Author's Note-Well, there's the next chapter. I've been coming up with some Disney worlds to put in here. If anybody has any suggestions, let me know. Oh, and I don't own Kingdom Hearts.

Taro untied the rope from the rock. He'd been in luck-after exploring the coastline for awhile, he found a rowboat tied up to the rock. He had to find Sora, and he was sure that the best place to start was the forbidden castle. Of course, he wasn't stealing the boat. He was commandeering it. With every intention of returning it. Some day...

He jumped into the boat and began to float off. He looked at the shore. He hoped he would find someone. Soon...

-----
Sora studied his new outfit for a few moments. His damp, bloody clothes had been discarded on the bed. He didn't seem too fond of these new clothes, but he figured that he'd get used to it. It was a pair of black paints and a black hoodie with a black and blue t-shirt and black, fingerless gloves and black and yellow shoes. Around his neck, he kept the necklace, unable to bear parting with it. Yeah. He would've chosen something else, but this was all he could find.

He walked out of the room. "Donald. Goofy." He called, looking up and down the halls. He sighed. He'd lost them again.

He walked back down to the entrance hall and began going through the lift stops. Eventually, he made it to being right outside the High Tower.

"Sora!" Donald quacked, standing at the bottom of the High Tower with Goofy. They ran over to him.

"Garwsh, we were looking for you! Nice duds..." Goofy commented.

Sora smiled. "I was lookin for you guys, too!"

-----

"She's just a lifeless puppet now? She's lost her heart?" A boy in an black jacket asked sadly. He stared down at the redhead who laid on the low platform in front of a giant, colorful keyhole.

"Exactly." Said the man beside him.

"How do I bring her back to life...?" the boy asked, his voice a near whisper. "How do I get her heart back?"

"Do not fret, child. I shall help you, unlike that coward, Kiyoshi. And unlike that friend of yours who knows yet doesn't care, Taro. However we do need them."

"What?"

"We need Taro and Kiyoshi and Riku if you wish to retrieve the girl's heart. Along with a boy named Sora..."

The boy nodded. "I'll do it. I don't know why we need them, but if it will help her..."

The man nodded. "Follow me..." he said, turning and walking down the staircase. The boy placed a lingering hand on the girl's cheek.

"Soon, Sakura...soon...I will help you. I swear it..." the boy said. With that, he pulled his hood up over his head and followed.
-----
Sora, Donald, and Goofy backed into each other as Heartless appeared around them.

"So these are the Heartless Leon was talking about." Sora said.

"What do we do?" Donald quacked.

Sora watched several shadows rise in the doorway. "We don't have much of a choice. Guys, we're going to the chapel." With that, his keyblade appeared in his hand.

"Er...what's that...?" Goofy asked, pointing to a cloaked figure that was appearing in a column of black mist. The figure raised his arms as if in calling, and sure enough, four more of these figures gathered around the first, spectators of the upcoming battle.

"Who cares? Come on!" With that, he rushed into battle. His two friends followed. One of the figures walked to the first block of the tower steps. Sora frowned. What's he planning? Is he going to try to stop us?

However, he, Donald, and Goofy tried to slice through the shadow Heartless that continued to appear around them. To Sora's dismay, the keyblade he was using was the Kingdom Key. What happened to his other key chains? Last he checked, he had the Oblivion keyblade.

Oh well. It didn't matter. So long as he kept up his concentration, he could still slice through these shadows. They looked different, though. Taller. Thinner. As Leon described, much more deadlier.

Finally, there seemed to be an end to the attacking dark wave. Sora breathed a sigh of relief and looked around at his comrades. "You guys okay?" he asked.

Donald nodded and so did Goofy. Sora saw their nods and then looked back up at the figure, who was still watching them intently from the first block of the steps. Suddenly...

"Sora!" Donald cried. Sora looked back to see a bunch of silver and black swirling pools appearing all around them. Sora got back into fighting stance for the next onslaught of what was to come. Unfortunately for him, he didn't expect it to come from underneath him...

His eyes widened and he gasped as a hand caught his ankle in a steel grip. It turned out that he had been standing on one of the pools! He was lifted up into the air, hanging upside-down. The silver Heartless, for it was silver and sharp-clawed with sharp teeth, drew back a long, thin arm to slice him into pieces with quite remarkable flexibility.

Sora swung his keyblade around wildly, and eventually made contact. His keyblade bit into and clean through the body of the Heartless. He fell to the ground as the Heartless dissipated. He landed quite clumsily and scampered up as quickly as he could and then rejoined his friends. He looked around, only to see that they were surrounded. Suddenly, several streaks of silver! They whipped past Sora and his friends, knocking them to the ground. Then they returned to their places around them, circling them.

These Heartless seemed quite bendy and flexible as they hardly stepped, but somersaulted and flipped around them. Sora sat up. The sun rose, casting its rays upon the Heartless, making them shine. The Heartless twitched, then moved in to attack. Suddenly, a black form leapt down from the platform above. Sora could tell that this wasn't one that he had seen earlier-this one was too short. He watched as their savior flipped and twirled through the air, taking down their adversaries with ease with his gold keyblade.

Wait. A keyblade?

The figure turned to them. Sora fell forward onto his hands and knees in surprise, and when his comrades saw who had saved them, in their surprise, they jumped on him to get a better look, squashing him. But all that the two had to say was...

"King Mickey!"
-----
Taro looked around as he stood on the platform. "This is so bizarre..." he muttered, as he watched the waterfall...or the rising falls, as he had to call them. "Water is supposed to go down, not up..." He then shrugged and thought not to stress himself out over such a trivial matter. "Well, best to see if I can find out where I am..."

