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?

9. Best Day Ever

AN: I feel like we should be having "Time to Say Goodbye" playing right now, because guess what we're diving into today. Come on guess.

Sora: Would it be an explanation as to how we finally reunite with Kairi?

AN: Was that a serious question? I honestly can't tell with you right now.

Jaune: How about something that shows just how awesome Team JNPR is?

AN: That's...actually not too far off, but not quite what we're aiming for.

Ruby: Oh! An early birthday celebration for a certain someone? [winks knowingly at everyone]

AN: Sorry Ruby, but no. Not to worry though, I will be doing my utmost to make sure that I have something ready for one of the RWBY stories by Halloween, be it an update to this story or the next meeting in RWBY Meetings. However, today, we are diving into Volume 2 of RWBY with the newest chapter of Remnant of the Key!

[audience applause]

AN: Yeah, you know it's pretty exciting, but before we do much more, let's get those review answers out there, shall we?

First off, "SuperSayainFever", to answer your question about how copying memories from the heart and reloading them into the brain, you'd have to ask Naminéabout that. She's the memory sorceress after all. Also, if we do visit Neverland, I don't think that they'll be going to Pixie Hollow. That would be something I'm going to probably run with in another story. As for your suggestion about using a rage-absorber to calm Yang down, we actually tried that. [waves to the side so that camera pans around to show a utterly totaled device labeled Rage-Absorber, Only to be Used on Very Angry Characters] Yeah, that's what happened after it got a fraction of Yang's anger into it. Cheap piece of junk. [kicks device away, and eliciting a crashing sound from off-stage]

Now then, "Dragon Rider 66", yes indeed, you were right in guessing where Kairi was going to end up being. Give yourself another pat on the back while we give you a round of applause for guessing correctly, bud.

[audience applause]

Anywho, I'm not really sure we'll see all that much more of Oscar and Kairi in this particular story at the moment. At the moment, the earliest we should expect to see them again would be in the sequel, which will simply be titled "Remnant of the Key Vol 2". Yeah, I'm not going to any extremes and keeping it simple with the titles this time around with this particular series. Back on topic though, maybe if I can find a way to work in something with Kairi and Oscar without it seeming like a filler chapter or something, or like it just comes off as being out-of-place or filler content, I might just do that. Only time will tell, but I will go ahead and say that if I do decide to do something like that, it probably won't be until we reach the Vytal Festival Arc of RWBY Volume 3. By the way, I honestly never made that connection about the moment between Weiss and Lea last chapter to that scene between Spidey and Tony in Spider-Man: Homecoming. I just thought it would have more of an impact on Weiss if it was coming from Lea, but now that I'm looking back at it, I can see the similarities. As for Xigbar aka Luxu, you'll start getting a little bit of an idea on at least part of his reasons for being here, or really just what he's doing now, today near the end of the chapter.

"Guest" of 10/1/2019, I guess this answers your question, doesn't it?

Moving on, "Spiderfan626", since when do the bad guys not underestimate Sora? I mean, even Xehanort and some of his other selves from across time did the same thing in Kingdom Hearts 3. Too bad it looks like this time, they may be justified in doing so, given what's being planned for Vale. And yeah, I do plan to try and include a bit more of Zwei in this series, at least for as long as the opportunity presents itself.

Ruby: YAAAAAAY!

AN: [chuckles amusedly] Oh, and sorry to say but, Sun and Neptune are not very likely to be traveling to any other worlds at the moment, or at least I don't plan on them doing so. Sora and the guys already got into enough trouble as it is for letting RWBY and JNPR in on the secret, imagine what might happen if they tell anyone else on Remnant who doesn't already know. As for your suggestion on asking either Professor X or Martian Manhunter to wipe Yang's memory so that I can finally escape her wrath...[pauses to check and see if Yang's around or if anyone would be likely to tell her, besides Ruby is present before whispering] I actually hadn't considered that, but with RWBY now kinda-sorta part of the DC Universe in a way (You know, since they now have a comic with DC Comics or whatever), I may just start thinking about it. Assuming she hasn't cooled off by now.

Blake: [looks to the camera that's viewing the bunker that Yang was locked in last chapter, and sees Yang still in there, getting hosed by the fire suppressant] Yeah, I think you probably should consider it at this rate. By the way, "Spiderfan626", maybe Sora and the others have encountered pure evil, but keep in mind, this is still early on in the series, and before I learned about Salem, and even she can't really be considered pure evil when you take into account how she started out, but yeah, I will admit, that I may have been living in a fantasy world thinking that pure evil didn't exist back then.

AN: Well, at least you're willing to admit that now. Now, next to answer is "CT7567Rules", I'm not really planning on going too far into the background of the White Fang characters, be it the current high leader or Blake's ex. In the case of the latter, what more do you really need to know other than the fact that he's basically like a Faunus version of Magneto at the master of magnetism's worst? And really, Siena Khan was barely around for very long to really give me much to work with, and there's not really many places that I could work such things into the story without it being filler. As for how I'm able to write such long chapters...I don't know.

Weiss: What do you mean, you don't know?

AN: Exactly that: I don't know. I don't really think about the length of a chapter all that much, at least not beyond whether or not its starting to drag on in one regard or another. I just think about what I want to happen in the chapter, and then put the figurative pen to paper so I can write it all out. Anything beyond that just happens naturally for me.

Next on the list of reviews to answer, "keybladelight", sorry but Xehanort will not be returning here, as a spirit or otherwise. KH3 was the end of the Xehanort saga, and this story takes place Post-KH3, so I want to avoid Xehanort showing up here in any way that is not a story to reference the past adventures of Sora and his pals.

"Monkey D. Conan", if you ask me, Penny's always had a heart. I could reference how Pinocchio did too when Sora met him in the first game, but that would just be driving the fact he was a source of inspiration for Penny home a little too much. Either way, how can you really look back at all those times Penny was around and think that she didn't have a heart and soul, like Ruby said she did in that one episode of Volume 2? But yeah, that will be brought up all the same. Regarding details about Yang and Lea's date...well, all I'm really going to say there is a few illusions to what they do on those outings, but we may or may not actually see them in the midst of a date later on during a future chapter, and I don't just mean when the dance comes around, either. The others won't be finding out about Luxu for a long time to come, and the return of Kairi's memories will be a very slow process, even after the moment when she first sees Sora. That's all I can really say about that right now without giving away spoilers.

"Anonymaton", seriously, no mallets! I don't have a death wish!...But thanks for the offer all the same. I'll get back to you if anything changes in that regard. As for whatever it is your talking about regarding things that could get ugly, if you're referring to the moment when Ruby and Kairi finally meet, it might not be as bad as you're probably thinking...At first...Maybe...You know what? You'll just have to wait and see on that.

Ruby: Oh, and finally, to the "Guest" of 10/8/2019, yeah...We barely understood all that much of what Donald was saying when he went off on Sora that time.

Yang: [over a microphone that was dropped into the bunker just for this] To put it mildly.

Blake: I only got about every other word of it.

Weiss: It was all completely unintelligible garbage to me.

Donald: I'LL SHOW YOU UNINTELLIGIBLE! [suddenly bursts into the room to begin chasing after Weiss, who runs away in fright]

AN: What the?! Who let him in here?! He's not supposed to be here right now! He's not a main focus character for this story! Ugh, great, now I gotta deal with this, so I'll just let you guys move onward with the main story. Pull the lever, Jaune!

Jaune: [rushes to the manual controls and pulls the lever] Uh, this was the right lever, right?

Blake: [opens her mouth to answer before her ears suddenly twitch] Uh, what's that noise? [turns to see a horde of dogs running into the room] YIKES! [runs out before anyone can even blink]

AN: Does that answer your question, Jaune?

Jaune: Yes it does. Sorry Blake! [Pulls the right lever]

AN: [sighs] Okay, I've gotta go help Weiss with Donald and call off the security dogs before Blake is chased up a tree or something, no pun intended...Okay maybe a little bit. Enjoy the story everyone.

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

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Chapter 9: Best Day Ever

Aside from some brief conversations with Ozpin at the Vale police station, things passed by rather peacefully and smoothly for the Beacon students, Keyblade wielders included. None of them had any more trouble with Cardin and his crew, or any other bullies really, none of them were getting mixed up in anymore criminal undertakings or White Fang attacks like the one at the docks, both the Heartless and Nobodies seemed to have decided to leave Remnant alone for a while, or at least the part of Remnant that the Keyblade wielders were currently occupying as a home away from home, and classes at Beacon passed by as they would for any other huntsmen-in-training that attended the school. It actually made that first portion of their semester seem like it would be the most exciting part of their time at Beacon, but considering that it allowed everyone to study up for any end-of-semester assignments and/or tests that they had, no one was complaining very much.

That did not mean that there were no concerns at all, and the first of those concerned Penny. For all intents and purposes, the girl seemed to have simply vanished off the face of Remnant, and it left Ruby a little worried for her. She was sure that Penny had gotten home safely, but after not seeing her anywhere for all that time, even among the other students that were coming to Beacon for the Vytal Festival, anyone would be concerned. Another thing to note was that some of them were worried about how some of the teachers would react if they found out about Blake, but the cat girl had assured everyone that the most any of the professors knew was that she was hiding the fact she was a Faunus. Some of them were a bit skeptical of her belief, but they kept quiet and thanked their lucky stars that Blake was being allowed to remain at Beacon all the same.

One could also argue that Xion's decision to make her stay on Remnant an extended one a slight problem as well, since she could not enroll into Beacon by herself, but the girl believed otherwise. Despite how great an opportunity it would prove to be, Xion had decided not to enroll at Beacon with the rest of her other worldly friends, and instead just claimed she was a visiting student from another academy. If anyone asked whether or not the rest of her team was going to be coming as well, she would simply say that it remained to be seen due to her teammates not being very open to traveling between kingdoms. It seemed like a reasonable excuse to some, while others would say that it was a little half-baked at best. Either way, it did seem like it was convincing everyone who was not in the know about the origins of the Keyblade wielders, and that was all that really mattered for now.

