43Reeve Tuesti struggled around in his bonds, but could not get free. They were firmly keeping him on the chair he was sitting on.
Being Balamb-Garden's head of security, the control room he was sitting in was his usual working place. But this time, he wasn't the one in charge... he was the prisoner. And during all these hours he had been forced to look upon the many monitors that were aligned above the main console... silently praying that neither of his friends would appear on any of them. For it would be their certain doom if the man who was currently holding him captive would find out their current location.
If the dark, hooded person that had attacked Balamb-Garden with his Heartless was a human being at all.
The hooded man turned around in mid-air, as he hovered in front of the bound Reeve. "It looks that your friends still manage to cause a stir," he said in a whispering voice. "Just a few minutes ago, that thief managed to break into the kitchen to steal some supplies... soon enough there won't be any food left for them. Do you want to see how your dear friends starve to death?"
"What about you?" Reeve grunted. "I don't suppose that you will be too happy if you don't have any food left for yourself."
"I feed on many things, Mr. Tuesti," the dark individual hissed. "But human food is not among these things. In a way, I am like that puppet you are controlling, the Cait Sith... I don't need to eat, I don't need to drink, I don't need to sleep. I just need to... recharge myself once in a while."
"If you are like Cait Sith, then maybe you are controlled by someone else as well," Reeve assumed. "Am I right? Are you somebody's puppet?"
The hooded man stayed silent for a moment. "That's what you would like to know, right? But what about you, Reeve Tuesti? Are you indeed the man controlling the puppet? Or is Cait Sith the true you. Isn't it the cat doll who made all the friends? Isn't Cait Sith's identity controlling your actions now?"
"Stop that!" Reeve shouted. "And tell me already why you're after my friends!"
"I told you, I need to know the whereabouts of the Scholar," the dark man replied. "As long as you refuse to tell me where he is, I will continue to torture you and your friends. They won't last for very long, you know? They might be able to defeat my Heartless... but I have a neverending supply of dark hearts at my disposal."
"What do you need the Scholar for, anyways?" Reeve demanded to know. "Is it because of his research regarding the Keyblade?"
"It is an intriguing weapon, yes," the hooded man nodded. His spindly fingers played with the crystal ball he was holding in his hands. "Many years in the past - or is that many years in the future? - I had to manipulate a whole clan of humans to do my bidding. But with the Keyblade... I could do so much more. Think about it... what do you need a key for?"
"To open a lock," Reeve replied. "So what?"
"Yes, but the Keyblade unlocks very special locks, don't you know? The Keyholes are the hearts of every single world... and once they are unlocked, they are helpless in front of the darkness." The eyes of the spooky man gleamed up in the darkness that was underneath his hood. "So you see? Just one single tool, to plunge so many worlds into nothingness... Truly, the Keyblade Masters are fools that they instead choose to use their weapons to seal the worlds from darkness. In the end, only Chaos will remain..."
"You are a coward!" Reeve snapped.
"Oh? What makes you say that?"
"If you were a man, you would at least have the guts to show me your face, or tell me your name!" Reeve shouted.
The floating figure chuckled. "I never implied that I am a man... and nobody has ever seen my face without becoming insane. I am... the phantom that seeks to bring death upon everyone! And I have returned for revenge..."
The evil being let its gaze sweep across the many monitors, until it saw what it had been looking for. At Balamb-Garden's main hangar, a giant bio-mechanical colossus with Gummi Blocks clinging to its surface had docked onto the biggest landing bay. In the smaller landing bay on the right, two smaller ships have landed. But the dark one's attention was focussed solely on the red-haired maiden that had climbed out of the mecha.
"So, we meet again, princess of the Earth..." he murmured. "I shall gladly repay you for what you and the accursed Moon Princess did to me... Sailor Terra!"
And the Wiseman's eyes lit up with glee.
"Dangit, did ya have to make it such a rough landing?" Ranma complained while Nabiki climbed out of her entry plug. "I was just drinking a glass of water, and look what it did to me."
"So sue me," the Evangelion pilot smirked at the drenched redhead. She looked around the huge hangar, and her eyes lit up when she saw all the high technological gadgets. "This place... it's wonderful! What do you say, do you think they are gonna let me use this as a workshop as soon as we save them? In addition to the usual fee, of course..."
"Stop that, Nabiki!" Akane said. "We will not demand any fee, we are doing this to help them."
"Just kidding, sis!"
Leormon's neck fur bristled, and his tail was twitching. "I don't like this place..." he growled. "Nothing natural about it, just dead steel, glass and cement..."
"Well, this IS a space station, after all," Kasumi said. "It wouldn't make any sense if trees were growing here, would it?"
"I still don't like it. I feel like I'm back in Guardromon's factory, and you know what happened when we first came there," the Rookie shuddered.
"You can hardly blame the technology for that," Nabiki frowned.
"Leormon is a creature of the wilderness, Nabiki," Kasumi explained. "It's just natural that he doesn't feel at home in here."
"Sorry that we aren't living in a floating forest," Rydia said with an amused glint in her eyes, as she and Tellah came walking over from the Enterprise. "But as soon as the Heartless are gone, Leormon should check out our training grounds... it's a big greenhouse, filled with plant life... but also with training monsters, I'm afraid."
Leormon grinned at the perspective. "A good brawl AND a natural environment? That sounds promising!"
"We have to keep that for later, I'm afraid," Tellah said. "Our enemy most likely already knows that we are here."
"How did he do that? Does he have the magical eye?" Ranma wondered.
Tellah simply gestured up to a security camera above their heads.
Akane angrily shot a fireball at the camera. It broke apart in a shower of glass and metal fragments. "I hate it when people spy on me without my permission," she grumbled.
