The Road to Dawn
By Ariana Aislinn
Chapter 26: A Memory Relived

Many thanks to Koorino Megumi and Perhelediel both for beta reading this chapter! And thanks also to Megumi for helping me hash out a ton of plot issues, so I was able to totally rewrite this chapter and really make it work well. Oh, and one thing I should mention - I had this mostly planned out before I ever played KH2, and that includes my mental image of Twilight Town. As such, the geography of the town doesn't work exactly like in the game, so don't worry too much if it doesn't sound like what you remember from KH2. Anyway, have fun with the plot twists, and enjoy!

Standard disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and its characters are the property of Square-Enix and Disney, not me.

"Okay, let's go over how we're gonna do this."

The three of them were standing on the steps near Hollow Bastion's southeastern gate. Goofy leaned casually against the wall, rubbing his nose idly. Donald frowned thoughtfully, tapping his foot as he listened to Sora recount the plan they had worked out.

Sora drew an imaginary circle in the air with his outstretched arm. "This is where we want the portal to be, so that's where I'll be aiming the Keyblade's power. Donald, you focus your magic here, okay? Right smack in the center. Remember, we're strengthening the portal and defining its borders, just as it said in the journal."

Donald nodded. "I got it. But what about Goofy?"

"Goofy's going to maintain the summon gem. I'll need to release its power with the Keyblade, but once that's done, any of us could keep the magic going…at least, until it runs out."

Goofy scratched his head with one forefinger. "But, uh…how're we gonna use it, Sora? That's our pal Stitch, right? What can he do?"

"Okay, hear me out. This sounds a little weird, but…he's got those two energy guns, right? Well, what we need is energy. Once we've got the portal open, he may be able to help us keep it open by pouring more energy into it." Sora sighed, seeing Donald's doubtful look. "Well, I can't explain it, but I have this hunch it'll work. Don't worry, we'll try it first, okay? If the portal won't stabilize, I won't go through it."

"Oh, all right." Donald sighed and hefted his magic staff. "Are you ready to try it, Sora? We should get Stitch out here and explain it quickly."

"Right." Sora nodded, fumbling in his pocket for the small, blue stone. The Keyblade appeared in his right hand as he tossed the stone in the air with his left. A quick burst of energy from the Keyblade, and the summon gem blazed to life.

"Aloha!" A mass of rapidly moving blue fur exploded outward, rolling along the stone walkway and coming to a stop against the wall. Stitch slid halfway down onto the ground, his legs resting comically against the wall as he stared at Sora, upside down. "You call Stitch?"

Sora grinned and crouched down next to the blue creature, who got to his feet and carefully dusted himself off. "Yeah, I did. Look, Stitch, we're going to try something with magic, and we need a lot of extra power. Those two energy guns of yours…do you think they'll be able to help?"

"Phase guns? Yeah! Stitch can help."

"Great! Now, we haven't got a lot of time." Sora straightened, then tossed the summon gem to Goofy, who caught it and began concentrating on the warm glow coming from the small stone. "You ready, Donald?"

"Ready as I'll ever be!" he quacked.

"Right." Sora braced his feet on the stone floor, then aimed the Keyblade at the spot he had chosen. "Stitch, when the portal appears, I want you to aim your guns right at its center, okay? You'll know when you see it." The blue creature nodded. "Ready…go!" Sora closed his eyes and concentrated, pulling the power from deep within himself and pouring it into the Keyblade, just as he'd planned based on the technique in the journal.

At first he thought it wasn't going to work, but apparently he'd tuned the energy just right, as a portal of swirling violet blue appeared before him in the air. It was small at first, but it grew rapidly. As soon as it appeared, Donald aimed a spell at it, and Stitch began shooting a stream from one of his guns. Sora continued to hold the beam of light from the Keyblade steady, and he watched as the portal grew wider and wider, until it was just big enough to enter.

"Okay guys, I'm going through!"

"What? But Sora, we don't even know where it leads!"

