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[recyclethedead]

THE BAD END MEME

 You've chosen your path and it's led you to one of the worst possible ends. A bad ending you've averted in the past could be coming true after all, a possibility you've always feared could be happening now. Something, somewhere went horribly wrong. It's game over.

 Tell us a tale of how wrong things went, add on to others with your character's role in the downfall. Play out the the downfall itself if you want. It's really up to you on how you want to roll with this since it's freeform mode.

If you feel uncreative, here's some helpful prompts to get you in the mood.

one｡ SURVIVORS -- you two are the only ones left, whether it be the result of the apocalypse, a fight with the final boss gone horribly wrong, or something equally tragic. now you're left to contemplate friends and loved ones lost, as well as which one of you may be next.

two｡ SICKNESS -- you are seriously ill. poisoning, virus, perhaps it's even mental; whatever the reason, you doubt time is on your side this time.

three｡ FORGOTTEN -- you're not sure how, but your memories are crumbling and the things you do recall are hazy and make you dizzy. can you even recognize the person in front of you anymore?

four｡ SEPARATED -- you can see them, hear them, but something's keeping you from being with them. perhaps you're placed in a room with impenetrable glass dividing you, or you're hiding in a phone booth downtown, calling them secretly.

five｡ MELLOWED -- you've been through things, you've loved and you've lost, and all of that's changed you. maybe you finally decided to give in to temptation, you could be addicted to a substance you know is destroying you, or you've simply lost the optimism you had as a youth.

six｡ ANTAGONIST -- you've flipped the coin. you had to do it; they might not be able to understand it, but you just can't forgive the things that have happened. the darkness has consumed you.

Comments

[captive_destiny]

Riku was killed in the DR during a fight with a Zexion, returning him to his own world yet again. Time had once again passed there, leading to beatings in effort to gain information on the secret of his disappearances. Even when the truth was given it was deemed so ridiculous as to be another lie, leading to more punishment.

Namine, Sora, Kairi, the King, Donald, Goofy- all his friends were either dead or missing, breaking the last bits of resistance and willpower in him. Xemnas used him to keep Roxas in line as the Organization took over the worlds. The Organization as a whole used him for the effects being near his Heart could give them, as well as the pleasure that could be taken from his body, until one night he went missing again.

Arriving back in the DR, it didn't take Riku long to attract the wrong sort of company. Looking for any way to make the pain stop, he put up little resistance when offered hard liquor and even less when he was later offered a needle. The drug helped after he'd seen too many familiar faces, had too many memories hitting him when he was sober.

Riku will now do anything to earn his next dose, or to convince someone to help him find some alcohol. Any Namine he finds is propositioned so his memories can be removed, but he's either turned down or the process left unfinished by their growing horror and disgust at what they find.

[kingdom_seed]

She remembers the good times, vaguely. The real times. Where she loved and laughed and walked among other people. Friends, family; the best of memories, all of them.

But things couldn't stay that way. Stories spread in a close-knit community, and when one of those stories mentioned that a Kingdom Hearts fragment, heavy with both darkness and light, could be found wandering around?

He'd taken her. Studied her like a rat in a cage. How long has it been since it began? All this time, taking her nature, changing and distorting it... forcing her to be something she was never meant to be, but to his eyes, she was the perfect key to creating.

She knows she had a name other than 'X-Blade' once.

[hallowedshore]

He develops an addiction to it. Dying, finding new ways to die, provoked murders and the occasional could-have-been-an-accident. A desperate craving for what happens next. He lies down on train tracks and swallows vials of putrid liquids from the labs. It's nothing for him, death. A close friend, a nap in the sunlight, a vacation. A couple hours or a couple days gone where no one can find him. When they ask him why he just shrugs. What else does he have to do?

He doesn't like it here. Here, they're all growing apart. They have other things to do and no danger to keep them close. They can wander around alone for eternity and there's no guarantee they'd get hurt. More than that, they're growing up. And he's not like them. He's not normal. He never has been.

Sometimes he does it just to see if he can get back to that point in time, to go home and see the family he grew up with and find a way to take them all back to where they belong.

