Ch. 1
The Letter
"Hey Sora. Over here!" Riku was standing on the edge of the ocean, about twenty feet away from Sora. Behind him, a couple of Shadow Heartless were attacking.
"Aww man I thought I had got them all!" Sora was tired, breathing heavily. He was sure he had just finished off all of the heartless, only to see Riku being ambushed by increasing numbers of Heartless.
With keyblade out, Sora charged towards the hoards of Heartless that were rapidly multiplying, and slashed away at them. More and more Heartless seemed to appear out of nowhere.
"Will this ever end?" Sora said desperately as he turned around to see yet another group of Shadows hustling towards him. He thrust his keyblade into the nearest Shadow. It went in a rush of Darkness, followed by a small glowing heart forever reaching upwards.
Sora and Riku had only been on the island for 2 months when things started getting chaotic again. They thought that they had sealed all the worlds for good, and that no more Darkness would ever threaten them again. But apparently, the Darkness had once again found a way to seep through the keyholes.
Sora and Riku fought recklessly, side by side, for the next hour, until they had defeated all of the heartless—for now at least. Once they were all gone, they sought refuge in the treehouse, which sat on top of the largest tree on the whole Destiny Islands. They ran up the spiraling wooden steps and into the dark room. There they sat for a while, trying to regain their breaths.
"Man, for all the days that Kairi decides to go on vacation…" Riku sighed, apparently out of breath.
"Yeah", Sora replied. "That gives us one less Keyblade Wielder to help us defeat all these annoying Heartless that keep popping up out of the shadows like that! How did they even get here anyway?"
"How did they get here?" Riku pondered this for a moment. Then he sat up, remembering something.
"Hey Sora, I'm just curious…", Riku started out, "Did Kairi take that bottled letter with her when she left? I mean… is it here on the island still? We never got a chance to read it.
"Yeah, it's still here. We put it in the treasure chest, remember? You know, the one that we keep hidden on the island and we fill it with important things?"
"Oh…yeah. Do you think….do you think we should read it?"
"But Kairi told us not to read it until she gets back! We were going to read it together…"
Riku frowned. "But it might be from the King! What if something went wrong?"
"Well……" Sora sat quiet for a minute, and then he put both arms behind his head. "I guess we could read it, you know, just to check… But if it's not from the King then we have to put it back and still act surprised when Kairi comes, okay?"
Riku was already gone, and was running towards the secret place. Sora jumped out of the tree and landed on the ground with a loud thump. He got up and bounded towards Riku, arms flailing.
"Hey, you were supposed to wait for me!" Sora yelled.
Riku disappeared behind the entrance of the cave. Sora followed shortly behind, pausing when he noticed the old drawings that he and Kairi had drawn there so long ago. But he had to focus. Him and Riku bent down over the chest, and opened it with a click. A pile of junk filed over the top of the chest, and Riku dug down until he found the bottle.
"See?", said Riku, pointing to the end of the bottle. "That's his mark. It's from King Mickey!"
"Well then, open it, will you?" Sora was getting impatient.
Riku popped open the bottle and unrolled the soft paper. Sora could follow Riku's soft eyes scanning back and forth on the page. Riku's eyes widened with fear as he read on towards the bottom of the paper. He then looked up at Sora with a shocked expression on his face.
"What? What's wrong? Let me see!" Sora was getting nervous, and was starting to spaz.
"Sora….", Riku said in a hushed voice, "They're back. I can't believe it but… they've come back."
"Who came back? Who? Let me see the paper, Riku! Come on, hand it over!"
Sora snatched the paper out of Riku's hands and hastily began to read. Sora isn't as fast a reader as Riku, so it took him a while to find out what Riku was freaking out about. He scratched his head as he tried to read as fast as he could, continuing down the aging paper. All of the sudden, Sora went silent. His hands started to tremble. The paper fell gently out of his hands and on to the ground, face up. The words that were neatly written on the paper seemed to engrave themselves into Sora and Riku's minds.
"Riku, the King…."
Riku finally started to come back, his eyes growing dark as he focused on Sora's sweaty face.
"Sora, you know what we have to do, right? …Sora?" Riku put his hand on Sora's. His hands were clammy and shaking. "Come on, Sora, be strong. I never thought you were that big of a whimp. Isn't your heart big enough for this?"
Sora gazed into Riku's eyes. A small smile appeared on his lips. "The question is, Riku, is YOUR heart big enough for this?"
They both laughed as they stood up. They looked at each other and smiled, nodded once and then ran out of the cave.
