Obsession

"Riku," a soft voice came. He looked up at Kagami, who was watching him worriedly. "It's been three days and you haven't slept. Please come to bed."

"I can't," he replied and looked at the papers littering the walls, "I have to figure this out."

"You can't do anything if you're too tired to think. I just want you to come to bed so you're...refreshed in the morning."

"I'm not coming to bed, so you should stop wasting your breath."

"What do you plan to find, Riku!? Staring at a bunch of papers isn't going to find Xehanort, and it's deffinately not going to tell you how to beat him, so why waste your time!? We're all working to find him. You just have to trust us!"

"No! You don't care about this like I do! I want him dead!"

"I didn't want to do this, but...plan B!" The door of the room flew open and Sora and Kairi flew into the room. With the three of them against him, and being sleep deprived, Riku couldn't fight back and was dragged to his room. He couldn't deny that the bed felt nice after bending over his desk for three days, and the pillow was very welcoming. He fell asleep the instant his head hit the pillow.

"I hope he doesn't start up again when he wakes up," Kairi commented and left the room, Sora following close behind, neither wanting to distrub him. Kagami drifted out of the room after a moment longer watching him.

The next morning, once Riku woke up again, he walked straight to his office again and started looking through papers again.

"You won't find anything, you know." He looked up to see Sora standing in the door frame, watching him worriedly. "I looked through everything myself. It's nothing new, all stuff we've looked over a million times."

"But we have to have overlooked something! There has to be something that can tell us how to beat him!"

"There's not. We just have to rely on luck. Hopefully what we've been told is true, and the Gatekeeper will come to our aid. If not, we'll have to find his weakness ourselves."

"We don't have the luxury to wait around for someone else to come and do our job for us! We have to do something now!"

"We aren't waiting for someone else to do our job, but we can't just expect to win this war ourselves. Two against thirteen aren't very good odds."

"There's four of us, Sora."

"Kairi and Kagami have responsibilities to their own worlds, they can't leave them."

"What about Mickey!?"

"He also has his own world."

"What about-"

"It's just us!" Riku stopped and stared menacingly into Sora's eyes, but the younger returned the look with one of ferocity he didn't know he had. "You think we can just tell people to leave their worlds unattended to help us!? No, we can't! We need all the help we can get, because our usual help needs to stay where they are! We can't rely on the king, Donald, Goofy, not even Ienzo and Neo! It's us versus him and all forms of him! We need the Gatekeeper, and if we don't get her help, we better pray luck is on our side, which I'm sure we've already used up! The odds are against us!"

"Then we need to put them on our side!"

"You're so obsessed with this you've lost touch with reality, Riku! Looking at everything over and over isn't going to change anything! He hasn't shown us a weakness yet!"

"That's not true," Kairi softly protested and the twins walked into the room.

"What do you mean?" Riku asked eagerly.

"Esmeraude told us his weakness months ago, you just didn't pay attention," Kagami replied.

"What!?"

"Emiko," the twins rang together. Sora and Riku looked at them, expecting an explanation.

"Haven't you ever noticed Xehanort himself never attacks Ienzo?" Kairi asked. There was no reply from anyone. "It's because he's her son. He can't imagine bringing pain to anyone related to her because he loved her."

"Really?" Riku asked.

"Yes!"

"That's all I need."

"We're not asking him to come with us!" Sora yelled, "He has Radian Garden to think about!"

"We need to get rid of him, and if that's his only weakness, we have to use it! Him! Whatever!"

"No! He needs to stay there!"

"Sora!"

"Riku!"

"I agree with Sora," Kagami chimed in. Riku looked absolutely furious, but she looked back at him calmly. "Ienzo needs to stay with his people. But we have something Xehanort doesn't."

"Which is?" Riku hissed.

"Time." The twins smiled devilishly at them, making him smile.

"So, you are gonna help us?"

"Of course! Why wouldn't we? Mom's protecting Pluto and Ceres has the toa, everything will be fine."

"What are we waiting for then? We're needed there! The World That Never Was!"

"We need to make a better plan than just barge in," Kairi replied. She, Sora and Kagami started planning, but Riku snuck out of the room while he did so. If they were going to wait, that was their problem, but he wasn't going to. No, he was going to take Xehanort down himself if he had to.