[sparksthefire]

Akane tries to stop him a few times. She never succeeds, and it weighs heavily on her as "evidence" of what makes her worthless, unwanted, but she does her best because what are friends for?

She gives up on him after one of his attempts goes even more wrong than usual: a blast that was meant for him goes awry and kills her instead. She keeps her distance after that. After all, it's not like he cares anyway, right?

[dawningcoast]

She lives a happy life. She watches Aden grow up with her nieces and nephews and all the rest of her family and it couldn't be better. She's proud of him and she's proud of them for raising such a wonderful son.

Red dies first. Slowly, quietly, the modifications to his body catch up to him. They talk a lot those days. They're both old and death is something they've been through a million times in the DR. With other people, with each other, it's part of life. She's not ready for it when he doesn't come back, but she settles well enough, with some help from her friends and family. Aden takes it a lot worse.

It isn't many years later before it's her turn, and she knows it. Now walking the edge, she avoids Halloween Town, her source of comfort. Being left to wander as a ghost or a ghoul is the last thing she wants, so she wanders the halls instead, dressed in bright crimson, until she's too tired to walk any further.

The last thing she expects is to wake up to sea spray, a much younger Sora pulling her from ocean water and Kai asking if she's okay. She wants to scream.

[seasides]

You slipped once before, a calm voice reminds you as you drift down a hallway. This is not slipping, you reply in bemusement. You aren't sure if you spoke aloud that time. You're never very sure anymore.

It wasn't difficult, becoming Light. Certainly, you were a host to it before, but you were never Light wholly. This was much different. And all it took was one fight, pushing you too far. One fight to push you over the edge into a blinding oblivion.

You spent two weeks unresponsive. That's not to say you were comatose. No, this time you were far from it. Your heart had not left you again! They said you would thrash about. That you would scream and howl as though you were being torn apart. You felt fine when you woke up, so you find that rather hard to believe.

In fact, you felt more than fine. You were in tune with yourself in ways you had never thought possible, after that fight. You could feel everything, every speck of Light and Darkness within every person in the Dressing Room. You would have thought it to be overwhelming, but somehow it wasn't. It was like looking over the ocean. But the ocean was tainted.

Some part of you was certain you would feel nausea the first time you killed a Riku. Regret, maybe. Fear at what had become of you that you could do it so easily. Your friends and family certainly didn't understand, when you said the Riku hadn't attacked you. Hadn't done anything at all. They looked at you in fear and concern when you explained you were removing a taint.

After your fifth kill the keyblade stopped coming to you. That was fine. Hands worked well enough, as did your Light. Some fought back, but your wounds healed immediately. You can't injure Light, not really. Your friends and family try to stop you. Some part of you still clings to them, still draws power from your love for them, so you decide they will be last. But they will definitely have to go. They are tainted. Everything is tainted.

The other Pure-hearted in the Dressing Room are spared your divine wrath, unless they try to stop you. They just don't understand, but that's okay.

You don't need allies.

[skybright]

Sora goes home.

That's the bad end, right there. Sora goes home, and her keyblade is still halved. For all her new power, she is no longer able to truly get rid of the Heartless that permeate the worlds. Eventually, she is overrun and loses her heart again. Roxas is reborn, with all of Sora's memories (after all, Sora does not immediately return this time). Being able to dual-wield 'naturally', Roxas still has a keyblade remaining. One of the two is still halved, but she is not immediately condemned to death, as she is still useful.

Roxas pretends to work with the Organization until she can help Riku by taking them down from the inside. Sora's Heartless is not distinct. She doesn't come back.

[twilit_kid]

Little Riku here was barely six years old when he dropped his stuffed paopu. He was crossing the train tracks while following his Shadow friend.

The Shadow was the only witness, and a late one at that, to the train that bore down on his best friend. If he'd been even a minute sooner, Sora would have been able to knock Riku to safety. The plush might have been mangled where it was stuck, but the little boy that didn't move in time could have been saved.

His blood stained the front of the train. The rest of his remains disappeared, but Riku didn't come back. The Shadow took to following an older Riku and Roxas couple, and always managed to look miserable for a Heartless.

