When Twilight Falls– A Kingdom Hearts Story

Fandom: Kingdom Hearts II/ Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Spoilers: Before the revisiting of the worlds in KHII; up to the third dungeon in TP.

Genre: It's supposed to be an adventureish-type thing, but some bad humor slipped in there, sorry.

Rating: K+ for now, but the rating will probably go up later.

Warnings: It's a CROSSOVER in case you don't like them. Um, it's an adventureish-type thing, so there'll probably be some violence... nothing worse than the games themselves, of course, just monster-killing. Also, this is my first time writing Sora or Link, so they may be a bit OOC. Let me know if you see that and I'll try to fix it. Also, let me know if you see any formatting errors (spelling, grammar, etc.), and I'll fix that too.

Other: Well, I promised myself that I would never write a crossover fic, and once I feel like writing again, what do I write? A crossover fic. Oh, well. I think these two fandoms fit together pretty well, though (although you can really cross over anything with Kingdom Hearts). People who haven't played Twilight Princess should probably look up a basic summary of it so that they aren't totally confused as to what's going on. Or they should actually play it, since it's a great game.

Last-Minute Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts/II belongs to Square Enix; Zelda is Nintendo's.

Prologue– The Landing

In which the main characters are introduced.

In the far corner of the Eldin Province, Kakariko Village was a peaceful little place, set directly under the shadow of Death Mountain, home of the Goron tribe. There was generally no trouble for the few residents except at midday, when the sun was at its hottest overhead and the dust clouds had become so thick that crossing the street became a challenge.

Granted, the dark cloud of twilight and the monsters that came with it had been something of a concern, but now everything was back to normal, with the addition of several children from Ordon Village making Kakariko their temporary home. After purging the Goron Mines from its goblin infestation, Link, the reincarnation of the Hero of Time, was preparing to continue his journey to stop the Twilight from consuming the land. The day before his departure, the crash happened.

It was very sudden: Talo had noticed a streak of light in the sky from his watchtower high above the village, and a few seconds later there was a tremendous explosion from the direction of the gorge. The children, naturally, wanted to check it out right away, but Renado had been firm with his decision of sending Link and only Link to find out what had happened.

"It's not fair!" Talo whined for the tenth time. "Link gets to do everything, and nothing ever happens here! Back in Ordon-- hey, Beth, Be-eth, remember when we fought monkeys out in the forest? Link and me went and–"

"...I thought you were kidnapped by goblins and Link rescued you," his little brother Malo remarked dryly. "Now if there's nothing else of importance here, I have a shop to attend to."

"We don't know what that explosion was, and Link is the only person capable of handling himself if things go wrong out there." The village shaman gave Talo an icy stare as Malo toddled off, seemingly intent on the Goron who had been examining his storefront closely. "If you are bored, go help Luda look after Colin."

"But Colin's better now! He doesn't need more people, right Beth?... Beth... hey! Where are you go– aah! Lemme go! Beth, don't leave me!"

"Come, child, let us burn incense at the sanctum to pray for the safe journey of the Chosen Hero." Renado rounded the corner with Talo at his side, the boy's protests growing fainter as they disappeared. Beth kicked up a cloud of dust with her foot and shook her head. "Hey, Luda?"

"Yeah?" her new friend answered as she opened the door to the inn. "C'mon, Dad'll get mad at me if we leave Colin alone for too long."

Beth grinned, a little dreamily. "I was just thinking about how cool Link is. He's so totally unlike that little brat." She turned to go inside. "I'm just glad I only have to deal with one of 'em."

A little while before...

"It's just not fair!" Sora complained. Donald and Goofy gave each other exasperated looks over the boy's head for what seemed to be the tenth time that day, and Donald once again attempted to explain the situation.

"Listen, we're running low on fuel, and the Pride Lands have absolutely no gas stations to speak of. We're heading to Hollow Bastion to stock up on supplies."

"But I wanted to visit Simba!"

Donald shook his head in disgust. "I give up."

Goofy pointed out the window, interrupting the conversation. "Gawrsh, is that an unmarked world out there?"

Sora's complaints promptly vanished. "Hey, let's go check it out! Maybe we'll find another clue from the king!"

"No way!" Donald quacked empathetically. "We're not stopping until we get to Hollow Bastion!"

"But we might be missing an important clue!"

"Clue, shmue, we're not stopping!"

Goofy cleared his throat. "Erm, guys?"

