Light Vs. Darkness: The Hero's Return

The moment Akira responded, Hunter stopped making out. A party member was trying to flee the battle, that just wasn't allowed. Especially their ogrelord. As he headed off in the direction Akira had left in, his body faded away, using his power of invisibility. It didn't take him long to catch up to her, she seemed to be looking for something in particular but he was just looking for a person. He got just a few feet in front of her and stopped, where he allowed his invisibility to fade away and he stood still with his arms crossed, like he was some spiritual god or some crap like that.

"'Scuse me, did you not hear the part about goddess going out of control and us needing a hero? You are needed, you can't just abandon the party like that, that's not how it works" Hunter said, giving his voice an echoey effect so that it sounded far more impressive. However, he sighed. He was going to have to be serious, like not even kidding around or anything so he could try to convince her. He had to make it seem like he cared about anyone other than himself. Damnit, that was going to be difficult.

He cleared his throat. How was he going to manage this? He had to speak like Caleb, yeah Caleb was a good guy...usually. He was all about save people, save the worlds and all that crap. "Akira, people are in danger. The goddess has been abusing her power, and people have been suffering for it, but she doesn't care. She just stands by and watches, not ever doing anything to help. We're trying to find the hero, so that people can be safer and the world will be a better place. The hero's legend has been passed down for many years now, and he's said to be able to surpass even the goddess in power. This island, aside from yourself, seems uninhabited, don't let the other worlds become like that too. We can do something, we can make a difference, and we can keep people safe, but we can't do it alone. We need you, we need you to stand up and fight for what is right, will you help us?" Hunter asked. Damn this being nice thing was so boring and unoriginal. He hated it. ​

 

​

Akira stared at Hunter long and hard. She didn't know whether to take this guy seriously or not. One minute he was one person, the next he was a totally different person... or thing. "How do I know you two are not lying to me?" she said, her eyebrows furrowing. "You are the rudest, more hormonal people I have ever met. How can I take you seriously? What if this is another one of your mind games you're trying to play on me like the last time?" She kept her hands on her sword, staring long and hard at Hunter. She couldn't trust this strangers, not after all the randomness they pulled on her and invaded her space. "Like I said, I don't know anything about this goddess, or this hero. I'm not the hero you are looking for. There's no one else here. Your "quest", if it's real, is finished. I'm the only one here. And I am not a hero. Neither am I a villain. I'm no one. If you're not making it up, you're wasting your time here."

 

​

The dysfunctional duo of Zephyr and Xross had eventually gotten what they could assume was close to where the smoke had originated from and unlike the flying tree plan, the source of the smoke did left and fly into orbit. Thus meaning that they had a much better chance of actually finding the source.

They'd ran past a couple of trees until they two (maybe three, I'm not 100% on how many people would be in range of eyesight). Scratch that, three people were in range of sight. Xross would only recognized them as some of the ones were at Disney Castle while Zephyr on the other hand knew that they were Hunter and Gwen. As for the third person, they both had no idea who that was, but apparently Hunter and Gwen were taking to her. He didn't quite hear what they were saying. Well whatever Hunter had said and the first part of what Gwen said, he did manage to catch the gist of the last part of what she said.

So they were trying to convince her to leave with them, why it looked the way it did, Zephyr had no clue. Thus explaining the next thing he said. "So why are you trying to entice her with adventure?"

 

​

Akira listened to Gwen very carefully, mulling over the possibilities of leaving this place. She had been here a while, training with her abilities and whatnot. What was the use of being isolated here anymore? She already accomplished all she could. Now it was time to step up to the plate and put her training to the test. She didn't trust these people, but if they were her ticket out of here... She raised her sword, swirling it above her head to call back the flames to her sword, extinguishing what was left of the fire all together. She then sheathed her sword, looking to Gwen and Hunter as if she made a decision.

Then another person came along.

She turned to see another boy, and again Akira's hand was placed on the hilt of the sword. "Another friend of yours?" Akira asked, watching Zephyr.

