Part I. Losing Memories
As we all left the second floor and about to enter the third floor, Goofy suddenly stopped and when Donald asked, he said, "It's that castle I mentioned earlier. I'm sure I didn't make it up."
"Don't you mean Hollow Bastion? I already told you.", Yoris reminded him.
"Uhh, yeah. That was the castle where Sora pierced himself with the Dark Keyblade (I winced since I remembered that I was the one holding that wretched thing) to free Kairi's heart. Then he disappeared for a while. I'll never forget how worried I was."
"Yeah!", Sora said. "When I turned into a Heartless! Wait… That happened in… a castle?"
"Well, yeah!", I said.
"You forget? Well, I remember it perfectly."
"Really?", Gregorio asked.
"Yeah! it was… (10 seconds of dead air) Jiminy… You wrote everything in your journal, right?"
"Every letter. I finished off the first volume right before we got into this castle."
Jiminy then rummaged in my backpack for his journal (I don't know how it got there), took it out, then jumped down.
But when he opened it, he suddenly gasped, "Th-this is impossible!"
"What's wrong?", Florina asked.
"All the entries have vanished! Every page… blank!"
"What?!", Donald gasped.
"How could this happen? I take good care of my journals! Ahhh… All that hard work, gone…"
"What kind of castle is this…", Sora and I thought out loud. As we went up, Florina thought spoke to me. Worry not, Rael. Tell Jiminy I have a copy of his journal somewhere safe. Don't tell him it's underneath my helmet since I'm afraid exposure will make it lose its contents like his own journal had.
When I relayed those words to Jimimy, he smiled a bit. As we went up, I suddenly saw a brief vision of a blond girl sketching, but it disappeared immediately after.
Once we were up on the third floor, Donald wondered, "How could everything that was written just vanish like that…"
Sora then stopped and said, "Maybe… It's not just stuff we write down."
As we turned to face him, he continued, "Goofy said we've been to some other castle. ("Hollow Bastion!", I reminded him.) But I don't remember it at all. Just the name our friends here (me, Yoris, Florina, and Gregorio) provided for us. Maybe… Maybe we don't remember because those memories are gone?"
"Gone? Are you crazy?", Donald said.
"Wait!", I called out. "Remember what Axel and the Red Ranger said. 'In this place, to find is to lose and to lose is to find.' They were talking about memories!"
"If we keep going, we'll lose our memories…", Sora replied. "No wonder they call it Castle Oblivion!"
Donald concluded, "So… the higher we go, the more we forget?"
5 seconds of silence.
"What if we forget everything and can't get it back?
"I'd forget Riku and Kairi too…", Sora said.
"Maybe we should turn back?"
"Don't worry.", Goofy suddenly said. "We might forget where we've been or what we saw, but we won't forget our friends."
"I'm not sure…"
"Hey, Sora. When you turned into a Heartless, did you forget about us?"
"Of course not."
"See… no matter what happens, you won't forget your friends."
"Yeah… You're right. Thanks, Goofy."
"I guess there's nothing to be scared of after all.", Donald said.
"So bring it on! Come on guys, let's go!" And as he went for the door, Sora suddenly said, "When I was a Heartless… who was the one that clobbered me, huh?"
Donald stopped and infuriatingly shouted, "THAT'S what you should be forgetting!" And we all burst into laughter. After voting for Olympus Coliseum as the next World Card to select, we then crossed the door.
Part II. Olympus Coliseum
Once we were in 'Olympus Coliseum', we saw an announcement for entering a competition. And when we crossed the entrance, we were now in the 'floor area' (i.e. Sora and I have to travel across rooms and Heartless) and we obtained the Key of Beginnings. When Sora used a "Moogle Room" door card, there was a Moogle in the middle of the small room (the rooms with Heartless are usually big). When we came over to the Moogle, he gave both of us a pack of 5 cards. When I looked at Sora's, it had Attack cards (obviously Keyblades) and when I checked out mine, it had 2 Magic Cards, 2 Summon Cards, and an Item Card (the combination differs in future Moogle Rooms, but I NEVER get any attack cards. obviously since they come in only once I set up the deck for the other cards). After buying some cards with MP(Moogle Points), and trading in some of them for MP (I could not trade in my attack cards since they said it would be 'cheating').
Eventually, we left the room and found the Room of Beginnings. In there, we found Phil and he signed us up But then he told us we can't beat Hercules because "Two words: You ain't heroes."
Sora said he was wrong and Goofy supported him but incorrectly since he said, "Yeah! That was THREE words."
"How do you know we aren't heroes, if you don't give us a chance?", Florina countered.
"They got a point there.", Hercules said as he appeared. "We were about to cancel the game but now we have contenders, there's no need."
"Okay, so we have Herc(ules), Team Keyblade (Sora, Donald and Goofy), Team Light Gun (me, Florina, Gregorio, and Yoris) —", Phil started to say.
