Notes:
Since chapter one was fairly complete as a fic in itself, this part would really be better labeled as a sequel than a second chapter. On the other hand, it does lead directly on from the first part and doesn't make a lot of sense on its own, so this seemed the more appropriate way to post it. There are still two more parts left to go (plus one very short omake, which may or may not be posted here thanks to all the insane formatting restrictions), but since those stand much better on their own, I'll probably post them as separate stories.
When they arrived, Traverse Town was little more than a firm place to stand in the endless nothing of the cosmos. The world was so small it had edges, the sort you could have walked to and looked right off, no more than fifty paces away in any direction. Nevertheless, it was somewhere to land long enough for Cid to figure out which part of the engine was making all that noise, and they weren't in any position to be particular. Flying most certainly did not agree with Yuffie, for one, who woke up a short while before they landed looking rather green. The moment they touched down she half-fell through the hatch and actually hugged the ground.

No-one ventured far from the ship. There wasn't far to go. The only structures of any real note were a couple of half-ruined houses, if you could have called them houses, for they were in such a state of disrepair as to give the impression that they'd be abandoned a century before without ever being completed. Despite his initial claims, the ship Cid had actually produced in that couple of months could not have flown circles around anything, not unless the something stayed perfectly still and everyone aboard had stronger stomachs than most people. There was nothing to do but wait until it was declared airworthy again. Squall kicked a pebble around in a tight circle in stony faced concentration. Aerith looked up at the sky with all its stars in different places, and tried not to think of home.

They hadn't been there much more than an hour, however, before the looming question of where to go next was taken away from them. In the sky above, a moving star appeared, one that gradually resolved itself into the familiar shape of the brightly coloured ship that had visited Radient Garden only a few months before. The king pulled up alongside Cid's ship, executing the kind of elegant landing that their pilot could only dream of, and the pilot literally bounded out of the cockpit. Aerith had of course heard of the king's visit to Radient Garden and seen his ship a little from a distance, but the first clear thought that went through her head on getting their first good look at him, was that the description 'short and mouselike' hadn't been any exaggeration.

"Oh, it's you again, you worldhopping rodent," grumbled Cid. "I was wondering when we'd run into you next. Out to cover the whole universe, are you?" Which really was, given their circumstances, as civil as anyone could have expected him to be.

The diminutive ruler declined to take any offense. "I don't usually travel this much, but this is very unusual. I'm certain this world wasn't here when I came through this route last," he told them, as though he was discussing mildly unusual weather. "It's Cid, isn't it? We met outside Ansem's castle… couldn't be more than a few months ago. Looks to me like you didn't need those schematics after all. I think congratulations are in order - I never imagined you'd have your own ship up and running so fast."

Idle compliments in that situation were all it took to push Cid past breaking point. "By the skin of my goddamn teeth, more like it. Hell of a maiden voyage. The garden isgone your majesty. Me an' the kids are everyone that made it out alive. The whole place blew up behind us.

"You can keep your damned schematics. Three months on that goddamn ship and the best I can put together carries one man and three brats and splutters its way into the sky, makes it way half way across the universe and dies on some nowhere world. Just you give me one more month – one little peek at those precious plans – and I'd have had this thing flying like a bird and the next prototype ready to carry ten times the load. So no, of course I didn't need any of your goddamn help, you…" Cid ground to a halt and let his head fall into his hands. It took him a while to get himself back under control. "Sorry, hell," he muttered through his fingers. "I know that wasn't fair, but, shit. Can you blame a guy?"

The king's smile faded like a light flicking off. "Your whole world? What in the name of the stars happened?"

"Hell if I know." Cid ground out. "I come home one evening and the street's crawling with these creatures. A bunch even got into my workshop, and damned if I've never been glad to have a nosy ninja for a neighbour before, but…"

"Heartless," Aerith put in. "The creatures, they're called Heartless."

Cid looked at her curiously. "That what your moth… Ifa…" He shook his head, gave up and delivered the rest of the sentence looking into the middle distance. "Is that what she called them?"

The king coughed politely and regarded them both with a serious expression. "It sounds like this is going to be a long story. I can see we're going to have a lot to discuss. I don't know how much help I can offer you poor folks, but you're all welcome to come stay at the castle for as long as you like. My world isn't far from here. We can talk in more comfort there" "

"Sure, nothing here worth sticking around for." Cid replied with feeling. "The ship'll survive another leg. Lead the way."

Certainly a good idea in theory, but getting Yuffie back on board the Gummi again was a different matter. She dug in her heals and refused to budge an inch.

"No! Not getting back on that ever again ever again EVER!" she screeched.

"Maybe you youngsters should come in my ship instead," Mickey suggested kindly. "No disrespect to any of Cid's work, but I'm sure I'll give you a smoother ride."

Yuffie frowned and had to be carried on board as a neurotic little ball in Aerith's arms, but at least she behaved herself for the trip.

The king's was a small world, but bright and comfortable. The castle was a starkly different building from the one they'd left behind back home. The king lead them all up from the hanger, through an ornate garden and up to the palace steps before they met some of the world's other residents.

"Donald! Goofy!" The king called to two unusual figures standing in the hallway. It was fairly clear from the looks on their faces that neither had expected guests.

"Who're they?" Donald spluttered.

"These are our guests, Donald." The king replied. "It's a long story – and hopefully I'm about to hear it. Would you and Goofy mind keeping an eye on the little ones for a while?"

"Well sure," Goofy started, but Donald cut him off.

"I thought we had rules about outsiders." He glared at the newcomers as though he expected them to launch a raid on the castle any second. "You can't just go picking up anyone and bringing them here."

"I'm aware of that Donald, and you'll have to trust me that these are very exceptional circumstances," said the king firmly. "Now, Miss Aerith, Mr Cid, if you'll follow me through here, we can talk in the library."

Donald settled for strutting irritably in a full circuit around the two youngsters so he could examine them from all angles, finally stopping to stare suspiciously at Yuffie from roughly where he started. Yuffie stared back for a few seconds, then poked him very deliberately in the eye. Squall had to put a lot of effort into not laughing out loud at Donald's response.

"Now, you were saying before that Ansem was researching the Heartless?" The king began.

Despite its enormous bookshelves towering towards the ceiling far over their heads, the library was a well-lit and spacious area, certainly as comfortable a place for this conversation as they could hope to find. The three of them filed into a small study area off to one side, equipped with a desk and chairs – though by unspoken agreement it was decided this subject matter would be better dealt with standing.

