Winds of Connection Chapter 9

“Donald! Goofy! I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you guys!”

“Uhh, yeah!” Donald shouted back awkwardly over the sounds of battle, raising his staff to call lightning down on a crowd of heartless. “It’s good to see you again... You!”

“Ahyuck! Yeah!” Goofy agreed with a laugh, blocking a soldier’s spinning clothesline that had been aimed at a distracted Squall. “It’s like I don’t even recognise ya!”

Ventus’ keyblade twirled, scything through two different shadows before twirling in a thrown arc through another crowd. “I have so many questions! Have you seen Aqua? Or Terra? How’s Mickey?! Did he make it out okay?”

“It’s a touching reunion but let’s focus on fighting for our lives,” Squall tried to admonish, holding his sword horizontally to block a rain of fireballs from flying wizard heartless. “Yuffie!”

“On it!” acknowledged the self-proclaimed ninja, shuriken flying out of her hand to curve around and slice up the wizards. “I think we’re thinning them out!”

A harried Kairi rolled out of the way of a big-bellied creature coming her way. “It doesn’t feel like it!” she shouted. On instinct, her head dipped to let a blast of ice pass over her head, taking out the fat heartless. “Watch it!”

“You watch it!” the duck shouted back without looking, instead moving on to the next enemy.

The redhead grit her teeth. She didn’t know who the duck was except that he was rude, but she had more important things to worry about. There were... A lot of heartless and not just the simple, almost inconsequential ones that had been on the island. Well, they hadn’t been inconsequential when there were hundreds of them but still, they were straightforward to destroy. Just hit them with anything. She barely had to think fighting those. But here, with these wild and varied creatures, she needed to think. She needed to plan. And at the same time she had to keep herself alive. The moment she found a target and realised how to defeat it, someone else was already there doing it. She couldn’t help the feeling of frustration and inadequacy. She was in the middle of all of these experienced fighters and she had no idea what she was doing!

“Heads up!” Yuffie shouted to get everyone’s attention. An appropriate choice of call as far above them a new enemy executed a controlled descent to drop in the middle of the square. It crushed multiple heartless in doing so but no one present would see it as a good thing as the empty set of armour loomed over them. Only made worse when the armour pieces separated to float independently of each other.

“Oh, I really shouldn’t feel this nostalgic about fighting something like this,” Ventus felt the need to comment.

“Yuffie, aim for the head!” Squall ordered.

“The head doesn’t matter!” Ventus corrected him immediately, “They’re all independent pieces! We have to take every piece down! Just hit whatever you can and–” The gauntlets of the armour began to whirl, detaching from the main body to cut a swath through the square, chasing Goofy down. Ventus smirked, used wind magic to not stop the spin but increase the speed and ruin the hands’ coordination until they slammed into each other. “And take advantage of opportunities to do real damage!”

“These things don’t stand a chance against all of us!” Squall shouted, raising his blade and bringing it crashing down on one of the armour boots, only for the other to kick out at him and send him flying.

Kairi watched as the focus of the battle turned to taking on the armour, the small fry left ignored.  But that also meant the weaker heartless had the opportunity to attack the others while they were distracted. But that also meant... Those same heartless were also distracted! And since she hadn’t contributed much they had ignored her! She raised her keyblade and began systematically taking out the smaller heartless, protecting the backs of her teacher and his friends! She was contributing! For an instant, she locked eyes with Ventus as he grinned at her while she was in the middle of a dissipating cloud of darkness. She felt pride swell up inside her. She wasn’t on their level yet but she was getting there!

From somewhere, she heard an odd thumping sound. Heavy and wooden. Strange in a battle with mostly metal weapons. Focusing on it, she tracked it to the great wooden door at one side of the square. “Hey! What’s going on over there! We heard explosions!” she heard a muffled voice shout.

“Jessie?!” Kairi shouted back. “Is that you?!”

“Yeah! What’s going on!”

“A huge heartless is attacking! Or... I guess it’s a bunch of little ones...?” she trailed off.

