So while you wait for an update for that other fic I'm currently writing, I might as well bring you this one. Also with E3 two weeks away, I wonder if we'll be getting anything KH related... anything at all... please senpai, notice us!


Chapter 35

To Uncharted Lands

Despite the fact that it may have even been a coincidence, that surely there were many Alices and that this could simply refer to one from this world, the seed of doubt had already been planted in Kairi's mind. She didn't want to even engage the possibility, but Alice being experimented on and becoming… whatever that was lingered in the forefront of her mind no matter how much she tried to push it out.

"Kairi, there's still a chance. If Alice was… you know, do you really think something wouldn't have happened to the worlds already? If even one pure light goes out, then the worlds would already have been in danger. That there not is our best bet to believe that she's still out there somewhere," Riku tried to convince her. It was working.

She was breathing more normally and she could feel her heart rate slowing down. Riku was right. Of course he was. There was no strong evidence to suggest Alice was that creature. She knew somewhere deep down that Alice was alive, almost as if they were connected with each other, and yet… why did she feel so uneasy? Perhaps she would have been able pass it off as nerves at such a terrifying sight if only she didn't get the strange sense of déjà vu, only that she was sure she had never seen such a scene before either.

The trio had just exited the secret passageway after a long period of investigation to find themselves confronted with a baffled Archdeacon. No one moved for what felt like forever. Finally, having just noticed a thick tome Kairi was hugging to her chest, the archdeacon spoke.

"What have you done? What is going on?" he asked, seeming unsure of what else to say.

No one gave a reply. It was a strange circumstance they found themselves in and they weren't even sure themselves what they had just found. The book in Kairi's hand was a clue that they had taken from the laboratory and was probably the only means of clarification that they had.

"Can it close?" Max asked looking back at the secret passageway. Riku shrugged and casually walked over to the sculpture and detached the chalice from the woman's hands. The floor glowed again and Riku quickly jumped out of its zone. The floor soon stopped glowing and the passageway disappeared, replaced by the flooring that had been there previously.

"I don't believe you answered my question," the Archdeacon pressed for further information.

"Well, you know how Frollo was always obsessed about alchemy?" Kairi waited for his nod to confirm that he had known about Frollo's obsession. "Well I don't think he was wrong."

"You realize no one can know about this? Well I'm sure I don't have to tell you that," Riku said.

The archdeacon nodded. "I saw nothing. I don't even think I want to be involved…" With that he turned and walked away. A lasting impression must still have been left on him because he was walking rather stiffly and looked pale from the side.

"Well that wasn't awkward at all," Max muttered. "So what's that book about?"

"Not here. Let's head back to Quasimodo and Esmeralda. I think they deserve to see this as well," Kairi suggested. With unanimous approval, the three headed back higher into the cathedral. As soon as they opened the door to the bell tower, they witness a most horrific sight. Quasimodo was writhing in pain and letting out a blood curdling scream. Esmeralda tried to calm only to find herself shoved away by the hunchback.

"Quasimodo, get a hold of yourself!" Riku yelled. He ran over to Quasimodo and quickly cast a Bind spell with his Keyblade to keep him down.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING? LET ME GO! This… pain… I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE! JUST LET ME DIE!" Quasimodo roared trying to thrash violently, but the magic held its dominance over him and prevented any movement. The only other way he could let out his frustration and pain was by resorting to grunting out animal-like noises.

"What's happened to him?" Esmeralda asked. "Wasn't the treatment supposed to work?"

"It hasn't been tested yet. There's no way to know what's happening," Kairi said. She rushed over to Quasimodo and placed her hand on his back. "Quasi, can you hear me? Just nod or blink if you can."

Quasimodo continued to grunt but managed to wink noticeably enough for Kairi to tell that he was listening. "Just keep listening to the sound of my voice. Okay, I want to inhale and exhale every four seconds. Here, just copy me."

