"Well, we should sign off here. I guess it's goodbye, guys." Sora grinned as he said goodbye to Mickey, Donald, and Goofy for what would probably be the last time. Since they'd managed to clear out the last of the bugs in Data Riku, that was it for all the bugs in the journal, and, without the bugs, the data would begin to return to normal. It was time for him and Riku to be reset. Sure, they never really found what they'd been looking for, and Sora couldn't shake the fact that something was missing right about now, but he had managed to save the Datascape, and that had to count for something in his mind. "Give the "us" out there our best, okay?"
He turned to Riku and nodded, ready for him to close the portal between the real and data worlds. It was time to finally end all this. "What's that?" Jiminy's voice came in through the channel they'd all been using to communicate with each other.
And suddenly, the ground was shaking beneath them, as if the entire world was being torn apart. "What is this power?" Not even Riku knew. That was a bad sign if Riku had no idea as to what was going on. Jiminy's Journal didn't have an answer as to what was going on, this was unfamiliar territory, and it was a dangerous one at that. "It's so much stronger than anything I've ever felt before. Could it be some sort of bug?"
"Bugs!? But how could that happen? I thought we got rid of all of 'em." Goofy's confused voice came in from over the channel next.
"I thought we did too. There's a chance we were wrong." So did Sora, and so did Riku. They all had, otherwise they wouldn't have said their goodbyes. Whatever this bug was, it had managed to escape eradication, and it was powerful. Maybe the power source for the bugs, that was a possibility, right?
Then came Donald. "Oh...what do we do now?"
"That message said it was going to delete the datascape. We can't let something that powerful get loose. The journal data has to be locked!" Riku was determined to keep both worlds safe from whatever this was, but what did that mean for them? For Maleficent and Pete? They were all still inside, about to be preyed upon by the bugs once more. If they didn't stop this, then they'd be destroyed. Mickey pointed those exact thoughts out, concerned for their safety.
"Then locking the data isn't an option." Riku was annoyed to say the least by the fact that they weren't willing to sacrifice what was already there for the only option that was apparent, but it wasn't like he didn't understand where those outside the journal were coming from. He didn't want to condemn Maleficent and Pete to death either, nor condemn himself and Sora. "Both worlds are at stake! What do we do?"
Sora thought for a moment before rushing forward. "You guys, hang tight! I'll take care of this."
"Sora? Where are you going? Hey!" Riku starting running after him. "Sora, are you crazy!?"
Sora turned back to face Riku. "No way I'm gonna leave them out there! You heard what Mickey said. I gotta find Pete and Maleficent!"
"But you don't even know where they are!"
Sora shook his head, that didn't matter to him at all. He'd find them, regardless of what it took. "Then I'll just have to go look for them!"
Riku looked at him, somewhat surprised by that answer. "Aren't you afraid? All our memories, our entire existence, even this whole world could get erased!"
"I'm afraid, but...you know why I have to do this." Sora looked straight at Riku. "You feel it too, don't you? There's someone in there, and she needs us."
Riku looked at Sora, a little more than slightly confused. It was true, that he held the journal's data when it was all erased and the bugs started showing up in the first place, but if that was the case, then why wasn't he sure what was in there that Sora was talking about, and why could he feel her too.
"Besides, even then, doing something to stop this, it beats just sitting around and waiting for the end of the world to come. I don't know if there's any way I can win, if there's any way to reach whoever's in there, but I know...I've gotta at least try." And with that, Sora jumped straight into the keyhole, not waiting to hear anything more from Riku or Mickey.
He was going to save them all, Pete, Maleficent, and whoever it was that was in there with them. He'd make sure of it.
-x-
Sora had run through the glitched Datascape. Beyond this point, the area had looked primarily like a System Sector, the portals he'd been debugging in his entire time going through the journal and fixing the glitches. At the very center of the last one lay the end of the journey, and there were Maleficent and Pete along with a cloaked figure. Possibly the one he'd seen at the beginning, when he'd gotten his Keyblade?
"Insolent fool, I'll take care of you myself!" Maleficent spread out her cloak at Pete fell backwards from a failed hit, sending a magic spell composed of green flames flying at the figure, who side stepped gracefully.
"Don't get in my way." The cloaked figure was female, and young from the sound of her voice, and with a single wave of her hand, she'd summoned a dark corridor, banishing Pete and Maleficent from the area.
"Maleficent! Pete!" Sora called out, running in with his Keyblade out, and causing the cloaked figure's attention to be shifted to him. She let out a laugh, one that sounded a lot darker than should've ever been coming out of that voice just from the sound of it.
And she removed her hood, revealing dark red hair, almost the color of a red wine, cropped short so that none of her hair fell below her neck. She looked to be almost normal for somebody buried so deep in the journal, but there were a few startling points that made it obvious that something had happened, namely wire like lines of black coding running down her face, creating a sharp contrast to the paleness of her skin. Her irises were black, with pupils the same red as that of the bugs he'd been facing throughout his entire journey, and despite having never seen her at all before this point, he couldn't shake the feeling that he knew her. "It's about time you got here, Sora."