“What?!” the guard shouted back, not able to hear her quieter voice. “Look, we’ll get something to help! In the meantime you need to get this door open! It only unlocks from that side!”

“How?!”

“There should be a key in, uh... Shoot, where was... I don’t know, it’s around there somewhere! Just find the key and we’ll bring over a party favour!”

Kairi wasn’t exactly a local, had no idea where she would find anything, let alone a key. But... She looked at the lock on the door, down to the weapon in her hand. Ventus had told her the keyblade was a weapon but also the ultimate key, capable of locking or unlocking anything. The battle wasn’t going terribly. Either it worked or it didn’t and she would go look for the actual key. She slotted the teeth into the opening of the lock and twisted. Despite the obvious ill fit, she heard and felt the tumblers click into place, the lock pop open. “I got it!” she shouted, grabbing hold of the door and throwing her weight behind pulling it open.

She had help from the other side as three people pushed the doors open, one of them wheeling forward a massive metal tube.

“Nice work– Oh hey!” Jessie called out from behind the cannon, casually lighting the fuse. “Kairi right? Good job! EVERYBODY GET DOWN! FIRE IN THE HOLE!”

“Wack!”

“Gawrsh!”

Ventus saw from mid-air Mickey’s friends diving for cover. He looked back, saw Kairi with that guard from before, and also found himself staring down the barrel of a cannon. “Oh shi–”

BOOM!

The cannon belched smoke, sending its payload sailing through the air to slam right into the main body of the armour, carrying both to slam against the far wall. The armour crumpled on impact, then dropped and dissolved.

“Master!” Kairi shouted as she ran, her vision obscured by the smoke. As she came out the other side she saw him safe and sound on the ground, held in place by an orb of darkness.

“Phew! That would’ve hurt!” he sighed in relief. “Gravity spell. Not the first time it’s saved my butt.” Even if he was being easygoing about it, Kairi still felt the need to grab him in a hug to make sure with her own hands that he was okay.

The instant she let go, he turned and swept Donald and Goofy into another hug. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you guys!”

“You said that already!” the duck complained.

“Ahyuck! We’re glad to see you too... Whoever you are!” Goofy nodded with a befuddled smile.

“You don’t recognise me?” Ventus asked. “Oh, right. I guess it was a long time ago and I look a little different. I’m Ventus! Call me Ven, remember?”

“Ventus...?” Donald asked, shaking his head.

“Hm... Ven... Oh!” Goofy slapped a fist down onto an open palm before turning to the duck. “He was at Yen Sid’s tower! Remember, when King Mickey was helping with that Xehanort feller?”

“I hate to break up a reunion,” Squall interrupted, stretching sore muscles and dusting himself off, “But the keyblade wielders need to go.”

“The heartless are drawn to them,” a woman in pink who neither Ventus or Kairi had been introduced to nodded along. “As long as you’re here, you’re putting the town in danger.” She smiled. “But, if you find a way to keep the heartless at bay...”

“Right!” Donald nodded firmly, turning back to Ventus. “King Mickey told us to stick with the wielder of the key! To help them complete their mission!”

“Yup! We’ve got a vessel that can travel to different worlds! We can look for the king and do whatever you two need to do to save the worlds from blinkin’ out!”

“Mickey said that?” Ventus asked Goofy, who nodded. “Did he say how we do that?”

“Uhh... Well... No...”

“Then we’ll just have to find him and ask him!” Kairi joined the conversation. “Or figure it out ourselves!”

“Well, that is our job,” Ventus admitted, though he had no idea where to even start.

“Wait!” the girl in pink spoke up suddenly, holding a notebook and marker pen. “Before yo u go, Mister Duck, I was wondering if you would sign this?” she asked bashfully.

The duck’s eyes closed, a smug smile crossing his bill. “Of course!”

Kairi leaned over to Ventus, frowning as Donald Duck... signed an autograph? “What’s that about?”

“I have no idea?”

-(-)-

Kairi marvelled at all the different buttons and wheels and nobs and lights inside the cockpit of the gummi ship. The only thing that could distract her was some new sight in the vastness of the Lanes Between. Even then, only for a moment. It was all so new! Like nothing she had ever seen before! “What does this button do?” she asked as she pushed it, beams of light firing from the front of the ship. “Ahh!”

