This chapter will be fairly fun. For one thing, they're going back to Hollow Bastion and reuniting with some old friends (though most of that reuniting will have to wait for a bit). Another character is also going to show up in this chapter as well. I'm going to spoil it and just say that Maria is going to show up again.
Unlike Zia, Maria is more than willing to drop in and show herself to everyone, not just Penelope.
So yeah.
Disneygirl125: I can agree quite a lot. As I've written Penelope throughout this series, she's changed a lot, kind of like Riku, as well as matured. She's grown ever since she first appeared in Re: Kingdom Hearts. I feel like what occurred in 358/2 Days helped her develop a lot, as well as helped her with her maturity. Thank you for your review!
I own nothing but my OCs.
Here's chapter 8.
-o-o-o-o-
Chapter 8: The Return
The quarter arrived back in Hollow Bastion. In a year, the town seemed to have started to restore to its previous state before darkness hit it. It bustled with activity; moogles flew about, doing their regular business as merchants, while the residents worked to rebuild the town. Sora, Donald and Goofy burst in, awed by what was happening.
They went over and gazed at the castle in the distance. Penelope caught up with them, somewhat exasperated. She took a deep breath. "Ok, I've done some running in the past year or so. But really, boys. That was a bit excessive, even for me." She sighed, as she caught up. Sora, Donald and Goofy looked back at her.
"Maybe you're just a bit out of shape." Donald stated.
Penelope put a hand on her hips. "And you weren't asleep for a year, Donald?"
Donald blinked at her before huffing at her and looking away.
"Don't get so feather-butthurt, duck. I was just saying." she explained, as she approached the trio. "Still. I am a bit out of shape, I think. But it's not too bad. This adventure will probably help."
There was a brief silence for a moment. "Hollow Bastion looks so different now, huh? I almost didn't recognize it!" exclaimed Sora as he changed the subject as they got back to moving.
"It does look kinda different." Goofy added.
Speaking of Hollow Bastion, it brought up another thing. "I hope Leon and the others are okay."
Penelope shrugged. "Knowing them, they probably are. I mean, they have weapons and stuff."
Suddenly, Penelope tensed up when her heart reacted to darkness. Goofy looked up on the roof, seeing some Soldier Heartless. "Uh-oh," began he, as he pointed in the direction of the Heartless. "Looks like we're gonna have to do some fightin'."
"It's kinda expected, really. Hollow Bastion isn't without heart-"
There was a flash of light out of nowhere, and took the four off guard. "Heya, Penelope! Are ya ready for your first lesson?"
Penelope jumped back and summoned Leviathan. Sora, Donald and Goofy were confused, but they also took out their weapons. Then, they noticed something off about Penelope's Keyblade. This was the first time she had summoned it in front of them.
"Wait a minute… I'd hate to interrupt the moment, Penelope, but… your Keyblade…" Sora stuttered.
She frowned and looked back at Sora. "Huh? What about it? Is something wrong?"
"Weren't ya wieldin' Oathkeeper as your Keyblade?" Goofy asked.
Penelope stared at her blade and then back at the other three. "I was. I still have the Keychain. I changed it a while ago." She explained, not mentioning how she got the keychain, and then looking at the newcomer, before recognizing her wild ponytail and her eyes.
"Wait a minute… Maria!? I thought you told me to call you if I needed you! What are you doing here at a time like this?" Penelope asked.
"Maria?" Sora asked, even more confused, and looking at the other two.
Donald and Goofy frowned at Maria. They could've sworn she looked very familiar from somewhere*, but they couldn't remember where.
"Huh? Do we know you from somewhere?" Donald asked Maria.
Maria's eyes widened and she bit her lip. She acted somewhat aloof, almost like it was some kind of nervous habit. Her response in itself was also rather dismissive to Donald and Goofy on the whole topic in particular. "M-me? Oh, no. No, no, no. Even if you did, you might be mistaken, since it would be an incredibly long time ago if you did know. So… um…"
The woman immediately switched topics and focused on Penelope. "Anyway, did I come at a bad time? Were you in the middle of something important that I might've interrupted?"