"K-" It was like a memory, one he couldn't access, but this girl knew him, and he knew her, somehow. And despite that, he couldn't even figure out a name. "Who are you? Why are you doing this?"
"You don't remember me?" Sora strained to make out the girl's tone of voice, but rather than detecting hurt in it, like he would've expected, she was playful. Almost as if she was toying with him instead. "Oh, that's right, you wouldn't. It's not like I exist really exist here anymore, after all, what does a corrupted piece of data have a place here?"
"Corrupted...you're the one behind all the bugs!?" Despite that being the logical conclusion to come to, he didn't want to believe it. Sure she looked heavily corrupted but, at the same time, something in him just looked at her and couldn't comprehend the idea that she could do this.
"Took you long enough to realize that. Except you got one detail wrong. I'm not the one behind the bugs," She summoned out a Keyblade, one with flowers on the teeth and a heart for the handle, but it was hard to tell. Like with the glitch lamp that Pete had made Jafar, it was covered with light blue blocks of corrupt data, forced into this form. The Keyblade itself, was black, with dark red lines coming all over it. "I am the bugs."
From outside the Keyhole, he heard Riku's voice. "Sora, be careful! Whoever she was, she's not them anymore."
"You mean, you don't know!?"
"She's data that was removed from the journal...I thought that when it was corrupted and I got the data, I got all the data, but...somehow she didn't make it in," Riku explained. "Whoever she was, the bugs must've gotten ahold of her!"
Before Sora could respond to Riku, the girl charged her Keyblade slashing down in a powerful strike, causing Sora to raise his Keyblade up to prevent her from landing a hit. A loud clash rang out as the Keyblade collided, and the girl pushed down, hoping to get him to drop his guard. "Any idea how I can free her from them?" He pushed back, watching as she jumped back gracefully, not even thrown off.
"Just try to take her down! If you're lucky, maybe it'll delete the remaining bugs in her and restore her to her original state." It was left unsaid between the two boys about what might happen if the idea didn't work, but they were pressed for time. If this was their only chance at trying to save her, it'd be worth the risk. "Good luck, Sora."
Sora nodded, despite knowing Riku probably couldn't see him, and ran for the girl again, who kept simply ducking out of the way of his Keyblade. Every swing he took seemed to be matched with a perfect counter step, pulling her just out of reach of the end of his Keyblade. After a moment of matching steps, she swung her Keyblade at him, hardly giving Sora enough time to react before he found himself whacked in the face with it. The girl had begun her counterstrike, and after the initial hit seemed keen on not letting up, attacking him with a series of quick strikes, her blade infused with darkness much as Riku's had been as she swiped at him once more. He barely had time to dodge the attack, rolling out of the way and putting as much distance as possible between him and the girl.
"Fire!" A fireball left the tip of Sora's Keyblade as he aimed at the girl, and he watched as she attempted to roll out of the way, just barely failing the maneuver and winding up with the edges of her cloak singed by the flame. Before she had time to ready a counter, he was already upon her, slashing at her with the Keyblade and managing to land a hit this time, but not before she hit him with a counter that he scarcely had time to raise his Keyblade up to block in time. With the counter occurring, the carnage began, and she summoned up her darkness charged blade, slashing at him repetitively in an attempt to catch the boy off guard, with several hits landing successful.
"Just give up already and let me DEVOUR THIS WORLD!" As she finished the statement, the girl let out a pulse of darkness, knocking Sora back and to the ground.
He stood up slowly, raising his Keyblade as a green light surrounded him, healing him of most of the damage he'd just taken. "No way. I'm not letting you destroy the Datascape, you're not getting into the outside world!" He ran at the girl, charging at her with his Keyblade and watched as she raised her Keyblade to protect herself once more. Sparks flew off from Kingdom Key as the two blades met, and she pulled back immediately only for them both to launch at each other again, this time blow meeting blow as neither of the two of them could land a hit. After several moments of attacks meeting one another, Sora pulled back, panting, but the girl seemed just as tired despite being made of bugs...perhaps she wasn't nearly as powered up by the bugs as he'd thought.
Looking down at his Keyblade, he gripped the handle tighter and looked at the girl, aiming the Keyblade and watching as a bright beam of light escaped from the tip, hitting the girl and causing a single Blox Bug to appear in front of her. "That's it, Sora! The source of the bugs! If you defeat that, it'll free her!"
"Got it!" Sora lowered his Keyblade, and the beam of light vanished, but the bug remained, crawling about on its four legs, trying desperately to get back to the girl, who had fallen unconscious the moment the bug had appeared. With one slice of his Keyblade, the Blox Bug was split in two, vanishing in a dark cloud as the last bug was cleared from the journal. The Keyblade that had been in the girl's hand up until that point shattered, as the glitches that had been sustaining it were no longer in the datascape.
The moment he cleared out the last bug, his eyes widened as memories of a young girl from the islands began flooding back in. He watched her slowly stand up as she awoke from the unconscious state caused by the removal of the bugs. He was hesitant until he saw her face no longer covered by the black, wire like marks it had been before. Her eyes were no longer black and red, but were now normal covered, with purple irises, and she smiled at him. He smiled back, and eager to see his other best friend once more as she should be, he shouted her name.
"Kairi!"
Art by Arc