Author's Note: Hello and welcome all! This is me explaining to all of you what dealio is with this story. First and foremost, if the description did not suffice, this is a sequel to my previous story "7 Guardians" if you have not read it, it may become required as time goes on since this story will refer back to quite often. Secondly, I'm here again with another crazy idea! Hear me out now. What if I told you that I was wanting to increase the crossover potential of the original 7 Guardians story? Crazy, right? Welp it happened and the result was this, 16 Hunters which is the immediate follow up to the madness that was the previous story. Please enjoy.

It was a strange day for the remaining 6 Guardians of Light. On the island, the whole crew was accounted for that day. Roxas, Lea, and Isa along with Aqua, who was finally reunited with Ventus and Terra. They were all engaged in a big ultimate frisbee game which was occurring near the artistic direction of Goofy, Donald, Pence, Hayner and Olette. After the game ended up destroying one of the sand sculptures, Mickey kept Donald and Goofy calm as Namine wandered around with Xion looking for shells to draw. Dante, Rise, Ruby, Yang, and Yuna all found themselves watching the festivities from the rock ledge in front of the waterfall, feeling just a little bit outside of the group as they watched all their interactions. After a few minutes of everyone fooling around and enjoying each other's company, the whole group's attention was brought up to the small islet where silhouetted against the sun was Sora, the leader of the 7 Guardians of Light, and Kairi the innocent one lost along the way. However, as the whole party focused on the two they all watched as Sora seemed to disappear, vanishing in the light and Kairi was left alone sitting on the tree. And just like that, their fun and lighthearted get together was shattered by a cold, empty reality of what had just happened in front of them.

Riku ran forward to Kairi on the island as she crouched to the ground. Arms wrapped around herself and she wailed a heart piercing cry that seemed to set off everyone else. Riku slid to her side and wrapped his arms around her protectively. Time slowed as people seemed to respond with a varying series of emotions. The Twilight Town kids were more confused at first than anything else. Olette was the first of them to realize what had happened as she slowly dropped to her knees in disbelief. Hayner seemed to get angry as he punched the wall of the seaside shack, but the tears on his face revealed the truth. Pence looked down at his feet unsure of what else to do as he tried to keep himself together. Ventus had tears well up in his eyes as Terra stood silently next to him with a hand on his shoulder, Aqua next to him with a hand on her own chest. Axel crossed his arms and closed his eyes, losing himself in thought. Roxas and Xion took their place on either side of him as Xion began to weep into his shirt. Namine wrapped her arms around her new drawing pad as she kept herself extremely still. Donald, Goofy, and their King all seemed to be lost. But it was Goofy who responded first by standing up straight and going into a proper salute. Donald just shook his head in disbelief and Mickey began to pace. Ruby began to weep uncontrollably and let herself be held by her older sister. Rise found herself joining the two Huntress sisters as she was also crying heavily. She too was embraced by Yang. Yuna began to feel the urge to begin trying to pray for him like she normally would have, but being away from Spira she simply sat down with her back to the seaside shack feeling helpless.

~1 year later~

Dante, heavily weathered by his recent fight with a being called Urizen, found himself back on the islands with everyone else who had been there that day and remembered how he lost one of the daycare kids all over again. No, he refused to believe that this was simply the end. So using the Gummiphone, he called the other Guardians. All of them had to go home to deal with different circumstances and it seemed that they were all just as weathered as he felt. Especially since he had spent months in hell just fighting his brother. He needed to solve this problem. Then he could go back and figure out how to leave hell with his brother and they could finally just be brothers. He hoped.

Rise had gone home later that day and it turns out that her career had hit a dead end. Between the burn scars on her hands and her inexplicable absence from the business, she was left with no choice but to try to get back into the business another way. In the meantime, she had been working at her grandmother's tofu shop and writing new music to try to find a different way to express herself for the world. She still had her dream. Emotionally drained from her rejection from showbiz, she became quite a bit more reserved until Dante had called and told her about a job he was putting together.

