DISCLAIMER: I don't own Kingdom Hearts but I do own the slight re-emergence of Agradar and my plot.

Chapter 35

On the Trail Again

"We've gotta find that key!"

-Donald Duck

"Wak! Stop playing around, Goofy!" Donald yelled as their ship pulled out of the Gummi Hanger at Disney Castle which was a huge flurry of activity as Chip and Dale worked on finishing their new Highwind Gummi Ship to ferry the shipmates of the R.L.S. Legacy home to Montressor. Donald and Goofy themselves were setting off to find Gentai where they would be less traceable themselves. Unfortunately, in the moment they got on the ship, Goofy had already tripped five times and nearly spilled a kind of drink he had gotten all over the dashboard and so Donald was not too happy.

Sora, Riku, and Kairi had left a day ago to go to Maxville and Mickey was holed up in the library poring over ancient texts while Edge had taken to roaming the castle and giving help where it was needed. Not that it was needed here. The king had given this task for only the two of them to complete and complete it they would. First they would start with Agradar where the king thought Gentai would most likely go due to it being his homeworld and all. But Goofy was already making this journey very difficult…of course, Pluto had joined them in an attempt to sniff Gentai out, at the behest of his master of course. It kind of reminded Donald of eight years ago when he and Goofy had set out to find the wielder of the Keyblade who turned out to be Sora. He had not known at the time that the spiky headed teen at the time would become one of his best friends in all the worlds.

Donald didn't dare put the ship into warp drive for the fear that Gentai might possibly have some uncanny power that would allow him to sense their ship coming at such a fast pace. That was why he reverted to the original controls. To Donald, it felt good to be sitting in the captain's chair again. When he had given the reigns to Sora (even after the disastrous landing in Deep Jungle) he had not had the captain's chair rightfully to himself for many years. Of course, he was grateful that Sora had flown them through the midst of all those Heartless ship battles and had even managed to maneuver them safely through an all-out assault outside the Land of Dragons a few weeks prior and the Assault of the Dreadnought (as he called it) outside Twilight Town seven years ago.

But now it was Donald's turn. He threatened Goofy with a silencing and a binding spell as they left and so much of the ships voyage passed in silence. When at last they were outside of Agradar, roughly three hours after setting sail, they felt free in talking in order to relieve some tension of possibly finding Gentai there.

"Gawrsh, you think he'll try to hurt us if he's there?" Goofy asked with some small degree of trepidation. Donald gave a stern glance to his dog-like friend.

"If he tries to hurt us then we'll hurt him straight back!!" Donald declared triumphantly and before Goofy could even hope to protest Donald flicked the switch and they were beamed back down onto Agradar. The first thing they saw was a small and yet slightly thick mist swirling around the world. Many of the bodies were already decomposing after a weeks time and the houses looked, if possible, worse for the wear than it could have been a little over a week ago. Both Donald and Goofy were appalled by the appearance but had no choice except for going forward. Donald took the lead, walking forward cautiously, his fear displaying itself by the quivering staff held in front of him.

They searched around the whole of Agradar but couldn't find Gentai anywhere, nor any trace that he had ever been here since that fateful encounter with Maleficent. But Goofy noticed something just as they were about to turn back towards the beaming spot for their Gummi Ship.

"Hey, look at that Donald!" Goofy yelled and he ran over someplace else, Donald following quickly in his wake. What goofy had led them to was the sole patch of yellow flowers. The area looked absolutely stunning compared to the rest of the world and Donald could even swear that sunlight was pouring on it, making it even more beautiful, and that the mist was not touching this area. The flowers themselves were arranged in a five foot wide circle.

Donald and Goofy walked over to see what was in the middle since it looked like a large stone was sitting in the center of the flowers. And that was not far off from the truth. It was a beautifully crafted marble headstone of some sorts and almost spoke as to the testament of how far Gentai's magic had come in just a year. There was also a beautiful engraving on the front of the tombstone that read: TO THE PARENTS OF GENTAI TANAKA WHO PERISHED WITH THEIR WORLD. Below that was another line etched in: TO HIKARU, THE GREATEST MENTOR AND KEYBLADE WIELDERS I HAVE EVER KNOWN. And at last they moved down to the final line of the text and saw the last, shattering truth that did not hit the two Disney Castle court members until now: TO DEMORA SUWARA, THE LOVLIEST GIRL IN THE WORLDS…WHO MET HER END TOO SOON.

