Your Adventure Begins at Midday

by signalsandsoundwaves

A novelization of the games if Sora was a girl, Kairi got some actual character development and backstory, and Riku's initial fall to the Darkness was for (hopefully) better reasons than what they gave us. Now with illustrations if you go look for this fic on Ao3! Soriku, RikuxSora, rule 63!Sora, Fem!Sora, Girl!Sora, Slow burn (the slowest burn you will ever see).

10. Chapter 9: A Prison of Sleep and Stone

KAIRI

Funnily enough, Kairi had actually completely forgotten she'd still had the thalassa shell charm in her pocket when everything went down. That entire day was a haze, with only the worst of it still clear in her mind, but Kairi vaguely remembered using the simplest knot to tie the pieces together haphazardly so they wouldn't come undone and stuffing it in her pocket to think about later.

And later had arrived, it seemed.

She watched Riku stare at the pieces as both his face and his Heart darkened as one. What once had been a candlelight at the end of a Dark tunnel, a hopeful beacon, had now dimmed to one lone star in a sky devoid of its fellows.

A north star. A way to guide the Heart where no conscience was found.

Kairi looked to the charm. And then she found her way back onto the play island again.

After the time she'd spent lying on the shore outside, sifting the sand through her fingers and feeling her pulse begin to ebb with the waves, she realized she was sick of the shore and its reminder of how she was still stuck. She idly wondered if this was a little bit like how Riku might have felt, and then quickly dismissed the idea: Riku had never lost the use of his legs, and he wasn't trapped at the risk of everybody else's suffering if he ever gained freedom. It wasn't the same at all.

But, she thought, what was the same was how they both stared at a horizon that felt like the bars to a prison cell.

Kairi finally trudged back towards the white room.

She hovered in the doorway and absently looked around the chamber, watching the slow crawl of magic lighting up the images of chains through the walls, the floor. The altered symbol of a geometric heart that was imprinted around the room, that matched the silver badge the sleeping boy wore. The throne that was as white as snow, that the boy slept upon even now, completely unaware of their plight.

Kairi walked over to her usual spot against the wall and halfway collapsed against it, and slowly slid down into a seated position. She stared blankly into space.

She wasn't really in the mood to talk right now.

---

SORA

She was sprawled out in her chair, the seatbelt now haphazardly buckled over her and her askew limbs (and it was questionable as to if the seatbelt would still work effectively if Sora was in her current pose, but Sora figured there wasn't anything visible in the part of space they were currently at, so she decided to not bother moving for now unless another whale appeared on the horizon).

Placed precariously on her face was the latest Ansem Report the group had found, courtesy of one Oogie Boogie from Halloween Town. Sora, now long bored of playing go fish against Goofy, who continually won the rounds now with the increased practice, blew on the report repeatedly until it floated on the current and gently floated back down onto her face, in which case then she would blow on it again and reread a little bit more of it.

Psh-whew!

'—I am studying material from the meteors that rained down that fateful night. What a find! The material is foreign to our world. It is elastic to the touch, and when two pieces are combined, they bond easily. None of the records even mention such a substance. —'

Phoo-o-o-o!

'—Was it introduced to this world when I opened the door? I wonder how many other such materials drift through the atmosphere of this tiny world…I wish I could soar off and find out! Could there be uncharted worlds up there? —'

Phew-woo-woo!

'—But I should stop speaking of such unrealistic dreams. For now, there is no way to venture outside this world. My people and I are all but prisoners of this tiny place—'

"Do you guys think Geppetto and Pinocchio got to Traverse Town okay?" She asked, now beginning to get bored of this pastime as well.

"I sure hope so, Geppetto was an expert with using those gummis," Goofy said optimistically. "That ship turned out pretty neat, ahyuk!"

"There's no way they couldn't have made it with that star shard," Donald grumbled out in response, still disbelieving of Pinocchio's story and peeved at having to help slug around gummi blocks for a day. He flicked a couple of switches on the dashboard and a menu popped up on the screen before him.

"New route, huh?" Sora asked as she straightened slightly at the sight. "Do we get costumes again?"

Sora hadn't stopped trying to see if her wings could fly the second she had seen the changes to their appearances in Halloween Town, and this resulted in more than a few accidents—Sora had become some sort of a vampire thing, from what she could judge by her new fangs, whereas Donald had become a mummy (with part of his midsection missing, to his dismay), and Goofy transformed into a sort of…monster thing? None of them were able to figure it out, but the giant screw that had appeared in his head attracted quite a number of the lightning bolts Donald had fired off from his staff in their fighting.

"Only if it's necessary," Donald replied grumpily. "We can't go getting costumes willy-nilly, it'll drain my magic."

"You're just peeved because we kept throwing candies through that hole in your torso."

"Well, it certainly didn't help."

"How many points did you manage to score, Goofy? Thirty-five?"

"Thirty-eight," He chuckled, and Sora couldn't stifle her grin as Donald threw them both a scowl and switched a lever, making Highwind lurch forward in speed to retaliate. Both Sora and Goofy were jerked around in their seats slightly, and Sora finally straightened in her seat for good.

"Hey, Jiminy? You wrote down our scores, right?" She asked, and Jiminy looked up suddenly from his journal.

"Sure did," He replied, to Donald's dismay, and glanced down at the journal again. "But what d'ya guys think Ansem meant when he said he 'opened the door'?"

Sora shrugged. "Maybe he's just talking in metaphors?"

"I don't know about that," Jiminy tapped his pen against the page as he pondered, "From what Cid's told us, Ansem seemed to be pretty straightforward on his research."

"Ya don't think he had to open a real door to let King Mickey in to visit?" Goofy asked.

"Either that or something similar." Jiminy hesitated for a moment. "I was thinking about what Leon and Yuffie explained to you, Sora, about how your world fell."

She blinked. "Yeah?"

"You said that your friend Riku mentioned opening a door of some sort? And not long after, the heartless invaded?"

"Y-yeah," Sora answered sheepishly, uncomfortable at the reminder in light of the events at Monstro.

"So if King Ansem had opened a door like that by the time he penned this report, and later on his world fell to the heartless like Cid said, what if it was the same scenario?"

"Wait a minute!" She butted in, "Maleficent's the one in charge of the heartless, who knows if opening the door did anything bad? Remember how my dream right before I got the keyblade told me I'd open some sort of a door too."

Albeit, that was right before Riku had opened the door on Destiny Islands, and so had fulfilled for himself what was presumed to be Sora's destiny. But she didn't mention that particular piece of information.

"That's true," Jiminy conceded, and resumed tapping his pen on the cover of his journal as he considered her words. "I guess opening this door just lets outsiders access the world in question?"

"And it lets outsiders in to wreck the world order," Donald reminded them from his spot in the pilot's chair.

"I'm sure King Mickey wasn't intending to wreck the world order when he visited, Donald," Goofy said.

"Yeah, but I'm talking about all the other outsiders."

"Like us?" Sora laughed, and laughed again when Donald turned his scowl on her once more. Everyone in the cockpit was jolted in their seats slightly as he made the gummi ship go even faster towards their destination. "Come on, you gotta admit we wreck the world order at least a little bit just by showing up and fighting heartless!"

"I'm not admitting anything," Donald replied steadfastly, "Except that we'll be at Atlantica soon. You better get ready."

---

RIKU

He flung the heartless against the wall, where it slid down with a gasping noise and dissipated into Dark smoke before it reached the ground.

Immediately, another leapt onto his sword arm, the claws on its feet making a hollow ringing noise against Soul Eater as the heartless climbed, and it gave a fitful swipe at Riku's face before he could grab it off him in time. A stinging feeling on his cheek was left behind as the heartless was picked up, and Riku held out Soul Eater in front of him in a guarded stance as the heartless went two-dimensional and started moving away. Quickly, yet carefully, Riku followed as he kept his eye on it.

It returned to normal form halfway behind a column. The second he saw its head rising back up out of the ground, before it could lunge, Riku swiped right through its short neck with his sword in one fell swoop. And with that, the heartless were gone.

All except for one…or, none?

Riku had turned to look towards the doorway with a smile and was soon disappointed. The little heartless that usually hung around to watch him was decidedly absent today, which was odd. It was always there when Riku had sparred with the heartless. And if not that, it always at least made its way to his preferred training room by the end of the round if it hadn't already been there when he began, its yellow eyes twinkling in curiosity and antennae swinging, as if the little heartless were desperately pondering something about what he was doing.

He decided to go look for it. Riku hoped it didn't get destroyed, which he couldn't deny the irony of such a thing since that was exactly what he was doing to its fellows not a minute prior.

But this heartless had somehow become special to him in the time it had woken him up every day by poking him on the nose—It had started as a nuisance, but Riku had begun to look forward to that part of living here, even when every other aspect of life in Hollow Bastion was beginning to fall short in his discovery of Maleficent's deception. And Kairi, well, seeing Kairi could only do so much when she wasn't able to reply to him whenever he talked. If anything, seeing her had sort of become depressing, as it had made him feel so helpless in the face of whatever had happened to her.

Which in itself was ironic too, one could suppose: Riku had come all this way to understand the Dark, to learn and use the power it had, and he couldn't figure out how to use it to help his friends. It was the whole reason why he had started this in the first place. But Sora betrayed him for (his) keyblade and some new lackeys to hang out with, and somewhere along the way Kairi had lost everything and Sora didn't even care.

Riku hissed out a forceful sigh as he wandered from wing to wing, room to room. He couldn't get distracted with that now. No use ruminating on a foregone conclusion, it was time to move on and see what he could fix.

Eventually the familiar walls he had traversed often gave way to unfamiliar layouts and passages. Here and there heartless wandered, just as they often did in some parts of the castle, but none of them were the ones he was looking for. Riku decided to follow them. Perhaps his friend was among them.

Up and down the lift stops, from floor to floor, and though there were heartless of all sizes he still did not find the one he was looking for. What had started as idle curiosity had become something closer to worry: Riku knew the heartless were expendable, he went through them in droves in his training—and though the logical part of himself knew the little heartless was just the same, he couldn't help but feel a connection to it. Riku hoped nothing had happened to it.

Eventually he ended up back in the chapel. Often it was populated with at least a couple of individuals with the meetings Maleficent held, individuals that Riku couldn't care much about alive and cared even less for dead. Jafar and Oogie Boogie were never particularly amicable, after all.

But today the chapel was empty. That wasn't anything new to Riku, but what was new was the cavernous opening on one section of the wall.

His steps slowed as he got closer, and Riku studied it. It looked as if it were part of the room's construction all along, with its finished edges and carefully laid brickwork inside, but it couldn't be: Riku had been inside of the chapel many times and never saw it before. All that was ever usually here was just another flat section of the wall framed with the pilasters that made up the décor of the room.

Or was there? Riku still hadn't pinned down the extent of Maleficent's powers, but it didn't seem out of the question that they could include illusions. He cautiously got closer.

Partially into the tunnel, and Riku could just begin to catch sight of a dimmed light at the end of where another room waited. His steps echoed in the passage as the torches along the walls flickered green.

Riku arrived at the steps down into the chamber, the doors to which were already opened. He could see where they were emblazoned with silhouettes shaped not unlike the skeletal remains of cast-iron fencing visible around the outer bulwarks of Hollow Bastion, that cast gaunt shadows that clawed at the pavement. But here there were no broken fragments in the silhouettes, no flaws in the design. Just perfect arches and columns that evoked the image of the walls of a garden.