Aqua had gone into the Realm of Darkness with Ventus and Terra. They had wanted to go looking for Sora immediately. However, less than a year later they returned, no closer to finding him. She had been assisting Kairi in getting to and from Radiant Garden to have them scan her heart to try and find Sora that way, Riku had helped fill them in on this matter. Aqua came back seeming to be generally better about her time there, but she had been hanging onto Dante's arm basically since the moment she had arrived.

Ruby and Yang had traveled to Haven to save the Hunter Academy there from falling to the forces that had destroyed Vale and Beacon. From what he could tell, they had been successful, but it came at a terrible cost. Their outfits had changed and they both looked quite a bit older than when he had last seen them. Yang seemed to be still a little shaken by something that had happened and she was quite a bit more closed off than normal. Ruby was just as idealistic as when he had last seen them, but she seemed really tired.

Yuna had been dealing with some issues herself, including difficulties with the groups known as the Leblanc Syndicate, the Youth League, and New Yevon. It has apparently accumulated in a showdown with the spirit of a man called Shuyin who had apparently tried to punish all of Spira for the death of a woman he knew in the past. Yuna was pretty much the only one who seemed firmly in a better place than when she left, but the exhaustion of the last year had definitely worn down on her.

Dante walked over to the dock and just stared out at the ocean. Looking down at his reflection, he remembered the day he met all three of the daycare kids. To think that these three teenagers falling out of the sky would throw him into the biggest adventure of his life. And now… it was looking like it was going to get a whole lot bigger. The thought occurred to him as his gaze fell on the faded scar that now adorned his unshaved face. With a hard look, he turned back to the whole group on the beach and with one last observance of all the people who had come here to remember Sora, he caught the attention of his immediate allies and the rest of the Guardians of Light all made their way over to him on the dock.

"Dante," Yuna said, "you look like you have an idea."

He nodded.

"What are you thinking?" Rise asked, getting her tears back under control, she had been pretty emotional since she arrived.

"Well, I can tell you this. I refuse to believe that Sora's completely gone. Not here, sure. Gone? No," Dante told the group. "Everything I have learned about him, the work he did, the work we do, there's nothing in all the worlds that can convince me that he is just gone. So, we do what just about everyone here on this dock has done before. Something, we're all good at. Some of the best at, in fact."

"What are you talking about?" Ruby asked.

"We hunt Sora down. Ruby, you and Yang are Huntresses in training, Yuna hunted down Spheres across an entire world. Aqua, you had to hunt down darkness as a Keyblade Master. Rise is a member of the Investigation Team which is basically one step short of being a hunter if you think about it. And I am Dante, the Legendary Demon Hunter. Hunting is what we all do. We can hunt him down and bring him home, wherever he has ended up," Dante explained to them all passionately.

"But how will we do that?" Yang asked with uncertainty.

Dante summoned his keyblade to hand. The silver blade shafted weapon, accentuated by a gun barrel, and a wing fanned crossguard centered around a horned demon skull. "With this, the same way he came to us. The way he brought us all together. The least we can do is repay the favor," he explained to them.

Aqua simply nodded as he went on. This was exactly what all the people who were here today needed. This was exactly what the remnants of the 7 Guardians of Light would do. From guardians to hunters, everyone on this dock seemed to have a sense of renewed purpose.

Riku and King Mickey both made their way over to the group as they could tell that this group was planning something away from the rest of the group. "Dante? What are you guys up to?" Riku asked.

Aqua turned to him and with a small smile she said, "We are going to go hunt down Sora. Bring him back for good."

King Mickey nodded. "What can we do to help?" he asked.

Dante answered by saying, "Keep everyone here safe. Sora is going to come home to all of his friends being alive and well. That was the reason Sora left us originally. To go get Kairi. Nothing will keep us from bringing him back. But we need to give him a reason to not need to leave again."

"Please let me help," Riku pleaded.

Dante shook his head and then put his hand on Riku's shoulder. "Don't leave Kairi alone. Right now she's going to need you more than ever. Especially with this being the anniversary, she may blame herself again," Dante told him. "We'll go get him."

