Author's Note: What a better way to start off my first official day of summer vacation then with a BRAND NEW CHAPTER!!! Not many better ways to celebrate, let me tell you.

Disclaimer: Yeah. Disney and Square Enix own ALL of this stuff.


Week 1, Day 1

Sora drifted lazily through his dreams, eyes closed. Thoughts swirled past and touched his mind, memories of his adventures across the worlds. Some of them he relived, other he simply observed. At some point he decided he needed to wake up But he continued to drift. He tried to summon the Keyblade, but it refused to come, and a momentary feeling of panic swept over him.

Sounds drifted into his dreams, the sounds of a city. Sora latched onto the sounds and pulled himself closer to the waking worlds. The sounds grew louder. His eyes opened a little, revealing a darkness mush like that of his dreams. Then he came awake suddenly and sat upright. The sounds of the city vanished. He felt the cool touch of asphalt beneath him, and turned his head around. A city. He felt like he had been here before. The sky above him was night and in the distance was a heart-shaped moon.

He was back in the Dark City, he realized suddenly.

"How did I get here?" Sora asked aloud. He absently tried to summon the Keyblade, but like in his dreams, it failed to appear at his call. "What's going on?" He wasn't even entirely sure what part of the Dark City he was in.

Finding an alley, Sora decided to take it. Better to go somewhere than stay nowhere, he thought. But he could not use the alley; something prevented him from going any further. It felt like nothing, but it was there. Thoughts of Xemnas crept into his head. He slammed the nothingness with his fist and a pattern of orange hexagons flashed briefly. A barrier.

"Why?"

He turned away from the barrier as dark forms coagulated on the ground. Sora stumbled back as the shadows lifted up and became three-dimensional. Once more he attempted to call the Keyblade, and once more it refused to come. He felt it tug, this time, like it was trying to come, but something held it back.

This can't be…

A sudden movement to his right made Sora turn and look. It was a boy, about the same age as him. "Do you have a partner yet?" the boy asked, facing the shadows.

"What?" Sora barely muttered out, still taken back be the sudden appearance of the boy.

"Do you have a partner yet?" he asked again, slower (almost mocking) and irritated.

"N-No," Sora looked back at the shadowy forms crawling closer. They looked like Shadow Heartless, but… different.

"Good." The boy smiled. "Be my partner. Say you accept." When Sora did not respond immediately, he turned and faced Sora with a look of fierceness in his eyes. "Say you accept!"

"F-Fine. I accept," Sora said uncertainly. As soon as he did so, a flash of light radiated from each of them.

"Now we can fight!"

The Keyblade materialized eagerly in Sora's hand. The weapon's presence had a calming effect on him. "Yeah, now e can – " The boy was gone. Putting it out his mind, Sora focused on the strange Heartless. One leaped at him. Metal flashed in the light from a street lamp and the creature fell to the ground. In the light, Sora could see what was different about these heartless: their limbs looked like tattoo. Two more fell with ease.

"Then the boy was beside him again.

"Not so tough," he observed. He reached up and lifted the headphones off hi ears, turned the volume down, and slid them back into place.

"What do you mean 'not so tough'?" Sora demanded, "I was the one fighting them!"

The boy slid both hands into the front pockets of his gray cargo shorts. A smirk formed on his face. "You must be new to the Game then."

"Game? What game?"

"This game. The on we're playing. The one being staged in this city." He looked around thoughtfully, as if judging the city. "Strange place to have, though. Usually it's in Shibuya. I don't know why they moved it here. Must be a new Game Master." Then he looked over at Sora as if he just remembered he was there. "I'm Neku, by the way."

"Sora." Neku nodded and then his eyes fixed on something beyond Sora. Sora turned to look, thinking it might be more tattooed-Heatless. It was a man in a red hoodie. He seemed to see them, but did not acknowledge them.

"Objective met. Wall clear." The orange-hexagonal energy barrier vanished. Neku seemed unaffected by this, focusing instead on his cell phone. "Hmm, no mission yet," he noted absently.

