Thanks to Belle, the heroes were able to escape. At least now they had time to plan and prepare for the fierce battle against Ansem: the man who had possessed Kairi and Riku's best friend.

Unfortunately, the pathway out of Hollow Bastion had been completely blocked by the swarming mass of heartless that was growing on the world, making it impossible to go back that way. Riku and Kairi stared out the back window, thinking of Sora.

"Don't worry, we're gonna get him back." Riku assured Kairi, looking to her. "And we're gonna get our home back too."

They made it to Traverse Town in order to get help in analyzing all the reports they had found so far. They prayed that Ansem's own words could be used against him, that they had some clue to his undoing. When they reached the town though, it seemed completely abandoned.

"Something's up." Riku assumed softly, being the first to walk out of the ship. "Where are all the people…?"

"Hello?" Kairi yelled, hoping to get some sort of response. There was none…

Suddenly, Riku tensed and glanced around. "Darkness! We have to hide, now!"

Before they could even react though, a familiar scream filled their ears.

A small figure wearing ninja attire was flung from the second district and she hit the accessory shop with great force.

"Yuffie!" Kairi yelled in shock, running to her along with her friends. "Yuffie, are you ok?! Who-?"

They heard a deep voice give an unsatisfied sound in seeing its prey was still alive. The four turned to the one Yuffie was glaring at. The man was tall with fair skin and long silver hair that reached down to his lower back. He was dressed in dark colors, not a hint of light to be found on him. The most confusing thing about this man though was the single wing on his back. He lifted the longest sword Kairi had ever seen and pointed it straight to Yuffie's neck. "...You know that you cannot defeat me and your attempts to delay me will only waste what little time you have in this realm. Give up and tell me where he is."

Kairi looked to Yuffie, knowing this man must be referring to her friend.

Yuffie gave a growl in anger. "I bet you'd like that, Septhiroth!"

"Yuffie, let us help you!" Kairi cried, summoning the keyblade. Daisy, Clarabelle, and Riku nodded.

Yuffie shook her head. "I need you to go to the secret spot, and get everyone there to safety in your ship, do you understand?"

"But-!"

"So, you're the wielder of the keyblade…?" Whispered the one-winged angel, making Kairi tense slightly when he pointed his sword to her. "Then you are far more worthy of my time then this disgrace. How about you show me your strength, girl?"

"No. This is between you and I!" Yuffie yelled, standing up with her ninja stars ready.

"Since when..." Growled the man. "You've merely gotten in the way!"

"Guys, go, now!" Yuffie gasped, seeing a dark blast of magic coming her way.

Daisy and Clarabelle wasted no time after they were shielded by magic from the attack. They grabbed the children by their hands and ran them away.

Septhiroth gave a smirk, realizing they must be heading to his prey and tried to follow, but Yuffie ran at him, ready to die in order to save her friends.

"Are you sure you're okay? He didn't hurt you, did he?" Aerith asked softly, helping the heroes out of the water. "How was Yuffie?"

"She was still fighting when we left." Riku told her, thankfully accepting her help out of the cold. "Do you know her?"

Aerith, Cloud, Leon, and Cid had all gathered in the secret place by the waterway, they had been told to, clearly.

"Well.." Aerith glanced away for help on what exactly to say about the girl. "You could say that."

"It's complicated." Leon finished gruffly.

"Who was that guy?" Daisy sputtered, wringing our her feathers.

"Septhiroth..."

They were suprised that Cloud had even spoken, since he was usually so quiet.

"He's a dangerous man, one who relys on the Darkness." The blond whispered. "... Yuffie is just wild enough to challenge him time and time again to protect the people she cares about, to put it simply, she's buying us time."

Kairi was quiet, wondering why Cloud always looked so distant, even now. "We… We can fight him, can't we? He can't stop us all!"

"Yes. I just need a sword or a staff or-" Riku was interrupted by Cid.

"We don't need anyone else risking their necks for us!" Cid grunted, the toothpick in his mouth nearly falling out. "Yuffie gathered us here so we could escape. You three! You still got that ship?"

"How could we no-?"

"Great! The transportation gummi I installed should reach far enough to get to the landing platform in here." Cid told them.

"The what?" Aerith, Leon, and Cloud all asked in unison, clearly not suprised that Cid had hidden it by thier deadpan voices.