Sora shrugged. "So I'll look through it first, Donald!" Ignoring the duck's protests, he walked slowly toward the portal, carefully avoiding the streams of energy from Donald's staff and Stitch's gun. Once he reached the edge, he stuck his hand through the portal. The sensation made him grit his teeth - the energy that formed the portal hummed through him at a jarring frequency, but he held on, extending his fingers and feeling around.

There didn't seem to be anything off. The strange hum was concentrated on his wrist, where it intersected the portal. On the other side, he thought he could feel a soft breeze on his fingertips, and…sunlight, perhaps? Some sort of gentle warmth, anyway. Oh well, no time like the present. If I wait much longer, we won't be able to keep the portal open long enough for me to get back. "It seems safe! I'm going to head through, so just keep the portal open as long as you can. I'll try to be three minutes, tops. If I can figure out where I am and what we're looking for, I can come back and we can try again when we know where to look for this other Keyblade. Maybe I'll even see some people who can help me! You never know."

"You be real careful, Sora!" Goofy frowned uncertainly. "I agree with Donald, I don't like this."

Donald sighed. "Well, if you're gonna go, then go! We'll try to keep this going!"

Sora grinned, making the Keyblade vanish before he dove through the portal.

In retrospect, it probably wasn't a good idea, on the whole. As soon as Sora hit the portal, the intense hum became an agonizing vibration that gripped his entire body. He was unable to control his forward momentum, and he spilled out of the portal onto hard cobblestones, rolling head over heels to lie on his back. The portal stayed open behind him, but although no part of his body touched it, he could still feel that hum all through him. He climbed to his feet with agonizing slowness, staggering dizzily as he straightened.

Sora looked around, shading his eyes as he gazed into the sunset. Before him stretched a quiet little town, set among rolling hills of a pleasant green. A soft, red-gold color touched everything as the sun's dying rays lit the town. A gentle breeze blew through the cobblestone street, and Sora could see children playing off in the distance, on a little hilltop some ways away. None of the children were looking in his direction, and there was no one else in the immediate area to see his arrival…which was useful for avoiding difficult questions, but it made it harder for Sora to find the answers he needed in the three minutes he'd allotted himself.

Sora tried to run up the street toward a line of buildings, but fire shot through his legs, and he bit back a cry. What's wrong with me? He set his teeth and did his best to stumble on, heading for what looked like a little café. He could hear voices coming from inside it, engaged in pleasant conversation, and the smell of fresh-baked bread wafted through the streets. Sora's stomach growled, and he almost laughed. At a time like this… He shrugged to himself and hurried on.

The portal closed behind Roxas and the others, leaving no trace. Kairi looked around - they were in the entrance hall to DiZ's mansion, just where they had left. She gave Roxas a questioning look. "What now?"

Roxas held out a hand to steady Naminé, then turned to Kairi. "Well, we need to go to the place where the attack first happened, which is also where Naminé's memories were lost when the Organization came back for her later on. Let's go out in front of the mansion." He beckoned. The girls exchanged glances, shrugged, and followed.

It was actually quite a short walk out the front door and across the grounds. Roxas led them to the mansion's front gate, which was closed tightly and barred with an old, rusty lock. Roxas produced his lockpicks. "These work great for unlocking memories, but the lockpicks themselves aren't magical, so they work fine for ordinary locks, too. This won't take long - there we go!" The padlock slipped open, and Roxas was able to swing the gate outward. They exited onto an expanse of soft, green lawn that was badly in need of trimming. Small wildflowers grew here and there, in gleeful defiance of the original landscaper's design.

They stood in the center of the lawn, the two girls looking expectantly at Roxas. He sighed, his hands on his hips, and surveyed the area. "I'm going to have to remember how this all happened, too. Like I said, I was pretty young… Naminé and I were four years old when it happened."

"That young?" Kairi asked, a little sadly.

