So, after fiddling around with Google Docs for a while, I officially know how to publish new chapters from my phone. It's a horrible kludge, but it works for those times when I don't want to wait til I'm home from work. Protip: The FFN mobile app is basically worthless for this purpose, as somehow even my below-average-length chapters are far too long for it to handle. So that's fun.

Also, I made a small edit to chapter 1 after realizing that during revision I accidentally removed something I hadn't wanted to remove. Probably it'll be quite a few chapters before it makes a real difference, though. Assuming I even include that idea, which I'm still undecided on.

Also also I added a genre! I never really know what genre to classify my stuff as on this internet web site.

Anyway. Let's continue.


"What the heck..." I had a Keyblade. I didn't know why I had a Keyblade. "I can't just have a Keyblade ex nihilo! There needs... needs to be... why am I getting deja vu about this?!"

"Holy crap, calm down, sister," my alleged brother said, looking way too amused. "Well, now I know why you weren't using it, at least."

"And you!" I turned on him, pointing an accusing finger. "How did you know about this before I did?"

"How did you not know?" He shook his head. "The entire reason the Organization wanted you was for that Keyblade."

"Well, they weren't exactly forthcoming with their motives... Wait. The Keyblade? But they already had two! Even if," here I waggled my hand vaguely to indicate the events of 358/2 Days and Xion's disappearance without tipping off Roxas or Xion, "they'd still have the one."

"I'm sorry, even if what?!" Hm, so much for not tipping them off.

"I mean, to be fair," my alleged brother pressed on, seemingly ignoring Roxas's outburst, "the Organization now has access to neither of them." He turned to face them. "I mean, you didn't think you'd be going back to the castle after aiding and abetting the escape of a vital captive, did you?"

"Aiding and abetting?" Xion finally spoke up. "Oh, no no no. This is hot pursuit. Roxas was trading an illicit meeting for vital information, and you spotted an opportunity to get out. We've been chasing you since."

Roxas looked at the three of us, clearly not engaged in any sort of chase. "Umm..."

"As far as Saïx or Xigbar knows..."

"Oh! Right. Hot pursuit. That's what we're doing right now."

For some reason, I got a sudden image of Xigbar shrugging and saying "okay I believe you" in a weird monotone.

"Speaking of vital information..." it finally occurred to me to ask, "... I have a sneaking suspicion that my brother... let's say, isn't currently going by his birth name." His surprised reaction confirmed that I had guessed right.

It had seemed the obvious explanation. I didn't at all recall having a brother, but I distinctly recalled having a sister... If the boy standing in front of me was transmasculine, the apparent contradiction was... mostly resolved.

There was, admittedly, a bit of a time issue - but I knew that time between worlds wasn't synced. While I experienced twelve days, he could well have experienced a month, or a year, or really any length of time.

"It's getting a little awkward to always call you 'my brother', so what name are you using?"

"Luke."

"... As in 'Skywalker'?"

He sighed in exasperation. "No, actually, and I had just gotten used to everyone I meet not pointing out the reference, so thanks for that."

"Hah, sorry, I really shouldn't be... Just, you know there's a non-zero chance of encountering the other Luke at some point, right?"

"I'll just tell him - if he even asks, if this even happens - that it's a coincidence, like I told... well, just you so far. But I was expecting to hear that a lot, right up until the world got eaten."

"Umm, as fascinating an insight into your world as this is..." Roxas interrupted.

"Right, right. I promised you answers."

XXXXXXXXXX

And so, after an intense questioning session which will inevitably be flashed back to whenever convenient and be a great device for patching plot holes...

...er, I mean... something that doesn't blatantly break the fourth wall? Yes.

After that, it was decided that our cover story was as follows: Luke and I split up to lose our pursuers, but Roxas and Xion took the obvious measure of splitting up to follow us, only to lose us after a while due to inopportune ambushes from Heartless.

