Chapter 14: Distant Kingdom

At the end of the wormhole, the Gummi Ship comes to a slowing pace towards a smaller world than Earth or Radiant Garden. But seeing how vastly green the continents were, I had doubted that this world was advanced.

"Looks simple," I commented out loud.

"I agree, doesn't look like a world with technology of any sort," Bentley tagged on. "What's the plan?"

"Well, we shouldn't all go down there, it will only raise suspicion," the king reasoned. "The team that goes down will have to be quick. Do a quick reconnaissance and get back to the ship before causing a ruckus."

"No exploring this time, Sora," Donald ordered.

"Luckily, one of my many jobs in recon work," I told the team. "I volunteer to go down to the surface."

"Do I need to do some magic?" the duck asked, raising his staff.

"Don't think it's necessary," Riku interrupted, looking over the monitors. "There's lots of distinct creatures down. Adding one more like a giant raccoon isn't going to make a difference."

I said, "I'll get to work then. I'm thinking of my jobs back home right now, so I'm not too worried about this recon..."

"Just remember to not draw too much attention to yourself, Sly," Bentley reminded me. "We can't really afford jeopardizing our mission on locating the Chaos Emerald here."

"As well as whoever may be in possession of it," Riku added.

"Hold on then," Sora interjected. "We can't send only Sly."

"Sora, I appreciate the concern, but I can handle some beasts, you've seen me in action."

"Can you handle this monster on the radar which has strong armor all over its body that could break your frequently upgraded cane if you so much as swing at it?" Penelope piped in. Okay, that sounded dangerous.

"Can it handle an electrical shock?" Carmelita asked, brandishing her signature shock pistol.

"Sorry girl. Primitive world, primitive gear," Kairi shot down the idea. "That would definitely make you stand out." My love groaned in disappointment.

"In that case, I'll go with you," Sora volunteered. "I've learned an assortment of magic thanks to a wizard's guidance."

"Thanks, Sora. At least I'll have some help. I have a feeling that I'll need it, given that we don't know what to expect here..."

"Don't worry Sly," Sora said while flashing me a big grin. "I'll stick with you all the way! You can definitely count on me!"

I gave Sora a smile in response. It was nice having the thought of him accompanying me going down to this new world we've arrived in.

"Make sure you two come back in one piece," Penelope told us. I just gave a fake salute to her just before there was a now familiar flash.

Green hills and meadows stretched for miles. A gentle breeze was going through, swaying the trees that dotted the land. It was a simple kind of beauty, calm and vast.

"This atmosphere is a first for me," Sora breathed, just as amazed as I was.

I responded with, "I've done a lot of traveling over the years, and even I'm surprised right now... this seems like a peaceful place."

"Can't stand around and admire this forever though," Sora reminded me, placing both of his hands behind his head.

"That's right," I said before pulling out my binocucom from my bag. "We need to scout out the area first if we're going to find out where the Chaos Emerald here is."

"Speaking of which, how exactly do you typically do your recon work, Sly?" Sora asked as he looked curiousily at the binocucom I held in my hands.

"Bentley has a camera feature on this binocucom, simultaneously a pair of binoculars and a phone," I explained, showing the buttons on the outside. "Everyone in my gang has one. You never know."

"Oh, so it's like a Gummiphone." The brunette pulled out a smartphone like device from his pocket. "It takes pictures and calls people too."

"Well then, this recon may go more quickly with both of us working together. But first things first, I definitely need a shot of this." I held up my binocucom to my face, adjusting the zoom feature and fixing the resolution for the best shot of this beautiful landscape. After a few satisfying pictures of the land, I stuffed the device back in my satchel.

"Alright. So where do you want us to go first?"

"Um, about that..." Sora looked a little sheepish. "Usually I just find a map laying around and I look around using that."

"What? I'm sorry, but how is that at all realistic?" Though really, I was kind of eating my own words. "Well, I guess I'm not much better. Bentley usually leaves holographic markers to help us navigate in places when on the job."

