16 Those Before Him

A: "Hm? What?? We're your predecessors, pretty sure its understandable... Am I speaking the wrong language?"

S: "No, no. It's just... predecessors?"

A: "You know if you'd let me finish talkin' bout your power you'd probably understand this better."

Azu had tried explaining but kept getting interrupted, Sora noticed this after being told directly and finally let Azu speak.

A: "Ready then? Okay, 'Peace and Calamity', it's a weird thing. It's a power that chooses it's owner and is extremely unique, it only chooses well natured people and as soon as the person it has chosen reaches the level of power the previous owner had, that person get's all the memories of ONLY the previous owner. Now, the power itself is the ability to control light and darkness, this includes basic manipulation and extremely effective materialization of weapons of the owner's choosing. For me-"

Azu equipped his gauntlet's that set ablaze with dark flames from the outer parts of the glove, there was also a lifted opening on the top of the hand that had flame coming out of it with extreme force. The gloves themselves shone with a pure, white light whilst the dark flames extended all the way down to his elbow. Sora looked at this display with awe.

A: "I chose to have these gauntlet's, because of 'Peace and Calamity' I was able to customise them to my liking, due to the natural powerful control you'll have over these two entities, making changes to your weapons or techniques are as easy as thinking them."

With a flash of bright light the gloves in his hands disappeared.

A: "That's the basic points of the power, it comes with other stuff too like being able to freely touch entities that hide in the mists of light and darkness, that's pretty useful. But yeah, in terms of basic stuff, that's kinda all you need to know - anything else you can figure out for yourself."

After being given the explanation of the power he was wondering if he truly had it, he never had the biggest talent for magic, he had an extremely basic level into magic enchantments, to be told this by someone he had just met in a place he never visited after being on the verge of death. It was all too unbelievable. Sora looked down onto the ground and didn't say a word. After a long silence.

A: "You're still in disbelief aren't you?"

S: "Hm? Well... yeah..."

Azu sighed, he believed most people would be ecstatic after hearing about this but Sora was only showing disbelief.

A: "Why? What's making you believe otherwise?"

S: "Well... alotta things... one, I was about to die, two I can't see any of the other people behind you and three, I don't have a talent for magic, what you told me about controlling it basically as easy as breathing is kind of unbelievable."

A: "Hm... well... to be honest... I can't really give a good answer to any of those. Everyone has a different experience when they awaken and their life before. There's always one thing that triggers an awakening, whilst we're your predecessors, we can't really see what happens in the outside world. We can sense faint things around your body but that's about it."

S: "See? Even you can't properly explain it. Plus, there's something thats been bugging me."

A: "What would that be?"

S: "You said that you only get the memories of the previous owner right? Well... if I can only interact with the previous one? Why can I see the other ones behind you?"

A: "That's something we're confused about ourselves. When I talked to them they were just as surprised meeting eachother than you are meeting me right now. Seems like this is the first time it's happened, I never came here to this place during my life. Seems like you're the first."

S: "What? What's so special about me?"

A: "Hmmmmmmmm... May be the power, maybe it's reacting to something and has brought us all together for a reason. It's impressive to be able to hold the memories of the previous owner I thought. But to think that it could hold the consciousness of the fallen and actually bring us here..."

S: "Huh?! 'Fallen?!' Are you guys dead?!"

A: "Well yeah, pretty sure that's a thing needed to be a 'predecessor'."

S: "What?! How're you so calm?!"

A: "Well I've been dead for a while I guess. Last thing I remember is my de-"

Azu paused.

A: "Hm, I wonder..."

S: "Huh? What? Wonder what?"

A: "It's nothing, just a promise. Anyway, we're just as confused as you are, when we were brought here we were all confused, then I guessed that you just awakened cuz' you weren't standing next to us."

S: "So... Fine. Say I believe all this, why hasn't there been records in the past?"

A: "Oh, we prefer to stay hidden."

S: "What? Why, with such an amazing pow-"

A: "With such an amazing power comes people who could abuse the way the power works, if someone out there had a grudge with us they could just stop the power from being effective by killing the chosen at birth."

S: "What? Who would be e-"

A: "Evil enough? It's happened in the past. So long ago that the legends from back then probably didn't make it far enough into recorded history. There's 6 of us here, there should be 12. For a long time we were constantly hunted and it created a period of time where there was one less hero in the world, doesn't seem like much but it means an equally powerful villain will go unchecked."