That was it. That last line conveyed so much. Gentai had loved Demora and each of the losses inscribed there was enough to set him over the edge as it had done. But Demora was gone and there was no denying it anymore. Goofy looked down at his feet.

"Gawrsh…Gentai must really be hurtin inside." Goofy said sadly, able to feel the young boy's pain on his own. After all he had gone through…but Goofy was convinced that Gentai was not that evil despite the things that he had done. Then Goofy, being the surprisingly keen being as he was, noticed something about the flowers. They weren't native to this world but to a world that he and Donald had seen recently. "Uh, Donald…these flowers are from Fabled Countryside."

"Wak! You're right Goofy! If Gentai's not here then that's where he must be!" Donald said and without another word the two got on to their Gummi Ship and headed for Fabled Countryside. So their journey throughout the worlds had begun. Ironically, this is the first time they had ever gone world hopping without Sora or the king and they kind of missed the king's well-mannered humor and Sora's over-bubbly personality. After all, even when Sora was down he was up…and nobody, even Kairi, would have him any other way.

Donald and Goofy's search for Gentai took many days and led them to many different worlds in their search for him. In fact, it almost seemed as if Gentai was stringing them along with different clues here and there to possibly lead them to where he was going, but neither of the members of the Disney Castle Court seemed to suspect this. In their mind, they would find where Gentai was holing up and making his base before they would take their new force of Keyblade wielders to take him down. And that brought Donald, often to the subject of Edge.

To him, Edge was a valuable asset, even if Sora and Riku did not trust him. Both Donald and Goofy had spent the night before their departure talking with Edge. As it turned out, he was pretty miffed that both Sora and Riku had called him a coward. He had apparently never jumped into the game for a few reasons. Donald, unlike Goofy, recalled the conversation with clarity.

"There always come problems with bringing an order like the Order of the Crown out into the open. It's target for attacks by not only villains but by other people as well and that just makes everybody lose. The last order wasn't strong enough and look what happened to them. They existed out in the open and the Round of the Crown eventually fell apart." Edge sat there and sighed, rubbing his temples with his fingers. "Donald, Goofy, I'm sure you'd understand. How was Sora when he first began to wield the Keyblade?"

"Impulsive, he never listened, and really got on my nerves!" Donald jabbered out, remembering how much he really didn't like Sora when he first met him.

"Aww…but Sora got better after that, didn't he Donald?" Goofy asked, sticking up for his currently absent friend.

"Yeah…but he's still naïve!" Donald protested and Edge had just chuckled a little.

"Well, multiply that by about twenty. Half my order is young and impetuous…just like Sora. They're easily open to influence and if they encountered Maleficent they could easily be snared by her traps as Riku once was. It is lamentable that I did not jump into the battle…but I tried my best, I promise you. I came out a few months ago to fight and have found out as much about Maleficent as I can." Edge sighed again, more weary with each passing breath. "If I had brought us into the open our inexperience would have doomed us all…I know Sora and Riku don't like it but I was only doing what I thought was right. I had no idea what was truly going on until we left…granted I did try to attack Maleficent a few times but her castle is well guarded."

"Awww…we don't blame you none!" Goofy said and Edge had smiled at him. That made the quick and sheer determination that clearly Edge was not a bad man with bad aims but just a good guy with clearly dreadful timing in the part that he could have come in before and helped stop the Huntsman. This warranted enough trust between them and the king trusted him so that was good enough for Donald. Ironically, he hoped Sora wouldn't be so stubborn for much longer like he himself usually was.

Regardless of all these thoughts, the current mission of finding the Keyblade wielder gone rogue took precedence over anything else that could possibly exist in the books. After all, Donald and Goofy trusted their good buddy Sora to take care of Royal Pain no problem since that was what the Keyblade Master was good at. Even alone Donald could remember all the bad guys Sora had taken down by himself: Darkside, the Card Soldiers for a time, Sabor, Riku, supposedly four of the Organization XIII members in Castle Oblivion, Luxord, Xemnas, 1000 Heartless and Jafar. All in all, Sora was pretty strong and with his two friends their combined strength was even stronger.