"Holographic markers? Sounds interesting. I'm not really that great with technology, for the record. It took me a while to learn how to use the Gummiphone. Maybe Bentley could teach me some things..."

"He isn't the tech wizard of the gang for no reason, you know," I said as I gave Sora a grin.

"So, do you think Bentley gave us any of these holographic markers to tell us where it is we should try exploring first?" Sora asked as he looked around our new surroundings. "Considering we don't have a map of this place, those markers sound like they'd definitely come in handy in helping us look around here."

"I don't see any, I'm afraid. My mask has circuits that picks up on them. Back on our homeworld, there was already recorded data that Bentley relied on to place the markers. But since this world is uncharted, I have nothing." His mood dropped and he slumped at the waist.

My ears twitched atthe sound of horse hooves. Quickly, I shove Sora over to some cover behind some trees.

"What?" he complained.

"Someone is coming on horseback," I warned, peeking from behind the trees to see who was coming. I took out my binocucom again and zoomed in on a figure quickly approaching on a brown and white clydesdale. A young human with messy, honey blonde hair was at the reins, and another human with silver hair was behind him holding on tight. They looked like they could be related with the same face and blue eyes. The blonde pulled lightly on the reins, making the horse stop several meters from our position.

I told Sora, "I think they were running from something. Maybe it was the beast Bentley saw on the radar. If so, I'm nervous. Let's try and stay quiet."

"Right," Sora replied. "Who exactly did you see, by the way?"

"It looked to be two humans like you," I explained to Sora. "One with blonde hair wearing a green tunic and the other with silver hair with a similar tunic only colored mahogany."

"No doubt they have to be residents of this world," Sora remarked to which I replied with a nod.

The silver haired human said something to the blonde, pulling out something green and glowing from a pouch. The blonde didn't say anything to him during the whole conversation, much to my confusion.

"The blondie doesn't talk much. His friend is carrying the whole thing, and they seem to be talking about..." I raised my binocucom again to get a look at what they're looking at. When the image cleared, I was surprised.

"There it is!" I informed Sora. "They have the Chaos Emerald we're looking for!"

"Seriously? That quickly?" he asked just as surprised.

"Yep, I think they had gotten away from that beast and..." I could feel the blood drain from my face. How could we've not thought of this outcome? "Sora, remember that entry that the Chaos Emeralds are attracted to each other?"

"Yeah, why?" I peek at the two again and their Chaos Emerald was beginning to glow brighter as their horse slowly approached us. I also saw at the corner of my eye that the same thing was happening to ours.

"We should've left them on the ship. They're coming this way!"

"Let's try to stay calm. We may not have seen this coming, but maybe those two are friendly..."

"Hopefully they are," I said, still feeling a hint of uneasiness within me. "On the bright side, at least we found out where the Chaos Emerald here is."

"Guess they'll be in for a bit of a surprise when they find out we have Chaos Emeralds too," Sora said with grin. I'm surprised he's still staying optimistic despite the current situation we're in.

Then, I heard a clink and the stretch of a bow string. My panic flared when I figured out what was coming.

"Get down!" I warned quietly, squatting lower. Sora quickly followed.

A bottle of gold powder was thrown in our direction and was shattered by an arrow. The dust flew everywhere in clouds, including on us. The dust got in my nose and I suddenly couldn't breathe properly. Both of us erupted into couphing fits, my throat quickly getting scratchy and irritated. I felt a hand grab onto my wrist and I was dragged out from cover. If my eyes weren't starting to water and my other senses a wreck due to the dust, I would've flinched at the sight of a sword being pointed right at my face.

"What *cough* is that *cough, cough* gold stuff?" I could barely hear Sora through my messed up ears.

"My own blend of herbs that causes high irritation to the senses for a short time," someone else replied. "So you don't get any ideas of ambushing us."