“Careful!” Donald chided her harshly, “You might hit something!”

The beams continued on and on until none of them could see them anymore. “I mean... They’ll stop eventually, right?” the redhead asked hesitantly.

“Hm,” Goofy rubbed his chin, “I don’t know! Guess we’d have to ask Chip and Dale.”

Ventus took pity on his fretting student. “Don’t worry, Kairi. There’s way more darkness out there than worlds of light. Even if they keep going you probably just shot a heartless in the butt or something.” It only partially mollified her, but he was already moving on. “Never mind that. Terra and Aqua, have you guys seen them? Are they okay? And what happened with Xehanort?!”

Donald continued to sit, unconcerned and with his arms folded. “Who are Terra and Aqua?”

“Terra. Big guy, brown hair, tan, looks unsure all the time. And Aqua had blue hair, she was really pretty with big blue eyes like sapphires.”

The duck shrugged, but, “Oh her!” Goofy pointed, remembering. “Don’t ya remember, Donald? After Ventus went to rescue the king, Aqua brought him back to Master Yen Sid!”

“Oh! Yeah!” Donald nodded, jumping up from his seat and slapping the blond with his gloved hand. “Some rescue!”

“Hey!” Ventus complained, but then deflated. “Yeah. I... Wasn’t even close to a match for what was there. Sorry.”

“Ohh...” The king’s court wizard couldn’t help feeling at least a little guilty at such a genuine apology. “Let me think. After she brought the king back, she said she was going to the Keyblade Graveyard... Then... Ah!” He raised a finger, looked to Goofy. “The king went after her!”

“Right!” Goofy nodded. “Then later she came back to the tower with you!”

Ventus frowned. “With me?”

“Yeah! You were asleep. Master Yen Sid said your heart was taken. But, uh, I don’t know what happened after that. Maybe the king would know!”

Ventus nodded, a feeling of relief and hope filling him. Aqua came back from the fight with Vanitas and Xehanort and she even had his body. That meant she was still out there somewhere! And that he still had hope to give Sora back his body! “Then I guess that’s just another reason we need to find him. What about Yen Sid? Can he help?”

“Ohh,” Dnoald moaned quietly. “Master Yen Sid’s been missing for a while.”

“He comes and goes,” the captain of the guard spoke in mysterious tones, “And where he stops, nobody knows!” he finished, laughing at his own rhyme. “I’m sure he’s doin’ okay but gawrsh I don’t know how we’d ever find him if he doesn’t wanna be found.”

Much as it wasn’t what Ventus wanted to hear, he found himself thinking back. Back to the most strange and unexplained part of what had happened so far. That odd magic that pulled him and Kairi to Traverse Town. It would take an incredibly powerful wizard to pull it off. Probably the only reason there were any survivors of the fallen worlds at all.

Maybe it was wishful thinking, hoping that it was Yen Sid’s doing. But it was a comforting thought, believing that the ancient wizard and retired keyblade master was looking out for them.

-(-)-

“Man, this might be the weirdest place I’ve ever seen,” Ventus mused aloud as the group of four wandered through the cozy yet slightly off room. “And I’ve seen a bunch.”

Falling into a pit with wonky gravity to enter, the bottom decorated with furniture painted on the floor. Then into a room that somewhat resembled a one room home though once again with some real furniture and other pieces merely painted images on walls or floor. A door as the other exit that was about one twentieth of the appropriate size, with a talking doorknob. A potion on the table that let one shrink down to a size suitable to go through, only for the doorknob to go to sleep! And somehow that meant it wouldn’t open! And so they had to become big again (with another potion), shove the bed aside to slot into the wall and find a secret door, which was also too small to enter without shrinking down again. So the room was built specifically for people who could change size, but also not built for anyone because the whole thing made no sense!

“So this kind of thing isn’t common?” Kairi asked.

“Let’s see...” Ventus considered, counting off on his fingers. “There was the island with pirates, the spaceship, the Keyblade Graveyard... And pretty much everything else was castles. Or at least castle-adjacent.”

