AN/ Heya! Welcome to the second special chapter, to celebrate reaching 100 chapters! This is AU, but, I think it makes a good special chapter. Please enjoy! (Extremely important note: this was first posted March 21st, 2012.)

Sora stepped out into Twilight Town, and then winced slightly. It was very bright in Twilight Town, and looking around with only one eye didn't help matters one bit. He grimaced. Maybe he should've just stayed until the dang wound healed enough that he didn't need bandages anymore…

"Sora!"

He turned, slightly shocked, though when he found it was Joseph who was calling to him, he realized that he really shouldn't have been surprised. He laughed slightly, and waved. Joseph ran over.

"What a coincidence to run into you here!" he said, coming to a stop next to Sora. He grinned. His grin fell, though, upon noticing the bandages. "Dude! What happened to you!"

Sora took a deep breath.

"It's a long story," he said. He didn't really want to explain all the details concerning his Shadow to Joseph. However… he figured Joseph would want some sort of explanation, so he said: "But, basically, I got in a fight with the darkness and am most likely going to have a very nasty scar across my face."

Joseph grimaced.

"How bad is it?" he asked.

In response, Sora shrugged off his jacket and pushed aside his shirt so Joseph could see the damage that had been done to his shoulder, too. Joseph winced.

Sora shrugged and pulled his jacket back on.

"It doesn't hurt too bad," he muttered. "My eye hurts the most. Aerith said I was lucky it wasn't any worse, otherwise I wouldn't be able to see out of the eye anymore."

"I should get you some ice-" Joseph stopped mid-sentence, eyes going wide in shock. "Ah fish!" he muttered. "I really need to stop doing this!" He turned back around, scanned the area behind him for a moment, then yelled: "Toby! Where'd you go!"

Sora raised his eyebrows (with some difficulty due to the bandages). "Who's Toby?" he asked, getting an odd notion that he had heard the name before.

"You'll see as soon as I find him," Joseph replied, quickly running off.

Sora watched for a second, and then followed after him. They found who he was looking for by the ice cream shop, looking rather miffed. Sora raised his eyebrows at the sight of the boy. He couldn't have been much older than eight.

"You ran off," Toby muttered, staring directly at Joseph. "I wasn't sure if I should follow you or not." He glanced over at Sora then, eyes widening slightly in shock. "Who are you?"

"He's my friend!" Joseph replied before Sora could even open his mouth. "His name is Sora!"

Sora smiled, and then nodded.

Toby waved.

Sora laughed slightly, and then waved back.

"Oh!" Joseph exclaimed, rather suddenly. "I have something I need to give you Sora! Gimme a second, okay?" And before either Sora or Toby could respond, he darted through a dark corridor.

It couldn't have even been a minute when he returned.

"Here," he said, handing Sora two halves of a broken wooden sword. Sora stared at them, confused, and Joseph shifted uncomfortably. "It sorta got broken," he muttered, refusing to look Sora in the eye.

Sora laughed.

"Hey, no big deal," he said. "It happens."

Joseph sighed.

"I still feel bad."

Sora slowly sat down, set the broken sword aside, and then reached up and started undoing his bandages. Joseph stared at him, confused, but Sora didn't explain what he was doing. He just pulled the bandages away from his face, and then winced.

Twilight Town was extremely bright, especially to an eye that had been closed for the past few days. He blinked a few times, trying to get used to it, and then tried to open his eye all the way. It hurt. He quickly settled on just squinting with that eye, because it hurt less.

Once he was done with that, he picked up the two halves of the broken sword and pieced them back together as best as he could. Then he used his dirty bandages to bind both halves together. It turned out rather well, though the sword was slightly crooked. He held it up for Joseph to see.

"There, all fixed."

Joseph stared.

Sora raised his eyebrows, trying hard not to wince as he did so. He hoped that eventually his eye would stop hurting so that he wouldn't have such a hard time with simple facial expressions.

"What?" he asked, and then looked at the sword. "Okay, I suppose it's not the best of work, but it really doesn't matter. I don't really need this old sword anymore."

"Not the sword…" Joseph said slowly. "It's that scar… are you sure it doesn't hurt?"

Sora made a face, which somehow didn't hurt his eye, and then nodded.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Does it look really nasty or something?"

Joseph nodded.

Sora laughed.

"Well, I guess I deserve it. This is what happens when you meddle with the darkness, kids! Don't do it! It's bad for you!"

