Kingdom Hearts II

The Town That Wasn't

Riku brought the boy back over his shoulder, and the man in the red bandages looked him over as if he were a crate that had arrived damaged. Riku had something to say about him before he let go. "DiZ. He could feel Sora." DiZ did not answer, and Riku pressed it. "If he had met Sora, things might have been different."

DiZ had no patience for that. "Oh, he told you how he 'felt,' did he? Ridiculous. A Nobody cannot feel anything."

He had a machine in the basement of an old house, and a town inside the machine, and he meant to put the boy in it. Riku, in the shape he now wore, asked him the practical question. "Will it work?" DiZ thought it would. "If we can maintain the simulated town until Naminé finishes chaining together Sora's memories." Riku asked the other question. "What will happen to Roxas?"

DiZ explained it as if to a slow student. "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." Riku looked down at the boy. "Poor thing." DiZ did not agree. "It's the fate of a Nobody."

Roxas woke in his own bed in Twilight Town, in the last week of the summer holidays, from a dream about a boy he had never met. In the dream there had been an island, and a girl who told the boy, "Sora, don't ever change." There had been a duck who objected to something. "Hey! What do you mean 'junior heroes'?" And a tall dog-faced knight who held out his hand. "Hey, why don't you come with us? We can go to other worlds on our vessel." Roxas lay looking at the ceiling. "Another dream about him."

He had three friends, and they met every day in the same place, a den behind the back alley they called the usual spot. Hayner was angry that morning, and it took him a while to get to why. Things had been stolen around town, and Seifer's gang were telling everyone it was them. "I mean, it's true that stuff's been stolen around town. And we've got a score to settle with Seifer and everything. So if he wants to think we did it, I can't really blame him." Olette was angrier than he was. "Seifer's gone too far this time."

Roxas had an idea. "Uh, well. We could find the real thieves. That would set the record straight." Pence liked it at once. "Hey that sounds fun!" Roxas put it the way Hayner would want it put. "First, we gotta clear our names. Once we find the real culprits, everyone will get off our backs."

What they found, going round the town asking, was that the things taken had all been photographs, and that none of them could say the word for what had been taken, however hard they tried. Then Olette saw a white shape slipping round a corner. "The thief!" It was not a person. It moved like something with no bones in it, and it came at them, and Roxas had nothing in his hands but a practice bat.

He was losing. "It's no use." Then there was something else in his hand, heavy and bright and shaped like a key the length of his arm, and he stared at it. "What? What. what is this thing?" He did not have time to wonder. When the creatures were gone, so was the key.

The pictures turned up where the thief had dropped them, and none of them could explain it. Roxas told the others the one thing he knew. "Not much to say. The pictures were just lying there." One of them was of him and the man who ran the shop, and he told them how it had come to be taken. "I was his first customer after he took over the shop. So we took a picture together." Olette worked out the rest. "Ohh. So that's why everyone thought it was us." Hayner thought the whole business was ridiculous. "C'mon, get serious. Why would anyone wanna steal a bonehead like Roxas?"

That night he dreamed about the key again. "A key. blade?" And when he woke, he said it to the room. "A Keyblade. What was that about?"

In the basement of the house on the hill, DiZ watched him on a screen. "His heart is returning. Doubtless he'll awaken very soon." Riku was watching the white creatures. "But. why would the Nobodies steal photographs?" DiZ knew. "Organization miscreants. They've found us." And he said what the creatures could not tell apart. "Both are nothing but data to them. The fools could never tell the difference. We are running out of time. Naminé must make haste."

Hayner's plan for the second day was the beach. They were going to earn the train fare by doing odd jobs around town. Roxas wrote it down, the way he wrote down most things. "Hayner's plan was for everyone to earn munny for the beach by doing odd jobs." He had to remind Hayner of the obstacle. "Maybe you forgot, but we're broke." By the evening they had enough, or nearly, and Olette counted it up for them. "Nice work, everyone. Added to what we started with, we now have."

Somewhere in those days the town stopped for him. His friends stood frozen in the middle of a word, and nothing moved but Roxas, and a man in a black coat with his hood up walked past him and asked him a question he could not answer. "Can you feel Sora?" Then everything was moving again, and the man was gone, and Roxas was standing there saying it to himself. "Can you feel Sora?"

Pence and Olette, when they could move again, did not know anything had happened. Olette asked if he wanted to come along. "Hey, you wanna come with us?" Pence explained where they were going as if he were being taken prisoner. "Olette dragged me along to go shopping."

And somewhere in those days a girl in white came to him, in a room where the town had stopped again, and looked at him as though she had been waiting to. "Hello, Roxas." He started to ask who she was, and she stopped him. "I wanted to meet you at least once." Then she was gone.

In the house on the hill, the beach was the trouble. Riku did not see why. "Is it really that hard to make a beach?" DiZ did not want one. "We'd be giving the enemy another entry point." Riku had taken the munny the four of them had saved, and brought the pouch out of the town with him, and DiZ was amused. "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."

On the third day Hayner left a note at the usual spot telling everyone to meet at the station, and Roxas went. "When I got back to the usual spot, I found a note from Hayner telling us all to meet at the station. It looked like he was going to try that beach trip today." But at the station the pouch was gone. He had fallen, earlier, bumping into someone, and he knew at once who it had been. "Remember when I fell? I had the money before that. I bet that guy took it!" His friends looked at him oddly. There had been nobody. "But he. There wasn't. Really? There wasn't anyone. there?"

The white creatures came for him again that day, a crowd of them this time, and a girl's voice came from nowhere. "Roxas! Use the Keyblade!" He wrote it down that night as best he could. "I was surrounded by monsters when I heard the girl's voice telling me to use the Keyblade. That's when I found myself in an unfamiliar place, bathed in light."

The place bathed in light was a round floor of coloured glass in the dark, the kind Sora had once stood on, and something enormous came up out of it. He beat it. A chest appeared, and after the chest a door, and then he was somewhere white, and the girl was there, and so was the man in the black coat.

Roxas knew him. "Hey! You're that pickpocket!" The girl had a question for Roxas, and she asked it urgently. "Roxas. Do you remember your true name?" The man stopped her. Riku said it without raising his voice. "Say no more, Naminé." She tried anyway. "But if no one tells him, Roxas will." Riku was sure. "It's best he doesn't know the truth."

When Roxas came to himself, he was with his friends again, and the day had gone, and so had the beach. Hayner was hurt about something, and Roxas tried to laugh it off, and made it worse. "N-no. It's not like that. Oh yeah! How was the beach? Wasn't that today?" Then, because he could see that Hayner was not laughing: "Hey. how 'bout we go tomorrow? We could get those pretzels and."

Hayner said something that night about the four of them that Roxas remembered afterwards. "Well, I doubt we can be together forever. But isn't that what growing up's all about? What's important isn't how often we see each other, but how often we think about each other. Right?" Pence had asked it first. "Do you guys think we'll always be together like this?"

The Struggle

He woke on the fourth day with a word left over from a dream about the island. "Right. 'Promise'. What a mess." Hayner was still sore about the day before, and Roxas went and found him before anything else. "Hey. Sorry about yesterday." Hayner asked what was going on with him. "I've got a lot on my mind."

He wrote it down as it was. "Hayner and I are on speaking terms, at least, but what happened yesterday has kind of soured things between us. Still, the tournament is about to begin." The tournament was the Struggle, the town's summer contest with foam bats in the sandlot, and Hayner had a plan for it that was really about the beach. "You and I have to make the finals! That way, no matter who wins, the four of us split the prize!"

They met in the first round anyway. Hayner looked at him across the sand. "Don't hold back." And then, grinning: "Ready, Roxas?" Roxas won. He went and sat with him afterwards. "I had a lot of fun fighting you." Hayner said nothing, so Roxas tried again. "Hey, let's find a way to cheer you up."

Something was wrong with his next opponent. Vivi was the smallest boy in Seifer's gang, and he fought like something else wearing him. Even Seifer saw it. "That's not Vivi." But he wanted the match fought. "Thrash 'im." Roxas did, and Vivi sat up afterwards with no idea where he was. "Huh?" He looked round at the crowd. "How did I get here?" Roxas wrote it down. "I beat Hayner and advanced to the next round, but something about my opponent Vivi seemed a little off."

Before the final the town stopped again, the crowd frozen in the middle of cheering, and a tall man in a black coat walked out onto the sand with his hood down. His hair was red and stood up in spikes, and he was pleased to see him. "Roxas. All right. Fight fight fight." Roxas had never seen him before. "Wait a sec, tell me what's going on!" The man stopped smiling. "You really don't remember? It's me. You know, Axel."

Roxas did not. Axel looked at him as if something were missing from a room he knew well. "Talk about blank with a capital 'B.' Man oh man, even the Dusks aren't gonna crack this one." Roxas shouted at him. "What's going ON!?" Axel decided. "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."

