Naminé noticed the involuntary shudder that ran through Yuna, Rikku, and Paine's bodies as a Dark Corridor appeared in the courtyard of Hollow Bastion. She supposed the reaction couldn't be helped, considering the three had worked for Maleficent briefly in an attempt to break the curse turning them into fairies. Considering they had turned on her around the time Sora had fought the battle of 1000 Heartless, and the witch was far from forgiving, they probably would always be on their toes whenever a corridor appeared. However, this time they needn't have worried, as the figures that emerged from the portal were far from antagonistic.

Lea's voice carried through as he led his group through the portal. "So, these are the old stomping grounds. Isa and I will be happy to give you the tour once we finish signing all of the paperwork, but until then I guess you can just hang out here until Naminé—" The redhead turned around and saw Naminé waving at him, so he quickly amended his statement. "Well, since she's here first, you can just hang out with Naminé until Riku's group arrives."

With that, the two oldest members headed out to city hall while the rest of the group coming from Twilight Town entered the courtyard of Radiant Garden's castle. Lea, Roxas, and Xion were all wearing the clothes gifted to them by the three fairies, while Isa was wearing his old organization cloak. Behind them came Hayner, Pence, and Olette, each wearing what appeared to be a borrowed cloak and carrying a Struggle Bat. While Roxas and Xion's cloaks seemed to be decent fits on Hayner and Olette, Pence wasted no time in taking off the awkwardly fitting cloak that must have been borrowed from one of the adults.

While the official lessons wouldn't start until the whole group arrived, Yuna, Rikku, and Paine flew over to their first three students to arrive. While they apparently introduced themselves and started figuring out more of what the Twilight Town trio was already experienced with and what they were hoping to learn, Naminé turned to the two Keyblade Wielders.

"Thanks for coming out here just for this. Now, you said you wanted my help with something?"

Roxas chuckled nervously. "Well, it wasn't a big deal coming here, and it will be nice to see where Axel grew up anyway. But, there's been something...strange...happening with me and Xion… we've been having these weird dreams lately…"

Naminé's eyes widened. This hopefully wasn't going the direction she thought it was going. "Have you talked with Lea about them?"

Xion sighed. "Well, it's hard to bring up. It would be really uncomfortable talking with him about this…"

Naminé blushed. "Listen, I'm glad you trust me, but I really think I'm the last person to go to for advice on handling the adjustment to human puberty and relationships…"

Both Roxas and Xion blushed furiously and yelled out "WHAT!" in unison, causing everyone else to stop what they were doing and look at the three Keyblade wielders. Naminé quickly apologized. "Sorry! I just had some very awkward conversations recently and I guess that was on the top of my mind. What is actually happening?"

As Roxas and Xion recovered while Hayner, Pence, and Olette seemed to chuckle at some inside joke, Naminé eventually heard the story. "We've been having dreams about Sora again, but not anything that makes sense from any of our old memories. Sometimes he's in a city at night, and sometimes he's in a dark world that seems to only have water and sky, but there's always this shadowy figure we can make out that seems to have one red and one blue eye…"

Naminé gasped. "Only water and sky? That sounds like the Final World! Although I don't know about any dark version of it… this might be something we can use! How can I help?"

Xion picked up explaining. "Well, we aren't sure, but we were hoping you could use your powers on our memories to draw out anything we might have missed. It's just difficult because this is starting to sound a lot like what was happening towards the end of our time together in the Organization, and we really would like to avoid a repeat of that…"

Considering the role she had played in the events that led to Roxas and Xion disappearing and Axel losing his friends, Naminé couldn't tell if she was feeling more guilt or sadness at the potential repeat. "Okay, I'll be able to help you, but we're going to need the technology still in the old mansion. I might need to ask Ansem for help getting it working again, but I'd rather not have him around while we do this. And we're only going to have one of you asleep, and only for an hour at a time. I am NOT going to let anything get far enough that we see any repeats from last time."

With that out of the way, the three Keyblade wielders turned their attention back to the rest of the group. Pence and Rikku were talking excitedly over some machine Rikku must have brought out, while Olette was paying rapt attention to what Yuna was telling her. In contrast, Hayner seemed to have jumped right into sparring with Paine—if you could consider Hayner's repeated charges and Paine's effortless disarming of him sparring. Knowing they'd just have to wait for the group from Destiny Islands to arrive, Naminé summoned Way to the Dawn while Roxas and Xion summoned their own Keyblades, deciding to get a little training of their own in.