The only other thing that could really be considered concerning at the moment, was actually a matter regarding the leader of Team SLVR. After what happened at the docks, Sora had become more determined than ever to try and find Kairi, and it was not like anyone could blame him since there now seemed to be Heartless and Nobodies roaming about on Remnant. Even so, the others would have been blind to not notice just how much of his attention Sora was putting into his efforts, or how he grew more and more irritable with each day that passed without any positive results to speak of. If they had been worried about walking on eggshells around Sora when it came to matters involving the missing Princess of Heart before, then it was definitely starting to become a major concern now, because even bringing up the topic in a vague sense or doing something that would suggest that they were not as serious about the search as him had a tendency to set Sora off on the rest of Team SLVR. The only saving grace was that he was not letting it consume him to the point where he stopped doing anything else just so he could continue searching, but given how little success they had in finding any leads, the rest of the guys had to wonder just how much longer it would be until he did hit that point. Worse than that was how the news Aqua had given them in Twilight Town kept ringing in their heads every time they failed to find something by the end of a day. More and more, it seemed like Sora learning about that would be the thing that would finally make him fall to that point, and none of the other Keyblade wielders were too willing to take the risk.

Somehow, they all made it through the remainder of the semester without Sora taking that dive into the deep end, and everyone found themselves enjoying a relaxing two weeks off from classes. Of course, some of them had a very different idea of relaxing from others. Take Weiss and Ventus for example: the two of them would often be found reviewing their notes from last semester together in the library before heading off somewhere private so that Ven could help Weiss practice with her glyphs a little more. Sure, it may have seemed like more work for some, but for those two, it was very enjoyable. If you were to ask Yang and Lea though, they would tell you that they were just using all of that as an excuse to spend time around each other, and given the way that both the Schnee heiress and the wielder of Wayward Wind would blush when it was brought up, they were likely not that far off.

Speaking of the fiery duo, Yang and Lea's one date eventually became several over the course of the two weeks, and needless to say, everyone always joked that it was miracle that nothing in Vale was set on fire when they came back from those dates. All jokes aside, the two did actually do quite a few things that did not normally involve fights or fires, like just grabbing lunch at a local hotspot in Vale as opposed to Beacon's cafeteria, or even just cruising around on Yang's motorcycle. Yang was honestly impressed that her driving style had not scared Lea off yet like it had a few other boys she had at least flirted with in the past, and given how much fun she had around the redhead, she was starting to think that things were starting to progress past the point of being just simply dating for the fun of it. She shook that notion off just as quickly as it came most of the time, but no one failed to notice how she would sometimes sneak a few lingering looks in Lea's direction, or how her cheeks tended to go red when he caught her and shot a sly smirk and wink back to her.

Some of the little group of friends did end up changing things around a little from their routine at this point, but none more noticeably than Blake. It seemed that finally letting out the truth about some of her past to the others had really helped her to start breaking out of her shell more, and help her to just relax like any other teenager her age. That was not to say that she was not still pretty closed-off and quiet, but she did make sure her voice was heard a little more often now, at least around her teammates and close friends. The latter of those two was only most noticeable with Roxas, Xion, and Sun, given the bond that they had all forged during that one weekend that led to her revealing a little of her past, but Yang liked to say that she was getting a little bit more out of Blake now too since they were partners. Still, Blake spent a good deal of time looking over old drawings she had sketched of a particular individual and notes she had made about the White Fang as she knew them in the past, attempting to figure out what caused things to change the way they had since she had been gone.

As for Sora, he tended to spend most of his time either practicing with his various Keyblade abilities or searching for clues about Kairi. Not like any of that was a surprise, given how his attitude was starting to take another slow decline, so everyone on Team SLVR was becoming more and more sure that Sora would have spent every waking moment doing one or both of those things if they did not have classes to worry about. The only time that he ever took any breaks from either of those things was when Ruby was around to convince him too. It was a little startling just how much pull the girl had on the wielder of Kingdom Key, but so long as she was able to bring out the old Sora, none of the guys were complaining. Ruby on the other hand, found it both easier and harder to be around Sora after that night at the docks. The memory of him risking his life to save her the way he did always seemed to make her heartbeat speed up, both out of worry for him and because it had seemed like something straight out of some of the stories that Yang used to read to her as a kid.

More than that, the moment from just before he used his Attraction Flow to end the fight also kept flashing into her mind's eye and she could not help but smile every time it did. The sheer emotion and confidence that she saw in his eyes at that moment had not stopped giving her butterflies, and every time he smiled at her afterwards, she felt like it was right to the point where she would just lift off the ground and float away. Ruby had figured that spending more time around Sora would help her to ensure she did not make a fool out of herself around him, or that she would turn into some love struck dummy, and while it did have that effect to an extent, it was not to the point where she was completely able to remain in control of herself without some conscious effort on her part. Still, there was no denying that Ruby and Sora definitely had fun whenever they hung out together, and that was all the more reason why the rest of Team RWBY had felt justified in joining into Lea's betting pool on how long it would be before the two ended up together. They found it odd that Ven and Roxas had not changed their bets even after all this time, but whenever they went to question the boys on it, they would always say that it was not their place to say before warning the girls to not ask Sora about it, and they got the sense that it was not just out of concern of how Sora would react if he found out about the pool.

Not all of their two weeks off was without incident of course, because since Team SLVR was not being kept busy with classes at the time, the rest of their fellow Keyblade wielders felt it was the perfect time for the boys to lend a bit more of a hand out in the other worlds. Sora had tried to protest against this, saying that they needed to stay and focus on finding Kairi, but when they all reminded him of his promise to lend a hand if they needed him and the others too, his resistance quickly crumbled. Having Xion come in to say that she would keep looking while they were gone was a big help too, but thankfully, they made it through most of the two week break without very many incidents that required aid from Team SLVR. In fact, the boys were only summoned to action by the others one time, and that time was today, on the world that was home to the former Princess of Heart, Cinderella.

Lea had to question just how lucky they were to be brought in on this action though, as he ended up being thrown back into some surrounding trees for the third time since they tracked down and engaged their target in battle. Pulling himself up again, he glared at their current target and snarled, "I'm getting really sick of being thrown around like a ragdoll by something that I should. Be able. To easily. BURN. TO CINDERS!"

"Less ranting, more fire power, buddy," Roxas shouted as he dashed past his friend, casting a quick cure spell over in Lea's direction along the way.

"I'm still trying to figure out why it looks so much like that one Unversed that Aqua told me she fought when she first came to this world," Ventus admitted as he leaped around the spinning, spiked vines that the plant-like Heartless was swinging at him like a pair of whips.

Indeed, the Heartless they were facing did look a lot like the Cursed Coach Unversed that Aqua had defeated many years prior, save for the fact that it had a dark violet coloration to its pumpkin-like body, sickly green vines for its wheels and tentacles, its eyes now formed a more, angrily vengeful expression as opposed to the original sorrowful one, and instead of an Unversed symbol, it bore that of the Heartless. If Ventus did not know better, he would say that someone had actually created this Heartless using the design of the Cursed Coach Unversed as inspiration. Such matters were of little importance though, because right now, they needed to worry about breaking this nasty jack-o'-lantern into pieces, and he intended to do just that as he aimed his Keyblade, which was currently equipped with his Lost Memory Keychain, and fired off a powerful blast of wind magic to blow away the explosive pumpkins that were being spewed out at them from the mouth of this Calamity Carriage, as they had taken to calling it.

Deciding to use Ven's recent bit of wind magic as an extra booster, Lea did not hesitate to fire a strong blast of flames into the tornado with Flame Liberator, and that certainly seemed to add an extra amount of burn into the attack, but it only really left the Calamity Carriage disoriented for a moment. Not that Sora and Roxas needed much more time than that to move in and slash at it as many times as they could, Roxas using his usual two Keyblades while Sora wielded Hero's Origin. Right when it recovered, Sora had quickly transformed his blade into Counter Shield and managed to block the worst of the Carriage's attacks from hitting him or Roxas. The two were still pushed back a pretty decent ways, but that was of little consequence to them at the moment.

Sending out a few more fire blasts to discourage the Calamity Carriage from getting closer, Lea eventually made his way over to the rest of his friends and asked, "So, not that I really need that much of a reason to beat down on some Heartless, but remind me again why we're here, or even why this Heartless is causing so much trouble?"

"First off, because we were apparently the only ones that were readily available when Ansem the Wise's scanner picked up on a huge spike in dark energy readings on this world," Sora grumbled in reply as he tossed Counter Shield at the Carriage, hitting it with several lightning-infused blasts when it spun through and around the Heartless boss before returning to his hand again.

"And secondly, it's a bit of a weird story," Ventus cut in before Sora could let his anger start controlling him in this fight. "Apparently Cinderella's stepmother, Lady Tremaine somehow got her hands on Fairy Godmother's wand and used it to try and rewrite history so that Cinderella never got to try on the glass slipper or something, and this Heartless was created to ensure that no one like Aqua could interfere or change things back."

"But wasn't Aqua here the first time to help ensure that would happen," Lea asked, remembering that particular story from one of their past conversations about the whole incident with the Unversed.

"Like I said, a magic wand was involved, which means that weird magic was involved," Ventus reminded him.

"And how is it even possible for some random, normal person to use Fairy Godmother's wand? Isn't there some kind of rule that keeps anyone other than her from using it," Roxas asked as he rolled to one side in order to avoid another swing of the vine-like tentacles.

"Plus, I thought that most of her powers were more in the magic words she always says," Sora pointed out as he mirrored Roxas's actions, while using Counter Shield to deflect more blasts, until he finally unleashed a powerful energy fist right into the center of the Calamity Carriage as a counterstrike, making it stop shooting pumpkin bombs at them and cease swinging at Roxas and Lea.

"Look, I don't know, okay?! Aqua's the magic expert, not me! And besides, Sora, you've got even more experience around various types of magic than the rest of us. Why don't you have any guesses," Ventus snapped in response, honestly baffled as to why it seemed like they all thought he had these answers.

Sora was about to reply when he suddenly had to jump away from a sneak attack that came from one of the various plant-type Heartless that the Calamity Carriage kept calling to its aid. Sighing in frustration, Sora just said, "Let's just deal with this thing, make sure that everything gets fixed for Cinderella, and go back to Beacon already."

"That'd probably be easier if our backup would do their jobs in keeping these other Heartless off our back," Lea shouted as he cut through some vines that a few Creeper Plants tried to slice him up with, and it was clear that he was not directing his comment at Sora, but to the people he was referring to as their backup for this mission.