He said Roxas's name and number as if calling a roll. "Number 13. Roxas. The Keyblade's chosen one." Roxas lifted the bright key that had come to his hand again. "Okay, fine! You asked for it!"

They had barely started when a man in red bandages appeared on the edge of the sandlot, as flat and bright as a picture, and spoke over both of them. "Roxas, this man speaks nonsense!" Axel knew who that had to be. "So it was you." And to Roxas, almost pleading: "Roxas, don't let him deceive you!"

They were both shouting his name, and Roxas put his hands over his ears and shouted the only names he was sure of. "Hayner. Pence. Olette. Hayner! Pence! Olette!" Then the town was moving again, and Axel was gone, and the crowd was cheering, and Olette was calling him. "Roxas! It's starting!"

Pence thought he looked strange. "Roxas, focus!" He faced Seifer in the final and won that too, and then the champion. He wrote it down the only way it made sense. "Despite being tied up in some bizarre goings-on, I somehow managed to win the tournament. Now I get to face the champion!"

In the castle at the other end of Axel's corridor, he had been given his orders that same day, and he had argued. "No way! It's too soon! You can't seriously get rid of him." Xaldin, a big man with long dark dreadlocks, had no time for it. "It's an order. Why do you hesitate? You, who has been ruthless towards those who turned their backs on the Organization."

Axel tried again. "But it's not like that! He didn't betray us. He CAN'T come back!" Xaldin told him what would happen if Roxas did not. "If he doesn't return, you know what you must do. Or you will face the consequences." Axel looked at the Superior, and saw what he was being shown. "So you'll turn me into a Dusk." And he gave in. "All right. I'll do it! If that's what you want."

After the tournament, at the station, Hayner said the thing he had been working round to. "We can't be together forever. so we'd better make the time we do have something to remember." Then they went up the station tower to watch the sunset, and Olette had brought something. "I've got a present, too. for all of us." It was sea-salt ice cream. It was nearly the end of the holidays, and he did not want to hear about it. "Only three days left of summer vacation." And before anyone could bring it up: "So don't even mention that assignment!"

Roxas fell. He had been reaching for something, and the tower was not there, and as he fell he reached out with the part of him that was not his hands, towards the girl in white, and found somebody else. "Naminé? Naminé? What's happening to me?" A girl was looking at him, a girl with red hair on a beach he had seen in his dreams. "Who are you? And that's not my name. I'm Kairi."

He knew her. "Kairi. I know you. You're that girl he likes." She wanted to know who he meant. "Okay, Roxas, but can you tell me HIS name?" He did not get to answer. Another voice answered through him, amused and a little hurt that she had forgotten, and told her it started with an S.

On the islands Kairi had been trying to remember a boy for a year. She had told Selphie so, sitting on the pier. "The one who was with Riku and me all the time, we played together on that island. His voice always used to be there. but now it's gone. I can't think of his face, or his name. I feel awful about it. So I told myself, I'm not going to the island until I remember everything about him." The other one she could still name. "He's far away. But I know we'll see him again."

She had written a letter and meant to send it. "A letter. I wrote it yesterday, to the boy I can't remember. I said that no matter where he is. I'll find him. One day. And when I stopped writing, I remembered we made a promise, something important. This letter is where it starts. I know it." She put it in a bottle and let the sea have it, and the name came back to her before the bottle was out of sight. "He will. Starts with an 'S'. Right, Sora?"

In the basement DiZ was furious, and it was not with Roxas. "No. Naminé hijacked the data herself. Look what she's done now. She's totally beyond my control!" Then he decided it did not matter. "It doesn't matter. As long as Naminé accomplishes her goal. we needn't worry about what befalls Roxas."

He understood what the fall had done. "Naminé's encounter with Roxas put his heart in contact with Kairi's. And that, in turn, affected Sora. You see?" Riku had been wondering about something else. "Was that Naminé made of data?" DiZ told him what she was. "She wasn't born like other Nobodies. She can interfere with the hearts and memories of Sora and those aligned with him." Riku said it quietly. "Naminé. She's a wonder."

DiZ had a question of his own for Riku, and he put it as a trade. "I could tell you. But first, perhaps you could tell me your true name." Riku gave him the only name he was using. "It's Ansem." DiZ made a little bow of it. "It's an honor, Ansem!"

The Seventh Wonder

He woke on the fifth day not sure what had happened. "I'm dreaming. But which parts. were the dream?" He sat up. "Yesterday. I fell off the station tower, didn't I?" Nobody at the usual spot seemed to think so. There were three days of holiday left and a school assignment none of them had started, and they decided to do it on the town's seven wonders.

Roxas had a different idea for it. "Maybe we could study the stuff that's happening to me. You know, the dreams, and the guys in white." The others did not take him up on it. Pence had a list of rumours, and the first was a flight of stone steps at Sunset Station. "There's this strange rumor going around. Wanna hear it? You know the stone steps at Sunset Station? We use 'em all the time, without even thinking about it." The weird part, he said, was that the steps counted differently going up and coming down.

Roxas found them first. "Aren't these the steps you talked about? The ones that count different going up and down?" They counted the same. So did the next wonder, and the next. He wrote it down. "There wasn't much to the mysterious stone steps after all, so we started investigating the rest of the seven wonders in the terrace." By the end of it he had an opinion. "You know. that last wonder wasn't exactly wonderful."

At Sunset Hill, Seifer's gang were already sitting on the wall, and Seifer told them why, as if it were obvious. "Waiting for the ghost train!" He looked at Roxas a long time. "Why does looking at you always tick me off?" Roxas shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe it's destiny." Seifer did not care for that. "Destiny. In that case, let's be friends. I don't feel like cooperating with destiny."

Pence told the rumour while they waited. "If the rumors are true, it'll be here any minute. For they say the train is empty. No driver, no conductor, no passengers. NO RETURN." And then Roxas saw it, a train on the line below with no one in it. "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!"

At the station the train was an ordinary train, full of ordinary people. Roxas kept at it. "A train came from the beach. There was no driver, right? Right!?" Nobody else had seen it. Olette made the best of the assignment. "We can still make it sound good if we write about all the work we did." Roxas would not let it go. "But what about the last one, the seventh wonder?" Pence knew that one too. "Well, they say there's a girl who appears at the second floor window even though no one's lived here for years."

In the basement, Riku had seen the train too, and he asked DiZ about it. "Why did you show him the train?" DiZ did not answer that, and Riku looked at him with something like surprise. "Hmph. that's almost kind of you."

The others would not come. He wrote it down afterwards. "My friends didn't want any part of it, so I went to check out the last of the seven wonders, the haunted mansion, alone." It was an old house on a hill outside the town, behind a gate that was chained shut, and he stood in front of it looking up at the second-floor window.

Then he was inside, in a white room with a long white table, and the girl was sitting at it with a sketchbook, and the walls were covered with drawings. "My name is Naminé." He looked at the drawings, and one of them was of him, in a black coat he had never worn, next to a tall man with spiky red hair. "Naminé? This is. me? And Axel's here too." She said it gently. "You ARE best friends."

He did not believe it. "No one knows me better than me." She asked him if that was really true. "Don't you want to know the truth about who you really are?" He admitted the rest of it. "But. I don't get what's been happening lately." She showed him another drawing, a boy in red with a duck and a dog-faced knight. "You know these three, don't you?" He did. "Yeah. Sora, Donald, and Goofy. They're from the dreams."

Naminé told him where the dreams came from. "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."

He asked why it affected him. "Yes. You and Sora are connected. And. in order for Sora to become completely whole again. He needs you." He asked why him. "You hold half of what he is. He needs you, Roxas."

He asked who she was. "I'm a witch with power over Sora's memories and those around him." Then, because he was staring at her: "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."

He tried to make it a joke. "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?" She told him the worst thing first. "You. you were never supposed to exist, Roxas." He took a step back. "What? How could you even say such a thing. even if it were true?" She was sorry at once. "I'm sorry. I guess some things. really are better left unsaid."

DiZ had another question for Riku that evening, and it was about Riku himself. "Now. what about you? Are the holes in your memory starting to fill in?" Riku said they were. "Yes. the haze is clearing." DiZ told him it was the same for everyone. "The same thing is happening to everyone who had ties to Sora. Very soon, to them, he'll be like a good friend who's gone away for a year."

Riku had done everything he was asked in that town, and he asked his own question at last. "I've waited, and now I want to know. What is it that you want?" DiZ told him in one word. "Revenge." Riku's hand closed into a fist, and he said nothing.

Summer's End

On the sixth day nobody saw him. He walked into the usual spot and said good morning. "Man, I could not sleep last night. Guys?" Hayner walked straight through the place where he was standing. He wrote it down later with his hand not quite steady. "I showed up at the usual spot, but my friends didn't seem to notice I was there. I couldn't even touch them."

