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“Ah, come on, Phil! I really need this!” Sora hurried after the portly satyr through the curiously empty streets of Thebes. He, Donald, and Goofy had come to Olympus Coliseum in an attempt to regain the fighting ability Sora had lost during his Mark of Mastery exam. He was hoping that Phil and Hercules could help him regain what he had forgotten.
The problem, though, was getting Phil to agree.
“Three words for ya, kid, three words: I don’t teach anymore! Herc was the exception, and only because I had an… understanding with his father.”
Sora tilted his head in contemplation. “Huh. Do you think I could come to a, dot dot dot, understanding, with Herc’s father, too?”
Phil scoffed, and looked back at him. “You’ve got no idea who his father is, do you?”
“Not really,” Sora admitted. “He sounds important, though.”
“Oh, he’s very important. Kid, Herc’s father is Zeus. You know? The big guy on the mountain? The most powerful and important of all the gods of Olympus?”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, ‘Oh’.” Phil turned away from Sora and made to keep walking. “Sure, you could go to his temple, but there’s no guarantee he’ll respond.”
Sora shook his head. “Phil, this is important. People are in danger, not just the people I know, but everyone. And I’m the only one who can help them. And I can’t do that if I can’t fight.”
The old satyr’s face turned down a bit. “Kid, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. You know Herc is the only one I’ve ever trained that’s actually succeeded, right? Everyone else… Well, none of them bit it, at least, but they couldn’t keep up with the others until they moved on and got someone else to teach them. If it’s really this important, you should find a better trainer.”
Sora lifted an eyebrow and gestured at Thebes’ empty streets. “What better trainer? I don’t want a different trainer, Phil, I want you.”
“Uh-huh. Tell that to Achilles, Odysseus, Jason, Perseus, Zack, Theseus, and all the other “yeuseus”. They all had to go find someone better. Herc’s the black sheep, kid, and lightning doesn’t strike twice!”
There was a rumble of thunder in the air and a bolt of lightning shot out of the sky, impacting six feet away from where Phil was standing. Phil’s mouth dropped open, and he turned to look not at the sky, but at a mountain in the distance.
“What, is that a vote of confidence or something?” He pointed at Sora. “Don’t tell me he’s your kid, too!”
A second bolt of lightning lanced down, striking three feet away from Phil. The satyr cocked his head in confusion. “I can’t tell if that’s a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.”
A third bolt hit a foot and a half away from Phil. “All, right, all right. Kid, looks like you do have that understanding with Herc’s dad. C’mon. Let’s get to work before Achilles catches that tortoise.”
“You mean it? Great!” Had it been nightfall, Sora’s grin could have lit the city single-handedly. Phil, on the other hand, sighed and strode back into the Coliseum, wondering what he had gotten himself into.
To Phil’s chagrin, Hercules was equally excited to be training with Sora again. The two threw themselves into the work, Donald and Goofy watching from the sidelines and giving feedback that was mostly helpful. Fortunately for all of them, what Sora was lacking was the conscious memory of how to fight. His muscles remembered quite well how to do what they’d been forced to learn over the past two years, and so progress was rapid. Even Phil had to admit he was impressed, both by Sora’s progress and by his work ethic.
Three days into the training, Sora flopped down outside the Coliseum’s ring, exhausted.
“Hey, don’t tell me you’re quitting on me now! We’ve still got another three rounds, at least!” Hercules grinned at him from the edge of the ring. Somehow, probably due to his god status, Herc wasn’t even winded. Sora groaned. Some things just weren’t fair.
He pulled himself to a standing position and gratefully accepted the water bottle Goofy passed him. Downing it in three gulps, he climbed back onto the ring and readied his stance.
Sparring with Hercules wasn’t the hardest fight he’d ever had – he still had flashbacks to fighting Leon and Cloud at the same time, to say nothing of Sephiroth – but it was a comfortable challenge. Even if he was only now remembering them, he had learned several more versatile ways of fighting since he and Herc had last sparred. Right now, instead of fighting Herc head-on, Sora elected to use the Reversal technique he picked up from Roxas to spin behind him. The frustration on Herc’s face was quite amusing, since whenever he turned to face Sora, Sora would slip behind his back again.
“Okay, if that’s how you want to play it,” Herc said, and started concentrating.
