I don't own Kingdom Hearts, Disney, or anything else.

Chapter 4: Return to the Garden & Terra

A few hours later, they reached their destination.

Everyone looked toward the rapidly growing little ball that was Radiant Garden. Sora could already tell that the world had made a lot of progress. It seemed to be glowing even from this distance.

When they entered the atmosphere, everyone searched for a decent landing spot. But they also took the time to admire the area from the air.

Surrounding the village was a lush, green forest. The village itself was larger than before, and it was bustling with activity. Ansem's old castle stood proud and shining, overlooking the area. It shone in the light from the sunset.

It had come a long way from becoming that dark, eerie place known as Hollow Bastion.

The Highwind landed lightly in what was apparently a Gummi ship parking lot. It was set on a hill to the west side of the castle, and the group had a great view of Radiant Garden. It looked even more spectacular on the ground. The people seemed genuinely happy.

Everyone warped out of the cockpit to the ground. Kairi walked over to the edge of the hill, and gazed at the village below. Sora crept up to her and wrapped his arms around her from behind. She leaned into him.

"It's beautiful," Kairi whispered.

"GUYS!" Everyone turned to see the new arrival. Running toward them was a short woman with short black hair and an air of hyper-activeness.

"Hey Yuffie!" Sora shouted, and waved to her.

She suddenly vanished in a puff of grey smoke. Kairi was perplexed by this, until she reappeared right in front of her.

Kairi instinctively backed up. Unfortunately, Sora was still there, causing her to trip over his feet, fall against him, and knock both of them to the ground.

Riku walked over to them laughing. "The fate of the universe depends on you?"

"Haha," Sora said in a humorless tone as he helped Kairi back up.

"Sorry to scare you guys," Yuffie apologized. "It's just great to see you again!" She immediately wrapped Sora, Donald And Goofy in tight hugs.

"Good to see you too, Yuffie," Sora said.

Yuffie leapt in front of Kairi and planted her face a few uncomfortable inches from hers. "Kairi, right?" she asked. The two girls had met briefly before in Traverse Town after Sora had saved her. She had been too worried about him to really get to know her, though. She nodded.

"Good to see you again!" Yuffie beamed, and hugged her in turn. "You've really grown!"

Seconds later, she noticed Riku. Her eyes lit up, and she bounced over to him. She stood on her toes and looked him directly in the eyes. It wasn't hard since their faces were only an inch apart.

"And you must be Riku, right?" She asked. Her voice seemed slightly softer this time.

To everyone's shock, Riku immediately blushed and couldn't respond.

Sora and Kairi shared a grin at their friend's condition.

In his mind, Roxas said something to Sora, that he couldn't help but agree with,
"This should be fun..."

Slowly, Yuffie pulled away and faced the entire group,
"Follow me, the others have been waiting!" She set off at a fast pace towards Merlin's house, with a bounce in her step. The others followed. Sora shot Riku a quick smirk, though he pretended not to notice it. Sora could see his blush deepen.

Everyone made it to Merlin's house, which was much larger than it used to be.

Yuffie pushed the door open. The area they were in had a wide, circular table surrounded by chairs in the center. A large, crystal chandelier hung above the table, filling the room with soft, golden light. There was a large window on the opposite side. Deep blue velvet curtains currently covered it. The white walls were adorned with various charts, everyone saw one that looked like an intergalactic map.

All of this entered Sora's mind before he was tackled to the ground by a small, blue creature shouting, "ALOHA!"

"STITCH!" he shouted in between laughs and licks, trying to shake the tiny thing off. He was soon covered in greenish alien saliva. "Please, please, stop! I missed you too! Alright enough!"

Stitch hopped off and landed on two legs. He bore a huge, toothy grin, laughed crazily, and jumped onto the table. Riku pulled Sora to his feet. Though he regretted it when his hand came away green and sticky.

"You get used to it eventually." Sora muttered.

"Or you have a psychotic episode." Someone muttered, darkly.

