Sora fidgeted from the floor of Riku's bedroom. He had finished his homework about twenty minutes ago and was debating on where to ask Riku, again, how much more he had to do. Why did his best friend have to be in all the stupid accelerated classes?

"If you keep distracting me, I'll never finish."

"Sorry," he did not sound it in the least. "I'm just bored."

"Sorry." Riku echoed absently.

They fell quiet again and eventually Sora was again twitching. A few more minutes passed before Riku sighed. He shut his physics book and sat up on his bed. "All right, you win."

"Huh?" Sora blinked.

"I'm not going to get anything else done up here so I'm going to bring my dad's laptop downstairs and do my paper on that." The silvered one slid off the bed. "That way you can play the game but you have to let me work."

Sora leapt to his feet. "Okay."

He darted for the door, missing Riku's exasperated yet amused look. He called over his shoulder that he would get the game started while Riku got out the computer. The older teen shook his head, grabbed the notebook he needed and went to retrieve the laptop from his father's office.

By the time he got downstairs, Sora had the game going once again and was at the world map. Riku settled himself on the couch, setting the laptop on the cushion beside him and starting it. Then he flipped through the notebook.

"All right, and now I'm off Disney Castle!" Sora grinned. "That's a sweet castle."

"It's very peaceful there." Riku observed from the couch.

Sora turned his head. "You've been to Disney Castle?"

"Yeah, a few times." Riku smirked even though he did not look up from the laptop now resting on his knees. "I am King Mickey's favorite."

"What?" Sora gaped. "You are not! Just because he knows you better and you spent more time with him and… Darn it, you are the favorite."

The silvered one chuckled as Sora returned to the screen to fight his way through the gate and land at Disney Castle. He, Donald, and Goofy disembarked and the two human-animals looked around the garage as Sora talked. The real Sora angled his head. "You know, I was kinda jealous that we went there. I really wanted to come home, too."

"Understandable."

Chip and Dale came running over and urging them to see Queen Minnie in the library. The group ran off and emerged in a large courtyard. Some heartless got in the way but Sora simply barreled through them. "Hey, Riku? Since you and the King are pretty close, how come he didn't ask you to protect the Queen?"

Riku stopped typing for a moment. "Well, I kinda ditched Mickey after the initial Roxas thing. I saw him once after I captured Roxas but after that… well…"

"That whole 'being ashamed of yourself' thing." Sora nodded sadly. "I gotcha. I still say you shouldn't have been."

Riku was spared having to reply by the trio on screen's arrival to the library. Donald and Goofy saluted and greeted her then Sora simply walked up and began asking questions. Minnie simply looked at him in bemusement as Donald forced him to his knees.

"You know, I still can't believe that in that year I was sleeping, the King didn't visit home at least once." Sora noted as the group began talking about heartless.

"Oh, he did." Riku countered. "There's a lot this game gets wrong but it's a video game. They can't get everything right. We went to the castle twice. Minnie makes the best little strawberry tarts."

"Really?" Sora turned.

"Yeah, always served them with tea." Aqua eyes flicked toward the screen. "You're supposed to be taking her to the audience chamber."

Sora turned back around. "Wait, why are we splitting up? Why are Donald and Goofy running around warning everyone? They have a public address system! The darn thing was blaring the whole time we were there!"

"Another pointless thing they put in the game." Riku had begun typing again. "Oh, was it just me or was that march they kept playing really obnoxious?"

"You mean the one playing now?" Sora asked. "Yeah, I kinda liked it at first but after the fifth time it got kinda old."

"Exactly."

Sora turned back and began escorting the queen. "Man, she's slow. It's like she doesn't even notice I'm being attacked here and, whoa, that was cool! She just raised her hand like took out five of them! What the heck did she need me for?"

"Minnie has really good defensive magic but she can't take too many at a time."

Sora and Minnie reached the throne room and he waited for her to open the door. When the tiny hole in the massive doors appeared, Sora shook his head and chuckled. "That still cracks me up. Big huge doors and they use this itty bitty opening."

"Those doors have four settings for different sized visitors." Riku commented idly.

"Really? That's kinda cool." On the screen, they had entered the throne room and things were silent. Sora bit his lip, fingers poised on the controller. "Wait for it…. Boom."

Several large Heartless flashed to life and he began attacking. "Yeah, lot of good sealing that room did there, Your Highness."

"Hey!" Riku looked up with narrowed eyes. "She couldn't have known the Cornerstone was corrupted. She did what she thought was best."

"Ugh!" Sora groaned. "I died. Great, now I've got to do it again."

As he restarted, he glanced over his shoulder. "I totally wasn't dissing the Queen, by the way. I just freakin' had so much trouble in that room."

"Looks like you still are." Riku commented dryly as Sora died yet again. "It took me four tries to get Minnie to the throne."

Sora growled as he began again. "If she would just stay on the carpet instead of wandering off, this would be so much easier."

This time, Queen Minnie did make it to the throne. While Sora continued to hold off the Heartless, she searched over the arm of the throne. "What is she looking for? The button's right there! All she had to do was hit it!"

"Video game, Sora."