The town seemed different. The white creatures were everywhere, and Axel was back among them, and this time he did not pretend to be friendly. "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." Roxas had one thing to try, the thing the drawing had told him. "We're. best friends, right?"

Axel almost laughed. "Sure. but I'm not getting turned into a Dusk for." He stopped. "Wait a sec! You remember now!?" Then he looked harder. "Great! But, you know, gotta make sure and all. So, umm. What's our boss's name?" Roxas did not know.

A voice came over the whole town, the voice of the man in bandages. "Roxas, to the mansion! The time has come!" Roxas ran. Behind him Axel stood among his creatures and let him go. "The Roxas that I know is long gone. Fine, I see how it is."

In the basement of the real house, Riku was watching the town fill up with Nobodies. "DiZ, we're out of time. Too many Nobodies!"

The gate of the old mansion was chained, and the creatures had followed him. "Don't call me and then lock me out." He lifted the Keyblade and something he had not known he knew told him how to use it. He wrote it down afterwards. "The enemies threatened to drive me into a corner, but I relied on the memories that were coming back to me and used the Keyblade to unlock the gate."

Naminé was waiting in the white room. He had a question ready that was not the one he wanted to ask. "Organization XIII. they're a bad group." She would not say so. "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." He asked what. "Kingdom Hearts." She started to say what he was. "You are." And she was gone, like a picture wiped off a screen.

Then she was there again, and this time she was really there, and Roxas asked her the thing he had been running from. "It's just, I think. I've been running away from the question I really wanna ask: What's gonna happen to me now? Just tell me that. Nothing else really matters anymore."

She told him. "Roxas. Nobodies like us are only half a person. You won't disappear. You'll be whole!" He heard only one word of it. "I'll. disappear?" She insisted. "No, you WON'T disappear!"

The man in the red bandages was in the doorway with Riku beside him. DiZ told Roxas how much it mattered. "There's no knowledge that has the power to change your fate." Roxas turned on him. "Even if it doesn't, I wanna know. I have the right to know!" DiZ was unmoved. "A Nobody doesn't have a right to know. Nor does it even have the right to be." Roxas shouted it. "But what IS a Nobody!?"

Naminé started to answer him, and DiZ cut her off. "No further outbursts!" Riku took her by the arm. She called over her shoulder as they went. "Roxas! We will meet again. And then we can talk about everything. I may not know it's you, and you may not know it's me. But we will meet again. Someday soon. I promise!" Then all three of them were gone into the dark, and Roxas was alone in the white room.

He searched the house. "I searched the mansion and discovered a way into a secret room from the library." Under the library there were stairs, and at the bottom a room full of machines, and as he stood among them it came back: the castle, the coat, the tower, the ice cream, the one who had brought him here. "My lost memories began to return while I was in the computer room." He smashed the machines until there was nothing left to smash.

Axel was waiting in the room past it, and he clapped. "Simply amazing, Roxas." Roxas knew him now, and said so, and it was not enough. "You really do remember me this time? I'm SO FLATTERED. But you're too late!!!"

Roxas had two Keyblades now, one in each hand, a white one and a black one, and with both he beat him. Axel was on one knee when he said goodbye. "Let's meet again in the next life." Roxas meant it. "Yeah. I'll be waiting." Axel smiled at that, and went into the dark. "Silly. Just because you have a next life." Roxas wrote it down afterwards in the only words he had. "Axel picked a fight with me, but I defeated him. 'Let's meet again in the next life,' Axel said as he vanished into a dark hole."

In the real house, DiZ gave Riku his last order about the girl. "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."

Deeper in, there were pods, and in two of them the duck and the dog-faced knight from his dreams were sleeping. "Donald and Goofy were sleeping peacefully inside their pods. A door there led even further in." In the last room there was one more pod, closed, and the man in the bandages was standing in front of it. "At last, the Keyblade's chosen one."

Roxas asked him who he meant. "Who are you talking to? Me? Or Sora?" DiZ answered as though it were obvious. "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." Roxas could not believe it. "Was that. Was that supposed to be a joke? 'Cause I'm not laughing!"

DiZ told him what he was. "I am a servant of the world. And, if I'm a servant, then you should consider yourself a tool, at best." Roxas's voice shook. "I hate you so much." DiZ seemed pleased. "You should share some of that hatred with Sora. He's far too nice for his own good." Roxas swung at him, and the blade went through him as if he were light. "My apologies. This is only a data-based projection."

Roxas kept swinging. DiZ told him he would have to join with Sora, and Roxas shouted him down. "No! My heart belongs to me!" Then DiZ was gone, and the pod was opening, and the anger went out of Roxas all at once.

The boy inside was the boy from the dreams, asleep, and Roxas stood looking at him. He smiled, a little sadly. "Sora. You're lucky. Looks like my summer vacation is. over."

Then there was only one voice, calling a name into the dark. "Sora?"

Thank Naminé

Sora woke up in a pod in a white room, with a name in his ears that he did not know, and yawned. The two pods beside his opened, and Donald and Goofy fell out of them, rubbing their eyes. None of them had any idea where they were, or how long they had been there. Goofy asked the obvious thing. "When do ya think we went to sleep?" Jiminy crawled out of Sora's hood. "I guess we musta been, or I don't think we'd be so drowsy."

The last thing any of them remembered was the door to the dark closing, and the long road after it. Jiminy opened his journal to see what it said, and turned the pages, and turned them again. "Gee, there's only one sentence. 'Thank Naminé'. Hmm. I wonder who that is?" Donald was not impressed. "Some journal that is." Jiminy closed it. "Well, what do ya say we find out where we are!"

The house they had slept in stood on a hill above a town, and the town was Twilight Town, and Sora had the feeling he had been there before. They went down through the woods and into the streets, and in a den off a back alley they found three kids sitting on an old sofa. The blond one did not like strangers walking in. "What do you want!?" Goofy apologised. "Oh, sorry. We're Sora, Donald, and Goofy."

The round-faced one was friendlier. "You're. new around here, right? I'm Pence." The girl had other things on her mind. "My name's Olette. Hey, did you finish up the summer homework yet? Independent studies are the worst, huh?" The blond one was on his way out. "Hayner. Nice to meet you, but we got stuff to do, so catch ya later." Olette followed him. "Well, we'd better get back to that assignment."

Pence stayed long enough to tell them about someone they had been asking after. "He sure seemed in a hurry. He had a black coat on so I couldn't see his face, but he had these big round ears." Donald jumped. "Oh boy! The King's trying to find us!"

In the sandlot a boy in a white coat with a beanie on his head stopped them. "Hey you, where'd you come from?" He decided they needed teaching. "Okay, smartalecks. Time to teach you how to behave in my town. Bring it!" Donald was glad to. "Yeah, you big palooka!" By the end of the day Seifer only wanted them gone. "Hey, how 'bout you get out of my town now? You've caused enough trouble."

At the station the white creatures came at them, more than Sora could count, and a small figure in a black coat with the hood up came down among them and cleared them away. He did not take the hood off. "Shh! You gotta board the train and leave town! The train knows the way." He left them a pouch with the fare in it, and a crystal, and he was gone before they could thank him. Goofy was sure. "It coulda been. Yep, I know it was!"

Hayner, Pence and Olette came up onto the platform to see them off. Sora looked at them, three kids he had met that morning, and a tear ran down his face, and he did not know why. Hayner told him to stop it. "Pull it together." Olette was kinder. "You okay?" Sora said he was. Goofy said what Sora wanted to hear. "Yeah. We can visit Hayner and those guys again."

The train pulled out, and the town went down behind them, and Sora sat with his face turned to the window.

On Sunset Hill above the tracks, three people watched the train go. One was Axel. "Guess that's that." The man with Ansem's face told them they could go. Axel laughed. "Go where? It's not like we have homes to return to. We don't exist, remember?"

Naminé disagreed with him. "Yes, it's true. We may not have homes. But there IS someplace I want to go. And. someone I want to see." Axel looked at her a moment, and something in it reached him. "Same here. So, you think you might let us go? I know you're here to get rid of us, but." Naminé had not known. "DiZ? Wants to get rid of me?"

Riku told them why he would not do it. "I owe you both. Castle Oblivion. You helped us." Axel stared at him. "You sure about this?" Naminé understood before he did. "Thank you." Axel opened a way into the dark for them. "Heh. You don't have to tell me twice."

Everyone Is Waiting

The train let them off at a crooked tower standing by itself on a floating island, with blue roofs painted with stars. Sora watched the train go. "There goes our ride." Someone was waiting at the foot of the tower who had no business being there: a huge black cat of a man in a sailor's shirt, talking to himself. "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!"

Donald knew him on sight. "What are YOU doing here?" Pete knew them too. "What are you two nimrods doin' here!?" Goofy explained him to Sora. "We sure do! Pete's been causin' trouble for ages! His Majesty banished him to another dimension a long time ago. I wonder how he escaped." Pete was proud of it. "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!"

