Sora (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
heartstorage) wrote2013-07-25 07:48 pm
heartstorage) wrote2013-07-25 07:48 pm
CHARACTER HISTORY
Before Kingdom Hearts I/Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep
Sora was born on the Destiny Islands, about four years roughly before the series chronologically starts. Some point during that year, his heart came into contact with Ventus who was dying from an injured heart. His heart healed Ventus's, allowing the boy to survive so his life can go on to fuel a crazy depressing prequel. In return Sora's appearance was altered so he'd grow up looking much more like Ventus.
The years passed, and Sora led a relatively normal life. He became best friends with a boy named Riku, who he constantly hung around and competed with (though almost always losing due to being a year behind him in age). Their favorite playing spot was a small island not far from the main island they were raised, often calling it "their island". His parents, while never shown, are implied to have been around. It was a peaceful life.
During the first part of his life there are a few small events that should be noted. When he was about four years old, two keyblade wielders came to the island. The first was Terra, who sensed potential in Riku and decided the right thing to do was to awaken the potential in the five year old so one day he could leave his peaceful life and live out one full of fighting, war and pain. Aqua later came to the island and nearly considered doing the same for Sora, but decided against it. Instead she just projected all her issues on a four year old by saying how he had to protect his close friends but didn't give him any means to do so.
Thanks guys. You're the best.
Not too long after that, Sora came into contact with Ventus's heart again. Long story short, the kid had kinda got himself destroyed and his heart had left his body. Sora ended up taking his heart into himself (let's be real he probably thought it was a talking firefly) so Ventus could have a safe place to heal. Being four and not yet fully exposed to how insane his world truly is, it's probably safe to assume Sora either forgot about this incident happened or just wrote it off as a crazy dream.
About a year or two later, there was a meteor shower that marked the arrival of a girl from another world. Her name was Kairi and she claimed to have no memory of her old home. She was adopted by the Mayor, and became best friends with Riku and Sora. This friendship would last them through their entire childhood and sparked Riku's further curiosity to the outside world.
Finally, when Sora was eight years old, he succumb to peer pressure and declared he didn't believe in Santa Claus. This act would come back to haunt him in his later life.
Kingdom Hearts I
The years passed peacefully until Sora was fourteen years old. The only oddity to note that he was starting to get strange dreams, ones about fighting and darkness that took place in odd citadel places. He didn't dwell on them too much, and instead focused on building a raft with his friends. And then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.
Okay seriously actually it was more the heartless nation and they decided to eat the whole world. During this literal apocalypse, the Keyblade decided to show itself. Buuut unfortunately the real chosen, Riku, had jumped to the wrong call out of sheer eagerness to get off the island and went with the darkness. So instead it went to Sora, who had no idea what was going on and therefore ended up being unable to save his world.
Oh and because Kairi's heart was actually special and needed protection from the forces of darkness? The Light decided to be a further douche by ripping it out of her body and shoving it into Sora for safekeeping, who again had no idea what was going on because no on expects surprise organ transplants.
Believe it or not, it only gets worse from here.
Thanks to having the keyblade, Sora ended up not getting eaten like most of the people he's ever known. Instead he wakes up in Traverse Town, a city made by and for refugees who have fled the heartless after they ate their worlds over the past decade or so. Because that's right, the Destiny Islands weren't the only placed destroyed. In fact: billions and billions of people are dead.
However Traverse Town isn't much of a safe haven and one of the first sights Sora gets to see in a brand new world is a guy having his heart ripped out by a heartless! After that horrible sight, he then gets beaten up by the ever leather pants wearingSquall Leon who wanted to see how powerful the Keyblade's Chosen is. His assessment: We are in deep shit.
When Sora finally wakes up, he gets the 411 from Leon and a teenager named Yuffie (their group also has Aerith and Cid Highwind but hey details). Essentially the heartless are destroying worlds, they don't know how to really stop it but if they don't they are all dead. And oh yeah it's Sora's responsibility since he's the keyblade wielder and the keyblade means he's pretty much got a Heartless target painted on him for the rest of forever. When Sora reasonably protests this bullshit plan and that he much rather find out if his friends are alive, he gets told tough luck destiny calls. But it's not all terrible, because instead of traveling alone he gets accompanied by Goofy and Donald Duck who were ordered to find the person with the keyblade.
Yeah no actually it's still pretty terrible. They are next to useless in most battles beyond meat shields. Though oh yeah there's also Jimney Cricket who comes along to record everything. He's cool and rides in Sora's hood.
After Donald and Goofy declare that the one rule of their crew is no sad faces (because you know, watching a kid be upset over losing absolutely everything is such a bummer man), they set off to travel worlds in search for the King - aka the only person who might have a clue of what to do. They convinced Sora to come with by saying there's a chance they could find Riku and Kairi on their travels- though Donald admits he was totally lying about that one. This is only the start of several games full of Donald's dick moves.
The first three worlds are Wonderland, the Olympus Coliseum and the Deep Jungles of Africa. In Wonderland they meet Alice whose been falsely accused but before they can clear her name she gets kidnapped off the world whoops. In the Deep Jungles they meet Tarzan who is more genre savvy than the rest of the cast and murder their first human. And at the Olympus Coliseum they meet Hercules and Phil who declare them "noobs" at the hero business. They also meet Cloud who instead of helping out with the war like the rest of his friends, spends the next two games obsessing over a side boss who has zero significance to the plot. In fact it's even hinted by the creator that the dude he obsesses over is really just a figment of Cloud's mind.
Good job Cloud, keep it up.
They went back to Traverse Town and the team figured out that if Sora sealed the keyholes of each world- that should prevent Heartless from being able to consume the heart of the world (though this plan doesn't seem to help rid of the hoards of heartless roaming around the worlds' surfaces, so really this plan just upgraded the states of the worlds from being blasted into oblivion ala Alderaan and more just become barren planets devoid of life because the heartless ate everything- but hey details! Who needs them?). They also talk about a guy named Ansem, who was the wise king of Leon's world. He wrote a lot of reports about heartless, so they think that maybe if they find enough of the reports maybe they can find a more permanent solution.
Sora than runs into Riku, and is thrilled to be reunited with his best friend. However Riku is less than thrilled about Sora having a keyblade and no longer needing his protection- and things were only made worse when Donald declared that Riku was not allowed to travel with them for no real reason.
Did I mention Donald is a serious dick?
Anyway, Riku ran off and Sora went to learn magic from Merlin. He then went to Agrabah where Jasmine got kidnapped like Alice did. Aladdin demanded to come along but was denied because of the World Order rule. However Genie was allowed to come along in his stead as a summon. How does this even work? I don't know, but my best guess is that much like Earth, in Kingdom Hearts's universe it's much harder for an Arab man to get through customs than a blue skinned dude.
And sadly, this is not the most racist part of Kingdom Hearts. Stay tune for that.
After Agrabah, because this verse wasn't trippy enough, the group get their ship eaten by a space whale. That clause was in no was exaggerated. But in the whale named Monstro, they meet up with Pinocchio and Ghe- Ge- aw screw it, Pinocchio's crazy puppet building dad. They also run into Riku, who decides to kidnap Pinocchio so he can take him apart to see how he works. Since yeah, Riku has taken some levels in jackass since the beginning of the game. Sora notes this and tells him off, even willing to fight him over it. Riku and Sora part ways, their friendship now insanely tense.
After we escape the womb level from hell, there's Altantica and Halloween Town. Plot wise, nothing super relevant happens, but Jack Skellington earns mention just for the fact he is so hardcore that took a heartless invasion as a chance to get new dance members for Halloween. And oddly, this does not turn out as badly as you'd think it would.
Once we past the two filler worlds, they reached Neverland. Oh well, it was just Captin Hook's ship actually but hey details. It was there that Sora finally saw Kairi- who turned out to be nothing more than a soulless husk that wouldn't wake up because her heart was missing. Riku showed more douchiness and that he was siding with the heartless, and Peter Pan taught them how to fly.
Sora then returned to Hollow Bastion so Cid could install new coordinates on their ship. He becomes depressed there, as anyone would after finding out one friend's turned into an evil douchebag and the other's a soulless husk. He then has a random flashback of one of Kairi's memories of her grandmother telling her a story about how the worlds used to be one but then they all fell apart because of war and what not.