 

While the others driveled on and on about their questionable experiences in leadership, Ohm actually took the time to survey the area, blue eyes scanning the area in silence. He heard the suggestion and turned, maybe splitting up would cover more ground. He nodded to Freya and came up to stand beside Samsara, he knew who he wanted to come with, he wanted to find out more about this girl.​

 

​

Seeing the girl's hand move towards his blade caused Zephyr to halt his movements. "Whoa, easy there. I mean you no harm." That was the first thing that he established. Which was when he realized that Xross was there too. Shit, that could make things very problematic. In fact Zephyr turned his head toward him to see if he was going to make anything worse, but instead what he heard was.

"Well they're no friends of mine, but they do seem to be friends of his."

No smug look on his face, no snide remark, just a legit answer that was somewhat truthful. Phew, that's one less thing to worry about. Now back to the matter at hand, not getting sliced by the girl holding the katana. "So what did I walk in on exactly?"

 

Dane felt the impact quite hard as the darkside hit him with its hand. He went flying through the air and slammed into the ground, a cloud of dust appearing around him as he skidded to a stop just a metre away from Alisia. He got up quickly though, and glanced at his friend. "Not almost enough" was what he said as he flashed a cocky grin. He dashed straight past Alisia and climbed up the darkside's arm. He got halfway up when the huge hand came for him, as though the darkside was trying to swat an annoying bug. He held up his scythe as it came and simply blocked the attack. The force behind the arm was tremendous, but Dane held strong and didn't flinch in the slightest.

With a surge of strength, Dane shoved the arm back, knocking the darkside off balance and causing it to fall over backwards, with Dane falling off of the arm. This was his chance. Racing up one final time, he practically jumped up the arm of their foe. As he reached the end of the arm, he approached the neck of the darkside. Raising his scythe high above his shoulder. He began focusing a large portion of his magic into the blade, causing it to glow a dark purple aura and the blade to actually widen in length, seeming to feed off of the dark energy. Dane then swung the scythe with an awe-inspiring amount of power, releasing a wave of energy from his scythe which launched straight into the darkside's neck, cutting the creature's head clean off and causing it and the entire body to turn into black vapour.

With the darkside defeated, Dane landed casually on the ground, panting and showing clear signs of fatigue. That should have been it, he should have cut the training there, but he couldn't. That heartless wasn't the only one to attack Charter's Rise, and he knew it. There was one more. "Change of plans. The other one's dying, too" he said, his voice serious and low as he repeated the summoning process. This time, rather than a darkside, a more aerial enemy appeared before them. It was a Dustflier, the strongest of the wyvern heartless species.

"Once this is dead, there will only be one murderer left, only one thing to kill. But first, that one murderer is going to kill this thing and do what should have been done years ago" Dane said with a growl. He was expending far too much energy, and he was beginning to tire, but he couldn't stop until the Dustflier was gone; until he had at least fixed that one mistake. With a loud battle cry, Dane charged forward, scythe in hand and fury evident in his eyes.​

 

Beuce stared at the clones of himself and Stratos. Damn. Fighting Crybex was like playing Where's Waldo: Satan Edition. Hmm...This fight was going nowhere fast. If he was going to have any hope of getting out of this, then he'd have to think outside the box...Or, inside it rather! Beuce put his fingers to his mouth and blew, letting out a loud whistle as though calling for something.

A massive blue police box materialized into existence. It easily took up the vast majority of the street they stood on. Beuce looked up at his impressive vessel. The FWARDIS. It was a brilliant piece of plot device engineering. It allowed him to travel seamlessly to other RPs or various plot relevant places in the RP he already existed in. There was only one flaw with it really...The doors flew open and a literal sea of Beuces poured from the doors. He sat and watched the flow for about a solid five minutes. Just like a spray of Beuce. Finally, he walked away to get a sandwich, took a piss, and returned with a book. He sat down, reading "NPCs and you: A fourth wall breaker's guide to exploration." "Hah! The bandits ARE coming!" finally, the sun had gone down and Beuce yawned. He reached into his bottomless pocket and pulled out a full twin sized bed. Laying down, Beuce went to sleep. A few hours later, the sun cracked over the horizon and Beuce sat up, stretching. Now, the thought had crossed his mind that a few hours had passed and that might interfere with the RP timeline. However, this inconsistency was cleared up quickly when he looked over at a nearby sign to see that the street they were on was named Abraxas.