"Let me help you with that, my boy." Said the white-bearded old wizard sitting at the table. He flicked his wand, and the goo covering Sora vanished. Another flick, and Riku's hand was clean as well.

"Thanks, Merlin." Sora replied.

Their young ninja friend walked in and addressed the assembled people. "Just in case you've been struck blind, deaf, and dumb-er while I was gone, Sora and the others are here."

"This is Riku." Sora said, he clapped a hand on his friends shoulder "And this gorgeous angel is Kairi" he kissed his now blushing girlfriend on the cheek. Someone giggled, another guy laughed, and somebody else wolf-whistled.

Aside from the newcomers, there were eleven people in the room. Leon was sitting near them with a thin, dark-haired woman he didn't know. Aerith was on his other side. Merlin and Cid sat across from them at the table. A large black man with a metal right arm was glaring at Stitch, who was giggling at him from the ceiling. In a corner of the room was Tifa. A young lioness was standing on all fours near her, looking at Sora in awe. Their highly magical friend Genie was floating above them.

"Sora! Donald! Goofy!" Tifa greeted as she saw them. "Welcome back, guys!"

"Any luck finding Cloud?" Goofy asked.

Tifa shook her head, sadly,
"Not yet, but I'm never giving up."

"Good for you," Sora smiled.

Genie went next at greetings, "Sora, Donald, Goofy...uh, YOU TWO!" He vanished in a cloud of purple smoke and reappeared directly behind the five of them. He wrapped them all from behind in a crushing hug and flew around the room with them still in his arms. "Oh I missed you –and am happy to meet you- SO MUCH!" There was another puff of smoke, and they were back in their original positions. Riku and Kairi looked dizzy. "And by the way Sora, good choice!" He whistled.

Axel held his sides and laughed loudly. Aqua giggled herself, as she'd never met the hyperactive and lovable Genie. Even Ansem chuckled.

Leon strode forward and shook their hands, offering his congratulations on their success with defeating Organization XII.

"I'm glad to see that you've made some progress here," Sora replied.

"You're too kind," Leon smirked.

Aerith hugged them. Cid gave Sora a rough pat on the back, and Merlin tipped his pointy hat to them.

Yuffie interjected. "Now that you've all finished reuniting with old friends, you have yet to meet the newcomers." She turned her head to the woman seated next to Leon, whom Sora was starting to believe was his girlfriend. She stood up and walked forward to meet them.

"Rinoa Heartilly." She said with a smile. She shook hands with all of them. Rinoa seemed like a kind, happy woman, and he couldn't help but wonder how she fell for Leon. "'Leon' has told me a lot about you all!" (She's from Final Fantasy VIII, like Leon.)

"And what exactly did he say?" Donald asked suspiciously. Rinoa only smiled and returned to her seat.

The large black man walked over to them. "The name's Barret Wallace, boys, don't you forget it," He told them. Unfortunately, he used his metal right arm to shake Sora's hand. The both of them could hear a suspicious crackling noise. Most of the room was tactful enough not to say anything, except for Stitch who immediately burst out laughing.

Barret snarled and pointed his arm at the ceiling. It then transformed into some kind of triple-barreled gun, and spun around. He aimed it at Stitch and shouted, "Just give me two seconds with that ball 'a fur!"

In response, said "ball 'a fur" growled, pulled out one of his laser pistols, and said something along the lines of "Meega natha queesta!"

"Down, boys!" Merlin said. Both of them were immediately knocked to their knees by some invisible force. Stitch flew the whole distance to the floor (about twenty feet), and smushed his face against the floor. "That will be quite enough."

"Um, good to meet you, Barret." Sora said, while the man massaged his chin.

"Likewise," He grunted.

That left only the lion cub on the far side of the room. As Sora looked closer, he guessed that she was still pretty young. Likely no more than three months, but lions grew fast. When he noticed her eyes and smile, a memory suddenly popped into his head.

"I'm counting on you Simba..." Nala said, nuzzling the king's neck. "And so's our baby."

