Chapter 3: The Two Realms

The pathway we took after passing through that corridor was strange. I'd rather not dwell on it. I thought I would air for a moment. Finally, we stepped out of another passage, entering a lavish, lovely little garden.

"Is this a courtyard?" I asked.

"You could call it that," Sora replied.

I could tell that Sora was serious about this garden being like a courtyard. Although, to be honest, I don't think I've seen a courtyard like this one before.

"Is your friend here, Sora? It would help to get some answers about where I am."

"King Mickey should be here," Kairi said. "If not, there's-"

"Sora! Riku! Kairi!" The new voice surprised me. I turned around and there was a goofy-looking dog dressed as a knight coming up to us.

Sora immediately gave a huge smile full of happiness as soon as he laid his eyes on the dog. From the looks it, I could tell that Sora definitely knew who that dog was.

"Goofy! It's so great to see you again!" Sora exclaimed in an excited manner.

So his name is Goofy. There is so much about Sora and his friends that I don't know.

"Gawrsh, it's great to see all of you!" His name definitely fit him. This guy was pretty goofy.

"Goofy, is Mickey in at the moment?" Riku asked.

"Why yes, he's in the study right now." Then, Goofy seemed to have noticed me. "Who's your new friend, Sora?"

"Goofy, I'd like you to meet Sly Cooper. He's from a world that none of us have been to before!"

I then waved in Goofy's direction. While he does give off a very goofy vibe to him, he does seem like a very nice guy. Goofy then looked at me with a very intrigued look on his face.

"He's from a world that we've never visited before? Gawrsh, that sounds interesting!" Goofy said.

"He travelled from his world to the Destiny Islands." Sora said. "We were hoping Mickey could help us find out why."

"Goofy, what are you doing?!" a loud, almost obnoxious voice rang. It was so high pitched and gaggled. "His Majesty has ordered us!" A small, white duck dressed as a wizard marched from the building. I almost cracked up.

"Hey, Donald!" Sora greeted with his chipper tone.

The duck, who apparently has the name Donald, immediately gave a look of surprise as soon as he heard Sora's voice.

Another one of Sora's friends... This will take some getting used to.

"Sora?" Donald turned Sora's way. Then, he grinned. "Well, what do you know? Great to see you, Riku and Kairi again!" Donald made his way over to us and looked at me with a suspricious stare. "Who's this?"

"Donald, this is Sly. He's not from any world we've been to before," Sora explained. "And don't worry. We can trust him."

I waved at Donald, though a bit more nervously than I did with Goofy. While the suspicious look he gave me did soften up a bit, I just couldn't help but feel a little bit uneasy.

"Didn't Donald say we are being ordered somewhere? Shouldn't we get going?" Riku pointed out.

I was going to meet the king. I was feeling very nervous, especially in the presence of Riku and Donald.

"Yeah, you're right, Riku. We shouldn't keep him waiting any longer," said Sora.

"Well, what're we waiting for? Let's get going, everyone!" said Goofy.

We headed out to the study where the king was, with me still feeling nervous.

I wondered what this king looked like. Stereotypical lion? A rooster (better behaved and not selfish like Tsao)? Even if neither of them, he must be a powerful figure.

We turned a corner, which led to a large door. I felt myself shake a little in my boots. This King wasn't a giant, was he?

Donald pushed a section of the door. I didn't think he could push it open... until a smaller, more reasonable door popped open. Now I was just confused.

Donald gestered us to follow him through the door. On the other side of it was what looked like a gigantic library of sorts.

There was a desk in the back of the room and I could hear a quil moving along paper.

I looked towards the desk where I saw a mouse sitting behind the desk and writing on a piece of paper. I glanced at the others and I could tell by the looks of their faces that they knew who the mouse was.

Could this mouse actually be the king that we were told about? That's the first thing that came into my mind as I moved my gaze back towards the mouse.

"Is this the king you were telling me about, Sora?" Hopefully he could help me find out what's going on.

Sora glanced at me and nodded. Okay, this was surprising. I was, no offense to his Majesty, expecting a bigger guy.

The king looked up from his parchment in knowledge of our presence.

"Well, hi there, everybody! I'm so glad that you all came here today!" said the king in a cheery manner. He seems to be a very nice guy.

"It's nice to see you too Mickey," said Sora, "Something important must be going on for you to call us here."

"Gosh, you get words fast." Then, the king saw me.

"Y-your Majesty," I quickly greeted, bowing as good as I could without shivering a little.

"This is Sly, Your Majesty," Sora introduced me. Again. What's with me today?

I couldn't stop myself shivering out of fear when the king looked at me for a moment. Suddenly, that anxious feeling slowly melted away when he suddenly gave me a very kind smile.

"Sly, huh? Well, it's very nice to meet you! My name's Mickey, the king of this castle! It's very nice to meet you!" said the king, whose name was apparently Mickey.

"Nice to meet you too. I'm apparently from a world Sora's never been to before, and we were hoping you could help us figure out what's going on."

"A world Sora doesn't know of. This is certainly interesting." He then looked like a thought struck him and he began to ponder. After a few seconds, he looked back at me with a serious expression before turning to Sora.

"Sly's sudden appearance may be tied into what I'm looking into."

Sora then tilted his head a bit in curiousity.

"What you're looking into? What exactly do you mean, Your Majesty?" Sora asked.

Mickey researching something? If it's related to how I got here, I need to know!

"I had recently returned from Master Yen Sid's tower. He had called me for something urgent. Apparently, time and space had been slightly distorted."

"Distorted?" Kairi asked.

"He asked me to look into this. From what I found so far, there was some sort of burst of mysterious power that created a small wormhole from another world to another. Something of immense energy."

