A/N: Goodness, I almost broke my New Year's Resolution already! No, I did make it before the 1-month deadline! I'm still here!

Disclaimer: Don't own anything. You think that disclaimer's lame, check out my chapter title.

Chapter 19

"Whoa, whoa, wait just a minute. Time-out. You want me to send my baby with these four?"

"That's just about the size of it," Yuffie answered, not at all thrown by Cid's emotional outburst.

"No. I don't think so. No way!"

"Cid. It's for the restoration of the worlds," Cloud tried to reason.

"It's my ship, and I'm not letting some little kids drive it around interspace!"

"Hey!" Sora protested, "I went around in a gummi ship before, and nothing bad happened!"

"That was not my gummi ship, and it was actually the little feathered fella who was driving, wasn't it? You kids'll just crash it!"

"Will not!" Sora argued.

"Nobody drives this baby but me. And if I were going to hand it over, I wouldn't hand it to a bunch of kids too young to have driver's licenses!"

"Amaya's old enough to have a driver's license." Kairi pointed out.

"I don't think that's the point, Kairi," Riku muttered. Aerith stepped forward.

"Cid. These four have to get to the Heart of Worlds. Otherwise, all the worlds will eventually disappear. It won't be today, and it won't be tomorrow, but eventually, everything is going to fall if they don't bring things back to normal." She squeezed his hand, "We need your help."

Aerith's magic works like a charm. How she does it, I'll never know, but none of us can say 'no' when she asks like that.

"Fine. We'll use my ship. But I'm flying it!"

"Um . . .that's probably not a good idea."

"Wha?"

"Well, it's just that . . ." Amaya was nervous. Can't really blame her, since she'd never been on the receiving side of one of Cid's tirades. I don't know if the two ever even met before now. . .I'd only known him because he'd been Zell's boss. "The reason all this started was because of an imbalance between dark and light forces. So when we approach the door, we have to do so in a balanced way. We have two light people," she pointed at Sora and Kairi, "And two dark people." She pointed at herself and Riku. "We have two male, and two female. We have water," she pointed to herself, "Earth," she pointed to Riku, "Wind," She pointed to Sora, "And fire." She pointed to Kairi.

"If we add another person, we could lose the only opportunity we have. We can't take that chance," I said from my usual spot in the corner.

"Hmph!" Cid paced the room, making frustrated noises back in his throat.

He finally stopped and looked at us, defeated, "Do any of you even know how to drive one of these?"

"Teach us," Riku answered.

"And don't worry. Even if we do crash it, it won't matter, 'cause once the worlds are restored the way they're supposed to be, you won't even need gummi ships anymore!" Sora proclaimed cheerfully.

Cid ran a hand over his face, "That's real reassuring, kid."

"How you kids doing up there?" Cid's voice crackled through the radio.

"All good here!" Sora answered.

"Ready to go!" Kairi said, buckling her safety belt.

"Amaya, secure and ready."

"We're all ready for take-off Cid," Riku answered, slipping his hand off his armrest to grasp mine. He smiled at me reassuringly. I tried to reciprocate.

"Now the coordinates are already logged in, so it should get you there just fine on auto-pilot. Do you know how to take it off auto-pilot if you run into any Heartless in Interspace?"

"Sure," Riku answered. "Just hit the manual button and blast 'em away."

"Where is the manual button?"

Riku rolled his eyes good-naturedly, "The green button on my right."

"No! It's on your le . . .oh, wait, it is the right. Okay. Alright, that's good. And you already know how to use the weapons?"

"I was gunner all the time on Mickey's gummi," Sora almost bounced in his seat, "I can handle anything they throw at us."

"And to turn it back on to auto-pilot?"

"The blue button right above the manual button."

"Good kids. If anything happens, we should have radio contact all the way until you get into the Heart of Worlds' atmosphere. For whatever reason, we get some kind of weird interference. But up until then, anything happens, you contact me, got it?"

"Yeah, yeah, let us out already!"

"Okay, okay," Cid wasn't used to being the one in the control tower, but he knew how to run one, so without further ado, the countdown began and the heavy, air-tight doors to interspace creaked open.

" . . .4 . . .3 . . .2 . . .1 . . ."

The force threw my head back into the seat, and I knew I must have been hurting Riku with how hard I was gripping his hand. Once we were actually into space I relaxed my grip and looked over at Riku sheepishly. "Sorry."

"It's okay," he rubbed his thumb over my knuckles. "I'm just glad you don't wear rings."

"We are gonna have two more fast parts like that, though," Sora craned his head around Riku to look at me, "This route's got us going through two warp gates. And it's a little weird entering the atmosphere, too."

"Well, if it's the fastest way to get there, it's the smartest way to go."

Riku gave my hand another squeeze, "You'll be fine."

I smiled, for real this time, "I know."

The stone pulsed where it sat on my collarbone. I'm coming, I tried to say. Whatever it is that's trapped you, Papa, we're coming to help.

We came through the second warp gate and saw what looked like clouds and stars, or maybe clouds of stars, all swirling around each other in a way that made me dizzy.

"Is that . . .?"

"Yeah. That's what the Heart of Worlds looks like on the outside," Sora answered.

