Chapter 19
The Outlaw
As the Gummi Ship approached the new world, the passengers looked out of the glass cover in curiosity. There was a large area of grassy plains. At what appeared to be the top of the sphere-shaped world was a large town with an ornate castle in the middle. The town was surrounded by a large body of water, and connected to the mainland by a bridge. At the "bottom" of the world was a tall tower. Donald checked the heads-up display on the ship's console and was relieved to see that the walls surrounding the world had come down when the ship approached, allowing them to land without difficulty. A pillar of green light extended from a point on the world's render, a distance away from the tower, that indicated the ideal location to disembark. He maneuvered the ship to a point above that corner of the world and parked at the edge of the world's atmosphere. He typed in a few commands into the console and pressed a button labeled "DISEMBARK". A circle of light began to glow in the back section of the cockpit.
"All right, everyone. Let's head on down," the duck instructed, unbuckling his seatbelt while the others did the same.
Mickey, Donald and Goofy stepped into the circle, while Sora led Riku and Kairi to join them. "This is going to be cool. Trust me," Sora reassured his friends with a grin.
They heard a low humming and felt the air warm up around them. A pillar of light rose up surrounding them, briefly blinding them, all while they felt a vibration through their entire bodies. Then, for a split second, they felt nothing at all. After that, the light faded away and they were standing in a grassy plain, standing in the exact same position they were in before the light enveloped them. Riku and Kairi paused in confusion, noticing the trees and flowers and feeling a cool breeze blowing through their hair. Instead of the whirring of the ship's engines they heard birds chirping, leaves rustling, and the clomping of hooves.
"What…" Kairi began to ask, but she could not understand enough of the experience to complete the question.
"This is actually why I never got used to parking on the ground," Sora told them. "We would draw less attention if we left the ship in space."
"We can transport ourselves down to the surface by locating one of these spots," Mickey said, gesturing to the ground beneath their feet. There was a circle of green light growing from the grass and dirt, a green aura circling around their feet. "I'm not sure why, but they seem to have a stronger connection with the walls and roads than other spots, as if this is where the lanes meet. We can also use these points as a focal point to beam back up to the ship."
"And the light fills you up like a Cure spell, so it will heal your cuts and bruises and restore your energy just by standing in it," Donald said with a triumphant sigh.
"We like to call them 'Safe Points'," Goofy added.
After basking in the Point's warm glow, the group stepped out of the circle and started to explore the forest clearing.
"So, how has nobody noticed these points all over their worlds? I'm pretty sure I never saw one before," Riku inquired.
"Usually, they're invisible to the naked eye. When people from outside of the world come near, the warmth becomes noticeable and they only start glowing when you step into them," Mickey explained, and as he spoke, the glow faded away as they walked away from it.
"Neat," Riku commented, impressed.
They heard the sound of hooves clomping grow louder behind them. Goofy turned around to investigate the sound. Three men came running from behind the trees. The man in front had brown hair and eyes as well as a scruffy goatee. He wore a white long-sleeved shirt underneath a turquoise vest, dark cream-colored pants, brown bucket-top boots, and a brown belt with a miniature satchel attached. Slung over his shoulder, he carried a light brown satchel. The two men behind him appeared to be siblings, possibly twins. They were burly and muscular, and they had red hair and blue eyes. They both wore black pants, and brown bucket-top boots. One of them had prominent sideburns and a slightly curved scar on the right side of his face, and he wore a green sleeveless shirt and had brown leather arm braces and a sword sheathed in a scabbard over his back. The other had an eyepatch over where his left eye would be, and he wore a long-sleeved shirt underneath his dark sleeveless shirt.
The lean man with the satchel deftly dodged around the group, saying "'Scuse me. Pardon me," as he ran. The party was not so lucky with the other two. Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey stepped out of the way but the brutes shoved Donald and Goofy to the ground as they plowed through.
Sora and Riku helped Goofy and Donald to their feet. Donald fumed in indignance. Sora simply looked in the direction of the three men with a puzzled expression. "What was that about?" he asked nobody in particular.
