Kingdom Hearts II

The Town That Wasn't

The man in bandages already had him. What he meant to do with him he explained only to Riku, and Roxas was not there to hear it.

"At last, the Keyblade's chosen one."

He had gone into a castle that was not his first, before any of this, hunting it down.

"Revenge."

What he built afterward, he built somewhere else: an old mansion nobody was using, with a machine in the basement, a room of pods for three sleepers, and a white room for a girl who was not asleep.

"His heart is returning. Doubtless he'll awaken very soon."

"If we can maintain the simulated town until Naminé finishes chaining together Sora's memories."

He went straight on to the next part of it.

"He holds half of Sora's power within him. In the end, he'll have to give it back. Until then, he'll need another personality to throw off his pursuers."

"It's the fate of a Nobody."

He kept talking.

"To half of Sora, of course. You reside in darkness. What I need is someone who can move about the realm of light and destroy Organization XIII."

He altered what the boy remembered and set him down in a town built to look exactly like the one he had actually lived in, with a lifelong history in it and three friends who had never been real.

"We can always buy some sea-salt ice cream. Objects from that town must be kept out of the real world. You can delete that."

"We'd be giving the enemy another entry point."

He went on counting up what could be used against him.

"Organization miscreants. They've found us."

"Both are nothing but data to them. The fools could never tell the difference. We are running out of time. Naminé must make haste."

He said it flatly, the way a man states something already decided.

"No. Naminé hijacked the data herself. Look what she's done now. She's totally beyond my control!"

"It doesn't matter. As long as Naminé accomplishes her goal. we needn't worry about what befalls Roxas."

He moved past it before it could become an argument.

"Naminé's encounter with Roxas put his heart in contact with Kairi's. And that, in turn, affected Sora. You see?"

"She wasn't born like other Nobodies. She can interfere with the hearts and memories of Sora and those aligned with him."

Then he circled back to what he actually wanted done.

"Now, for the finishing touches. First, we must dispose of Naminé. She did a splendid job with Sora, but it's high time she disappeared. Roxas isn't the only one who was never meant to exist. Take care of it, Ansem."

"There's no knowledge that has the power to change your fate."

Nobody had asked him anything yet.

"A Nobody doesn't have a right to know. Nor does it even have the right to be."

"No further outbursts!"

He did not raise his voice again after that.

"I am a servant of the world. And, if I'm a servant, then you should consider yourself a tool, at best."

"You should share some of that hatred with Sora. He's far too nice for his own good."

Roxas woke into the life that had been built for him and knew none of it was borrowed. "Another dream about him."

Summer was almost over, and he meant to spend what was left of it with the only three people he had ever known, chasing a plan for beach money that kept falling apart.

"Uh, well. We could find the real thieves. That would set the record straight."

"First, we gotta clear our names. Once we find the real culprits, everyone will get off our backs."

White creatures came into the town after the photographs and after him, more than once, and each time a single key-shaped blade came to his hand out of nowhere and left again once the danger had passed.

"It's no use. What? What. what is this thing?"

"A key. blade?"

"A Keyblade. What was that about?"

Whatever it was, it left as quickly as it had come, every time.

"Maybe you forgot, but we're broke."

"Hey! You're that pickpocket!"

Somewhere in among his ordinary days a name came to him that did not belong to anyone he could put a face to.

"Right. 'Promise'. What a mess."

"Wait a sec, tell me what's going on!"

"What's going ON!?"

"Okay, fine! You asked for it!"

"Hayner. Pence. Olette. Hayner! Pence! Olette!"

"Naminé? Naminé? What's happening to me?"

"Kairi. I know you. You're that girl he likes."

None of it settled into anything he could explain.

"I'm dreaming. But which parts. were the dream?"

"Yesterday. I fell off the station tower, didn't I?"

He said it to no one in particular, and kept walking.

"You know. that last wonder wasn't exactly wonderful."

"I dunno. Maybe it's destiny."

The four of them went looking for the town's seven wonders as a school assignment, since the summer had nearly run out from under them.

"Look! It's really true. And there's really no one aboard! What's the catch? There's gotta be a catch, right? Then it's real!? Let's go to the station!"

"But what about the last one. the seventh wonder?"

He went to that last one alone, and it was a mansion at the top of a hill outside the town.

Somewhere in those same days a girl found him who already seemed to know him.

"Hello, Roxas."

"I wanted to meet you at least once."

"Roxas! Use the Keyblade!"

She was gone again before he could answer.

"My name is Naminé."

"Naminé? This is. me? And Axel's here too."

"No one knows me better than me."

Axel was ordered, over his own objections, to go and bring the boy back or else be rid of him.

"No way! It's too soon! You can't seriously get rid of him."

"But it's not like that! He didn't betray us. He CAN'T come back!"

They gave him no room to argue further.

"So you'll turn me into a Dusk."

"All right. I'll do it! If that's what you want."

He came into the town after that and found Roxas, and Roxas had no memory of him at all. "Roxas. All right. Fight fight fight."

"You really don't remember? It's me. You know, Axel."

"Talk about blank with a capital 'B.' Man oh man, even the Dusks aren't gonna crack this one."

Roxas gave him nothing to work with. "This town is his creation, right? Which means we don't have time for a Q & A. You're coming with me, conscious or not. Then you'll hear the story."

"Number 13. Roxas. The Keyblade's chosen one."

The fight folded itself into the middle of the town's own tournament, in front of everyone who lived there.

"So it was you."

"Roxas, don't let him deceive you!"

The man in bandages reset the town's own running rather than let it finish, and pulled Axel out of it before it could.

More than once after that Roxas was reached in danger by someone he took for the girl, and once by somebody else entirely: a stranger in a black coat who put one question to him and vanished before he could answer it.

"Can you feel Sora?"

He fell from the station tower once, after the tournament, reaching in his own mind for the girl he thought had been keeping him safe, and touched someone else instead: a name he already had from his dreams of the boy in red. When she asked what that boy was called, Roxas found himself answering with a letter that was not his to give.

For a stretch after that the town began skipping around him, moments repeating or vanishing while everyone else in it noticed nothing, and he went on being confused about it for longer than he would have liked.

Summer's last day arrived and the girl told him outright what he was, and who he was for. He was not born the way his friends were. He was going to meet a boy his own age, the one from the dreams, and complete him. Nothing in the town, not the friends and not the town itself, was real.

He came a third time, with new orders.

"Look at what it's come to. I've been given these icky orders to destroy you if you refuse to come back with me."

"Sure. but I'm not getting turned into a Dusk for. Wait a sec! You remember now!?"

"Great! But, you know, gotta make sure and all. So, umm. What's our boss's name?"

Roxas answered anyway. "We're. best friends, right?"

"The Roxas that I know is long gone. Fine, I see how it is."

The man in bandages froze him where he stood, and froze the moment around him too, and got Roxas out from under it. "Roxas, to the mansion! The time has come!"

Inside it the girl was waiting for him again, and this time she had more to tell him than a name. "Roxas. Do you remember your true name?"

"But if no one tells him, Roxas will."

"You ARE best friends."

She kept talking before he could ask anything back.

"Don't you want to know the truth about who you really are?"

"You know these three, don't you?"

She didn't wait for an answer.

"About a year ago. some things happened, and I had to take apart the memories chained together in Sora's heart. But now. I'm putting them all back exactly the way they were. It's taken me a long time, but pretty soon Sora will be his old self again. The process has been affecting you, too, Roxas."

"Yes. You and Sora are connected. And. in order for Sora to become completely whole again. He needs you."

She did not stop to let him respond.

"You hold half of what he is. He needs you, Roxas."

"I'm a witch with power over Sora's memories and those around him."

"That's what DiZ called me. But I don't know why I have this power. I just do. I'm not even sure there's a right way for me to use it."

"But. I don't get what's been happening lately."

"Yeah. Sora, Donald, and Goofy. They're from the dreams."

It did not make the dreams stop.

"Hmm. I can't help you there. It's funny. Suddenly I feel like I don't know myself at all. I guess I would like to know. What do you know about me. that I don't?"

"You. you were never supposed to exist, Roxas."

He had no answer ready for that.

"What? How could you even say such a thing. even if it were true?"

"I'm sorry. I guess some things. really are better left unsaid."

He pressed her again anyway.

"Organization XIII. they're a bad group."

"Bad or good, I don't know. They're a group of incomplete people who wish to be whole. To that end, they're desperately searching for something."

"Kingdom Hearts."

The man in bandages cut the conversation there and had her taken away before she could tell him anything else. What she told him instead, before she went, was not a fact about Nobodies. She said they would meet again someday, even if neither of them would know the other when they did.

He went further into the mansion after that, and the deeper he went the more of his own memory came back to him: a number, a coat, a life he had actually had before this one.

"Even if it doesn't, I wanna know. I have the right to know!"

"But what IS a Nobody!?"

"Who are you talking to? Me? Or Sora?"

Nobody in the room answered him.

"Was that. Was that supposed to be a joke? 'Cause I'm not laughing!"

"I hate you so much."

"No! My heart belongs to me!"

At the bottom of it he found the machine itself and wrecked it, in a fury that had been building the whole way down.