"No-one knew what he was researching," Cid replied to the king's question. "Though it sounds like Aerith has run into some information I haven't," he added, not unkindly.

Aerith made sure she dragged her eyes back from the various titles on the nearest bookshelf, to which they kept wandering when she tried to think about the past. She found there was no way she could look both of them in the face at once, so forgave herself for speaking facing the floor. "Yes, my father was…" ( - is - ) "a scientist. He's worked with Ansem a few times."

"He worked with Ansem on this?" Cid sounded appropriately incredulous about that idea.

Aerith shook her head slightly. "One of Ansem's assistants showed him part of a report about what they were working on. It talked about the Heartless at length."

The king folded his arms thoughtfully. "This is all very strange. When I went to see Ansem he was studying the darkness of the human heart. It seems to me these Heartless would have to be related – but when I spoke to him he was concerned his research was becoming dangerous and terminated the project. Something must have happened to change his mind."

"What sort of something?" Aerith wondered.

"I can only guess what might have happened, but Ansem isn't a reckless man – he must have had some reason for reopening his research." The king spoke with the kind of conviction no-one would seriously consider arguing with. "If the Heartless started appearing, if he had some clue that the world was in danger, that might well have been enough."

Aerith considered this. "When his assistant came to see my father, he didn't make it sound as though there was any danger."

"Yeah, come to think of it, that's the same thing they were telling people when those Heartless things started showing up," Cid added.

The king seemed to be about to offer some theory on this, but he hesitated and shook his head. "It's too hard to say. The problem is we just don't have enough information." He looked thoughtful. "Exactly what happened after you left? You said there were monsters, but can we really be sure the whole world was destroyed?"

Aerith and Cid glanced at each other, but neither had considered that angle. "Before we left there was someone – hell, it was Aerith's mother, I mean, and she has this way of knowing this stuff – and she seemed pretty sure our time was up. I'd trust her judgment further than my own, but we didn't exactly stop to look back on our way out. I wouldn't have a clue what might be left there."

"Then the first thing we need to do is find out," Mickey declared. "I'll take my ship and go back there. Just maybe, I'll find something that'll give us a clue. In the meantime, I think you all deserve a good rest."

"Are you sure you want to do that on your own? I could…" Cid started.

"I promise you I'll be careful…" The king pushed the library doors open. "This way please, I can at least get you settled in before I go."

Aerith and Cid were led out of a side door, down a long corridor and up a short flight of stairs. The door at the top led to an ornate bedroom with a single occupant with undeniable resemblance to the king himself.

"Good morn…" She began at the sound of the door opening, then caught sight of the others. "Oh, my."

"May I present Queen Minnie." The king declared as he ushered them through the door. "Minnie, may I introduce Aerith Gainsborough and Cid Highwind. I've invited them and two of their younger companions to stay at the castle for a while. I have some important errands to run which I don't want to postpone, so can I ask you to help them get settled in while I'm away?"

The queen clapped her hands together in delight. "It's an honour to make your acquaintance," she declared, reaching up to take their hands in greeting in turn, handling the whole situation with a relaxed dignity that Donald could only have dreamed of. "Guests! It seems like so long since we've had any. Welcome to our castle. Of course we can find you somewhere to stay."

The king nodded and smiled in satisfaction. "I expect I'll be gone a few hours, but in the meantime, why don't we give them the guest rooms in the West wing? They might need some dusting, but there'll be plenty of space."

"That sounds perfect," Minnie agreed. "Now, have you been given a tour of the castle yet? Right this way, please."

"Invited to stay, very posh. Almost like we had somewhere else to go." Cid muttered, just loud enough for Aerith to hear on their way out, though for the rest of the process of finding guest rooms he was on his best behaviour.

From then on, it really was just a matter of settling in. The castle was as pleasant a place to stay as anyone could have asked, but after all that had happened was disappointingly anticlimactic. The end of the world had been and gone and now the universe seemed to expect them to get on with their lives.

Mickey never reached Radiant Garden. The closest he could get from any direction of approach brought him up against a field of floating asteroids, in between which hid dozens of tiny ships of unfamiliar design which would begin to snipe at him as soon as he came into range. Cid listened to all this with gritted teeth, gave the inevitable tirade about the Gummi ships' lack of weaponry and decent shields and started making lists and sketches of new parts he'd need.

Cid's way of coping in those first months after they arrived was to throw himself back into his work on the ship and keep as busy as possible. It was a huge relief to him to have the primary responsibility for the care of three children removed. He was – in his own words – not cut out to be a hero, or a parent, and he was only too happy to relinquish both roles to the more qualified residents of the castle. He didn't quite resume his old work habit of vanishing for weeks at a time, as he'd always made sure to make at least an a awkward attempt to check on all the kids he'd rescued every day. At other times he would of his own accord, usually complaining about flying rodents and the damn chipmunks that were giving him another headache.

"It always used to be my dream to build a ship that would fly me up into space some day," he told Aerith once. "Just doesn't seem so important now that I don't have the old hanger to come back to."

Goofy offered to give Squall 'a few pointers' on using the gunblade. The resulting session did not go well. By the time it was all over, it had been well and truly established that wielding a gunblade and bludgeoning the enemy with a spinning shield were two arts which had next to nothing in common, and it was further established that no-one other than Squall was going to get to so much as touch that particular heirloom for a good long while.

Donald took to counting the castle cutlery, and shortly thereafter confirmed his suspicion – pieces were gradually disappearing. The following day he caught Yuffie in the garden trying to fashion makeshift shuriken out of a pile of pilfered forks. Caught red-handed, Yuffie did what any self-respecting juvenile ninja menace would have done and legged it. The ensuing chase took them half way around the castle, overturned fifteen pieces of furniture and broke four expensive pots and a table; ending fairly abruptly in Daisy's room. Yuffie got a slap on the wrist, while Donald got a twenty minute lecture on responsible behaviour and picking on little girls. Yuffie stuck her tongue out at him from behind Daisy's skirt. Situations were all but reversed in just the following days, however, when Daisy's jewelry became Yuffie's next target.