With that, with a bit of difficulty, he leapt from platform to platform, going up and up. He had a bit of trouble at some parts-trouble even to the point of where he had to stab the platform with one of his keyblades a couple of times and then climb his way up.

He got to a part with a small stream running through the middle and stopped. Strange. He was getting...visions...right there. He could almost see something happening there, some...distant memory or something.

Riku tossed a wooden sword to Sora, a keyblade now in his hands. "You were just the delivery boy. Go back to playing with your toys, Sora..."

Taro blinked. The people he saw...they were faint and translucent, like ghosts. Only the message was clear: Something had happened here before. And now he definitely knew that he was probably getting into a situation that was over his head.

He turned away from the sight and jumped up onto the remaining platforms. He finally came to an archway. He took a few steps forward, looking out at the castle up ahead. He sighed. There was no bridge, no platforms, no nothing. He took a couple more steps forward, then turned. He didn't notice the lift coming down to pick him up until he had disappeared and suddenly saw himself on it. He turned to see him being pulled up to the castle and figured that he couldn't do anything but wait. He looked over the railing and gulped. Sure was a long way down...

He turned back to the castle. Up on one of the towers-probably the highest tower, in fact-he saw people. And he may have been wrong, but it looked like a battle was raging up there. He suddenly appeared on the walkway around the castle. He looked around.

"Huh...weird..." he commented. A bunch of monsters suddenly surrounded him. "Hey! Those are the monsters from town!" he exclaimed. Both keyblades appeared in his hands and went through a series of spins and twirls, slashing through the darkness. With that, he ran to the large doors and pushed them open with a loud, resounding creak.
-----
A girl watched the object streak closer, closer, into the ocean. Her blue eyes were bright and filled with wonder. "Woah! A falling star!" she exclaimed. Her black hair whipped around her in the ocean breeze. Her hands were clasped behind her back.

"Maybe it's Sora and Riku! I've gotta tell Kairi!" She raced around the island to find her red-haired friend, then smacked her forehead. "Of course. She's in the secret place!"

She ran to the secret place and not surprisingly saw Kairi sitting next to the drawing that she and Sora had drawn a year before. The redhead was leaning against a root, writing something.

"Whatcha doin?" the brunette asked her friend cheerfully.

"Writing a letter..." Kairi eyed her friend suspiciously. "Did you just have caffeine...?"

Her dark-haired friend nodded energetically. "Two Dr. Peppers..."

Kairi sighed. "Oh dear..."

The brunette's grin grew wider. "Guess what!"

"What?"

"I just saw something fall out of the sky and drop into the ocean! It could be Riku and Sora!"

Kairi's eyes widened and she jumped up and grabbed the shoulders of her friend. "Really?! Tifa, are you sure?!"

"Well, I'm not sure if it was Riku and Sora, however, I did see something crash into the ocean." Tifa said in a matter-of-factly voice.

Kairi, still wide-eyed, ran out of the cave. Tifa ran after her and grabbed her arm. "Wait!" she said.

"What?" Kairi demanded.

"It'll be sunset soon! Our parents wanted us home early today for the town spring fling."

"So?"

"So lets go so that we don't get in trouble. Then we slip out and sneak here later tonight. We tell our parents that we're staying over at each other's house, they never get any wiser. It's fool-proof!"

"Well..."

"C'mon! Please?"

Kairi hesitated, glancing back at the secret place, then out at the ocean a bit longingly. "Oh... Alright..."

"Alright, then! Let's go!" Tifa said, pulling Kairi to the boat.
-----
King Mickey grinned. "Hey, you guys!" he exclaimed.

"King Mickey!" Donald and Goofy exclaimed again, climbing off their twitching brunette friend and running over to their king.

Sora groaned as he sat back up again. He blinked. "King Mickey...?"

Mickey turned to Sora. "Hey, Sora. Sorry for attacking and sending you here. I didn't know you weren't a Heartless until it was too late."

Sora shrugged. "It's okay. It got me reunited with my friends. Now all I have to do is find Riku and then we can both go home to Kairi." He said optimistically. He looked around. "Speaking of which, where is Riku? Wasn't he with you?"

The mouse king lowered he head and sighed. "No...he isn't...anymore..."

Sora frowned, his blue eyes displaying worry. "No? What happened to him?"

"Soon after the doors were shut, we lost each other in the darkness. But you need to find him anyways. Riku and Taro are in terrible danger!"

"What? What kind of danger? And Taro? Who's Taro?"

"Taro is none of your concern." Said a soft, young voice off to the side. The four looked over to se one of the hooded figures approaching them. Sora and the others got into fighting stance, though the figure appeared to be wielding no weapon. "However, you are. Help us...and we can help you find your friend..."

"What?! You know where Riku is?!" Sora demanded.

"I saw him only hours ago..." the figure said. He held out a hand. "C'mon. Help us. Join the darkness and you will find him. I can guarantee you that."

The memory of when Riku disappeared into darkness flashed through Sora's mind. The memory of that fateful night on the island-how could he forget it! Sora shook his head. "No..." he said. "I'll find him myself...but I won't fall into darkness!"

"Then you leave me with no choice..." the figure said. That's when Sora noticed that the figure was standing right next to a button on the wall.

"What..."

The figure slammed the button and suddenly, bars shot up out of the ground and around the mouse king, forming a cage. It lifted on a thin pole slightly, at least three feet off the ground.

"Mouse trap."

Author's Note-Okay, maybe I got Tifa a little ooc, but I've never played FF7 before and she had caffeine, so I have an excuse, as lame as that may be. If anybody could help me with her profile, then feel free. Anyways...um...please review! Or I shall trap you in a room with a moose! I shall try to update soon. Ja ne!