"Now that Tempest is actually aware of her Keyblade, she can use the Lanes Between, and you two can't. I don't think you're 'supposed' to know about those, but I suspect at least one of the higher-ups in the Organization does, and that should explain how we got away so swiftly."

"And... be careful, all right? The Organization is already suspicious of you two. They might not buy the cover story. Axel might pretend to, he's on your side, kind of... But the higher-ups, especially Xigbar and Saïx, you need to be careful around. I think you should plan to get out. Axel won't let you leave without him, I think, so make sure to get him on board as soon as possible."

After they left, Luke turned to me and asked, "Well, what now?"

"Hmmm." I considered this. "Well, first, I think you need to explain how to use the Lanes Between."

"Ah. Well, it's surprisingly simple. First, put the coat back on. The Lanes Between are no Realm of Darkness, but they're still pretty full of darkness. Then..." He summoned his Kingdom Key D, and with a flourish, pointed it at a seemingly random spot in the sky. A beam of light shot out, and a glowing portal orb appeared.

"... I see. But, ah, as impressive as that is, you might want to explain in a bit more detail - as you might recall, I've known about my Keyblade for roughly an hour, and I'm not exactly practiced in its more esoteric uses."

He snrk'd. "Fair enough. So here's how you do it..."

XXXXXXXXXX

"... there you go! Just like that."

After a few tries, I managed to get my Keyblade to generate the beam of light that unlocks passage to the Lanes Between.

"And the same basic principle is used to summon the Keyblade Glider, just a different motion."

"That's... a little weird."

"A little, but Keyblades are kinda," he waved his hand 'mystically', "like that."

"A lot of things in this 'verse are," I waved my hand the same way, "like that."

"Heh. Very true."

Suddenly, an unfamiliar tone chimed from Luke's pocket. He pulled out his phone and glanced at it. "Shoot. Okay, I have a thing I have to handle... normally I'd offer to let you tag along, but there's some stuff you'd need to be briefed on first, and I'm not sure there's time to wait..."

I waved him off. "Go, handle the thing. I've got things I want to do myself. Just, keep in touch, all right?"

"Speaking of which - your phone needs an update to recognize the network we're using. Let me send you the data..."

XXXXXXXXXX

After installing the update and confirming that it did allow us to contact each other, Luke summoned his Keyblade Glider and headed off.

I, meanwhile, had a bit of a conundrum.

The thing I wanted to do was find Sora and figure out what the crap was going on. Only, I had no clue where he would be at this point. At the end of Dream Drop Distance, he had returned to the dreaming version of Traverse Town to... hang out with his Spirits? That seemed incorrect, since he had made it sound, like, legitimately important. But I could only remember that one iconic image from the post-credits scene, and nothing about any other task.

But since I wasn't clear on what that hypothetical other task was, I had no clue how long it'd take him. And I also didn't know what he planned to do afterward. Which would be important if he was already done and 'afterward' was, in fact, now.

After some thought, I decided to head to the Mysterious Tower. That was his last known (to me) location in the waking world, and even if I couldn't find him, Yen Sid would surely know something useful.

XXXXXXXXXX

One nice thing about the Lanes Between was that, unlike the Realm of Darkness or... whatever Gummi Ships traveled through, it was completely devoid of enemies.

In fact, I had initially assumed that the Lanes Between was what Gummi Ships traveled through - it was the lack of Gummi Heartless that clued me in on the difference.

What I'm saying is, the trip to the Mysterious Tower was uneventful. And I could expect future trips to be equally uneventful. Which was good.

As I descended to land in front of the tower, I considered my approach. I was, after all, a virtual stranger, and I couldn't reasonably barge in asking questions and expect them to trust me on my word alone.

My thoughts were rendered moot, however, when I landed and was immediately confronted by a flowery Keyblade in the face.

"Why are you back here, Luke? I told you, we don't - you're not Luke." Kairi lowered her Keyblade, but didn't dismiss it.

"I am, indeed, not Luke," I said. "I'm Tempest, Luke's sister. ... What on earth did he say to you to get that reaction?"