They told him Maleficent was gone. He did not believe it, and set his Heartless on them. "Heartless squad! Round up!" They beat the Heartless. Goofy told Pete he ought to find something nicer to do. "You oughta find somethin' nicer to do." Pete told them who lived in the tower, and what he expected to be left of him. "Oh, ya don't know, eh? Well, it's old Yen Sid. 'Course he's probably a Heartless by now!" They went in without him.

The Heartless inside were the old kind, and Donald said so with some satisfaction. "Heartless, Heartless, Heartless! Things haven't changed one bit!" At the top of the stairs an old man in a tall blue hat sat behind a desk, and he was no Heartless at all. Sora waved at him, and Donald hissed. "Sora! Show some respect!"

Yen Sid was the King's teacher, and he asked them one thing first. "So, you are Sora. Now then, have you seen the King yet?" Goofy answered for them. "Yes, we did, Master. But we didn't get a chance to talk to him." Yen Sid knew. "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."

He told them what the year had been. What they had done had held back a flood of Heartless, he said. "Your past endeavors did prevent an immense effusion of Heartless from the great darkness; make no mistake about that." But the Heartless were darkness made real, and there was darkness in every heart. "The Heartless are fewer. But while darkness exists in a single heart, it will be difficult to eliminate them." He looked at Donald. "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!"

Then he told them about the others. When a person with a strong heart became a Heartless, he said, the shell they left behind could go on by itself, a thing that did not truly exist, and those were Nobodies. "Nobodies may seem to have feelings, but this is a ruse." They only pretended to have hearts. "You must not be deceived!"

"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." Sora listed everyone who was out there fighting, him and Donald and Goofy and Riku and the King, and put another name in the list without knowing why, and Roxas.

Yen Sid sent them through a door to three old fairies who argued about colours and made Sora new clothes. "Through there, you'll find three good fairies. If you ask, they'll create for you appropriate garments." Then he told them how the worlds would open this time. "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."

He called the ship for them, and sent them off. "Now then, that is all the information I can give to you. Go forth, Sora, Donald, and Goofy. Everyone is waiting."

After they had gone, a raven flew in at the fairies' window with something old and black and tattered in its beak, and dropped it on the floor. The fairies knew whose cloak it was, and tried not to say her name, and could not help remembering her, and remembering was enough. When they ran to tell Yen Sid, the thing on the floor had become a woman again.

Pete found her in the ruins of her old fortress, and she asked him where the others were. "And where is everyone else?" He did not know. "Beats me. They musta had some other matters to deal with." She was offended. "'Matters'? You mean they have more important affairs to attend to than my return?" Pete told her about the Organization, and she dismissed them. "Let those fools play their little game!" She sat down to be told the rest. "Oh, has he? Very well then. I suppose you'd best tell me what's happened during my absence."

The first world the Keyblade opened was one they knew: the town under the castle where Leon and his friends had stayed behind a year before, which had been called Hollow Bastion since the Heartless took it. Goofy saw it first. "Wait! I think it's a world we know!" Donald hoped the others were well. "I hope Leon and the gang are doing okay."

Merlin met them first. "Oh! I thought it was you. Right on time!" Then Yuffie came in, pleased. "I see you're still in top form." Donald asked after the others. "How are the others?" And Leon came, and looked at Sora for a moment, and said the only thing that needed saying. "I knew it."

They were rebuilding the town. Yuffie made a ceremony of it. "Meet the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee!" Leon told them what they were up against. "Hollow Bastion's got a problem. A big problem." And what they wanted. "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 was looking at the great dark castle above the town.

They were given cards that made them members, and Donald was delighted. "Membership cards!" Goofy thought so too. "Kinda cool, huh?" Merlin lent Sora a few spells for the walk. "Now, what am I to do with you? I suppose I'll have to lend you a few spells. But be careful with them!"

Out on the wall above the valley, the white creatures came up out of the stones, and while Sora and Leon cleared them, somebody laughed with nobody attached to it. Sora told whoever it was to show himself, and figures in black coats stood up out of the dark all round them, hoods up. One of them made a joke of his entrance. "Oopsy-daisy!" Goofy called out to them, and the one standing in the middle answered him, in a deep, unhurried voice. "You called?"

Sora told them to get out of the town. The one who had spoken was offended. "Now do you think that's polite, shutting me down like that?" Donald said they would make them move. "Then we're gonna MAKE you move!" The man laughed. "As if! You can talk all you want, but that won't change a thing." The one in the middle looked at Sora as though he were a disappointment. "What a shame. And here I thought we could be friends."

The others went. This one stayed, and when Sora squared up to him he explained why that would not work. "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." Sora glared at him. The man stopped. "Oh, dear. I think you got the wrong impression." And then, looking at Sora's face: "As if! Why don't I remind you how tough the crowd you're dealing with really is?"

Something in the way Sora was looking at him pleased him. "That's RIGHT, he used to give me that same exact look." Sora asked who. The man spread his arms, as if inviting him to try. "Gee. I just don't know." And then he was going. "Be a good boy now!"

Leon watched the place he had been. "Organization XIII. They look tough. Be careful out there." A beam of light went out of the Keyblade at the sky, the way Yen Sid had said it would, and Sora said goodbye. "Sorry to run, Leon. But other worlds are calling."

In the castle in the dark city, the ones who had stood on the rocks talked him over. Xaldin was scornful. "Do my eyes deceive me? Does he really have the power to wield the Keyblade? He is nothing but a boy." Xigbar defended him, grinning. "Give him a chance. It means he's straight as an arrow. He's pure of heart, unlike all of us here." Saïx did not care which. "He had better be, or else he's worthless."

Luxord meant to enjoy him. "I truly hope he's enjoying himself on his adventure. Maybe he'd like a hand to determine his fate." Demyx had a plan that involved doing as little as possible. "Hey, as long as it works in our favor. We can let him do what he wants for now. Then we'll all jump in if needed." Xigbar took it as an offer. "Those are bold words coming from you. Are you saying you'll volunteer to take care of it if things go wrong? Huh?" Demyx backed away from it. "What!? Me? No, you have the wrong guy. I'm not comfortable with that."

Xaldin told Demyx to stop pretending. "You act as though you have a conscience. When was the last time any one of us felt anything?" Luxord was sorry to see the argument end. "Truer words were never spoken. Well, I suppose the fun will have to wait." The Superior ended it. "Gentlemen. The hero of the Keyblade has embarked on a new adventure. Make sure it is one he will remember. Now go."

The Cornerstone of Light

The worlds opened one after another, as Yen Sid had said they would, each with its own trouble in it, and in most of them someone in a black coat had been there first.

In the castle of the Beast they had met a year before, the Beast would not look at them. Somebody had been talking to him. When they reached his room, a man in a black coat was standing beside him, a big man with long dark dreadlocks, telling him what to think of the girl he loved. "It's time you dealt with Belle. She's scheming to take everything you have. This castle, your precious rose. And then, your life. Trust no one. Feed your anger! Only anger will keep you strong."

The Beast said something about love, and Xaldin laughed at him. "What? To love, and be loved in return? Who could ever love a beast? See? She has accomplices." Then the Beast was coming at them. They brought him back to himself, with Belle's help and some shouting from Donald. "Well, you put everybody down there in that dungeon!" When it was done, Xaldin left without a fight and without admitting anything. "So you think. Farewell."

Goofy worked out what the Organization had wanted, and told the Beast. "That's right. And they were gonna make you into a Heartless. That way, they could get that Nobody of yours and have control over it."

At the Coliseum another of them ran past them in a panic, shouting. "Run! Run away!" They met him again under the ground in the land of the dead, with a stone the gods needed in his hand, and he stared at Sora as if he knew him. "Ah! You! Wait a sec. Roxas?" Sora did not answer to it. The young man sighed. "Roxas? Oh, it's no use."

He had written orders, and he read them out loud. "Let's see, here. 'If the subject fails to respond, use aggression to liberate his true disposition'. Right. Did they ever pick the wrong guy for this one." Sora told him what he thought of him, and the young man was offended. "Now that's just plain rude!" He fought them, badly, and dropped the stone, and ran, and called back over his shoulder. "Roxas, come back to us!"

Sora did not know anyone called Roxas.

Then they were called home, to the King's own castle, and Queen Minnie was waiting in the library, frightened. Before they came she had been talking to herself. "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?" When they came she was glad of Sora. "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."

Under the castle there was a hall, and in the hall a great round stone of light. Minnie told them what it did. "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." Black thorns had grown round it, and there was a woman standing among them who was not really there. Minnie knew her. "Just what are you doing here, Maleficent!?"

Maleficent was delighted to see them. "Well, well, well. What have we here?" She looked Sora up and down. "If it isn't the wretched Keyblade holder, and his pitiful lackeys!" Donald went for her. "What!? Now you're gonna deal with me!" She laughed at him. "All in good time. I promise you'll be able to partake of my vengeance. But you must be patient."