Aerith spent a lot of time in the library, or in Minnie's company. There had been no queen in Radiant Garden during Aerith's lifetime – but the role could conceivably have been invented just for Minnie. Aerith discovered that she was a kind soul, and if in her presence everything suddenly caught up with you and you started to cry without any apparent reason, she'd understand and she'd stay there for as long as you needed her.

The most truly notable event of the period took place one Sunday afternoon, when Merlin appeared in the throne room in a puff of smoke. Cid (who was not technically allowed to smoke in the castle but had enough faith in the ventilation of some of the larger rooms to occasionally risk it) nearly swallowed his cigarette.

"Your majesty! Your majesty! " The elderly magician hollered. "Something terrible has happened! Something…"

"Merlin?!" Blurted Cid. "How the hell did you get here?"

Merlin blinked through the clearing smoke cloud. "Ah… young Master Highwind, isn't it? What in the universe are you doing in the king's castle?"

"That was my question." Cid reminded him, stubbing out his cigarette to avoid further mishaps. "I shouldn't be surprised you know the mouse."

"Mouse?" spluttered Merlin. "That mouse is a king renowned on worlds you've never even heard of!"

"Well you can tell him that when he gets back." Cid informed him. "He's off on another one of his trips, probably won't be back until this evening. You can break your terrible news then."

"Or maybe even earlier, if he's running early," piped up a voice from well below eye level. Cid and Merlin both jumped – neither had heard the small door open. "Merlin! I thought I smelled smoke," the king exclaimed, prompting a coughing fit from Cid that had absolutely nothing to do with any stubborn nicotine addiction of any kind. "I should have known you'd make it out of there in one piece."

"In one piece?" Merlin exclaimed. "You mean you knew what happened to our world?"

"Of course. I've known for weeks. Cid here and three children were the only ones we knew of who escaped. They've been staying at the castle with me ever since."

"Wait just a sec." Cid cut in. "You mean to tell us you didn't know what happened to the Garden until now? The hell have you been all this time?"

Merlin positively fumed. "I'll have you know I was away on a journey when the unspeakable calamity that befell our world occurred. I hadn't the slightest inkling until I tried to take myself back home not an hour ago and found myself landed on an asteroid floating in space where my house should have been!"

Cid wasn't mollified in the least. "Mighty convenient. Bet the rest of us would've liked that freedom to just pop out of there at will."

"Cid, you shouldn't be so harsh," said the king. "The worlds may be disconnected, but most of them have at least one or two residents who know perfectly well what else is out there – or even have visited others. And Merlin may have powers most of us don't, but even his magic can only transport one person between worlds at a time. We met years ago, but I still had to wait until a way for my ship opened up before I could visit his world. It doesn't make his magic useless." Merlin looked vaguely sheepish, but didn't contradict any of this.

"Fat lot of good it did those poor bastards back home." Grumbled Cid, but beyond that little more was said on the subject.

Merlin took over one of the many castle guest rooms and was unpacked and settled in in no time. Two days later, he was gone again, allegedly on a mission of investigation and information gathering of the utmost importance, but the long and short of it was that no mere change in the base of his operations would quell Merlin's love of travel. He did find the time between trips a few weeks later to tell Squall that he knew a thing or two about heirloom swords. Squall told him, reasonably politely, to go away.

Before long, Cid was taking his modified Gummi ships – which now boasted engines which purred rather than spluttered and really could have flown circles around his first prototype (if not yet the king's much sleeker craft) – on longer and longer test flights. "Strangest thing, " he brought up over dinner one evening. "You can see all those stars out there just fine, but I can't for the life of me find any way to get anywhere close to landing on most of them. Some kind of a weird field keeps pushing me back." At the other end of the table, Yuffie waited until Squall was looking the other way and flicked a pea at him with pinpoint accuracy. Squall pretended not to notice. Hard.

"That'll be the world shields." Micky explained. "There can't be more than a handful of worlds out there that are properly connected. The shields keep out just about everything else."

Cid considered this new item of information. "Kinda takes the fun out of space flight, if you ask me."

"Maybe, but you have to remember, those shields keep out unfriendly visitors the same as friendly ones. It might keep the worlds separated, but it also keeps them safe," said the king. The fourth pea proved to be Squall's breaking point. Yuffie made a face that strongly suggested to all in view that she'd just been kicked under the table.

Cid looked thoughtful. "What about our world? You visited us way before everything went critical. Why didn't we have one of them shields?"

"You used to. It was destroyed a short while before I got there. You remember the meteor shower you told me about?"

Cid paused a few seconds as the implications added up in his head. "All that Gummi stuff came from our shield? Damn, never would've thought."

"The Heartless," Aerith put in. "They started appearing around the same time. A few people saw them around the town long before that night when they attacked in force."

Down the table, Donald had definitely noticed Yuffie's expression. "Squall," he warned. "You aren't teasing Yuffie again are…" He stopped as a carrot bounced off the side of his head. Yuffie giggled in a way that really wasn't going to do her cause any good.

"That's one hell of a big coincidence. You think losing the shield is what let them in?" Cid suggested.

"There's got to be some kind of connection," Mickey agreed.

"But… my mother said the meteor shower wasn't anything to fear." Even after all this time, Aerith felt her throat tighten; barely. She blinked her eyes a few times and did her best to shrug it off.

"Maybe that's only because the shower itself wasn't the danger," The king suggested. "Or maybe we're all looking at this the wrong way. Maybe it was the Heartless that destroyed the shield in the first place."

"Lotta maybes," Cid complained, speaking louder now to be heard over the full blown food fight that was breaking out at the other side of the room.

Mickey shook his head. "There are just too many possibilities at the moment and not enough information."

"Then what can we do?" Aerith wondered.

"Well, we can always do some research," Mickey suggested. "There's no reason to believe this is the first time something like this has ever happened – maybe we'll learn something that will let us start narrowing those possibilities down. We can keep improving the Gummi ships too – maybe some day we'll have them up to scratch to take us back to your world again and see what we can find there. But in the meantime, there isn't much we can do except wait and see." He paused, looked around the room, and sighed. "And right now, we can send someone in to do something about the mess…"

The wait had its advantages – it gave them plenty of time to prepare – even in ways that would not see fruit for years afterwards. Though certainly no such distant concerns were on Squall's mind when someone knocked on his bedroom door a few evenings later.

The king pushed the door open. "I thought I'd find you here. Do you mind if I join you?"

