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Walking down the long staircase to the dock, Setzer felt a rush of emotions that he tried not to show too much: eagerness to get back flying again, concern and hope for his friends out there somewhere, nostalgia and sadness on thinking of Darryl. But then, she wouldn’t want him to remain grounded, nor for her masterpiece to remain underground. There was some guilt too, since Edgar had been bugging him this whole time to not give up hope and help him find some way to get to another landmass. It just took Celes showing up out of the blue to convince him to give up that drunken stupor and get back to doing things. Now that he was close, he was feeling a lot better, more hopeful.
“Here we are,” Setzer said as they made the last turn and saw the magnificent airship ahead of them. “That’s the Falcon, designed to break past the Storm Wall and find out what’s beyond our little oasis in the stars.”
“Can it still do that?” Celes asked.
He shrugged, but this time it made him laugh. “Who knows? Sometimes I studied the ship logs trying to see what went wrong. Might not need it, but I should get down to serious study sometime to finally solve that mystery. But we should find the others and deal with Kefka before that.”
Edgar lightly punched his shoulder, a grin on his face. “You know, if you’d just share the secrets of your airship technology with me, we could figure that out faster.”
“But the mystique of it all is so important!” Setzer said dramatically. He could hear Celes trying to muffle her own amusement behind them. “Although, I might share my secrets if you share your secrets on how the hell your castle shuffles between deserts and why Figaro hasn’t tried to take over the world before the Empire did. You could have easily done so.”
“With some improvements perhaps,” Edgar said. “But conquest wasn’t our goal. That’s one reason why. And now it’s your turn.”
Setzer groaned, but honestly, he should let Edgar in on the mechanics of airships. The combination of himself and Darryl hadn’t managed to break the Storm Wall that surrounded their world, and that combination of guts and intellect was formidable. If they had known the king of Figaro had been as mechanically inclined as he was, perhaps the three of them might’ve solved it before. He did let Edgar help him with a quick inspection of the airship, since he knew enough about regular ships to be helpful. Celes could only watch them at this point, but she had been the one to push them on to doing this. And when it came to fighting monsters, neither of them could hold a candle to her (at least not easily).
Once the inspection was cleared, Setzer took the cockpit area to start up the engines and lift the dock out of the bay. The Falcon was quick to warm up, eager to fly once the dock opened up. Things were back to normal. At least, until they rose back above waters. “What’s up with the sea?” Edgar asked, looking over the edge.
“That’s what I was telling you about,” Celes said, gesturing off to the north. “If there had been working ships, you would’ve noticed sooner.”
“It seemed whole from a distance,” Edgar said, thinking over it.
“Then the sea is abruptly coming to an end?” Setzer asked, staying at the cockpit. It was something that Celes had told them. She had escaped from an island on a raft and had to navigate a narrow path of water that faded off into space. “What about the other continents?”
“Get higher so we can find them,” Edgar said.
While he did that, Setzer also brought up a scanner to get a read on the space that surrounded them. It came back with a bizarre reading: there was almost nothing around except the Kohlington continent. A few islands were out in the ocean, but then the ocean ended. Of course, it always had ended as the world was square (actually rectangular-ish, but the saying was always square). But this wasn’t a neat divide between sea and sky. The waves lapped out into space as if trying to regain old bounds. There were some other abnormal things in the scan too.
“I don’t see anything,” Edgar said, worried.
“Wait, over there,” Celes said, pointing out the southeast. “Is that the Flying Continent?”
“Could be.”
“That’s what it looks like from here,” Setzer said, focusing the scan on one area. “The atmosphere is unstable around there. Actually, look back to the north again, there’s something odd there.”
“There’s the island I ended up on,” Celes said, checking back that way.
“Yes, but what’s that in the distant sky?” Edgar asked. “It’s like one of those streams you mentioned before, but larger than the ones we used before.”
Setzer nodded. “Right, it’s a massive stream, but what’s around it?”
It took a few moments for Celes to reply, “Nothing but sky, but then…”
“That should be where the Storm Wall is,” Setzer said. “Right by the entrance to the stream, but there’s nothing now. The Storm Wall appears to be completely gone now.”
“That’s more than just odd,” Edgar said, coming over to see the scans for himself. “That was what used to keep explorers from going beyond our world.”
Giving a dramatic sigh, Setzer said, “Great, this is just great. I finally got back the will to fly, but the main obstacle is completely gone.”
