"Sora?" Mina called up the ladder to Sora's room. It was late, but there was little doubt in her mind that her son was awake. After his…reaction…to meeting David, she was sure that he'd be plotting to get rid of him. And as far as she knew, he hadn't yet broken the lock on his widow screen, so unless he managed to wiggle out of the bathroom window and shimmy down the drainpipe, he would have to be in his room. "Will you come downstairs?"

The floorboards creaked overhead, but they were followed by the slamming of his bedroom door and the subsequent floorboard creaks back to wherever he'd been sitting.

"Sora!" she called, exasperated. "You can't just hide in your room! You're going to hurt David's feelings!"

The steady thumping of a bass beat drowned out the rest of her words, and Mina sighed. She'd figured that Sora wouldn't take it well, but at the very least, he could have the decency to act like he wasn't just an angry teen boy.

Which, she supposed, he was, and while she certainly saw the signs of maturation and growing up n how he moved and spoke, there was still the undercurrent of utter teenness in him. Perhaps he was just now reacting to the two years he'd lost, but it hurt her to see him blowing her, and David, off like that.

"Is he alright?" David asked, coming out of the living room to wrap his arms around her shoulders.

Mina shrugged, and crossed her arms. "He's being stubborn." She smiled weakly, but it didn't last against his penetrating expression. "He'll get over it, he'd smarter than that." After all, it wasn't like he hadn't ever had to deal with hard truths before.

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

She let him pull her back to the living room, and for a while, she was only really aware of the beat of whatever it was Sora was using to blast any of their noise away.

-

"Boyfriend?" Kairi asked. "When did your mom get a boyfriend? How did they meet? Is he cute?"

"Kairiiii, don't talk like that!" Sora whined, absently kicking his heels against the wooden supports of his bed. "I don't want to think he's cute, I don't like him!"

"You don't want your mom to be happy?"

"That's not what I meant and you know it, Kairi," Sora snapped. "I don't like him. He's too friendly."

"But the friendly people are the helpful ones, right? Like Leon and Aerith and all them. And it's the bad guys who you should look out for."

Sora fell sideways onto his bed and kicked at the blankets, knocking them all onto the floor. "It's not like that anymore. Here, the bad guys and good guys aren't clear cut. They're all mixed in together." He switched the phone to his other ear, even more discontent with Kairi's answers than he'd been when his mom had introduced him to David. "I don't think he's good enough."

"Don't worry about it," Kairi said, attempting a soothing voice. "I'm sure your mom knows what she's doing. She's done it a lot longer than you have."

Sora grumbled to himself, and he knew Kairi was just trying to make him feel better, but the last thing he wanted was false reassurance. Why couldn't people tell things straight anymore? Even when people were withholding information, he still had an idea, at the least, of what was going on.

"Yeah," he finally said. "I'm gonna go, I have homework to do."

"Alright, and don't worry about it!"

Sora closed his cellphone and tossed it somewhere in the vicinity of the closet, where it thunked on something hard and skittered to the floor.

He flinched, and got up to check how many pieces the phone was in. Mina was gonna be pissed if he broke this one, too…

The phone lay on the floor, surprisingly in one piece, and Sora stuck it in his pocket. He shuffled over to his dark, filled-to-the-brim closet, and began to prod at it. He couldn't recall anything that would make that kind of peculiar, almost metallic thunk, except the weird box Mickey gave him to keep the Gummi ship blueprints in.

Wait a minute… he thought, an idea forming. The Gummi ship still worked; the worlds were still connected.

And what better way to blow off steam than beat up the last few vestiges of Heartless still flitting about the worlds?

Sora pulled the box out, and sifted through the blueprints to find the fastest. He could make it to Hollow Bastion in a few hours, if he left in a few moments, or-

A shadow fell across him, and a voice cut through his train of thought. "Twilight Town?" Roxas kneeled down next to Sora, and focused on the blueprint in Sora's hands. "If you had no other plans. There's plenty of people to fight. Hayner and Seifer, and maybe Setzer if you could convince him it was worth his time." His tone was easy, soft, but Sora could feel a parallel stress in Roxas. The need to be his own person was almost overwhelming at times, and there, nobody would think twice about two boys, particularly two boys with weapons.

"Twilight town it is. Go write a note for my mom, will you? I don't want her to think I'm gonna be gone for two years again, she might take that badly." Sora set the blueprint aside and packed the rest back into the box. There was a second, much larger box, underneath where the Gummi box stayed in his closet. It held all the things he'd collected on his journeys, and he managed to shove enough clothes and old toys and random crap he'd never gotten around to throwing away off of the top of it to lift off the lid.

"What should it say?" Roxas inquired from over at Sora's desk. He shoved the undone homework to the side, and held a pencil at the ready. "Just that you're leaving for a bit?"

"Yeah," Sora said, not really paying attention. He dug through the box to find the bag of munny from King Mickey; it was about time he gave it back to Roxas anyhow, seeing as it belonged to him. "Something about being back sooner or later. I need a day or two off from school anyhow." He pulled the munny bag out, and set it aside. At the bottom of the box were his clothes- he'd put them away at his mom's request. Apparently, they made her think he was about to leave. He pulled them out, and shook the wrinkles out of the jacket. "Think I should?"

"Might as well," Roxas said. He signed the note and looked around the room. "You get in and out of here with a ladder. You don't exactly have a door to stick this to."