Squall nodded a bit. The king ambled in and quickly spotted the gunblade, given place of honour on a side table that carried nothing else. "That's the one your father left to you, isn't it? Do you mind if I have a look?"

Squall wasn't too keen on anyone else near it, but this was the king. "'Kay."

Mickey lifted the weapon up with enviable ease. He examined it intently for a few minutes. "It's impressive workmanship. It's similar in design to any other heavy blade weapon, though the trigger mechanism would add an extra dimension to how you'd wield it."

"Goofy and Merlin already tried to tell me they could show me how to use it. They hardly knew what it was," said Squall, a little sulkily.

"Well, I'd wager I know a fair bit more about swordplay than either of them, but the truth is I can't teach you to use it either," the king told him without a trace of embarrassment. "This weapon is going to be far too heavy for you to use for some years to come. But what I can do is get you started on some basic swordsmanship – everyone starts with a practice weapon. And when you've had a few years of that, maybe you'll be ready to try out the real thing too."

Yuffie spent a week pretending not to watch Squall's practice intently before the king asked her whether she wanted to join in. Yuffie told him ninjas didn't care about stupid sword stuff, and the king replied that that was a shame because Squall could really have used a sparring partner his own age, even if that partner was learning to use different weapons and techniques.

Yuffie only held out for a couple of seconds before asking: What kind of different weapons?

And the rest very rapidly became history.

In the end, they'd wait the best part of three years to see anything. Then, one night, Chip and Dale came pelting into the castle with urgent news - they'd actually been outside to see a star disappearing from the night sky. Before first light the next day, Cid took his now many-times-upgraded Gummi and flew straight towards the new empty patch in the sky. Many tense hours passed as everyone else waited for him to return.

Twenty four hours passed before Cid's Gummi reappeared. Cid emerged with the crazed energy of a man too overtired to rest, but otherwise unscathed. "Waste of a trip. Wasn't nothing left there to find," he reported. "Nothing but asteroids and those damn Heartless bug ships and a whole lotta empty space. The new shields and guns really paid off though." He staggered a little at this point and had to be forced to sit down before he did himself any damage. "That's not all either – you all remember that backyard-scale world where we ran into Your Majesty – the one you said wasn't there yesterday?"

"Of course I remember," said Mickey.

"It just got a whole lot larger. Bunch of new people just showed up there too. If you want to call 'em people, anyhow."

The new residents of the proto-town turned out, as Aerith and the king discovered one short argument with an obviously sleep-deprived Cid and a slightly longer Gummi flight later, to be a family of tiny white creatures with bat wings and pom-poms on their heads who called themselves moogles. They were understandably disoriented and had no idea how they'd arrived in such a strange place after their world vanished, as they'd certainly had nothing like Cid's ship to take them there. However, they were (as it turned out) a largely nomadic group by nature and were not as attached to their home world as they might have been, and quite familiar with moving to new places. A few of the younger ones were far more excited by the whole affair than they were scared.

They politely declined the king's offer to let them stay in the castle. The moogles loved nothing better than craftwork and discovering new materials, and the town, which had now doubled in size and begun to accumulate all manner of intergalactic flotsam and jetsam, was voted far too wonderful an opportunity to pass up. The news their world had disappeared without a trace left them understandably distraught, but after debating the matter, the whole group agreed that the castle didn't sound half as interesting as the place they'd washed up.

Over the years that followed, Aerith and the other residents of the castle would gradually come to understand rather more about the strange little world that would soon acquire the title of Traverse Town. It was a world that truly had not existed before the first of the greater worlds was destroyed, a place between light and darkness build entirely of debris generated when other worlds were torn apart. Sometimes whole buildings would pop into being undamaged, their occupants no more than shaken. Others the world seemed to build of its own accord from whatever material was available. It was a twilight world, a place where objects and people would simply wash up unexpectedly - in fact, by the time Sora arrived there many years later it was approaching the size of a small city. It would also make one of the best sources of information the king and his guests would ever discover.

Once the introductions were over and the moogles beginning to get settled in, they were able to give accurate descriptions of several varieties of Heartless that Aerith recognised instantly from that final night of terror in Radiant Garden, quickly removing any doubt that the two worlds had indeed met the same fate. Beyond even that though, they had something even more valuable to offer – some of them had actually witnessed a stranger who'd appeared to be able to command the Heartless to do her will. The moogles described a horned woman dressed all in black who'd towered over them like a monster (though, to be fair, much the same could have been said of Goofy – scale is a rather a different matter when you stand less than two feet tall). They were even able to supply a name.

"Malificent?" declared Merlin on hearing the tale. "Why, this is simply terrible news!"

"Friend of yours?" suggested Cid.

"Most certainly not! I'm pleased to say I've never met the woman." Merlin countered indignantly. "But I doubt very much there's anyone in my distinguished field who hasn't heard of her. This Malificent is a witch of the of the darkest of powers. With an army of creatures such as those Heartless at her command I dread to think what she might become capable of."

"Worse – we already know," said the king, shaking his head sadly. "Two whole worlds – gone completely. And if we can't do something, who knows how many more to come."

"But why?" Aerith wondered. "She'd never even visited either world before. What could she have to gain by this?"

"For a monster such as Malificent, what gain does she need?" Merlin replied. "Mark my words, now she's come this far she will not stop until she's seen every world in the universe consumed by the darkness. Our only option is to find and take care of her before she strikes again – and I fear we may not have much time. I doubt she'll wait half as long before she makes her next move."

This was easier said than done. Barely a month had gone by before the next star winked out of the sky, and within the next hundred days, another four had followed it. Merlin vanished muttering something about spell components and contacts, and for a long time was seen only sporadically (generally when he popped back to get something and landed in the wrong room, which was really not so different from business as normal where Merlin was concerned). Cid and the king spent day after day flying loops around large portions of the galaxy looking for signs of trouble, but there seemed no way to predict where Malificent would strike next. Whatever power had kept the Heartless at bad the last two years seemed to have evaporated overnight.

Even on the occasions when they found worlds under attack before it was too late there was rarely much they could do. Mickey once battled Heartless on one world for seven hours before the earth started to crack beneath his feet and he had to race to get back to his ship in time. The stories of Malificent that arose from the survivors made Merlin's warnings far too easily believable. There were a thousand stars to choose from, and little pattern to the attacks.

