Welp, began replaying kh 1.5 to get the kick back!

Been a while since then though.. *shrug*

Hopefully that helps my story!

Credit to respective owners, etc.

-YARN

P.S. Edited (slightly)

I hummed cheerfully as we got back to the courtroom and the queen glared expectantly at us. I began to lay the boxes of evidence down on the floor between the stand and the Queen's throne and smirked up at her, amusement clear. We had exactly what we needed in order to prove her wrong, and the anticipation of seeing her face was almost too good for my imagination.

"Your highness, we have managed to gather all the evidence we could in order to help prove Alice's innocence." I said haughtily, my look all but screaming we had her beat.

The highness sniffed at the boxes, "That's alot of evidence, but I'm still not impressed. Guards! Bring forth my evidence!"

A single box was placed next the four boxes and suddenly they all jumped into the air. They slammed into each other and all became one single box before bouncing away from each other into the five separate boxes once again.

"What the hell?" I growled, an idea of what was about to happen already beginning to take form in my mind.

I just like to reiterate my general bafflement at the lack of justice and due process.

"Since checking all the boxes would just waste time, "The queen said haughtily, "Choose one, I'll base my decision on that alone."

"After all the trouble of gathering it?" Sora yelled, dismayed.

"You have got to be kidding me!" I complained, "How the world is that even fair?"

I managed to clamp my mouth shut before I went on a tirade of just how unfair she was being, acting more like a brat than a queen. Call me crazy, but I had a feeling that wouldn't help our cause much.

"You dare object?! If you do, it's off with your head!" She roared.

'I swear to god this is freaking ridiculous, what is with this place?' I lamented mentally.

"So how do we pick the box?" Sora grumbled.

I closed my eyes and exhaled crossing my arms, "I don't know…"

I tried to think of which box to pick - my attention shifting to the five boxes - so we could make sure we had the one to save Alice. Suddenly, as though I was jolted by static electricity, a feeling rippled against the edge of my thoughts. I looked at the boxes and closed my eyes trying to clear through the unfairness and anger at the queen swirling in my head. There was a slight essence that was emanating from the boxes, it was murky and hard to pinpoint, but definitely there.

Like the faintest whisper of wind against my skin.

"Sora!" I hissed, "I think some of the boxes are radiating the feeling from the heartless! Maybe we can sense which boxes are the right one!"

Sora nodded and hopped from the stand down to the boxes and closed his eyes, his hands held out as he reached out towards the boxes. He smiled after a minute of walking past the boxes and confidently picked up the one in the middle.

"This is the box of evidence we choose!" He said loudly.

"Are you sure?" The guard asked.

Sora nodded and set the box down.

"Now," The queen said confidently, she was sure she would get her verdict, one way or another, "We shall see who the true culprit is!"

The box was opened and a image of a soldier heartless appeared for a moment, twitching and clanking in a jerky manner before it faded away. I pumped my fist in victory as Donald and Goofy cheered.

"What in the world was that?" The queen demanded.

"The proof of what we have been trying to tell you all along!" I called proudly.

"Alice is innocent!" Sora followed enthusiastically.

Everyone could hear Alice sigh in relief.

I smirked at the queen triumphantly - ready to see her slump in defeat and humiliation - but immediately was surprised by the venomous scowl on her face, her face slowly turning red in fury.

"Silence!" She roared in anger, "I am the law here! Article 29: Anyone who defies the queen is guilty!"

My jaw dropped and Sora stared.

I was half-convinced that there wasn't even an 'Article 29' and she simply made it up because she was too proud and hated it if she was wrong.

If we weren't guilty from one thing, she would find us guilty of another charge.

Donald roared, "That's crazy!"

The stand where the rabbit had stood melted into the ground as well as the stand where I stood, even the seats that Goofy and Donald had been in sank into the ground in a poof of smoke. A curtain swished around Alice's cage and blocked her from view as a tower with three levers rose from the floor. A card soldier rushed over and began to yank the lever down, raising Alice's cage so that she couldn't get down even if she managed to move the curtain and open the cage.

