Annals of Darkness is a Kingdom Hearts fanfiction series written by Shire Folk
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The series began in 2007 as one of the traditional "Kingdom Hearts 3" fanfiction works of the post-Kingdom Hearts 2 pre-358/2 Days, BBS, Re:Coded era; and its main focus has been on Sora, Riku, and Kairi as they attempt to stop Maleficent from taking over the worlds in the Realm of Light.
Since inception, it has garnered a reputation for being lengthy, crossing over quite well with just about anything Shire Folk can think to crossover with it and having a ridiculously large cast of supporting and tertiary characters. Early stories were mostly focused on adventure with splashes of weak to moderately well-done romance tossed in, while later stories became more character-driven with a larger emphasis on romantic dramedy than was previously seen.
Stories so far:
Side stories:Garden of Snow and Ice
Table of the Keyblades (Non-Canon)
This fanfic provides examples of:
- The Ace:
- Garda. Master combatant, skilled leader and Kairi's teacher.
- The Lich King is a dark version of this trope since it has been implied that even the current Maleficent would be child's play for him to defeat.
- Ace Pilot:
- Sora due to long experience of flying the Gummi Ship. Also the Four Wings of Sand Island AKA The Ghosts of Razgriz.
- Fuu definitely has the makings of one. Can anyone say Ice Woman?
- An Ice Person: Naminé and Agatha. Though seeing as they've been taught by Ur, that's not really surprising.
- Morganna may be one. More combat data is needed to confirm this.
- Artificial Limbs: Edward Elric is present. Also, Sora now has an automail arm.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: As far as Radiant Garden's peerage is concerned, even just having a Keyblade makes you a member of the nobility. Though that still doesn't mean that you get a seat in their current Senate/House of Lords unless you are actually from Radiant Garden.
- Autobots, Rock Out!: Chapter 78's finale against the Decimator Heartless. Yuna and Selphie decide to sing RWBY's This Will Be The Day to help Sora, Kairi, Roxas, and Yuffie take the damn thing down. It works GLORIOUSLY.
- Bandage Wince: Happens in most of the cases of After-Action Patch-Up. Sora makes a notable one when Kairi's patching him up after a big fight on Destiny Islands.
- Big Damn Heroes: The most recent example - at the epilogue of Light's Growth, when it seems the wall and gate will be breached by the incoming onslaught, several lightning bolts rain down and deposit several people in the way. One of which is Ajax, of Greek mythology.
- Casual Danger Dialogue: In spades. Sora invokes this on himself once while single-handedly tearing through Heartless at Beast's Castle in Final Form by singing 'A Pirate's Life For Me' while cutting them down.
- Celebrity Paradox: There are many references back to the Kingdom Hearts videogames, Hand Waved by the explanation that Sora and co's adventures have become so well known that videogames have been created about them.
- Court Room Episode: The final act of A Week of Troubles is like this for all of the characters except for Sora.
- Crossover: It's Kingdom Hearts. Though it has expanded beyond to include Bleach and several others. There's also a cameo by the Lich King from World of Warcraft.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: If Maleficent is present, then whoever she's facing is going to be on the receiving end of one.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Sora gets this when Kairi rips the hem of her shirt to use it as a bandage after she ripped too little of Sora's off. She admits that she guessed the wrong amount of material needed the first time because she's intoxicated, but...
- Doorstopper: It's over 1.6 million words and counting.
- The Dragon: Maleficent has seven of these. All Nobodys. Their name? The Eximius Septem (Super Seven)
- Here's the members - Nixion (Ixion's Nobody), Lexai (Lea's Distaff Counterpart), Tismetrx (I think we all know who's Nobody he is), Xarcs (Scar's Nobody), Xayn Shu (Shan Yu's Nobody), Xokor, and Sennox
- Eldritch Abomination: Excalibur. He's powerful and let's leave it at that. He's also so annoying that he's almost immediately de-summoned. At least one reviewer has tried to bribe Shire to NEVER have him summoned again. The second time he was summoned, they cut him off before he could annoy them and proved just how powerful he really was.
- Flirting Under Fire:
- Sora and Kairi are repeat offenders of this trope. They have even weaponized this trope through their Lover's Leap Limit (which has only ever been fully seen once).
- Riku and Yuffie to some extent as well.
- Game-Breaking Injury: Averted. Sora gets his arm replaced with automail. However, if it weren't for the the godly blessing he gets for being a Keyblade Wielder he would have been down for three years of limb acceptance and rehabilitation.
- Giant Mook: As of the Battle of Radiant Garden some of the bosses from the first game seem to have been reduced to this.
- Good-Looking Privates: Whenever they try on new armour for the first time or get a new set of duds from Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather.
- Healing Hands: Kairi's the one most inclined towards healing magic.
- Heel–Face Turn: After realizing that Maleficent didn't intend on trying to help her get her heart back, Cossex defects, and shows up later at the Battle for Radiant Garden, now back to her true self, Devona
- Hero Killer: Morganna, a Death Knight in the service of Maleficent. Her first act in combat was to defeat Garda. She hasn't been in combat again since, but money's good on her kicking ass.
- How Many Fingers?: Riku asks Sora a variation of this after they hurl Sora into an administration desk.