"Ya know, the landing platform!" Cid growled. He pointed then straight into the waterfall. "It's just behind there, it's a one-way outta here. We didn't ever have a ship, but now we can escape."

"That's convenient. We have to go back to Hollow Bastion and we need your guys' help to get there." Kairi smiled.

Cid shook his head. "No way! That place is crawling with Heartless now! You'll lose your hearts in an instant."

"We've already lost our hearts!" Riku growled in frustration. "Kairi and I have already fallen just to save our friend! We're willing to do it again."

"That's right!" Kairi cried.

"You lost your hearts?" Leon asked in shock. "Then how are you…"

"Prince of Heart, magic powers saved me." Kairi explained quickly, nodding to Riku. "And I bet we can do the same with Sora! Please, if you cared enough for a friend, wouldn't you take the risk?"

They all went silent. They looked rather upset at the mention of a sacrifice like that until Cloud spoke, "We would, because we know we would all do it for one another."

"I guess you're right." Cid sighed, looking to the kids. "Fine… Nine years ago, when our world was destroyed, I hid a navigation gummi in a mural down here, it'll give us a new path to Hollow Bastion."

"Thanks Cid." Kairi smiled. She wanted to ask him why he would have a gummi to such a awful place, but decided against it when she saw how tired he looked. She then gasped. "Oh! Right! We found tons of reports, and were hoping you could look them over!"

"We'll help them do that, you and Riku should find that gummi, alright?" Clarabelle asked.

Kairi nodded before giving the many reports over to Aerith.

Aerith counted them and smiled. "Wow! There can't be too many more, maybe two or three and we'll have completed it!"

"That's great!" Kairi grinned. She noticed Riku was already looking eagerly into the cave and walked to him. "We better find that gummi, huh?"

"You're getting tired." Septhiroth chuckled to Yuffie, seeing her gripping her side as she struggled to stand.

"A radiant warrior like myself never settles for defeat!" Yuffie cried. She ran at the man, throwing two stars that aimed for his face. He blocked with his sword but Yuffie flipped over him. She flung herself onto him, grabbing for his neck but he quickly threw her off of him with a blast of dark aura.

She growled in pain, her head and heart were aching.

"For one so small, you have done such awful things…" Septhiroth mused. "I would think you would feel at home in the dark."

"I only did that stuff to keep track of you, to stop you!" Yuffie yelled in anger, trying to stand.

The man shushed her. "Stop trying to put the blame on anyone but yourself. You know you like the feeling it gives you, the power you feel when you let yourself give into your rage..."

"T-That's not true!" Yuffie yelled. "Shut up!"

"It's easy to do, just let yourself embrace it, all your friends will join you in time, starting with him."

"I SAID, SHUT UP!"

The group studying the reports had laid them out in what they believed to be the order, including the three that Belle had given them.

"The things said in these reports are so shocking…" Aerith admitted. "I never imagined Ansem could be so, for lack of a better term, heartless, in his want for knowledge."

"We thought he would be someone who could help us, but he was the one who kidnapped the boys and tried to hurt Kairi." Clarabelle explained. "He told us he was Ansem when Kairi confronted him."

The Traverse Town people looked between each other with surprise. The Ansem they knew had always been trying to protect the peace of their world. His methods were questionable to be sure, but his goal had always been to protect his home.

Leon picked up one of the reports that Belle had grabbed and grunted in slight suprise.

"Leon, what is it?" Aerith asked.

Leon read it out loud, as if needing to affirm it himself. "There is no doubt that the Heartless are deeply connected to the people's hearts. Further study may unravel both their motivations and the mysteries shrouding the heart…. As a start, I have built a device that artificially creates Heartless…"

"What?!" Cid yelled in anger, making them all jump. He snatched the paper away with a loud, "Gimmie that!"

He scanned it himself and then shook his head. "No… I-I supplied that castle myself with the finest technology, to make our world better, not help destroy it! I trusted that research team was doing good! How could Ansem do this?!"

"Let me get this straight, the Heartless we've faced weren't all actual Heartless?" Daisy asked in confusion. "They didn't come from a real person's heart?"

"Only the ones marked with this symbol were artificially made." Cid told them.

Clarabelle and Daisy looked at the symbol and recognized it as the one that had been on every final battle in each world.

"How could he do this…?" Cid growled again softly to himself.

Aerith looked at him sadly before picking up another report. "This is… This is about the Queen!"

