She found herself in Shibuya (TWEWY) after she died. She was emotionally broken. Every memory of Terra and Ven she had were of them being gone. She failed to save someone because he'd rather die than let her help him. And the Darkness had begun to get to her. She was ready to just accept her fate.
Thankfully, Link was not. She wound up partnering with the Hero Of Time in the Reaper's game. She regained more and more of herself, fighting along side him. And seeing more and more people fall and be erased, she became more and more determined to save them all and end this game. She and Link won, but... TWEWY. She was returned to life. Right back where she would have been. The Realm Of Darkness.
But this time she had new reason to fight, to get back out. Link was still trapped there. Rhyme was still trapped there. They needed her. She had never realized how much she needed to be needed. It gave her the power to fight back the Darkness... literal and figurative.
The Wayfinders were an unbreakable connection... She used that. Used them to follow the connection between herself and Ven. The Ven she found wasn't exactly either of the Vens in her memories. But he was Ven. Finally. She was able to rouse him - more proof this was a different Ven - and together they were able to follow the connection to find Terra. Terra was from a different point in time than either of them, and the friends reunited. Different versions, but at the core the same hearts. Touching their Keyblades, she filled in even more gaps of memories, and then she filled them in on her adventures. Together they went back to Shibuya to save Link and Rhyme and end the game once and for all.
The day was won, not by weapons and war, but by connections and compromise, and by a sneaky barista who might have given them a few more hints than he ought. The price of victory was not measured in lives lost, but in a painful promise. Aqua and Link were to never return to Shibuya again.
Tearful goodbyes were said then Link returned to his home and Aqua tried to return with Terra and Ven but instead found herself pulled back to the Darkness. She fought and struggled and as she did she saw a bright blue Light. She followed it and came out in Planet Speed with no memories of other versions of her, or her checkered past. She remembered a far simpler path as if it was all there had ever been.
So she did what Aqua does most in an un familiar situation. She tried to find her friends. Following the connection in her heart to Ven she found someone else instead, someone whose heart was very close to Ven's. Roxas. And Xion. Very swiftly Aqua came to care for the unlikely new friends. Came to love them. She 100% adopted them as her new siblings. But... she wasn't the only one. Prompto and Noctis and Gladio and their friends also adopted in the pair. Especially Roxas. Together they made an odd family, and went by the name Team Warp Strike. While with them Aqua and Prompto made wayfinders for the group, Aqua learned never to let Roxas drive ANYTHING unless the goal was to crash it, and they helped a robot girl find her heart. But perhaps the most dramatic happened when Xion passed out... and then vanished. Dropping everything, Team Warp Strike went looking for their missing friend. They finally found her in the lab of an evil scientist named Vexen who was trying to turn her into Chihiro as a way of enslaving another friend of theirs, a dragon who went by Kohaku.
They freed Xion, but the process had begun and she was losing who she was under the force of the copy of Chihiro's personality. It took them all remind Xion of who she was, and why they loved her to solidify Xion back in her own skin. Aqua was the only one who noticed the Darkness taking advantage of their distraction, but since it was only aiming at her, she put it off, focusing on helping Xion.
So of course just as Xion stabilized the Darkness attacked in earnest. Vexen had been playing with more than replicas and copies of personalities. He had been tapping into the Darkness himself. And he had found something terrible there. Darqua. A dark version of Aqua.
The battle was terrible. And as it drew on, longer and longer, Aqua realized that it was getting its power from her directly. So she decided that the best way to save her new family... was to throw herself into the Darkness and drag it down with her.
Thankfully she was stopped, but it did let the others know that the connection was the problem. With that new info the tide of battle swiftly turned and Dark Aqua was banished, Aqua remaining. There might have been some... arguments after that about the various members of Team Warp Strike who kept trying to kill themselves to save others. They all agreed that none of them wanted their friends to be martyrs, and yet...