“Castles?” Kairi asked in suddenly much greater interest. “Like, with queens and princesses?”

He had to suppress his shudder. “I can confirm I have met one princess.” And kind of hoped never to meet her again. “Oh, and a queen! Queen Minnie is really nice by the way.”

“You met the queen?!” Donald demanded. “I mean, of course Queen Minnie is nice! Show some respect!”

“Well I guess if you think about it like that, maybe this is a nice change of pace!” Goofy suggested, choosing to have a positive outlook.

“Yeah,” Ventus nodded along as they passed through some carefully cut hedges to the sound of a trumpet, ignoring some playing card soldiers as they went. “At least this is something–”

“Court is now in session! Her majesty, the Queen of Hearts presiding!”

Ventus’ mouth hung open as he looked upon the new room. Because it was just a room. This time not just furniture was painted on the walls. An entire backdrop of rolling hills and a castle in the distance were exactly as two-dimensional as the playing card soldiers standing guard. And dominating the space behind a judge’s bench sat a large woman wearing a very tall crown. “You know what? I should’ve figured.”

The trial seemed to be for a girl accused of stealing the queen’s heart. Something for which the girl professed her innocence, and of course the visitors to the world readily believed knowing the likely true culprits. But on saying as much, they were charged with the task of finding evidence of said ‘true culprit’. Which they couldn’t name because Donald kept smacking people whenever they tried to say ‘heartless’.

“So now we have to run around looking for evidence of heartless-? Ow!” Kairi whined, rubbing her bruising backside from the swat Donald had given her with his staff. “Knock it off you rotten duck!”

“No!” said duck stubbornly refused, turning his bill up. “We have to protect the world order! That means no blabbing about the heartless and other worlds!”

“Donald,” Ventus sighed, “How many people from different worlds did you see in Traverse Town?”

“Well there was Aerith, and you two...”

“And me!” Goofy volunteered.

“The answer is ‘all of them’,” Ventus answered for him. “Everyone in Traverse Town is from some other world that was destroyed by the heartless.”

“Including me,” Kairi added sombrely.

“The world order is shot already,” Ventus continued with a nod of gratitude sent Kairi’s way, “There’s no need to talk about other worlds or anything, but not warning people about the heartless is just leaving them unprepared and in danger. The ruler of this world has already been attacked by them and you wanna leave them ignorant?”

“We do kinda have to prove it was them now if we wanna save Alice,” Goofy admitted with a sheepish look.

“Ah phooey!” the wizard groused. Which was apparently as close as they were going to get to him admitting they had a point.

“Well, let’s go look for clues, gang!” Kairi cheered.

“I think I’ll stay here,” Ventus told her with a shake of his head, to her visible disappointment. “Like I said, the queen’s already been attacked. No sense leaving the, uh,” he sent an awkward look at one of the playing cards, “people here unprotected.”

“Are you sure?” the redhead asked with trepidation.

“I’m sure. Don’t worry, I’ll be right here when you get back. Hey Donald, Goofy, could I talk to you two for a second?” The two stepped over for a quiet conversation. “I need to ask you two for a favour. I want you to keep Kairi safe for me. I want her to get some confidence to stand on her own two feet but she’s still pretty new to all this. So if you could look out for her and watch her back?”

“Of course, Ven!” Goofy readily agreed with a smart salute. “You can count on me! I’ll protect her like she was Queen Minnie herself!”

“The king said we have to stick to whoever has the key! So we’d protect her even if you didn’t ask us to!” Donald added.

“Well, even so, thanks. It means a lot to me.” The blond moved back over to where Kairi waited at a gap in the hedges. He pulled her into a quick hug and smiled reassuringly. “You’ll do great.”

“Aheh, I hope so!” she laughed awkwardly.

“Have a little more confidence,” he told her, squeezing her shoulder, “You’re doing fine. Better than I did when I started out.” Granted there were some extenuating circumstances there but she didn’t need to know that.

