Disclaimer: I own a lot of things. Clothes, dogs, little elastic hair band thingies. Kingdom Hearts, however, I do not own.

Author's Note: Thanks to the two people who left me reviews. It makes me feel good, though I wish there had been more. Anyway, all I can do is keep writing, right?

Chapter 2

The Usual Spot

The darkness swirled around Kairi's legs, grabbing at her like greedy hands. It seeped into her pores and made her whole body shake in revulsion. It only lasted for a moment this time. She found herself standing in the middle of a small city. Or a large town. She couldn't tell which. What was the difference? Town's had town squares and cities didn't, right? And then there were villages…

Kairi forced herself to stop thinking before she strained something.

Whatever it was, city, town, or village, this place was completely new to her. Physically, she had been to a whole manner of worlds, but she had been asleep for the vast majority of them. She had always supposed it would be thrilling to go somewhere new, but this place didn't seem very exciting.

She was standing in a convergence of streets, right in front of a large building with the picture of bright, cartoonish ring hanging over it. There was a woman standing behind the counter, reading something, but she didn't seem to have noticed Kairi's sudden appearance from the Realm of Darkness. Maybe this kind of thing happened a lot around here.

The rest of the buildings were all as equally bright and welcoming looking, but the entire square seemed to be empty. It was silent too, so silent that when the woman in the ring-shop turned a page of her book Kairi heard it from almost twenty yards away.

A snuffling at her feet drew her attention downward. The dog was beside her, black button eyes staring up at her and tail thumping against the cobblestones. Fortunately, Axel was nowhere to be seen. It would seem she had left him in the Realm.

Thank god for that.

The dog stuck his nose into her hand, sniffling. Kairi felt something cold and metallic bump against her palm. The dog had tags!

Pluto

"So that's your name, huh?" Kairi said, scratching him on the head. "Funny name. Okay, Pluto, let's go find out where the hell we are."

There were four streets branching off from her current location in the empty square. They all looked rather similar, except one led uphill, one led down, and two just meandered along levelly. She chose the down one for no particular reason, and was immediately pleased by her choice.

There were voices drifting up toward her, loud excited voices. Pluto ran ahead of Kairi, loping along in such a lopsided manner that she couldn't understand why he didn't trip over his own ears. By the time Kari reached the bottom of the hill, he was nowhere to be seen. That was alright. He wasn't her dog anyway, and she was sure he would come back at some point. Besides, there were things to interest her here.

The source of the voices turned out to be a group of kids around her own age. They were separated into two groups, almost like teams, and they were all watching two of their number, who were duking it out in the center. One of the two was ginger-haired and skinny, the other muscular. They were both gripping blue, wiffle-bat looking things, and proceeding to beat the crap out of each other.

From where Kairi stood, they seemed pretty evenly matched. The ginger-haired kid was quick-footed and agile, while the other guy had a lot of strength behind his swing. He, however, was wearing a black hat, which constantly seemed to be slipping in front of his eyes. Kairi wasn't sure if it was a fashion statement or just a lame attempt to keep the long silver hair out of his eyes.

While she watched, Ginger swatted Silver in the shoulder, knocking him to one side. The two kids behind him cheered, while his opponent's team scowled. Kairi took a few steps forward, to the edge of the ring. Ginger must have seen her, because he looked round unconsciously. Silver took this opportunity to pick himself up and smash the other guy across the face. Ginger grunted and toppled to the ground.

"Ha! Take that, Hayner!" Silver yelled, punching the air in triumph.

Hayner picked himself of cobblestones, wiping quickly at his eyes, which had begun to tear. "Screw you, Siefer. Rematch. She distracted me." He turned to glare at Kairi. Absolutely everyone else followed his gaze.

"No way, man," Siefer protested. "We said one match. I won. We get to use the Sandlot tonight." He shot a smile at Kairi. "Thanks, babe." He turned back to his posse. "Come on, guys. Let's see what we can shake up before dinner. See you later!" Kairi was sure this was addressed to her, because a wink accompanied it. She felt an intense rush of dislike, and glared at his retreating back.

