Kingdom Hearts 358-2 Days Page 3

  “You certainly are well informed.”

  Axel shrugged. “Everyone who’s being shipped off knows that, at least.”

  “Doesn’t the master of the Keyblade intrigue you at all?”

  “Not really.”

  That much was true. There was no reason for Axel to concern himself with the matter.

  “Roxas expressed some interest, though, didn’t he?”

  “Sure. I mean, it’s kind of his area. He wouldn’t not be interested.” Axel turned his back on Marluxia but didn’t get far before another bit of news stopped him in his tracks.

  “And if I told you that Roxas is that Keyblade master’s own Nobody? Would that pique your interest?”

  Axel whirled around, his eyes narrowing as he fixed Marluxia with a stare. He didn’t seem to be lying.

  “You are so transparent.” Marluxia chuckled. “It’s like you’re still human.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  A beguiling smile played at Marluxia’s lips. “If acting as one with a heart is praiseworthy, then it just might be.”

  “And?” said Axel. “That’s not all you wanted to say, is it?”

  Marluxia looked squarely back at him.

  A few days later, Roxas and Axel were back in Twilight Town.

  “Our second mission together, huh?” said Axel.

  “Yeah…” Roxas nodded and readied the Keyblade. Today’s mission was to yet again collect hearts. Which meant eliminating Heartless.

  “Let’s go,” said Axel. Roxas took off ahead of him.

  Roxas had several assignments under his belt by now, but this was his first true mission—according to Saïx anyway.

  Axel had thought he was swift his first day on the job, but he was especially nimble now. As his backup, Axel tossed his chakrams at the Heartless, even though Roxas was the only one who could capture hearts by defeating them. Anyone assigned to go with Roxas on a heart-collecting day was, by definition, just there for support.

  Not that Roxas seemed to need it much. He charged ahead, Keyblade swinging, without so much as a glance back at Axel. It was quite something to see him in action.

  Finally, with barely a scratch after accumulating a decent number of hearts, Roxas turned to him. “That does it for today, right?”

  “…Right,” said Axel.

  Its work done, the Keyblade winked out from Roxas’s hand. Sweat beaded on his face as he caught his breath.

  “So got any plans?” Axel asked casually.

  “Plans…? I mean, I was just going to report to Saïx and go to my room, like always.”

  Well, that was the proper answer, but it wasn’t the right answer. Axel rubbed the back of his head and looked down at him. “Look, Roxas—”

  That same trio of noisy Twilight Town kids cut him off, literally, darting between them during their conversation.

  “Move it, Pence!”

  “Hey, wait up!”

  “Last one there has to buy the winner an ice cream!”

  These kids certainly did seem to keep crossing paths with Roxas, Axel thought.

  “Who were they…?” Roxas looked curiously after them.

  He had seen them before the first time he came here with Axel. But his memory was probably a little hazy.

  “They live here, I guess,” Axel replied.

  “Hmm…” Roxas squinted—not a reaction that Axel would have expected. “Does everyone here act like that?”

  The question didn’t make much sense to Axel. “Act like what?”

  “Like, running around chasing one another, yelling…”

  Roxas had a strange expression as he said that, one Axel hadn’t seen before. Maybe something in him could recall time spent running and shouting with friends, having fun.

  “Well, that’s the kind of stuff people with hearts do,” Axel said.

  “Oh… I guess they’re different from us.” Roxas looked at his feet.

  The silence that fell between them was too heavy. Axel scratched his head and tentatively suggested, “We could get some ice cream, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Why…? Well, because…”

  He wasn’t sure what to say. He just wanted to get ice cream and hang out in his favorite spot with Roxas, like they had done the other day, but he got the sense he needed to put it a different way.

  If he didn’t, Roxas probably wouldn’t understand.

  He took a deep breath and said, “Because we’re friends.”

  Why was it so blisteringly awkward to say that out loud? Still, words only meant something if you gave them voice.

  And he couldn’t come up with a better answer anyway.

