As Sora made his way down the familiar cobblestone laden streets, his reminiscent wandering was interrupted by a familiar sight rising up from the ground. One he'd recognize anywhere.

A completely black, vaguely humanoid body with a round, spherical head and circular, glowing yellow eyes. Atop that head sprouted two long, twisted antennae. Both of its hands had three clawed fingers, and large feet lacking any discernible digits. The most common variant of Heartless Sora and his friends encountered: Shadows.

Fortunately, they were still as basic and easy to fight as Sora remembered, as with a few well placed strikes, the Heartless balked under the assault of his Keyblade. Albeit much more slowly than Sora hoped. The loss of his techniques left Sora struggling a bit as he was forced to utilize only the most basic of combination attacks. Worse still, given how he grown so used to fighting with Donald and Goofy, he nearly slipped up taking his focus off of other Heartless which nearly surrounded him. Still, in the end, he emerged triumphant against the ebony bodied Heartless.

Taking a breath, Sora wandered through the streets, finding himself in a particular district of the town. He recognized it as the place where he first met Donald, Goofy, and Ruby. The place where they fought that big floating armored heartless. He'd grown so used to having them by his side.

"Hmm, fighting alone isn't as easy as I thought." he mumbled to himself. He only had to fight the Heartless by himself for a short time before now. Both when his Island was destroyed and when he first arrived in Traverse Town. After that, he'd grown so used to all the friends he had fighting by his side. And now...

In the midst of his reminiscence, he heard a faint ringing sound from behind him. Sora turned to see a flash of light coming from two cards descending from up above. "Aah!" He cried out in surprise when suddenly, Donald and Goofy just materialized right behind him as the light faded. "Don't pop out of nowhere like that!" he exclaimed.

Donald glared at him, stomping a foot in irritation at the demand. "Hey, it's not our fault! We don't know what's going on!" he complained.

The duck's confusion was definitely a mutual one among the three friends. But rather than focus on that, Goofy's attention was focused on something behind Sora. "A-hyuck!?"

Confused about Goofy's shocked exclamation, Sora turned to look behind him. To his and Donald's amazement, they saw…

"Pluto!?"

Equally surprised as the other two, Donald immediately found himself wondering aloud, "Things keep getting stranger. What's Pluto doing here?" They were certain they didn't see Pluto run into the castle with them. In fact, they saw no head nor heel of him after he ran down that dirt road.

"There's nothing strange about that. We came to Traverse Town with Pluto, didn't we?" Goofy inquired. He could've sworn Pluto came here with them when they were trying to find the Keyblade and Leon.

Donald paused for a moment, trying to remember when they first arrived here. "Did we?" He could've sworn there was a little more to it than that. Wasn't there?

"No, wait!" Jiminy said as he hopped out of Sora's hoodie and recalled something he once wrote from his journal, given it was one of the first things he chronicled after joining Donald and Goofy. "According to my journal, it was before you met Sora that you came to town with Pluto!"

"Wak! He's right! We were chasing after Pluto, and that's how we ended up in Castle Oblivion!" Donald said, immediately recalling how they got to the castle in question. They'd completely lost track of Pluto, lay down to sleep for the night, woke up to follow Sora, and the rest was history.

"But aren't we in Traverse Town?" Goofy inquired, the growing confusion evident upon his face.

"Well it's not really Traverse Town," Jiminy pointed out. "I think the card created this Traverse Town inside Castle Oblivion!"

Sora couldn't wrap his head around any of this. And the more he tried, the more frustrated he seemed to become. Especially with everyone else's attempts to make sense of the situation. "Aaghh! Who cares about all that? It's too confusing! I don't know where we are, but let's just keep moving forward defeating Heartless! We'll get somewhere!" A simple solution for a simple boy.

"You'd better be careful, or it's the Heartless that are going to defeat you."

"Indeed. If you don't remain vigilant, you'll only invite disaster upon yourself."

