Remnant of the Key

by lyokoMARVELanime

Adopted from FandomBard12. Four Keybladers meet four huntresses while on a quest to recover a lost friend. Now, their destinies shall become intertwined as they fight against darkness of both Remnant and beyond. The question is, just what else will come from this meeting between the two?

7. Key Exposure

AN: Okay everybody, as you can see, I've still avoided the horrible fate that is death by Yang, and I know some of you are probably hoping for some funny gags and such further showcase this fact, but today's chapter is a long one. And I mean a really, really long one, so I'm just going to answer a few reviews really quick and get right into things.

First off, to "Spiderfan626", Glad you like the story and the RWBY series, be it main or chibi so far, and I do agree with you that Sokai will always be number 1 when it comes to KH pairings, but like you, I can still see the RoseHeart ship happening. Honestly, if I had to pair Sora up with any other character in a crossover, Ruby Rose is the only person I can honestly say that I would be willing to pair him with. I mean, sure, there are some that make a good case for Weiss, but Ruby just makes more sense in my book.

Next, "Monkey D. Conan", Blake's still blushing from the flattery you sent her in your last review, and Ruby's currently inhaling all the cookies you sent. Meaning they both say thanks for all of that. As far as your questions go, all I can say is that at least a few of them will be answered in this chapter, while I will confirm that Sora and the others will be bringing their friends from Remnant along to other worlds later on in the story. It won't stop with the one they go to here. Also, love the suggestions on jokes that Yang could make in the future; gonna have to keep those in mind for later on.

"SuperSaiyanFever", this is Sora we're talking about. He wouldn't even think of going for a threesome even if he could handle it.

"Anonymaton", I actually am a little interested in that Anti-Dumbfool mech suit, (And yes, I am sticking with that nickname for the rest of my life), Ruby got the cookies and is wolfing them down with the ones she got from "Monkey D. Conan", and thanks for the suggestions on how to avoid any further injury on my part from Yang.

Okay, that's a wrap on the reviews, time to get things started.

Ruby: Hey lyoko, have you seen Yang? I can't find her anywhere.

AN: Ruby, you're sister currently still wants to kill me. If I had seen her, do you really think I'd be sitting here right now, getting ready to start this very long chapter?

Ruby: But someone told me that they heard some really weird noises while you were trying to seal one of the closet doors closed earlier today. And I heard that back when you were working on the Gundam SEED Prime triology, you sometimes locked cast members in the closest in order to avoid them killing you.

AN: Ehehehehehe...I have no idea what you're talking about.

[loud banging and muffled grunts and screaming can be heard from somewhere in the hallway]

Ruby: What was that?

AN: [looking a little panicked] Uh nothing! That was just the...cat! Yeah, the cat! I haven't had a chance to feed him today. I'm gonna go do that right now while everyone reads the story. [rushes out the room before coming back in for a few seconds] Disclaimer! [rushes out again]

I do not own anything from either the Kingdom Hearts or RWBY franchises, or any other franchise mentioned in this story.

---

Chapter 7: Key Exposure

Of all the things that they had expected to hear in the first call they received from their friends on other worlds since coming to Remnant, a request for help in dealing with a sudden Heartless uprising probably was one of them, but it still came off as shocking for Team SLVR all the same. Despite this, they were not about to ignore the call, even if it did mean that they would need to leave their current mission for a short time. At least, Roxas, Ven, and Lea were willing to do so, but they were a little uncertain as to whether or not Sora would feel the same. Sure, he had said that he would leave Remnant if it was really important, but saying and doing were two very different things, and after all that had changed about him recently, they had a hard time believing that Sora would follow through on that promise. Thankfully, they were able to breathe easier when the spiky haired leader asked Riku for more details on the situation, proving that he was at least willing to hear him out before making a final decision on whether they join or not.

"As I'm sure you all already know, ever since the end of the Second Keyblade War, and once everyone was rested enough, all of us who have a Keyblade have taken to patrolling the other worlds, or at the very least the ones that we've visited before, in order to keep an eye out for any sudden returns of the Heartless or any other creature that we had battled in the past," Riku started off once Sora and the others had all gotten into more comfortable seating and made absolutely sure that no one could listen in. "At first we didn't find very much, and while none of the Unversed have been sighted since Vanitas was destroyed, the few Heartless and Nobodies we did run across were not much more powerful than some of the more basic varieties, like Shadows, Neo Shadows, and Dusks."

"What about Assassins? Have any of those appeared? Or the Samurais," Lea questioned. The others all glanced at him questioningly upon hearing his inquiry, to which he explained, "Those are the Nobodies that answered most directly to me and Roxas back in the old days, and afterwards, if they weren't just wandering around, they were following orders from the rest of the Organization like a basic Dusk, so I can't help but be curious."

"Do all lesser Nobodies just wander about when their master leaves or is destroyed," Ventus asked, feeling curious about the matter since all the members of the Organization that commanded a special variety of Nobody had been defeated for quite some time now.

"For the most part, as far as I know," Lea shrugged in admittance.

"Either way, we haven't run into any of them. To be honest, we've seen more Heartless than anything else," Riku admitted. "Of course, those few times we encountered any of them were still pretty rare, until a few months ago. It wasn't really too bad at first, just one big group of Heartless on two or three of the worlds we checked in on, but recently, something seems to have changed."

"Changed how," Sora asked.

"On some of our last few patrols, every world we went to had at least one big group of Heartless, and not just the basic variety, but all manner of them, especially in the case of ones that seemed to be very specific to that world. Normally that wouldn't be a problem, but then, we started encountering a few old boss-level Heartless as well on some worlds, and a little too frequently as well. What's worse is that nearly all of them were even more powerful than they were before, or were ever known to be able of becoming. Terra learned this firsthand when he ran into an Opposite Armor on San Fransokyo, and found that it was capable of changing into a Guard Armor at any time it desired, while also possessing capabilities that were more common of a Red Armor."

"Heartless boss being stronger and able to do things it couldn't do…Why does that sound familiar," Lea asked sarcastically while the rest of his team gained looks of recognition at the notion.

Riku on the other hand had no idea why they were all reacting that way, and had naturally asked, "Have you guys had a similar encounter?"

"Yeah, months ago when we were in the middle of the initiation exam for Beacon," Roxas replied. "The Heartless suddenly appeared and attacked both us and some of the other students, and they were being led by a Darkside that was a lot more powerful than normal. We figured that it was just a random, freak occurrence, or that something about Remnant had a weird effect on the Heartless at the time."

"Well it looks like that isn't the case, because it's happened a few other times as well, and not just that time I mentioned with Terra," Riku revealed. "Aqua, Mickey, and I all had some experience dealing with a Heartless boss that we had faced in the past with more power and abilities than what it had before, and even Xion and Naminé had come across at least one when they were checking in on things over at Radiant Garden. Thankfully, that one hadn't gained too big of an upgrade, and it wasn't as powerful as some of the others, but it's still reason enough for us to worry, especially since Radiant Garden hasn't had any problems with the Heartless since Ansem the Wise had finally perfected that defense system that the Restoration Committee had set up. Add in the fact that we've had so many encounters like that happening one after another, and I think you can all understand why we're concerned."

"So what's the plan? We can't just leave and help you guys patrol the worlds at random. We've got a lot of work to do on Remnant, both in terms of our main reason for being here, and in terms of the stuff they've got us doing as students at Beacon," Sora questioned while pointing out the flaws in the most obvious of plans.

"Don't worry, Sora. We're not at that point just yet," Riku reassured his friend. "As we speak, Ansem is working on a new kind of scanning system that would allow us to know in advance when a Heartless infusion like the ones I just mentioned will take place, and on which world. That should help us to figure out exactly where we need to be a little easier than just looking around each world at random would, while also helping to let us know if and when some of the most important worlds fall at risk. The only problem is that it's going to take him some time to finish, so until then, we need to keep a constant watch on those important worlds I just mentioned."

"And what exactly would qualify as an important world," Ventus asked, not really liking the phrasing of that statement. The others could understand, since they figured that all worlds were just as important as another, even if they did not have anything of significance on them aside from a few friends they had made while there.

Riku must have picked up on this, because the first thing he said was, "I know how you guys feel, but if we can't save all the worlds, then we should at least protect the ones that have something of greater value than the others, and after talking it over with Mickey, Yen Sid, and Aqua, we all came to an agreement on just which worlds made that list. I doubt I need to mention the obvious, but the worlds of the Princesses of Heart do make the list, and despite the fact that the last group has already passed on their light to a new seven, there's still a chance that someone may think that they retain at least some of their former powers. That's why we're including the worlds of both the old and new seven hearts. Yen Sid's tower and King Mickey's home are both worlds that could be considered as important, but they've got their own special protections to keep them safe."

"Namely Yen Sid's magic and the Cornerstone," Sora cottoned on.

"Right, so all that's left is any world that could most likely serve as a safe refuge for people who have lost their world," Riku continued on from there. "Obviously Traverse Town is one of them, but from what we figured, Radiant Garden and Twilight Town could just as easily serve as worlds that people would be sent to if their homes were lost to the Heartless. The Land of Departure is also an especially important world to be keeping an eye on, but Aqua has insisted that she placed quite a few magic spells on its world barrier that would ensure its safety."

"What about Destiny Islands? That seems to ping on a lot more people's radar than most people give it credit for, considering," Lea asked, only trailing off at the end since he felt that the rest of his comment did not need to be said.

It really did not need any further clarification, as they were all well aware of just how interconnected Sora and Riku's home was to the events of the past few years, and everything else that was involved with Xehanort. Of course, they all found themselves in for quite the surprise when Riku gave his answer. "I've been keeping an especially close eye on the islands ever since we started to see more Heartless on the other worlds, but for some reason, they've never appeared there. It's like the islands are suddenly no longer considered as big of a target to them, or the world has somehow become much more protected since it fell to darkness a couple years ago."

"What does it matter either way? If the islands are safe, that's all there is to it, right? It's all the other worlds that Riku listed that we need to be more concerned with," Sora told the others. Sure, it may have come off as a little cold, but the boys could still see that Sora was very relieved that his home was being spared from any repeats of the horrors it had been subjected to on the night he had first gotten the Keyblade. Sure, it still hurt that he had to trust it would stay as safe while he protected other worlds, but after his last adventure, Sora was able to better understand that you could not always take action based off of your feelings alone. Not that he liked this fact, but that was a matter for another time. Right now, he had a much more important question to ask. "So where do you need us?"

Hearing that question from his best friend made Riku smile a little more, as he took it to be a sign that the old Sora really was still in there, and he then went on to explain everyone's assignments. "At the moment, Mickey, and I are keeping watch over Traverse Town, Arendelle, and the Kingdom of Corona, while Terra and Donald are looking after Enchanted Dominion, the Dwarf Woodlands, and the Palace of Dreams. Xion and Goofy are taking care of things in Agrabah, Beast's Castle, and Wonderland right now, and finally, Aqua and Naminé are prioritizing Radiant Garden for the moment."

"Whoa, whoa, hold on a minute. How come Aqua and Naminé are the only ones that are just given one world while the rest of you have three," Ventus questioned.

"Part of it is because Naminé's still new at wielding a Keyblade, and the other part is because Radiant Garden is probably one of the largest worlds that any of us have ever been to. Not to mention that even with all the magic she's placed on the world, Aqua still wants to keep a close eye on the Land of Departure, even with Yen Sid promising that he would look after it for her while she's away."

"And when you add in the fact that it's Ansem the Wise who's making that fancy scanner for us, it would be better to have someone on his world full-time instead of having them split their time between there and another world," Lea pointed out. This time when the others gave him looks of surprise, he felt a bit more insulted, and huffed, "What? Just because I'm normally the type to just rush in and burn through things doesn't mean I don't know how to recognize important stuff like that, too."

"Either way, from the sound of things, there's only one world out of the ones you listed before that doesn't have anyone protecting it, and I'm guessing that's where you all want us to go, right," Sora picked up.

"Yep. As soon as you guys can, we need you to head for Twilight Town. Like I said before, it's just as likely to serve as a refuge world as Radiant Garden or Traverse Town, but more than that, there's also the fact that Ansem's old computer is still there, and there's no telling what could happen to any data that's left on it if the Heartless were to find and destroy it," Riku confirmed.

"Alright, then we'll head out first thing tomorrow morning after we tell Professor Ozpin about the situation," Sora agreed, and after a few final exchanges and farewells, the conversation came to an end, allowing him to hang up. Looking to his team, Sora could not help but grin a little and say, "Looks like we're getting an unofficial first mission as huntsmen, boys."

"Maybe not as huntsmen, but definitely as a Beacon team," Lea joked with him, with both of the other two smiling along in equal agreement.

"Either way, we'll be ready for it, so bring it in, boys," Sora prompted as he extended his hand out, silently asking for a hands-in moment. Feeling that it deserved, the other boys all placed their hands in, one on top of the other, until they were all in, at which point, Sora declared, "All for one, and one for all!"

What Sora did not expect, was that saying that last bit would cause the others to all look at him as though he had just killed the moment, or for Ventus to say, "Yeah, Sora, don't take this the wrong way, but I'm pretty sure none of us want that to be our battle cry, or whatever you want to call it."

"Why not," Sora asked.

"Because that's more of a thing that you do with Donald and Goofy, or even those guys and Mickey," Lea stated. He then waved around the group and asked, "Do any of us look like one of those three to you?"

"Well then, what would you guys recommend," Sora asked after he pulled his hand back. It was just going to get awkward if they continued to stand there like that while having this conversation.

"I don't know, how about 'Let's strike silver,'" Roxas suggested.

"That sounds like something we'd say if we were going to fight ourselves," Lea dismissed, with Sora nodding in agreement. "Maybe… 'Time to burn through the night.'"

"Sure, we could use that, if we were all as crazy about using fire in our battles as you were," Ventus argued, getting nods of agreement from both Sora and Roxas, and prompting Lea to cross his arms in a huff. "Oh! I've got one! 'Brilliantly aligning for a silver shining!'"

"…That sounds dumb," all three of the other boys chorused as one.

While Ventus hunched over in pitiful sadness, Sora placed a hand to his chin, thinking hard about a few ideas of his own, until he finally snapped his fingers. "I've got it! How about… 'For life and light, together we fight!'?"

The others were all silent upon hearing that suggestion, and unfortunately, Sora could not tell if it was because they were letting that stir in their minds for a minute, or if they were just preparing to shoot it down like the other ideas thus far. He soon breathed a sigh of relief when they all smiled excitedly, and Lea said, "Yeah, I like the sound of that."

"I can get on board with it," Roxas agreed.

"It's perfect," Ventus praised.

"Alright then, let's try this again," Sora prompted, holding his hand out so that the others could put them in once more. The minute that the last hand was on the pile, Sora started off by saying, "For life and light…"

"Together we fight," the boys finished as one, and after pulling back briefly, they all shared a group fist bump with one another, sealing the deal on their new battle cry, and with that, they all went to bed with excited smiles on their faces, eager for the mission that awaited them tomorrow.

---

The following morning, Ruby woke up feeling really happy. Then again, she had gone to bed feeling really happy for some reason beyond her comprehension. All she knew was that it probably had something to do with how she had spent the entire day with Sora. Sure, they did not do all that much aside from looking for clues that could help with finding his missing friend, and later on, some simple repair and maintenance work on their weapons, but despite how simple, routine, and all around boring those tasks normally would have been, Ruby had found herself having a great time. In fact, she could not remember the last time she had that much fun doing regular maintenance work on weapons with someone else, and it left her feeling really eager to spend more time with Sora. Then again, she had found herself wanting to spend a lot of time with Sora since they first met, and over time, the idea of hanging out with him started to give her an odd tingly feeling in her stomach. She was pretty sure that it was not any kind of sickness, or at least none of the kinds she had in the past, but it was still odd all the same. It was like she was both excited and nervous at the same time, and she had no idea what to make of it.

The only thing that did make sense was that it seemed to only grow a little more intense around the spiky haired boy, so Ruby came to the logical conclusion that she could finally get an answer to what this sensation was if she spent as much time with Sora as possible, hence the reason why she was currently skipping through the halls of the dorm building in an effort to find him. Well, part of the reason anyway; the rest was just because she really liked spending time with him. The only problem was that she could not find him right now. The entirety of Team SLVR seemed to have vanished after breakfast that morning, and so far, Ruby had no luck in finding them, even after looking in all the places that she and others had all known the four to normally be found.

Her search finally came to an end when she spotted Sora coming out of his dorm room, looking like he was in a hurry. "I can't believe I nearly forgot to grab those Elixirs before we headed out," he muttered, or at least, that is what Ruby thought she heard him saying as he apparently scolded himself.

Not that it really mattered either way. Ruby had finally found her target, and quickly rushed over to talk with him. "Hey Sora," she called out, startling the boy in her approach. "Sorry, didn't mean to surprise you."

"Oh, no big deal, Ruby," Sora brushed off, even though he still had a nervousness about him that Ruby could not ever remember seeing before.

Ruby just shrugged it off for now, determined to follow through on her mission, and decided to just get to the reason why she was looking for him. "So, do you want to hang out again today? I could use a study partner, and you could probably tell me a little bit more about the whole Keyblade stuff," Ruby asked, hoping that he would say yes.

"Oh…I would, but…I've got something I need to take care of right now. Might take most of the day," Sora stuttered, slowly making his way down the hall as he did. "May-maybe some other time. Bye Ruby!"

Before Ruby could bid him farewell in return, Sora had already disappeared around the corner, leaving the poor girl disappointed and a little upset with the way he took off. Still, it was not like she could do anything about it now, so she just decided to go back to her team's room and see if any of them were still there. When she arrived, she found that only Yang and Blake were present, the former playing a game on her Scroll while the latter just sat back with a book that she had checked out of the library yesterday firmly in her hand. Seeing that the two were both busy, Ruby just trudged over to her bed and began pulling out some of her notes so that she could review the stuff they had covered in their last few classes, but unfortunately, she found it very difficult to focus.