Quasimodo watched albeit with a pained expression as Kairi gave an example and then tried to follow. His breathing at first was ragged and sharp, at least until he was able to find a certain tempo where after his breathing seemed to return to an almost normal level.

"See. Everything will turn out okay. You just need to keep fighting. We're here with you," Kairi said. She stood up and looked at Riku. "Now we just need to wait and see if the antidote will have any effect. Everything else will be up to Quasi."

"That's the thing. We won't even know if it's the antidote counteracting the Heartless side or Quasimodo himself. Maybe they both have an effect, maybe they don't, but he certainly wasn't acting like this before we gave the antidote to him, was he, Esmeralda?" Riku asked.

"He wasn't. So the effects might have worsened?" Esmeralda hypothesized but Max shook his head.

"I'm not so sure. When I get sick, it usually always gets worse before it gets better. Maybe that's what's happening here."

"We'll just have to wait a bit longer then," Kairi said before setting the thick tome down on the floor along with herself. She pried at the book cover with her index and middle finger and flipped it open all the way.

"So you found something then?" Esmeralda asked, temporarily forgetting her worry for Quasi at the introduction of the book.

"Yeah, a secret passageway hidden under the cathedral. It was like you said, one of the tunnels of the catacombs that took us to a laboratory, a really ancient one at that," Kairi summarised. She left out the creature they had found. In her mind that was the one thing there that didn't make any sense and she wasn't sure she could answer any of Esmeralda's questions about it if she brought it up. "This book has a really dry and musty smell. It must have been lying in there for ages."

Their hopes however were diminished as they scanned page after page. The text was undecipherable, not due to worn out ink but because it was in a language that none of them understood. Strange symbols littered each page, some recognizable like a bird for instance, while others they have never seen in their lives. Probably the only thing that they could infer from was the illustrations on random pages of the book, too spread out for them to connect anything coherent.

"Well this was pointless. What's the point if we can't read it?" Max asked.

"I think I get the gist… here! It looks like some kind of chalice in this picture, right?" Kairi pointed out.

"Like the one downstairs," Riku said.

"Yeah. I remember reading up on something to do with alchemy with Luna in the library and we I remember this symbol." Kairi guided them to a circle with a dot in the middle with her finger. "That's the alchemical symbol for the Sun. Gold is categorized as being linked to the Sun so I think this is describing the properties of the chalice. Makes sense since we know that it's actually gold."

"Nice work detective. Anything else you can tell from this?" Riku asked.

"Well, I remember the planetary symbols and the four basic elements so I could identify them if I found them. Silver would be the same as the moon's symbol for example. The problem lies with these other symbols that I've never seen before," Kairi said as she continued going from page to page. "Yeah, they're definitely not alchemical symbols. A different language maybe?"

"Wouldn't it be funny if it was, like, Atlantean, or something?" Max's joke was not seen as such by Riku and Kairi. In fact, they looked quite impressed. When Max looked at them again after his round of laughter, he raised his hands. "Wait, was I onto something there? I mean I was just joking."

"That's a pretty flattering joke then," Riku said. "Now we just need to find someone who can read Atlantean, or find a dictionary."

"So it's real… It's really real!" Kairi's mouth opened up slowly before letting out a laugh filled with disbelief. "We did it, Riku!"

"You mean you did it. I'm still not even sure if I even contributed anything," Riku said.

"Of course you did. You were there to look good and be moral support as I figured things out," Kairi said playfully.

"And I'm just cannon fodder," Max added.

"See? You both get it!" Kairi grinned and looked back at the book. "Well one clue is better than no clue… Riku, take a look at this."

Riku peered over Kairi's shoulder and looked down where he finger was pointed. His eyes shot wide open and he stepped back almost tripping over one of the floorboards. "That can't be… but why would it be in this of all things?"

"So then is this where it comes from?" Kairi said. Both their eyes were glued to the χ on the page, unable to escape its bold lettering because they knew that its purpose for being there couldn't have been a good one.


