It really wasn't that much further into the future, so Hallom and I were still talking about Wesley. I had just gotten through telling him how Wesley's father just keeps popping up again in his life—even after he ran away at age eight, he still had run-ins with his father when he was fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen. Hallom collapsed backwards onto the bed disheartened by that comment.

"So, you mean, even after all these years, my father could still get me?" He questioned and then added, "Well that's encouraging."

"Is that sarcasm Hallom?" I asked, but his mind had already drifted off to pieces of his childhood, until it eventually focused on one in specific.

One day, when he was four, he found a robin's egg at the base of a large tree at the playground. The egg had clearly fallen to the ground due to the windstorm the night before, but at that point, Hallom thought it was because of the poor thing's father. Since he felt so bad for it, he brought it home to care for. He found a little basket, filled it with soft stuff, and gave the broken egg a blanket to keep warm. Then, he himself went to bed.

The next morning when he woke up, the egg had grown too large to fit in the basket, so Hallom concluded that the bird egg he'd seen the night before was a disguise until what really lay inside knew it could trust the caretaker. He brought his ostrich sized egg to day care that day to show everybody the dragon that lay within. When he told his friends, though, they all just laughed and walked away.

Hallom continued caring for his precious egg, however. Gradually it grew, and grew, until it was so big it took up his whole bed, and he had to sleep on the floor. His father kept calling him, "stupid," and "idiot," for doing such things, but Hallom knew the reason he was mad was because his dad didn't believe in dragons, so he couldn't see the dragon growing. Hallom begged the dragon's egg over and over to hatch so his father could see him, but nothing happened.

Summer, autumn, and most of winter passed with nothing happening. Even the egg had stopped growing larger. Hallom had begun to worry, until something miraculous happened on New Year's Day. He came back inside from playing in the snow to find a huge crack in the egg! After a while, a little mouth peeked out…and then a whole head. Hallom backed nervously away, bracing himself against the wall. No one had ever seen a real dragon before.

He wasn't so frightened anymore when the whole thing came out of its shell. It was just as tall as he was, and it had this soft little nuzzle with no teeth. Cautiously, he inched forward to touch it, but when he did, the dragon grew before his eyes to the stage of a teenager. He was so tall, almost too tall to stand in Hallom's room, especially with his wings, which were each as big as Hallom's daddy. Hallom fell to his butt, looking like he might cry.

"Do not be afraid Pup," an amazing, booming voice comforted, "I am here to protect you."

Hallom looked up at the dragon and asked hopefully, "Really?"

"You gave me life. I owe you my protection."

Hallom hopped up and ran over to hug the dragon's leg. After a moment, he wondered, "Are you hungry? What food do you like?"

"Anything you have will be fine."

Hurriedly, Hallom rushed down the stairs and to the kitchen to look in the refrigerator for dragon food. He couldn't figure out what the dragon would like, until he thought, Well, big people like steak, and he's a BIG dragon. Quickly, he grabbed a chair so he could reach the steak in the freezer and started back up the stairs. Before he made it far, though, he noticed all these bloody footprints that were the same size as his shoes. Hallom stopped and thought for a while, eventually deciding it must have come from the egg hatching.

Knowing his dad would be mad if he left it there, Hallom ran to the closet to get towels to clean the mess up. On top of the towels was his father's special trophy, which shouldn't have been there, so Hallom didn't notice it. He grabbed the towels from underneath it, making it fall to the floor, where it broke.

"Oops," Hallom whispered as he picked the pieces back up and tried to fix it. He knew he couldn't, so he put them back in the closet in a pile. He returned to cleaning up the floor for a while, until he heard a car pull up in the driveway. Afraid that it would be his father, he abandoned the cleaning, brought the steak up for the dragon, and hid in his closet.

After a few moments that seemed like forever, the door opened, the light revealing his mother standing in the closet doorway. She picked him up in her arms as he revealed, "Mommy, when I came home from playing outside today, my dragon hatched, and he made a big mess everywhere, so when I went to clean it up, I broke something."

She sat down on his bed, hugging his head to her chest, and picked up the tiny robin's egg. "You mean this dragon honey?" She paused for a long time before continuing, "You never played outside today Hallom. Your father hit you and threw you out in the snow. The dragon does not need to eat our dinner, and the reason the house is a mess is because you're bleeding, not the tiny little robin egg."

"My dragon, Maldwyn, is real Mommy, just you wait and see. One day, you're gonna see him too."

Suddenly, his father's voice thundered through the house, "Hallom!"

Hallom was instantly wriggling to get free. "Mommy, Mommy let me go. Let me hide…please… Maldwyn, save me!"