"I'm sorry," a familiar voice shouted before several rounds of Fire Dust were shot through the Creeper Plant that was attacking Lea. A moment later, Pyrrha vaulted over a line of Chief Puffs and Puffballs before she began cutting them down with her weapon, Miló in its sword form right alongside Jaune, giving him a break from having to mostly deflect attacks with his shield. Shortly thereafter, Ren spun in, firing Stormflower at the various Creeper Plants that were giving many of his friends trouble. When several Puffballs began to come together on top of a Chief Puff, they were all quickly knocked down by Nora's hammer before she changed Magnhild into its grenade launcher form and started firing several blasts into anything that had a Heartless emblem on it.

When Mickey had called them with this request for help, he had said that they could bring along some of their friends from Remnant as backup, and when she heard that, Nora immediately volunteered Team JNPR for the job faster than she could say "Gimme some pancakes" when she was hungry. The guys had not been quite as eager to let Team JNPR join them, and Team RWBY was not too happy about the fact that Nora had beaten them to the punch in volunteering, but Nora was quite adamant that they be allowed to go this time, even if the only valid part of her argument (and the only part that they could actually understand with how fast she eventually started talking) was that her team had not gotten to go to another world yet, while Team RWBY had visited two, even if the first one was mainly by accident. In the end, the guys were broken down into letting Nora's team come when she promised that she would not ask them any more weird questions unless it was absolutely necessary.

As it turned out, Team JNPR did pretty well in taking directions on how to handle things on another world. They made sure to stay out of sight and let Sora's team do the talking when addressing most of the locals, kept most of the collateral damage to a minimum when they encountered the small fry Heartless in the town, and Jaune even came up with plenty of battle strategies that they were able to use to get rid of the Heartless faster right on the spot. The only thing more impressive than the ideas that Jaune thought up was how well each of those ideas allowed the two teams to combine their strengths. Not that it was too surprising in some cases, namely that of Lea and Nora's, but even without knowing the full extent of what they were all capable of, Jaune still somehow managed to come up with moves that they could execute without any trouble. At the moment though, they all agreed that they needed one of those ideas for beating the Calamity Carriage more than anything.

Luckily, Jaune was able to come up with one for that too, but not until Pyrrha finally managed to get to his position and give him some breathing room to think. "Sora, do you have Shooting Star equipped right now," Jaune asked.

"No, but I've got Hunny Spout, and that has Formchanges that are pretty much the same," Sora replied.

Though a little thrown off by the name that Sora mentioned, Jaune was able to quickly cast it aside so that he could relay what he had in mind. "Okay, you and Ren do what you can to distract it while blasting the pumpkin bombs it fires," Jaune ordered. "Pyrrha, Roxas, you get in close to hit it as much as you can, but you're priority is to pin down the vines its using as tentacles. Ven, you and I will deal with anymore Heartless that it calls for help."

"And I'm guessing that means Nora and I will be the ones that deliver the finishing blow, right," Lea questioned.

"By all means," Jaune confirmed with a smirk.

Nora and Lea wore nearly identical grins after hearing that, and simply replied, "Got it."

Roxas and Ren both let out tired sighs at their respective best friend's excitement over inflicting knockout blows, and could not help but simultaneously mutter, "Why did I let those two become friends?"

The woes that the excitable pair caused their best friends aside, the two teams swiftly executed Jaune's plan without any trouble. The next time that it launched into the air to try and unleash a bombardment of pumpkin bombs, Sora had already switched over to Hunny Spout and converted it into Hunny Blasters so that he could knock out the explosive attack with several delicious rounds of honey alongside of Ren's regular Dust rounds. When the bombardment finally stopped, Sora quickly transformed his weapon into Hunny Launcher, and fired one last, powerful blast that not only knocked the Calamity Carriage out of the air, but also left it really sticky, making things easier for Pyrrha and Roxas to attack it and ensure that its tentacles were pinned down. Wanting to make sure that Ren and Sora immediately rushed in to slice away a few more shreds of the Calamity Carriage's strength, and once they had destroyed the last of the backup Heartless, Jaune and Ven joined in on those efforts as well before assisting Pyrrha and Roxas in pinning the vines even more than they already were.

"Sora, juice Nora up," Jaune called out, wanting to be absolutely sure that his team's powerhouse would have all the energy needed to take this thing down.

Nodding only once, Sora immediately raised his Keyblade high and called down a powerful blast of lightning magic onto Nora. Normally he would not do this, but since he knew that Nora's Semblance allowed her to absorb electricity and get stronger, all reservations were rendered null and void. With Sora's spell boosting her strength, Nora's grin only became more savage, so when she charged in with Magnhild ready for a final strike, no one could be blamed for thinking that the frozen expression on the Calamity Carriage's face had actually changed into a panicked one at the sight.

The others all waited until the absolute last second to pull away from their positions, and were all glad that they had managed to do so before Nora had hit, because they were sure that if any of them were still attached to the Calamity Carriage when the hyper, ginger haired girl attacked, they would have been sent rocketing right along with the Heartless. Its flight only seemed likely to go on for longer when Lea's next fire blast lit it up like a rocket, and made it become little more than a shooting star in the night sky to anyone that saw it at that point. Even without the feed from the scanners on the stealth gummi ship being viewable on the Gummiwatches, the guys all knew that it would have taken a very insane, freak miracle for the thing to have survived that last attack, but they still checked just to be safe anyways. You could never be too careful after all.

Once they had confirmed that the Calamity Carriage was toast, Nora and Lea exchanged a victory high-five while Ren and Ventus merely nodded with satisfied smiles. Roxas could not help but smirk at the proud glances that Pyrrha and Jaune exchanged with each other, having detected a little extra something in the invincible girl's gaze when she had looked to her partner, but his smirk fell when he heard Sora dismissing his Keyblade and turn to start marching away.

"Come on. Let's go check to make sure that Cinderella's got everything else here covered and head back," Sora called out, sounding like a certain Imperial army captain he knew back when he first met said captain when he did.

"Aw come on! Can't we just hang around a little longer? I wanna see if there'll be a big victory party when Cinderella and the prince take down ol' Stepmuddy," Nora pleaded, happily using Jaq's way of pronouncing the word stepmother as an actual name for Lady Tremaine. She had been doing so ever since they ran into the little mouse, and she had not heard one word of disapproval yet.

"Its not like it would hurt to at least let our friends know that we were heading out," Ventus tried to reason, but Sora was not going to hear it.

"We've already been gone from Remnant for longer than we need to be, and it'll take a couple of days at most to get back even with the warp gummi. In case you guys forgot, classes start up again in a few days, so the sooner we leave, the better," Sora disputed.

"You make it sound like just saying goodbye is going to be a huge pain," Jaune could not help but innocently note.

The air around them somehow suddenly became much chillier when Sora next spoke, but it was not due to a sudden bout of anger. If anything, there was more sorrow than anything else. "Maybe because saying goodbye can be painful. Especially for the people that you're leaving, or who end up leaving you."

Sora did not say anything else after that. He just simply marched away to a place where he could safely teleport back to the ship without anyone noticing while the others watched him go out of worry. Pyrrha was about to go after him and say something, when Ventus stopped her. "Just let him go," Ventus advised. "Sora's never been a big fan of saying goodbye to friends when he doesn't know how long it will be before he sees them again. Even less so, as of late."

"Parting from friends can be harder for some than others, but you say that as though Sora hates the idea completely," Ren observed.

"You probably would too if you'd been through what he has," Roxas shrugged. Right when the others were about to ask him for clarification, he instantly said, "Just forget about it, okay? It's Sora's problem to deal with, if not a problem for just our team. If we do end up needing help with it, we'll let you guys and Team RWBY know."

"Although, Ruby will most likely be the first one to tell, since she has the best chance of cheering him up. You know, with a big hug and a sweet, little round of…" Lea started to imply.

"AXEL/LEA," Roxas and Ventus both snapped as one, both worried about what their friend's mind had cooked up right then.

"What?! I was gonna say kissing. Jeez! I'm not that bad," Lea insisted.

Seeing this exchange of banter between the remaining three Keybearers did help ease Team JNPR's worries about Sora, but they just could not get how dejected Sora's voice sounded before he had parted just now out of their minds even after they had finally met up with Cinderella and confirmed that everything was back to the way it should be again.

---

The flight back to Remnant, while not unpleasant, did have a certain tension in the air that no one was able to really break, save for how Nora was constantly flittering about the cockpit asking about the functions of the various controls. She was really excited to learn about every little thing about the stealth gummi ship that she could, but as far as any of the others could tell, the only one who found it really that endearing was Ren. Nora's rapid fire rate of pointing at various controls and asking what they did only came to a stop after Lea had tricked her into pressing a button that would spray her with knockout gas, putting her to sleep in an instant. Amusing as it all was, and as happy as they all were that something had finally gotten Nora to settle down, it did not really help alleviate the tension in the air, mainly because of the source of that tension.

Sora had been incredibly quiet beyond the necessary exchanges of pleasantries and commands since they had all come aboard and departed from Castle of Dreams. Sure, he was still smiling a little bit, but it was pretty obvious that he was only doing so just enough so that the ship had enough power to keep flying. The reason why everyone could tell was because his eyes held the same intensity that had been growing inside of him over time since that night at the docks, and to be quite honest, it was starting to scare his fellow Keyblade wielders a little bit. They were already worried about him as it was with the recent decline his attitude was taking, but they honestly had no idea that leaving Remnant to go to other worlds like this right now would have made it worse. Still, they were going to count their blessings and be thankful for the fact that he was not flying angry, or doing something really stupid in order to try and get back to Remnant sooner. Not that it stopped them from breathing a sigh of relief when they finally landed in the Emerald Forest again and then teleported back into Team SLVR's dorm room.

Their return actually ended up being timed perfectly, as Xion arrived to drop off some notes on things she had come across in her efforts to find Kairi almost right after Team JNPR left to return their equipment to their lockers, and while she did not have good news, she did admit to thinking that she may have found a few leads that could at least help a little. Sora brightened up a little when he heard that, and while he asked her to let him look over what she found, the rest of his team shot her a very thankful look from behind his back that she returned with a subtle wink. The only thing they were happier about was how Xion convinced him to study her notes in the cafeteria while they all grabbed lunch instead of just staying in the room to do so, because like them, she had managed to figure out that Sora was planning on doing just that if she did not say anything just from the way he had started turning to one of the desks.