"My apologies. This is only a data-based projection."

Knowing that changed nothing about what he did next.

Axel was waiting for him in the room after that, one more time. "Simply amazing, Roxas."

"You really do remember me this time? I'm SO FLATTERED. But you're too late!!!"

He could hold two blades now, one in each hand, and it was enough.

"Yeah. I'll be waiting."

He went out through a hole that was not a door.

"Let's meet again in the next life."

"Silly. Just because you have a next life."

Past two more sleepers in their own pods he found the last one, and the man in bandages was there ahead of him, saying things about what he was that put him back into the same blind fury as the machine had, until partway through hitting him he understood that this, too, was only a projection, and kept on anyway. Then it was gone, and so was the anger, all at once.

"Sora. You're lucky. Looks like my summer vacation is. over."

"Sora?"

Sora woke to that name being called, with the other two waking beside him and a year gone from all of them that none of the three, or the cricket who kept their record, could account for.

"Thank Naminé."

Riku let the two of them go rather than hand them over, and at Sunset Hill something the girl said moved the man who had fought Roxas twice more than he expected it to.

"Yes, it's true. We may not have homes. But there IS someplace I want to go. And. someone I want to see."

"DiZ? Wants to get rid of me?"

"Thank you."

Axel took longer to say his half of it. "Guess that's that."

"Go where? It's not like we have homes to return to. We don't exist, remember?"

Riku had already made up his mind. "Same here. So, you think you might let us go? I know you're here to get rid of us, but."

"You sure about this?"

"Heh. You don't have to tell me twice."

A way out opened for both of them, and they took it.

In the days after, the man in bandages, the girl and Riku kept working on what Sora still needed. He was told to be rid of her and did not do it. Somewhere in the same stretch, studying the sleeper's heart, the man in bandages found more inside it than the one boy he had gone looking for, and hid what he had learned there instead.

They woke again in a town built exactly like the one they had just left, except that this one was real, and none of them could account for how long they had slept or how they had gotten there.

The three friends who lived in this town for real, and Seifer besides, were among the first people they went looking for answers from. Mickey found them before anyone else did, cleared a swarm of white creatures off them, and put them on a train out of town without stopping to explain any of it.

At the station the three real friends said goodbye to a boy they had never actually met, and he cried without knowing why he was doing it.

The train carried them toward a tower that stood by itself, away from every other light.

Everyone Is Waiting

Somebody was waiting at the foot of the tower who had no business there.

"I sent some of my lackeys inside to see if the master of this here tower's as big and tough as they say. Word is, he's a real powerful sorcerer. Which would make him the perfect bodyguard for me. See, it don't matter how tough he is. once he's a Heartless, he'll do as I say!"

He knew the two who came off the train with Sora on sight, and did not bother hiding it. "What are you two nimrods doin' here!?"

Donald and Goofy told Sora who he was, and none of it was in his favor.

"You want to know how, eh? Well, Maleficent busted me out, that's how! And now your world. no, no, no, all the worlds. are gonna belong to yours truly. Cause Maleficent's gonna help me conquer 'em!"

Told that she was dead, he did not take it well.

"Heartless squad! Round up!"

They beat what he sent.

"Oh, ya don't know, eh? Well, it's old Yen Sid. 'Course he's probably a Heartless by now!"

Sora, Donald and Goofy went past him into the tower without waiting to hear the rest of it, and Pete was left outside to lose his temper alone.

Up the stairs somebody had been waiting considerably longer than Pete had.

"So, you are Sora. Now then, have you seen the King yet?"

He had not, and said so.

"Yes. I know. However, everything in your journey, Sora, is connected. Whether you will find your way home to the islands. Whether you will return alone or with your friend. And, whether or not the islands will still be there. And the key that connects them all is you, Sora."

"Your past endeavors did prevent an immense effusion of Heartless from the great darkness; make no mistake about that. However, the Heartless are darkness made real, and darkness yet lingers in every heart. The Heartless are fewer. But while darkness exists in a single heart, it will be difficult to eliminate them."

He turned the warning on Donald directly, by name.

"If one such as you, Donald, yields to the darkness in their heart, they too will become a Heartless. But you know this. The Heartless are always lurking and ever seeking to capture new hearts. Never let your guard down! Now then. At times, if someone with a strong heart and will, be they evil or good, becomes a Heartless, the empty shell they leave behind begins to act with a will of its own. An empty vessel whose heart has been stolen away. A spirit that goes on even as its body fades from existence, for you see, Nobodies do not truly exist at all. Nobodies may seem to have feelings, but this is a ruse, they only pretend to have hearts. You must not be deceived!"

He did not pause to let it land before he moved on to what it was for.

"While Heartless act on instinct, Nobodies function in a higher manner. They can think and plan. And it seems they are working towards a goal. What that goal is, we do not know. The King sensed the danger, and journeyed forth to fight it. He found the dark realm's Keyblade, and with it, closed the door. Now he's traveling from world to world, fighting the Heartless as he seeks the answer to the riddle of the Nobodies and Organization XIII."

That was as much as he meant to explain of the enemy. The rest was about what came next.

"Through there, you'll find three good fairies. If you ask, they'll create for you appropriate garments."

"You'll be departing after you've changed in the wardrobe. Take time now to prepare."

He explained how the worlds themselves would be found this time, before he let them go.

"Do not fear. If what the King suspected proves true, the worlds have prepared new pathways along which you may travel. These pathways may be utilized by unlocking special gates. How these gates are opened, I'm afraid I do not know. However, the Keyblade will serve as your guide. When a beam of light radiates from the Keyblade, return to the Gummi Ship. Though the worlds may seem far apart and out of reach, they nonetheless remain connected by invisible ties. As do our hearts."

"Now then, that is all the information I can give to you. Go forth, Sora, Donald, and Goofy. Everyone is waiting."

Through the door he found three more people waiting, and all three noticed him at once.

"Well, look who's here, dears! Sora, Donald, and Goofy!"

"I'll do the designing."

"Ooh, if you're looking for clothes, you've come to the right place!"

None of the three agreed with either of the others about what that meant.

"Now, now, dears."

"Oh, that will never do."

"But don't you like this better?"

They went back and forth like that until Flora put a stop to it herself.

"All right, then. Together now, dears. And no more squabbling!"

"Ooh, it's lovely."

"Oh, yes! He does look very dashing."

Whatever they had settled on, all three were satisfied with it, and moved on to what it was actually for.

"Now, those aren't ordinary garments."

"They have very special powers."

Flora, at least, meant to be specific about it.

"Your garments also have other powers. but you will have to discover what they are as you continue on your journey."

"Those clothes have all kinds of powers that rely on the help of friends! Just as you on your journey, they need friends, too, to unleash their powers."

Fauna had one more thing besides, not from herself.

"Take the orb, dear."

"Oh, and there's something else for you. from Master Yen Sid."

She did not say what it was for, and nobody asked.

"And watch what happens."

"You'll have amazing powers when you transform, but the process takes time. Even so, transforming will help you tremendously on your adventures!"

Merryweather had the last word on it herself.

"You've already gained a new ability! Those clothes must be meant for you! That transformation unleashes your potential to the fullest, Sora!"

"This journey's gonna be twice as difficult as your last."

Yen Sid called the Gummi Ship for them, and they left in it.

Their first stop put them back among people they already knew.

"I knew it."

"Hollow Bastion's got a problem. A big problem."

"We want to restore Hollow Bastion to what it used to be. Who knows, maybe even something better. There's still a lot to do, but I'm sure we can handle everything, except. for that."

He made them honorary members of it on the spot, and took them out to see the work for themselves.

At the Bailey something was waiting for them that was not restoration work.

Sora and Leon fought it off together, and the fighting led the three of them away from the main town. There, something answered them that was only laughter with nobody attached to it, until Sora demanded whoever it was show themselves, and several hooded shapes did.

"Oopsy-daisy!"

"Now do you think that's polite, shutting me down like that?"

"As if! You can talk all you want, but that won't change a thing."

The rest of them left. This one stayed.

"See, that would work. if I were just any old dude. 'Cept I'm not. I'm with the Organization. Nothing 'any old' about me."

"Oh, dear. I think you got the wrong impression."

"As if! Why don't I remind you how tough the crowd you're dealing with really is?"

Something about the way Sora was looking at him seemed to remind him of somebody else entirely. "That's RIGHT, he used to give me that same exact look."

Sora told him he was talking nonsense. He spread his arms open, as if inviting a blow he plainly did not expect to land. "Gee. I just don't know."

"Be a good boy now!"

Then he was gone too.

Before the Keyblade could open anything, Leon said one more thing. "Organization XIII. They look tough. Be careful out there."

Shortly after, a beam of light answered him from the Keyblade itself, and Sora, Donald and Goofy went back to the ship.

None of the three of them were there to see what happened at the tower after they had gone.

A bird brought something old and tattered to the three who had dressed him, and none of them wanted to recognize it.

"My goodness! What's that?"

"Haven't we seen this somewhere before?"

One of them almost placed it out loud.

"Yes, dear. I wonder whose it was."

