Suddenly he was standing in the street, people moving and bustling around him.

"Hello, young man! I have just the thing for you! A combination hookah and coffeemaker!"

Riku blinked in surprise at the small, turbaned man thrusting some green tube thing at him.

"No thanks," Riku said, confused, and started making his way through the crowd.

"What the hell happened?" he asked passersby. " Where is the huge party?" But they gave him odd looks and backed away. Questions without answers flitted through Riku's mind as he approached the palace. He heard the sound of someone hurtling through the air towards him, and jumped left, just barely getting out of the way before the man rolled and started running past him.

"Sorry!" the man called as he turned back, and Riku was surprised to recognize Aladdin, wearing some patchy purple vest and covered in dirt. Very, very different from the clean and well-dressed prince he had had seen on the ramparts just minutes ago.

"Catch him!" That was assuredly the palace guards chasing after him. With swords drawn, no less.

A yelp, a crash, and Aladdin was off. But the unmistakable staccato of a staff on stone had Riku chasing after the thief and guards as well.

"Unhand the princess!" Riku heard one of the guards shout. He turned the corner to see Aladdin and the Princess of Heart helping each other stand up. But where was the staff?

"I order you to leave," the princess shouted back at the guard, her poise and aggressive stance making him back up.

"Princess? I—"

"I order you to arrest him," a tall, dark man said, stepping forward, his staff making a distinct and familiar click as it hit the stone of the road.

"But sir—"

Another click of the staff cut off the guard's insubordination. "Don't question me. Arrest him, and take the princess back to the palace, where it's safe."

Someone from Maleficent's group kidnapping a Princess of Heart. Overcome with shame and pain, Riku charged forward to take out his negativity on the vizier. "Like hell!" he shouted, coming in high to lop off the bastard's head, his keyblade materializing in his hand mid-slash.

Jafar raised his staff and Riku saw the flanged head of the snake, its eyes glowing yellow.

"Wake up."

Riku blinked and found his hand bound with chain. Stone, darkness, chains, and an excruciating headache. How did he end in a prison?

"Hey, you're up. Thanks for trying to help back there. I'm Aladdin, what's your name?"

Riku sat up. He spotted a third prisoner, an old man, apparently sleeping. Of all of them, Riku was the only one chained.

"Riku. What happened?" he asked Sora's friend.

"Well, the tall guy shoved his staff in your face and told you to sleep. You sort of stood still then, and then he got this scowl look on his face and knocked you over the head with the staff, while the guards took me. I have to get out here, though, because the guards are going to take my hands." Aladdin's usual calm, blasé attitude was tinged with a hint of worry as he looked at his wrists.

"Oh? I can help you get out. But I'll want something in return." The old man, who apparently wasn't sleeping, rolled over to look at them, the rags he wore doing little to hide his spotted and flabby skin.

Riku was disgusted by his appearance, but Aladdin didn't seem to mind. "Yeah? You know a way out?" the thief asked, hope radiating visibly out of him.

"Yes, yes. But you have to promise you'll help me. You'll be well rewarded: I want to raid a cave of treasure and need a strong back to carry it. Will you promise?"

"I promise." Aladdin jumped at the opportunity, and Riku winced.

"Do you promise to help me, Riku? If you help me, I can help you get Kairi's heart back.""I promise."

"And my friend Riku, too. He has to get out of here as well; they're going to execute him for trying to kill Jafar. He can carry stuff too."

Riku didn't think he was imagining the look of anger on the old man's face, but he was certain that the hesitancy was real. "We won't be able to escape if there are more than two of us. Now come on, boy, we'll get out of here and then you can help me. And besides, the more people, the less treasure we each get."

Riku stood up and summoned the keyblade. A slight twist, and the chains fell from his wrists. "I'm coming with you. You guys can keep the treasure. I'm not interested" Maybe if I stick with Aladdin I'll understand what the bond was trying to tell me.

The old man grumbled something, but opened the secret passage out of the jail and into the city streets.

"It's just this way." The old man lead the two of them through the desert night. Riku had a sinking feeling that they were headed to the trap-infested Cave of Wonders, which only deepened when he saw the dead end canyon they were walking into.

"Behold, the Cave of Wonders." The old man gestured, and from him shot forth two golden lights that merged to form the eyes of the Cave. "Find me the lamp in there, and everything else is yours. It should be in the deepest section of the cave."