  “Friends…?”

  “Yeah. Friends. People who eat ice cream together or laugh at stupid stuff that doesn’t make sense… Like those kids we just saw.”

  Roxas blinked up at him.

  “C’mon, I’ll show you how it works.” Though Roxas was still bewildered, Axel headed for the sweets shop.

  Down in the plaza in front of the clock tower, those kids were arguing. Roxas watched them with undisguised curiosity as he ate his ice cream.

  His conscious will had developed quite a bit since they’d first met, Axel thought, and since their first mission together, too. And yet, there was something empty and cold about it. That was true for all Nobodies.

  “Hey, Roxas.”

  Roxas looked up.

  Wait, what was I gonna say again? “Let’s meet up for ice cream again after your next mission. I mean, who wants to just bounce back and forth between work and the castle, right?”

  That was more than he’d expected to say. The words just spilled out of him, like before. Unplanned but genuine.

  Trying to parse them, Roxas gazed down at the kids in the plaza again. “Okay. I guess then we really would be friends…”

  Axel thought he saw the hint of a smile. But he wasn’t quite sure.

  “Well, we won’t be able to have ice cream here for a bit.”

  “What…?” Roxas looked at him, wide-eyed.

  “Starting tomorrow, I’m gonna be at Castle Oblivion for a while.”

  “Where’s that…?”

  “The only place you’ve been to is Twilight Town, right? But there are lots of other worlds out there. And the Organization has another castle, in another world between worlds. That’s Castle Oblivion. Got it memorized?”

  “I wish people would tell me this stuff…” Roxas hung his head. “When will you come back?”

  “I dunno… When they let me, I guess. But when I do, we’ll grab ice cream again.”

  “…Yeah.” Roxas’s eyes followed the train in the distance.

  “Well, I gotta go back and get ready,” said Axel. “Lots of fun stuff to take care of.”

  “Oh, then I’ll—”

  “Nah, you stay and take your time. Enjoy that ice cream. See you.” Axel got to his feet and vanished into a dark portal right there on the clock tower.

  Roxas was alone.

  “It really is salty,” he mumbled, pondering the ice cream bar. Just then, he noticed a word on the stick. Intrigued, he shoved the remainder of the ice cream in his mouth so he could read it.

  “What’s this mean…?”

  Cleaned of its salty-sweet contents, the stick read, Winner.

  Chapter 3

  Xion and Roxas

  HE HAD BEEN SENT TO CASTLE OBLIVION PLENTY OF TIMES BEFORE. The castle was home to an extremely special place, though few of the Organization’s members knew about it.

  Axel finished his preparations for the trip and left his room. He wouldn’t be back for a while.

  “Axel. I have a message from Lord Xemnas,” someone said from behind him.

  He paused in the hallway and wordlessly turned to meet an impassive Saïx.

  “We have reason to believe that one or more of the members posted at Castle Oblivion intend to betray us. Find them and dispose of them.”

  That was a rather roundabout way of putting it.

&nbs
p; There was no one else in the vicinity. Why was Saïx delivering his message so evasively? Axel’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. Then again, Saïx did prefer to express himself in ambiguous, indirect ways.

  “Really? Exact words straight from Lord Xemnas’s own lips?” Axel remarked before he could stop himself.

  Saïx raised one eyebrow. “Does it matter?”

  “Actually, yeah. I think it does.”

  Unable to deny that, Saïx let out a sigh. “You have your orders. Eliminate the traitors.”

  “Okay. Got it.”

  As soon as Axel acknowledged him, Saïx spun on his heels and left.

  There were six going to Castle Oblivion, including Axel himself. So how many of them were traitors, and what was this betrayal even about? Was he supposed to figure out everything by himself?

  What was going on over there at Castle Oblivion? It did spark his interest, just a little.

  He didn’t notice the smile forming on his lips.

  When he got up, Roxas took the ice cream stick from beside his pillow and slid it into his pocket as he headed out.

  If he was a winner, he wanted to know what he’d won.