Riku looked at all of the people on the dock. All of them were resolute in their new jobs. Riku had made a point to get to know each of them over the course of the last year waiting for Sora to return. Dante had rubbed him the wrong way when they first met back on Dante's world, but he did care more than he would ever purposefully let on. Sora it seemed had helped him become a bit more forthcoming with his feelings and thoughts in the time that they have known each other, though he was not above joking around whenever he could. There was a serious undertone to him now that Riku was actually on good terms with these days. His journey had changed him to an extent beyond the scar on his face.

Riku's gaze then moved over to Rise Kujikawa. When Riku had first met her, he could not really wrap his head around her being one of the 7 Guardians of Light. She was by far the bubbliest member of their group but Riku could not deny that she was a lot more capable than she originally let people know. She was a lot like Sora, emotionally invested in the fate of the people around her and dedicated to the friendships she made. Communicating her feelings was the most important thing to her, so it did not surprise him that she became such fast friends with Sora. When he learned about her power of Persona and how it had evolved to make her able to fight, he was truly understanding of her resolve.

He then looked at Aqua and felt a pang of guilt. Riku's temper had caused him to become too careless and the damage he took trying to take on Vergil by himself after losing Kairi had made him unable to go after Aqua himself like he was originally supposed to do. So instead, it fell on Sora's shoulders and he did a good job. According to Terra, he has never seen Aqua so happy since the days before they all left their training grounds over ten years ago. The darkness that Mickey said had consumed her was all just a small blot in her past and Aqua credited that to Sora and the other Guardians. Though she did admit to having nightmares from the Realm of Darkness.

Riku looked next at the two sisters Ruby and Yang. Half sisters he found out, to be exact. Yang was a bit of a flirt when they first started talking but when they got past that she was honestly a really dedicated friend and driven young woman. Having originally been looking for her mother, Yang learned responsibility was just as important as a desire for information and as such she had since refused to let her drive control her. Riku suspected that there may have been more to it considering the scar on Dante's face that he has refused to fully heal and both of them dodging the subject of how he got it when the others knew nothing about it. Her sister Ruby was a dedicated Huntress in training. From what he could tell, Huntress was a title of someone who was like the keyblade wielders. Hunt monsters and protect the people. Where Yang was the thrill seeker, Ruby was the enthusiastic worker. A little awkward around large numbers of new people, once she got to know people she was a really fun person. Also missing her mother, Ruby had only ever wanted to be a hero. Even losing one of her legs to her own fight with Vergil on her world had not slowed her down, though she did complain about the occasional pain that came with it. A complaint that Riku was very attentive to every time he could help with it since he remembered the day he lost Kairi to that same man.

Finally he looked at Yuna. As the person who had been here the shortest amount of time, Riku was amazed by just how dedicated she had become about the whole world saving job. But when Riku learned about her history as something known as a Summoner, it made a whole lot of sense. Yuna had dedicated her whole life to being a savior for her home world. However, her future afterwards was completely open and unplanned for. That adventure was actually the reason that had caused her to become friends with the people here.

"Then I will leave this to you," Riku said as he finally stepped down. Mickey also nodded and stepped away from their group. The two of them headed back over to everyone else on the beach. Finding out that these six were the only ones going to go after Sora would go over better if they were all told by the two people who have been there since the beginning. Aqua could see the look of concern from Terra and the sadness still on Ventas's face. Axel looked like he was just about ready to ignite being told that he was to stay put… again. Roxas however just nodded and Xion was still buried in Axel's coat. Isa was much better at masking his emotions. Goofy held back a clearly angry Donald. The Twilight Town kids seemed to be grateful above anything else.

The group of guardians all turned to each other and looked at Dante's Keyblade. "So how are we going to do this?" Aqua asked. "Are we really just going to go wherever the keyblade takes us again? I think we got too lucky last time we tried this."

"Do we really have a choice?" Yang asked with a half-hearted shrug.

"Well if we are doing this with the goal of finding Sora in mind, then shouldn't the keyblade take us places that will help lead us there?" Yuna asked.

Ruby added, "Sora did say that his goal was to defeat Xehanort and his new Organization and we did it. So clearly the keyblade was onto something."