“But so are the other landmasses,” Celes said, following over. “And our friends.”
“Wait a moment,” Edgar said, stopping by the cockpit screens and putting a hand to his chin. “You said before that the streams always connected one part of our world to another. So if Kefka blasted our world apart and broke the Storm Wall, then that stream could lead us to a missing part of our world.”
“Really?” Celes asked, more hopeful again.
“It’s a sound bet,” Setzer said, smiling to reassure her.
Edger was still working out more in his mind. “It matches up with other legends about why our world is what it is. There used to be a greater Original World that got shattered in an ancient war. Due to the influence of the Warring Goddesses, a collection of small continents gathered together into an archipelago in the stars. That became our world. Sometimes the continents would drift away, but the power of the Goddesses could be invoked to return the missing continents back to our area. The Storm Wall is rumored to have been a method to keep the continents from drifting apart. If we could figure out the methods, we should be able to restore our archipelago back to how it was.”
“That would be great, but how would we do that?” Setzer asked. “I’m sure that with the streams, we can get out to the missing continents. But I ain’t got a clue as to how to bring those lost lands back home.”
“There might be something back in Figaro Castle,” Edgar said. “Although the safer bets would be to find Thamalsa or Strago, or a living esper that knows how.”
“Then there’s no reason to not head on through the stream and see what’s out there,” Setzer said, grinning at the thought. He wasn’t going to pass through the Storm Wall, unfortunately. But they would be going into unexplored space.
“What about the Heartless?” Celes asked. “I know you said there’s some people in Kohlington now who can use magic and fight them. But we don’t know what kinds of monsters are going to be past the Storm Wall.”
“Is that really a problem, with us around?” Edgar said, smiling at her. “Besides, when it comes to the Heartless, your magic is far better than ours. They don’t stand a chance against you.”
“I mean we should be cautious, even if we do have magic to deal with them,” she said. “There could be stronger ones out there. But you’re right, we should search out the other continents and find a way to bring them back. We’ll just need to be careful about Kefka blasting the world apart again, at least until we have the means to defeat him.”
“We’ll be fine,” Setzer said. “Then if there’s no other objections, let’s take off!”
There was no telling what was out there, but Setzer was eager to discover it.
One of the troubles with training in a place where time did not move was that when they were done with it, almost no time had passed outside that place. Riku would still be off with Mickey to find Aqua, while Sora would be off somewhere with Donald and Goofy in trying to find his power of waking again. “Could we go off on some adventure on our own?” Kairi asked, hoping for it.
“Eager to get out there, huh?” Axel asked, smiling briefly. “Not that I blame you. I mean, this place is beautiful, but it gets boring after so long.”
“Right, I’d love to see some new places,” Kairi said. Her friends had told her about so many interesting worlds, but she’d been told to stay home, or in some safe place to wait. But she had her own keyblade now; she was tired of being told to stay out of things.
“It would be nice to expand your horizons,” Merlin said, pausing in the magic he was setting up. “But then, I’m not sure what Yen Sid would think of it. You both are the least experienced of the Guardians of Light we plan to have, at least as keyblade wielders, so we wouldn’t want you to get into too much trouble.”
“But Sora and Riku both trained by traveling from world to world,” Kairi said. “Maybe we spent as much time as they did, but it’s just been in this safe forest. We might not be as good as them because of that, especially me.”
Axel patted her shoulder. “Don’t sell yourself short, you’ve been working hard. Although, you do have a point there. You can train all you like in controlled settings, but it’s no guarantee that you’ll be good in a real fight.”
“If there’s time, I don’t mind supporting that kind of argument with Yen Sid,” Merlin said, pointing out a few directions with his wand. “All right, I’m ready. Let’s head back to the tower.” He swept his wand in a grand gesture, surrounding them with magical winds.
When the winds settled down, there was no tower in sight. Nor any forest around them, although there seemed to be one in the distance. There was a town nearby, full of cobblestone roads and brick buildings. “Where are we?” Kairi asked.
“Doesn’t look like any place I know,” Axel said, looking around.
“Oh goodness, I’m not sure what happened,” Merlin said, stroking his beard. “Perhaps a miscalculation? But his tower should still be in the same location; I can’t imagine he’d move at this time without informing us.”
“It is strange,” she said, although she was hopeful that they could stick around for a bit. They’d have to be careful because of the World Order, of course, but it was a new place…
After some more thought, Merlin said, “Well, I’m going to stick here for a bit to see if I can examine the magic of the area and figure out what went wrong. Would you two go into that town and find out its name? We don’t want to interfere too much, but knowing the name of this place will help get us back on track.”