"Are you sure you meant to be sharing this with me?" I asked from beside the bed. Hallom had been equipped with a form of telepathy called Mind's Eye in which he could share his thoughts and memories with others by projecting their pictures in the room. I knew of it, and I was pretty sure he hadn't realized he was doing it.

"Y-you saw that?" He questioned.

I nodded.

"Oops," was all he said.

Realizing he didn't really want to think about what happened after that moment, I decided to start a conversation. "You certainly stuttered a lot less when you were four."

After a short pause, he replied, "I don't…stutter…I just—you make me feel comfortable, and I don't know why you make me want to talk, but I don't like talking…so I spend most of the conversation convincing myself to stop talking to you…which is hard."

I smiled, "I can have that effect on people."

A moment later, Hallom yawned, muttering through it, "I'm tired."

I laughed, "I can have that effect of people too…but I know how important it is that you sleep when you're tired, so good night. I'll sleep on the floor tonight."

He looked at me strangely and then threw a pillow from the bed at my head and drifted away to sleep. At least half an hour later, as I was just about to fall asleep as well, Hallom shot up in bed shouting, "No Maldwyn! Don't eat that!"

He climbed out of bed and rushed to his secret exit. Curious as to what he was doing, I followed. We swam to the edge of the river, and then he ran through the forest like there was no tomorrow. I couldn't keep up at all with him. As soon as he was out of my sight, the path started spinning. The trees on either side of me were moving both directions, so I couldn't tell if I was walking forward or backwards. I finally understood what Hallom had meant when I notice that a rock I could have sworn was behind me, appeared in front of me.

Lost and confused, I shouted as loud as I could, "HALLOM!"

The group of six friends had entered the forest. It wasn't too hard to find again the place Warren had marked as the beginning of the road. Nori stepped onto it cautiously, and a few feet of yellow bricks appeared to the North.

Nehemiah looked to the road heading north and to the map pointing them west, deciding, "I guess this is where we part. Good luck."

"Good luck to you too," Nori replied, giving Chiyo a special smile as she walked off with Becca, in her Japanese street clothes, and Nehemiah.

"Nori's got a girlfriend," Warren mocked in a sing-song voice over and over again.

Nori dropped his head in his hand, trying to ignore it, and asked Dusty, "So where does the road go next?"

"'Continue upward,' it says," Dusty answered perplexed. As Nori tried to figure out the clue, Dusty wondered, "Are you just gonna let him keep saying that?"

"Yup," Nori responded, "you think upward means forward? If I stop him from saying it, he'll get agitated or angsty. Giddy is certainly better." He tried stepping off the front of the road, but immediately got smacked in the face by a blank sign that popped out of the ground. Nori fell to the ground, rubbing his nose. "I guess not."

Warren broke out in a burst of atypical laughter. Then, he picked Nori up off the ground and pushed him off the road again.

"Not funny Warren!" Nori shouted as the sign smacked his face again.

Warren was about to do it again, when Dusty urgently jumped in front of him noting, "Wait! I've got something really important to ask you."

"What?" Warren asked, dropping a relieved Nori back to the ground.

Dusty hadn't gotten that far, but after a second, she blurted out, "What's your favorite color?"

Raising an eyebrow at Dusty he answered, "Grey."

Nori climbed to his feet and tried to figure out how to "continue upward." He quickly noticed a tree branch extending right over the road. Deciding it must be the solution, he tried to reach it, but even jumping he was too short. He took a running start, missed the tree, but ended up landing on a floating, invisible platform. A second later, an entire staircase appeared, made from the yellow brick road.

Dusty and Warren looked up at the staircase and started climbing up. Nori whispered to Dusty as they climbed, "You need to keep asking him a bunch of random questions like that because it always seemed to work for Kairi."

"Why me?" Dusty wondered.

"Because we're good at his recovery process, but only girls can keep him calm, and…he seems to have taken a liking to you."

"Nuh-uh," Dusty countered.

Nori just smiled and walked up ahead.

With a sigh, Dusty inquired, "What does your toothbrush look like?"

A slightly cheerful smile spread across Warren's face as a heartwarming story came to his mind. "Pink," Warren replied distantly, "with Hello Kitty on the handle."

"What?" Dusty exclaimed, almost breaking out in laughter. She was hushed by a harsh glare from Nori.

"Odd…I know," Warren continued. "It was a gift from my sister the day I left Central City. She wasn't supposed to know I was leaving because everyone knew she couldn't come with me. She found out somehow, though, and she gave me the toothbrush to say good bye. That's all."

Dusty thought for a second. "Hmm. How old was your sister?"

"Six then, but she'd been six for a while already."

"Why couldn't she come?"

"What is this some sort of Warren Peace family history class?" He demanded angrily.

Nori whispered back to her, "Not random enough."