Everything about the old man was shady to Riku, but considering they were raiding a treasure cave, that wasn't surprising. He and Aladdin approached the cave, which belted out a message in a deep voice.

"Only a diamond in the rough may enter," it bellowed.

Both Riku and Aladdin looked back at the old man, who just waved them on and called out, "Hurry up!"

"I don't trust that old man," Riku said to Aladdin, who looked at him and nodded. The two of them entered the cave, and stepped down onto the second stair. Thankfully, nothing happened, and the two continued down.

"Huh. I have the strangest feeling of deja vu. I think I've been here before," Aladdin said to Riku as they passed hundreds of gold coins and jewels, pursued at some distance by a flying carpet. Riku looked at Aladdin, remembering the fight between Jafar and Aladdin he had heard of from Maleficent's spies.

"Maybe it's because you have been here," Riku said, as the thief grabbed his pet monkey away from shiny gems. Aladdin looked at him in confusion, before shaking his head and hurrying on.

It didn't take long until they reached the central chamber, and Riku was unsurprised to see that everything was as he had left it, the closed keyhole staring at him. Aladdin continued on down a side passage, but Riku felt the bond calling out to him.

He placed his hand on the keyhole. The bond was grieving, its weight bulbous and bloated and painful.

"I want to help, but you haven't told me how to do it."

The bond seemed to react to him, a hiccup in the grief, punctuated with a wail of pain. It seemed desperate to tell him something, something important, something now. But Riku wasn't able to figure it out.

The cave began shaking violently, and Aladdin came tearing out of the chamber on the back of the carpet. "Hop on!" he called out to Riku. "The cave is collapsing!" Riku ran alongside the carpet for a moment before jumping.

The carpet zigged and zagged around falling sand and pillars, and finally the night sky was visible in the distance, the old man holding a hand out to them. "Hurry!" he called out to them.

The carpet dodged around a falling pillar and ducked down to miss a large column when a rock hidden caught it right in the middle. Just when they were almost there.

Aladdin, at the front, jumped forward and scrambled onto the edge of the ledge to the exit, and the carpet launched Riku forward. He careened past the old man, and rolled to a stop.

Riku righted himself and ran back to the cave mouth, where the old man fought with Aladdin's monkey with one hand and swung a wicked dagger about with the other. "Out of my way!" Riku shouted at the old man, and dove to the ledge to reach for Aladdin's grasping fingers.

It was too late. The old man screeched as the monkey bit him and fell backwards, dislodging the animal as Aladdin fell from the ledge. Riku reached, but his arm was too short, too slow to reach the thief as he tumbled into the darkness. Riku had to scramble back as the ledge collapsed and the whole Cave of Wonders collapsed into sand.

"No! Noooo!" the old man was shouting, and Riku turned his gaze upon their backstabbing benefactor.

"You won't have to worry about rabies. I'm going to end you right now," Riku growled out, summoning up the keyblade.

"I'd like to see you try, boy." The old man's voice became the suave tones of Jafar as the magical disguise melted off of the vizier.

"Jafar. I should have known. You're going to pay for killing Aladdin, and for trying to kidnap the Princess of Heart." Riku charged forward, the keyblade ringing off of Jafar's staff.

"Perspicacious, aren't you, boy? I don't know you, but you certainly seem to know me. Ha!" A blast of green fire flared from the head of the staff, and Riku rolled to extinguish the flames from his clothes. He fired back with dark fire, but Jafar deflected some the black bolts with his staff. The others impacted against his robes, burning and buffeting the sorcerer, who used his staff to keep himself upright.

"Enough!" Jafar cawed and thrust his staff into the ground, the shockwave of magic tossing Riku back. The keyblade wielder rolled with the fall and jumped onto his feet, but Jafar was nowhere to be seen.

Riku was about to create a portal back down into the Cave when a rocket burst forth from the sand, with Aladdin and Abu and the stalker carpet clinging tightly to it as it went over the horizon. Seeing that the only place of interest was Agrabah, Riku focused on the city walls and melted through the shadow of a sand dune.

In the city, Riku sat on a rooftop and thought about the bond. The sky was filled with the gentle predawn light, and Riku watched as the stars vanished one by one in the sun's brilliance. Why had the bond brought him here? Where was the problem? And how did that problem manifest as the void of white?