Sora grinned and looked the young lion over again. To everyone's surprise, (and confusion) he bowed. Donald and Goofy soon arrived at the same conclusion as Sora, and bowed as well. The cub's eyes widened a bit, but she seemed to enjoy the treatment.

"It's good to meet you, Your Majesty." Sora said, grinning.

"'Your Majesty'?" He heard Kairi ask Riku.

"Call me Kiara." The lioness said. "And it's great to finally meet you three, my dad talks about you a lot."

"How is Simba these days?" Sora asked. He was starting to see a great deal of the king of Pride Rock in his daughter. They carried the same air of friendliness and mischief.

She rolled her eyes. "He's fine, but he is SO overprotective. But, he didn't even realize that I stowed away with Leon until I was already gone! Can you believe that?"

"You WHAT?" Donald and Goofy shouted as one.

"Woah, how'd you pull that off?" Sora asked. Kiara seemed remarkably proud of herself.

"SORA!" Kairi shouted disapprovingly.

"Wha? Right! Right, sorry. I mean, um, How could you!?" Sora quickly amended.

"Don't worry, Merlin's already cleared it up." She said, a little defensively.

"Oh, good," said Sora.

"So, what's this all about?" Cid questioned. "The old man told us to bring these folks here, but didn't explain why!"

"We can answer that," Ansem began.

Soon, he explained everything to the group that he could.

Aqua even filled in some of gaps.

Once the explanation was finished, almost everyone was silent.

"...Whoa..." Tifa whispered. "I had absolutely no idea."

The door to the house opened, and in walked three men.

Two of them were wearing grey uniforms with white cuffs and a red heart on the chest. There are blue hearts on the cuffs of both gloves.

The tallest of them had very angular and strong features, with a square chin, straight nose, and sharp cheekbones. He had blue eyes and small eyebrows. He had auburn hair slicked back into rather odd, messy spikes.

The second tallest had black hair in long dreadlocks. He kept most of his dreads tied into a low ponytail, but one dangled over the right side of his face. He also had thick sideburns, thick eyebrows, and violet eyes.

The shortest one wore the same kind of lab outfit that Ansem wore, with a purple ascot. His steel-blue hair was styled into long bangs that obscured the right side of his face and left only one of his bright blue eyes visible.

Riku recognized the tallest and shortest from Castle Oblivion. Sora, Donald and Goofy recognized the black haired man from Beast's Castle.

Before they could draw their weapons, Axel stepped in front of them,
"Hey, chill out! Like me, they woke up in the castle's laboratory after their Nobodies were destroyed."

"I'm Ienzo," The shortest man introduced himself, then gestured to the two next to him. "This is Dilan, and Aeleus. You already knew Dilan's Nobody, Xaldin. I was known as Zexion, and Aeleus was Lexaeus. Make no mistake, we cast our hearts off by choice, but we didn't know that Xemnas-or rather, Xehanort, was deceiving us." He then bowed. "I hope you can forgive us."

"...So I guess this means you're on our side, then," Sora said.

"Supposedly, yes," answered Dilan as he crossed his arms.

"No need to play coy," Axel snarked at him.

"Well, I'm glad you've returned," Ansem smiled at them.

"As are we, Master Ansem," Aeleus replied.

"So, our basic mission is travel around, help the Worlds that need it, and search for the Power of Waking so we can awaken Ven," Aqua said.

"There's something else as well," Ansem said, then turned to Ienzo. "Have you decoded it?"

"Only part of it, I'm afraid," Ienzo sighed.

"Decoded what?" Kairi asked.

"While you and I were travelling through the sleeping worlds, I recovered some secret research data that Ansem hid inside you, Sora," Riku answered.

"In...inside me?" Sora asked. "What do you mean?"

"While you were sleeping as Naminé restored your memories, I hid some data inside your mind," Ansem elaborated. "Unfortunately, my time in the Realm of Darkness affected some of my memories, so I can't remember what it was. In time, my memories will return."

"From what we've deciphered so far, we've discovered that your heart doesn't just belong to you, Sora," Ienzo said.

"I know," Sora nodded, placing his hand over his heart. "There's also Roxas, and Ven."