Farther into the room he could see vast staircases curve around the bottom of a rounded platform, flanking a violet flag emblazoned with a curlicued emblem that was likely left from the previous occupants of this citadel. Running along the floor, extending out from under Riku's feet, was a luxurious red-and-blue rug that was markedly in better condition than most of the other furnishings he had seen elsewhere. In fact, now that he inspected what he could see of the room a little more closely, the entire area was much more nicely kept than most of the citadel: The walls were free of claw marks, and the floor was free of debris. Large vessels forged of polished metal gleamed with bright blue flames, marking the edges of the rug and framing its design of the heartless emblem. The ceiling stretched far above.

He stepped inside cautiously and stopped.

There, carefully placed inside recesses in the walls, Riku could see Alice, Jasmine, and three other girls fast asleep.

---

SORA

She screwed her eyes shut and held her breath as they tumbled off of the rocky shore and into the waves.

The gummi ship quickly disappeared beyond the surface of the ocean, the reds and yellows and blues of its hull blurring into each other before all that was visible remaining was the rays of sunlight streaming through the water. Her lungs began to burn, and Sora resisted the urge to breathe in as she could feel her lungs quake as her instinct fought against her will. Some bubbles escaped past her lips, drifting upward and soon vanishing from sight. She could feel her legs sewing together and it became impossible to swim as she normally did. Sora kicked her legs—or, by now she figured it'd be more accurate to say leg—uselessly.

Sora realized something was up when she could still hear underwater. Back on the islands, whenever she'd swam under the waves, the last thing she'd hear before going under entirely was the burbling of water in her ears before everything went muffled. But now, Sora could hear Donald and Goofy beside her still thrashing about, with Donald's scratchy voice muttering spells and curses at alternating intervals under his breath.

Finally, Sora couldn't hold her breath any longer. She breathed out, and her vision cleared, with the darkening at the edges of her vision now gone. Her lungs still burned slightly, but nothing like they were before. She breathed in.

Wait a minute, Sora thought with a start.

"I can breathe underwater?" She asked as she opened her eyes, and saw that Donald and Goofy had transformed into some sort of amalgamations between their normal forms and undersea creatures: Donald's normally webbed feet and feathered tail had shifted into six tentacles quite like an octopus, whereas Goofy's entire body was now that of a turtle's, with his face peeking out from between the shell. Donald's staff ceased glowing once their transformations were complete. If they got turned into fish, Sora wondered inwardly, did that mean she got turned into one, too?

She looked down at herself and let out an excited squeak too fast to be stifled in time.

Sora had turned into a mermaid.

Her legs had been replaced by a deep blue tail similar to that of a dolphin's, with slick skin instead of a fish's scales, and she cautiously poked at it, feeling the touch where her thigh had been. Sora wiggled what had been her feet, and the end of her tail waved back and forth in the water, gleaming slightly to reflect the light of the sun far above. She was still wearing her necklace, but the rest of her garments were gone, replaced by a matching blue bikini top made of a clamshell.

"Of course you can breathe underwater," Donald huffed as he awkwardly tried to upright himself in the water with his lack of feet. It didn't work well. Beside him, Goofy was trying to wobble each of his turtle legs to move around. "It'd be impossible to blend in with undersea creatures if we were drowning!"

"Donald, I'm taking back all of the mean stuff I said about your magic," Sora said as she shimmied about, in efforts to relearn how to swim. She slowly drifted around, moved by the current, and saw they were all being twirled about slightly.

"Good, you better." Donald replied. Sora could see he turned his head at an awkward angle to talk, as he was beginning to drift upside-down.

"Gawrsh, I wonder if there's another one of those Ansem Reports here too," Goofy wondered aloud. Donald turned to reply, and Sora decided to take the opportunity to get some distance and angle herself away from them to check the clamshell top. It'd be really awkward if it ever came loose, she thought with a shudder.

A slight tug, and it gave no signs of any risk of coming off. A harder tug, and eventually tugging with all her strength, and still nothing. She let go at the feeling of her skin beginning to burn with the pain of being tugged on so hard. The clamshell must have been welded to her skin, or part of her anatomy in this world. No risk of that, then, she thought with relief.

Sora looked up at the sound of shouting. Coming straight towards them was a group comprised of, from what she could see, another mermaid and two much smaller fish. Sora could hear Donald and Goofy quieting down at the noise as well.

"Come on, Sebastian! They're right on our tail!"

"Ariel, wait!" An accented voice replied, and Sora saw it came from a bright red crab that could barely keep up. "Slow down, don't leave me behind!"

"You guys, there's someone up ahead—!" The other fish called out, and nearly crashed into the mermaid as she stopped suddenly once she caught sight of the trio.

Her previously harried expression shifted as her eyes widened, and the mermaid took in their appearance. Sora with her mermaid tail and silver necklace, and the halfway fish-like visages of Donald and Goofy, who were trying feebly to stay upright.

"Oh, my!" She gasped, "Hello! Are you new around here?"

Sebastian brought a claw to his forehead in exasperation.

"Don't talk to them, Ariel!" He cried, "They could be enemies!"

Ariel rolled her eyes. "Relax, Sebastian. They don't look like them," She turned to the yellow fish that ducked behind her, and asked, "Right, Flounder?"

Flounder poked his head out shyly. "I don't know, there's something weird about them."

"I, uh," Sora nervously laughed, "What do you mean?"

"You guys do seem a little different," Ariel agreed and swerved around gracefully to inspect them from all sides. "Where are you from?"

"From, um, from somewhere far away," Sora tried, and she could see Sebastian eyeing Donald and Goofy suspiciously as they clumsily swam around. "And we're not really used to these waters. What was it you were running from?"

Before any of them could answer her question, a group of jellyfish-looking creatures bobbed closer from where Ariel and her companions were speeding through, and Sora could see the heartless emblem on their heads. The keyblade blazed to her hand with a gleam of Light, and she raised it in front of her.

"They're here too?" Sora asked exasperatedly, and swam like how she'd seen Ariel do to meet them halfway. A wave-like movement from the waist as she moved her legs as one, without the kicking she'd done before. Sora could see electricity tingle along the edges of one heartless' limbs, and the one closest to her raised its arms as if to smack her away.

Fighting as she normally did was harder to do in the water, which pulled at her arms and kept her movements from being as powerful as she'd like. The tooth of the keyblade dragged down one heartless' head and a trail of Dark dust seeped out into the water, which clouded her vision. The heartless flinched back from the wound and lunged forward to attack as Sora guarded with a swift raise of her weapon.

A flash of light lit up the stony walls around her, and Sora glanced over to see Donald casting one electricity spell after the other. The heartless flinched away somewhat, Dark trails seeping from their wounds, but it seemed electricity didn't have as significant effect on these as it would other types of heartless. But Donald's attacks were fast, and that was what made the difference.

She raised her keyblade and joined him. Rather than electricity, she shot out alternating blasts of fire and ice from the tip of her weapon, noting how the frost spells restricted their movements as the ice encasing their limbs tried bobbing upwards, and Sora could hear Ariel giving a cry of amazement at the sight of their magic.

They made quick work of the heartless Sora had already struck, with the Dark trail seeping out into a cloud as a glowing Heart bobbed towards the ocean surface far above. Soon after that, another heartless that Donald had been chipping away at joined its fate. But before Sora could try and see where the others were, for her vision was obscured by the dust, she could feel a harsh slap to her back from another heartless' arms.

Sora hissed out a fire spell towards where the blow had come from, and Donald joined her. The magic lit up the lingering traces of the Dark clouds, reflecting their light. She swam closer and struck blindly, again and again and again.

A rush of bubbles was her response as the heartless feebly tried lifting its arms to fight back, and with one more fire spell courtesy of Donald, it dissipated into a Dark cloud. Far above them all a shimmering Heart trailed after the others.

And that left one. This time it was Goofy that struck the hardest blow, as he figured out a diving move that sped him across the water in a small, powerful spurt, ending with the edge of his shell leaving a long gash in the heartless' head. Sora raised her keyblade to cast a fire spell, but before she could mutter the word, Goofy had already taken care of it with another flick of his shell.

"I've still got it!" He cheered, and clumsily spun in circles through the water.

"Wow," Ariel marveled, and they turned to see her and the others with their jaws dropped. "Oh, wow! What was that stuff?"

Sora blinked, and her and Donald shared an uneasy glance. She really hoped they hadn't disrupted the world order already—ten minutes would make for a new record. "Do you mean the heartless?" She hoped, gesturing to where the creatures had been.

"Well, that too," Ariel supposed, and pointed to her keyblade and Donald's staff. "But that bright stuff! It…it made the water warm!"

"You mean fire?"

"Is that what it is?"

Sora blinked again. "Have you never seen fire before?"

"They live underwater," Donald whispered, "When would they have ever seen fire before?"

Sora rolled her eyes at him but didn't reply.

Ariel shook her head. "Could you show me that fire again?"

"I, uh," Sora glanced to Donald, and he gave her a shrug. He must have figured there was no use trying to hide it, since they already revealed its existence. "Sure, I guess. Fire!"

She held out her keyblade and fired off another burst of flame, and this time Ariel raised her hand to try and touch it. But before Sora could warn her against it, the fireball had already just grazed along her fingertips and Ariel flinched away with another awestruck look. She looked at her now pink fingertips and flexed them.

"That's amazing! Fire, you say? Gosh, it hurts. Like a weird sort of hurt, though."

"Like…it burns?"

"Burns," Ariel echoed, as if to try and memorize the word. She flexed her fingertips again. Sebastian gave them all an untrusting glance, his eyes squinted.

"I don't like the looks of them," Sebastian warned, "Ariel, we've got to get back to the castle! Who knows when more of those things could show up?"

"Why, that's a great idea!" Ariel swam towards the trio. "I can't believe the way you knocked them out like that, you should come with us back to the castle. We need your help!"

"I didn't say that to suggest—!"

"I think they should come too," Flounder agreed, "Only your dad's been able to hold those things off, Ariel."

Sebastian gave a drawn-out sigh, and Ariel grinned. Sora looked back towards Donald and Goofy, and they gave her mirrored nods.

"Sounds good to me," Sora said as she turned back around towards the group. "Let's go."

---

RIKU

He stumbled closer.

Beside Jasmine were two other girls he couldn't recognize: The closest was a young woman in a silvery ballgown, whose blonde hair was swept into an updo and fastened into place with a headband that matched her dress. A wan smile was spread across her mouth as she slept, and Riku could see her gloved hands were restrained behind her by some strange black substance that held her in place in the recess.

The next was another young woman with blonde hair, this time down, with a golden tiara on her head. Her smile matched the other girl's as her arms were just as restrained, and the black rocky material had crept further onto her blue dress than the other girl's had.

He stumbled over to the other row. On the end closest to the door laid a girl Riku couldn't recognize either, her short black hair tied back with a red bow, and her blue-and-yellow dress encumbered with that same black stone. Another wan smile. And next to her, Alice.

"No," Riku gasped as he unconsciously raised a hand to his mouth. "No."

Her hands were held behind her as the black stone trapped her in the recess. And just like the rest, Alice looked to be sleeping peacefully, a small smile curled at the corners of her lips. To the right of her was an empty space, waiting to be filled. Riku didn't want to think of who would go there.

