Chapter 1
Beaming out of the gummi ship, Sora, Donald, and Goofy looked around in awe at the alien landscape. Hollow Bastion was no longer the land of upside down waterfalls and leaky plumbing, but a bustling metropolis. They could see many people at the market place, and peeking over the wall they could see the nearest borough filled to the brim with quaint stone dwellings.
Is this really Hollow Bastion? Sora thought to himself. "Donald, are you sure we're in Hollow Bastion?" Sora said, examining the buildings closest to them.
"Gawrsh, it looks kind different now," Goofy said to no one in particular.
"Yes, according to the new map that Master Yen Sid gave to us before we left in the gummi ship. Let's look around to see if we can find anybody we know." Donald began to walk down the steps just as Goofy interrupted him.
"Hey, fellers, we got company!" He pointed towards the sidewalk in front of Donald – a band of Heartless had appeared. The trio prepared for battle but was cut short as the Heartless disappeared and glowing orbs appeared out of the sidewalk.
"Um, what was that?" Sora said, pointing out the obvious. "I think we had better start looking around. Things seemed to have changed more so than we thought."
Continuing walking down the steps, the trio soon found themselves in a quiet subdivision of Hollow Bastion they had never seen before. Stepping through a stone archway, more of the glowing spheres appeared, popping up randomly through the ground around them. Sora began to reach towards one, but a loud voice interrupted him.
"That's the town's defense mechanism, so if you don't want to lose a finger, don't touch it," a cheery but familiar voice stated. Sora, Donald, and Goofy looked all around them and found their old friend, the great ninja Yuffie, standing upon the nearest stone wall. "Hey, watch out!" she cried. Suddenly, Dusks appeared from out of nowhere and attacked. Sora deployed his Keyblade, while Donald used his staff and Goofy his shield. Unlike Heartless, which destroying usually took less effort than it took to swat a fly, the Dusks gave a somewhat larger challenge to the three. "Hey you guys! It seems you're still in top form," Yuffie cried as she somersaulted off of the wall, vaporizing the last Dusk into nothingness.
"What did you expect?" Sora replied, smiling. "Looks like at least you are doing okay around here."
"Well what did you expect? After you left to banish the Heartless for good, things quieted down a bit and the gang and I started working on restoring Hollow Bastion to its former glory. But it's been hard work with the Heartless and Dusks hanging around. But that's why you're here, right?" Yuffie smiled knowingly.
"Yeah, I guess so," Sora replied. "We wanted to check on how everyone was doing; Master Yen Sid said things were not all well with the worlds since we left. By the way, have you seen Riku or King Mickey lately?" Sora's eyes belayed his calm manner – they looked pleadingly at Yuffie for good news.
"Nope, sorry, I haven't," Yuffie replied gaily as she bounded off. "Everyone has been working at Merlin's house lately, so come on!" Sora slumped his shoulders, knowing that his second quest to reunite his friends would be just as difficult as the last, if not harder.