The Girl That Never Was

by Onomonopia

The Chilly Academic

Xion had never summoned her keyblade faster than she did when the being in the cloak spoke to her. And it was a good thing she did, for a moment later shards of ice erupted from the beings right hand and hurled themselves across the air to get to her. She deflected the ice with her key, but instead of taking the opening to close the ground against her foe she backed away with terror in her eyes.

"This...isn't possible. You can't be here," Xion whispered to herself as the being slowly began to advance towards you. "You were erased. I saw the reports! And even if you somehow managed to survive, how could you possibly know that I'm here?! Answer me, Vexen!"

'Puppet, get a grip. It's clear that this is nothing more than an illusion created to mess with your head,' Sombra's voice said from within Xion's pocket, getting the puppet to take a moment to realize that he was right. 'If what you said is true, then the real one is dead. Meaning this guy here is a fake. So calm down, or get even more worked up, and put an end to him once more.'

"Yeah...that I can do," Xion growled as she lifted the woodland keyblade and took up her fighting stance, before roaring with rage as she lunged towards the cloaked being. She leapt into the air and slashed her blade at the head of Vexen, who lifted his shield to block the attack. Vexen skidded back under Xion's strength, but even as the keyblade wielder pushed against the icy shield she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

"You are not apart of my life anymore," Xion said through gritted teeth as she continued to overpower the Academic, who gave her no response. "You may have originally created me, but I have become a...person that you can no longer control! Do you hear me, you fake?!"

"Fake? I am insulted, no. I. Unlike you, I...am no fake!" Vexen yelled as he flipped his hood back to reveal a narrow face with long, icy blonde hair. A mad smile crossed his face as his eyes locked with Xion's, which only grew wider when he saw the fear in her eyes. Vexen let out a cackle before he kneed Xion in the gut, sending her skidding backwards before collapsing. "I am the genuine article. I am the one that made you. And I am pleased to see just how far my creation has come."

"But...that's not possible. You were erased. Axel personally erased you!" Xion roared as she pushed herself back to her feet. Vexen placed a finger in the center of his forehead before leaning back and letting out a laugh that was as cold as the ice that hung from his shield.

"Foolish, idiotic puppet. Have you learned nothing from your brief time in this world? I am not the Vexen you know. I am from a different reality," Vexen informed Xion, who glared at him in confusion for a moment before her eyes went wide with realization. "That's right. Axel would have slain me in my reality, had the Maestro not stepped in and put an end to him and the keyblade wielder. Thanks to him, Organization Thirteen finally took control of the worlds!...but why do I tell you this? For soon, you will belong to me once more?"

"So you're here on the Maestro's orders? Are you here to kill me?" Xion asked, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Pinkie was moving to a position behind the Nobody.

"Kill you? What good would that do any of us? Unfortuantely in my world, an unexpected consequence of the keyblade wielder being slain is that Roxas vanished as well. We do not know how that happened, but that means we are lacking a keyblade wielder that can be...controlled," Vexen said with a large smile as he took in Xion once more. "And without him means that our puppet would never work like you. But as I made the Xion in my world, I can...reprogram you to serve both mine and the Maestro's purposes. Now be a good puppet and don't resist. Because if you do...things will get painful."

"Maestro...killed Roxas? And Axel?" Xion asked in a near whisper as she looked down at her hands, her words getting Vexen to look at her with confusion. Then his face hardened like ice and he slammed his palm into the ground, conjuring icicles that spiked across the ground towards Xion.

'Move, puppet!' Sombra roared in her mind before using his power to yank her to the side

"Oh yes, he ripped the very nothingness out of Axel. Didn't know that was actually possible until I saw him do it," Vexen stated with a small chuckle before he aimed at Xion with his hand once more. "But that is enough questions. After all, once you are under my command, you will no longer need to ask-!"

"Hey, do you like ice cream?"

"My shield is modeled like a snowflake. Of course I like ice-" Vexen answered before he realized the question he was answering. He spun around just in time for Pinkie to slam a tub of ice cream over his head. Vexen let out a muffled roar as the sugary goodness stuck to his hair, getting him to stagger around as he tried to pull the tub off of his head. "Cloaked girl, that's not going to last for long! Do you have a plan?"

'Puppet?' Sombra asked Xion, who had yet to move after hearing what had become of her two best friends.