Finally, after all this, the stream of Beuces began to slow down, and eventually they just kind of rolled out into a pile. "Ya done ye-" He was interrupted by the spray picking back up for a few moments. "Ya done yet?"
"Yeah we're done."
"You know how i managed to fit all of you into an area the size of a storage closet is a testament to my packing skills. Anyways, You see that ******* over there?"
Immediately, every single Beuce looked to a different one with a glare.
"No, i mean Xindainotxindai."
"Ohhh"
"I think you know what to do."
Each Beuce gave another a knowing look. They did indeed. All the clones of Beuce and Stratos were rounded up. The real Stratos could just Zantetsuken his way out. Each possible entity that could be Crybex was taken into the grasp of Unlimited Beuce Works.

Into the FWARDIS, they pushed them all in and climbed in themselves. It only took nineteen more hours to get them all in. Once they were in, Beuce jabbed at them with a stick to try and fit them in a bit better and keep them from spilling out so he could close the door. Slamming it shut. He slapped it and it disappeared off into an unspecified location which could be determined at a later date. You could say they took Crybex and pushed him somewhere else. "Alright Myst, you wanted a way off Riel, there it is. Try not to do anything else stupid."




As they landed, Zavion noted that it felt strange to be in such an untamed feeling world. Prior to now, all the worlds he'd been in were cities. This was a vastly overgrown world. There was probably a cave somewhere around here. He closed his eyes, scanning the area with his Clairvoyance. It was difficult to see through all of the oddly shaped trees, but eventually, he stumbled across something that may have been what they were looking for.

"Have you found something?" Ghost asked.
Zavion nodded. "Yeah, on the outside of this forest, there's some kind of structure. I don't think it's quite a natural made cave, but it seems close enough. In fact, i don't think much of the framework of this planet is naturally made, just the things that grow on it. It's like the whole place is made of steel."
"Interesting. In any case, we should be going. We need to confirm whether or not the Hero is here."



"Truly?! You think this Hero might be able to help?!"
"Sure. But don't get your hopes up about finding him. We're looking for him now. Not exactly sure why here though. It's a ship. He's supposed to be in a cave." Bartholomew said, pointing out the oddity of the location they'd chosen to search in. Honestly, that red headed woman didn't know what she was talking about. He'd have to force her into a mental solitary confinement for a day or two. Not even because of the faulty information really. He hadn't gotten to properly scare anyone, and she was a good target.
"Even still...I'm glad you came to this ship. Had you not, i may have never encountered you. I will help you find your hero, so that in the end he might help me accomplish my goal. "
"Alright, well once Caleb has decided that there are no caves in the ship, we'll probably be going back to our headquarters."​

 

​

Akira looked from one being to the other debating what she should do next. With a big intake of air, she sheathed her sword, but kept on guard. "It's been a long day," she muttered, looking over at Gwen and Hunter. "I suppose names need to be shared... I am Akira Nakano, wielder of flames."

 

As soon as the spell lifted, Lexcifur's arm shot toward Xero with the weapon just missing her head and stabbing into the wall behind her. He only stood there panting and staring at Xero angrily, wanting to finish the fight but knowing he wouldn't be able to with Sapphire there.

"You came here for a reason, so please share, if you are not going to share what that reason is, and you don't plan to move back home, I have to ask you to leave." Lexcifur looked at Sapphire while ripping the weapon out of the wall and slowly rose it up, pointing it at Sapphire. He was shaking, yet his eyes were filled with rage and his teeth were gritted.

The gauntlet began to glow and a shadowy mist began to radiate from it. The creature that appeared from it was now visible behind Lexcifur again.