Xion had quickly departed, saying that she had left a few more things in the library that could also help in the search, so they all ended up going on ahead without her. Right when they were rounding the last corner to the cafeteria, someone suddenly called out to them, making them pause and turn to see who wanted their attention. The person in question was a young, dark-brown haired woman decked out in an outfit that was various shades of brown, save for her black gloves and necklaces. Along with that, she also wore a pair of black, wire-rimmed aviator sunglasses, a dark brown beret, and had a black shoulder bag hanging off of her shoulder via what looked to be a bandolier strap. Seeing that the boys' eyes were on her, the girl strutted right over to them with confidence showing in every step, and asked, "You guys the mighty Team SLVR that everyone's talking about lately?"

"That depends on what people have been saying," Ventus stated, figuring it was better to err on the side of caution right now.

"All good things, really, like how you're supposed to be selfless paragons that aren't afraid to stand up to anyone, and have some really interesting weapons and Semblances," the girl easily summarized in response.

"Well in that case, you've guessed correctly. Team SLVR, at your service, Miss…" Lea announced with a bit of flare, while trailing off at the end as a way of asking who this girl was.

"Adel. Coco Adel, leader of Team CFVY," Coco smirked while lowering her shades so that they could finally see the cool yet friendly dark brown eyes behind them. "I've been meaning to talk to you guys for a while now so that I could say thanks for helping out my teammate with that jerk Winchester."

"Oh, so you're Velvet's team leader. She's mentioned you a lot whenever we hung out," Roxas realized as he walked over to shake hands with Coco. "Nice to finally meet the 'cool, confident, and always steadfast best friend' at long last. Velvet's words, though I'm not sure if she wanted me to mention that she said it all like that to you."

"No worries. I'm well aware just how much Velvet adores me and the rest of our team," Coco reassured. "So, judging by the hair and your familiarity with Vel, I'm guessing that would make you Dual-Blade Roxas, right?"

"That's me," Roxas confirmed, only to furrow his brow a minute later. "Wait, 'Dual-Blade Roxas'?"

"It's something of a nickname that I overheard some of the other students calling you," Coco revealed. She then turned to the other three and said, "And if what I've heard is right, that would make the guy who looks like you Ventus the Shining Air Master, the redhead Flame-Brain Lea, and the moody looking one Weapon Master Sora."

"Flame-Brain Lea," the redhead repeated, sounding a little offended, while the others could only snicker at his reaction.

"Got it all right, and nice to know we've earned ourselves some colorful titles. Especially since it means that I finally have at least one fancy nickname like these guys," Ventus admitted. "You can just call me Ven, though."

"Noted," Coco confirmed while she seemed to be giving him and the others a few appraising looks, like she was measuring them up for something. After another few minutes or so, she seemed to smile in approval as she said, "Gotta say, I love your outfits, but…Sorry to say this Ven, but don't you think you could do a few more things to mix it up so that you and Roxas don't look that similar?"

"Trust me, I've thought about it quite a bit, but I really don't think it's my outfit that's the main problem in that regard," Ventus shrugged.

"Hmm, well maybe if you tired styling your hair a little differently, like maybe slicked it back or something, got a small haircut to the point of just being noticeable enough, or even dyed it a different color, that might help," Coco suggested. "I can probably list a few other different ideas on how you could change things up if you're ever interested. Offer goes for all the rest of you guys too."

"Thanks, but I'm good with what I've got," Sora declined, finally entering the conversation. "Besides, there's a lot more to my outfit than just helping me to look good."

That made Coco smirk in approval, clearly indicating that she was intrigued by Sora's statement while simultaneously happy to see him showing something a little closer to what Velvet had described the leader of the Keyblade wielder team as. "Hey, I did say that it was only if you were ever interested. Besides, I do feel like I owe you guys for helping out Velvet like that," Coco reassured him. "I love that girl to death, but she really needs to get a bit more confidence so she can really stand up for herself against racists like Cardin."

"It was no big deal," Sora shrugged. "Helping out others is just second-nature for us."

"Some more so than others," Lea pointed out. He then frowned a little and asked, "But how come you never tried to set Cardin straight for any of the stuff he did?"

"Believe me, if I could, I wouldn't hesitate to introduce him to Gianduja here, but unfortunately, school policies prevent students for picking fights with lower classmen," Coco frowned in response, showing just how much she really did want to put the hurt on that bully for the stuff he did to the rabbit Faunus.

While it was nice to see that Velvet's teammates did care about her to that extent, the reason behind their inability to help her with Winchester made a few things start to come into Ventus's mind. "Hold on. When you said 'lower classmen,' do you mean to say that you and your team aren't first years," he asked.

"Nope. This is our team's second year at Beacon."

"Are you saying that Velvet could've mopped the floor with Cardin if she wanted to at anytime," Lea reasoned out, having caught on to what Ven was thinking. When Coco just nodded in response, the boys all grew a little more confused, to the point where they were all wondering Lea's next question in their minds. "So…why didn't she? I mean, I get that there's rules against picking fights with lower classmen, but I'm sure no one would have a problem since Cardin was the one messing with her."

"It's just not who Velvet is. She's not really too fond of getting into confrontations with others," Coco shrugged.

"And yet she's attending a school that trains people in how to fight monsters," Roxas pointed out.

"Hey, she doesn't have any trouble with tearing through the Grimm, but when it comes to people, that's a different story," Coco clarified, earning some understanding hums from the boys. "Regardless, we owe you guys for stepping up when we couldn't, so if you ever need anything, just say the word."

"Thanks, we'll keep that in mind," Sora nodded. Afterwards, Coco said that she would catch them sometime later, and headed on her way, leaving them to resume their trek over to the cafeteria for a meal, content in knowing that they now had another person, if not three more people on their list of friends from Remnant.

---

It was no surprise that the guys would end up sitting with Team RWBY, who were just one table away from Team JNPR, but what was surprising was the distinct lack of the hooded leader. When Sora asked the girls where Ruby was, while ignoring the smirks of his friends, Yang merely said that her sister was working on something that was, in Ruby's words to be of the utmost importance. Beyond that, lunch proceeded as it normally did for the duration of their two week break from classes, with Sora looking over the notes that Xion had made in her search efforts for clues about Kairi, Yang catching food in her mouth that Nora tossed over to her while Lea occasionally added some extra spice to one or two pieces with his fire magic, Blake looking at something in her notebook, and everyone else just enjoying their food. Of course, the boys did have to tell the girls all about their most recent excursion to another world, but that was really the only break from normalcy right now, so it was not really worth noting to a great extent.

At one point, Yang was able to take a break from her food catching so that she could slide over to Blake and finally ask, "Whatcha doin'?"

"Nothing," Blake quickly answered while closing her notebook, preventing the others from seeing what was on the page. "Just going over some notes from last semester."

Yang had to quickly turn to catch Nora's latest food projectile in her mouth, but still turned back after she had to say, "Lame!"

"More like smart, and something you might want to consider doing too, seeing how you just barely made it through some of our classes last semester," Ventus corrected with a knowing smirk.

"Hey, my grades were just fine, thank you very much. Besides, what's it really matter when you're as awesome as I am," Yang questioned in her defense.

"I gotta agree with Hot-Stuff. You don't need to study when you're on fire by default," Lea nodded along, sparking a quick flame onto his finger as Nora tossed another piece of food past him and into Yang's mouth.

Roxas and Ventus both rolled their eyes at the obvious fire pun, while Yang threw a thumbs-up to both Nora and Lea. Everyone else just kept quiet or gave the two flat looks, but before anyone could say anything more on the matter, a large, white binder was suddenly dropped onto Teams RWBY and SLVR's table, startling both teams. Even Sora was caught by surprise when the book hit the wooden surface, mainly because he was really absorbed in looking over Xion's notes, and the surprises only grew when they saw that the person who had dropped off the book was none other than Ruby Rose herself, looking like she had something very important to say as she cleared her throat for attention.

"Sisters! Friends! Weiss," Ruby began.

"Hey!" Weiss cried out, while Lea laughed at the latest jab she had been dealt.

"And whatever Lea is," Ruby added.

"Wha-? Hey!" the redhead snapped, his laughter gone just like that, and now replaced with snickers from his teammates.

"Four score and seven minutes ago, I had a dream," Ruby continued on, sounding like she was giving an incredible speech all the while.

"This oughta be good," Yang grinned.

"Ruby, do you even know how long a score is," Ventus questioned.

"Shh! Don't ruin the moment," Sora quietly admonished so that Ruby could continue unhindered.

"A dream that one day, all of us would come together as friends, and have the most fun anyone has ever had…ever!"

"Did you steal my binder," Weiss interrupted, having noticed something that was more than a little familiar about the book Ruby had brought to their table.

"I am not a crook," was Ruby's only reply as she shot Weiss a couple of peace sign with both hands, earning her a soft chuckle from Sora.

"I don't know, Ruby. I mean, we can all clearly see the original title and Weiss's name marked out in the same red marker you used to write 'Best Day Ever Activities' on it, and since red's your favorite color, I'd say you've been caught…Ruby red-handed," Lea joked, or more accurately, punned, much to his friends' displeasure, and in some cases horror.

After getting out their moans and groans, Roxas immediately pointed to the blonde girl on the other side of the table, and said, "Yang, I swear, if I find out that this recent interest in puns my best friend has gained is due to your corruptive influence, I will shave your head, consequences be damned!"

"Hey, it's not our fault that you guys don't have a sense of humor," Yang shrugged, neither confirming nor denying the accusation.

"Actually we do, and that's the whole problem," Ventus fired back.

As entertaining as she found this, Blake was still curious about whatever it was Ruby was going on about just now, and decided to get them back onto the original topic. "What are you talking about, Ruby," she asked.

"I'm talking about kicking off the semester with a bang," Ruby eagerly announced.

"I always kick my semesters off with a Yang," the older of the two sisters then punned, completely breaking the moment for Ruby. "Eh? Guys? Am I right?"

Yang's only response to her bad joke was a number of face-palms, shaking heads, and groans, coupled with an apple that Nora threw at her face while crying out, "Boooooooo!"

"Yeah, you definitely deserved that one," Roxas sighed before he turned around to throw Nora a thankful grin, much to her satisfaction.