"That guy's such a louse." One of Hayner's two friends, a pretty, dark-haired girl of maybe fifteen, had spoken. "Don't let him bother you."

"I won't," Kairi assured her.

Hayner looked a little put out. "Olette, don't worry about her, she's the reason we lost!" He was almost whining.

Olette shrugged. "He was probably gonna beat you anyway. Besides, who cares? We'll just hang out at the Usual Spot."

Hayner still looked pissed, but he shut his mouth. "I'm sorry," Kairi tried. "I didn't mean to distract you."

He shrugged dismissively. "S'okay."

"What's your name?" Hayner's other friend, this one a boy, had stepped forward. He was a little chubby, with black badly-spiked hair. "I'm Pence."

"Kairi."

"That's pretty," Olette said, cocking her head. "I don't think I've ever met a Kairi before. What's it mean?"

"Uh…winter rain," Kairi answered, feeling a little self-conscious. Nobody had ever asked her that before, and her name meant such a stupid thing. Who wanted rain in the winter?

But Olette seemed to think it was cool. "You doing anything?" she asked. Kairi shook her head.

"Come hang out with us!" Pence said, a little over-excitedly.

So Kairi followed her new-found friends out of the sandlot, and back up to the town square. The ring-selling woman was still reading her book when they passed, though she looked up to wave at Olette, Hayner, and Pence.

"So…" Hayner began casually, "You from around here?"

Kairi debated telling him the truth. They seemed like nice people, and who knew? Maybe they had more of a clue what was going on with the worlds than she did. But then again…

"No, I'm new in town," she decided on. "I'm actually…here looking for someone."

"Really?" Pence asked. "Who? Maybe we know them."

"His name's Sora."

Hayner stopped so suddenly the other two walked into him. "You know Sora?"

Kairi felt a flood of excitement. "Yes! Is he here?"

But Hayner shook his head and started to walk again. "No. He was here, but he left a couple of weeks ago."

"Describe him to me," Kairi demanded, a little harsher than she meant to.

The three shared confused glances. "Uh…he was kinda taller than us…he had, like, light brown spiky hair…and big yellow shoes."

Kairi's excitement was beginning to ebb. That didn't sound like Sora. Sure, there were the yellow shoes but anyone could have those. Her Sora had dark brown hair, and he wasn't all that tall. Of course, things could have changed.

Only one way to tell for sure.

"Hey…this guy… was he by any chance lugging around a big old key?"

"Yeah!" Pence exclaimed. "It was really cool. Oh, and he had these two friends with him too…"

"Donald and Goofy?"

"That's the ones!"

"It is him!" Kairi could feel a huge smile spreading across her face. Her heart rate seemed to have gone up, and hope was seeping all the way to the tips of her toes. So Sora had been here. She was on the right track!

It only took them a few more minutes to reach the Usual Spot. It was situated in a covered lot between two warehouses, its opening covered by a red curtain. Inside was a jumbled assortment of second-hand furniture and a mini-fridge. There was a dart-board on one wall and a photograph collage on the other.

"Nice place," Kairi commented.

"We try," Hayner answered dryly. He was still being a little cool with her, but she didn't blame him. It was partly thanks to her that Siefer had won their little fight. Olette flopped down on the couch and Pence followed suit. Kairi remained standing, not knowing exactly what to do.

"So, tell us," Pence said conversationally, "How do you know Sora?"

Kairi perched on an arm of a worn-out blue easy-chair. Where to begin? "We…we grew up together. I haven't seen him in two years, though." She willed herself not to cry. She refused to go to pieces in front of strangers, especially Hayner.

Hayner, however, was now looking at her curiously. "Your friend. He seemed like he was in a hurry. Is he in some kinda trouble or something?"

Kairi couldn't help herself from smiling. "I guess you could call it that. Except, he's the one who's gonna fix the trouble."

"That's good to hear," Olette said, "Cause lately, there's been a lot of weird stuff going on."

"Like what?"

