CHAPTER III

Touchdown, Turnaround.

(NOTE)

Okay, I understand that a whole hell of a lot happened in that chapter. xD; I have an excuse, really I do. I'm a rushing sonuvabadperson. :D Disclaimer: I don't own Kya: Dark Lineage, Fall Out Boy, my Cheez-Its or my band uniform. But most importantly, I don't own Kingdom Hearts or any of its characters, nor do I own Quince. D:

(/NOTE)

"You're crazy." Roxas interjected. All thirteen members looked over at him. "Savior of Balance? She needs that to give out hearts?"

"It's simple," Vexen told him, "without a source to let the power flow from, it could just dissolve in the air. Being the wielder's Heartless, Savior or Destroyer of Balance is the only one that she can wield."

Xemnas's eyes widened, and he looked over at every member. It seemed that they were thinking the same thing as he was, and Vexen was angry that he hadn't realized this before.

"Obviously our problem was getting the girl in through the darkness, but her Nobody... a member of the old Organization... of course!" he muttered to himself a little bit, and grinned as he looked over at everybody. "Her Nobody which has the power to wield the Destroyer of Balance, a source of power for the heart creation to take place through."

Axel and Roxas looked across the room at each other; they were both thinking the same thing. If they thought Charity would be a pain to get there, they had never met Exie. She was a pain both in brutality and in attitude.

"Do you have something to share, number XIII?" Marluxia asked him, eyes narrowing. He remembered only too well how Roxas had gone against him in attempt to destroy him. Such a thing most definitely couldn't be forgotten.

"I have something I wanna share," Roxas admitted, "but this isn't exactly rated M."

"Silence, both of you." Xemnas ordered.

Marluxia only stared up at him with his narrowed eyes. After all, he should have been the leader. He should have been the one with special privileges, and he should be the one in the highest chair at the moment. This man was the one that brought them all back in the first place. "Without me, you'd be nowhere." he hissed up at him.

"Care to repeat that?" Xemnas asked. The rest of the Organization looked over at him.

"It shall be repeated enough when your actions backfire as they always do."

"Leave." Xemnas ordered Marluxia.

Marluxia cocked his head to the side in angered confusion, "What was that?" he asked.

"You heard me very well." Xemnas began to clarify, "If you refuse to remain loyal to the Organization, please leave before I degrade you to a dusk."

"Remain loyal?!" Marluxia laughed in an amused tone, "Who exactly was it that brought you all back?!" Receiving no response, he looked over at all of them smugly. "I'm leaving for my room. I think I've made my point." He disappeared in almost a lava flow of darkness, and Xemnas sighed, exasperated as he put his hand to his head.

"You're smart," Xemnas looked over at Vexen, "When does this start getting easier?"

Vexen shook his head and took that question rhetorically.

xxxxx

Charity couldn't sleep that night, even though she was back in her four-year room. 'That's what I would be if my heart was taken?' she thought to herself much too much that night. She periodically heard odd noises in the room that used to be Leander's but was now occupied by Broden, but refused to ask exactly what was wrong.

When she woke up after being able to muster two hours of sleep at the most, she rubbed her eyes and flipped out of her bed. Changing quickly, she walked out of the room and into the main room that they always seemed to meet at.

"I'm not too sure about going back to that island again. You know, Stitch's island." Sora murmured. He had some good times with Stitch, but the little girl just freaked him out and the last time they were there, Charity was almost destroyed. "We might want to start with Wonderland." he suggested.

"...Wonderland." Riku semi-silently complained.

"Ugh." Charity murmured and rested her head on Riku's shoulder.

"May as well get it over with, right?" asked Kairi, optimistically as always. It was nice that she had finally shaken off the funk that she was in since Sora and Riku were gone from her lives for a year straight. Imagine how Charity felt.

"To Wonderland it is." Broden said. They all left the room and boarded the Gummi ship. Sora was driving again, so Charity took a wild guess and said that Chip and Dale finally quit. Or died; chipmunks weren't supposed to live that long, anyway. Then again, neither were mice or ducks. Charity refused to question any crazy concoction of Disney's mind.