Finally the lanes between worlds opened again and they could leave. Noctis brought Roxas and Xion home so Roxas could be the heir after him and they could live with him. Aqua went with and stayed for a while, training the kids. Then she planned a trip, leaving instructions with the others for protecting Roxas and Xion. She knew they wanted their friend Axel with them and she had to find Terra and Ven. So.... Basically an AU of the ending of KH III that involved giving Xion a gummi ship with orders that Roxas was never allowed to drive it, and gathering many heroes to win the day.
Meanwhile, a data version of Aqua had been extracted at the same moment she had been drawn from the Darkness to Planet Speed. In the Dataverse, Aqua once more - having only canon memories - tried to find Ven and Terra. This time the pull brought her to... Sora. Whom she adopted almost at once, and who kept showing hints of Ven as they talked... and trained.
In the Dataverse, Aqua and Sora and their new friend Tanks worked as a team to basically solve their parts of the plot with friendship. Seriously, they friended at villains and brought them back to their true good selves. Also there was a terminator style fan fic about a truck called Truck-kun that they got trapped inside of when they offered help to a talking paperclip. That was... a thing that happened.
In the end, by the combined powers of friendship, Wayfinders, the connection between hearts, and the command board, they helped Angiwoman and Deviwomon reconnect and the dataverse was saved. They were all able to go back to the files for their own worlds. But of course we know nothing is ever that simple. Trunks came and helped with the end of Kingdom Hearts plot stuff. Then once everything settled, data Aqua uploaded a copy of her memories to flesh Aqua.
This hit as Aqua and planet Speed Aqua had been holding each others' Keyblades to share memories. Which one of them accidentally absorbed the other... the world may never know.
Somewhere in here (I think it was between the LARPs so Aqua had no memory of the LARPs yet, but I'm not 100% sure) Aqua landed in SMK. She joined near the end of the game, so not too terribly much happened there on the scale of the rest of this, other than learning a new form of magic. Always useful.
Then, sent adrift again from there, she once more sought out her missing friends. First she found Sora and had an adventure with him where they found and woke Ven and then started systematically taking back their home from the Organization, one room at a time, while refusing to play the Org's games. Or rather, Aqua wouldn't let the others use the cards on offer.
Aqua spent a lot of time in that one trying to curb Sora's recklessness and hide the truth about Terra from Ven. But eventually she had to yield to that realty’s version of her, lest she merge again.
She tried once more to find her friends. This time she wound up on a Romulan ship, where Xion had just been... There she fought heartless and met Enki for the first time. Everyone else was gone. Together they tracked down the Darkness she had sensed. Gantu. They dealt with Gantu and she got to meet Stitch's Ohana when they came to take him away. There were more adventures there. In no particular order: Encountering Xion and Roxas again. Trying to get Axel out from under the Org's thumb, which lead to Xigbar dumping them in the Keyblade Graveyard, requiring them to get help from someone who had a gummi ship. And, you know, encountering a pirate who decided to take Enki's ship for herself. The pirate called herself Khell - not her actual name - and Aqua was able to talk her out of stealing the ship. Khell's Ai friend, Rren helped Aqua and Roxas to take down MCP in the computer systems. With help from Squall and Cid not only did they get MCP out of there, but they got Rren a body. Khell basically decided that Xion and Roxas were hers now. (And Enki, but she didn't say that part out loud. Much) Aqua realized that with all the Darkness being drawn there, the only way to protect the world was to seal it. Enki, Khell, and Rren decided to come with her.
Once they left their world, they went to Traverse Town to get Merlin's help sending them to the datascape where Aqua knew an alternate of her was there. The point to the trip was so that they could get a copy of the data that Sora needed back from Roxas and Xion so he could be awoken without harming them. She took Naminé with them so that Naminé could talk with her other self and learn what needed to be done. What Aqua didn't know was that the Naminé's swapped places. The one fromt he datascape wanted to give her other self a chance to truly live and be free as soon as possible. Where as she knew that going back with Aqua would mean that she would have to go into Kairi, but that was okay. She didn't tell Aqua until they were back in Traverse Town and there was no other choice but to continue with the plan.
Lots of little mini adventures, encounters with Riku, and such. Aqua came back with Ven and Sora, both awake, and they made their base camp in the 100 Acre Woods.