- Imagination-Based Superpower: Naminé and Agatha due to the nature of their Ice Make magic.
- Interrupted Intimacy: Shire Folk seems to like having other characters walk in on the couples whenever they're doing anything that goes above PG.
- I Want Grandkids: Partially subverted. Sora's father says that he wants them, but not just yet.
- The Juggernaut: Riku in Shikai especially considering that the only thing that can damage his armor is magic.
- Knighting: Has occurred several times over the course of the story, starting with King Mickey knighting Roxas. Secondly Lord Ramius doing the same to Naminé Radiant Garden style opposed to Mickey's Disney Castle version. And then she goes and knights Kairi right in the middle of a tournament in order to boost her morale!
- Let's Wait a While: Sora and Kairi's mostly unspoken motto. With the revelation that their friends are not following the same creed, we have yet to see how long the waiting will last.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": A silent one when the rest of the United Forces Fleet looks on in horror as three Mighty Prow Heartless tear the DCS Avenger apart.
- Modesty Bedsheet: Invoked by the couples after suffering from more than one moment of Interrupted Intimacy.
- Modesty Towel: Naminé loses hers after a Shower Scene. Coincidentally, Roxas walks in right when she does.
- Ms. Fanservice: Naminé appears to have the most nude scenes out of all the female cast, along with a seductive side that we'll probably never see in the games.
- Next Tier Power-Up: The Shikai of the Wielders (Sora, Kairi, Riku, Roxas, Naminé, Yuffie). Like in the series it was taken from their Keyblade transforms into something else whether it's a differnent blade, armor or, in Kairi's case, transforming the wielder.
- One-Winged Angel: Kairi's Shikai turns her into a half human/half dragon hybrid. There has been foreshadowing to what her Bankai will be like.
- Painful Transformation: The first time Kairi drops out of Shikai that we see. Though this has more to do with all the injuries she had prior to the transformation happening all at once.
- Only One Name: The residents of Destiny Islands don't have last names.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Their Inferno Tempest Limit MIGHT put Sora and Kairi on the lower end of the scale. Then again they did kill several Boss-class Heartless with it.
- Prince Charming: Prince Alexander III of the Kingdom of Haressus of the world Destiny's Enclave, which Destiny Islands is a small province of, appears to be one of these played straight.
- Redemption Quest: Sora's time on the Pride Lands to recover his ability to use the Keyblade.
- Red Baron: Kairi "the Dragon Knight"
- Relationship Upgrade: Riku and Yuffie get this during the infamous Chapter 14 of the first story.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Mickey, Kairi, Naminé, Ovan. Really most of the royals in this story.
- Second-Act Breakup: Sora and Kairi in the second story. Being romantically separated doesn't last long.
- Sdrawkcab Name: See Bitch in Sheep's Clothing above.
- Shower Scene: Naminé seems to be the one who is most often found bathing or showering of the whole cast.
- Shout-Out:
- Female magic users lose their ability to use magic during ''that time of the month.''
- Sora and Kairi say a reworded version of a very familiar motto.
- Fans of Orlando Bloom may have heard Radiant Garden's knighting speech before.
- Four soldiers, assumedly in red armor, using guns, are present at the Battle for Radiant Garden. Their names are Sarge, Simmons, Grif, and Donut.
- Space Navy: The United Forces (a coalition of worlds dedicated to defeating Maleficent and the Heartless including Destiny Islands, Radiant Garden, Twilight Town, Disney Castle, Amestris, Earth (Alpha), and Star Command are just getting started on theirs. Though there is a slight setback in that Maleficent's already got her own Heartless fleet and it is much larger than their fledgling navy.
- Standard Royal Court: The old Royal Court and advisors to Radiant Garden's prior King and Ansem the Wise had been this before the Maleficent and the Heartless had their crack at running things. Now they're the Senate of the Parliamentary system of Constitutional Monarchy that Radiant Garden has switched to. At least until Kairi and Naminé turn the arbitrary age of nineteen and one is allowed to ascend to the throne and take over as ruling monarch and the world returns to a (hopefully) benevolent dictatorship.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Tom Marcinek takes a blow from a Neoshadow meant for Namine, when neither she nor Roxas noticed it because they couldn't stop fighting.
- Tank Goodness: Nod Tick Tanks. Apparently Radiant Garden has some too, but they have not appeared as of yet.
- Their First Time: Sora and Kairi spend a good deal of time talking about this, especially after discovering what the other two official couples are doing when the lights are out. There is now a betting pool among the other two couples on when this will occur.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- Kairi is a trained swordswoman and mage.
- Namine has been classified as artillery due to her ability with magic.
- Tidus, Selphie, Wakka, Hayner, Pence and Olette are all soldiers now. Did we mention that Tidus and Wakka actually went through the events of FFX during the time the Destiny Islands were lost to Darkness during the first game?
- Though it was always badass to begin with, being both a Dreadnought-class gummi ship and Kairi and Naminé's Flagship, the Starlight never really got any recognition from readers due to its name... until it simply rammed a dreadnought-sized Heartless in two and simultaneously pulled off a momentary Big Damn Heroes moment as it blasted the remaining pieces of it into space dust to save another ship in their fleet.