I'm sure in no way will this story ever become relevant to the series, so let's move on!
The trio travels to Hollow Bastion and they run into Riku. Riku reveals that he was the real chosen of the keyblade, and takes the keyblade away from Sora. With this revelation, Donald declares that him and Goofy need to travel with Riku instead and proceed to leave Sora, a now defenseless kid, stranded in a world that has been horrendously ravage by the heartless for the past nine years to the point that there is nothing but heartless living here.
Again, I feel compelled to point out Donald can be a real dick sometimes.
Sora feels distraught, but is encouraged to go on by Beast the determinator who showed up there to save Belle (who also been kidnapped like Alice and Jasmine). The Beast and Sora travel through Hollow Bastion until they meet up with Riku again. Riku and Sora stand off and Sora is saved by Goofy who decided that leaving Sora to die was terrible, even if it meant going against the King's orders. The jerk duck decides to follow suit too, and Sora proves he has a stronger heart thanks to his friends and wins back the keyblade from Riku.
They fight, and Riku loses and runs off upset that he lost. He then runs into a guy who offers him to loan him more darkness powers, buuut this turns out to be a trick and Riku gets possessed by an evil guy. Good job Riku. At least you're still better off than Cloud in terms of great life choices.
Now with his keyblade and friends back, Sora battles through Hollow Bastion. When they reach the top, they end up battling Maleficent first in human form, badly wounding her. They go to follow her to finish the deed, only to watch the now possessed Riku in possession of a dark keyblade stab the lady and unlock her heart so she turns into a dragon. She is killed by Sora's group.
After this battle, Sora comes across a room where he finds out what Alice, Jasmine and Belle are being used for. Apparently their hearts are special and can be used to unlock the final keyhole that would bring out immense amounts of darkness until the world. However it turned out Kairi was the last princess and her heart was currently in Sora, making it impossible to complete the keyhole. Possessed!Riku attempts to kill Sora to release that heart, but Sora beats him back and he disappears.
However they found they had two problems on their hands. The first was Hollow Bastion's keyhole couldn't be sealed without the seventh heart, and second that Kairi would never wake up as long as her heart was in Sora. Realizing this, Sora decides to use that keyblade Riku used on Maleficent on himself. He stabs himself in the chest and releases the hearts within him, waking up Kairi so the first thing she sees is her best friend die.
At this point, the guy who was possessing Riku reveals himself in his true form. And lo and behold, it's Ansem- the wise king that Leon and the others talked about! Turns out he's the man who caused the heartless to invade, and is the only black character in the entire series. It even later turns out that he used to be white in his human days, but becoming a heartless turned him black.
See. I told you it'd get more racist.
Riku holds Ansem back as Kairi, Donald and Goofy flee the castle. Sora, now a heartless, follows them. Kairi recognizes him, and through a power hug- is able to return him back to human form...or at least, to a heartless in human form. It's complicated and the whole thing led to the creation of Roxas and Namine- but I'll save that explanation for other people's apps. Either way, the four of them retreat to Traverse Town because the opening of that keyhole turned out to be a terrible plan. But after some semi-romantic scenes, Sora returns to Hollow Bastion to seal that keyhole. He learns that Leon, Yuffie, Aerith and Cid originally hailed from Hollow Bastion and that it's possible to restore the worlds- but if they do that none of them will be able to see each other again. Leon says something shonen-like, and we are all creeped out so much that Sora decides maybe having the world walls back up suddenly sounds like a great idea.
They find out Ansem retreated to a place called "The End of the World" so they decide to head there. They find him deep in there, and Ansem talks about DARKNESS and then they beat him up. They encounter a door with some light that fries Ansem, but it's the door to the realm of darkness whoops. But they find the King there, and him and Riku stay in the Realm of Darkness to seal the door shut from inside. Riku, now no longer a douche, tells Sora with a smile to look after Kairi.
The worlds are restored, and Kairi shows up at the reforming Destiny Islands. Sora decides not to go to Destiny Islands, but instead look for Riku. He promises Kairi he'll come back one day with Riku and they part ways. At some time later- Sora, Donald and Goofy travel a road before they see Pluto carrying a letter with the King's seal on it. They chase after him, in hopes of finding Riku and the King.
Which you should all know, this plan fails horribly and leads to-
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
In summary: Sora got mindscrewed so bad that they legit have to make him forget it all just to put him back to normal. He remembers nothing of this and it's probably a good thing because he'd need years more therapy than he already does. He goes into a coma for a year just to recover. Which meant-
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days
He slept through this entire game. So let's head on to-
Kingdom Hearts II
About a year after the events of Kingdom Hearts, Namine and company found that due to the Organization's meddling with Roxas and Xion, they can't wake Sora up just on the parts he had left on his own. And so without the consent of either Roxas or Sora, they hunt Roxas down and essentially force him to merge with Sora.
Which believe it or not, neither one of them are thrilled about this. Though Sora is unaware of what happened for most of this game.
After this crazed science happens, Sora wakes up in Twilight Town with Donald and Goofy! Confused at their current situation, they start to explore Twilight Town. Due to Roxas's now subconscious memories within him, Twilight Town feels very familiar to him as well as many of the occupants. But he doesn't get much time to dwell on this, as they are attacked by Nobodies. Mickey saves them and gives themfraud money to get on a train, and sends them on their way. As Sora leaves Twilight Town, he finds himself feeling sad and even shedding a tear, even if he doesn't understand why.
It should be noted that Donald doesn't take this opportunity to pull a dick move. Either this is character development or he's just having an off day from just waking up.
The group makes their way to Yen Sid's Tower where they meet Pete, mostly because they felt this series was lacking a Gold Fish Poop Gang. They find out from him that Heartless are still around, but pretty much blow him off entirely.
They travel up the tower, very unhappy to see that heartless are indeed still around. They meet Yen Sid who explains yeah Heartless will always be around as well as explain what Nobodies are (creatures not to meant to exist with no hearts). Sora gets some new clothes since he had a growth spurt during his coma and they set off to see new worlds!
Their first stop was Hollow Bastion, which their friends had been working to rebuild. They meet up with Leon, Yuffie, Aerith, Cid and Merlin and find out that they apparently forgot about them (rude!), but that's okay because they remembered them again shortly before their arrival. Anyway, Leon showed Sora that Hollow Bastion had this slight problem where there was a canyon FULL OF HEARTLESS. But before Sora could help take care of it, Organization XIII came to troll and then the keyblade made the signal that it was time to go- leaving Hollow Bastion with its canyon full of Heartless that surely will not come up later in the plot.
So yet again they traveled worlds! In the Land of Dragons they helped Mulan save China and watch take several levels in badass. At the Beast's Castle it turned out the Beast was being taunted by Xaldin from the Organization. At the Olympus Coliseum Sora met Auron, learned that Hades is p. much invincible and got up on a hydra's back. At this point they get called back to Hollow Bastion by Merlin, who tells them that he found Pooh's story book. Unfortunately, before Sora can really reunite with his bear friend- heartless attack and damage some of the pages. This triggers Pooh to have complete amnesia and forget who Sora or any of his friends are. They have no choice but to look for the pages that got ripped out across the worlds in hopes that restores Pooh's memories.
Over at Disney Castle Pete and Maleficent tried to use time travel to take over, and shenanigans were had. We also learned that Donald has not bothered to write or visit his girlfriend and/or wife for the past year and a half, despite many opportunities. His only solution to this was to try to violate the rules of time travel and attempt to change the past.
Yep, no need to fear guys. Donald is just as much of a dick as always.
Port Royale gave us an awkward rendition of the only good Pirates of the Caribbean Movie but it was nowhere near as awkward as Atlantica where Sora performed in musicals. In Agrabah, there was shenanigans with putting Jafar's Lamp in a safe place that went way smoother than anyone would expect and there's no chance this won't go wrong. And then they arrive in Halloween Town, where Sora got to meet Santa only to find out that he's on the naughty list for crime he committed 7 years ago with his declaration that Santa wasn't real.
See. I told you it would come back to haunt him.
But it's cool because they still saved Christmas...from their own friend Jack. They then traveled to the Pride Lands where they helped take part in an overthrow of the monarchy and put in a guy with little experience but a bit more decent of a dude. And sorry guys, Mufasa is still dead.
