Hello everyone. I apologize for the massive delay. I thought I was getting back into the Kingdom Hearts series when I started writing this, but a Steam Sale let me get Oblivion, which I ended up playing quite a bit. Combine that with my "practice" at giving detailed descriptions turning into me spending an hour staring at the anatomy of a shoe, and I ended up burning myself out real quick. This is why I took so long to publish this chapter, and why it's so short. I was originally going to have this chapter run from Sora's awakening to the start of the first Disney Castle cutscene, but instead, we're getting a full chapter for the first Destiny Island gameplay section. Just as well, as Establishing the Normal World is an important skill, and this is partially done for writing practice anyways. Don't worry about another big hiatus though, I fully intend to at least get to the end of the first Traverse Town visit by the end of the year, even if I write something else as well. I preserved the original Author's Notes from my first attempt at writing this between the lines below, so most of my humble thanks for reading this are contained therein, as is some other information. While the number of incoming views has slowed down significantly, I still received far more than I ever expected to. For one last time, I have to thank everyone who dropped by and read this.

At the time I have started writing this, it has been five hours since I uploaded the first chapter of this story. According to the story stats, I already have 13 views in the short time it has been since I posted, when I was only expecting 4-5. Admittedly, one of those might have been it counting the time I clicked the URL to see what the story looked like as everyone else saw it, but that is still 7 more viewers than I had expected to see by now. Thank you, everyone who gave my story a chance, even if you dropped the story after the first author's note and are not reading this, that still means my not-so-great first attempt at a summary made you curious enough to read the author's note explaining everything. Aside from that, all I have to mention is that it is very unlikely that any author's note from this point on will be anywhere near as long as the first one, as that was just as long as it needed to be to explain everything. Case in point, this author's note is already over. Enjoy the show.

The spikey-haired boy awakened to the bright sunny sky of a warm summer day. He sat up and looked at the sea in front of him, before lying back down. Before he could get comfortable, a familiar red-haired girl startled him when she leaned over him. "Woah!" He exclaimed. He quickly got up as his friend laughed. "Give me a break, Kairi." Kairi was a girl about the same age as her spikey-haired friend. She wore a sleeveless white top with purple straps over a sleeveless black shirt with white trim. She had a lavender-colored skirt that covered half of her thighs with a pattern on the edges resembling a stylized star, held up by a purple belt with a silver buckle. On her left arm, she wore a large yellow bracelet on her wrist, and a purple armband below her shoulder, and on her right arm, she wore two bracelets, one yellow, one black, both half the size of the bracelet on her other arm. Her shoes lacked a tongue or eyestay, instead being one piece up to drawstrings that served as laces, and they had white vamps and soles, purple toe boxes and heel seats, and a lavender feather. She had short red hair, and bright blue eyes. "Sora, you lazy bum. I knew that I'd find you snoozing down here." She said. Sora wore a red one-piece outfit with a zipper along the front. On the left side of the outfit was a chain linking the front and the back, every other link of the chain had a crown icon placed on it. Over his outfit, he wore an unzipped black hoodie with white trim, which had white sleeves with black trim, and blue lining on the inside. He had a simple blue belt with a silver buckle loosely on his waist, and his shoes had a black throat and tongue, a yellow quarter, collar, toe box, and waist, and a white feather and heel seat. He wore white fingerless gloves with black and yellow straps, thick blue lines across the palm and back of the hand, and on the back of the hand, each glove had a metal circle, with a trefoil design on them. "No!" Sora exclaimed, "This huge, black THING swallowed me up! I couldn't breathe, I couldn't—" Before Sora could finish his thought, Kairi hit him on the head. "Are you still dreaming?" She asked. "It wasn't a dream! ...Or was it? I don't know." Sora replied. "What was that place? So bizarre..." He wondered. "Yeah, sure." Kairi replied. "Say, Kairi, what was your hometown like? You know, where you grew up." Sora asked. "I've told you before, I don't remember." Kairi answered. "Nothing at all?" Sora asked. "Nothing." Kairi replied. "You ever want to go back?" Sora asked. "Well, I'm happy here." Kairi answered. "Really..." Sora replied. "But you know... I wouldn't mind going to see it." Kairi continued. "I'd like to see it too. Along with any other worlds out there! I want to see 'em all!" "So what are we waiting for?" Kairi asked. "Hey, aren't you guys forgetting about me?" Asked Riku. Riku wore a sleeveless yellow shirt with black sides, white lines separating the yellow and black, as well as one going down the front of the shirt, and a strip of black cloth with white trim that crossed in an X shape on his chest, held in place with white buttons. He wore blue jeans, and over those jeans he wore two additional baggy pant legs held up by similar strips of cloth to the one on his shirt, which were attached to his belt, as well as by two other belts, one worn at the bottom of each pant leg. His shoes had blue vamps, white quarters, black heels, dark grey soles, and black straps held in place by yellow strings. He wore black gloves that did not go all the way up to his wrists, and black sweatbands. He had unkempt white hair that went down to his shoulders at the back, partially covered his ears, and covered most of his forehead, and his eyes were a bright blue. He was carrying a large wooden log. "So, I guess I'm the only one working on the raft." Riku said. As Riku walked by Sora, he tossed the log at him, knocking Sora on his back, and prompting a giggle from Kairi. "And you're just as lazy as he is!" Riku continued. "So you noticed. Okay, we'll finish it together!" Said Kairi. As Riku sat down, Kairi said "I'll race you!" "Huh?" asked Sora. "What, are you kidding?" asked Riku. "Ready? Go!" Kairi continued. Despite their initial complaints, Sora and Riku immediately started sprinting. As the three friends raced across the beach, Sora pushed his memory of the dream to the back of his mind. "Just a strange dream," he thought, "nothing to be worried about."

Things I learned while writing this:

1: Kairi wears two shirts for some reason.

2: Kairi bonks Sora on the head within a minute of being properly introduced.

3: What the different parts of a shoe are called.

You can actually see Kairi's hand just at the very edge of the screen for a few frames about a second before Sora says "Ow!". I procrastinated writing this because I took one look at Sora's outfit, and just knew it would be a pain to describe, but I was wrong about what would be hard. If you told me that I would spend half an hour trying to figure out how to describe Sora's shoes last year, I wouldn't have believed you. I am mainly writing descriptions of established characters for practice, as I have never considered myself very good at describing things, but there are two other reasons. The first reason relates to part of why I'm writing this, the characters I'm adding won't necessarily be ones Kingdom Hearts fans would be familiar with, and it'd be odd to have a mix of detailed and brief descriptions. The second reason is my belief that every installment in a series is someone's first. Theoretically, someone who barely knows what Kingdom Hearts is could end up reading this, and the descriptions would likely benefit them. This chapter took a while to write because of a mix of the procrastination I mentioned earlier, and my interests not going where I thought they would. I was starting to get into Kingdom Hearts again, when I discovered how to mod Oblivion and Minecraft, and I tried out Spore and fell in love with it. Don't worry about this going on hiatus yet, I fully intend to at least get past the first Traverse Town visit before stopping, and if I get into Kingdom Hearts like I thought I would, I might go even further. The fact that some of the most complex designs are out of the way will make it easier for me to sit down and write knowing that the hard part is behind me. While I was writing this chapter, the amount of views more than tripled, and someone left a review asking when the next chapter would be. Once again, I must take a moment to thank everyone who stopped by. More people have seen my work in a few days than I thought would see it for several months, it really means a lot to me that people have shown interest in the work of a self-admitted novice writer.

This is still a bit too similar to the original dialogue... I'll probably start adding minor dialogue changes so the parts before the new stuff don't just read like the game's script.