[daddyhasagun]

She goes back to her 'proper' time, and is relieved and ecstatic and full of joy and Light to be back with her properly aged parents and siblings and aunt and uncles. She spins tales of how really not old the adults of the family used to be, and shares stories of how her siblings were much cuter and better when they were tiny and listened to her and gave her lots of hugs and kisses.

But then the Darkness crushes down. It's not like the Heartless attacks that are so common and expected in their time. It's like the whole DR has twisted, and even walking down the hallways for supplies is like going through Corridors of Darkness. The very air eats away at everyone, tearing a their Hearts with invasive Darkness.

It's Daddy, strangely enough, who goes first. Everyone thought he'd be strongest, so in tune with Darkness that it doesn't affect him. But when the wards keeping the oppressive Darkness out of the family hallway come crashing down, Daddy's eyes bleed gold that won't go away as he screams, skin taking a darker shade, and everyone realizes just how much pain he'd been hiding. Mama and Papa and the uncles do what they have to do, the children all barricaded away with Uncle Kai and the strongest Light Shield he can muster. But both he and Kira go down screaming when it happens. Auntie Piku throws up blood in the hallway and she can't summon Way to the Dawn anymore afterwards.

After that, it's a matter of time.

It's like dominoes.

Kira can't bring up her Light anymore, by the end. Every loss shattering her soft Heart more and more, sparkling little shards that cut her apart with every breath. She tried her best to protect her cousins and siblings, because they're not like their parents. Rikka has Soul Eater now, but when his eyes bleed gold, Kira knows what she has to do.

Even in this DR, the closets still love Kira. She has a nice one, very large and spacious, with bright colors and soft fabrics making things bright like a rainbow. Against the far wall, Kira makes sure the area around the egg-shaped crystal pods is particularly cheery and bright. She asks Inaya if a certain dress looks good on her, and tells Aden that the fabric is easily washed and doesn't stain. Namine sleeps quietly. Satu and Sanyu share a pod because Kira would never break them apart. Rikka will never wear black again if she can help it.

Kira thinks she can find Uncle Kai soon. Maybe Mama, too. They'll all be together again and things will be perfect.

[frostedwaters]

Kairi's lack of social interaction has left her in an almost... damaged state. The more anxious she gets, the colder she gets, until just being in the same room is enough to drive people away. She tries to end it once, but just comes back. Part of her was just wanting to go home.

After a while it gets so bad that she accidentally freezes someone to death where they stand. Once the shock wears away though, she realizes that people can't leave her, can't desert her, if they're frozen in place.

There's a hallway in the dressing room that's always icy cold. And a bedroom encased in snow and ice, and several very lifelike ice sculptures. Kairi sits on her frozen throne, decked out in fur, the perfect image of the White Witch.

The people who wander in never wander back out again, and she is never lonely again.

[gameofpretend]

Despite the mold he was created to fit, the very nature of the body he inhabits is considered a curse for a reason. Only a splinter of an actual person, the madness innate to all of his kind fractured his mind further as he got older and gained power.

Bit by bit, all his little defense mechanisms to rule his own need for control and protect himself from the truth of his own existence were eroded away.

Simply mass-ghouling humans stopped working, having pets bound to his blood wasn't enough control for him. All his little pets needed to be broken to his hand as well as bound to him by blood.

Soon that too wasn't enough and Luxord became increasingly reclusive, hiding away in some deep dark corner of the DR. Only sending the ghouls out to collect prey for him and send them back afterward.

Since he'd keep to himself it was probably fairly innocuous or unnoticed by outsiders until one day he stopped releasing the victims his ghouls lured or kidnapped for him. He wasn't killing them, but he also wasn't letting them go.

At some point someone dear to someone would be taken, some ghoul would be caught while out fishing or someone somehow found out, and and either way took the time to hunt him down

By the time he's found, Luxord isn't there anymore; not that he ever actually was given he was always just a fragment of someone else's mind. His own fragment isn't much better, in the memory of a memory a little bit was lost in translation, and whatever was He of all people going to do with all those lovely pets.