"And one other," Ienzo added.

This shocked everyone.

"Wait...one other?" asked Sora. "I don't understand."

"There's one other heart, besides Roxas and Ventus, but we don't know who it belongs too," Ienzo said.

Everyone looked at each other, seeming worried.

"Just another mystery to solve," Ansem surmised.

"We'll keep you informed on any progress we make on decoding the rest," Ienzo said, handing Sora something.

"What's this?" he asked, taking the gadget.

"It's a new product Chip and Dale developed, it's called a GummiPhone," Aerith told him.

"A GummiPhone?" Sora asked. "What does it do?"

"All kinds of things!" said Tifa. "You can even take pictures with them!"

"Mainly, you can use it to communicate with others on other Worlds, and from a distance," Leon added.

Rinoa picked up a box and placed it on the table, "There's one for everyone."

Everyone else went over. The box had many different color variations of the same phone, like they'd been made with the heroes in mind.

Kairi grabbed the pink one, Riku took a silver one, Axel picked orange, Aqua chose lavender, Mickey chose gold, Donald picked blue, and Goofy picked green. And Sora's was red.

"Cool!" Sora grinned. "How does it work?"

"Well, here, lemme show ya," said Jiminy.

The next few minutes were spent showing how a GummiPhone worked.

"Wait, what's Classic Kingdom?" Sora asked.

"Oh, we'll show you that one, later," said Yuffie.

"Okay," Sora responded, then he remembered. "Oh, Aqua, we might have an idea of where Terra is."

"Really?" Aqua asked. "Where is he?"

"Some sort of desert-like World," Donald answered. "Not sure what it's called..."

"The Badlands, where the Keyblade Graveyard is..." Aqua realized.

"So that's it!" said Goofy.

"Why?" asked Aqua. "Did you see him?"

"Well...we saw someone in armor," said Sora. "I couldn't quite hear what he was saying because it sounded so...garbled or something...but I could hear the names 'Aqua' and 'Ven'."

"Then let's go there!" Aqua exclaimed.

"Aqua, are you sure?" Mickey asked. "Even if we land as far away as possible from where the Graveyard is, Xehanort might-"

"Attack, I know," Aqua finished for him. "But, I have to see if it's him!"

Mickey was silent for a moment, before nodding in agreement, "Alright then."

"Just so you know," Sora began, "We had a really tough time, fighting Terra...that is...if that was really him."

"Why did he attack you?" Aqua asked.

"I...I think he mistook us for Xehanort, so he might be a little crazy right now," Sora said.

"Well, if I'm there, he won't attack us," Aqua said, confidently.

"Hey, mind if I come along this time?!" Yuffie hopped in excitement.

Everyone looked at her, surprised.

"Yuffie, you wanna go?" asked Leon.

"Sure, we haven't had a lot of action lately anyway!" she said.

"Uh...I'm not so sure about that," said Riku.

Yuffie hugged his arm, "Come on, what harm could it do?"

Riku blushed a bit at how close she was.

"I don't see a problem with it," Sora said.

"She definitely knows how to fight," Mickey added.

"It's fine with me," Leon said, "Just make sure she doesn't get into too much trouble."

"Hey, it's me," Yuffie winked.

"We know," Cid snidely remarked.

"In the meantime, I'll return our guests to their Worlds," Merlin said.

"Not to worry, I can get back to Agrabah in a flash!" Genie said. "Good luck everyone!"

Then he disappeared in a puff of blue and purple smoke.

"Bye, Genie!" Sora exclaimed. "It was good seeing him again."

"Welp, we'd better get going too," Mickey said.

"Before you do," Merlin waved his wand, and in a puff of smoke, a discarded suit of armor, and a Keyblade. It's guard was circular and somewhat jagged around its edges. The upper half of the guard was black, the center was grey, and the bottom of it was white. The handle was a featureless, grey rod. The shaft of the Keyblade was thin and navy blue in coloration, except for the tip, which was silver. The base of the shaft also sported two diamond-shaped bumps. The teeth were comprised of a rectangular frame lined with four short, blunt spikes. The frame and the spikes were all navy blue. The teeth also had three silver pieces bent at right angles; two on the inside corners of the frame and one on the inside center of one side. The Keychain links and token resembled water drops.