"Even if we do find her I don't know what we're supposed to do about it." Cid complained after so many months of hunting without even a decent lead to show for it. "Crazy witch who chews up worlds like taffy isn't anyone I want to start an argument with."

"Actually, we might have more on our side than you think," replied the king. "Worlds are living things, just like the rest of us. You don't have to tear one apart to destroy it – one blow to the heart is all it takes. Their hearts are protected, of course – they're not easy to get to – and the individual Heartless might not be too much of a problem, but with an army of this size, finding a way to a world heart might not take long. If we can just take out the person in control, maybe that'll be all we need to do to stop this."

Aerith did not say anything, but something she'd read somewhere about doors and keyholes teased at the back of her mind.

Most of the meetings held in that period were unanimously voted to be best kept from the ears of anyone younger than fifteen. Squall and Yuffie found themselves locked out of the library a lot during meetings, to their growing mutual irritation. Yuffie in particular had never been happy about any place she couldn't get into.

"What are they talking about in there?" Yuffie complained, pacing from one side of the locked doors to the other for the seventeenth time.

"Grown-up stuff," said Squall, slouched against the door on the far side. The king was supposed to have taken them for training an hour ago; his original hope that they'd be done in there any minute had dried up some time back.

"It's a stupid castle anyway!" Yuffie complained. "Proper castles have secret passages and trap doors and stuff and you can't lock anyone out of anywhere."

Squall considered this. "You think our castle did back home?" He'd only been inside it a couple of times, his dad made it sound like all the important stuff in the world started out there, and Squall was sure he'd have known if….
…Squall really didn't want to keep thinking about that.

"Bet it did," Yuffie chimed in, oblivious and for once in her life the less easily distracted. "Hey, bet even this one still has attics. You can get anywhere in the house from an attic."

"We'd get in trouble," said Squall, who did not need any further prompting to tell where this was about to go.

"You only get in trouble if you get caught," Yuffie sang back. It was practically her motto.

Squall looked up from the fascinating pattern of cracks on the far wall he'd been studying for the last fifteen minutes. "How would you even get up there? There aren't just ladders hanging down all over the place."

Yuffie was momentarily taken aback, then inspiration struck. "From the roof! I bet ya there's a way in from the roof!"

On the one hand, getting involved in Yuffie's plans was a recipe for disaster. Squall knew there was every chance the whole plan would backfire and they'd be not only caught but in really serious trouble by the time that happened. On the other… "There's a low bit on the roof around the side with that angel statue on that big stone pedestal thing. I bet if we both pushed it together, we could move it close enough to climb up there from."

It took the others an hour to find the errant children when the meeting finally adjourned, with much running around and triple-checking of already checked spots and general panic. However, when they were finally discovered, sitting quite quietly on the roof of the ballroom in the Eastern Wing, so distracted by the view of the sunset from this angle that their original mischief was forgotten, no-one had the heart to punish them nearly as soundly as they had first intended.

Meanwhile, Traverse Town, had swelled to more than five times its original size. There was no longer any question of offering all the refugees the option of staying at the castle – quite apart from the inconvenience of hosting so many guests the town was rapidly accumulating more people than even the castle had rooms. Besides, with such a giant influx of new people and things, the world was rapidly approaching the point where it would be able to support itself. The king and the residents of the castle did make a point of organising regular supply trips to provide a number of important things that it couldn't always find for itself though – like food and clothing and medical supplies. Given how miserably they'd failed to protect those poor people's worlds it seemed the least they could do. Goods were distributed from a small shop which Donald and Goofy were put in charge of operating, much to Donald's chagrin – it was a job he would be only too happy to pass off to three of his more enthusiastic nephews a number of years later, when the young ducklings would finally be old enough.

The opportunity they'd been waiting for finally came in the sixth month, heralded by the reappearance of Merlin one evening right in the middle of the dinner table, and in so much of a rush to pass on his story that he got halfway through the tale before the smoke had cleared. He'd been visiting another king whom he'd apparently had some business with some time back and had actually been there to see the first of the Heartless appear right in front of them. Dinner was cut rather short that day.

Within an hour, the King, Donald and Goofy were boarding one of the Gummis, all three armed with weaponry that bore little resemblance to the practice swords that Squall was getting so used to. Everyone, even the children, were there to see them off. The atmosphere hummed almost as loudly as the warming engines of the ship.

"Well, this is it." The king announced on the Gummi steps, with very little of his usually unfailing smile in evidence. "I'm not going to waste our time with big speeches, but you all know how much this chance could mean – to everyone, and I want you all to know we aren't going to waste it - and we'll be back again, just as soon as we can make it. Donald, Goofy, are we ready to go?"

"Ready aaand waiting, sire!" Said Goofy, throwing a sloppy salute.

"We'll show those Heartless!" Donald chimed in with a flourish of his staff. Neither of them had been party to all of the theorizing and secret meetings which had taken place since the death of that second star, but you hardly needed extensive research into the subject to know that the Heartless were bad news.

Moving with the utmost dignity and poise, Minnie took one step forward to stand right at the feet of the Gummi steps ."Take care," she reminded them. "We'll be waiting for you, however long it takes for you to make it back." She raised a hand to Mickey, which he kissed elegantly, and then turned amidst shouted farewells and calls of encouragement from all present and disappeared into the ship. The Gummi rose smoothly and shot off into the night, its destination an unfamiliar world under siege half a galaxy away.

Waiting and seeing was a lot harder in the following hours than it had ever been in the last few years before. Merlin, of course, had an extensive list of expertly categorized reasons why he couldn't possibly just magic himself back over there to check how they were doing, which he would launch into the moment he began to suspect anyone present was about to so much as broach the subject. Destiny, intergalactic interference and the rules of engagement as observed by a half dozen different cultures made up the start of it (no-one stuck around to hear the full list, although it was possible Minnie might have, had something in her infinitely patient demeanor not flustered the old magician so much that when it came to making that speech in her presence he summarized it down to a handful of quick points entirely of his own accord.) Twenty four hours passed without sign or omen. One day became two, and two became three. No flying ship returned, no stars fell, no newcomers appeared gasping and disoriented on the bordering streets of Traverse Town, although Cid was finding ways to stretch the simple task of maintaining the supply shop there during its usual owners absence to a full time job.

