Oh yeah! As a quick @khoc-week bonus, here's a quick WIP of a line up I've been slowly chipping away at of all of Kimbri's different designs through the years! She had a brief involuntary pirate phase when she first got to Traverse Town due to having to borrow some clothes lol (one of these years I'll tell y'all about Rosa, I promise)

Sister Squad!

I had a lot of fun drawing this! On the right are Kimbri and Echo (Also known as Aoi) and the two absolute cuties on the left are Amaya and Haru! They're all Sora's sisters, or in Kimbri's case she just kind of adopted him and calls him her little brother, haha! I got the idea of them all hanging out in my head and it was just so cute I couldn't not draw it!

Kimbri and Echo belong to me. Unfortunately I do not have a story about them up anywhere, sorry! If you wanna know more and ask questions you can head on over to my KHblog @kingdomkeykitsune !

Amaya and Haru belong to @blissfulnightrain ! And if you want to find out more I suggest you check out her blog and her fic, Keeper of the Keyweilders! That can be found here:

KotK on FF.net

It's always so bittersweet to come to the end of @khoc-week, but we couldn't have a more fitting prompt.

So, the thing about endings is that they don't really mean everything's over, they're just a good stopping point. When Kimbri's journey comes to an end, when all of her loved ones are home safe and sound and she's free to settle down, it's only the start of the next chapter of things. She shifts her focus more fully onto the restoration efforts, ending up stepping into a bit of a community leadership role. She repairs her relationship with Ansem, even letting him walk her down the aisle at her wedding. She also becomes a teacher, passing her hard earned knowledge to the next generations. Speaking of which

As mentioned on day 3 she becomes a mother. She loves her children more than anything, and of course they and their friends have their own stories, in which she features heavily.

The short answer for today's @khoc-week prompt?

Balance.

After the Fall of Radiant Gardens Kimbri spends a very long time fighting back and trying to contain or reject her darkness, terrified to succumb to it and potentially hurt somebody. But with the damage done to her Heart that method of approaching the situation is extremely detrimental to her well being. It effects her mental and physical health and leads to more problems than it solves. Inevitably she always reaches a breaking point and her Darkness overflows far worse than it would have if she would have just accepted it.

And when it does overflow she doesn't like the person she becomes. Sure, it comes with extra strength and power, which can be handy if she's in a tight spot, but it also ends up amplifying all the other things about herself she tries to repress. Anger, jealousy, pettiness, grudges... It all comes rushing to the surface, worse than it ever is under normal circumstances

It takes years for her to reach the realization that Darkness is not inherently evil, but is something that exits within almost every Heart to some degree. What matters isn't how much Darkness you hold within yourself, but what you do with it. And even once she reaches this conclusion it takes a long time for her to reach a point where she no longer gets overwhelmed or associates it with her worst traits. She has to learn to manually release the pent up Darkness. To this end she asks the Good Fairies if they could imbue her clothes with the needed Darkness protection so that she can use Dark Corridors as a means of short range travel, as that gives her a non-destructive way to channel the Darkness into something productive. She also learns to incorporate using Darkness in her fighting to additionally help release it.

Back to our roots this year, huh @khoc-week ? Then I think it's time I circle back around to my oldest KHOC, Kimbri. Maybe you know her, maybe you don't, but regardless some things have changed, some of which is new while others are resurrected concepts from her early days given a new spin, so sit back and enjoy! To go with the changes to her story she got a bit of a redesign, and in doing so I brought back some of my favorite things from earlier KH character design, excessive belts and zippers. (And, yes, for those of you who remember who she's shipped with, she did steal some of her partners aesthetic)

Now, I do want to issue a disclaimer, throughout July I was doing Art Fight and balancing the busy season at my new (as of March) job as a Youth Library Assistant (a job I've been chasing for years, so yay me!!) so I didn't end up getting much prepped in the way of new art so we might be seeing some really old art this week that won't match the updated ref, sorry! I'll try to do a couple more pieces on my days off, but other than that it might just be a lot of me talking this year.