“Sure, that shouldn’t be hard,” Kairi said.
“If we got here by mistake, this place might have more connections to other worlds than usual,” Axel said. “At least such places are easier to get into. Well, let’s go see what’s up.”
It didn’t take long for them to get the name of the town: Tzen. Much of it was built on a raised stone wall, with an open plaza in the center of it. From the armor and weapons that a few soldiers wore, Kairi wondered if this was some kind of fort. There had been no gate keeping them from entering, although there were holes and slots in the walls that could act as chokepoints. It was unlike the peaceful places of Destiny Islands and the forest.
“I wonder if they’ve had a war recently,” Axel said. “They’re not too concerned about us outsiders strolling in, but this apparent technology level…” a tremendous crash interrupted him, followed by screams from the other side of town. “Hey…”
“Let’s go check it out,” Kairi said, heading down another set of stairs to sprint across the plaza. Axel followed after her.
Past a group of shocked civilians, she spotted dust coming from what seemed like the largest house in town. There was a large muscular man who was somehow bracing up a crumbling pillar all by himself. “There’s still a kid in here,” he called, “one of you go get him!”
For some reason, none of the residents were moving to go in. “We’ll go, right?” Kairi said.
“Right, let’s get the kid,” Axel said, going over and knocking aside the partly open door.
There were cracks all through the walls, with dust and dirt all over the floors. From that and a general feeling of emptiness, it seemed like this place hadn’t been lived in for a while. There were also giant grey scorpions scuttling around, ones that quickly scurried to attack. Kairi deflected the tail strike of one of them, but her return attack made a heavy clonk. “Huh, these aren’t Heartless?”
“Guess not,” Axel said, then sent away his keyblade in order to call out his fiery chakrams. “Leave them to me and keep an eye out for that kid.”
“Got it,” she said, feeling disappointed. But then, she had no training for weapons outside of the keyblade. Axel cut down the scorpion monsters quickly, so she could only check on another room. “Not there, but there’s more monsters and some stairs.”
“Let’s check on the rest of this floor,” he said, hurrying on to the next door. Kairi had to rush over to keep up with him. There were more of the monsters around, including a few that seemed to be digging at the walls. But the child didn’t seem to be around.
Down the in basement, though, they found some Heartless mixed in with the monsters. Axel could damage the Heartless with his chakrams but couldn’t destroy them while not using his keyblade. Kairi had to defeat them instead while avoiding the monsters he was taking out. “What is going on with this world?” she asked when they had another room cleared.
“It’s not the only world like this,” Axel said, trying to open another door. He had to kick it in to get past. “They are uncommon, especially for having both monsters and Heartless.”
On clearing the next room, the missing child finally crawled out of a fireplace. “Th-thanks, um,” he said, frightened and seeming unsure of Axel.
“There you are,” Kairi said, approaching him and smiling to encourage him. “Come on, this place isn’t safe.”
“Okay,” the boy said, taking her hand to run alongside her. Axel went ahead of them to make sure their way was clear.
Once they were clear of the house, the man who’d been holding it up ran back towards the stairs with them. It held together for a few seconds, then collapsed. “Hoo boy, that was a close one,” the man said. “Thanks for getting him out; your friends are safe ahead, kid.”
“Thanks, Mr. Sabin, and you two too,” the boy said, letting go to hurry back to his friends and mother.
“We’re glad to help,” Kairi said, relieved that it worked. “I’m Kairi, and this is Axel. We’re travelers.”
“Me too, at least I used to be,” he said with a friendly smile. “Nice to meet you; like he said, I’m Sabin. How’d you come in?”
“Well, it was kind of a mistake,” Kairi said, not sure how much more to explain.
“Right, a spell from our companion who’s still outside of town,” Axel said. “We just came by to see where we ended up.”
“Magic, huh?” Sabin shrugged. “I can use magic thanks to the espers, but don’t really understand it. Then you guys can fight those creepy Heartless, right?”
“Right, we have special weapons for them,” Kairi said, calling out her keyblade to show him. “Then can you defeat them with magic?”
He looked curiously at her keyblade. “Sure, you can barely touch them with standard weapons. But then most people can only use magic by magicite and the espers. That’s a weird looking, err, giant key you’ve got there.”