"Nothing in particular," Kairi said, probably lying because I had given her no reason to trust me. "Actually, he was very insistent on not saying anything in particular." Or maybe not. "He didn't even mention having a sister. ... Why are you here, anyway?"

"Well, it's a bit of a long story, but the short of it is..." I held out my right hand and summoned my Keyblade.

"Another one?!"

"Yeah... There's a lot going down, and I don't even know most of it. I figured a Keyblade Master would be a good starting point."

"Riku's busy."

"I meant Yen Sid."

"... Oh, that makes more sense."

XXXXXXXXXX

"Greetings. I have been waiting for you. As you seem to already know, I am Yen Sid."

"My name's Tempest, and - wait, you've been waiting for me?"

"I have. Many unexpected developments have occurred lately. Unexpected, it seems, even to our enemies. Tell me, Tempest - what do you know about Organization XIII?"

"Well... they're a group of Nobodies, led by Xemnas, with the goal of gathering hearts from Keyblade-slain Heartless, to create an artificial Kingdom Hearts, which they plan to use to gain hearts and become whole people again. Except secretly, they don't need to do all that because anything with self-awareness can grow a heart over time, including Nobodies, and the real plan that almost none of them knew was that they'd be thirteen vessels for Xehanort. And then they all got killed, mostly but not exclusively by Sora. Due to some weirdness, this caused their originals to come back to life.

"And then, they all came back. The Nobodies. And that's the really weird part, because up til now, everything has been possible within the cosmology of this multiverse. But a bunch of slain Nobodies, who had regenerated into their originals, all coming back without..." A possible hole on this logic occurred to me. "Nothing's happened to Lea, right?"

"Lea is alive and well, and his training is proceeding as normal."

"Right. So the bodies of these Nobodies are all up, about, and occupied by their original hearts. So how'd they come back independently?"

"That is what I have been attempting to find out. My two primary clues are this. Firstly, when your world fell to darkness, it was, in The World That Never Was, precisely one month after the Organization's reappearance.

"And secondly, I would like confirmation from you: while you were in the custody of the Organization, did you meet every single member?"

I blinked. Of course. I ticked them off on my fingers to confirm, but subconsciously I had already realized - I had never once encountered Xemnas or Naminé.

Now, I was pretty sure, from eavesdropping on the other members, that Naminé was, in fact, returned alongside everyone else, and I simply hadn't met her. They seemed to be keeping us apart on purpose, in fact, though I had trouble imagining why.

But I had no such evidence of Xemnas's existence. Indeed, the fact that Saïx and Xigbar seemed to have become the de facto leaders of the Organization was actually evidence that their inexplicable return had, equally inexplicably, excluded their Superior.

"No. I never met Xemnas. Somehow he's the only one that didn't come back, isn't he?"

"That was my observation. However, I still do not know why."

I thought about this for a moment. "How important is the 'why', though? Compared to what we do about it, that is."

"Indeed, our response is the most important thing. However, learning the cause of this event may help us decide on a plan of action, so it is not entirely irrelevant."

"Fair enough... I don't really have any leads on the cause, though. Do you?"

"Not at this time, unfortunately. We shall have to wait and observe, and in the meantime, prepare.

"That said... you might wish to return to Radiant Garden, briefly at least. Your friends there have surely been concerned for you."

"Oh. Yikes. I completely forgot about how I left there. Yeah, I should definitely tell them I'm okay. Uh, first, just to be safe - is there some way to scan me and make sure there's no trackers of any kind? It'd be a bit annoying if I went to all this effort to escape and they immediately recaptured me."


And that's chapter 4. In slightly under two weeks. A good pace, in my onion. Though I got stuck for a few days on, uh, Luke's name. Well, you're reading a fic called "A Decent Self-Insert, Probably", so I imagine you already know I'm not the best at naming things.

Also, wow, that's a lot of scene cuts. I think I might have overused that technique a bit in this chapter.