"All right, we're almost there," Roxas says, steering the gummi ship to the best of his abilities. Roxas wasn't used to this form of transportation, it was taking some getting used to. The three arrive at their destination, a world Roxas and Xion were unfamiliar with, known as the Land of Dragons. Roxas and Xion were about to enter the world when Namine got their attention.
"Roxas, Xion. There's a problem." Namine says worryingly.
"What's wrong?" Xion asked.
"There's a war going on within this world. If you two go down there as is, Roxas will get caught in the middle of it." Name explained,
"Wait, just Roxas?" Xion was confused. Namine explained how in this world, men are forced to join the army to fight against the invaders, however, Women are actively turned down when volunteering. "Well, what are we supposed to do?" Xion asked Namine. Namine thought of multiple possible options, when suddenly
"I have an idea. . ." Roxas says as he looks at their belongings stored in the corner of the Gummi ship's cockpit. It took some time, but the two put on their organization coats. Besides physically showing that they were a member of the organization, these coats had the strange ability to make the person wearing it almost blend in with the people around them, as long as they weren't drawing attention to themselves purposefully. With that on top of the hood's ability to seemingly mask the wearer's face when pulled over their head, it made for the perfect disguise. With the preparations completed. Entered the new world, as Namine watched them through the memories they were making in real-time.
Once Xion and Roxas enter the world, they find themselves in a large bamboo forest. Without much of a guide, the two wander around aimlessly, until they overhear two voices near a cliffside. There they find a boy and a small red dragon talking about the army. After making their presence known, the two introduce themselves to the residents of this world. The boy introduces himself as Ping, while the dragon's name is Mushu. The four travel together to find the camp where the army is training at. As they approach the commander, some heartless appear, and without thinking, The Roxas and Xion take them down with ease, while Ping sorta, stood there, not much of a fighter himself.
"You two, what are your names?" the commander asked.
"I'm Roxas, and my friend here is named Xion."
"I am Li Shang. Your skills in battle far surpass most of the others here. You are welcome in this troop." He says. He, however, does not accept Ping with Open arms, requesting he joins Roxas and Xion on their patrols and that if he does well, he'll consider allowing him the troop. As the sun sets and the night begins to draw, the three are sent to a tent where they will be staying in the next few days. Roxas and Xion realized that this may be a lot harder than they thought. Not only would going back to the Organization style routine of going on missions in the name of a commander be difficult for the two of them, after hoping to set that life aside, but Xion would also have to keep the guise of being a man up for much longer than anticipated. The two go to sleep and hope things go well.
The next day, Roxas, Xion, and Ping are assigned a mission. A few heartless have infested their camp, and they need to be eliminated before any more heartless appear in the camp itself. It was a simple task, and after a few minutes of searching, all the heartless were rounded up and slaughtered. After that, they were assigned another mission. Some heartless have been found outside of the camp, and they must clear them out. At first only a few heartless seem to be in the arena but the rest soon appear after Roxas, Xion, and Ping make their presence known. Without thinking, Roxas goes into Valor Form and takes care of the heartless with ease. The next day their task is to clear the heartless at that spot again, this time, however, The heartless came in greater numbers, and they brought a few strong ones with them. The three took out the shadows with relative ease, but when the Assault rider heartless appeared, they ran into a problem. The heartless were putting up a fight! Its large lance was able to attack the three blade-wielding heroes without getting in range of their attacks. Xion was about to begin casting a blizzard spell, but before she could finish, Roxas entered Valor form and Jumped over the heartless and its lance. Roxas struck the heartless at its back many times in rapid succession with his two keyblades before the beast was finally slain and the three finished their mission.