It was really weird to Ruby. One minute, she was able to keep her mind on her work, easily putting down her answers to the questions on her homework, or working to memorize the facts she had written down in class for her notes, and then a few seconds later, her earlier encounter with Sora suddenly popped into her head, drawing a sad sound out from her. She could not understand why that was the case. Sora had not yelled at her or been mean in any way when he said that he could not hang out, and yet, she still felt really bad that he had turned her down for some other thing. What that thing was, Ruby could not say for sure, since Sora had not told her, and from the way he was acting, it seemed like he had no intentions of telling her whatever it was he was doing. Maybe that was why it hurt so much; because Sora was keeping secrets from her. It was pretty obvious that he and his team were keeping everyone in the dark about a lot of things, but Ruby still felt pretty upset about how it seemed like Sora did not at least trust her enough to tell her what at least one of those secrets could be.

What Ruby did not realize was that her moans and groans were not as quiet as she thought they were, and Yang and Blake had both taken notice very quickly. Naturally they were concerned about the young leader of Team RWBY, but they figured that if something was wrong, Ruby would tell them. That or they would figure it out quickly enough, seeing as Ruby wore her heart on her sleeve most of the time. When Ruby just kept groaning and they failed to figure out what the reason was, Yang finally decided to step up and see what was bothering her little sister so much.

"Everything okay there, Rubes," Yang inquired, pausing her game so that she could give her full attention to the conversation.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just can't seem to focus on my work," Ruby insisted.

"All that moaning and groaning does not sound like frustration with an inability to focus," Blake disputed. "Did something happen?"

Ruby leveled a look at Blake for being so perceptive, but she could not fault the black haired girl since she probably was making it a little obvious. Taking a deep breath before letting it out with a quick sigh, Ruby admitted, "I guess I'm just a little upset that Sora couldn't hang out with me today. I mean, he said he had finished all of his weekend school work the other night, so I thought he might want to help me with mine, or even let me help him look for his friend."

"What friend," Yang asked.

"Oh, right. I guess you guys don't know yet," Ruby realized. "Sora and his friends came to Beacon because they heard that they would have a better chance at finding a missing friend of theirs." At this point, her earlier smile returned to her face as she revealed, "We actually spent most of yesterday looking up anything that could give them a clue as to that friend's whereabouts, but we couldn't find anything before we had to go down to the school's workshop so that we could give Crescent Rose and his Keyblade a check-up."

"Whoa, hold on a minute," Yang cut in, a wide grin already starting to form on her face. "Are you telling me that…you actually let Sora come with you when you did maintenance on your scythe?"

"Why wouldn't I have? I invited him to come along with me," Ruby shrugged, not realizing that admitting that was likely to be a mistake until after she said it.

"You invited him," Yang exclaimed, getting a lot more excited than she already was before, right to the point where she had jumped down from her bunk to get closer to her sister.

"What's the big deal," Blake asked, not getting why her partner was so excited.

"Blake, Ruby never invites someone to go with her when she's giving her scythe its regular maintenance! Not since she was old enough to do it by herself," Yang explained. "The only time she ever lets anyone be around her when she's doing so is when someone's already there, or if someone else is already going with her. I've even had to struggle to get her to let me tag along so that I could do some work on Ember Celica, and she actually invited Sora to go with her! That's basically like she asked him out on a date!"

"YANG! Don't say things like that," Ruby protested as her face began to match her cloak. "It wasn't a date! I don't even like Sora that way! He's just a really good friend!"

"Yeah, that you have a total crush on," Yang teased.

"Do not!"

"Do too."

"Do not."

"Do too."

"Do. Not!"

"Ahem," Blake coughed, breaking up the childish bickering and drawing the gazes of both sisters onto to her. She said nothing more for a minute, making Ruby and Yang think that their conversation was bothering her while she was trying to read, until finally, she gave Ruby a very cat-like smile and said, "You totally do have a crush on Sora."

"BLAKE," Ruby whined, while Yang pumped a fist in victory. Seeing that the other two girls were ganging up on her, Ruby went with her usual defense strategy in these situations and ducked under her hood. "You guys are being mean to me," Ruby whined.

"Ruby, come on," Yang said as she pulled her sister's hood back, her teasing tone now gone in place of a much more soothing one. "There's nothing wrong with having a crush on a guy. It's totally normal. Besides, there are worse guys you could have picked for your first crush."

"I'm telling you, I don't have a crush on Sora," Ruby continued to insist.

"Do you even know how to tell when you have a crush on someone? Or even what it's like when you have feelings like that for a guy, Ruby," Blake then asked, honestly curious about whether or not the younger girl did.

"Well…I don't know, kind of," Ruby confessed, albeit a little nervously. As Yang had said, this would be the first time Ruby ever had so much as a crush on someone, seeing as the closest thing to romance she had ever been exposed to was between her parents, and some of the boys that Yang had dated in the past. She could not really remember her mother that well now, since she was really little when Summer Rose had died, and Yang's relationships tended to not last very long, so neither of those were the best examples to draw an idea from.

One shared look between each other after hearing that told Yang and Blake exactly what they had to do now. "Well then, how about we help you out with that," Yang offered. "Me and Blake will ask you a series of questions that you'll need to answer with complete honesty. No half-answers, no cop outs, just the complete and honest truth."

"I-I don't know about this," Ruby tried to refuse, but she knew it was futile to refuse when her sister was really serious about something like this.

"First off, do you ever find yourself thinking about him more than anyone else when he does something crazy or maybe even dangerous, even when someone else is involved," Blake asked, taking the initiative on the whole thing.

That seemed like an easy one to Ruby, since it made her think back to when Sora and Roxas had challenged Team CRDL, but she did not want to admit the truth. She was afraid it would make her look like a bad person. It must have shown on her face, because Yang placed a hand on her shoulder when she did not answer right away, and said, "Ruby, its okay to admit if that was the case at any point. It doesn't make you a bad person; it just shows how much you care about him." When Ruby continued to remain silent, Yang then went on to add, "I promise that none of what you say will leave this room. We'll probably tell Weiss about it, but that would be it, okay?"

Having that confirmed for her seemed to make Ruby feel a little better, because she gave a small nod in response and sighed as she finally gave her answer. "Yes."

"Have you ever found yourself feeling a bit self-conscious around him? Like say, if you wanted to ask him something, but you were afraid that you would mess up doing so, or you were just worried about how he would react to something you did that would be considered embarrassing," Yang asked.

"Yes," Ruby replied, her mind automatically going to both yesterday when she had asked if he wanted to do their weapon maintenance work together and when they first met after she had exploded.

"Do you find yourself staring at him and noticing things about him in a single moment that others would probably miss," Blake asked.

"Once or twice," Ruby answered again, feeling a little more nervous about that one than the last few.

"Do you feel like it's easier to be yourself or just have fun with him around," Yang asked.

"…Yes," Ruby admitted, worried about how her sister would take that.

Luckily, it did not seem to bother Yang too much, as the blonde just kept on smiling at her sister, even as she asked the next question. "Have you ever felt especially excited at a chance to hang out with him?"

"Yes," Ruby confirmed.

"If he's having trouble, or is just upset, what's the first thing that you want to do," Blake then questioned.

"Help him, of course," Ruby answered. Apparently that was not good enough, because neither of the other two asked another question after that, and Ruby could not help but elaborate afterwards. "Okay, help him and maybe give him a hug until he feels better. Or really just do anything to make him feel better, because it seems like he's always hiding some kind of sadness underneath that smile of his."

"How would you describe that smile," Yang asked, making a note to ask about what sadness Ruby was talking about later.

"I…I don't know," Ruby shrugged.

"Just go with whatever the most honest answer is, and whatever comes to mind first," Blake offered in prompting.

Ruby paused for a minute to think about the sight of Sora's smile, and soon found herself smiling a little more as she admitted, "I would say…cute…warm…like something that always makes me feel safe and that everything's going to be okay no matter what happens, even when everything seems hopeless."

"Yeah, Ruby, those are all signs that you've definitely got a crush on Sora. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that you may even be in love with him," Yang informed her sister. This time when Ruby blushed, she did not try to hide behind her cloak, despite how much she obviously wanted to, and Yang took that as her cue to continue on. "Like I said, you couldn't have picked a better guy as your first crush. I mean, Sora's like the perfect guy from what I've seen. Always smiling, always willing to help others, kind, cute…"

"Just about every other positive word or description in the book," Ruby absently muttered without realizing it.

"What was that," Yang asked.

"Nothing!" Ruby immediately insisted in a panic, never noticing how Blake's cat-like smile was back again, signaling that she somehow knew what the red-clad scythe wielder had said. Her face soon fell again when she argued, "But Sora's not perfect. I mean, almost every time we ask him and his friends a question about who they are, they clam up or try to change the subject after saying that it's a long story or they just don't want to talk about it."

"Well, it's not like they're the only ones who keep secrets," Blake pointed out, absently playing with her bow a little as it seemed to twitch a little when she did.

"But this is a lot more frequently than anyone else," Ruby argued. When she thought back to the time she spent with Sora yesterday, she found that she had a few things to add to her argument, and added, "I mean, aside from the fact that friend of his is missing, and that they have red hair and a Keyblade like him and the rest of his team, Sora really didn't tell me too much about whoever he's looking for. I don't think he ever even mentioned whether they were a boy or a girl. And when we were in the workshop, I could've sworn I heard him say something about some friends of his being able to do magic."

"But Ruby, there's no such thing as magic," Yang reminded her. "Are you sure that he wasn't talking about some kind of stage show variety."

"I'm positive, because when I asked him to repeat himself, he went and said Dust instead, like he was trying to cover a mistake he had just made," Ruby replied. "He also mentioned that his best friend had reached this really important goal, but afterwards, it seemed like he was upset that they didn't both get to it even though they were taking the exam for doing so at the same time. It just feels like every time when I learn something new about him or his friends, there's a dozen new questions popping up that they won't tell us the answers too."

"Ruby has a point," Blake admitted, prompting the sisters to turn to her again in questioning. "During some of their past conversations, I couldn't help but overhear some really weird things between them that seemed a little suspicious. Not really in a bad way, but it does make me think that Team SLVR knows about some things that they aren't telling us, like about the Heartless or their weapons and abilities."

"Did you ever hear anything that made it sound like something bad might've happened to Sora in the past," Ruby asked.

"Once or twice, usually after someone made an indication that he had feelings for someone, usually you," Blake admitted.

"Come to think of it, Roxas was acting pretty weird when he caught me getting ready to tease you and Sora about that back on our field trip to the Forever Fall Forest," Yang admitted. Her brows then scrunched up in thought as she added, "Speaking of which, Roxas and Lea both seemed to act really weird a lot of the time when their past is brought up, but especially when you mention their old jobs. Even when I tried to learn a little more about his past while we were hanging out yesterday, Lea would flip between eager and happy to moody and sad."

Hearing all of this information about Team SLVR that they had each come to notice or gather made the girls grow a little more suspicious about just what it could be that the four boys were hiding. Sure, they were a big mystery for everyone at Beacon, but most other people had not been around the Keybearers as much as Team RWBY had. The only ones that had nearly as many interactions as the girls were Team JNPR, and it was hard to say for sure if Jaune's team had noticed the same things that theirs had. All in all, it was clear that they had way more questions about the huntsmen-in-training than what some would consider normal for an entire team at Beacon.

Thinking about how much they had noticed in regards to Sora's team, Ruby could not help but wonder aloud, "Do you think that Weiss has noticed anything odd about them, too?"

Before the other two could answer, their door suddenly slammed open, and they turned to see a rather irritated Weiss Schnee had just arrived. "Whoa, what's go you worked up, Ice Queen," Yang asked.

"First off, enough with the Ice Queen thing," Weiss snapped. "Second, not that it's any of your business, but Ven just had to cancel our study session."

"I didn't know you two had even set up a study date," Ruby questioned.

"It was just last night after we did some sparring practice together," Weiss revealed. "He said that he was going to be spending all of today working on his weekend assignments and could use the company, but when I saw him in the hall earlier and asked if we were still on, he said that he forgot he had made plans to do his homework together with the rest of his team and ran off."

"Weird…That sounds a lot like what happened when I asked Sora if he wanted to hang out earlier," Ruby hummed in thought. Another thing then occurred to her after thinking over what Weiss had said, and she then asked, "Did he say he was going to be doing his assignments with his whole team?"

"Yes, you dunce. That's what I just said," Weiss replied.

"But that doesn't make any sense. Sora told me yesterday that he had finished all of his weekend homework the night before," Ruby recalled.

Blake was about to add onto that by revealing that Roxas had done all of his assignments yesterday after they ran into each other in the library, when an odd sound suddenly reached her ears. Without the rest of her team noticing, Blake swiftly made her way over to their window, and looked out to see if she had been hearing things or not. As it turned out, she had not, and she immediately cut into the others' conversation, saying, "Hey girls, you might want to see this."

The other girls all quickly crowded around the window, and looked out and down to see the entirety of Team SLVR gathered up, apparently checking over some things that they had on them while they talked before they all took off in a direction that would lead them off campus. What made it really strange though, was how the four boys seemed like they were checking to make sure that no one was watching or follow them before they started to head out, and when they did, they were not heading in the direction of either the other buildings of the school or the airship landing pads. In point of fact, it looked like they were heading for the Emerald Forest, of all places for some reason.

"Where in the world are they going," Weiss questioned on everyone's behalf, but it seemed that none of them had any answer for her.

After looking after the departing Keybearers, Ruby found it easy to answer that question with one simple order for her team. "Come on. Let's go find out."

"Uh Ruby, are you sure about that? I mean, I get that they have a lot of secrets, but spying on them like that wouldn't make it right," Yang hesitantly argued.

"We're not spying on them," Ruby insisted. "We're just…going with them without them knowing, and learning about a few of things that they're trying to keep secret from us."

"That is spying," Weiss pointed out.

Ruby did not seem to pay her partner any mind in this case, as she simply asked, "Look, those guys have been keeping a lot of secrets from us and I want to know why. If they won't tell us, then this may be our best chance to find out for ourselves. Besides, what if they're mixed up in some kind of trouble? I don't want Sora and the others to get hurt because there was something that we could've done to help and we didn't."

Ruby's words seemed to do the trick for the girls, because after one more exchange of looks with Yang and Blake, Weiss nodded in agreement as she said, "Well, I suppose I would be a very irresponsible partner if I just let you go off and do something like this alone."

"I'm in," Blake agreed.

"Like I'm gonna let my baby sister get into trouble like this without me," Yang smirked.

"Alright, Team RWBY, gear up and move out," Ruby ordered, and with that, the girls all raced out of their room to follow Team SLVR. But only after they stopped to grab their weapons and a good supply of Dust.

---

A short time later, Sora landed on the forest floor of the Emerald Forest with a light thud. Afterwards, he quickly pulled out his Gummiphone to check the tracking app they could use to locate the stealth gummi, and after confirming that they were heading in the right direction, he looked over his shoulder and shouted, "Come on you guys! Hustle it up!"

"Relax buddy! We're coming," Ventus replied as he floated down into a steady landing just a few feet behind Sora.

Roxas followed soon after, easily using Glide to guide his descent like the other two had, but the final member of their team landed with a bit more noise, and a lot more scorch marks, as Lea used his fire powers to carry him down by unleashing fire blasts from his hands every few seconds or so until he was on the ground. "You guys do remember that I can't use Glide like the rest of you, right," Lea questioned. "As in, I can't basically fly through the air like we're all on Neverland?"

"Don't worry, Axel. We'll teach you how to do it someday," Roxas reassured his friend before joining the other two in a sprint for the ship.

"That's what you keep saying, and yet, here we are, long after the first time you said it, and I still don't know how to use that ability," Lea pointed out as he ran alongside his best friend. "Forgive me if I'm not too willing to take your word for it."

"Okay, then how about you take my word for it," Ventus offered. "Don't worry. We'll teach you how to use Glide…Someday."

Lea was not dumb, nor was he stupid, so he did not need to see the pair of blondes laughing as they high-fived one another to know that they were having a good laugh at his expense. Just as he was about to start grumbling over it, Sora called back, "Focus you guys! We can poke fun at each other once we're on the ship and flying towards Twilight Town."

They all went quiet after that, knowing that Sora had given an unspoken order to keep their eyes and ears peeled for any sign of anyone or anything that should not be out here with them right now when he said that. Sure, it was probably silly to think that there was anyone out in the Emerald Forest right now besides the Grimm, but you could never be too careful, especially when you are trying your best to protect the world order. Their silence did not last for all that long though, since Lea was a little skeptical about their chosen path to the ship. "Are you sure we're going right way, Sora," Lea had to ask.

"Of course I'm sure," Sora insisted. "Chip and Dale made it a point to make sure that I knew how to use the tracking app on the Gummiphone so that we'd be able to find the stealth gummi ship no matter where we landed it. I may not be all that great with technology, but that doesn't mean I'm completely hopeless with it."

Lea seemed to accept that, and they continued on with their journey forwards in silence for a few more minutes, drawing closer to their improvised landing site with every step they took. For a time it seemed like they would be able to get to the ship without any incident impeding their path, but then, Ventus suddenly skidded to a halt, and called out in a hushed tone of voice, "Guys, hold on a minute and keep quiet!"

The other three froze the very second that Ventus had spoken, and did not say a word as they strained their ears in an attempt to hear whatever had spooked him. When they heard nothing more than the sounds of nature, Sora slowly edged over to his partner and asked, "What's the matter?"

"I thought I heard something just now. I don't think we're alone out here," Ventus replied, keeping his voice low and quiet as he continued to listen.

After falling quiet and listening for a few more minutes, Lea finally sighed and said, "You must have imagined it, Ven. There's no one out here but us and some wildlife."

"And a whole bunch of Grimm," Roxas reminded him. "Or did you forget how we had to fight a massive pack of them not even half an hour after we had crashed down out here?"

"All the more reason why we should hurry and get airborne," Sora agreed, and he was soon picking up his pace in an effort to reach their ride off-world.

