The islands were different. They seemed silent, to Kairi at least. Each day it was the same she would get into the tallest tree and look out into the distance, hoping with all her heart to see her two closest friends come flying up in a Gummi ship. Each day it was the same, open blue sky without anything to spot it, cloud or ship. Kairi watched as the other three children played below. From her height they looked like small dots racing across a vast sheet of sand.

"...I'll come back to you. I promise." The words woke her from her trance like state. She heard them everywhere she went, each time bringing a twinge of happiness to her heart at hearing Sora's voice, but the happiness was closely followed by sadness. Again her eyes looked into the light blue sky only to spot a lone cloud drifting slowly. She hung her head as if to cry but instead for some reason found herself looking at the dock with the six boats tied to it, one for each person on the island and two for really close friends.

Climbing down from the tree where she had been perched, Kairi found her gaze wandering back to the boats floating lightly on the surface of the water. Growing impatient with the long climb down Kairi let go of her hold and dropped the last twenty feet onto the soft sand. A slight pain from the landing was drowned out by her laughter. This had been the first time she had laughed since losing Sora. The three others stopped their game and listened to the sound that had almost been lost to them.

The other three didn't remember what had happened. All they knew was that something, two some things, were missing. They went about there days carefree, unlike Kairi. She made her way to the small opening at the base of the big tree. Inside was dark, almost the same darkness the heartless used for their skin, but Kairi walked straight through it. The Secret Place had changed. She had erased many of the older picture for newer ones. Ones that showed Sora, as a great light, shining, with his two friends, out of a swarm of heartless, Keyblade in hand. Others showed Riku fighting Ansem in the dark realms of his heart. They made tears well up in her eyes each time she entered here.

Her eyes opened with a start. Tear marks stained her face along with small clumps of sand from the ground where she had fallen asleep. She got up and ran from the cave. It was nearing nightfall, she didn't care though. She raced along the beach, past the dock that now held only three boats (the others having gone home), and to the other side of the island. It had to be there!

The stairs had seemed endless, going up into the grayness forever. After the Door to the Light had close and the worlds split Donald and Goofy had found a staircase. It was the only way to get out of the gray darkness. On what Sora said was the third day did they see a small light. The light was from a sun glowing in the sky over lush grass hills marked only by a simple dirt path. They ran through the grass laughing in merriment, and joy. The world seemed to be void of heartless and in fact anything other than themselves, they later found out.

The idea of sleeping out in the open unnerved Sora. The grass offered little cover for them but it was better than the dirt path they had followed most of the day. Sleep didn't come well to Sora. His hope renewed after escaping the gray pit of nothingness. Every time he closed his eye he saw Kairi in Riku's arms and each time he opened them in rage. Never had he known such hatred. He told himself that is was just the fact the he wasn't there as well. Was Riku already home? How did he get out of Kingdom Hearts? Each question made his hatred grow. He needed to be there, with Kairi in his arms.

The next day was much the same. The sky overhead a deep blue with small white puffs of cloud. Sora looked down at his open hand, where the heart-shaped pendant that Kairi had given him lay. A small ruffle of the grass to on side of the path made him look up. Onto the path, emerged the dog that had woken Sora up that day so long ago.

"Pluto! Wherever you been....look a letter with the king's seal on it," Goofy said running toward the dog. The dog took flight up the trail with Goofy, Donald, and Sora close behind.

The misty wind from the sea blew her hair about her. Kairi had found it, the Highwind, floating on the water off of the shore a little ways. After swimming out to get it she had restocked the food stores and patched the sail. Now she was leaving the island again this time how Riku had planned it, except instead of looking for worlds she was looking for friends.

Chapter 1: Mistakes are Made

The path wound around and up the rolling green hills. Nothing bothered the four runners, the hills seemed to completely devoid of life. The air around the runners seemed to give them energy and strength for none of them slowed the slightest after three hours. None had slowed down but neither had any sped up.

Cresting a large hill Sora stopped for a moment to look off down the trail. About a mile ahead of them the path turned sharply to the left and continued eastward from there.

"Sora, what are you waiting for? We've got to gets that letter," hollered Goofy as he ran past Sora and down to hill toward the fleeing dog. He was followed by Donald who asked nearly the same question.

"You two continue on this way. I'm going to try and head him off." With that Sora took off running down off the path toward where it turned hoping to cut Pluto off. The grass was slightly wet from the morning dew and felt good on his legs, cooling them off easily.

Nothing. For a day Kairi sailed but nothing happened. She had lost sight of the islands quickly and now was floating aimlessly across the open waters of the sea, with nothing to see except water and sky. Looking down at her feet she realized that this wasn't what Riku would of wanted. He wanted adventure, and to discover new worlds, but sailing wasn't the way to get it.