"Well, I guess so. We really just got here, and from the looks of it, our first matter of business is to go see Leon and the others (not that I know where they are, but still)." replied Penelope, who twirled a stand of her hair.
Maria frowned, scratching her head. "Welp… It seems I really do have bad timing sometimes…" she mumbled under her breath before perking up. "Anyway, when do you want me to come back? Is there any specific times that would be best?"
Penelope paused, looking back at Sora, Donald and Goofy for any suggestions as a result. It was mainly due to the fact she was really confused, somewhat stressed by this coming up out of nowhere and flustered. And because of it, she was at a lack of words. She didn't want to come off as rude to Maria as they hadn't really known each other as long for that matter.
Even though she had time to think in the unnecessarily long moments it took for her to answer, her mind drew a blank. So, Sora decided to step in and give some kind of suggestion and help in some way. "Uh… would a half hour be okay with the both of you? I'm unsure how long this visit with Leon will be, but we could see how long it takes and go from there."
The two in question frowned a moment before looking at each other. Penelope cracked a nervous smile. "Well… yeah. I think thirty minutes would be good. I could manage to profusely apologize to everyone in about thirty minutes or so."
"Yeah… wait, what about apologies?" Maria asked. Sora frowned at Penelope, looking worried.
He put his hands on his hips. "C'mon! I thought we talked about this! Aren't you kinda overdoing it with the apology thing?"
"I can't be overdoing it if I haven't even started yet." Penelope stubbornly replied. Maria looked incredibly confused as to what was going on, but she paused when Sora set his hands on Penelope's shoulders and looked her straight in the eye.
"Penelope…"
She took a deep breath. "Okay, okay. Sorry, Sora. I'll try my best to not overdo it, ok?" Sora sighed in relief and smiled at her.
Maria smiled before vanishing as quickly as she appeared. Penelope was still unsure how Zia or Maria even managed to show up out of the blue like this in the first place, but now wasn't the time to be worried.
They started continuing onto finding Leon and the others. However, Donald and Goofy had their concerns about something. Donald decided to address it to Penelope, and tapped her on the shoulder.
"Hey Penelope… How do you know Maria?" Donald asked, causing them to stop.
She paused and stared back at Donald and Goofy. A puzzled look appeared on her face when she noticed that the two appeared worried and also confused. "Huh? Why does it matter?"
"Well, it's just kinda weird. She's familiar from somewhere, but if it is Maria, it would be kinda odd." Goofy tried to explain.
"Odd how?"
"It feels like seein' a ghost when ya look at her. I'm unsure why." Goofy answered. Penelope ran a hand through her hair and shrugged. She didn't get the same feeling from her like Goofy seemed to be describing.
However, they were stalling. They had a place where they needed to be, after all.
XxXxX
(Hollow Bastion- Marketplace)
While the quartet was heading to wherever Leon happened to be at this time, they ended up passing by an out-of-place duck. He was nearby a freezer holding a bar of ice cream in hand.
Donald and Goofy seemed to recognize this duck from somewhere, but Donald was taken aback. He hadn't seen this duck in quite a long time. "Uncle Scrooge!?" He called, but didn't quite catch the other duck's attention. He didn't seem to be paying attention at this time. Penelope almost seemed to recognize that name and started humming a tune, but Sora had no idea what was going on.
"Er… who?" Sora asked, feeling left in the dark due to not being told about anything. Goofy was more than willing to answer the question for Sora.
With a smile on his face, Goofy gave Sora a quick explanation. "He's Donald's uncle-a business typhoon! Before the Heartless showed up, he traveled the worlds on a Gummi Ship with the King. He was helpin' to set up a traffic system." Donald frowned at Goofy and proceeded to correct him as result of mixing what Mr. McDuck was actually doing.