"Yep. You were the same age, in fact." Roxas nodded. "Okay, here's how we're going to do this." He flopped down to sit on the grass in a cross-legged position, beckoning for the girls to do the same. Soon they had formed a tiny circle, each of them joined to the others by clasped hands. "Right. Now, first we have to restore Naminé's memories. I don't know if this will work on you at all, Kairi, but I think it will work better if we're all a part of the circle. So if you don't remember anything, be patient. I'm going to restore Naminé's memories of what happened that night, eleven years ago. Naminé, you'll probably end up reliving it, which could feel really weird - so just hang tight to Kairi's hand if it gets too disorienting. Kairi, I don't know if you'll see anything - you'll probably get a few scattered images, even if you don't feel every single thing Naminé felt. But who knows? We don't really know how shadows work, after all, so you might get the whole memory too." He produced his lockpicks from his pocket, then held his hand out in front of him, causing a small, shimmery keyhole to appear, floating in the center of their little circle. "I might drop hands to work at unlocking the memory, so don't worry if that happens - just keep hold of each other."

The girls nodded, looking a little nervous. Roxas flashed them both a reassuring smile. "Hey, don't worry! It's just a memory, that's all. No matter how bad it is, we're all here together, right? So just relax."

The words made Kairi feel a little better, but she noticed that Roxas clenched his teeth slightly as he put the lockpicks down in front of him and took their hands again. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Kairi could feel him tense up, even as he opened his eyes and grinned at them again. "Okay, let's get started. Close your eyes and just wait for the memory."

Kairi and Naminé did so, and for a while there was nothing…but then an image of Twilight Town appeared in both their minds, looking almost exactly as it did today. It was quiet and peaceful, and a weathervane clanked in the stillness. The picture focused on a little white house, its paint tinged a rosy color from the sunset. Out on the front lawn played a little blonde girl in a white dress, giggling as she merrily chased a butterfly from flower to flower.

"Naminé, don't go too far!" called a gentle female voice. "Roxas, go out and play with your sister, would you? It's too crowded in this kitchen for me to make dinner."

A screen door banged open, and a little boy hopped down the front steps, his hands in his pockets. He wore a white shirt and a pair of white and black checked shorts, which were a bit dingy and had grass stains on them from the usual wear and tear suffered by a little boy's play-clothes.

The four-year-old Naminé giggled, waving as she raced off after the butterfly, which had fluttered off down the street.

"Hey, come back!" the boy protested, hurrying after her. "Mom said not to go far!"

Naminé soon left him in the dust, however, and continued to run up the street. A couple of blocks away, she slowed as she saw a huddle of ten people gathered in an alleyway. The butterfly forgotten, Naminé hid behind a tree and crept closer, trying to hear what they were saying. She recognized them as newcomers to the town - visitors who had arrived on a train a week ago and had taken up residence in the Twilight Town inn. No one knew who they were or where they had come from, and they didn't act like tourists. They dressed strangely, wearing plain black slacks and long-sleeved shirts of varying colors, but with multi-colored tabards belted over the top, each with a different symbol in the center.

"Look, I don't know much about it, either," a young teenager was saying. The only girl in the group, she wore a rather suggestively tight undershirt of pale green, with tight, black pants and a tabard of yellow, with a lightning bolt symbol in its center. Her hair was yellow-blonde, and her cold, ice-blue eyes made Naminé uncomfortable. "I'm telling you, though, this is no ancient font of magic and tradition. This is a provincial little backwater, and we wasted our time coming here."

"Dunno about that, Ralene." An older man leaned casually against a wall. His own black shirt and pants were loose and comfortable, and he'd taken off his gray tabard and tied it around his waist as a sort of sash. He'd ripped the sleeves off his shirt to reveal muscular arms, and his long, black hair was tied in a ponytail. "I heard some of the locals talking about this guy they've got up in that mansion up there - their king, or somethin' like that. Could be worth a look."

"What, Lord Dumos?" The girl sneered. "Sounds like a useless old geezer to me."

Another older man, with long, blond hair and a serious, lined face, frowned at the two of them. His blue tabard had a white crystal in its center, and it covered a white shirt, as well as the same black pants all the others wore. He sighed heavily. "A useless old geezer, you say? I am wounded. You would do well not to disregard your elders so easily, when there is much they can teach you."

The man with the ponytail waved a hand dismissively. "Aw, Even, relax. You're only thirty-nine, and you've already got tenure."

