Ah man I am just pumping out chapters! At least if this note is still relevant by the time this chapter is up...

Reviews and (only) constructive criticism is loved!

All credit to respective owners and the like!

-YARN

P.S. Edited (slightly)

Unfortunately, Donald was definitely correct in his observation of the creatures that were now scampering around in the camp. Looking like monkeys, they were covered in blue fur, which appeared to be lighter around their head and torso, and darker around their arms, legs and long tails. The center part of their face was pitch-black with jagged edges, and two glowing, yellow eyes could be seen. The inner sections of their round ears were a light purple color, as were their large paws and feet, which ended with sharp, black claws. They seemed to be wearing golden bracelets and anklets and sported a heartless insignia which was clear on their chests. The most worrisome point was that they seemed to be perfectly suited for the jungle and several heartless were surrounding a gorilla that seemed to be terrified and unable to escape the ring of heartless around it. We all quickly summoned our weapons and rushed at the heartless, intent on destroying them. Tarzan rushed in, swinging his spear in wide circles while yelling, smacking the heartless away from the gorilla. We all began to focus on different heartless as Tarzan stabbed one and it exploded into darkness.

I rushed one of them that had been on its back and brought Abaddon Plasma down to destroy it, but the monkey instead rolled to the side and roughly kicked me with one of its feet, knocking me to the ground. I rolled with the blow and saw the monkey heartless leap away from where I had been standing and land on top of the boxes that had been stacked in the middle of the camp. I scrambled to my feet and leapt after the heartless, carefully watching its movements. It was a far cry in style from the shadows, lanterns, and soldiers that we had been fighting up till now.

The thought I had of heartless changing to a more suited form for each world was absolutely correct as the monkey heartless was agile and able to leap much higher and scrambling around with almost astonishing speed. It seemed to favor swinging around the pole in the middle of the camp or nearby bamboo stalks to apply more force as it slid at me or to leap higher into the air and come down with a flurry of swipes. I jumped away as it came down and planted its fist in fist through the crate where I was. I grinned victoriously as it was now trapped; I lunged and brought Abbadon Plasma down on its head. As it evaporated, I sighed and straightened as everybody dealt with their respective foes seconds after I had disposed of mine.

Unfortunately, they weren't the only attackers, two monkeys - their fur now was in shades of pink, the bow a bright sunny yellow, with a choker that was a dark blue, with black paws materialized into existence and wielded rudimentary slingshots. I ducked away from a hail of what seemed to be bolts that were shaped like seeds. The rest of us didn't seem to have too much trouble though - with five of us - as we were able to surround them and take them out quickly. With a small pause to wait to see what might come, we all slowly decompressed as we judged the small skirmish to be over.

I turned to Sora to see he was looking at the keyblade in my hand.

"Hey Niji..." He began, "What's with that keyblade your using? What happened to your old one, I wasn't really paying attention but I thought while we were at the coliseum and the tree house that you were using this new one. I was going to ask earlier but I forgot with all that's been going on."

I looked down at the keyblade in my hand and shrugged before hopping off the crates, "I was just relieved that I was still using a keyblade, I wasn't going to make a big deal over what it looked like, but I had a weird dream and the next thing I knew, when I tried to call 'Starlight', I was holding this one called 'Abaddon Plasma' instead."

Sora seemed a bit unsure as to what to make of that but was approached by the gorilla before it placed something in its hand before loping away into the trees. Sora looked at the gummi block that was in his hand, unlike the one we had found in Wonderland, it wasn't quite so complex and looked more like the one Goofy and Donald had stumbled across earlier. I shot an inquisitive look with Donald but he gave me a 'i-don't-know' shrug back. I stared hard in the direction of where the gorilla had left, mind racing. After traversing the jungle for as long as we had, the heartless hadn't showed up at all, even with two keyblade wielders both being in the world. I was beginning to think that maybe we didn't need to worry about any heartless right up till now.

But if they were suddenly here...

What brought them here?

"If the heartless are here," I began, "We need to clear them out, I don't know if they will be able to take animal hearts, but I don't want to risk it."

Goofy nodded, "We may not be able ta get everywhere but it'd be a good idea to see where we can help."

With that we began going through the forest, we encountered more of the heartless cornering gorillas and closing in on them. We didn't hesitate to give as good as we could when it came to destroying them. It wasn't easy to fight them as our first encounter since the monkey heartless were perfectly suited for the terrain and we - with the exception of Tarzan - were not quite at home with the jungle setting. If there was any sort of silver lining to the situation that we had on our hands, it was the fact that Donald and Sora were forced to stick close and help each other. With every battle we engaged in, our teamwork and attacks got better and better, getting us situated better on the uneven terrain.