This isn't right, he thought. This isn't right at all. Why are they sleeping so peacefully? Why were they smiling when they were trapped? Riku looked to Jasmine: Another smile. That couldn't be natural at all. Jasmine would have not gone gently into that good night, he knew it for a fact. She would have fought with everything she had and more.

What was this place? Was this what his work had gone towards?

A prison of sleep and stone?

He heard a swish of robes walking down the stairs and wrenched his head over to look. It was a miracle he'd managed to hear it past the drumming of his pulse.

It was Maleficent. A movement out of the corner of his eye made him look up and he could see the last vestiges of a Dark portal circling away just past the balcony on the platform above. Who had she been meeting with?

She looked surprised. "My child, what are you doing down here?"

"Tell me the truth, Maleficent," He commanded, and shook his head when she had begun to answer, already knowing the next words out of her mouth. "And don't say 'balance', there is no balance here. Tell me the truth. Now."

Maleficent was less than pleased. He couldn't bring himself to care.

"This is balance, boy," She began, and cut him off before he could say anything more. "I told you in Agrabah that those who beg for change the most might not always like the face it presents to them. Such is the same here. You came to me asking for change in the form of balance, and this is the face it presents itself to you in."

"You're imprisoning them! I brought them to you because I thought you'd—you'd—" The truth was that he hadn't any idea what she would do with Alice and Jasmine when he brought them to her, but it certainly hadn't come to mind that she'd ever do such a thing as this. "I don't know, you'd give them a place to stay! A job! Like me!"

Maleficent laughed, and it made Riku feel insignificant.

"Remember, boy, Jasmine hadn't even wanted to stay in the same room as you. You think she'd want to partake in our line of work?"

"Well, no," Riku sputtered, and raced over to the closest recess where the girl in the tiara slept. "But I didn't think you'd do this!What's this stuff on them? Why are they under glass?"

"I have a plan in mind for all of this."

"Then tell me. Tell me what this 'reward' is that you were talking about with Jafar," He exploded, not missing the way her eyes narrowed at this. "Tell me your real plans with the princesses, tell me why you're helping Kairi!"

"So you were listening, then."

"Yeah, I was," Riku spat. "I'm not stupid, Maleficent. I was always going to figure out what's going on around here one way or another. You might as well tell me yourself."

She raised her chin slightly, and an unreadable look dawned in her eye at his words.

"Fine, then. I'll tell you the truth," Maleficent replied, "As you may already know, what me, Jafar, and the rest of our associates sought was a certain Heart."

"I already know about the Princesses of Heart."

"No, boy, beyond theirs. The Princesses are only a means to an end."

The rest of what Jafar had said came back to him. "You're talking about the Door?"

"Precisely. Somewhere deep inside the Darkness—and I mean true Darkness the likes of which neither of us have ever seen, that nobody has seen since the age of tales—there is the Door. Behind it lies something that goes by many names."

She went on, "Some have called it the Heart of All Hearts, the Great Star, the One True Light. Or, if the teller of the tale were being cheeky, the Light That Slumbers Still. But one name that everyone knows it by is Kingdom Hearts."

She stepped towards the case that held the girl who wore the tiara.

"The measure of a Heart can vary," Maleficent said. "With the Princesses of Heart, we know theirs is formed of nothing but Light. But for beings such as us, we are something of a Darker shade. As for Kingdom Hearts…well. We know not what makes it for sure, for all we have to go off of are stories from a bygone era, but you may be able to infer enough from a name like 'the One True Light'. Yet what lies within it is not only Light, but untold wisdom."

"Wisdom?"

Maleficent nodded. "Such was the reward I spoke of. Wisdom is the one true power, though Kingdom Hearts undoubtedly holds infinite amounts of the latter as well. But it is wisdom that shall bring your foes to their knees, and it is wisdom that shall give you anything you could ever want."

"And the Princesses of Heart…"

"…They were the key," She finished, "Technically only part of the key, really."

"Then what was the rest of it?"

"You and I," Maleficent said simply. "And Jafar, Hades, Ursula, anyone willing to join our cause. The key to Kingdom Hearts requires seven Hearts of pure Light, and thirteen of Darkness. I am attempting to recruit more to form the Dark portion of the key as we speak."

"Seven and thirteen are pretty specific numbers. Why those?" Riku asked.

She shrugged. "Who am I to deny the word of destiny?"

He had to admit that much of what she said made sense, even if her methods of fulfilling the requirements were distasteful, he thought with a glance around them. To plant Darkness at a bastion of Light such as Kingdom Hearts could help yield balance—true balance—for good. Somewhere in all that wisdom there had to be a way to save Kairi.

And somewhere in that wisdom lay another chance at a keyblade.

"That reminds me," Maleficent spoke as her mouth widened into a smile, and then a grin. "I must say, my child, I was pleased with your initiative in seeking the puppet some days ago."

"I didn't accomplish anything, though."

"Actions are meaningless without their intentions," She explained. "And you intended to go the distance to find your answers, further than you ever have before. You intend to still. Your Darkness proves it."

"It does?"

"Oh, yes," Maleficent drew closer, and Riku took a step back. She drew closer again. "And I think it's time I taught you a few more tricks with it, don't you think?"

That made him stop in his tracks. "Like what?"

"I've seen how you go through the heartless in your training. I won't say I'm not impressed, but I think you would become something truly marvelous with a little help. A little authority. What say you to the ability to command the heartless?"

Riku swallowed hard. If he had the power to control the heartless, he'd be capable of so much more. He could stop Maleficent (and maybe even take her place), keep the heartless from turning others forcibly like he'd seen in Agrabah (and open the Door and show the Heart of all Hearts the truth of Darkness).

He could command the heartless to help him get Kairi her Heart back.

(He could open the Door and get the keyblade that was promised all those years ago.)

"I want it. I want anything you can give me."

Maleficent's grin had never left her face as the conversation progressed, and at his answer it grew wider still.

"Excellent," She said. "Then close your eyes and breathe in deep, and brace yourself."

Before Riku could ask what Maleficent meant by needing to brace himself, she raised her arms, the sleeves of her robes billowing with the movement. His eyes closed of their own accord.

The first thing he felt was a warmth, and Riku could see green light blaze through his eyelids. The warmth grew hotter, and hotter, searing his skin, and just as he began to gasp in pain it subsided into the feeling of sharp pinpricks up and down his arms and legs like they were waking up again after lying still for so long. Like Riku's blood had been replaced with a static that roared in his ears.

He sucked in a gasp, and Riku finally opened his eyes again. He could see the last traces of that green light ripple across himself before they disappeared.

Soon Kairi, he thought to himself.

Soon.

---

SORA

"Ariel! I've told you not to leave the palace!"

"But daddy—"

"No! You know it's dangerous out there," King Triton's voice seemed to thunder across the water as he spoke. "Were you blind to those things trailing after you as you came in here?"

The 'things' in question were stragglers to the heartless they had fought along the way, that rapidly gained in number the longer they remained to fight. And just like in Traverse Town, the group elected to start running from the heartless if there were too many at a time to take care of fast enough in favor of getting help in finding the keyhole and ending the issue of the heartless for good. Thankfully, the creatures were felled in one shot by the trident in his hand.

The problem was, though, that while he—King Triton, who was also Ariel's father—was reportedly capable of helping them find the keyhole, he was not in the least bit willing.

He finally seemed to notice the rest of the group, and cast his eye on Sora, Donald, and Goofy. "And who are they?"

"They saved me from those creatures!" Ariel commended them as the trio introduced themselves. "Daddy, they say they can get rid of them for good if they find something called a 'keyhole'. Can you help us find it?"

"The what?" King Triton's eyes widened, and he spoke quickly. "There's no such thing, certainly not here."

"But—"

"Ariel, not another word. You are not to leave the palace again. Is that clear?"

Ariel clenched her fists and seemed as if she had plenty more to say, but then she angrily dropped her arms. She swam back towards the trio with Flounder in tow, while Sebastian remained with King Triton. Ariel reached for Sora and Donald to pull them along with her as Goofy paddled by her side.

"Ariel, where are you going?" King Triton bellowed. She ignored him.

"Let's go," Ariel said as they moved from the throne room.

"But," Sora bit her lip as she looked back towards King Triton, who now had sunken into his chair with a sigh. He soon disappeared from view as they continued to move, and soon all that was visible were the distant blue silhouettes of pillars and sea life.

There were no heartless for a while as they swam through the gorge, only the stony faces of the cliffs that ran high above were the group's company. That, and the occasional fish or coral that teased at their fins and skirted just out of their fingertips.

"I'm sorry he's so stubborn," Ariel finally muttered.

"It's not your fault," Goofy consoled. "He's just looking out for ya."

"He treats me like I'm still a little kid. He never wants to let me do anything," She sighed. "All I want is to see the outside world, and collect all the little things humans use, maybe even see a human in real life! But he keeps saying it's dangerous, that humans are barbarians. He doesn't even try to listen when I tell him otherwise."

"King Triton doesn't want you to get hurt is all," Goofy replied. "When my boy Maxie was little, he'd get into all sorts of hijinks if I didn't tell him not to. Once he learned why he shouldn't do stuff that could get him hurt, everything was alright!"

"But he never tells me why. I'm just supposed to listen to whatever he says, but I know he's wrong."

"How do you know?" Donald asked.

"Humans are supposed to be scary. But I've found all sorts of their stuff, and nothing is the tiniest bit dangerous. If humans were barbarians then they'd make scary things, right, Sora?"

That caught them all off guard.

"W-W-What makes you say that?" Sora choked out.

Ariel giggled. "That thingy you're wearing, silly!" She replied as she pointed to her necklace. "Mermaid jewelry's always made out of kelp, seashells, or coral, but I've never seen anything made out of that shiny stuff. Did you find it somewhere?"

"I, uh," Sora faltered, and nervously grabbed at the necklace, feeling the sharp points poke at her fingers. "It was from a friend."

"Ya know," Donald said, "You never told us how you got that necklace before. I thought maybe you just picked it up somewhere."

"You never asked!"

"A friend," Ariel murmured, before twirling in place and looking up to the distant surface of the ocean, and the wavering gleam of the sun shining down. "It's only ever been me and Flounder looking for human stuff. I never knew other merpeople were interested."

She glanced back over to them. "Maybe you could come with me to search for stuff sometime, and bring your friend along too?"

Sora gave a sad smile at that. "Maybe," She said, and she didn't know if it was a lie or not. Only time would tell. And Riku. "But we've gotta find that keyhole first."

"Right," Ariel grinned, "If my dad won't help, let's just look for ourselves!"

---

KAIRI

She decided to check back on her body and was promptly confused.

The first thing she noticed was the feeling of her nose being poked repeatedly, in a staccato that was slowly growing more urgent the longer it kept going. Whatever was poking her felt a little sharp, like a claw.

And then, Kairi realized with some alarm, it really wasa claw. Specifically, the clawed finger of a heartless that was intensely studying her.

Kairi watched the heartless, and the heartless watched her. And all along, it continued to poke her in the nose.

Something about this heartless' Darkness…Kairi knew this Darkness.

But before she could try and focus further, to decipher more, the door opened. It was Riku.

"So this was where you went," He murmured, and smiled at the little heartless as it turned to him. Riku spotted its raised claw, stilled mid-poke. He chuckled as he shook his head.