What none of the boys realized was that the thing Ventus heard had actually been Yang's boot snapping a twig she had just missed, but thankfully, she and the rest of Team RWBY had managed to find a good hiding place before the boys had spotted them. Once she had deemed it safe to continue their pursuit of the boys, Ruby silently signaled for the girls to move forward, and they returned to their silent pursuit of Team SLVR, ducking between trees and rocks in order to avoid further detection. After traveling a short distance, Ruby found herself scrambling to duck behind cover again, as she saw that Sora and the others had all come to a stop in a small clearing. Thankfully, it did not seem like they saw her, and she was able to let the rest of the girls know that they needed to hide before they wandered into the clearing. They would have peeked out from their hiding places to watch for when the boys began moving again, but from what the girls could tell, Team SLVR had no intention of moving on from the clearing. Instead, they just continued to stand there, with Lea, Roxas, and Ventus all glancing about at their surroundings as if they were standing guard, while Sora seemed to be waving his hand through the air in an effort to find something.

With most of the boys on lookout, none of the girls felt it was safe to try and peek out from their hiding place too often or too carelessly, so they stayed down, most of them with their backs up against the tree or boulder that they had hidden behind. That could not continue for long though, because otherwise, it would defeat the purpose of their impromptu spy mission, and that would mean that they would likely miss something when the boys started moving again. Finally, Blake decided to take a chance, and peeked out from her hiding spot, only to be met with a surprising sight that she had not expected at all.

"They're gone," Blake exclaimed, not bothering to whisper at all.

One by one, the rest of Team RWBY came forward to see that Blake was correct. All four boys had seemed to have vanished into thin air, and there was not one trace of anything that would indicate that they had left the clearing, or where they could have gone if they had. "Great! All that time and effort, and we ended up losing our targets," Weiss grumbled.

"Hey, it's not like they just disappeared. Maybe there's something that we're not seeing," Yang pointed out, trying to stay optimistic.

"Or maybe they realized we were following them and are now getting ready to jump scare us," Blake offered. Given how often the Keybearers joked around, she did think that it was likely something that they would do to someone that had been spying on them, whether they knew it was their friends or not.

While the rest of her teammates continued to theorize about what had happened to their targets, Ruby spotted something odd in the spot where Team SLVR had been just a moment ago. An oddly colored, rectangular piece of material that seemed to be just sticking up out of the ground, and she did not think it was metal. Or at least, it did not seem like any kind of metal that Ruby had ever seen before, and what made things even weirder was that it did not seem to be moving at all like anything else would be if it were just sitting in a position like that.

Feeling curious, Ruby started to move forward, tuning out the rest of her teammates as she went, and as she drew closer, she started to extend her arm out so that she would be able to touch the strange object upon reaching it. What she did not expect was that she would end up tripping over some unseen object on the ground the moment she was nearly in arm's reach, but her sudden cry of surprise and the thud that followed her ungraceful landing did at least bring an end to the debate that her friends were having. Still, she only found it all the more weird that she had landed on something that was a lot harder and colder than the forest floor should have been.

"Ruby, are you okay," Yang shouted as she rushed over to her sister's aid.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Ruby reassured her sister. She then started to turn towards the object she had been moving towards as she added, "But I think there's something here that you…should…see?"

The girls were all confused by how Ruby had trailed off and ended her response in a question, but what was even more surprising was how Ruby was now looking back and forth at her surroundings like she did not recognize them at all. When it started to get to the point of being worrisome, Blake asked, "What's the matter?"

"Come over here and see for yourselves," Ruby quietly called, waving them over. "This is something that you've definitely gotta see to believe."

Now feeling just as curious as Ruby had been earlier, Weiss merely shrugged and then led the other two over to where their leader was sitting so that they could find out just what was so fascinating to the point of being unbelievable. They made it a point to watch their step though, since they did not want to end up falling over whatever it was that Ruby had tripped on, and when they finally came to a stop next to her, Weiss was more than ready to demand what it was Ruby wanted to show them that they could not have seen from where they were. At least that was the case, until she too began to take notice of their surroundings.

Gone were all signs and characteristics that were typical for the environment of the Emerald Forest, and in their place was a strange, rather colorful hallway that almost looked like the inside of a ship that seemed to stretch in two different directions. The only sign that they were still at least close to the forest was the fact that they saw the trees of said location after looking back in the direction they had come from, which allowed them to see that they had all just walked through a doorway or a ship's boarding hatch of some kind. When Blake moved to stand beside the door, she looked to her left and saw no signs of their being anything but forest that lay behind the doorway. That prompted her to lift a hand and try to reach out past the door on the other side of its edge, only to find it resting on a solid surface of some kind, while the wooded area behind it suddenly seemed to distort a little.

"It's…some kind of camouflage or cloaking device," Blake noted aloud for everyone.

"But just what is this thing that it's hiding, and how did Sora and the others know it was here," Yang asked. "Do you think it might belong to them?"

"It does seem very possible, but that still doesn't answer the question of which way they went from here," Weiss pointed out as she indicated the two paths that they could take from their current location.

Ruby was just about to answer her partner's question, when a soft rumbling reached her ears. Listening to the sound, Ruby quickly recognized it as an engine of some kind, but it still took her a moment to recognize what kind of engine it was. "Does anyone else hear an airship engine starting up?"

Looking back to Ruby as they listened for a minute, all the girls confirmed that they heard the same thing, which prompted Weiss to ask, "Does that mean that we're standing in some kind of airship?"

"Seems that way," Ruby noted. "But I've never heard of any airships with a cloaking or camouflage system like this."

"It doesn't look like anything from Atlas either, at least not based off of the airships that I've seen," Weiss informed them.

"So then…who made this thing? And what would Sora and the others be doing on it," Yang asked.

"Uh…Maybe we should be asking these questions from outside of the ship," Blake offered, pointing to the exit over her shoulder with her thumb.

The girls were all about to agree to that, when a warning light suddenly started flashing over the door, causing them to freeze in place out of worry that they had been caught. "What's that," Ruby asked, suddenly a lot more nervous than she had been before.

---

Meanwhile, up in the stealth gummi's cockpit, Sora had just finished confirming that the ship was fully operational again, mentally thanking Chip and Dale for making sure to install a self-repair gummi once again after he did, and was now in the process of bringing the ship fully online when a warning light suddenly flashed on his console. His eyes automatically jumped in the direction of said indicator, worried that he had missed something in his preliminary check over the systems, but a minute later, his expression turned flat as he looked over his shoulder to his teammates. "Okay, who left the hatch open," Sora asked.

Both of the blondes in the cockpit automatically turned to Lea, knowing that he was the last person to enter the ship, and his sheepish expression confirmed the silent accusation to be true well before he had even opened his mouth. "My bad," Lea confessed. "I could've sworn I hit the control to close it."

"Well, at least we don't have to walk all the way back down there to close it," Sora sighed in response, hitting the control on his console to close the hatch himself. "Let's just hope nothing accidentally got inside while it was open."

"I'm sure we've got nothing to worry about," Ventus confidently assured everyone. "After all, we made absolutely sure that we were clear before coming into the ship, and it's not like that much time passed between now and when we stepped inside."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Sora agreed.

"Enough talking; let's get going already! My home needs us," Roxas insisted.

"Right," Sora confirmed, and he immediately returned to what he had been doing before. A few more button presses and flip switches later, and Sora proudly announced, "Main power, fully online."

"All engines and thrusters operational," Ventus reported from his station. "Environmental control systems activated."

"Shields and armor systems fully charged and engaged," Roxas carried on once Ventus had finished his reports. "Navigational systems activated. Standing by to deactivate cloaking system."

"Weapons powered up and on standby," Lea informed the team. "Teeny Ships standing by for deployment."

"Alright, looks like we're go for launch," Sora declared, earning a round of excited confirmations afterwards. "Let's go, stealth gummi! Next stop: Twilight Town!"

Upon making that last declaration, Sora fired the ignition, and the four felt the ship rumble under their seats as it lifted up off the ground and began making its ascent from both the Emerald Forest and Remnant as a whole, ready to break through the world barrier and fly through interspace once again.

---

What none of the boys knew was that after Sora had hit the control to seal the hatch, Ruby quickly panicked as she saw the door closing, and ran as fast as she could without using her Semblance to either get out or stop it. Sadly, she was not fast enough, and the door closed right in her face. Looking around rapidly, Ruby quickly located the control to open the hatch, but no matter how many times she slammed her hand again it, the door would not reopen, or even give any kind of response to indicate that she was trying to open it. "It's sealed shut! I can't get it open," Ruby cried out.

"Out of the way! I'll open it up," Yang offered, smacking a fist into the palm of her hand as she moved over to the door.

Just when Ruby was about to let her sister at it, they all felt the ship's rumbling grow a little more intense, indicating that they were about to take off, and that prompted Weiss to urge Yang onward as she pleaded, "Hurry! I think they're getting ready to take off!"

Cocking her fist back, Yang was soon punching the door with everything she had, but no matter how hard she hit or how many times, it did not seem like the door was going to budge. Even when she started using Ember Celica to give her blows some extra power, nothing seemed to make the door even crack. Just when Ruby was about to suggest they all try blasting it at the same time, they felt the ship lurch upwards, indicating that it was too late, and they were now airborne. What they did not expect was that the lift off would include a much greater amount of g-force than usual, and as a result, they were unprepared to be thrown off their feet and back a short distance. Not wanting to take any chances, the girls all found something to grab onto, and held on for dear life until they felt like the ship had finally leveled off and assumed a speed that was safer for them to freely move about under.

The second she no longer felt the pressure of the previous g-force on her body, Blake raced over to the nearest window she could find, hoping she could see something that would let her guess where they were going, or at least what direction they were heading in. When she finally did find a viewport and looked outside, she could only gasp in awe at what she was seeing. "Whoa," Blake finally whispered when she found her voice again.

It had not taken too much for the other girls to notice Blake's sudden exclamation, despite its quiet volume, nor did their curiosity need much stroking for them to join Blake at the window so that they could discover what had prompted a wide-eyed, amazed reaction from their normally quiet and reserved teammate. Upon looking out the window for themselves, that amazement was just as quickly shared by the rest of Team RWBY, because there before them, they saw a vast ocean of stars and cosmic clouds, while slowly fading away into the distance was a massive sphere that could only have been Remnant. Sure, seeing a star-filled sky was nothing new for any of them, but the fact that they were currently flying through space at this very moment was enough to render all four girls speechless.

"Are…Are we actually…in Space," Yang eventually managed to ask.

"But that…that's impossible," Weiss protested. "Dust can't work outside of Remnant's atmosphere, and no one's discovered a way to change that or any alternative types of fuel sources that we could use for space flight."

Everyone was ready to point out that it looked like that was no longer the case, when another glance out the window allowed them to see several streaks of light passing by, and they all soon felt the ship lurch back a little, indicating that it had suddenly put on a new burst of speed. "Whoa! I think we're traveling at warp speed," Ruby exclaimed with stars in her eyes.

"But that…This…I can't…And the…" Weiss stuttered, until finally she just dropped against the wall and pulled her knees against her chest while sputtering an incoherent mess of babble and nonsense.

"Oh boy. I think this whole thing just broke her," Blake commented.

"There, there, Weiss. Everything will make sense again soon enough," Ruby soothed as she patted her partner on the shoulder.

"Shut up. It won't, and don't touch me," Weiss weakly protested, but she still pulled Ruby closer to her so that the red hooded girl could give her a proper, comforting hug.

As amusing as it was watching the two polar opposites that had somehow become partners and their antics, Blake still felt the need to point out just how serious this whole situation was, and reminded everyone, "If this really is Team SLVR's ship, then they've got a lot more explaining to do than we originally thought. Starting with why they would hide something like this from the world?"

"Not to mention how they managed to make it in the first place, or even where they're even going right now," Yang added on.

Ruby looked up from where she was sitting next to Weiss, her determined look now back on her face again, and said, "I get the feeling that we're not going to find out anything until after we get to wherever it is that Sora and the others are going."

---

Traveling with the warp gummi may not provide the most scenic routes, but there was no denying that it helped someone get wherever they needed to go fast, and the four Keyblade wielders could not be more thankful for that fact when they came into a final approach on Twilight Town barely more than an hour after they had left Remnant. When the ship came out of warp, the boys all smiled happily at the familiar sight of the world that Roxas and so many of his closest friends called home, and soon proceeded to kick back and relax as Sora guided the ship in closer.

"Ah, home sweet home," Lea sighed as he rested his arms behind his head. "I know we've only been gone for a few months, but it still feels like it's been ages since we've been back here, and it feels so good to finally be back."

"I know what you mean," Roxas gladly agreed. "I just wish we were here for a more social visit and not for the sake of work."

"Don't worry you guys," Sora told them. "I'm sure we'll get to hang around for a little bit after our job's done. All we have to do is land the ship and patrol around the town until Ansem the Wise has finished all the work on his Heartless Scanner, and then you can hang out with Hayner and the rest of the gang until sunset, at which point we'll be able to head back to Beacon. Besides, considering that Riku and the others have all taken the more important spots, I doubt we really have to worry that much about…"

"Heartless," Ventus suddenly shouted, interrupting Sora right when he was about to finish along with a loud klaxon that was now sounding throughout the ship.

"Seriously?! It's like every time I go to land on a world, a Heartless shows up to get in the way," Sora grumbled, thinking that Ven was referring to a Heartless ship that was about to fly into their path.

"No, not up here. Down there, in Twilight Town," Ventus corrected. "The ship's scanners just detected a really huge spike of darkness that could only be caused by a massive amount of Heartless, or a really powerful one."

"I thought gummi ship scanners could only detect Heartless that appeared out in interspace. Since when can they get a reading on how many Heartless are on a world," Lea asked.

"It's one of the special upgrades that were installed on the stealth gummi," Ventus explained, having been there to help Chip, Dale, and all the others involved in their current ship's development. "Not only is it capable of aerial combat on a world and equipped with cloaking capabilities, but it also has a scanner that lets it determine the threat level of Heartless on a world just based off the amount of darkness that's coming from a world."

"That would've been so helpful on some of my last journeys," Sora muttered.

"Hey, there are some drawbacks. It has to be within a certain range to get any kind of reading, let alone an accurate one. Right now, it can only tell us how bad the Heartless are on Twilight Town, the Kingdom of Corona, and Radiant Garden," Ventus explained. "If we want to use it on another world besides those, we'd have to get closer to it."

"Fascinating, now can we please go deal with the Heartless situation here? In case you forgot, we've got a lot of friends down there, and this is mine and Roxas's home," Lea reminded them.

"Right," Sora nodded in response. "Hold on guys, I'm taking us in! Axel, ready the main cannons to fire on the Heartless as soon as we're in range. Ven, watch our shields and armor levels. Roxas, see if you can get in touch with our friends that are down there and tell them to start evacuating everyone to safety."

"Way ahead of you, and it looks like the guys are also way ahead of us," Roxas reported, making everyone turn to see him just pocketing his Gummiphone. "That was Isa just now. He said that he got Hayner and the others together to help evacuate everyone to Sunset Terrace the moment he realized that the Heartless were about to attack. The town should be completely clear by the time we've gotten there."

While the other two just nodded in thanks for that update, Lea leveled a look at Roxas while he grumbled, "So you can call Isa by his name no problem, but you have a hard time calling me Lea instead of Axel?"

"To be fair, Isa acts a lot different from when he was Saïx, and it helps both me and Xion from remembering any of the times that we interacted with him while he was Saïx," Roxas defended.

"Okay, yeah, I can understand that," Lea agreed, knowing just how rotten his childhood friend had been to Roxas and Xion back in those days.

"Enough talk. Let's get in there," Sora ordered, and before anyone could respond, he gunned the ship forward so that it would be flying across the Twilight Town skyline all the sooner.

Soon after, the boys were all firmly strapped in as Sora brought the stealth gummi through Twilight Town's world barrier, allowing them to see the fiery skies of the city that was in an eternal sunset. What they did not see though was any signs of the Heartless that Ventus had reported getting traces of from the scanners. Sure, it was good to see that there were not any people in the town below, but they did not want to have sounded the alarm due to a faulty scanning device giving them the wrong information. Sadly, it was starting to seem like that was the case, because no matter where they looked, there was no sign of any Heartless. At least, not until something outside had hit the ship hard enough to the point that they would have been thrown from their seats had they not buckled up.

A few more hard blows just like that first one ended up causing them to be thrown even more off course, but thankfully, the shields seemed to hold out pretty well and Sora was able to get their flight path stabilized without too much difficulty. Unfortunately, when they saw what had hit them, any relief they might have felt from not crash landing once again was washed away faster than a spider down a waterspout on a rainy day. There, spinning through the sky and smashing against several buildings as it went, was what looked like a massive tornado or a giant tsunami of Shadow Heartless, and at the center, they could see a large core that glowed with a dangerous violet and orange color.

"Please tell me that's just a Demon Tower," Lea begged.

"Considering that we can see a huge sphere at its core as it passes by us, I'm afraid that I can't do that," Ventus informed his friend. "We're definitely dealing with a Demon Tide."

"But I thought the last of those things was destroyed in the battles at the Keyblade Graveyard, or at least all the ones that Xehanort and his Seekers could summon from the realm of darkness," Roxas protested.

"Doesn't matter. It's here now, and it's our job to stop it," Sora informed the group, and from the way his fingers were dancing across his control board, the other three had a feeling that they knew what Sora was thinking right now. Needless to say, it was risky, impulsive, and just downright bad to the point where none of them liked it.

"Uh, shouldn't we come up with a plan of attack before we charge that thing," Lea asked, hoping to deter Sora from his chosen course of action.

"I've already got a plan," Sora replied as he finished his work and gripped the steering controls. He then narrowed his eyes at the powerful Heartless and said only one word. "Attack."