It wasn't long before they reached the rotating world with a familiar rabbit hole. The second they thought they had landed in the world, their Gummi ship abandoned them at the top and they floated down the hole.

"Feels like ecstasy." Nessa nodded.

"And you... know how that feels?" asked Charity, a bit worried.

Quince laughed, "I wanna be the ecstasy, then."

Nessa blushed; she really shouldn't be feeling this way. After he had just figured out that he had been in a coma for two years, how would he react to the fact that she completely abandoned her love for him and chose Hayner? Was that being selfish, or was she doing the right thing to move on with her life? After all, who knows how long that coma could have kept itself up. A few more years? A couple more decades? His whole life?

Finally, their feet touched a reassuring ground. Oddly enough, Exie stepped right back out of Charity. "I smell trouble." she complained.

"Like we have time for trouble." Naminé shook her head. "If I remember right, the keyhole's just in that door. I visited only a few days ago."

"So the keyholes are back in their original locations?" Sora asked.

"That was it's original location?" asked Naminé, "Then I suppose so."

"That makes things a lot easier." he sighed, reassured. The second they stepped in the room, Nessa started ranting about how everything was way too small.

Sora gave them all a huge grin, the kind of grin that kept the Gummi Ship running. He grabbed a bottle on the table and began to drink it.

"Little Timmy wanted a drink, but he could drink no more," Charity said in sing-song, "because what he though was H2O was H2SO4."

"H2SO4?" asked Kairi.

"Sulfuric acid." Charity told her, nodding.

"...Thanks for that." Nessa shuddered. As they finally became aware of their surroundings, they realized that they were suddenly looking up at a table of a giant.

"What... happened?!" asked Riku, now a bit worried.

"I'm magical." Sora smiled. It was a bit hard to take him seriously with a pink and yellow outfit, nonetheless a flower drawn on his cheek that he still refused to stop making on a day-to-day basis, greatly discomforting the group.

"Mmhm." Charity left it at. "Is that the door?" she asked, pointing at a door just their size. It was odd; as if the doorknob was moving on its own, sleeping and possibly snoring along with that. Was it alive?

"Yeah, let's—!" Sora was interrupted quickly by a new presence in front of the group.

"Strange." the hooded figure remarked in a melancholy tone, "My original order was to get Naminé, but it seems like I've been stuck with the task to retrieve Exie as well."

"Who's under the cloak?!" Naminé shouted, impatient.

The figure underneath laughed. As he pulled down the cloak, Roxas was underneath it. "It's just me." he said.

"Roxas?" asked Naminé quickly, almost in tears to see him. She walked up to him and put her arms around him. "I thought you were gone with the Organization forever. Why are you wearing the cloak?" she asked.

There was no response from Roxas as Exie walked up to the two of them, confused. "And why'd you have to include me in that little skit?" she asked impatiently.

A twisted grin appeared on Roxas's face, and he put a hand on both of their shoulders. Both bodies seemed to disappear into the darkness.

"What?!" asked Sora, Kingdom Key readied and pointed at Roxas, "Where did you send them?" he asked, confused. Roxas laughed.

Suddenly, he realized...

"Zexion!" Sora shouted.

The fake Roxas's figures seemed to morph themselves to be that of a young man with gray-black hair that half covered his face, and an Organization coat that seemed too big for him.

"Where did you take them?" asked Charity.

"More importantly," Riku interjected, "how is the rest of the Organization back?!"

"You can thank Marluxia for that," the cloaked schemer replied, "just recently, actually."

"How the hell did he find out how to do that?" Nessa asked angrily.

Zexion laughed, "I don't think I would tell you that. You might learn and try to bring back your precious Leander."

This, Nessa couldn't take. Her temper rose to its fullest possibility and she charged at the schemer with her sword. Going right through him, he made himself solid once more and took on the form of someone familiar; definitely Nessa, but old Nessa. Not Sada's body.

"If you think for one second that means we'll go easier on you, you're crazy!" Charity shouted, readying Savior of Balance. It seemed like the only times she ever adopted Nessa's temper was when her friends were in trouble.