After that, Sora goes back to Twilight Town. He helps protects Seifer and his gang from being attacked by Nobodies and gets a trophy in return. Saix from the Organization shows up to warn Sora about a man from the Organization named Axel who apparently has gone rogue and will stop at nothing to turn Sora into a heartless. Sora's overall response is "bitch plz" and plots jumping into Saix's portal after him, but Saix throws him off by making some ominous statement about Riku and then portals out. Sora then runs into Hayner, Pence and Olette again who tell them that they ran into Kairi. As it turns out, Kairi got effing sick of waiting around for Sora and Riku to return so she jumped into the first dark portal off the island and wound up in Twilight Town. And while she was in Twilight Town, she ended up getting kidnapped by Axel. Whoops. Sora has a moment where he channels Roxas, and leaves the world feeling upset that now both Riku and Kairi are in danger. Goofy and Donald attempt to cheer him up, but it backfires and makes him blame himself for their plight.
However he doesn't get a chance to start looking for the two, because their ship engineers notice that Hollow Bastion is covered in darkness. They head there to find the number of Heartless has increased, as well as Nobodies. While heading to Merlin's House, they run into Cloud who instead of giving them the scoop of what's going on, instead starts going on about Sephiroth and even blames the dude for his haircut and darker outfit.
Uh. Right. Thanks Cloud. Nice to see you haven't changed that much.
Aerith shows up and takes a moment to call him on his bullshit, but lets him go off to because he's proven to be pretty damn useless anyway. After that, they reach Merlin's house and find out some good news! Leon and the gang found the computer that Ansem used during his research about heartless and darkness. So they head off to meet Leon and King Mickey who is with him, and along the way encounter the Gullwings - a fairy mercenary group that had been hired by Maleficent to do recon and kinda suck at the job. They also meet Tifa, who is looking for Cloud and feels the best way to do search is to tear apart an entire room.
Anyway they meet up with Leon and he shows them the computer, but then Stitch who was hanging on the ceiling jumps down onto the keyboard! Donald also jumps onto the keyboard to get him off, and that pisses the computer off since apparently Ansem had installed Windows ME/The MCP on it. He gets him, Sora and Goofy sucked into the computer (because there's a world in it), but they meet a program named Tron who helps them get out before they get derezzed. He also requests that they find his user so he can get the password to restore his program fully, which makes it to be insanely awkward considering they killed his user in the last game.
They get back to Hollow Bastion and look for the password. Mickey shows up and there's a big happy reunion with him, Donald and Goofy. He helps them figure out the password (an insanely long password btw), and they go back to help Tron. Tron does not understand why the hell they didn't just email it, but he's thankful for the help. They help him restore his program and help stop the MCP from using the password for it's own evil things. They fess up that they are enemies of his user, but he confesses he's pissed off at his user too for changing up his program so it's all good.
Once back in Hollow Bastion again, Leon is dumb enough to let Sora handle the data collection on the computer. Sora, being computer inept, gets so frustrated at constantly receiving an error message that he starts hitting the computer. This brings up an image of an old man he doesn't recognize, but Mickey recognizes as Ansem the Wise! Sora thinks the king has gone crazy and drags him over to see a portrait of the Ansem he knows- you know the dude he killed. Mickey reveals no that guy is actually an imposter of the real Ansem and they don't know his real identity, but the guy Sora fought was the imposter's heartless. His nobody on the other hand, is leading Organization XIII
Needless to say, Sora is less than pleased by this news.
He tries to ask about Riku with the king, but Mickey refuses to say anything and apologizes. Sora tells Mickey about Kairi, and that makes the king resolve that they should travel together and search for Riku and Kairi! Buuut before they can go anywhere, there is a loud crashing sound as the heartless army finally breaks through bailey's walls. They head out to see Nobodies and Heartless battling each other with Maleficent leading the Heartless, with the nobodies kicking the Heartless ass. Maleficent does her super badass teleporting out, and the Gullwings are left behind and angry that Maleficient bailed without paying. Sora tells the Gullwings that maybe they should help Leon's side instead because they really need it, and Donald lies to them saying that Leon has lots of treasure.
Thanks Donald. Even when you try to be nice you're a dick.
But they get out of the castle to find that there's a huge giant battle going on and everyone is fighting for their dear lives! Sora wants to help out since he has a lot of friends in Hollow Bastion, but Mickey tries to kitchen him saying to go look for Riku and Kairi. Buuut the trio says screw that and run in anyway. They run into Demyx, a member of the Organization, and fight him to the death. Mickey catches up with them and agrees to let them fight against the Heartless.
At that point, Goofy pushes Mickey out of the way from a falling boulder which makes him all think he's dead in a surprisingly depressing scene. Sora and Donald are devastated while Mickey goes into furious rage and runs off to get revenge. Donald follows Mickey and Sora follows last, getting several of his friends (Tifa, Yuffie, Leon and Cloud - yes he actually does something) to help him clear the way. He finally catches up with Mickey and Donald and Goofy pops back up to show that yeah he's not dead! Never underestimate the power of cartoon physics guys, okay.
But they head out together in time to see Xemnas, the leader of the Organization XIII, show up! Mickey remembers that the imposter is actually Ansem's old apprentice, Xehanort. Mickey charges after Xemnas, but before the others can follow they are surrounded by heartless- leaving no choice but to fight. And so they split up and Sora massacres a thousand heartless until the canyon is empty.
Seriously. It's as badass as it sounds.
They catch up to Mickey and Xemnas only to find out that Organization XIII has Kairi. Xemnas and Mickey disappear, but Saix shows up to taunt Sora. Sora begs him to take him to Kairi, but Saiz is a douche and refuses. He also tells him that they are using all the hearts that Sora releases with his keyblade for their own plot with Kingdom Hearts. This BSODing nearly gets him killed, but Maleficient intervenes rationalizing that the Organization is a bigger threat and might as well side with Sora until they can go back to their old antagonistic ways. They get sent to the realm of darkness, and a robed figure leaves them a box with a photo with the group from Twilight Town plus a kid they had never seen before (though Sora immediately identifies as "Roxas") and a bar of Sea-Salt Ice Cream that Donald eats.
That's right. The kid just went through hell and the dick duck still takes the ice cream.
Anyway, they get out of the Realm of Darkness only to find out all the worlds seem to be having problems now. The Land of Dragons, Beast's Castle and Port Royal were all getting harassed by the Organization; Olympus Coliseum, Halloween Town, Atlantica, the Pridelands and Hollow Bastion had their own homegrown problems while Agrabah had a mix of both. Sora went around and helped all his friends, all while feeling an increasing amount of pessimism that his journey would ever come to an end or that he'd solve his problems once and for all. Who could blame him really after over a year of these things happening?
Eventually, the engineers of his ship detected two strange things: first a giant world near the edge of the Realm of Darkness- and a duplicate Twilight Town. They couldn't get to the giant world, so they decided to check out Twilight Town. They found Hayner's group also investigating due to some oddities they had noticed. They had figured there was another Twilight Town, and perhaps Kairi was there. With the help of Mickey and Pence, they were able to find able to find a way into the other Twilight Town - a digital one that had been created by DiZ as part of his process to reawaken Sora. Sora quickly recognized it as "Roxas's Twilight Town" and saw one of his memories- even if he didn't understand what it meant.
In this digital Twilight Town, they found a portal that would lead to the giant world- the World that was the Organization's homebase. They went through the portal, but were attacked by legions of Nobodies. Right then, Axel showed up to help- saying that Saix had Kairi and asking Sora to save her. He fought alongside Sora for a bit, but when the numbers got too great- Axel sacrificed himself with a kamikaze attack that took out the legion. As Axel laid dying, he told Sora that he had just wanted to see Roxas again because he made him feel like he had a heart, but Sora made him feel the same. He then opened a portal to get Sora out of there, and died.
Walking through the portal, Sora showed up in The World That Never Was- the homebase of the Organization. He didn't get far before another person in a black hood showed up, whisking him away to some place that resembled the dreams he'd have before he got the keyblade. The person in the hood showed that they had a keyblade, and challenged Sora to a fight. It was a long battle, but through Sora being resourceful and well- cheating- he came out the victor. The hood came off to show that it was Roxas, who told him that "he made a good other" before the entire scene vanished. When he asked Goofy and Donald about it, they said they didn't see anything other than Sora disappearing for a bit.