Goofy turned away when he realized that the sound of hooves were getting louder. He squinted to see what was in the distance, then his eyes widened in horror. "Everybody gangway!" he yelled. The others turned and saw five horses charging toward them, each horse carrying a soldier wearing red shirts, gray pants, black boots, white gloves, and gold armor breastplates and helmets. Each soldier carried a crossbow. The man who appeared to be the captain had a bushy moustache and rode on a white-furred Hanoverian horse while the other soldiers rode brown-furred horses.
Expressions of fear crossed the party's faces as they ran to get out of the horses' path as fast as possible. The soldiers and horses proceeded without much thought to the people who were nearly trampled, though one scrawny-looking soldier shouted a meek "Sorry!"
As the horses were about to disappear behind the trees again, Sora got an idea. "I'll be back in a jiffy," he told his friends before he turned and launched himself into a quick run, throwing himself several feet in a single bound, leaving his still-baffled friends behind.
Running like the wind, Sora quickly caught up with the rider in the rear, the same soldier who had shown brief concern for the group's well-being. He slowed until he matched the pace of the horse and waited for the soldier to notice him. "What's going on?" he asked, shouting above the noise of the wind and the hooves.
"We are trying to catch the thief Flynn Rider, and his accomplices, the Stabbington Brothers," the soldier explained, after regaining his bearings from the shock of seeing a teenager running as fast as a horse.
"Good to know. Thanks," Sora replied. He waved good-bye and stopped running, kicking up dirt as he skidded to a halt. He turned around and started to walk back to his friends, but by the time he was halfway back he met up with them, as they had started to follow him.
"Wow. You sure can run," Riku commended, a smirk on his face. Sora, his pride fueled, simply crossed his hands behind his head and smiled.
"So, what were they doing?" Goofy asked.
"They're chasing after a guy named Flynn Rider, and the 'Stabbington Brothers'. The one guy said they were thieves," Sora answered.
Kairi raised one eyebrow. "Were those two lunkheads seriously named 'Stabbington'?" she asked.
Sora shrugged. "I guess so," he replied bluntly. "Considering we just landed as this was happening, maybe it would be worth a look. What do you guys think?"
The rest of the group looked back and forth at each other and shrugged, though Mickey, Goofy and Kairi seemed to be more immediately receptive of the idea.
"I suppose it couldn't hurt," Mickey said. Sora turned around and they broke into a brisk jog, following the path cut by the horses and the sound of the chase. As they ran through the forest, they soon came across what appeared to be a giant dandelion head. They stopped and moved in cautiously to investigate.
"Have you ever seen oversized plant life in any of the worlds you've been to, Sora?" Kairi asked nervously, never taking her eyes off of the large sphere of dandelion seeds.
"Only in Wonderland, which was more due to us being small… I think," Sora answered, then groaned from a mini-migraine as he was forced to remember the utter nonsense that was the second world he ever visited.
Kairi leaned in closer, believing that she saw something beneath all of the dandelion seeds, but suddenly sneezed. Her sneeze caused all of the seeds to fly off into the breeze. With the seeds gone, the party could see a black sphere with yellow dots like eyes. The giant leaves beneath the sphere waved up and down.
The seeds landed on the ground, and an orb of dark aura formed around them. When the aura faded, in the seeds' place stood egg-shaped black objects with a deep blue disc on the front that had two smaller circles, like glowing eyes. At the top of each shape was what appeared to be a yellow flower head, and it wiggled green leaves like arms. Beneath the deep blue disc on the front, a Heartless emblem was visible.
"That's new," Sora commented, summoning his Keyblade while Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy summoned their own weapons and Kairi unsheathed her sword. The Dandelion Seed Heartless flapped their leaves like wings and lifted themselves a few inches off of the ground. Sora struck one of them but another Heartless spun itself at him, slashing at him with its leaves and throwing its body at him. He promptly counterattacked, sending the foe flying before he went back to fighting the first one until it exploded into dark smoke, releasing a miniature glowing heart.
Riku swung his Keyblade at another Heartless, sending it flying, then obliterated it with a burst of Dark Fire. Donald took out two with a few successive blasts of Fira. Mickey cut through his target with a single shot, then knocked another one away with a shot of Pearl. Goofy was tripped by an enemy, but he threw it into the air with his shield as he rose back up, then spun around in a tornado spin, hitting it several times with his shield until it was no more. Kairi stabbed at another one then sliced its leaves off. Within moments, the Dandelion Seeds were all gone.