S: "What? How do you know that, weren't you only able to see to the one before you?"

A: "Yeah, the one before me did extremely deep research into the past of this power, like us, he was curious, unlike us, there was nothing to keep him busy. He burned it all after fear of someone finding out but he made sure to memorise everything so that I would know."

S: "Then, how big is the restri-"

A: "Just make sure you don't directly tell anyone, unless you really trust them. Out of all the owners I'm pretty sure I was the one closest to revealing the secret, I got too famous. Luckily the Celestial King kept their promise to me."

S: "C-"

A: "Hm?"

S: "Celestial King?!"

A: "Yeah? What about 'em?"

S: "What do you mean what about them?! They're one of the biggest presences in the five realms!"

A: "They ain't that bad, they can drink a night away that's for sure."

S: "Wha? Wha-"

Azu stood proudly, he had been on the same side as the Celestial King fighting against the Demonic King, naturally they would meet and team up. They had become great friends and had both charged into the battlefield to lead their people to victory, they had many high's and lows - after asking the Celestial King to keep the existence of him and his team a secret from the outside world, the Celestial King agreed, that's why no one knew about both Azu and the connection his team had to eachother.

A: "That's besides the point. What you need to do right now is to grow."

S: "Grow? To do what?"

A: "To fight the Demonic King of course."

Sora was stunned.

S: "Th- The Demonic King?!"

A: "What? That's probably the reason the power chose you..."

S: "What?! That's a power I can only dream of!!!"

A: "Well yeah of course it is, that's the point of 'growing'"

S: "Growing?! You expect me to grow to that level of power?!"

A: "I mean... yeah?"

Sora calmed down.

S: "How?"

A: "I don't know... train? You know the usual way of doing things."

S: "But... basic training won't get me to the same level as the Demoni-"

Before Sora could finish he noticed a blurry hand appear on Azu's shoulder, the same barrier seemed to be there as it distorted and blocked his speech from being heard by Sora.

A: "Hm? Alright."

The figure turned and joined the other blurry figures behind Azu. Azu sighed and scratched his head.

A: "Look, I know I haven't explained this in the best way, but as it is right now it seems like I'm the only one that can. You want a reason? I know it's sudden and I didn't want to tell you but... after already fighting against that Demon he knows my aura, and when you were born you released two seperate waves of invisible energy only really noticeable by figures like the 100 Legends. The first was your own innate energy, if it was strong enough to travel throughout the entire realm you have a special talent inside you already, the second was my own to show that you were chosen, he should have already sensed it and is most likely hunting you right now..."

Sora was shocked, he stood in silence as he stared at Azu, Azu's smile had disappeared as soon as he began telling him about the Demonic King and was now extremely serious. There was no hint of the previous manchild left. Seeing the visible shock in Sora's eyes Azu made a questionable decision.

A: "To fight, to survive, you need to reach my previous level of power at the bare minimum."

Sora looked up and made direct eye contact with Azu, who's aura was slowly changing. Suddenly, the slowly expanding aura burst into a wide area that expanded way beyond the people behind Azu, the height also rose extremely high into this space, the aura took the form of a white flame that turned darker as it reached the outer edges. Sora was now terrified of the person in front of him.

A: "This is the power you have to reach to survive. Saying no... will only lead to death..."

S: "This power... is on the same level as the Legends... probably even higher..."

Sora was terrified now, but he did not back down, this power in front of him was something he couldn't even fathom. It was a level so far from his own that he couldn't help mentally submitting. He steeled his resolve and stood in the face of an extreme power.

A: "Can you do it?"

S: "Can I- Can I do it?"

Sora stared at Azu.

S: "Can I really do it? I accepted my weakness a moment ago and now your telling me that I have to fight something much greater than anything I have or probably ever will experience" Sora was extremely conflicted right now, he had been shown the limits of his strength in such an astonishing way and had already accepted that he had no place in the 100 Legends.

After a long silence.

Azu had long retracted his aura and the space had been silent for a long time now, his mouth slowly curved upwards.

A: "Haha..."

S: "Huh?"

A: "AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

S: "What's so funny?!?!"

A: "That's exactly how I felt when I was faced with my first real decision to do with this power."

S: "What?"