"Oh! Malefi-"

Flora would not let her finish it.

"No! We mustn't remember her name! Oh dear."

It did not work.

"She was a mean ol' witch. Oh no! The memories are coming back! What'll we do!? Oooh-what'll we do!?"

"Yes. That's what we must do. Hurry!"

"Maleficent!"

They ran to find Yen Sid, and by the time anyone thought to check on either the fairies or the sorcerer, neither one could be found.

The Cornerstone of Light

He did not believe he had been told the truth, and went to see for himself.

"Now what's gonna happen to our plan?"

Nobody answered him at the empty fortress but her bird, and that was enough. He went back to her in glee.

Being under her again had cost him something, and what it left him with was a longing for an easier life he used to have, back when he only captained a boat. A door opened because of that longing, into the very years he was missing.

"On the other side of this portal, they're about to begin construction on that wretched castle. But until then, their treasured Cornerstone of Light lies unguarded, with all of its power still contained!"

In the present, black thorns closed around the thing that door was aimed at, and Heartless started turning up inside the castle that kept it. Somebody who was not really there came to gloat over it before anyone could stop her.

Somewhere she could not be heard, before anyone answered her, the queen said what she was afraid of out loud. "Oh, King Mickey, I wish you could hear me. The castle is in danger! We've got to do something soon! Donald. Goofy. Where are you?"

They arrived anyway. "Oh, Sora! The King told me all about you in his letters. He said you're a very brave young man."

Then she saw what had come in with them.

"Oh my. So those are the Heartless."

"The audience chamber is through the large door in the hallway. Now hurry, Sora!"

She led the way there herself.

"As soon as the trouble started, I made sure to seal this room."

"All that's left now is to go to the audience chamber. Hurry, Sora!"

It was not the last room with something waiting in it.

"Not here, too!"

In the room below, she told them what the castle had always had to protect.

"The room below is called the 'Hall of the Cornerstone.' Our castle has always been safe from worlds that are evil. thanks to the Cornerstone of Light which we keep down there."

"The Cornerstone. of Light?"

Thorns were already closed around it, and the shape that was not really there had come to gloat.

"Just what are you doing here, Maleficent!?"

Minnie did not have an answer ready for that. She had an idea instead.

"Yes! That's perfect! Merlin just might know something about this mess. Let's ask his advice!"

"I'm sure Merlin will help. Please, go to Hollow Bastion and tell him about the castle."

He came back with them, and opened a second door where the first threat had come from.

"I knew Merlin would help! Still, our problem's not solved. Sora, I'm counting on you!"

Then the three of them went through it, and Minnie stayed behind to protect the castle itself.

On the other side, the castle had not been built yet, and the Cornerstone sat by itself on a bare hill.

"What's going on? Everything's black and white."

Somebody they did not recognize ran past them before they got far, dressed for a much older year.

"Ah, which is it?!"

"Hey you! Seen any bad guys around here?"

They decided he was one, and said so.

"Why I oughta. Bah! I don't have time to waste on punks like you! So, I guess I'll go easy on ya!"

"What's with you squirts? You got some kinda bone to pick with me?"

"Them's fighting words!"

He asked one more question before the fighting answered it for him.

"What's that for?"

They won, and only then did any of it stop making sense.

"What's you punks' beef with me anyway? Hmm. Who are ya? You new around here?"

"Well, of COURSE I'm Pete. I'm the captain of the steamboat. So stop botherin' me, see?"

"So hit the road! I gotta go find the little runt what stole my boat!"

None of them corrected him about who he actually was.

Back at the hill, the past had come open in more places than the one they had used. Four windows looked onto other days of it, each one thick with the same white and black creatures as everywhere else, and a fifth showed them exactly why any of this was open at all: his own homesickness, and nothing more deliberate than that. They went through the four in turn, clearing each one, and found further windows behind those, laying out the rest of it: what she actually meant to do with a door that had only opened because somebody missed his old life.

Coming out of the last one, they found the Cornerstone already gone. They caught up with it at the Pier, in hands that were not the ones they had already fought.

"Don't fail her again. let's see. That's it! I just gotta smash that cornerstone to smithereens! But first. I gotta go get my old boat back."

He had taken a boat along with the stone, and it was not his to take either.

"No way, small fry! I finally found the pipsqueak what stole my steamboat!"

He was still wrong about who he was looking at. They took both the stone and the boat back from him.

They returned the Cornerstone to its hill, and found the boat's own captain again at the Wharf. This time he joined them.

"Your future's on the line, pallie, so back off and give me the boat!"

"You'll pay for this!"

"Ha! You're still wet behind the ears!"

Somewhere in the middle of it the wrong man caught a blow meant for the right one.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!"

It ended with only one of them still standing.

"It serves ya right!"

He went back to her beaten, and Sora's Keyblade sealed the door shut behind him so he could never use it again. "Yeah. Annnd stay out!"

"Secret? What kinda secret? Oh, never mind. Sorry I put you guys through all that trouble."

"And to show ya my appreciation, I'll let you pilot my steamboat. Best little craft on the river! My deck hand Mickey's late anyways."

They let that go unanswered too.

Back in the present, the thorns were already gone.

"The thorns have disappeared!"

"Welcome back! Because of your bravery, the castle is safe and protected again. Thank you so much for all you've done!"

What the Cornerstone had been guarding came open behind it, a gate, and Sora's Keyblade answered it the same as it always did.

The One Who's Coming Back

They had a story to tell him before he could ask them anything himself.

"You and that dog came flying out of a hole in the wall. You nearly gave us heart attacks!"

"You okay?"

She had been looking for somebody, and they told her the same thing more than once.

"If you stick around, Sora's bound to show up."

"Yeah, he said he's coming back."

"What a romantic story!"

She waited with them for a while after that. Then Axel came, and took her. Nobody had a line for that part, only for what came before and after it.

Getting out of town again turned out to be harder than getting the story out of them had been. Something met Sora, Donald and Goofy in the streets that had nothing to do with any of that. They beat it, and only once it was over did somebody come to see them off properly.

"Impressive. By the way, have you seen a man named Axel? I expect he's here somewhere."

Sora did not have him. "You see, Axel's no longer acting in our best interest."

"Don't let your guard down. Axel will stop at nothing to turn you into a Heartless."

Then he said something that did not sit easily next to the warning he had just given.

"Glad to hear it. Axel aside, it would break our hearts to hear something happened to you."

"True, we don't have hearts. But we remember what it was like. That's what makes us special."

"We know very well how to injure a heart. Sora, you just keep on fighting those Heartless."

He left them with one thing more, and no explanation attached to it.

"Don't be reckless. Do you want to end up like Riku?"

Then he left, without waiting for an answer.

"You okay?"

He left for the next world meaning to find both of them, Kairi and Riku.

Under Arrest

Mickey turned up long enough to say part of it. "Say, fellas, did somebody mention the Door To Darkness?"

"Well, the Door To Darkness can only be opened by the seven princesses. There's Snow White, Jasmine, and Belle."

He gave Sora's own clothes something more before he went, the same as the fairies had. "I'll see ya when you get back. Oh! One more thing. Let me give your clothes some new powers, Sora."

"Finding Ansem's research data will have to come first. I'll explain everything later. Please be careful."

Then he was gone again, the way he always was.

They were called back to the same castle, for a different reason this time.

"We found the computer Ansem was using!"

"Hey, fellas. you're just in time. Got some good news for ya, so get yourselves over to Leon's."

"He went on over to Ansem's study to find out what all the ruckus was about."

Sora went looking in it for anything that might say where Kairi or Riku or the King actually were.

Something was already on the ceiling above him while he typed, and it did not stay there. It landed on the keyboard, and Donald went after it, and between the two of them the keys took a beating neither one had meant to give them.

"Attention current user. This is a warning. Further misuse of this terminal will result in immediate defensive action."

Nobody stopped in time.

"I am the Master Control Program. I oversee this system."

"Decision gate reached. You are now under arrest."

Then all three of them were somewhere else.

Somebody was waiting there who worked for the very system they had just annoyed.

"I am Commander Sark."

"Observe."

Donald and Goofy found out what that word meant a second later.

Then he turned to report them up the chain.

"Master Control. Why not just de-rezz Tron?"

"What about a logic probe? With all your processing power."

"Acknowledged."

They were sent down to a cell built to hold exactly this kind of trouble.

Somebody was already in it.

"You're inside a mainframe computer system."

"A computer system. for processing data. This system is a copy of one created by a corporation called ENCOM. The original program was destroyed."

It had not stayed that way.

"But this copy was acquired by another User. The new User updated and customized the programs, renaming the system 'Hollow Bastion OS'. He used the system for town maintenance, and to advance his private research. My name is Tron. I'm a security program. But now I'm under arrest, same as you."

"The Master Control Program. It controls the whole system. If you idle here, you will be derezzed."

Somewhere above them, the thing he had just named was still looking for something it did not have.

"I still haven't located the password to the dataspace."

"You're dismissed, Sark. Stop any remaining anomalies in the system. or else. End of line."

None of it had been meant for them to hear, and all of it was.