Their trip was rather uneventful however, much to Donald's displeasure. They found another little tidbit of a clue at Fabled Countryside…a thalassa seashell was resting near the Queen's castle as they strolled around the world, trying to find all the places that their Keyblade wielding friends had been to. After all, they didn't have some type of super-scent that Riku had going for him. Regardless, the shell told them that Destiny Islands was their next stop. They didn't understand why Gentai was bouncing around from world to world, but they could only assume he was planning something.

At Destiny Islands it took them nearly till sundown and a long run from an immensely irate Selphie to find the next clue as to Gentai's whereabouts. Of course, escaping Selphie was not easy since she knew they were friends of Sora and Kairi and she desperately wanted to know where the couple was. This was only complicated by the fact that Goofy thought it would help to try and talk to her. Based on Sora's description of her, Donald decided that this was a very bad idea and dragged Goofy along. The clue they had found was one of the crystals from the Four Crystal Trophy of the Struggle Tournament.

Twilight Town was perhaps their longest stop. They returned to the crystal to the Struggle Promoter and then proceeded to start looking for their clue. This was hindered by two things. For one, Seifer and his gang were still giving them trouble on the Sandlot and tried to bully the two animals before Donald literally set his pants on fire. He went racing around the Sandlot screaming until Vivi was overcome with confidence and cast a water spell on his behind. And also, they ran into Hayner and Olette who had some very happy new to share with them.

"I'm pregnant!" Olette cried happily when she saw them and even Hayner was happy as he held his wife in his arms. This, of course, got Donald and Goofy very excited and the two of them would not calm down enough until Pence arrived on one of his many lunch breaks from the Sea Salt Ice Cream Corps and gave them each a Sea-Salt Ice cream. When at last that lunch break was over, the trio left, Olette and Hayner happily discussing plans for the baby's room. This finally gave Donald and Goofy time to search the world. They searched the world all over the place: Sunset Terrace, the clock tower, the plaza, and even the Old Mansion but were unable to find anything. Not even a single clue was there that could hint at Gentai being there at all. Therefore, that night the two companions returned to the Gummi Ship rather dejected.

"Phew…we've had a long day!" Goofy said, collapsing in one of the passenger chairs on the Gummi Ship.

"But we didn't do anything Goofy!" Donald yelled until he noticed a faint, blinking green light on the ships council. He looked over at it and sat in the captain's chair. He pressed the button next to it and the very faint and scratchy image of Leon appeared on the screen.

"Request…immediately. Saw…Ship in area. Prob…at castle…please ans-" but the message broke off after that. Donald furrowed his brow in confusion and both he and Goofy watched the transmission over and over again but all they could figure out was that Leon was having some kind of problem in Radiant Garden. Well, they never gave up the opportunity to help another and so, without any rest Donald began to pilot the ship towards Radiant Garden. The flight took a few hours and it was nighttime when they arrived there so they decided to get some sleep before beaming down the next morning, the sixth day since Sora had left Disney Castle.

The second they landed in Merlin's house they could tell that something was wrong. Cid was scrutinizing the screen intently while furiously typing into the computer stationed in Merlin's home. Merlin was fidgeting his wand back and forth while most of the Restoration Committee was not even present. Leon was the first to notice them there.

"You got my message!" Leon said, striding over to them. "You see, our communications system was shut down all of a sudden about a day ago for some reason and we've been unable to reboot it. We than found something and needed to contact the king. Can we use your Gummi channel?"

"Hey, we can help you out!" Donald declared, slightly indignant at the thought of not being considered worthy of helping out. Leon gave a dry chuckle and shook his head.

"It's not that…we need more than you guys…we've got a big problem." Leon said with a scowl. "And I mean, it's huge."

Author's Note: Yes, I know, it's short, so sue me (actually don't but you can pretend you did). I thought the concept of it being just Donald and Goofy was promising so I test drove it. This might have been a bit lacking in the plot furthering department but it made some things VERY clear and I'll leave it up to you to guess what those are. There is only one question that now remains: what is the problem in Radiant Garden? Well, you'll have to wait for tomorrow or Friday before the big secret is revealed (and believe me it is BIG), since I want this moment to be good. And a quick note: we are officially halfway through the chapters of Part II!!!

Captain A: I believe this answers your question about why Edge didn't challenge Maleficent openly.

Drop a review for me, please, and Dare to Be Silly.