"Beginning landing sequence." The autopilot's voice announced. I was surprised it wasn't Cid's voice; he'd called us every ten minutes for the first two hours. The gummi started jostling and I grabbed on to my arm rests.

"We're just going through the atmosphere," I could hear Riku saying to Amaya. I chanced a glance at her. Apparently, she didn't do to well on gummis. Well, if we did what we were supposed to do here, it shouldn't be a problem for her anymore.

With a little bit of a bump, the gummi managed to land on a tiny piece of rock, standing out of an ocean.

We all climbed out of the craft, trying not to look at the women Cid had painted on the outside.

"How do we cross this?" I asked, curious. There wasn't a boat in sight.

"You can walk on it," Sora smiled and stepped right into the ocean . . .and didn't sink. He stomped around a little for good measure.

"See? It looks like it goes on forever, but its only about two inches deep."

"Like Hollow Bastion," Riku said, following Sora out onto the water, with Amaya and I not far behind.

"What is that material under there?" Amaya bent, wetting the knees of her jeans.

"I don't think this is the time to do research, Amaya," Riku rolled his eyes and pulled her back to her feet, "Besides, what are you going to do? Write a term paper on it? This place will disappear once we've done what we need to do."

"Oh, right. Right." We all started walking forward, but Amaya kept looking at everything like she just wanted to pick it all up and take it to her secret laboratory. And yes, she does look like the kind of person who has a secret laboratory.

Not that the rest of us were much better. Sora was a little less star-struck than us, since he'd been here before, but Riku, who'd only seen the other side of the door, and I, who'd only transported here at the last second before things started falling apart, just about had our eyes popping out of our heads. Even though I knew this place was dangerous, and that it only existed because everything else was dieing, it made me sad that a place so beautiful would be gone tomorrow.

Like a shooting star. Everyone says shooting stars are pretty, shooting stars are lucky, but they're really something burning up, dieing, and if it doesn't die in the air, it'll fall and kill a lot of things on the ground. This place wasn't right, but that didn't stop it from being beautiful.

"Kairi, watch out!"

"Huh?"

Sora dived and rolled, getting us both several feet away from what looked like a ring of flames. Then they condensed and turned into some kind of Heartless with a huge sword. I gasped. A Heartless had been right above me and I hadn't even seen it!

"Stay here," Sora said, and started to run toward the thing. Then he looked back, "Unless something comes over here. Then move." I just nodded dumbly and watched him and Riku take turns slashing at it. I saw Amaya standing off to one side, and thought that Riku had told her to stay out of trouble, too, until I saw her make a gesture and the thing's arm caught on fire, making it drop its sword. My eyes must have bugged out. Amaya was a mage.

And as I sat on the side, I was scared. Call me a wimp if you want, but I was scared, and I think any person that doesn't know magic and has no weapon to call her own has every right to be scared of something that's about eight feet tall that happens to be carrying a six-foot tall sword. So yeah, I was scared, and feeling ridiculously helpless. I'm going to tell you, in case you don't know; helpless isn't cute. Helpless is extremely frustrating, and, if I haven't mentioned it before, very frightening. As soon as we get out of this place, I'm going to get a gun license.

Together, the three of them took it down, and it disappeared into a sparkly cloud that melded in with the clouds in the sky and the strange rocks under our feet.

"You okay?" Sora came over to get me, sweating and triumphant.

"Yeah . . ." I let him pull me up from where I'd been half-lying on the ground, "But I'm really sick of not knowing how to fight."

"Well, then, how about you be our lookout? Watch our backs, you know?"

"Sure thing," I tried to sound enthusiastic. He was just brushing me off. Not that I could blame him; if I were him, I'd brush me off.

"Now, you're gonna wanna watch out for those flame-things. And the bubbles! Don't step into bubbles."

"Okay," we all kept walking, until Riku abruptly stopped and rubbed his nose. He felt out in front of him. "There's a wall here. Like an invisible wall."

"Oh, yeah, I forgot about those," Sora said nonchalantly, "Just keep a hand on it, and we can figure out which way we need to go. But be careful about the bubbles! And if you see anything on the ground, don't pick it up."

"Alright," Amaya agreed, gingerly placing her hand to her side, and watching it stop when her arm was half-extended. We all put our hands on the wall and started following Sora, even though he was just feeling his way around the same way we were.

"I don't know what's coming next," Sora admitted, "Last time I had to fight through mini-versions of all the worlds I'd locked. I don't know if I'll have to do that again, or if it'll skip us to the end. Or if it'll throw something different at us."

"So just be ready, huh?" Riku said.

"Yup."

"Great."

Be ready did not even begin to cover it.

Review Responses

Idiotichobo: Symbolism? Huh. I love it when people think I'm deep and I'm not . . .j/k. ;) Thank you for the review.

Riku of Darkness: Oh, thank goodness you're still here. I was sure I scared everyone off with chapter 16. Should I write it out, do you think? Hope to see you back at this chapter!

JenniferKay1: Hey there! Yeah, go ahead and email me--my email's right on the bio page.

Kosa-kun: Welcome aboard! Glad you like the story:)