Thus followed a lot of training, some squabbling, and some... uncomfortable reunions. For some odd reason... Axel and Khell weren't super fond of Riku. Sora couldn't understand why, of course. Kairi was adjusting to Naminé, because this Naimné knew more and was able to communicate a small bit with Kairi and, more importantly, give Kairi ALL of her memories. Which Aqua does NOT know. She has hints, but doesn't know for sure that Kairi knows how that version of the war ended.
Aqua tried hard to be the leader, to train everyone and get everyone ready for the coming fight. The group - Khell, Rren, Enki, Sora, Kairi, Riku, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Ven, Axel, Roxas, and Xion - was a very mixed group. They had clashes and different strengths and weaknesses, and while Aqua did know how to train to that, as things took longer and longer she started to fear that they were losing the whole advantage they had and had to move faster. Which led to her dropping her better training methods in favor of trying to get everyone on the same page. Which was a disaster of hurt feelings, wounded egos, and bruised skin.
So Aqua, being Aqua, decided to try and take on Xehanort and his army all on her own. But Aqua being Aqua wanted to make sure that everyone was okay. So she went to make a supply run. Enki caught wind of her plan and went with her, planning to talk to hr. But Rren was there and then they found Shale and brought her in. It all came to a head and... yeah. That was a bad time, lots of hurt feelings. But they went back to the group and discussed. And a new plan was crafted. Aqua would help with training, but she wasn't the leader. That would be Mickey. Y'know, the actual king? Anyway, while they were trying to figure out a battle plan and were split into small groups Q showed up to harass Enki and wound up kidnapping him, Ven, Shale, Axel, Khell, Rren, Sora, and Kairi. He dropped them in Wonderland and then kidnapped Sora separately to try and make them interesting. Ven used his Keyblade glider to go get Aqua and a gummi ship so they could get everyone home.
Unfortunately in the time it took Ven to go get Aqua, Q had zapped them all to the Descendants world, and the people that Aqua had connections to.... are all on the Isle. Undetectable due to the shield.
And that.... bring us to here. She was in a Gummi ship with backup, trying to find their missing friends.
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branchandroot
Part 2
Date: 2022-11-07 08:10 am (UTC)Thankfully, Link was not. She wound up partnering with the Hero Of Time in the Reaper's game. She regained more and more of herself, fighting along side him. And seeing more and more people fall and be erased, she became more and more determined to save them all and end this game. She and Link won, but... TWEWY. She was returned to life. Right back where she would have been. The Realm Of Darkness.
But this time she had new reason to fight, to get back out. Link was still trapped there. Rhyme was still trapped there. They needed her. She had never realized how much she needed to be needed. It gave her the power to fight back the Darkness... literal and figurative.
The Wayfinders were an unbreakable connection... She used that. Used them to follow the connection between herself and Ven. The Ven she found wasn't exactly either of the Vens in her memories. But he was Ven. Finally. She was able to rouse him - more proof this was a different Ven - and together they were able to follow the connection to find Terra. Terra was from a different point in time than either of them, and the friends reunited. Different versions, but at the core the same hearts. Touching their Keyblades, she filled in even more gaps of memories, and then she filled them in on her adventures. Together they went back to Shibuya to save Link and Rhyme and end the game once and for all.
The day was won, not by weapons and war, but by connections and compromise, and by a sneaky barista who might have given them a few more hints than he ought. The price of victory was not measured in lives lost, but in a painful promise. Aqua and Link were to never return to Shibuya again.
Tearful goodbyes were said then Link returned to his home and Aqua tried to return with Terra and Ven but instead found herself pulled back to the Darkness. She fought and struggled and as she did she saw a bright blue Light. She followed it and came out in Planet Speed with no memories of other versions of her, or her checkered past. She remembered a far simpler path as if it was all there had ever been.