Sora remembered what this was. He was much too close to the hero. “Aw crap!” he muttered, not escaping the blast of the shockwave Herc sent out.
The force of the explosion tossed him out of the ring, sending him skidding across the ground, right to the feet of Donald and Goofy in the stands.
Donald shook his head. “That’s what you get for playing around!” he declared, tone teasing.
Sora jumped to his feet. “Hey, I’ve been doing pretty well for myself!”
Phil waddled over and shook his head. “Nope, the duck’s right. Rule number seventy-seven, kid: Don’t get cocky. Especially when you’re up against someone you’ve fought before. Just cause you beat them once don’t mean they haven’t picked up a few new tricks.” He didn’t add that Herc had gone easy on Sora the last time they fought. The kid didn’t need that sort of discouragement.
Sora let out a sigh, and made to trudge back to the ring, but Phil stopped him. “Hold it. Take a break. Hero or not, you don’t have Herc’s stamina. Rest a bit, then get back to it. That goes for you, too!” he called over to Hercules. “Megara will kill both of us if I let you pass out from dehydration.”
Herc nodded and hopped off of the ring. Sora collapsed gratefully into the stands and accepted another water bottle from Goofy. “I wish I knew how he did that, though,” he muttered to himself. “It’s not like any magic I’ve seen before.”
He sat back after taking a swig, then suddenly sat upright again and fished for the notebook at his side. Donald and Goofy watched in confusion as he turned to a blank page and started scribbling.
“Taking notes this time? I thought you liked leaving that to Jiminy?” Donald asked.
Sora froze. Slowly, he looked up at them, as if it hadn’t occurred to him they were there. “Uh. Yeah,” he said. “If it’s important, though, I gotta write it down, right?”
It was close. It was very close. But the voice was just wrong enough to not be Sora’s. Donald and Goofy shared a concerned glance, then light dawned and Goofy chuckled.
“Oh, you’re not Sora, are ya? You’re Roxas!”
Roxas blanched. “Uh. Yeah. Sorry. It’s nice to meet you?”
“Nice to meet ya, too!” Goofy said with a wide grin. Beside him, Donald was remembering what Sora had told them about his heart’s passengers.
“So. Been spying on us, huh?” he snarked.
Roxas started. “What? No, no, I don’t have a choice in watching, I’m sorry if I…” he trailed off as he realized the duck was joking. “Hey, not funny,” he muttered.
“Aw, he didn’t mean anything by it,” Goofy said. “What were you writing about?”
Roxas considered the words he had put down in the notebook. “I guess I could just ask you two instead of this. Does Sora not know what a Limit Break is?”
“A what?” Donald asked. Goofy shook his head.
“A Limit Break. It’s like… a huge explosion of power? It’s not a Keyblade thing; everyone in the Organization could do it. Xion and me, too. I think the shockwave thing Hercules does is something like that.” His face scrunched up. “It’s hard to describe if you don’t know what one is.”
Goofy shrugged. Donald thought back hard on all the fights the three had powered through. “Sora does have his Ragnarok and Ars Arcanum techniques. Are those Limit Breaks?”
Roxas shook his head. “Technically speaking, sort of? But what I’m talking about is a specific technique. It’s like…” he trailed off, thought for a bit. “It’s like an ultimate power you can only use in an emergency?”
Both Donald and Goofy pondered a bit, then shook their heads in unison.
Roxas’s voice shifted slightly. “It’s a desperation attack. We could only use them when our lives were in direct danger. It’s as if, knowing we’ll die if we don’t do something, we push all our power to its limits. It can be dangerous even to ourselves, and if what Roxas and Sora told me was right, it’s how Axel… died.” The voice quivered a bit on the final word.
“Xion?” Goofy guessed.
She nodded. “Hello.”
“Nice to meet you. Are you okay?” Donald asked.
Xion shrugged. “Yeah. I’m just missing Lea at the moment. I think Roxas is right about the Limit Break thing, though.” She smiled to herself. “He was never good with describing things.”
“Desperation, huh?” Donald said, pondering this, and starting to get annoyed with the Organization all over again.
“Gawrsh. Now how do you feel desperation when you can’t feel feelings?” Goofy asked, sharing a dark look with his friend. Even knowing that Xemnas had already paid for what he’d done to these people, the two couldn’t believe how badly he’d mislead them.
