A/N: Hey there! So this story deals with my character Lita, a Keyblade wielder who was in love with Axel and was good friends with him before he died. She's still secretly trying to deal with his death and also trying to figure out how to deal with her feelings that are starting to form for Riku. I try not to explain things that have already happened much, but I think some of my descriptions are needed because I originally wrote this for a class, bearing in mind that most people don't know much about Kingdom Hearts, so kindly overlook the unnecessary repetition of information. Also, this story is full of OC's, at least 4 of them. Well, technically one's only half-OC, but meh.

A couple more things...first of all, this story takes place in an alternate universe. We call it the parallel universe, because this has an exactly-the-same copy of every world in the regular KH universe. The only one that's not doubled is The World That Never Was because that would be rather confusing. We also didn't double Radiant Garden because we wanted to actually know the characters, and that can be confusing with replicas of the worlds and their citizens. The way you travel between the real universe and the parallel is through the Dark Corridors (most people from the parallel universe, including Lita and Abry, cannot utilize them to cross into the normal universe. However, if you can use the powers of Darkness or are accompanied by someone who can (or you're just special like Sora) then the pathways are open to you). The Twilight Town that the story primarily takes place in is the one that was data-altered by DiZ, so everyone knows Roxas here. That leads me to the second point. I break canon here because Roxas is one of Abry's best friends and I need someone for her to hang out with when Lita is otherwise occupied, and Roxas is just amazing anyway. So instead of having him combined with Sora as he rightfully would be at this point, I retcon that and pretend he has his own body again.

This half of the story is completed as of December 2011. Recently updated as of January 2014. Enjoy!

Overcoming the Darkness

Chapter 1: Heartless Warm-Up

It was just another normal morning in Twilight Town, warm and drowsy. A good portion of the city was still asleep when Lita slipped onto the window sill of her flat. She lifted her face to the breeze for a moment, basking in the tranquility of the day. Then she dropped down to the ground, landing nimbly as a cat, and set off toward the "haunted mansion". It wasn't really haunted, a girl named Naminé lived inside, and the rather daunting building often had Heartless and Nobodies swarming around it, but most citizens didn't really understand what was going on with the mansion so they simply avoided it under the easy label of "haunted". But Lita wasn't bothered by it. In fact, she was heading there for the sole purpose of destroying Heartless! She liked a good workout in the morning.

She approached the hole in the wall that separated the town from the forest. As she stepped through it, she wondered how it had come to be there. It's really rather conveniently placed, leading almost directly to the mansion. Did someone blow up that part of the wall to gain access to it? I don't think there's any other way of reaching the mansion. Why was the mansion outside the walls of the town in the first place? She mulled over the questions for a moment, then shrugged and thought, I'll ask Naminé about it sometime. Maybe she'd know, or Haru. If not, Ansem surely does.

Lita walked to the center of the forest area and simply stood, waiting. When no Heartless appeared, she rolled her eyes and summoned her Keyblade, fully aware that Heartless are always drawn to the Keyblades. Immediately, she spied dark shadows growing on the ground around her. She smirked and slid into a familiar battle stance, Keyblade poised before her, weight distributed more in the back leg than the front leg, allowing for faster movement.

The murky shapes on the ground melded into several black bodies surrounding her. Lita quickly identified them as Shadows, the most common type of Heartless. She silently beckoned to them in a "come and get me" fashion, and as one started toward her, she suddenly leapt at it, slashing her blade straight through it, taking out a few to either side with one strike. She spun around, whipping her blade through the air and decimating the remaining Shadows.

"Aw, come on, guys! Put a little effort into it! I'm never going to break a sweat like this," Lita complained. The Heartless seemed to answer her wish, as not a moment later five Soldiers in their clanking armor materialized. "Now that's a little more like it!"

She stabbed one through its center, destroying it before it could attack, then used the Soldiers' own signature move, Cyclone, against the farthest one from her, spiraling through the air and slamming into it, killing it instantly. She swept her blade at the closest Heartless, but it parried her blow. She attacked it again, but swapped directions mid-swing, crushing its unprotected side. Lita sensed movement from behind her and about-turned, blocking a Cyclone attack from first one, then the other remaining Heartless. Quickly cutting down the most recently blocked Soldier who was dazed beside her, she glanced about for the last one and caught sight of it attempting to sneak away. She immediately dispatched it with a well-placed Blizzard spell.

"That was better, but I could still use a bigger challenge!" she called out, just in case the Heartless decided to heed her request again. She waited for a minute, but it seemed that no more were going to show up in the area that day, so she de-summoned her Keyblade. She sighed, but wasn't too terribly upset. After all, the Heartless problem in Twilight Town had been decreasing rapidly since Lita and her best friend Abry had become Keyblade wielders a year before. And since less Heartless meant less danger for the people who lived there, she wasn't really going to complain.

Besides, if she really wanted to fight a horde of Heartless, all she need do was go to her blacksmith friend Haru's house. Haru had a constant flow of Heartless in her backyard due to the Hearts that seemed to enjoy gathering there. Lita supposed that Haru's own Heart was calling out to them. It was probably bored. Haru spent a good deal of her time ignoring the crystallized thing sitting in a cage on her belt. Lita knew that Haru wasn't intentionally cruel to it, but it was rather needy, like a young child, demanding constant attention that Haru was never in the mood to give. Haru would've likely joined with her Heart if she could have, but Haru's body could no longer accept it, her blood being made of mercury and all. If she joined with her heart now, it would kill her. No human can live without blood. Unfortunately, if she simply let her heart wander free, it was likely to either force a joining, not realizing the danger, or get caught by a Heartless and be trapped for who knows how long. Perhaps it was easier for a Nobody not to know where their heart was. He certainly never had that problem—

Lita smacked her forehead lightly, and shook her head to clear her thoughts. No! I'm not going there. I shouldn't think about him. I need to see Abry. She's probably awake by now, and she always cheers me up when I get broody like this. She looped her arm around the nearest tree trunk and used it to swing herself back to face the city wall. She jogged back through the hole and into town. She ran to the arch situated directly below the window she had dropped from earlier that morning and paused, calling up to her flat. "Hey, Abry! You still here?"

Receiving no answer, she assumed Abry had already left home, likely to go bug Seifer or Hayner, which meant she could be found in the Sandlot, and failing that, up on the clock tower.