A/N: Since Sora and the gang are finally on their way to Radiant Garden, I figured I'd give the Radiant Garden Restoration Committee a proper introduction before having both groups catch up on old times. I also squeezed a new Final Fantasy character into the line-up, having joined sometime after KHII. Let me know what you think of this addition and the cameraderie between the committee members. Enjoy!

Chapter 11

Restoring the Light

The telltale ring of the security system's scanners beeped. The shopkeepers heard tiny tapping footsteps approach, and looked out of their stalls to see what was coming. What they saw was a humanoid figure covered head-to-toe in knight's armor. Its heels were raised so that it only touched the ground with the pointed ends of its spike-shaped boots. Its visor, decorated with two red spirals, was raised, exposing its pitch-black face and yellow eyes. In its left hand it held a sword with a gold guard and handle. The ever-familiar Heartless emblem was visible upon its breastplate.

The Armored Knight heard someone coming from behind and turned around to block the man's blade with his own. The man wore a white undershirt, a black short-sleeved jacket with a fur collar and a design of two red wings on the back, black pants that had a zipper going down the side of each leg, black gloves, black zipper-lined shoes, three belts around the waist, two of which were worn loosely, three belts around his left arm, and a necklace with a token resembling a profile lion head on a cross. He had brown hair and blue eyes. A scar was cut diagonally across the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes. He held a large sword, but in place of a handle and hilt were the grip of a shotgun and the cylinder and trigger of a revolver pistol, and a token shaped like the lion head of his necklace was attached to the butt by a chain.

The man, Leon, swung his Gunblade at the Armored Knight, but the Heartless attempted to parry each time. However, Leon managed to overpower it and stun it. He used the opening to slice it in twain. It exploded in a ball of darkness. A glowing red heart floated upward out of the shade and faded back into the darkness.

Three shadows appeared in the center of the marketplace. Leon charged in to intercept them, and struck down two of them without giving them time to react. The third one, however, flattened itself to the ground so that Leon could not harm it. It crawled around and even slipped under his feet, then rose back up behind him. It tried to claw at him from the back, but Leon whirled around and cut it down.

"Leon, look out!" Leon heard the warning and turned around. He saw a red hourglass-shaped body with a black, spherical head poking out of the top. The Heartless had a pair of small, thin crow's feet poking out of the bottom hole and wore a yellow conical hat with a jagged rim and a thin, curled tip. The Red Nocturne shot a ball of fire at Leon, forcing the soldier to brace himself for the hit, which sent him flying.

Leon forced himself back to his feet while the Heartless spun flames around itself and prepared to throw itself right at him. This attack was nullified when a throwing star hit it in the face, stunning it and dispersing the flames. Three more shurikens were thrown before it disintegrated.

Leon turned to get a look at his rescuer. On top of the Item Shop roof stood a young woman with short black hair and indigo eyes. She wore an unzipped, black combat vest over a navy-blue tank top with white floral designs, a white wristband on her right arm, a black fingerless glove on her left hand, dark tan and black short-shorts with a strap dangling from the left side, tall black socks with white stripes at the top underneath knee-height tan sneaker-boots with white soles, and a black headband. She waved cheerfully and gave Leon a thumb-up.

Leon smiled and shook his head, but then noticed a Blue Nocturne, which looked like a Red Nocturne but with a blue body, floating off somewhere to the ninja girl's left. Leon raised his Gunblade, lined the blade up with the Heartless in his sight, and pulled the trigger. The cylinder turned and the ammo in one of the tubes struck the bottom of the blade, creating a ball of fire right in front of the cylinder and shooting it at the Heartless with a loud crack. The fire shot hit the Blizzard-based Blue Nocturne, destroying it.

He saw three Yellow Operas approach the ninja girl from behind and crackle with electricity. "Yuffie! Three behind you!" he warned her. Yuffie Kisaragi glanced a bit to the side and caught one of the Heartless in her peripheral as they were about to surround her. She pulled a metal cross-point out of her pocket and turned a few knobs on each arm, causing four kunai-like blades to extend from each end. She twirled her Fuuma Shuriken in her hand, willing it to glow with chi energy, then tossed it in a tight arc around her. It spun around her several times, cutting through the antenna-capped Heartless, then caught it and threw it across the marketplace, where it flew around and destroyed two Red Nocturnes, two Blue Rhapsodies, and a Green Requiem, then returned for her to catch. She collapsed the Shuriken back into its cross-point form and placed it back into her pocket.