The tension stretched but couldn't continue rising much further by the end of the fourth day; if anything, by then, things had calmed down enough that people could talk to Merlin over dinner in relative safety, and Cid sometimes stopped long enough between trips for an almost-conversation. The chipmunks started stocking fireworks for the celebration that would ensue the moment the king returned. Yuffie and Squall kept each other busy inventing new training exercises of varieties which their official instructor would have never imagined (nor approved). Aerith began the task of replanting one of the larger garden flower beds in time for the coming spring. Daisy sorted through her whole jewelry collection three times, her dresses twice and her shoes four times. And Minnie, as the reigning monarch of the castle, managed to be everywhere she was needed both in the king's stead and in her own duties, and somehow, at the same time, was always waiting in the same place for the long awaited sign of an answer in the sky.

It was two weeks and three days of nervous nights half-watching for any sign before at last the king's ship came gliding neatly home to land. Chip and Dale wasted no time - by the time the hatch was fully open the skies were aglow with exploding rockets to welcome the returning heroes. The king and companions emerged from the ship with bashfully surprised expressions, and for most of the evening not even the tale they had to tell was half as important as the chance to welcome them all home.

The journey and battle had been as hard and long as the long wait suggested, but all was confirmed – Malificent had been defeated. "I wish I could say destroyed," Mickey had to clarify eventually. "But the best I can safely say is that she's gone for now. We managed to save the world she was after, and I don't think we'll be seeing her again for a good long time."

There was more to tell too, and far stranger things to report. "We found out why the Heartless have been so hard to track. Often we'd see them appearing and disappearing right before our eyes. No wonder the world shields can't keep them out, they're using corridors of darkness to move themselves around."

"So that's how whole worlds were going kaput before we could even get there." Cid scowled.

"I know none of you want to hear this now, but we can't assume everything is going to get easier from here. We've bought some time, but we can't be everywhere at once, and we already know how difficult it is to predict where the Heartless will strike next," Mickey declared, bringing the festivities to a close. "It isn't going to be enough to hope we can get to the next world they attack in time to save it. What we need is some way to protect those worlds - the very world-hearts themselves. As it stands, all the Heartless need is a way to the world heart and it's over."

"But you already have an idea, don't you?" said Aerith, who'd been watching the king closely through his speech.

Mickey looked momentarily surprised, then smiled at her. "Well, maybe. I don't want to place too much hope on a hunch just yet, but I might know where to start."

Malificent's temporary defeat may not have been the final overwhelming victory they'd hoped for, but it did mean that life calmed down at the castle for a while. Indeed, beyond the acquisition of a few new pieces of information, life returned to much the state it had possessed before the first star disappeared. With one exception: Cid was leaving. He had plans about starting a shop of his own – something in a different theme to the one the castle ran. Indeed, by the time the king returned he must have been thinking about it for some time, for he was packed and ready to go before he said a word.

"It's not I don't appreciate your hospitality all these years," he told the king with uncharacteristic trepidation. "But I'm not cut out for all this nobility and castle life, and saving the universe is wearing me out. The Gummi ships can take on just about anything the universe can throw at them by now. There'll be more for me to help out with over at the town than here, and if you do ever need any repairs, I'll never be more than a few hours away." He was obviously worried that all this would make him sound ungrateful, but equally eager to be away.

The king was entirely understanding. He smiled warmly and shook Cid by the hand. "We'll all be sorry to see you go. It's been an honour to work with you, and I think I speak for everyone here when I say I can't thank you enough for all the help you've given us. Take good care of yourself."

Cid turned a shade of red at the praise, even as he grinned with relief. "Then I'll be seeing you, and the brats. Stop by any time, I'll be set up before you know it."

They saw him off that same afternoon with minimal fuss and fanfare – as Cid himself wanted. Traverse Town might no longer have been growing at any more than the rate of the odd straggler here and there, but it was big enough to be starting to develop its own economy. Cid hadn't been kidding when he said there was plenty more there for someone with his skills to contribute to.

After Malificent's defeat, their research too took on some new themes. It was an activity several of the castle inhabitants (chiefly the king, Aerith and Merlin) had undertaken on and off over the years, with limited results. Finding the information they needed, even in a library as extensive as the castle's, was a long and tedious process. Their work was not utterly without fruit, even if most of what they had discovered was interesting primarily from an academic standpoint – they had discovered, for example, that this was not the first time the Heartless had ever appeared, nor the first a world had ever been destroyed, though details beyond that were often sketchy at best. The king himself had always been particularly interested in tales surrounding a legendary item known as they keyblade which would come up occasionally in the course of their study – so much so that Yuffie and Squall were by now being brought up on such stories. Now, however, even much of his research began to take a different direction.

You could not get very far researching the Heartless without hearing about the darkness – more than you ever wanted to hear, in Aerith's case at least, for one fact which came up in almost every chronicle which so much as breached the subject was how easily the slightest interest in the dark could grow to corrupt one's very soul. It was scary stuff to read, to suggest that merely seeking to learn about the Heartless might be enough to begin to make you one of them. However, since returning it had become the subject that interested the king more than anything.

It worried Aerith to see him venturing into such territory, but when she brought it up the king told her, "I appreciate your concern, but those same sources you're talking about make it clear that a strong enough heart won't be consumed by the darkness. If we let ourselves become so scared we don't even try to understand the place the Heartless came from, then we have little hope of ever defeating the real thing." And despite her concerns, Aerith trusted the king enough to trust his judgement on this matter too.

It wasn't long before even Aerith couldn't deny the king had a point - they would soon learn, for example, that the Heartless did not merely travel by means of corridors of darkness, there was an entire, unexplored world of darkness which such creatures could reach. If they were ever going to get to the roots of all this, it might just be that the answers would only be found there.

It was a dark time when the next star disappeared – it had seemed for so long so sure those days were over with. Worse still was the necessity of accounting for how it had even been possible. Could it really be that Malificent had returned again so soon?

None of the new arrivals to Traverse Town had ever seen or heard of anyone like her.

More were to follow. Things never escalated back to the level of crisis of the peak of Malificent's rampage - not until years later - but once or twice a year, as if just to remind them that the enemy was still alive and kicking, a new star would vanish. It became clear that the Heartless had little need of Malificent to wreck havoc. Anyone with some evil in their heart could attract them, anyone with more could command them, and even where such incentives were absent, the Heartless were perfectly able to cause trouble with no outside prompting at all. Invasions arrived on a dozen worlds, some that faired better than others. The Coliseum, not only handled their first assault with ease, within a week they had the Heartless stacked in cages a mountain high to use as challengers in the ring. Other worlds held out of their own accord with varying degrees of success. The king and his makeshift army did what they could, but even in the face of such trouble they couldn't spend their whole lives in a state of constant panic. Some days it felt as though the Heartless had become a simple fact of life which was there to stay. A solution still seemed as far away as it had ever been.