That night under the stars she slept. With a makeshift blanket around her she closed her eyes and thought of what she would say or do when she found her friends. Twice she woke in the night due water coming over the slightly upwardly bent side of the boat, twice more she woke shouting Sora's name.

"...I will come back to you. I promise." The words haunted her thoughts. Had that moment really happened or had her mind tricked her into believing it. May be Sora and Riku weren't even real, no one else remembered them or what had happen what seemed ages ago. The thoughts troubled her greatly. No one would come back to her. She would be alone.

"Sora, you promised!" she shouted into the night. "You promised you'd come back. So keep you promise and get back here." She found her self standing shouting into the darkness. Falling to her knees she cried and pushed the thoughts of her two closest friends being figments of her imagination out of her head.

A sound, far from normal, brought her from her sleep. At first she saw nothing, just water and sky, but than when she looked closer at the water she noticed it. The water was darker, as if some giant monster swam just below the surface. She pulled one of the two wooden swords strapped around her waist out and held it as she had seen Sora hold his Keyblade back at the Hollow Bastion. Again she looked out over the water at the quickly moving shadow and pulled the second sword from its place. The swords had been Sora and Riku's before they left, and since getting back she kept them with her at all times.

Courage turned to panic instantly as the creator of the massive shadow broke through the surface of the water right in front of Kairi. The monster swam forward with it giant mouth opened. Just before it closed around her she saw what it truly was, Monstro.

Something was wrong. The sky was darkening and still he hadn't come upon the path. Nor could he see or hear his friends anymore. The stars winked into being above him as he ran onward. He had to come to the path sometime, and he did. Not one path though. When he finally broke through the grass he found himself at an intersection, leading off in four different directions.

"Why me?" he said with a sigh following. He sat down wanting time to think before he choose which way to go. Maybe he had gone to far and passed his friends completely, ir maybe the turn in the path had been imaged. Either way he was lost.

He moved his hand from his lap putting it down support him as he got up. Before his eye the Keyblade appeared in his grip. A quick glance around told him he was not alone. Shadows welled up on all sides of him. He couldn't tell how many for their midnight skin blended in to well with the night sky.

A movement behind him told him to swing. The Keyblade slide through the head of one heartless, its dark substance wisping away into the darkness. The empty spot left by the heartless was quickly filled as were spots all around him.

Swinging the Keyblade, with relative ease, around him ended three more heartless lives. More filled there place as well. The swing left him a little off balance giving a small Shadow an opening for attack. Sora had forgotten what the sting of the touch of a heartless felt like but he quickly remembered. Keyblade leading he charged the lucky heartless that and touched him and drove his weapon through its body. Again one of the heartless touched him. Rage pounded through his blood as he turned and cast a blizzard spell into the approaching crowd, with such speed that any onlooker would had only seen a blur.

Eleven, including the six that and been taken by the spell, Sora counted mentally. It had been a mistake to leave the others. Determined not to let any more slip up occur he bound into the gathering of Shadows swing at all sides. Twelve, another wisp of darkness faded into the sky, thirteen, fourteen. With each Shadow he killed more replaced them. Never had the heartless attacked in so great of numbers.

Twenty. Sora's arms began to weaken from the constant swing of his Keyblade. Again he used a spell from his arsenal. The gravity spell wiped six other Shadows from the intersection, each be replaced rapidly. He let his guard down for a second to cast a curing spell over him, and again a Shadow took advantage of the opportunity. The pain interrupted his casting and left open his left side. The pain was coming from all sides now. Rage rushed through his body fueling his energy.

A small tap to Kairi's head brought her back from her unconscious state. Slowly she opened her eyes and took in her surroundings. The first thing she saw was the Highwind, broken beyond repair, next she saw what had awakened her.

Before her stood, bent over, a man. He wore only tattered clothes and a happy near toothless grin. In on hand he held a slightly bent bone, that looked to be unusually sharp, in the other was one of the two swords made of wood. Kairi looked toward the hilt and saw, crudely craved, Sora's name. Quickly the grasped up the other sword that lie next to her and held it at ready. The ragged man backed away, whimpering. Slowly Kairi lowered her wooden sword and approach the man.

"Harm no you mean I," he said falling into a hump of rags before her. Both his bone and Sora's sword at his sides. Cautiously Kairi bent down toward the wooden sword and took it from the man. She replaced it with Riku's wooden sword.

"I mean you no harm either," she said softly. The tattered man looked up and when he saw Kairi's sword safely away at her side he rose. Brushing away the dust that had gotten on his already dirty rags he held out his hand containing the bone sword as if he wanted her to shake it. After a moment he returned his hand to his side.

"Polite very aren't you." He turned and set off away from her. Kairi than saw that they where in what appeared a cavern of some sort. "You shallowed he when head your hit You. Since out been." It took her a minute to switch around his crazy backwards talk but when she did she realized that they weren't in a cavern but the giant whales mouth. Boy, she thought, what a mistake to leave the island.