Getting out meant getting power to a door, and getting power to the door turned out to be its own kind of trouble.

"If we could bring the energy core in the canyon online, we could power it back up. The problem is. we're stuck in this cell. We're not going anywhere unless we unlock the energy fields."

"We can get out by gathering the door's lock data and freezing it. The problem is, we don't have any way to extract the data."

They found a way around that anyway.

"That thing in the center's the energy core. Let's try accessing it."

"This is the energy core."

"You guys really are Users. Your actions are totally illogical."

He had one more thing to explain before they could use the terminal that had just opened.

"DTD is the name my User gave to the dataspace. Copies of all the original system programs are stored there, along with anything that's sensitive or restricted."

"Looks like the MCP's on to us. I'll keep this terminal up and running. You better exit the system, now!"

They went home without the one thing they still needed to come back with.

The New Password

The password turned out to be names he already had reason to know: the seven Princesses of Heart, met one by one across his own travels. Nobody staged a scene for how he found the list in Ansem's study, and none is invented here. He went back into the system with it.

Getting back to Tron meant getting past somebody else first.

"Welcome to the game grid."

"That's right, you've been chosen to play a few games. Lose, and you will be subject to immediate de-resolution. Win? Well, (chuckle) no one wins."

Nobody actually won it, the way he told it, except that they did.

"Tenacious little bugs! You're time is up. Prepare for de-resolution!"

"We. would have made a great team."

Tron did not expect them back.

"I don't understand. Why are you here?"

"The MCP is originally a data acquisition program. If you hadn't rescued me, it would have stolen all my data."

They went to the Dataspace together and gave it the names.

"No, it's the DTD's final security routine. This isn't a game. Stay focused!"

"I'm as good as new! All my functions have been restored!"

The same password that fixed him let something else in behind it.

"Finally. I have full access to the DTD. My takeover of the system is now complete. I might have anticipated such a simple password. What's this? An emergency destruct program for the town. Let's see how it performs."

"I'm disappointed in you, Program. Why do you insist on allying with these selfish Users?"

Tron did not deny it.

"Because I want to help them. Something written into my code commands me to do what is right."

"Any data you need from the DTD can be accessed through my User's terminal. I'll keep a dedicated access channel open for you."

"I knew you'd ask. It's a very important link between our worlds. It's how we stay connected."

Then he did something about the trouble instead of just explaining it.

"You. my friends. are the new password."

"I changed the password, so you won't have to worry about the MCP for a while."

What the MCP had actually been arming went up next, in the I/O Tower.

"The MCP's loading a hostile program into the I/O tower."

"I disengaged the security program. Now the lift to the I/O tower should work. Hurry! The lift's straght ahead out of this room!"

He explained what came next before doing it.

"More dangerous programs are sure to follow. To fight these guys. we should delete the enemy data to limit their movements."

"Really? And what command would that be?"

They deleted it together.

"I really owe you one. With all my functions up and running, I think I've got a chance of getting system control away from the MCP. Now I'd better get to work. It's what my User would want."

Then, with nobody asking him to, he said the thing he had plainly been sitting with.

"Well, actually. he's my enemy, too. Ansem took ENCOM's original system and customized it for his own use. I was part of the original system, and Ansem modified me, too. So that makes him my User. But Ansem is also the one who brought back the MCP. The Ansem I first knew wouldn't do that."

"I don't. understand it either."

"But I think Users, like you, are going to be the ones who will finally figure it out. You have the ability to take illogical routes and still arrive at the answers you seek."

He sent them home through the same terminal, and stayed behind himself.

"I'll stay here to make sure the MCP doesn't cause any more trouble. The User world is in trouble. You should hurry back through this terminal."

"You too! And give my best to the Users!"

Back in Ansem's study, what the DTD actually held had been left corrupted. Space Paranoids was quiet again, for now, and there was still the rest of the castle to deal with.

Who Ansem Actually Was

Everything the DTD was supposed to hold had come out of the corruption as one surviving picture. They showed it to him.

"Of course I do! And this is him! I'm positive!"

The face in it belonged to the real one.

"Well, the man in the picture is definitely the one who tried to take over Kingdom Hearts. the one you fellas defeated. But, what you actually fought was his Heartless. Ya see, he wasn't really Ansem. He just went around telling everybody that he was."

He added one thing more, unasked.

"I know I've met this fake Ansem before, and I've seen the leader of Organization XIII, too. Hmm, kinda felt like bein' around the same fella."

He did not take the thought any further than that, and nothing here does either.

Look Out

It came right out of that same conversation. An explosion tore the Bailey open, and Heartless and Nobodies came through it into the town. They had to fight their own way out of the castle's own halls just to reach what was left of it.

"Now I remember! Xehanort! Ansem's apprentice! The leader of Organization XIII is Xehanort's Nobody!"

"Looks like there's more Heartless now."

"Don't worry. There's already lotsa help here. We'll take care of this fight."

He meant for them to go find Riku and Kairi instead. They went to help anyway.

"You're comin' with us whether ya want to or not!"

At the Castle Gate somebody they already knew was waiting.

"Didn't we catch you messing around in the Underworld?"

"Hey, you guys are looking lively."

"You shouldn't judge anyone by appearance."

He kept talking even as they drew on him. "I told them they were sending the wrong guy."

"Oh, we do too have hearts! Don't be mad."

It didn't stop the fight.

"You rotten-!"

"Silence, traitor."

It ran long.

"No way?!"

Mickey caught up with them once it was over. "You sure have lotsa friends to help. So, I guess we better all pull together and finish this battle for good!"

"Yeah, we gotta go help our friends out first."

Something a Heartless fired knocked a boulder loose over his head.

"Look out!"

Goofy took it instead of him.

He did not answer when they tried to wake him. All three took that for the worst thing it could mean.

"They'll pay for this."

They forced their own way through the Ravine Trail after that, and did not do it alone: Cloud, Leon, Tifa and Yuffie were there too, fighting the same thing from their own side of it.

Partway through, he came to.

"Gawrsh, Yer Majesty, I get bumped on the head all the time."

The Answer's No

They fought their way into the Great Maw and saw him for the first time.

"What a shame. And here I thought we could be friends."

Mickey went after him alone. "I know nothing of any Kairi. As for Riku. Perhaps you should ask your king."

Then he was gone, and Mickey followed him through a Corridor of Darkness.

Before the other three could follow, a whole army of Heartless closed around them instead. They split up to get through it faster, and when it was over, only the three of them were still standing in it.

Somebody else came instead, meaning to tell them the truth.

"Way to fall right into their trap."

"C'mon, it's a set-up by Organization XIII. Xemnas is using you to destroy the Heartless. that's his big master plan."

"The guy you just saw. He's their leader. Got it memorized? X-E-M, N-A-S."

He kept going.

"Man, you're slow. Every Heartless slain with that Keyblade releases a captive heart. That is what the Organization is after."

"Bingo. The name's Axel. Got it memorized?"

"Look, about Kairi. I'm sorry."

He did not get to finish it.

"You're doing well."

"We'll ensure he receives the maximum punishment."

Then he turned to Sora. "If it's Kairi you're worried about, don't. We're taking very good care of her."

"Is she that important to you?"

"Show me how important."

Sora went down on his hands and knees for it. Nothing here records the words he used doing it, only that he did it, and that it did not work.

"So, you really do care for her. In that case. the answer's no."

"Are you angry? Do you hate me? Then take that rage, and direct it at the Heartless."

"Pitiful Heartless, mindlessly collecting hearts. And yet they know not the true power of what they hold. The rage of the Keyblade releases those hearts. They gather in darkness, masterless and free. until they weave together to make Kingdom Hearts. And when that time comes, we can truly, finally exist."

Leave, Now

She came in already sure of what she wanted, and said so to the one who had just been explaining his own certainty.

"What in the world do you think you're prattling on about?"

"Kingdom Hearts belongs to me! The heart of all kingdoms, the heart of all that lives. A dominion fit to be called Kingdom Hearts must be MY dominion!"

She meant to hold his Nobodies back with Heartless of her own. Sora wanted her to stop. "I do not take orders from you!"

"While I keep these creatures at bay, you devise a way to vanquish them. forever!"

Her own Heartless lost to his Nobodies anyway, and she went down still refusing to be sorry for any of it.

"Do not misunderstand me. I shall have my revenge on you yet."

With her down, he went right back to where he had left off.

"Now then. Where did we leave off?"

"The Heartless ally with whoever's the strongest."

"Yes, Sora! Extract more hearts!"

Sora would not do it.

Beaten as she was, she still got them out.

"Leave! Now!"

"Imbeciles! You can't be trusted to do anything!"

She opened a way into the dark and put them through it. The battle ended there.

Whatever it had cost her broke her own hold over the Heartless. The Organization took them over instead, and started sending them to worlds Pete had already been to.

In the dark she had just sent them into, they found something to follow: clues that would eventually lead them to Twilight Town.

"Maybe everything we've done. maybe it was for nothing. What am I supposed to do if I can't use the Keyblade?"

Goofy did not let him stay there long. Doing nothing, he told him, would only mean the Heartless kept taking worlds.

