Chapter 004

"Ugh... now where am I?" Sora stood up off of the cold hard ground, he looked around trying to figure out where me might be. "Now I know I've never been here before, so where the heck am I?" A few moments pass as the boy just stands there with a clueless look on his face. "Wait a second...! Where are those cards?!"

The brown haired boy franticly started to search around for the two cards that were dragged threw through the portal. From the corner of the boy's eye, he saw his feather-haired friend, and his not so intelligent-looking friend. "Donald! Goofy!" He took off running towards them, then lost his balance and tripped over a bump in the concrete.

"Sora!" Donald and Goofy both yelled as they jetted off over to help their fallen comrade. The both leaned over and grabbed one of his hands and pulled him up.

He was rubbing his head, "Thanks guys. I'm so glad to see y'all again. Boy that hurt, ha ha ha."

"Where are we?" Goofy asked.

"Good question, I was wondering the same thing myself. This place isn't Traverse Town, even though it sure doesn't look a lot like it. Let's get going, maybe there's some people around here that we could ask."

The trio started walking away from the alley that they all landed in. And back in the depths of the alleyway, a dark figured appeared. "Fools, all of them. They don't understand anything, not even their own destiny." The figure slowly took a few steps backwards into the darkness, not being seen the whole time.

"Ugh..." Sora said with chills running up his spine.

"What's a matter?" Goofy asked him.

He turned around, "Nothing, must have been my imagination. I just had a bad feeling though."

Goofy, Donald, and Sora continued walking down the side of a street, until they came across a general store. "Hey, maybe there's people in there." Donald exclaimed.

"You think? Nice going Donald." Sora said with a bit of sarcasm in his voice. He could tell that Donald was getting irritated. "Ha ha ha, I was just kidding Donald. Calm down."

Inside the store stood an old man behind a counter. "Welcome! How may I help you?" he said very energetically for a man of his age.

Uh... just curious, it must of slipped my mind but, where exactly are we?" Sora asked kind of timidly.

The man started bouncing around the room for no apparent reason. "You don't know where we are? Well I'll tell you where we are!" he paused for a few seconds, as if trying to catch his breath. "We're in Twilight Town! Founded hundreds of years ago by a heroine named April. Legend has it she saved the world with a mysterious weapon and created twilight town so that darkness couldn't enter it. But no one knows for sure what happened, it's just a legend."

"A mysterious weapon..." Sora said quietly to himself while thinking of the keyblade. "Well," he said livelier" thanks a bunch, I think we'll just be going now."

The gang started walking towards the door when the man interrupted, "y'all could always go to the clock tower. There's a shrine of April at the very top, you might want to see it, Sora."

Sora stopped dead in his tracks and began to think, "how does he know my name?" He spun around fast and faced the man squarely. "Thanks for the tip, by the way, what's your name?"

"Oh, well you see... You can just call me 'ol man Ballthesar."

"Got it, have a nice day."

"You too...you too..." the 'ol man said in a sly but quiet voice as the trio left the shop.

Sora and co. started heading down the street again looking for a road that would take them to that clock tower. "How did he know my name?" Sora thought. "I've never see him before in my life, or at least I don't think I have." They all continued on down the street when they cam across an inn.

"Maybe we could stay a night at that inn. It should be getting dark soon according to the time on the clock tower." Goofy said to Sora.

"Yeah, you're probably right, Goofy." Sora said back. They all entered the inn and approached the employee behind the counter

"We're new here, we just need a room for the nigh."

"Okay, would you like a room with a view? And what about a bathroom as well?"

"No thanks," Sora replied, "we're just going to be here for the night, no real point of having a view if it's going to be night time. Plus, there's probably a community bathroom on the floor anyway."

"Okay, sure. Here is your key, you'll need it to get into your room. Second floor, the room number is on the key. Just come by tomorrow morning and get the bill when you are ready."

Donald grabbed for the key before Sora could get it. "Thank you." The key had "Hab. 34" inscribed on it.