Sora knocked several heartless away from Donald's back before they could rush him. Donald turned to give him a quick nod of thanks.

Sora was about to smile back when he was almost buried under three heartless that landed on him when Donald cut in with a furious cry of, "Fira!"

A large waved of fire burned the heartless into oblivion and Sora sat up and sighed in relief.

"Thanks you Donald." He said with a slightly awkward smile.

"Your welcome." He replied just as awkwardly.

I hid a smile at the two, 'Definitely close, they just need to agree on an apology...' I internally sighed in relief.

With every area cleared, the gorillas that we saved would would give us all a gummi block in thanks. Honestly I was worried for Clayton - as much of an ass as he was - he was still someone who we could save, and I may not have liked it, but I was going to save everyone I could. We finally managed to clear most of the areas before we got to the clearing in the bamboo thicket that Donald and Goofy had been found in. We walked around before Goofy saw Clayton's smoking pipe laying innocently on a rock in the middle of the clearing. I picked it up and twisted it around, seeing if there was any sights of recent use.

I shook my head and placed it back down on the rock we found it, "It's cold and unlit, why would he leave it here?"

Just then the hairs on the back of my neck stood on edge, making me stiffen. I turned in alarm at the sound of a familiar growl.

Sabor the leopard leapt from the bamboo thicket that surrounded us and pounced on Sora, bearing down on him with all of his weight. Sora let out a cry of alarm as he desperately tried to push the feline off of him. Goofy scowled and used his shield to bash the the cat in the side with his shield, sent the cat down and off of Sora. Tarzan, Donald, and I all stood to block the cat from our friends.

"Sabor!" Tarzan growled angrily at the leopard.

"You better run this time, or else I am going to kill you myself!" I yelled at the jungle cat, "Back off!"

The leopard only roared at our challenge and crouched low, body as tense as a taut bowstring. It lunged at us with single-minded intensity as Tarzan held his spread in a guard position to catch the charge. He grunted as the leopard pushed him back two feet from sheer force. I swung my keyblade in a wide side-swing to hit it but the leopard seemed to have a better idea of how to fight with us and disengaged from Tarzan to slip to the side and away from the blow. However it was still as stupid when it came to magic despite being struck by it before.

Donald raised his staff and called out, "Blizzard!"

Several bolts of ice shot from the tip of his staff and some struck Sabor in the side. The cat let out a yowl at the chilling feeling of the ice now crawling along its body. Sora didn't hesitate to pay the cat back for its previous assault and knocked it away with a heavy Slapshot. The cat landed on its side and rolled to its feet only to bet meet with a shield to the face, courtesy of Goofy. We had beaten it pretty thoroughly when it was only me and Sora, in the face of all of us, it just wasn't able to keep up with our onslaught. It was on its last legs when Tarzan finally lunged forward, spear glinting like a star in the sunlight of the clearing.

With a final attack, Sabor fell to the floor, slain.

We barely had a moment to relax after the battle when a terrified scream of a woman cut through the general sounds of the jungle. We traded panicked looks and raced back to the tent, knowing that only person who could be that close for us to hear a scream. When we got to the camp, our hearts fell as we saw heartless scampering about the camp in a large number and several of the instruments knocked over as well as the tea table in splinters. With a war cry, I charged the heartless, keyblade gripped in hand. We began to beat the wave of heartless down while Tarzan dashed into the tent to see if Jane was alright. When we managed to destroy the last of the heartless and joined Tarzan only to see that the projector had been knocked over and the floor had been roughly tugged, as though someone had struggled to stay in while someone had dragged them out.

"Damn..." I snarled, "Did the heartless get her?"

Tarzan shook his head and loped outside to point in the direction Sora and I had first come to the camp in, "Jane, danger. Jane near... treehouse."

"Lets find her!" Sora yelled as he began to run in the direction of the vines that we could climb to get to the tree house.

We all anxiously followed suit, hoping we weren't too late.

As it turned out the heartless had Terk - the gorilla that Donald had saved and Tarzan's friend - and Jane trapped behind a bunch of black vines that radiated the feel of darkness in one of the heavily forested areas. Also there seemed to be a giant black fruit - with a nearly choking miasma of darkness - growing from the tree that had black vines spreading from it and leading to the cage that held Jane and Terk. Heartless bounded around the fruit, and turned to face us the moment we entered, beady yellow eyed staring. One lunged at us and I summoned my keyblade just in time to block a heavy punch that would've definitely hurt me. I pushed against the force and with a shout of effort, threw the heartless on my keyblade to hit the wall. I quickly analyzed the situation and began to call out directions.

"Hit the fruit!" I yelled, adding a bit of basic wording for Tarzan, "Sora, Donald! You two attack the fruit! Fight! Goofy and Tarzan! Defend Sora and Donald! Protect!"

