Fanfic / ∞:∞

He got off the pavement, wet, dirty and alone.
They left the beach, ready to chase him down.
She gripped her Keyblade, twisting it tight enough in her hands to leave marks.
It was time to go home.

"∞:∞", otherwise known as infinity:infinity, by divisionten is a Kingdom Hearts post-Kingdom Hearts III fanfic following Sora after the events of the Secret Ending

As the fanfic is canon-compliant and spoils some major plot points for Kingdom Hearts 3 right from the first chapter, spoilers after this point will be left un-tagged.

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Tropes in "∞:∞" include:

• Action Girl: Multiple:
  • Kairi is repeatedly shown as a competent fighter and problem solver, though even she admits she's more useful fighting in a team than alone.
  • Xion's clearly Taken A Level In Badass; either that, or the Heartless in the Muppet World are weak.
  • Though we haven't seen her use her powers yet, Rhyme has taken over the duties as Joshua's new Conductor of Shibuya.
  • Aqua, even without a Keyblade, can still hold her own against a Demon Tower.
  • Naminé, throughout all of Chapter 30, becomes this without ever crossing swords.
• Act of True Love: Kairi and Lea return the Assassin Nobodies to their former selves by kissing their foreheads to show their gratitude. This trope is even name-dropped.
• A Day In The Lime Light: Perspective constantly switches between Sora, Riku, Vanitas and Repliku/Tomo dead in Shibuya to their friends in various other worlds searching desperately for them.
• Adorable Abomination: Vanitas's Unversed. Since he's directly present and watching over them, they act more like domesticated pets to the cast, though they're still wicked powerful in a fight.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: They try to keep this up, especially in the 'Old Worlds'. Emphasis on try. The only places where they don't even attempt to do so are worlds like Shibuya, where the inhabitants already know about other worlds.
• Aliens Speaking English: Justified, by one of several ways.
  • Joshua uses his magic to teach Sora and co. Japanese instantaneously, so none of them are actually speaking English. When Sora goes to talk to his own friends, he has to mentally translate back to his own language to do so.
  • Joshua, meanwhile, can understand Sora's native language, though it takes him some time to remember it.
  • Fairies inherently can speak all languages.
  • Everyone searching for Sora and Riku has a language spell put on them by Aqua and Donald Except Luxord, who can't read Gnomish. They're all still speaking their own language, and the world inhabitants their own, but the magic translates both what they say as well as what they see and hear. It doesn't work on recordings or written text in the Kingdom Hearts' language, though. Aqua extends this magic to Artemis Fowl, so he can understand their group chat over the phone.
• Angelic Transformation: Neku becomes one after Coco kills him in the fic's climax.
• Ascended Extra: Ienzo, originally not sure he should be going world hopping, with no combat skills and a very basic set of minor magic, ends up becoming the most useful member of his team.
• Back from the Dead: The entire fic's plot.
  • Vanitas and Repliku, both Killed Off for Real at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3, are Players in Shibuya's Reaper's game, at least until Sora gives them an out.
• Bilingual Bonus: In universe, characters occasionally make jokes that work in one language but don't in another. The Japanese Komaeda speaks to Sora before Joshua gives him language skills is all correctly written as well.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The angels can shapeshift at will, and heal wounds instantly. Joshua also regrows a few teeth. And Lea's Nobodies, even when regaining a human appearance, can still pop out the trademark Asssassin spikes on their arms.
• Brainwashed: The mesmer/imprinting powers held by angels and fairies, though its only been used on willing victims so far.
• Break Them by Talking: Several times, given it's Kingdom Hearts
  • Used in a more positive way to slowly break Vanitas out of his spiral of self-hatred. Sora, Riku and Komaeda the biggest 'offenders'.
  • Combined with The Power of Love, Dipper uses this to get Gideon to let him pass to see his sister without coming to blows.
• Cast from Hit Points: Donald outright says that this is how he can summon extremely powerful magic spells when his mana's been depleted.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The card Luxord hands to Sora at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3 is central to how he (and others under its power) are cheating the Reaper's game, though how exactly it works is a mystery, other than influencing time in some way.