Dusty quickly changed the subject. "Uh, you know those blow-up, child protection, flotation devices that you put on your arms? Yeah, well, did you know if you put them on your legs instead of your arms, you turn upside down and get stuck under the water? My sister did that once. I laughed at her for that. I laugh at her a lot."

An hour later, Dusty was still asking questions. "What is a piñata?"

"You know," Warren replied, "Roxas asked me that same question once, only he sincerely didn't know what a piñata was, so we tied him to a tree by his feet and beat him with swimming noodles until he couldn't laugh anymore. No candy came out, though."

Because Dusty looked a little concerned, Nori added, "That was before either of them moved to our house, when they were friends in Central City."

Dusty nodded and then mentioned, "But that didn't answer my question."

"He doesn't have to answer the question, just keep thinking about random things. Ask him more than once, and he'll rip your head off." Before Dusty could ask the next question, however, Nori wondered about the next clue, mostly to himself, "What does it mean, 'the hamburger and fries are simply a distraction'?"

He didn't expect anyone to answer that question, much less Warren, who explained, "The hamburger and fries? Are we there already? It's a common nickname for the gate to Central City…only it's not the real gate. Within its small boundaries is restrained a terrible monster that is feared by even the worst of creatures this side of Fiction-land."

After a moment, Dusty interrupted a terrible silence with, "Uh…sorry to say this, but I think we may have to fight said terrible beastie."

"Why?" Both boys asked. Nori continued, "We can't fight. Warren can't start or he'll never stop for the whole trip, and neither of the two of us have weapons."

"Well, the next clue says, 'The journey is only possible with OEOHFPPE on your side.'"

Nori sighed, depressed for a second before he came up with an idea. "Does this monster have a weakness? Surely it must because the forest is based around weaknesses. All we must find is its weakness and use it against itself."

Warren scratched his head for a moment like he was thinking. He tried saying something, but nothing came out for a very long time. Finally, he suggested, "Dig a hole and bury it in it."

Nori looked at Warren strangely. "What is it with you and Roxas and holes? Every time we need a solution from one of the two of you, it's burying something in a hole!"

"That was the point," Warren agreed. "That boy…what's his name?"

"Roxas," Nori answered, slightly confused.

"Him…as far as I know, he's the monster's only weakness."

"You're suddenly not making any sense at all Warren," Nori noted, reaching out his arms to catch Warren who had started to sway like he might fall. He turned to Dusty and stated, "We can't leave him exposed to dark for this long. You never know what might happen."

Warren kept explaining, stuttering, "He…he defeated OEOHFPPE (correctly pronounced Oh-Ae-Oh Huff-Pee) once…with just…with just his." Warren suddenly stopped, collapsing to the ground as if he were choking on something.

Nori knelt by his side, immediately asking, "Dusty, do you have a phone like Tiara's that has a light on it?"

And Dusty did, but she hadn't given it to Nori before Warren looked back up with a glare in his eyes. The transformation had begun. He growled softly, picked Nori up by his chin, and pinned him to a tree.

It didn't take too long for Nehemiah, Becca, and Chiyo to defeat their first challenge. That should have been a given, though, since Mr. Miyagi had given them the secrets of the forest. The problem was: he had also mentioned that the challenges always got harder as you go. They came across next the Hubabaloos—namely the strange creatures that could only be overcome using Three Musketeer candy bars. Having an appearance slightly mixed between a cat, a rat, and the Dusks, the creature was black with eyes that didn't glow but reflected any little bit of light they caught. It also had the ability to move so fast that, even if you could distinguish it from the dark background, you wouldn't see it move.

You had to draw it away from yourself with the Three Musketeer bars before it attacked you, otherwise it would instantly infect you with the disease it carried. This disease could read your heart and, based upon that, it would determine how to proceed. For example, someone like Nori or Sora—entirely good and always happy—would quickly whither, die, and turn into a Hubabaloo. Someone like Warren, however, who came from the darkness would be easy to reconvert and would just be swallowed by his past ways.

Thankfully, Becca had caught sight of the beady eyes beginning to surround them before they attacked. "Those are the—?" She began in a questioning tone.

"Hubabaloos," Nehemiah replied, noticing them as well. Each of them took a Three Musketeer bar, unwrapped it, and threw it in a different direction from the others. The Hubabaloos ran off to fight over the three candy bars, and the three friends safely walked on, ready to take on the next challenge. They made it like fifty feet forward before the next thing appeared. The ground they were standing on suddenly rose up several hundred feet, leaving them a small platform with huge cliffs on every side. All three of them were afraid of heights.

Chiyo closed her eyes and frowned to muffle a scream that would have otherwise come out. After her jaw stopped shaking, she wondered, "Do we have to climb down the side?"

Gulping the lump from his throat, Nehemiah answered shakily, "I think so."