Riku was startled out of his thoughts by a cacophony of sound coming from the main street of the city. He saw swarms of people flooding toward the main thoroughfare, and joined in with the crowd on the ground to see what the occasion was.

"Make Way! For Prince Ali!" thunderous chorus of singers shouted as one, as a parade more ostentatious than Riku had ever seen marched through town. Men passed by with swords, bells, animals, gold, and jewelry, a seemingly never-ending stream of people and wealth, before Riku caught sight of the Prince himself. Standing on an elephant was none other than Aladdin, in the same robes he wore at his wedding. Aladdin was the great Prince Ali, the one with all the jewels, the gold, the animals, the dancers, the women, and the wealth.

Riku felt a stab of jealousy. How had he gotten all of it? He had been a thief in jail last night, and now he was wealthy beyond anything Riku had seen before. Riku had said he hadn't wanted the treasure, but seeing all of the wealth made him upset with his choice. He had to ask Aladdin, had to find out how he had gotten all of it.

Sora got the keyblade, and Kairi, and the chance to be hero. Aladdin gets wealth and to be a prince. What do I have? It's not fair.

He followed the march along, intent on questioning Aladdin as soon as he could get the prince alone. There didn't seem to be any bodyguards, save the giant elephant, so Riku felt confident in his ability to get through.

He stalked the prince through the streets and into the palace, where he took up a position in the shadows as Aladdin and Jafar danced around each other to win the Sultan's favor. Finally, finally, Aladdin went off alone, and Riku trailed after him, flitting from shadow to shadow to avoid the palace guards, before he finally saw Aladdin go into his own room. Riku followed after.

"Hey, Aladdin," he called out, causing the thief to jump in surprise.

"Riku!" he turned around, naming his partner in crime. "What are you doing here? If Jafar or the guards catch you they'll kill you for sure!"

Riku smirked. "I'd like to see them try. Jafar is scared of me, and the palace guards aren't that strong."

"Yeah, well, you getting caught in my rooms will be enough for Jafar to have me executed, and I can't fight off a dozen palace guards at once. Come back tonight and we can talk. I've got to go see Jasmine." With that, Aladdin strolled out, and Riku, still upset, walked through a portal back to the city to get some sleep.

It was already well past noon the next day when Riku awoke. I must have been more tired than I thought. He stretched his legs headed toward the palace at a light jog.

"Did you hear about Jafar?" One gaggle of merchants and shoppers seemed intent in conversation, and the dropped name caused Riku to divert his jog. "They say the new prince exposed him as evil; he was controlling the sultan!" Gasps and shouts of outrage greeted that statement, and Riku's respect for Aladdin rose a notch. Now finally awake, he took a side alley and shadowed back into the palace. He noted a bird flying out a window, a lamp clutched firmly in its talons. A lamp? Wasn't that what the old man—no, Jafar—wanted? And didn't he have a pet bird?Riku ran out to the window, but the bird had disappeared.

"Riku! Hey, good to see you. You're free now. Since Jafar was a bad guy, you're off the hook for trying to kill him. The sultan actually wants to give you a reward for trying to stop him!" Aladdin said. "Come on, I want you to meet Jasmine." Aladdin must really not have a lot of friends if he's doing so much for me,Riku thought, as he walked along with Aladdin through the palace corridors.

"So, how did you get all the money for all that stuff?" Riku asked.

"I wished to be a prince, everything else came with. Apparently it's one of the better wishes."

Genie, he has to be using Genie. When Sora used Genie, he didn't seem powerful enough to create all that stuff. Maybe Genie has more power over this world.

The two of them entered the throne room, and Riku saw the Princess of Heart and the sultan. The princess looked at him quizzically, as if trying to place him, before shaking her head. "Ah, Riku, Prince Ali has told me so much about you."

The sultan chuckled from his posh seat. Riku bowed, and that seemed to please the sultan more. "You tried to defend him from my former vizier, and for that I want to give you my thanks." He clapped his hands, and a servant approached with a pillow, but Riku was too busy looking behind the servant at Jafar, who had slunk out of the hallway's shadows.