The Other Twilight Town

They went back to Twilight Town looking for a way into the enemy's own world, and found the other three already working on a theory of their own.

"This mansion's freaky. It feels like monsters are lurking in there."

"Word is, this mansion gets a lot of really strange visitors."

"We thought this place might be the gateway to some kind of alternate Twilight Town."

They had worked out more than that.

"A computer. Do you think it's connected to that other Twilight Town?"

"I bet you can get to the other Twilight Town through this mansion."

"And this is the trophy Seifer gave you. You left it behind, remember?"

They had a use for the pouch too, once they saw it again.

"I made that pouch myself, and I still have it. So there shouldn't be two of them here."

"Your Majesty? You got the pouch with the crystal from Riku, didn't you? And you promised not to tell, right?"

"The pouch is from the King. When he gave us munny for the train ride, he gave us the crystal too."

Nobodies found them at the mansion before they got any further. Mickey arrived in time to help fight them off.

Inside, Pence went to work on the same computer, though nothing told any of them it was the same one that had once run an entire summer for somebody else.

"This place is falling apart. There's supposed to be a computer in this raggedy mansion?"

"Let's head in! This place has to be hiding some kind of secret!"

It wanted a password.

"Hey, that's it! Ansem the Wise loved ice cream!"

"The password's the name of that ice cream! Make sure you get it right. It won't take an incorrect password!"

The other three stayed behind.

"We'll be here to hold down the fort."

"Leave this world to me! If you get in trouble, just come back. That device there should be able to bring you back."

They had a little more to say before the door actually opened.

"There should be a device like this in the other world, too. You should be able to come back by using it!"

"Say hi to Kairi!"

"I feel we'll see you again. Bring Kairi back with you, okay? We'll be here waiting for you!"

The computer opened a way through.

Got It Memorized

The computer opened onto the same simulated town Roxas had once lived in, though nothing here said any of them knew that.

From there a passage led toward the enemy's own world, and a horde of Nobodies closed around them in it before they were halfway through. Axel was already there.

"Don't stop moving, or the darkness will overtake you! Get goin'!"

The Dusks kept coming.

"Don't ask. Just do it!"

He fought the rest of them back himself, and told them plainly what none of them had had before now.

"I kidnapped Kairi, but she got away from me. After that, Saïx caught her. He's a member of Organization XIII. Saïx. Got it memorized? Now go save her!"

He was still fighting when the worst of the horde finally went down.

"I think I liked it better when they were on my side."

"Nah. I can handle these punks. Watch this!"

The attack he had promised took out the rest of the horde in one stroke. By the time it cleared, he had already begun to fade.

"Well, that's what happens when you put your whole being into an attack. You know what I mean? Not that Nobodies actually HAVE beings. right? Anyway, I digress. Go, find Kairi. Oh, almost forgot. Sorry for what I did to her."

He kept going anyway.

"Think I'll pass. My heart just wouldn't be in it, you know? Haven't got one."

Then he said what he had wanted all along.

"I wanted to see Roxas. He. was the only one I liked. He made me feel. like I had a heart. It's kind of. funny. You make me feel. the same. Kairi's in the castle dungeon. Now go."

He opened the portal to Organization XIII's own world. Then he was gone.

A Good Other

They came through into the enemy's own city.

"Axel, what we're you trying to do?"

No one answered him. He told them himself what he had learned instead. "Axel said Kairi's in the castle dungeon."

They fought their way through the Heartless the city was full of, toward a tower standing over the rest of it.

At its foot, armored Nobodies closed around Donald and Goofy. In the same moment, someone else pulled Sora somewhere they couldn't see.

A figure stood across from him, hooded, a blade in each hand.

"You can't be. Riku?"

"Riku? I defeated a Riku once."

He didn't let the question sit.

"Tell me. Tell me why he picked you!"

Sora had no answer for that, not in words. The figure looked at something around them Sora couldn't make out, and found his answer in it anyway.

"I see. That's why."

They fought again. Sora took both blades out of his hands before the end of it. "You make a good other."

He fell where he stood, satisfied rather than bitter.

His memory had already begun to move into Sora's own.

You Just Disappeared

What was left of Roxas reached out, and found Axel, in a place made to stand for the clock tower the two of them had once shared.

"Look who's finally awake."

They both knew why they were there.

"Or, maybe I have it wrong. Might be time to sleep. Soon, we won't be able to talk like this anymore."

"Does that mean. it's time for me to go back to where I belong?"

They talked about whether a Nobody might have a heart. "You know, I've been thinking about something Naminé said. Roxas, are you really sure that you don't have a heart? Is it possible that we ALL have one? You, me, her. Or is that just wishful thinking?"

Roxas tried to answer by looking inward. "I dunno. I can't. just look inside."

"But I figure, if there is something in there. inside us. then we'd feel it, wouldn't we? And if so. No, never mind."

Axel wouldn't let him leave it there. "Yeah, I guess not."

"C'mon, don't leave me hanging."

Roxas answered him instead. "Sora will find the answer we're looking for. I know he will. Because he's me."

"True enough."

He offered him a sea-salt ice cream, the same kind they had shared in the other Twilight Town, and they ate it there together.

"Man, I miss the old times. Still got it memorized? The day we met, when you got your new name, you and I sat right here and watched the sun set."

"Yeah. This place is home. Me, Hayner, Pence, Olette. We've shared a lot of adventures."

"You'll see them again. I know you will."

Something in the way Roxas ate answered a question Axel hadn't asked aloud.

"Yeah, I suppose he is. Man, this is some good ice cream, huh?"

"Yeah, you're right. Well, I should go. Sora's waiting for me."

They said the same words back to each other.

"Take care, okay?"

"Right back at ya, buddy."

Both of them faded from the place as they said it.

Sora came back to Memory's Skyscraper still turning over what the figure had told him.

Donald and Goofy insisted nothing had happened to them at all.

"Gawrsh, I dunno. You just disappeared. Then me and Donald had to fight some Nobodies."

They went further, dismissing him outright as an enemy who had probably been lying to confuse Sora, someone not to be trusted.

Sora was left with the gap between what he had just been through and what they insisted had happened to them, and he went on regardless.

A Hall of Empty Melodies

They made their way from the city toward the castle, and a path opened before them.

"This town sure is dark. This is where the Nobodies live, right? C'mon. Let's try to find a path to the castle Kairi's being held at."

"This sure is a strange world. The moon even looks like a heart. C'mon, now that we've opened the path to the castle, let's go rescue Kairi!"

They studied it from outside before going in.

"That castle's the enemy's headquarters. It's probably swarming with Nobodies. They're tough opponents, but they all have weaknesses. Try to find them out."

"Be careful! I think we got company!"

Whatever had come at them was dealt with by the time they went in.

"Golly, I feel darkness around us but we haven't seen any members of Organization XIII. But you know they always show up out of nowhere, so let's be ready."

"Wow! This place looked big from outside, but the inside looks even bigger! If this is going to be our last battle, let's show them what we're made of!"

They still had no way straight to her.

"It doesn't look like we can get to Kairi directly from here. I know you're in a hurry, but we need to take that path over there."

Naminé freed Kairi from her cell herself. "This way!"

Kairi showed her distrust. "Believe in yourself. C'mon, hurry!"

They did not get far before Saïx stopped them.

"Naminé. There you are. Kairi. I'm afraid leaving is not an option. I'll take you to see Sora."

"I do. More than anything. But not with you around."

A hooded figure came at Saïx, carrying Riku's own weapon reshaped into a Keyblade, and Saïx chose not to press the fight. "You can take it from here, Riku."

"You. Didn't Roxas take care of you?"

"If I had a heart, this would be where I die of laughter."

He was already withdrawing as he said it. Naminé's own part in this was finished, and she vanished too.

Kairi would not let him leave unrecognized. She pulled the hood back herself and found Ansem's own face underneath it, and took it in stride rather than flinching from it.

"Riku. You're really here."

Riku led her on toward Sora, but Heartless rose up between them before they arrived.

"This time. I'LL fight. You know Sora's completely hopeless without us! C'mon, Riku!"

He gave her a Keyblade of her own, and together they cleared the way.

Sora, Donald and Goofy reached the hall without Mickey, who had gone on ahead alone.

Saïx was waiting for them there.

"Well, you don't have to. But you can believe this. Organization XIII has no further use for you. Just look there. Our Kingdom Hearts. Thanks to you, we've collected countless hearts. Can you hear their euphoria? Now, all they need is one more helping from the Keyblade bearer!"

He set a swarm of Heartless on them that filled the hall.

"We gotta fight!"

In the middle of it, Maleficent and Pete slipped in to make their own use of the chaos. "Well, well. Will the intrusions never end?"

Kairi and the hooded figure arrived from the level above in the same stretch of time. Donald knew the face for Ansem's, and was afraid for her because of it.

"What's going on? Ansem was fighting alongside Kairi! Anyway, Kairi's under attack. We have got to help her!"

The castle's own sharpshooter cleared the rest of the swarm himself, a barrage of gunfire raining down from above, not to help them but to clear the field for himself.

"Have you been a good boy?"

He was mocking them, not fighting yet.