Ambush?" I said between my coughing. "You *cough, cough* have the wrong *cough* idea. We weren't *cough* planning to ambush you *cough* at all."

"Then why were you hiding behind these trees?" Another person asked sternly. "And who exactly are you two anyway?"

There was no way we could answer that, not with our irritated lungs and not to mention saying that we're from another world would be unbelievable to these guys.

"We're cautious *cough* about this land," Sora replied. "*cough, cough* We're not native." That's one way to put it, nice thinking Sora.

"Foreigners? What are foreigners doing on the outskirts of Hyrule?" the second new voice questioned.

"Hold on a second, Link!" the first called. My vision was finally starting to see who was wielding the sword. It was the blonde in the green tunic, and... his ears were pointed. How come I didn't notice those before. His deep blue gaze was on someone other than me.

"This is what our emerald was reacting to!"

"Hey! *cough* Give that back!" Sora yelled in protest.

"Link, let's give them a chance. The antidote is in the back, front pocket, in the translucent bottle."

The blonde doesn't move for a second, looking back down at me, before he pulled away and walked up to the horse behind him.

I thought to myself, "We're making progress, it seems. Let's see how this goes. Hopefully we don't make them any angrier..."

Eventually, the blonde haired individual soon came back with something in his hand before he looked over at the one with silver hair.

"Aaron, are you sure we should do this?" The blonde knight asks his silver haired companion with a hint of hesitance in his voice. "What if they try to surprise attack us if we give them this antidote?"

"I think we should give them a chance to explain themselves properly," the one with silver hair said with a tone of reassurance. "I don't think they mean any sort of harm. Plus, considering they have emeralds similar to the one we have, maybe they have answers as to what it could possibly be."

The blonde, Link I think the silver haired one said, sighed in defeat and pulled the cork off of a clear bottle with copper colored powder.

"Now, all you have to do is rub some of that on your hands and then clap them together."

"What? What kind of antidote is that?"

"You'll be amazed." The more chemical experienced one had this "scientist smirk" on his face. Trust me, Bentley made that face all the time with huis new gadgets.

Link sighed again and pulled off the leather gloves he was wearing. The powder was quickly spread on his hands, making sure nothing was uncovered. He then passed the bottle to his friend, who did the same thing.

Boom!

Wh-what kind of medicine exploded when you clep them together? That's insane!

"How does that even work?" I couldn't help but ask, sitting up with my legs crossed. It hit me right there. I was't coughing, my breathing cleared, and the remaining blurriness in my eyes was quickly blinked away.

I told "Link" and "Aaron", "I've seen a lot of science where I'm from, but I honestly didn't expect that...at least the coughing fit is over. I'm not questioning it."

"Thank you," the silver haired man who I'm assuming is Aaron says with a smile. "Alchemy is a personal hobby of mine, so it ended up feeling quite simple for me to create stuff such as the antidote you took after doing it so many times."

An alchemist, huh? Considering what I've seen in the past as well as what's currently going on, I shouldn't be surprised that I'd end up encountering an alchemist at some point.

Not to mention how medieval this world was, so of course there would be an alchemist.

"Way to brag before we get to questions," Link commented, unimpressed. "But I'm not going to ask what sort of things you put in your medicines."

"I could just throw away the tonic infused cookies and burn the recipe," his friend pointed out with a challenging grin. Once Aaron's hands were covered in powder, he clapped them together, making another miniature explosion in Sora's face. From my angle, I could actually see the powder disperse and become translucent dust that was easily entered his system.

"It's not like I needed your cookies before." It took only a few seconds before Sora was breathing normally and wide eyed with surprise.

"But isn't it easier to get your point across?"

"It's not normal for me!" Link shouted.

"Well, the attitude part certainly isn't. I might have to fix that."

"You wouldn't dare!"

What in this world were they talking about?

"Ahem," I called to them. Both of them finally put their attention back on me. "You wanted to ask about our emeralds?"