"Ah, Riku, so good to see you again." Riku's keyblade appeared in hand, and Aladdin jumped between Jasmine and the sorcerer. "Do you know what is most sweet? Stealing from a thief." Jafar held out his hand, and a lamp dropped from the multicolored bird that Riku had seen earlier. Dammit. How could I have forgotten about that?

Aladdin patted his pockets, but it was true, the lamp was now in Jafar's hands. A brief rub on the outside, and blue mist erupted from the room.

"Hey Al! How's it...oh." The bearded blue genie's shoulders sagged as he saw who now held his lamp.

"Genie, for my first wish, I wish to be the most powerful sorcerer in the world!" Genie covered his eyes, even as Riku rushed forward, trying to stop Jafar before he got too far.

Then Riku was sent flying back, a wave of force impacting him from Jafar's new staff. The sorcerer's mad laughter echoed off the high ceilings as everyone else in the room became paralyzed with a wave of Jafar's hand.

"Genie, for my second wish, I wish to be sultan!" Another bolt of light. The sultan's robes vanished, and Jafar's red and black attire was replaced with ivory white. Another wave of his hand, and all of the people in the chamber bowed to him.

Riku struggled, and finally broke through the paralysis around him. "Too bad, Jafar. I'm going to end you." He ran forward, the keyblade held out.

"Genie! For my third wish…no. I'm going to settle this myself. Ha!" A wave of the staff and Riku blocked another wave of force, but he landed exactly where Jafar wanted him. A strike of the staff on the ground and the palace tiles stretched and broke. Riku found himself encased in stone. Though he struggled, he wasn't able to move through the stone cage.

"Hahaha!" Jafar crowed, and then began ripping into Aladdin, showing him to be a common thief, stripping him of his fancy clothes, and then smashing him and Riku together, before launching them into a tower. "So Long, Ex-Prince Ali!" he cackled, as the entire tower shuddered, and then launched itself like a rocket over the horizon.

Riku winced as he woke up, the stone cage shattered around him. The bruises on his body and dent on the tower wall indicated pretty clearly the cause of his new found freedom. The building shuddered and started rolling, Riku still in it.

He scrambled for the window and jumped, his fingers just barely catching the edge as he pulled himself up and out. He stood up, and saw that the tower was in free fall down a cliff. Aladdin held a hand out toward him from the cliff's edge, and Riku jumped, but it was too late. The hand was just two feet too high. Desperate, Riku thrust his hand forward, summoning the keyblade as he did so. The blade caught in the rock, and Riku hung from it, just a few feet from the cliff. Swinging himself up, he grasped Aladdin's hand, finally making it to the safety of the clifftop.

"We have to go back and stop him," Aladdin called out, before hopping on the carpet, the snow and wind tossing his hair about.

Snow? Where the hell are we? I don't remember this part of the world at all.

"I'll meet you there." Riku felt the shadow of the cliff and focused on the throne room. He stepped out of the freezer into the sauna. Red tapestries and hundreds of sconces and braziers made the palace too warm, even by Riku's sunbaked island standards.

The throne room was mostly empty, and so Riku wandered about on his hunt for Jafar, avoiding the palace guards, who didn't seem to mind the change in décor.

He found the new sultan running his hands all over the Princess of Heart. The former Sultan was in a box, being stuffed full of crackers by Jafar's bird.

"Hello, Riku, why don't you come in?" The sorcerer laughed and yanked hard with his staff, pulling Riku and some of the tapestry he had been hiding behind forward to land at his feet. "You have been a rather surprising annoyance to me. You never quite get in the way of my plans, but instead go after me. I must say I thank you for that, for I am far more durable." The sorcerer struck his staff against the ground, and Riku jumped away as he felt the floor start to respond.

"This is your end, Jafar," he called down, punctuating his words with blasts of dark fire.

"You can't kill me! I'm the most powerful being in the world!" Jafar batted away the fire effortlessly, turning it back at Riku.

Riku summoned the keyblade and deflected the bolts, scaring away Iago and shaking the former sultan's cage, then landed and rushed in, bringing his keyblade up and attacking forcefully. He never let Jafar get distance, though the sorcerer's staff blocked most of the keyblade wielder's blows. A few did get through, and cutting into Jafar's white robes. Riku, however, was not faring nearly as well. The green fire and lightning that Jafar summoned had burned his clothes badly, and the skin underneath was red and blistering from the heat. His nerves kept up a steady chorus of Pain!

