A/N: This is a fanfic that does not attempt to be serious, or even about the series. It unabashedly stars real humans—namely, my dearly beloved sister WOWZAcoolBEANS, for whose birthday this humble fic is a gift.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

Sora could see the bright keyhole looming up behind the massive Heartless dreadnaught. The gummi ship had fared pretty well until this point, but the dreadnaught's cannons were hitting hard, and Sora knew the shields couldn't take more than one or two more direct hits. The next shell whizzed past ominously close to the teeny ship darting along at his left; the moment it was safely behind him Sora yanked the controls back in that direction, sending the gummi ship into a tight barrel roll and narrowly avoiding two more shots above him and to his right.

A blossoming explosion singed the ship's left wing then, startling Sora as the shield gauge began to pulse an ominous red. He narrowly jerked the ship away from one more shell, gunned the engines forward and up, and sailed right over the top deck of the dreadnaught, locking a missile on to the cannon, steadying his aim, and releasing the firearm…

"Ha! Bullseye!" he shouted, pumping his fist into the air. The shrapnel of the cannon's explosion followed them through the glimmering keyhole. The ship went into autopilot then, traversing the final wormhole that stood between King Mickey's castle and the new world, so Sora could finally drop his hands from the slightly sweaty steering mechanism. Flexing the stiffness from his fingers, he turned to Riku, whom he found doubled over in the copilot's seat, his face ashen white.

"Hey, Riku? You okay?" he asked. The glare he got in response could have melted lead.

"Did you have to make so many damn barrel rolls?" Riku gulped heavily, settling his stomach through sheer force of will.

"If you're this bad after one trip in the gummi ship, how did you expect to go days on that little raft of ours?" Sora teased, failing to fully stifle his laughter.

"I'm fine on boats! Remember Neverland? But all this spinning…" A fresh wave of verdigris flushed his skin at the reminder.

"Hey, haven't you ever been through the world pathways in a gummi ship before? How did you get around?"

"I used the corridors of Darkness, mostly."

"Yeah, and those didn't make you sick…" Sora muttered. The ship floated to a halt and the transport pad started to hum, which meant that the ship's computers had found a connection point on the world and they could disembark. "Come on, I bet there's some place for you to lie down in this world."

"Right," Riku said, hoisting himself onto his unsteady feet. He shot a glance at the ship's viewscreen, now showing a world icon with a cartoonishly distorted brown house and a large tree; underneath it blinked the world's name. "Hey, that's not Sabrie."

"The King did say Sabrie is pretty far away from Kingdom Hearts. I guess we'll have to connect through this other world."

"Pff. New Town? What a stupid name."

"Oh, that reminds me. Riku, when we get down there, you're going to have to be a little more… uh…"

"What?"

"… not Riku-ish. Unless they're identifiably a Heartless, a Nobody, Maleficent, or Pete, you have to be nice to everyone." Riku grimaced. "No, really, everyone! The first people we meet are usually the people we need to help. I don't know why it works that way, but it does. So just… smile a little more." He grinned widely to demonstrate. "Like this!"

"Like this?" The older boy bared his teeth in a wolfish snarl.

"… We'll work on it," Sora said, and pressed the button to activate the transport pad. "Welcome to New Town."

Riku pulled his lips up in a painful smile and did his best not to vomit.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

Cybele's phone buzzed in her pocket.

'3rd row near the end. BTW happy birthday!'

She picked up her bag and headed for the high school's exit. Sure enough, Lenore's forest green four-door was idling in the third row of the parking lot; Cybele could see her older sister waving from the driver's seat. As she walked to the passenger side door, she rummaged in her bag for her sister's present.

"Finally! I thought today would never end," she said, climbing into the car and shutting the door.

"How did your finals go?" Lenore asked, narrowly avoiding a pair of clueless freshmen as she backed out of the parking space.

"Magnificently, of course. But they were so boring. Plus I couldn't wait to open your present! Okay, so I obviously could, because I did, but that's not the point." Cybele slipped her finger under the tape on the wrapping paper and began to tear the gift open. Underneath the paper there were two boxes, wrapped side-by-side. One was a wooden box—which explained the package's unusual weight for its size—whose lid was set with a mosaic of colored glass; the other was a narrow box of white cardboard. She set the more elaborate box on her knee and slid the lid from the white. Inside was a faceted sphere of glimmering yellow-orange crystal, with about the same diameter as a quarter, wrapped in a double helix of filigreed brass. It was attached by a short chain to a brass alligator clasp.

"Norah! It's gorgeous!"

"It's a keychain. It matches mine, see?" Lenore tapped the keys dangling from the ignition; hanging there next to their house key and Lenore's library card was a similar crystal, although hers was blue-green, and the metal wrapping around it—only one thicker spiral rather than the more delicate double helix of Cybele's chain—had a mottled greenish tint like oxidized copper; where Cybele's shone brightly in the sunlight and gave the impression of being constantly spinning, Lenore's seemed venerably antique. "Now you just need to get some keys to attach yours to."

Cybele chuckled and moved on to the glass-topped box. The stained glass on top allowed a badly distorted view of the contents, but she couldn't quite tell until she lifted off the lid that inside it was a deck of cards.

The cards were on heavy, glossy stock, a bit larger than standard playing cards. On the back of each card the same stained-glass mosaic design as the box's lid was printed, but that was the only similarity between them. The front of each card was startlingly unique. Some cards were recognizable, perhaps even standard-looking. The Ace of Spades, for example, looked much like any card of the same denomination in a Hoyle or Bicycle deck, save the bat-like triangular decorations surrounding the large central spade icon. Others sported strange distortions, almost like someone had taken bad translations of playing card names and depicted them on the cards—Cybele noticed an eleven of hearts, a three of diamonds which instead depicted three triangles formed into a single triangle, and a four of clubs which simply showed a grinning skull and crossbones. The card which bore the letter K and a heart symbol in its upper corner did not depict the dual-headed Charlemagne of a standard deck, but rather a dark castle silhouetted against a glowing moon in the shape of a heart. Still others seemed more like tarot cards, like "The Alchemist," which bore its name in simple script beneath a crowned, snake-draped cross, and "The Angel," which depicted the aforementioned winged entity holding a cup and a sword aloft. Despite the disparity of their depictions, they were stylistically similar and looked beautiful together.

"…Do you like it?" Lenore asked. She couldn't remember why she'd thought the deck would be a good gift. It wasn't a usable deck, and even if it was, Cybele didn't play cards. All she knew was that when she'd spotted the box dusty and forgotten under a shelf in her favorite antique store, it had suddenly become important to purchase it.

"It's awesome! Some of these look familiar, I'm not sure why…" Lenore's self-consciousness over the gift vanished as her younger sister began to draw card after card out of the box, flipping past them in feverish excitement. For the first time Lenore wondered just how many cards were in the box—Cybele had a sizeable handful scattered across her lap already, but the box didn't seem to be emptying. She shrugged and decided to focus on driving; the high school's parking lot was a treacherous enough place without offering portions of her valuable attention to what she was sure was just an optical illusion.