So she did what Aqua does most in an un familiar situation. She tried to find her friends. Following the connection in her heart to Ven she found someone else instead, someone whose heart was very close to Ven's. Roxas. And Xion. Very swiftly Aqua came to care for the unlikely new friends. Came to love them. She 100% adopted them as her new siblings. But... she wasn't the only one. Prompto and Noctis and Gladio and their friends also adopted in the pair. Especially Roxas. Together they made an odd family, and went by the name Team Warp Strike. While with them Aqua and Prompto made wayfinders for the group, Aqua learned never to let Roxas drive ANYTHING unless the goal was to crash it, and they helped a robot girl find her heart. But perhaps the most dramatic happened when Xion passed out... and then vanished. Dropping everything, Team Warp Strike went looking for their missing friend. They finally found her in the lab of an evil scientist named Vexen who was trying to turn her into Chihiro as a way of enslaving another friend of theirs, a dragon who went by Kohaku.
They freed Xion, but the process had begun and she was losing who she was under the force of the copy of Chihiro's personality. It took them all remind Xion of who she was, and why they loved her to solidify Xion back in her own skin. Aqua was the only one who noticed the Darkness taking advantage of their distraction, but since it was only aiming at her, she put it off, focusing on helping Xion.
So of course just as Xion stabilized the Darkness attacked in earnest. Vexen had been playing with more than replicas and copies of personalities. He had been tapping into the Darkness himself. And he had found something terrible there. Darqua. A dark version of Aqua.
The battle was terrible. And as it drew on, longer and longer, Aqua realized that it was getting its power from her directly. So she decided that the best way to save her new family... was to throw herself into the Darkness and drag it down with her.
Thankfully she was stopped, but it did let the others know that the connection was the problem. With that new info the tide of battle swiftly turned and Dark Aqua was banished, Aqua remaining. There might have been some... arguments after that about the various members of Team Warp Strike who kept trying to kill themselves to save others. They all agreed that none of them wanted their friends to be martyrs, and yet...
Finally the lanes between worlds opened again and they could leave. Noctis brought Roxas and Xion home so Roxas could be the heir after him and they could live with him. Aqua went with and stayed for a while, training the kids. Then she planned a trip, leaving instructions with the others for protecting Roxas and Xion. She knew they wanted their friend Axel with them and she had to find Terra and Ven. So.... Basically an AU of the ending of KH III that involved giving Xion a gummi ship with orders that Roxas was never allowed to drive it, and gathering many heroes to win the day.
Meanwhile, a data version of Aqua had been extracted at the same moment she had been drawn from the Darkness to Planet Speed. In the Dataverse, Aqua once more - having only canon memories - tried to find Ven and Terra. This time the pull brought her to... Sora. Whom she adopted almost at once, and who kept showing hints of Ven as they talked... and trained.
In the Dataverse, Aqua and Sora and their new friend Tanks worked as a team to basically solve their parts of the plot with friendship. Seriously, they friended at villains and brought them back to their true good selves. Also there was a terminator style fan fic about a truck called Truck-kun that they got trapped inside of when they offered help to a talking paperclip. That was... a thing that happened.
In the end, by the combined powers of friendship, Wayfinders, the connection between hearts, and the command board, they helped Angiwoman and Deviwomon reconnect and the dataverse was saved. They were all able to go back to the files for their own worlds. But of course we know nothing is ever that simple. Trunks came and helped with the end of Kingdom Hearts plot stuff. Then once everything settled, data Aqua uploaded a copy of her memories to flesh Aqua.
This hit as Aqua and planet Speed Aqua had been holding each others' Keyblades to share memories. Which one of them accidentally absorbed the other... the world may never know.
Somewhere in here (I think it was between the LARPs so Aqua had no memory of the LARPs yet, but I'm not 100% sure) Aqua landed in SMK. She joined near the end of the game, so not too terribly much happened there on the scale of the rest of this, other than learning a new form of magic. Always useful.
Then, sent adrift again from there, she once more sought out her missing friends. First she found Sora and had an adventure with him where they found and woke Ven and then started systematically taking back their home from the Organization, one room at a time, while refusing to play the Org's games. Or rather, Aqua wouldn't let the others use the cards on offer.
Aqua spent a lot of time in that one trying to curb Sora's recklessness and hide the truth about Terra from Ven. But eventually she had to yield to that realty’s version of her, lest she merge again.