Joseph laughed at that, and Toby laughed slightly, too, even though Sora was pretty sure he didn't understand the joke.

Then it hit him.

He remembered where he heard the name before.

He smiled slightly, and then got on his knees so he could look Toby in the eye.

"You're name is Toby, right?" he asked.

Toby nodded.

"Y'know Toby, I know a story about a mighty king named Tobias," Sora said, slowly, doing his best to ignore the nostalgia that was burning inside of him. "They called him Tobias the Fiery Menace, mainly because he had fiery red hair, like you, but also because he had a fiery personality."

"Was he evil?" Toby asked.

Sora shook his head.

Toby frowned. "Then why did they call him a menace?"

Sora laughed.

"Because he ruled his country so well, all the other kings were jealous of him," he explained, a sly smile working its way onto his face. He picked up his broken sword and then hopped to his feet, brandishing the blade. "And if you were Tobias the Fiery Menace, then I'd be Samson the Assassin!" He declared his "name" proudly, striking a pose as he did so. Both Toby and Joseph laughed.

"And I was hired to kill you," Sora continued. "You gonna let me?"

"Never!" Toby replied, picking up a nearby stick and brandishing it.

Joseph made a face. "Who would I be?" he asked, turning to Sora skeptically.

Sora paused, and thought about it for a moment. Then he laughed, surprised that it hadn't hit him sooner.

"You can be Sir Joseph," he said. "Tobias' brave and loyal knight."

Joseph made a face, but then drew his own sword.

XXX

They ran around Twilight Town for quite some time, and, surprisingly, Toby and Joseph put up a fairly good fight. Sora quickly dodged around a corner and hid there, trying to keep his breath steady so that he wouldn't give himself away by breathing too loud.

It's been so long since I've had to run so much… he thought, remembering his days as a kid on the Islands. But man Toby has a lot of energy in him! I'd be surprised if he tired out after a full day of this!

He stole a glance around the corner to see if either of the boys was nearby.

"There he is!" Joseph shouted.

Sora frowned, and then turned around. Joseph was standing in a different entrance to the side area Sora had been hiding in, which was, not surprisingly, up a whole level. Sora grimaced and scolded himself for not bothering to look and make sure he was in a relatively good hiding spot.

"What are you waiting for? Get him!" Toby commanded.

Joseph jumped down to where Sora was. Sora quickly ran off, hoping that Joseph was as tired as he was, and therefore the chase would be relatively fair. It turned out that it didn't really matter, though. Toby jumped down from the bridge Sora was running under and blocked his path.

"Didn't think so!" Toby laughed, brandishing the stick he was using for a sword.

Sora grimaced.

It wasn't that he was in a really bad position right now.

In fact, he was in a very good position to "kill" Toby and declare the game over.

However, that would be completely unfair to the poor boy.

Thankfully, Joseph came to his rescue. He ran up behind Sora, sword prepared to strike. Sora heard him coming just in time and managed to block Joseph's blade, only barely.

It's a good thing we're only using toy swords, he thought with a laugh, and then pushed Joseph's sword away.

They fought for a bit, and then Joseph swung his sword down, hard, on Sora's sword. Sora's sword, being held crudely together with bandages that had loosened over time, snapped in half again. Sora glanced at the half that he still held with disappointment; he could've sworn he had tied the halves together better than that…

Joseph quickly kicked the other half out of reach and pointed his sword at Sora's chest.

Sora sighed and dropped the half of a sword he was holding and held up his hands in surrender.

"Okay, okay," he sighed. "You guys win! I'm beat!"

Joseph cast a glance over at Toby. "Would you like to do the honors, sire?" he asked.

Toby shook his head. "Nah, you can kill him."

Sora almost chuckled at that, but quickly stifled it so that he'd stay in character. "Kill me!" he asked, pretending to be shocked. "But what about a trial? Shouldn't I get a trial!"

"You've committed treason!" Toby replied. "And the punishment for treason is-"

"Immediate death," Joseph finished.

Sora decided he wouldn't mention that treason wasn't technically the right term for the crime he had "committed". It was funny, though. Treason would have been the right term had this been anything like the play he had been in when he was a kid.

Well, one of the right terms. If this was like the play, he would've been convicted of at least six before the day was through.

"Sir Joseph, stand down!"

His heart turned in his chest.

Kairi… if you had yelled at me like that when I was getting to close to the darkness…

Would I have listened to you?