The queen raised her heart-shaped mallet, "Don't let them get to the tower; if they do, it's off with your heads!"

The cards leapt into the air and descended on top of us. Sora and I dived away from the landing cards and I rolled closer the the Queen who glared at me. We rose in tandem, keyblades materializing in our hands and ready to fight.

I pointed my keyblade at her snarled, "I am going to enjoy this WAY too much! FIRE!"

A sphere of flame erupted from my keyblade and though the queen raised her heart-shaped mallet to block, it struck her and exploded with enough force to send her sprawling onto her back. Sora and I moved in sync, dashing at the tower while Donald and Goofy began to attack the guards that surrounded them. We tried to make our way to the tower but the card soldiers kept forcing away after landing a single blow on the tower. We wouldn't be able to break if the cards just kept getting to their feet like this!

I blocked a thrusted lance and grunted as I stumbled back next to Sora, "This isn't working!" I growled, "We'll be overwhelmed if we don't find out how to keep them off of us!"

"If we could just make them stop moving for just a moment..." Sora grumbled.

I thought of our new spell and grinned, "Maybe not stop them, but how about freeze them in their tracks?"

Sora blinked and a matching grin spread over his face.

We pointed our keyblades and pointed them at the feet of the advancing card soldiers.

"DEEP FREEZE!" We shouted in unison.

Bolts of white, snowflake-shaped energy shot out of our keyblades, exploding into the soldiers and freezing a good three-fourths of them where they stood. It took a few more castings to stop all of them, but we managed.

I frowned as I panted... I felt drained. I felt as though I had been exercising rather heavily and my limbs weren't responding too well, except that feeling was less physical and more ethereal/mental than anything else. I blinked as I realized that it was my magic beginning to run thin from overuse, which actually made a lot of sense now that I had a moment to actually think on it. In every instance of magic use before, we had used it more sparingly in our fights, usually to hit enemies that were out of range while keeping our keyblade in hand, Sora and I had been casting magic pretty heavily just now and the sudden strain had taken a pretty hefty toll - inexperienced as we were - since our reserves of magic probably weren't very high. Throwing our keyblade didn't require any magic but it left us without a weapon so we didn't want to use it unless we needed a stronger hit than our magic could muster. Until now, I hadn't considered the fact that here was a limit to how much magic I could use before I ran out completely.

I exchanged a glance with Sora who also looked like he had also strained his reserves of magic, judging by the sweat beading on his forehead.

While we made short work the the remaining soldiers, the trapped cards yelled and tugged at their legs but were stuck fast as they tried to reach us. Sora and I darted around the guards and began to beat the tower with our keyblades; with the now unimpeded assault, the wheels of the tower were quick to splinter and shatter, leaving the tower exposed. The ice that had encased the card soldiers was beginning to creak and crack, but before they could escape, the cards were suddenly struck down by a bolt of lighting. Donald and Goofy had dealt with their soldiers and were now moving to cover our backs, knocking the soldiers over with magic and might.

"Take this!" Sora roared as he swung his keyblade in a powerful downward stroke.

The tower last few brick crumbled under the force and finally collapsed. There was a sound of a chain rattling as the cage that had been hoisted into the air slid back down to the ground. Sora ran over and skidded to a stop in front of the curtain-covered cage which swung open to reveal absolutely nothing.

The cage was empty.

"What?!" I yelled, "She's gone!"

"She must have been kidnapped while we fighting!" Sora realized.

"You fools!" The Queen roared, slamming her fist down on her podium with enough force that the podium cracked, "Find her at once! I don't care how!"

The cards began to scramble about in a mad panic around the courtroom.

We beat a hasty escape before the queen could attempt to turn her ire on us once again. None of us wanted a repeat of the queen being a colossal brat trying to imprison us. Stepping into the forest I noticed a bud blossom into a red flower.

I yelped as the flower promptly spat out a boulder which I dived to the side to avoid as it would have killed me if it hit me.