"That won't help much," Rydia said. "He still knows we're here, and it's just a matter of time before the Heartless will be after us."
"Well, then we just have to strike them before they do," a cool voice said.
They turned their heads. Captain Faris had come from her pirate ship and approached them, her hand on the hilt of her curved saber. Her crew was still on board of the ship.
"Faris, thanks for coming to our aid," Rydia smiled. "May I introduce you to Keyblade Master Akane and her friends?"
"It's an honor to meet a Keyblade Master," Faris said, saluting Akane. "I'll be honest, for the longest time, I thought people like you were a myth..."
"Um... I didn't know about this for a long time either," Akane admitted. "I just recently learned what a Keyblade is... or Heartless, for that matter."
"But for being a newbie, she certainly knows how to use the Keyblade like a pro," Ranma grinned.
Akane blushed. She wasn't used to such praise, especially not coming from Ranma. "I... I just knew what to do. It came naturally to me, as if the Keyblade was just an extension of my arm..."
"In that case, we are glad that you decided to come for our aid," Faris nodded. "I take it you met Cait Sith?"
"They did... shortly before his internal power ran out," Tellah remarked grimly.
"Then our enemy knows we are coming... and when the time comes to face him, we might have to fight another old friend," Faris said. "Reeve Tuesti, Cait Sith's controller, may not be a strong warrior like General Celes, but he knows enough about guns and other mechanical weapons to give us some trouble... and there's no one that knows Balamb-Garden better than him. He could easily wait in ambush for us."
"Oh my..." Kasumi murmured, remembering how cold General Celes had acted when she attacked them. "I certainly hope not..."
"Well, what are we waiting for, then?" Ranma asked. "If we wait any longer, the bad dude's gonna put one of these headbands on him for sure."
"Just a minute," Faris spoke up. "I have brought a few things from my ship that should prove useful." And she knelt down and emptied a small leather pouch in front of them.
"What's this stuff?" Nabiki frowned as she picked up a tiny crystal.
"Materials," Rydia explained. "They can be used to forge incredibly useful items, through a process called 'Synthesis'. Using two Power Shards and two Spirit Shards, for example, will result in a Power Chain, an necklace that will strengthen its wearer."
"Sounds neat," Ranma remarked. "Well then, how do you do it?"
"Unfortunately, only Moogles know the exact process," Faris explained.
"Ah, then I guess it's a good thing that you have me around, kupo!" Mog said as he came fluttering out of the Enterprise's main hatch. Ranma blinked. She had nearly forgotten about Tellah and Rydia's little mechanic.
"But don't you need your workshop to do that?" Rydia asked the Moogle.
"No, not really," Mog replied. "I think there's enough equipment in the hangar and aboard the ship that I can make use of. Excuse me, please..." He took the materials and a couple of tools that were lying nearby and fluttered back inside the ship. For a while, they could hear how he was rummaging around inside.
Akane noticed that there was still another item lying on the floor. "Oh, he missed something," she said.
"Actually, that's not a material," Faris told her. She picked up the small, blue sphere. "This is a magic element."
"Just like the one Cait Sith gave to me!" Akane realized. "But... this one is blue, and the one he gave me was red."
"That's because the one he gave you was a Fire Element. This one is an Ice Element. It allows the user to cast the spell Ice."
"Sounds really 'cool', if you pardon me the pun," Nabiki spoke up.
"And... you're giving it to me?" Akane asked.
"It's yours, Keyblade Master!" Faris said as she handed the element over. "You have come here to save us, the very least we can do is to assist you with everything we have."
Akane accepted the Ice Element and touched it with her Keyblade, where it attached itself right next to the Fire Element.
She then pointed her Keyblade at an empty crate that was standing nearby and shouted: "ICE!"
Within seconds, the crate was covered by a thick layer of ice. Seconds later, both the ice and the crate broke apart.
"This really is cool," Akane grinned. "I'm really beginning to like this job..."
Kasumi, Ranma and Nabiki smiled at each other. They all knew what Akane meant... they all had felt it during their first adventures as heroes of Japan.
"Finished, kupo!" Mog shouted as he came flying back outside. He dropped a small assortment of items in Faris' hands. "Here, this is everything I was able to make from the materials you had... I decided to keep the rest of them for now, until you can bring me even better."
"These will do fine, thank you, Mog!" Faris said. She looked over the assembled group of adventurers. "Which one of you has the most potent magic spells?" she asked.
Nabiki grinned as she shoved Ranma forward a bit. "That would be her!"
Faris nodded. "Miss, this is for you. It is a Magic Armlet. It will boost your magic power when you wear it."
Ranma frowned when she accepted the accessory. "But it looks so girly..." she whined.
"Hey, you ARE a girl right now," Akane giggled.
Faris had to smile. "I perfectly understand you, Miss. I admit, I am a bit of a tomboy myself, even though I hate wearing women's clothing... would you imagine that one time, I was forced to wear a ball gown?"
Ranma wanted to point out that she wasn't really a girl, but she sighed in defeat and put the Magic Armlet on. If this would really help them, there was no use in complaining.
"Terra Star Power Make Up..." she mumbled and was transformed into her Senshi form.
Faris raised an eyebrow. "Very... flashy," she said. It certainly reminded her of her former ability to change job classes... even though she had to abandon that power when she and her friends had to give back the saved Crystals...
Faris raised the next accessories. "Well, I also have a Golem Chain and an Angel Bangle..."
"I think Akane should use the Golem Chain, she's the physical main attacker of the group," Tellah said.
"Okay, then I guess I take the Angel Bangle... whatever it does," Leormon grumbled.
After they all had put on their new accessories, Akane nodded to herself. She tightened her grip around her Keyblade and said: "Okay, let's go... we have a friend to save!"
