A/N

This is a just a test chapter to gauge the audiences reaction.

I wasn't sure if I should put it up or not due to the fact that I can't promise steady updates. I gotta work and go to school and don't have as much time as I'd like to write but hopefully you'll like it and I can get the next chapter up soon.

Prelude

"Sora, Hold on!"

Goofy called rushing forward, arm outstretched as if to hold his buddy by sheer force of will.

"No, wait,"

Donald squawked desperately, almost stumbling over his feet. But they both knew that it was too late, they would never reach him in time.

Sora turned to his companions, his friends, with that cheesy grin of his that seemed to light up his entire countenence, that was all the answer he gave. Turning away he raised the dark keyblade high into the air then brought it down, stabbing himself through the heart. His hands fell to his sides as his body slowly rose into the air. As he floated slightly off the ground the keyblade began to withdraw, almost as if being unsheathed by some invisible force. In an impressive explosion of color and rainbow colored light the keyblade dissolved releasing the hearts of the captive princesses and returning them to their true holders.

At first seemingly asleep at his feet, Kairis' eyes slowly began to open as a seventh heart bloomed from display and floated from Sora to her. A blinding flash lit the hall as Sora was engulfed in a soft golden light, his face a reflection of dreamy satisfaction. Goofy froze, unable to do anything except watch as his pal faded before his eyes. Donald, however, refused to accept what he saw happening and kept running desperately forward.

"Sora! Sora! Sora!" He screeched as the keyblade master fell backward.

Almost instantly aware Kairi sat up, though still groggy from her ordeal, then launched to her feet.

"Sora!" She called, leaning forward only to have his glowing form dissipate as her arms closed around him.

"Huh?"

She looked up to see the glittering lights that were Sora fly away and disappear.

"Come back, Sora!" Donald shrieked helplessly. Goofy was silent.

He could feel himself falling but could see nothing.

"What's ... what's happening to me? Falling ... falling ... into darkness." He whispered.

It engulfed him.

Kairi's arms were still outstretched as if to call the scattering light back to her. Donald and Goofy stood speechless where their friend had disappeared, gazing in disbelief at the ceiling.

They had been too late.

"Sora, are you really ..."

She took a deep breath trying to calm down and fight the lump lodged in her throat. "No." Putting her hands over her heart she cried out. "He can't be!"

Tears slid down her cheeks as she turned her head this way and that, searching for her childhood friend. Almost believing he would jump out at any moment and say "Gotcha!" before sheepishly apologizing, hand behind head, and telling her not to cry as she yelled and called him an idiot.

He didn't.

Donald and Goofy were at a loss as to how to comfort her, their concern etched in their faces. So caught up were they in their grief that the dark glow seeping toward them remained unnoticed till a cold voice broke them from their shock.

"So, you have awakened at last," The trios attention snapped toward the owner of the voice who stood, smirking down on their little drama. "princess."

Standing a little taller than Goofy the man seemed to exude a dark power that clung and pulsed around his leanly muscled form. Long, pearlescent silver hair flowed down past his waist, in a silky waterfall that was a startling contrast to his dark copper skin. Molten gold, glowing eyes seemed to pierce through their thoughts and bare their every secret, while a strikingly familiar smirk graced plump lips in a face a shade too fierce to be truly feminine.

"The keyhole is now complete. You have served your purpose." His arm moved in a motion that was obviously for dramatic emphasis. "But now it's over."

This mysterious new arrival, an enemy, approached them menacingly. His white trench coat billowing behind him, however, the shock of his theatrical entrance was quickly overcome and the magician and knight instinctively stepped forward to protect Kairi.

"Don't make another move!" Donald waved his wand in a warning gesture.

Goofy brought his shield up and in a easily overheard stage whisper asked Donald.

"Do you think we can stop him all by ourselves?"

The newcomer's smirk widened to showcase perfect white teeth.

"I don't know." The duck answered anxiously. His gaze darting back and forth between his lifelong friend and, apparently, certain death.

Goofy was saved from answering when said figure of doom stopped dead, just halfway toward them, trembling. A hissed "Impossible!" was torn from the mans' throat as he wrestled with the ghostly form of ...

"You won't use me for this!"

Donald and Goofy could only gape in astonishment.

Kairi stepped forward, arm raised as if to reach for him with shock and surprise evident in her voice.

"Riku!"

His ghostly figure turned his head in their direction. He began yelling frantically, struggling against this menacing figure at his back.

