A loud crack awoke Kairi with a start. She looked out her window and saw long spindly blue whips of lightning followed closely by a crack of thunder, streak along the brilliant blue sky specked with stars and a full moon.
She slipped out of bed and quickly got into some clothes, then crept downstairs and slipped out of the house.
Riku was tying down some logs on the raft when the storm began. 'Oh crap,' he muttered, and began pulling the raft towards a shelter he and Sora had constructed in case a storm like this happened.
The storm increased in temper and started to pelt Riku with large droplets of rain. The sand became very slippery and raft was hard to keep a grip on. Riku strained with all his strength to haul the heavy raft up to the shelter but even his bulked muscle couldn't haul the heavy slab up the shore. He was about to give up as the rain started to hail down like a blanket, when out of the gloom a figure charged into view and grabbed hold of a corner of the raft.
Riku grunted and strained his arms, legs and back, but with the help of the stranger in a black cloak he got the raft into the shelter. Once he had tied down the raft he walked up to the cloaked figure who he thought was someone familiar.
'Hey thanks Sora,' Riku said slipping the hood off the figures head.
As the hood fell back Riku realized that it wasn't Sora but a total stranger. He had long silver hair, thin lips and a straight nose. But the thing that surprised Riku most was that he couldn't see the man's eyes because he had them hidden behind a black blindfold.
Before Riku could do or say anything the man reached inside his coat and produced another black blindfold. He gave it to Riku and turned and walked into the chaos of the downpour.
Riku looked at the blindfold he was just given, it was a long strip of black velvet and noticed that it had a large insignia on the top right corner: T.O.
'T.O,' Riku muttered, 'what does it mean? Who was that guy?' these were the thoughts going through Riku's mind as he sat on the cold, dry sand in the shelter.
A figure rolled limply into the shelter and rolled into the half-made raft. Sora got up and holding his side ran over to an astonished Riku. 'Riku we need to leave now,' he commanded.
'What! Why?' he asked getting up. Then he noticed the oncoming threat, a bunch of tiny black creatures, with a pale yellow glow for eyes running towards him and Sora.
'Go now!' Sora commanded, picking up his wooden sword from the sand, and charged at the fuzzy little critters, hacking at them.