As the Gummi Ship descended into the courtyard, Naminé dismissed her Keyblade and bent over panting. While she put up a decent showing in their three-way spar, it was clear she was still behind Roxas and Xion in terms of skill. Of course, she was working with around a year less experience than they had, so she was just happy she hadn't gotten eliminated right away and could actually somewhat keep up with them. She made a mental note to ask Lea to spar later to see how she compared to another newer wielder, but when a disheveled Riku walked down the ramp from the Gummi Ship Naminé's attention immediately went elsewhere.

Riku's eyes were slightly panicked as he hurriedly walked towards Naminé and grabbed her shoulders. "Whatever you do, do not let Tidus and Selphie talk with Scrooge, unless you want to see the start of a war with the moogles or a collapse of the worldwide economy."

Naminé wasn't sure what the reasoning behind that demand was, but in his hurry Riku forgot to keep his voice down and Tidus yelled as he walked down the ramp. "Oh come on, I can't be the only one thinking it! If a decent portion of those asteroids in the Ocean Between have gummi materials or rare ore deposits, and we are among the few people that have access to them, why is it a bad idea to just gather as much material as possible? It's practically free money floating out there!"

Riku groaned, especially on seeing Yuna, Rikku, and Paine's eyes light up at the thought of easy money. "Yes, until the sudden increase in supply from an unknown source suddenly devalues everything and you can't explain how you got that money without breaking the world order. You can take a little as you need it, but we're not stripmining the Ocean Between just to make a quick buck."

Naminé could practically hear Selphie rolling her eyes. "Fine, but can we at least take some time to invest in a larger Gummi Ship? We already had to take different groups just to get here, and I'd rather not find a situation where we've got people three to a seat in there. Get us the equivalent of a bus if you have to, but at least give us something!"

Riku sighed. "Fine, I'll make sure to collect some extra blocks on my way to and from San Fransokyo. I think I'll have some room left over after picking up the microbots… assuming we'll be able to get a better excuse to keep people away from wherever we want to set up the next training course. Anyway, I'll let you get to your training. Ladies, feel free to be as harsh as you want with these slackers, and Naminé, if you need any backup I'm just a call away."

Naminé felt she probably wouldn't have blushed at that if Tidus hadn't let out a wolf whistle at the declaration. However, she was saved from any further embarrassment as Paine called out, "Deal with your teenaged drama on your own time. We've got work to do."

With that, Riku made his exit, and Tidus and Selphie joined Hayner, Pence, and Olette standing at attention as Yuna started the lesson. "Okay, so you all want to learn how to use magic, but you're starting from nothing. Luckily for you, the Gullwings are going to be the perfect teachers. I'm Yuna, and I'm what's known as a Summoner back on my home world, meaning I have extensive training in the manipulation of pure magic for all sorts of spells." Gesturing to the swordswoman beside her, she continued. "Paine here is more of an expert in enchantments, or imbuing her weapon with different magical effects." As a way of demonstrating, Paine silently activated Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder Edge in succession along her sword. While that seemed to impress the students, Yuna continued. "Meanwhile, Rikku—"

The blonde fairy immediately cut in. "I'm more of an innovator than someone along a traditional branch of magic. For instance, with a little spell I created…" Suddenly, she pulled a jump rope out from behind her back. She just stared at it in shock. "Okay, that's new. The Disarm spell is supposed to steal a weapon…"

Selphie suddenly seemed to recognize the jump rope in question. "Hey, that's mine! And excuse me for living on a peaceful world and not having anything else to fight with. I was really good with it back when everyone was using wooden swords, but it's not my fault Tidus got a real sword and everyone else got Keyblades."

Rikku sighed as she returned the stolen weapon. "Hey, it's fine. Although if you want to learn to fight, maybe we could get you some real weapons in addition to magic lessons. Maybe some nunchucks? They're basically like a much shorter, much deadlier jump rope…"

Yuna cleared her throat. "Getting back on topic, we've got more going for us than just a diverse skill set. Back home, we ran afoul of a powerful curse that turned us into these forms. When that happened, we lost all of our magic abilities and had to relearn everything, so we're probably the best teachers for starting magic since we all had to go through it twice. That's why the council thought we'd be the best choices to help you."

Paine snorted. "And it counts as community service hours towards our sentence, so we'd be fools not to accept."