“Okay...” She let out a forceful gust of air from her mouth. “Confident. We’ll be back soon.” She smiled as she led the way into whatever lay beyond that hole in the hedge.

And so Ventus was left behind in the... ‘castle’, waiting for his student to return. Taking on guard duty he wasn’t entirely sure was actually necessary, but the point was to get Kairi out from under his supervision for a while to prove she had what it took. He knew she did but she still had doubts.

Meanwhile, what was he to do?

Talking to the queen was immediately proven pointless. She was as nonsensical as the rest of the world. Playing cards turned out to be terrible conversationalists, who would have thought. And so he was left with the poor blonde girl in a birdcage. She at least seemed more or less like a sane person. Possibly the only sane person in this topsy-turvy world. They didn’t have much to talk about beyond commiserating over how baffling this world was, but Ventus was at least happy to keep her company as she awaited her final verdict.

“We’re back!” Kairi announced, scuffed and sweaty but smiling. “And we have evidence!” Goofy appeared behind her carrying a stack of boxes, the top one tumbling off to bounce off Donald’s head. The duck glared at his compatriot as he caught the box.

The rabbit put the herald trumpet to his lips.

“Not for them, you fool!” the queen barked at him. “Let’s see this ‘evidence’!”

“Here it is, your majesty!”

Ventus moved away from Alice to look at what they gathered. “Why is it in pink boxes? Is it the pink boxes?”

“It’s in boxes because this world is weird!” Kairi ‘explained’, still smiling proudly.

“We met an invisible cat!” Goofy announced.

“It was annoying,” Donald groused with his arms folded.

“Very well, and here is my evidence!” Another box appeared with the other four. “Now choose one to present!”

Kairi’s proud smile turned fragile. “What?”

“You may present one piece of evidence! Choose!”

“But...!” Kairi whined, frustrated at going through all that work only for the queen to pull this. “I hate this world. Fine, that one!” The box opened of its own volition and a heartless soldier popped out. “What the...?”

“Didn’t that one just have claw marks in it?” Goofy asked Donald behind his hand.

“W-Well there you go!” Kairi forcibly regained her bearings. “There’s your real culprit! Alice is innocent!”

“Silence! I am the law here!” the queen roared. “Anyone who defies the queen is guilty! Seize them!”

“I HATE THIS WORLD!” Donald squawked as the courtroom and hedges collapsed, a tower appearing out of nowhere and playing card guards flooded into the castle area.

The fight was swift and brutal. The enemy were playing cards for pity’s sake. It was being kind to call it a fight at all. Unfortunately by the end of it, Alice had somehow disappeared while everyone had been distracted by the stupidity and nonsense being forced upon them.

The group had taken to simply ignoring the queen entirely as she ranted, demanding Alice’s capture in the background. “Well now what do we do?” Donald moaned sadly.

“We have to find Alice!” Kairi answered instantly. “They can’t have gotten far with her!”

“But if the heartless got her...” Goofy spoke, fingers to his lips in worry that they had failed so severely.

“Did the heartless get her?” Ventus asked, his brow furrowed. “They would’ve had to get in and get out in seconds, not to mention ignoring Kairi and I even though we had our keyblades out. I’m not sure this was the heartless.” He looked to Kairi. “We at least need to make the effort to look.” There was some amount of talking himself into it for Kairi’s sake, but the more he talked the more reasonable it sounded to his own ears.

“Ugh, even if it means staying in this crummy world,” Donald complained in agreement.

-(-)-

The group split up again. Ventus’ argument for it was simply that he could get to places they would struggle to reach. Well, maybe Donald wouldn’t. Either way it was another opportunity for Kairi to get her feet wet in a world where the heartless weren’t too dangerous.

No. The real threat of this world...

“... I hate this place,” Ventus whispered under his breath as he appeared through a painting to stand on the wall of that strange one-room home. Was it fair to call it a giant room? It might have been. The world seemed to fit the scale of being shrunken, save for it and the pit entranceway. But then, if that was the way people from other worlds came in then maybe it was fairer to say the rest of this world was tiny and the bizarre room was the proper size– “I HATE THIS PLACE!”