"Wait, I can see the other side now, it's totally covered in darkness! I bet there's Heartless there!"

"It's just the world's shadow."

"No it isn't, because look! The sun is shining right on it, and it's still dark!"

"...Guys?"

"We have absolutely no idea what's there!"

"So? We'll just wing it! It's more fun that way, anyway."

"If that's your idea of 'fun'– "

"Sora, Donald, look at this!"

There was a long pause.

"Umm... that little fuel thingy shouldn't be pointing to 'empty', should it?"

"...No. No, it shouldn't."

"The ship's going down!" Chip (or Dale) yelped from the driver's seat.

"ABANDON SHIP!" Donald howled.

It was about that time when everybody started panicking, the lights went off, and Sora tripped over the seat and hit his head on the floor. Donald stepped on him as he scrambled for the escape pod, which normally would have made Sora complain if he were not currently unconscious.

The Gummi Ship quivered, then took an awkward nose dive toward the planet. A few minutes later, Link was called on to investigate the source of the very loud noise.

And thus, Sora, Donald and Goofy entered the world of Hyrule.

May the Goddesses help it.

Chapter One– Finding the Sparkly Rainbow Path

In which there are meetings, good and bad.

Noises.

"Is he dead?" The soft, childish voice seemed to come out of nowhere.

"Doesn't look like it." Another voice, male and deeper, this time from directly above him.

Sora could hear the voices as he came back from the blackness. He thought, for a fleeting instant, Now what have I gotten myself into? before deciding that thinking made his head hurt.

A mocking giggle echoed through the air, sharp and piercing. Sora wanted to tell it to stop, but when he tried to speak, he found that he couldn't. He couldn't open his eyes, either, and he realized with a jolt that he couldn't feel his legs. The first voice came suddenly close to him, now sounding decidedly feminine. "Well, you should get that off him, then."

Someone was gently pulling his body to one side and dragging a weight off his legs– that's why I couldn't move them– and abruptly a great tingling pain spread through his lower body. His legs jerked and he yelped reflexively.

That giggle again. "Hey, he's awake."

"His legs don't look too damaged. Hey, you all right?" Sora felt something cold pushing against his mouth and involuntarily opened it. "Here, drink this." It was some type of potion that tasted like flavored chemicals, but he could feel a coolness flowing through his body once he swallowed, and the pain disappeared. His headache eased, and he raised one hand up to feebly bat at the potion bottle. The voice laughed softly, strikingly contrasting the giggling from his other side. "That's better. Can you open your eyes?"

When he did, he saw blue sky above him. He turned his head to the left and saw, for just a second, what looked like a small silhouette floating above the tall grass. When he blinked, it was gone, and the person who had given him the potion was taking his arm and helping him to sit up. Sora turned to face him and was relieved when he appeared to be human– giant talking shadows would not help the pain in his head. His rescuer was a boy who looked to be about sixteen or seventeen, blond, wearing green clothing, and smiling at him with an honest, open face. His clear blue eyes looked Sora over once, quickly, before he nodded. "You don't look like a Twilight creature, where're you from?"

Sora hesitated, shifted nervously, and saw that he was lying in a meadow. For some odd reason, the smell of smoke was wafting through the air. He glanced back at the boy. 'Err... not from around here." About several million miles away, actually. "Me and my friends were just traveling around... exploring the place... then our ship ran out of fuel." He looked around in a circle, but the source of the giggling was nowhere to be seen. Could he have imagined it?

"This your ship?" The boy's voice made Sora jump and hurriedly turn to face the Gummi Ship... or rather, what was left of it. The source of the smoke came from what seemed to be the engine, but he couldn't exactly tell, as it was in a large crater and covered by the rest of the ship. With a loud groan, Sora let his head drop back to the grass.

"Man... I have to help fix this thing again?" This crash looked even worse than the time they had fallen into the Deep Jungle. At least they had been able to find spare ship parts all over the place.

"Do you know where Castle Town is? I heard they've got all kinds of weird stuff over there... machines and the like."

Sora was about to reply that he'd never heard of it when another thought occurred to him that made him sit up so fast he got dizzy. "Donald, Goofy... my friends, have you seen them?"

"There were other people with you?" The boy frowned, shaking his head. "When we got here all we saw was the wreck and you unconscious." He stopped for a second, grimaced, and continued while pointing to the ruined ship, "I'll help you look and you can tell me the details later, okay?"