She told the Queen what she wanted. "Ah, Queen Minnie. Radiant, as always. I'm here on a property venture. I want this castle for my own. However, it's a bit too 'bright' for what I have in mind. I suppose I'll just have to fill every room with my personal touch of darkness." Minnie told her to stop, and Maleficent laughed at that too. "Ooh, how frightening. Very well. I'll stop. Just as soon as the castle belongs to me!"

Minnie thought of Merlin. "Yes! That's perfect! Merlin just might know something about this mess. Let's ask his advice!" Merlin came, and found in the castle a door that had not been there before. "My boy, that is a gateway to a special world. Someone in that world is responsible for what's going on in this castle. Of that, I'm certain." He warned Sora what the world would ask of him. "Now, one more thing. You're heading into a very special world. While you're there, the nature of that world may tempt you to do something dark. You must resist that temptation at all costs!"

The door opened on a river in the old days, before the castle was built, and everything on the other side of it was black and white. Sora looked at his own hands. "What's going on? Everything's black and white." Goofy saw the stone on its hill. "Hey, look! There's the Cornerstone of Light!"

The door had come from Pete. Maleficent had thrown him out after hearing how badly things had gone while she was away. "You absolute idiot! You've managed to fail at everything! And what's more. you foolishly thought you could take my place while I was away. Well, as of now, you're finished." Left alone, he had missed the old days, when he had only captained a boat. "Oh. I miss those good ol' days. What I wouldn't give to go back in time. What I wouldn't give." And the wanting had opened a door.

Maleficent had seen it. "Fascinating. This appears to be a portal to the past!" She told him what was on the other side. "Listen well. 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!" And she gave him one more chance. "Go then. Time to prove your worth! And don't dare to fail me again!"

Pete talked himself into it on the way. "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." They caught up with him, and met the younger Pete of those days as well, captain of a steamboat and very angry about it, and took the stone back from the one and the boat back from the other. Pete swore at them as he went. "You'll pay for this!"

Sora sealed the door behind him with the Keyblade, so that nobody could use it again, and when they came back through into the castle the thorns were gone. Minnie saw it first. "The thorns have disappeared!" And she thanked them. "Welcome back! Because of your bravery, the castle is safe and protected again. Thank you so much for all you've done!"

The One Who's Coming Back

On the islands Kairi had her memory of Sora back, the whole of it now, the way everyone else had, and she stood on the beach at the end of the day looking at the water. "Maybe. waiting isn't good enough." A man in a black coat was standing behind her, and he agreed with her. "My thoughts exactly! If you have a dream, don't wait. Act. One of life's little rules. Got it memorized?"

He was friendly about it. "Axel. I happen to be an acquaintance of Sora's. Why don't we go see him?" The white creatures were standing up out of the sand round her. A yellow dog came running down the beach, barking, and behind her a doorway of darkness opened where there had been nothing, and the dog ran into it. Kairi went after the dog.

She said it over her shoulder as she went into the dark. "You're not acting very friendly!" Axel called after her, almost fondly. "We've got something in common, Kairi. You and I both miss someone we care about. Hey. I feel like we're friends already." In the corridor, for a moment, she saw a figure in a hood, who did not speak. Then she was somewhere else.

She came out of a hole in a wall in Twilight Town with the dog, in front of three kids, and they were not sure afterwards which of them had been more startled. Pence told her so. "You and that dog came flying out of a hole in the wall. You nearly gave us heart attacks!" Hayner asked if she was all right. "You okay?"

She told them who she was looking for, and they knew him. Sora had been through, and had said he would be back. Pence told her. "If you stick around, Sora's bound to show up." Hayner said the same. "Yeah, he said he's coming back." Olette thought it was the best thing she had heard all summer. "What a romantic story!"

She waited with them. Then Axel came, and found her. "What took you so long, Kairi? Somehow I just knew you'd be here. I tell ya, Kairi, you've got a lot of guts, jumping right into the darkness like that." He took her by the wrist. Hayner swung at him and missed, and Axel took her through the dark, and the dog went after them.

Axel did not keep her long. Saïx found him, and took her from him, and put her in a cell in the Organization's castle.

Sora came back to Twilight Town not long after, and the first thing he heard was Vivi shouting. "H-Help! The sandlot! It's Seifer! Somebody please help us!" The white creatures had Seifer's gang cornered. When they were gone, Seifer gave Sora a trophy, and hated doing it. "This goes to the strongest guy in Twilight Town." And then: "I don't like this. You can have that trophy for now, but I'll be getting it back!"

Pence wanted to see the crystal the King had given them. "Hey, Goofy, do you think we could see that crystal of yours?" Sora held it up to the sunset and looked through it, and for a moment, looking at him against the light, someone else was standing where he stood, a boy with fairer hair; and then it was Sora again.

At the station the white creatures came again, many of them, and a man in a black coat with blue hair and an X-shaped scar across his face stood watching while Sora fought them. He was polite about it. "Impressive. By the way, have you seen a man named Axel? I expect he's here somewhere." Sora had not.

Saïx told him why he asked. "You see, Axel's no longer acting in our best interest." And he warned him, as though Sora were someone whose safety concerned him. "Don't let your guard down. Axel will stop at nothing to turn you into a Heartless." Sora thanked him for nothing. "Gee, thanks for looking out for us, mister. But I think we can take care of ourselves just fine."

Saïx smiled. "Glad to hear it. Axel aside, it would break our hearts to hear something happened to you." Sora said they had no hearts. "True, we don't have hearts. But we remember what it was like. That's what makes us special." And he gave Sora an order dressed as advice. "We know very well how to injure a heart. Sora, you just keep on fighting those Heartless."

He left one more thing behind him as he went. "Don't be reckless. Do you want to end up like Riku?" Sora was still staring at the place where he had been. "What did he mean, 'end up like Riku'?"

Then Hayner, Pence and Olette found him, and told him about the girl and the dog, and the man who took her. Sora was already moving. "I gotta help Kairi!" They did not know where Axel had taken her. Sora stood on the platform with nowhere to go. "Riku, the King. and now I lost Kairi again, too."

In the castle in the dark city Saïx reported to his Superior. "I passed on the message as you so desired. I told the young Sora to keep defeating the Heartless." Xemnas was pleased with him. "Good. Not only have you the power to inflict pain, you also have the power to plant seeds of doubt in one's receptive heart. Sora will soon begin to doubt himself. It will cause him to hesitate, and that hesitation will turn to anger. That anger will fuel him to get rid of his apprehension and move forward. He will pave the way for the future we desire."

Saïx had a second thing. "There's something I've meant to ask." It was Axel. Xemnas was contemptuous. "About Axel. The poor fool. How long will he keep chasing the illusion of friendship, when he himself lacks emotion? Trying so hard to retrieve what he has lost, when it may never have existed in the first place. He deserves nothing more than our pity."

The Man in the Picture

There were more Heartless in Hollow Bastion when they came back, and Goofy saw it from the air. "Looks like there's more Heartless now." Yuffie met them in the street with news. "We found the computer Ansem was using!"

It was in the castle, in the study of the man who had ruled the place before the Heartless came, behind his portrait. Leon was waiting for them there. "So you made it." He showed them the way in. "The computer room's through here. Computers are delicate. It's okay to touch them, but don't goof around."

Sora sat down at it and started pressing keys, looking for anything that might tell him where Riku and Kairi and the King were. Leon winced. "Easy. You wanna break it?" Goofy had an idea of his own. "I thought I'd ask the computer if it can tell us about them Nobodies." A little blue creature dropped onto the keyboard from somewhere, and Donald went after it, and between them the keys took a beating.

The computer spoke. "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." Leon shouted. "Run!" And the machine said the last thing. "Decision gate reached. You are now under arrest."

They woke in a cell of light inside the machine, with a man in glowing blue lines who was a prisoner too. "You're inside a mainframe computer system." Goofy introduced himself politely. "Nice to meet'cha, Tron. I'm Goofy." Tron told them where they were. The system was a copy of one made somewhere else, he said, and another User had taken it and changed it. "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."

He told them who held them. "The Master Control Program. It controls the whole system. If you idle here, you will be derezzed." Goofy asked who had made the MCP. "Gee, Tron, ain't the MCP one of those programs, too? Do ya know who it was who made it?" They got out, with Tron's help and some of Sora's illogic, and Tron was surprised by them. "You guys really are Users. Your actions are totally illogical."

He told them about a place in the machine where the User had hidden the things that mattered. "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." But it needed a password.

When they came out of the computer, Leon was waiting. "Where have you been?" He listened, and nodded. "What do you know. But. that still leaves the password."

Then the King was in the study with them, in a black coat of his own, as if he had been there all along. "Say, fellas, did somebody mention the Door To Darkness?" Goofy explained himself. "Uh, yes, sir! Ya see, we're lookin' for the secret password." The King knew what it was, or where it came from. "Well, the Door To Darkness can only be opened by the seven princesses. There's Snow White, Jasmine, and Belle."