“It’s a keyblade,” she said.
“And that really defeats the Heartless?” Sabin asked.
She nodded. “Yes, but it didn’t do much to the other monsters in there. I’ve been training to use it, so I guess it’s a kind of magic.”
“Well that’s handy for travelers,” he said. “I’ve been letting people here and in Miranda borrow the magicite I have so they can learn magic to protect their towns. I was hoping to head on soon to find my friends, although I hear there aren’t any ships sailing. Mind if I talk to your friend about if there’s some way for me to get around by magic?”
“That could be difficult,” Axel said. “But we’ll try asking him.”
“Sure, just give me a minute,” Sabin said, then headed down the stairs. “Hey, you guys!”
“Oh, yes Master Sabin?” a young man in the crowd asked. He and a few others there seemed nervous.
Sighing, he went over to them. “I’ve told you all before, you don’t have to call me master. Now why didn’t you come search the house too? I couldn’t do it myself since I was keeping it from collapsing.”
“Well it was dangerous, and there’s been monsters inside lately,” he answered, looking away.
Sabin went over and seemed to knock the guy lightly on the shoulder; it still made him stumble back. “Yeah, and that’s why we shouldn’t have let those kids into the house in the first place! But since they snuck in there, you should’ve been quick to heed the call to go searching for them. You all are helping to protect the town now, remember? The kids could’ve all died, or at least gotten badly injured.”
“S-sorry Master Sabin,” he said, along with the others. Despite being told otherwise, it seemed like they respected his skills. “It was unexpected…”
“We’ll do better in the future, promise,” another one said.
“You’d better because I’m going to move on when I get the chance,” Sabin said, giving them a hard look. “Keep training yourselves, and work on ridding yourselves of this cowardice and sloppiness.”
“Yes sir.” The group bowed to him, then headed out.
Back outside Tzen, they found Merlin with a floating scroll and an abacus, working out his calculations manually. He did pause to listen to them explain things and was surprised to hear that this world had both Heartless and monsters. On being asked about going somewhere by magic, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, but the spells I use for that require a wizard’s education. I am curious about your methods of teaching magic through crystals.”
“They’re magicite,” Sabin said, bringing out a small blue crystal. “I’m not the best at explaining how it works, but this here is the power of an esper named Shiva turned into a crystal, after she perished. But you can summon her spirit back with this. While you hold onto it, you can use ice magic, and eventually learn it well enough to not need the magicite for magic.”
Merlin tapped the magicite with his wand, briefly making the figure of a wintery woman appear in the air. “I see, this functions as a summon stone and the link allows one to borrow the esper’s power. Perhaps it is the esper itself that allows for learning magic with these magicite. After all, learning by doing is a practical means of beginning a magical education, but the doing is often an obstacle itself.”
“Right, I wouldn’t be able to use magic without ‘em,” Sabin said, putting the magicite away.
“Whoa, what’s that coming down?” Axel asked, watching something in the skies.
Kairi and the other two looked up immediately and soon saw it too. There appeared to be a wooden ship coming down near them, one with sails that spread horizontally as well as vertically. “Is that a gummi ship?” she asked, unsure of it. While it was coming down from the sky, it wasn’t brightly colored like gummies and was far larger than any other gummi ship she’d seen.
“That’s an airship,” Sabin said. “Huh, I wonder if Setzer got his fixed. Last I knew, it had been sliced in two.”
Before it could land, a large black monster flew out of the sky and flung a mass of black feathers at the airship. It managed to avoid most of them, leading the feathers to strike the ground and form various Heartless with each. Without discussing it, Merlin cast a protective magic over the four of them while she, Axel, and Sabin hurried ahead to fight back. Axel had swapped back over to his keyblade, soon leaving a wake of fire around him while attacking. When she had a moment to notice, Kairi saw that Sabin was fighting with his fists rather than magic despite them being against Heartless. But he didn’t seem to be having any trouble.
Unlike her. She ended up taking more damage than she should, from Heartless sneaking up on her and from some of the large bird Heartless’ attacks from overhead. If she was going to fight with the others, Kairi knew that she would have to get much better. But she had trained for about a year now, relatively. Maybe going on her own adventure would help with that, if she could convince Master Yen Sid of it. Or maybe if they could convince Merlin out of going back right away. Probably not, since she’d hoped for that before.
Despite the bird Heartless, the airship landed nearby. A woman and two men came running off to join in. “Hey Sabin, sorry about bringing along some annoyances,” one of the men called.