By this point, Goofy noticed that the original Heartless had already regrown its seeds, which sat on its head like a large white afro. "Careful! If those seeds get planted, more of the things we just fought will appear," he warned his comrades.
Mickey shared a knowing look with Riku, Donald and Sora. They circled around the Dandelion until they were facing it from four directions. They pointed their weapons at the Heartless and prepared to cast a spell. "Firaga!" they all shouted simultaneously. Large bursts of flame shot out of the tips of their weapons and engulfed the Heartless. When the fire died down, the Heartless was still there, though it appeared to have been weakened, and its seed afro was completely gone.
"Now! Before it tries to spawn more of them!" Mickey commanded. Goofy threw his shield to cut into the Dandelion's "neck". Kairi cut the leaf arms off and stabbed at the underbelly. Sora, Riku and Mickey took turns delivering combo attacks to the head until finally it dissipated, releasing a glowing heart.
Jiminy poked his head out of Sora's pocket. "So, it looks like this Heartless is rooted into one place, but it can create more creatures subservient to it by spreading its seeds," he observed. "They bear the Heartless Emblem but, being sprouts cloned from the original, they do not contain hearts like other Emblem Heartless. Very interesting." He opened his journal and began writing notes down.
Riku pointed in the direction they were headed before the fight began. "We should keep moving if we want to catch up with them," he advised. They wordlessly agreed and continued their pursuit.
After a few minutes, they came to a cliff wall that rose roughly fifteen feet high. The party could see three soldiers restraining the Stabbington Brothers against the wall, with one of them placing handcuffs on each of them.
"I'll kill that no-good Rider!" the brother with the sideburns growled in fury. He struggled to escape the soldier's grip, but he was held firm and prodded with the point of a spear to be made to settle down.
Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy stood in a circle to discuss what was going on. "I guess that Flynn Rider guy ditched the brutes to get away," Kairi noted.
"I wonder what his deal is," Riku mused.
"Say, wasn't Aladdin a thief who was chased down by the guards?" Goofy asked, remembering what he had heard from word on the street in Agrabah.
Donald looked at him in disbelief. "Not all charismatic thieves have good hearts, you know!" he scolded. "We know far too many scoundrels!"
"Maybe so, but I still think we should take a closer look before we judge," Sora said. He studied the wall, gauging its height. "I think maybe we could make a ladder by standing on each other's shoulders. Some of us can climb up to reach the ledge, and then we can pull each other up, one by one."
"We can only reach down so far," Riku reminded him.
"Then I'll be at the bottom," Sora answered. Everyone gave him a confused look. "Trust me," he reassured him.
Riku glanced at the cliff wall and smirked. "I think I'll be right above him. Then Goofy, then Kairi should be able to reach the top."
They had come to an agreement. While the soldiers were too busy with the criminals, Sora took his position in front of the rock wall. Riku climbed up his back and stood on his shoulders, and Goofy did the same to stand on top of Riku's shoulders. Next, Kairi climbed the stack of three until she stood firmly on Goofy's shoulders and could easily lay her arms over the ledge. Riku noticeably struggled to not buckle under the weight, though Sora had less difficulty.
Mickey was the first to scurry up the impromptu ladder and get off on the higher ground. As Donald proceeded to do the same, one of the soldiers saw them. "Hey, what are you doing?" he asked, bewildered.
"Don't mind us. Just passing through," Sora replied. Kairi started to snicker at the ridiculousness of such a claim, and even more so when she realized that the soldier seemed to have bought it.
When Donald was safely at the top, Kairi pulled herself up. She turned around and knelt down to reach for Goofy. But she realized that he was too far down for her to reach while properly anchoring herself, not to mention she probably could not pull him up all by herself, so she called Mickey to help. She grabbed him by the ankles and held him upside-down over the ledge. He summoned his Keyblade, holding it by the teeth, and reached it down for Goofy to grab. Together, Kairi and Mickey, with some assistance from Donald, pulled Goofy up.
Sora let Riku go and the silver-haired boy dropped to the ground. They both stepped back thirty feet. Their friends, as well as the soldiers, watched them with interest, curious as to what they were planning to do.
"Think you can make it?" Riku taunted lightly.
"Try to keep up," Sora retorted. They both crouched, their backs arched and their hands on the ground, as if they were ready to begin a footrace.