Jafar thrust his staff forward and Riku ducked, but left himself open to Jafar's other hand, which brought down a torrent of fire upon him.

"Agh!" Jafar cried, as a deep slice appeared on his back. Aladdin had finally arrived. "Damn you, street rat!" Jafar hissed, even as Aladdin sped away to rescue the princess. His victory was short-lived: even as Aladdin saved her, she was trapped again, this time in an hourglass, sand pouring from the top compartment down onto her.

"You better hurry Aladdin; time is running out for your pretty princess." Jafar cackled, as he waved his arms, summoning more green fire.

"Don't forget about me!" Riku called, his left arm blackened by the torrent of fire, as he struck the keyblade at Jafar's side. Caught between Aladdin's sword and Riku's keyblade, the sorcerer did his best to deflect both, and tossed Aladdin aside with a gesture.

"You two don't understand my power! I am the most powerful man in the weird."

"No you aren't!" Aladdin called back, slashing his sword to deflect more fire away. "The Genie is more powerful than you'll ever be!" Riku jumped forward and slashed, scoring a light scratch on the sorcerer and jumping away again. Jafar held a hand over the wound, hissing in pain. "Genie!" the sorcerer shouted. "For my third wish! I wish to be an all-powerful Genie!"

"Great going, Aladdin!" Riku shouted in anger. How the hell were they supposed to fight a Genie? Jafar's visage reddened to a brick red color, and his sultan robes fell away to reveal a broad chest and massive muscles.

"Yes! Yes! I am all powerful!" He cackled as he grew in size. Riku winced, before jumping up and trying to stab the red genie. His blade passed right through, and Riku struggled to find a solution. He threw a few bolts of dark fire, but those Jafar ignored, and they bounced off of his skin. Jafar brought a hand out to slap Riku, and despite using the keyblade to deflect the blow, the impact sent him flying into a pillar. Riku gasped, his back a fire of pain, as the pillar dented.

"With an itty bitty living space!" Aladdin called out, and Riku and Jafar both turned to look at the thief, who held up a black lamp.

Immediately, Jafar started shrinking, growing smaller and smaller and being drawn into the lamp. "No! Noooooo!" He tried to dig his hands into the ground, but they gave him no purchase, and he was sucked faster and faster until all they heard was a quiet "no" from the mouth of the lamp, then silence.

Riku got up using the keyblade for balance, and walked over to Aladdin, who smashed the glass on the hourglass, freeing the Princess of Heart.

Riku felt odd in the clothes the sultan had given him. The white and blues were fine, but the billowing long sleeves and several layers felt weird compared to his clothes from home. However, as both the sultan's and Aladdin's guest of honor, it was expected. Aladdin and Jasmine didn't seem to care; they were blissfully ignorant to everything outside of each other. Riku's left arm still burned from the fire Jafar had flung at him, the palace doctor promising "extensive treatment" later that night.

Riku followed Aladdin as a guest of honor to the wedding, and felt apprehension seep into him as the wedding process proceeded.

This is where the burst of whiteness originated. At this very wedding. Is it going to happen again?The bond screamed in his veins, and Riku shuddered.

"Are you alright, my boy?" the Sultan asked, concern on the old man's face.

Riku shook himself. "Yeah, I'm—" Just then, Aladdin leaned down to kiss Jasmine, and the whiteness burst forth from them, engulfing Riku before he even had a chance to react.

The whiteness lasted much longer this time, and Riku was able to feel the character of this place. There was a great pressure, a pushing on him from all sides. A distant scream, and the whiteness was gone. He was back, standing on the parapets of the palace wall.

"Stop! Trespasser!" A voice shouted behind him, and Riku saw several palace guards rush towards him, swords drawn.

"Arrest him!" The guard with the fancier outfit shouted, thrusting his sword toward Riku, telegraphing his intent for a painful arrest.

Riku didn't bother saying anything, just ran along the walls, focused on a patch of shadow. The palace guards were much slower than the whiteness, and so Riku had plenty of time to focus on the darkness as he ran into the shadow of the parapet and out of a shadowy alley in the main city.

He leaned back against the cool stone, and banged the back of his head hard against the wall.

"Dammit."