“No problem, glad to see you guys again,” Sabin called. “Let’s trounce this group before they get into town.”
The three others all stuck to using spells against the Heartless, just like Merlin. Perhaps like him, they didn’t have special weapons to use. They were all really good too, especially the woman. Kairi got a moment to see her raise her sword right as the bird Heartless tried to summon more Heartless with its scattered feathers. However, all the feathers got absorbed right into the woman’s sword. She then cast a Thundara to strike back against the Heartless that remained.
Not long after that, the bird Heartless and its flock were defeated. “Man, it’s great to see you again, Sabin,” one of the men said, coming over to shake his hand.
Sabin laughed at that and clapped his arm. “Heh, did you think a little something like the end of the world was gonna destroy me? You guys seemed to have done a good job fixing the Blackjack here up.”
“This isn’t the Blackjack,” the other man said, looking back at the airship. “That’s the Falcon. We’ve come out looking for everybody, and a way to reunite the archipelago. So who’re your friends here?”
“I just met them, but they’re good fighters,” Sabin said. “The girl’s Kairi, and the fire-head is Axel, and that’s Merlin. And, this here is my brother Edgar, the king of Figaro, along with the Imperial General Celes and the crazy gambler Setzer.”
“Is crazy gambler the only way you can think of to describe me?” Setzer asked, teasing him more than being offended.
“It’s fitting,” Celes said. “Good to meet you all.”
“The same to you,” Kairi said to her. “You were really amazing there, Celes! How did you do that magic absorbing there?”
She seemed surprised. “Oh, you mean Runic Sword? It’s a difficult skill to learn, since one needs to be skilled in magic and swordsmanship to even try. Although, you have a strange weapon. Is it magical in nature?”
“That’s one way to describe a keyblade,” Merlin said.
“Then maybe you could learn Runic, if we had some time to try,” Celes said, looking thoughtful. “What are you doing now?”
“Oh, um, Axel and I just got done with our keyblade training,” Kairi said. “We’re supposed to be helping some friends of ours later on, but it could take a while for them to get their tasks done. What are you doing?”
“We’re searching for our friends,” Celes explained. “We got separated a year ago, because of a madman named Kefka. It’s a long story, but our world is supposed to be an archipelago among the stars, imprisoned by a celestial storm and kept together by a triad of goddesses on a central island. Kefka caused the lands to be scattered and the Storm Wall to be eliminated, so we believe. Because of that, our friends are all on different lands. We were around Kohlington. Is there anyone else around here, Sabin?”
He shook his head. “No, not unless they’re in the imperial capitol, and I doubt that. I’ve been trying to help Miranda and Tzen be able to defend themselves against the Heartless. Around here at least, they’ve been far more numerous since Kefka’s attack.”
“It was the same way around Kohlington,” Setzer said.
“My word, so your world was less of a world and more of a collection of lands among the stars?” Merlin asked, curious about this.
“Right,” Setzer said, then pointed back to the airship. “You could get around on normal ships but these airships were the quickest way to get around. There’s far fewer of them, and this might be the only one left. Since we found this continent, though, I’m sure that the other streams from our area will lead us to other missing parts of the world.”
“There used to be an original world in ancient days that was far bigger than ours,” Edgar said. “But that got destroyed in another war. We’re hoping that we can bring the continents back together to reform our piece of the world, once we find them all and the means to do so.”
“Sounds crazy, but if it can be done, we should do it,” Sabin said.
“I haven’t heard of a world that’s an astral archipelago before,” Merlin said. “Very interesting. So it was held together by goddesses?”
“According to legend,” Edgar said. “But Kefka has control of them now, so we’re going to have to confront him sooner or later. We also need to find out how to do it all, but it seems possible.”
“Oh, could we come along to help you search?” Kairi asked, hopeful it would be accepted.
“They would help, since they can do more against the Heartless,” Sabin said. “Trying to fight them solely by magic is exhausting.”
Celes nodded. “True, that would be of help. But you needed to help your friends too, right? Once they were done with their tasks.”
“Right,” Kairi said.
Axel rubbed his head. “It might be a while. And we could use some practical experience too. I mean, I’ve fought a lot, but the keyblade’s new. She’s new at fighting, though, and you guys seem like you could teach us some things too.”
“Yes, that would be great,” Kairi agreed.
“Well I was to keep you both safe until the time came,” Merlin said, thinking it over.
