I'm baaa-aaack! Who missed me?Crickets chirping Ouch...

Riku: "You're not that popular. DarthKingdom doesn't own Kingdom Hearts, Disney, Square Enix, or anything else."

--

Chapter 19: Ship-To-Ship

The group exited the mansion back to Sunset Hill, chatting companionably. Axel had revealed that the portal to the World That Never Was through the virtual Twilight Town had disappeared after the defeat of Xemnas. That meant they had to take the longer route using the Unity.

King Mickey pressed a small button on the back of his glove. He spoke into thin air, "Okay, guys. We're done here, you can take us back up."

He, Donald, and Goofy immediately started glowing, and in a flash of red light, they were gone. Hayner, Pence and Olette vanished next, soon followed by Riku, Kairi, Axel, and Namine.

As Sora waited to be brought back aboard the ship, he saw Roxas staring out over the town below, an unidentifiable expression on his face. He seemed to be reminiscing. He walked over to his side.

"I wish we could stay a bit longer." Roxas muttered.

"It never does feel easy to leave home." Sora said, understanding. "When you don't know when you'll be back."

"Or if you can ever come back at all." Roxas added glumly.

"When this is all done, we'll come back here for a while." He said. "I promise." Roxas smiled at him gratefully. That was when Sora noticed something on the ground at his feet. He bent down and picked it up.

It was a tiny, oval-shaped pendant. On the oval was the image of a green Iguanadon, which was outlined in black. Sora recognized what it was immediately: A Summon Charm.

He and Roxas dubbed it the 'Dino Charm', before they were pulled back up to the ship in a flash of red light.

A few hours later, the Unity was well on it's way to the World That Never Was. Sora was at the pilot's seat again. This route was unfamiliar to him, and there could be enemy ships waiting along it.

Most of their group was on the bridge, going about their bussiness. Axel and Roxas were sitting at the meeting table behind them, catching up. Namine was with them. Riku was talking with Yuffie (again). Jack was apparently trying to barter Hercules's sword off of him. Donald was once again arguing pointlessly with Stitch. Barret was polishing his arm.

Kairi was standing next to Sora, and she shot a glance over at Riku and Yuffie.

"They already look a lot like a couple."

"So did we." Sora said, smiling. "And look at us now, we're walking PDAs."

She rolled her eyes and kissed his cheek. "How much longer do you think it will take for them to cave in and admit that they like each other?"

"Judging by that hug she gave him earlier, and what can happen in the heat of the moment?" He thought for a moment. "Two months tops."

"But until then it's going to be a lot of fun picking at him about it." Kairi said with a mischievious smile.

"I love you more and more by the second." Sora said, mirroring her grin.

She lent down and kissed him again. At the same time that alarms started blaring.

Donald and Stitch rushed back to their positions manning weapons and RADAR. "Strap yourselves in!" Sora cried.

The remaining people in the group rushed to the crash seats around the bridge (Kiara was forced to go below decks, and Roxas and Namine returned to Sora and Kairi) and strapped into them. The view in front of them changed drastically.

"We're being pulled out of warp drive!" Donald quacked unneccisarily.

Space was now a deep purple with occasional blasts of what looked like lightning in the distance. Closer to their ship were several long, grey shapes coming closer and closer. They almost looked like roads. Some of the "roads" were dotted with small weapons emplacements.

Pouring out of openings in the roads were dozens of average-sized Heartless and Nobody ships.

The second they were out, they began to speed directly at the Unity.

"Enemy ships at twelve 'o clock!" Donald said.

"Let's see what this thing can really do." Sora said, his grin appearing again. He looked at the blue creature to his left. "You ready Stitch?"

Stitch suddenly grew spines out of his back, sprouted two antenae and an extra set of arms. He growled at the ships as if he believed he could really intimidate them, and said, "Ih."

Sora wasn't totally sure what that meant, but he didn't have time to worry about that now. The ships had just begun their attack. "Fire at will!"

And fire he did.

The viewports were filled up with streaks of blue and green light from their eight laser turrets on the top and sides. The smaller ships exploded all around them, their lasers doing very little damage to the enormous ship.

Sora's piloting skills brought them clear of most attacks. Despite the ship's great size, it was incredibly fast and nimble. With Sora's skill it was capable of amazing, and seemingly impossible maneuvers.

No matter how much the ships fired, they couldn't seem to do any real damage. The worst the Unity took were a few scorch marks left by laser cannons. And even those were barely noticable.