Becca fell to her hands and knees to look over the edge, as she noted, "It would be helpful to have some rope or something."

Being the boy, of course Nehemiah had to be the one to step forward and try climbing down first. He turned around and tried to climb down backwards. He was able to find a couple footholds and take a couple steps before a loose rock fell out from beneath his foot. As he fell, Becca and Chiyo desperately grabbed his wrists, catching him in the nick of time.

Once they had a second to calm themselves down from the sudden adrenaline rush, Chiyo commented, "I wonder how long we'll have to stay here."

Hallom couldn't stop running. That was all he knew right then. He had to get to Maldwyn before his dragon did something stupid. He fell to his knees but instantly climbed back to his feet. Maldwyn's voice was getting louder, so he knew he was close. Hallom burst through a bunch of trees to a large clearing full of amazed spectators. In the center of the clearing was his giant dragon, looking sickly and in pain. It was obvious he was starved, and three men stood beneath his head holding up the leg of some poor creature for him to eat.

Even though he was exhausted, Hallom was able to rush between Maldwyn and the men, insisting between breaths, "Don't eat it Maldwyn…The voice you heard…it's not me."

"You get out of the way boy," a random man with the same voice as Hallom ordered, tossing the worn out Hallom to the side.

Hallom hardly had enough energy after that run to stand to his feet and demand, "Who are you?"

The man replied, "The question should be: 'who are you to interfere with our procedure? Don't you see the signs?'" He pointed to a fence of yellow tape surrounding the dragon.

Wiping the sweat from his face, Hallom drew his katana and positioned himself to fight, "My name is Hallom. Now, step away from my dragon."

"I was afraid that might be so," the man said with a smirk. "We were well aware of your strong connection with the dragon and were afraid you might try to interfere. Rest assured we are thoroughly prepared for your arrival. Have a seat."

Hallom didn't plan on complying, but his legs suddenly gave in. He fell to the ground, looking up at the laughing man.

"Telepathy, huh?" Hallom realized.

"Yes," the man agreed, "I am Dr. Agari Sampson, assistant to Dr. Thinity. We've been studying different telepathic abilities for some time now and became very interested in the one you possess. It was only a matter of time before Mind's Eye drew you to rescue your dragon, what is his name?"

"Maldwyn," Hallom mentioned distantly, having noticed something different. Doctor Thinity had his same last name. Could he really be…related to him?

Hallom gathered the strength to stand to run away, but he was instantly stopped by the two words, "Wait…son." In this case, 'son' did not have the meaning of an endearing term for some random boy younger than you, but that of a despised child from years past.

A mixture of fear, anger, and over ten years of holding a grudge filled Hallom's voice as he stumbled out, "Fa-father?"

The new voice chuckled, "It has been a long time hasn't it Runt?"

Hallom wasn't sure whether he wanted to attack or flee, so he just stood there, staring at his worst nightmare, as he tried to win first the struggle within himself.

"Don't worry Runt," his father continued, "now that you're here, your childish fantasy can leave, practically unharmed. Though, I must admit, I never thought you capable of creating something so powerful with your mind."

A small growl grew in Hallom's throat at the insult, but it was hardly audible because Maldwyn had suddenly risen into the air, uttering an ear-piercing scream. He swooped down in front of Hallom, completely surrounding the small boy with his large body. Using Mind's Eye so only Hallom could hear him, Maldwyn stated, Thank you for coming Pup, but I cannot let you go through the things you've been through again. He picked Hallom up and set him safely between his two wings. Taking to flight, Maldwyn finished, I'm going to get you away from here even if I die doing it.

"No Maldwyn…don't," Hallom muttered, just as the crowd began to recover from the horrid screech. Dr. Agari was the first to recover, telepathically reaching out to slap Hallom's mind—a technique he learned from the character's in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. The pain hit Hallom's mind so hard that he almost fell off Maldwyn but instead grabbed onto the dragon's skin, digging in with his sharp nails.

Maldwyn looked back to the small boy and asked, Are you all right?

"Don't make contact!" Hallom shouted painfully. "He'll get you too."

They flew for another second until Hallom started shaking, his nose started bleeding, and a single tear fell down his face. Kid? Maldwyn asked, concerned.

"SHUT UP!" Hallom begged, but it was too late. Without any sort of warning, nor sign of pain, Maldwyn just fell out of the sky. Letting out a yelp, Hallom nudged the dragon a couple times and whispered worriedly, "Maldwyn…Maldwyn."

The dragon didn't respond, so Hallom climbed off of him, unsheathing his katana. "You said he'd be unharmed!" Hallom shouted running to attack Dr. Agari.

He collapsed to the ground as well after another attack on his mind and tried desperately to swallow the pain as Dr. Agari responded, "That was if you stayed."