"Luna. Luna! Luna!"

Luna finally snapped out of her dazed state upon hearing her name and looked around wildly before finally calmly setting her eyes on Sora. She had no idea how to explain what had just occurred to her other than that a possible spell of dizziness had overtaken her. It was as if all her senses had just been dulled and consequently her slow to react.

"Oh, sorry. I guess I'm just a little tired," was her chalked up explanation.

"Just a little?" Sora grinned and sat down next to her. Luna grabbed the journal from her desk and showed the recently written pages to Sora. "Heh, saying that's a lot would be an understatement. Your aunt's going to have a lot of fun reading that."

"Goofy told me it was like a book. I might even sell it and become an author someday," Luna said.

"As long as I get royalties for using my name."

Luna winked at him. "Don't worry. I'll be changing your name for the finalized version."

"Aw, you're no fun," Sora said with a grin. He had come to realize how much he valued their playful banter after what had happened between them after Traverse Town. After losing her to the Realm of Darkness, he wanted ever single moment with her to be one filled with laughter. Luna had agreed with him, wanting to push away the moments that had put pressure on their friendship.

"Seriously though. If you ever were having a problem with something, you'd tell me, right?" Sora asked.

There was something about Luna that intrigued him, something special that he couldn't quite place. It wasn't anything to do with her appearance or her character, no, it lay in their meeting. Sora had been surrounded by special people all his life with mysteries that were worth solving. Kairi was a Princess of Heart that had been sent to his own world through Aqua's magic; Namine was a special existence that had come to be through strange circumstances and had power over his memory; Yeul had been a Seer, one who had the power to see all of time and now Namine had that power, and so on and so forth. But Luna… hers was a strange mystery. How had she gotten the Keyblade? Why had Abraxas chosen her of all people? Why had she retained her human form when becoming a Chimera? Was she immune, or was it something entirely different? She was a treasure trove of mysteries that Sora wanted, or desired rather, to unlock.

Luna looked thoughtfully at him for a moment. "Sora… are you flirting with me?"

"WHA-" Sora jumped out his chair and began waving his arms about in denial. His face turned an embarrassing shade of red that went up to his ears. "Of course not! Nuh uh, no way! W-why would I be f-f-flirting… with you?"

"I knew you took things too directly. See, it was a joke. You know what those are, right?" Of course, Luna didn't deny to herself that she wouldn't have minded if he had flirted with her. She had even kind of been hoping that he would have said yes.

"So you're teasing me then. You know, I haven't forgotten that you're ticklish," Sora reminded her in a matter-of-factly tone.

"Was that a threat?"

"I wouldn't know about that. Do I look like the kind of guy who threatens someone else?"

Luna defensively covered her sides just in case. "I certainly can't see it. You're more like a fluffy puppy."

"Well this fluffy puppy has some mean claws." Acting to prove this, Sora reached for Luna's hand, was easily able to free her hand from her side and began tickling her. Luna let out scream after scream in between uncontrollable fits of laughter as she struggled to get out of her seat only to fall back down due to her weak jelly-like knees. Sora in the meantime was having the time of his life judging by his cheeky grin at getting to torment his friend.

Luna soon noticed that Sora's fingers had stopped moving and when she opened her eyes and looked behind her where Sora was looking, she saw Stephanie watching from the hallway, half tired.

"Stephanie! It- it isn't w-what it looks like!" Now it was Luna's turn to trip over her words.

But it seemed Stephanie had no interest in that. She put an index finger over her mouth. "Shhh." She gave them one last stare before heading back into her room.

Sora and Luna exchanged glances for a while before the former whispered, "You think she noticed?"

"There was nothing to notice, plus she was dead tired. She'll have forgotten about it by tomorrow," Luna said.

