The events of "Chain of Memories" only took about a week.

Here's something I jotted notes down on a while back (when 358/2 Days was pretty recent, so it's been a while now) but never actually got around to posting up anywhere until now.  It's slightly off-topic for this blog's usual "replacement for the Fangirl Extermination Squad wiki and other stuff related to that story" purpose, and to be perfectly honest I've lost almost all interest in the canon KH universe at this point so I'm pretty much only posting this for the sake of finally getting this information out there in an attempt to counteract the nonsensical "the Chain of Memories events took about a month" misconception that was pretty prevalent in the fandom the last time I really paid attention... but anyway, I figure a rant about the Kingdom Hearts series and the weird, weird misconceptions of its fandom would fit better here than on either of my other blogs, so here it goes.

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Anyway... as the title says, it's pretty clear to me that the events of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories only took about a week from start to finish (in other words, from Sora's arrival at Castle Oblivion to the moment that Riku defeats "Ansem"/Xehanort's Heartless and leaves the castle with Mickey.)  For some odd reason there seems to be a perception among KH fans that it took something closer to a month, but if you look at the information available this is obviously wrong.  358/2 Days' "Secret Reports" make it perfectly clear just how long things take, at least right up to the 11th floor or so... the only reason people are getting the "month-ish" length is because they're not using a little thing called "common sense."  Here goes...

Day 24: Zexion writes that "Marluxia has succeeded in leading the Keyblade master to the castle."  In other words, this is the day when Sora first arrives at Castle Oblivion.

Day 25: Lexaeus writes "What's happening on the upper levels?" and "Zexion talks of the bond we share as an Organization, but how could such a thing exist? Still, he remains the only one I can trust."  This report is pretty much referencing a Vexen/Lexaeus/Zexion conversation that happens in Chain of Memories where they talk about Riku's arrival and other recent events.  So at this point Riku is already making his way up through the lower floors.

Day 26: Zexion writes "Simple deduction suggests Axel's outwardly inscrutable actions are the result of some directive from Saix. Why else eliminate Vexen? He simply wanted to do research."  So at this point -- just two days after Sora's arrival -- Sora's two fights with Vexen and Axel showing up to assassinate the old scientist have already happened.  In case you forgot, or were one of those people who never actually played Chain of Memories because the card-based battle system required too much thought and not enough blind button-mashing, this happens on the 10th floor of Castle Oblivion.  That means that in two days' time, Sora has climbed from the first floor to the tenth.  This is the part the "CoM took a month" crowd seems to miss -- why would Sora take multiple weeks to climb the last three floors when he only took three days at most to get through the first ten?  It doesn't make any sense at all.

Day 27: Marluxia writes "Axel is in the way, though I don't know if he's aware of our plot. Vexen had no part in our plans - why eliminate him, assuming Axel's orders were to root out traitors to the Organization?"  Doesn't really establish any clear events in the timeline, aside from showing that Sora hasn't reached Floor 13 yet at this point.  Presumably Larxene hasn't died yet either, as Marluxia refers to "our" plot and those two were the only ones in on it.

Day 28: Axel writes "I've uncovered most of what I need to know about the Replica Program, but where's the other one? I can't find any trace of it. ... Vexen was caught in the middle. Pitiable, but unavoidable. I could not risk his Program falling into their hands. Of greater concern are the traitors. Not the obvious turncoats, but the ones who will get in his and my way."  Apparently Larxene and Marluxia are still alive at this point (as Axel still mentions the "obvious" traitors), and Axel has been poking around at Vexen's research on the Replicas which suggests that it's getting close to the end now -- before he sics the Riku Replica on Zexion of course (since Marluxia died right as Riku encounters Zexion), but possibly after he's already come up with the plan to do it.  "The other one" probably refers to Xion rather than the Riku Replica, as I don't think Axel is aware that Xion is the other Replica at this point.  My guess is that Axel's report on Day 28 was written early in the day, after he'd stayed up all night searching through Vexen's research, and Larxene at least probably dies later on that day.  While it does seem like Sora's pace slowed a bit after his encounter with Vexen (otherwise he'd be up at Floor 20 by now, if such a floor existed! XD), it doesn't make any sense at all that he would randomly take weeks to climb the last three floors -- I'd say maybe a day per floor at most.

Here's what we know for sure of the timeline, compressed down for quicker reading:

Day 24 -- Sora arrives.
Day 25 -- Riku arrives.  Stuff's already going on up on the upper floors -- Naminé changing Sora's memories, Sora/Donald/Goofy's first fights with Axel and Larxene?
Day 26 -- Sora's on the 10th floor.  Axel kills Vexen.
Day 27 -- Larxene and Marluxia are still alive, so Sora's not reached the 12th floor yet.
Day 28 -- Axel's plotting to get rid of Zexion.  Larxene and Marluxia are still alive, so Sora's not gotten to the end of the memory-room on the 12th floor yet -- but I suspect he's probably already very close at the point when Axel wrote this.