They continue onward and eventually reach a dead end between the city and the castle. However Namine and Kairi managed to make light powers to make a gateway for them yay! They head into the castle and Saix attempt to make them kill more heartless, but gets interrupted by Kairi, "Ansem", Maleificent and Pete. Kairi and "Ansem" start fighting heartless with their own keyblades, and Saix leaves. But before Sora can head up to where they are at, he gets interrupted by Xigbar. Xigbar taunts him about how pathetic he is compared to the other keyblade wielders, and then they fight- with Sora coming out the victor.
Sora finally catches up with Kairi and the "Ansem" and has a happy reunion. It turns out that the Ansem is actually Riku who lost his normal form through shennagains, and they have a happy reunion too. They all travel together through the castle and battle Luxord and Saix to the death (of course while Riku and Kairi want to help they are cut off by arbitrary party headcounts!). At this point Sora is so fed up of people calling him Roxas he starts demanding to know what's going on. Riku explains that Roxas is his nobody that used to be part of the Organization, but left. Also oh yeah, he's inside of Sora now. thanks to wacky science.
Speaking of wacky science, they continue on until they run into DiZ and Mickey! Diz turns out to be actually Ansem the Wise, and he monologues awhile which is cool because he's voiced by Christopher Lee. Xemnas shows up and there's also an argument there. But at this point Ansem's machine he was using to contain Kingdom Hearts blows up in a giant ball of light. Kingdom Hearts is horrendously damaged, Riku gets reverted back to his normal form and Christopher Lee dies....maybe. It's all kinda vague.
Anyway, as it turns out Chistopher Lee's plan had one kind of flaw. He managed to release a lot of hearts from Kingdom Hearts.....only to have them become a heartless army. Whoops. Sora and company run for it, going after Xemnas with millions of heartless chasing after them. Luckily for them, Maleficent and Pete show up and decide to take on the heartless themselves! They tell Sora and the others to go take care of Xemnas while they fight off the heartless. Not so much out of a moral change of heart as just...realizing if Xemnas is dead that's one less problem for them and they can have his cool looking castle.
Anyway, they catch up to Xemnas who decides to go into Kingdom Hearts and become one with it. The light gives them a door so they can follow- marking their final battle.
Which of course means Sora runs off to do 23423432 sidequests and tasks first, but still!
Okay finally after you finish all the sidequests, they go to fight Xemnas. It's an epic battle with skyscraper cutting! Sora, Riku, Donald and Goofy all seemingly destroy him. They all decide to head home via a dark portal (no way this can end bad), but not before Namine and Roxas can share a moment. This slow up makes the portal close before Riku and Sora can go through it- and they see a dragon. They follow, they fight it- and turns out Xemnas isn't so dead as they thought. So they fight him again! It's even MORE epic. They managed to win, but not without badly injuring Riku. Sora hauls his bro out of the battle area and they end up on the dark shores.
They hang out awhile there, talking and stuff, but eventually find a note that Kairi sent out WAY at the beginning of the game. This somehow opens a gateway that lets them return to the Destiny Islands! So they crash land into the ocean, swim to shore and reunite with their friends who were waiting for them. And this game ends on an actual happy note where things don't suck.
Don't get used to it, because the others are bummers.
Kingdom Hearts: Coded
And then Sora took a vacation for an entire game. It was awesome.
However at the end of this, Mickey writes Sora a letter asking him to help out the people that were still in need and that they are the reason he is who he is today. Sora agrees to help out and Yen Sid decides to see if he and Riku are ready by making them take the Mark of Mastery Exam. Which leads to-
Kingdom Hearts: Drop Dream Distance
Sora and Riku arrive at Yen Sid's Tower, where they get told they need to take the Mark of Mastery Exam. Sora at first objects at the idea he needs to prove himself since you know, already saved the universe twice, but Riku is much more accepting about it and Sora relents- saying that they'll pass no problem.
And then he fails it so miserably a fifth year senior would be like "damn bro".
Nah, not really. For the exam, as a gambit to help them gain a new power, Yen Sid sends them to the "7 Sleeping Worlds". These were worlds once destroyed but then brought back thanks to Sora's actions, however something went wrong so they are stuck in a dream- or constant timeloop. It would be up to Sora and Riku to head into these worlds and wake them up.
Initially it seemed like the test was running smoothly. Riku had been sent to another version of the sleeping worlds seemingly, but they still caught hints of each other's presence from time to time. Along the way, Sora made many new friends as well- not unlike his previous journeys.
However, something was off. In almost every world, he would come across either someone in a black coat or Xemnas or a mysterious young man that would taunt him about his existence or his heart. It would never be for long, but they would constantly throw at him unsettling words that would make him start to question who he was and what the words could mean.
Also apparently Tron or Tron's original copy had gone evil. And then he maybe died. Or maybe he didn't, it was left pretty vague. Either way, that sucked.
However after he finished with the seventh keyhole, shit went really wrong. Instead of going back to Yen Sid's Tower, he ended up at the World that Never Was. Xigbar was there, telling him that the entire thing was a trap and he's been off course from the start. He then put Sora into a deep sleep. The mysterious young man, who was actually Xehanort at a young age, explained the workings of time travel and how he set this entire plan into motion.
After Young Xehanort was done monologuing, Sora seemed to show back in the World that Never Was. Traveling through, he then saw Namine heading up some stairs. He chased after her, trying to tell her that he wanted to thank her- only to have her change into the image of a dark haired girl he had never seen before, but left him feeling a wave of sadness enough to make him shed a tear before she ran off.
He chased after her, and when he finally caught up, it turned out he had found Roxas instead. Roxas tried to tell him that they were the same person, and so many hearts were connected to him- but Sora told him he was wrong. That Roxas was his own person and deserved to live his own life as much as he did. Roxas seemed surprised and touched by this opinion, and responded by sharing all his painful and traumatic memories with Sora before vanishing.
Thanks Roxas. I guess you're making up for the lack of Donald dickery in this game.
Sora, now upset and more traumatized, kept going. He soon came across visions of Riku and Kairi and tried to catch up to them, but they shifted into the images of Terra and Aqua, calling him "Ven" and smiling before walking away. He also had a moment of channeling Ventus, and all in all he found it pretty freaky.
He eventually found Xigbar again, who revealed that while the content of the dream all came from Sora's mind, it was their intent to put him into the deepest of sleeps as a trap. He started taunting Sora about his heart steering him in the wrong direction, which Sora retorted with the realization from Roxas's memories that Nobodies have hearts too. Xemnas showed up and confirmed the statement, saying that even if a nobody loses their original heart, eventually they start to build a new one through experiences and connections to other people. However he had lied to the Organization members all this time so they wouldn't foster any new hearts- that way they would ideal to use as vessels for copies of Xehanort's hearts- making thirteen Xehanorts in all. And while many of their original candidates had turned out no good for various reasons- they had decided to use Sora instead for a vessel.
Well. Shit.
Sora was not okay with this plan. Pissed off that Xehanort would use people in such a way, he told them off that his heart was what made him strong. Xigbar tried to use this against him to try to point out how insignificant Sora himself was, but it backfired when Sora replied he already knew the keyblade didn't choose him, and he didn't really care about that. His friends were his power. This made Xigbar run off, and he went to battle Xemnas on his own.
He won the battle, but at a heavy cost. He had used up all his energy and due to lack of protection against darkness, his heart shattered and fell into darkness while his body fell into a coma. He would have been lost completely had it not been for his connection with other people. Riku, Mickey,Axel Lea, Donald and Goofy came to save his body and stopped him from becoming a vessel for Xehanort. Meanwhile his heart ended up being shielded by Ventus, who used his armor in the nick of time to shield it from being eroded and lost by the darkness.
However, even when they were back in Yen Sid's Tower, Sora still didn't wake. Riku, concerned for his friend, used the dream eating powers he had gain during the exam to dive into Sora's sleep. He found the armor now possessed by a Nightmare, defeating it before realizing it was Sora instead. Not too long after that, Sora managed to wake up before his friend did. Riku finally woke up finding his friend having some goddamn tea while Donald tried to hog all the food despite several members of the team going through traumatic experiences.
Yes siree, Donald is still a dick.