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” Axel said. “At least, we should be able to keep out of the Organization’s notice helping them out. I doubt they’ve heard about their world, so they might not see this area as important.”
“Our world has been closed off from the rest of space,” Setzer said. “That sounds solid to me. With the Heartless being more numerous, it wouldn’t hurt to bring a couple of specialists along.”
Edgar looked over them, then nodded. “True. By the time you two might need to fulfill your obligations, we should be able to find more of our friends to help fix up our world.”
Merlin smiled at that. “Well then, would you mind taking these two along to further their training? I’ll need to go speak with some others about this, but I’ll leave means for me to find them when they’re needed elsewhere.”
“Sounds good to me, we’d be glad to,” Celes said.
“All right, this is going to be great!” Kairi said, excited for her own adventure. If she could learn Runic Sword from Celes, that could help her be a better Guardian of Light when the time came to confront Xehanort.
“Well it looks like the time has come,” Setzer said, turning to him as they got back on the airship.
“And what time is that?” Edgar asked. The Falcon had taken damage in getting chased by the giant bird Heartless. While the others were practicing with each other to exchange skills, Setzer had asked him to come help with repairing their ship.
“Oh, several things, actually,” he said. “One is breaking out something that Darryl and I really didn’t want to use, but mostly it’s to introduce you to the secrets of air travel.”
“For the first, do you mean adding weapons to your airship?” he asked as the first thing that came to mind.
“Now how do you figure that?” Setzer asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You don’t have any weapons on this ship,” Edgar said. “But adding cannons and such to sea ships has been done for centuries. Given how you are, I would guess that you haven’t done so yet because you didn’t wish to have your airships conscripted into war machines. If the empire could have had aerial war machines as big as the Falcon or Blackjack, I’m sure they would have done it.”
“Geez, am I so easy to read?” he asked. “That’s a pity; I’ll have to work on it. But you’re right, we wanted to enjoy flight for the sake of flight. We’ve always had the means to put weapons on the airships. In fact, we have some special weapons that could only fit on these airships. Come on, let’s get to the engine room; it’s where the stockpile is.”
Edgar had been down in the engine room of the Blackjack several times, examining the machinery as much as he could while it was running. This time, Setzer twisted one of the wall decorations around, revealing a hidden storage area. It had extra tools and supplies, but also contained many brightly colored blocks. Setzer took one of the green blocks and tossed it over to him. When Edgar took it, it was firm and yet jiggled in his hand. “What is this?”
“It’s a gummi block,” Setzer said, taking a large book off another shelf. “That’s the secret of how our airships work, along with this manual. See, both the Falcon and Blackjack are blended technologies. This manual describes how to build a ship for space travel by using the gummi blocks, specifically going beyond a world’s atmosphere and using the streams.”
Holding it up and making it jiggle again, Edgar asked, “This thing lets you travel the stars? It looks like candy.”
“Maybe, but it’s not edible,” he said. “And tastes horrible according to the few who’ve tried. When you use it with the right magic, it will transform into various ship parts. They stick to each other firmly and won’t let go without the right disassembly magic. And the bad taste made it easy for us to pick up as many as we could for cheap.”
“But where did they come from? If they allowed for space and air travel, one would think airships would have appeared sooner.”
Setzer rubbed his chin. “It was about ten years ago, I believe, when there was a massive meteor shower where Darryl and I lived in. The gummies fell from the skies. This book may have too, since she stumbled across it when we went investigating the strange materials. Following this book’s instructions, we put together a ship made entirely of gummies. However, gummi ships are limited in size. But more than that, ships made entirely of gummies tend to be tacky looking even once you figure out how to change their colors.”
“I imagine so,” Edgar said, taking an orange gummi block off the shelf to look at. But it was difficult to tell what it really was in this block form.
After tapping his forehead, Setzer tapped the blocks. “That orange one is a wing part, and the blue one I gave you is a small engine. As exciting as it was to have a flying machine, we weren’t satisfied with the look of the gummi blocks. But with lots of experimentation, we figured out how to put ground up gummi blocks into a wood stainer, which allowed us to attack gummi parts onto wooden surfaces. Doing so had the fortunate side effect of getting the gummies to blend into the wood alongside our goal of making a larger vessel. That is what allowed us to make the beautiful ships we have now.”
“Interesting, I’d like to read up on that,” Edgar said, putting the two blocks back with their respective colors. “It’s strangely convenient, though, that a material for traveling the stars would just fall from the sky alongside falling stars.”
