Shot through the heart...

[Sai]

The ship took to the deep reaches of space quite well. The sailing was smooth and the ride was pleasant. Sai would have rather enjoyed this, in another life. Turning to the others, he nodded to them. "The auto-pilot should get us there, provided there's no-"

Suddenly, the ship lurched. Sai grabbed his chair to avoid being thrown before moving over to the radar system. On screen, he could see several small vessels closing in. He looked up to the windows, seeing them coming. Small, sharp vessels with the Heartless symbol on them. "Stingers..." the Nobody observed, then grabbed hold of the dashboard.

"Lexia, I need someone with quick reflexes on the helm. Ximar, on the laser cannon. Lilith, if you'd please handle the guns..." Sai muttered, choosing his efforts to keep an eye on the radar systems. He looked up every now and then to observe Heartless movements. "Keep your minds focused... They're only Stingers for now..." he stated.

This did, however, bode ill for their destination. If Stingers were about that meant that the larger control ships were probably nearby, and likely in the direction they were going. Why were they here, though...?

[ximar]

Ximar quickly ran to the large cannon. He jumped into the chair and took aim. Once locked on his target, he started to blast at them. He missed a few times, but he quickly dispatched his enemy. He continued to make shots at them, destroying them as he went along. "THIS IS SO MUCH FUN!!! WHOHOOOOOOOO!!!"

[Lilith]

Lilith jumped onto the guns and began to fire at the stingers with pin point accuracy.

[Leckseeuh]

Lexia nodded and ran back to the helm, sitting down and wondering how to work the thing. After a minute she chacked her knuckles, took aim, smiling, starting to take out the enemy. "This actually isn't too bad..." Hearing Ximar yell for the fun of it she giggled, not like she was killing anyone or anything, it's completely innocent.

[Atticus the Fallen]

The battlefield, as quickly as it was depleted of Stingers, would begin to replenish itself. Soon, Monoliths would be part of the action as well alongside the speedy fighters. These ships were slow, yes, but extremely powerful and shot beams of concentrated darkness at the diminuative gummi ship. They also had an incredible amount of defense, so it would take more than the two or three shots the Stingers needed...

All the while, they were being watched... his presence masked by the nebulous clouds that covered hyperspace in a hazy sort of dreaminess. The Fallen was sitting on the bridge of his Flagship, considering the action carefully. Yes, one or two of his ships would be damaged, but the good news was that ships could be repaired or replaced, and the pilots were all trained to corridor out before they would be harmed. Needless to say, he was barely concerned that the smaller, weaker, cheaper ships were proving ineffective. Perhaps his monoliths would-

Atticus' eyes shot wide. Somewhere in the deep rifts of space... the entire equation had changed. He grabbed his head as other heartless flailed about in sudden terror. A new light had been opened onto the world... There was a Keyblade Wielder at large...

The dark creature growled... then slowly quieted. New plans needed to be made... so he'd sit back... close his eyes... and concentrate... ***What he does here can be seen in the Silent Ballroom over in the World that Never Was***

Meanwhile, the heartless were coming back to their senses, manning their ships and attacking relentlessly. This annoyance needed to be handled so they could focus on more... pressing matters.

[ximar]

Ximar felt a sharp tug at his heart. "AUGH!" He fell out of his chair, spazzing on the floor like a fish out of water. He writhed in pain. Something was deeply wrong. After a few moments of spazzing out on the floor, he spoke, with two voices. "THE KEYBLADE HAS RETURNED!! FEAR!! RUN! MUST ESCAPE!! AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGH!!!!!"

[Sai]

With the addition of more firepower in space, Sai had to consider many different points of battle. He was concentrating on the systems, diverting power where needed and making sure they didn't fall apart. When Ximar suddenly started freaking out, he turned and looked over his shoulder, watching a moment. "Hm..." he muttered, then abandoned his post to go over to the boy, knealing down.

"My apologies..." he muttered, then reached into his pockets to produce a small vial. "If anyone has any objection to foul odors, I suggest you take measures..." he said calmly, then cracked it open and waved it under the boy's nose. The scent was so pungeant and distasteful that it would knock ANYONE out at close range. It was, quite simply, the most efficient way to get him to stop thrashing about, and with him in the mental state he was clearly in, raving about keyblades, he wouldn't have been much good to them even if Sai calmed him.

Standing up, Sai grabbed the laser cannon and attempted to open fire, but the Stingers were too fast and the larger, more powerful Monoliths took more than your usual amount of hits. "We're outnumbered..." Sai observed, his cool demeanor a complete contrast to the mayhem around them.

Suddenly, the radar began to spaz out. They had reached their destination but... they were now being assaulted from all sides by massive chunks of celestial debris. Alexandria... was GONE. It simply was no longer there. What was there, however, was billions of asteroids and various chunks of blown-apart planet. It had been destroyed... utterly and completely... What's worse, because they were right in the middle of it... the ship had almost nowhere to maneuver.

"This is not good..." Sai muttered pointedly.

[ximar]

Ximar went out like a light. He wouldn't be up for a while.