Posting her ref sheet info under the cut in case peeps can't read it

So, like I said I the previous @khoc-week post for today, I'm a sucker for romance. Well, I'm especially a sucker for soft domestic scenes. So please accept this offering of another short snippet looking in on the alternative version of things where Leon, Kimbri, and Cloud are a triad. (Also I call Leon Squall in this because I like to think that in these soft domestic moments he'd let that name be used, as a way of letting his guard down and being intimate)

I Miss My Lover, Man

Alright, so, Day 4 of @khoc-week ! Old af art, I didn't have time to redraw it, but the outfit designs hold up!

I had a plethora of choices for AUs with Kimbri, I've come up with a fair few over the years, but I decided to pull out an old favorite, my untitled Modern Fantasy Slice of Life AU! You might remember this setting from... I think it was Year 3? I posted a drabble about Vanitas vs The Gremlin at Exhaustion Departure, the coffee shop. Well Kimbri just so happens to work at Merlin's Books right next door in this AU! It's a magical place that holds WAY more books than it should be able to, while also playing host to it's own resident magical creatures, in this case mostly colorful pixies who live in birdhouses around the store! They're definitely a bit better off in this regard than their neighbors, lol. Other members of the staff include Merlin himself, Ienzo, another OC of mine, Lena, handyman Cid, who also owns his own garage down the street, and part-timers Pence and Olette.

Below the cut find a drabble I wrote set in this AU. Enjoy some warm, fuzzy goodness in:

Sweater Weather

I will never not love this sketch and I'll pull it out any given opportunity I swear.

So, Kimbri has a LOT of interpersonal connections that mean a lot to her, but a little fun fact I've shared before and will likely share again is that it's thanks to @khoc-week that she has an official ship! Kimbri and Leon's relationship got it's start with the original KHOC Week's AU day prompt where I drew a silly little Shoujo AU where Kimbri had a crush on Leon. (I was a bit late to that prompt, didn't post it until the 6th but I drew it the day before so their anniversary is August 5th!) Things just grew from there, and now I couldn't imagine not having this ship!

Anyway, into the lore! I'll just hit the highlights about who her most important people are. These are listed in no particular order

Leon, of course. The love of her life, her sweet lion. Couldn't imagine a life without him at this point, and thankfully she'll never have too.

Aerith, her best friend and a sort of surrogate sister figure.

Ienzo, since they were both wards of Ansem the Wise she considers him her little brother.

Vega, her biological big brother who went missing during the Fall, he's the one she's searching for.

Cloud, a close friend (and in some AUs an additional romantic partner, poly ftw) She is often frustrated with his constant disappearing acts.

Sora, she basically adopted him as an additional little brother after meeting him during KH1.

Echo, in Sister AU Echo gets the same treatment as her brother, becoming a beloved ray of sweetness and sunshine in Kimbri's life.

Cid, he's been her surrogate father figure for the past decade or so since the Fall.

Vincent, also fills the role of a surrogate father, but in a different way than Cid does.

Rosa, the mysterious woman who ran Traverse Town's only restaurant, she provided a nurturing feminine presence in Kimbri's life that had previously been sorely lacking as all her parental figures since her birth parents passed had been men.

Merlin, he taught her most of what she knows about magic after she lost her memories of most of Ansem's teachings for reasons unknown to her.

Orihime, Sora and Echo's mother. She doesn't meet her until very late in the story but she quickly becomes very dear to her, reminding of her birth mother in the most comforting way.

Ansem the Wise, her uncle and guardian with whom she currently has a strained relationship. She loves him dearly but it's hard to reconcile that with the horrible things that happened under his watch, including her own trauma to do with the Apprentices' experiments.

And then there's a few that haven't been born yet

These are Leon and Kimbi's kiddos, who are of course some of her most precious people! Ariav and Nova are twins!

Ariav, the eldest, Mama's little helper who's always trying to fix things for her.

Nova, the middle child, strong willed and independent her mother is one of the few people who can reign her in without a fight.