Rikku started mumbling under her breath, but her voice still easily carried. "Sure, we can be forgiven for working under Maleficent since we were only doing that to break the curse, but we can't be forgiven for the charges of attempted extortion, attempted embezzlement, and public indecency for the same reasons? Besides, how can we even be guilty of attempted embezzlement if we were never trusted with funds in the first place?"

All the gathered students started shooting glances at each other upon hearing this revelation about their teachers, until Selphie finally groaned. "Fine, I guess we get to learn from criminals. Not exactly what I expected when I was thinking I'd do anything to be able to help, but not a dealbreaker."

Yuna tried to get things back on track. "Anyway, since all of you are starting from nothing, we won't be sure what approach will work best for you, so we're going to be rotating for a bit until we find something that clicks. Rikku's approach will probably benefit most from one-on-one time, but Paine and I can each take two students at once. So, let's get started!"


Naminé turned to a blank page in her sketchpad and resumed drawing. While Roxas and Xion had joined Lea and Isa shortly after the magic lessons began, she hadn't had any other plans and decided to continue trying to see what her powers could show her. So far she had gotten brief flashes of the city where Sora was fighting the mysterious enemy with silver hair and mismatched eyes, but none of her sketches had come out detailed enough to be really identifiable. Luckily, she had plenty of pages left, and she found the background noise of the lessons to be a better environment than the pure silence she usually worked in. While she heard the various expressions of frustration or attempted guidance, it was easy to just let it flow past her without drawing too much attention. As she let her powers once again flow, she could barely place the names to the voices as another image began forming in her mind.

Sora, stumbling to the ground and barely catching himself with one hand: "How could…"

Pence's pleading voice: "Could I try working with one of your machina instead? I've always been more of a tech person than a hands on person."

A deep voice cutting through the darkness: "Sorry, but I don't lose."

Paine's disinterested drawl. "You know, I enchanted your sword with Cure magic to try and give you a feel for it so even if you hit me it wouldn't amount to much, but I think that sword's a bit too big for you. Can you even swing it properly?"

The sound of ice cracking, except in reverse as crystal flowed up Sora's arm and engulfed his whole body…

"AHHH!" Selphie's scream cut through Naminé's focus, just as she noticed she had finished drawing Sora while trapped in his crystal prison. She immediately turned towards the fellow resident of Destiny Islands, only to see Yuna smiling up at her as Selphie seemed to try and regain her balance, only to keep tipping since instead of standing on the ground she was now floating around a foot above it.

Yuna clapped. "Congratulations! You just cast your first spell! Admittedly the Float spell isn't always the most useful apart from avoiding ground based traps, but if you can remember that feeling and recreate it you'll be able to channel your mana into different elements."

Selphie clasped her hands together as she still kept wobbling back and forth. "Yeah, great. Will casting it again undo the spell? Because as helpful as it is to be earthquake-proof, I highly doubt it's worth the potential airsi—"

Before Selphie could finish her sentence, Naminé felt like she had suddenly been thrown into a Dark Corridor as the oppressive feeling of darkness filled the castle, which seemed to be trying to rip itself off of the ground. While the tremors quickly subsided, the cloying feeling of wrongness in what should have been a world full of light remained as Naminé quickly got back to her feet and cast a Curaga over the group to heal any injuries they might have sustained from the fall. While the new students were all glancing around in confusion, Naminé noticed the Gullwings all had their weapons drawn and had a hardened look cross their eyes as they also seemed to be ready for a fight.

Selphie nervously chuckled. "Please tell me I didn't jinx anything with…"

"Quiet," Paine interrupted. "Something's wrong, and you either need to get off world or stay out of our way." Paine's typical bluntness was one thing, but when Rikku quietly cast Dispel on Selphie to let her return to the ground the new students clearly got the message.

Tidus brandished his sword, a massive black broadsword with a red design on its blade and a T-shaped hilt. Naminé noticed a look of confusion cross Yuna's face as the islander spoke. "Well, we gave our cloaks back to Roxas and them, so we're stuck here. Know any place in the castle we could hunker down? I might have a real weapon but I'm nowhere near good enough with this to be anything more than a hindrance in a fight."

Naminé kept Way to the Dawn ready as she answered. "Without knowing what's happening, it's hard to say. We might be safe enough here, or we might need to go deeper inside. Without knowing what's going on, it's hard to say what the best way to approach this is. It might be something we can fight, or it might be some weird natural phenomenon…"

Naminé knew that last part was mainly wishful thinking, which was only confirmed when alarms started ringing throughout the castle and a recording of Leon's voice began echoing through the courtyard.