"A transit system!" squawked Donald to Goofy, causing Scrooge to speak. He didn't understand the racket, and acknowledged such in a prompt manner.
The duck proceeded to sigh before he spoke. "What's all the racket?" asked the older duck before he turned around. He was pleasantly surprised to see Donald and Goofy (as well as Sora and Penelope, but then again, they never directly met). "Why, if it isn't Donald! And Goofy! Hello, lads! Aye, you all look hale and hearty!"
Donald looked at his uncle and nodded, smiling back at him. "So do you, Uncle Scrooge." However, Scrooge seemed to disagree with Donald on that idea. In fact, he seemed troubled by something.
"Ah, if only I were... I canna seem to recreate my favorite old-time ice cream. I'd make millions if I just got it right..." sighed Scrooge. This thought was starting to distract him as he looked sadly at the pale blue-green ice cream bar in hand. He tasted the ice cream, only to be disgusted and visibly upset. "Terrible…!"
Scrooge went back to trying to recreate his favorite ice cream flavor, and there were no farewells, or at least, farewell-for-now said between the two parties. However, Penelope found the ice cream bar familiar.
She was unsure what to say as the quartet continued to move along to the next area of focus, being the Borough of Hollow Bastion.
XxXxX
(Hollow Bastion- Borough)
Upon arriving to their 'destination' (well, the destination for now), the quartet noticed strange pillars of light appear and reappear. They looked like they had either taken something down or were searching for something.
Regardless of such, nobody knew what the heck they were. Donald was kind enough to bring the question into circulation by spouting, "Hey, what's going on?" at those things as if they could hear him.
The four of them proceeded to hear a familiar voice from afar. "That's the town's defense mechanism." Searching for the voice, the quarter ended up seeing Yuffie up on a building. Sora was ecstatic to see Yuffie for the first time in what felt like forever.
"Yuffie!" he called to her, grinning. Yuffie smiled back at Sora and waved for a moment until she noticed something coming behind Sora, Donald, Goofy and Penelope; and with some panic, she shouted, "Look out!"
Sora's Keyblade flashed as a Dusk was coming from behind him to attack him, but Penelope was on it, quickly taking it out with a combo from Leviathan. As if on cue, more nobodies came in to play, and Penelope twirled her Keyblade as if taunting them.
Donald and Goofy were surprised at Penelope's swiftness to defend Sora. However, now definitely wasn't the time to be distracted by her on-point defense. Now was the time to fight more nobodies.
The quartet proceeded to fight the nobodies, with the help of the light pillar defense mechanism set into place. Though Sora, Donald and Goofy could get back into the swing of things fairly easily even though they had been hibernating for a year, it was evident that Penelope was more in shape than they thought.
Of course, Donald wasn't going take back his comment from a while ago about saying that Penelope was maybe out of shape, but she seemed used to fighting Nobodies (well, more like fighting in general). The other three still had work to do as they were still a bit rusty.
Yuffie was relieved, and called down to the three of them. "Hey, you guys!" she shouted, hopping down from the building and coming over to them. "I see you're still in top form."
Penelope scoffed at that comment, but decided to say nothing to Yuffie about the events that had taken place over a year. She'd probably find that out later.
Sora, however, took the compliment and asked rather cockily, "What'd you expect?" He patted his chest and looked at Yuffie, still relieved. "Looks like you're doing ok."
Yuffie gave Sora the same response he has given her. "Well, what did YOU expect?"
Sora, Donald and Goofy started to catch up with Yuffie on the events of what had been going on in Hollow Bastion. Basically, the crew had been doing well; Yuffie hadn't seen King Mickey or Riku; and now, they were all heading to Merlin's House to catch up with everyone else.