"I came to put an end to Xero. And you're not going to stop me."​

 

"I am the aforementioned Hunter, wielder of awesome. Think of the most awesome, amazing thing you've ever seen, now triple it...no, quadruple it and you've got me. Ginger, don't make it sound like you didn't want to bang me, I used my power to get you into the cave, but we both know that you wanted it more than I did, and that's saying something. Now, enough of this useless conversation, filler is boring. We need to leave and get our asses back to the castle so we can plot. I know the rules say to go and defeat a boss and move on, but" Hunter said, before putting his hand against a random rock, using his power of Chrysopoeia to turn it into gold. He could've sworn there was a white dragon flying around somewhere, and was that a cape he now had? And why did he feel more up himself than usual? "Screw the rules, I have money" he boomed, his voice echoing with power.


Caleb stopped. By Sapphire he was stupid, why had he been looking for the hero on a ship? "The legend directed us to this ship, so I was under the assumption it would take us to our destination, however I appear to be wrong. So, let's go back to the castle. I can't see us getting anywhere standing around here, we're just wasting time" Caleb said, his voice relatively neutral. "The hero might be able to help you, he might not be. There's no way of saying for certain. What we can guarantee though, is that if anyone aside from the goddess is capable of saving your people, it's him" he added, before opening a dark corridor that lead back to disney castle.​

 

• Phantom
• Stratos
• Charlotte
• Rinox
• ADVENTURE!
• Lucien

• 
  As Phantom had tried to subdue his target, things went less then well. His leg was encased in ice by a spell the guy had cast, and Phantom was just sort of stuck standing there unable to move. Sighing a bit, he took out his newly forged handgun and pointed it at his feet. Firing off a few rounds, he managed to break off a few pieces of the ice, before being able to just pull his legs out of the ice by brute force. He then continued to run through the streets, in hot pursuit of his target.
  
  It took awhile to find him, however, and when he did it had seemed that he was in a house. Well, breaking and entering, that was another charge to hit him with. At this point he was basically resisting arrest. This kid was something else, and Phantom still had no clue why he was even in front of the palace in the first place. However, when he looked inside, he could see a scene that Phantom couldn't really comprehend what was going on. There was Xero, Sapphire, and the kid and he seemed to have a giant floating darkness creature behind him...what? Despite not being able to comprehend the situation, he figured he'd make as little trouble for the goddess as possible. Switching the rounds in his guns to be that of tranquilizer darts instead of bullets, he just sort of the pulled the trigger thrice, shooting three darts at the abdomen of his target. Looking at the two ladies he realized what he had done might not have been the most favorable, and then nervously said, "got him boss."
  
• 
  After having dealt with Crybex for a bit, he then created a large illusory world of a mass of Stratoss and Beuces. However, at the end of the whole thing, there were just two of each of them. Now, Stratos had a really easy way to figure out which of them was the real one. Given that there was a wind barrier that he created on both of them, it was a pretty easy tell to figure out which was which, however Beuce had a more...Beuce....solution to the problem. Having an entire army of Beuces just collectively grab everything and shoved both Crybex and the fake Stratos and Beuce and the actual Stratos into a giant box. Somewhat confused at what had just happened, Stratos quickly used Zantetsuken to escape the confines of the box, he looked as the thing disappeared, and looked back to Beuce. "So, I guess we got him," Stratos said, still slightly confused at everything.
  
• 
  While the man who had appeared didn't really seem to be of ill intent, the fact that he had some sort of massive dark aura around him still seemed to be a bit off putting to Charlotte. Nevertheless, she didn't feel as though anything needed to be done about him, and thus just simply listened to the exchange between the others. She wasn't entirely sure about whether or not the Hero would be able to rid him of the plague that seemed to befall him and his people, and she also wasn't sure as to what part of the legend had actually told them to come here, but nonetheless, it had appeared that there was nothing of real note here in regards to their search. As such, she had simply walked through Caleb's dark corridor back to the library.
  
