musefic | Kingdom Hearts fic: Potentials

In chapter 12: Kairi tries to formulate a plan.

The following is from the cached version of a blog post by a blogger known as “SoundofLight”. The original has been deleted.

The Script Theory: Part 2

So last time, I explained the basics of The Script Theory and roughly what that is, and why people might believe it. Lots of people weighed in, whether they believed in it or not, and there were a lot of interesting questions and discussions. Please go check it out if you haven’t!

One of the things a lot of people have said about this theory is… well, so what? Does it really matter if there really is a “script” that all of these interactions follow? It may be a bit misleading to have Heroes and Villains doing things according to a script, but is it really wrong? In my post I even said that Heroes were a kind of celebrity/reality TV star/social media influencer mash-up, and no one thinks that any of those things are completely genuine and unfiltered.

Largely, it comes down to corporate interest and profit. The Defenders of the Light and the Heroes they employ are supposed to function for the public good, yet are a private force. If The Script Theory is true, then it’s irresponsible to have Heroes that are supposed to help people, but are really just acting. Or worse, Heroes who don’t even know they’re acting.

And regardless of whether or not the whole Script Theory is true or not, there are legitimate critiques of an individual corporation having a stake in a Hero group.

The mundane authorities would probably give up a shocking portion of their operating budget for the kind of surveillance and technology that the Defenders of the Light have. That’s been at the center of multiple legal cases, but as of yet the Defenders of the Light cannot be required to broadly share their footage, even if it may show the commission of a crime. Police can request specific footage, but those requests have to go through an approval process.

The reasoning so far has not been about potential invasion of privacy, but has been that the Defenders of the Light’s surveillance system is a proprietary part of their business. They’ve argued that forcing them to share it would place undue strain on their ability to maintain exclusive rights to the footage, and this could negatively impact their business.

If they’re so protective of what they consider their property, for fear that it would hurt their bottom line, then what else could that say about them? What else will they prevent their Heroes from doing simply because it isn’t profitable?

Kairi counted her breaths, waiting for her heart to stop trying to batter its way out of her ribcage.

Run.

Corridor had said as much to her when he confronted her in the apartment. That she and Sora needed to run away, along with the then-mystifying comment about getting “a fresh start.”

And now he had gone on television, verbally telling both of them to turn themselves in, but signaling them to run instead.

What the hell could that possibly mean? He betrayed them, yet was trying to warn them. And he saved me during that last fight, even if he did frame it as another attack.

“Talk about mixed signals,” she half-joked to herself, but it just made the hollow feeling in her chest expand.

Before she relinquished her borrowed computer, she did a quick search for Keyblade’s name in the news, to see if there was any information about him being captured. Other than a few mentions in articles about other things—Corridor’s allegiance change, thinkpieces bemoaning the Defenders of the Light falling from grace, a profile on Roxas and his weapon of choice—there was nothing.

She’d seen enough at this point. Sure, she could do a deep dive into the blogs and the op-ed pieces and the forum chatter. She could spend forever trying to tease out the nuances of public opinion, to figure out exactly where the divergence had happened; she’d certainly had life-long practice interpreting media coverage and internet mentions. But she didn’t have forever.

Kairi logged out, grabbed her bag, and left the library.

This whole… thing, this suddenly-being-the-villain thing, could be a mass-illusion, mass-hallucination, alternate dimension, or alternate timeline. Given the recent emphasis on a dimensional collision, that seemed most likely, but any of them were plausible. It was outside of her skillset to determine which.

Or you’re the anomaly, came the poisonous whisper in the back of her head.

She shook it away. ‘Don’t doubt yourself’ was the first lesson they had drilled into them when they learned about the possibility of being trapped in alternate dimensions. She knew her own past. She did.

So maybe you’ve just come home, was the next sly suggestion.

She shook that one away, too. She didn’t know what her dimension of origin was like: maybe she could have been a villain there. But that wasn’t home. Her home dimension was the one she’d grown up in, where she had become Starchild and Radiance, where she planned for a future with Keyblade and Corridor. Sora and Riku. And if this wasn’t her real home, she was going to get back there. And if this was an altered version of her real home, she was going to fix it.