[windup_boytoy]

He doesn't tell anyone about it. After all, it's his problem, and he's strong, and he doesn't want anyone to worry needlessly over something that is probably nothing.

He feels good, better and stronger than he has in ages. If he's a little more aggressive and bloodthirsty, who cares? They were bastards who deserved it for threatening his family. His eyes are permanently gold, but he can put an illusion over them -- courtesy of a Zexion that didn't mind his business and had to be disposed of -- so that no one worries.

When he starts to get spasms, and blacks out for no reason, that's when he thinks something might be seriously wrong. He wakes up in strange places, his body humming with Darkness and power and strength. But things can't be bad if he feels so good, right? The DR must be fucking with him again, but at least he hasn't turned into a girl. That sucks.

They're having a barbeque. He's brought out his grill and all of his family and friends are there, celebrating the return of good 'weather' and the relative peace. The platter of burgers falls from his hands when he seizes and crashed to the ground. Everyone is screaming in shock and surprise, and he manages to see Sora and Riku rushing forward, Kai not far behind with an expression on his face that he doesn't understand.

He tries to tell everyone he's just fine, even with the Darkness escaping from his body. This feels so strange but familiar somehow. Riku looks like he's going to throw up, even as he yells at him not to go. Riku-pi has gone completely gray, which looks bad with her hair. Sora is crying. He doesn't know what's wrong, because he feels just fine, even when he can't see anyone anymore.

Replicas were never meant to last very long.

[before]

It starts off inconspicuously enough. He feels a pain in his gut that shouldn't be there. He steels himself one night and cuts himself open to see what it is, and the answer surprises him. His kidneys are rotting.

Replacing them is, in theory, easy enough. Finding replacements is the issue. He doesn't tell anyone what the problem is. He doesn't let Riku touch him anymore. Before he can replace his kidneys, it gets worse.

The rot starts to travel.

Death, at this point, is the easiest thing to turn to. Unfortunately, when he returns he's right back where he started, rotting from the inside out. It spreads, eats away at his organs and works its way up into his chest. He tries dying twice more, but it doesn't help. In the end it gets to his lungs, and then his heart.

He lives, in agonizing pain, for a week and a half before the rot crawls up his spine to his brain. And then he's gone, a corpse that was once a miserable child and a secretive man, but above all, a failed experiment.

[summer_poprocks]

Roxas is gloriously happy. He returns to the DR and discovers his Sora already there. They go down in a mass of limbs and laughter, much to the amusement of everyone around at the time.

One night a few months later, Roxas is invited to watch movies with a friend. They hadn't thought anything of it when they moved on from Disney to Final Destination.

Sora is led to believe that Roxas returned to their world sometime in the night. No one wanted to tell him the truth, that Roxas had had a heart-attack during his first scary movie. He was seventeen.

[justalittlesick]

Really all he had left in his life was the hope that when his body got too old to continue functioning he'd finally get to stay dead.

It didn't work.

After his body passed it's expiration date, he was brought back again. This time in a younger body and that was the final straw.

Even gave up trying to fight himself, after all, what was the point? there was no hope of his existence ending and each passing year made it harder. If there'd been a choice he'd have simply chosen to become feral again.

At least with him running naked through woodland tearing apart random wildlife, people would have been safer. Instead he regresses, seeking out the things he remembers making him happy.

Repeated rejection eventually led to a rather messy divorce with reality and this is eventually reinterpreting 'things he remembers making him happy' as just 'Ienzo,' unfortunately now anyone he catches or lures home could be designated as Ienzo regardless of age or sex (Though young boys are preferentially targeted.)

Each time only lasting until the victim breaks the illusion for Even, then killing them during the resulting tantrum. Each time resulting in a moment of awareness before he cleans the mess and censors the incident from his mind.

Of course having no powers means the frequency and amount of damage caused is nowhere near what it could be.

Revenge is easy to take too, but the censorship of the incidents from his mind; the trickiness of keeping him alive and imprisoned for significant periods of time; and the fact he is frequently aroused by pain usually prevents it meaning much of anything to anyone involved.

Sometimes he gives killing himself another try, but it never takes.