Sora was overjoy to see Riku safe and sound (ironic considering he had been the one in deeper danger), and Yen Sid informed them that only Riku had passed the exam and that he was the new Master. Sora, despite failing, was very happy for his friend. Then everyone in the room was shocked by the fact that Lea was able to summon a keyblade.
Not long after that, Sora says he needs to get some stuff finished. He was on his way to Traverse Town before showing up in Exsilium.
Sora was born on the Destiny Islands, about four years roughly before the series chronologically starts. Some point during that year, his heart came into contact with Ventus who was dying from an injured heart. His heart healed Ventus's, allowing the boy to survive so his life can go on to fuel a crazy depressing prequel. In return Sora's appearance was altered so he'd grow up looking much more like Ventus.
The years passed, and Sora led a relatively normal life. He became best friends with a boy named Riku, who he constantly hung around and competed with (though almost always losing due to being a year behind him in age). Their favorite playing spot was a small island not far from the main island they were raised, often calling it "their island". His parents, while never shown, are implied to have been around. It was a peaceful life.
During the first part of his life there are a few small events that should be noted. When he was about four years old, two keyblade wielders came to the island. The first was Terra, who sensed potential in Riku and decided the right thing to do was to awaken the potential in the five year old so one day he could leave his peaceful life and live out one full of fighting, war and pain. Aqua later came to the island and nearly considered doing the same for Sora, but decided against it. Instead she just projected all her issues on a four year old by saying how he had to protect his close friends but didn't give him any means to do so.
Thanks guys. You're the best.
Not too long after that, Sora came into contact with Ventus's heart again. Long story short, the kid had kinda got himself destroyed and his heart had left his body. Sora ended up taking his heart into himself (let's be real he probably thought it was a talking firefly) so Ventus could have a safe place to heal. Being four and not yet fully exposed to how insane his world truly is, it's probably safe to assume Sora either forgot about this incident happened or just wrote it off as a crazy dream.
About a year or two later, there was a meteor shower that marked the arrival of a girl from another world. Her name was Kairi and she claimed to have no memory of her old home. She was adopted by the Mayor, and became best friends with Riku and Sora. This friendship would last them through their entire childhood and sparked Riku's further curiosity to the outside world.
Finally, when Sora was eight years old, he succumb to peer pressure and declared he didn't believe in Santa Claus. This act would come back to haunt him in his later life.
Kingdom Hearts I
The years passed peacefully until Sora was fourteen years old. The only oddity to note that he was starting to get strange dreams, ones about fighting and darkness that took place in odd citadel places. He didn't dwell on them too much, and instead focused on building a raft with his friends. And then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.
Okay seriously actually it was more the heartless nation and they decided to eat the whole world. During this literal apocalypse, the Keyblade decided to show itself. Buuut unfortunately the real chosen, Riku, had jumped to the wrong call out of sheer eagerness to get off the island and went with the darkness. So instead it went to Sora, who had no idea what was going on and therefore ended up being unable to save his world.
Oh and because Kairi's heart was actually special and needed protection from the forces of darkness? The Light decided to be a further douche by ripping it out of her body and shoving it into Sora for safekeeping, who again had no idea what was going on because no on expects surprise organ transplants.
Believe it or not, it only gets worse from here.
Thanks to having the keyblade, Sora ended up not getting eaten like most of the people he's ever known. Instead he wakes up in Traverse Town, a city made by and for refugees who have fled the heartless after they ate their worlds over the past decade or so. Because that's right, the Destiny Islands weren't the only placed destroyed. In fact: billions and billions of people are dead.
However Traverse Town isn't much of a safe haven and one of the first sights Sora gets to see in a brand new world is a guy having his heart ripped out by a heartless! After that horrible sight, he then gets beaten up by the ever leather pants wearing
When Sora finally wakes up, he gets the 411 from Leon and a teenager named Yuffie (their group also has Aerith and Cid Highwind but hey details). Essentially the heartless are destroying worlds, they don't know how to really stop it but if they don't they are all dead. And oh yeah it's Sora's responsibility since he's the keyblade wielder and the keyblade means he's pretty much got a Heartless target painted on him for the rest of forever. When Sora reasonably protests this bullshit plan and that he much rather find out if his friends are alive, he gets told tough luck destiny calls. But it's not all terrible, because instead of traveling alone he gets accompanied by Goofy and Donald Duck who were ordered to find the person with the keyblade.
Yeah no actually it's still pretty terrible. They are next to useless in most battles beyond meat shields. Though oh yeah there's also Jimney Cricket who comes along to record everything. He's cool and rides in Sora's hood.
After Donald and Goofy declare that the one rule of their crew is no sad faces (because you know, watching a kid be upset over losing absolutely everything is such a bummer man), they set off to travel worlds in search for the King - aka the only person who might have a clue of what to do. They convinced Sora to come with by saying there's a chance they could find Riku and Kairi on their travels- though Donald admits he was totally lying about that one. This is only the start of several games full of Donald's dick moves.
The first three worlds are Wonderland, the Olympus Coliseum and the Deep Jungles of Africa. In Wonderland they meet Alice whose been falsely accused but before they can clear her name she gets kidnapped off the world whoops. In the Deep Jungles they meet Tarzan who is more genre savvy than the rest of the cast and murder their first human. And at the Olympus Coliseum they meet Hercules and Phil who declare them "noobs" at the hero business. They also meet Cloud who instead of helping out with the war like the rest of his friends, spends the next two games obsessing over a side boss who has zero significance to the plot. In fact it's even hinted by the creator that the dude he obsesses over is really just a figment of Cloud's mind.
Good job Cloud, keep it up.
They went back to Traverse Town and the team figured out that if Sora sealed the keyholes of each world- that should prevent Heartless from being able to consume the heart of the world (though this plan doesn't seem to help rid of the hoards of heartless roaming around the worlds' surfaces, so really this plan just upgraded the states of the worlds from being blasted into oblivion ala Alderaan and more just become barren planets devoid of life because the heartless ate everything- but hey details! Who needs them?). They also talk about a guy named Ansem, who was the wise king of Leon's world. He wrote a lot of reports about heartless, so they think that maybe if they find enough of the reports maybe they can find a more permanent solution.
Sora than runs into Riku, and is thrilled to be reunited with his best friend. However Riku is less than thrilled about Sora having a keyblade and no longer needing his protection- and things were only made worse when Donald declared that Riku was not allowed to travel with them for no real reason.
Did I mention Donald is a serious dick?
Anyway, Riku ran off and Sora went to learn magic from Merlin. He then went to Agrabah where Jasmine got kidnapped like Alice did. Aladdin demanded to come along but was denied because of the World Order rule. However Genie was allowed to come along in his stead as a summon. How does this even work? I don't know, but my best guess is that much like Earth, in Kingdom Hearts's universe it's much harder for an Arab man to get through customs than a blue skinned dude.
And sadly, this is not the most racist part of Kingdom Hearts. Stay tune for that.
After Agrabah, because this verse wasn't trippy enough, the group get their ship eaten by a space whale. That clause was in no was exaggerated. But in the whale named Monstro, they meet up with Pinocchio and Ghe- Ge- aw screw it, Pinocchio's crazy puppet building dad. They also run into Riku, who decides to kidnap Pinocchio so he can take him apart to see how he works. Since yeah, Riku has taken some levels in jackass since the beginning of the game. Sora notes this and tells him off, even willing to fight him over it. Riku and Sora part ways, their friendship now insanely tense.
After we escape the womb level from hell, there's Altantica and Halloween Town. Plot wise, nothing super relevant happens, but Jack Skellington earns mention just for the fact he is so hardcore that took a heartless invasion as a chance to get new dance members for Halloween. And oddly, this does not turn out as badly as you'd think it would.
Once we past the two filler worlds, they reached Neverland. Oh well, it was just Captin Hook's ship actually but hey details. It was there that Sora finally saw Kairi- who turned out to be nothing more than a soulless husk that wouldn't wake up because her heart was missing. Riku showed more douchiness and that he was siding with the heartless, and Peter Pan taught them how to fly.
Sora then returned to Hollow Bastion so Cid could install new coordinates on their ship. He becomes depressed there, as anyone would after finding out one friend's turned into an evil douchebag and the other's a soulless husk. He then has a random flashback of one of Kairi's memories of her grandmother telling her a story about how the worlds used to be one but then they all fell apart because of war and what not.