After ten seconds, they broke into a run. They closed the distance between them and the wall within seconds, and when it appeared as though they were about to hit it they pushed downward hard with one foot each, launching themselves almost vertically upward. They brought their legs up to catch onto the rough surface, and kicked out to throw themselves further up, almost as if they were running up the wall. As they reached the top, they brought one hand out to catch onto the ledge and vault themselves upward, soaring clear over the others.
Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Kairi clapped, with Kairi even cheering, clearly impressed. Down below, the soldiers and criminals stared upward in utter disbelief. "What sort of training regimen do those two go through?" one of the soldiers asked. The scrawny soldier simply shrugged.
Riku studied the signs of travel, flattened grass, broken branches and twigs, and the scent of sweat and horse fur. He pointed in the direction in which Flynn Rider fled and the remaining soldiers pursued, which was to the right of the way they had come up. "That way," he directed. Without a word, they followed the path.
After a few minutes, they came across the other two soldiers, one of them being the captain, and one of the horses. They were backed up against each other, surrounded by Shadow and Soldier Heartless, as well as two Heartless that looked like the Red Nocturne and its cousins but had a blue-green body with white swirls around it and it wore a pale green cap with a light blue curled antenna. The soldiers shook with fright in spite of themselves, holding their crossbows pointed at the nearest monsters, while the horse was completely spooked.
The party knew they had to do something, so they brought out their weapons. Sora pointed at the floating Heartless. "Emerald Blues," he identified, explaining their nature to Riku, Kairi and Mickey. "They use Aero magic. Be careful of their tornado attacks."
With the element of surprise as an advantage, they rushed in to the rescue. Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Kairi fought the Shadows and Soldiers, while Sora and Riku each engaged an Emerald Blues. The floating Heartless attempted to counter by conjuring blades of wind around themselves. This did knock the Keyblade wielders back, but it otherwise had little effect, and they swiftly struck back and vanquished the Heartless.
The captain approached Sora and Riku. "Thank you for your help," he said, clearly embarrassed at his inability to protect himself but sincerely grateful for the assist. "We have never seen anything like those creatures before."
"Huh. I guess the Heartless only showed up recently," Sora pondered. He looked at their rescues and realized something was off. "Didn't you have a white horse?"
"Indeed, I did. I was dislodged from my mount and we ended up being cornered by those, erm, 'Heartless' creatures. In the meantime, my steed, Maximus, continued his pursuit of the thief Flynn Rider," the captain explained. He looked off into the distance for a moment. "However, I cannot imagine that the chase would have led them much farther, unless they were to go off of the cliff…"
Sora nodded, understanding. "We'll keep a lookout. You be careful, now." He turned to face the rest of his group. "Come on, guys."
Much to the captain's confusion, the three youths and the strange-looking warriors ran in the direction that Rider and Maximus had gone.
The group approached the cliff and looked down into the pit, which seemed to go down several hundred feet. They saw what appeared to have been a horizontally-growing tree that sprouted from the edge of the cliff. However, it was completely snapped as if it had failed to hold up a sufficient weight. They knew immediately that the thief and the horse had indeed fallen from the cliff.
"Judging from prior experience," Donald judged from examination, "they might have survived mostly undamaged. Kairi gave him a perplexed look, but Sora, having fallen a great distance and into a tree house after crashing through the roof only to get back up and fight a wild animal before even learning Cure magic, was not keen to argue.
"But just to be safe…" Sora summoned his Keyblade again, and Riku and Mickey followed suit. Sora grabbed Kairi with his free hand and held her close, whispering "Trust me" into her ear. He backed both of them off of the cliff. After a few seconds, he dug his Keyblade into the rock wall. The blade continued to carve through the rock as they went down, but this was enough to slow their descent until they were almost completely stopped by the time they reached the ground. Seconds later, Riku, Mickey and Goofy came down. Goofy was using his shield to carve the way down, and Donald was hanging from his neck for dear life. However, the shield in the rock did not resist their motion as well as a sword stabbed into the rock, and the two of them hit the ground hard enough for Goofy to fall on his backside and Donald to lose his grip and hit the ground as well.
"We all right?" Mickey asked. The others nodded, though Donald grumbled. The mouse king seemed to take that as an "I'm fine".
"Okay, let's see what's around," Sora declared.