Kairi didn’t have much of a lead, except that other than Corridor, only one member of the Defenders of the Light seemed to have escaped the public perception of villainy. Worse, he seemed to be trading on their “fall” to bolster a position with the Organization.

Maybe he had an explanation. Maybe he could help sort this all out. As much as Kairi would once have believed that wholeheartedly, she found that now she deeply doubted it.

But she was ready to hit something, and if that something could be Xehanort, she was just fine with that.

Kairi hadn’t been sure what she’d find going to Headquarters. She doubted Xehanort would be there, but it was the best place to search for a way to find him. She parked a couple blocks away from the building, hopefully distant enough not to draw attention, and approached on foot.

The building was completely closed off, defaced with graffiti. “Villains” and “Murderers” stood out prominently, as did “No room for Vigilantes.” Another phrase that showed up in a couple spots was “Light Expires.” She shivered.

Broken glass and trash littered the ground, and it looked like people had thrown bottles at the building. It wasn’t terribly surprising, considering what people apparently thought of the Defenders of the Light, but it was still a shock to see. Especially for it to have happened literally overnight.

She prowled around the building, the glass crunching under her feet. She would have felt better in her costume. She may not love it, but at least it was armor of a sort, and would have felt less vulnerable than jeans and a t-shirt. She was smart enough not to dress as a known supervillain, so her costume was tucked into the trunk of her car. She still didn’t like it.

The windows and doors were all in lockdown mode, steel shutters creating what was supposedly an impenetrable second wall. Despite the vandalism, no one seemed to have broken in. A mixed blessing: it didn’t help her get in, but it meant anything left inside was more likely to be undisturbed. Kairi made it to the back of the building, looked around for any potential witnesses, and not finding any, began to plan a route to the second story. Those windows were bolted over too, but maybe…

She was just sizing up the jump necessary to grab the very small sill below one of those second-floor windows, when it occurred to her that maybe there was a better route.

There was the emergency entrance and exit. An apparently unrelated maintenance shed attached to a completely different building about a block away connected to a tunnel to the basement of the Headquarters building. It was rare, but every once in a while a Hero had to be able to come and go without risking a camera spotting them. Radiance had never had a reason to use it, since Corridor was a more effective “secret passage.”

She pushed the twinge away.

Xehanort knew about the tunnel, of course, but she crossed her fingers and hoped that maybe it wouldn’t have gone into a lockdown as extensive as the main building. Hard to build security of that caliber into something that was supposed to remain inconspicuous. And it was also intended to provide a last-ditch escape if something happened inside.

That block-long walk to the shed was more nerve-racking than it should have been, as Kairi resisted the urge to hunch over and sneak the whole way, which would have drawn more attention. But her hopes were actually answered for once. The maintenance shed, despite being marked with every kind of threatening warning sign about voltage and caustic chemicals, was only locked with a padlock.

Kairi didn’t have the key, but she did have a pocketknife with a screwdriver in her bag, and that easily removed the depressingly unprofessional hasp the padlock was hooked through.

Inside the shed was dusty and dim, even more so when she closed the door behind her. Straight ahead was a second door. It opened onto a very small closet, lined with shelves holding a disgusting array of filthy, rusted cans and bottles of mystery substances. The floor was caked with dirt and the spilled remains of who-knew-what. It looked like you’d probably catch some horrible flesh-eating disease if you so much as touched it.

Perfect camouflage. Kairi found the slight lip at the front of the closet floor with her shoe, and pushed. The “floor” slid back into the wall, revealing a hole straight down.

With a brief surge of gratitude that her powerset was what it was, Kairi flicked a ball of light down before her, and leapt down.

Loath as she was to leave herself without an easy exit, she slid the false floor back across the opening, just in case someone tried to follow her, or accidentally stumbled upon the shed. And then she marched down the hallway toward the Headquarters building, her lights bobbing around and in front of her to show the way.