I'm sure in no way will this story ever become relevant to the series, so let's move on!
The trio travels to Hollow Bastion and they run into Riku. Riku reveals that he was the real chosen of the keyblade, and takes the keyblade away from Sora. With this revelation, Donald declares that him and Goofy need to travel with Riku instead and proceed to leave Sora, a now defenseless kid, stranded in a world that has been horrendously ravage by the heartless for the past nine years to the point that there is nothing but heartless living here.
Again, I feel compelled to point out Donald can be a real dick sometimes.
Sora feels distraught, but is encouraged to go on by Beast the determinator who showed up there to save Belle (who also been kidnapped like Alice and Jasmine). The Beast and Sora travel through Hollow Bastion until they meet up with Riku again. Riku and Sora stand off and Sora is saved by Goofy who decided that leaving Sora to die was terrible, even if it meant going against the King's orders. The jerk duck decides to follow suit too, and Sora proves he has a stronger heart thanks to his friends and wins back the keyblade from Riku.
They fight, and Riku loses and runs off upset that he lost. He then runs into a guy who offers him to loan him more darkness powers, buuut this turns out to be a trick and Riku gets possessed by an evil guy. Good job Riku. At least you're still better off than Cloud in terms of great life choices.
Now with his keyblade and friends back, Sora battles through Hollow Bastion. When they reach the top, they end up battling Maleficent first in human form, badly wounding her. They go to follow her to finish the deed, only to watch the now possessed Riku in possession of a dark keyblade stab the lady and unlock her heart so she turns into a dragon. She is killed by Sora's group.
After this battle, Sora comes across a room where he finds out what Alice, Jasmine and Belle are being used for. Apparently their hearts are special and can be used to unlock the final keyhole that would bring out immense amounts of darkness until the world. However it turned out Kairi was the last princess and her heart was currently in Sora, making it impossible to complete the keyhole. Possessed!Riku attempts to kill Sora to release that heart, but Sora beats him back and he disappears.
However they found they had two problems on their hands. The first was Hollow Bastion's keyhole couldn't be sealed without the seventh heart, and second that Kairi would never wake up as long as her heart was in Sora. Realizing this, Sora decides to use that keyblade Riku used on Maleficent on himself. He stabs himself in the chest and releases the hearts within him, waking up Kairi so the first thing she sees is her best friend die.
At this point, the guy who was possessing Riku reveals himself in his true form. And lo and behold, it's Ansem- the wise king that Leon and the others talked about! Turns out he's the man who caused the heartless to invade, and is the only black character in the entire series. It even later turns out that he used to be white in his human days, but becoming a heartless turned him black.
See. I told you it'd get more racist.
Riku holds Ansem back as Kairi, Donald and Goofy flee the castle. Sora, now a heartless, follows them. Kairi recognizes him, and through a power hug- is able to return him back to human form...or at least, to a heartless in human form. It's complicated and the whole thing led to the creation of Roxas and Namine- but I'll save that explanation for other people's apps. Either way, the four of them retreat to Traverse Town because the opening of that keyhole turned out to be a terrible plan. But after some semi-romantic scenes, Sora returns to Hollow Bastion to seal that keyhole. He learns that Leon, Yuffie, Aerith and Cid originally hailed from Hollow Bastion and that it's possible to restore the worlds- but if they do that none of them will be able to see each other again. Leon says something shonen-like, and we are all creeped out so much that Sora decides maybe having the world walls back up suddenly sounds like a great idea.
They find out Ansem retreated to a place called "The End of the World" so they decide to head there. They find him deep in there, and Ansem talks about DARKNESS and then they beat him up. They encounter a door with some light that fries Ansem, but it's the door to the realm of darkness whoops. But they find the King there, and him and Riku stay in the Realm of Darkness to seal the door shut from inside. Riku, now no longer a douche, tells Sora with a smile to look after Kairi.
The worlds are restored, and Kairi shows up at the reforming Destiny Islands. Sora decides not to go to Destiny Islands, but instead look for Riku. He promises Kairi he'll come back one day with Riku and they part ways. At some time later- Sora, Donald and Goofy travel a road before they see Pluto carrying a letter with the King's seal on it. They chase after him, in hopes of finding Riku and the King.
Which you should all know, this plan fails horribly and leads to-
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
In summary: Sora got mindscrewed so bad that they legit have to make him forget it all just to put him back to normal. He remembers nothing of this and it's probably a good thing because he'd need years more therapy than he already does. He goes into a coma for a year just to recover. Which meant-
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days
He slept through this entire game. So let's head on to-
Kingdom Hearts II
About a year after the events of Kingdom Hearts, Namine and company found that due to the Organization's meddling with Roxas and Xion, they can't wake Sora up just on the parts he had left on his own. And so without the consent of either Roxas or Sora, they hunt Roxas down and essentially force him to merge with Sora.
Which believe it or not, neither one of them are thrilled about this. Though Sora is unaware of what happened for most of this game.
After this crazed science happens, Sora wakes up in Twilight Town with Donald and Goofy! Confused at their current situation, they start to explore Twilight Town. Due to Roxas's now subconscious memories within him, Twilight Town feels very familiar to him as well as many of the occupants. But he doesn't get much time to dwell on this, as they are attacked by Nobodies. Mickey saves them and gives them
It should be noted that Donald doesn't take this opportunity to pull a dick move. Either this is character development or he's just having an off day from just waking up.
The group makes their way to Yen Sid's Tower where they meet Pete, mostly because they felt this series was lacking a Gold Fish Poop Gang. They find out from him that Heartless are still around, but pretty much blow him off entirely.
They travel up the tower, very unhappy to see that heartless are indeed still around. They meet Yen Sid who explains yeah Heartless will always be around as well as explain what Nobodies are (creatures not to meant to exist with no hearts). Sora gets some new clothes since he had a growth spurt during his coma and they set off to see new worlds!
Their first stop was Hollow Bastion, which their friends had been working to rebuild. They meet up with Leon, Yuffie, Aerith, Cid and Merlin and find out that they apparently forgot about them (rude!), but that's okay because they remembered them again shortly before their arrival. Anyway, Leon showed Sora that Hollow Bastion had this slight problem where there was a canyon FULL OF HEARTLESS. But before Sora could help take care of it, Organization XIII came to troll and then the keyblade made the signal that it was time to go- leaving Hollow Bastion with its canyon full of Heartless that surely will not come up later in the plot.
So yet again they traveled worlds! In the Land of Dragons they helped Mulan save China and watch take several levels in badass. At the Beast's Castle it turned out the Beast was being taunted by Xaldin from the Organization. At the Olympus Coliseum Sora met Auron, learned that Hades is p. much invincible and got up on a hydra's back. At this point they get called back to Hollow Bastion by Merlin, who tells them that he found Pooh's story book. Unfortunately, before Sora can really reunite with his bear friend- heartless attack and damage some of the pages. This triggers Pooh to have complete amnesia and forget who Sora or any of his friends are. They have no choice but to look for the pages that got ripped out across the worlds in hopes that restores Pooh's memories.
Over at Disney Castle Pete and Maleficent tried to use time travel to take over, and shenanigans were had. We also learned that Donald has not bothered to write or visit his girlfriend and/or wife for the past year and a half, despite many opportunities. His only solution to this was to try to violate the rules of time travel and attempt to change the past.
Yep, no need to fear guys. Donald is just as much of a dick as always.
Port Royale gave us an awkward rendition of the only good Pirates of the Caribbean Movie but it was nowhere near as awkward as Atlantica where Sora performed in musicals. In Agrabah, there was shenanigans with putting Jafar's Lamp in a safe place that went way smoother than anyone would expect and there's no chance this won't go wrong. And then they arrive in Halloween Town, where Sora got to meet Santa only to find out that he's on the naughty list for crime he committed 7 years ago with his declaration that Santa wasn't real.
See. I told you it would come back to haunt him.
But it's cool because they still saved Christmas...from their own friend Jack. They then traveled to the Pride Lands where they helped take part in an overthrow of the monarchy and put in a guy with little experience but a bit more decent of a dude. And sorry guys, Mufasa is still dead.