"Maestro...killed them."

'That he did. Not the ones you know, but ones just like them,' Sombra stated, but as he glanced into Xion's eyes he wished he could smile. 'And he's going to do it again. And again. And again. And Vexen is going to control them or you to his heart's content. Unless somepony stops him. Somepony that has the key...to his defeat.'

Xion threw her head back and let out a howl that shook the ground, before an aura of darkness erupted around her. With hate filled eyes she glared at Vexen, who had just managed to free himself from the imprisonment of Rocky Road. His eyes went wide as he saw what was happening to Xion. Xion extended her keyblade and a blade of darkness encased the key, which Xion slowly then lifted as she took up a fighting stance.

Vexen then let out a roar as he fired blasts of ice towards the key master, but in a flicker of darkness Xion moved past the ice and appeared in front of Vexen. Vexen's eyes went wide as he stared down into her eyes, eyes that were filled with the power of darkness. Her body flickered and a moment later she appeared behind Vexen, standing in a pose with the keyblade held high. Vexen turned slowly to look at her, before a slash tore through his body and nearly cleaved him in two.

'What...is happening to him?' Sombra asked in disbelief as he and Pinkie watched as Vexen began to come apart, pieces of him fading away into the darkness.

"We are made from nothing. Thus, we return to nothing," Xion whispered as she turned around to stare at Vexen, who was staring at himself with wide eyes. Then he slowly lifted his eyes to Xion, locking eyes with her for a moment before he let out a cackle, the most menacing, but also joyous, laughter that she had ever heard.

"Truly you are my greatest creation. I created you to copy the powers of the key bearer. But to think that you would be able to learn genuine emotion and humanity...truly it shows what an incredible genius that I am," Vexen laughed to himself as his legs vanished into nothing and all that was left was his upper torso. "But the trials will only get harder from here, my creation. I will not be the only being from your past Maestro will bring to deal with you. And after you see what else he has up his sleeve, perhaps you will wish that you had been reprogrammed by me."

"I will never be the slave of someone like you again," Xion promised in a rage filled whisper, but all that did was make Vexen smile once more.

"Actual rage. From a puppet like you. How incredible you turned out. I have nothing...but...pride..."

The rest of the Nobody vanished into nothingness, leaving the group of three to stare at the spot where he had vanished. Xion was the first to look away and turned her gaze towards the door that they had opened. To her surprise she found that the entire area within had been frozen in ice, except for a book that floated off of the ground.

"There it is!" Pinkie sang as she skated across the ice and to the book, grabbing hold of it and placing it in her mane. "Thanks for helping me find that! Twilight sent me to find it, but I've been looking for days with no idea where it could be. To think it would be in here..."

"Yeah...no problem," Xion replied as she banished her key and started to walk towards the exit, only for Pinkie to hop alongside her. The two left the darkness of the cavern and stepped back out into the light. Pinkie reveled in the light, but Xion flipped up her hood to shield her from the star. "Thanks for your help back in there. Guess I shouldn't have underestimated you. Bye."

"Hey, wait," Pinkie said, getting Xion to stop and turn her hooded head to look at the pony. "I still didn't get your name."

"...Xion. My name is Xion," Xion replied before she walked away from Pinkie, leaving the pink pony to watch her go until Xion vanished from her sight.

"Xion, huh? What an interesting friend," Pinkie said to herself before she started to head off in the opposite direction. "Wonder how she got her hair to look so nice?"

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No. I
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"Alright, as we promise the land is now free of the Heartless," Xion told Gorgana, who hissed happily at the news. She slithered over to one of her shelves and removed the Heaven's Tear from the shelf, which she then placed on the table in front of Xion along with a balloon keychain. "But I'll warn you now, Heartless almost never stay gone long. Be careful if you go back out to the mountains, just to be safe."

"I will keep that in mind, key bearer," Gorgana replied before she took a look at Sombra's horn, which was resting on the table. "So I must ask you this, king of the darkness: do you actually know the rest of the ingredients to reform your body? Or are you hoping to stumble across the answer to that like you have most other things in your life?"

'Well thank you for making me look bad in front of the help. The next time the villagers form an angry mob when they find out what you are, don't ask me to warp their minds,' Sombra spat in reply. 'But in all seriousness though, what are the remaining two ingredients? I'm asking for a friend.'