"So this burst of power ended up creating another a wormhole between two other worlds... But what exactly could these two worlds be?" Riku asked.

"Well, from what Sora said about Sly coming from a world that none of us has ever been to, I have reason to believe that these two worlds may be our world and Sly's world," said Mickey.

"I think I know what made this burst of power. A jewel I got during a meteor shower a while back was looked at by a friend of mine, and he noticed a huge amount of power coming from it. Could that power take me home?" I told them. Sora turned to me in great surprise.

"What did you say?" he asked. "A gem during a meteor shower?"

"Yeah. I have it right here." I pulled the gem out of my bag, but it felt a little different than when I held it earlier. Everyone in the room was surprised, even Riku.

"What is that?" Donald questioned. I could only shrug at him.

"There's two of them?" Kairi gasped. Wait. Two?

"Two? Two what?"

"Look, Sly." To my surprise, Sora pulled out a cyan version of the jewel I was holding.

I couldn't help but gasp in surprise.

"You have a jewel like I do, Sora?!" I asked with a voice full of surprise.

"You bet. I got this jewel during a meteor shower just like you did, Sly. Other than the fact that they're both different colors, they look exactly the same." said Sora.

Then I remembered how I saved Murray. "Dark creatures were attacking my homeworld, and to save one of my friends I ran towards him with jewel in hand, and when I open my eyes I see my cane transformed into the sword you use, Sora."

The room was filled with screams of shock.

"No way!" Sora exclaimed.

"You wielded a Keyblade?!" Riku asked.

"How is that possible?!" Donald shouted. "There's no way Keyblade wielders existed in your world!"

"I don't know how that happened either. I just wanted to save my friends and all of a sudden, it was there. My cane looked different, I could feel power rush through and before I knew it, I had slain those monsters."

Everyone in the room stared at me with the most shocked looks I've ever seen. To be honest, I couldn't really blame them for doing that. It was a complete shock to me when it happened to me when I was in my world.

The connection between me and Sora just keeps getting bigger. I didn't expect this at all when I got the jewel.

"Hmm... This is a strange situation we're in. I think we better start at the beginning of when all of this happened," King Mickey suggested.

I went ahead and told everyone in the study about the meteor shower on my world, the jewel, meeting Sora, and the Heartless attacking me world. They were most shocked by there being Heartless on my world.

I couldn't exactly blame any of them for being so shocked, though. Admittedly, I thought I would've seen the last of those things when I had that dream with Sora in it.

"There were Heartless in your world, Sly?!" Sora asked with a shocked voice.

I told Sora, "I have no idea how they got to my world, but yes, there were some Heartless there."

"This isn't good," Goofy pointed out. "If no Keyblade wielders live on Sly's world, the Heartless could destroy it!"

"Destroy?!" I exclaimed. I was horrified. Those things could destroy Earth?

The others looked at each other with worried expressions on their faces. It was obvious that they knew what the Heartless were capable of doing.

"This is really bad, everyone. Unless we can manage to get to Sly's world in time, who knows how long it'll be until the Heartless manage to destroy that world!" said Mickey.

"Gawrsh, but other than that wormhole that brought Sly here, how're we supposed to get there?" asked Goofy.

I said, "If that wormhole brought me here, maybe it can bring us to my home. That's my best idea."

"Well, likely, you first were in a bit of trouble," Riku stated. "You said you were being pulled down into darkness before you woke up on our island. I highly doubt we can replicate the experience."

"That is true. Unless there's some device that creates wormholes..." Now I was worrying more.

Oh. I forgot the reason we're here. "Your Majesty, do you know of a world called Earth?"

The king and his subjects gave me confused looks before the king gave my question some thought.

"Earth... Earth... Where have I heard that name before?"

"Never heard of it," Donald said with a tone I didn't like.

"Sorry, no bells ringing here," Goofy added.

"I believe... Master Yen Sid told me about a world called Earth, along with many other worlds," King Mickey finally answered.

"There's actually a world out there known as Earth, Your Majesty?" Kairi asked, her eyes widened up from surprise.

"Well, like I said, only Master Yen Sid told me about a world with that name, but I believe it's very likely that such a world like that one exists, especially since Sly's from a world with the same name," King Mickey explained.

This "Master Yen Sid" sounds like a smart guy. If I ever get back here, I want to meet him.

"So if Master Yen Sid knows of Sly's world, he may know a way to get there," Sora said.

"It's possible. Unfortunately, Master Yen Sid closed the gateway to his tower after I left. So we'll have to unlock the gateway manually."

"Gateway? Manually?"

"You see Sly, the world's are connected loosely by gateways in space," Kairi explained. "You can use special vehicles to travel between these worlds. There's also different methods of the same thing, but the vehicle method is the safest."

"So if we want to reach Master Yen Sid's tower manually, we'll have to go to Radiant Garden first," Riku pointed out.

I tilted my head in confusion as soon as I heard the name of the place that Riku had mentioned.

"I'm sorry, but what exactly is this Radiant Garden place?" I asked. "It's definitely a place I've never heard of back on Earth."

Sora said, "It's an important world for us to visit, one that's been the home of many people important to our adventures."

"You sure are friends with a lot of "aliens" as you put them."

"'Aliens'?" Donald deadpanned while giving Sora an unamused face. I couldn't help but chuckle.

"Well, what're we waitin' for, everybody?" Goofy asked. "If we're gonna get to Master Yen Sid's in order to find out how we can get to Sly's world before the Heartless destroys it, then we better get goin' to Radiant Garden now before it's too late!"

"I trust you to help me get home in time, Sora." Hopefully everybody home is OK.

Sora gave me that cheerful, assuring smile.

"It's a promise."

At the moment he said that, I had the gut feeling that this will be my longest adventure ever.

End Chapter