Chapter 20

Donald and Goofy's Gummi Ship landed safely in the hangar, and the two hopped out of the ship, not even thinking to check the ship for problems before they walked away. After all, that was Chip and Dale's job, right? And there couldn't be anything bad going on--the Cornerstone of Light kept any evil being from entering the castle!

Or so they thought. In reality, the Cornerstone only prevented beings of Darkness from entering--and, unfortunately for Chip and Dale, that wasn't what they had to worry about. Just as the two chipmunks entered the ship for its daily checkup, an unnatural-looking glow began to shine from the door to the ship's storage area. Not expecting anything out of the ordinary, they opened the door, revealing a large, bipedal insect-like creature curled up inside.

The two weren't even able to open their mouths to call for help before they were each impaled through the chest by one of the creature's sharp claws.

Shortly afterward, two tiny pink hearts drifted up out of the chipmunks' lifeless bodies, each clinging near to the glowing creature that had removed them. There were two small flashes of light, and then the hearts were gone, replaced by two white-skinned, cricket-like creatures.

Disney Castle was now in more danger than it had been in a very long time, whether anyone inside knew it or not.

At about the same time, the Gummi Ship piloted by Riku and King Mickey was heading away from the Twilight World, leaving through the blue-tinted crystal door and floating off into space.

"So," Riku asked, "What do we do now? I can't go back home now... not as long as Gil-Neithev's still around."

"Well," Mickey said, "How about we go back to the castle? It should be a little safer there."

"Yeah... it should be," Riku said, stopping for a while before continuing. "Sorry about that. This whole thing just has me in a bad mood."

"I know what you're talkin' about there," Mickey said, looking over toward Riku, "This Gil-Neithev mess looks like it's gonna be worse than anything we've seen before... but we've got to keep trying, no matter how bad it gets."

Contrary to popular belief, Twilight Town's sky actually did get darker at night--rather than a bright, orange-hued sunset, Twilight Town's sky at night resembled the last few minutes of a sunset, sinking down over the horizon as the sky grew dark.

Except, it never really went past that point. Instead of being frozen in the middle of sunset, the sky was frozen at the end of it--it still didn't quite look like it was night, but it wasn't quite daytime either.

Roxas was still awake, lying on his bed, when his alarm clock went off, signifying that it was nearly midnight. He reached over and turned the alarm off before hopping out of bed and slipping his usual clothes back on. He summoned his two Keyblades, illuminating the room with lights and flames for a second, and then slipped them into the straps across his back.

Hopefully, he wouldn't need to use them--but it was always better to be safe.

He left the house, walking down the half-darkened streets of Twilight Town. When he passed by houses where anyone lived, he would stay in the shadows, sneaking past them and making sure nobody saw him. Other times, when he was sure nobody was around, he would start running. After all, he didn't want to be late.

Several minutes passed before he made it to the woods. The pine trees looked especially creepy at night--even though it wasn't completely dark, it was still dark enough to make the trees seem like something would jump out from their branches at any moment.

But, of course, nothing ever did. Roxas passed through the woods safely, pushing the vines and weeds out of his way as he finally reached the mansion's gate. Looking up to the second-floor windows, he noticed that the lights were on in one room--Naminé's room--even though the rest of the building was dark.

For a second, Roxas felt more nervous than he had in years. He was finally going to see Naminé again--for the first time in nearly ten years--but he didn't know what to expect.

After a few minutes of just standing around, he finally managed to reach up and open the front door of the mansion, taking a few steps into the building. The door to Naminé's white room was apparently open, as the light from that room was pouring into the lower floor's front room as well. That made it a little easier to walk up the stairs without tripping, even with the thick layer of dust that still coated the whole place.

Roxas climbed up the stairs slowly, holding onto the handrails the whole way. He kept one hand ready to draw one of his Keyblades, just in case something happened--even though he knew Naminé wouldn't do anything to hurt him, he also remembered the glowing insect-creatures that lurked in the area.

It seemed like it took forever to get to the door he was headed for, but actually only a few minutes had passed. He slowly peeked around the doorframe, looking into the white room and noticing the pictures covering the wall, just like the last time he had been here.

Except this time, the person who had drawn them was there as well. Her back was turned to the door, and her hair had grown even longer than it was before, hanging halfway down her back and almost covering the back part of the chair she sat in. She was wearing a white dress and sandals, as always, but now the dress was a much longer one and her sandals were a more normal-looking brown, rather than blue.

Naminé had also grown up--a lot--since the last time Roxas had seen her. She seemed to have grown nearly a foot in height since then, and there were... other changes, as well. She definitely wasn't such a tiny little girl anymore. Roxas just stood there and watched her draw, blushing slightly, for several minutes. Finally, she put the pen down on the table, and Roxas decided to take a step through the door.

Just as Roxas entered the room, she stood up out of her chair before turning around and smiling at him. The same smile she always had when he visited her in Castle Oblivion, coming up with all those crazy ideas for things she could draw. He ran up to hug her...

And then passed right through, as if she wasn't there at all.

Michiko wasn't able to sleep. She just tossed and turned on Marluxia's old bed, still full of energy from today's training session--she was getting stronger, but since she didn't know how to control her powers yet, she always ended up pumping herself full of extra energy and then having nothing to do with it.

So she got out of bed and went for a walk. It wasn't much of a walk, since she had to stay inside Castle Oblivion, but it was better than just lying there trying to get to sleep. Several minutes passed, and she had already reached the bottom floor.

"Wow... well, that was quick," she said, looking around and noticing where she was, "I must've been walking faster than I thought..."

It was then that she noticed that someone else was still up--Vexen, who was still working on something with his lab. While most people Vexen's age found it harder and harder to stay up late, the old scientist was somehow able to stay up hours after dark without even getting drowsy.

Must be something in those avocados.

Michiko walked over to Vexen's lab, peeking into it, when suddenly he jumped up in shock, munching on what seemed to be a raw avocado while staring intently at a computer screen. Wondering what it was that had shocked him so much, she walked into the room.

"What's going on?", she asked, approaching the older man, "And how can you eat those things raw? Ewww..."

"Forget the avocados for now," Vexen said, "Look at the screen. Do you see anything different than normal?"

The girl walked a little bit closer, looking at the screen. Vexen first set the screen to show the positions of everyone in Twilight Town, and nothing looked particularly strange. Then he turned off the settings for displaying Heartless. A few dots here and there disappeared. Next went the dots that detected the creatures of Light which had appeared recently, which were a bit higher in number than the Heartless. Next, he turned off the setting for Nobodies, causing a fair number of dots to vanish--including one of the two in the old mansion.

"And now," he said, "Watch the mansion very carefully."

He turned off the setting for complete beings--the last setting that was still turned on. Hundreds or even thousands of dots on the screen suddenly went dark, leaving only one of the dots visible...

It was the second dot from the old mansion.