"Just stick it on one of the rungs, Mom'll see it." Sora pulled off his shirt and threw it over his shoulder. "I hope I haven't gotten any taller, or this'll look weird."

Roxas rolled his eyes, and peeked over the edge of the floor to check for Mina or her boyfriend. From the sounds of it, they were still in the living room. He folded the note and set it on the lowest rung he could reach, then sat back up and looked over at Sora.

He was standing in front of the mirror, turning this way and that and scrutinizing the clothing. It almost looked out of place on him, but Roxas could nearly see the way Sora stood taller, more confident. He needed the break from routine as much as Roxas needed to just get out.

"Ready?" Roxas asked. He grabbed the blueprint and the bag of munny, and handed both to Sora. "Unless there's anything else you need to grab?"

Sora shook his head, and tossed the munny back to Roxas. "That's yours, remember? Olette made you the bag."

"Not the real Olette," Roxas said, his eyes falling on a spot over Sora's shoulder. "Let's go."

Sora held back the urge to say something comforting, knowing that Roxas wouldn't care, and he unrolled the blueprint.

-

Mina heard a vague sort of "zoom" over the ear-drum rattling music, and shook David off long enough to go and check. Sora hadn't left his room, but she was pretty sure that he didn't have anything that would make a "zoom" noise. "I'll be right back," she said, smiling at David. He frowned, but turned his attention back to the television. She headed out of the living room and into the little hallway that ended with the ladder up to her sons's room- and spotted the white paper, sitting innocuously two rungs down from the hole. She hurried over to it, fearing the worst.

Mom, it read in scrawled handwriting that was only vaguely similar to Sora's chicken scratch, I'm going to Twilight Town to visit some friends. I'll stay with them for a few days. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine.

Mina crumpled the note, angry. Something was going on, and so help her, she was going to get to the bottom of it, and Sora was not going to be happy when she found out what he was doing.

"David, I'm going to make a phone call, alright? Sora's slipped out, and I need to call his friend's mom to let her know he might be coming over."

"Take your time," he responded. She grabbed the phone off of the counter, and dialed Riku's number.

The line picked up immediately, and it wasn't Riku's mother. "Sora?" Riku asked, sounding annoyed.

"This is his mother," she answered. Riku wasn't in on it, it sounded like, but at the least, he could probably help her track him down. "It seems as though Sora's run off. Would you mind coming over? I need to talk to you."

"…yeah." The line went silent, and she could hear the vague mumbling of Riku asking for permission. "Is Sora in trouble? What did he do?"

"Just hurry, please." She hung up, replaced the phone on the stand, and headed back out into the living room.

"Is everything okay?" David asked. She sat down next to him, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "We can go look for him, if you want."

"We won't be able to find him," she muttered. How could she have forgotten about the-what were they called, rubber ships? Of all the stupid things to do! Of course he could leave, he knew how to drive the damn thing! "One of his friends is coming over. He'll be able to find Sora, he knows his tricks."

Silence reined, and David ventured an idea. "Have you considered alternative schooling? It seems to me that he needs more structure."

Mina twitched.

David hastily backtracked. "I'm not insulting your parenting skills, I'm just saying that he needs a firmer hand. A father's hand, maybe?"

Mina put her face in her hands. "I don't know!" She wailed. "I've been trying, but he's just not taking to it! He won't listen to me, he's so much more headstrong and independent since-" She cut herself off, mentally beating herself over the head. How could she explain him without saying why? Sora's disappearance was a well-kept secret, and she wasn't sure David would believe her anyhow…

"I don't mean to pry, but wasn't he kidnapped? It was in the newspapers. Was that Sora?"

Newspapers? Mina stared blankly at him. She hadn't told anyone anything, but- Riku's parents. Of course. But why hadn't Sora mentioned it? Riku would've told him for sure, they told each other everything.

"…right. Yes. Kidnapped."

A knock on the door sounded and Mina thankfully jumped up from the couch to answer it. Riku stood there, his hand still raised to knock, and an expression of mild surprise on his face. His mother's car pulled out of the driveway, and Mina waved half-heartedly at it as she drove away. "Hi, Riku, come on in."

He followed her back to the living room, and he waited in silence while she bustled around the kitchen for a moment. His eyes fell on David, and they narrowed. His arms crossed, and David stared back. I suppose that's why Sora left, he thought. The man, even though he was seated, was still imposing, and his dark eyes felt like they were reading nuances that even Riku would miss. But who is he?

"Riku?" Mina called from the kitchen. She came to the doorway, and quickly stepped between the two. She shoved a note at him, and Riku scanned it.

It wasn't Sora's handwriting, but the casual words clued him in. So Sora and Roxas both were on their way to Twilight Town- not that they could go without each other, but Roxas wasn't just a tagalong. He folded the note and handed it back to Mina. "Do you know where that is?" she asked, looking tired. "I haven't heard of it."

"I can track th- him down." Riku glanced at the man again, eyes carefully devoid of emotion, and headed past Mina to the ladder.

Sora probably would have taken the fastest Gummi, but he wasn't that good at planning; he wouldn't've thought to take the rest as well. Riku climbed the ladder, and found the Gummi box resting innocuously to the side of Sora's closet. Inside it, the blueprints were strewn about, but it took only a moment to find the one he wanted. "Sora, you'd better be there," he muttered. "Let's not have a replay of the whole thing, yeah?"

He unrolled the blueprint, and subsequently disappeared.

A/N: This is the edited version; the original I'd forgotten to proofread. [/fail]