The main difference to their lives in those years, thanks to Cid's relocation and the suddenly expanded state of Traverse Town, was that they spend a lot more time at their neighbouring world. Cid was always happy enough to see them – the man was clearly settling into his new world unexpectedly well, and was more at ease with life now there was some distance between himself and the castle.

It was on one such visit that the Heartless made their first appearance in the growing town.

The timing was less than ideal. Cid was out testing one of the ships following some work to fix some minor engine problems, and the children had been left to mind his shop when one of the town's citizens came running in to report just exactly what had been sighted in a warehouse in one of the other districts. There was no way to go for help until Cid got back, and even then the return trip to the castle would take hours, and they didn't have time to waste. Aerith had no-one else to send, and it was obvious within a glance that she wasn't going to get away without taking Yuffie and Squall along. Leaving their informant with a message for Cid, they rushed off to find the warehouse and see just how bad things might be going to get.

The place they were directed to was fortunately not hard to find, and the Heartless infestation proved to be not nearly as bad as they might have feared, as it consisted of only a single creature. It was one of the smaller floating types, bright blue, and looked more disoriented than really dangerous, as it was wandering around as if it didn't know what to do with itself. It would float about halfway across the building, vanish, and then reappear again back where it started. Wherever it had expected to emerge from the dark corridors must have been somewhere else.

"It looks lost," Yuffie whispered from behind the pile of boxes they were using to hide from the thing.

"It must be. I don't think it meant to come here. Maybe that's why there's only one," Aerith agreed.

"You know what it'll do to the people here if we let it go. We've got to do something about it now," Squall hissed back urgently.

Aerith nodded. Mentally, she took stock of their position. They weren't strictly defenseless. Although Yuffie still maintained that the king wasn't anything like a proper ninja and even Squall considered his practice sword a pretty poor substitute for a real gunblade, they both approached their training with a single-mindedness that was genuinely unusual for children of their age. For herself, between Merlin and her mother's instruction she had a few useful spells in her repertoire, though she could hardly yet boast anything like her mother's aptitude with the powerful holy spells that had driven the Heartless away that night long ago. The trouble was that none of them had come prepared for this. Yuffie, if she knew Yuffie at all, probably had something she could throw. Squall didn't have anything in the way of weaponry. Even five years on, the gunblade was still too heavy for him to swing easily.

It would have to do. The Heartless might not be very smart, but they couldn't trust that it wouldn't find its way out before help could arrive. "We need a plan. We…" There was a faint jingling noise from above them. In unison so perfect it would have been comical under any other circumstances, the three of them looked up to find a small, blue blob of a creature floating directly over their heads.

There was a beat, during which no-one moved. This was not the best tactical maneuver for any of them, motivated mostly by shock and partially by mad hope that maybe the Heartless somehow wouldn't notice them if they didn't move, which was quite the opposite of the truth.

The creature swooped at Yuffie. Caught in a terrified moment of not knowing which way to dodge, Yuffie didn't move until Squall grabbed her by the arm and yanked her out of the way. The two of them landed in an untidy pile in the corner. Aerith scrambled the other way as fast as she could manage, the space behind the boxes too small for her to be able to move freely, and tried to bring any useful spell to mind. The Heartless was faster than her. There was a tinkling noise and a flash of cold blue. The spell that hit her was the least of ice magic, little worse than a snowball to the face, but it temporarily blinded her and destroyed her concentration; the spell she'd had almost ready flew straight out of her mind.

In the corner, Yuffie and Squall managed to untangle themselves enough for Yuffie to reach her pockets and start sorting through for something useful. "Hey you!" she hollered at the Heartless and hurled a handful of shuriken - Aerith had known she'd have some with her. Her aim was dead on, but yelling first just to get the its attention away from Aerith had been a mistake - the Heartless had already turned and swung easily upwards out of the way, then made a quick maneuver sideways in time to avoid a ball of sparks which crashed instead into a wall of boxes, leaving a wide brown burn mark. Aerith's eyes cleared enough for her to make out Squall standing with one arm stretched out in front of him, in exactly the place the spell looked to have come from. The lessons he'd been having from Merlin must have been really paying off, but the Heartless was too agile for any of them to hit.

The tinkling noise again alerted Aerith just in time to come up with a reflect spell before a significantly larger ball of ice made it to Squall, but the sight of the spell rebounding inches from his face left the boy nearly as startled as he would have been had it made contact. The last one left, Yuffie gave a shriek of battle, scrambled up on to one of the boxes and made a flying leap for the Heartless, narrowly catching it by its feet. The creature struggled to get free, but it wasn't used to aiming its ice straight down and wasn't nearly strong enough to lift both itself and a twelve-year-old ninja. Yuffie clenched her eyes closed and held on for all she was worth, yelling out a litany that consisted largely of "Now! Nownownownownownownow!"

Squall found his feet again and readied another fire spell. This time, he didn't miss, and the Heartless exploded in a puff of ice-dust and sparks. The force knocked Yuffie off her feet as well, but she was only down for a moment before she had her eyes open again and was back on her feet yelling "Yeah! We got him!" and leaping and spinning around so hard she barely kept her balance. Squall was staring at his hands like he'd never seen them before, but didn't turn around fast enough for the others to miss seeing that rare grin. Aerith brushed herself off and went to check whether the other two were alright. They both had a few scratches from their tumble into the corner and Yuffie had some ash on her face and in her hair, but nothing worse. She released a sigh of relief.

"Wait until we tell the king," said Squall, still trying not to grin. Aerith coughed pointedly.

"What you both just did was very dangerous, you know," she told them sternly. Both the little ones looked very slightly sheepish, though not at all ashamed. Aerith let her expression drop into a smile. "Well done, both of you."

In an ideal world, this would have been just about enough excitement for one day. Yuffie was practically skipping as they made their way back out of the warehouse. The glow of victory lasted them all the way back to first district, but Traverse Town had one more surprise left for them. They were just passing through the last gateway, when a pillar of green fire appeared in the centre of the square, resolving into a tall woman in a long black dress and horned hood.