"She's not gonna wake up like I do when you do that," Riku told it as he reached over and lowered its hand gently. "She's in a special sort of sleep. She can't wake up."

When he said this, his face slowly fell, and he looked away from them both.

"A special sort of sleep," Riku repeated quieter. He gnawed at his lip and looked back to the heartless before clearing his throat. "I need you to watch over this room whenever I'm not here. If anyone shows up in this room—Maleficent, another heartless, whatever—I need you to find me immediately. Got it?"

The little heartless had whipped its head towards him in rapt attention as he spoke and gone completely still. Its antennae were moving about like feelers now. And finally, it nodded. The gesture was stilted, unsure, like the heartless was doing an imitation of a nod.

"That actually worked?" Riku wondered aloud with a blink.

Then, as Kairi started to think about what it could mean that Riku had the ability to command the heartless—had he had it all along?—Riku left the room.

---

SORA

"Still not here," She sighed as she put the rock back down. All that was under it was sand, and one obstinate starfish. Sora let her eyes roam over the sea sponge, the anemone. Nothing remotely keyhole-shaped in sight.

"Should we try looking around the sunken ship again?" Ariel suggested as they wandered about the ocean floor listlessly. None of the trio had swum so much in their lives, and Sora knew it was tiring them out even if they'd gotten a rest overnight. It certainly tired her out, anyway. Ariel must be absurdly athletic if she was able to withstand an entire lifetime of this, Sora mused to herself.

"We already looked twice," Flounder moped, "Nothing around but that awful shark."

At this, everyone gave a collective sigh.

"I'm not sure where all the human stuff's gone," Ariel said, "Usually there's tons of it around there. Just the other day I found this amazing three-pronged dinglehopper right by the hole in the side of that thing."

Sora felt her brows wrinkle. "Dinglehopper?"

"Yeah!" She replied, perking up. "I've got an above-sea friend named Scuttle, he can identify anything you give him! I brought this little shiny metallic thing, like your necklace, to him and he told me it was used to straighten your hair. I've been using it ever since. It's a shame I left it at the palace, I'd love to show you now."

Wait a minute, Sora thought. A pronged thing used to straighten hair?

"Are you talking about a comb?"

Ariel gasped, while Donald gave Sora a warning spark from his staff.

"Don't upend the world order even more," He warned quietly.

"Donald, we already showed her fire, I'm sure it's okay to tell her the right names for a couple of things," Sora murmured back.

"It's a comb, you say? Oh my gosh, I didn't realize humans used words just like ours! That's so weird, what else could we share?" Ariel got a look of inspiration at that instant and raced to excitedly take Sora's hand in hers. "You've got to see my grotto! Why didn't I think of that earlier?"

"Hey, yeah!" Flounder wiggled his fin. "You guys could tell us the names of all sorts of things!"

"I've got a ton of human stuff collected there, gadgets and gizmos, whoozits and whatsits."

"Thingamabobs?" Goofy asked.

"I've got twenty of those," Ariel grinned. "Will you guys go with me?"

Donald was giving Sora a stern look, then, wordlessly warning her not to risk tampering any more. But Sora figured it would be way more promising than searching for the keyhole under another rock again.

"Sure," She replied as Donald heaved a sigh, "Maybe the keyhole's there, too."

"That's another good idea!" Ariel chirped, and raced towards another direction with renewed fervor. The trio and Flounder kept up as best they could. "This is going to be great, my sisters don't even know about this place. I remember this one time Aquata came really close to finding it—"

Ariel continued to babble on about her six older sisters and her various adventures in searching for human things the entire way to her grotto, with several parts expounded upon by Flounder here and there. Hearing about Ariel's own exploring reminded Sora quite a bit of the times she and Riku (and later on Kairi as well) would run around the play island and the various parks and beaches they'd visited in search of, well, anything. One day they'd play pretend at being pirates and dig countless holes in the ground searching for treasure, the next they'd be searching for imaginary lost ruins as explorers.

And then those memories, in turn, reminded her of Riku's actions at Monstro. They reminded her how he'd changed.

Sora raised her hand to the pendant of her necklace as she swam and felt the sharp edges of it poke into her fingertips once more. She raised it to her lips without thinking.

At the feeling of the cold metal Sora quickly dropped it again. Why had she done that?

But then, why did Riku do what he did?

She figured that perhaps they were both going a little crazy from being away from home for so long. After all, Riku had to either be crazy or really, really stupid to be working with someone like Maleficent. Sora tuned back into the conversation once she saw Ariel slowing down. In the corner of her eye Sora could see a black flash of something slither by, but it was gone by the time she turned to look.

"—Someday I'm going to see what's out there. I want to see a whole new world and be where the people are. I just wish my father would understand that. It's over here," Ariel said as she waved them over. The group swam over with varying degrees of skill to find a large hole in one side of an undersea rock formation large enough to come close to breaching the ocean's surface. They started to go inside.

"And may I present," Ariel started with gusto, "My collection from the outside…world…"

They stopped short at the sight of King Triton in Ariel's grotto. He was inspecting the room with a furious scowl, and all around him were shelves of ruined objects: Tattered paintings, broken vases, upended crates and chests. Higher up Sora could spot a lute with its strings ripped, and the neck broken off and nowhere to be seen. The silence they shared as King Triton slowly turned towards them was almost unbearable.

"Daddy?" Ariel said, in a voice almost too quiet to hear. His expression darkened.

"Ariel, Andrina told me you never came home last night."

"What did you—"

"We were worried sick about you. I've told you time and time again not to leave the palace."

Ariel's lip trembled as she shook her head and reached down towards a piece of a necklace lying on the ground by her fins, and her hand trembled just as much as her chin as she watched the pearls fall right off of the string back to the grotto floor.

"Everything Flounder and I worked so hard to collect," Her voice was thick, and she didn't look up at any of them. She just kept staring at that fallen string of pearls. "How could you?"

Ariel heaved a sob and sped out of the grotto before any of them could stop her.

"Ariel!" Flounder shouted after her as he followed, and Donald and Sora scowled at King Triton. Goofy, meanwhile, paddled towards the fallen pearls with a sad look on his face.

"Father or not, that wasn't very nice!" Donald snapped.

"It wasn't me. Those creatures you and Ariel encountered were in this room," He explained. "You three are from another world, aren't you?"

Their shock told King Triton more than any response could. He hmphed at this and readjusted his hold on his trident.

"Then you must be the key bearer," He declared to Sora.

"How did you know?" She asked.

"You may fool Ariel, but you can't fool me. You don't know your dorsal fin from your tail." King Triton said. "And as the key bearer, you must know that a weapon such as yours can shatter piece and bring ruin."

"You're wrong!" Donald argued, "Sora would never do such a thing."

"Yeah, she's not like that," Goofy added. Sora smiled at them both gratefully.

"The road to ruin is often paved with good intentions," King Triton said quietly as he observed the broken objects all around them. "I thank you for saving my daughter. But there's no room in my ocean for you or your key. Please stay out of our world."

At this, he left the grotto without another word, and the trio were left alone in the mess.

Sora summoned the keyblade to her hand. It twinkled cheerily in the dim light of the grotto, the reflective metal smeared with bluish tones from being underwater. It was a simple design, with a crown shape matching her necklace pendant in the negative space of its single tooth. At the other end was the golden hilt with the keychain sprouting from the end, finished with a design of three circles connected together.

In her dreams of using it before the start of her journey, Sora had never used the keyblade to hurt her allies. Only heartless and denizens of the Dark. The bad guys. Fire, lightning, frost, any magic she cast was for play at the worst, and she'd never use that to hurt anyone either.

'The road to ruin is often paved with good intentions.'

But that couldn't be true. Not for her, who was chosen by the keyblade. Sora was one of the good guys.

Right?

---

RIKU

The heartless—and his experiments to see how much he could control them—did wonders to distract him from thinking on his discovery of the Princesses of Heart and the empty space amongst them. Or at least, they could sufficiently distract Riku during the day. During the night, though, their peaceful faces in the middle of so much black rock haunted him.

No borders around, or below, or above.

Riku had to get (his) keyblade back. He had to.

If a key could open doors, unlock shackles, free anything that could be bound regardless of what form the prison took, then maybe it could free the Princesses too. This wasn't just a matter of getting what was rightfully his anymore, it was a matter of doing the right thing.

The right thing…

"You come back now with the same story about balance, about doing the right thing, and you expect me to fall for it twice!"

Riku gritted his teeth. Obviously he and Jasmine hadn't seen eye to eye, that was the least you could say about their time together. But she didn't deserve that. Encased in glass, in stone, with an unexpected smile considering what Riku could only imagine had happened to her. What had Maleficent done?

What had he done?

No, Riku vehemently reminded himself, he hadn't done anything beyond following orders he was under the mistaken impression of being for the greater good. The only mistake he made was being gullible enough to take Maleficent for anything other than a villain.

And Riku would make sure to stab her in the back with every knife she was foolish enough to give him.

Starting with the heartless. He turned to choose another opponent from the small group he'd gathered.

"Better idea," Riku spoke, and felt a pleased rush as the heartless hung onto his every word at this. "All of you, fight me all at once. Now."

Soul Eater came to his hand in a flash as they lunged, and Riku barely raised it in time to deflect most of their claws. He gave a pained hiss as they reached out farther to grab at his arms, and he could see blood begin to bead along the cuts he hadn't gotten to with a potion yet. He'd have to be quick about this fight, because he wasn't sure his pride would let him call it off before it was over.

The instinctive anger he felt at being struck was useful for him to call forth particularly powerful Dark attacks, bolstering his leaps and giving him strength beyond what he had before.

One swipe of his sword and three weaker heartless fell instantly, with hardly any time for even a single curl of that Dark smoke to seep out and signify their injury before they succumbed. Riku grinned. He could get used to this.

Another heartless that decided to go two-dimensional rose from the floor and grabbed onto his leg. Riku kicked it away viciously as another heartless lunged for his back and began to climb, and Riku's attention was diverted to three different things at once: The heartless that were lunging at him from the sides, the one from below, and the one crawling up behind. Another swipe and two more heartless fell, and the third—one that wore pieces of armor—was not destroyed but certainly down for the count. The beads of blood had begun to trickle down and trace paths around his arms, droplets falling with the same intimidating reminder as the ticking of a clock.

Drip, drop, tick, tock. Keep it quick, Riku.

An uncomfortable squeeze at his throat was another reminder of his misplaced attention, and Riku gave a gasping exhale as he forcibly yanked the heartless' arms away. Its claws left reddened scrapes at his neck but thankfully no scratches, and Riku hurled it to the far side of the room where it collided with the wall with a smack!

He kicked again at the heartless that tried to gather around his legs, and some went two-dimensional to avoid the blow whereas others took it head on and suffered for it. Those were the ones to exude Dark smoke after the blow, and stumble somewhat afterward. Another kick, and they were done for.

The heartless that had clawed at his neck lunged once more, and Riku brought up Soul Eater with a swooping noise as its blade cut through the air and sailed right for the creature and split it in two. It disappeared immediately. A clawing at his foot made Riku look down and he saw the rest were trying to climb up again, and he leapt towards the ceiling as he could feel the Dark bolster his jump to get out of their reach. Angling himself slightly so that he fell with Soul Eater out edge first, Riku managed to defeat the rest of them before they would completely sink into the ground to dodge.