Hoping to avoid anyone causing a scene or starting something dramatic, Ruby quickly and happily intervened. "Look guys, it's been a good two weeks, and between more exchange students arriving and the tournament at the end of the year, plus the chance to go on some more other worldly adventures with our resident Keyblade heroes, our second semester is going to be great! But classes start back up tomorrow. Which is why I've taken the time to schedule a series of wonderful events for us today!"

"I don't know whether to be proud or scared of what you have in store for us," Weiss admitted worriedly, while ignoring Yang's attempt at retaliation for Nora's recent food attack. She missed her target, but did end up hitting someone else instead, much to the ginger haired girl's amusement.

"I don't know. I think I might sit this one out," Blake politely refused.

"Yeah, same here," Sora stated, much to everyone's surprise, and Ruby's disappointment. "This latest world hopping trip has set us back on our mission here, and I really need to go over all that Xion found while we were gone to see if any of it might hold up as a solid lead."

"Sit out or not, I think however we spend this last day, we should do it as a team," Weiss insisted.

"I agree," Ventus nodded while patting Sora on the back. "Those notes will still be here later, so why not spend our last day off from classes having a little bit of fun."

"Because we didn't come to Remnant to have fun, for one thing," Sora instantly reminded him, his voice starting to turn a little cold.

While the guys all flinched back out of fear after hearing him, Ruby just gave Sora a sad look and said, "But Sora, I was…I was really hoping that you could join in on this. I even came up with some ideas that I knew you would especially like since you've been in such a bad mood lately. Couldn't you at least consider it? Please?"

As if her sad sounding voice was not bad enough for him, Sora could barely even hold it together from just feeling the sad expression that Ruby was giving him right now. He tried his best to keep from facing the girl, but in the end, he had to succumb, and found his gaze meeting Ruby's very sad one, causing his resolve to crumble into dust. "Oh…okay, I guess it couldn't hurt to take a little break," Sora finally conceded, already starting to pack up Xion's notes into his bag so that he could put his full attention on hearing Ruby's plans for the day.

His response earned him a happy cheer from Ruby, while the others all shared knowing smirks with each other. At least until Yang noticed something over at Team JNPR's table, and quickly turned a little panicked as she waved for the person responsible to not do what they were thinking of doing. Yang's efforts proved futile, because right when Weiss stood up, she ended up getting a pie right in the face before she could say much of anything. The others all instantly spun to face the pie-thrower, only to see a very startled looking Pyrrha and Jaune, an exasperated Ren holding his face in his palm, and Nora quickly dropping back into her seat while throwing an accusatory finger at her best friend despite how obvious it was that she was the guilty party.

Just when the girls were about to retaliate on Nora's recent pie attack, Lea suddenly laughed and said, "Hey check it out! A Weiss-Cream Pie!"

As funny as some of the guys found Lea's joke, Ventus had to disagree, especially given how Weiss was now glaring at his tall friend, so he felt completely justified in what he was preparing to do. "Oh, you think that's funny, huh," Ventus asked with a conspriatory tone of voice. "Well how about you have a nice, cold, drink on you."

Before Lea could ask what Ventus meant by that, the blonde was already up out of his seat, and dumping out an entire can of soda all over him, drenching the fire magic expert from head to toe in the sticky drink, much to Ven and Sora's amusement. Roxas on the other hand looked very worried now, and the others were starting to see why when Lea slowly turned to his laughing teammates and asked, "Oh, so it's like that, huh?"

"Uh-oh," was all Roxas could say, since he had only heard Lea speak that way one other time before in a situation like this, and he knew that it would not lead to anything good, and before he knew it, he was proven right, as all hell broke loose along with someone shouting two particular words.

"FOOD FIGHT!"

---

Around the same time chaos incarnate was beginning to unfold, Sun was actually heading over to the cafeteria as well with his partner right beside him, listening in amazement as the monkey boy told him about the craziness that had gone down that night at the docks. "Man, that's harsh," the blue-haired boy commented during Sun's most recent pause in the story.

"So then we were fighting side by side, and she was super fast and I threw a banana at a guy, which sounds gross, but it was awesome," Sun continued on.

"Nice!"

"Right? And the best part is she's a Faunus," Sun accidentally revealed. Thankfully, he realized his mistake quickly enough, and immediately added, "But that's a secret, okay?"

"Got it."

"And not a 'I'm gonna go tell Scarlet the second Sun turns his back' secret. I'm talking secret-secret," Sun emphasized with a look to his friend.

"Whoa, chill out man, okay? I got it," the blue-haired boy reassured him. When Sun gave him another look to be absolutely sure, he nodded once again as he repeated in a near-whisper, "I got it!"

"You better," Sun cautioned, earning him a scoff from his friend. "I just don't want to screw this up, ya know? The people here are the coolest! No offense to you guys."

"None taken," his friend dismissed with an easy going smile. "Especially after hearing about those guys with the key-shaped swords you were talking about. Speaking of which, what were they doing the whole time?"

"Aw man, you should've seen it!" Sun cheered, getting excited all over again at the memory of the Keybearers in action. "They were tearing through White Fang and these other weird, silver creatures like they were nothing, and I was thinking that their weapons weren't really going to do much, but after seeing the stuff they did, boy was I proven wrong! They were blasting them with fire, ice, and all kinds of other stuff, slicing them in half like master swordsmen, and then this one guy, who's like the leader of the team I told you about, summoned a freakin' roller coaster made of lights!"

"Whoa! Seriously?! You're not just messing with me now, right," the guy questioned.

"Dude, I wouldn't be telling you this if I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes," Sun insisted. "I get the feeling that those guys have some kind of bigger story behind them, but whatever it is, it's probably an even huger secret than the Faunus thing, and some of them seem pretty tight-lipped or really sensitive about it, so don't try to press them for answers on that stuff, okay, Neptune?"

"Like I said, man, I got it," Neptune reassured his friend.

The two were just about at the entrance to the cafeteria, having taken no notice of the chaos that was happening inside as they were passing by the windows, not even when Jaune suddenly came flying into one of those windows along with some of the food, and it would be a little longer before they did notice anything, as they soon heard someone else calling out to them. "Hey Sun! Wait up," a girl shouted out, making the boy in question turn to see Xion racing over to him and his friend.

"Xion, hey, good to see you," Sun greeted in return as she came to a stop before him and his friend. "I was just telling my buddy about you and the others."

"Oh! Are you one of Sun's teammates," Xion asked.

"Yep. Name's Neptune. Nice to meet you," the blue-haired boy introduced with a charming smile.

While she was flattered and a bit amused by the obvious attempt at flirting, Xion still had to turn the guy down and immediately said, "I have a boyfriend. Namely one who is definitely the jealous type and uses two Keyblades."

"And that's cool," Neptune quickly stated, raising his hands in playful surrender to show that he was backing off. He may be a charmer, but he did know better than to cross certain lines. "So, do you also have one of those Keyblades?"

"Yeah. Nearly everyone in my circle of friends does," Xion admitted. "Speaking of which, were you guys headed to the cafeteria to meet up with them too?"

"Of course. I wanted to introduce the others to Neptune since he just got here today," Sun explained. "What about you? You grabbing a bite while meeting up with Roxas or something?"

"Yes and no. I also have some notes that I wanted to give to Sora since they pertain to one of the big reasons why he and the others are all here," Xion explained.

"Well, what're we waiting for? They should all be just in here then," Sun said. Turning back to Neptune, he then added, "I'm really excited for you to meet them, so be cool, okay? You're gonna be cool, right?"

"Dude," Neptune replied as he assumed a cool pose and grinned, his teeth flashing a little in the sunlight as if to emphasize his argument.

"Good point," Sun agreed, while Xion just raised an eyebrow in question, wondering how that was supposed to answer Sun's question.

She shook it off though, as they all just headed on in to the cafeteria, only to freeze up a little as they were nearly trampled over by a number of fleeing students. "What in the world," Xion started to ask, only to stop short when Cardin suddenly fell over his own feet in his attempts to get away right next to her.

"We're dead," Cardin shouted, obviously having a panic attack of some kind. "We are dead! All dead! All gonna die! Dead men be we! A cornucopia of pain and despair is coming our way to ensure our demise! We are so going to die-e-e!"

Cardin likely would have continued on further from that had one of his teammates not come up from behind, hoisted him up, and then slapped him in the face. "Get a hold of yourself, man! AND RUN LIKE CRAZY," said teammate shouted, but Xion, Sun, and Neptune were unable to tell which member of Team CRDL it was before he vanished from the room along with the rest of the students, leaving them as the only witnesses to the madness that was about to unfold here.

"Ahahahaha," Nora loudly cackled from atop a massive fortress made up of tables and a couple of soda machines, while standing proudly on various points of her fortress was the rest of Team JNPR and surprisingly, Lea and Roxas. A minute later, Nora started singing out, "I'm queen of the castle~! I'm queen of the castle~!"

Nora's singing was interrupted when Ventus suddenly shot up out of nowhere and angrily pointed at his look-a-like. "Roxas, how could you betray us like this," he dramatically cried out.

"Sorry guys, but when it comes to choosing teams, I feel like it would be smarter to side with the team that has both Nora and Axel on it than against them," Roxas excused.

His answer was not met well, as Sora and Ruby suddenly stomped down on a table in front of them dramatically, while the former declared, "You shall pay for this treachery, Sheru! You and Firebrand both! DO YOU HEAR ME?!"

"Justice will be swift! Justice will be painful," Ruby promised soon after while squashing a milk carton in one hand. "IT WILL BE DELCIOUS!"

"YEAH!" the rest of Team RWBY and Ventus screamed out, raising their fists high to show their readiness for battle.

"Off with their heads," Nora ordered while jumping down from her tower, signaling her team to attack, not knowing she had given some of the Keybearers flashbacks to a certain queen from Wonderland when she said that.

Hearing his childhood friend's order, Ren immediately stomped down on a tray holding three watermelons, and then sent them flying at Sora, Ven, and Team RWBY with a fast spin kick. Jaune and Pyrrha were quick to send their own large green fruits flying as well, while Lea and Roxas batted several melons at their opponents using their Keyblades, and Nora went the extra mile by flipping over an entire table of watermelons. Ventus immediately went to work trying to blow the melons away using his wind magic, trying his best to send the very healthy fruit back to the ones who had thrown them, but Roxas was quick to either deflect or repel the melons onto their original flight path once again.