  “Axel…!” He ran into the Grey Area, but Axel was nowhere to be seen.

  “Axel already left,” said Saïx, striding past him.

  “Wha…?” He had missed seeing off Axel?

  Saïx glanced back at Roxas. “Did you need something?”

  “Um…nothing.” He looked down, avoiding Saïx’s gaze.

  “All right. Today, Roxas, you will be taking a mission with Xion.”

  “Oh. Really…?” Roxas raised his head. The small figure stood in the corner, hood pulled up, as always. He still hadn’t seen Xion’s face.

  “Together you will eliminate a particular Heartless,” Saïx instructed him. “Roxas, you are in charge.”

  “Me? …Okay.” Roxas nodded, but he couldn’t tell whether Xion was listening or not.

  “Let’s go.”

  Xion didn’t move a muscle.

  Not sure what else to do, Roxas opened a dark portal and stepped in. Then, in his peripheral vision, he saw the fourteenth Organization member move to follow him.

  In the Corridors of Darkness, he looked back, and Xion was there behind him, face still hidden under the Organization cloak’s deep hood.

  Roxas didn’t have much to say, so he just kept walking. The mission was in Twilight Town again.

  Roxas charged up the slope, swinging the Keyblade and scattering the plant-shaped Heartless in Twilight Town.

  Behind him, Xion was keeping up—and nothing else. His partner for the mission had no weapon, no magic. No will, apparently, to do any more than follow him like a shadow.

  One of the plant Heartless fired a barrage of seeds. Even after being struck, Xion didn’t cry out and only fell silently to the ground. For an instant, Roxas hesitated about whether to offer a hand, but first he brought the Keyblade down on the offending Heartless. It disappeared, and the heart it released rose into the sky.

  “That should do it,” said Roxas.

  Xion wordlessly stood up, without even brushing the grit from the black cloak.

  Well, it was awkward, but they had carried out the mission, Roxas thought.

  “I’ve got someplace to be,” he said. “You can go ahead and RTC without me.”

  Again, without giving any acknowledgment, Xion started walking away, probably back toward the portal to the corridors.

  Roxas headed to the sweets shop in the tram common. The mission was finished, and it was time for ice cream.

  Just going back and forth between work and the castle was no fun.

  “One sea-salt ice cream, please,” he said to the lady at the shop counter.

  “That’ll be twenty munny,” she said.

  He handed over two ten-munny coins and took the ice cream bar in its clear plastic film.

  He realized this was his first time making the purchase himself. Axel had always bought it for him.

  With the cold prize in his hand, Roxas started out of the shop, then paused. He still had the stick from yesterday’s ice cream in his pocket.

  He held it out to the shopkeeper. “What’s this mean?”

  “Why, look at that, you’re a winner! Congratulations!”

  “‘Congratulations’…?” It was a new word to Roxas. Was that what he’d won?

  “You get another ice cream, on the house,” she told him.

  “Um, how much?”

  He didn’t know what “on the house” meant, either. But he had heard that one could get things in exchange for munny or for hearts.

  “No, no, it’s free. You won! Have you got a friend you’d like to treat?”

  “…Um, I do, but…he’s not here today.” He thought of Axel.

  “Then why don’t you save this until you come back with your friend? You’ll get a tummyache if you eat two ice cream bars by yourself, after all.” The shopkeeper returned the Winner stick to him.

  “With my friend… Okay.”

  When Axel comes back, I can show him the stick, and we’ll have ice cream together.

  With today’s reward in hand, Roxas headed to the clock tower.

  In the depths of the Castle That Never Was, there was a white room with a pod in the middle of the floor like an enormous flower bud. Hooked up to the pod was a machine with several monitors.

  Saïx stood in front of it, typing on the keyboard. As the door opened, he turned. “…Ah. Xion.”

  Downcast and silent, Xion wore the black hood up, as it probably had been during the entire mission with Roxas.

  “We’ve prepared your room,” said Saïx. “You’ll rest there from now on.”