“Ven!” he heard a familiar voice call out to him from the wall (to his perspective. But then again, if this was the same room (which considering Kairi, Donald and Goofy had come in walking on one surface and he another was likely) then it stood to reason that the only true perspective of the room would be that of the floor and he was the one in the wrong). The redhead giggled at his fuming countenance. “Having fun?”

“Not really,” he sighed. “Did you three have any luck?”

“That weird cat we told ya about before told us to light the lamps on the ceiling,” Goofy explained, “But, uh, don’t really know what that’s about quite yet.”

“He helped us find the evidence of the heartless though,” Donald added. “So we think he’s trying to help!”

“Help is a word,” a new voice joined the conversation coming from grinning teeth and eyes and nothing else. “A gentle guiding push helps you get you where you’re going whether the going is good or grisly.” The eyes disappeared leaving only the maniacal smile. “The shadows come.”

“What?!” Kairi demanded, but the smile had vanished from sight.

“Did he trick us?!” Donald demanded.

Before they could say any more, the shadow the cat spoke of descended from above. A spindly limbed heartless that took the vague appearance of a circus performer, complete with batons for juggling.

“Wait!” Kairi exclaimed, “I know what to–!” she tried to say looking up at the potions on the table, only to see the heartless immediately drum a beat on the table and turn the whole thing into a flat image on the floor. “Oh.”

“Don’t worry, you’ve got this! I’ve got your back!” Ventus reassured her. With a swing of his keyblade he cloaked Kairi and Donald in shields of wind, trusting Goofy to be able to defend himself.

“Thanks!”

From where he was, Ventus could do very little but run support for the others, occasionally chipping in to distract the creature when it came close. As such, he got a front row seat to Kairi in action, standing strong against an intimidating enemy, gradually figuring out its weaknesses. That the heartless was quick, but prone to big sweeping motions and attacks that left it vulnerable for a moment each time. That its incredibly slim legs were more hindrance to it than help, easy for a hammer like Goofy to knock into and force the thing’s body to move as they wanted it to.

Even as it took its performance up another notch by lighting its batons, Kairi barely batted an eye, casting... Water? Ventus never taught her that. Donald must have given her some pointers on magic. And here he was thinking they didn’t get along but it seemed they got on well enough for the duck to give her magic lessons.

The heartless was coming toward him again. He had actually come up with a plan to perhaps take it down quickly. He was standing on the chimney breast. All it would take was a Gravity spell inside the fireplace, snag one of the thing’s feet or worse, and it would be a sitting duck.

... He let it pass, instead casting another Aero shield on his student, just in case.

And sure enough, within less than a minute the combined efforts of the three brought the thing down and clobbered it to death. “We did it!” Kairi cheered as the creature of darkness began to dissolve.

“Great job!” he praised her, his chest bursting with pride for her accomplishment.

She giggled, smiled, blushed. He knew he had made the right choice. She was going to be great one day.

“Agh, what’s all this racket?” a familiar sleepy voice yawned, “Can’t a doorknob get any peace and quiet around here?” It yawned again.

“Huh?” Kairi’s attention was stolen by the keyhole in the mouth of the doorknob. “What the- Ah!” the tip of her keyblade lit up, “Master, what’s going on?!” she asked frantically as the key seemed to move with a will of its own, pointing her arm at the keyhole and firing a beam of light inside.

“I don’t–” He was interrupted by a heavy thunk, like the largest lock in existence clicking into place. “–know.”

“Sounded like something just closed,” Goofy mused aloud.

“Stay there, I’ll be right with you!” Ventus promised as he climbed, or walked, back up the wall and dove into the painting, taking the strange route back to the floor of the room.

Once he arrived he looked into the keyhole. He... Had no idea what just happened. But he did know one thing. “The heartless are gone. All of them.” He hadn’t come across a single one on his way back.

“The cat came back,” Donald told him, expression downcast, “He said Alice is gone.”

There weren’t words that could make them feel better. It wasn’t a total loss. They may have discovered something vital, but it sure felt like a loss. “Come on, let’s get back to the ship.”