Even though they were still buckled up, the other boys still felt the need to grab onto the nearest, secured surface when the ship suddenly blasted forward, with Sora putting it on a course that had them barreling towards the Demon Tide. The monster must have realized what they were doing, because it immediately spun around after bouncing off one of the buildings below them and started throwing Shadows at them like projectiles. It was a normal tactic for this type of Heartless, but that was where the normalcy ended, because a good number of the Shadows that were thrown at them all suddenly burst into flames in midflight, leaving some very harsh scorch marks on the ship's hull when they did hit, while causing some parts of the town to be set on fire if they missed them. What was worse was that even if the Shadows did miss, they all still came out in one piece for the most part, and then quickly scrambled to rejoin the rest of the tide. A few never quite made it and ended up disintegrating like they should have after being flung out from the Demon Tide, but it was still not enough to weaken it by any larger of a margin than the Demon Tide normally would have been by using that attack. If anything, it just ended up ensuring that it never lost any strength at all.

When he realized what was happening to Twilight Town every time one of the flaming Shadows missed them, Lea quickly grabbed the weapons controls so that he could make his best attempt to blast them out of the sky before they could hit the ground, assuming they missed the ship. He also spared a few shots for the Demon Tide itself, hoping that he could at least weaken the beast a little more, but it did not seem like he was having any effect on the main collection of Shadows. The only thing he did manage to do was stop more of the thrown Shadows from rejoining the rest of the tide, but that was still little help them in the long run. At one point, the Demon Tide even started to slam its body against the ship, much like it had after they had first started flying over the town, only this time it was doing so intentionally, and there was no way for Lea to stop that attack.

Between the Shadows that the Demon Tide was throwing at them, be they the flaming ones or the normal variety, or the various times that it was slamming against them, it was clear even without his readouts that Roxas had good reason to say what he did after the most recent hit that the Demon Tide scored on them. "We're not going to be able to take many more hits like that," he shouted over the ship's alarm.

"Then let's see how it likes some of our bigger guns," Lea offered as he began to reach for the trigger on the ship's heavier artillery.

"No," Sora shouted just when Lea's finger was a hairs breath away from the trigger. "Using even the lightest of our stronger weapons comes with too much risk of damaging the town on the off-chance that we miss. I doubt I need to point out how most of the people who live here would rather have a home to come back to after this battle is over to you since this is just as much your home as it is Roxas's, do I?"

"Well what would you recommend," Lea questioned. "In case you haven't noticed, the main cannons aren't exactly all that effective against that thing, and it's the only thing we can use if you want to minimize the collateral damage."

Sora barely had time to think before he had to pull the ship up and into a sharp turn in order to avoid getting hit by the Demon Tide's next slamming attack again, but even if he did have more time to consider his options, he would not find many more than the only one that he knew for a fact could work. "We've got to get down there and take this fight to that Demon Tide in person."

"Right; because I'm sure that it's going to let us land the ship so we can hit in a full-frontal assault," Lea sarcastically remarked.

"I never said I was going to try and land without some form of cover," Sora pointed out. Then he turned to his blonde partner with a simple request. "Ven, think you can land a dive bomb attack to get its attention?"

"No problem. Just let me get down to the hatch and tell me when you're ready," Ventus confirmed, and he quickly unfastened his seatbelt in order to rush down from the bridge and get into position for the requested maneuver.

Getting from down to the hatch that they had used to board the ship from the cockpit normally would have been a piece of cake, but getting there while they were under attack was a totally different story. Ventus was not sure what caused him stumble through the hallway more, the Heartless that were hitting the ship, or Sora's crazy piloting in an effort to hold them off. He was just glad he was able to stay on his feet for the most part, and the furthest he had come to falling over was when he got slammed into a wall from a sudden lurch of their vessel, but that could all change if he did not hurry to the hatch. Another point in his favor was that he was one of the fastest members of the team, so it came as little surprise that he managed to reach the hatch before any hits could cause him to lose his footing and drop to the floor, but just as he was about hit the controls and open the hatch, his good luck in avoiding a fall finally ran out. Surprisingly though, it was not because he lost his footing.

The next time that the ship shook under the blow of another hit, Ven had just barely managed to catch himself before he heard a startled yelp that was definitely feminine, and the next thing he knew something had slammed into him, causing him to drop to the floor with a hard thud. The really weird thing was that whatever hit him was actually still moving even after it had landed on top of him, and started letting out a pained groan as it pushed against his chest in an effort to sit up. When Ventus looked to see just what it was that hit him, he could only gape in stunned surprise upon realizing that he had not been hit by something, but instead, someone, and Ventus recognized this person very easily, even without seeing her usual, nearly-all-white attire.

"Weiss," Ventus could not help but cry out.

"Ven," Weiss gasped soon after, realizing who she was currently lying on top of. The minute that she had locked eyes with him though, the two became frozen where they were, clearly having realized their positions, but too embarrassed to really do anything to correct it, given their crimson blushes. Hearing an explosion from somewhere outside the ship helped to bring them back to the situation, and Weiss immediately jumped up so that she could glare down at the blonde while demanding, "What are you doing here?!"

"Me?! What're you doing here," Ventus retorted as he got back on his feet, bracing a hand against the wall just in case the ship was suddenly hit again. "You're supposed to be at the library or something right now!"

"Ugh! You really think I'd go on with our study date after you ditched me like that," Weiss questioned, indignantly.

"I didn't ditch you! I told you that something had come up that I had to take care of," Ventus protested.

"You told me that you had already made plans to study with Sora, despite the fact that Sora had finished all of his homework after classes let out last Friday," Weiss reminded him. "And not only that, but it turns out that you actually came out here to go joyriding on some weird airship!"

"This isn't a joyride! We're here because…" Ventus started to hit back, only to stop short when Weiss's words processed in his head. "Wait, how'd you know that Sora finished his weekend homework already?"

"I told her," Ruby's voice answered, sounding a lot more stern than usual for the red-hooded huntress. Turning to where the voice had come from, Ventus found himself face-to-face not just with Ruby herself, but Yang and Blake too, and all three of them looked just as mad as Weiss did right now, despite their otherwise disoriented states. "What is going on here, Ven," Ruby asked, though it was really more of a polite demand than anything else.

Ventus was not really sure how to answer right now, but thankfully, he did not have to think for too long, as the ship suddenly shook once again, only this time, it was followed by a call over the ship's intercom. "Ven, what're you doing down there?! Why haven't you gotten in position to make the jump yet," Sora's voice hurriedly questioned.

Rushing over to the nearest intercom panel, which was right next to his original destination, Ventus hit the control to answer and replied, "Sorry guys, I'm in position now, but I ran into a few surprise guests right when I was about to open the hatch."

"Surprise guests? What are you talking about," Sora asked.

"Exactly what it sounds like. We've got some stowaways onboard," Ventus replied while throwing a small glare at the four girls that made some of them flinch back a little. If that look was any indication, then Team RWBY all had a feeling that they might be in a bit of trouble.

There was silence on the other end of the ship's intercom, during which Ven was sure that the other two were chewing out Lea for his carelessness in leaving the hatch open before they took off, until Lea's voice took over and asked, "We didn't accidentally bring a Grimm with us from Remnant did we?"

"No," Ventus replied.

"It's not Cardin or any of the rest of Team CRDL, is it?"

"No," Ven repeated

"Oh, well in that case, how bad could it be," Lea questioned, sounding a lot more flippant about the situation than he really should have been, but then again, he was not the one who was currently down here with the stowaways.

"I don't know, Lea; why don't you come down here and ask Team RWBY about that yourself," Ventus questioned in retort.

"…Did you say Team RWBY is here," Roxas asked.

"Yeah, you heard me right."

"As in Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long. That Team RWBY," Lea next asked, now sounding a lot more nervous than before.

"How many Team RWBYs do you know," Ventus questioned in return.

"Well, there was this one time when Marluxia…"

"Dah-dih-dih-dih! Never mind! I don't want to know," Ventus interrupted before the pyro could go any further. He then turned to the controls for the hatch and then typed in the security code that would allow him to open it while saying, "I'm in position now. Let's just hurry and take down that damn Heartless, and deal with this other situation afterwards."

"Um, excuse me," Yang snapped, sounding very offended at the way Ventus was brushing them off like that.

The other girls would have been glaring at Ven in the same way as Yang was, had it not been for the fact that Ventus immediately spun around and leveled all of them with a glare of his own that made it clear that they should not try to start something with him right now. "You four, find something to hold onto, stay put, and once the ship lands, don't do anything unless Sora or one of the others tell you to do it. You have no idea what kind of mess you've just landed both us and yourselves in simply by being on this ship."

No one said a word after that. The girls were all suddenly a lot more afraid of Ventus at that moment, seeing as they had never seen him so worked up before. Not wanting to test him right now, the girls all quickly found a secure object to hold onto, while letting Weiss use her gravity glyphs to better secure them in place, and then watched as Ventus opened the hatch at last, letting a powerful wind start blowing into the ship, while anything that was not secured in place started flying around them or end up getting blown out of the opened hatch. When they saw the Demon Tide barreling closer, they all felt a deep sense of dread building up on the inside, but not to the same extent as Weiss when she realized when Ventus was about to do.

"Ven, wait! You can't take that thing on alone," Weiss shouted over the window, but Ventus either did not hear her or just refused to listen, as the next thing she knew, he had jumped out the door and began free-falling towards the Demon Tide.

Spreading his arms and legs wide, Ventus did his best to guide his body so that his descent would not take him right into the middle of the Demon Tide, while at the same time allow him to strike either its side or very close to it. After getting to just the right position and finding his target in striking range, Ven summoned Wayward Wind, pulled back for a strike, and then thrust himself forward so that he was sent rocketing the rest of the way to the ground. His blade cut a long gash in the side of the Demon Tide as he sped past it, and when he hit the ground, the resulting shockwave seemed to deal a fair bit of damage to its base as well, throwing it off balance just as it was preparing to rush the stealth gummi ship again. Despite all the injury it had sustained from Ventus, the Demon Tide still seemed intent on attacking the ship, but a quick Wind Raid helped Ven convince the Heartless monstrosity to change its plans.

After infusing his Keyblade with a bit of ice magic, Ventus unleashed a powerful Blizzard Raid that froze a good chunk of the Demon Tide in place for a moment, and that seemed to finally earn him its full ire, because after Ven had his Keyblade back in his hand again, he saw the iced-over portion of the Demon Tide suddenly light up in fire, shattering the ice, while the entire beast had now fully turned to rush after him in a full tsunami of Heartless. Turning around, Ventus immediately began leading it further away from the ship and into the center of town, but he knew that he was not likely to stay ahead of it for long on foot. Good thing for Ven that he did not have to. He quickly tossed Wayward Wind forward, and then leapt up towards a nearby wall. Bouncing off the wall, Ventus was able to send himself flying just far enough ahead that his Keyblade Glider ended up nearly falling behind him, but it still managed to end up right underneath his feet when Ventus came down again, and like that, Ven was off, flying his winged waveboard just fast enough so that he was out of the Demon Tide's reach, but not so far that he would lose it completely.

It was actually a few seconds after he had transformed and hopped aboard his Keyblade Glider that Ven's Gummiphone suddenly rang, prompting him to scramble around in his pockets in a haphazard rush to pull it out and answer the device. "Nice job, Ven," Sora praised the moment his face appeared on the small screen. "Try to keep it busy for a few minutes while we set the ship down over by the old mansion."

"Just don't keep me waiting for too long. This thing is lousy company," Ventus joked in response before hanging up. All joking aside though, Ven could not help but spare a nervous glance over his shoulder back to the thing that he was currently trying to distract while simultaneously avoiding the attacks of, and he found himself quietly adding, "Seriously you guys, please hurry."

---

Sora was not sure if he had ever wanted the gummi ship's landing process to go faster more than he did right now. You could not blame him, seeing as he had just sent a friend of his out to battle with a giant monster in order to give them time to land the ship, so neither Lea or Roxas complained when Sora jumped out of his seat and the cockpit in order to lead the way to the ship's main hatch in a mad rush. Then again, it was not like they were going much slower than Sora; the former Nobodies were scrambling down the halls of the stealth gummi ship too. The only difference was that they were not giving out orders as they went.

"Okay, once we get into town, we need to hit that thing with everything we've got. Doesn't matter if it's magic, sword attacks, or whatever; if you can bring it out at a moment's notice, you use it so we can get that thing's attention on all of us and not just—RUBY," Sora had been saying, when he suddenly stopped short with a cry of surprise at the end, mainly because the girl in question had appeared in his path right after he rounded the corner.

"Ruby? Sora, Ven's the one that's fighting the De…" Lea started to correct, only to be grabbed by his vest and then slammed against the wall by a very irritated Yang. "Oh, hello Yang," Lea nervously greeted in a futile attempt to appease her rage. Turning his head a little, he saw that the other two girls were there too, leveling glares at him, Sora, and Roxas while standing in their path, prompting him to turn back to Sora and asked, "So did you mean Ruby as in the girl or the team?"

"I really don't think it matters in this case, Axel," Roxas muttered after taking in the looks on all four girls' faces.

"One of you is going to explain what is going on right now, or else I'll beat each of you to within an inch of your lives so fast you won't even have time to register its happening," Yang threatened, showing no room for disagreement.

Whether he realized that or not, Sora still had to argue against that course of action as he started to move past the younger of the two sisters. "Look, we'd love to fill you all in, but now's really not a good time for this."

"Then make time for it," Blake demanded, her arm slowly moving up to draw her sword from the sheath on her back.

"Yeah, see the thing is, we can't right now. We've got something kind of important to deal with at the moment, so if you could just let us…" Lea tried to excuse, only for Yang's grip to tighten on him. At least in one hand; the other just moved to position one of her gauntlets under Lea's chin, after she had cocked it to fire.

"No one's going anywhere until we get some answers," Weiss promised in finality, not knowing the fire she had just set off in Roxas.

"Fine! You want to do this now, by all means! Just know, that your stopping us from going out there will more than likely have doomed both Ventus and an entire world," Roxas snapped at the heiress, startling both her and the other girls with how vicious he sounded right then.

The fact that Roxas mentioned how Ventus was in such trouble was reason enough to give the girls pause, but it was the second thing he mentioned that really shocked them. "What do you mean 'an entire world,'" Blake eventually asked, being the first to somehow get over her shock.

Seeing that Yang had calmed down a little bit, at least to the point where her eyes were no longer red, Lea gently pried the blonde girl's hands off of him so that he could start moving forward again, and replied, "Exactly what it sounds like. Ven's fighting a really dangerous Heartless right now that if left unchecked, could cause this whole world to be either destroyed or lost to darkness. And right now, the only ones that can stop it are the three of us, four if you count Ven, and since we've got friends who live here, I think you can understand why we're so desperate to get out there and fight."

No one said a word after that, but neither side seemed willing to back down just yet. For the guys, it was because they did not want to make any moves without seeing how Team RWBY would react to all of this new information, but for the girls, it was because they were now hit with probably the biggest revelation that they had discovered since this whole day first began. Team SLVR having a secret ship that could not only reach but fly through space, seeing Ventus jump out of that ship while it was airborne to fight a massive monstrosity that was unlike anything any of them had ever seen or heard about before, the fact that they were apparently on another world entirely, none of that could compare to the shock that these four, strange boys were in the midst of going into a battle that would decide the fate of an entire world. In that moment, they all wanted to protest and say that it was too much for any average student to take on, even with what they had seen the boys do in the past, but for some reason, they could not. There was something about the looks in their eyes that said not only that they were going to go out there no matter what they said, but that they knew exactly what they were doing, that they had been through this before, and that they were going to do it again. It was all really unnerving.

The silence between them hung for quite a bit, right to the point where the intensity between them started to make the boys uncomfortable, but eventually, it was broken when Sora decided to speak up again. "Look, we're sorry we lied to you, and that we didn't tell you about all of this, but we had our reasons for keeping it a secret, and one of those reasons is right outside attacking Roxas and Axel's home, with only Ven to hold it off until we get there." When the girls remained where they were, not saying or doing anything that would give away their thoughts, Sora took a deep breath and added, "As soon as this is all over, we'll tell you anything and everything you want to know. I promise."

His promise did seem to get the girls to at least start sharing looks between each other again, but it still did not seem to be enough to convince them to step aside and let the boys do their thing. When one of them did move, it was not to move out of the way, but instead, to slowly move closer to Sora, with her eyes firmly locked onto his. "Sora, just do one thing for me before you go," Ruby requested, not giving any room to refuse. "I want you to look me in the eye, and tell me the full, honest reason why you didn't tell me about this."

Looking Ruby in the eye was a harder request for Sora to fulfill than the girl probably realized, since he often found himself getting lost in those glistening silver pools nearly every time that his eyes found hers, but somehow, he did manage to keep his wits about him and do as she asked. It may have been a much simpler version of the answer, but it was still the most honest one that he could give her. "Because I couldn't say anything, and because you're my friend, and I didn't want you getting pulled into all of this."

Ruby may not have realized it, but when Sora's beautiful blue orbs locked onto hers, a small blush had begun to form on her face. Like Sora, Ruby had often found herself getting lost in his eyes that were so blue that the sky and the ocean would both be insanely jealous, and she had to force herself to not drown in those blue seas so that she could hear Sora's answer. Upon hearing it, her blush only grew a little more, while her stomach did a few somersaults, and was that her heart skipping a few beats just now? She was pretty sure it was, but not just because of how a new intensity seemed to fill his eyes when he spoke. When he did answer her, Ruby saw nothing but pure, clear honesty in his eyes and it could be heard just as clearly in his voice, so really, how could she not believe him with all of that? A better question would be why was she just standing here blocking his path when she should be doing something else entirely, but that one was much easier for her to answer, as she proved when she finally gave him a satisfied smile, stepped out of his way, and drew her scythe.

"Okay, how can we help," Ruby asked, confusing the boys a little.

"You mean besides letting us leave and do our jobs," Lea asked, praying a little that she was not asking what he thought she was asking.

"I mean, how can we help you destroy that thing before it destroys the town," Ruby clarified.

"Ruby, you can't be serious," Weiss protested, trying to be the voice of reason, and she was not alone in that regard.