"Yang! Turkey," Ruby ordered, seeing Ven's stalling tactic was not going to hold for long.

Yang immediately rushed forward to grab a pair of turkeys from the ground, and immediately slipped them onto her hands so that she could use them like her gauntlets. One quick slam of the cooked birds later, and Yang was rushing in to punch through what remained of the watermelon barrage. When the last melon was destroyed, Sora and Blake jumped over and ahead of her, each grabbing one or two baguettes as they rolled along the ground after landing, and destroyed four more melons, leaving the last one for Yang to smash with a fast back kick. Yang then sent the turkeys flying at Pyrrha and Jaune, and while the invincible girl was able to dodge the projectiles, Jaune was not so lucky. Grabbing a baguette of her own, Pyrrha then immediately moved to engage Blake in a duel of bread-blades. Sora would have tried to assist Blake in her battle against the redhead, but Roxas had other ideas, as he intercepted Sora with his own pair of bread loafs.

"We were brothers once," Roxas snarled at Sora after they had locked loafs.

"Once," Sora confirmed before he broke the lock and engaged Roxas in a duel that was very similar to the last one they had not so long ago.

The two boys were very evenly matched until Sora took his eyes off the former Nobody just long enough to see Blake being forced back by Pyrrha. That left him open for Roxas to finally bash him back, and he continued to press his advantage by tossing one of his baguettes at Sora, while Pyrrha did the same. The only difference was that Pyrrha was targeting Yang, and throwing her bread projectiles in a manner similar to how she would throw her javelin. Sora was unable to stave off the barrage of bread, and while Yang was able to hold her own for a short time, she was ultimately knocked down by Pyrrha. Ruby was not about to let her sister's defeat stand, and she proved it by using a food tray to slide along the tables towards Pyrrha. When Pyrrha's next baguette came for her, Ruby quickly spun around and sent the loaf flying in the opposite direction, eliminating Roxas from the fight. Pyrrha was completely caught off guard at seeing her attack had ended up taking out one of her teammates, and as a result of pausing to apologize to Roxas, she ended up unprepared for the moment when Ruby came flying in to slam her tray into the invincible girl, her strong legs adding some extra strength to the blow.

Ren and Nora immediately came running in to get even for their fallen teammate, but their opponents were ready for the pair, as Ruby proved when she leapt aside, allowing Weiss to release a stream of ketchup onto the floor before them. Ren was unable to either slow down or stop before his feet hit the slippery trail, and ended up crashing into several tables that had been stacked up as a make-shift barricade at some point. Nora was able to take advantage of the scattered tables though, as she jumped onto and off one to grab a flagpole that she then stabbed into a watermelon, granting her a make-shift hammer. She had intended to hit Weiss with the melon hammer, but before she knew what was happening, Ventus had jumped between Nora and her target, taking the hit for Weiss.

"Ven," Weiss cried out from worry after seeing the boy get bashed away, but she did not let it distract her for long, as she quickly scooped up a sword fish to engage Nora in a one-on-one face-off. Weiss's skill with her usual weapon seemed to hold true even with her improvised sword, but Nora's overwhelming power and strength ended up being too much for her, and she was soon sent flying away after a particularly nasty hit.

Said hit ended up sending Weiss crashing into a pillar, rendering her unconscious and causing the pillar to collapse before it slowly started to fall, threatening to flatten Weiss when it came to the ground. Luckily, Ruby came to the rescue, easily catching her partner before she was crushed, but it did not seem like Weiss was going to be waking up. "Weiss. Weiss! Don't leave me," Ruby called out in an attempt to rouse her partner, but it proved futile. "NOOOOOO!"

Unfortunately for Nora, Ventus had recovered just when Ruby's dramatic cry of sorrow had rang out, and after seeing Weiss was down, he fixed a hardened glare on Nora, and raced forward, grabbing a baguette to use as a sword. He soon clashed his food-weapon against Nora's until eventually they found themselves in a hard lock with one another, and he took that moment to deliver a promise to JNPR's powerhouse. "Hello. My name is Ventus Kunsanagi. You defeated my teammate. Prepare to die."

"Bring it," Nora grinned eagerly, and like that, their duel commenced once again, while Yang scooped up another pair of turkeys to engage Lea and Ren.

Ren had grabbed a pair of leeks to use like the blades on his guns, while Lea had retrieved a pair of large pretzels that he wielded like his chakrams, and the two were soon matching Yang blow for blow. Sadly, Ren was quickly overwhelmed by Yang's reflexes and strength, and even after using the moment he was knocked into the air to try and take Yang down, he was ultimately defeated by the blonde. Thankfully, Lea was still going, and was soon sending adding a small bit of fire to his large pretzels when he next attacked. Yang was able to match the redhead, but it was clear from his cocky grin that Lea believed he still held the advantage. That cockiness was soon proven when Ven suddenly came from out of nowhere and slammed into Yang, no doubt courtesy of a particularly hard hit from Nora, and granting Lea the opening he needed to finally take down both blondes. The redhead easily tossed his pretzels at the two, and unfortunately, Yang did not have enough recovery time to pull both herself and Ventus clear from the line of fire, so she had no choice but to leave Ven to take the brunt of that attack. Sad thing was, her attempt to dodge Lea put her right in Nora's line of fire, and the ginger haired girl easily used her melon hammer to send Yang flying up through the ceiling.

Seeing her partner and Ventus get taken down, Blake was more than ready to retaliate, and given that Nora and Lea's last attacks came at the cost of losing their weapons, she was sure that she held the advantage now, so she quickly retrieved a long, link of sausages and attacked. With a few easy, hard swings, she used the link like a whip, and struck both hyper redheads hard enough to send them flying back into the soda machines that rested at the base of their team's fortress. Unfortunately for Blake, that proved to supply Lea and Nora with some new weapons, and they quickly made that clear when they began launching several soda bombs at her. Blake was able to dodge many of them easily enough, thanks in part to her Semblance and natural agility, but she was still thankful for Ventus coming in to redirect the soda cans away using some quick and powerful wind magic.

Lea and Nora did not slow down in their throwing of soda cans though, until Pyrrha finally recovered from Ruby's earlier attack and saw what they were doing. Seeing a few more soda cans on the ground around her, Pyrrha did not need to think twice about using her Semblance to up the ante, and soon sent a massive wave of soda cans flying towards her two opponents, giving Nora and Lea a chance to take a break from their soda throwing. Seeing Pyrrha joining in on the soda barrage, Ventus was quickly forced to increase the amount of wind magic he was using until he could no longer cast a single spell. That was exactly the moment Pyrrha was waiting for, and before either cat Faunus or Keyblade wielder could react, they were both knocked back and out of the fight by a storm of soda bombs.

When they saw their teammates go flying over their heads, Ruby and the recovered Sora both slowly rose to their feet again, leveling a glare at their opponents, as the latter adopted his best French accent said, "Mademoiselle Rose, would be so kind as to deliver a special order of what Chef Sora is about to cook up for our foes?"

"With pleasure, good sir," Ruby quipped in return, giving Sora his cue to spin back, and summon his Keyblade, which he quickly transformed into Grand Chef.

"Wait, is he gonna…" Lea started to ask when he saw what Keyblade Sora started wielding.

"I think he is," Roxas replied, seeing Sora point his Keyblade at everyone on their side of the food fight, and wave it over them like he was lining it up for a special shot.

Jaune had just recovered in time to hear the two's exchange, and was about to ask what they were talking about, when he saw Ruby take a runner's starting stance. "Oh she wouldn't," he protested.

"Ready," Ruby shouted to Sora.

"She would," Ren informed his leader.

"Set," Sora called back to Ruby, making Team JNPR and their two allies all the more nervous.

"GO," both then shouted as one. The minute that they shouted that, Sora spun forward a bit and unleashed the power of his Fruit Crusher Shotlock to rain down tons of fruit from the sky, which bounced off his Keyblade after it had transformed into a shield. As the fruit continued to rain down, Ruby took off with her fastest and most powerful burst of speed, grabbing every bit of food in the tailwind that followed her, be it the food that was already in the cafeteria, or the fruits that Sora had just summoned with his Keyblade.

Before they could really think about how Sora was not getting picked up by the tailwind as well, Lea and Roxas saw Ruby transform into a red tornado of rose petals before she rocketed past them and the boys of Team JNPR. A moment later, they too felt themselves getting picked up by the powerful winds along with the rest of their allies, and they did not stop until they all slammed into the wall that was just cracked by the wind pressure of Ruby's speed. They barely saw Ruby leap high into the air before their eyes found the storm of food that flying at them, and they all knew one thing in that moment.

"Roxas, I think we made a terrible mistake," was all that Lea could utter out, and while he mainly meant that in regards to their choice of sides in this food fight, others could say that it also applied to the decision to challenge Ruby Rose to a food fight at all.

"'Roxas, I think we made a terrible mistake.' That's you," Roxas mocked his friend, but he was quickly being forced to close his mouth again so that none of the food or dishware that was swept up along with the food got into his mouth while it was painting both him and the rest of his teammates.

A moment later, Ruby dropped to the floor again, standing before the cracked wall that had now become a relative work of pop art, while Sora spun around to hold his Keyblade down by his side in victory, leaving Team JNPR, Lea, and Roxas to drop to the ground, defeated at last. Sora only needed to bask in his team's victory for a moment before he looked to the defeated team and openly mocked, "Would you care for our desert menu next? Perhaps some humble pie, or even the humility pudding? Oh, or perhaps the Rose de Tarte ala Sora, named in honor of the true queen of the cafeteria."

"Why Chef Sora, you are far too kind, sir," Ruby commented in a faux, proper-sounding accent, knowing that he was referring to her with that last bit.

"I merely give credit where it is due, madam," Sora bowed with a bit of showboating as his answer to Ruby's statement, earning a cute giggle from Ruby in return. His moment of showing off only continued when he grasped Ruby's hand and place a quick kiss on the back of her palm, drawing a brilliant blush onto Ruby's face while making her giggles grow a little more. Sure, she had a hunch he was just playing around, but it was still very touching all the same to Ruby.

As she watched the show continue on, Xion could not help but smirk at the sight of the two team leaders, now finally seeing a perfect show of what Roxas and the others had been telling her about regarding Sora and Ruby. It was very clear just how much the two were clicking together with one another, so she had to wonder just how much longer it would be before those two also realized this. Although, she had to admit that she was a little worried about how Sora would react when he did realize how close he and Ruby were becoming, but all the same, she was going to enjoy seeing sweet moments between them like this while she could.