• 
  Rinox had a slight smirk when he was called just a floater. There was a bit more to it than just that, however, the term seemed to fit him well for the time being. As the topic of leaving had been brought up, Rinox simply said, "I believe leaving now would be a good idea. I doubt anyone had followed behind us, and you are right in thinking that nothing related to the hero is here. Now then," creating a dark corridor and gesturing towards the portal, he said, "shall we take our leave?"
  
• 
  As Jackie's authority was questioned by their new cannon scrubber Samsara, she said, "well obviously I'm the captain because I have the most captainly adventuring spirit of anyone here. Isn't that right Blanc?" As he was about to say something, Jackie then interupted him and said, "thanks buddy," giving a thumbs up and a confident smile, she then watched as everyone else had gone off to do their own thing and Samsara seemed to bark out orders. As she walked over and Freya seemed to ask who made her in charge, Jackie simply interjected with, "yeah, I'm in charge after all!" As Ghost and Zavion pointed out something to go explore she simply said, "and we should all go explore that thingy over there." And so they did! I seriously have no idea what they did explore, but by gone it, they explored the shit out of it! And afterwards, they came to the executive decision that there was nothing of any sort of interest or relating to the hero here. And so, given that everyone except for Jackie and Ohm had a method of creating trans-dimensional portals and so one of them definitely made one and they were definitely going to leave via that method.
  
• 
  Just sort of chilling out in the library, Lucien looked up from his book as he saw people filling into the room. As it had turned out, they had just about nothing to show for their efforts, and Lucien simply said,"so, no dice? Figured. After all, this set of worlds was probably the least sense making of all the ones we've made so far." Standing up, he put down the book and addressed everyone else in the room as he said,"luckily for all of you, I have the last piece of the legend. Also known as the most important part, and with it the entire legend is complete, and you know what, probably would have been way more convenient to look for the entire legend first rather than going on a wild goose chase across three universes. I mean, it was actually a really super obvious answer, but hey I'll let you guys know once everyone's back."
  

 

The fight was tough, that much was certain. Had Dane rested, he would have been able to take on the two heartless without a problem, but as it was he was struggling. And yet he wasn't going to give up. As he leapt up, the Dustflier flipped upside down in the air, slapping Dane away with its tail as the shadow reaper slammed into the ground, tasting dirt. He spat it out and got up quickly. "HA! That's the best you can do?" he taunted in between deep breaths. His body began glowing with a purple aura as his eyes became filled with the same colour, indicating his use of darkness. This creature had lived for too long. He looked to his side and grabbed his scythe, before he created a dark corridor. He took a running dive into the dark corridor, and appeared out of the other end above the Dustflier. With a roar, the shadow reaper flew straight into the Dustflier, his body acting as a human missile.

The moment he collided with the heartless, both battlers fell out of the sky and crashed into the ground, causing a huge dustcloud to emerge. Gritting his teeth, Dane pushed himself up. "This is the end for you" he said, his voice low and serious; a rarity for Dane. He tapped deep into his energy reserves, and began dashing around the grounded Dustflier as it thrashed around trying to get up. As he was dashing, Dane created several huge, purple orbs. Once he had created all of them, he leaped up into the sky. The Dark Mega Flares simultaneously converged on the enemy, inflicting tremendous damage.

Raising his scythe high above his head, Dane prepared to deliver the finishing blow. He rocketed towards the Dustflier again, but just as he was about to finish the fight, he saw a sight he hadn't expected. He saw Maddie, yelling out and calling to him, just as she had when they were children. He lost focus for just a moment, and by the time he regained it he'd missed his opportunity. He slammed into the creature uselessly, simply bouncing off of it and rolling onto the ground. The Dustflier took advantage of this and pinned him down with its talons, before breathing fire all over Dane. He cried out in pain, and the heartless then grabbed him with his talons and tossed him away, causing the scythe-wielder to slam into the mouth of a cave, far away from the battle.

