Chapter Three: Message in a Bottle

Kairi woek up the next morning to the hum of the ocean waves crashing against the shore. As she slowly opened her eyes, still heavily in sleep mode, they focused on the bubble from the day before, which was directly in front of her and had shrunk quite a bit since she last saw it. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. Picking up the orb was surprisingly easy, as it seemed to be that when shrunken, the bubble solidified. Kairi examined the sphere, turning it slowly in her hands.

"I wonder why this thing shrunk so much...maybe it stayed lit for so long last night that it um...ran out of battery?" The next thing Kairi noticed was that the orb was flashing bright red for a few seconds and then began to fill with what seemed to be a crimson mist.

At this point, Kairi had stopped turning the orb and focused on the center of the sphere, where the red mist seemed to be clearing. she could hear voices coming from the inside of the orb, and was almost certain a figure could be made out...
"Ack stop hitting me! I don't care if you ARE the king, if you ruin Kairi's present I'll seriously cream you."
"Oh, don't worry about this thing. It's made out of white steel, it won't break even if I hit you all day, see?"
"Owe! Hey look...is this thing on now?"
"Yup, it's been on for a few minutes."
"You mean Kairi's going to see this? She'll think I'm a total dork! Awe man, maybe we shouldn't send this..."

King, what king? Who were these people, and what were they talking about? One of the voices sounded familiar to Kairi, but she couldn't quite put her finger on who it was since the figure was still fuzzy through the clearing mist in the orb.
"Come on Riku, we've got to tell Kairi why we sent this stuff to her. I'm sure seeing us in a little orb is kinda strange."
Kairi's palms began to get a bit warm. "Riku..." she remembered the last time she'd seen him. It was right before those huge ivory doors closed and she saw Sora with a worried look after Riku told him something.

"Alright I'll start." Riku said as he shoved the figure beside him.

"Is...," Kairi squinted at the figure shown on the orb, "is that a mouse?"

"No, I think it would be proper if I talked to her first." The figure shoved back. "Hello there Kairi, my name is King mickey and I'm the king of Disney Castle. As I'm sure you've noticed, neither Sora nor Riku are back on your island. This is because Riku is currently with me. As for Sora...I'm not sure of his current whereabouts. We're in the process of looking for him, though it could take a while considering the rift we found..."
"Hey, are we allowed to tell her about that?" asked Riku. "The rift I mean."
"I'm the king, I can tell her whatever I want." Mickey answered and turned back towards the screen. "After we closed the door to the heartless Riku and I prepaired to fight for all worlds, but we could sense that something was terribly wrong. You see, every time we tried to attack a heartless...it would disappear. We continued to attack the horde, but they would simply disappear. Eventually, they were all gone. At this point, we weren't sure what to do, so Riku went to see how far the chamber continued. He came back fairly quickly and told me what he'd found which was--" Mickey was cut off by an impatient Riku.

"Kairi, you probably won't believe this, but as Mickey said earlier, we found a rift in the worlds! To be more specific, everything is still connected, but only at the End of the World. We actually figured we could travel to worlds like--"

"Ahem!" Mickey glared at Riku, then turned back towards Kairi and his expression relaxed. "Well, since Riku has explained almost everything in a nut shell, I don't have much else to say, except to explain your weapon.This," he held up Kairi's staff, "was custom made for you by Cid and the Moogles at the Synthesis Shop of Traverse Town. Aerith was kind enough to find the items needed, so you can bet this baby'll pack a punch!" Mickey swung the staff in a downward slash for emphasis. "Right now the rod is in Attack Mode, so it's compact and the net is tightened. In this mode, your physical attacks will be brutal and sometimes critical. The second mode is Elemental, which will greatly raise your Max MP and summoning power. What is summoning you ask? It's calling on a special creature to help you during battle. In fact, I think we've got an extra for you! Riku, will you check?" he turned to the young man.

"Yeah, sure." Riku reached into his right pocket and pulled out several small spheres about the size of large marbles. The looked like very small versions of the orb Kairi was currently holding.
"Um...let's see..." Riku fingered through them. "Ah, here we go!" he handed the king a metallic blue one.

"Oh," Mickey looked it over, "Tinkerbell, good choice," he turned back towards Kairi. "you should be able to find this at the center of your orb once this tape ends and the bubble enlarges again. I'm sure you're wondering how to use these and modes. Well, the more you train, the more modes and summons you'll receive. There are a total of five known modes: Attack, Elemental, Heartfelt, Defender, and Theif, thought I'm sure you'll find more throughout your journies. Which reminds me, I've sent a friend of yours to bring you to my Castle for personal training from my dear friends Merlin and Leon! I would send you to Merlin's home in Traverse Town, but considering the events of the past few weeks, I feel my world would be the safest for you to be at this point. Oh my!" Mickey seemes to be looking right below the orb, "we're almost out of time! Well..um...I suppose Leon and Merlin will have to explain how to use summons and whatnot when you arrive at Disney Castle. Good luck, Kairi!"

"Wait, what about my turn?!" Riku yelled frantically. "I---Kairi!" the image of her friend disappeared and the orb returned to its normal color.