She tried once more to find her friends. This time she wound up on a Romulan ship, where Xion had just been... There she fought heartless and met Enki for the first time. Everyone else was gone. Together they tracked down the Darkness she had sensed. Gantu. They dealt with Gantu and she got to meet Stitch's Ohana when they came to take him away. There were more adventures there. In no particular order: Encountering Xion and Roxas again. Trying to get Axel out from under the Org's thumb, which lead to Xigbar dumping them in the Keyblade Graveyard, requiring them to get help from someone who had a gummi ship. And, you know, encountering a pirate who decided to take Enki's ship for herself. The pirate called herself Khell - not her actual name - and Aqua was able to talk her out of stealing the ship. Khell's Ai friend, Rren helped Aqua and Roxas to take down MCP in the computer systems. With help from Squall and Cid not only did they get MCP out of there, but they got Rren a body. Khell basically decided that Xion and Roxas were hers now. (And Enki, but she didn't say that part out loud. Much) Aqua realized that with all the Darkness being drawn there, the only way to protect the world was to seal it. Enki, Khell, and Rren decided to come with her.
Once they left their world, they went to Traverse Town to get Merlin's help sending them to the datascape where Aqua knew an alternate of her was there. The point to the trip was so that they could get a copy of the data that Sora needed back from Roxas and Xion so he could be awoken without harming them. She took Naminé with them so that Naminé could talk with her other self and learn what needed to be done. What Aqua didn't know was that the Naminé's swapped places. The one fromt he datascape wanted to give her other self a chance to truly live and be free as soon as possible. Where as she knew that going back with Aqua would mean that she would have to go into Kairi, but that was okay. She didn't tell Aqua until they were back in Traverse Town and there was no other choice but to continue with the plan.
Lots of little mini adventures, encounters with Riku, and such. Aqua came back with Ven and Sora, both awake, and they made their base camp in the 100 Acre Woods.
Thus followed a lot of training, some squabbling, and some... uncomfortable reunions. For some odd reason... Axel and Khell weren't super fond of Riku. Sora couldn't understand why, of course. Kairi was adjusting to Naminé, because this Naimné knew more and was able to communicate a small bit with Kairi and, more importantly, give Kairi ALL of her memories. Which Aqua does NOT know. She has hints, but doesn't know for sure that Kairi knows how that version of the war ended.
Aqua tried hard to be the leader, to train everyone and get everyone ready for the coming fight. The group - Khell, Rren, Enki, Sora, Kairi, Riku, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Ven, Axel, Roxas, and Xion - was a very mixed group. They had clashes and different strengths and weaknesses, and while Aqua did know how to train to that, as things took longer and longer she started to fear that they were losing the whole advantage they had and had to move faster. Which led to her dropping her better training methods in favor of trying to get everyone on the same page. Which was a disaster of hurt feelings, wounded egos, and bruised skin.
So Aqua, being Aqua, decided to try and take on Xehanort and his army all on her own. But Aqua being Aqua wanted to make sure that everyone was okay. So she went to make a supply run. Enki caught wind of her plan and went with her, planning to talk to hr. But Rren was there and then they found Shale and brought her in. It all came to a head and... yeah. That was a bad time, lots of hurt feelings. But they went back to the group and discussed. And a new plan was crafted. Aqua would help with training, but she wasn't the leader. That would be Mickey. Y'know, the actual king? Anyway, while they were trying to figure out a battle plan and were split into small groups Q showed up to harass Enki and wound up kidnapping him, Ven, Shale, Axel, Khell, Rren, Sora, and Kairi. He dropped them in Wonderland and then kidnapped Sora separately to try and make them interesting. Ven used his Keyblade glider to go get Aqua and a gummi ship so they could get everyone home.
Unfortunately in the time it took Ven to go get Aqua, Q had zapped them all to the Descendants world, and the people that Aqua had connections to.... are all on the Isle. Undetectable due to the shield.
And that.... bring us to here. She was in a Gummi ship with backup, trying to find their missing friends.