"Right you are," Dante said. "But with a goal as focused as finding Sora would it really need to take us anywhere other than to him? Like as open ended a goal as 'Defeat Xehanort' it would make sense that it would need to take us all over the place and gather warriors who would be able to stand up to him."

"Unless we can't save Sora on our own…" Rise thought out loud. She took on a blue hue and her Persona appeared behind her. Concentrating on Sora, Himiko was coming back with nothing. "Not even my Persona can seem to sense him anywhere."

Aqua hummed in thought. "So if your Persona could find me before, then it is confirmed for certain. Sora is not in the Realm of Darkness. Which means he isn't physically lost somewhere. He may be beyond our reach. But the Keyblade may be able to take us to someone or something where that can be fixed."

"So a two stop then? I like it," Dante said confidently.

"Two stop if we're lucky," Rise commented as Himiko faded away. She was clearly bummed out that her Persona could not locate Sora.

"Hey," Aqua said resting a hand on her shoulder, "your power did find me, right? I am thankful to you for that." The smile Aqua gave her was genuine and it did a lot to raise Rise's spirits.

"Anyone know of any worlds that have places people go when they are dead. I mean there wasn't one in mine. Dead people just seem to die there," Dante said.

Rise shook her head. Yuna seemed to think while both Ruby and Yang shrugged. Aqua however seemed to think and realized something. "I remember that a long time ago, I had to deal with someone called Hades. He claimed to be the Ruler of the Underworld. From what I learned off of Jiminy's Gummiphone device, the Olympus Coliseum world has an underworld where the spirits of the dead go," Aqua explained.

"The farplane on my world, where pyreflies go," Yuna explained

"So we check the Underworld and the Farplane if we can't find him anywhere else. Any other ideas before we get going?" Dante asked.

"Look for people specifically who can try to reach out to people who are dead, search areas where dead people go? Seems like a hefty workload to me," Yang said out loud. The group just nodded and with one last look over at all the people on the beach, Dante pointed his Keyblade to the sky. The blade he ultimately ended up calling the Rebellion Arsonal due to it encompassing most of his iconic weapons, shone and a beam of light flew into the sky. The sky almost seemed to shatter and in the center of it was a large keyhole.

"No matter what, we will succeed. But, something tells me this is gonna be one hell of a party!" Dante announced.

Yang added, "We'll start this job off with a Yang!" Half the group groaned and soon the whole group disappeared off the dock. The group on the beach fell silent as the display disappeared.

"Mickey," Riku asked aloud. "Do you think they will find him, especially after all this time?"

"I don't really know," Mickey replied. "But if anyone could, I believe that it would be all of them, don't you?" His tone was almost optimistic. Riku could not help but smile.

"Would you like to stay around here for a little while longer?" Riku asked all the people with them. Everyone was still a little too raw to leave now and the group felt they would handle this all better if they stayed together. Riku agreed and everyone made themselves comfortable hoping that they could find a resolution to this before they all went back to their homes.

5 days later…

Nero was being plagued by calls of a strange portal occuring in the city. He had decided to take over the Devil May Cry shop while Dante was in hell to keep the utilities on and let the world know someone was still looking out for it. Kyrie had come with him and the two of them continued to run their orphanage in the shop. Nero looked down at the place where his arm should have been and just scoffed as he made his way over to the Red Queen, his trusty engine powered sword hanging on the wall behind the desk. If calls about this portal were not going to go away, he was just going to have to investigate them himself. It was bizarre, his arm had grown back and everything, but it began taking on a demon form again. To not scare the kids, he let it disappear until he could figure out how to keep it human, so it was back to getting yet another new arm design from Nico.

"Nero?" Kyrie asked as she watched him begin performing maintenance on his weapon. She knew that this was one of his rituals before leaving for a job. "Are you sure you will be alright out there with only one arm?"

"Duty calls, Kyrie. If I don't investigate this thing, no one else will it seems. Don't worry, if I have to, I'll grow the damn thing back again and I'll be home before you know it," Nero said to her with a cocky grin. She nodded and gave him a quick peck on the lips. "Even faster," he added afterwards.