He passed over the manual. “That doesn’t give any indication of how the gummies came about and who figured out everything about them. This has our notes in it too. I need to check on the gummies that are on the ship now, as well as finally install these ones.” He brought out a ring of keys to unlock a drawer at the bottom. “These are the weapon gummies; I’ve played around with them, but this’ll be the first time they get put to earnest use. If there’s Heartless roaming the stars, then we can’t take chances.”
“Certainly not,” Edgar said, putting the manual away for now. “What repairs do you want me to work on while you do the gummi work?”
“Check the body and make any repairs to the wood structures, if you don’t mind,” Setzer said, already sorting through the weapon gummies.
“Got it.”
Even though she’d been acknowledged as a general, Celes still found it odd when people wanted to learn from her. It was no different with Kairi. She was only a few years younger than her too. Still, she seemed like a spirited girl and wanted to help out her own friends. Celes could remember some similar girls from a long time ago, ones who had given up on that adventurous spirit in order to become domestic wives and mothers. She hadn’t seen those friends in a long time, but the thought of them made her want to encourage Kairi to keep her adventurous spirit. While it was a tough life with many dangers, there was no reason to give it up to meet the expectations of others.
“Here, hold onto my sword with me,” Celes said. Setzer and Edgar had to make repairs to the ship, so they had some time to start training. “This was how I learned this particular skill.”
“Okay,” Kairi said, dismissing her keyblade in order to take her hand and sword.
She had to hold her weapon lower than normal for this, but it would still work. “You already know how to cast magic, so I want you to recall how it feels to cast magic out of yourself. Your mana comes from your heart and that’s what creates magic. For Runic Sword, we need to reverse that process. We’re going to create a pull on magic so that any spell gets drawn to this sword and broken down so its mana comes to us.”
Nodding, she closed her eyes and tried to do as instructed. It wasn’t easy to reverse something like this. But Kairi was grasping it far better than anyone else Celes had tried to teach Runic Sword to. Had she been injected with magic too? Or perhaps in other worlds, magic could be a more common skill to know.
“Just as a warning, this will draw any of your allies’ spells as well as your opponents,” Celes said. “But get the timing down and it could save your lives against an enemy skilled in magic. All right, here we go.” She cast Runic through the sword, then released a Thunder spell. It got drawn right to the sword with its energy split between them.
Kairi twitched in getting hit with the Thunder energy. “Ow.”
“Sorry, that could happen a few more times until you get the skill down,” she said, checking her over. It didn’t seem to be much damage. “Did you feel the Runic working?”
“Yes, it was weird,” she said. “But I guess that’s to be expected when you’re trying to reverse magic. I can still tell how you’re doing it.”
Smiling at her, she said, “That’s great, you must be a natural with learning magic. I’ll demonstrate a few more times until you’re properly absorbing the mana, then we’ll see if you can cast it with your keyblade. I’ve got some potions if you need them and we should be able to rest a while on the ship when we move on.”
“Sure, I’ll be fine,” Kairi said. After a few more attempts, she was able to cast Runic Blade with her keyblade.
“Excellent,” Celes said, feeling proud of her. Kairi laughed and beamed at her praise. Teaching wasn’t so bad, although maybe having a good student helped. “Well then, I don’t know how your keyblade works, but it looks enough like a sword that I can show you some tips on swordsmanship for a woman. That could help your skills as well.”
Hopefully Kairi could come with them for a while, since this was fun.
Celes went off with Kairi to teach her and Edgar had gone off with Setzer to help him with the ship repairs. Then what now? Sabin felt like his parting words to his students in Tzen were enough for now. He’d only been helping then with magic, after all, not martial arts. Once the odd character Merlin disappeared in a poof of pink clouds, it left him with the beanpole in a long black coat. He reminded Sabin a bit of Shadow, except Axel’s urchin-styled bright red hair wasn’t going to help him hide at all. “You look goofy in that getup,” Sabin said to him.
“What, you don’t think it’s cool?” Axel asked, albeit with a mischievous twinkle to his eyes. Then maybe not Shadow as much as Edgar. “You look like you barreled out of some gym without bothering to change.”
“Yeah, well I don’t clean up for anybody,” Sabin said. “Just take a dunk in the river or rain if I need it.”