A chittering noise from somewhere towards his left made him look over. One heartless was left standing, one just the same as so many of the ones that attacked him. A small black thing with gnarled hands and feet and crooked antennae. At the sight of the creature an idea occurred to Riku, and he decided to call the fight. He'd be able to defeat this one with hardly a flick of the wrist anyways, so it was as good as done for regardless of it he had actually done anything to it.

"Stop," Riku ordered as he saw it prepare to spring. It twitched and got back into a normal position, its glowing yellow eyes staring at him curiously as it waited further instruction.

He thought to how Maleficent had used the heartless to round the Princesses of Heart up beyond what Riku did. Using them to round up Jasmine, for instance, when she had decided to traverse Hollow Bastion alone upon arrival. And who knows what else Maleficent's used them for? Spreading them amongst the worlds to help the onslaught of the Dark could entail a countless number of orders she may have given them, and whatever orders her cohorts like Jafar had to have given the things.

Riku could give them more complex instructions than simply telling them to stand guard over Kairi or fight him with everything they had. But he was a little short on ideas. There were almost too many possibilities.

"Do a cartwheel?" Riku asked the heartless after several moments.

It turned its head slightly, as if trying to remember what a cartwheel was.

Before Riku could try and tell it how, it raised its hands and spread its feet slightly. The heartless looked over to where it would go and tilted to one side and kept its arms extended, landing on its palms somewhat clumsily before it angled one leg over to catch it as it did the controlled fall. And then, to Riku's surprise, it landed upright on its feet again and resumed looking to him for instruction.

The heartless had really done it. He made it do a cartwheel.

"Huh. Okay," Riku murmured. "Neat. Do it again."

It did.

"Again."

And it did.

"Do three cartwheels."

By now it had ended up on his right from the movement, and after it was done it stared back up at him. Riku bit the inside of his cheek to keep his smile from showing. This is kind of rad, he thought. The sound of something beginning to drip onto the stony floor made him look down, and Riku saw the blood from his cuts had made their way towards the ground where they disappeared at once. He had forgotten his injury.

After taking care of them with a potion or two, he looked to the heartless again. "Jumping jacks?"

It did them continuously, and Riku was halfway considering just leaving it there to do jumping jacks for eternity, or until whoever else came in and told it to stop, but then decided against it.

"Okay, stop." It did.

"Um," He paced for a bit as he decided his next order. "Divide into two heartless?"

The heartless quirked its head again but did nothing. It seemed this wasn't a possible order, as a heartless was comprised of only one Heart. Or that was the best explanation Riku could come up with. He'd have to research whether a Heart could divide into two later.

"Never mind," Riku told it. Another idea came to him: If a heartless couldn't divide, could it change its shape?

It seemed possible, heartless already came in all shapes and sizes. Riku thought back to when he'd made Soul Eater with Maleficent's guidance. That was a different scenario—he was making something from nothing, or technically something nonphysical, and it required her magic because of it. But if he was already working with something physical, maybe Riku didn't need her magic at all.

"Become a dog," He commanded as he closed his eyes. Something simple, he figured, something easy to imagine.

Riku recalled the black veil he had imagined when forging Soul Eater. That formless black shape that could be molded into anything. He imagined the typical form of a dog: Pointed ears, a longer snout. Four paws instead of the heartless' own hands and feet, and a shift to its posture that made it walk on all fours. A tail at the other end. He opened his eyes.

The thing in front of him was now a dog, but still with some heartless qualities. It stared at him with perfectly circular glowing yellow eyes, and it was an unnaturally black color that seemed to absorb all light in the room, like it was the silhouette of a dog. Its tail did not wag, but rather hung limply.

Riku breathed out a laugh as he walked forward to scratch the heartless dog behind the ears and grinned. It was fascinating to see the effects of his new power even if it wasn't perfect, as the heartless didn't give any response to Riku petting it like a normal dog would. Riku decided he'd have to see if he could adjust its behavior to fit its form later.

He stood back up. "Become a cat?"

Riku closed his eyes. It was easier to shape the silhouette now with practice, and it readily yielded to his imagination. The four legs remained but shortened slightly while the proportion of the torso stayed mostly similar as it shrank in size. The shape of the head changed the most, with the ears remaining pointed yet shorter, and the snout receded into the skull into a more feline profile. The tail lengthened.

Riku opened his eyes. Now it was a cat, though with the same typical heartless eyes and color palette as the dog.

Another idea occurred to him. If he could make animals…could he make people?

Riku knew in an instant who he wanted to make. The same person he had wanted to see the most throughout this entire journey, who had fallen out of his reach when he went through the Dark Portal towards the unknown. The one who he had been so desperate to see again. Who made him feel happy, and when she couldn't make him feel happy, she made him feel like things were going to end up alright in the end. Even if things weren't so okay right then.

The one who could beat him in any staring contest. The one whose house he had a key to, who never knew how many sleepless nights he had stared at that key even when he had avoided her. Who didn't know that sometimes he'd still take it out and do nothing but stare at it and think of home. Of her.

And she was also the one who had pointed (his) keyblade at him and abandoned him and Kairi.

It was like fate was playing an awful joke on him. To make Riku still want to see her after everything she'd done, and even though they were technically enemies now. Enemies. The word tasted awful on his tongue, and Riku wasn't sure if he'd be able to say it aloud if he tried. To say such a thing would make it real.

No. He would save that for another day.

"Become Sora."

Her image so easily to him, and Riku wasn't sure how he felt about that. The black veil in his mind took a general humanoid form and he tailored it to the imprint of her still in his Heart. Shorter, with lean arms and legs, and hair that never stayed neat for long. The swimming shorts and short-sleeved hoodie she'd ended up off-world in, with those garish yellow shoes she loved so much. Her fingerless gloves she'd gotten to match him when he got his own gloves.

More specific, now: The belt that she wore and left mostly undone, which used to be number one on the list he liked to call Fifty Things About Sora That Bugged the Crap out of Riku (That He Wouldn't Change for Anything).

The exact angle of her nose, which Sora loved to demonstrate was perfect for balancing writing utensils on.

The crown chain affixed to aforementioned belt, that he'd gotten for her as a birthday present one year when he saw how perfectly it matched her necklace.

And finally, the necklace itself.

He could recall the shape of it clearer than anything else. The gleam it took as it reflected the light of shooting stars, how it sparkled merrily back in Traverse Town when Riku finally saw her again that first time. Three sharp points with circular gaps in between them. The simple chain that it hung from.

Riku opened his eyes, and there she was.

---

SORA

"Ariel!" She yelled towards the expanse of the open ocean. "Ariel! Where could she have gone?"

"Ariel! Flounder!" Donald yelled, his scratchy voice elevated to near deafening levels. "Anyone?"

After they had left the grotto, their mood dampened from their discovery and King Triton's words, the trio had wanted to try and find their companions. Each of their guesses as to what might have happened to her and Flounder were less optimistic than the last, as there was a notable amount of heartless around. Then again, seeing even one heartless could be considered notable, as they did not bode well for the world and could quite quickly multiply. And not for the first time since they landed in Atlantica, Sora wished King Triton would have just put aside his convictions and helped them find the keyhole in the first place so the heartless could be taken care of entirely. She gave an angry sigh.

"Gawrsh, guys?" Goofy spoke up. They turned to him, and he said, "I think we should try going back to the castle."

Donald scratched his head. "Huh? Why?"

"Ariel wouldn't go back after thinking Triton broke her stuff, and he wouldn't be willing to help us anyways," Sora agreed, "What would be the point in going?"

Goofy moved to paddle back towards King Triton's palace before he answered. "Just a feeling," He replied.

"Why, do you think she and Flounder are in trouble?"

"Nope," He replied, and when he looked back to see them both unsatisfied with his answer he explained, "Maxie would do the same thing whenever he got mad or if we didn't agree on something. He'd go to the park or somewhere else for a little while to calm down, and usually by the end of the day he'd come home and we'd be able to talk about it. I betcha Ariel did the same thing, and she'd have to go home eventually."

"I dunno," Sora could feel stress settle at the edges of herself. "What about the heartless?"

"Yeah," Donald admitted. She could see Goofy pull his mouth to one side in concern, and then Sora knew he had considered the same.

Goofy shook his head. "We gotta stay hopeful. No frowning, no sad faces."

She pulled the corners of her lips into something resembling a smile, but that had become harder to do since Monstro. Goofy was right though. Highwind ran on smiling faces.

And the Dark ran on anger, fear, sadness…practically everything else, it seemed.

But the Light ran on hope. It ran on altruism, on joy. It ran on the will to fight.

And if nothing else, Sora was good at fighting. She was good at hoping. This whole thing was just another sort of test, that was all. A test she had been studying for all her life.

"Maybe this is what we've been practicing for. The real test. We pretend to be knights all the time, so what would be different about this?"

Nothing at all was different, except for the fact that Riku and Kairi were not by her side. But that was okay. Even if fate or destiny or whatever had set all of this in motion didn't have plans for the three of them to be together again, Sora planned for them to be together again, and that was enough. There was just the matter of fixing everything and getting Riku to stop this whole Darkness business first.

But first the keyhole. And Ariel and Flounder.

The trio soon realized something was wrong as they approached the throne room where King Triton was supposed to be. But at the moment, as they could see through the pillars, he was absent and only his crown and some small object they couldn't see sat where he once did. Before the throne they saw Ariel and another figure, the latter of whom whose torso ended in a body skin to an octopus' instead of a tail like any other mermaid. Flounder hovered close by Ariel with obvious alarm.

"—Now that dear daddy's been silenced," The unknown woman cackled, and Sora could now see King Triton's trident in her hand. "We had a deal, didn't we?"

Ariel's shoulders shook.

"Ursula, no! I didn't want this!" She begged. "Give me back my father!"

Ariel's hands trembled as she reached towards the crown and scooped up the object that was situated within it. Not an object, Sora realized, but some creature. A creature whose features looked suspiciously similar to King Triton. A pair of moray eels came from either side to circle around Ariel and Ursula, the latter of whom cooed at the eels and brushed a hand lovingly along their spines.

"We cannot find the keyhole," One eel rasped, its mismatched eyes fixed on Ariel.

"It is not here," The other chimed in, who looked to Ursula instead. She grimaced.

"It's got to be somewhere, keep looking! And as for you, dearie," Ursula turned to Ariel, "Be careful what you wish for. The price of making your dream come true can be huge, especially if it's an impossible dream. Now," She said as she reared the trident high into the air, "Time for a little journey to the Dark world of the heartless!"

Ursula turned at the sound of the trio's shouts of anger at her words, and Sora could see she was indeed like no other mermaid they'd seen so far. For one, Ursula's skin was a startling lavender color, and a shock of stark white hair rose out of her head. Her rotund lower half writhed with black tentacles as they flared out, and her troubling smile was punctuated with a beauty mark.

"Why, we have company," She said with mock surprise as she eyed the keyblade in Sora's hand. "I'm afraid you're a little late, dollface. I've already taken care of things here. Now out of my way," Ursula growled as they moved to block her path, and she burst right through with surprising speed alongside her eels. Over her shoulder she yelled, "I've got an ocean to conquer!"

"After her!" Sebastian yelled from his spot on the throne, and Ariel rushed to put down the creature carefully before taking off herself. Sebastian wasted no time in scuttling over to it.

