Kingdom Hearts II Vol 2 Read online

  Copyright

  KINGDOM HEARTS II: THE NOVEL, Vol. 2

  TOMOCO KANEMAKI,

  ILLUSTRATIONS: SHIRO AMANO,

  ORIGINAL CONCEPT: TETSUYA NOMURA, KAZUSHIGE NOJIMA

  Translation by Melissa Tanaka

  Cover art by Shiro Amano

  KINGDOM HEARTS © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

  Characters from FINAL FANTASY video

  game series © 1990, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001,

  2002, 2003, 2005 Square Enix Co., Ltd.

  All rights reserved.

  English translation © 2017 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.

  Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First Yen On Edition: December 2017

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kanemaki, Tomoko, 1975– author. | Amano, Shiro, illustrator. | Tanaka, Melissa, translator.

  Title: Kingdom hearts II : the novel / Tomoco Kanemaki ; illustrations, Shiro Amano; translation by Melissa Tanaka.

  Description: First Yen On edition. | New York, NY : Yen On, 2017–

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017016091 | ISBN 9780316471930 (v. 1 : paperback) | ISBN 9780316411790 (v. 2 : paperback)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Fantasy. | Friendship—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic. | JUVENILE FICTION / Media Tie-In.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.K256 Ki 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016091

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-41179-0 (paperback)

  978-0-316-41180-6 (ebook)

  E3-20171123-JV-PC

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  INSERT

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  TEARS OF NOBODY CHAPTER 1 CONFRONTATION

  CHAPTER 2 UNDER THE WORLD

  CHAPTER 3 THE LAND OF DRAGONS

  CHAPTER 4 BEAST’S CASTLE

  CHAPTER 5 DISNEY CASTLE

  CHAPTER 6 TIMELESS RIVER

  CHAPTER 7 PORT ROYAL

  ANTHEM—MEET AGAIN / AXEL’S LAST STAND CHAPTER 1 RADIANT GARDEN

  CHAPTER 2 WAITING FOR YOU

  CHAPTER 3 AXEL’S LAST STAND

  CHAPTER 4 MEET AGAIN

  CHAPTER 5 WAY TO THE DAWN

  CHAPTER 6 ANTHEM FOR XEMNAS

  CHAPTER 7 SOMETHING YOU COULD NEVER IMITATE

  EPILOGUE YOU’RE HOME

  YEN NEWSLETTER

  TEARS OF NOBODY

  CHAPTER 1

  CONFRONTATION

  AS THE TERRIBLE RUMBLING ECHOED THROUGH HOLLOW BASTION, Sora and the others dashed outside.

  They had no idea what was happening, but it was definitely something.

  “I hope everybody’s okay…,” Goofy worried as they ran.

  Sora heard the muttering behind him, but he kept running. Even if people were in trouble, the trio would help. They could fight.

  Kairi, Riku, and the people of Hollow Bastion—they were more important than Kingdom Hearts or Nobodies.

  Because Sora was on this quest to save Kairi, find Riku again, and help everyone.

  “Let’s go!” he shouted as they hurried toward the castle postern.

  Riku gazed at the woman clad in black-and-violet robes.

  This was Hollow Bastion, the empty castle.

  This place had once been called Radiant Garden, before it fell under Maleficent’s rule. Sora and his friends had driven her off and were finally beginning to restore the town to its former glory, but once again, Maleficent and the Heartless—and now the Nobodies—were trying to put a stop to that.

  “So you are alive, Riku,” said Maleficent coldly.

  “And you’re back from the dead, like I thought,” Riku answered quietly from under his hood.

  “But of course. Like the darkness itself, I will not be vanquished. And aren’t you the same? You may change your form, but you cannot change your heart,” she said with a smile.

  That scent particular to human beings could not be hidden so easily. And try as he might to disguise himself, with her magic, Maleficent could easily tell whose heart it was.

  “Do you know about Organization XIII?” Riku asked.

  “I have heard of it. Those fellows in black cloaks like yours?”

  He nodded. “And the Nobodies.”

  “Nobodies?” Maleficent repeated. He stood close enough that she could feel the breath from his words.

  “I’m sure you’ve seen them. Those weird white creatures.”

  Just as Riku spoke, the castle shook with a terrible rumble.

  “They’re here.” He frowned, turned his back on Maleficent, and began to run.

  “Wait, boy!”

  “You’d better fight, too, if you don’t want to lose this castle,” he told her, ignoring her command, and plunged himself into inky darkness.

  “Hmph. What could he have been after…?” Maleficent muttered.

  Then she heard Pete shouting from behind her. “This is bad! Maleficent!”

  She turned deliberately to ask, “Now what?”

  “Those things. The white things…!” Pete gasped out, pointing behind him.

  “Well, speak of the devils…” Maleficent laughed softly, quite unruffled, and advanced toward them.

  Just after Sora and his friends rushed outside because of the noise…a man in a black cloak stole into the empty computer lab.

  The screen displayed a picture of a man with a white beard.

