Whoops, forgot to check back in here to reply!
loool. Guess we came to the same conclusion. But I have my doubts on Braig having a Heartless, anyways.
I thought you were trying to say that none of the Apprentices had Heartless though? But there's no way that he didn't have one. I mean, I won't argue that there's no chance that the hearts went to Xemnas' KH but I am going to say that it would make little sense (my reasoning is explained at the end of my post).
Xehanort may have just ejected Braig's heart, considering how he summons his keyblade after Even's and Ienzo's deaths. But the Apprentices couldn't have become Pureblood Heartless because Purebloods don't go to the Artificial KH. Assuming, of course, that their hearts went there. Which I still find to be a reasonable assumption.
Braig could have also just walked in the room. It's hard to say for certain what exactly happened in that scene since it's mostly insinuated but I'm pretty confident that AX attacked them all with his keyblade. Hopefully KH3 will be able to clear it up in the reports so there's no room for confusion.
Axel and Xaldin were defeated at least a year after the others, to say that a difference in revival time affected even just one of the two seems very far-fetched, let alone both of them.
Didn't Nomura sort of debunk his own rule of it mattering which order the Heartless and Nobodies were destroyed in? I'm pretty sure he did at least, but I don't really want to dig through interviews. And if he did, then it doesn't really matter when the Nobodies were defeated, it matters when the Heartless were.
Ah, ok. Considering that Nomura has said they're probably off somewhere as regular Heartless since the KH2 Ultimania back in 2006, I never thought otherwise.
Yeah, that's why I never thought otherwise either.
Well, it should be noted that Dilan and Even were off resting. They had still been revived, we saw them on the floor. (I think the fact that they were "unstable" may be hinting at something but that remains to be seen).
That's actually an interesting thought. I never really considered that the two of them being unstable, but I'd really enjoy it if what you're insinuating were true.
Just want to be clear, I'm not saying it's impossible that Sora happened to destroy all of their Heartless at the right time, but that you face more variables which would otherwise be accounted for by the artificial KH explanation. If that were true, the destroyed-Heartless explanation, then there would have been a possibility that each apprentice could have been revived at separate times (Sora could have even met them before the end of KH2). On the other hand, the artificial KH explanation guarantees that they'd have all been revived after KH2 at the same time. I prefer that explanation because it factors out any probability issues, that's all. That and I think it's fitting that the apprentices, who Ansem noted had already been "exploited" by Xehanort, would be used toward the completion of Xemnas' KH.
I'm willing to accept the probability that the Apprentices hearts went to Xemnas' KH after their Heartless were destroyed. I just definitely don't see how they could have gone directly to KH without being Heartless first which was my main issue with the theory.
Upon more thought though, it really doesn't make any sense at all for the Apprentices to have become Emblems. Like Sora, they should have become Purebloods. And if they did, their hearts for sure would not have gone to Xemnas' KH. So why couldn't their hearts have gone to the RoD in wait until their Nobodies had been destroyed? Please correct me if I'm mistaken about that but Sora becoming an Pureblood in itself is pretty good evidence that the Apprentices would have also become them as their Nobodies were created in a similar fashion.