She loved being able to call this group her friends.

They weren't sitting at home complaining about relationships, homework, or life in general. They had one goal and had lived with so much loss and adventure that little things didn't matter to them. These were the kind of people that Charity liked. Keeping this in mind, she only fought harder against the schemer.

xxxxx

"Rokusasuuu," Axel cooed through the door. Roxas sighed and walked to it, seeing Axel's smiling face. "I know we're against this whole thing, but look who's here." he smirked. Moving out of the way, the white-blond witch named Naminé stood there, but she looked utterly disappointed with herself.

"Naminé!" Roxas said, suddenly feeling regenerated. He wrapped his arms around Naminé for the first time in a long time, even when they were near each other. Regretfully, she did the same to him. No, she couldn't. She wouldn't let him know that she couldn't even see through Zexion's disguise of Roxas. That would be horrible.

"You have to tell me," Naminé told him, "Why I'm here and why the Organization's back. And who that Heartless is." she brought up, thinking back to the slightly creepy, violet-eyed girl that had thrown Charity into a fit and taken Axel and Roxas back to The World that Never Was.

"I do." Roxas admitted.

xxxxx

"This isn't cute." Charity spat.

"Good." Zexion replied through Nessa's body. The sword only inched quickly and faster towards her, but Charity knew all too well of Nessa's fighting style with that blade of hers. Downswipe, sideswipe, sideswipe, underswipe. She knew it all, hence making the fight much easier. Zexion, however, also knew some of Nessa's memories of Charity's fighting style when she ran through her. This put them at a stalemate.

"I can't sit back and watch this anymore." Kairi grunted as her self-designated Destiny Blade appeared at her side. Nessa hadn't seen Kairi fight enough for him to know her fighting style, if that's what you could call it. With Kairi's help, Zexion was down in seconds.

"I... won't lose now." he said, as he reached out dramatically. He disappeared backwards through a portal, but dropped something on his way.

"Hm?" asked Charity. She was beaded with sweat and her hair was plastered to her forehead. She picked up the dropped item; it was an odd book of some kind. It was black, with an odd silvery-white symbol on it.

"Zexion's book." Kairi glanced at it. She wondered why he hadn't used it in battle. Charity seemed to be wondering the same thing.

"I wouldn't use that." Nessa warned her.

"I don't plan to," Charity assured her, "but think about it." She raised it up to eye level and smirked. "He has to come back to his precious book sometime." She ran her hand down the front of it. It was so smooth.

"Good thinking." Riku said, mindlessly hitting a small Heartless out of the way. Apparently, they had only been working on getting rid of them while Kairi and Charity fought Zexion. Nessa, on the other hand, was almost unconscious for the whole time he was fighting from the shock of running right through and having her memories and data read.

"You hold on to it," Charity told Sora, throwing him the book. He caught it in one hand and looked at the cover himself. It wasn't all that intricate for such an important book. He nodded his head and stuck it in his pocket.

"Let's seal the keyhole." Sora suggested.

Charity realized for the first time that she felt much emptier without Exie, yet somehow the same as she felt before she had ever gone on the journey trying to get Nessa, or should she say Xylia, from the Organization.

Shock only filled them to the highest extent when they found the door; the knob was completely missing.

"But it was there a minute ago." Nessa complained.

"Or was it?" came a freaky voice. Kairi immediately recognized this and clung to Sora's sleeve, who was backing up a pace. A set of teeth appeared before them, and soon after, eyes. A head, a body, and limbs. The Cheshire Cat.

"It was there. I saw it. Go eat tuna." Nessa practically commanded the cat.

The Cheshire laughed, "Gullible isn't in the dictionary!" he laughed.

Sora raised an eyebrow and shrugged at everyone else. "Listen, what happened to the keyhole?"

"The darkness simply took it away!" he laughed, everything disappearing one by one now.

"Well, how do we get it back?!" Sora asked, trying to bide all of his time as long as the Cheshire Cat still had a mouth, "Any advice?"

