"Guys, what's going on here?" Sora asked as he, Donald and Goofy all looked around them. Some brutish man had come charging towards them, in the mist he seemed like an undiscovered breed of heartless, but now blood dripped from the keyblade and a crisp, black, but very human skeleton laid atop a scorched patch of sidewalk. "Sora," Donald didn't look away from that one spot as he answered slowly, and as clearly as his voice would allow, "I think you just killed a man." The keyblade vanished and Sora fell to his knees, he couldn't believe what had just happened.
The man's words were hard to follow, but Sora realised what he was saying a moment too late, just as the Fira spell was cast. "Screwin' the milkman!" He'd yelled, "She been screwin' the milkman!" Sora's body moved to curl into itself, the bring his hands to his eyes and rock with sobs, but that didn't happen. In the confusion the three companions had been snuck up on, and now men in dark clothing fastened their hands behind their backs. "You bastards are coming with with us, one of them announced as he yanked Goofy to his feet. "Coming where?" Goofy looked horrified before even getting his answer. "To Cook County jail!"
They were all searched for anything potentially illegal or dangerous, this new world was their most confusing yet. Potions and Ethers were called "drugs" and "booze", much was made of Sora being too young for these items, but he couldn't understand why. "You guys are lucky, lucky as a bunch of no good murderers could be!" The officer who had searched them directed them out of the small room and down a dull, dark corridor. They didn't dare to speak, so waited to be told about their so-called luck. "Some overcrowding has the more, let's say, serious people around here pretty occupied as of late. That means you get to deal with Matron Morton, down in E-Block. With all the pretty little girls." He locked the three of them in cells near each other, and walked out without another word.
It was late at night, so they assumed this Morton person wouldn't be around any time soon. Donald pointed out right away that Sora could probably open the doors with the keyblade, but they agreed that whoever Matron Morton was, they may be able to help them understand this world. Besides, Sora had done something awful, and he felt that he deserved to be punished, he couldn't bear to look at himself, staring at the floor was his only option in the tiny cell. "Hey! Hey kid!" A woman called from the shadows. "What'cha in for?" She slowly came into focus as Sora stared into the cell across from his. "Well, what did you do, kid? C'mon I'm a busy woman!" He struggled to form words and finally muttered a reply. "I-I killed someone…" It almost hurt to say those words, he was appalled at his own rashness. "That all?" The woman sounded bored with him, as if he'd done nothing of interest. "Well, yeah… That's pretty bad, isn't it?" He was baffled by this woman, her nonchalance towards murder. "Puh-lease, kid!" She called him that to be condescending, that much was clear, but she was intriguing, clearly someone lacking in morals. "Everyone in here, in this block at least, offed at least one bastard in their time. I'm Velma, by the way, Velma Kelly."
After a sleepless night Sora wanted to know more about this place, and about Velma Kelly, this odd woman who didn't bat an eyelid at one person killing another. "Cool it," she demanded when he threw question after question at her, "clearly you are not from Illinois, and without a doubt you've never set foot in Chicago." She laughed a dark, coarse laugh. "Must be why you haven't heard of me. Y'know, I was makin' a thou' a week before I wound up in this joint?" Her speech had slip somewhat, she didn't seem as well spoken or refined in her tone anymore. "How did you get put in here?" Sora had finally found an opening for his most troubling question, and Velma's smile showed that she relished the chance to tell her story. He couldn't believe this world he'd ended up in, so crude, so unrefined, he was baffled by part of the story, the climax leading to her double murder. "The spread eagle?" He felt ashamed to ask, she's been so blunt that he surely should have know. There it was again, that laugh of hers, sharp, harsh. "Kids these days, I tell ya, I caught 'em in the sack! You know, screwin'?" Sora nodded, he knew what she meant, Riku had told him about things like that, or at least Riku had told his as much as he had actually managed to learn. "Oh. I… I'm so sorry."
Matron Morton strolled in shortly after, and the strangeness of this world grew stronger with her arrival. She announced out loud to Sora, Donald, Goofy, and the scared looking blonde woman trailing behind her "Call me Mama!" and broke into song. Many of the women lining the sides of Murderess Rown, the name Velma had given this place, danced in perfect synch with one another, as Mama's song continued until the door closed in front of the frail blonde woman, whom Mama walked away from, clanging something against the bars as she went. The lights went out, and Sora realised he'd spent the entire day talking to Velma about this new world. He had also learnt one brief lesson from Morton, though he hadn't caught all of her randomly belted lyrics, he now knew one thing: "When you're good to Mama, Mama's good to you."
Waking back up after just gettign to sleep, Sora didn't know which sound had woken him. There were footsteps in the distance, shoes on metal. There was a drumming of fingers across from his, Velma must be having sleeping trouble too. Finally, a tap dripping further down the Row. They all combined in a peculiar rhythm , and to add more to the illusion, a spotlight beamed into the middle of the cellblock, which had become much wider, the floor much smoother. Just when Sora thought he was beginning to make sense of the place, things got ever weirder. "Pop." A voice down the hall uttered this single word and others followed with short, disconnected words that somehow slotted perfectly together. "They had it comin'!" Velma and five other women pleaded aloud. "He only had himself to blame!" Donald called out to Sora, to pull his attention away from Velma's sudden involvement in an unprompted song. "Sora, look!" The duck pointed to the spotlight, in with six tall, thin heartless circled, taking a form that looked human, like six men, and each approached a singing murderess.
The keyblade flashed into being in Sora's clenched fist, but as it turned out it was less than necessary. A woman stepped out of her now open cell and began to slowly dance with one of the heartless as she discussed her murder of a man guilty of loudly popping gum. Once she was done, she dragged the heartless aside and the next woman sang of her crime. One by one they performed as the one who came because dispatched the heartless with which she'd tangoed, demonstrating the power of ludicrously high kicks, and heals far too high for any normal jail. When Velma's turn came, as she recounted her tale from the Hotel Cicero, the woman who had daned before her, the one who'd pleaded of her innocence, struggled against the heartless as it overpowered her. The murderesses were too preoccupied limbering for what was to come, no one was going to her aid. In one fluid motion Sora unlocked the door and lunged forward, swinging the keyblade just as Velma's successor stepped forward.
Free of their cells, and having had enough of this place, Sora, Donald and Goofy sprinted back to the gummi ship, unlocking every door in the building as they went. Alarms blared and guns fired, but they managed to take off moments before the police caught up to them. "Sora! If there's heartless, shouldn't we stick around and help?" Goofy had a good point, but things were too crazy there. "Nah, they can handle themselves, besides, we need to work out how we even got here. Do you guys remember?" The two friends shook their heads, and Sora sped the ship up, wondering how hey had gotten to this new, unfamiliar place, and where they could possibly end up next.