AN: I wrote this chapter right after I read the last chapter of Fullmetal Alchemist. Still in Space Paranoids, but I think I'll try to finish this world in the next chapter. Some quick answers to people's questions: Hughes will be appearing in this story and I don't think I can include Axel because all the members of Organizations 13 were "dead" at the end of KH2 but maybe I can make use of those hologram things you could fight in Final Mix to work in some sort of Roy vs. Axel battle, 'cause I kind of like that idea. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and Fullmetal Alchemist do not belong to me.

"GYAAAAH! Dammit, How the hell do you drive this thing!" Ed took back everything he said about riding the motorcycle thing not being hard. He felt like a pinball as the light cycle swerved through the labyrinth and bounced off the walls as he desperately attempted to stay on.

"Grah! C'mon, it's like riding a bike! I can do that!" He tightened his grip on the handlebars and swerved the bike into the center of the narrow hallway. He kept his arms as steady as possible and the cycle's movements evened out. "Alright! I got it!"

But Ed spoke too soon. Suddenly a wall shot up out of the floor in front of him. "Oh crap!" He exclaimed and jerked the handle bars to the right, sending the cycle into a sharp right turn that bounced him off the opposite wall and almost took his leg off in the process. "You gotta be kidding me! Any more surprises?"

He suddenly noticed a dark shape hovering next to his head and turned to see a heartless, or rather a heartless imitation, floating alongside him. "Oh come on! It was a rhetorical question!" He removed his right hand from the handlebars, but didn't move it too far in case he needed to grab on again. When the bike didn't swerve, or send him flying to his death, he decided it was safe to turn his attention to the heartless.

He summoned his keyblade and swung at the creature. There was a flash of light and the weapon bounced harmlessly off, with enough force to almost throw Ed off his balance. When he regained control of the bike, Ed took the chance to examine the heartless. It didn't seem to be paying a lot of attention to him, until it suddenly attempted to shove him into the wall. He swerved out of the way; he looked forward and realized that another wall had risen out of the ground to block his path. He turned the bike around the corner, and had to duck to prevent getting decapitated by the heartless. So they're trying to run me into the walls he thought. He picked his keyblade back up and stared at his target. It put up some sort of shield, maybe I just need to attack with more force.

He revved up the engine on the bike and felt the speed building. Unfortunately the heartless also sped up, but losing it wasn't his intention. When he felt he had enough speed, he jerked the bike towards the heartless and swung at it with all his strength. The additional momentum was enough to break the shield and the heartless exploded into a cloud of numbers. "Alright!"

Ed used the same strategy to deal with the rest of the maze. If a heartless showed up, he would charge up the light cycle and use the extra force to break its shield. He missed a few times, but it was mostly successful. He hadn't crashed yet, but he was still trapped in a maze in what was probably the worst game ever invented.

C'mon there's gotta be a way outta here somewhere! he thought. Suddenly he caught a glimpse of one of the walls that had surrounded the area before the maze had popped up. There was a dark, jagged line running through it. A crack? That's my way out!

He nearly missed colliding with another wall and turned the bike towards the exit. A few weak heartless and a few more obstacles later, and he was on a straight path for the exit. Almost there! C'mon! A large heartless popped up in his path, but he destroyed it with ease. The extra speed sent him flying towards the crack in the wall, which he could now see clearly. Closer, closer, almost there! Finally! He went flying through the crack in the wall and entered a dark room. Before he could stop, he collided with the wall opposite the entrance.

"Oww!" he whined as he pulled himself up off the ground. He looked at the wrecked light cycle. The lights flickered then faded, and the bike vanished in a cloud of data. "Worst. Game. Ever!" He exclaimed, and then turned to leave the room.

"When I find that spiky haired freak I'm gonna kill him!" he fumed.

"Hello? Edward?"

No answer.

Sora, Riku and Tron had wound up in the Dataspace, and Ed obviously had not, as there was no sign of him, and there really wasn't anywhere to hide in the room.

Tron looked grim. "Perhaps the corruption brought him to a different location. Should we look elsewhere?"