When all that was left was the mouth, it just laughed and replied, "Never drink soap!" It then, too, disappeared into the nothingness.

"Oh. Wow." Nessa complained.

"I... don't like him much." Quince admitted.

"You're not all that alone." Kairi murmured into Sora's sleeve.

xxxxx

"Don't let Exie anywhere near the Heartless," Xemnas told Saïx, who was holding Exie by the sleeve. Xemnas seemed to be determined to show the girl exactly how a real Organization should act. "You never know what reactions might occur."

Exie growled at the man. "I can feel it. You're going to be trampled in the small amount of power that you already hold, if not by it." Author's Note: Foreshadowing, people...

"Right," Xemnas replied heartily, "just like a skeleton is going to replace Santa Claus in the act of Christmas gift-giving." At that note, Saïx decided he didn't want to hear much more of Xemnas's comparisons, and brought her into a spare room that only seemed to be like a dungeon. What kind of a headquarters was this? It wasn't a mansion, a castle, or a house. It didn't even have an official name, at least not one that was used. And the rooms were a lot more uncomfortable than Castle Oblivion, which she had gotten quite used to. Then again, she also got used to sharing a heart with Charity, but that was over for the time being.

In the meantime, Naminé was pulled by the arm out of Roxas's room. "No foreplay in the castle, for one." Marluxia warned her. What a past Naminé had with Marluxia, "Secondly, you need to create the memories now. We have no time to waste."

Naminé could practically feel the sketchbook and pencils in her hand. Although unskilled at drawing, she loved doing nothing more. But for this? Why for this? Kairi wasn't much of a sketcher. She wasn't much of an artist at all; she preferred to speak through her actions, hence Naminé never had much time to enjoy herself.

"How will you like living in The World that Never Was?" asked Marluxia.

"It will be sickening." Naminé replied coolly.

"Seems like you've picked up some of the wench's attitude while you were gone." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll remind you to not forget your place."

"My place here, surely, must have changed since I left the Organization for good. I'm no slave." she reminded him.

"That could have been all true," Marluxia grinned, "except my name's not Shirley." Author's Note: Totally stole that from Igor Lollipop.

xxxxx

"Heartless... everywhere." Sora complained. They had almost completely ran through the court room, not much in the mood to deal with an emotionally unbalanced queen with obvious eating problems. Charity said to her on their way to the odd looking forest that 'there are better ways to deal with stress', but was pulled back in before the angry royalty could follow.

Finally, it seemed the last of the Heartless in the area disappeared. Much to their amusement, a White Mushroom appeared and they had gotten a lot of munny, most of which Sora promised to use to buy them all a dinner that night and give poor Aerith a break.

"I haven't seen a doorknob anywhere." Charity groaned.

"I hear ya." Nessa mumbled, resting her elbow on an odd mushroom on the ground.

"Nessa, don't!" Sora shouted. It was too late; the mushroom pushed into the floor and she fell through it. Following suit, everyone else jumped through the hole in the ground. They only ended up in a very odd looking area with a long table and chairs everywhere.

"A very merry unbirthdayyyy..." came a low and long voice as a small figure began to rise from the ground.

"Hades is back! Hades is back!" Nessa complained, running behind Quince, who simply laughed.

"Somehow, I don't think that this person's rising from hell."

"What makes you so sure?" asked Nessa.

"The simple fact that he used the word 'merry' and there's no fire spurting from his bald head." Quince replied. Actually, this head held a hat on it.

"To youuuu!" he sang in a very opera-like voice. Pulling off his hat, expecting applause, Sora only backed up a pace. He remembered this room.

From the hat that was already pulled out, he reached in and pulled out a brown hair. Teapots, plates, and everything of the sort appeared on the table in an orderly fashion, as did corresponding chairs around the table. There seemed to be enough for both of them.

"Another unbirthday." Sora sighed. He had never met the Mad Hatter and the strange hare next to him, but seen them in a painting, in which their expression always seemed to change. This didn't look too good. "Hey, have any of you seen a doorknob?"

The mad hatter giggled ferociously and simply poured some tea into another cup, "Well, that's quite rude! Entering a room without being asked and asking for tea like that!"