"Oh, right." Aaron held up the green Chaos Emerald in one hand and Sora's cyan Emerald in the other. Link also showed my white one, which surprised me into checking my satchel. I didn't feel my bag being moved.

"Care to explain what they are if you were spying on us?" Link questioned.

I said, "The Chaos Emeralds seem to be from another world and contain a huge amount of power. Ever since we learned about the white and cyan ones we have, we've been trying to track the rest down, since we have heard that their appearance may lead to a great threat of some sort. We're not entirely sure of the specifics on that though."

"A great threat, you say?" Aaron says as he carefully examines the emeralds in his hands. "You certainly must've come a long way if you were in search of these 'Chaos Emeralds', as you call them."

"It really is important that we find them as soon as we possibly can," Sora said as the antidote's effects were kicking into him. "So, we're glad to have been able to find one of them with you."

"Considering what you just told us, I wouldn't be surprised if there really was something of improtance to these gemstones, especially since they did appear to react to each other not too long ago," Aaron said before offering Sora back the cyan emerald. "Here, you can have this back. I do humbly apologize for taking it off your hands so suddenly."

It's alright," the brunette beamed. Cheerful as ever. "Aaron, right? I'm Sora."

"Sly, Sly Cooper. I'm with him," I introduced myself.

"Nice to meet both of you," Aaron greeted. "The knight over here is Link. Don't let the sword intimidate you, he's usually easygoing."

"Yeah, that would be you whose easygoing once your timidness is out of the way," Link rebutted with a smirk. The silver haired man just shrugged.

"Sly!" The communication earpiece seemed to explode in my ear when Bentley yelled, making me cringe.

"Gah!"

"What's wrong? An after-effect?" Link questioned, looking me over.

"No, there should be no side effects to the antidote," Aaron rejected.

"One moment please," I said to them before going back behind the trees. I then answered my friend. "Bentley, what the heck? We're trying to do some negotiation."

"Negotiation? You mean you already ran into someone? You're supposed to only do recon, not chat with the locals!"

"But these are nice locals, Bentley. And they have the Chaos Emerald on this world."

"What? That was fast," Penelope commented through the communicator.

I responded with, "Yeah, I'm surprised too. By the way, without the holographic markers or a map, we didn't really have an easy way to do recon on this world..."

"I guess some markers would've been a good way for to help you and Sora to navigate this world," Bentley admitted. "But then again, this is an entirely new world we're talking about. We don't know the terrain of this world or what exactly is there to see unlike back in our world, Sly."

Bentley did have a point. Even if we wanted to use the holographic markers like my gang and I usually use during our heists, we didn't know what this world was like. It'd take a while for us to get a better understand of this world to properly use them.

"Ahem." That was very close to my ear, making me jump and face Link, looking at me with suspicion.

"Uh, put it this way. I have a... telepathic thing in my head that can reach far distances to communicate with our friends. Sora doesn't have one."

"Just say it's a communication device." Yipe! When did Aaron get behind me? He even had that knowing smirk on his face. Sheesh, my senses must still be a little numb to not have sensed either one of them approach me. "Sure, we don't have a lot of technological stuff, but we at least know what it is and making process on it."

"You apparently can't say the same for Sora. I do work with a tech wiz though, so that may not be an issue for much longer. My gang wasn't expecting the search for the Chaos Emerald to be so short. That green one makes 3. I think we have some explaining to do...

"Yes, I do think an explanation would be quite reasonable at this point," Link says with a hint sternness in his voice. He really is an intimidating one, isn't he?

"I hope you guys aren't in a rush or anything, though," Sora adds. "It's a really long story and we don't want to hold you two up if there's anything more important you need to take care of."

"It's no trouble at all," Aaron insists. "Please, start from the beginning, if you will. Take all the time you need."

And there we went with the whole explanation with everything that had happened so far. Aaron looked intrigued, but Link continued to look skeptical. I couldn't blame him, most would think that a lot of it was mumbo jumbo unto they saw it for themselves.