"She's right. That thing out there, the Demon Tide, it's not like the Heartless you all saw during initiation. Even we would face a huge risk of not coming back in one piece, if at all by trying to fight it," Roxas informed her.

"That just sounds like more of a reason for us to go with you to me," Ruby insisted.

Sora looked to his two friends that were native to this world, but they could only shrug to say that they had no more ideas on how to convince her otherwise than he did, so he just let out a sigh and turned back to Ruby with a smile. "Just follow our lead. Keep moving around so that it can't ever grab or hit you, and if it dives into the ground, be ready to take a lot of damage and do whatever you can to recover right afterwards," Sora instructed.

"Got it," Ruby nodded. She then turned to her team and asked, "You all in?"

"Like you even have to ask, Sis," Yang replied with a confident smile.

"It is technically our duty to help people whenever monsters attack. No one ever said that it stopped with just Grimm," Blake smirked as she drew her sword.

Weiss made a show of sighing tiredly, but they all knew it was an act from the smile on her face, even as she jokingly stated, "Well, someone has to make sure you all don't get yourselves killed."

"Hey, Ice Princess, I think you'll find that would be our job in this case," Lea quipped in return as he summoned his Keyblade forth.

"Alright, let's get moving," Sora ordered, and with that, he and Ruby took the lead in racing off to Ventus's last known location.

What neither Sora or Ruby realized was that Yang and Lea had managed to position themselves well back in the group so that they could exchange conspiratory smiles over a matter that they had both taken notice of earlier. "So, you caught Ruby's little slip earlier too, right," Lea asked the blonde.

"You mean when she asked 'Why didn't you tell me' instead of 'Why didn't you tell us' during that exchange she and Sora had a moment ago," Yang feigned ignorance in return. Her act had dropped immediately after when she next said, "She definitely likes him."

"Oh big time. Now it's just a matter of getting her to admit it," Lea agreed. Not that his smile stayed for long, because he then added, "Just don't get any ideas about messing with Sora over this just yet. I'd rather not spend our date next Saturday cooking up schemes on how to get those two together."

"Yeah, you might want to avoid getting your hopes up on that, because depending on what you guys have to tell us once this is all over…" Yang cautioned, her playful nature suddenly gone again.

"Right…Gotcha," Lea nodded in understanding. He may not be in it right now, but it was clear that no matter how the fight with the Heartless ended, he would still be in hot water with Yang over all of this.

---

In hindsight, Ven probably should have realized that using his Keyblade Glider in a town that he was not very familiar with was a bad idea. He was just lucky that he was able to stay airborne and on the thing for as long as he did, but it did not sting any less when he was blasted off the thing not even five minutes after the stealth gummi had flown out of sight. Luckily, with or without his old, main method of travel, Ventus was still one of the fastest Keyblade wielders in the worlds, and he used that to his advantage by dancing between buildings, alleyways, and even the thrown Shadows while trying his best to score hits on the Demon Tide. He would have tried to hit it with some of his more powerful attacks, but the thing was just moving way too fast for Ventus to be able to properly power up any of those attacks, so he had to stick with whatever he could throw out at a moment's notice.

Eventually, his attempts at evasion while firing off potshots came to a close, when the Demon Tide suddenly sank into the ground and then burst back up again from directly beneath him. The attack had not been fatal, but it did hurt a lot, and the flight Ven was sent on after just managing to escape did not help either, considering that his landing consisted of him being smacked into a building before dropping to the ground like a brick. Ventus felt like his whole body was screaming in pain after that, right to the point where it hurt him just to roll out of the way when the Demon Tide came flying at him again, and he was sure that he would not be able to dodge its next attack. That next attack looked like it was going to come a lot sooner than anyone would have liked, because the Demon Tide had managed to rebound off of a building in its latest charge, and turn itself right back around so that it was flying at Ventus once more.

Ventus was sure that he was finished, until he felt somebody grab his arm, while a bright, white light suddenly flashed into existence beneath them. He barely had time to try and determine what the odd light was before the person holding him pulled him away at an incredible speed, getting them both clear of the Demon Tide's attack before it could hit. After breathing a sigh of relief, Ventus turned to thank his rescuer, thinking it had to have been one of the other guys, most likely Sora or Roxas. His gratitude died in his throat when he saw that the person who saved him was not any of his fellow Keyblade wielders, but instead, a familiar heiress who was now turning to aim her rapier at the Demon Tide in a silent challenge. "Weiss," Ventus exclaimed. "What are you…?! I thought I told you to stay in the ship!"

"You also said to do whatever Sora and the others say and they decided to let us help you fight this repulsive thing," Weiss retorted without even looking at him. She quickly fished something out of the pouch she had attached to the back of her skirt, and held it out to him with her free hand and said, "Sora also said to give you this if you looked hurt, and from what I can see, you most certainly need it."

Although he was still upset that Sora and the others would let the girls get involved in this fight, he was thankful for the save, and seeing that Weiss was handing him an Elixir that she had no doubt gotten from Sora, Ventus could find no real reason to do anything but politely accept the item in question, down the vial's contents in one gulp, and then jump back up on his feet once he felt his strength return to him with a smile as he said, "Thanks."

"We're still going to be talking about all of this later," Weiss promised him.

"I know," Ventus agreed. "Let's just deal with the Demon Tide for now."

"Way ahead of you," another voice called out, and the two were soon treated to the sight of the Demon Tide being surrounded by a fast moving storm of rose petals as something slashed at it several times over.

Upon delivering one last slice with her scythe, Ruby Rose finally came to a stop before the Demon Tide, but she did not stay in that spot for long. She quickly fired Crescent Rose at the ground in order to push herself away from the Heartless, giving Lea an opening to throw out several blasts of fire with his Keyblade. After one final fire blast, Lea transformed his Keyblade into a pair of flaming chakrams, and sent both spinning, spiked wheels hurling at the Demon Tide. It seemed to have some small effect, but not nearly enough, and Yang soon realized this when she went to attack it with a powerful punch. Her hit did not manage to connect, as the Demon Tide merely swiveled out of the way before hurtling itself directly at her, striking the blonde so hard that if it was not for her Aura, she probably would have lost consciousness at best. Luckily Blake was able to swing in and catch Yang before the blonde hit the ground, and with her partner's help, Yang was able to spin around and get set on course for another flying punch, this one having an extra boost from her Semblance.

Yang's attack connected this time around, and it seemed to knock the Demon Tide a little off balance, which was just fine with Roxas, because it gave him his own chance to attack, and he took it without hesitation. With Oathkeeper and Oblivion in hand, Roxas dealt a quick succession of several blade strikes onto the Demon Tide, only pausing to add a little bit of both light and dark elements to his blades so that each strike would have some extra power to them, and it seemed like he was really whittling it down quite a bit. At least, until the Demon Tide suddenly tossed a few more flaming Shadows at him, prompting Roxas to break off his attack so that he could try and either evade or destroy the Heartless projectiles before they hit him. He mainly focused on destroying the flaming Shadows though, since he did not want to risk any more fires starting in the town, but there was only so much one could do, even with two Keyblades. He was just glad that most of the fires had already been extinguished by the last member of their group.

When he arrived in town with the others, the first thing that Sora did was set to work on putting out the fires with every water spell that he could muster up, and whenever a new one started to crop up, he quickly doused that one out as well, even if he had to break off from joining in on the fight to do so. Once he was sure that enough fires had been dealt with for now, Sora finally managed to get in on the action, and it was right after Roxas had been forced away from the Demon Tide. A quick switch from Kingdom Key to Shooting Star later, and Sora had swiftly joined the fight by transforming his weapon into his go-to long-range form. Using his Double Arrowguns to fight the Demon Tide from a distance was definitely a good call on Sora's part, because it freed up Roxas and most of the others to launch a full-frontal attack once more. The only ones that were not joining in on said assault were Blake and Ruby, both of whom had decided to use their weapons' gun modes to help Sora out with the long-range approach.

The strategy was rather sound and prevented any more fires from starting in Twilight Town, but no plan could ever work for the entirety of a battle, and the Demon Tide proved that when it suddenly launched into the air and began plowing through the group that had attacked it up close. Only Weiss and Ventus managed to get clear before it hit, thanks to a timely use of Weiss's glyphs, but Yang, Roxas, and Lea were not quite as lucky, and ended up getting blasted into the side of another building before they dropped down in an alleyway below them. When Ruby saw her sister and their friends get hurt, she immediately switched Crescent Rose back into full scythe mode, and blasted herself towards the Demon Tide, against the better advice of her other friends. Once she was close enough, Ruby angled her scythe so that she could use the next blast adjust her flight path a little, and she was soon hitting the Demon Tide with a powerful spin attack. It was hard to really say for sure how much damage she did, because the Demon Tide was still going as strong as ever afterwards. When Ruby landed again though, she had not seen that. All she saw was that her target had completely vanished from sight, and she thought that meant that they had won. At least, until she heard the others shouting for her to get away from where she was standing, but by then, it was already too late.

A faint rumbling was all the warning Ruby got, and she just barely had time to glance down before the Demon Tide suddenly burst out from beneath her feet, sending her flying into the air. As hard as she tried, Ruby could not suppress a scream of both fright and mild pain after getting hit by that attack, and when Blake managed to swing in and catch Ruby using her weapon's ribbons, she found the girl was just barely conscious at the moment. Blake had immediately set to work in trying to heal Ruby using the Potion that Roxas had given her before they entered the town, but she should have done a better job of taking in her surroundings first, because the Demon Tide was already flying at them, ready to attack again. By the time Blake had realized this, there was already little time for them to react, and she was not sure if she could even get them to safety using her Semblance.

What Blake did not know was that Sora had frozen in his current spot to watch Ruby carefully after she was hit, and the moment that the Demon Tide started barreling towards her and Blake, his mind had flashed back to a far-too-similar scenario. The biggest differences being that instead of a town there was a massive wasteland littered with fallen Keyblades, instead of two girls there was only one, and that one girl was a certain redhead trying to reach for him before she was suddenly swept away by the monstrosity. It was probably one of the most horrifying moments of Sora's life up to that point, and he did not wish to see it again.

"No! Not this time," Sora declared as he used his Airstep to move right into the path of the Demon Tide. When his feet landed on the ground, he quickly switched from his Double Arrowguns to another Keyblade, and a second later, a brilliant light seemed to flood the whole area, forcing everyone to shield their eyes until the light had died down.

When it finally did, the girls from Remnant were all staring at Sora with eyes that were as wide as dinner plates, while the guys just grinned excitedly knowing that the Demon Tide was more than likely about to be toast. There, standing before Ruby and Blake, was Sora, but his attire had now taken on a shinning, silvery-white and black color scheme, with black, wisplike stripes going up his pants legs, and three crown symbols on each of his sleeves, while in his hand was a glowing rainbow colored blade. What really stood out to the girls of Team RWBY was that Sora's eyes now possessed a far more intense and serious look in them than anything that they had ever seen from the leader of Team SLVR. At the same time though, his new appearance when combined with that gaze seemed to grant Sora a sense of assurance and confidence that would allow anyone to rest easier simply because he had now become able to make things right with just a simple move, if he wanted to. This was Sora's most powerful Formchange, brought on by the power of his Ultima Weapon; this was the Ultimate Form.

Seeing this new form of Sora's, even though he had not done anything with it yet, had left Team RWBY so awestruck that only Ruby herself could really find anything to say at the moment. Thankfully, she found the words to summarize all of their thoughts. "Holy cats."

"You can say that again," Blake barely whispered in return, being the first to find her voice again and the one who was closest to Ruby at the time.

The Demon Tide did not seem too perturbed by this sudden change, because it only paused for a few seconds before continuing its charge once again. A very bad move on the Heartless monster's part, because Sora was about to give it a full demonstration of what he was capable of in this form, and it had started the moment that he changed over to the Ultima Weapon. Barely even a second after the Demon Tide had begun moving for him and the two girls behind him again, Sora teleported right in front of the Demon Tide and struck it several times over with his new blade at a speed that he had not possessed before. To make matters even worse for the Demon Tide, each of Sora's attacks seemed to summon several additional swords of various colors, eight in total, making his strikes even more powerful than they already were. Leaping away from the Demon Tide, Sora then sent his blade flying towards it, summoning several additional swords with a wave of his hands as he did, and the blades spun through the Demon Tide several times over. Almost immediately afterwards, Sora called the blades forth once again as he dived down, and letting the blades spin about him while coiling outwards. This not only seemed to damage the Demon Tide quite a bit, but also sliced up any Shadows that it had detached in an effort to strike back or preserve some strength for later.

Sora's regular attacks were not the only things that had been powered up, as he proved when he next unleashed a number of powerful spells as well. Even his weakest spells seemed to pack the power that was typical of his strongest when he cast them, and they even covered a much larger area than normal. Too bad for the Demon Tide, Sora was not using any of his weakest spells. He was throwing every last ounce of magic power into this fight that he had, and that meant all of his most powerful magic was going into it as well, leaving the Demon Tide to suffer very great damage, while the rest of the guys cheered him on in encouragement, and the girls continued to gape in disbelief at the power he was exuding at the moment. Sure, it might be an even greater give away on his other-worldly origins to Team RWBY, but at the moment, Sora did not really care. All he knew was that this thing had attacked someone he cared about, and he was not going to let that stand.

Despite all the power that Sora threw at the thing, the Demon Tide still persisted in its attack, only now it seemed to take a more defensive approach by doing its best to avoid the transformed teen as best as it could. A futile effort, given that Sora was able to teleport right to its location every time he so much as readied an attack, but it was a good stalling tactic otherwise. After all, Sora could not hold onto the power of Ultimate Form forever, and with how many times he was throwing some of its best combos and combo finishers at the thing, he knew he was going to have end things soon, so he soon flipped back into the air once more, ready to unleash Ultimate Form's finishing move. Using a quick, rapid spin of his body, Sora unleashed a rapid flurry of light blades that dealt rapid damage to the Demon Tide and anything within his immediate surrounding area, and ended it all by sending out one last circle of swords around him in a great radius that the Demon Tide was unfortunate enough to be caught in.

With his finisher unleashed, Sora's clothes changed back to normal, and he let himself fall back to the ground again, barely able to use Glide enough to the point where his landing was not too horrible, but still just strong enough to keep himself from landing in any way that would have been dangerous. He was a little out of breath after all the attacks he had just let loose, and all the magic that he had unleashed as well, but otherwise, he was fine. When Ruby rushed over to check on him, Sora felt like he was getting a little better just from her support, but his mood quickly changed when the Demon Tide suddenly sprung up out of nowhere once again. Clearly it had either managed to find a way to survive Sora's powerful assault, or it was just more powerful than Sora realized. He was just about to try and stand again, even with Ruby's protesting that he was too weak at the moment, when Ventus suddenly came rushing forward while his body started to gain a faint glow of its own.

"Well, if he's not going to bother holding back, we might as well give it everything we've got too," Ventus shouted from where he was. "Command Style: Wingblade!"

Back in the old days, Ventus would have had to power up with another Command Style in order to activate his Wingblade Style, but after coming back, a few special lessons with Aqua, and some private training at Beacon, Ventus had figured out a trick that would let him activate at least this one without having to go through any middle ground. It certainly showed when his body became enveloped in a bright blue aura, while six swords of light spread out from his back in a manner reminiscent of an angel's wings. Taking a huge leap towards the beast, Ventus unleashed several fast, powerful attacks that were only made stronger with how the six swords followed every move he made, often times dealing additional damage with every swing of his sword. Unlike Sora though, Ventus did not let his attack extend out for very long, and went right to his finisher as soon as he could.

Leaping into the air, Ventus threw the glowing swords of light into the ground around the Demon Tide, creating a circular magic emblem of light, which he then landed right in the middle of. When his feet hit the ground, a massive shockwave of light was released, damaging the dark creature several times over. As soon as the light settled, Ventus looked to his target and had to bite back a curse when he saw that the Demon Tide was still standing, in a manner of speaking anyway, but he was not too worried, as he simply glanced over his shoulder and said, "Your turn, Roxas."

Right after Ven had spoken, Roxas leapt over his fellow blonde's head and began to unleash every form of strike that he had at his disposal. Eventually, he even went so far as to switch to just Oathkeeper, and encased it in light so that it was packing even more power when he moved in to slash it several times over. After one last strike, Roxas summoned forth four pillars of light around himself, and sent them flying away in straight paths that guaranteed at least a small hit on the Demon Tide no matter what. Summoning Oblivion once again, Roxas then called forth a similar attack, only this time, he was just firing off fourteen orbs of light that all homed in on the Demon Tide. Every time they hit, the Demon Tide seemed to wither and writhe in pain, but even after all of that, it still would not go down, and Roxas could not use such powerful moves without tiring himself out pretty quickly. Sure, it may have been easy for him once upon a time, but it had been a long time since his days with the Organization, and he was still in the process of regaining some lost strength.

Thankfully, Lea had retained a fair amount of old tricks from his time as Axel, and he proved it when he transformed the ground under the Demon Tide into a sweltering, lava-like surface while a ring of fire encased it in a single area of the town, signaling that it was his turn to attack. Every single inferno that Lea shot off afterwards seemed to be even stronger so long as it was within the fire ring that the redhead had created. At one point, he even melded into the surrounding fire so that he could jump out and land a few surprise attacks on the beast. Too bad for him that such tactics can only work for so long against an enemy like the Demon Tide, and Lea found out when the thing finally managed to bash him out of the fiery enclosing, extinguishing the flames completely when Lea dropped to the ground next to Roxas.

"You okay," Roxas asked as he used Oathkeeper to cast a healing spell on them both.

"Only if you can tell me that we're at least slowing it down," Lea groaned as he felt the magic doing its work on him.

"Hard to say at the moment," Sora replied once he came to stand next to them both, now better rested and ready to fire off Ultima Weapon's Shotlock at the first chance he had.