Aqua gasped happily, "My Keyblade, and my armor!"

"The day we found Xehanort in Terra's body, we also found those items," Ansem explained. "I thought it best to hang onto them, in case the owner ever came back for them."

Aqua ran up and hugged Ansem, who chuckled as he pat her head.

"Thank you!" she said.

"Of course, my dear," said Ansem. "Now...go."

With that, the heroes headed back to the Gummi Ship, boarded it and left Radiant Garden.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Scene Change~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Using the Warp Drive, they instantly got to where they needed to go: the Badlands.

They warped down to the empty desert area, the same spot where Sora, Donald and Goofy encountered the Lingering Will.

"This is where you saw him, right?" Aqua asked.

"Uh-huh," Donald confirmed.

"TERRA?!" Aqua called out. "Terra, it's me! Aqua!"

A small dust storm blew past them, forcing everyone to cover their faces.

As the dust cleared, they saw the same suit of armor, kneeling before it's Keyblade.

Aqua gasped silently...before she backed away.

"That's...that's not him," she whispered. "That's not Terra!"

"What?!" Sora asked. "What do you mean?!"

"That's just his armor..." Aqua whispered. "Somehow, it's taken on a will of its own."

The armor lifted its head, and looked at the blue-haired girl,
"Aqua...?"

Aqua gasped silently.

"W-what's happening?" asked Yuffie.

The armor glowed brightly for a minute, then it stood up, dropping its Keyblade to the ground.

"Aqua, is that really you?!" The armor spoke again, but this time, with actual emotion.

"...Terra...?!" Aqua whispered.

The armor ran over and hugged her, tightly.

Aqua shed tears of happiness. It kinda hurt hugging the armor, but she didn't care.

She was happy to be reunited with one of her old friends...even if he was a walking, talking suit of armor right now.

"I thought she said that wasn't him?" Axel questioned, confused.

"She was half-right," Kairi said. "Only his mind occupied the armor. But now, after seeing Aqua again, his heart has joined his mind inside it."

"He still doesn't have his body though," Mickey said. "But, we can get it back, eventually."

The two friends let go of each other.

"Aqua, it's so good to see you!" Terra exclaimed.

"You too!" Aqua replied, still crying happily. "But, how did this happen to you? I know Xehanort stole your body, but...your armor..."

"When Xehanort was about to take my body, I tried to put on my armor to protect myself," Terra explained. "But I was a bit too late. Still, my mind was strong enough that it remained inside my armor."

"So that's what happened," said Aqua.

"Terra, I'm afraid the original Xehanort has returned," Mickey said. "Let's return to the ship and we'll tell you everything that's happened in the last twelve years."

Terra nodded,

"Alright."

He picked up his Keyblade, and everyone warped back onto the Gummi ship.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Scene Change~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At the graveyard of ancient Keyblades, Master Xehanort stood with four of his minions; his younger self from the past, "Ansem", Xemnas, and Terra-Xehanort.

All of the sudden, Terra-Xehanort fell to his knees, clutching his chest in pain. His body also flickered a strange glow.

"What's wrong?" asked Xemnas.

"My power...it's fading...!" Terra-Xehanort groaned.

Master Xehanort, his younger self, "Ansem", and Xemnas all glanced at each other.

A big, pink light shot out of him, and streaked over the sky.

Xehanort's eyes widened, "No, it can't be!"

"...Sora...!" "Ansem" hissed. "Damn that boy!"

"Terra's heart has left me," Terra-Xehanort lamented, looking at his hands. "Now, I only have half of my power."

"What do we do now?" asked Xemnas.

Xehanort stayed silent, not caring one way or another.

I decided to do something different with Terra's Lingering Will; hope everyone likes it!

If parts of this look similar to another story, it's because I based it off of it. That KH story was a near masterpiece!

Read and review, please!