"I didn't ask for tea." Sora informed them, throwing up his hands in a mock surrender.

The Mad Hatter's eyes narrowed. "Don't question me, boy. I had a bad day at the stocks, my girlfriend broke up with me, and my rent just doubled. I don't need some insolent teenager with a giant key telling me when I can and when I can't enjoy company at tea time." He seemed to growl at Sora.

Certainly, when they said Mad Hatter they didn't literally mean 'angry' as far as Mad.

"...Okay. Sure. We're leaving." Sora decided. They all took a door out of the odd area. The door was that of a fence. He immediately felt something wrestle under his hand as he put his hand on the doorknob. Wrenching it off, there was the doorknob they had been looking for, gagging angrily at the seven of them.

"I see you've met Eduardo!" the Hare told them all. Turning their heads slowly, they all faced the hare. "Eduardo, please excuse their rudeness."

"We need to unlock this keyhole." Sora told them, pointing out Kingdom Key. The keyhole refused to open his mouth wide enough. "What the hell?" asked Sora.

"Not until you have tea with us!" The Mad Hatter insisted, quite madly.

"We don't have time for this... We have to..."

"TEA DAMMIT." The Mad Hatter ordered them. Silently nodding, they all sat in the remaining seats surrounding the table, leaving one open.

After about an hour of having tea and much ado about an unbirthday, they were finally allowed to leave the table. Sora pulled out his keyblade, and sealed Wonderland once and for all.

"STAY FOR MORE." The Mad Hatter insisted.

"We gotta get out of here." Kairi decided, ignoring Eduardo's cry of pain as she wrenched the doorknob and they all ran through. Ignoring the Heartless in their path, their only want was to go through the forest, through the court, and back to the Gummi Ship.

Reality struck them as they made it to the Court. The Queen of Hearts was shouting angrily at her cards, and pointing at Charity, "That's her!" She whined, "That's the girl that says I eat to deal with my stress!" She seemed on the verge of tears as she shoved a Whopper in her mouth, hence spitting out some of the burger at her cards, "Off wif der heads!" she ordered. Taking out her inhaler, she stuck it up her nose, much to the groups displeasure.

Ignoring this little scene, the Cards crashed towards them all, and they readied themselves for yet another battle.

xxxxx

Naminé had long since stopped creating memories and replacing memories. Since her encounter with Sora, she couldn't bring herself to do it anymore. That's why she made memories for nobody but from herself and taped it in her room at the mansion in which she would watch over Roxas. On this drawing was a picture of a brown-haired girl, her hand on the chest of a boy with dark hair that looked oddly like Riku, and a heart forming in his chest.

"I'm sorry." she whispered.

xxxxx

"There are so many of these things!" Charity complained.

"Why are we even still fighting?" asked Broden, "We sealed the keyhole, now let's go!" Abandoning the battle scene, and surprised that an invisible barrier didn't prevent them from moving too far, they were sucked back upwards by the Rabbit Hole, and back onto their Gummi Ship.

"That was..." Riku gasped.

"Close." Charity finished for him, practically stumbling into his arms. They all obviously had a long day.

"If anyone else comes to take away another member of the group like that, we'll be defenseless." Sora murmured. "But somehow, I think they've got everyone they need." With regret, he started up the Gummi Ship.

"I understand Roxas, Axel, and Naminé, but why would they need Exie?" asked Charity. She seemed to especially need one of her witty comments now more than ever.

"Maybe," Quince suggested, walking over to Sora and pulling the book out of his pocket, "this might tell us."

"How would that tell us what's going on? You think it's a diary or something?" asked Broden, scratching the back of his head. He obviously was not happy about losing Exie.

"I think it might hold Zexion's memories. So it might be." Quince told them.

"I don't know..." Riku murmured.

"C'mon," Quince gave a Sora-like smile, and put his hand to the cover of the book, "live a little."

Author's Note: Eventful, no? I think I like this new story. I can tell you it will either be the same size or longer than the other two. I have a lot of ideas for the next chapter, so see you then. :3