He smirked at that. “While I can admire the sentiment, I just wouldn’t stand near you on knowing that.” Sabin laughed at him. “Although given that the others have gone about their ways for the moment, I have to ask you: how do you defeat the Shadows with your bare fists? I always heard you had to have a keyblade to properly destroy them, though magic seems to work in a pinch.”
“Cause my fists are magical,” Sabin said, poising like he was ready to strike.
“Yeeaah, no really, how?”
“Well they’re like magic or something,” he said, easing up. “From what I get of it, magic comes from the mind or heart, or both, something like that. I’ve spent years in desolate mountains with my master and another apprentice, honing my spirit and body to unite in martial arts. The heart unites both! Or so my master would say. After all that training, my fists draw on the strength of my body and spirit to surpass where normal human limitations draw the line.”
Axel looked at him seriously during that answer. “Huh, so your fighting style also draws upon the power of your heart without needing a keyblade.”
“Yeah, I think so,” Sabin said. “I’ve still got a ways to go to truly match my master, but I gave up on the ascetic training in order to help out my brother and our friends. There were more important things at stake; still are, if Kefka’s still around.”
“You’re doing pretty good,” he said. “I would’ve liked to know that was possible before, because the keyblade isn’t my preferred weapon.”
“What would you rather use?”
“These.” He held a hand up and gripped nothing, causing two giant chakrams to appear. After a moment, the blades and spikes erupted into fire.
“Yeah, those look better with you,” Sabin said. “Hey, but, that keyblade is some kind of manifestation of your heart, if I caught it from that wizard right?”
“Something like that,” Axel said.
Then perhaps… “Well if you’ve got the training to weaponize your heart, can’t you use the keyblade as more of a tool than a weapon? Like use your spirit to transfer the qualities of the keyblade to those chakrams.”
“Really?” Axel asked, looking at one in thought. “That would be a handy skill to know, if I could pull it off.”
“It might be easier than the training I took, if the keyblade can work that way,” Sabin said. “But you still have to focus the power of your spirit and body together! Think you can do that?”
“Sure, shouldn’t be a problem,” he said, then pointed a chakram at him. “You wanna spar then? To see if I can do this.”
“Got it, but you’re going to be in trouble against me,” Sabin said with a grin. “I’ve got the power to suplex a train.”
“Now you’re just boasting,” Axel said, returning the grin.
“Nope, I’ve defeated a train that travels to the land of the dead that way,” he said. “Now show me what you’ve got.”
When Merlin got back to Tzen, things looked promising. The six adventurers were all on the deck of the Falcon, which was preparing to leave. Axel was over with Sabin and Setzer near the open cockpit, involved in some joking boasting with the other two men about things they’d done (there was something about snatching a woman out from an opera only to get out-scammed by said woman). Meanwhile, Kairi was listening to Celes and Edgar explaining something called magitek (she didn’t look too confused and kept asking questions). This was exactly how he’d talked Yen Sid into accepting this: experience in a broader range was valuable to young keyblade wielders. It was in accepting paths once considered fruitless that they now had a better understanding of keyblades themselves.
“Excuse me,” Merlin said to the group with Kairi. “I’m glad I caught you before you left. You all were planning on returning your world to how it should be. Where is the information on how that works? I was curious about it myself.”
“We’re not sure, it could be in several places,” Edgar said. “And we have to find those places. Thamalsa is likely our best bet as where knowledge of ancient magic would still be. My kingdom of Figaro might also have some resources, or some Imperial sources, or a living esper.”
Merlin nodded. “I see. I can use magic to get myself to a place I know the name of, so I can reach Thamalsa and start some research there. Thank you, I’d like to know more and I may as well help you along on your quest as well.”
“You must be a masterful sorcerer to wield that kind of magic,” Celes said, bowing her head respectfully. “Thank you for helping us.”
Merlin chuckled as he snapped his fingers to bring something out of his magical bag. “If it’s to our mutual benefit, why not? And Kairi, here, this is a magical charm I’ve made. It’s nothing special at the moment, something that will help protect you. But I can track it down because I made it; no one else could. I’ll come find you when the time is right.”
She nodded as she accepted the small pearl bracelet. “Okay. I’ll keep an eye on Axel and make sure we don’t get into too much trouble.”
“I trust you both to do well,” Merlin said, smiling. She had a good spirit; they were fortunate to have her as one of the Guardians of Light. “Good luck on your adventures. I’ll see you all later.”
Not long after, the Falcon sailed back out into the stars, in search of lost lands and lost friends.