The trio perked up at the sound of a familiar voice They turned around to see a man approaching them. He sported long, brown hair, light blue eyes and a scar going diagonally down the middle of his face. His attire consisted of black gloves with belts on them, black, zipper-lined shoes, a pair of brown belts criss crossing over his waist with studded silver pieces, two brown armbands over his left flexor on his arm, a silver necklace looking like a lion's head, a white undershirt and a short, black jacket with red wings on the back and a red symbol on his shoulder like his necklace.

And beside him was a a tall young woman clad in an elegant, magnificently woven white, steel blue accented collared tailcoat that showed off the sides of her shoulders along with her upper arms, and topped off with a brilliant red jewel at the central neck part of her coat's collar. Underneath, she wore a steel blue button down vest with a white frilled undershirt stretching down to her ankles, a pair of tight, white pants covered by a pair of grey, decorated high heeled boots. Her hair was tied up in a bun with a part done mostly over her right icy blue eye.

At first, Sora was wondered if he was imagining things, but the moment he saw the pair in front of him, his frustration was replaced by elation. afterwards because he knew exactly who they. Two people who he'd met in this very town!

"Leon! Winter! It's you! What are you doing in Castle Oblivion?"

Leon and Winter's brows furrowed with confusion as the former inquired "Castle Oblivion? What are you talking about? This is Traverse Town." he inquired suspiciously, as if he didn't seem to recognize Sora. "And how do you know my name? Who are you?" His inquiry made Sora's eyes widen with shock. "I've never met the likes of you before." he said in an almost dismissive tone.

"Neither have I." Winter interjected, shocking Sora even further as he found himself on the receiving end of the familiarly chilling icy glare of Weiss's sister. "I don't make a habit of telling random children my name. Explain yourself."

Sora couldn't believe what he was hearing. This had to be some kind of bad joke. "Quit kidding around! We fought the Heartless together, Leon! You know that! And you know it too, Winter!" Sora said insistently.

Despite Sora's heartfelt insistence, Leon simply shook his head. "Look, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't even know your names." His tone however sounded serious. And Leon wasn't one to joke. Something they knew full well.

"Ya don't?" Goofy asked, worriedly.

Leon simply turned around, completely unconcerned by the troubled expressions on their faces, and crossed his arms. "...Sorry."

"Nor do I." Winter said, turning away from the trio just as dismissively.

His rather terse apology didn't do much to ease things. Sore felt genuinely hurt at Leon's words, and his dismissive attitude. "I can't believe it. How can you have forgotten about us?" Sora asked, the pain in his voice was evident.

Yet Leon still didn't seem concerned. He simply uncrossed his arms and said, "I feel for you, but you've got the wrong guy. It happens all the time. Don't take it so personally, Sora."

Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy blanched with shock when they heard Sora's name slip out of the young man's mouth. Donald and Goofy looked at each other, the former with anger and the latter with confusion. "You DO know his name!" Donald exclaimed indignantly.

Leon turned around, surprisingly with an equally shocked expression as the trio before him. "Now hold on! Why do I know your name?" he asked as he faced the utterly befuddled Sora.

He wasn't the only one who was shocked. Winter turned around with an almost identical expression as Leon. "What...What is this? I don't know you either, yet I somehow know your name is Sora as well." she said in an increasingly suspicious yet audibly confused tone.

"You think Leon's just kidding around?" Goofy whispered to Donald, leaning down to whisper to his shorter friend.

"If he is, it's not funny. Sora's really upset." Donald whispered back angrily. He'd had been on the receiving end of admittedly funny jokes before, much as he'd hate to admit it. But this joke, if it was one, one DEFINITELY wasn't funny.

"Who's kidding around, Goofy?" Leon asked the other two with an indignant tone.

One that Winter compounded with equal indignation. "Indeed. You and Donald are the ones who-"

Leon's words only added further surprise and confusion as Donald let out an increasingly shocked quack. Leon, confused as could be, hand pinched his forehead with eyes clamped shut as he spoke with growing frustration, "I don't get it... something's wrong with my memory. What's happening here?"