"Had tenure, or need I remind you that we are exiles here?"

"Exiles…and excommunicated, unwelcome, untrusted." This man was younger, wearing another gray tabard, but his hair was long and pale blue, his eyes a deep golden color.

"Yeah, the big Exes, that's us," sighed the youngest of the group, a teenage boy with blond hair. His own tabard was a deep blue, with a pattern of rolling waves in its center. The kid had a musical instrument of some kind slung over one shoulder, and he fingered the strings idly as he sat, cross-legged, against the alley's back wall. Naminé had no idea what these ten people were talking about, but she was entranced by the sound of the teen's music.

Suddenly one of them looked up - the older man with the blond hair. "What's that? I…sense something. A portal, perhaps?"

"What, like the one we used to get here? Come on, Even, who could do that? I've still got the jitters from our first screwed-up attempt, and we only barely managed to figure out what was wrong the second time we tried it. It ain't exactly a piece of cake. Who else besides us would be dumb enough to try? You're imagining things, man."

Even shook his head. "Maybe not. I, too, have heard things about this Lord Dumos, who lives in the mansion at the top of the hill. Though the townsfolk know little of the nature of their world, and care even less, their ruler holds secrets that have been passed down for generations. More than likely, he holds twilight powers the others do not. It is very possible that he is the one creating this portal I sense." The man nodded decisively. "Very well then, I intend to investigate. Are the rest of you with me?"

There was some muttering, but all ten of these strange visitors eventually agreed and hurried up the road toward the mansion. Naminé pressed against the wall until the alleyway was clear, then she began to follow.

A hand touched her shoulder, and the girl bit back a yelp. She turned and scowled. "Roxas, you scared me!"

"Where are you going? We gotta go home!"

She shook her head. "I wanna know what those people are up to. You know, the strangers? They're going to see Lord Dumos."

The boy blinked in surprise. "They are? What do they want?"

"I don't know. Let's go find out!"

All parental instructions forgotten amid their curiosity, the two children hurried up the hill after the others.

The cobblestone street widened at the top of the hill where it met the neatly-tended lawn of Lord Dumos' manor. A gate blocked the path, closed but not locked - Lord Dumos tended to welcome visitors on most days. The hedges that lined the walkway were tall, but although the mansion and its grounds were perhaps a little forbidding, to the children they seemed comfortingly familiar. The one thing out of place in the scene before them was a small, black and violet oval, hanging in midair in front of one of the hedges as it spun slowly. The ten strangers - the Exes, Naminé thought to herself - hung back on the other side of the lawn, most watching with curiosity, the youngest with apprehension. They took no notice of Naminé and Roxas, who huddled into one of the hedges, trying not to be seen.

The portal grew, bit by bit, until its bottom edge just touched the ground and it was tall enough for a person to walk through. Sure enough, someone did come through the portal - but to Naminé's surprise, it was a little girl just about her age. She had red-brown hair and bright blue eyes, and she wore a white and lavender sundress that would not have looked at all out of place in Twilight Town. Naminé would have smiled to herself, for she liked the girl already, but the expression on the child's face was so very afraid.

Naminé turned to Roxas. "I'm gonna go talk to her."

"What? No! You can't talk to strangers!" he whispered back.

"But she looks so scared! I'll be right back." Heedless of the Exes just a few paces away, Naminé began walking across the lawn.

The little girl shrank back as Naminé approached her, but Naminé smiled, holding out her hand. "Hi. I'm Naminé. What's your name?"

"K-Kairi," the other girl stammered, managing a shy smile. "Where-"

Just then, the portal behind them rippled, and something black began to bulge through. The blackness separated from the portal, spilling out onto the lawn, and both girls grabbed hands, taking a step backward. The creature stood in a low crouch, bobbing its head at them. It had twitching black antennae and glowing, yellow eyes, and it started to creep toward them. Behind it, the portal bulged again, and three more of the creatures skittered forward.