"You don't have any friends," both Xion and Gorgana said at the same time, before Gorgana cleared her throat. "The other two items to reform a body destroyed by the heart. You will need the Dragons Fire and the Golem's Core. One of those you will find to the East. The other will be in the South. But be warned, I have heard rumors that the lands are not as safe as they once were. There are dangers out there, along with the Heartless. Be careful."

"We will. And thank you for your help," Xion said with a small bow before she took the Heaven's Tears off of the table as well as the chain, placing them both in her coat before nodding to Gorgana. The serpent pony slithered into the back of her house, telling Xion that it was time to leave. She stepped out of the house to see that the spell Sombra has placed on the ponies had worn off, meaning that all of them gave her the same glares that they had when she first showed up.

"Time to go."

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No. I
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From the confines of his horn Sombra looked over Xion, who was resting her head on her arms while she stared into the fire that crackled before her. She hadn't said anything to him since the cavern where she fought the other hooded being, which was something that had interested Sombra.

'So that Vexen being was the one that created her, huh? Guess she wasn't joking when she said she was a creation,' Sombra thought to himself. 'But if she was right about that, does that mean she was telling the truth about everything else? Like how she is a being with no emotion made of nothingness? That can't be true, Vexen himself said that she had developed emotions on her own. But the less I know, the more interested I become. Seems that she's not just some powerful kid from the darkness, but a science experiment gone horribly right.'

'So why are you still moping?' Sombra asked Xion, getting her to lazily look over at the horn resting beside her. 'We stopped the Heartless, killed your creator while also tapping into your inner darkness, got the Heaven's Tears and best of all got away from Pinkie without becoming friends with her. I'd consider today a win. Yet you look like you're about to attend a funeral.'

"Sorry, it's just that...I didn't come here expecting to see anyone I knew, let alone the Nobody that...created me," Xion said as her body shivered, getting her to pull her limbs closer around her. "Actually, I've had to face y creator twice now. First it was the Maestro, and now it's Vexen. I almost can't believe it."

'So this Vexen, he's a member of Organization Thirteen, right?' Sombra asked, chuckling when Xion nodded. 'Thought so. Not only is he a member, but one from a different reality than what you know. Things just keep getting more and more interesting, doesn't it?'

"Interesting? How can you call this interesting?" Xion said with a rage as hot as the fire that blazed before her. "We're beings of shadow in a world of light while being hunted by a mechanical madman that seeks to undo the very fabric of this world! Now we have to deal with Maestro bringing in members of Organization Thirteen from a world where they've won!...Maestro killed my friends..."

'I call it interesting because, not only did you and Maestro pretty much confirm that multiverse theory is real, but now all these beings of shadow are showing up in the land of light. That will have to help balance the scales,' Sombra told Xion, but as she rested her head onto her arms Sombra knew he wasn't going to be able to get her to do anything until she was cheered up.

'And speaking of darkness, that was quite the darkness you pulled out there during your fight with Vexen,' Sombra continued on, waiting to see if she would react before he continued. 'Not only did you call upon the power of darkness, you called upon enough darkness to put even me to shame. And all of that without much training by me. Just like I said, puppet. You're a natural. You've got quite a bit of darkness in your heart.'

"I don't have a heart, remember?" Xion reminded Sombra, but all Sombra did was respond with a gargling sound of annoyance.

'You can feel hate. You can feel love. You can feel sad. You cannot feel any of those emotions without a heart. Therefor, you have a heart,' Sombra stated for her in such an annoyed tone she decided not to argue. 'But, as I was saying, you used that darkness and channeled it perfectly. Not only did you channel it around your keyblade, but you also channeled it around yourself, increasing your physical attributes. Makes you quite the warrior. Next time let us see what that can do for your magical side.'

"I thought that I wasn't supposed to use my emotions for darkness?"

'You didn't. You didn't rely on the emotions to draw out the power. You didn't let your emotions control you. You felt the negative emotions and channeled them into power. Just like I taught you,' Sombra said with a small sniffle. 'I almost brings a tear to my eye to see how well you're following my orders. Maybe we'll make a proper puppet out of you yet.'

Xion grunted in reply, but instead of answering Sombra she summoned her blade, flashing light across the area. She removed Fluttershy's keychain from the key, returning it to the Kingdom Key, before pulling out Pinkie's balloon and attaching it to the base of the key. The keyblade vanished in a flash of light and was replaced a moment later with a different design.