The trio, now accompanied by Flounder, swam to follow them out of the palace as quickly as they could. Along the way Sora could see other small brown creatures that Ursula must have transformed in her path looking up at the group with dreary eyes.

"We gotta stop Ursula!" Flounder sputtered as they raced through the water. "We can't let Ariel try and fight her alone!"

"What happened?!" Donald demanded, his grip on his staff tightening as small sparks began to flicker out of it.

"A-Ariel was crying, and Ursula found her somehow," Flounder struggled to talk as he raced through the water, "And told her you guys came from another world! An' Ursula said she could take Ariel to another world too but she needed the trident to do it, and I-I-I told Ariel not to do it! I told her this wasn't like picking up abandoned human stuff, this could be dangerous, but she didn't listen to me," They all swam faster now at the sight of Ursula and her eels on the horizon, getting closer. They passed the sunken ship they had searched earlier. Flounder continued, "She led Ursula to the throne room and King Triton walked in just as Ariel touched the trident, and then he saw Ursula and got really angry! That's when Ursula grabbed the trident and turned him into that thing, and you guys came in."

"Ursula tricked her!" Sora exclaimed.

"She mentioned the heartless, she's gotta be working with Maleficent," Donald scowled. "Still think she just went home to calm down, Goofy?"

"Gawrsh!"

"Donald! Now is not the time," She scolded. "Besides, Goofy could have been right if Ursula hadn't shown up. We wouldn't know."

"Fine," He huffed, but his staff still crackled at the edges.

They had come up on a sort of clearing now, where the stony cliffs of undersea mountains were far off and there wasn't much in the way of coral or any other kind of underwater life out here. Even the sun's rays from far above didn't quite reach this place, making for a gloomy environment that would not be out of place twenty leagues more under the ocean's surface, and looked out of place for an area that was supposed to be in the same depths as somewhere like King Triton's palace. Had Ursula done this?

"Ursula!" Ariel bunched her hands into fists, "Turn my father and everyone back to normal or else!"

"Or else what?" Ursula simpered as the trident in her hand glowed threateningly, and its light was reflected in the eels' hides. She slid her gaze onto the rest of the group as they approached and gave a mocking laugh. "I see the rest have come to join those poor unfortunate souls."

"We're here to stop you, Ursula," Sora raised her keyblade to emphasize her point, and saw how Ursula fixated on it with distaste. At the edge of her vision, Sora could see Ariel circle around behind Ursula once she was distracted.

"I'd like to see you try," Ursula sneered. She raised the glowing trident in response and ran a hand through her hair to reveal a newly-placed crown that was nearly identical to King Triton's. The trident began to give off an unsettling humming noise as it charged with power. "Now watch the queen conquer, I'm going to wipe out anything that's in my—AUGH!"

Ariel had yanked on Ursula's hair with astonishing strength, causing her head to be pulled back as her eyes wrenched shut in pain, which in turn caused her aim with the trident to skew. The bolt of energy that shot out of the trident soared far above the group's heads as they flinched, and at the sound of sizzling Sora realized it had hit Ursula's pet eels instead and destroyed them. Crumbling black particulate seeped through the current and was promptly carried away as Ursula watched, completely taken aback at the turn of events.

"I…wha…my darlings…" Her mouth hung open for a moment, and then her face twitched once, twice, as her expression turned mean and her eyes turned into something bestial. "You'll pay for this," Ursula started in a low voice as the trident glowed again and she smacked Ariel away. Dark clouds began to obscure the group's vision, and they clustered together as the smoke surrounded everything. "You'll pay for this!"

Sora kept a tight grip on the keyblade as she was blinded from the smoke and held the weapon out in front of her, ready for whatever might come from the fog. She could hear Ursula's voice grow monstrous as it boomed over the clearing.

"I rule the sea now, you pathetic fools!" She roared, and the smoke cleared enough to where they could see she had become a giant, dwarfing even the cliffs in the distance. Ursula swung her free arm out widely, and it caused a current that threatened to sweep the group up along with it. Her many legs rose and fell to cause the sandy earth to tremble, and the ocean surface was visibly growing agitated with her movement. Now, the group had to actively swim in directions changing every second to avoid being swept up or become trapped in the grip of a stray black tentacle.

"The sea and all its spoils bow to my power now," Ursula gripped onto the trident as it continued to glow, and Sora could see it form the center of a vortex as all manner of things got swept up in it. "And you will bow right alongside them!"

Sora fitfully beat back one of Ursula's legs with her keyblade, noting unhappily how it only left gashes but didn't stop it in its path. Trails of Darkness seeped out that would have marked the doom of a normal-sized heartless, but the problem was that this was no opponent of a normal size. And by the time Sora could manage to leave enough cuts to weaken her effectively, Ursula may very well have noticed her doing so by then and taken steps to stop it. Not to mention that trident in her hand, that had potentially so much more capability than they'd seen already.

That trident…Sora thought about it as she continued to dodge. If they were able to get it out of her hands, maybe this could be fixed. But how?

She struggled to swim against the currents Ursula created, and saw how the others were trying to do the same with varying degrees of success: Flounder had long since gotten swept around and decided to hold onto Ariel, who was doing notably better than the trio at not getting tossed around. Donald was firing off spells of all kinds as fast as he could, and Goofy repeatedly did that flicking move he had done in their clashes with the heartless to Ursula's legs. But they couldn't keep it up forever, and Ursula didn't seem to be harmed very much by their work so far. There had to be another solution.

Sora swam upwards to try and get mostly out of reach of Ursula's legs and scanned the surroundings. There wasn't much to see, as most of the detritus had already been swept up into the vortex Ursula created. And what was left wasn't easily visible amongst the low light of the area combined with the remaining traces of the Dark smoke.

"This won't be pretty," Ursula crowed as she began waving the trident around, its glow partially blocked out by the swirl of rubble around it. Sora could feel the water give a great pulse as the rubble flew in all directions, and the force of it threw her around as well. Judging by the angry yell Donald made, some of it likely hit her friends.

She slowly opened her eyes. Where Sora had landed was a small distance away from the fight, and Ursula's looming visage was a little less overwhelming because of it. She could see great bursts of light shoot out, likely from Donald's spells.

She continued searching. There had to be something useful around here, something big enough to hurt when it hit…

The ship! Sora realized with a start, as she saw its silhouette not too far away begin to quake as Ursula formed another vortex again. Its structure looked a little ramshackle, like it could begin to break apart if the current grew too strong, but even the pieces could still do significant damage. But if the structure could be fortified somehow, and they could make it sweep up into the current doing so, they could still win. But how?

Ice. That was it!

If they casted a strong enough frost spell on the ship, it could stay in one piece and it would get swept up in the current easier. Ice tended to float, after all. But Sora couldn't do it alone.

She swam back towards the group as fast as she could, her speed helped slightly by Ursula's vortex still building, and saw that they had made not much progress yet. Goofy was still trying to spin, his movements now wobbling with vertigo, and Ariel kicked and punched any of Ursula's legs within reach. Donald was still firing off spells.

"Donald!" Sora called out, "Donald, I need your help. You gotta help me cast the biggest frost spell we can, maybe a whole bunch of them."

"What are you thinking?"

"I think we can defeat her for good," Sora said, trying to grab everyone else's attention as Ursula continued to wield the trident.

She told them her plan, past constant interruptions with trying to dodge a stray leg or a piece of rubble getting sucked up. "So me and Donald gotta get to that ship, but I need you guys to distract Ursula, so she doesn't try using that trident if she catches onto us."

"Sounds a whole lot better than spinning," Goofy said as he dizzily held a flipper to his head. Ariel nodded and swam towards the handle of the trident, with Flounder staying behind with Goofy. And with that, Donald and Sora sped away towards the ship.

It took some doing, but they had made it there. And with no further ado they both started darting in and out of the ship casting all the frost spells they could. From fortifying the rudder, to plugging up most of the hull's and stern's holes, and most of the work going towards turning the bowsprit and remaining masts into viciously sharp icicles, the entire ship was soon encased in a significant layer of ice.

The water around Sora and Donald was so cold she could see small bits of frost hover around them as the temperature dropped sharply with their work.

Sora could still feel a slight pull at her as Ursula's vortex strengthened, and she grinned as the ship began to shake back and forth with the current much more than it did before.

"I think it's working!" She excitedly told Donald.

He huffed. "It better, I don't think I have a drop of magic left after that."

Sora didn't either, she realized. That gnawing feeling she got when her magic ran out from overuse was the strongest she'd felt yet on her journey, and she really, really hoped this succeeded.

"Don't think I've forgotten you, dearie!" Ursula shouted as she pulled the trident out of Ariel's reach. The vortex doubled in strength, and now the ship rose out of the ground with a river of sand pouring from the remaining holes in the hull, reducing its weight and making it go faster. Unfortunately, it pulled Sora and Donald along for the ride with the vortex's power, and they both grabbed helplessly onto whatever parts of the ship they could reach as it sailed through the water. The ice encasing it was so cold it began to feel as though it burned Sora's hands, but she didn't let go.

Ursula lowered the head of the trident to level it against Goofy and Flounder, and the vortex followed. The ship gave a nauseating turn as it got closer, and by now they were near enough that Sora could see Ariel had circled back around behind Ursula again and was reaching desperately for the handle of the trident.

Ursula's laugh was loud enough to nearly deafen Sora with how close she was, and the ice encasing the ship gave a crack as they left the frigid temperature of the area she and Donald had frozen it in. She desperately hoped it could stay together just a couple of seconds longer.

The vortex strengthened again, and the ship gave another terrifying crack.

Closer, now.

Sora could see they were heading straight for Ursula's back, and Ariel swam out of the way and made another dash towards the trident.

Closer.

Creak!

Closer.

The ship groaned, and Sora's fingers felt like they were going to fall off from the cold.

The bowsprit was aimed perfectly at Ursula's back, and the sharp point of the ice speared right into her. Sora felt a little nauseated as she saw it come out the other side, and Ursula gave a choked noise before she began to fall over, her tentacles thrashing about as she recoiled from the pain. Sora and Donald let go of the ship immediately and swam away so they wouldn't get crushed, and Sora watched the trident slip out of Ursula's grasp as her eyes rolled towards the back of her head and she started to dissolve into Dark smoke. Ariel made a mad dash towards it and laid a hand on its still-oversized handle, and the trident visibly shrank to its former size as Ariel tightened her grip on it.

"Goofy?" Donald yelled, at the same time Ariel yelled "Flounder?"

"I'm here!" Flounder replied, and Sora looked over to see him dashing out of a large plume of the Dark smoke with Goofy close behind. They both looked as exhausted as Sora felt.

There was a flash of light, and the next moment all of their exhaustion was gone. The wounds the group had sustained from the fight had healed, and Sora could feel the gnawing sensation disappear as her magic was renewed. The group all looked over to see Ariel now wielding the trident.

"Let's go back home," Ariel said. "I have an apology I need to make."

---

RIKU

"Fight me again," He said as he wiped away a small trickle of blood from the cut on his face.

This heartless Sora was mostly made of Dark smoke at this point, more mist than girl, but it didn't stop her from lunging again. Riku barely raised Soul Eater in time to block and the heartless' claws left another scrape on his forearm. His eyes darted to the doorway where he had stationed multiple heartless to keep watch in case Maleficent decided to come in and watch.