"You underestimate the power of kids' memories," Sora said. "But you gotta admit I did get you good there. You and Kairi are both the same when it comes to that."
Luna froze for a moment before getting up from her seat. She knew Sora wasn't exactly the smartest tool in the shed when it came to flattering girls, but surely he couldn't have been that naïve.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, pretty much confirming Luna's suspicions.

"You know, because it's you, I'm going to get some sleep and hopefully forget what you just said in the morning," she said.

"Huh? What did I say?" Sora asked, baffled by Luna's sudden change in behavior. Before Luna could reply, the ship rocked fiercely sending them to the floor. Sora tried to stand up quickly but another hit from the side jolted the ship to the right and sent him crashing into and over one of the swivel chairs.

"Sora, are you okay?" Luna asked from the wall.

"I think we've experience some minor turbulence," Sora managed to groan while upside down. He detached himself from the back of the chair and sat upright, his eyes looking upwards at the window, searching, until it finally found the problem. Outside the Gummi Ship, circling them was an armored figure on a Keyblade glider.

"Moira's Crescent?" Luna asked, watching the small but still identifiable figure shift from the left side of the Highwind to the right.

"Maybe…" Sora scurried to his seat and attached his seatbelt as Donald and Stephanie dragged themselves into the room.

Donald rubbed his eyes and looked from Sora to Luna. "What's going on? Luna, if you're messing around with the ship again without asking me or Sora, I'll-"

"For once, it's not me," Luna interjected quickly before pointing at the window.

Sora ignored Donald's quack of shock as he noticed the figure and looked behind him. "Where's Goofy?" he asked.

"Probably still sleeping. You think this kind of stuff wakes him up? I'm kind of jealous actually," Donald replied.

"You and me both… Donald, take hold off the controls." Sora tried to ram the Gummi Ship into the attacker who dropped below the height of the Gummi Ship, disappearing below Sora's line of sight.

"Where are you going?" Donald asked. Sora took off his seatbelt and waited for the duck to take hold of the stick before letting go and standing up.

"Well, we need someone on the guns, or would you rather they bring us down? Luna, take the other gun!" Sora was about to leave the cockpit when he felt Stephanie's hands tug his sleeve.

"How can I help?" she asked.

Sora smiled at her. "Let's see… can you wake Goofy up for me? Tell him it's important."

Stephanie grinned and headed off. Sora gave one last quick look at Luna before opening up a hatch on the side of the room and dropping into the ventral of the Highwind. He sat down in the single seat and took hold of the Thundaga turret with both hands. Sora felt the Gummi Ship lower to meet the figure and Sora lined up the crosshair quickly before pulling the trigger.

A great number of yellow bolts surged forward and tried to hit their target, with the opponent dodging each one skilfully before pulling upwards on their glider. They shot upwards above the ship. The figure jumped and dismounted from their glider, their bike transforming back into a familiar looking Keyblade.

"It's her!" Sora grunted out just as the ship suffered another hit. Their opponent had just launched herself at ship heading towards her in the most confident of manners and had managed to slam the front of her blade into the windshield. Of course, she probably hadn't even gotten that close anyway. Her Keyblade had the ability to change both length and tenseness. Her Keyblade design was also the most unusual one Sora had ever seen, with the blade itself acting as the joints of a skeleton and being able to detach and reattach at will. There was certainly no way he could mistake the likeness of Desiree Elegia Skye.

He watched as she fell below them and then rose back up on her transformed again bike. Sora failed to notice his grip tighten and his palms start to sweat as anger he had thought he had left behind back in Radiant Garden rose within him. Neuge's words when they were training came back to his head in that instant.

"But it would be best to compartmentalize your thoughts of anguish and joy. If you let them manifest as one then it will end up manipulating your actions, and then it will destroy you, like it almost did me."

Sora shook and dismissed the thought before shooting again, holding down the trigger a lot harder this time. He couldn't let her get away with it, not like last time. If she wanted him dead, he was going to put up a hell of fight before she could succeed.