"Oh, it sounds like you haven't. Sora! Roxas!"

"You've really put Organization XIII in a pickle. I guess that must be why the Keyblade chose you. But MAN, did it pick a dud this time. You don't look like you're half the hero the others were."

Sora had heard enough of it. "Are you done rambling?"

"Rambling? As if! All I'm trying to tell you, traitor, is that your time is up!"

They fought, and Sora won.

He needled Sora once more instead of answering him, fading as he said it. "Wouldn't you like to know."

"Why did you call me Roxas?"

Nothing answered him.

The One They Called Roxas

They climbed to the level above and reached Kairi, where a hooded figure stood beside her. Sora asked him, before anything else, who he was.

"I'm no one. Just a castaway from the darkness."

Kairi and Sora embraced.

"This is real."

The figure tried to leave rather than be found this way. Kairi would not let him go, and said his name aloud to stop him. "Riku, don't go!"

With some concentration of his own, Sora saw Riku beneath the dark appearance, and the recognition overjoyed him to the point of tears.

"I looked for you! I looked everywhere for you!"

"Why didn't you let me know you were ok?"

Riku told Sora plainly.

"I didn't want you to find me."

He told Donald and Goofy, half fondly, that he had worried they would never catch on to the clues he had left them, the ice cream and the photograph.

"I was starting to worry you guys weren't ever gonna catch on. Sora never did pick the brightest friends."

Then he explained the face itself. He had fought Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, when Xehanort's Heartless invaded his own heart, and had won, but the power of darkness it took cost him his own form. "I told you. I didn't want to be found. Not like this. I couldn't. I fought with Ansem. With. Xehanort's Heartless. When it invaded my heart, and I won. But to use the power of darkness, I had to become Ansem myself."

He gave the tactical reason first.

"This battle isn't over. And until it is, I still need the power of darkness."

Then, separately, came the confession beneath it.

"In the past, I was overcome by the dark and betrayed you. Look what's become of me. I wasn't sure I wanted to see you. But Kairi insisted."

Donald and Goofy confirmed the clues between them.

"But it was him that was helpin' us, wasn't it?"

"So Riku was the one who's been helping us all along. You two must be best pals for him to change his look to help ya!"

"It's amazing Kairi and you recognized Riku. He looks just like Ansem. I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw him."

Kairi gave Sora back the substance of her own charm.

"You held onto that charm. That talisman of reunion really worked! I wanted to see you so badly, Sora. I missed you so much!"

Sora accepted him exactly as he was. "Then, let's finish it. You're still Riku, no matter what."

Riku turned the group toward what was left to do. "We must defeat Xemnas. He's the Organization's last survivor. C'mon."

The group, now five, continued upward through the castle.

"I wonder how far the King went? I know he's strong enough to take care of himself, but I'm still worried."

"I wonder what this castle was built for? It's pretty mysterious."

Kairi felt it too, and said so. "I don't like the feel of this place. It's almost like a graveyard. Do you know what it all means, Sora?"

Kairi walked with them now, rather than watching from behind, and complained lightly at having been left out of their earlier adventures. "So all of you were out adventuring while I was living a normal life. Why do I always get left out!? You're going to tell me about it later!"

"I wish I could fight like you and Riku. I know what you're thinking, but you guys shouldn't be the only ones getting hurt."

Riku warned them, in general terms, about members of the Organization who treated a fight as a game. "Some members of Organization XIII see fighting as a game. No matter what the rules are, you'll always have a chance to win. Don't miss that chance."

The five reached the area where Luxord waited, Sora walking ahead of the others. Luxord appeared between them and used his cards to remove Sora's friends from the area entirely, leaving Sora to face him alone.

"I'd rather we just skip the formalities."

Mid-fight, Luxord called him by another name, and Sora corrected him outright.

"That's SORA!"

Sora wore Luxord's own time down, cutting through the cards he raised to shield himself, until Luxord was beaten. He named Sora the same way once more as he faded.

"How could you. Roxas."

Separated from the fight, Donald complained he had never gotten the chance to help. "Oh, phooey! I was all ready and raring to go, but I didn't get a chance to fight! We really can't tell what's going to happen! Keep your guard up!"

Once the group was whole again, Riku told Sora he had grown stronger.

"Hmph. Not bad, Sora. You've grown stronger. You don't need my weapon, Soul Eater, or the power of the dark yet."

Saïx came to Xemnas somewhere apart from where Sora's own party climbed.

"Xemnas. Is Kingdom Hearts ready?"

"Very soon."

Saïx pressed him further, and waited on the answer.

"Then, I can end this charade?"

"Indeed."

Saïx closed the exchange with how long he had waited to hear it.

"How I've waited to hear that."

Riku sensed Saïx ahead of them, using something to boost his own power. "I can sense Saïx. He's using something to boost his power. If we can figure out his power source, we may be able to use it, too."

Kairi spotted the glowing entrance before any of them. "Look! Now this entrance is glowing. Could this have something to do with your enemies, Sora?"

Saïx was waiting for them there, and called Sora by the other name again, warning that a different name meant the same fate. "Only you could have made it this far in one piece. Roxas."

"Different name, same fate."

Donald corrected him. "Yeah! He's Sora!"

Sora had heard it too many times already to let it land as anything more than an irritant. "That's really getting old!"

The fight opened. Saïx's shockwave forced Kairi and Riku back, and Riku shielded her with his own body, leaving Sora, Donald, and Goofy to fight Saïx alone. They defeated him. In his own last moment he reached for Kingdom Hearts.

"Why. Kingdom Hearts. Where is my heart?"

Donald, afterward, was simply exhausted. "Gwah! I'm exhausted! Let's rest before we go."

It was Kairi, not Sora, who opened it.

"Roxas. I know that name. Once I spoke to him. He reminded me of you, Sora. Who is he?"

Riku answered Sora directly.

"Because, Sora. Roxas is your Nobody."

He explained the rest of it.

"Xemnas was the one who found Roxas. He could use the Keyblade because he was your Nobody. That's why Xemnas brought him into the Organization. But Roxas betrayed them. After that I fought him because I thought it would help you wake up. I lost, but the next time we met I made sure I was the stronger one."

Then he went further, and second-guessed the fight itself.

"Maybe I didn't need to fight him after all. I think he left the Organization because. He really wanted to meet you."

Sora's own reaction was quiet. "Roxas. I wish I could meet him too."

The Man They Called DiZ

Riku turned the group to keep moving, and told them what he knew of Mickey and of the man Sora still knew only as DiZ.

"It's the King and DiZ. I mean, Ansem the Wise. They must be higher up. We better hurry."

The name reached Sora for the first time fixed to the man ahead of them: not DiZ, but Ansem the Wise. Still talking, now of how he had first come to know Roxas, he returned to the older name, the one the man had gone by when the two of them met.

"I met Roxas because of a guy named DiZ. I didn't trust DiZ at first, but we both needed each other's help."

Mickey had gone on ahead of them alone, into a stretch of the castle Sora's own climb never touched, running the same stretch of time as the fights with Luxord and Saïx. He found Ansem the Wise under attack by a band of Nobodies and Heartless, and fought them off. Ansem the Wise let the mask he wore fall away, and greeted Mickey as an old friend.

"It's been too long, my friend."

Mickey asked him plainly why he had not come for help sooner. "Ansem the Wise. Why didn't you come to me before things got so bad?"

Ansem the Wise answered with the plain fact of who Xemnas was, and did not stop there.

"Xemnas, the Organization's Superior, is the Nobody of Xehanort, my foremost apprentice. The burden was mine to bear."

"I won't deny there was more. I was. Obsessed with thoughts of revenge. My apprentices stole everything precious to me. My research, and my pride."

He turned from himself to Riku, and told Mickey the good that had come of it.

"He must be with his friends by now. Riku was a great help to me. I found him wandering the darkness, after you and he lost track of each other."

Mickey filled in his own half of the story. "Gosh, we didn't lose each other exactly. Riku left. Well, 'cause Xehanort's Heartless was still inside his heart, troubling him. And he sure must've been suffering. But what I don't understand is why he looks like that now, when he's still Riku at heart."

He told Ansem the Wise the promise Riku had made him keep, too. "I guess it must have been after that when I saw Riku again. He said he wanted to help Sora. But he made me promise. Promise that Sora wouldn't ever find out about what happened to him while he was out in the darkness."

Ansem the Wise went back further, and gave him the whole account of Riku.

"I am to blame. When I met Riku the first time he still had the appearance of a boy. Probably because he had such a strong heart. I asked him to find a young man named Roxas from Organization XIII, and bring him to me. When I told him it would help Sora awaken from his slumber, Riku left without a word. He fought Roxas. And I can only surmise Riku lost that fight. Riku must have realized then: to fight in the realm of darkness, he would have to immerse himself in that same darkness. And when he did. You saw what became of him. When Riku brought Roxas back to me, he was introducing himself. As Ansem. If that was what it took to awaken his friend, he was ready to live in darkness. Riku was the victim of my revenge. Oh, how my heart ached. I could only laugh to hide my shame."

He said the time had come to make it right.

