ATUHOR'S NOSE: I always want to apologize for my chapters being late, but then I check the publication dates and they're basically perfectly on my normal pace. I don't even know.

Further notes at the end, as usual.

I really need to learn to start listening when people tell me things.

I had been in the Gummi Lanes not two minutes when the first Gummi Heartless spotted me.

I had no weapon, no armor, no nothing but the clothes on my back and the glider beneath my feet. So I was an appetizing target indeed.

Two more minutes and the swarm chasing me had grown beyond my ability to count them. Admittedly, fleeing swarms of pursuers through outer space on a barely-existent vehicle - one I had to balance on, no less! - would not be conducive to anyone's arithmetic skills.

Still, there were certainly a lot of them and I was deeply regretting this decision.

Thankfully, I had spotted Sora's Gummi Ship almost the moment I took off. So I beelined in that direction as quickly as I could, taking only small detours around various asteroids in an attempt to slow down the swarm of enemies after me.

Oh, and did I mention they all had freakin laser beams?!

I was not having a good time. Why did I think this was a good idea, again? Oh, right.

Thankfully, someone on the ship noticed my approach well before I was in weapons range. As soon the chasing Heartless crossed the invisible line, the ship started blasting them with every weapon they had - and I spotted a Corridor of Darkness opening up just next to it.

With one last burst of speed, I dashed into the portal, and despite immediately putting on the brakes I swiftly crashed into the other wall. Or, more precisely, into the pile of mattresses and pillows that someone had thoughtfully piled in front of said wall.

"Ow," I mumbled.

"Y'know," Riku mused as he returned to the ship, closing the dark portal behind him, "In retrospect, I could have just had the one portal, let you slow down in the Dark Realm, and then let you onto the ship. I'll try to think faster next time."

"It's fine, thanks anyway - oh, but do keep that two-portal trick in mind in case we ever find a scenario where it actually is useful."

"And now," Kairi added, "there's a bit of an obvious q-"

"Holy crap Tempest what were you thinking trying to pilot a Keyblade Glider through the Gummi Lanes, me and Riku did that once and we almost died, it's super dangerous!" Sora shouted.

"... Yeah, basically that," Kairi finished.

"Well, you see, what I was thinking was, 'oh shit, they're gonna go after Naminé like right now, we gotta go fast, why did I think Castle Oblivion was the best place to send her'."

Riku blinked. "Oh. I see. So you needed to tell us there was a change of plan as quickly as possible -"

"- and without using the communicators we had just established were insecure," Kairi finished, nodding.

"... What's Castle Oblivion, again?" Sora asked.

"Wait what." I retraced the timeline in my head. "... Oh. Oh jeez. You actually don't know."

"I... was going to tell him," Riku said. "But somehow I never remembered to. We had a few months to ourselves after beating Xemnas and I... just never got around to it."

"Hey, we were focusing on other things then, remember?" Kairi said.

"That's true," Riku and Sora both said simultaneously, smiling slightly.

I let them have a moment and then cleared my throat. "Well, uh, I think Riku knows the most about it," I lied - actually, was it a lie? I barely remembered Chain of Memories and Riku had spent a year in the castle helping Sora regain his memories. He might legitimately know more than I do.

I had gotten distracted by this thought and forgot to finish my sentence, but luckily it just looked like I was giving Riku an opening to provide the explanation, which he dutifully took. "It's a castle that the Organization was looking into. They know some stuff about it, but it's not really theirs, and there's a lot that's unknown to them. Naminé's probably safer than you think, Tempest - she has access to chambers that the Organization can't get into. Sora, remember when you lost a year, just after defeating Xehanort's Heartless? That secret chamber is where you spent most of it, while Naminé fixed your memories."

"Oh! Is that what we're supposed to thank her for?" Sora asked. Riku nodded.

"Hmm, Riku, how do you know the Organization can't get into these chambers?"

"Because they only work for Naminé. She already knew they wouldn't work for the Organization - they had thrown a fit about that when they realized - but when she tried showing me early on how to operate them, the mechanisms wouldn't do anything unless she pushed the buttons personally."

"Huh."

"Once we figured that out, we relocated to an area where most of the doorways worked for both of us, but there were nearby rooms that only worked for her that she could quickly retreat into - we never ended up actually needing to do that, but y'know. Oh, and for whatever reason, a lot of mechanisms wouldn't work for either of us."

I pondered this for a bit. I recalled that Castle Oblivion was really the everted form of the Land of Departure, and it was supposed to be incomprehensible to anyone but the one who had everted it - Aqua, in this case. But it seemed that the weakest and least-secure of the mechanisms were mistaking Naminé for her - no, the second-least-secure, because the actual least-secure mechanisms were the ones letting anyone through. If there were varying levels of security, then...

"This is just a hypothesis, so I'm not a hundred percent on it, but... let's say I'd bet a hundred munny that some of the mechanisms Naminé couldn't use will respond to Kairi. But not all of them, and definitely not the most important - we'll still need to bring in Aqua for those."

Riku frowned very loudly. "What on earth gives you the idea that Kairi has anything to do with it?"

"... You mean aside from the fact that Naminé is her Nobody?"

"Yeah, and how do you know that? None of us have mentioned it to you at any point."

"Er - the Organization let it slip when I was with them."

"Didn't Axel say they had explicit orders not to even mention her existence in your presence? You said you eavesdropped on them, but what reason would they even have to mention something this specific?"