"Minnie?" Daisy asked in shock. She realized she had accidentally used her name rather than her highness and coughed slightly. "How would Her Highness know Ansem?"

"It says that she found him one day shortly after he opened the world's door. She used your ship to get there." Aerith told them.

"It was never our ship!" Laughed Clarabelle. "The Queen made that years ago out of the gummi blocks!"

"That explains why the researchers were so keen on me working with them. Lucky that I actually liked that work." Cid grumbled.

"The Queen told a story about the Keyblade, to Ansem…"

"But the Keyblade was supposed to be a secret to nearly everyone!" Daisy whispered. She was one to talk since she had told Kairi about there being more than one. But that was their secret. "Why would she tell him?"

"She shouldn't have." Leon agreed, reading another report. "Talk of the Keyblade and the one who would wield it, Kairi, drove him insane… He wanted to find it so desperately to complete his research about the Heartless before the keyblade and Kairi came to his world, that he sacrificed his heart to Darkness…"

"That's… horrible." Cloud said simply, with barely any emotion to his voice, though he had his eyes narrowed.

"And it's all we have of the reports. All we can skim from this is that the reason he took the princes' hearts and tried to get Kairi out of the way was to find where the Heartless came from. The keyhole he was trying to unlock would've poured out Darkness and lead him to that place, or at least close to it." Leon thought out loud. "All we can do to help is be there to fight back the Darkness while Kairi takes on Ansem…"

"She can't do that alone!" Daisy cried in shock.

"She'll have to," Leon answered. "If the Queen is correct that she is the only one with the key."

Clarabelle sadly nodded.

"That's all we have…" Aerith sighed softly. "I'm sorry we couldn't be more help. I thought there would be more than this."

"There… is." The cow whispered. She suddenly took out a single sheet of paper that she had hidden.

Daisy looked guiltily at the ground. "We found it in the library, but we couldn't tell the kids about it…"

"Why not?"

"This mural has a weird aura to it…" Riku told Kairi as they stared at the painting on the wall.

They had stepped through shallow water to reach the mural of a a sun.

"It's almost hypnotic." Kairi agreed quietly. She touched it gently and it suddenly glowed before dropping a small gummi in her hands. She gasped in joy. "We found it!"

Riku stared at the mural with slight disappointment while Kairi turned to leave.

When she noticed he wasn't coming, she turned. "Riku? You coming?"

"It's just… all my life I thought if something awful would come to the island that I'd be the one to defend you and Sora, our home, that I'd be the strong hero because I believed in the light… guess I wasn't cut out to be the savior like you."

Kairi hesitated before placing a hand on his shoulder. "Riku, you are a savior! You saved me with your light because you still believed in it, and that light also stood up against Ansem to try and rescue Sora! When I lost my heart, I felt everything and everyone I knew being forgotten, I was starting to lose even the most important feelings, but because of your light, I came back… You are and will always be a true hero, I can feel it in my bones, Riku, just like your grandpa did!"

"Gramps…That story and him are the only things I can even faintly remember of my past..." Riku whispered. "Y-You saw it too?"

"Of course I did, we were together all along throughout our journey." Kairi reminded him. She laughed. "You had me on a wild goose chase…."

They were quiet for a moment and Riku gave a sigh. "So… I guess the whole paopu fruit thing with Sora was a bust, huh?"

Kairi blushed in memory that he had offered her one and she felt her heart sink. "And it always will be, if Sora… really lost his heart."

"He might have, but he's not gone for good." Riku insisted, making her glance up.

"But Ansem-!"

"You're gonna beleive what he says? I thought you knew better than that." Riku laughed, making her huff in slight anger.

"Don't laugh! Sora's in real danger!"

"I know, but I also know that you're going to save him, just like I saved you and you saved our friends: with the light in your heart. We're all connected, remember?" Riku asked.

Kairi remembered and nodded. "That's right…"

"Even if you don't have the paopu fruit, you'll always be connected by your charm." Riku reminded her then, swiping the charm from her pocket teasingly. "He feels the same way about you that you do about him."

Kairi realized that she didn't actually know what that feeling was. She and Sora had always been best friends, and had never wanted to part. They had always made each other happy. What was the feeling though? "G-Good! That means the wayfinder will help guide him back to the light, like it did to the sailors of the past."

"The real light's in there." The boy told her, poking her chest. "And you're gonna need it if you're facing Ansem alone, the rest of us have to hold back his Darkness."