So basically... Sora's story in Chain of Memories most likely takes no more than a week, and possibly as little as only five or six days depending on just how soon after Axel's Day 28 report the final battles take place.  Literally the only way it could take any longer is if you assume Sora randomly spent weeks hanging around in the memory-rooms on the last few floors.  Riku's story extends a little bit after Sora's ends, but probably not by much -- we know that Larxene was killed somewhere around the same time as Lexaeus, and that Riku encounters Zexion at the exact same time Marluxia dies in battle with Sora, Donald, and Goofy (Riku senses his "scent" fading and Zexion confirms the identity of the "scent" was Marluxia.) After the Zexion encounter there's only a few more floors left for Riku -- the final battle with the Riku Replica, and then the battle with Xehanort's Heartless, and then he's done and leaves Castle Oblivion.  Even assuming that Riku takes on a similarly slow pace to Sora during his last couple floors, I'd guess that he leaves the castle no later than Day 32.  So Sora's story is over by Day 28 at the earliest and Day 30 or so at the latest, and Riku's by Day 30 at the earliest and Day 32 or so at the latest.  Chain of Memories only takes about a week.  Not a month.  Not multiple weeks.  About a week.

And now, the part that throws people off if they don't think about things too much.  Yeah, I think I've figured out where people keep getting the "month" in the timeline... just like the above, it's from 358/2 Days' secret reports..

Day 51: Saix writes "The Replica Program continues apace, but something has gone wrong at Castle Oblivion. The Dusks returned with word that none of those we dispatched survived—but the news came in fragments. I still know too little to extract the truth. I doubt Axel would be among those lost, but I must plan for the worst."  The source of the "month" misinterpretation can probably be traced to this one report.  People see "Saix gets word from Dusks that all of the Organization XIII members at Castle Oblivion are gone" here and assume that it must have happened right after everything went down at Castle Oblivion.

...but that wouldn't make any sense.  There doesn't seem to have been much, if any, communication on a day-to-day basis between the Castle Oblivion group and the Castle That Never Was group.  In 358/2 Days you don't hear anything from the Castle Oblivion group during their assignment over there.  There's no indication in either game that they're being checked up on regularly -- Axel being sent there to root out the traitors is the only involvement that Saix and Xemnas have with the whole Castle Oblivion operation.  Xemnas and Saix aren't keeping a constant watch over Castle Oblivion, so it wouldn't make sense that Dusks would be sent to investigate the exact moment that everyone died.  Plus, Dusks aren't exactly the best investigators (as we know from Kingdom Hearts 2's Roxas intro scenes), so it's likely they took a significant amount of time to check through the castle's various floors and confirm that they couldn't find anyone.  Let's say it took two weeks before Saix sent a team of Dusks to investigate (that would mean the Dusks were sent around Day 44) and then another week for them to finish their search... that brings it right up around Day 51, and makes a lot more sense time-wise than "Marluxia and Zexion die somewhere in the late 40s, Dusks immediately sent out, and then they finish their investigation and head back in less than a day" like what the CoM-took-a-month theorists must think happened.  And apparently Axel hid from the Dusks, since they reported that no Organization members were still present at Castle Oblivion even though Axel was still hanging around at this point (as we see from the next report.)

Day 52: Axel writes "I've lost track of the Keyblade master and the other intruders. I'm the only one left in the castle. Everybody else has been destroyed. My orders were to end the traitors, but I think by this point, I fit that bill better than anybody. There's one last thing I need to look into while I'm here."  Basically, Axel has spent the past month continuing his investigation into everything that went down in Castle Oblivion, along with probably recovering from his last fight (he fought a Sora/Donald/Goofy who went on to defeat Marluxia soon afterward, after all -- and we know Axel's weaker than even Marluxia's flower-doppelganger, let alone the real Marluxia, so he's not gonna be in good shape after that fight) and at this point he's almost done with that and just wants to look into one more thing (presumably the "Room of Awakening" that's hidden somewhere in the castle.)  In the process of investigating everything, he lost track of Sora and the others, which means that DiZ has already relocated them by this point -- probably even earlier, since if they had still been in the castle when Saix's Dusk team was sent out they would've found them.

So basically... what confuses people is that the aftermath of CoM keeps going maybe a month or so after the actual events of the game have ended.  Since there's not much communication between the Organization's two bases, nobody knows for sure that everyone at Castle Oblivion is dead until Saix sends some Dusks to investigate.  Rather than reporting back to Saix right away, Axel lingers around Castle Oblivion for a few weeks investigating Vexen's research, trying to find where Sora and the others went, and looking for the Room of Awakening (and also hiding from the Dusks that Saix sent out to investigate, it seems, considering that Saix doesn't know he's still around at first but suspects he wasn't killed like the others.)  He only leaves when he's done with this extra searching, not right away after everything's over.  And searching through 13 floors aboveground and another 13 below would take a while -- he's not going to be barging up through them at full speed like Sora and Riku did, since he's looking for hidden stuff that not just anybody would be able to find

While the timeline given in 358/2 Days doesn't make it perfectly clear how long things took, it doesn't make any sense at all to assume it took the majority of a month for Sora to go from Floor 10 to Floor 13 of Castle Oblivion when we know for a fact that he only took about two days to make the trip up the first 10 floors... but if you seriously try to make the "CoM lasted a month" thing work, you pretty much have to go with Sora randomly taking a month to climb up three floors, since we know exactly when Vexen died (and that happened on the 10th floor.)