"And Cloud.", as he appeared from behind us.
It was followed by, "Barret too." as the gun-arm man arrived as well.
"All right.", Phil then said. ""Now we got a whole set of contenders. (Cloud and Barret have entered separately), I will now list down the rules in this tournament:
One, First person or team through the obstacle course wins.
Two, In the occurrence of a tie, a battle between the two (team is counted as one) declares the winner.
Three, you are allowed to interfere with your opponents in the obstacle course.
Four, All contenders, be it solo or every single member in a team, have to give their all."
On Phil's signal, we all set off and when we were outside the Room of Beginnings, Sora was already gone but luckily, I remembered that I had a device that emits the same beam that the Keyblade does when locking or unlocking locks. (Of course, we already had the Key to Guidance) When I reached a door, I pulled out the 'Keyblade Laser' and when I used it, the 'Door Synthesis' menu appeared in my heads-up display (It turns out that Sora and I have universal access to our door cards. Luckily, Sora was following my advice since I saw a card suddenly disappear from the menu, probably because of Sora's using it.) As I crossed the rooms, Eventually, after obtaining Ice Discus in a Bounty Room, found the Door to Guidance. When I was there (Of course, my companions, except for Sora, Donald, and Goofy, appeared.), I suddenly noticed Barret. When we wondered out loud whether he was waiting for us to catch up or to follow Rule Number Three, Barret simply told us to pass.
"I'm not here for the Cup, but Hercules.", he continued.
We then called out our weapons and when he said that he did not want to fight us, I replied, "Rule Number Three: You are allowed to interfere with your opponents in the obstacle course. I wanna fight Hercules and/or Team Keyblade as well."
"Big mistake. Cloud is also after Hercules."
"No problem. I bet Sora is fighting him right now in the course."
The battle matrix then initiated and I started to deal with Barret.
-You imagine what the battle was like-
___________________________
//MIGHTY GUN-ARM MAN – BARRET
ATTACKS
Big Shot: Charges and shoots a fireball at his opponent.
Open Fire: Fires his Gun-Arm at his opponent.
Sleight – Mindblow: Fires a blue ball of energy at his opponent, dealing heavy damage.
Sleight – Catastrophe: Fire twice in succession with his Gun-Arm, each dealing a quarter more damage than normal.
Grenade: Jumps up and fires a grenade at his opponent.
-end of battle description-
After the battle, Barret suddenly disappeared and I left the Room of Guidance in a hurry. After getting the Key To Truth and finding the door to it (and also running into Sora), we all found Hercules, Cloud, and Barret in a 3-way tie though Herc seems to be ganged up by his two opponents. Still, they were both beaten down, though they still wanted to fight.
"I can't guarantee your safety if you keep this up.", Hercules said.
"Worry about yourself!", Cloud demanded and when we came to back up Herc, Barret said, "Hah! No matter how many allies you send in, we'll still go through them all, so long as it allows Cloud to retrieve his memories."
"What?! Cloud lost his memories?", I alarmingly said.
Just then, Hades came in and told them, since you have 'spilt the beans', "You're both FIRED!!"
"But… my memories! We made a promise!", Cloud said.
"Did you really think you could get your lost memories back like that? Get a grip! I'll take care of Hercules myself!" And he followed up with a shockwave which knocked everyone back. That is, everyone but Hercules and, of course, Hades himself. "Rule Number 5, Its never too late to enter the games! Cloud and Barret may have failed but they have weakened you and now it's time for Plan B and send you to the Underworld."
Just then, we managed to get back and say, "Hold it, hothead!"
Despite Herc's protests, we insisted in the battle and the 'battle matrix' initiated. Just before the battle, Hades said, "Rule Number 6, There are no rules! Ha ha!". We started the battle by barraging him with attacks. But then, he managed to use Temper Flare, which gave him new abilities. Whenever he started spewing out flames from his arms like a flamethrower, we immediately did a Card Break on him (neither my shield nor my arm can tolerate that much heat). We also avoided any Firaga Balls and Fire Swings. I also realized that using Silence deactivates Temper Flare (though he tries to activate it again), and that Blizzard attacks work. Soon enough, we defeated him and obtained his card (as well as EXP). I also obtained Esuna and Dispel and then the battle matrix dissipated. Due to the events, Phil canceled the games, but when I told then there were still Team Keyblade AND Team Light Gun left, he then agreed to have us battle one another.
-I will not tell you the outcome or the result of the battle, but it is clear that neither of us won easy though one of us DID win.-
After the battle, we came over to Cloud and Barret. After Sora gave some advice to Cloud concerning lost memories (Barret remained silent), they gave us their Summon cards, and then refused our offer to join them (Remember, they are figments of our memories). We then left the Room To Truth together and found the door to the next floor.