Sora was suddenly aware of something vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out. A phone. Where did it come from? I wasn't his. He opened it. There was a new message.

Make your way to where your memories touch the sky. 60 minutes. Do not fail.

As soon as he read it, he felt a sharp pain in his right hand. It looked as though a clock was inscribed on his palm. A clock that was ticking down 60 minutes. But to what?

"Damn!" Neku swore. "I don't know this city! If this were Shibuya… but that must be the point."

Sora hardly heard him. He was wondering about the meaning of "where your memories touch the sky". This was the Dark City. He knew its layout, having traversed the whole thing once before. Only one place matched the message's description.

"I know where we need to go!" he exclaimed. Neku looked at him, bewildered. "I do, come on!" He had Neku by the arm and led him down the now open alleyway. They ran, not knowing exactly how far way it was. They encountered no one in the streets. Sora expected as much, but Neku seemed surprised. He kept glancing at the ticking timer on his palm.

Finally they turned a corner and were in an open area. A large building towered over all the others. Memory's Skyscraper. Just as Sora expected, the timer vanished.

"Well I'll be damned," Neku muttered.

Sora sat down on the hard concrete, exhausted. Neku joined him. "We got to where the message told us to go. Now, will you tell me what's going on?" Sora pressed Neku. The other grinned and exhaled sharply. A moment later he spoke.

"Fine…"


"Agh! I can't believe this mission was so easy! What is he thinking?" Uzuki Yashiro was nearly ripping he hair out of her scalp as she screamed in frustration. "And what were those things? Not Noise!" She gripped the edge of the railing and peered down like a fierce gargoyle.

"You know, all this stress isn't good for your complexion," Koki Kariya leaned casually against the same rail that Uzuki was attempting to crush, his bean pop resting lazily on his lip.

Uzuki glared at him with a look that could freeze the sun.

"Just saying…"

"Stow it, Kariya, I'm not in the mood." She was no longer screaming; she never lingered on one emotion for very long.

"You're never in the mood." He turned to face her. "But will you listen to what I have to say? For once?"

Uzuki chewed on her lip for a moment. "Fine."

Kariya's mood darkened quickly. "The first mission is always easy, even back in Shibuya. Easy first missions give the players hope that they might actually win. False hope. That way, crushing them with tougher missions and enemies will be swift in the latter half of the week." Uzuki looked at him, and then away, "If you stopped to think, you would know this."

"Fine, Kariya. Easy missions first." She looked up at the heart-shaped moon. "Then what wee those things that attacked Phones and Key-Boy?"

Kariya gave her a half-smile. "You really don't pay attention to anyone but me, do you? Easy, easy. No need to get angry. Those things were, in fact, Noise."

"They were not!" Uzuki interjected.

"Kariya sighed. "There you go again not listening. DO you want me to tell you or not?"

"Sorry," she grumbled.

"Anyway, they are Noise – were Noise. Noise without their Hearts. Well, actually they are the removed Hearts of Noise, immersed in Darkness." Uzuki stared at him like she couldn't believe it. Kariya took no notice and continued. "Think about it: beings of negative emotions, removed from any moral trappings, beings of such ferocity that they will stop at nothing until their target is dead. Or they are."

"Do they have names?" Uzuki was taken aback by what Kariya had said. She understood what such begins entailed. Once she thought Noise were fierce and unpredictable, but they seemed tame compared to these new creatures. She noticed Kariya chuckling softly to himself. "What's so funny?" she demanded.

"Oh, nothing. It's just…ahem…the new Game Master calls them the 'Vengeful'. Rather fitting name in my opinion. Though a tab obvious, don't you think?" He returned to his usual lax attitude and let his mind wander away from his Reaper duties. He never noticed that Uzuki never answered him, or that she leaned once more on the railing and stared at him, but not angrily.

Or the red-haired stranger she moved to speak with.

Or the strange, wheel-like weapons he balanced on one finger.