The cat reappeared onto of the boulder, grinning.

Sora helped me to my feet before he walked over the feline, "Have you seen Alice?"

"Alice, no." He replied, "Shadows, yes!"

"Where did they go?" Goofy asked.

"This way? That way?" He murmured, "Does it matter? Left, right, up, down! All mixed up thanks to the shadows! Step deeper into the forest to the deserted garden. You might find shadows in the upside-down room!"

With that long spiel, he vanished.

I stepped closed to the boulder, patting its rocky surface, "Guys... I think this rock was on the other end of the forest... Maybe we should go to see if it was blocking off something."

With that in mind, we began to make our way through the forest, at least until a few heartless swirled into existence.

And one was a very large, very fat heartless.

"What the hell is that?" I yelled, leaping back as a shadow launched itself at me, "That looks like a soldier heartless that became morbidly obese and didn't care to stop eating!"

Jiminy popped his head out of one of Sora's pockets, "I believe it's called a 'large body'!"

I rolled my eyes as I ducked a swipe from a shadow, well, at least the name was accurate.

"Thank you, but I was hoping for more of a how to kill it!" I replied as I bashed the head of a soldier heartless that was trying to blindside Goofy.

"Aim behind it! It's stomach repels all physical damage! If you have to hit the front, use magic!" Jiminy yelled.

I decided to keep that in mind when I saw it pull itself back as though it was about to launch itself towards us.

And launch it did.

It threw itself - stomach first - at all of us. We scattered as it landed right where we had been with enough force to cause the ground to shake. It seemed to make no move to get up and I capitalized on its current predicament; with a war cry, I dashed over to it and began slashing at its back. Right when I thought it wasn't going to cause too much trouble, however, in a flash it was on its feet and swinging it's arms around, forcing me to back away or risk being nailed by a flailing haymaker. Shadowy wisps of energy rose like steam from its body and its eyes locked on me as it stared/glared.

"Aw peanuts." I mumbled.

It slapped it stomach and then ran at me with the speed of a... waddling sort of sprint.

Though it wasn't a particularly stupid heartless to be fair (were heartless even capable of a high-level of strategic though?), I recognized exactly what it was trying to do. If its stomach was its most armored part, magic may have been able to punch holes in it, but against a physical attack like they keyblade or something like that, there was no need to fear a reprisal.

So running at me stomach first was a good idea, after all it hadn't seen me use anything other than my keyblade.

Unfortunately for the heartless, my keyblade wasn't my only weapon.

I pointed my keyblade at it and yelled, "Fire!"

A ball of fire erupted from my keyblade and exploded as it made contact with its stomach. It trembled for a moment as it toppled over from the explosion before evaporating and releasing the heart it held. I grunted in mild discomfort as my magic reserves twinged slightly as they hadn't fully recovered from the over-expenditure at the courtroom. Just then a shadow crashed onto its back in front of me and twitched feebly until it evaporated into nothingness.

Sora strode over to me and patted my shoulder, "You good?"

"I think I am going to fall back on throwing my keyblade for a bit." I replied, absently rolling my shoulder as if to clear it of the drained feeling, "My magic still hasn't recovered from all that casting..."

"We should probably give out throwing keyblade attack a name." Sora said, grinning with a trace of mischief tinging his expression, "I mean art first it was kind our only long-range attack, but it's definitely getting stronger."

I thought back to our clash with the guard armor, and my keyblade glowing as it spun, "How about... Strike Raid?"

Sora thought about it for a second, "That's an awesome name!"

I chuckled, "Alright, that will now be named Strike Raid forevermore."

As we grinned, a small part of me wondered how in the hell I was coping with everything that has happened and how I haven't lost my mind to this change from the almost instant shift from normalcy to a world of heart-stealing monsters, legendary weapons, and an entire universe that - had I been normal and never chosen by the keyblade to be its wielder - existed beyond the borders of my world.

The larger part of me just shushed it and pushed me to carry on.

So carry on I did.