He did not stay. "Finding Ansem's research data will have to come first. I'll explain everything later. Please be careful."

They went back in with the names. Tron had not expected them. "I don't understand. Why are you here?" They told him they had come back for him, and he was grave about it. "The MCP is originally a data acquisition program. If you hadn't rescued me, it would have stolen all my data." They opened the dataspace with the princesses' names, and the MCP came in behind them and took it, and Tron stood against it. The MCP asked him why he sided with the Users. "Because I want to help them. Something written into my code commands me to do what is right."

When the worst of it was over, Tron told them something about Ansem that he had been carrying. "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." Sora did not understand it. "I don't. understand it either." But Tron had faith in them. "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 changed the password so the MCP could not use it, and told them what the new one was. "You. my friends. are the new password."

What the dataspace had held had come out of it ruined, all but one picture of a man. They asked the King if he knew Ansem. "Of course I do! And this is him! I'm positive!" It was not the face Sora knew. Sora took the King by the arm and pulled him across the study to the portrait that had hung there a year before, the face of the man they had fought at the end of everything. "Excuse me. Could you come this way, please?"

The King looked up at it, and told them. "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." Goofy was lost. "Uh, I'm kinda confused. If he's a fake, then what happened to the real Ansem?"

The King did not know. He said one more thing, frowning, as if he were not sure he ought to. "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."

Leon had got into the dataspace from outside. "That did it. We're in. I have to go into town. Need to see what that last shakeup did."

The Answer's No

The shakeup Leon had gone to see about was the town's defences waking up wrong, and then it was worse than that. An explosion tore open the wall above the valley, and Heartless and Nobodies came pouring through it together into the town. The King met them on the way down and told them to go. "Don't worry. There's already lotsa help here. We'll take care of this fight."

He wanted them off looking for Riku and Kairi. Sora wanted to stay and fight. Donald told him to behave. "C'mon, Sora! Ya gotta be good!" Then he and Goofy looked at each other, and Goofy took Sora by the arm the other way, towards the fighting. "You're comin' with us whether ya want to or not!"

At the castle gate the young man from under the Coliseum was waiting, and he waved. "Hey, you guys are looking lively." Sora knew him. "Didn't we catch you messing around in the Underworld?" Demyx did not like being laughed at. "You shouldn't judge anyone by appearance." When they drew on him he sighed. "I told them they were sending the wrong guy."

Sora told him Nobodies did not have hearts, and the smile went out of him all at once. "Silence, traitor." He fought them in earnest this time, and lost, and could not believe it. "No way?!" Then he was gone, and Sora called after the place where he had been. "You rotten." Donald was scandalised. "Hey, Sora! Don't antagonize them!"

The King caught up with them, meaning to be angry, and gave it up. "You sure have lotsa friends to help. So, I guess we better all pull together and finish this battle for good!" Goofy agreed. "Yeah, we gotta go help our friends out first."

Down in the ravine the Heartless and the Nobodies were fighting each other as well as everyone else. Maleficent stood on a rock above it sending her Heartless at the white ones. "Hear me, my Heartless! Attack the white husks! Sweep them away!" Pete took one look at the white ones and ran. "What, are you nuts? We're never gonna win! I don't know about you, but I'm outta here, sister!" Maleficent screamed after him. "You pathetic coward!" Then, seeing Sora, she changed her mind about her Heartless. "Heartless! Leave the white ones. Turn your attention to Sora and his friends!"

Something a Heartless threw brought a boulder down over the King's head, and Goofy saw it. "Look out!" He pushed the King clear, and the boulder hit him instead, and he did not get up. Donald knelt by him. "Ohhhh. Goofy." The King stood looking down at him, and his face changed. "They'll pay for this." He took off the black coat and threw it away.

They fought their way down the ravine without him, and did not do it alone. Leon was there, and a tall swordsman with spiky blond hair, Cloud, who fought beside him as if they had done it before. Leon looked at the ravine full of Heartless. "Think you can handle this many?" Cloud considered it. "Well. Might be tough if one more shows up."

Goofy caught up with them halfway, rubbing his head. "Gawrsh, Yer Majesty, I get bumped on the head all the time." Donald was so relieved he was furious. "Don't you ever do that again!"

At the far end of the ravine, where the valley opened out into a great bowl of rock, a man in a black coat stood on a ledge above an army of Heartless that had stopped moving. He took his hood down, and the King looked at his face and something came back to him. Goofy saw it too. "You mean it's his Nobody!"

What came back to the King was a room in the castle above them, years before, and the man who had owned it. Ansem had been glad to see him. "I'm glad we have the opportunity to speak like this, my friend. I'm intrigued by your hypothesis. and I'm finding it difficult to stave off the urge to test it. Still, I'm concerned about the stability of the worlds." And he had been afraid. "The doors that appeared. The place the Heartless seek. I fear my research may have brought this upon us." The King had been afraid too. "Yep, that's what worries me too."

And there had been an apprentice, who wanted to go further, and Ansem had forbidden it. "I forbid it! Forget this talk of doors, and the heart of all worlds. That place must not be defiled!" The apprentice had argued, and Ansem had said it again, more quietly. "Xehanort. Those thoughts are best forgotten."

The King said it out loud. "Now I remember! Xehanort! Ansem's apprentice! The leader of Organization XIII is Xehanort's Nobody!" The man on the ledge heard the name and seemed almost amused. "How long has it been since I abandoned that name." Donald did not care what he called himself. "We can't let Xehanort get away!"

The army of Heartless woke all at once, a thousand of them, and came up the bowl at them. They fought it all the way up.

At the top, on the cliff above Maleficent's old fortress, they caught up with the King and the man with Xehanort's face. Xemnas looked at the Keyblade in Sora's hand. "The Keyblade. a truly marvelous weapon. Were it only in more. capable hands." Sora asked him where Riku and Kairi were. "I know nothing of any Kairi. As for Riku. Perhaps you should ask your king." He went into the dark, and the King went after him before it closed.

Somebody else came out of the dark instead, laughing at them. "Way to fall right into their trap." It was the red-haired man. "C'mon, it's a set-up by Organization XIII. Xemnas is using you to destroy the Heartless. that's his big master plan." Goofy did not see how. "Organization XIII wants to get rid of the Heartless?"

Axel told them the name, spelling it. "The guy you just saw. He's their leader. Got it memorized? X-E-M, N-A-S." And he told them what they were being used for. "Man, you're slow. Every Heartless slain with that Keyblade releases a captive heart. That is what the Organization is after." Donald wanted to know what they did with the hearts. "So what are those guys gonna do with the hearts?"

Sora worked out who he was talking to, and said it. Axel did not deny it. "Bingo. The name's Axel. Got it memorized?" And then, more quietly: "Look, about Kairi. I'm sorry." He did not get to finish. Saïx was on the ledge above them. "You're doing well." He looked at Axel. "We'll ensure he receives the maximum punishment." Axel was gone into the dark before he finished saying it.

Saïx came down to Sora, pleasant as ever. "If it's Kairi you're worried about, don't. We're taking very good care of her." Sora begged him to take him to her. Saïx considered him. "Is she that important to you?" He had a price. "Show me how important."

Sora got down on his hands and knees on the rock in front of him and asked again. Saïx watched him do it. "So, you really do care for her. In that case. the answer's no." Sora came up off the ground at him, and Saïx stepped back, pleased. "Are you angry? Do you hate me? Then take that rage, and direct it at the Heartless."

He told them what the Heartless were for. "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."

Someone laughed at that from the rocks above them, and it was Maleficent. "What in the world do you think you're prattling on about?" She had heard the name. "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 called her Heartless, and Sora shouted at her to stop. "I do not take orders from you!"

Saïx called Nobodies, and they were stronger than her Heartless. Maleficent turned to Sora as if he were hers to command. "While I keep these creatures at bay, you devise a way to vanquish them. forever!" They dragged her down, and she warned Sora as she went that none of this meant she had forgiven him. "Do not misunderstand me. I shall have my revenge on you yet."

Saïx picked up where he had stopped. "Now then. Where did we leave off?" He told them why Maleficent's Heartless had failed her. "The Heartless ally with whoever's the strongest." And he gave Sora his instructions. "Yes, Sora! Extract more hearts!"

Maleficent was not quite beaten. The ground opened in darkness under Sora and Donald and Goofy, and her voice came after them. "Leave! Now!" And, to the Nobodies she was holding: "Imbeciles! You can't be trusted to do anything!"

They landed in a grey place with no sky, and Goofy looked round. "What's this place?" Sora knew it from the year before. "It must be the Realm of Darkness!" He sat down on a rock. He had spent the whole journey doing exactly what the Organization wanted. "Maybe everything we've done. maybe it was for nothing. What am I supposed to do if I can't use the Keyblade?" Goofy would not let him stay there long. If they stopped, he said, the Heartless would just keep taking worlds.