Xion hung her head. “Real or mimicked, I don’t think it made a difference.”
Goofy patted her on the back. She’d come far since she had first woken up in Sora’s body, and didn’t jump at the unexpected contact like she used to.
“Do you think you could teach us how to do a Limit Shake?” Goofy asked.
“Limit Break!” Donald corrected, and Xion laughed.
“I could try,” she said, “but I can’t demonstrate it to you. I can’t fight in Sora’s body. No Keyblade.” A shadow flitted over her face, but neither of them noticed it.
“Well, do your best to teach us, and then we’ll teach it to Sora!” Donald declared.
“Are you sure the two of you can teach him?”
Donald puffed up his chest. “Who’d ya think taught Sora all the magic he knows?”
“Merlin,” Xion said, automatically. “I had Sora’s memories for a year, remember?” She exchanged a smirk with Goofy as Donald grumbled to himself.
“So how do we go about a Limit Break?” Goofy prompted.
“Well, first you have to make sure you have a panel for it installed in your grid.”
“A what in what?”
The Moogle that had set up shop in the Coliseum’s antechamber was quickly becoming the trio’s best friend. It had graciously allowed them to buy hi-potions at half price, once it learned that they were buying in bulk. With Sora and Roxas’s agreement, Xion had begun tutoring Donald and Goofy in the Limit Break technique, which required that they reduce their health to dangerous levels. Initially, Xion had been concerned about asking them to risk themselves, but Donald and Goofy had waved away her fears, demonstrating Donald’s emergency healing magic.
Thus, their days became a routine of Sora and Hercules sparring while Donald and Goofy practiced Limit Breaks, taking breaks every so often so that Xion could measure their progress. It was much easier than they thought it would be, and it didn’t take long for them to pick it up. Roxas claimed this was nothing unusual; he had picked it up in a single training session during his first week of service in the Organization.
Sora found the whole thing somewhat amusing, since he had never conversed face to face with Xion before, but was still able to intuit what she had told Donald and Goofy from their broken remembrance of her instructions. He was looking forwards to comparing notes with her when she, Roxas, and Naminé finally got their bodies back.
Phil and Hercules took the additions to the training regimen in stride, after Sora gave a brief explanation of why he sometimes acted like a completely different person. Phil racked his brains, trying to figure out where he had heard the name “Roxas” before, but it wasn’t coming to him. Roxas didn’t have the heart to explain to the old satyr that he had trained him for a time.
There was a lot on Roxas’s mind, actually.
“Training is something that Sora needs to do for himself, and I get that. And Xion’s right, I’m not good at teaching, so I can’t really help the two of you with Limit Breaks,” he confided in Donald. The duck saw a lot of himself in the former Nobody; mostly the anger management issues, but Donald had also struggled with feeling useless in the past. “There’s just… nothing for me to do.”
Donald nodded sagely. “And it feels horrible sitting on your hands, especially with the approaching threat.”
“Exactly! I just… I don’t know. Back in the Organization I could do basically whatever I wanted as long as I completed the day’s mission, but I had no idea what was going on and no one would tell me. Now, I know exactly what’s going on, but I can’t… Ugh!” He slammed his fist against the stone seat, cutting open his knuckles.
Donald waved a hand over the cut and his Cure closed the wound. “It’s not going to be forever, you know. Sora and Lea will find a way.”
“Not until after Xehanort’s gone,” Roxas muttered, subdued. “We’re not as important.” He caught the look in Donald’s eyes and sighed. “Okay, maybe that’s unfair. But it means I’m sitting on the sidelines for the entire thing. And if anything happens to Axel… I have to watch. Again.”
“Why would we wait until after defeating Xehanort?” Donald asked. “The more people available to fight him, the better.”
Roxas blinked. “But it’s supposed to be seven lights versus thirteen darknesses..?”
Donald scoffed. “Why in the world would we agree to be outnumbered on purpose? Goofy and I aren’t counted as these ‘seven lights’, but if you think we’re not going to help you’ve got another thing coming!”
“…Oh,” Roxas said. It did make sense. The clash of seven and thirteen was necessary to forge the true χ–blade, but that wasn’t what their side was trying to accomplish. Why limit themselves by playing right into Xehanort’s hands?