A rotund Heartless with fat blue arms, silver bracelets, a conical cap, and colorful armor on the front of its torso materialized in front of Leon. Leon leapt back before the lumbering Large Body could swing its heavy arms at him. Above the Large Body, four more Green Requiems appeared. Leon groaned in exasperation, as he knew that whatever damage he dealt to the big Heartless the Green Requiems would simply heal. He could not attack them because they flew high enough to be out of his reach, and they absorbed fire, ice and thunder-based magic attacks, including Leon's fireballs, to heal themselves.

"Yuffie! The green ones are yours!" Yuffie got the message and threw her small shurikens swiftly to destroy the Green Requiems. Leon, meanwhile, ran around the Large Body, moving from its invulnerable front to its exposed back. After that was done, he swung his sword. When it had registered the pain sufficiently, it turned around quickly, seething with an anger so fierce that it began to glow purple. Leon was already in the midst of a swing, and his blade bounced harmlessly off of the armor. Leon ran backward, and dove to the side when the Large Armor threw itself onto its stomach and slid across the ground. It seemed like it would go past the walls and up a short flight of stairs into one of the shopping stalls, but a holographic yellow disc and sphere materialized and moved into the Heartless' path, exploding on contact and causing it to flip three-sixty degrees in the air, landing flat on its stomach. While it was stunned, Leon ran up behind it and slashed at it with his sword until it dissipated.

Yuffie jumped off of the roof and touched the ground with a three-point landing. "Nice going, Leon," she said, walking up to her partner and holding her hand up for a high-five.

"Things have been quiet the last few months," Leon commented pensively. "We've scarcely seen a Crimson Jazz. Now, a wider range of Heartless is appearing all over town. Not as many as before the invasion, but certainly more than lately."

Yuffie retracted her hand. "Well, it's nothing we can't handle," she assured him. "Come on. Let's get something for the gang." She grabbed his arm and dragged him to the freezer-shaped shop at the marketplace's entrance. In front of the shop stood an elderly-looking duck wearing an expensive blue jacket, a black top hat, pince-nez glasses, and red spats, and who carried a wooden cane with a gold tip. "Morning, Mr. McDee,"

Scrooge McDuck noticed her and Leon approaching and smiled at them. "Ah, hello there, lassie!" he greeted back. "What can I get ye?"

"Five Sea-Salt Ice Creams, please," Yuffie answered cheerfully.

Leon glanced at the shopkeeper across from Scrooge. A small, white, furry creature resembling a plush toy, who had a bulbous pink nose, purple bat-like wings, and a spherical red "pom-pom" attached by an antenna, floated behind the counter. A few similar creatures, known as Moogles, mulled about the shop, working with hammers and anvils, blowtorches and cauldrons, using forging and alchemy to smith and synthesize different materials and products. The shopkeeper, Mog, wiggled his pom-pom, which Leon took as the equivalent of an eye-roll for a creature whose eyes were constantly squinted until they were almost entirely shut. Both knew for sure that there was no way that Yuffie was paying for the treat.

Leon was already fishing his wallet out of his pocket when Scrooge presented five sticks of a sky-blue-colored frozen treat. Yuffie took three and, after giving Scrooge the Munny, Leon took the other two.

They walked out of the marketplace and down through the borough, the main residential district of Radiant Garden. They heard the hum of a construction machine on the city wall, and occasionally saw the holographic discs of Cid's CLAYMORE security system appear and disappear, scanning the area to make sure there are not any intruders, namely the Heartless and Nobody variety. They approached a house with lavender roof shingles and a cylindrical tower for a second floor, which had its own roof that was shaped like a witch's hat. Leon pushed the wooden door open and Yuffie rushed in to greet their coworkers as they entered the headquarters of the Radiant Garden Restoration Committee.

