#khoc week

Xemnas: “We merely need a functional Keyblade master. The details are unimportant.”

Xemnas’ plan for Organization 13, or at least the plan for them to gain new hearts that he uses to keep the other members loyal to him so they don’t suspect that they’re just future vessels for Xehanort, requires a keyblade wielder in order to collect enough hearts to summon Kingdom Hearts. The problem is that none of the eight original members of the Org or their newest ninth member (currently) have a keyblade.

Four years after the Fall of Radiant Garden (and thus five years before the events of KH1), the only known active keyblade wielders left are King Mickey and Sigyn. Ventus is alive but in a coma somewhere, Aqua and Terra are missing (but that Xemnas sure does look familiar), and none of the other Scala wielders survived the destruction of the world (allegedly).

King Mickey is a Keyblade Master, but he’s also a king consort on a world very well protected from malicious forces by a powerful artifact known as the Cornerstone of Light. Sigyn, on the other hand, is a young and inexperienced Apprentice and thus a much easier target. So Xemnas sends the other eight Organization members and their new prototype Replica after her.

Here’s a short fic of Sigyn’s early encounters with the Organization before she met the twins:

Word Count: 1,184

“Key…blade…”

Sigyn almost missed the figure in the long, black leather coat lurking amongst the shadows of the darkened street. This new world she’d found herself in was an unending urban sprawl with crowds of people and vehicles rushing between the impossibly tall buildings and grimy roadways. She probably wouldn’t have paid the stranger who was about as tall as her any attention if she spotted it among the masses before midnight had fallen and the city quieted down.

But there it was, face fully obscured by the shadows of its hood as it held one arm outstretched and pointed at her. Its voice was low and crackly, as if coming from an old radio, yet somehow carried through the musty city air. Although it just stood still, there was something so…unnatural about the figure that made the hairs on the back of Sigyn’s neck stand up.

The stranger in the black coat took advantage of Sigyn freezing in shock upon hearing that familiar word and charged at her, a strange weapon manifesting in its hand. It looked like a sword or a club at first as the figure swung it downward toward her, but as Sigyn summoned her keyblade Tyrving to block the attack she saw that the “blade” had a rotating chain attached to dozens of serrated teeth. Sparks flew as these metal teeth sawed at the shaft of Sigyn’s keyblade until she managed to knock the stranger’s weapon back.

Their duel continued until the headlights of an approaching vehicle flooded the street. The driver of the black automobile didn’t even honk his horn before barreling toward Sigyn, and she barely managed to leap out of the way in time. She could see two large, mean-looking dogs barking at her through the back window as the vehicle rounded a corner and disappeared into the night.

When Sigyn turned to look for the figure in the black coat, it too had vanished.

Sigyn never saw the stranger in that particular world again, but it continued to ambush her across other worlds whenever no one else was around. Sometimes it was alone, but other times Sigyn caught a taller figure in the same black coat watching it from afar out of the corner of her eye as she battled the chainsword wielder. Whether Sigyn managed to old off her opponent until someone approaching spooked it off or she had to flee before the figure could strike the killing blow, the distant observer never seemed to react.

Worryingly, Sigyn began to notice a disturbing trend with the chainsword wielder the longer the two of them fought. Every time the two of them clashed, her opponent not only seemed to adapt to her attacks but had also started to use her own techniques against her. It was only a theory of Sigyn’s at first until the figure in the black coat began casting Light magic against her.

In another world, this one a land of knights and wizards, Sigyn managed to find the chainsword wielder first and attacked before it could summon its weapon. With surprising strength, the figure in the black coat simply grabbed the end of Sigyn’s keyblade with both hands as she swung it, stopping its momentum completely. It then began to pull the weapon towards itself as if trying to yank the keyblade out of Sigyn’s hands.

Disturbed at the very notion, Sigyn quickly dematerialized her keyblade and immediately put some distance between the two of them before summoning it back into her hand. As she did, her enemy began to laugh for the first time, in an awkward and hollow tone which was nevertheless uncomfortably familiar.

The figure in the black coat then lowered its hood, and Sigyn found herself staring back at her own face.

An icy terror gripped Sigyn’s heart as Tyrving manifested in the hand of her doppelgänger. As she tightened the grip on her keyblade to reassure herself it was still there, Sigyn glanced down and realized the two weapons weren’t actually identical. The colors on the copy of her keyblade were just a few shades off compared to the real one, and seemed to be growing more distinct with every passing second.

Looking back up at the figure in the black coat, Sigyn could see that its eyes were now grey instead of brown. In fact, the doppelgänger’s facade seemed to be breaking down—all of its facial features began to slowly slide down as if it were melting. The twisted mirror of Sigyn’s face warped into a repulsive scowl as the figure let out a distorted snarl before charging at her, its weapon already transformed back into the familiar chainsword.

Spurned on by her indignation, Sigyn managed to get the upper hand and finally take down her opponent. As its weapon dematerialized, the figure in the black coat flopped backwards and hit the ground with a loud thud. When Sigyn approached to make sure it was defeated for good, she saw that her tormentor’s face was featureless and smooth like a doll’s.

Through her confusion, Sigyn’s ears caught the sharp click of a weapon being loaded and she dove for cover behind a tree just in time to avoid a barrage of projectiles. When she looked out to see if the coast was clear, she spotted another figure in a black coat hovering over the limp form of the chainsword wielder.

Sigyn could just make out the new stranger grumbling about “defective prototypes” and “failed experiments” in a rough voice as he bent down to lift the lying figure. When he stood up, his hood slid off to reveal a scarred but more human-like face.

“Who exactly are you and why do you keep attacking me? Explain yourself now!” Sigyn demanded as she approached the man with the eyepatch, keyblade drawn.

“Hey, it’s nothing personal, kiddo,” the man in the the black coat replied with a cold smirk. “We need the power of the keyblade and unfortunately for you, you’re a sitting duck out here on you own.”

“What?” Sigyn took an involuntary step back.

“Of course, there’s an easier option for both of us, you know,” the man with the eyepatch continued languidly as if Sigyn hadn’t interrupted. “If you agree to join the Organization, we can skip over this whole cat-and-mouse routine.” With a wave of his hand, the stranger summoned a Corridor of Darkness as he tucked the body he was carrying under his other arm. “What d’ya say?”

Sigyn bristled in equal parts at the presence of darkness and the sheer disrespect. Through gritted teeth, she declared, “I am Sigyn, daughter of Urd—”

Was that a spark of recognition in the stranger’s remaining eye? No, it must have been her imagination.

“—and the last keyblade wielder of Scala ad Caelum. I’d rather die than join you!”

“Yeah, that’s the plan.” The man with the eyepatch quipped as he turned away and started walking through the Corridor. “Oh well, your loss then!” With a jaunty wave, he disappeared into the darkness, leaving a perplexed and uneasy Sigyn in his wake.

To Be Continued

(Author’s Note: The first world Sigyn is visiting is the version of NYC from Oliver and Company, the second world mentioned is the setting for The Sword and the Stone.)