"So you came from lands known as 'Earth' and 'Destiny Islands' to secure this Chaos Emerald of ours so that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands," Link summarized the last part.

"Yep," Sora confirmed. "There's no way your Emerald came here by coincidence. Same with ours. Had any meteor showers lately?"

"Meteor showers? Like the raining stars just last night?" Aaron asked.

"Last night? Well, that doesn't coincide with us," I pointed out. "Meteor showers occurred two nights ago for us."

After thinking about it, I said, "Is there any chance we're dealing with a slight time difference between our worlds? Just putting that possibility out there. Have you encountered anything like that, Sora?"

"I have, actually," Sora confirms. "A bunch of the places I've been too apparently flows different from each other. I don't really understand it myself, but that's about the just of it."

Has he really been to that many places that happened to have different flows of time? Just how many worlds has Sora visited, anyway?

"Other worlds? That just makes it more unbelievable," Link said.

"Come on, that's not the most bizarre thing I've heard of," Aaron commented. "You can go along with that last part, but I'm all on board. Maybe, you know..." He suddenly looked nervous to continue his thought, twiddling his thumbs. But the look of understanding on his double's face was enough.

Suddenly, there was a loud, horn like noise that travelled across the meadow. Link was at immediate attention, running up to his horse and quickly climbing on. Aaron quickly followed and the blonde helped him up.

"What's going on?" Sora asked on alert.

"The town is under attack! I have to return to help!" the knight quickly explained. "Sorry, but we need to cut this short!" Before either of us could get a word in, he got the horse galloping away in the direction they came from. Thinking quick, I threw a small tracker that Bentley had made me carry in case we need to tail someone and it successfully latched onto Aaron's hat.

"Bentley, place a marker on that horse!" I told the brains. "I have a tracker on them! Something is going down at their home!"

Bentley responded with, "On it. Follow that horse, and we might learn something about the current situation. Why do I think this is Heartless-related?"

"Wouldn't be surprised at this point," I said before looking over at Sora. "C'mon, Sora. We have to help those two. For all we know, it could most likely be another Heartless attack."

"Right," Sora said with a nod. "Let's hurry things up then!"

Without any moment of hesitation, we proceeded to run in the direction that Aaron and Link went on their horse, using the holographic marker to keep track of them.

It was a very long run (Sora had crazy stamina, he didn't look a lick tired), and it didn't help that the horse was fast. There were sturdy bridges to cross, forests to navigate through, until we came upon more open plains, this one however giving the view of a walled town with a large castle on a high hill.

"A castle town. Of course," I groaned.

"Not having fond memories of one?" Sora joked.

"Not really. The last time we were in a town like this, things didn't exactly go as planned. Bentley was especially unhappy that night. I don't really like remembering the situation..."

"Er, let's just leave it at that then," Sora said with a nervous smile. "Sorry for bringing up bad memories."

"It's fine, it's all in the past now," I assured before looking back at the town. "For now, we have to put our attention to this place. Who knows what kind of trouble may be stirring in there."

We were caught of guard by loud roar, followed by Link's horse dashing out of the gates.

"Oh no! Link and Aaron!"

"Come on!" We ran through the unguarded gates, only to find ourselves face to face with not Heartless this time, but robots.

"Bentley, you getting this?"

"What? But this is supposed to be a very simple world!" he exclaimed in shock. "There shouldn't be something this advanced!"

I responded with, "I don't get it either. I wasn't expecting robots, of all things. Let's see if we can make sure people don't get hurt over this..."

"You two better careful," Bentley warned us. "I have a very bad feeling about those robots. They don't look like anything from our world, Sly. We have no idea what those robots are capable of doing!"

"Guess we're going to find out," I said before looking over at Sora. "Ready for action, Sora?"

"You know it," Sora replied as he summoned his Keyblade. "Let's kick some robot butt!"

As soon as Sora's Keyblade came out, the robots had their attention on us. Time for a rumble.

End Chapter