A blast of light that erupted in front of him caused him to close his eyes and look away. He recognized the blast as one of the Ultima cannons that were currently in Luna's part of the ship. When he looked back, the power of the blast was such that it had blown Desiree off her Keyblade and into the world nearby.

"Great job, Luna! Let's go after her," Sora said after a while.

"Huh? Are you sure? We could just continue on our course-"

"Because she's-" But Sora paused. He wasn't sure he wanted to reveal his ulterior motive to them yet. "We don't exactly have anywhere to go so we might as well check this world out as well. Maybe we'll find something out."

"Sora…" Luna could sense the desperation and irritation that Sora tried hard to conceal. She knew it couldn't be easy for him, coming into contact with another of Moira's Crescent's members, and she knew that if she couldn't convince him to not go then she could at least protect him. "Alright. Donald, you know what to do."


Luna knelt down and picked the soil they were standing on, watching as it slowly returned back to the earth from her hands. They were in an unusual place, not one that any of them had been to before. They were in jungle-type or terrain, or something akin to a tropical rainforest. Trees of various heights and bends surrounded them completely, and the temperature was sweltering and stifling.

"This soil is really rich. They say that having a lot of worms in your soil is a good sign of a healthy ecosystem so I just counted. Yeah, there are a lot of them," Luna said. She reached into her pocket for her hand sanitizer and applied it to her hands.

"That's impressive! How did you know about that? Don't tell me you actually stayed awake in geography class?" Sora asked.

"No, I pretty much day dreamed through my classes. It's just that me and my mom used to plant flowers in our garden, and she told me about it once…"

Her hands had stopped moving and her eyes were stuck on the soil, her mouth twisting to form a painful smile. Sora quickly changed the topic.

"Desiree should be somewhere around here. I think we should have Jiminy help us track her down," he said. This seemed to snap Luna out of her thoughts. She took out the communicator and pressed the button, holding it to her mouth.

"Jiminy?"

Instead of the expected, it was Kupopo who raced to their needs this time. "Ready and waiting for orders, kupo!"

Then there was some strange commotion going on, and Luna could hear Jiminy's voice shouting over Kupopo's.

"Sorry about that. I thought I was usually the one on the communicator," said the cricket.

"She's only used it once. Besides kupo, why can't I do it every once in a while?"

Luna shook her head. "You guys really need to figure something out. Why don't you just alternate after the other one does it?"

"Then it's my turn!" Luna could have sworn she heard the sound of a moogle's squeaky body pushing a cricket out of the way. "How may I help Luna, kupo?"

"I need a scan of the area to see if there's anyone nearby. You do know how to do that, right?"

"You can count on me, kupo!" Kupopo exclaimed. Luna counted thirty two seconds before she heard a reply. "Sorry, kupo! There's something in that area jamming our signal. It's making things all fuzzy. We also might not be able to beam you up into the Gummi Ship properly because of it."
"That's strange… alright, tell us if anything changes," Luna said before returning the device to her pocket. "So what do we do now?"

"Well standing around here isn't going to do us any good. Let's just start walking and who knows, maybe we'll run into someone eventually," Donald suggested.

He had been half right. Had they not started walking, they probably would not have encountered anyone. But walking certainly hadn't made them encounter anyone either, or at least anyone good. They were lost in a thick green, the sun was beating down and they were all tired from not enough sleep. They set their sights on hoping to find a cave or something that could equally give them shelter and cool them. Their venture took them into a less open area but they found little else other than trees on either side of them. After what seemed like an hour of walking, Stephanie dropped to the ground and started nodding her head from side to side.

"I'm really tired…"

Luna sat next to her and cuddled her. "I know. It's just too hot. There being no wind doesn't help things much either."

"Well, I guess we can jus- GOOFY, BEHIND YOU!" Even as Sora yelled this, he was already running to Goofy. He managed to shove him out of the way just in time as a metallic claw reached forward at incredible speeds and slammed into his chest. Sora was thrown backward by the impact, his back hitting a tree behind him causing him to slump.