"My friend, the time has come. I must make amends to these young people."

"Sora and Riku are together. We have no part to play here."

He added one more thing about the shape Riku wore. "Riku chose that form so he could use the power of darkness. It won't be easy."

Mickey asked about the device Ansem the Wise carried.

"What's this gadget for?"

Ansem the Wise told him what it was.

"It's a device to reclaim Kingdom Hearts and encode it as data."

He admitted, more than once, that he did not know what the attempt would cost him.

"I do not claim to know the outcome of this venture, either. After all. Hearts are unpredictable."

"I'm a fool. I've spent years studying the workings of the heart. Yet it seems I still haven't learned a thing!"

He went further, and reflected on what his own research had gotten wrong.

"The process of encoding hearts is incalculable. The inhabitants of my Twilight Town were data created from real hearts. I was convinced that they would think and behave the way I had envisioned. But I couldn't have been more wrong. A heart is so much more than any system. I saw it when Roxas and Kairi crossed paths. I knew. But I was too stubborn to accept it. It's always the same. I try to wrap my mind around things my heart already knows, only to fail. While I was trying to bring Sora back, I had so many plans in store. But once Sora was an acting force, they fell apart. All my research amounted to nothing, compared with that one boy's heart."

The attempt began, and failed. Kingdom Hearts proved too great for the machine to hold, and it started to overload. Ansem the Wise ordered Mickey to run.

"All the more proof that hearts cannot be contained by data. Run, my friend! It's going to self-destruct, and anything could happen!"

As the machine went critical, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy reached Mickey and Ansem the Wise, and Xemnas arrived at almost the same moment. The whole party tried to stop what Ansem the Wise was doing.

"My heart is telling me what I must do. Please allow me to do what it says!"

He told Sora that what happened next was his to finish, and turned, in the same breath, to an apology he did not know would be heard.

"Sora, the rest is up to you. And Roxas. I doubt you can hear me. But. I am sorry."

Xemnas addressed him by the name he had just reclaimed. "I was wondering who would dare interfere with my Kingdom Hearts. And look. Here you all are. How convenient for me. Ansem the Wise. You look pathetic."

He laid the blame for everything at Ansem the Wise's own feet.

"Students do take after their teachers. Only a fool would be your apprentice. After all, none of this would have happened without you. YOU are the source of all Heartless. It was your research that inspired me to go further than you ever dared."

Ansem the Wise did not deny it.

"Have your laugh. I deserve as much for failing to see you for the fool you are."

Xemnas answered that he was only carrying the work forward. "All that and more. I'm carrying on what you yourself began, and I'm creating a brand new world, one heart at a time. I thought you'd praise me, but all you ever do is hold me back. I understand, though. Unlike me, you have a heart. And you're powerless to control it. Consumed, by the jealousy you feel toward the student who surpassed you."

Ansem the Wise admitted his own share of it, and turned the question back on him.

"I admit. My disregard brought chaos to more worlds than one. But what were YOU seeking? You erased me from the world, only to take my name and continue research better left forgotten. Is this the answer you've been looking for?"

He did not stop there. He named Xemnas by the name underneath the name. "Xehanort. Foolish apprentice of a foolish man. You have surpassed nothing. Only proved how little we both know. We may profess to know the heart, but its essence is beyond our reach. We're both ignorant. As oblivious as when we began. I'm afraid that any world you try to create. Any world of yours. Would be an empire of ignorance. That is why you and your creation are destined to fall!"

Ansem the Wise turned to the two men closest to him. "We've said enough! Riku, you know what to do! King Mickey, my friend, forgive me! Farewell!"

Still bearing the face of Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, Riku took hold of Mickey's hand.

"His heart's decided. We can't change that."

Then the machine exploded. The blast purified Riku of the presence of Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, and restored him to his own true form. It released several hundred Heartless down into the city below, where Nobodies also came to try to catch the falling hearts. Mickey saw Riku standing there whole again, and thought of the warning Ansem the Wise had given him.

"Ansem did say 'anything could happen'."

Riku stood whole again, but the remorse the ordeal had put in him had not lifted with the rest of it. Sora spoke to him.

"Riku. C'mon, man. Why do you have to do so much on your own? You got friends, like us!"

The two of them went on together through what remained of the castle.

Maleficent and Pete had been inside the castle since infiltrating it earlier, apart from the party's own knowledge, and they stepped in now as the released Heartless threatened to overrun everyone. Maleficent told the party to go on, and left the creatures to herself and Pete.

"Be gone from here! Leave these creatures to us!"

Mickey explained to the others why they let it stand. "They're doing what their hearts command. We can't interfere."

Maleficent gave Pete a choice of his own. "I will be sending them after Xemnas. Or, perhaps, you would rather fight them yourself?"

Pete doubted they could take on so many.

"But there's no way we can take 'em all!"

Maleficent answered his doubt with a dismissal of her own. "Off with you then!"

Pete greeted Mickey with his usual disrespect, then turned to the fight itself with enthusiasm. "Well, if it ain't the boat-boy King."

"Now lookie here. Opportunities like this don't come along every day, ya know. Bring 'em on!"

Maleficent closed the exchange with a warning of her own. "Sora! 'Your Majesty'! Do not forget. When I've destroyed them all, this castle shall be mine!"

The Promise Kept

With the path ahead of them clear, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey went on together and reached Xemnas at the Altar of Naught. He mourned the ruin of his own attempt to reclaim Kingdom Hearts, vowed to start over, and called on his warriors to bring him more hearts.

"Ohh. My Kingdom Hearts. Ruined. Now I'll have to start all over again. Warriors of the Keyblade! Go forth, and bring me more hearts!"

Xemnas turned from his own ruin to the party gathered before him, and put a question to all of them at once. "Denizens of light, answer this: Why do you hate the darkness?"

He pressed further, setting their own choice of the light against what he called the Nobodies' own exile from both light and dark alike.

"Then allow me another question. You accept darkness, yet choose to live in the light. So why is it that you loathe us who teeter on the edge of nothing? We who were turned away by both light and dark. Never given a choice?"

Mickey answered him, unprompted by any question meant for him alone. They did not hate the darkness, only found it frightening, since the world was made of light and darkness together, in equal share.

"Aw, we don't hate it. It's just kinda. Scary. But the world's made of light AND darkness. You can't have one without the other, 'cause darkness is half of everything. Sorta makes ya wonder why we are scared of the dark."

Riku answered too, though no source preserves his own words; only Xemnas's reply survives.

"That may be. However, what other choice might we have had?"

Mickey cut in sharply, mid-speech. "Xemnas! No!"

Donald answered Xemnas's own goading in kind.

"You'll never win!"

Xemnas closed the exchange and turned toward the fight to come, declaring he could feel no sorrow, whatever became of the worlds, and whatever the party thought, felt, or were.

"Very good. You don't miss a thing. I can not feel. Sorrow. No matter what misery befalls the worlds. No matter what you think, what you feel, or how you exist."

Sora answered him plainly. "Just give it a rest! You're Nobodies! You don't even exist! You're not sad about anything!"

Riku, addressing Xemnas directly for the first time in the exchange, gave what may have been his own answer to the question no source had preserved from him a moment before.

"It's because of who's lurking inside it."

Xemnas was not finished with words. He drew Sora alone into a phantom battleground called Memory's Contortion, a place that echoed Riku's own earlier fight with Roxas.

With Sora gone from view, Kairi called out for him.

"Sora! Where are you?"

Riku demanded he answer. "Sora, answer me!"

Sora fended Xemnas off, who conceded upon defeat that the fight had been no illusion.

"So, it wasn't a fallacy."

Sora was returned to the Altar of Naught, where Mickey greeted him.

"Gosh, you all did great!"

Xemnas was not finished even then. Sora told him he could not hide from them.

"Xemnas, you can't hide from us!"

Xemnas retreated into what remained of Kingdom Hearts, and addressed it directly, appealing for the power to be made complete. "Hear me, Kingdom Hearts! It seems we must begin anew. Ah, but know this: I will give to you as many hearts as it takes. Mark my words! You can no more be complete without me than I without you. Heed me, Kingdom Hearts! Lend me your power, so that we may be complete! The power to erase the fools that hinder us."

He went on, setting his own understanding of hearts against what he named as Ansem's own mistaken teaching. "Hearts quivering with hatred. Hearts burning with rage. Hearts scarred by envy. That fool Ansem said the heart's true nature was beyond his understanding. But it's not beyond mine! Hearts are the source of all power!"

The worlds themselves answered him. A door appeared. Mickey marked the moment. "The worlds gave us this doorway. They want us to be the guardians of their destiny!"

Goofy marked it too. "What's goin' on?"

Riku laid out the stakes plainly: there would be no turning back once they went through, only victory or oblivion, and he remembered standing on the far side of a door from Sora once before, now standing beside him instead.

"Once we go through, there's no turning back. It's victory. Or oblivion. So, Sora. Are you ready? Do you remember before? We stood facing each other on opposite sides of that door. Now we stand side-by-side. Let's go home together this time."