Sun on the other hand, had taken in everything that had just happened, and could only think of one thing to say. "I love these guys."

"Ditto," Xion agreed, but given the look on his face and how he was covered in grape soda, it did not look like Neptune could find it in himself to agree with the sentiment as well.

Neptune was not the only upset with what had just happened, as proven when Glynda Goodwitch suddenly stormed in with a very cross look on her face. Sure, you could say that she was upset that some of the students had decided to start a food fight that had nearly destroyed the cafeteria, but others would argue that part of her irritation was due to the fact that she was the one who was now having to clean up the resulting mess. Sure, it was not too hard, given her Semblance made it easy to return everything to its original state after a simple wave of her riding crop, but it was the principle of the matter, all the same.

When the last table had finally been returned to its original spot, Glynda leveled a powerful glare on the three teams involved in the food fight, and said, "Children, please." She then paused to readjust her glasses, unknowingly making things all the more dramatic before she finished her statement when she did. "Do not play with your food."

"That's what she calls playing with their food," Xion whispered in disbelief.

On the other side of things, the teams that Goodwitch was glaring at were all just keeping quiet until Nora let out a loud burp. When Yang finally came crashing back down from her earlier flight, looking none the worse for wear, no one could find it in themselves to hold it in any longer, but it still ended up being Sora who was the first to burst out laughing like no tomorrow, with the others following along soon after, much to Glynda's growing displeasure. She likely would have started screaming at someone or something, had she not suddenly felt a calming hand being placed on her shoulder, and turned to see Ozpin had just arrived.

"Let it go," Ozpin insisted, not sounding upset at all.

Despite the fact that her boss did not seem the least bit angry with these kids, Goodwitch still managed to let out a calming breath, even if it did still sound rather angry when it came. "They're supposed to be the defenders of the world, while four of them are supposed to be defenders of so much more than that," Goodwitch grumbled.

"And they will be, while those very four have been just that for quite some time now, but right now they're all still children. So why not let them play the part," Ozpin asked. As he turned to leave, he could not help but add, "After all, it isn't a role they'll have forever, even if some of them have more than earned the chance to do so."

If the students heard what their headmaster had said, they did not seem to give any indication of it, since they were all still laughing like no tomorrow and going on about various points in their bout that each of them found particularly awesome in one way or another. Their laughter did not seem likely to calm at all until a familiar voice suddenly shouted, "What did you four do now?!"

"Uh-oh," Ventus gasped as he flinched in fear along with the rest of the guys.

"Not again," Sora moaned miserably when he saw Aqua stomping towards them, looking very upset.

"I cannot believe the four of you would actually go and have a food fight like that," Aqua started off as she marched over to her fellow Keyblade wielders, making them all hang their heads in sorrow and anticipation for the pain that was likely about to come. Thankfully it never did, because the next thing anyone knew, Aqua's serious exterior had dropped completely as she finished, "Without me! Ven, you know how much I loved all those food fights we used to have with Terra back in the day."

As shocking as it was to hear that the mighty, elegant, and always-proper Aqua would actually have joined in on their food fight if she had the chance, there was no denying how amusing the notion also was, or how Aqua had gone from serious and angry to sad and whinny in an instant like that. Not that it stopped Ventus from shooting back a retort for her last comment. "I also remember how you only won most of them because you cheated, and what happened as a result of our last fight," the blonde commented.

"What happened that time," Ruby asked.

"Uh, nothing! Nothing at all."

Needless to say, no one believed Ven's panicked reaction to Ruby's question, and Aqua's mischievous smile showed that she was not going to keep it a secret. "He got a whole mess of pudding stuck in his hair for weeks, along with a number of other things like syrup and dough. No matter how hard he scrubbed, even after blasting himself in the face with a water spell, it just would not come out."

Apparently that was even funnier than anything that happened in the food fight from just seconds ago, because everyone had instantly burst out laughing once again, save for Ventus, who could only huddle over in a corner as if attempting to hide from the shame of such embarrassment. "We promised that we were never going to talk about that again," Ventus grumbled under his breath.

"Tell us more," Yang then demanded of Aqua, wanting to hear a few more embarrassing stories about Ventus like that, and the rest of Team SLVR if Aqua knew any.

"With pleasure, Yang," Aqua agreed, only pausing when she noticed the eager smiles on the rest of Team SLVR's faces. "I don't know what you three are so excited about. I've got almost if not just as many stories about you three to tell them as I do about Ventus."

"What? No you don't," Lea disputed.

"Yeah, you're bluffing," Roxas accused, but on the inside, he and Lea were both very nervous that she was telling the truth.

"Am I? Does the tale about a certain incident on Neverland ring a bell? Namely one that involved Tinker Bell, some mermaids, and a particularly messy Heartless," Aqua questioned, making the two go more and more pale in the face with every word she said.

Sora was not sure what Aqua was referring to, but at the moment, he did not care. If she really did know about some embarrassing stories regarding each of them, then there was no doubt she would tell them to Team RWBY at the very least unless they thought of something to distract them. Thankfully, he knew just the thing. "Hey, Aqua! What brings you here, anyway? Don't you have some important work to do right now, or something," Sora asked.

"I do, actually, and that's part of the reason why I'm here," Aqua confirmed. She then stood up straight and turned to approach the cane-wielding man that ran the school. "You're Professor Ozpin, the headmaster of Beacon, right?"

"Indeed I am," Ozpin confirmed. "And who might you be, Miss…"

"Master," Aqua corrected. "Master Aqua Magum of the Keyblade. I'm here on behalf of Master Yen Sid."

"I see," Ozpin nodded in understanding. "Perhaps you would consider postponing any talks between us for a later time, though? An old friend of mine is due to arrive very soon, and I think he should hear about any updates you have as well. In the meantime, I can set you up with a special room in the guest dorms, or if you wish, you could share a room with your friend, Miss Memoriko. I'd hate to have to make you wait around in some stuffy room on the ship that brought you and your fellow Keyblade wielders here, after all."

Aqua nodded in agreement and then made to follow Ozpin out of the cafeteria along with Xion, right after the black haired girl had quickly handed off her notes to Sora, but the blue haired woman still paused to turn back and informed her friends. "Don't think you're out of the woods, just yet."

Team SLVR simultaneously gulped nervously upon hearing that, and they knew that Aqua was going to make good on her threat. Clearly she had now found a new way to get back at them for leaving on this new adventure without telling her, and they could only pray that she did not tell the girls or any of their friends on this world anything too embarrassing, even if it was a futile hope. "Does anyone know where some bad guys are," Lea asked.

"Why," Blake asked.

"So we can go throw ourselves into a fight with them and let them beat us up, because honestly, that would probably be a lot more merciful in comparison to what Aqua's planning," Roxas explained.

Sora and Ventus both nodded in agreement, but none of the others seemed to really sympathize with them, save for Jaune and Ruby, as they had both quickly figured out why they were so afraid of what Aqua was going to tell them. Sure, they were just as eager as everyone else to hear the embarrassing stories, but that did not mean they could not offer some form of comfort to some of Team SLVR right now, as evidenced by the reassuring pats on the back that they gave to the two.

---

That evening at Roman's base of operations, the White Fang was hard at work gathering up and taking stock of the supplies of Dust that they had stolen while working with Torchwick, while the criminal in question was looking over his map of Vale in an effort to determine where they should strike next. Or at least he was until he noticed a certain pair of individuals had just arrived; namely, the same pair of kids that were very close associates of Cinder and Luxu's, more so the former than the latter. What he was more interested in was why they were only showing up just now when they should have been here a while ago, but he was not going to let on to that just yet.

"Oh, look, she sent the kids again," Roman remarked in a false happy tone. "This is turning out just like the divorce."

"Ugggh," the green haired girl of the two shivered in disgust before she and her partner managed to shrug Roman off. "Spare us the thought of you procreating."

"That was a joke," Roman informed her before he flashed a piece of paper that he swiped out of the girl's pocket at her. "And this just might tell me where you two have been all day."

"What," the girl gasped, wondering how Roman could have pick-pocketed her so easily.

"I'm a professional, sweetheart. Pay attention; maybe you'll learn something," Roman explained as simply as he could. He then looked at what was written on the paper that the girl had, and frowned upon reading its contents. "Why do you have this address?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," the girl retorted.

"Yeah, I would. Now, where have you been all day," Roman questioned.

"Cleaning up your problems," the boy taunted in return. "One of them at least."

"I had that under control," Roman growled back.

"Two packed bags and a ticket out of Vale said otherwise," the boy countered, getting even further under Roman's skin.

"Listen, you little punk. If it were up to me, I would take you and your little street-rat friend here, and I would…" Roman started to threaten, only to be cut off before he could finish.

"Do what, Roman," Cinder's voice suddenly echoed about the room, drawing all three of their gazes up to see the woman in question riding a freight elevator down to them, her glare just daring Roman to finish his threat.

Roman could only laugh nervously before he nervously replied, "I'd uh…Not kill them?"

"Cinder," the green haired girl excitedly beamed upon seeing her boss.

"Hey, what about me? Don't I get any love, Emerald," another voice questioned from the shadows, prompting everyone to turn and see none other than Luxu stepping out, his hood down so that they could see his grin.

"Don't take it too personally, Luxu. Cinder's just got an extra special place in Emerald's heart that you just can't hope to match," the boy teased, earning him a smack on the arm from the green-haired girl.

While Cinder did find the banter amongst her companions amusing, she was a little more peeved at the moment with Roman's inability to silence one of their loose-ends: a former White Fang member by the name of Tukson who had been planning to leave for Vacuo, at least until he had the misfortune of meeting Emerald and her partner earlier that day. "I thought I made it clear that you were to eliminate the would-be runaway," Cinder informed Roman.

"I was going to," Roman started to insist, only for Emerald to interrupt.

"He was going to escape to Vacuo. Mercury and I decided to take it upon ourselves to kill the rat," Emerald proudly corrected.

"I think he was some sort of cat, actually," Mercury told his comrade.

"What, like a puma," Emerald joked with a faint chuckle.

"Yeah, there ya go," Mercury agreed.