"Not now," Said Riku, who was eyeing the terminal in the room, "Can you use this to access the information we need?"

"No." Tron shook his head. "The Security program shut it down, we are going to have to go to the location where the data is being stored, and access it directly, once we destroy the program, of course."

"So, where's it being kept?" Sora asked.

"The Central Computer Core." Torn answered.

Sora looked at him. "Isn't that where we fought the MCP?"

Tron nodded, "Yes, but I do not think that there is any connection, aside from the fact that that part of the system has very high defenses."

"All the more reason to think that the information is dangerous…" Riku said.

Sora stared at his friend. He had the strangest feeling that Riku knew something he wasn't telling, and it was bothering him. "Riku?" he asked cautiously.

Riku looked at him, Sora decided to continue, "Do you know something you're not telling us?"

Riku sighed, "I guess I should probably tell you."

Sora nodded and waited patiently while Riku got his thoughts together.

"Ansem…rambles sometimes…" Sora didn't see how this was connected, but he let his friend continue. "When I was working with him, he mentioned something about a strange world he visited. He said they had a weird power there that could change the shape of objects. He said it resembled item synthesis."

"Alchemy…" Sora breathed, "He went to their world!"

Riku nodded, "He said, the power was fueled by a sort of 'energy', one that surrounded the entire world and flowed through everything within it…and…he wondered what would happen if the heartless got a hold of that 'energy'."

Sora was silent for a moment, then spoke, "You think the heartless absorbed that power when they destroyed Ed's world?"

Riku closed his eyes to think. "I don't know, it didn't make much sense at the time, so I didn't ask Ansem for an explanation, now I kind of wish I did." He chuckled a little. "But I think that that is the most logical theory at the time being. Though not an entirely comforting thought…"

"But, the heartless aren't performing alchemy! They're just…strong…and those…marks…mmm…" Sora was starting to get uneasy as he realized that Riku's logic made sense. The marks on the heartless, the ones that seemed to be the source of their new power, were the same as the ones on the Elric's keyblades, and on Roy's gloves. From what Sora could tell, they were related to alchemy, and the world it came from.

"Now do you see why we need that information so badly? Obviously there are things we don't know, but hopefully Ansem's research will answer our questions." Riku explained. "Obviously the king and Leon have come to a similar conclusion. I'm not saying that Ed and his friends are responsible, 'cause they're probably not, but there is definitely a connection."

Sora nodded. "But what about Ed? Can we really just leave him? What if something happens?"

"Excuse me! I can take care of myself!"

Sora spun around to find himself face to face with an exhausted, and apparently infuriated, Edward Elric. And yet, he couldn't help feeling relieved.

"Ed! You're okay!" Sora shouted.

"Of course I'm okay, what did you think was gonna happen?" Ed shouted back.

"Are you unharmed?" asked Tron.

"More or less. Oh, but I hope you didn't need that Light Cycle thing for anything."

Ed stretched his shoulders and then turned to Riku. "Anyway, I overheard that you support that Leon guy's theory that these new, stronger, heartless are somehow connected to the destruction of my world? And by the way, those 'marks' are called transmutation circles."

"Transmuwhats?" Sora asked, but he was ignored.

Riku nodded. Ed mumbled something about a gate that Sora didn't understand. Then the room got silent.

Ed was the one who broke the silence. "If alchemy's responsible for all the pain these things are causing, then, as an alchemist, I must take responsibility and fix the problem." He looked up, his eyes burned with determination and his face was dead serious. Sora was at a loss for words.

Then Ed smiled. "Plus, I still want revenge on them for trashing my home."

Sora grinned. "Then what are we doing here? Let's get over to the Central Computer Core!"

AN: Thank you to the Kingdom Hearts Wiki for giving me an outline of the Light Cycle mini game. I couldn't remember how it worked and my PS2's disconnected so I couldn't check myself. But when I spontaneously thought of putting Ed on a Light Cycle, I just couldn't get rid of the idea.

And we finally got some explanations, the rest will come in the next chapter or so, and then we get off to the rest of the Disney worlds! (Why do I get the feeling that this is going to be a really long fic…?) Hope you liked it!