Sora nodded and slowly pulled himself to his feet, thinking. The last thing he could remember before blacking out was Donald yelling to abandon ship. The others could have gotten out before the crash, but it seemed unlikely, as the ship had dropped like a stone...

When he took a step forward, he stumbled and nearly fell, but the other teen quickly steadied him with arms that seemed used to hard work. He had the trained swordsman look of Leon and Cloud. The blade at his back, which Sora was currently leaning against, looked appropriately long and sharp. Was he another hero? Sora wondered. He hoped so, since finding a hero was like finding a sparkly rainbow path to the world's keyhole.

When Sora's dizziness faded, the other boy released him, smiling warmly. "You took a nasty hit on the head, but you're gonna be fine now. My name's Link, by the way, from Ordon Village– ever heard of it?"

"No... sorry. My name's Sora." Sora reached the miniature crater and peered down with a groan. It was even worse than he'd thought. With a sigh, he prepared himself for some heavy lifting.

Half an hour later, Sora collapsed onto the remains of the pilot's seat, exhausted. Behind him, Link picked up another piece of ridiculously heavy machinery and threw it aside. The hero (Sora just knew he was a hero now, especially after he had vaguely mentioned something about a prophecy when asked why he had left his village), studied the area where the ship part had been and shook his head, panting lightly.

"Sorry, Sora, but I haven't found anything." When this announcement was met with a dejected sigh, he gave one of his gentle smiles. "That could be good, though. They probably escaped from the ship before it crashed."

Sora didn't look up at him. "...Yeah."

Link considered for a moment. "They could very well have ended up in Kakariko Village. It isn't far from here, and if they aren't there you could always stay and rest up."

"All right." Sora stood up. "Which way to the village?"

"You see that gigantic volcano to the south?"

"Whoa!...Now I do."

"It's right at the base. Let's go." Link reached into his pocket and pulled out an odd, horseshoe-shaped blade of grass. When he blew on it, it made a high, piercing noise that quickly became a little tune.

Sora was about to make a remark about how grasswhistling shouldn't be done in a place where there could be large hordes of monsters with acute hearing waiting to steal your heart, but the answering call stopped him short. Something was coming toward them.

The sight of such a completely familiar animal in a strange new world made Sora blink for a moment before voicing the obvious. "It's a horse?"

"What, no horses where you come from?" Grinning, Link gestured to the horse, which came thundering up to him and slid to a stop so close that its muzzle nearly touched his face. Link patted the glossy copper neck. "Good girl, Epona. Ready to go?"

Epona whickered softly, nuzzling the hero's neck. "Oh, come on, girl... here." Link pulled a small carrot out of his bag and gave it to the mare, who crunched it up happily and playfully headbutted her master in the chest. Link gently tapped her nose. "That's enough, girl." He turned to face Sora, who was still staring. "Coming?"

"Um." Sora looked at the horse. She looked back at him. He could swear she was staring at him. "I've... never ridden a horse."

Link looked stunned. "Never?"

"No. I'm not even sure if I've seen one in person." Yep, she was definitely staring at him. Sora hoped it was a 'nice-to-meet-you' friendly stare, not a 'you-touch-my-master-and-I'll-yank-a-spike-out- of-your-hair-and-gut-you-with-it' glower of pure hatred.

"You've missed out." Link shook his head sympathetically, then put one foot in the stirrup and sprang onto Epona's back, looking for all the world like he had been born there. "Come on, it's a big saddle. We can ride double."

"Um, yeah– if it's all right with you, I'll just walk to the village. Could use the exercise, y'know..."

Link looked unconvinced, and Sora remembered that they had been lifting heavy objects for the past half hour. Hurriedly, he tried his last resort. "But I have no idea how to even sit on it. Um, her."

Link's grin turned almost evil. "Well...now's a good time to learn, isn't it?"

End Notes: Not too bad. I have a good idea of the story's beginning, middle, and end, as well as several scenes (Sora meets Midna, the Twilight, Donald and Goofy return, etc.), but I'd like to have some help with the Sora/Link interaction. They're both pretty hero-like, but Sora's a boy who has always dreamed about going to different worlds and, well... Link was a ranch hand out in the boondocks. I get the feeling that they'd agree on some things and clash with others. Also, where does Midna fit in? Would Sora be annoyed with her or just patiently tolerate her like Link? Will I ever end this Author's note?