A: "After reaching the same level of power as my predecessor, which wasn't much as he was a simple researcher. I remembered that I would have to fight against the Demonic King one day due to the nature of this power. It's a power only given to good-natured people, good-natured people help people, the Demonic King hurts people. Someday our paths would logically cross. I reacted the same way! You really do have the potential to grow stronger than me. Not only are you in the same situation as me, but you actually were able to awaken at a younger age."

S: "What? That doesn't change anything though... I'm still too far... from even the Legends... let alone the Demonic King..."

A: "Ahhhh youth, trust me."

Azu placed his palm onto Sora's chest.

A: "I don't think I ever asked your name."

S: "..."

S: "It's Sora."

Azu smiled.

A: "Hm. Well Sora... it seems we all accept you."

S: "All accept me? For what?"

A: "You can say whatever you want. But there's one thing that hasn't changed."

S: "What?"

A: "We're here."

S: "Huh?"

A: "If you really believed that you couldn't do it, to grow to a level of power to fight the Demonic King, then we wouldn't be here."

S: "But... I don-"

A: "Oh c'mon. You've already proved yourself."

S: "Proved myself of what?"

A: "Three things, when I was talking to those guys behind me they told me to test you for three things. Number one, would you actually be unworthy of the power, you've proven yourself in that regard. Number two, would you submit to an extreme power so far from your own, you didn't. Finally, number three, would you be arrogant as soon as you heard about the power you can hold in the entire test, in which you weren't. You passed all three tests."

S: "But, but... is this responsibility... something I can accept? Something I should accept?"

Azu smiled.

A: "Hey man, none of us did."

S: "Huh?"

A: "Ain't a choice, it's a duty."

The blurry figures behind him seemed to fade into multicoloured aura's and slowly got absorbed by Azu, the palm of his hand slowly began to glow with a multicoloured light and he, too, eventually faded and the aura he left behind was automatically absorbed by Sora, he stood in silence as the aura was slowly absorbed by his own body. As Azu faded he heard a collection of voices.

V: "Resolve isn't something that is easily shown on the surface, but you have never once shunned the responsibility given to you, maybe you will exceed us in power, but that's up to you to decide.

Before all the voices faded there was one more that echoed from inside him.

A: "Those guys. Hey, I know it looks like we forced this on you, but trust me, this is the best thing we can do right now." As the last voice faded Sora stood in silence, now alone, in the dark space. In his body he could feel a new aura, a completely unique one that he had never felt before.

He held both hands out and, after merely thinking about it, began to emanate the powers of light and darkness in them, light on his right and darkness on his left. Surprised at how easy it was to control these powers, he then began to think of Azu's gloves, making two changes to them, Azu only had two openings facing towards the front and back of his hand, this allowed him to propel backwards and forwards, Sora had a sign on top of his gloves akin to a plus sign, which allowed for four-directional movement and he also added a circular sign of darkness on the palms, so that he could use those to propel aswell. The gloves easily materialised. Whilst Sora was seemingly carefree, he was dilligent, he easily grasped the concepts of the power after being told just once. With a flash of pure, white light, the gloves were gone. Sora looked up into the darkness.

S: "This power... how will it fare..."

Sora looked at his hands. His eyes suddenly blazed with resolve.

S: "No..."

Sora begun to smile, it had been a while since he last smiled.

S: "Welp, I guess this is just a way to help me get to the level of a Legend."

Sora sighed.

S: "Previous holders, just watch me."

A light appeared at the top of the dark expanse and Sora extended his hand out towards it.

S: "I'll do it! I'll get to the top!"

The light spread out towards the entire dark expanse, completely covering it with a blinding light. Sora closed his eyes. As soon as he opened them he found himself in midair facing a sword that was on a straight path to his neck. Sora knew he had returned to the real world now. With but a thought, he materialised his gloves and caught the sword.

With a ringing sound, 'Seiju' was holding the sword and it had been caught by one hand by Sora in midair, who now had a glove that seemed to glow with pure light. With his other hand he had been letting out a dark flame to keep him suspended in midar, leaving the two in stasis. Sora smiled.

S: "Those guys weren't kidding."

He let go of the sword and instantly moved back to a faraway position.

S: "Seems like my speed has increased too..."

Staring at the 'Seiju' in front of him, he now had a new level of confidence.

S: "Let's go..."