She then bit her lip. "Riku… we've been together this whole time, what if I can't do it without you?"

"You're not going to be without me, or Dasiy, or Clarabelle, or any of our friends, we'll be in your heart." Riku whispered.

Kairi hugged Riku, making him wince in surprise but then accept it.

"When you feel like you can't go onward, don't worry. Even if we're worlds apart, I'll be fighting right by your side."

From the Desk of Ansem the Wise

Opening the door to the world's heart causes its walls to crumble. These fragments are seen as shooting stars. This explains why these "gummi blocks" can travel freely to other worlds.

I know the catalyst of the collapse, the appearance of the Heartless. However, it will take time to search out the worlds' doors, and to retrieve each heart.

Furthermore, the doors can be locked using a Keyblade making the heart forever unattainable. I must take action before the wielder of this key appears in this world.

If the princes and the Keyblade are connected, they should resonate.

I have chosen a boy. I don't know if he holds the princes' powers, but I will find out. He may lead me to the key bearer.

I shall set him free and observe.

"That's the final report…" Clarabelle sighed.

It wasn't, but two of the reports they would never find: one that had been burned detailing Ansem's final destination, and one that would soon be stolen away to keep the keyblade wielder in the dark…

Daisy let them all read the report and explained it. "We can't tell them because they would each think it was their fault this all happened… Kairi was why Ansem tracked down Riku as a child and sent him to the islands, derailing his life, and Riku resonated with Kairi, leading the Darkness right to her… The plan worked all too well. We can't have them thinking that it was their fault after everything that's already happened."

"But don't they deserve to know?" Aerith asked.

"They do, but not now." Clarabelle answered. She crumbled the report in her hoof just as the children ran in.

"We found it!" Kairi declared. She then frowned. "What's wrong?"

"We just were thinking how hard this battle will be, based on his reports and what he's already achieved, there's no doubt Ansem is beyond clever." Daisy muttered.

Kairi handed the gummi to Cid who started installing it right away.

In the few minutes they had, the heroes packed up their supplies.

Kairi placed the wayfinder charm at the very front of her pocket.

"Ready to go home?" Cid asked his old friends the moment he was done.

"Home?" Kairi asked in surprise, looking at them.

"Of course. 9 years ago, Hollow Bastion was our home. It was in a lot better shape though." Aerith smiled.

"Why else would they have the navigation gummi?" Riku asked obviously, making Kairi feel rather silly.

"We have to get going." Cloud suddenly said, getting on the ship. "Yuffie won't be able to hold Septhiroth back forever."

Yuffie was finally slammed to the ground and the man charged a ball of dark energy. "Tell me where he is, or you will drown in your own Darkness!"

Suddenly, a loud blast was heard from nearby rockets and he watched with shock as the gummi ship flew through the air before turning to a mere flash of light.

Yuffie couldn't help but laugh despite the pain she had when he kicked her aside. "Don't you get it?! You're never gonna find him or any of my friends! The great ninja Yuffie won't fail to protect those she cares about from your Darkness! I'm willing to fight you to protect them!"

Septhiroth was merely staring at the sky, eyes narrowed. He then turned with a cold look upon the teen, towering over her with the ball of Darkness still in his hands. "Yes… and I'm sure after all you've done for him, giving up your freedom, your sanity, your very life to stop him from falling to the Darkness, he would do the same for you…"

Yuffie's laughter ceased then and saw the dark aura that grew larger as he drew closer to her. "No… that doesn't work on me!"

"It didn't," Septhiroth agreed. "but that was long before you decided to be a hero and chase down the very Darkness you swore to defeat…. You can rest now, I'm sure he and the keyblade wielder will save you, someday."

The girl gritted her teeth in anger, feeling hot tears come to her eyes. All these years, had they been for nothing..? She gripped the torn red cape she had worn since the first day she had faced the man, thinking that, at least, she'd be able to see an old friend again…

Cloud opened his eyes in shock, feeling that one connected to him had been lost thanks to the other side.

Aerith noticed and took his hand in questioning.

The blond man saw Leon and Cid look at him with veiled concern for the girl as well.

He merely nodded.

Kairi noticed this and looked out the window to see the outline of Traverse Town fading as they left its sight and gripped her wayfinder charm tight. One day, she would lead Yuffie back to the light. But for now, she had to save the person dearest to her...She had to be his Light in the Darkness.