  Axel quietly pushed back his hood, revealing a shock of bright red hair. He squinted, leaning closer to peer at the screen.

  But there was something else that grabbed his attention more than the man in the picture—something about the computer system itself.

  The interface looked familiar. It was a lot like the one the computers in the organization headquarters used.

  That wasn’t the only thing giving Axel déjà vu. He stared at the screen…

  “…What are you doing here?” said a voice behind him.

  Axel spun around to find another man in black standing there.

  Seeing that Axel was ready to fight, the newcomer pushed his hood back and shifted his shoulders.

  “Ansem… Oh, Riku, it’s you.” Axel breathed a sigh of relief, recognizing the face. “Don’t scare me like that, okay? I got people after me, y’know.”

  “Well, if so, you should be a little more cautious.” Riku pulled up his hood again and went to join Axel in front of the computer. “You’re weak anyway,” he added, and a small laugh escaped him.

  “Wh— Hey, I just let my guard down for—”

  “So this is Ansem’s computer?” Riku interrupted Axel’s protest. “Who’s the man in this picture?”

  “Beats me.” Axel shrugged.

  “…I thought someone in the organization would be more help.”

>   “I’m not in the organization!”

  Ignoring Axel, Riku began typing on the keyboard, and the screen displayed some data about the man. It seemed Sora and the others had left the information unlocked.

  “…Ansem? …That’s the real Ansem?” Riku murmured, reading the text above the picture.

  Beside him, Axel stayed quiet. A little while back, when he and Riku had exchanged information, they’d both come to understand that the man who called himself Ansem had only stolen Ansem’s name.

  “Oh!” Axel blurted.

  “What is it?”

  “I remember now! The screen looks like that computer in Twilight Town!” he exclaimed with certainty. The details of the system interface were the same.

  The one in Twilight Town had seemed more advanced, though. As if this one was its predecessor.

  “It has the same layout and the functions. That computer was managing Twilight Town, and this one is managing Hollow Bastion. Both of these systems were developed for town administration. There’s no way anyone else could’ve designed this. It has to mean they both have the same creator.”

  As Axel rushed to explain, Riku only kept staring silently at the computer.

  “…So where did the real Ansem go?” Axel said finally.

  “There is one person whose true identity we don’t know,” Riku muttered.

  At that, Axel looked up from the screen, meeting Riku’s eyes.

  Someone was there.

  After she’d come to Twilight Town, Naminé had never set foot outside of the white room. She hadn’t gone to the lab in the basement or to the town itself. She just prayed and drew pictures.

  Today was different.

  She could sense someone in the basement lab—a presence she didn’t recognize at all.

  Uncertainly, heart pounding, Naminé left the white room. She crossed the long hallway to the room at the far end and, step by step, descended the stairs to the basement.

  In front of the single door, Naminé paused.

  There was no doubt—he had returned.

  She took a deep breath and opened the door.

  A man was there, illuminated by the blue-white glow from a computer screen. “I thought you went with Riku.”

  “DiZ?” said Naminé. “When did you come back?”

  “Exactly what I’d like to ask you, Naminé.” DiZ turned in his chair, looking somehow amused.

  “I…”

  “Ice cream?” DiZ held out a blue ice cream pop. “It’s sea salt.”

  Still nervous, she accepted it.

  “Sora really is something else,” DiZ mused. “It seems he infiltrated the system and restored that modified program to normal.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Naminé.

  DiZ only smiled and took out another ice pop, then bit into it.

  “Hey, DiZ. Are you a bad guy or a good guy?”

  “…Well…I can’t answer that myself.”

  At that ambiguous reply, Naminé lowered her eyes, disappointed.

  “Oh, that’s right. I have something more important than ice cream to share with you.” He stood up and handed her a single photograph.

  “This is…”

  It depicted Hayner, Olette, Pence, and Roxas.

  “Those are all the presents I have for you. Now I’m afraid I must disappear.”

  “Wait—DiZ!”

  “Oh yes.” He shrugged and pointed to a small door under the computer. “There’s lots of sea-salt ice cream in the freezer there. Have as many as you like. Or share it if anyone comes by.”

  “Hey, DiZ, hold on!” The moment she tried to run after him, he vanished.

  She didn’t know what he was planning.

  When he’d taken Sora from that castle, he’d said it was for his protection.

  But DiZ had hurt Roxas—even let him be destroyed—to wake Sora up.

  Roxas had to disappear. I know that. I understand it, but something inside me makes me reject that.

  Did he really have to disappear?

  The heart probably had secrets unknown even to DiZ.

  The Heartless were an embodiment of the darkness in the heart. When a Heartless was born, it created a Nobody, too—an empty physical form.

  Then…a Nobody is……

  Sora had to be the one who held the key. By coming into contact with him, the heart would awaken.

  And that means……

  “…It’s salty…but sweet,” Naminé murmured after taking a bite of the ice cream.

  The Nobodies and the Heartless grappled in the open hall.

  “Hear me, my Heartless!” Maleficent called, looking down upon the battle. “Attack the white husks. Sweep them away!”

