For hours and hours, the trio of friends had wandered through the vast desert of Agrabah in search of their friends and the Keyhole. They inadvertently ran into the Heartless when they reached a town of sorts. It was, however, like a ghost town. No person to be found. In the place of the townspeople were Heartless bandits and Shadows.

There search eventually led them to an alley. Sora was curious as to why he felt prompted to investigate. Something in his heart simply led him to make the decision. There must have been something special about it, he thought. Donald and Goofy merely followed, staying on the lookout for more enemies to fight.

"My mistake," the boy folded his arms, seeing that there was absolutely nothing in the alley.

He was about to turn around and head back the way they came, but then there was a soft gasp from behind some crates. Sora, Donald, and Goofy paused and looked around until their eyes spotted a head poking out from behind one crate.

"Who's there? Hello?"

It was a girl's voice. Reluctantly, she came out of hiding and approached the trio. The three were stunned to have finally met one of the residents of Agrabah. She looked like one, anyway, according to her garbs. Neither one of them seemed intimidated by the other.

"Uh... Hi there!" Sora awkwardly waved at the black-haired girl. "Who are you?"

"I'm Jasmine," she introduced herself to them, a little more comfortable being around the three boys. They didn't seem to be like the type to chase after her. Not like those strange fiends from before. It was obvious to her that they were not from Agrabah, so she very briefly told them about the place. "My father is the sultan of Agrabah. But... he has been deposed by Jafar, who now controls the city."

"Um..." Sora folded his arms and thought for a moment. "So that makes you a princess?"

"Wait... Who's Jafar?" Donald asked.

"You haven't heard of him?" Jasmine looked surprised. "He is the royal vizier, my father's adviser. He's gained evil powers and seized Agrabah! Oh... He's desperately looking for something. That I know. Er... something he calls a 'Keyhole'. Jafar caught me trying to escape and sent monsters after me, but then that man helped me."

"Who helped you?" Sora asked, but the girl was so caught up in her own thoughts. She didn't hear him talking to her.

"We were hiding nearby, but he left a while ago to take care of something..." she said. "Oh, I hope Aladdin's alright."

They could have gone on for hours in conversation by the looks of it. This young woman was hiding from something, but then they somehow brought out her more talkative side. But, no one was aware of the very dangerous figure standing right there with them.

"Aladdin?" the silver-tongued man smirked. "Where might I find this street rat?"

"J-Jafar!" Jasmine cried out.

This only made him smile wider as if victory was his.

"Jasmine," he spoke like a snake, "allow me to find you more suitable company, my dear princess. These little rats won't do, you see."

Sora held out his hand to the princess for her to go, "Jasmine, run!"

He didn't have to tell her a second time. The Heartless appeared around Jafar as the young royal ran away for safety. In the meantime, Sora and the others readied themselves for a fight to defend the world against the evildoer and the Heartless. But, when Jafar saw the Keyblade in the boy's hands, he was surprised. Realization hit him. "Ah, the boy who holds the key... in the flesh," he hissed. "Get them!"

The Heartless quickly and promptly leaped into action at the command. As did Sora, Donald, and Goofy.

Our opportunity to rest was apparently an opportunity for the Heartless to ambush us out of the blue at the oasis. It was dawn already when we were woken up, and dawn was barely even over when we got rid of the invaders. And as soon as they were all finished, we went on about our day with preparing ourselves for our the rest of our adventure in Agrabah's merciless desert.

It soon became dark again when we reached a part of the desert surrounded by ominous clouds. Although, it still looked like it was daytime miles away in the other direction. This was a peculiar place.

"Is that a giant tiger's head?" I pointed to a giant head of some kind of creature sticking out of the sand up ahead.

It looked so creepy in the darkness with its wide mouth agape and eyes glowing. The swirling clouds above and spiky rocks surrounding us helped in no way, except to intensify the sinister setting. It all gave me chills that Riku hopefully didn't notice.

"It's not real, so you don't need to be afraid," Riku chuckled, patting the sandy lip of the weird... thing. The tongue and teeth... and everything about it seemed so lifelike. I was nervous when Riku hopped inside the mouth as if it was nothing. "Come on! It looks like some kind of cave."

"What?" I blinked.

"Yeah?" he turned back around with a questioning look.

"You mean we're going inside?" I gulped quietly. "In that?"

"What about it?" Riku folded his arms.

"...Nothing..."

I reluctantly followed Riku inside the cave. Well, maybe there really was no reason to be so afraid. There were worse things that I've faced, like the Heartless. Those things were actually alive and could do me harm. Ha, this giant thing was just some sand sculpture. It was possible that whoever lived in this world wanted to keep trespassers out and away from something.

Treasure? Possibly.

...

At least an hour into our investigation of the mysterious cave, Riku and I had run into a series of... not Heartless. Traps. A lot of them, too.

Twice, we were nearly pulverized by giant boulders rolling out from some part of the surprisingly huge and decorative cavern. And, there were also torches on the walls that had the tendency to blow fire out at us. We didn't run into any arrows shooting out from who knew where. Yet.

"Phew..."

I was panting after escaping from yet another trap. It took a lot out of me, shockingly.

"Think there's something important in this place or what?" Riku half joked as he rested after the tedious venture.

We were both in agreement that there was something inside this cave that someone didn't want found.

I leaned back against the cold stone behind me and glanced around. The cave was so open. Over the edge of the walkway was nothing but a pit of darkness. Underneath that darkness was nothing but mystery that neither of us wanted to discover.

Instead, we continued on inside the cave until we came across a treasure room after avoiding many more traps. It confirmed our thoughts in the end.

There were heaps of treasure all around us in there. Gold and rare ores of many varieties. Anyone who had a sense of greed in them would surely be in heaven. But, seeing all of that sparked nothing in my eyes. Sure, it was an immense amount of treasure. There was just something more important that I wanted to find.

My still missing friend.

"Ouch!" Riku groaned.

"Hey!" I grumbled when something hit me in the back of the head, which must have hit Riku.

We looked around, only to find a small monkey picking up a red diamond from the golden ground. It made little noises like any kind of monkey as it investigated the treasure, and then it looked up at us. Immediately, it ran back behind one of the mounds of gold.

There was a gasp, and then a man's voice spoke up from somewhere inside the treasure room.

"Hey, what are you doing, Abu," the male said, coming out from behind the gold with an oddly shaped lamp in his hands. "This is no time to be messing around! We have to hurry out of here before those things show up again. I got the lamp, so put that thing back where you got it."

"Huh?"

"Who are you?"

"Uh oh!" the man jumped in surprise when he saw us, and he ran out of the area as fast as he could.

Riku and I stared after him as he fled. Confusion struck us both.

"Did we do something wrong?" I asked, but Riku only shrugged.

"Let's just keep looking around until we find Kairi," he said.