Team RWBY had some other ideas though, as Yang proved when she suddenly lunged forward and began bashing the Demon Tide on every point that she could while Ember Celica was firing with every punch she threw. Just when the Demon Tide was about to hit her again, Yang used her gauntlets to blast away, and it was at that point that Ruby came rushing in again with aid from her Semblance and scythe. Getting up high and in close to the beast, Ruby sliced away at the Demon Tide as fast as she could, and even fired several rounds from the scythe's sniper while it was in point-blank range, or just so that the attacks that she dealt using her weapon ended up even stronger than they normally would have been. Continuing her team's show of coordination, Ruby then jumped to the side so that Blake could come in and slash at the Demon Tide's base along with her, and the two of them were quickly delivering several fast, slashing attacks until Blake had to use her Semblance to avoid being crushed by the Demon Tide sending several shadows down on her like a long arm.

Weiss easily took notice of this, and immediately rocketed forward with some help from her glyphs so that she could cut apart any more Shadows that dared to approach Blake, giving both of them time to back flip away from the beast when it started throwing more flaming Shadows once again. While Blake came to a stop shortly after the attack had ceased, Weiss went a little further back than her, and, remembering all the practice she and Ven had put in yesterday, she switched Mytenaster's revolver around so that it was loaded with lightning Dust, and created a time dilation glyph beneath Blake's feet. The next time that the Demon Tide launched several Heartless at her, Blake was able to cut down every single one of them, thanks to her movements being sped up by Weiss's glyph, and when you added in the fact that she was using both her actual sword and the bladed edge of her sword's sheath, it was easy to see why she had no trouble not only destroying all of the Heartless that were launched at her, but also strike a very dynamic pose at the end as several of the destroyed Heartless exploded around her.

Seeing what they had just managed to pull off, Blake and Weiss exchanged a knowing smile with each other as the former commented, "We're going to need to remember that one."

"Agreed," Weiss nodded with pride in herself, her teammate, and in the maneuver that they had just pulled off on the fly.

Their celebration was cut short when they noticed that the Demon Tide was still going, and to be quite honest, they were all now very annoyed by this thing surviving so many of their attacks. Even through their annoyance though, they also saw that the beast was now moving much slower, like it was finally on its last legs, so that had to mean that they were close to ending this fight. The only problem was that Sora was not sure if his Ultima Weapon's Shotlock would be enough, and he was very doubtful that he would be able to finish it with Magic Launcher, so you could understand why he was trying to think of an option that had a sure-fire guarantee of succeeding.

Sadly, none of Sora's ideas seemed likely to work without all of them having at least half of their full strength, at least in terms of magic, and some of the others must have realized this too, because Lea soon let out a small groan as he asked, "Where's some of our best magic users when we need them?"

What happened next would have made you think that the universe was granting the heroes a lucky break, or that the person responsible had been waiting for just that question before they jumped in, but none of them really cared at the moment considering that it was just the save that they needed. Right when the Demon Tide was about to make another run at them, a brilliant light suddenly shone down on all of them, making the beast recoil a little like the light was hurting it, and then a figure dropped between the group of eight and the Heartless as she aimed her blade towards the Demon Tide and shouted, "BLIZZAZA!"

When the light finally died down enough for everyone to see without having to cover their eyes, the girls of Team RWBY were all left stunned once again. Not by the fact that the Demon Tide seemed to have been completely frozen in ice, but by the person who had clearly performed the act. Standing before them, with her back facing them, was a blonde haired, rather petite-looking girl that seemed to be the same age as Sora and Roxas, clad in a white dress that ended at her mid-thighs in an embroidered lace pattern and light blue sandals that were decorated with yellow flowers. What really caught the girls' attention was that in her hand, was a Keyblade that was colored red, blue, and green, with the tip being a golden eight-pointed star inside of a silver circle, while the teeth were made up of three, different colored stars. Upon turning around to face them, the girl allowed everyone to see her rosy cheeks, bright blue eyes, and pale pink lips that were curled up in a smile when she laid eyes on the boys.

"You rang," the blonde girl jokingly questioned with a wave of her Keyblade, which the boys all knew to be called Fairy Stars.

"Nice timing, Naminé," Lea grinned in thanks.

"Aw yeah! That's my sister," Roxas cheered proudly, while Sora just beamed happily in thanks.

Ventus would have joined in on the celebration had he not thought of something that made him instantly go pale, and he could not stop himself from reminding the others of that. "Uh guys…" he called out, and even with how weak his voice was at the moment, they still managed to hear him somehow. "Who was Naminé paired up with again?"

None of them answered that question with words, but instead, with the way that they went just as pale as Ventus the minute they realized what Naminé's arrival in Twilight Town likely meant. Trying to stay optimistic as always, Sora quickly offered up a course of action for the group. "Okay, calm down. No need to panic just yet. Maybe she's still a good ways behind Naminé, so we just need to kill the Demon Tide as quickly as possible, and then make a break for the stealth gummi ship so we can get out of here before she shows up."

"Great plan, aside from the fact that a certain bunch of somebodies aren't likely to let us leave right after beating that thing," Roxas pointed out as he indicated both Team RWBY and the Demon Tide respectively.

Sora was about to either offer another solution or ask if Roxas had any better ideas, when the sound of ice cracking reached their ears, and they all turned to see that the Demon Tide was already starting to break free from its icy prison. The group all prepared themselves for battle once again, but just after the Demon Tide broke loose, a massive number of light chains suddenly wrapped around it, encasing it into a relatively medium sized sphere, and then pulled it over into a nearby wall. The chains continued to hold their captive in place, and from the look of things, it did not seem like the Demon Tide had the strength to put up much of a fight anyway. Not that it mattered, since the caster of those light chains was already ready moving into position to fire off her next attack, as she shouted out, "Prism Rain!"

Following that declaration, several light beams that each took on one of the many colors in the rainbow came down on the captured Demon Tide, and they were quickly followed by several more salvos of similar blasts. The last bombardment proved to be the thing that finally brought an end to the Demon Tide at last, and the group all watched as the beast went up in smoke and ash. When the smoke from the destroyed Heartless finally cleared, another new arrival dropped down to the ground, proving exactly what Team SLVR had been worried about. Not that they really needed much more evidence, since there was only one person who could use the Prism Rain Shotlock, but seeing the blue haired woman in question, garbed in her regular warrior's attire did help to drive the point home for the guys.

"Uh-oh," Ventus muttered.

"Oh stars," Sora added on.

"We're dead," Lea and Roxas both said at the same time, and they were most likely right about that, as the blue haired woman immediately spun around and gave all four of the boys a glare that was so hot you would think it was backed by at least several different suns.

"Who's that," Yang asked.

"And why is she looking at us like that," Blake added while fingering her weapon in case this was a new enemy.

"She's not looking at you. She's just looking at us," Lea corrected, but somehow, that did not make the girls feel much better.

"Sora Hikari, Ventus Kunsanagi, Lea Firebrand, and Roxas Sheru," Keyblade Master Aqua roared as she stomped closer to the group.

"How'd she know that he'd settled on Sheru for his last name," Ventus asked, only to suddenly have Aqua's glare turn onto him with even greater intensity. "You know what, I'll worry about that later."

"Uh…H-hey Aqua," Sora greeted in his best attempt at trying to sound overly affectionate and sweet. It did not work, and not just because of the stuttering and nervousness.

"Oh, don't you 'Hey Aqua' me, Mister," Aqua snapped, making Sora and the boys all flinch back in fear. "You four go gallivanting off on a whole new adventure, and on a world that none of us have ever even heard of, let alone been to before, and you didn't even once think to tell me before taking off?! I swear, when I'm done with you, the Heartless, the Unversed, Xehanort, and every other major villain each of you have ever faced will look like scared little kittens in comparison!"

The boys had all known that they had messed up by not telling Aqua about their mission before going to Remnant, but it was not until this moment that they truly realized how badly they had screwed up. "Maybe we should've just run for it after killing the Demon Tide and let the girls kill us for not answering their questions right away like we said we would," Lea muttered.

Hearing the redhead mention that gave Sora what he believed would be the perfect idea on how to escape Aqua's wrath, or at least put it at bay for a short time, and he quickly put on another charming smile as he said, "Now Aqua, I know you're mad, and you have every right to be, but do you really want to show your…less pleasant side to our new friends?"

Miraculously, Aqua did stop short of raining down mystical punishment on the boys when she heard that, and she quirked a surprised brow at Sora as she repeated, "New friends?"

It was easy enough for the rest of the boys to catch on to what Sora had just planned at the spur of the moment, and Ventus was the first to react by leading most of them over to where the huntresses-in-training were standing, making them into unwitting human shields against Aqua's wrath. "Yes, this is Team RWBY, some of our friends from Remnant," Ventus announced while putting his hands on Blake and Weiss's shoulders, while Sora did the same with Ruby and Yang, and Lea just hung back behind all of them. "Girls, this is Aqua, Keyblade master, gifted mage, guardian of the Land of Departure, and the big sister that I never had."

"And speaking of sisters, this is my twin sister," Roxas revealed as he slid over to wrap an arm around Naminé.

"Hello; I'm Naminé. It's nice to meet you all," the blonde girl smiled pleasantly.

"Hi-ya, Naminé, Aqua. I'm Yang," the powerhouse of Team RWBY introduced, prompting a chorus of introductions from the rest of the team.

"Blake."

"I'm Weiss."

"And I'm Ruby, team leader and Yang's younger sister."

"Oh, uh…hello there," Aqua stuttered, now feeling a little embarrassed for her outburst. "Sorry you all had to see that just now, but well…Ven's like family to me, and the same applies to most of these other boys as well, so I get a little nervous when they rush off without a word, and well…"

"Oh, you don't have to explain. From one big sister to another, I totally get it," Yang reassured the blue haired girl.

"Regardless of the circumstances, it is a great pleasure to meet you at last, Master Aqua. Ven and the others have told us quite a bit about you," Weiss nodded as she performed a light curtsy to the Keyblade master.

That got the Keyblade wielders and the rest of Weiss's team to exchange bewildered looks, until Ventus finally asked, "Uh Weiss? What're you doing?"

"I'm trying to be respectful. Why? Is it offensive for me to do this," Weiss whispered in reply, sounding a little panicked at the end.

"No, no, it's not but…well…" Ventus reassured her, even though he was not really sure what else to say after that.

"Just stand up straight. She's not a queen, you know," Sora finally told Weiss. He then paused to think for a minute as he muttered, "Well, I mean, she is technically in charge of the Land of Departure, so I guess that would kind of make her a queen, maybe. Aqua does that count?"

"No, it doesn't. Ven, Terra, and I may live in a castle, but we're not royalty, and neither was Master Eraqus, and he was guardian for both our world and home long before I was," Aqua explained.

Now Weiss felt a little silly, and quickly stood up straight once again and said, "Sorry about that. I just…wanted to make sure you would like me."

"Hey, if you're friends with these guys, you don't have to worry about that," Aqua reassured her. That made Weiss relax a bit, until Aqua asked, "But why would you want me to like you specifically?"

"Uh…Well…N-no reason," Weiss stuttered in response, unable to stop herself from blushing a bit.

Seeing the blush and taking note of how Ven was the first one to help the white haired girl relax, Aqua was able to start putting more than a few pieces into place, and could not help but smirk towards Ventus at the prospects that this offered her. Not that her friend seemed to realize any of this, given his bewildered look, but she would likely do something to fix that later on. Right now, there were more important things to deal with. "You know, friends or not, I'm actually a little surprised that Ven and the others brought you all along with them, let alone allowed you to actually fight against something like the Demon Tide," Aqua admitted, her look now going from Ventus to Sora while changing from teasing to knowing and slightly accusatory.

"What," Sora asked, not understanding why she was looking at him like that right away. He managed to figure it out quickly enough though. "Okay, hey! Don't look at me like that! This wasn't my idea! They insisted on letting them help us, and for the record, we didn't bring them along. They stowed away after Axel left the door open."

"Oh, thanks for throwing me under the gummi ship, buddy," Lea retorted with a glare in Sora's direction.

"Wait, why would you board the ship the old fashioned way in the first place? Couldn't you have just used the gummi ship's teleporter," Naminé questioned.

Upon hearing the former memory witch's question, Ventus, Roxas, and Lea all slowly turned to glare at Sora, who could only nervously chuckle in response before he defended, "Okay, to be fair, I wasn't sure if the ship still had that or not, and after the way we landed on Remnant, I also had not been entirely sure if it had been repaired or not, even after all this time. Besides, it's not like we couldn't have used the exercise, right?"

"Speak for yourself, lazy bones," Lea huffed. "Unlike you, the rest of us work hard and actually do need some sleep."

"Axel, Sora works harder than the rest us, and especially you, Mister I-Spend-My-Day-Off-Sleeping," Roxas retorted in Sora's defense. "To paraphrase something Xion once said, unlike me, Ven, and Sora, maybe you're just out of shape."

"Ha, ha, ha," Lea grumbled while the others just let out good-natured laughs at his expense.

"Speaking of ships and all this talk about other worlds…" Blake suddenly interrupted, reminding both her teammates and the boys about a certain matter that they still needed to address.

Hearing their dark-haired teammate's comment, the rest of Team RWBY all turned demanding looks onto the boys, most of them with their arms crossed for added effect, eliciting a new wave of nervousness from the guys. "You guys did promise to explain everything to us after the battle was over," Ruby pointed out.

"They did," Aqua and Naminé asked while giving the boys a few judging looks as well.

"Well it's not like we can really change what happened, and they've already seen a lot more than most people should. We don't really have a choice in the matter now," Roxas pointed out.

"I could always erase their memories," Naminé offered.

"…You can do that," Roxas asked in wonder. He knew that Naminé still had some of her old memory powers, and that she could now use them on anyone whether they had ties to Sora or not, but last he checked she was still learning how to better use and control them, and this was the first he had ever heard of Naminé possessing that particular ability.

Team RWBY on the other hand was much more nervous than they were intrigued. The idea of someone actually modifying or just outright erasing their memories was frightening to say the least, and that was without the casual way that Naminé had offered to do it in. Sure, it did seem like this whole thing was a pretty big deal, given the boys' reactions upon realizing that they had found out about all of this, but to hear that it would warrant such an extreme reaction made them wonder if it was really worth all the trouble that they had gone through to learn about it. Not that they would have changed anything that had happened if they had the chance; they would likely do it all over again if they had the choice. After all, they had just helped Sora and the others save an entire town from a very dangerous Heartless, even if their contributions were not quite as grand and spectacular as those of the Keybearers, and experienced things that no one else on Remnant had likely ever experienced before. They did not want to lose all of that.

As it turned out, they did not have anything to worry about, because before Naminé could answer, Sora cut in. "No," Sora refused, surprising everyone with how serious he sounded. "We…I gave my word to them that we would come clean, and I'm not going to break that promise just because of some stupid world order rules. Besides, if you guys really trust me, then shouldn't it be enough when I say that I trust them?"

It really touched the girls' hearts when they heard Sora stick up for them like that, and that was especially true for Ruby. Not only was Sora going to keep his promise to them, or more accurately to her, but given the conviction in his voice, it seemed that he really did trust them with whatever big secret that was involved in all of this. The fact that it looked like he was willing to stand up to his friends for their sake certainly reinforced that idea, just as the blush that she could feel on her face right now seemed to prove once again that her sister was right to say that she had a crush on Sora, at the very least. Of course, she and her teammates were not the only ones that were moved by Sora's little speech.

The rest of Team SLVR also smiled in relief upon hearing Sora speaking up in Team RWBY's defense, and hearing him insist on telling them the full truth was something they were going to take as another sign that the old Sora was still in there. The latter sentiment was shared by both Naminé and Aqua, given how they were also smiling in relief after hearing what Sora said, and given how sure he sounded about trusting these girls, how could they argue against letting the boys spill the secret? Besides, they were already here, and Naminé had actually been joking a little when she said that she could erase memories, so it was not like they had any other choice. "Okay, but first, we should let everyone know it's safe to return to the city, and then find somewhere a little more private," Aqua ordered.

"On it," Lea replied while pulling out his Gummiphone in order to call Isa and the rest of the Twilight Town gang. "And luckily, I know just the place for a private conversation."

"Clock tower," Roxas asked, knowingly.

"Clock tower," Lea confirmed. "And more than that, I'd say that everyone's earned the icing on the cake, wouldn't you, bud?"

"Definitely," Roxas agreed.

"Okay, now what're you two going on about," Weiss asked.

"You'll see. Just follow us," Roxas replied with a wave of his hand to indicate that they should follow him. "Meet you there, Axel."

"Like that's ever in doubt," Lea playfully questioned before moving in a different direction.

The girls were now more curious than ever about what sort of strangeness was going on now, but Sora had promised to answer all of their questions, so they just shrugged it off and followed after their guides. Though there was no denying that they all had a new wave of excitement building up inside at the prospect of learning about Team SLVR's secrets at last, even if it was lined with a bit of trepidation.

---

"Woooooow," Ruby cooed in awe barely seconds after they had all arrived at the top of the Twilight Town station's clock tower. It was a bit of a tight squeeze to get everyone up there on Roxas and Lea's favorite spot, but somehow, they ended up managing to pull it off, and now, the Remnant girls were all able to take in the magnificent sight of a Twilight Town sunset with their own eyes.

"I've seen a lot of sunsets, but I don't think I can remember any of them being as nice as this," Blake admitted with a peaceful smile.

"I don't think I've ever even seen anything in Atlas that's as beautiful as this," Weiss added with her own admission.

"Yeah, the view of Beacon from Vale, and the view of the school right after we got off the airship on our first day definitely have nothing on this," Yang agreed.

"Naturally," Roxas nodded like it should have been obvious. "There's a lot of reasons why this world is called Twilight Town after all, and the biggest one is because you won't find very many places with a more amazing sunset. Of course, this is definitely the best spot for watching them, but I may be a little biased, all things considered."

The way Roxas had worded some of that had the girls a little perplexed, but they were unable to call him out on it since Lea chose just that moment to finally arrive. "Hey, hope you guys didn't start without me," Lea greeted with a wave.