Well… most were. As Penelope was about to join in with walking back, it had hit exactly 30 minutes and Maria reappeared in a peculiar way. She looked like she had appeared from a portal, but was hanging upside down. She nearly scared the life out of Penelope, but the girl stopped herself from screaming. "Heya! So, it's been half an hour. Didja get everything sorted out with Leon and the others?" The woman asked.
Penelope noticed that Sora, Donald, Goofy and Yuffie were still heading off to Merlin's House and catching up. They hadn't noticed that she hadn't caught up yet, but that didn't seem to be a bother. Maria understood the situation by one glance.
"…I take the silence and the fact that you've only talked to Yuffie as a 'no'. I don't mind giving you more time to catch up with everyone and get the lowdown of what's going-" Penelope interrupted Maria.
"Nah. It's been 30 minutes. I can't keep stalling forever."
"But I thought you wanted to go talk to Leon and the others and quote-on-quote 'apologize profusely' to them for how rude you were."
Penelope sighed, watching the other four continue leaving. "Meh. Sora's been waiting a year to see his friends. I might as well let him see them, right? It'll make no difference whether I'm there. If I am, I'll likely ruin the moment."
Maria bopped Penelope on the head, causing her to draw back. She didn't seem all that pleased by Penelope talking down about herself again. "Bad Guardian. Bad. You're not going to ruin anything just by being there."
Penelope shrugged. "I suppose so. I still want to get to this lesson though. Leon and the others can wait."
For a moment, Maria looked at Sora and the others, and then at Penelope. Somewhat hesitantly, she came out from the portal (and landed gracefully like a cat), opening a Corridor of Light and taking Penelope to the Hall of Light as she was supposed to.
Still, Maria felt bad for letting Penelope continue to fracture relationships. She hoped that the girl wouldn't be too hard on herself about this.
Meanwhile, as Sora and company were about halfway to Merlin's House, Sora noticed something wrong. There was four people, not five.
"…Penelope? Where'd you go?" Sora asked. Donald and Goofy paused and looked around, seeing that the Guardian of Light and Darkness wasn't there. Yuffie acknowledged this as well.
"Wait, the sassy brunette girl was here? She was so quiet that I didn't notice her."
Sora bit his lip, worried that something bad might've happened. "…Y'know, I'm getting this slight feeling that she hasn't been here at all while we've been walking back. Do you guys think we should go look for her?" He asked Donald and Goofy.
Donald was dismissive on the subject. "Nah. She's probably fine, Sora. If she vanished, she probably had to go somewhere."
Goofy agreed, recalling their meeting with Maria earlier. "A half hour mighta passed already, so Penelope probably went with Maria to do some training." Sora decided to believe that was probably why she was gone.
He didn't like that Penelope wordlessly left, but he hoped that she would meet back up with them soon.
Especially noting what was to come.
-o-o-o-o-
Wow. This chapter took much longer than expected, guys. Sorry about that.
So, to make a long story short, I have been super busy with school, but also uninspired with a lot of stories I've been writing on this site. I'm going to rewrite a few, pause others, and try to continue the rest.
Inspiration for Re: Kingdom Hearts 2 hasn't been hard to come by, though. For a while, due to the bustling of life, it's been hard for me to get back into writing this story. There's also the fact that I've been working on another story on deviantART somewhat-loosely based around Tomodachi Life as of late, and it's taken up a lot of my focus.
Still, I have a lot planned for this story. I know it's been a good few months since I've last posted anything on this story.
I'll try my best to update, but if life gets super busy again and I suddenly stop, just note that it may be the reason pausing updates.
*This is in reference to Kingdom Hearts: Unchained X. Mickey, Donald and Goofy appear in-game at one point and meet your player character in some earlier missions. Their relationship to Maria and Zia will be discussed later on.
Other than that, please review if you'd like, please refrain from flaming, and please tell me how I can improve. I appreciate the feedback as I've been working hard to refine my writing.
I will see you all in the next chapter.
Ciao!