Sora grabbed the key from Donald's hand. "That must be our room number, let's get going. They all headed toward the staircase and opened the door. It was in a spiral instead of just a normal square type. They started heading up the long staircase up, it seemed like forever and they still haven't hit the second floor yet. Finally, they reached the second floor, where one flight of stairs cuts off, even though there is more above them.

"Weird." Sora thought, "Anyway, it doesn't matter. Through the door was a long corridor with just one room at the end of it. That was the oddest thing Sora's seen for a while, besides the mansion of course. "Why is there just one room?"

"How should we know? As long as we have a room it's fine" Donald snapped back at Sora. Obviously getting back at him whenever he was being sarcastic earlier.

Done the hall they went until they reached the door. Sora put in the key, unlocked the room, and then the entered it. Their jaws dropped. The room was gigantic. It must have taken up the whole entire floor. Four king sized beds with a buffet table and everything.

"Whoa!" Sora yelled in excitement, "I didn't want a room this big! This is huge, I've gotta go and talk to the employee about this, this has got to cost a fortune!"

"Awe, phowee. Don't worry about it, we get all this free food!"

"Well... I am pretty hungry, It's been a while sense I've had some real good food... Well, what the heck." Sora and co. all dived at the food eating like maniacs for the next hour. Turkey, gravy, you name it, it was there. They all continued to eat until there was a knock at the door. Donald ran and over and answered it with a turkey leg in his mouth and another one in his hand. It was the employee.

"Oh sorry guys, I must of given you the wrong key. I was supposed to give you 24, not 34...!" The employee's jaw dropped when he saw what the three have done to the room. Food every where, messed up sheets, and the wallpaper, it was torn down. And one of the beds was flipped!

"Hi." Sora said with a very timid voice.

The employee gave him a look of disgust. "Out, now. This is for first class guest only. Your room is at the other second floor. The one right below the third floor but right about the first. Nice job counting." With a flash she, the employee, took the key to the room they were currently in and handed them the other key. "I'm going to walk with y'all to the right room, so hopefully you don't get lost."

The employee walked the trio down to the second floor and unlocked the room for them. Goofy, Donald, and Sora entered the small two bed room and fell asleep on the beds, except Goofy, he got the floor.

The next morning they went downstairs to the check out desk to get the bill, but no one was there. They went around the rest of the lobby looking for an employee, but couldn't find one.

"That's strange." Said Sora. "Well, no harm in just leaving without paying, I mean no one is here besides us."

The three quietly sneaked out and started walking down the street again towards the clock tower. Most buildings were shining because the sunlight was being reflected off gold looking material.

"Too bad we slept through the night, I hoped that we'd be able to get up earlier while it was still dark and people weren't out yet. As a matter of fact..." Sora looked all around the plaza they just entered, and no one was there at all. There were booths, carts like in a bazaar, but no people at all. The whole town was almost deserted. In fact, there was some hay blowing across the plaza. "This is just too weird. The only two people we've seen were in shops, and one just disappeared. What's up with this town?"

"I don't know." Said Donald, but it sure is scary being all alone in a town that we've never been to before."

"Well, maybe people just aren't here yet. Or this is a deserted part of town." Sora and co. continued on down to the end of the plaza and took another road, this time a road that was named "Clock Avenue", so it sounded convincing that it would lead them to their destination. Finally, at the end of the road, there was a sign that had a picture of a clock tower on it and pointed to the right, which led to a new street, hopefully towards the clock tower. After a few minutes of the street weaving, which had no reason because there was always room straight down the middle of the giant alley, they finally ended up at a gate, which was surrounding the clock tower.

"Phew, finally." Said a sweaty Sora, who decided it'd be best to run down the road instead of walk. They all continued to walk until they got to what seemed to be the only entrance to the gigantic structure. One door, no more than 6 feet high and 3 feet wide. "How do they get to the top of this thing?" The trio stared straight up and could barely make out the top of the tower. "This thing is huge! It has to be at least 20 stories high, and what's the point of the two buildings out to the side of the tower? Well anyway, we'll find out once we go inside." Sora stepped up and grabbed on to the door handled and opened the door.