That was around the time that the weapons emplacements opened fire on the ship. Large, double-barrel energy cannons blasted red bolts into space.

The first impact had a much more noticable effect on the Unity. The ship shook, and was thrown of course a bit. In the cockpit, it didn't go unnoticed. If not for the crash seats, half the room's occupants would have been tossed into the opposite wall.

"Stitch!" Sora called over the roar of the battle. "Target the weapons emplacements with proton torpedos, but don't stop shooting the little guys."

Stitch's secondary arms pressed some buttons, and another control arm appeared at his station. On the little screen in front of him appeared an added targeting reticle. He motioned it into position around every turret in sight one at a time. All the while, the primary arms never stopped firing the main weapons.

Laughing crazily, he let loose the missles, which soared from hidden gun ports on the underside of the ship and collided with the turrets in impressive explosions.

"Eighteen direct hits!" Donald said.

"Nice going!" Sora said as he barrel-rolled completely over a group of incoming ships and kept cruising forward. Some of Stitch's guns rotated one-hundred eighty degrees to blast them before they even turned back around.

And just like that, all was quiet. Everything was peaceful for several minutes, and it seemed that the danger had passed. But then in the distance, what looked like a massive grey cloud appeared. Sora magnified the image seen on the viewscreen. What he saw didn't please him.

An enormous wave of ships was approaching rapidly. Clustered together with weapons ready to fire.

"How do we get past that?" Goofy asked, voice trembling.

Sora looked back at the alien at the gun controls. "How many torpedos are left?"

Stitch did a quick count. "Eh. Fitty too."

Sora believed he had meant 'fifty-two', but didn't press the matter. "Focus all of them at the center of that group of ships. Then follow up with more fire."

"Ih."

Stitch locked on to the heart of the incoming ships. His ears laid flat down on his furry head and he growled low in his throat. He waited for the signal for Sora.

"LET 'EM FLY!" Sora said, accelerating to give the projectiles some extra push.

There were fifty two proton torpedos left in the Unity, which had two missle launchers. Each missle tube fired two torpedos per second. This means that in twenty-six seconds, fifty-two proton torpedos were launched at the center of a group of exactly five hundred eighty-four Brotherhood ships. Proton torpedos carry a blast radius of aproximately two-hundred feet. When those ships were destroyed, they carried an explosive radius of seventy-five feet.

In a word: BOOOOOOM.

A large series of explosions incinerated the enemy ships, totally destroying them and taking chunks out of the strange structures around them. The resulting shockwave was so great that it even rocked the giant Unity.

The group in the cockpit looked at the huge cloud of dark smoke that was once five hundred eighty-four Brotherhood vessels. There was no return fire, and they passed through the cloud with no problems. Sora smiled as he saw the familiar flash of light that indicated they were exiting a combat zone.

"Alright!" Sora said, punching the air. Stitch enthusiastically jumped out of his seat and licked Sora all over. "Yeah, yeah. Good job buddy!" He turned around. "Everybody alright?"

For the most part, they were. The Twilight Town gang seemed glued to their seats. Hayner's right eye was twitching. Sora laughed.

"Wooh! That was the best bit of piloting I've seen in a long time!" Barret said, with a feral smile, "You're alright, kid!"

"That's why we chose you to pilot the ship, Sora." Mickey said, as Genie conjured up a barf bag for Pence.

"You did this every time during your other journeys?" He said when he emerged.

"No. The explosions weren't that impressive then." He responded with a grin. He patted the control pannel affectionately. "I love this thing!"

Kairi rolled her eyes.

--

I never really showed off my new ship, so... Who can guess who the first Summon is? He's a Disney-Pixar character.

SamuraiJedi: Thank you.

Voltair27: Yep!

Craxuan: Do you mean the part with the Ether? Just making sure.

Disneytiger: (Smiles evilly) You may not like me for this, but this will not be a Larxel story.

Heaven-Monument: (Continues smiling evilly). None of those names ever sounded right, so I was forced to come up with an explanation for using his Nobody name. He's technically still a Nobody, just with his heart replaced. So he's not 'Ale', 'Lae', or 'Eal' anymore. Hope that made sense.

ConfederateofZ: If you're talking about the one interrogating Axel, he's not a Heartless or Ruxik.

Garuto: Thanks! But don't talk to me about being nerdy. I'M nerdy!