After that, Sora goes back to Twilight Town. He helps protects Seifer and his gang from being attacked by Nobodies and gets a trophy in return. Saix from the Organization shows up to warn Sora about a man from the Organization named Axel who apparently has gone rogue and will stop at nothing to turn Sora into a heartless. Sora's overall response is "bitch plz" and plots jumping into Saix's portal after him, but Saix throws him off by making some ominous statement about Riku and then portals out. Sora then runs into Hayner, Pence and Olette again who tell them that they ran into Kairi. As it turns out, Kairi got effing sick of waiting around for Sora and Riku to return so she jumped into the first dark portal off the island and wound up in Twilight Town. And while she was in Twilight Town, she ended up getting kidnapped by Axel. Whoops. Sora has a moment where he channels Roxas, and leaves the world feeling upset that now both Riku and Kairi are in danger. Goofy and Donald attempt to cheer him up, but it backfires and makes him blame himself for their plight.
However he doesn't get a chance to start looking for the two, because their ship engineers notice that Hollow Bastion is covered in darkness. They head there to find the number of Heartless has increased, as well as Nobodies. While heading to Merlin's House, they run into Cloud who instead of giving them the scoop of what's going on, instead starts going on about Sephiroth and even blames the dude for his haircut and darker outfit.
Uh. Right. Thanks Cloud. Nice to see you haven't changed that much.
Aerith shows up and takes a moment to call him on his bullshit, but lets him go off to because he's proven to be pretty damn useless anyway. After that, they reach Merlin's house and find out some good news! Leon and the gang found the computer that Ansem used during his research about heartless and darkness. So they head off to meet Leon and King Mickey who is with him, and along the way encounter the Gullwings - a fairy mercenary group that had been hired by Maleficent to do recon and kinda suck at the job. They also meet Tifa, who is looking for Cloud and feels the best way to do search is to tear apart an entire room.
Anyway they meet up with Leon and he shows them the computer, but then Stitch who was hanging on the ceiling jumps down onto the keyboard! Donald also jumps onto the keyboard to get him off, and that pisses the computer off since apparently Ansem had installed Windows ME/The MCP on it. He gets him, Sora and Goofy sucked into the computer (because there's a world in it), but they meet a program named Tron who helps them get out before they get derezzed. He also requests that they find his user so he can get the password to restore his program fully, which makes it to be insanely awkward considering they killed his user in the last game.
They get back to Hollow Bastion and look for the password. Mickey shows up and there's a big happy reunion with him, Donald and Goofy. He helps them figure out the password (an insanely long password btw), and they go back to help Tron. Tron does not understand why the hell they didn't just email it, but he's thankful for the help. They help him restore his program and help stop the MCP from using the password for it's own evil things. They fess up that they are enemies of his user, but he confesses he's pissed off at his user too for changing up his program so it's all good.
Once back in Hollow Bastion again, Leon is dumb enough to let Sora handle the data collection on the computer. Sora, being computer inept, gets so frustrated at constantly receiving an error message that he starts hitting the computer. This brings up an image of an old man he doesn't recognize, but Mickey recognizes as Ansem the Wise! Sora thinks the king has gone crazy and drags him over to see a portrait of the Ansem he knows- you know the dude he killed. Mickey reveals no that guy is actually an imposter of the real Ansem and they don't know his real identity, but the guy Sora fought was the imposter's heartless. His nobody on the other hand, is leading Organization XIII
Needless to say, Sora is less than pleased by this news.
He tries to ask about Riku with the king, but Mickey refuses to say anything and apologizes. Sora tells Mickey about Kairi, and that makes the king resolve that they should travel together and search for Riku and Kairi! Buuut before they can go anywhere, there is a loud crashing sound as the heartless army finally breaks through bailey's walls. They head out to see Nobodies and Heartless battling each other with Maleficent leading the Heartless, with the nobodies kicking the Heartless ass. Maleficent does her super badass teleporting out, and the Gullwings are left behind and angry that Maleficient bailed without paying. Sora tells the Gullwings that maybe they should help Leon's side instead because they really need it, and Donald lies to them saying that Leon has lots of treasure.
Thanks Donald. Even when you try to be nice you're a dick.
But they get out of the castle to find that there's a huge giant battle going on and everyone is fighting for their dear lives! Sora wants to help out since he has a lot of friends in Hollow Bastion, but Mickey tries to kitchen him saying to go look for Riku and Kairi. Buuut the trio says screw that and run in anyway. They run into Demyx, a member of the Organization, and fight him to the death. Mickey catches up with them and agrees to let them fight against the Heartless.
At that point, Goofy pushes Mickey out of the way from a falling boulder which makes him all think he's dead in a surprisingly depressing scene. Sora and Donald are devastated while Mickey goes into furious rage and runs off to get revenge. Donald follows Mickey and Sora follows last, getting several of his friends (Tifa, Yuffie, Leon and Cloud - yes he actually does something) to help him clear the way. He finally catches up with Mickey and Donald and Goofy pops back up to show that yeah he's not dead! Never underestimate the power of cartoon physics guys, okay.
But they head out together in time to see Xemnas, the leader of the Organization XIII, show up! Mickey remembers that the imposter is actually Ansem's old apprentice, Xehanort. Mickey charges after Xemnas, but before the others can follow they are surrounded by heartless- leaving no choice but to fight. And so they split up and Sora massacres a thousand heartless until the canyon is empty.
Seriously. It's as badass as it sounds.
They catch up to Mickey and Xemnas only to find out that Organization XIII has Kairi. Xemnas and Mickey disappear, but Saix shows up to taunt Sora. Sora begs him to take him to Kairi, but Saiz is a douche and refuses. He also tells him that they are using all the hearts that Sora releases with his keyblade for their own plot with Kingdom Hearts. This BSODing nearly gets him killed, but Maleficient intervenes rationalizing that the Organization is a bigger threat and might as well side with Sora until they can go back to their old antagonistic ways. They get sent to the realm of darkness, and a robed figure leaves them a box with a photo with the group from Twilight Town plus a kid they had never seen before (though Sora immediately identifies as "Roxas") and a bar of Sea-Salt Ice Cream that Donald eats.
That's right. The kid just went through hell and the dick duck still takes the ice cream.
Anyway, they get out of the Realm of Darkness only to find out all the worlds seem to be having problems now. The Land of Dragons, Beast's Castle and Port Royal were all getting harassed by the Organization; Olympus Coliseum, Halloween Town, Atlantica, the Pridelands and Hollow Bastion had their own homegrown problems while Agrabah had a mix of both. Sora went around and helped all his friends, all while feeling an increasing amount of pessimism that his journey would ever come to an end or that he'd solve his problems once and for all. Who could blame him really after over a year of these things happening?
Eventually, the engineers of his ship detected two strange things: first a giant world near the edge of the Realm of Darkness- and a duplicate Twilight Town. They couldn't get to the giant world, so they decided to check out Twilight Town. They found Hayner's group also investigating due to some oddities they had noticed. They had figured there was another Twilight Town, and perhaps Kairi was there. With the help of Mickey and Pence, they were able to find able to find a way into the other Twilight Town - a digital one that had been created by DiZ as part of his process to reawaken Sora. Sora quickly recognized it as "Roxas's Twilight Town" and saw one of his memories- even if he didn't understand what it meant.
In this digital Twilight Town, they found a portal that would lead to the giant world- the World that was the Organization's homebase. They went through the portal, but were attacked by legions of Nobodies. Right then, Axel showed up to help- saying that Saix had Kairi and asking Sora to save her. He fought alongside Sora for a bit, but when the numbers got too great- Axel sacrificed himself with a kamikaze attack that took out the legion. As Axel laid dying, he told Sora that he had just wanted to see Roxas again because he made him feel like he had a heart, but Sora made him feel the same. He then opened a portal to get Sora out of there, and died.
Walking through the portal, Sora showed up in The World That Never Was- the homebase of the Organization. He didn't get far before another person in a black hood showed up, whisking him away to some place that resembled the dreams he'd have before he got the keyblade. The person in the hood showed that they had a keyblade, and challenged Sora to a fight. It was a long battle, but through Sora being resourceful and well- cheating- he came out the victor. The hood came off to show that it was Roxas, who told him that "he made a good other" before the entire scene vanished. When he asked Goofy and Donald about it, they said they didn't see anything other than Sora disappearing for a bit.