A figure in a black coat came out of the grey, put a small box down in front of them without a word, and went. In the box there was sea-salt ice cream, and a photograph: four kids in front of an old mansion. Goofy knew three of them. "Gawrsh, it's the gang from Twilight Town. There's Hayner, Pence, Olette. and, uh, um." Sora knew the fourth. He had never seen him in his life, and the name was in his mouth before he thought about it: Roxas.

Goofy turned the box over. "A photo and some ice cream? Hmm. Wonder if they're some sorta clue. And who woulda left 'em for us, anyway?" Donald tasted the ice cream and made a face, and then another one. "Salty. No. sweet!"

In the castle in the dark city the Organization met to talk about Sora. Saïx told them what had changed. "Sora knows the truth now. The more Heartless that he defeats, the closer he is to becoming our perfect puppet. This new knowledge will make him that much harder to control." Xigbar was not worried. "What does it matter really? Whatever his circumstances, Sora has never been able to help himself from saving people from the Heartless. It's what his pure little heart wants."

Luxord was enjoying it. "There. The dice have been cast. Things are in motion. He can't stop this." Xaldin warned him that his luck might go the way Demyx's had. "Nothing is set in stone. If the dice aren't in your favor, you will share Demyx's fate." Luxord shrugged it off. "The fun is in not knowing, isn't it? What is the point of betting on something if you already know the outcome?"

Xigbar asked the Superior the question they were all avoiding. "Are you sure that defeating him won't derail the Organization's plan?" Xemnas was unconcerned. "If he is to die so easily, he is of no use to us." Xaldin was pleased. "That's exactly what I wanted to hear. It's not in my nature to hold back."

Never Heard of Him

They went back out through the worlds, because there was nowhere else to go, and the Organization was waiting in most of them.

In the land with the Great Wall and the Emperor's city, a man in a black coat with his hood up was going to the Emperor ahead of them, and Sora went after him and fought him on the palace steps. The man fought back, and he had a sword Sora knew, dark and edged like a bat's wing. Then he was gone past them to the Emperor.

Donald could not make sense of it. "Riku's in the Organization?" At the gates of the throne room another hooded figure was waiting, and Sora called the name at him. The man pushed his hood back, and it was the one with the eyepatch from Hollow Bastion. "No. Never heard of him." He left them his Nobodies and was gone. Goofy sighed. "Guess it wasn't Riku."

The Emperor had seen the first one, and told them what he had seen. The man had come to warn him about the dragon the Organization had made into a Heartless, and he had described him. It was Riku, it had to be, and he was safe, whatever he was wearing.

At the Beast's castle the Beast and Belle were dancing in the ballroom when they came in, and Goofy thought they should go. "Uh, maybe we came at a bad time." Xaldin had come too. "A welcome indeed." Sora told him to leave the Beast alone. "You don't know when to quit." Xaldin had come for one thing. "I've come to take something you hold very dear."

He took the Beast's enchanted rose, and the Beast went after him through the castle roaring, and turned on Belle afterwards for the party and sent her away. Xaldin was pleased. "Yes. Let your anger grow." They had to coax the Beast out of his room to go after it. Goofy did the coaxing. "Don't be bashful, now."

Xaldin had Belle and the rose both, out on the bridge, and was glad the Beast had come. "So, Beast. you came after all. You had me worried. I was afraid you'd given up for good." He told them what the Organization wanted with a heart like the Beast's. "Kingdom Hearts. When Kingdom Hearts is ours, we can exist fully and completely. So you see, Beast, that's why we need your Heartless AND your Nobody!" And he offered the Beast a choice. "With pleasure, but I'd rather travel light. What shall I leave behind? Belle? Or the rose?"

Belle made the choice for him. She drove her elbow into Xaldin's side and took the rose and ran, and the Beast came at him. Xaldin called up six long lances out of the wind and fought them on the bridge, and lost, and faded into the dark.

In Port Royal a man in a black coat was sitting on the chest of cursed pirate gold aboard the Black Pearl, a neat man with a short pale beard, and he had a question for the gold. "The darkness of men's hearts, drawn to these cursed medallions; and this Heartless, a veritable maelstrom of avarice: I wonder, are they worthy to serve Organization XIII?"

When Jack Sparrow drew on him, Luxord raised a hand. "Parley!" He gave the chest back with a bow. "I surrender the chest with my humblest apologies." But he had taken four of the medallions out of it first, and he tossed them to his Nobodies, and the curse came back with them. "Just a few souvenirs. for the memories."

They found the four medallions and broke the curse, and Luxord took the heart the curse had been feeding and went, and congratulated Sora on the way out. "Sora, bravo." Sora explained to Jack where he came from. "He's part of an Organization that's collecting hearts. First, they release Heartless to different worlds. We defeat those Heartless, they get the hearts. We're never gonna stop them like this." And what they had to do instead. "We gotta find their stronghold and finish them off once and for all."

In Hollow Bastion, when the machine in Ansem's study was cleaned out at last, a picture came up on its screen of the town as it had been when it was first built, and Aerith looked at it and remembered. "You know, this town had another name once. Radiant Garden." Leon remembered it too. "That's right. I remember now." Cid, at the keyboard, said it for all of them. "Just like the old days." And Merlin was indignant about the new name. "Hmm. I'd be fascinated to ascertain as to when the town got such a dreadful name as Hollow Bastion!"

Got It Memorized

The photograph brought them back to Twilight Town. Goofy said so as they came down. "Gawrsh, aren't we here because of the picture?" Hayner, Pence and Olette were not at the usual spot. They were up at the old mansion on the hill, and Pence did not like it. "This mansion's freaky. It feels like monsters are lurking in there." Hayner had heard things. "Word is, this mansion gets a lot of really strange visitors."

White creatures came out of the woods at them before they got further, and the King came with them, and between them all they cleared the gate. Olette told them what the three of them had worked out. "We thought this place might be the gateway to some kind of alternate Twilight Town." They had reasons. Hayner held out a trophy. "And this is the trophy Seifer gave you. You left it behind, remember?" Sora had never seen it before.

Olette pointed at the pouch Sora carried. "I made that pouch myself, and I still have it. So there shouldn't be two of them here." Goofy explained where it had come from. "The pouch is from the King. When he gave us munny for the train ride, he gave us the crystal too." Olette turned to the King. "Your Majesty? You got the pouch with the crystal from Riku, didn't you? And you promised not to tell, right?"

The King looked miserable. "I don't wanna break my promise." Then he gave in. "Riku's going to be so mad at me. Still, we have to hurry and search the mansion!" Donald told Sora to stop bothering him. "Hey! Stop pestering the King!" The King had news of his own. "I got somethin' to tell ya. I found out where Ansem is." He said it again, so there would be no mistake. "Ansem the Wise! The real Ansem! He snuck into Organization XIII's stronghold."

Hayner was sure of the rest. "I bet you can get to the other Twilight Town through this mansion." Olette led the way in. "Let's head in! This place has to be hiding some kind of secret!" The King knew what to look for. "There should be a computer leading to another world in this mansion! I'm sure we'll find it if we search hard enough!"

Under the library they found stairs, and at the bottom a room full of machines. Pence could hardly believe it. "This place is falling apart. There's supposed to be a computer in this raggedy mansion?" He sat down at it anyway, because he was the one who knew computers. "A computer. Do you think it's connected to that other Twilight Town?" It asked for a password.

The King had an idea about the man who had built it. "Hey, that's it! Ansem the Wise loved ice cream!" Pence knew which. "The password's the name of that ice cream! Make sure you get it right. It won't take an incorrect password!" It was sea-salt.

The machine opened a way through, and the three of them would not come. Hayner said so for all of them. "We'll be here to hold down the fort." Pence showed them the device beside the machine. "There should be a device like this in the other world, too. You should be able to come back by using it!" Hayner meant it. "Leave this world to me! If you get in trouble, just come back. That device there should be able to bring you back."

Olette had one more thing. "Say hi to Kairi!" And then: "I feel we'll see you again. Bring Kairi back with you, okay? We'll be here waiting for you!"

On the other side was the same room in the same house, and Sora knew it without knowing how. He called it Roxas's Twilight Town, and in the computer room, for a moment, he saw a boy he did not know smashing the machines in a fury. There was a doorway of darkness in the basement hall, and they went through it.

It led into a long grey passage between worlds, and Donald did not know which way. "Well, which way should we go?" The Nobodies came at them from both ends before anyone could answer, more than they could count. Then there was fire in the middle of them, and Axel was there, fighting beside Sora. "Don't stop moving, or the darkness will overtake you! Get goin'!"

Sora asked him what he was doing. "Don't ask. Just do it!" He was tired, Sora could see that, and he had been hurt before he got there. He told them where Kairi was while they fought. "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!"