Riku did not want an audience, and especially not her audience.

Today had started the same as yesterday since he'd discovered he could make the heartless transform into Sora: After getting out of bed and getting ready and a quick check-in with Kairi and the little heartless, Riku would make a mad dash down to the training room he frequented and pull aside several heartless along the way. Once there he would tell one heartless to go inside, and the rest to stay at the door and keep watch for Maleficent. And then Riku would promptly go in and tell the heartless to become Sora.

The first time he'd opened his eyes and saw her, even just an imitation, his Heart fluttered. And that made Riku furious all over again.

He was supposed to hate Sora now. He wanted to desperately, and he'd managed to hate everything else about the situation already—Riku hated his Heart for still fluttering like that, he hated fate or destiny or whatever dictated all of this for making them enemies, and he hated the Light because Sora chose it over him. He hated that duck and dog that tagged along with her everywhere she went because they replaced him and Kairi so easily. He hated that Sora was going along with all of it and being so stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid…

…But Riku also hated how he couldn't hate Sora even now. No matter how much he tried, and no matter how much he wanted to.

That flutter in his Heart made Riku angry enough to tell the heartless to stop looking like her and leave, and Riku would not admit to the chasm in his chest he felt at seeing it go. And so, later, he got another heartless and turned it into Sora, and demanded that it spar with him, and that was how he ended up here. With yet another imitation of Sora to spar with.

He would have liked to pretend that this was like old times again, only no longer on a sunny shore. But that was hard for Riku to do with a Sora that was as Dark as the night, with round yellow eyes that reminded him painfully that this creature was not human, though it once was.

The heartless Sora kneeled down to all fours and charged towards Riku exactly like a normal heartless, and he grimaced as he reared back Soul Eater.

Another aspect to the heartless that kept Riku from being able to pretend was the fact that none of the Soras carried a weapon of any kind. He had tried forming a Dark keyblade in her hand, once, but upon opening his eyes he made it disappear immediately and never tried giving any of the others one since. Another time he tried giving one a sword shaped just like the wooden ones they'd sparred with back on the islands, but somehow it didn't look right in her hand anymore either.

The heartless Sora caught Soul Eater in the crook of her hand between her thumb and pointer finger. Even though Riku had held back on the strike, as he'd noticed himself doing inadvertently more and more during these spars, it was enough to destroy the heartless. Its hand gave way as it dispersed into Dark smoke and Riku's face fell.

For what felt like a long time, though it couldn't have been more than under an hour at the most, Riku did nothing but stand there and stare at where the heartless had once been. Where Sora had once been. Eventually the empty feeling grew to be too much, and he found himself standing in front of the door to the training room already reaching at the handle. Riku hadn't even realized he'd been walking towards it.

He opened the door, and the heartless he'd stationed outside of it looked to him. Riku pointed at one at random.

"You. In here."

Without missing a beat, it shuffled inside and Riku closed the door quietly behind it.

"Become Sora."

Now her image only had to blink into his mind for a split-second for the command to work, as Riku had done it so many times. The heartless didn't move as its limbs shifted and it stood straighter, and its antennae multiplied and settled into the exact silhouette of her hair.

"Fight me."

He'd triple-checked today to make sure Maleficent was busy and that Diablo was nowhere nearby.

Riku and the heartless fought, and they fought, and they fought. He alternated between pulling his strikes slightly and giving them extra fervor, and thankfully this heartless was able to withstand and fight back much better than any of the others he'd sparred with yet. Riku could almost pretend with this one.

In the back of his mind Riku thought: No, she stands more like this than that, and the heartless shifted its stance slightly to match. Riku didn't realize it had done so, instead instinctively finding more similarities to Sora with this heartless. Sora would plant her foot at a narrower angle and push her leg back more. The heartless did so, and continued parrying. She'd bring her other arm up to guard and bring her head down a little more. The heartless did just that.

Riku found more similarities as he went and didn't yet realize the heartless could hear subconscious commands, too. And somewhere along the way he forgot he was supposed to be pretending.

He pulled his hits more and more, and soon enough it was mostly the heartless that was on the offensive as Riku was too distracted with the thought This is Sora, it's Sora, she's here again.

(You're finally with me.)

(Together.)

"S-stop," Riku gasped as he stumbled over to the wall and leaned against it. They had fought for so long that he was completely out of breath, and his arms burned. He dismissed Soul Eater from his hand. "Stop the fight."

Sora looked at him blankly, tilting her head slightly. It was a questioning gesture that was so accurate it made his pretending into something much closer to believing this was Sora, right here with him. His Heart fluttered again.

Riku wasn't sure what exactly he was feeling right now. The adrenaline had bypassed anger, and fear, and changed into a sort of loneliness—which in turn confused that little place in his mind that believed this was Sora. How could he feel lonely if she were right here?

"I missed you," He whispered.

(Closer, please, I missed you.)

Sora blinked, and drew closer. Her steps even had that slight bounce onto the ball of her feet.

(I need you with me. Choose me. Please.)

She got closer.

It took him a moment to remember to breathe.

That feeling settled into something quiet and desperate and needing at the bottom of his Heart that Riku didn't know the name of, that he'd never felt before. And its former quietude was ended in favor of something a little louder.

Before he knew it that something was getting louder and louder, until it pushed out his thoughts, his anger, his fear, anything and everything else Riku felt at that moment. Until there was only that something left.

(Please love me back.)

Riku closed his eyes and leaned in without realizing what he was doing, and Sora did too. They both tilted their heads just so.

His lips touched a smooth coldness, and Riku finally realized exactly what just happened. He jerked back fast enough that his head hit the wall, and unblinkingly watched the heartless with an unnerved feeling as he cradled the back of his skull with one hand.

With the other hand Riku repeatedly wiped his mouth and looked back and forth between the heartless and the door, desperately hoping Maleficent wasn't anywhere near the door out in the hallway. He staggered backwards until he could feel the handle press into his back as his eyes didn't leave the heartless, who was still staring at him with its head tilted, and Riku swiped at the handle until he grabbed it and threw open the door.

He searched the hallway without stepping out of the archway, ignoring the remaining heartless looking to him in expectation of another order. Maleficent wasn't here, and neither was Diablo. Good.

Riku glared at the heartless outside of the door, and said, "I don't need you anymore."

They dispersed and went their own paths up and down the hallway. Riku shut the door with much more force than earlier and stared at the heartless Sora for a moment as it stared back, green eyes meeting glowing yellow. Not blue, he reminded himself, Not blue. Not real.

"Go away," He said quietly. It stepped into a Dark portal and disappeared. In no mood to deal with the long walk back to his room and potentially face Maleficent, Riku summoned a Dark portal himself.

Once he stepped out onto the floor in his room he went straight for the bathroom door, and once Riku opened it he made his way over to the mirror. Riku had both blanched and blushed at what had happened, the colors warring on his skin to subside into a strange sallow pink.

Riku realized then that what he hated the most about all of this was the feeling of emptiness returning to his chest—so much stronger now and so much worse for it—at knowing the heartless was gone.

---

SORA

Later, when they had returned to the palace and Ariel returned the victims of Ursula to normal along the way, the group slowed when they began to come up on the throne room. Sebastian had remained with King Triton, who was still in his form as a polyp and sitting in the middle of his crown. They both looked over as the group swam in.

Ariel's face twisted with shame at the sight of her father. She grabbed onto the trident with both hands as it began to glow, this time a soft steady light as compared to when Ursula wielded it. Ariel closed her eyes as the polyp blazed with light, and the rest of the group did the same.

"Your majesty!" Sebastian cheered as the light settled back into the prior form of King Triton, who looked to Ariel with regret.

"Ariel, you deserve an apology."

"What?" She held out the trident as she approached, her forehead creased with confusion. King Triton took it. "I should be the one saying sorry, daddy, I took your trident and gave it to Ursula."

"It's my fault. You only followed Ursula because I wouldn't let you follow your Heart," At those words Ariel dashed towards him for a hug, and King Triton held his arms open wide. He looked to the trio over Ariel's head with none of the judgmental air he had regarded them with previously. "I did not trust you three, and for that I apologize as well."

"You were trying to do your best," Goofy encouraged, and Sora nodded. Beside them both, Donald huffed, but said nothing after Sora gave him a slight nudge with her elbow. The corner of King Triton's mouth curved up at them before he sighed.

"Brave key bearer, I have one more request: Seal the keyhole."

"So, it was here in Ariel's grotto the whole time?" Sora gaped. "And you knew?"

King Triton nodded. "I didn't tell you because I hoped the situation would never come that anyone else needed to know. The more people that know of its location, the higher chance those such as Ursula may overhear, even by accident. It's interesting that Ariel chose this place to hide her discoveries from her excursions."

"It fascinated me for some reason," Ariel replied as she swam up and down the chamber to inspect her findings, repaired courtesy of King Triton with the help of his trident. "And there were tons of places in here for me to put my things."

Without further ado, King Triton raised his trident as the keyhole flashed into existence before Sora's eyes, and she wasted no time in raising her keyblade towards the keyhole as stars of Light swirled around its end with a chime.

A great beam of Light shot out of the keyblade towards the keyhole, and it disappeared with the heavy click sound of it locking. Finally, the group was left in the peaceful quiet of the grotto.

"Thank you," King Triton said. "Now peace will return to the sea."

Ariel stared longingly at where the keyhole had been even after it faded from view.

"Sora, tell me," She pleaded, "Your world—what's it like?"

"About that," Sora cringed slightly. "I'm sorry for lying to you."

"It's okay, really," Ariel chuckled. "Besides, if you can travel to so many other worlds, maybe one day I can too," She looked up at the ceiling of the grotto far above them, towards where the sun shone far above the crests of the waves. "So many worlds, so many people. There's so much to see out there. I know I'll find a way to get there someday, and I'll make sure not to put anyone else in danger again doing it."

"Some things never change," King Triton gave her a weary smile, and turned to Sora. "I must give you one last warning, key bearer."

"Huh?"

"If mishandled, the key can bring unspeakable calamity," He warned her. "But it can also be the penultimate force for good. Choose wisely what you do with such a thing, key bearer, and use the key with caution."

She studied him with confusion. None of the trio had confessed to anything about themselves other than that they weren't from the same ocean as Ariel and everyone else here, and Sora hadn't even said where her necklace came from. It was King Triton that could discern her as not even being a mermaid in the first place, and it was King Triton that seemed to know much more about the keyblade and its potential than any of the trio had ever let on.

"How do you know about this?" She asked as she gestured with the keyblade. "How did you know about us?"

"There was a paper that Ariel had discovered not long ago, and excitedly showed me before she realized I did not approve of her hobby," King Triton explained, as he started to scan the shelves for the paper in particular. Ariel eagerly swam to the exact spot the paper was at and, upon pulling it out with a rustling noise, dived back down to hand it to Sora. "Written by another king who had studied the Heart."

"King Ansem?" Goofy asked, and King Triton's eyes widened at him slightly with surprise. Sora and Donald leaned over to read the paper.

"Why, yes," He replied, and continued, "In that text he discussed what another had told him of the key's potential. As for the keyhole, knowledge of it was passed down to me from a long line of previous rulers. I did not know what it could do other than that it was important to keep it secret, but when I saw you three arrive asking after it, I remembered the warning of King Ansem and what that key could wrought, and I deemed it best to feign ignorance."