She’d been afraid the lockdown would have sealed the interior door at the end of the tunnel, but it hadn’t. It looked like it was supposed to, but it had failed, and the steel shutters only extended a couple inches out, leaving the door accessible. That was probably the kind of design flaw she should report to a superior, which gave her a flicker of mean amusement.

Inside the Headquarters building, everything was on backup power. Dim emergency lights and occasional lit screens lent an entirely different ambiance than the usual sterile fluorescents. Quiet. Creepy.

The basement was where the labs were located, somewhere Radiance rarely had cause to venture. The Scientist and Grimoire and their assistants were the only ones who usually used this space, doing research and conducting experiments, whatever that really meant.

At first glance, Kairi wondered if maybe someone had managed to get in to ransack the place. Desks and shelves had been shifted, computers and other equipment clearly missing, papers scattered. But aside from some of the places where it looked like stacks of printouts had been knocked over, it looked more deliberate than a break-in would have. Maybe like someone was moving out in a hurry.

Getting here had been as far as her plan extended, and now she wasn’t sure what to look for. There could be something worthwhile in the scattered papers, or it could all be incomprehensible lab notes, and it would take her a long time to find out which. She’d make a complete sweep of the building and then reassess.

As she headed toward the stairs—elevators wouldn’t run on backup power—she heard a noise behind her. Kind of like a pot of water boiling in the next room.

She flicked her fingers, collecting the light into a glowing ball at her palm and spun, flinging the light ahead of her. It hit the Shadow that had bubbled its way out of the ground and dissolved it.

It was almost insulting for Heartless to be appearing in their Headquarters. Though of course it wasn’t surprising; the Heartless liked dark, quiet spaces and ambushing single victims when possible. And they had no awareness of territory, just of ideal habitats.

The single Shadow was not replaced by more, so she continued on.

The hallway of the main level was similarly dim, lit by the lower wattage emergency lights, the few external windows covered over by the shutters.

This was the most “public” area of the building, though that was a relative term, and Kairi didn’t expect to find much. She made a quick tour of the lobby—the assignment screen on, but blank—, the empty ballroom where the media event had been held, the currently-disabled arena and viewing decks, the training rooms… Everything was quiet and still and empty.

The second floor was where most meaningful records would have been kept, in medical and administrative offices, and she ascended the stairs cautiously. That caution paid off as she heard the light, whispery flutter of one of the Dusks.

Crouching low, trying to avoid detection by whatever means these Nobodies used, she glanced around the corner of the stairwell. The Dusk drifted past, down the middle of the exterior hall, and turned to go down one of the central hallways. Like it was patrolling.

Why couldn’t it have been more Heartless? Kairi dug the pocketknife back out of her bag, unfolding the small blade. It wasn’t much, but it was better than her bare hands.

She headed for Xehanort’s office. He was the only one who seemed likely to know what had happened, so if his office had anything left in it…

The Dusk was between her and Xehanort’s office door. Decoys had worked against the Nobodies before, so she sent a flare of light to the other end of the hall. When the Dusk started to drift that direction, she rushed up behind it, grabbed on, and reached around to stab with the tiny blade of her knife.

It cut easily enough, though it wasn’t a one-hit kill. The Dusk twisted, folding in on itself in a disturbingly inorganic way, then lunged at her, sharpened limb aimed for her stomach.

Kairi twisted, and the Nobody sliced along her side instead of stabbing into her belly. She ignored the sharp pain and delivered a slicing strike of her own as its momentum carried it past her. Another quick spin to follow it and a downward stabbing motion before it could turn back to face her, and the thing faded away, scraps of white material and black smoke drifting into nothing.

The scratch on her side was minor. Painful, bleeding, but shallow. She ignored Xehanort’s office door long enough to get to the medical offices, familiar enough with the exam room layout to find the gauze and bandages. Wound dressing wasn’t her favorite skill, but it was one she was proficient at. It didn’t do anything for the blood on her shirt though, which could be a problem once she was back in public.