"You've gotta run! The heartless are coming!." The man's face twisted into a grimace as he wrestled against Riku. The darkness surrounding them grew and lengthened, forming into countless shadows.

Kairi nodded in acceptance unable to speak as the three turned and ran like hell for the door, not stopping to even clear a full path through the advancing heartless or look back.

Were he not otherwise occupied the white-clad man may have laughed at the girlish scream of fright let loose by the duck, but he was at present taking care of the boy's aggravatingly persistent spirit.

It was over in a matter of moments.

"What about the key hole?" Goofy bellowed to his companions.

"Let's just get out of here!" Donald screeched back.

Kairi didn't have the breath to speak.

None of them saw Riku's wicked grin as he began to glow and fade into the undulating waves of power swirling around him and his older counterpart, or hear Ansems' delighted laughter as he too vanished into the hungry darkness.

At first Sora thought he was dead, but seeing as he's never been dead before he couldn't be certain. If he was, well it was pretty anticlimactic if you asked him. There was nothing he could hear, smell, feel, taste or barely see, just the vast evening, a night without stars, he couldn't help but wonder if there even was an afterlife. He should be in some sort of paradise right about now shouldn't he? This was nothing at all how he pictured it. Unless of course the heartless destroyed that too, but he stopped them didn't he? Before Sora could finish his stream of muddled thought a painful flood of light penetrated his partial field of vision, and he screamed in silent agony.

When he came too the first thing he noticed was that he was cold and hungry, so hungry that the craving for sustenance seemed to consume him from the inside out. He doubled over and struggled to just breath, reacting the same way he would in a fight he let the pain pass through his body until he could control and use it.

In the moment of clarity pain usually brings he realized two things, one was that he was surrounded by the darkness but he was in no danger from it, and second was that he was alive. Wonderfully, amazingly, and painfully alive! This came just before another, nearly unbearable, wave of feeling and hunger swept over him. When finally it began to recede he took inventory of his body.

He felt somewhat weightless but also somehow restrained, as if gravity had a specific hold on his movements which were somewhat jerky at best. Sora couldn't place the sensations he felt either. He didn't feel entirely solid, but adrenalin and power raged inside him, brimming with cold and hunger and something else, something new and dangerous.

The floor felt like water beneath his feet, liquid and flexible, yet strangely enough also stable. It was difficult to balance but he managed to stand yet, he didn't dare open his eyes for fear of being blinded the light already peircing his eyelids. Still, information provided by his other senses was coming at him in a rush, yet none of it made any sense and was out of sync with what he knew the world to be. The castle was solid mass beneath his feet but it felt as if he could accidently slide through the floor at any minute. As for the amount of light in the room it was ridiculous to think that a few lamps giving off false light would feel like the sun at it's zenith on Destiny Island glaring down into his eyes. Sora almost wished he was dead again, at least it didn't hurt as much as this sudden rush of sensory overload and he was afraid something was very, very, VERY wrong. He was missing something. Something important, one tiny fact that had escaped him but he couldn't focus enough to say what it may be.

Kairi! That was it, wasn't it? He had to find Kairi, and Donald, and Goofy. But...where? Cautiously he opened first one eye and then the other.

Whoa!

It was intense. Sora decided he must be suffering from some serious side effects of having his heart stolen/handed on a silver platter however you want to phrase it. Everything appeared to him in varying shades of black and purple and traces of red. The hall was nearly indistinguishable it was so completely saturated in the ... light? It reminded him of Infrared or blacklight except it wasn't, he hoped it wasn't some head injury or that he was going blind.

How did he get back anyway?

He thought about it for about half a minute.

If he had been holding Kairi's he must have had two hearts ... or something, that would explain why he'd come back. He'd ask the others about it later but first he had to find them. But how? His antennae twitched in the direction of the door.

They must have left already thinking I'd dissappeared! I've got to-

Wait ... antennae?

Slowly, fearfully Sora looked down at what he hoped were normal human hands, and to his shock dark, purplish, three fingered claws were what his fractured vision beheld. One, two volatile breaths later and the piercing scream that reverberated down throughout the castle gave even, his now fellow heartless, pause.

It's not so much a chapter as my own twisted version of how this part of the game happened. As for spoilers for the second game ...

I've seen the opening and ending already, including the super secret one and a nice chunk of gameplay>

You all will probably have defeated it long before I get to anything important. Either way I'll put up warnings and I always appreciate critique.

One last thing is that I am a fan of all types of writing and pairings ... HET / YURI / YAOI.

I like it all and this fic will probably have all that and more...