Hayner gave Olette a sharp look, but she continued, not paying him the least bit of attention. "Like…there's been these weird sounds coming from the mansion in the woods. Some people say it sounds like laughing—,"

"But others say it's crying," Pence chimed in.

"Yeah. And there was this one time about a month ago when somebody stole all the photos in Twilight Town"

"What?" Kairi asked, chuckling a bit. "What a dumb crime."

"I know, right? But not only did they steal the actual photos, they stole the word 'photo' too!"

"You mean, like…you couldn't say it?"

"Yeah," Olette answered, her face shining in a way that suggested she was telling a particularly good ghost story. "And that's not all—."

This time it was Hayner that cut her off. "Things have just been…weird. Lately its felt like…I don't know. Like something's missing somehow. And when your friend was here…" He glanced in Kairi's direction. "When Sora was here, I guess everything kinda felt right again."

Kairi didn't have to ask what he meant. Sora had had that effect on her all her life. While Riku had always been there to create the excitement, Sora was always the one to sooth the hurts and lift her up when she was down. But something else Hayner had said had struck home.

"Are you telling me Sora's not here anymore?"

Pence shook his head. "He left on the train a couple of weeks ago."

"Oh. Dammit."

Olette suddenly jumped to her feet, echoing Kairi's curse. "Shit, guys. I promised my mom I'd be home for dinner this time. She's always going on about how all I ever do is hang out with a couple of boys. Parents…" She waved to Kairi and left via the red curtain.

"I think I'm gonna get some ice cream," Pence said after a moment.

"Get me one," Hayner said.

" 'Kay. Want one?"

Kairi shrugged. "Sure."

"Cool. See ya guys."

When he'd left, Hayner and Kairi sat in awkward silence for a few minutes. At last, Hayner stood up and headed to the curtain. "I really wanna burn off some energy. You're welcome to come…"

"No, that's okay," Kairi answered. She could tell he didn't really want her to come. He was still kind of sore at her, apparently. Besides, she wanted time to think.

She flopped down on one of the couches after Hayner had gone. Her brain was really working on overtime. Nothing made sense and, at the same time, everything did. Somehow the Realm of Darkness had spat her out in this Twilight Town place, a place where Sora had been recently. These kids knew him, they'd spoken with him.

And the there was Axel. He was part of some society…what had he called it? Organization Thirteen? It sounded forbidding enough. And apparently, they wanted her to lure Sora to them. Well, it was never going to happen.

She was just beginning to consider her options, when the red curtain swished again. It was not, however, one of her three new friends. It was Siefer. He'd removed his ridiculous hat, and his silvery hair now shone like burnished steel. He was attractive, in an arrogant way.

"Can I help you?" Kairi asked, peeved at being interrupted in her musings.

Siefer just grinned at her and sidled the rest of the way in. "Hangin' out in the Usual Dump, are you?" He laughed loudly at his own joke. "Come on, let me buy you something to eat."

"I'm fine," Kairi told him.

His lips turned up in a very slight sneer. "Come on, sweetheart." He grabbed her by the hand and hauled her to her feet. "Let's go. You're the cutest thing in this whole shitty town."

"Get off me!" Kairi spat, trying to jerk away. It didn't work. Her first assessment of Siefer had been correct. He was strong.

"Come on, baby, I don't bite!"

"And neither do I. Unless of course, I'm provoked."

Siefer dropped Kairi's wrist, wheeling around to face the newcomer. His face clouded for a moment as he realized there was no one standing by the curtain. Then he saw the tall man in the black coat in the back corner.

"How about you leave my girlfriend alone?" Axel asked, venom dripping from every syllable.

Siefer backed toward the door. "Sorry man, didn't think she was taken. See ya."

Kairi cast Axel a glance. "I'm not your girlfriend."

Axel laughed. "That's the only thing a dusch-bag like this guy'll understand."

"Thanks," Kairi said grudgingly, rubbing at her wrist.

"Always happy to help out a fellow redhead. Now tell me, how're you enjoying your little vacation?"

Next Chapter: The Train Knows the Way