"No, we were just waiting on you," Roxas reassured him. He then became a little more excited as he asked, "Did you get it?"

"I'm offended you even thought it was necessary to ask," Lea scoffed in return as he produced the item that Roxas was referring to. "Take one down, pass it around, and enjoy the icing on the cake."

"Yes! Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme," Roxas cheered as he nearly jumped at Lea for the treats that the redhead had started passing out. The minute he had his own in hand, Roxas let out a longing sigh as he said, "Oh sweet, darling wonder. How I have missed you."

"Addict," Ventus playfully teased with a roll of his eyes.

RWBY on the other hand, could only look at what they had been given in confusion, while trying to puzzle just what it was that Lea had handed them. "Is this…some kind of ice cream," Blake finally asked.

"Not just any kind of ice cream. Its sea-salt ice cream, the best cold treat you'll ever have," Roxas declared proudly, almost sounding like he was the one who had created the flavor.

Unsurprisingly, Weiss was the first one to give a voice of skepticism. "Sea-salt ice cream? That sounds incredibly gross."

"I actually have to agree with Weiss," Yang admitted, as strange as it seemed. "That really doesn't sound like a flavor that many people would enjoy."

"What? Are you kidding? Everyone loves it," Roxas protested.

"He's not wrong. Everyone that we know who's ever tried this ice cream does like it a lot, and once they have tried it the first time, they can never get enough," Sora confirmed. His defense of the treat soon turned into a moment of teasing as he added, "No one's quite as bad about it as Roxas and Axel, but…"

"Hey you! Don't make me take that ice cream away from you and throw it over the ledge," Lea threatened while waving his popsicle at Sora in a similar manner.

"Just try at least one bite. Trust me, you won't regret it," Ventus gently encouraged the girls.

When they saw Aqua and Naminé nodding along in agreement, Team RWBY figured that they did not have much to lose and decided to give the strange treat a try. Besides, from the way that the boys were going on about it, the girls had a hunch that they would withhold answering any questions until they did as Ventus was asking. So, on the count of three, the girls all took a quick, small bite of their popsicle, and almost immediately after, flinched back a little as the first bit of the ice cream's taste came over their taste buds.

"Ugh, it's really salty," Weiss grumbled in displeasure.

"And yet…really sweet too," Ruby added after the saltiness in her mouth had passed for the more favorable side of the ice cream flavor.

"Good right," Roxas asked.

"It's a little surprising, and may take some getting used to," Blake started to say.

"But yeah, this is really good," Yang finally concluded, and it seemed like the rest of the team agreed with her on that.

With the entirety of Team RWBY now giving a seal of approval for sea-salt ice cream, everyone found themselves falling into an amicable silence while enjoying the rest of their frozen treats for a good amount of time. Not that you could blame them. When you have a good spot, some tasty treats, and good friends all in one place, you can't help but let your troubles take a back seat so that you can enjoy the moment for a little bit. Nothing lasts forever though, because once she was at least halfway through her ice cream, Ruby looked to her Keyblade wielding friends and said, "So, are you all ready to finally fill us in on the big secret?"

"That depends. What do you want to know," Sora asked in return.

"Everything," Weiss answered as simply as you please.

"As long as you're comfortable with it," Yang quickly reassured them. Just because they were pulling some answers out of the boys, it did not mean that they should make them share things that they did not enjoy thinking about for one reason or another.

Aqua, Naminé, and Team SLVR all nodded in thanks to Yang for that, and while the two girls had decided that they would offer their two cents here and there, they were still planning on letting the boys take point for this conversation. With that said, they were a little surprised when most of them turned to Ven, and immediately thought that they were volunteering him as their spokesperson for the whole thing. The truth of the matter was that the boys had been preparing for a scenario like this, and had determined in advance that Ventus should be the one to lead into the heart of the matter. Ven had no problem with it, and thus, he started things off by saying, "Let me ask you girls this: have you ever wondered what stars are, or where their light comes from?"

While Weiss had a pretty good idea where he was going with this after hearing that question, the rest of her team was of a different story. "I mean, kind of," Ruby admitted with a shrug.

"I always kind of figured they were just giant balls of flaming gas, kind of like the sun," Yang admitted.

"Why does it not surprise me that you think something like that involves flames," Blake questioned.

"That is one good guess, though, but there's another idea as well," Ventus revealed. "They say that every star you see up in the sky is another world."

"Another…world," Ruby repeated in question, but there was no denying the awe that was slowly creeping into her voice at the thought of such a thing.

"Yep, hard to believe there are so many worlds out there besides your own, isn't it," Ventus smiled in confirmation, feeling a sense of déjà vu as he spoke. You could not blame him though, because this felt almost exactly like a conversation he had with Terra so long ago, only now, he was the one explaining the legend. Sure, he had already done so with Weiss, but the sense of déjà vu was only really making itself known now that he was telling it to Ruby and the rest of the all-girl team. "The light is their hearts, and it's shinning down on us like a million lanterns." Before he could go any further, he heard a familiar bit of laughter start ringing out, and he instantly turned to the blue haired culprit in question. "Hey, Aqua, what're you laughing at?"

"I can't help it," Aqua admitted. "It's just so weird hearing you sound so much like Terra, and it all reminds me of what I said to you guys the night before mine and Terra's Mark of Mastery exam. You two would make the weirdest brothers."

Hearing that reminder along with a new string of laughter from one of his oldest friends put a smile on Ven's face as he joined in on the laughter, but it did not last for very long, as Weiss had to interrupt, despite how cute the moment seemed to be. "No offense, Ven, but what does this legend that your friend told you once have to do with anything," the heiress inquired.

Ventus did his best to control his chuckles, but he still smiled when he replied, "Everything, because in point of fact, as I'm sure you've probably guessed by now, we're actually on an entirely different world from Remnant right now."

That surprised the four girls quite a bit, but they were still a bit skeptical of the claim. "You're telling us that this whole town isn't part of Remnant, but an entirely different world on its own," Blake asked.

"But that's…That's impossible," Yang protested. She did not want to sound like a skeptic, or at least not as big of one as Weiss probably would be, but the claim was still pretty unbelievable.

"Hey, when you so much as meet someone who has a Keyblade, the line between possible and impossible becomes blurred to the point of nonexistence faster than you can say Kingdom Hearts," Lea informed the girls. "Twilight Town is actually the world that Roxas and I call home, even if it isn't the world that I was born and spent most of my years growing up on."

"Not only that, but each of us are all from different worlds as well," Roxas said as he waved between the Keyblade wielders. "Ventus and Aqua come from a world that rests on the boundary between the realms of light and darkness, known as the Land of Departure, and Sora, he's from a small world made up of islands and vast oceans known as the Destiny Islands."

"Not to mention that Sora has all kinds of friends on several different worlds too, including the world that Lea was born on, Radiant Garden," Ventus finished.

"So you guys are all from different worlds, and have traveled to each other's worlds too," Ruby asked in awe.

"Pretty much," Sora confirmed. "As wielders of the Keyblade, we do possess the means of reaching other worlds, but that does come with a huge responsibility as well."

"What kind of responsibility," Blake asked.

"To protect the balance between light and darkness and to keep the worlds safe from anyone that would seek to cause trouble on that world, just to name a couple," Ventus informed them. "At the same time though, we can't just go around telling everyone about other worlds, because they're supposed to be kept a secret."

"He's right. If everyone on every world knew that other worlds existed, the results could be very catastrophic, so it's our job to maintain both the balance and the peace between each world while keeping the secret safe in order to maintain the world order," Aqua elaborated while keeping it as simple as possible.

"I guess I can see why you guys would want to keep that a secret from us, but why did it mean you guys had to lie to us about what you could do," Ruby questioned.

"Well, I'm sure you already figured out that we don't actually use Dust in our fights, but real magic, and since magic doesn't exist on Remnant, we had to come up with a cover story of some kind in order to protect that bit of world order," Sora explained. "It's not always easy doing so either. Trust me, I speak from experience."

"We all can," Roxas pointed out with a small frown. "And not all of those experiences are very great."

"What's that supposed to mean," Blake asked. She was not demanding an answer this time; she was just curious, but at the same time, she was also a little nervous about what they would learn.

The boys shared a look between one another and with Aqua and Naminé, just to make sure none of them had any reservations about sharing this part, and when they saw none in any of their eyes beyond the obvious, Ventus took point once again and said, "To really understand that, you'd have to understand our full story, and that all began a little over eleven years ago, on the day when Aqua, Terra, and I had all gathered with our late master, Eraqus, and the man who would become our greatest enemy, for Aqua and Terra's Mark of Mastery exam…"

From that moment on, the boys spoke only of the long story that was their adventures and struggles against Master Xehanort, with Aqua and Naminé helping to fill in some details here and there. They did not go too far into all the details, mind you, as there were still some things about their histories that they did not want to share. This was not to say that they did not share anything that made them uncomfortable, but that was mainly because there was no way for the story to really make sense to the girls if they did not include those details. The biggest example of things that they had to share was the fact that Lea had been a member of the Organization, but they did their best to keep any mention of Roxas being a member out of it. All they really said was that Roxas had once been targeted by the Organization because of his ability to use the Keyblade, and he had to give up a great deal in order for Sora and the others to stop the group. Another thing that they made a point to not go too far into detail about was anything regarding Kairi. Yes, they mentioned that Sora had first journeyed through the worlds to save his best friends, but the only one of those friends that they ever mentioned by name was Riku. It was actually impressive how they managed to keep Kairi out of the story so much, and even more so that doing so had not gotten Sora upset, but they had to figure that the chances of upsetting Sora were a lot greater if they did bring up the lost Princess of Heart, so they took what victories that they could get.

Everything else though was laid before the girls like an open book, almost as though they had let the girls read Jiminy's digital journal on the Gummiphone. Everything from Ventus, Aqua, and Terra's struggles against the Unversed, to their final battle with Xehanort and Vanitas in the Keyblade Graveyard, and how in its aftermath, Ventus had fallen into a deep coma, Terra was possessed by Xehanort, and Aqua was stranded in Dark World. From the day when Destiny Islands was lost to darkness and Sora first got the Keyblade, to how he had journeyed across so many worlds that first time to save his friends and stop Maleficent and the Heartless the first time around, and right up to his final battle against Xehanort's Heartless. After that particular story, Naminé had pitched in and told everyone about the events that had taken place when Sora first visited Castle Oblivion, and by the time she had finished, Ruby and Yang had all nearly jumped up to give her the biggest comforting hug that they could muster in an effort to help ease the pain of remembering what she had gone through back then. Blake and Weiss had felt the same urge as well, but just barely stopped themselves from following through like the sisters. At least at first, but in the end, they could not help but hug Naminé as well.

The stories did not stop there though, because even without going into all the details about Roxas's past involvement with the Organization, they did still tell about how Sora and his friends stopped the first Organization XIII and their plans for the worlds. After that came the tale behind Sora and Riku's journey through the sleeping worlds, and how it served as their Mark of Mastery exam, and that came with the sad tale of how Sora had nearly become one of Xehanort's thirteen Seekers of Darkness. Hearing that such a kind, caring person like Sora had nearly ended up being subjected to such a cruel fate had made all four girls feel a need to tear Xehanort apart, and Ruby had even gotten up from where she was sitting so that she could promise to track down wherever Xehanort was at that very moment and give him a very up-close and personal introduction to Crescent Rose. Thankfully, Aqua was able to help calm Ruby down by reassuring her that Xehanort had failed and was already gone for good, thanks in no small part to Sora, but she did still find it very interesting how passionately Ruby had reacted to hearing that Xehanort had hurt Sora in the way that he had.

Of course, mentioning that Xehanort was gone for good did mean that they had to tell the girls the final story about how the old coot had finally been defeated for good, and by that point; the girls were on the edge of their seats in excitement. Hearing about how it involved Sora traveling to a lot of different worlds in order to obtain the Power of Waking, and how despite the fact he had not gone with Riku and Mickey right away, it still fell to Sora to help bring Aqua back home to the realm of light had left the girls feeling like they had severely underestimated just how much Sora was truly capable of at one point or another, but that notion quickly passed. After all, it had already become very clear that he had the power, skill, and strength of character to make things like that possible, but even with learning about all the other good things that had followed Aqua's return, like how they brought back Ventus, Terra, Roxas, and Xion, there was still the less pleasant matters to bring up as well.

Even at this point, they still did not mention Kairi by name, but they did reveal that Xehanort had struck down a very good friend of Sora's in order to further motivate him into acting. That had upset them all quite a bit, but only Ruby noticed how Sora's hands had clenched tightly upon being reminded of that particular moment, and she had to wonder just how important this friend really was to him. Sure, she knew that she was pressing them for answers right now, but she knew when to not push an issue, and this definitely qualified as one such time from what Ruby could tell. Despite not getting a full story and just the basic understanding of why that moment was likely one of the worst in Sora's life, Ruby and the girls were still glad to hear that Sora had given Xehanort exactly what was coming to the old man, even while he had the power of the ultimate Keyblade in his possession. The only thing that made them feel even a little better about the whole thing after that was when the guys ended by explaining their full reasons for coming to Remnant at last, or at least as much as they could without revealing anything specific about Kairi.

"…So then we got to Beacon, met you and all the rest of our new pals, and you pretty much know the rest from there," Lea finally concluded.

Team RWBY could only sit there and stare at the boys for a little bit, until Yang finally muttered, "Sweet Oum."

"You can say that again," Blake agreed.

"You guys and your friends seem to have been living the lives of huntsmen even before attending Beacon. It actually makes me wonder why you're even bothering with going to the school in the first place," Ruby admitted.

"Hey, just because we've done some amazing things and gotten really strong and powerful, doesn't mean there isn't still a few things we can learn and improve on," Sora pointed out, showing one of his rare moments of maturity when he did.

As tempting as it was to point that out and tease him for it, none of his friends did so, since they did not want to step on his moment too much. That, and there was also the fact that Weiss had asked a very important question almost immediately after that. "Still, what makes you really think that you're missing friend is on Remnant," the heiress questioned.

"They're there. I'm sure of it. I have to believe that our friend is somewhere on Remnant, and that we're going to find them," Sora insisted with conviction so clear that you would think it was a perfectly made piece of glass. "Besides, Master Yen Sid said that he had been able to track them to Remnant, and I doubt he would've sent us there on a wild goose chase, right?"

Even before he had finished his question, Aqua had started to tense up and get nervous, but thankfully, Sora did not notice. Naminé and the rest of the guys had though, and they all easily figured out that she knew something that she felt Sora should not know just yet. That did not mean they were going to let her keep it from the rest of them though, but they had to get rid of Sora before they could question the Keyblade master on anything. Luckily, they knew just the thing that would be guaranteed to get Sora away for a little bit.

"Hey Sora," Roxas called out. "I'm pretty sure that Hayner and the rest of the gang should've gotten everyone back into the town by now. Why don't you see if you can track them down so you can introduce the girls to them?"

"Oh, great idea," Sora agreed with a smile. Upon jumping to his feet, he immediately held out a hand to Ruby, and said, "Come on! You guys are going to love meeting all the friends we've made on this world, and I'll bet that Uncle Scrooge might still be here too."

"Uncle Scrooge," Ruby questioned as she accepted the hand up, much to nearly everyone's smirking amusement.

"He's my friend Donald's rich uncle. He runs a local bistro here in Twilight Town and has a movie theater business going just across the way. Trust me, he's a business tycoon that you don't want to make an enemy out of," Sora explained.

"I'm sure he can't be that good," Weiss insisted.

"Oh, he is," Sora insisted. "He's not just a businessman, he's one of the greatest adventurers in all the worlds too, so he's not just blowing smoke whenever he says that he made his fortune by being tougher than the toughies, smarter than the smarties, and sharper than the sharpies." When the girls just looked at him after hearing the remark, Sora merely said, "His words, not mine."

Team RWBY all nodded along after hearing that, and had soon disappeared from view afterwards, leaving only the rest of Team SLVR, Naminé, and Aqua on the clock tower. Even then, the boys all made sure that they kept quiet until after they saw their five friends walk out of the train station and towards the town before they finally rounded on the Keyblade master. "Okay, Aqua, spill it," Ventus instantly demanded once Sora and the others were long gone.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Aqua immediately denied.

"Uh-huh. Do you really think any of us are going to buy that," Lea rhetorically questioned. "You got all nervous when Sora mentioned how Yen Sid had tracked Kairi down to Remnant, so what's the matter?"

Seeing that the others all looked just as determined to get an explanation out of her, Aqua knew she was backed into a corner, so she simply sighed and revealed what she knew. "Shortly after I found out about your mission, I went to Yen Sid and asked him for all the details. Riku had actually been there at the time too, so he learned about all of this at the same time I did, and he was not any happier about it than I think you guys will be."

"What do you mean," Roxas inquired, suddenly feeling nervous.

Even though she had steeled her resolve for this moment, Aqua was still really hesitant to admit any of this, but she knew that there was no way around it now. "The truth is…Yen Sid doesn't really know for sure if Kairi is on Remnant or not."

"WHAT," all three boys and Naminé all shouted as one, each in varying degrees of outrage.

"Are you telling me that the old man really did send us on what could be a wild goose chase and didn't think to be upfront and tell us the truth about it," Lea demanded, hotly.

"I never said that," Aqua quickly reassured, calming everyone down a little bit. "He does think that Kairi is on Remnant, but it's only his best guess as to where she is right now. Or at least it was at the time, because he had sensed a very powerful light coming from Remnant when he looked there. It was not until after you all left that he became a little less sure."

"Why? What happened," Ventus asked.

"He had called his friend, someone I think you all know as Professor Ozpin, right," Aqua questioned, just to make sure she was remembering right. When the guys confirmed that she was, she continued on, "In that conversation, Ozpin revealed that one of the New Seven Hearts is likely on Remnant. After that, Yen Sid made it a point to reach out a little more with his senses to see if he had accidentally made a mistake and mistook this new Princess of Heart's light for Kairi's. That's when things got a little more…complicated."