The main reason I called out the grouping as they were was for that fact that we didn't know if the fruit had defenses against magic or physical attacks. Sora and Donald could cover for each other's techniques if one failed. Tarzan might have had a more physical weapon, but he was much more suited for the monkeys style of fighting and blocking any that would attack; Goofy had his shield, so he would be more suited for that task than I was. I was hoping to beat some of heartless away so I could take some pressure off of Tarzan and Goofy.

With that we all moved onto our respective tasks, hoping for the best.

The tactics worked well although it took a bit more effort than preferred, Tarzan moved with remarkable dexterity in keeping the monkeys from using the higher ground to get the drop on Sora or Donald. Goofy and I - on the other hand - kept the ones that tried to used the lower level to attack Sora or Donald too busy. It wasn't too easy as Tarzan was the only one able to consistently guard them from up top and Goofy and I were only able to keep a certain number of them away from the walls and on the ground. However Sora and Donald weren't holding much back in their assault on the black fruit as they launched a powerful offensive. Donald was casting Fira and occasionally Thundara to help thin out the heartless when he felt it was a bit too much while Sora was whaling on the fruit with Hurricane Periods and the occasional Strike Raid.

In short order, the fruit dissolved in a cloud of black vapor and the black vines immediately began to crumble and wither. The heartless paused when the fruit was destroyed ad began to leave in portals of darkness.

Jane was holding a distraught Terk as she explained that Clayton entering the tent was the last thing she remembered.

"Clayton?" We chorused in confusion.

She nodded, "Terk had come rushing into the tent."

Terk let out a couple of grunts, and Tarzan immediately stiffened, "Danger! Kerchak, family, danger!"

"We have to help the gorillas!" Jane said firmly.

We didn't have any trouble doing that, as far as we were concerned, Tarzan needed help to save his family, and he was a friend. We all began to race through the forest in hopes that we would be able to reach the Gorillas before it was too late. When we got there, Kerchak was roaring and beating his chest, trying to intimidate the heartless that were in front of him to back off. What stunned us however, was that Clayton was standing with them, face blank and raising his rifle to shoot the gorillas. We landed and I immediately moved to grab the gun and push it away. However, the moment I touched the stock of the gun, Clayton swung at his gun with unnatural strength and almost clubbed me upside the before I threw myself under and away from the strike. I let out a grunt as I managed to turn my roll into a crouch. I managed to summon Abaddon Plasma and got into my stance, hiding my surprised anger(and slight bit of unnerved fear).

"You idiot hunter," I growled, "what the hell are you doing?"

"Not Clayton!" Tarzan warned before he let out a series of worried grunts and repeated, "Not Clayton!"

As if in response, Clayton let out an angry yell as he raised his rifle and squeezed off a shot at Tarzan, who ducked and rolled away. I saw the Gorillas were beginning to back away from the encounter and run into the trees, which was a relief, we couldn't afford to be distracted by trying to defend the Gorillas as well as dodge bullets. Sora, Donald, and Goofy all attacked at once, pelting the hunter with light attacks - trying to knock him out and not kill him - but similarly to Cloud, he seemed to shrug off the blows. Sora brought his keyblade down in a over hand, but Clayton parried with unnatural grace, raising the shaft of his weapon against the attack. He twisted and pushed Sora off the weapon and held it out with one hand, aimed right at Sora's face.

Sora eyes widened as he ducked instantaneously as the bullet in the chamber shaved a few hairs from his head.

Donald howled in fury at the hunter nearly killing Sora and blasted him away with a cry of "FIRA!"

The hunter was sent flying and crashed into the rocks at the side, before beginning to rise again. He had burns now decorating his body and his clothes had blackened as the flames had eaten at them.

"Guys!" I yelled, "Don't hold back! I don't know what happened, but he's trying to kill us! Something isn't right!"

I no sooner had said that than the wall behind me exploded outward and something hit me and sent me sliding face-first to the ground before I felt three things wrap around me and throw me even further away. I hit the wall and crumpled to the floor, groaning in pain. I blearily saw Tarzan rush at Clayton but get knocked back as though something had hit him.

"Cure!" Sora yelled, fury pulsating in his voice.

I felt the pain fade and I pushed myself to my feet as I leapt away to see exactly what was going on.

Clayton was sitting on thin air, reloading his rifle with bullets.

'No...' I thought as the air beneath Clayton warped slightly as though some clear haze was interfering with my sight, 'There is something there... we just can't see it!'

"What?" Sora gaped.

"There's gotta be a heartless there!" I growled, "It's probably using some sort of camouflage!"

The invisible heartless let out a chittering noise and the battle began in earnest.