"Gawrsh," Was all Goofy could say to that, and Sora looked up from the paper.

"'One legend says its wielder saved the world, while another says that they wrought chaos and ruin upon it'," She recited, and bit her lip. Sora raised the keyblade and watched how it twinkled in the light of the grotto once again.

She had thought it could only be used for good. Sora didn't realize it could so easily go the other way.

"Hopefully you understand my initial distrust of it," King Triton commented. Sora nodded.

"I'll never use it for such a thing," She said. "I promise."

---

RIKU

That day, he was woken up not with a repeated tapping of his nose, but with a less-than-gentle shove to his shoulder. Riku's eyes opened with a start at the gesture and he bit back his reflexive anger as he looked over to see a different heartless had woken him up today. Right, he reminded himself, the little heartless is with Kairi. It was easy to forget in the haze of having just woken up.

"Don't wake me up like that," Riku ordered it, and the heartless didn't even blink in response. It merely went two-dimensional as it wandered back out of the room underneath the gap beneath the door, its task done. Riku sighed and got ready quickly, before going down to see whatever it was Maleficent wanted.

He decided to make a Dark portal to let him out at the end of the hall to get to the chapel quickly without Maleficent questioning him for overuse of the Dark power, as Riku wasn't really in the mood to listen to lectures on the matter after the incident yesterday. Riku stopped outside the door to take a deep breath and hoped the still-lingering traces of his blush were gone, feeling his face to make sure.

Maleficent regarded him with appraisal as he walked in and sat down, and said, "You're punctual today."

Riku gave a noncommittal noise in response, unwilling to give her room to ask anything more. They both turned at the sound of footsteps wandering into the chapel, and Riku could see it was Captain Hook.

He'd only met him a couple of times before, once in his introduction to all of the members of Maleficent's inner circle after the events of Agrabah, and in the meetings thereafter. Riku could not say he was impressed with the man—he came off as somewhat bumbling and hotheaded, and too busy tripping over his own coattails to accomplish much. When Riku had brought this up with Maleficent she replied, "It's always good to have a spare."

He hadn't quite understood what she meant then, but after hearing her true plans for forging the key to Kingdom Hearts it made sense.

"What's the plan today?" Riku asked.

Captain Hook grinned and raised the impeccably polished hook that was his namesake up to the light, so that it gleamed. "Certainly no pleasure cruise, that's for sure."

"What a shame," Riku deadpanned, and did not react to Captain Hook's frown.

"I've received a potential lead on where your dear friend's Heart might be, my boy," Maleficent announced, and Riku saw her expression shift slightly as she watched him remain unchanged at news that would have been cause for celebration just a week ago. "So it might be best for you to not be antagonistic."

Riku was sure she was lying to him again somehow. The images of the Princesses of Heart flashed in his mind again, encased under glass and whatever magic Maleficent had cast. The sight of the empty space among them loomed in his thoughts every day since he had discovered the true purpose of his work.

His hand balled into a fist in his lap.

"And what'll you be doing?" He asked her.

Maleficent raised a brow just slightly.

"I've got work of my own to do, so I'll be gone for the day myself."

The empty space appeared in his mind's eye again.

Maleficent had to be planning something for it, there was no other possibility. But who would go there? What other girl was she planning to take?

He thought of Alice and Jasmine.

And then he thought of Kairi.

Nothing is free, Riku.

She was helping him with Kairi for a reason, something far beyond simple generosity. And Riku wouldn't let down his guard until he found out why.

"Fine," He agreed as he stood, and the chair gave a dull sound as its legs scraped against the floor. "But I'm taking Kairi with me. It has to do with her Heart, right? We'll bring her and find out right then and there."

Maleficent was hiding something from him, and Riku wouldn't leave off-world without Kairi again if he could help it. The little heartless was his friend, but he couldn't rely on it to be strong enough to stop Maleficent if she tried anything.

Maleficent pursed her lips at his request for a split-second, almost too fast to see, but it was enough to confirm his suspicion. Maleficent had intended to distract him with this task.

"Fine, but you need to leave quickly," She decided. "You'd best be on your way."

---

KAIRI

Other than the brief visits from Riku, most of Kairi's days since the little heartless was stationed in her room were spent observing it.

It didn't do much beyond watching her, at times approaching the bed and giving her nose a tentative poke as if it were still searching for a sign of life. But when Kairi was unable to respond, it walked away and went back to watching her again.

It was endearing, certainly, but that wasn't the only thing about the little heartless that fascinated her. It was the pieces of the Heart within it.

Kairi had never bothered to see beyond into the Heartless the same way she did with people. Her few encounters with them were fleeting, for one, and too terrifying thus far to consider the idea beyond the need to get away.

That is, until this one.

Perhaps it was the fact that Riku could command this heartless, or perhaps it was from watching it behave in such a docile manner over the course of her time with it, but Kairi couldn't bring herself to be afraid of it even if she wanted to. It was a heartless unlike any others she'd seen yet, and its Darkness was familiar. But not like the hooded man's Darkness, that ensconced both of his Hearts, where her memory of it was in a place of her entrenched in a past she couldn't name.

This was a Darkness she knew from a time she remembered, from a Heart she knew well. Kairi was sure of that. But who?

It was a difficult task to recognize a Heart when she could only see half of it, where the Light was gone. The Light had given her a whole picture, a feeling, something to remember it much more easily by. But recognizing a Heart only from its Darkness was like trying to translate a language you only partially knew and half of the words were missing.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps quickly approaching her door, and Kairi saw Riku walk into the room. He spared no glance for the heartless as he made his way towards the bed and scooped up Kairi's body, and adjusted her until he was carrying her bridal-style. What was going on?

"It's okay, you're dismissed for now," Riku said to the heartless distractedly. It looked to him in silent question, and he informed it, "We'll just be going somewhere for a little while, okay? Don't worry, we'll be back soon."

The little heartless bent its head down in an unexpectedly forlorn gesture and Kairi could see Riku giving it a soft smile before it disappeared into a Dark portal. And with that, Riku summoned a Dark portal himself just in front of the door, and they both went through.

They came out onto a harbor somewhere, filled with old-style ships whose sails stretched up towards the sky. It was night, with the moon providing the majority of the light, and gas lamps here and there lit up the rest of the way on the dock Riku carried her along. They were walking towards a particularly large ship trimmed with gold, and a giant carved wooden skull forming the figurehead. On the dome of the skull was marked a red 'X' painted to look like crossbones. Emblazoned on the side of the hull in gilded script read The Jolly Roger.

"I can't tell you much right now," Riku murmured to her as his eyes darted between the other pirates walking towards the ship and climbing aboard, "But I had to take you with me this time. Maleficent's planning something with you and I couldn't risk it. Sorry about that."

If only Kairi could talk to him, and she would tell him everything. How much of this could have been avoided if that were possible?

Or would it have been like with Sora, and Maleficent would manage to find out regardless and put a stop to it?

Kairi didn't know. But she figured it accomplished nothing to think of what-ifs, and that she should think more on what was. What is. What could or would be.

She had told the sleeping boy back in the white room her grandmother's story of hope. The story of how the first Light was obscured by a Darkness that seemed to eclipse everything, that seemed like it would last forever. But it didn't.

The Light lived on in the Hearts of kids like her. Pieces of it bound together to create a new Light that saved everything.

Kairi had to remember that even in the middle of so much despair, in the middle of so much Darkness, there was always a Light. And just because she couldn't see it didn't mean it wasn't there. It was hiding in the Hearts of kids like her, like Riku with his small pinpoint of Light in his Heart even now after following the Dark. Like Sora, whose Hearts Kairi remembered shone with so much Light it nearly blinded her.

If there was always a Light, there was always hope.

And hope was exactly what Kairi would do.

---

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

°□° Oh snap, you guys, only 4 chapters left (well, 3 if you don't count the short lil epilogue)

Sorry I skipped over Halloween Town. Nothing story relevant would happen with that, so maybe I'll cover it a little bit later on with the ancillary material to this series I'll eventually do. Also sorry this took a couple of weeks, the endgame chapters are kinda heavy comparatively so there's bunches of things to balance!

Notes:
1. (˵ ͡° ͜ ʖ ͡°˵ )

2. (˵ ͡~ ͜ ʖ ͡° ˵)

3. okay but seriously I'm super surprised people haven't written more fics about the sort of hijinks Riku could have been up to with being able to control the heartless and make them look like Sora.

4. 'Fifty Things About Sora That Bugged the Crap out of Riku (That He Wouldn't Change for Anything)'. Hmm. I'm halfway (really three-fourths of the way) thinking about making a oneshot series titled exactly this, going into exactly those things (and maybe one thing Riku does that bugs the crap out of Sora that she couldn't change, either) (or maybe make an equivalent list of fifty? I dunno) (I don't think Sora could even come up with fifty things, it doesn't seem in line w/ his character)

5. Okay, so I know Triton says that the key bearer must not meddle in the affairs of other worlds, but the games never explain *how* he knows that. Such insight would imply that Triton somehow knows A) what keyblades are and what they can do, B) what the keyblade wielder's mission is and what heartless are, and C) that there are other worlds out there and that they are to remain separate (which doesn't make any sense either now that I think about it, because IIRC according to Union-X the worlds were all one world in the beginning) (and if a denizen of a world knows there are other worlds in existence, isn't that meddling already?). I'm not sure, so I kinda cherrypicked what he would know and worked in a sort of explanation for that!

6. yep, I know you get Ansem Report #9 from dealing with Neverland and Capt. Hook, but the idea that "The keyblade brings either salvation or ruin" seemed particularly pertinent with King Triton's words of the keyblade potentially bringing ruin in this level (and it'd make more sense storytelling-wise as for how he got that information, just sayin').

7. Ariel's gonna be calling a fork a comb for the rest of her life now (at least until Prince Eric tells her the proper names for everything) I got the impression that mermaids also called their combs 'combs' since in the movies we see Ariel and her sisters all use brushes/combs. Now I've written the word comb enough times that it doesn't look like a real word anymore. Comb comb comb comb comb.

8. Seriously, if Ariel basically swam 24/7 her entire life, she'd have the endurance of an Olympian. I'm not even kidding, have you seen Olympic swimmers? Consider how Ariel would be probably outcompeting any of them in any event. (she'd also have crazy biceps and shoulders, too, but that part's on Disney for not including that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

9. I know canonically Sora doesn't have his necklace on him in his atlantica form in either kh1 or kh2, but the necklace appears in every other form he ever comes in, including the pridelands lion form (hmm). And! If the necklace theory is correct, the necklace will play one helluva role in KH3, so it makes sense for the necklace to appear in every form he takes anyways, which makes it interesting that it doesn't appear in the atlantica transformation. Hmmmmm.

10. If I ever got turned into a Disney mermaid making sure my clamshell top was fused to my skin would be the first thing I'd check, tbh

Okay! Kairi's gonna come up a lot more in the next chapter, so don't worry about that, it's just this one was 18k already and she'd still be kinda in a state of emotional shock at potentially being in a beachy purgatory for the rest of eternity, so she probably wouldn't have much to say to anyone. She needed a while to recoup first.

As always, thank you all so much for your comments/kudos/everything on FFN and AO3. You guys are the stars in my night sky and I love you ( ˘ ³˘)