"So this is where my dear Heartless have been disappearing to," she declared aloud, as if the universe itself were expected to pay close attention to her every word. "Who would have thought this pitiful little world could have grown so fast?"

The children didn't need to scattered shrieks and slamming of doors from around the square to identify her. "Malificent!" exclaimed Squall before Aerith could stop him. The sight of that same woman turning towards Squall's voice was one of the most terrifying things Aerith had ever experienced.

The witch looked them over with a scornful eye. "Well, well, well, what have we here? If it isn't the lost children of the hollow garden."

Aerith's eyes widened fractionally – how could she have known?

"It was you!" yelled Squall, an anger sounding in his voice which Aerith had never heard nor imagined before in anyone so young.

The witch laughed, a horrible rising cackle of a sound. "I'll have to thank you for providing me with such a splendid castle." Her voice dripped with false courtesy. "Truly, I could not have dreamed of any dwelling so appropriate."

"Lord Ansem's castle?" Aerith could scarcely believe her ears. "It's still… you've…?"

"Foolish children." Malificent crowed. "You understand so little of the great events coming to pass. I shall take such pleasure in letting you witness your new home consumed just as the old one. Give your miserable king my greetings." With another screeching laugh she disappeared in a final swirl of green flame.

First district did not just house Cid's shop, it was also the oldest and most familiar part of the town. It was going to be long time before it felt the same again.

The atmosphere on the Gummi on their return trip was far more subdued than their earlier victory should have allowed. Cid responded to the news about as well as anyone could have expected him to.

"Someone remind me," he grumbled, "just exactly how we wound up never getting around to going back to check whether some evil witch had taken up house in our own goddamn castle?"

There were answers to that – the Heartless that surrounded their old home were to this day the nastiest they'd ever encountered. They'd visited the sites of other vanished stars and found nothing remained. Cid's question didn't really invite those kinds of answers.

"Why would she go all that way just for one stupid Heartless anyway?" Squall complained. He might just have been whining, but it was a valid point.

Aerith thought back through everything she could remember Malificent saying. "She made it sound as though it wasn't the first," she said carefully.

"There haven't been any others," argued Squall. "Someone would have seen them and told us if there were, right?"

"Well maybe the others didn't get stuck like that one," Yuffie piped up. With all the excitement on this trip she'd completely forgotten to be motion sick. "Maybe they just popped up – bang – went 'where's this stupid place, I'm not meant to be here' and popped out again."

Yuffie was rambling, but she was also making a certain amount of sense, Aerith decided. "We must be lucky they haven't found and attacked any of the people yet." It went unsaid there was no guarantee they'd stay as lucky as that in the future. Gloom descended even further over the three of them.

"I hate this," said Squall. "All this stuff keeps happening and all we can do is watch."

"Well, Squall…" Aerith began.

"It's not Squall anymore. It's Leon," said Leon.

Aerith paused. "Well then, Leon, what do you suggest?"

Their decision surprised the king even more than the news of Malificent's return. "You're leaving?"

"Your majesty," Aerith spoke up, "We'll always be grateful for your generosity in all the time you've let us stay here, but we've decided. The town is where almost everyone who's ever seen the Heartless and survived is gathered. The town is where we have the best chance of finding out what we need to know. Besides, if the Heartless are starting to appear there they'll need people who can defend them." Leon and Yuffie looked both terrified and determined at once.

The king looked fondly from face to face. "Ah, children," he sighed sadly. "They always grow up so much faster than you expect. Well, if that's what you've all decided, then there's no stopping you. Do you have somewhere to stay once you've arrived there? I don't want to cause Cid too much trouble – I think he's enjoying his freedom too much."

Aerith shook her head. "It's okay. We have somewhere else in mind to stay." On previous visits, Aerith had gotten to know an old widow by the name of Elmyra, who was by now one of the town's longest residing inhabitants, and who had made it clear she'd be perfectly happy to let them stay with her.

The king gave a satisfied nod. "I've got some advice for you before you go. I know how important everything you're trying to achieve is – to all of us, to all the worlds, but I want you all to remember not to let that purpose become everything you are. None of your parents," and here something caught in Aerith's throat, "would have wanted you all to spend your whole lives thinking only of revenge, or the past, or even the battle to come. There'll be more to life than that. I'm not going to make you all promise me, but all the same, I hope you won't forget.

"Another thing Squall – I'm sorry, Leon, right? I've got something for you before you go."

The king's gift was a light weight, replica gunblade, not quite an exact copy, but made to a very similar scaled design. "It'll be a few years yet before you're ready to use the real thing, but you've proven today you're well and truly ready for a real weapon. I've been waiting for the right opportunity to pass this on to you."

Leon looked at the weapon as though the fates of all the worlds might have rested on it. He turned it over in his hands a few times, feeling its weight, then swung it easily through three dangerous looking but actually finely controlled loops in front and behind him to come to rest over his shoulder. "Thanks, your majesty." He bit out, in a voice that sounded about to crack.

The king smiled. "Then I'll just remind you of what Cid said when he left – we're never more than a few hours away. But just one more thing – It may be that this is something bigger than any of us can hope to fix, but there are still going to be things we can find that we can do. I think you're going to be right about the town being the place to look. And if that's the case, there's something I want you all to keep an eye out for..."

Before the end of the week they were packed and ready to go. None of them had ever accumulated a great store of possessions they couldn't part with.

Moving to another world wasn't the beginning or the end of anything. Five years had gone, but really they were not much more than children even now. They still didn't have more than the vaguest of ideas how to restore their world, not beyond the few hints left to them by the king, or where to go from here. But they had a goal, they had a place to start that journey, and until the day their world was restored they'd always have something to look forward to. The rest could work itself out on the way.

Edit (of the now massively overdue variety, but at least I get around to these things eventually) The two final parts to the series have been posted up as separate stories under the titles of Cloud and The Long Way Home. Never did quite find a way to format the omake chapter in a way that worked here, as it makes heavy use of the strikethrough, which ff-dot-net won't let us use in fic (insert grumbling here) - but it's posted over at my livejournal and listed under the KH fic section of my memories if people want to go find it. Finally, my beta reader for the last two parts was kind enough to draw me some lovely fanart, which is linked from my author profile.