"Wh- Riku, why are you being like this suddenly?"

"You show up suddenly knowing stuff you have no reason to, you insinuate yourself into our circles, and this Points of Shadow thing? You say you're trying to seal them, but you're 2 for 2 on blowing them up. Why should -"

Riku stopped suddenly as Kairi put her hand on his arm. "Tempest," she said, "what is it you're hiding?"

"That's... a rather broad question..."

She shook her head. "Look, I've noticed that you're not a particularly open person. You don't volunteer information about yourself, but you'll respond freely when someone prompts you. I get that that's different from deliberately hiding - but you are deliberately hiding something, and it's making it hard to trust you."

Well. When she put it like that, there's only one thing they could be thinking of. The problem, though... "I'm... well, the thing you're referring to... I keep quiet about it because I don't understand it myself. So I can't know if it's safe to tell people."

Sora looked between the three of us. "So, wait, is this about that 'unfair advantage when it comes to knowing things' you mentioned earlier?"

I blinked. I had totally forgotten, but that was something I had said not all that long ago. "Yes. It's exactly that thing."

Sora nodded. "Riku, I think we can trust her."

"Wait, just like that? I- I mean, not that I'm saying Sora's wrong! But... how does that tell you you can trust me?"

Sora grinned. "Let's say I have an unfair advantage of my own."

"What? Hey, what kind of unfair advantage can you have over me? My unfair advantage doesn't say anything about that!"

"Can't tell ya, it's a secret!"

"Are you trolling me? Sora, is this actually a secret or are you trolling me right now?"

Riku facepalmed as Sora continued teasing me. Conveniently, the autopilot chimed right about then. "Well, I'm gonna land the ship while you two mess around. Or actually, you should probably strap yourselves in - given that this is unfamiliar territory and kind of controlled by the Organization, it might be a bumpy landing."

XXXXXXXXXX

Conveniently, we managed to find a landing point several floors up. Riku said that Naminé's hiding place was on the top floor, so skipping more than half the climb was nice.

Also convenient was that Riku had held on to all his room cards from his first time through, as well as Sora's - while the memory effects of the castle had been faked by Naminé, the card mechanics really were part of the location. In fact, the moment I set foot in the first room, I felt a deck of attack cards appear in my pocket.

But I didn't get a chance to use them, as Riku managed to construct a path out of nothing but Calm Bounty and Moment's Respite rooms. At least I got enough cards to cast all my spells, if need be.

Thankfully, that wasn't going to happen today. We reached Naminé's hiding place without any trouble.

"Time to go somewhere safer?" she guessed.

"Mm-hmm..." I stared at the blank Replica in the memory pod. Why did I want this? There's a reason... an important one...

"Do you remember yet?" Naminé asked.

"Not yet..." I admitted.

"Is this related to the thing you can't remember that you got that Violant ink for?" Riku asked.

"... I think it is, actually. Hmm. What do a blank Replica and 'not Sora' have in common...?"

"It might help to bring Roxas here, after you rescue him," Naminé offered. "When... the other Naminé was reconstructing Sora's memories, she encountered problems with... the other Roxas. If there's a connection..."

"And by 'here' you mean 'wherever you end up moving to', right? On account of how Castle Oblivion is the second place the Organization is going to look for you?"

"Okay, obvious question," Kairi interrupted. "Where is Naminé moving to?"

We pondered that for a moment.

"My first thought is Yen Sid's tower," I said, "but after Xaldin's attack maybe that's less safe than I believed."

"No, I think it'll work," Kairi said. "Between me, Lea, Master Aqua, and Master Yen Sid, I think we can keep things under control."

"Didn't Xaldin blow up like half the tower?" Sora asked.

"Yes - we think he found a loophole in the wards. They're meant to defend against those who intend harm against the tower's occupants, but Xaldin only attacked the tower itself - until you showed up, Tempest, and you never qualified as an occupant - and he did it for the purpose of distracting us. So the wards didn't work on him. Master Yen Sid closed that loophole, though, so something like that won't work again."

"I see. I guess that loophole wouldn't have been useful to them anyway, if what they want is to capture Naminé. What do you think?" I said, turning to the girl in question.

She closed her eyes in thought for a few moments. "Well, Yen Sid's tower does seem like a good place to be, especially in light of..." She held out her hand and summoned a Kingdom Key. "... this new development."

"Whoa! Since when have you had that?" I exclaimed. (Sora, Riku, and Kairi were expressing similar sentiments.)

"Not long. Something about holding your Keyblade, Tempest... I realized when you called yours back that I still had one."

"Did lending you my Keyblade count as a Bequeathing? Or did you already have a Keyblade and somehow that awakened it?"

"Honestly, considering my unusual circumstances, it could be both. All I know is... for the first time, I really feel like the multiverse wants me to be my own person."

To the anon from a while back - I don't know if you're even still following this, but it suddenly occurred to me that "The Havoc Side of the Force", a Star Wars/Harry Potter crossover by Tsu Doh Nimh, is probably right up your alley. Obviously Harry isn't technically a self-insert (though he's divergent enough that one could consider him an OC stand-in), but Star Wars technically is Disney now. It's in my favorites if you want to check it out.

Obligatory reminder that all fanfic writers love reviews, and... well, I imagine most fanfic writers love wild speculation, but I still haven't confirmed that. But anyway, I definitely do.