After completing their last mission, Li Shang allowed Ping to join his troop, as long as he continued to improve in his combat abilities. After a night of rest, the Li Shang takes the three of them, plus three other soldiers from the troop, with them up the mountain to a nearby village in the mountains. The group searched for any signs of Shan Yu. Mushu claims to have seen the Hun entering a nearby cave and check it out, but find nothing. As they're about to leave, a sudden swarm of heartless appear, mostly containing shadows, but they're lead by one Assault rider. The three fight for their lives against the multitude of heartless, they can swipe and destroy large amounts of shadows at a time, but the assault rider Range advantage and overall strength cause them a great deal of trouble. Roxas, growing nervous and impatient, transforms into Valor Form and slashes through the shadows, before striking at the assault rider with all of his might. The death of the first assault rider attracts two more, leading to Roxas fighting one while Xion and Ping attempt to take care of the other. One of the assault riders begins to spin his lance wildly in order to prevent Roxas from getting an attack in, but Roxas blocks his lance with one keyblade and smacks the heartless with the other, from there he slices and dices until the heartless disappears in a puff of smoke.
When Roxas turns around he sees Ping finish off the other assault rider as Xion kept it's lance caught between the notches of her keyblade. After that battle, the three walk out of the cave, when Roxas hears a familiar voice
"You need to stop doing that." The voice sounds exactly like Namine. Before Roxas could say anything, he heard someone else
"Namine? Is that you?" Xion says, but not out loud, her mouth didn't open, nor did she make a sound.
"Yes. I'm not down there with you guys, but I can talk to you using a little trick I thought about just earlier." Namine explains how, by implanting each other's thoughts in their memories as they're being made, the three of them can essentially communicate by thinking. "Sadly, there's a delay to how fast I can implant the memories, so I can't use it to help when fighting.
"Alright, but what were you telling me to stop doing?" Roxas asks.
"I was talking about your over-reliance on Valor Form recently. You've been using it almost every chance you get. I know you're trying to make good use out of it, but you need to make sure you can still beat strong enemies without the use of drive forms" Namine says. Roxas brushes off her statement
"Don't worry, we'll be fine. Namine" Roxas responds.
" But Roxas, we don't know if there are any negative side effects to using them ye-" Namine is cut off
"We'll be fine Namine!" Says Roxas, a tad annoyed. There's a short pause before Namine speaks again.
"Alright just, be careful out there you two," Namine says, disappointingly before their thoughts ceased being shared.
Upon exiting the cave, they find the village that was fine moments ago, suddenly burned down and destroyed entirely. The three search the village and find Li Shang, along with the three other soldiers suffering from major injuries. They tell them of Shan Yu's location, being at the summit, and the three head off to face him. Ping leads the way and makes some distance ahead of them, giving Xion the chance to talk to Roxas
"That was kind of rude you know, brushing off Namine like that," Xion says
"Sorry, I just don't understand why she needs to get so worried all the time, we've been doing fine," Roxas says, somewhat annoyed at how much he's been nagged recently.
"Roxas, Namine is putting her full trust in us, we should at least try and give her some confidence that we can do this, and you're not exactly helping. . ." Xion says Scoldingly. Before Roxas can respond the three stop. They've made it to the summit. Far away, they see him, Shan Yu. He raises his sword and yells one word
"Attack!" Suddenly a legion of small flying heartless, known as rapid thrusters. While they are weak, the three are separated from each other and forced to fight alone. The three fight with everything they have, but are quickly overwhelmed, Roxas enters Valor Form, hoping to defeat the surrounding heartless and to assist his friends, but the heartless are too high in number for that to change anything, Suddenly, they hear voices, the three soldiers and Li Shang have arrived, and they brought a large firework, they aim at Shan Yu, but Ping realizes that won't be enough, and quickly takes the firework, and shoots it at the summit above, causing a massive avalanche. The Heartless and Shan Yu get swallowed by the oncoming Avalanche, and the group runs to cover to attempt to protect themselves from the avalanche.
Once the Avalanche had stopped, the group turns to congratulate Ping on his quick thinking and defeating Shan Yu, when they notice something. The avalanche had caused Ping's knot around his hair bun to come undone, with his hair down, it was much easier to realize something, Ping was in fact, not a man, but a woman.