  • Naminé's Keyblade is a giant functional colored pencil, and its point doesn't lose its, well, point. It's used both as a writing implement and a javelin, and its keychain, a functional sketchbook and mini pencil, which Naminé also makes use of.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • Ienzo, Roxas, and Xion are varying degrees of annoyed when they discover they can't curse in the Muppet world; the world will naturally create a loud noise, such as a honk or an ambulance, to make the word inaudible. Ienzo ends up weaponizing this to later defeat Tex Richman and his heartless via literal F bombs.
  • Naminé knows no magic and can't create dark corridors. However, the Heartless can not harm her. This includes Bill Cipher himself.
  • Naminé is a memory witch. Guess where she ends up? Gravity Falls and when the Memory Gun fails to fire, she fills that role.
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  • Bonus points for it being used as a weapon in the Muppet world.
  • In Shibuya, Vanitas's use of these lets Sora know something isn't right. Unsurprisingly, with his ability to emphasize with pretty much everyone, his assessment is correct.
• Compressed Adaptation: Given the fic is compressing six other stories while trying to tell its own plot, it's inevitable. Some side stories get around this by only focusing on a small section of the story such as Final Fantasy XV, others get around it by being set after the main story has concluded The World Ends with You and Mary Poppins, but the remaining ones compress and adapt existing storylines to make room for the Kingdom Hearts characters and elements added.
• Creepy Child: Coco, though, as a Reaper, her actual age is unknown.
• Cute Monster Girl: While in monstropolis, Kairi becomes a pink girl-shaped Blob Monster with tentacles instead of limbs, and still looks adorable. Lea spends a lot of time comparing her to various deserts. Even Sora likes it.
• Deadpan Snarker: Many, including Joshua, Lea, Komaeda, Neku, and Vanitas.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Multiple:
  • Neku's realization just exactly who (or what) he's been slugging for the past six months hits him like a ton of bricks. He knows Joshua is the city's Composer, but never actually understood quite how powerful a position it was.
  • Walter does this to a Heartless'ed Tex Richman, by dropping a Precision F-Strike... literally.
• "Double, Double" Title: Well, it's supposed to be the infinity symbol, but still applies.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: The owner of the shop Lapin Angelique sells EGL, and has been known to 'kidnap' people to try out her new duds for her.
• The Empath Vanitas, in the most literal sense, with his Unversed powers.
• First-Episode Twist: The fic is far enough along that it is tagged with some of the characters/worlds Sora and Riku's friends visit to try and get them back, including The World Ends with You, Mary Poppins, Artemis Fowl, and Gravity Falls. The Muppets (2011) and Final Fantasy XV were left untagged.
• Fisher Kingdom: Thanks to Aqua and Donald's magic, those searching for Sora and co. all get the power to change form when traveling to worlds where their own bodies would be an issue. So far:
  • Everyone passing through Monstropolis to use the door to Gravity Falls becomes a monster.
  • Donald and Goofy become human in Eos, home of Final Fantasy XV. Demyx just gets new, punk-ier duds.
  • Lea and Kairi's clothes change only slightly when going to Gravity Falls, but Mickey turns human there.
  • Xion and Ienzo get new clothes in The Muppets (2011) world, but Roxas becomes a Muppet himself. The Nobodies are marionettes, to boot.
  • Vexen, Naminé and Isa get a Victorian makeover in the short time they're in the world they search.
  • The Wayfinder Trio- Aqua, Terra, and Ventus, arguably get the most extreme makeover. They're fairies, an elf, a demon, and a sprite respectively. Ven in particular seems happy to be able to fly around.
  • Vanitas and Repliku meanwhile, don't get a makeover at all, and have to go buy new clothes to fit in the world they end up in; neither of them have ever had the world-order curse placed on them.
• Gameplayand Story Integration:
  • Ienzo weaponizes the Muppet world's inability to curse.
  • In the Gravity Falls world, time is stuck in a bubble. Chapters involving it don't jump back to other worlds because of the time lock. The reader knows the bubble's spell is over when the story jumps to another world, mid chapter.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Ienzo uses Roxas as a weapon since Ienzo can't wield a Keyblade, and Roxas can't lift his in his Muppet form. Ienzo ties Roxas's plush arms around his Keyblades, and swings his friend around in circles to attack a horde of Heartless.
• Heel–Face Turn: Vanitas's entire arc in Shibuya. Not that he needed much convincing.
• Immediate Sequel: Takes place exactly where the Secret Ending concludes.
• Improbable Weapon User: Ienzo could probably weaponize a rubber chicken and nobody would bat an eye.
• It May Help You on Your Quest: Luxord's card becomes a powerful MacGuffin that acts as Sora's game fee.