He could hear Luna scream his name but all he could really focus on was the burning sensation in his chest and the pain in his back. He placed a hand behind him on the tree's trunk, using it as a support to stand up.

Meanwhile, Luna had managed to evade each of the robot's legs by keeping on her toes. She struck with Dream Seeker at one of the legs and clashed with it. The automaton used this to its advantage, using another leg to sweep under and slam into Luna's legs, making her flip a perfect three sixty into the air and land back on the soil.

The automaton tried to finish her off by stamping on her only to be blocked by Goofy's shield. The claws which slammed themselves repeatedly into Goofy's shield but failed to bypass them, withdrew and for a second the knight thought that he would have a moment of reprieve. That was before the grappling claws turned into buzz saws and pierced through his shield, splitting it in half. Sora didn't even want to think of what would have happened to Goofy and Luna had Donald not deflected the buzz saws away with fire magic.

Finally managing to push himself off of the tree, Sora summoned the Kingdom Key with one hand while still holding his burning chest. The automaton's red visor noticed this and instead struck out at him. Sora's eyes switched from leg to leg as he warped through each of them. He switched to Oblivion quickly and activated Ars Arcanum before starting to clash with the legs. There was some resistance at first, but Oblivion was soon able to cut through the leg and detach it from the robot.

Sora continuously warped and cut when he saw it appropriate, keeping one hand on his chest the entire time. From Luna's perspective, she could already see traces of Neuge in him. She scrambled for her own Keyblade before and teleported in front of the automaton and slammed the Dream Seeker into its visor.

The robot caught her by the leg before she reach the ground and was about to throw her but Sora interrupted this, jumping backwards and using the plasma arm from the Keyblade to grab onto the robot's head. He pulled backwards and tore the head of the weapon's body. Luna took advantage of the robot's confusion and held her Keyblade up.

"Thundaga!" A stray bolt that had appeared above where the head would have been came down and was swallowed by the robot's exposed interior. The claw loosened, releasing Luna from its grasp. The weapon jittered up and down and for a moment they thought that it was done for. It did have one more surprise for them however. Compartments opened up on various parts of its body. Sora barely had time to move before waves of missiles were unleashed from the robot.

Sora threw himself to the ground and cast reflect, the explosions slamming and testing the shield's surface. Once the explosions stopped, he looked up to see a bunch of trees that had fallen in the near vicinity and had completely blocked him off from the others.

Sora brought down the shield and ran up to the closed off path. "Guys! Are you there?"

"Oh thank goodness, you're alive! Sora, we can't get through!" Luna yelled from the other side.

"Yeah, I guessed that… but you're all alright?"

"We are, thankfully. And you?"

"Same here. Just what was that thing anyway?" Sora asked.

"No idea. Some kind of robot, I guess? It's in a bunch of pieces now anyway but there could be more around here. What do we do?"

Sora considered his options carefully but stopped when realizing that there really was only one option. "We're just going to have to split up for now, see if there's another way to meet up. I'll keep going down this path and you guys go back the way you came from. If we're lucky, we'll be able to find each other again but as it stands…"

Luna closed her eyes and lowered her head onto one of the fallen trees. "Then be careful, Sora. If there's another one of those things up ahead, or Moira's Crescent, I want you to promise me something… just run, please… just run."

"Luna-"

"Please, Sora. Just promise me. If the danger's too great, don't risk facing it alone."

Hearing the stress in Luna's words, Sora nodded even though she couldn't see it. "I promise. You guys be careful too. Keep Stephanie safe."

Luna made a sound of affirmation and Sora bobbed his head up and down, knowing that the next time he would see her or hear her voice would probably be a while.

"Okay… see you on the other side," he finally said, and with that he set off at a jogging pace.

"I'm counting on it," Luna whispered before returning to Stephanie, Donald and Goofy.


I'd imagine most people know what this world is. Get your capes in gear folks, or don't...