“Don’t worry. Even if you don’t want to or can’t fight, it only makes sense to bring you three back at the same time we put Ventus’s heart back in his body.” Donald gave a comforting smile. “We’re not going to leave you behind.”
Roxas contemplated this. “…Thanks,” he finally said, a smile finally reaching his lips.
“…and I just worry, that all this is temporary. He has some sort of special connection with her, and I’m terrified I’m just some sort of replacement while they can’t be together. But that’s horrible to think about both of them, because they’re not like that, but I can’t…” The voice trailed off, scared of the other person’s response.
“Well, gawrsh! If you love him that much, it’ll work out, Xion!” Goofy declared. He was sitting with the girl in Sora’s body on a ledge overlooking the Coliseum. It was the middle of the night, and she hadn’t been able to sleep.
“I appreciate it, but that’s easy for you to say. You aren’t…” she trailed off. There were several things that she was that he wasn’t, Goofy knew, but she didn’t need to specify.
“I know. The circumstances’re different. But worrying about things like this is normal, ‘specially when you’re young and your relationship is young. Now, I’m not saying ignoring your fears is the right thing to do, ‘cause it’s not. But you do need to confront how you’re feeling.”
“How do I do that?” Xion asked.
“Ya talk to Roxas about it, of course!” Goofy said with a smile.
Xion blanched. “No, no, I can’t, if I do that he’ll…”
“He’ll what?”
“…I don’t know. I’m scared that he’ll be mad at me, or be hurt, or decide I’m not worth the trouble.”
Goofy wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Gawrsh, there’s no way to know how he’ll react until you try. But if you don’t, your fears’ll never get resolved. And here’s the most important part. The two of you are partners in this. It’s not him versus you. It’s the two of you together versus the problem. And I can tell the two of ya make a great team!”
Xion sighed, and leaned back against him. “Thank you. But I’m still afraid.”
“That’s okay,” Goofy assured her. “Ya can’t be brave unless you’re afraid first.”
“..ora! Sora!”
Sora blearily blinked his eyes. The last thing he remembered was taking a break from sparring with Herc and watching Donald and Goofy practicing that Limit Break thingy of Roxas and Xion’s, then his Wayfinder glowing, then…
“Uh. Why am I lying on the ground?” he asked.
“Ya fell over!” Goofy said, helping pull him back to his feet.
“You grabbed your Wayfinder, then said the name ‘Aqua’,” Donald explained, tapping the bottom of his beak.
Sora gasped, and pressed a hand to his chest. “Ventus? Was that you?”
There was no response, but Sora knew.
“They found her,” he whispered.
“Huh?”
“Riku and the King. They found Master Aqua,” Sora declared.
“How do you know?” Donald asked.
“I don’t. But I think…” Sora pressed a hand over his heart again. “I think Ventus does, somehow.”
He looked over to Phil and Hercules, who were watching anxiously from the sidelines. “Phil, Herc, thank you so much for what you’ve done for us, but we need to get going. Things are moving and we need to keep on top of them.”
“Are you sure?” Phil asked. “I mean you come in here begging for help and then after a week you just up and leave?”
Sora sighed apologetically. “I know, I’m really sorry, Phil, but there’s this prophecy and–”
Phil’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Kid, you didn’t say nothing about a prophecy! Rule number 2020! Never mess around with oracles! And if you absolutely have to, for gods’ sakes listen to what they tell you!” He waddled over to the Coliseum entrance, waving for Sora, Donald, and Goofy to get going. “Now go on, scram! And… if you need help again, you know where to ask.”
Sora beamed. “Thanks, Phil, and you too, Herc. For everything. We’ll come back and visit when this is all over.”
“We’ll hold you to that,” Hercules said, matching his smile. “Good luck, Sora. I know you can do this.”
The two shook hands, and the trio hurried to where they had parked their gummi ship. Herc and Phil watched them go.
“…Say, Phil?” Hercules asked.
“What?”
“Did the name ‘Aqua’ sound familiar to you?”
Phil stroked his goatee. “…wasn’t that the name of the girl that Zack kid was sweet on before he left?”
“Oh yeah. Huh. Odd coincidence.”