• Kick the Dog: Coco turns from cute to frightening in a heartbeat, the way she mistreats Yozora, who she's using as a magical battery to supplement her powers.
• Killed Off for Real: Neku and Vanitas get and stay dead, respectively. They're in a world full of Angels and Reapers, so they can still hang around and pester everyone, though.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The entire fic hinges on the premise that Sora waking up in real world Japan is actually the world of The World Endswith You; he sees Shibuya 104 instead of the actual 109 building, a structure only seen in the TWEWY game.
• Macro Zone: Though Terra, Aqua, and Ven don't realize they've shrunk to about two thirds their size because everything in Haven is fairy sized.
• Magical Profanity Filter: In the world of The Muppets (2011), everyone is incapable of swearing, and when they do there's an actual bomb effect going off to hide the swear. Ienzo takes advantage of this to drop literal F-Bombs.
• Meaningful Rename:
  • When Sora and Riku run into Repliku in the Reaper's Game, they realize they can't just call him Riku as well. After Riku calls him friend, Komaeda suggests just using that- Tomo- as his name, as it's a normal, though uncommon, boy's name in Japanese.
  • Komaeda only goes by their last name, to hide the fact that their first name is Emi, a Japanese girl's name. They've been using masculine haircuts and out-of-work clothes due to losing their entry fee, which was their own voice. Komaeda's voice as a Reaper is that of their fraternal twin brother, who died a year later in neighboring Shinjuku.
• Meanwhile, Back at the…: With a few exceptions, chapters always bounce back to include what Sora and co. are doing in Shibuya while everyone else is searching for them.
• Mission Control: Oddly, Kairi acts as this while also fighting on the front lines, as the only one who remembers that they all have working cell phones.
• Mundane Utility: Kairi uses her Keyblade as a key in several instances.
• Nerf:
  • Vantias's fee to play the Reaper's game is his powers. No magic, no Keyblade, and even his punches and kicks don't hurt. He can't even use Pins to fight, meaning, in normal circumstances, he'd be dead meat on arrival. He can still summon Unversed, however, so even though he can't fight offensively, he can have them quite literally eat the Noise, and Noise can't attack him. Far from defenseless, he's actually extremely powerful.
  • Sora and Riku have to do this deliberately while doing their job as Reapers. They're given bad pins and don't use their Keybaldes or magic from home, to make their fights even.
• No Fourth Wall: God is writing the fanfic, and she is not pleased with something Coco has done.
• Odd Friendship: Of all people, Naminé and Pacifica Northwest actually hit it off quite well.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted and used as a plot point- there's two Komaedas- siblings-slash-twins, one who died in Shibuya and the other died in Shinjuku. Both are Reapers, and both are helping Sora and co.
• Super Cell Reception: One of the ways that everyone is able to narrow down their search for Sora and Riku is to find an Old World where their cell phones actually work.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Sora and his family thought mermaids saved him when he was drowning as a kid. It was actually Vanitas, inside Sora's heart alongside Ventus, who woke up and swam Sora's sorry butt back to shore.
• Take a Third Option: Yozora is presented with two choices: stay in Shibuya or go back to his game. However, after he's told he's from a videogame, he realizes that he's basically dooming himself to replay that part of his life over and over, so instead he decides to drag all his friends out of the game and they all live as action figures with Andy's toys.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Prompto is a Nobody, and has been his whole life. Demyx starts piecing it together after seeing how affectionate the Dancers are with him.
• Urban Fantasy: Shibuya, Eos, and Haven certainly qualify.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Neku and Joshua's typical greeting consists of Neku punching Joshua in the face as hard as he can. Joshua comments on the quality of his punches. Otherwise, the two are on perfectly good terms and really close friends.
• Vocal Dissonance: Commented In-Universe, as Mickey maintains his normal voice even when in human form.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Two of Lea's summoned Assassins become humanoid and able to speak, thanks to magic. They're not quite sure if they count as human, either.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: Each World runs on a different clock, the only constant between worlds is time only moves forwards. It's one of the ways that the people in Gravity Falls, Haven, and Shibuya figure out they're all actually on the same planet.

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