"How could they possibly be complicated? I mean, even if one of the New Seven is on Remnant, Kairi's both a Princess of Heart, previous and new, and a Keyblade wielder. She would have to stand apart from any other powerful light without even trying. It's not like he only sensed one powerful light when he made that second scan," Lea reasoned out. His only answer was a brief silence, and that made him and the others start to worry. "Did he?"

"That's the thing. He did sense more than one light, but neither of them were powerful enough to be Kairi's, or at least not at the strength of what we've known Kairi's light to be now," Aqua revealed. "He's not sure if that means that two of the New Seven are on Remnant like with Arendelle, if something is trying to hide Kairi's light from us, if something had somehow weakened her light, or even if…"

"If what," Ventus hesitantly encouraged, not entirely sure if he wanted Aqua to finish that last idea, but still not liking how she left it hanging at the end.

"…If there was just nothing of Kairi to find there," Aqua finally said. Silence hung in the air for a brief period before Aqua went on to say, "After that, Yen Sid started searching the other worlds again, this time going over them all with a fine-tooth comb in an effort to locate Kairi, but he found nothing even close to what he had sensed from Remnant, not even a clue as to where the rest of the New Seven Hearts could be."

"So why didn't anyone contact us? Sora has a right to know about this," Roxas insisted.

"Roxas, do you really think he could handle learning about something like that right now," Naminé asked in Aqua's place. "You four have been around Sora more than anyone else in our group has been lately, so do you really think he could handle the idea that his search may be in vain, and that there may be a chance that Kairi really is gone for good?"

None of the boys had the heart to answer, be it with a lie or with the truth, and that was answer enough for Aqua and Naminé. They all knew just how much Sora had been affected by the loss of Kairi, and by how Yen Sid had forbade him from using the Power of Waking to bring her back. If he were to learn about this, there was no doubt that he would be crushed beyond repair in a best case scenario. That did not make it feel anymore right to hide this information from them, but given that they were almost always around Sora at Beacon, they could understand why the others had not shared such crucial information with them until now. Still, it left one thing unanswered.

"Not that I don't appreciate what we've been doing at Beacon, or the friends we've made while on Remnant at all, but if all of this really is for nothing, then what the hell are we even still doing there if the old man really was wrong," Lea asked.

"He still wants to be sure that he had not made a mistake when he first suspected Kairi was on Remnant," Aqua explained. "He still wants you all to keep looking for any sign of her, but on the off-chance that Master Yen Sid was wrong, and Kairi isn't there then…" This part really hurt Aqua to say every time she even thought about it, but she knew that they had to face the very real possibility of this reality, no matter how much it hurt. She just wished that saying it out loud did not make it feel like the chances of it becoming more likely were increasing. "…Then this may be the only place where Sora can learn to move on from her."

---

It was a few hours later when the five Keybearers had finally left the clock tower, and in all that time, they had done a lot of silent thinking. What Aqua said had made sense. There was no way that even Yen Sid would have been one hundred percent certain in his claim of Kairi being on Remnant, especially when you factored in the possibility that there could be another Princess of Heart on the same world, but the idea that she probably was not there at all, or may even be gone for good like she and maybe even Yen Sid were probably implying was just too much to take in for them. With that in mind, it made a little more sense as to why no one had told Sora about this. If he knew, then it would be like the fallout that he had after waking up in the Mysterious Tower all over again at best, only this time around, he would not just be upset; he would be heartbroken, too, and there would be no way that he would ever comeback from that chasm of depression. Sure, Sora was strong, but there was no telling if it was possible for him to recover from something as big as that. No matter how many times the boys told themselves that though, they just could not assuage the guilt that they felt at deciding to hide all of this from their friend.

They probably would have told him straight up what they had learned the next time they saw him, and it looked like Naminé would have backed them up on that completely, given how she had reacted to hearing this news. Aqua would not have blamed them if they did, because she was right there with them on this, but they all felt any resolve crumble the minute that they finally found Sora and the girls again. Apparently, at some point after he had parted ways with them, Sora had ended up not only taking the girls on his own little tour of Twilight Town, but he had also run into Scrooge McDuck and Little Chef. It made sense given how Weiss looked like she was just starting to calm down from a recent freak out, no doubt brought on from discovering that a rat was apparently cooking food at the bistro, but what really made them freeze was what they saw in Sora himself as he and the girls continued to hang around the richest duck in the worlds.

Sora was not just smiling wider than they had seen him smile in some time, even after they had first arrived at Beacon, but he was laughing, joking around, and even seemed likely to start bouncing off the walls in excitement, much like he did before the final battle of the Second Keyblade War. Even his posture seemed more relaxed than ever, and there was this bright, twinkle in his eyes that they had not seen since he woke up in Yen Sid's tower after that moment. Sure, you could chalk it up to saying that it was simply something that was brought on in the rush of the moment, but from what all five of the other Keyblade wielders could tell, it was not just that. If anything, they would all say that it likely had something to do with a certain hooded huntress-in-training, and it seemed pretty well justified given how close Sora and Ruby were standing to each other at the moment, along with the fact that there was a very similar shine to Ruby's eyes as well.

Seeing all of this made Naminé and Aqua think that maybe it was too soon to tell Sora about Yen Sid's recent suspicions in regards to Kairi's being on Remnant, but for the boys, it had a much deeper effect. Sure, they knew that Sora was able to be a bit more like his old self around Ruby, but seeing how they both had lit up in excitement just from being around each other for a short time, really drove home the idea that Ruby was likely to be the key to bringing back the old Sora. More than that, they knew that telling Sora about what they just learned was very likely to undermine all of the progress that Ruby had made without even knowing it. Having realized all of that, the boys all found that they no longer had the heart to tell Sora the truth, so when they finally rejoined him, they did so with the best smiles they could muster in an attempt to hide their sorrow, and then thanked whatever higher power made it possible for Sora and the girls to not catch on to their distress.

After a few more exchanges with Mister McDuck, the group finally started making their way back to the stealth gummi ship so that the two Beacon teams could make their way back to Remnant, at which point they also decided to finally address the big matter that they had been wondering about for a little bit. "Why'd you and Naminé come here in the first place, Aqua," Ventus asked.

"Yeah, we thought you were supposed to be taking care of things in Radiant Garden," Roxas remembered.

"We were, but Ansem the Wise asked us to come here," Aqua revealed. "He said that he needed us to access his computer here in Twilight Town to put the finishing touches on his scanner. The only way he could do that was if someone were to open up the network link from the computer itself, but once he has all the necessary data, it'll be up and running in no time."

"Well, that's some welcome news. Just be sure to let us know if there's anything else we can do to help," Lea requested.

"And if you feel like we'll need to pitch as well, just say the word," Ruby added on before Sora could say anything to indicate that there may be a chance that they would not answer just any requests.

Aqua and Naminé looked a little hesitant on that note, and the boys were not much better off, so even before the Keyblade wielders said anything, Team RWBY all figured out what was coming. "What? You don't think we can pull our own weight on these kind of missions," Yang outright accused.

"No one said anything about that, Yang, but keep in mind; you just stumbled onto this mission by accident. Besides, we're already breaking a few rules by telling you even a little bit of everything that we did," Ventus started to say.

"So what? It's not like we're going to tell anyone about it," Blake pointed out.

"Well, maybe Jaune and the rest of Team JNPR, but they are our next door neighbors, and they're good friends of yours too, so it would only be fair," Ruby admitted with a shrug.

"Besides, who would even believe us? I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around it," Weiss added, though mostly in regards to Blake's argument for their being allowed to help.

Before any of his friends could say anything further against this, Sora decided to be his old, lovable self and said, "Okay, sure. You're in, but only if you promise to keep this whole thing a secret, at least from everyone other than Team JNPR."

"Huntress's honor," Ruby proudly promised with an easy salute, and from the look of things, the rest of her team were in full agreement as well.

Seeing no other way around this, they all just sighed in resignation, with Aqua commenting, "And there he goes again, getting others involved in what's supposed to be our fight alone."

"You get used to it after a while," Ventus shrugged, knowing better almost than anyone in this group about that.

"Oh, one last thing before you leave, boys," Naminé suddenly gasped before she reached into a small bag that was attached to the almost-unnoticeable belt she currently had wrapped around her waist. When she had grabbed the items she was looking for, she held her hand out to the members of Team SLVR, and allowed them to see four different colored devices that looked a lot like wrist watches. "Ansem, Chip, Dale, and Ienzo wanted you guys to have these."

"What are they," Lea asked as he hesitantly accepted the red and orange colored watch.

"Gummiwatches," Naminé answered as simply as possible. "They're basically like your Gummiphones, except for the fact that you wear them on your wrists. They can do everything that your Gummiphones can do, but only so long as you have the Gummiphones on you. Plus, it'll make a lot of things easier for you as well, since now, all you have to do if you encounter an enemy you don't recognize, is scan it with the Gummiwatch, and it'll look up the data right away. It may take a little extra time if there isn't any prerecorded information in its digital records, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem, given that we've likely seen every type of monster and bad guy under the sun at this point. You can even use it to make calls and there's a feature on there that should let you remote pilot the gummi ship as well."

"Wow, really," Sora exclaimed in excitement while he took a black and red Gummiwatch that matched the rest of his attire perfectly.

"Yep. You just need to sync it up to the gummi ship you want to control with it, and then either tap a command on the list or say what you want the ship to do into the watch," Naminé instructed. "Chip and Dale can give you guys the rest of the information on how to use these things later on, but that's the basic rundown of it."

"Cool," Ventus eagerly grinned as he admired the way his green and silver Gummiwatch looked on his wrist.

"Thanks Naminé," Roxas nodded as he did the same as Ven with his white and black Gummiwatch.

"Well, I guess this is it for now," Aqua sighed with a bit of sadness. She then proceeded to give each of the boys a loving hug as she said, "You all be careful out there, whether it's on Remnant or anywhere else you end up going, okay? Oh, and make sure you all study hard, too. And this time, please, make sure at least one of you calls me so that I can know how you're doing."

"Okay, okay, relax. We'll be fine, Mom," Ventus teasingly grinned, earning him a small jab to the forehead from his big sister figure even as she laughed with him.

Aqua then looked to the girls and said, "That being said, think you girls could do you me a huge favor and keep an eye on these four for me? They tend to get into a lot more trouble than anyone would be comfortable with."

"We'll do our best, ma'am," Ruby nodded in reply.

"Honestly, I get the feeling that trouble would find all of us no matter what," Yang shrugged. She then added on to her point by throwing a wink at Lea and saying, "After all, I'm sure that me and that one are going to set the town on fire on our upcoming date."

Lea had no shame in admitting that he did a small fist pump in victory after he heard that, prompting a few eye-rolls from most of the others, and after a few more exchanges of farewells from both parties, Teams RWBY and SLVR finally proceeded to board the stealth gummi ship once again, after it had dropped its cloak of course. No one wanted to stumble around finding the hatch or risk tripping over the foot of said doorway like Ruby had when the girls found the ship back on Remnant. Just before Ruby was about to enter the ship though, she heard Aqua calling out to her, and turned to face the Keyblade master once again, wondering what else there was to say.

Leaning to the side to make sure that Sora was not in ear-shot, Aqua then leaned closer to Ruby and whispered, "No matter what happens going forward, make sure you never stop being there for Sora, okay Ruby? He really needs someone like you right now."

It was hard for her to say whether Aqua was teasing her or not, but it did not matter in the end, because Ruby's face had lit up with a blush once again. One that she could only hide by resorting to her usual defense mechanism of pulling her hood over her head, even as she rushed into the ship while rapidly bidding one last goodbye to Aqua. After the hatch had closed behind Ruby, Aqua and Naminé were left to watch as the ship lifted off into the air and proceeded on its return trip to Remnant, and if they were being honest, after meeting Team RWBY, and seeing the effect that those girls had on their friends in one way or another, they both had a very good feeling about what may come in the near future.

---

AN: [comes into the room while panting and holding a hammer in one hand, muttering] Okay, that should hold for a little bit. [notices everyone looking at him] Oh! We done with the chapter already? Wow that was quick. [tosses hammer away to somewhere off-stage] Ahem, anyways, pretty long one, but we got a lot of stuff done in here today. Ruby's starting to confront and confirm her feelings for Sora, we got a little bit of world-hopping action, references and cameos, we battled against an upgraded Demon Tide, Team RWBY has not only learned about the truth along with an abridged version of the Kingdom Hearts history (at least in this continuity), but also got their first taste of sea-salt ice cream (as if we were going to have them go to Twilight Town and not get the frozen treat), and look at that, Aqua and Namine showed up, but with the downside of them delivering some bad news to most of the boys.

Before anyone asks, yes, that was actually important for the plot later on in the story, but rest assured, this is not me killing off Kairi. I was originally planning on putting in a scene at the end of this chapter just to confirm that Kairi was around, but I eventually figured that it would be better to put it in at the end of the chapter where we conclude Volume 1 of RWBY, which should likely be the next chapter or the one after that. That and the fact that this chapter was already getting really long kinda made me drop the idea. I was also going to mention that Sora and the rest of SLVR would be taking RWBY to see Disney Castle/Town just to further prove the existence of other worlds, but that also got dropped too in favor of not making the chapter any longer than it needed to be.

Moving right along, let's talk about Namine's Keyblade. Yes, it is a Keyblade that we first saw in Birth By Sleep, namely the one you could earn after clearing Enchanted Dominion, but honestly, after looking all the different Keyblade, I couldn't really think of one that would fit Namine better, and I wasn't really up for going with something completely original here, or some fanart thing. Anyone could've done both of those, but I wanted to go with a Keyblade that everyone would be able to recognize and easily remember this time around. As for Aqua's wrath on the boys, I know some of you are probably disappointed that it seems like it was quelled so easily, but don't worry, she's not quite done getting payback on them just yet. Just wait until she eventually finds her way to Remnant for a visit. After all, older siblings do tend to embarrass their younger siblings in front of their friends and love interests quite a bit, intentionally or otherwise.

Oh yeah, and while I'm thinking about it, the Gummiwatches. Yes, those are basically smart watches, because hey, if they can get a smart phone in the form of Gummiphones, then why the heck not? Plus, it would make things a little easier for them to talk with their friends on other worlds without having to fish out the Gummiphone every time someone calls or struggling to try and hide it if someone were to walk in on them while they were in the midst of a conversation.

Btw, I hope you all caught that little reference to RWBY future, namely how Weiss and Blake basically used their team combo move Checkmate before it was officially a thing, inspired in part by that scene when Team RWBY fought against Roman Torchwick and his mech suit. Did you catch it? Great. I thought you might. And if you didn't, I'm sure you've already gone back to look through the fight with the Demon Tide just to look again.

Also, show of hands, who all saw the whole thing of RWBY figuring out the secret being Lea's fault? I'd say that it's justified how he was thrown under the gummi ship, as he put it in the story. But how about the initial reactions that the girls had to everything beforehand, and the confrontations that they had with the boys after they had all arrived at Twilight Town and started running into each other. Just to be clear, Weiss did not intentionally fall on top of Ven in that scene. She just fell after the ship was hit, and it provided them one of those special moments that all budding couples seem to go through at least once in their lives, be it in canon or just in some fan thing.

Oh yeah, and the big scene where Blake and Yang were helping Ruby to realize her feelings for Sora. I just want to go ahead and say that so far, Ruby's only confirmed that she has a crush on Sora. She hasn't quite figured out whether or not it's at the point where it goes beyond that to the point of actually loving him, but we will see her get closer to that realization as the story goes on, guaranteed.

And the cherry on top was getting to see all kinds of super powers from the Keyblade wielders, from Shotlocks to Command Styles, to Formchanges and more, they were pulling out all the stops this time around, and why shouldn't they have? They didn't need to maintain any kind of cover here, and even with RWBY around, it was obvious that the secret was out, so why act like it wasn't at that point? Am I right. Plus, I really hope the girls' reactions to seeing Sora's Ultimate Form is what you were all expecting it be, because that's just how I pictured it going. Of course, I was also planning on having Sora finish off the Demon Tide with an Attraction Flow, probably Blaster Blaze or Mad Tea Cups, and actually getting Ruby and one or all of the other girls to join in on that fun, but the fight was starting to drag on at that point, and I felt that having Aqua and Namine come in to deliver what was basically the final blow at the end was satisfying enough as it was.

Well, that's everything I wanted to cover. Next time it's back to the RWBY story line, and I'm sure we know which bit of Volume 1 is going to come next, so I doubt I really need to bother with the next thing we would normally do here...Oh, what the heck, I'll say it anyway. Onto the Preview!...

With most of the Keyblade wielders' secrets now out in the open, things certainly seem like they're starting to look up for everyone at Beacon, and it looks like the timing could not be better. The day of the Vytal Festival is fast approaching, and everyone in Vale is getting excited just from seeing how the townsfolk in Vale are already setting up decorations while welcoming some of the first of the students visiting from other huntsmen academies. Those aren't the only visitors that Vale's about to have though, as a special girl in Roxas's life is also coming to visit too. The only downside is that there seems to be a bit of tension in the air that causes quite the divide for the black and white members of Team RWBY, and Team SLVR may end up finding themselves caught in the middle. Just what are our heroes getting mixed up in now? Find out just how black and white some things really are next time.

[walls suddenly gets blown in along with the remains of a closest door followed swiftly by a large amount of fire]

Yang: [angrily stomps in with the remains of rope hanging off her arms, while a loosened gag hangs down from her neck] Did you think that you could stop me by tying me up and locking me in a closet?!

AN: Uh-oh! Reinforcement failed! Uh, gotta go guys! See ya later, and as always...

Please read and review, and may your heart be your guiding key for your landing strategy.

[AN runs away screaming with Yang hot on his tail]

Ruby: [sighs] Not again. You'd think she would have cooled down by now, or at least reigned it in to the point where she can properly remember that we need him able to write so that this story can continue. [starts rushing off after them both so she can stop her sister from killing the author]