(Sorry for the short post, but what exactly do I say to that? )

[Leckseeuh]

Lexia coughed at the terrible smell the vial let out, waving her hand to her nose to get it away. She pulled the little bunny from her pocket and put it to her face, the sweet smell barely blocking off Sai's. "What the hell is that stuff? You trying to kill us Sai?" She mocked, turning back to her weapons and attacking again. Then she stopped once the radars spazzed, she looked in front of her, out of the window. Wherever they were going, it wasn't there. Just remains, chunks of the world itself. "Where are we supposed to be, Sai?" She asked quietly, now putting the bunny in her pocket and breathing normally again.

[Atticus the Fallen]

To call The Harbinger massive is a vast and insulting understatement. To better understand the scope of the thing, one must put it into perspective. The average Excalibur Class Gummi Ship requires about 30 individual blocks of varying types to build. The Harbinger boasts numbers in excess of 9000 blocks, a great many of which dedicated solely to weaponry, and another vast amount intended for enhanced armor. The engines alone were at least 300 gummi blocks each in construction, and the ion discharge cannon located on the front-underside of the enormous construct had a barrel so large, the common ship could easily fly into and down the length before destroying itself in the atom-smasher.

So, when Atticus the Fallen suddenly opened his eyes, his business concluded in the vast reaches of Hyperspace, and gave the order "Take her up!" to his crew... it is redundant to say that the heroes would be treated to a specticle that would leave most in utter terror.

The Harbinger lifted like a phantom from the nebula clouds it had been using to hide from their radar, revealling only a small amount at a time, like an iceberg suddenly deciding it no longer wished to be bound to the ocean. Their scanners not only would show the gigantic blip that the flagship of the Heartless Battle Fleet in its simple scale possessed, the blip would slowly cover more than a third of the actual screen, and it clearly didn't quite cover the entirety of the matter.

It rose... it rose... it ROSE! When finally, all of its glory could be seen... well, not ALL of its glory could be seen at once! It was simply too large and too destructive for the heroes to appreciate... but that wouldn't stop the caretaker of their kind...

It should be a warning to them that all the other Heartless ships in the area... were suddenly NOT there.

"Arm the discharge cannon..." Atticus muttered to a nearby engineer heartless who ran off to do as told. "This little ship is in my way..."

Ten seconds. That's all they would have to do whatever they planned to do, for what good it would acheive. They were locked in by the shattered remains of Alexandria, a trap they set for themselves by flying headlong into the world that was no longer there. Space around them would begin to crackle as the vacuum began to be filled with charged particles, ready to ignite.

And then it happened. In one enormous, destructive blast... the Ion Discharge Cannon fired on the tiny Gummi Ship...

[Sai]

"Knockout gas..." Sai muttered when Lexia asked him what it was. He threw the discarded vial aside, seeing as it was a one-time-use item. He'd have to make another if he wanted to use that trick again. "Emergancies only," he finished.

"As for the fate of our destination, I cannot say, but I can conclude with absolute certainty that it is no longer here..." Sai said, checking the area around them. Strange... the ships were retreating... why? "Based on the fragments of the world around us, I'll assume it's been destroyed." That's when he looked up as suddenly, the Flagship of the Battle Fleet began to rise.

"More troublesome still..." he muttered in his calm voice. The Harbinger was intimidating, but Sai was not moved. He didn't know fear. Lucky him.

Looking around though, he would recognize the crackles of energy around them, his one eye going wide. "A complication..." he stated, then jumped down from the laser cannon he was occupying to run over to Lexia's station, the navigation controls. He quickly YANKED on the helm and hit the turbo, ignoring the debris they would have to crash through as a result. They needed to MOVE. NOW.

The shot connected with the wing, ripping apart one side of the Gummi Ship and tearing out one of the engines, completely destabilizing and incapacitating them. The ship whirled out of control, slamming into one asteroid and then another as it was flung out of the range of the broken Alexandria.

The people INSIDE the gummi ship would feel the same kind of treatment the ship received, getting battered and bashed against the walls and machinery as it flailed this way in that in its death throws. It toppled through space away from their destination... drifting aimlessly towards another world all together...

One with a big clock tower and massive bells... Twilight Town.

[Atticus the Fallen]

An exhaustive search of Alexandria's ruins had uncovered...

nothing.

Not a single scrap of paper in the myriad of ruined asteroids that once created the crust of the marvellous world of Alexandria had any pertenant information on it. It was nothing but diaries or letters or bills. Nothing on the Keyblade. Atticus waved a hand, calling his ships back in as he sat back and considered this a moment... It was inconceivable that Alexandria, boasting the greatest library in all of hyperspace, did not contain those accursed scraps of paper.

Granted, with any luck at all, they had been destroyed in the carnage that ravaged all of this tiny, insignificant world. By the grace of Darkness, maybe the fires stoked by the architect of Alexandria's doom had burned them away. Still, he could leave no stone unturned. He needed to be sure they were gone.

"Turn the ship around..." He muttered, opting not to waste energy on travel for now. "We're going back..."

***returning to the world that never was***