The party followed Xemnas through the door. He mocked their own loyalty to their hearts as they went. "So, it seems your hearts have led you to obliteration. Perhaps it doesn't pay to be too loyal to one's heart. I will have to be sure and remember that."

Sora declared it would end there. "Get ready, Xemnas. It all ends here!"

The party infiltrated the war-machine Xemnas had made of himself, the fight carried partly inside its hull and partly outside it, against the dragon directly. Partway through, Xemnas's own attacks cut Kairi and Mickey off from the rest of the party.

Sora insisted the four of them left could still finish it. "We can take him on our own!"

Xemnas took up Master Xehanort's own Keyblade Armor and the weapons of his fallen Organization, and turned on Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Riku directly, expelling Sora and Riku bodily from the ship's own cockpit.

"Hearts are power."

The fight carried on outside, against the dragon in the open air, and Xemnas turned his own attacks into taunts as he fought. "Sora. Are you certain you can trust Riku?"

"Riku. Are you sure you're not jealous of Sora?"

"Sora. Riku. There is falsehood within your hearts. Do you dare deny it?"

Defeated a second time, he protested that he needed more, and began to fade.

"I need. More rage. I need more. Hearts."

He seemed to fade into darkness, and the party found themselves once more at the Altar of Naught. Riku spoke of what the darkness had already done to him.

"I had given in to the darkness."

Sora pressed Xemnas even in his own retreat, about what a heart held beyond anger and hate.

"Xemnas, there's more to a heart than just anger and hate. It's full of all kinds of feelings. Don't you remember?"

Xemnas answered only that he did not. "Unfortunately. I don't."

Before they went on, Sora asked one thing more. "You're coming back with us, right?"

The party believed itself still bound for one shared last battle, not yet knowing it would be Sora and Riku's own to finish alone. Donald warned they might yet be separated, and urged pressing on regardless.

"Don't let your guard down. We may wind up getting separated at any time. Come on, let's save the world again!"

Goofy called the door Kingdom Hearts itself had opened a chance not to be missed, a hard fight, but a winnable one. "The Kingdom Hearts opened the door to Xemnas. We can't let this chance slip by. It's going to be a tough fight, but we can do it!"

Mickey guessed Xemnas had only grown stronger still, and said the battle had begun with Ansem's own research and ought to be finished for his sake.

"Xemnas has probably grown even stronger, and is waiting for us. This battle began with Ansem's research. Let's finish it for him!"

Kairi refused outright to be left behind. "I'm tired of waiting, so don't tell me to stay behind! From now on, wherever one of us goes, the other follows, got it?"

Naminé appeared again, and opened a corridor of darkness that led toward Destiny Islands. Riku, purified now of Ansem's own darkness, could no longer open one himself.

Roxas came forward out of Sora, and he and Naminé stood together before Sora and Kairi. She spoke first.

"Sure. See? We meet again, like we promised."

Roxas spoke next, of his own doubt, that after so long apart the two of them might not know each other anymore. "You said we'd meet again, but when we did, we might not recognize each other."

He answered his own doubt himself.

"I think I understand. I see myself the way you remember me. And you see yourself the way I remember you."

He set that against what Sora and Kairi alone, of the four of them, had been given.

"Yeah, but you and I didn't. We got to meet our original selves."

Asked when they would meet again, he answered simply.

"Right. Anytime Sora and Kairi are together."

Kairi thanked Naminé for it. "Thank you, Naminé."

And in the same breath, told Sora what she meant to do with it. "We'll be together every day. Right, Sora?"

Roxas accepted what came next, and joined with Sora.

"Look sharp!"

Naminé, too, wondered how the two of them had survived so long inside Sora and Kairi at all.

"I always thought Nobodies were doomed to fade back into darkness."

Then she let herself see the plain gladness in it.

"So, we can be together again!"

She merged into Kairi, as Roxas had already merged into Sora. Once both were gone, Riku offered what reassurance he could.

"Don't worry. You're all still you."

One by one, the others went on ahead through the corridor Naminé had opened. Kairi stood by the portal, and spoke before she went through it herself.

"Hey, let's go home!"

Mickey admitted he could not be certain what waited for them beyond the corridor, but pressed the others to hurry through all the same. "Well, I'm not sure. But we'd better hurry and get through."

Goofy called back not to be left behind. "Wait for me!"

Donald's own voice carried after him as he went. "C'mon!"

Before Sora and Riku could follow them, Xemnas's construct, having escaped the World of Nothing, attacked once more, and cut the two of them off from everyone else. Sora and Riku alone were left to face what remained of him.

No More Eternal

With the rest of the party already carried through Naminé's corridor and the portal closed behind them, Sora and Riku destroyed Xemnas's construct and gave chase, following him back into his own pocket dimension for a third and final battle.

Somewhere in that chase, alone together, Sora spoke of what he had not yet managed to say. "Hey, Riku? I wanted to thank Naminé, but. I couldn't bring myself to say it, not until everything was back to the way it was before."

Riku answered him. "Don't worry, we'll make that happen. Once this is over, you can thank her all you want."

Once the construct was gone, Sora and Riku found themselves inside the World of Nothing, a nearly empty void of shifting greys and whites, where Xemnas would be fought for the last time.

Xemnas opened the fight with a boast. "Anger and Hate are supreme."

He mounted his final assault, drawing on his full power over light, darkness, and nothingness, and very nearly ended the fight there with a massed volley of Ethereal Blades.

Pushed back but not beaten, Xemnas refused to yield, and turned to the same claim of permanence the Organization had made from the start. "Heroes from the realm of light. I will not allow it to end this way. Not yet. If light and darkness are eternal, then surely we nothings must be the same. Eternal!"

Riku took up the claim, to turn it back on him. "You're right, light and darkness are eternal. Nothing probably goes on forever, too. But guess what, Xemnas?"

Sora finished it. "That doesn't mean YOU'RE eternal!"

Xemnas pressed on for one more round. "No more eternal than that radiance of yours."

Near the end of the fight, Sora was left open to a blow meant to finish him. Riku took it in his place, and gave Sora the opening to beat Xemnas into submission.

Together, Riku and Sora fired a beam of light from Sora's Keyblade, and it finished Xemnas for good.

"Curses. Keyblade."

Riku answered him once more. "I wouldn't be too sure of that."

Defeated, Xemnas had left one last order behind him: an onslaught of Dusks, sent to finish what he could not, and eliminate the Keyblade wielders. Sora and Riku destroyed them.

Sora and Riku escaped the realm and arrived at the Dark Margin: a dark beach with blue rocks and huge arches stretching above and across the sea, and a cold light resembling a sun shining far off, at the border between the Realm of Darkness and the Realm Between.

Closer Than You Think

Sora and Riku came to rest on the Dark Margin's own shore, both of them spent, Riku exhausted and injured besides.

Riku spoke first, and what he said was a small, bitter joke. "You know. I always figured I was better at stuff than you."

It did not stay a joke. Looking at the place they had washed up in, he wondered aloud whether this, nothing, was simply what the world really was underneath everything, and whether he ought to stop fighting it.

"If this is what the world really is. Just this, then maybe I should fade back into darkness."

"If the world is made of light and darkness. We'll be the darkness."

Sora would not let him. "Aw, c'mon, Riku. You've been hanging around darkness for too long. You gotta try and think positive."

Pushed to it, Riku admitted the truth underneath the joke. "What I said back there, about thinking I was better at stuff than you. To tell you the truth, Sora. I was jealous of you."

Something washed up beside them: a bottle, and inside it, a letter. Riku took it, read enough to see it was not his, and passed it to Sora.

"Sora? I think it's for you."

Sora read it aloud. "Thinking of you, wherever you are. We pray for our sorrows to end, and hope that our hearts will blend. Now I will step forward to realize this wish. And who knows: starting a new journey may not be so hard, or maybe it has already begun. There are many worlds, but they share the same sky, one sky, one destiny."

Reading it, Sora noticed a light where there had been none. "Hey, Riku. What's that light?"

Sora got up and offered Riku a hand. They walked into the light together, and fell, and the fall ended in open water, the sky overhead the one they had grown up under.

Kairi was already there, and called out before Sora even reached the shore. He swam for her, and the two of them came together the way the letter itself had promised they eventually would.

"You're home."

Sora returned what he had carried the whole way: her charm, still on its string, kept exactly as promised. "You held onto that charm. That talisman of reunion really worked! I wanted to see you so badly, Sora. I missed you so much!"

Around them, Donald and Goofy closed in on Sora. Riku, separately, was met by Mickey.

Later, once the noise of arrival had settled, Sora and Riku talked once more, this time without anything chasing them. Sora asked what he still did not quite have words for otherwise.

"Hey Riku, what do you think it was, the door to the light?"

Riku did not answer with an explanation. He tapped Sora's own chest instead.

"This."

Sora pressed a hand to his own chest, and looked up. "This?"

"Yeah. It's always closer than you think."

Somewhere in the same stretch of homecoming, a second letter turned up, this one not Kairi's. Sora looked at it, and asked the only question the record gave him to ask.

"From the king?"

Sometime after, in a moment set apart from everything before it, Sora went back to the Secret Place and found a new drawing on the wall: Kairi, giving him a paopu fruit.