They continue onward and eventually reach a dead end between the city and the castle. However Namine and Kairi managed to make light powers to make a gateway for them yay! They head into the castle and Saix attempt to make them kill more heartless, but gets interrupted by Kairi, "Ansem", Maleificent and Pete. Kairi and "Ansem" start fighting heartless with their own keyblades, and Saix leaves. But before Sora can head up to where they are at, he gets interrupted by Xigbar. Xigbar taunts him about how pathetic he is compared to the other keyblade wielders, and then they fight- with Sora coming out the victor.
Sora finally catches up with Kairi and the "Ansem" and has a happy reunion. It turns out that the Ansem is actually Riku who lost his normal form through shennagains, and they have a happy reunion too. They all travel together through the castle and battle Luxord and Saix to the death (of course while Riku and Kairi want to help they are cut off by arbitrary party headcounts!). At this point Sora is so fed up of people calling him Roxas he starts demanding to know what's going on. Riku explains that Roxas is his nobody that used to be part of the Organization, but left. Also oh yeah, he's inside of Sora now. thanks to wacky science.
Speaking of wacky science, they continue on until they run into DiZ and Mickey! Diz turns out to be actually Ansem the Wise, and he monologues awhile which is cool because he's voiced by Christopher Lee. Xemnas shows up and there's also an argument there. But at this point Ansem's machine he was using to contain Kingdom Hearts blows up in a giant ball of light. Kingdom Hearts is horrendously damaged, Riku gets reverted back to his normal form and Christopher Lee dies....maybe. It's all kinda vague.
Anyway, as it turns out Chistopher Lee's plan had one kind of flaw. He managed to release a lot of hearts from Kingdom Hearts.....only to have them become a heartless army. Whoops. Sora and company run for it, going after Xemnas with millions of heartless chasing after them. Luckily for them, Maleficent and Pete show up and decide to take on the heartless themselves! They tell Sora and the others to go take care of Xemnas while they fight off the heartless. Not so much out of a moral change of heart as just...realizing if Xemnas is dead that's one less problem for them and they can have his cool looking castle.
Anyway, they catch up to Xemnas who decides to go into Kingdom Hearts and become one with it. The light gives them a door so they can follow- marking their final battle.
Which of course means Sora runs off to do 23423432 sidequests and tasks first, but still!
Okay finally after you finish all the sidequests, they go to fight Xemnas. It's an epic battle with skyscraper cutting! Sora, Riku, Donald and Goofy all seemingly destroy him. They all decide to head home via a dark portal (no way this can end bad), but not before Namine and Roxas can share a moment. This slow up makes the portal close before Riku and Sora can go through it- and they see a dragon. They follow, they fight it- and turns out Xemnas isn't so dead as they thought. So they fight him again! It's even MORE epic. They managed to win, but not without badly injuring Riku. Sora hauls his bro out of the battle area and they end up on the dark shores.
They hang out awhile there, talking and stuff, but eventually find a note that Kairi sent out WAY at the beginning of the game. This somehow opens a gateway that lets them return to the Destiny Islands! So they crash land into the ocean, swim to shore and reunite with their friends who were waiting for them. And this game ends on an actual happy note where things don't suck.
Don't get used to it, because the others are bummers.
Kingdom Hearts: Coded
And then Sora took a vacation for an entire game. It was awesome.
However at the end of this, Mickey writes Sora a letter asking him to help out the people that were still in need and that they are the reason he is who he is today. Sora agrees to help out and Yen Sid decides to see if he and Riku are ready by making them take the Mark of Mastery Exam. Which leads to-
Kingdom Hearts: Drop Dream Distance
Sora and Riku arrive at Yen Sid's Tower, where they get told they need to take the Mark of Mastery Exam. Sora at first objects at the idea he needs to prove himself since you know, already saved the universe twice, but Riku is much more accepting about it and Sora relents- saying that they'll pass no problem.
And then he fails it so miserably a fifth year senior would be like "damn bro".
Nah, not really. For the exam, as a gambit to help them gain a new power, Yen Sid sends them to the "7 Sleeping Worlds". These were worlds once destroyed but then brought back thanks to Sora's actions, however something went wrong so they are stuck in a dream- or constant timeloop. It would be up to Sora and Riku to head into these worlds and wake them up.
Initially it seemed like the test was running smoothly. Riku had been sent to another version of the sleeping worlds seemingly, but they still caught hints of each other's presence from time to time. Along the way, Sora made many new friends as well- not unlike his previous journeys.
However, something was off. In almost every world, he would come across either someone in a black coat or Xemnas or a mysterious young man that would taunt him about his existence or his heart. It would never be for long, but they would constantly throw at him unsettling words that would make him start to question who he was and what the words could mean.
Also apparently Tron or Tron's original copy had gone evil. And then he maybe died. Or maybe he didn't, it was left pretty vague. Either way, that sucked.
However after he finished with the seventh keyhole, shit went really wrong. Instead of going back to Yen Sid's Tower, he ended up at the World that Never Was. Xigbar was there, telling him that the entire thing was a trap and he's been off course from the start. He then put Sora into a deep sleep. The mysterious young man, who was actually Xehanort at a young age, explained the workings of time travel and how he set this entire plan into motion.
After Young Xehanort was done monologuing, Sora seemed to show back in the World that Never Was. Traveling through, he then saw Namine heading up some stairs. He chased after her, trying to tell her that he wanted to thank her- only to have her change into the image of a dark haired girl he had never seen before, but left him feeling a wave of sadness enough to make him shed a tear before she ran off.
He chased after her, and when he finally caught up, it turned out he had found Roxas instead. Roxas tried to tell him that they were the same person, and so many hearts were connected to him- but Sora told him he was wrong. That Roxas was his own person and deserved to live his own life as much as he did. Roxas seemed surprised and touched by this opinion, and responded by sharing all his painful and traumatic memories with Sora before vanishing.
Thanks Roxas. I guess you're making up for the lack of Donald dickery in this game.
Sora, now upset and more traumatized, kept going. He soon came across visions of Riku and Kairi and tried to catch up to them, but they shifted into the images of Terra and Aqua, calling him "Ven" and smiling before walking away. He also had a moment of channeling Ventus, and all in all he found it pretty freaky.
He eventually found Xigbar again, who revealed that while the content of the dream all came from Sora's mind, it was their intent to put him into the deepest of sleeps as a trap. He started taunting Sora about his heart steering him in the wrong direction, which Sora retorted with the realization from Roxas's memories that Nobodies have hearts too. Xemnas showed up and confirmed the statement, saying that even if a nobody loses their original heart, eventually they start to build a new one through experiences and connections to other people. However he had lied to the Organization members all this time so they wouldn't foster any new hearts- that way they would ideal to use as vessels for copies of Xehanort's hearts- making thirteen Xehanorts in all. And while many of their original candidates had turned out no good for various reasons- they had decided to use Sora instead for a vessel.
Well. Shit.
Sora was not okay with this plan. Pissed off that Xehanort would use people in such a way, he told them off that his heart was what made him strong. Xigbar tried to use this against him to try to point out how insignificant Sora himself was, but it backfired when Sora replied he already knew the keyblade didn't choose him, and he didn't really care about that. His friends were his power. This made Xigbar run off, and he went to battle Xemnas on his own.
He won the battle, but at a heavy cost. He had used up all his energy and due to lack of protection against darkness, his heart shattered and fell into darkness while his body fell into a coma. He would have been lost completely had it not been for his connection with other people. Riku, Mickey,
However, even when they were back in Yen Sid's Tower, Sora still didn't wake. Riku, concerned for his friend, used the dream eating powers he had gain during the exam to dive into Sora's sleep. He found the armor now possessed by a Nightmare, defeating it before realizing it was Sora instead. Not too long after that, Sora managed to wake up before his friend did. Riku finally woke up finding his friend having some goddamn tea while Donald tried to hog all the food despite several members of the team going through traumatic experiences.
Yes siree, Donald is still a dick.
Sora was overjoy to see Riku safe and sound (ironic considering he had been the one in deeper danger), and Yen Sid informed them that only Riku had passed the exam and that he was the new Master. Sora, despite failing, was very happy for his friend. Then everyone in the room was shocked by the fact that Lea was able to summon a keyblade.
Not long after that, Sora says he needs to get some stuff finished. He was on his way to Traverse Town before showing up in Exsilium.