For Day 25 of the Kingdom Hearts 3 Countdown Challenge - Light. Contains spoilers for one of the November trailers.

Where were all these Heartless even coming from?

Sora had never seen them falling from the sky like this before. The whole world was turning dark, too, as the darkness spread further and further and swallowed everything in its path.

Would the light really expire, just like the prophecy said?

No. No way was he gonna let that happen. He summoned his Keyblade. No matter how bad things got, he would keep on fighting. He had to protect the worlds. He had to protect the light. He had to protect his friends.

He thought of them now as he charged into battle with Donald and Goofy right as his heels. Their faces all flickered through his head as he dove headlong into the fight.

The people he'd met on his travels. His friends back home.

The Heartless just wouldn't stop coming, wave after wave after wave of them lunged at him and clawed at his legs and back and tried to tear out his heart—

Terra. Aqua and Ven.

There were Unversed here, too, so many of them, choking up the air, choking out the light, draining all hope along with them—

Roxas and Axel and Xion.

And Nobodies, lots of Nobodies, trying to catch him off guard, trying to get him to fall—

Naminé.

The Seekers were the ones behind this, weren't they, this had their dirty fingerprints written all over it—

Mickey, Donald, and Goofy.

Xehanort really was making good on his promise, he really did want the worlds collapse into darkness, didn't he—

Riku.

He had to keep fighting, he had to, Riku would tell him not to give up, but maybe it really was useless to resist, maybe fighting was pointless, maybe he should just—

Kairi.

He stared at the horizon. Was that… light?

Yeah, it was. A huge wave of light pushed back the darkness, pushed back the Unversed and Heartless and Nobodies. Sora almost had to cover his eyes, it was so bright.

When the light had faded, a good chunk of their enemies were gone. And in their place, standing a little ways away, was—

No. It couldn't be.

"Kairi!"

Wow, she looked great. She was even prettier than before, if that was even possible. Her hair was shorter and she was wearing a new outfit, pink and black with a nice skirt that—

Sora watched, stunned, as she kicked a nearby Heartless into the air for Axel to do what he did best— set it on fire. Then she used a smaller burst of light to target one of the bigger Unversed as he caught a group of Nobodies in his flames.

When the smoke had cleared, she finally turned Sora's way. She flipped her hair and gave him a teasing smile, and he knew he was a goner.

"Sora, pay attention!" Donald scolded, zapping a stray Heartless that had gotten too close.

"They're comin' back, Sora," Goofy shouted, "you gotta keep fightin'!"

Sora hardly noticed. "Kairi! Kairi's here!"

"Yes, she's here!" came Donald's exasperated voice. "Fight now, talk later!"

Oh, he would fight, all right. He would fight his way to her side until nothing stood in their way anymore.

Because at long last, they could finally be together.

A/N: Something tells me that however Sora and Kairi's reunion goes down in KH3, it's going to be special. Nomura carefully avoided letting them see each other in 0.2, which is very telling - he wanted to save their big onscreen reunion for KH3, which means he's got something special planned.

Then I got to thinking about how that reunion might go, exactly, and I thought Kairi swooping into battle to show just how far she's come during her training would be an awesome way to do that. And thus the idea for this fic was born. I've been meaning to write it for a while, actually, and now I finally had the chance.

Hope you enjoyed!