"None of this makes any sense...I don't know any of you, but...I know your names? I demand an explanation at once!" Winter said, trying to retain some measure of control in the midst of her visibly rampant confusion.

Silence filled the district as its four confused tenants tried to make sense of this. The silence was broken a few moments later by a peppy feminine voice. "I dunno, Leon. Maybe Aerith was onto something after all."

"You two shoulda listened to her and Taiyang." followed by the gruff, throaty, laid back voice of a man.

Appearing at the spot where Leon first emerged was a woman looking younger than him but older than Sora. She had short black hair and wore a metal headband with two green tassels, a yellow scarf, a green tube top held up by two blue belts, tan short-shorts with another loose blue belt around her waist, white mid-thigh socks within orange shoes and mesh sleeves on her arms disappearing into orange, fingerless gloves with black bands constricting the ends.

The other was a lavender eyed, rugged, unkempt man with black hair and a stubble, a button-up white and grey tailcoat with a black cuffs, black pants, black shoes, a bandage-like cloth along his right wrist, upon whose hand he wore a ring on his index finger and one on his ring finger, a cross shaped pendant around his neck, and a shredded red cape.

As the new pair approached, the girl spoke again with the same enthusiastic tone. "She said she sensed some uncanny kind of power and asked us to look into it. Well, this is as uncanny as it gets. Maybe you should take Sora to see Aerith."

"Yeah. Maybe you shoulda thought of that instead of attempting to jump into an interrogation, Ice Queen." the man added with a smug grin which, along with his words, made Winter glower with visible annoyance.

Sora smiled, delighted to see another friend he met on his adventures. What's more, she seemed to remember him. "Yuffie! Qrow! You know my name!" he exclaimed to the ninja, as well as Ruby's uncle.

"Yep! Looks like you know ours, too." the chipper ninja answered without hesitation. The implication of it caused Sora's face to fall, immediately realizing she and Qrow must have been in a similar state as Leon and Winter.

Leon raised an eyebrow as he turned to ask Yuffie, "You know him?"

The smile on Yuffie's face remained as she turned to Leon, answering in an ever so chipper tone. "Nope. Total stranger. But I definitely know his name."

None of this was helping Winter's mood, especially with Qrow jumping on openings to tease her. "For all I know, YOU put them up to this." she accused Qrow, who simply kept giving her that gratingly patronizing grin.

"Fun and funny as that would be, no. I'm just as confused by this as you are." Qrow said, making it clear that this was not some prank...though in a manner that did little to soften Winter's glare.

This was getting way too surreal. Sora was a total stranger to her, yet Yuffie knew his name? None of this was making any sense. "Strange, yes, but convenient! We can skip introductions!" she said, completely unbothered by the illogical situation.

Her way of looking at this unbelievable situation made Leon pinch his brow. "How is it that you can accept this situation so easily? I don't get you." he grumbled. Yuffie's only response was a nonchalant shrug. At this point, Leon was wishing he could brush this off the way Yuffie did. Like water off a duck's back.

"Well, I'm gonna run ahead to fill Aerith in. Leon, you give them the grand tour." With that, she trotted away with Pluto by her side, leaving a very frustrated Leon with a very confused Sora, Donald, and Goofy.

"Yeeaaah, you too Winter. Give em a grand old tour and all that jazz." Qrow said, earning a near-sputter of disbelief from the older Schnee sister.

All Winter could do as Qrow wandered off was let out a groan of increasing frustration. "That man is an absolute reprobate, I swear..." she muttered, before finally shaking off...the worst of her annoyance and focusing on the situation at hand. "Well, Leon. Should we bring them with us to the others?" she asked.

"I guess it's no use pondering over it. Come on, follow us." Leon said with a sigh, deciding to take at least one page out of Yuffie's book. Though they were still confused as could be, Sora, Donald, and Goofy followed after Leon and Winter.

Hopefully when they met up with Aerith and apparently Taiyang, they'd get some answers about what was going on here.