattered his own Heart to save the Worlds. The same manner of sacrifice that would bring Roxas into being once again a decade later.
Thus starting the cycle anew.
Between the alien memories and the bone-crushing pressure coming from the churning nexus within the monster, it was hard to process the crippling sense of recurrence. It all flowed in too fast for Roxas to really discern whether what little he remembered was even true. However, with it came answer enough for Vanitas. “Because he’s my Other,” Roxas replied as he placed himself in the path of the violaceous blast streaking towards the throne. Roxas knew instinctually that this place, this throne-room, held what hope remained for both Sora and himself, the remnant of their innocence and abiding strength.
“And I still think,” Roxas admitted as he had to Axel, placing himself between the throne and the onrushing beam, keyblades crossed and bracing for the impact. “Sora’ll find the answer we’re looking for.” It seemed crazy really, even after all that happened, their crushing defeat in the World of Dreams. Yet, in saying the words Roxas knew they were still true.
He made agonizing steps towards the great core, the concussive force pressing back against his guard until the Keyblades became to grow painfully hot in his hands. Waves of energy broke like heat-mirages over his vision and stained glass shattered into twinkling fractals, but Roxas kept himself interposed between the Beast and the seal.
1) Roxas is guarding against the attack on the throne and trying to advance towards the Anti-Sora @dungeon
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