"Quiet," Cinder interrupted, her cold tone telling the two that they made a mistake in thinking that she would approve, something that Roman apparently found funny, given how he was smiling mockingly at them as she scolded them. "Did I not specifically instruct you two to keep your hands clean while in Vale?"

"I just thought…" Emerald started to say.

"Don't think. Obey," Cinder said.

Seeing how cowed Emerald and Mercury were, Luxu took this time to step forward and said, "Hey, don't get us wrong, we're glad you took care of the rat, and you did make a good effort to cover your tracks so that no one would know it was you two, but in order for this big plan to work, we need to be absolutely sure that you're so squeaky clean that anyone would think the idea of you being cold, hardened crooks, to put it mildly would be just a silly little joke. Just be glad that I had some Dusks keeping an eye on you guys so that they could clean up any remaining indications of your involvement that you missed." He then grew a lot more serious all of a sudden and said, "But keep in mind, there's very little chances of that happening a second time, understand?"

Emerald and Mercury both straightened up after they heard that, still looking apologetic for disobeying Cinder's orders, but glad that they were not in too much trouble all the same. "Yes sir, and ma'am. It won't happen again."

"Atta girl," Luxu praised with a pat on Emerald's shoulder. "See that, Roman? That's someone who knows how to carry out their role, and how to learn from their mistakes. Can you say the same?"

"I have to agree," Cinder said, making Roman nervous once again. "Why wasn't this job done sooner?"

"Uh…" Roman muttered before he started pointing all around him at the various containers of Dust in the warehouse. "Eh? Ehhhh? EHHHHHHHHHH?! Sorry if I've been a little busy stealing every speck of Dust in the kingdom!"

"You're an inspiration to every punk with a gun and a ski-mask," Mercury sarcastically praised, much to Emerald and Luxu's amusement. Even Cinder would have cracked more of a smile at her associate's mocking were it not for her sense of self-control.

"Nice one," Luxu chuckled in approval, sharing a fist-bump with Mercury soon after.

"Look around, boys. I've got this town running scared. Police camping out at every corner, Dust prices through the roof, and we're sitting pretty in an old warehouse with more Dust crystals, vials, and rounds than we know what to do with," Roman ranted as if it would help his case. Admittedly, it did to an extent, but it also seemed to be making him a little braver than Cinder or Luxu felt was acceptable for him right now. This showed when Roman asked his next question. "Speaking of which, if you guys wouldn't mind filling me in on your grand-master plan, it might actually make my next string of robberies go a little smoother. Or hey, how about you lend me something that would actually stand a chance against those kids with the weird swords in case they show up to ruin everything again."

"Whoa! That's some pretty brave talk for someone so small," Luxu falsely praised, drawing a scowl from Roman. "Look, you don't need to concern yourself with Sora and the rest of his little Key-slinging pals; they've already got more than enough of their own problems to worry about. I'm making sure of that."

"Yes, do have a little faith, Roman. You'll know what you need when you need to know," Cinder insisted while caressing his face with one hand like a mother would a child's, much to Torchwick's displeasure. "Besides, we're done with Dust."

"Oh-kaaaay. Then what now," Torchwick questioned, feeling more than a little confused after hearing that.

"We're moving," Cinder answered. "Have the White Fang clear out this building. Luxu will provide you with some Nobodies to assist and make things go quickly. I'll send you details and coordinates tonight."

"Coordinates?"

"We're proceeding to phase two," Cinder declared with an excited-looking smirk.

With that said, Luxu, Mercury, and Emerald all took their leave with Cinder, but not before Emerald made sure that Roman knew she had pick-pocketed his lighter off of him as her way of showing that she did not need any tips in that department from him. Once they were well away from Roman, Luxu finally took this time to ask, "You sure we need him that badly?"

"Roman's a small man, but he does have his uses," Cinder insisted. "What about you? How are your efforts going?"

"It's only a matter of time before my old Keyblade is back where it belongs, and I'm sure that my old friends will be returning to this realm shortly after it does appear again," Luxu promised. "Speaking of which, there's a chance you may not see that much of me in the near future, since I've got to keep an especially close eye on where I think both the blade and those guys are going to reappear."

"Of course. If we need anything, we'll be sure to contact you," Cinder promised.

"Aw, and that means it's going to be a little more boring around here," Mercury complained.

"Hey, I never said I was leaving for good, Mercury. You just won't be seeing as much of me. You really think I'd leave you to suffer in the company of these two girls all alone for that long," Luxu questioned. "I mean, sure, hanging out with two girls is a dream come true for most guys, but with these two…"

"What's that supposed to mean," Emerald demanded.

"Whoa! Easy, easy there, Em. Just a little joke between us guys," Luxu reassured the green haired girl. He then waved as shadows began swirling around him, and said, "Be good boys and girls now."

The other three then watched as Luxu vanished into a dark corridor, and once he was gone, they resumed their departure from the hideout. As they went, Mercury could not help but comment, "I swear, that guy is just so weird and random."

"Yes, but you do get used to it after a while, or so I'm told," Cinder remarked.

---

AN: Okay, so going over what all happened, yes, I removed the scene where Emerald and Mercury took out Tukson, mainly because there was no change there beyond the Dusks going in to clean up any remaining traces of their involvement. And instead, we got a run down of what happened between the start of this chapter and the end of last chapter, before cutting over to another off-world mission for Team SLVR, this time featuring Team JNPR as their backup. And in case it wasn't obvious, yes, they did in fact go to the Castle of Dreams during the time period of Cinderella 3. In regards to the Heartless boss that they were fighting, like I said in the chapter, just think of that one Unversed Aqua fought when she went to that world in BBS, and you've got a good idea of what it looks like. I know, not really all that original, but to be fair, that wasn't a major point of focus for this chapter beyond showing how Jaune and his team were involved in a mission on another world at one point. I didn't want to leave that as just something we talked about, so you got a little show to go with it.

Lea: Speaking of shows, there was also another encounter that we had today I feel like you should mention.

AN: You mean the moment when you guys met Coco?

Lea: That's the one.

AN: Yeah, I felt like I should give one or two members of Team CFVY at least a little bit of extra face-time in this story, and really, who better than Coco? I mean, you do remember how awesome she was during the Breach in Volume 2, right? A girl that badass deserves a chance to get a few more words in. Speaking of words, looks like our Keyblade heroes now have some fancy new titles. Be honest, what did you guys think of them? Some of them were kind of on the nose or thought of at the last minute, I'll admit, but I do think that they have a certain sense of rightness to them as well.

Ventus: I'm just glad to finally have one at all. Much better than being considered as essentially a second generation Foreteller or something.

AN: Here, here. Plus, we finally got someone to mention an idea to Ven and Roxas on ways they could change their looks so that people weren't confusing the two for one another so much in the story. Really, who better to do that than Coco? She has been mentioned and referenced as someone who's very in-the-know on fashion and style.

Now, the part I'm sure everyone was really here on this chapter for: the food fight. Be honest, how many of you saw Team SLVR splitting up to stand on two different sides for this thing? Or that Sora would make Ruby's final attack all the more powerful by using the Grand Chef Keyblade's Shotlock? Pretty impressive, right? Also, did you guys catch all the little references that were made in the fight? Please don't be afraid to admit it if you did or didn't. I can list all the ones that I knowingly used in the next chapter's starting note if anyone is curious.

And oh, look at that, we got a few more RoseHeart moments! Including one where our boy putting the moves on Ruby without even realizing it. Sora, you slyyyyy dog

RoseHeart: [blushing brightly, knowing just which moment he was referring to]

AN: Finally, all that went down during the most recent meeting of evil minds. Yeah, Luxu's pretty tight with Cinder's crew, as if that wasn't already obvious, but look on the bright side, he hasn't gotten his Keyblade back just yet, and the Foretellers haven't quite returned to the worlds yet either. Too bad that's not going to last for very long, but hey, at least now you guys know my reasons for not getting the one-eyed punk involved in that many different things that Cinder and her crew are up to. Btw, does anyone think that we can classify Mercury and Emerald as Cinder's friends, because if you ask me, they seem more like lackeys a lot of the time. Sure, there are moments when it seems like at least Emerald considers Cinder as something more than just her boss, and the same can kinda be said in regards to her and Mercury, but considering Cinder's character, I don't really think she sees anyone as a friend or anything beyond that.

Ruby: You know, that actually is a good question, considering that most of the friendly act she put up at Beacon before the Fall was just to maintain her cover.

AN: Yeah...Something to think about I guess, but we're off-topic. We will see a few more appearances in terms of both the Heartless and the Nobodies, so don't think that Luxu's lack of presence on Remnant is going to change that. I will go ahead and say now though that we will be seeing the Nobodies more on Remnant than anywhere else though. Beyond that, I don't really think there's anything else I can cover today. Is there?

Sora: No, I think you got it all, assuming that Weiss is safe from Donald now, and that you got Blake away from those security dogs.

AN: Do you think I'd be sitting here right now talking to you guys if I hadn't? [turns to the side] Ladies, how you holding up?

Weiss: [looking out of breath but none the worse for wear] I'm good. Just going to have to make sure that I watch what I say when I'm not one hundred percent sure certain individuals dressed like sailors are within hearing range.

Blake: [shivering a little, clearly still in shock from having to run from so many dogs at once] I'll be okay. I think. There were so many.

AN: Oh boy. I think we might need something extra to help her.

Ruby: Allow me. [runs to the kitchen and returns with a big bowl of noodles topped with fresh fish, much like the one Blake had at the start of Volume 3]

Blake: [goes stary-eyed with a smile of thanks as she starts to dig in] Okay, I'm all better now. Thanks Ruby.

AN: Well...I'm actually a little disappointed in myself for not thinking of that sooner. Lessons have been learned for the future. Speaking of the future, let's get on over to our regularly scheduled look at this story's next chapter. Onto the Preview!...

The arrival of General Ironwood brings an interesting encounter for Aqua and Ozpin, but given that it also comes with a small fleet of Atlesian battleships and soldiers, you could understand why the two are more than a little concerned with the general's idea of being cautious. Meanwhile, a nice relaxing group study session (or at least what's supposed to be a group study session) has little effect on keeping Sora and Blake from getting more and more restless over the lack of answers to their respective questions and quests. So is it really any surprise that their teammates decide to hatch a plan to take a more active approach in getting those very answers themselves? The time to take action for the safety of Vale and beyond approaches, next time.

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