"You're. . . A woman?" Shi Lang turns, his voice turning to anger. "I put my trust in you, and you lied to me!?"
"Trust huh?" Roxas thought to himself, thinking back on what he had just been scolded for. Li Shang turns and storms down the mountainside but before he does, he says one last thing
"The punishment for high treason and dishonoring the army. . . Is death. If you value your life, then I suggest you never show your face around us, ever again." He storms down the mountain, and his troop follows, except for Roxas and Xion. Xion approaches "Ping"
"Don't worry about them so much. You're not the only one who has to hide who they really are." Xion says, pushing her hood back, showing "Ping" who she really is. "Ping" laughs and introduces herself as Mulan. The three talk for a bit and begin to go to Mulan's home when they hear a strange noise. They hide behind cover and witness Shan Yu rising from the snow, along with many heartless. He seems almost unscathed. They watch as he goes down the mountainside, approaching the Imperial city. Realizing that their journey is not over yet, storm to the imperial city, too warn Shang and stop Shan Yu.
The three arrive at the Imperial city and see Shang up ahead, they warn him of Shan yu's approach, and before he could say anything they're attacked by heartless. Realizing the danger the emperor is, Shang runs to the castle just up ahead, while the three take out the heartless. The heartless were no match for the three and they keep on moving. Shan Yu has the Emperor at the end of his blade when Shang attacks from behind and knocks him away for long enough to take the emperor inside and have the gates closed. Shan Yu gets back up and walks towards the entrance, but Mulan, Roxas, and Xion stand in his way. They would have to defend the gate.
Shan Yu summons heartless at his side. And the two groups attack. Roxas chargest at Shan Yu and swipes at him with his keyblade, but notices a heartless had made it past Xion and Mulan. He forces Shan Yu backwards as he charges and slashes through the heartless at the door. Roxas turns to face Shan Yu, only to be blind-sided by Shan Yu's blade. Seeing Roxas in danger, Xion runs to his aide, but Shan Yu sees this coming. He parries her blade and grabs her by the throat before throwing her into a nearby pillar. Roxas gets back onto his feet and strikes at Shan Yu, who blocks it with his blade. The two are blade locked, attempting to push the other into a corner. The two are about equal, when Shan Yu is suddenly enveloped in darkness and gains a massive increase in strength. He pushes Roxas to the wall and keeps on pushing. Roxas can barely hold Shan Yu's blade back as it's inches away from his neck. Roxas, inches away from death utters what little words he can muster while staying focused on keeping Shan Yu back.
"Namine. . . I'm sorry." Roxas is enveloped with red energy and gains a second keyblade, dawning the red of Valor form once again, he slashes at Shan Yu with his other keyblade, knocking him off balance, before launching him into the air. Roxas jumps high into the air as Xion recovers from her injuries. Roxas strikes Shan Yu from above, knocking him towards the ground, Xion meets him halfway and strikes him into a wall. Before finally being struck down at the hand of Mulan's blade. With Shan Yu dead. Mulan enters the castle to inform the emperor of the elimination of the threat. While she's gone, Roxas begins to talk.
"I really tried this time, I really tried to win without Valor Form," Roxas says, disappointed at his failure.
"Hey, you did your best, and you used it only because you had to. There's nothing wrong with that." Xion says, comforting him.
"You think so?" Roxas says, their eyes meet and for a split second there's clarity and peace. The two break eye contact as they see their keyblades glow, and a large keyhole appears in the sky. Knowing what to do, they point their keyblades at the sky, unlocking the way to a new world.
The two arrive at the gummi ship. Xion takes a seat near the opposite side of the cockpit, while Roxas talks to Namine,
"Hey, Namine. I just wanted to apologize for earlier. I shouldn't have brushed you off like that, I understand why you were so worried. I'll try to stop using Valor Form in every situation. And I mean it." Roxas says. Namine chuckles a little and responds.
"Apology accepted," Namine says with a smile. The Roxas and Namine get in their seats, and they set sail for the next world, a world that might just be familiar to them. . .