A blond-haired man in his mid-forties stopped typing on the large computer and turned to face Leon and Yuffie. Cid Highwind wore a white T-shirt, baggy blue pants, a wide orange waistband, grey socks, black shoes, black pilot's goggles, and a necklace with a rectangular charm. He chewed on a toothpick, trying to ease up on his smoking habit out of consideration for his colleagues, at least while he was indoors.

Two women who were talking by a circular table with a white cloth turned to greet their friends as well. One of the women, a girl in her mid-twenties with green eyes and long curly brown hair that she braided and tied with a pink ribbon, smiled warmly at the arrivals. She was wearing a carmine pink and white top held up by a string that wrapped around her neck, a pink dress with a white stripe across and a second white dress beneath, and light brown boots. The other woman, an engineer in her upper thirties with hazel-brown eyes and auburn hair tied in a ponytail with a yellow band, gave them a wave. She wore a mustard-yellow sweater, similarly-colored slacks, a white lab coat, a brown belt, brown shoes, and circular spectacles. Yuffie skipped over and gave them both a stick of ice cream while Leon handed one to Cid.

"How did it go?" the girl in pink, Aerith Gainsborough, inquired.

"Ooh, there were all these big, nasty Heartless!" Yuffie embellished. "Leon was doing fine, but got himself in a jam. Then I came in and I was like, ba-bam!" She twisted back as if to throw a punch, then swung forward, throwing her arm to deliver several weak jabs into the air. Aerith pretended to look impressed as she took a bite of her ice cream.

"So how was it really?" Cid asked in a gruff tone, standing up so that he would not drip any ice cream on the computer.

Leon shook his head. "They still haven't returned to the numbers from before Maleficent's invasion attempt, but there is a growth in forces. We even saw a Large Body and dozens of elemental floaters, including Green Requiems."

"Interesting," the female engineer, Shera Martine, commented. "An hour ago, CLAYMORE detected and dispatched three creatures scaling the wall into the bailey. We believe that they were Neoshadows."

"Neoshadows," Leon mused. "Now those are a rare sight. This can only mean one thing." He took a bite of his ice cream. "Maleficent has regained control over the Heartless."

A gloomy silence fell over the band. Although it was over a decade ago, the memory of Maleficent leading the Heartless in attacking Radiant Garden, claiming the hearts of hundreds. Cid remembered gathering up as many people as he could, which was very few, and being forced to flee the world. Shera remembered staying back to close the garage and prevent the Heartless from infiltrating the group's last stronghold, only for that to fail miserably, and being swarmed by half a dozen Shadows. Yuffie and Aerith remembered watching the streets turn black as shadowy abominations swarmed the town, and their friends and neighbors were lost in the flood.

Leon remembered fighting the monsters, but he was unable to cut them up fast enough, and the bullets he shot at the distant and airborne ones had no effect. He remembered being unable to protect the people, and was forced to abandon his home with three of the people who were in the same room as him, not even able to find his best friend before the escape. He could not go to sleep without having nightmares of a human-sized Shadow, a Neoshadow, tearing its claws into one victim…

"So what?" Cid broke the silence roughly. "We can handle what she's got now! Heck, we took on thousands of stronger creeps. And with help from the inside of the computer system, CLAYMORE is getting smarter, faster and stronger every day. Pretty soon we'll have the firepower to bring down a Behemoth before it gets anywhere near the town." He smirked confidently and took a bite of his ice cream, spinning his toothpick between his fingers.

Yuffie nodded. "Cid's right. We'll worry about whatever threat Maleficent poses when it comes along."

"If we spend all our days fearing the dark, we'll never be able to call this place the City of Light," Aerith advised.

"True, but we have to keep an eye out," Shera said. "We don't want to be taken by surprise by a powerful force that we are not ready for."

Just then, an alert sounded from the computer. Cid sat down to check it out. The tab for detecting airborne objects was blinking, so he clicked on it and opened a window. Apparently, the radars at the top of the castle had detected a large flying object entering the world's atmosphere. Cid clicked a few commands and opened up a three-dimension scan of the object. The others crowded around Cid and examined the model that was generated. Everyone except for Shera recognized the craft.

"Some surprises are welcome," Leon said, a slight smile forming on his face.

"Well, let's go say hello," Aerith decreed, already opening the door. Leon and Yuffie followed her out.