She used the detour to the medical offices as a chance to search them, but they’d been cleared out even more thoroughly than the labs downstairs. The supplies were still there, but the computers from the small reception area and the nurses’ and therapists’ offices were gone. So were the tablets the nurses carried with them. There weren’t any file cabinets or other places for physical files to have been kept, and a quick check of the desk drawers revealed only office supplies and mundane items like snacks and books.

One of the nurses apparently really liked fruit snacks and cheesy superhero romance novels. Kairi rolled her eyes at Unmasked Desire, which purported to be a whirlwind romantic thriller about a couple who were attempting to hide their superheroic identities from each other, not realizing that they were actually part of the same hero team.

The most useful thing she found was someone’s sweater left over the back of a desk chair, which didn’t look great with Kairi’s outfit, but at least covered up the bloodstains. Shrugging it on, she headed back down the hallway.

The medical offices had been her backup plan if Xehanort’s office had been completely cleared out, so having to strike it off her list wasn’t encouraging. If his offices were as thoroughly empty, she wasn’t sure what she’d do.

They were.

His computer was gone, and the drawers of his desk had been emptied of everything, not so much as a scrap of paper or a stray paperclip left behind.

“Fuck.” At least she could swear.

Without much hope, she started to poke through the other administrative offices. They were almost as empty, computers obviously removed recently from desks, drawers emptied of files. But in the third office, she did find something.

The office had a sliding closet door along one wall, covering over shelves containing mostly office supplies. Reams of paper, industrial quantities of staples, boxes of pens, mystery spare cords. But on one of the lower shelves was a laptop bag.

Kairi’s hand almost shook as she grabbed it. It was probably just some spare thing that had been wiped of data, waiting to be given to a new employee who needed it, but…

She pulled the thin computer out of the bag. It was labeled with a yellow sticky note.

Even’s personal laptop
Confiscated 06.28
Password: C0nnecT!on

She wasn’t sure who Even was. Maybe a lab assistant? According to this they’d taken his laptop a couple of weeks ago. Kairi opened the computer and entered the password from the note. It worked.

She selected a file at random, one called “Active” from the recent files list. It pulled up on the screen, and she started to skim.

It looked like a list of the active Defenders of the Light Heroes, with the basic dossiers that would be shared on their website, and she almost closed it. But reading through, she realized it was more than that.

“Lancer

An “elemental” Hero, he controls air currents, and is able to use control over wind to grant himself limited flight.

Civilian identity: Dilan Akimoto…”

It was the dossiers for the active Heroes… but included information that was supposed to be heavily guarded. Only the Organization higher ups and law enforcement were supposed to know Hero identities, if they were known at all.

This “Even” clearly had a lot more information than she could have hoped. She saw why as she continued scrolling.

“The Scientist

An “enhanced ability” Hero, he has a superhuman ability to view connections between data points.

Civilian identity: Even Nozawa…”

They’d confiscated The Scientist’s personal computer? Kairi closed the file. She felt… wrong, reading it. Other Heroes’ identities were meant to be secret, and it felt invasive and almost voyeuristic to be learning them. The file was probably useful, and she’d come back to it, but for now she’d see what else was on this computer.

There was a folder labeled “Potentials Project” on the desktop, which among other files had subfolders for each of the active Heroes. She tried to open the folder labeled “Radiance,” but it requested a password. She tried the same password that had unlocked the laptop, but it didn’t work. She met with the same result for the other folders, named for other Heroes on the roster. She didn’t even consider trying random combinations. For all she knew a certain number of failed attempts could permanently lock the files, or erase them, or who knew what.

Kairi regretted that she wasn’t more tech savvy. The most she’d done was help maintain the “secret” tech that let her, Keyblade, and Corridor listen in on each other, and that had been set up before her time as a Hero. It was a far cry from breaking into locked files.

But this was her best lead. Maybe it would turn out to be nothing, but she didn’t think that was the case. The Scientist had been one of the Heroes in charge of ongoing studies. If a document that included the most highly secret information the Defenders of the Light had—the civilian identities of the Heroes, including his own—was unlocked, what was important enough to lock?

And who could help her find out? Who would be willing to help someone labeled a Supervillain?

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Kingdom Hearts fic: Potentials - Chapter 12