Kairi and Naminé, still holding hands, turned and started to run, pushing between two of the Exes, who were advancing on the portal. One of them, the older man called Even, raised his hands and fired something at the portal - it looked to Naminé like ice magic, which she had seen Lord Dumos use once. The four little black creatures dissolved into black motes and disappeared, a strange glow rising out of their bodies and vanishing into thin air. There were more of the creatures right behind them, however, and they continued to pour out onto the grass as the Exes advanced, fighting through their ranks.

There were too many of them. The black creatures covered the strangers in a dark wave, blocking them from view. Naminé heard screams - it sounded like the young teenage boy who played such lovely music. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a familiar form racing forward to join them - a tall man with long, blond hair, deeply tanned skin, and golden eyes, dressed in robes of red and black. "Lord Dumos!" Naminé cried, watching the ruler of Twilight Town run across his lawn toward the front gate.

The black creatures continued to rush forward, coming closer to Naminé and Kairi. On her other side, Naminé could see Roxas trying to get to her, shouting, but the mass of blackness blocked him from her. Kairi pressed into her, trembling, and Naminé bit back a scream as the first black creatures leaped at them.

Claws ripped at her, grabbing onto her arms and legs and digging into her flesh. They felt cold, and where they touched her, her skin began to grow numb. An intense cold penetrated into her being, working its way deep inside her. Just when she thought she was about to pass out, a bright, warm light flashed in front of her, pushing the darkness back. Naminé realized it was coming from Kairi - or more accurately, from hers and Kairi's clasped hands.

Naminé opened her eyes, and amid the brightness she could see Roxas, trying to push through the black mass surrounding them. Next to him was a teenage boy - not one of the Exes, but rather a skinny kid with spiky, red hair and green eyes. He looked panicked, and Naminé could hear him calling out Kairi's name. Beyond them, the ten Exes lay on the ground, unmoving and ignored by the black creatures.

The light that surrounded Kairi and Naminé could not keep back the dark creatures for long, however, and it began to sputter and fade…but as it collapsed inwards, Naminé felt it falter. Most of the light rushed back through their clasped hands and into Kairi's small form, but Naminé could feel some of it traveling up her own arm. A warm place settled into the deepest part of her heart, and then the light around them was gone, and the creatures moved forward again.

"No!" screamed the red-headed teen, pushing through the throng of dark creatures. Roxas followed close on his heels. A circle of flames appeared in front of the redhead, pushing the creatures back from the girls, but it did not distract them for long. This time, when they moved to attack again, they leaped upon the teenager, pushing him back into Roxas' small form. They both fell to the ground, black creatures swarming over them. There was a sound like breaking glass, and Naminé and Kairi both screamed, their voices perfect echoes of one another.

The image faded, and they came back to themselves. Kairi and Naminé realized they were both screaming again, just as they had that day so long ago. Their eyes opened wide as the screams faded, and they stared at each other, then turned to look at Roxas. He merely looked back at them, his eyes sad, as they gasped for breath.

Sora dropped to one knee, panting. He wasn't going to make it. Even if he could reach the café up the road, there was no way he'd be back in three minutes. He shook his head, cursing his own stupidity and overconfidence. Had he expected the Keyblade of Twilight to be on display in front of him as soon as he entered the portal? Or maybe he'd expected the new Keyblade master to greet him with open arms!

So, what now? He supposed he'd better swallow his pride and get back to the portal while he still could. Donald and Goofy could help him come up with a different plan…hopefully one that didn't result in his feeling stretched like a rubber band. His entire body tingled with pins and needles, like a foot that had been asleep and was just starting to come painfully to life once more.

Sighing, Sora began to turn…and then he heard the screams. They were coming from the top of the hill just up the road, echoing in the still air before dying away as quickly as they had come. Sora's eyes widened. He knew one of those voices… "Kairi?"

All thoughts of the portal vanished, and he turned back up the street and ran as hard as he could, ignoring the pain that coursed through him.

Apparently I am in a great deal of trouble with some people for being so mean to Sora in this chapter. ;) Please don't kill me, everyone! Anyway, more drama is ahead. Chapter 27 is finished and is just awaiting beta reading before I post it.