Dane looked up, groaning as he tried to see where Maddie had gone. But he couldn't see her. It had simply been a hallucination from the fatigue, something he had wanted to see so badly he had been sure it was there. "Alissia! Finish it!" he managed to shout out, before he laid down on the ground, simply too tired to continue.​

 

Lexcifur was tired of Sapphire trying to convince him to stop what he was doing. He was tired of everything, done with people. Lexcifur charged at Sapphire, weapon held back and ready to slash at her. Suddenly he felt three things hit his abdomen and he fell to the floor, his body numb and his vision blurred. He tried getting up, only barely able to move his body at all. The Guardian had faded back into the gauntlet and he blacked out.​

Xero only sat there, her eyes still wide from everything that had just happened. She cupped her mouth as she silently let tears fall from her face, her scythe dissipating away. Xero crawled over to Lexcifur and tried reaching her hand out to touch him, but retracted her arm as more tears began to fall.

"Sapphire... For all of these years... what wrong have I brought to my son... to have him hate me so much...?"​

 

Xero looked up at Sapphire and then back down to Lexcifur, "No... I'll do it. Once he regains consciousness I'll extract whatever is within him. It's the whole reason R gave me his CC-Link." She then looked over to Phantom and stood up, "You're the kid who helped me out of the bar a while back. Heh... Sorry you had to see me like that."​

 

"I'll live. Which is more than I can say for that heartless. It was a little sloppy, but you got the job done" Dane said as he stood up slowly. He looked behind him at what he'd slammed into. The mouth of a cave, well damn no wonder it had hurt. It got him wondering though. The legend had spoken of a hero inside a cave, and he had gone to the keyblade graveyard because it sounded like it fit. There was no way it was that simple, was there? "Hold up, I'll be back in a minute. I'm just going to go check something" Dane explained. He walked into the cave and headed down the single pathway, getting to the end. What he saw there surprised even him, causing his eyes to widen. He wandered back to Alisia and sat down, leaning against the mouth of the cave once again. "If you want to see what your hero looks like, go in there. Seems to be asleep or something. As much as I hate to say it, I don't know how to wake the hero up. Which means that we're going to have to wait for the others to catch up. Here's hoping Samsara isn't as thick as she seemed, if they take too long I think I'm more likely to die of boredom than anything else" Dane said, closing his eyes as he did what he could to rest. ​

 

​

When Akira had sheathed her blade, Zephyr slowly brought his arms down to his side. That was a relief as well as one less thing to worry about. Now as for the answer to his question, which Gwen had decided to give him. It started off understandable, but she'd nearly lost him when she mentioned the random sex. No wonder the situation was the way it was when he arrived. At the end of her explanation, Hunter chimed in saying that the sex was mutual, despite whatever he used as an influence and suggested that they head back to the castle.

Firstly, Zephyr looked towards Akira and said. "Don't worry, not everyone in our group is as bad as them, well him anyway." The final decision on joining them was still up to her, but he assumed that she would be tagging along. She did already introduce herself if that was anything to go off of. He then started to walk in the direction that Hunter had started going before stopping to turn a rock into gold. He didn't bother to stop and question that, instead he just kept on walking. Zephyr only got a couple of steps before he'd walked into something hard, which caused him to stumble back a bit.

The first thing that went through Zephyr's mind was question on what did he just walk into. It felt like he'd walked into a tree and he was very certain that a tree didn't just move in front of his while he was walking. He looked up and someone else that he didn't recognized.

"Three men and two women. Certainly not what I was expecting to see when I followed the smoke here." Asura said. With the way that he was speaking and a quick change of attire, he could easily be some Zen master living up in the mountains or something along those lines. Zephyr had got himself up on his feet shortly after the man had spoken. Since it was clear that he wasn't from this world and referring back to what Gwen had said about finding Akira in a cave, this guy probably wasn't, nor knew anything about the hero. He still had to ask though.

"You wouldn't happen to have seen anyone who would look like a hero in any way shape or form?" In response, Asura folded his arms before speaking.

"I do not, however the hero is the object of my travels." In other words, they had a common goal and since they had just gotten one new person to tag along, why not go for the double.

"Same for us." Zephyr started, directing to those the others. "Why not come with us, it'll make things easier." Following his proposal, Asura thought about it in silence for a few moments, before nodding his head in agreement.