The base of the keyblade changed to the outline of a cupcake, with the top of the guard colored like frosting while the bottom was the color of chocolate. The blade itself was a single, long candle that had a metal flame where the tip of the blade was supposed to be. And the part sticking out from the blade was the roman numeral for fourteen, both Xion's "age" and the number she wore back in the Organization. She wondered if it was on purpose. And from the bottom the blue balloon keychain swung back and forth, with little bits of confetti falling off.

'Ugh, that is one ugly blade. So what's this one do?' Sombra asked Xion as the girl extended the blade, swinging it a few times to get a feel for it before she held it with both hands.

"This one has huge reach, meaning that I can strike foes from farther away," Xion noted as she swung the blade, allowing Sombra to see that it had a large arch. "It's also balanced in magic and strength, which is fine, I guess. Oh, but I get Lucky Lucky with it. That'll be handy for gathering items."

'See, something good happened to you today. In fact, a lot of good things happened to you,' Sombra added on quickly before Xion's sadness returned. 'You got a new blade on top of everything else. So why wallow in your misery. It doesn't do you any good. So why not use those emotions for something useful, like channeling your magic?'

"What do you mean?"

'Well, how do feel when you're angry?'

"Well, like I could tear apart any that stand before me. I'm like a wildfire."

'Good. How about when you're sad, like right now?'

"I feel...alone, distance...cold."

'Excellent. Now then, I recall earlier you showed me that you could shoot a fireball with your magic. Am I wrong to guess that you could also do the same with ice?'

"Are you saying...to use these negative emotions to further strengthen my magic?" Xion asked. "But I thought you said-"

'Again, using emotion to further your magic is fine. What you want to avoid is depending on the emotion to cast your magic,' Sombra clarified again for her. 'You must embrace the pain, embrace the rage and make it work for you. And stop calling them negative emotions. There are no good or bad. There are only emotions. And what emotion you're making me feel is incredibly ticked off.'

Xion thought about what Sombra said for a while, before another thought crossed her mind. "Why are you teaching me, anyway? If you plan to take the keyblade from me eventually, why are you helping me to become stronger? It just doesn't seem right from someone like you?"

'Because puppet, if you were the only problem I had to deal with I wouldn't bother so much with training you. But we've got the Heartless to deal with. We've got the Maestro to deal with. And in order to deal with all of these threats, you're going to need to be stronger than you ever thought possible,' Sombra revealed to Xion in a concerned tone and when Sombra was worried about something, it made Xion worry as well. 'Now get some rest. First thing in the morning, we're going to hunt some Heartless so you can try out something.'

Xion nodded at the horn before she looked down at her own hand, remembering the battle with Vexen and the things he had told her. 'He was just the first brought here by Maestro. That means that Maestro can bring others, others from my past who will try to kill me. Sombra's right. I have to be strong. I can't fall to them yet. Not until...I reach the beach and fulfill our promise.'

Author's Note:

Obtained: Happiest Day

Comments

[badninja]

Well that was a good ending for that member of the Organizing XII. Now can we all be happy that Meastro has been defeated, at least in the future.

[the other sans]

You are not apart of my life anymore
Actually, I've had to face y creator twice now
I almost brings a tear to my eye to see how
allowing Sombra to see that it had a large arch

1. A part, two words in this case.
2. My.
3. It.
4. Arc.

So then... one had to wonder what Pinkie really saw. Such a tease isn't it? Oh, and the battle with Vexed reminded me of the special weapon in 358 days where if you're using the weapon as a character it reflects their inner personality. I remember the other organisation members being really silly.

[TheMyth]

Imagine Xion having to fight either Saix, Xigbar or even Xemnas...

[not-so-anonymous]

If those that have 'died' are returning, I wonder if we'll see the only other Replica someday. One that embraces the darkness freely...

[Animefan608]

And she gots Celestia to deal with and organization 13 coming after her.

[Lorddarkrai2000]

that keyblade is partytastic!

[Warrior Kitten]

Xion whispered to herself as the being slowly began to advance towards you

Oh awesome! I didn't know i was in the story!

[AetherToast]

Was the Five Nights at Freddy's reference on purpose there with the Keyblade weapon?