  Behind her, Pete hid his face in terror. The Nobodies clearly had the advantage. “Maleficent, we’re never gonna win! I don’t know about you—but I’m outta here!”

  He ran off.

  “You pathetic coward!” Maleficent fumed, but Pete didn’t look back.

  Meanwhile, the Nobodies were cutting swaths through the Heartless, and Maleficent took a step back.

  That moment, a certain trio hurtled into the great hall—Sora and the king’s lackeys.

  But King Mickey, the leader, was no longer with them.

  “Maleficent!”

  At Sora’s shout, she glanced toward them and gave a small contemptuous laugh. “Heartless! Leave the white ones. Turn your attention to Sora and his friends!”

  With that, she vanished from the scene.

  All at once, the Heartless turned from their fight with Nobodies and set their sights on the trio.

  “Uh-oh…,” said Goofy.

  “We can take ’em both!” Sora dashed into the swarm of Heartless and Nobodies.

  Both enemies posed a danger to this world, so to Sora and the others, there was hardly any difference between them. It just meant they had more than one kind of adversary.

  “Fire! Fire!” Donald yelled, waving his wand.

  “Gee, I guess we gotta.” With his shield out, Goofy joined the melee.

  Outside the castle, Leon, Yuffie, and Aerith battled the onslaught of Nobodies.

  They were just beginning to restore the town of Hollow Bastion. They couldn’t let a bunch of Nobodies destroy it now. They had to stop the Nobodies from infiltrating the town any further.

  “They just keep coming…,” Aerith murmured, facing the Nobodies that poured endlessly from the castle.

  “But it’s up to us to protect the town!” Yuffie shouted back, shuriken in hand, but a Nobody knocked her to the ground.

  “Yuffie!” Aerith gave her a healing potion. “Right now would be…”

  In the throng of Nobodies, she looked up at the sky. Right now would be a good time for him to come.

  And just then, a blade flashed among the swarm.

  “Cloud…!” Aerith cried.

  The owner of that blade—an enormous sword that he had to rest on his shoulder—was a blond youth dashing through the Nobodies toward Leon.

  “Tch.” Surrounded, the latter made a noise of frustration.

  Cloud turned to face the Nobodies, back-to-back with Leon.

  “Think you can handle this many?” Leon said with his gunblade ready.

  “Well… Might be tough if one more shows up,” Cloud replied without much concern.

  Leon smirked. “Then that’ll have to be the one I take care of.”

  “What, you’re fighting, too?” With that good-natured jeer, Cloud sprang into the sea of silver and whirled into action. Not a moment later, Leon began carving a path through the Nobodies.

  They would both fight to protect their home.

  Axel and Riku stood at the cliff by the postern, gazing down at the writhing mass of Nobodies.

  “Now what are you gonna do?” Axel wondered.

  Riku never took his eyes off the battle with Leon and his friends as he retorted, “What about you?”

  “I’m not telling.”

  Apparently, Axel had something in mind.
<
br />   “I’m gonna try to help Sora and the gang,” Riku informed him. “They’ve got their work cut out for them, fighting a horde like this.”

  He was about to leap down from the cliff, Soul Eater in hand, when—

  “Riku!” a voice called from behind him, and he froze.

  “…Your Majesty?” Quietly, Riku turned.

  “Good thing I found ya!” King Mickey ran to him.

  Riku instinctively glanced in Axel’s direction and noticed the redhead was averting his gaze uncomfortably.

  “Who are you…?” the king asked warily.

  “Axel,” he replied, mildly annoyed. “Got it memorized?”

  King Mickey nodded, then confirmed his suspicions. “…You’re a member of the organization, huh?”

  “You guessed it,” Axel said, quite unabashed.

  “He betrayed them, though,” Riku added.

  At that, the king looked between the two, then focused on Riku. “Is he on our side?”

  “No idea,” Axel interjected.

  “It’s true,” said Riku, finding it a bit funny. “We’re not sure whose side he’s on.”

  “But you’re friends,” said King Mickey.

  Mildly surprised at that, Riku looked at Axel.

  “Nobodies don’t have friends,” Axel snapped.

  “I’m glad to see you’re not all alone, Riku!” the king said with genuine relief as Axel slumped wordlessly.

  “Where’s Sora?” Riku asked, unable to hold the question in any longer.

  “He’ll be along soon,” King Mickey replied. “He said he’s looking for you and Kairi… He really wants to see you.”

  Riku shook his head. “Well, I don’t want to see him.”

  “But Riku—”

  “Please don’t, Your Majesty.” He didn’t let the king finish. “You already promised, didn’t you? Don’t tell Sora about me.”

  “All right. But it won’t be easy to keep him off your trail.”

  Riku smiled slightly. “Well, it is Sora, after all. Anyway…did you find any clues about where Ansem the Wise might be?”

  “I just don’t know,” said King Mickey. “It felt like I was awful close to him at one point…”

  “So you did feel his presence…?” Riku looked down.

  The real Ansem the Wise…and there was one more whose true identity they didn’t know. What if they were connected…?