Kyrie stifled a small giggle at his antics and replied, "Just be safe. And contact Lady or Trish if you think you will need any backup. And I will call you to let you know if Nico has any updates on her mechanical arm idea she had been bragging about lately."

"Of course, you keep the kids in line till I get back and we'll all celebrate with some of the reward money," Nero told her. He put his blade on his back once the blade was safely secured, he grabbed his trusty Blue Rose revolver and placed it in the holster inside his jacket. "See ya." Nero finally stepped out of the office and headed out into the streets to investigate the portal. Some reports advised of red eyed dark creatures wandering out and attacking innocent people when they are nearby but otherwise seem docile when observed from a distance. It was a strange difference from normal demon behavior and was the main reason he was even going to investigate it. When he arrived, he was surprised to find that these creatures were not actually demons. Seeing them in the distance he could definitely understand why people would have thought they were, but no demonic energy was coming off of them like normal demons would have.

"Well, well, well. What is wandering into my neighborhood then?" Nero said out loud to himself and he decided to get a closer look at the creatures and at this strange portal. After he was noticed, a quick skirmish made easy work of the wolf like creatures that had been slowly making their way over. Nero however was too interested in the portal. This was not a hellgate. This was more like a tear in the air that existed in just a way to get from one place to another. When he walked around it, he found it to be almost like a two dimensional object hanging in three dimensional space. But as he looked through the portal he realized that he was not looking at Hell. He was looking at a forest near a strangely advanced but damaged looking city. The young teeneager named Sora came to mind as the realization set in. "Is this a portal to another world?" Nero asked himself.

He reached his hand into the portal and decided to investigate as thoroughly as possible. Nero felt a small tug from the portal like structure and he made his way through to the far side and found himself in a forest on the edge of a ruined city. As he walked across the threshold of the portal he felt a strange weight on his arm. Looking down he found a strange metal device capping his missing limb.

"What the hell?" Nero asked out loud. He had been speaking out loud by himself a lot lately. He walked towards the ruined city. Catching his attention most immediately was the elevated portion of the city's central tower with a stone dragon attached to the top. As he made his way into the city he listened for signs of life. Besides the expected monsters currently ignoring his existence, this city was abandoned as far as he could tell. Making his way through the streets, he finally came across signs of life in the form of combat. Or at least, the sounds of combat. Jumping up on an overturned box truck, Nero came across a strange sight. A young woman with a parasol fighting a man with a cane in a white coat and bowler hat. But the man in question was radiating a dark energy that reminded the young demon hunter of the Heartless that he had fought when those keyblade kids were around. The young woman with the parasol had pink and brown hair and some kind of white coat over a brown corset. To Nero, she just looked like the living embodiment of Neapolitan Ice Cream. She also looked like she was in some trouble. Nero leapt down from the box truck and took off in a breakneck sprint.

"Be a good girl, and listen!" Nero overheard the man yell. If it were not for the fact that this man had bright orange hair and looked nothing like the woman he fought, he would have almost believed that he stepped into a father-daughter dispute. The man took his cane and knocked her to the ground. Nero however launched himself through the air and put his feet together. Nero's drop kick never failed it seemed since it still had a 100% accuracy. The man was knocked back and slid to a stop.

Nero landed and with a light footed dance step he taunted, "Didn't your mother ever teach you not to hit a lady?"

"Another white haired, bravado toting, coat wearing imbecile getting in the way of progress? What did I ever do to deserve this?" the orange-haired man complained as he got back to his feet.

"Another one?" Nero asked.

His question was ignored as the man simply said, "Neo, perhaps we could finish this discussion behind closed doors."

"Neo, huh?" Nero asked looking back at the young woman getting back on her feet. "You know this guy from somewhere?"

Neo did not answer. Instead she took out a notebook and pencil, without taking confused and focused eyes off the man across the way, and wrote. She tore the page out and handed it to Nero. It read, 'His name is Roman Torchwick, I knew him once.'

"Alright," Nero said, using his good arm to give a couple of punches before he took the Blue Rose out of the jacket holster and pointed it at Roman. "Then you won't have a problem if I put this sick puppy down."

"Of all the days," Roman said as he struck a combat ready pose.