  Number 14 said nothing, as usual.

  “Have an underling show you. Vexen won’t be back for a while. Come to me if you need anything.”

  Saïx wasn’t concerned by the lack of response.

  Xion simply waited.

  Castle Oblivion stood in the realm between—the liminal place belonging to neither darkness nor light but somewhere in the middle, and its existence was not widely known. It was home to worlds shadowed with mist that never cleared and worlds made of paths that went on and on forever.

  By traversing through those places, which they came to call the Corridors of Darkness, members of the Organization could travel from the realm between into other worlds that were otherwise isolated.

  In a certain room in Castle Oblivion, Axel lounged on a sofa, similar to the one in the Grey Area of the Castle That Never Was. It was just as uncomfortable.

  Castle Oblivion was an odd place. It had two equally huge sections above- and belowground, and the memories that had power over each floor would change the rooms depending on who was inside them.

  The one keeping the castle in its current state was a witch who could manipulate memories—Naminé.

  Using her power, the Organization was carrying out a plan to rewrite the memories of the Keyblade master.

  But Naminé was not human, in fact. Nor was she a Heartless. Perhaps she wasn’t even a Nobody. After all, the way she had come into being was completely unique. She was born from the heart of a princess.

  In front of Axel, Marluxia was studying an image of Sora, the Keyblade master, on a large crystal ball set in the middle of the room.

  The Organization’s objective was to gather hearts, and for that, they needed the power of the Keyblade.

  But they already had a Keyblade wielder—Roxas. Was the Organization trying to get more of them under their control?

  What exactly was this Keyblade thing anyway?

  Axel kept hearing that only very special people could wield it, but they had already found two—Sora and Roxas, one human and one Nobody.

  Then Marluxia turned away from the crystal ball to face Axel. “So how are things going for the others below?”

  The question caught him off guard, but Axel kept from showing it as he got to his feet.

  The aboveground team consisted of t
he newer members, namely Marluxia and Larxene, while the older members—Vexen and Zexion and Lexaeus, who had once been apprentices of Ansem the Wise—composed the underground team. Apparently, the two factions were at cross purposes. As a newer member, Axel had been posted aboveground, and under Marluxia’s orders, he was to spy on the underground team.

  “Looks like they have a guest, too,” said Axel. “Riku. Heard that name before?”

  He knew that the Heartless form of Xehanort, calling himself Ansem, had possessed Riku at some point. And Xehanort was deeply tied to Xemnas.

  “Ah yes… The one who once merged himself with the darkness,” Marluxia murmured.

  “Oh, you’ve done your homework.”

  Ever since they’d learned Sora had entered Castle Oblivion’s aboveground floors, while Riku was doing the same underground, things had gotten a bit hectic.

  “And what are they planning?”

  “Couldn’t say… But you know about the experiments they’re doing down there, right?”

  The six of them might have been posted to the same location, but that didn’t mean they knew anything about the others’ tasks or objectives. Members of the Organization essentially worked alone.

  “Are you referring to that nonsense Vexen likes to call science?” Marluxia remarked.

  “Is it nonsense?”

  “I can’t imagine that puppet will be of any use. Now then, it’s time for me to greet our hero. The Keyblade master is almost here.”

  With that, Marluxia vanished. Even within Castle Oblivion, the Organization members could move about using the corridors.

  Following his lead, Axel left the room by the same method.

  When Roxas went to the Grey Area the next morning, he saw Xion there, along with the chattier duo of Demyx and Xigbar.

  “Isn’t it, like, a million times nicer here without all those bossy jerks?” remarked Demyx, attempting to engage their number 14 in conversation. But Xion remained hooded and silent.

  “Bossy jerks?” Roxas came to join them.

  “You know, the dream team who got shipped off to Castle Oblivion.” Demyx shrugged and glanced mischievously at Xigbar. “Dreamy for me because they’re gone, am I right?”

  “Too bad you and Poppet here didn’t get more quality time with them,” Xigbar said to Roxas.