"Attention all citizens, this is Mayor Leonhart. Our city is under attack. Take shelter immediately. Representatives of the council will be working to lead non-combatants to more permanent shelter."

Naminé didn't have to wonder about the nature of the attackers for too long, as only a few seconds passed from hearing the announcement to when a handful of pools of light and far more pools of shadow started appearing outside the castle gates. Naminé half expected this to start a repeat of the last battle she was involved in at Radiant Garden, with the Orochi Spawn attacking and some random Heartless thrown in, but when figures emerged from the pools she realized there was more at play here. Instead of snakes, the pools of light brought forth unicorns that looked like they were about half as tall as she was. And instead of random Heartless, all of the creatures coming through the pools of darkness bore replica Keyblades, identifying them all as Darklings.

Naminé knew from Xion and Kairi's experience that a single Darkling would be more difficult to fight than a High Soldier or a Neoshadow, and now she was facing an army of them. More worryingly, unlike the Orochi Spawn that had mindlessly targeted any darkness for attacks, the unicorns seemed ready to fight alongside the corrupted Keyblade wielders. Even with Yuna, Rikku, and Paine helping her, this would be a difficult fight to get through if it was just them. However, they also had five non-combatants to watch over, so Naminé knew she couldn't just blindly rush into the fight. Quickly coming up with a plan, she decided to cut her losses and waste some magic so she could better focus on the battle to come.

"Protectra! Shellra! Hastera!" Instead of focusing the spells directly on herself like she had when using them sparring against Riku, she let the magic spread over all of her allies. While she trusted the Gullwings to know what that meant, she turned her focus briefly to her other friends. "That should help protect you a little bit if you get hit by crossfire and let you get out of here more quickly. Now, run into the castle and find someplace to hide. I'll find you later."

Naminé returned her gaze to the now charging army, only to notice Rikku laughing. "Well, looks like we've got another support mage on our hands. Can't fall behind now, can I? Valor! Faith!"

Naminé winced. "Don't cast Faith! The unicorns absorb...light…" She trailed off as instead of seeing the expected pillars of light a red aura appeared around Paine while a blue aura appeared around Yuna. While Yuna raised her staff, Rikku shrugged. "I said Faith, not Holy. All this does is give Yuna here a boost, for—"

The summoner cut off her companion with a cry of "Kiloflare!" The ensuing burst of flame might not quite have lived up to Aqua's Mega Flare or the suicidally destructive power of Donald's Zettaflare, but it still blasted back the charging army and left them scorched. They seemed to be barely hanging on, which didn't last longer as Paine called out, "Blizzard Rave!"

The swordswoman then launched herself through the stunned enemies with her sword coated in ice magic. It resembled an ice variation of Sonic Blade, or maybe more closely the Absolute Zero shotlock documented in the Land of Departure, but it was enough to finish off the first ranks of enemies before Paine returned to the side of her companions. Unfortunately, more enemies rose up to replace the Darklings that fell under the initial assault.

Naminé was ready to throw herself into the fray when spikes of stone burst among the ranks of enemies, impaling most of them. Naminé turned to see Aeleus with his Skysplitter impaled in the ground, only for the former Taciturn Stalwart to drag the blade through the earth with a grunt. This sent a wave of stone rolling from just outside the castle walls, creating another barrier and leaving a seemingly bottomless fissure between the created bulwark and the undisturbed castle grounds. Aeleus raised his Skysplitter but seemed to remain ready for battle.

"Go find Ienzo. We'll hold the gate but enemies may spawn within the castle itself."

Rikku tilted her head. "We?" However, before she could answer Aeleus's stone wall exploded, revealing a golden winged unicorn that seemed to have demolished it with a single thrust of its horn. It continued the charge and leapt the fissure, but before it could land inside the castle a dragon created from winds bit into its neck and threw it back. As the two beasts wrestled, Dilan used his spears to direct further wind gusts through the enemy forces. "Yes, we. But we believe their real target is Kairi, and it is imperative we protect her. Ienzo will be able to give you more details, but hurry!"

The Gullwings immediately followed the orders of the castle guard, and Naminé only hesitated for a second before joining them. While she hadn't interacted much with Lexaeus during her stay in Castle Oblivion and had never met Xaldin personally, she knew the two Nobodies were extremely powerful and judging from all the other examples of recompleted former Organization members that strength was bound to carry over to their restored forms. She'd just have to trust the two to be able to handle the opposing forces while she figured out what was happening.