Joseph stabbed him, hard, interrupting his thought process. It didn't really hurt, nor did it actually do any damage, but Sora had played dead often enough to know better than to mention that. He quickly clutched his chest and staggered back, pretending to be severely injured, even taking the time to check for "blood".

"This- this isn't fair!" he gasped, taking extra care to draw his words out as if he was actually dying.

Then he fell over.

He grimaced once he hit the ground. The stone streets of Twilight Town hurt a lot more than the relatively soft sand of Destiny Islands. The only upside to this was he wouldn't have to worry about getting sand in his hair or clothes or something. He ignored that thought and made a face; something that he hoped would pass as "dead", then he held his breath.

There was silence for a moment.

Sora grimaced, trying not to let out the breath he was holding.

Someone else had to say something first…

Someone kicked him lightly in the side.

"Are you actually dead?" Toby asked.

Sora couldn't help it. He had to laugh at that. The laughing quickly turned to coughing, though, and he rolled over, trying to get the coughing under control.

"Oh gosh, Sora, don't seriously die!" Joseph said. "That would suck!"

Sora only coughed some more.

"Will you stay alive if I get you ice cream?"

Sora laughed again, though the laughter hardly made it out through his coughing. "Stop- stop making me laugh!" he managed to say, and then proceeded to continue coughing. Thankfully, the coughing fit didn't last long after that.

"You okay?" Joseph asked.

Sora nodded.

"It's been a while since I've held my breath for that long," he replied, and then grinned. "The laughing didn't help either, though. Now what was that you said about ice cream…?"

Joseph laughed and stuck his sword back through his belt.

"Yeah, sure, gimme a sec and I'll get some."

XXX

About five minutes later, Joseph and Sora were eating their ice cream. Toby had finished his rather quickly (Joseph said he had only ever seen Axel eat ice cream so fast) and was currently running through the Tram Common, probably a bit crazy from the sugar. Joseph was too tired to run after him, and Sora was just tired period.

But, hey, he had had a good day.

"Did you make all of that up?" Joseph asked rather suddenly, turning to Sora.

Sora shook his head.

"No. I based it off of a play I was in when I was about your age," he replied. "Well, I added the 'Fiery' part to Tobias the Menace, and I swapped the parts around. Tobias was the assassin, Samson was the king. But-" He smiled. "I didn't really peg Toby as an assassin type, and sometimes you have to change the character to fit the person. The person won't always fit the character."

Joseph nodded, understanding. "I get it; it's like how you made up a character for me."

Sora laughed.

"No, Sir Joseph was real! I mean, he was Samson's knight, but he was real."

Joseph frowned.

"I don't believe you…"

Sora threw a look at him.

"Well, I would sure hope Sir Joseph was real. He was the part I played in the play." He sighed. "I mean, if you really want to know, you can ask Kairi, she was-" He paused, heart turning in his chest again. "She was in the play, too…" he finished quietly, trying to keep his voice from cracking.

Joseph started to say something, but then he stopped.

Sora pretended he didn't notice and took a bite of his ice cream.

They stood there in silence for a bit, until Toby came running up. He looked like he was relatively tired out. Relatively.

"Hey Joseph, do you think we should be heading back now?" he asked.

Joseph shrugged.

"Do you want to head back?"

"Kinda…"

Joseph turned to Sora.

"Hey, you can go," Sora said. "I'm not keeping you!"

Joseph nodded and then formed a dark corridor. Toby quickly went through. Joseph started to follow, but paused.

"Hey, thanks for helping me occupy Toby!" he said. "I feel bad for 29 now, especially if I was this hard to handle." He shook his head.

Sora laughed.

"Sure thing!"

Joseph saluted, then started through the corridor.

"Joseph!" Sora called. "Thanks!"

Joseph frowned and turned back to him.

"What, for the ice cream? That's nothing! You know that!"

Sora smiled then shook his head. "No, not for the ice cream, but for a good day. That was fun."

I… haven't had this much fun since I was a kid.

Back when all I worried about was the play-pretend world that I practically lived in.

How long has it been now?

Two years?

No… three now. It would be three years.

"What's that face for?" Joseph asked.

Sora looked up, a bit confused; he hadn't realized he had been making a face. Then he laughed; it wasn't really a surprise, given what he had been thinking about. He smiled.

"Today's my birthday," he said. "I'm 15 years old now."