"It's stupid." She finally hit the button and a section of the floor moved, revealing a massively bright light that wiped out the remaining Heartless. As Minnie explained how the Cornerstone of Light worked and how it had always protected their world, Sora leaned back and regarded Riku with an upside-down face. "Hey, Riku. Why don't other worlds have something like that?"

"What? The Cornerstone?" The silvered teen shrugged. "No idea. Would have made things a lot easier, huh?"

"Well, yeah." Sora spat out, straightening out to watch the screen again. "What was with all the thorns anyway? It's not like they blocked us from reaching the thing?"

"Think of them as Maleficent's calling card. She has a thing for using thorn bushes." When the witch appeared, Riku flicked his eyes up and snorted. "I can't believe I let myself be manipulated by a self-centered idiot like her."

"So, does she like, have nothing better to do than go around annoying people?"

"Nope, spends the whole game real estate shopping." Riku returned to his report. She just keeps going around trying to find the perfect castle."

Maleficent disappeared, her laugh lingering on for much longer than necessary. Sora shook his head and at the exact same moment as his game-self stated, "What a hag."

Riku actually laughed. "I would have said bitch but that works, too."

The group onscreen suddenly decided to go get Merlin to figure out what's happening to the Cornerstone and how to fix it. They make a brief trip to Hollow Bastion, talk to Merlin and as Donald is explaining things, the screen faded out and they suddenly reappeared at the Cornerstone. Merlin looked the thing over and as he did, Riku paused in his work.

He unfolded his legs and stretched. "What I want to know is if he teleported all of you back to the castle, how did you end up leaving?"

Sora scrunched his face. "What do you mean?"

"Your Gummi ship would still be on Hollow Bastion."

"Well, uh," Sora cocked his head. "Yeah, that is a good question. How did the Gummi get back there?"

Riku stared at him. "Wait. You seriously don't know?"

The brunette shook his head.

Riku rolled his eyes and fell back on the sofa. "You goof. Go through your door and save."

"Huh? Oh." Sora turned back to the game. "This place was weird."

"I'm trying to figure out what the dark thing you might be tempted to do is." Riku hit save on the laptop. "This whole last little bit of Merlin's speech makes absolutely no sense."

Sora thought about it for a minute. "Yeah, it didn't, did it? I never felt tempted to do anything bad in there. It was just a bunch of random problems we had to solve and Pete causing a commotion. Actually, the whole thing was rather pointless."

"That's what it seemed like to me. In here it's just some mini-games." Riku rolled his shoulders. "I'm hungry."

"Me too." Sora agreed. "But I wanna get all this Cornerstone stuff done."

"Fine," Riku stood up. "You stay here and play and I'll run down the street for something. These stupid games are easy anyway."

"Okay." Sora nodded. "I want a cheeseburger and fries with a chocolate shake."

"You buying it?"

"Uh…"

Riku whapped the back of his head. "Fine. Be done with this Cornerstone nonsense by the time I get back."

--0—0—

When Riku returned, Sora looked over and grinned. "That was so freakin' pointless! Maleficent is an idiot."

"Yeah," Riku handed the younger teen his shake and dropped the food bag on the table. "Why the hell did she leave Pete in charge when she knew he was a complete numb-nuts is beyond me. She wasn't nearly that stupid in reality."

"I didn't even do most of this for real!" Sora exclaimed. "This whole world, level thing was totally blown out of proportion! We were there for like, maybe, a half hour. We didn't even get to ride the steamboat and that would have been totally cool!"

"So you're done?"

"Yeah, we're just leaving for another world." Sora grinned. "Oh, there's Daisy. I like her! She totally had Donald whipped."

"Yeah, she's cool."

"…And now we seal the world."

"…And head for a Gummi ship that shouldn't be there." Riku dropped back on the sofa and dup in the bag of food.

"Hey! I don't get it either." Sora protested. He quickly went though the mini-game and the Coliseum appeared. "Oh, cool. Auron's in this?"

"Yeah, they got him down pretty well, too." Riku pulled out his fries. "And the maps don't help. You're still gonna get lost wandering the Underworld."

"Great." They watched as Hercules tossed around a Titan and the crowd roared. The group walked into a cavern and the first thing Sora did was head for the save point. "Okay, I'm done for now."

He hopped up on his knees and scooted toward the coffee table. "Man, this game is long. And you said the others are longer?"

"Yeah. They don't have spoken dialog either so you have to read all o the conversations."

Sora's jaw dropped. "Are you serious? Man, I don't think I can pay that much attention for that long. Maybe I'll just watch you play them."

"Oh, no." Riku countered as Sora pulled out his food. "If you want to watch Cloud and Leon and them, you're doing it on your own time. I've already played my time through."

Sora pouted. "But, Riku-"

"No."

"Fine," Sora bit into his cheeseburger. "Then I'll get Tidus to play it for me."

"Have fun trying to keep your mouth shut."

The younger teen scowled. "Fine. And I'm still waiting to see this Advent Children movie you claim exists."

"I'm working on it!"

"Uh huh." Sora grinned. "So can I play again tomorrow?"

"I have the doctors." Riku frowned. He hated going to the doctors. "If you go with me, then we can try playing after if Dad lets us have the TV."

"Okay."