[twelfthspark]

Larxene keeps to herself when she finds herself back in the dressing room. Trouble doesn't follow her the way it used to, but the damage was already done: her knees are never quite as good as they used to be, and seeing Axels that aren't hers still jabs at the Heart she didn't want. Outside wasn't great, but the purposeless life trapped in the DR grates at her.

She gets to thinking.

It's all the brat's fault. If she'd had the sense to stop it when she first found out, things would have been different. Nothing would have tied her to that idiot to begin with. That would have saved her some pain and a death or two at Saïx's hands; she'd have been free to mock the proceedings from a distance. She wouldn't have found herself stuck in an endless march of parental duties she never wanted. There'd be no reason to sympathize with a trapped child in a dungeon: Ri's little vendetta could have been avoided. She wouldn't have met 'Mint, leaving her no reason to be so damn lonely now.

One day, she walks into the apartment where the two versions of her daughter live and summons her knives.

[windup_daddy]

He dies, peacefully and quietly, in his own bed and surrounded by fat, happy grandchildren.

That's how it was supposed to happen.

Instead, he's burying yet another grandchild, or great-grandchild, or maybe it's one of the great-grandnieces. He's surrounded by them, by their faces and their names and their strikingly similar personalities, but they are not his family. At first it was easier, when everyone died younger, through fights or Heartless. But when his family starts growing old, and he still looks like he's in his twenties, he knows how cruel the DR can be.

As the years pass, it's easier to fade away from the familiar family hallway, then watch over them from a distance, just another 'Riku' brought to the DR. There's a boy named 'Ri' after his forefather. He has a relationship with a Marluxia, and things go badly.

It's never been harder to live, when he has to watch the past repeat itself.

[forza_del_bene]

The obvious bad end for a Xehanort lies in madness. This is not that one. Not as such.

Dying - well, he'd expected it to happen at some point, in here. An experiment going wrong, a Heartless outbreak (Unversed, Nobody, Keywraith, Dream Eater - he could pick and choose the options.) And from what he'd known, he'd have come back whole and well. In the end, it's another keyblade that does it, and instead...

Instead, a Master Xehanort and a Terra emerged into the strange new light of the DR, a few strange memories in their minds. But this is not their ending, either. The part of him that was Xeha alone, that had lived and hoped and built its own life? That ... survived. He'd always sworn he was neither of them, but himself, and apparently the DR listened...

A fragment of a heart that would not have been otherwise, that belonged to neither of his forebears. It's lost, and so is he. He wanders, half-spectre, half-nothing, searching for a way to communicate, to come back to the world. Once in a while, he'll find someone, a suitable host, for all he once swore he would never steal a body without permission; but they're always too strong, their friends too willing to help. And as his old friends leave or die for good, those he knew could help him are growing few in number.

And it goes on...

[aprincess]

She was always too trusting. Even knowing the dangers of this place, even despite the warnings and the stories, repeated over and over throughout the worlds. Xehanort, Xemnas, Axel... She kept hope and shook her head at the warnings, pointed out how many of them were thought bad and turned out good, and how the same was true in reverse. 'Bad' Soras, 'good' Axels, a Vanitas or two that had never hurt anyone. She tries to befriend everyone, and nearly every time her judgments prove accurate. She makes new friends where others would overlook and avoids the villains with care. But sometimes they're just too cunning, their lies too earnest. A Xehanort comes to the DR, young and fresh, with enough sense and foresight to learn about the place, and what others will know about him. Kairi befriends him and promises he won't have to turn out that way.

Months later he is destroyed, history repeated as it does so often. There's no one left to tell them where Kairi's body lies, frozen in heartless sleep beside so many other princesses.

[twilit_papa]

A Heartless was hiding in the engine of the two-seater plane he was flying, but this time there was no new world to crash land into. No new but familiar family to patch him up.

Riku managed to deal with the Heartless, but not before it had done irreparable damage. Without the ability to portal to safety, it was all he could do to at least try to make sure he didn't kill anyone else when the plane went down.

He crashed into a line of trees, seatbelts snapping after the ejection seat failed to launch. All anyone could see at first was the blood on the windshield, splattered over pictures of his family. He was 42, and he didn't come back.