The Dusks kept coming. Axel laughed at them, breathing hard. "I think I liked it better when they were on my side." Sora told him to run. "Nah. I can handle these punks. Watch this!" He put everything he had into one blaze of fire, and the passage was empty.

He was fading when the fire died, and he knew it. "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." Sora told him to come with them and apologise to her himself. "Think I'll pass. My heart just wouldn't be in it, you know? Haven't got one."

Sora asked him what he had been trying to do, all along. "Axel, what we're you trying to do?" Axel told him. "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 a way into the Organization's world with the last of it, and was gone.

Sora stood looking at the place. Then he told the others what they had to go on. "Axel said Kairi's in the castle dungeon."

In the castle they talked about it afterwards, the few of them left. Xigbar looked round the room. "The house is looking pretty empty, huh? I thought I'd get a little enjoyment watching Axel throw one last tantrum. But he went a lot quieter than I thought." Luxord had his own view. "Perhaps he was ready for it. Perhaps he put his existence on the line, and won what he'd been longing for."

Xigbar scoffed. "Wait a minute, how would that even be possible? We don't exist, remember? What you're saying goes against the laws of nature." Luxord adjusted his bet. "Then, perhaps he bet his NON-existence. Either way, he came out a winner. Oh, Axel. A grifter till the end." Saïx would not have it. "That's absurd. He won nothing, and IS nothing. He couldn't stand the emptiness of being without a heart. And THAT led to his demise. He was foolish and weak."

The Superior saw a use in it. "But weakness has the power to awaken that which is dormant. Is it clear that through his actions, however foolish they may have been, Axel has touched Sora's heart. Perhaps HE will soon awaken."

A Good Other

They came out into a city at night under a sky with a heart-shaped moon in it, and rain on the streets, and not a person anywhere. The King looked up. At the far end of the city a castle stood over everything on nothing at all. "Then we better find a way to get to that castle!" Goofy looked at the dark. "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."

The King warned them before he left them. "You can bet Organization XIII will be waiting for you in that castle. I don't need to tell you how powerful they are. Don't let your guard down." Then he was gone, and Donald complained. "The King went on ahead again! Can't he ever wait up!? Not that I'm nervous, but I'm glad we can go back to Twilight Town anytime."

At the foot of the tallest building in the city, the one with the great dark screens on it, the Nobodies closed round Donald and Goofy, and someone in a black coat pulled Sora out of the street into somewhere else. It was a round floor of coloured glass in the dark, like the one Sora had stood on long ago, and the figure stood across it from him with a Keyblade in each hand.

Sora asked who he was. "Someone from the dark." Sora looked at the coat and the height and the two blades and said the only name he had. "You can't be. Riku?" The figure almost laughed. "Riku? I defeated a Riku once."

Then he came at Sora, and he fought as though he hated him. "Tell me. Tell me why he picked you!" Sora did not know what he meant. The figure looked past him, at the glass under their feet, where the faces of everyone Sora cared about were set into the floor, and his arms dropped. "I see. That's why."

He tried once more anyway, and Sora took both Keyblades out of his hands. The figure went down on the glass, and he did not seem sorry. "You make a good other."

Somewhere that was not anywhere, what was left of Roxas opened his eyes on the top of a clock tower, in the evening, and Axel was sitting beside him. "Look who's finally awake." Then, more quietly: "Or, maybe I have it wrong. Might be time to sleep. Soon, we won't be able to talk like this anymore." Roxas understood. "Does that mean. it's time for me to go back to where I belong?"

Axel had been thinking. "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 did not know. "I dunno. I can't. just look inside." He tried to say something else. "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 let it go. "Yeah, I guess not." Then he would not. "C'mon, don't leave me hanging." Roxas answered him with the only thing he was sure of. "Sora will find the answer we're looking for. I know he will. Because he's me." Axel smiled at that. "True enough." He had two sea-salt ice creams, and he gave Roxas one.

"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." Roxas was looking at the town below them. "Yeah. This place is home. Me, Hayner, Pence, Olette. We've shared a lot of adventures." Axel promised him what he could not promise. "You'll see them again. I know you will."

Roxas said something more about Sora, and Axel agreed with it. "Yeah, I suppose he is. Man, this is some good ice cream, huh?" Roxas stood up. "Yeah, you're right. Well, I should go. Sora's waiting for me." He said goodbye. "Take care, okay?" Axel did too. "Right back at ya, buddy." And they were both gone from the tower.

Sora was standing in the street again, under the screens, and Donald and Goofy were there, and the Nobodies were gone. He told them what had happened. Goofy did not know what he was talking about. "Gawrsh, I dunno. You just disappeared. Then me and Donald had to fight some Nobodies." They had seen no one in a black coat. If there had been one, they said, he was one of the Organization, and probably lying to confuse him. Sora was not sure of anything, and went on.

The way to the castle opened for them over the empty air, and Donald looked up at the moon. "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!" Goofy looked at the castle. "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." Then: "Be careful! I think we got company!"

Inside it was bigger than it looked, all white and empty, and Goofy could feel the darkness in it. "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." Donald was ready for anything. "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!"

A Hall of Empty Melodies

Kairi was in a cell high in the castle with the King's yellow dog for company, and Saïx came to look at her. She asked him the only question she had. "What are you going to do with us?" He told her what she was for. "You're the fire that feeds Sora's anger."

When he had gone, a doorway of darkness opened in the cell, and a girl in white stood in it. She held out her hand. "This way!" Kairi did not know her, and did not move. The girl was patient. "Believe in yourself. C'mon, hurry!" Kairi went with her, and the dog came too.

The girl kept fading as they went, going thin as a reflection and coming back, and she did not seem surprised by it. Saïx was waiting for them at the end of a white corridor with a crowd of Nobodies at his back. "Naminé. There you are. Kairi. I'm afraid leaving is not an option. I'll take you to see Sora." Kairi would not go with him. "I do. More than anything. But not with you around."

A figure in a black coat came down between them with a sword and drove Saïx back, and Saïx knew the shape of him. "You. Didn't Roxas take care of you?" He did not stay to fight. "If I had a heart, this would be where I die of laughter." Naminé looked at the hooded figure as if she had been waiting for him. "You can take it from here, Riku." And she was gone.

He turned to go without a word. Kairi caught his sleeve before he could, and pulled his hood back, and under it was the face of Ansem. She looked at it and saw who was behind it. "Riku. you're really here."

He was ashamed of it, and she did not care. Heartless came up out of the floor between them and the way down, and she would not stand behind him this time. "This time. I'LL fight. You know Sora's completely hopeless without us! C'mon, Riku!" He put a Keyblade in her hand, and she knew what to do with it.

Below them, Sora and Donald and Goofy had come into a great hall of pale stone and found their way barred. Goofy saw it first. "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." Saïx was waiting above them on a balcony. "Sora. You've done well."

Sora asked where Kairi was. Saïx was amused. "Who knows? I expect she's catching up with her friend from the darkness." And then, because it would hurt: "She doesn't need you anymore." Sora said he did not believe him. "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!"

Through the great window above them the heart-shaped moon hung over the city, and it was nearly whole. Saïx filled the hall with Heartless, and Donald raised his staff. "We gotta fight!"

In the middle of it two more people slipped into the hall who had not been invited, a tall woman in black with horns and a big black cat of a man, and Saïx saw them. "Well, well. Will the intrusions never end?" Maleficent was looking round the castle with an owner's eye. "Why, Pete. this castle is perfect. Perhaps we should. acquire it." Pete did not like it. "Well, the setup is. kinda nice, I guess, but. what about all the Heartless? This in-between world, it's way too close to the darkness! They ain't gonna listen to us here!" Maleficent was scornful. "Once again, you underestimate me."

Up on the gallery above, Donald saw Kairi fighting, and the man in the black coat beside her with the face he remembered from the end of the last journey. "What's going on? Ansem was fighting alongside Kairi! Anyway, Kairi's under attack. We have got to help her!"

Then gunfire came down from somewhere above, a storm of it, and the Heartless in the hall were gone. It had not been done to help them. The one with the eyepatch dropped down onto the floor in front of Sora, grinning. "Have you been a good boy?" Goofy got in front of Sora. "Here he comes!"

Xigbar answered his own question. "Oh, it sounds like you haven't. Sora! Roxas!" He had more. "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 had enough of him. "Are you done rambling?" Xigbar was offended. "Rambling? As if! All I'm trying to tell you, traitor, is that your time is up!"

They fought him across the hall, and the hall changed shape round them while they did it, and they beat him. Sora asked him the question that had followed him through every world. "Why did you call me Roxas?" Xigbar only laughed at him, fading. "Wouldn't you like to know."

They climbed to the gallery, and Kairi was there, and a hooded man beside her. Sora asked him who he was. "I'm no one. Just a castaway from the darkness." Then Kairi saw Sora. "Sora! It's really you!"

She ran to him and held on. "This is real." She told him why she had come. "You and Riku never came home, so I came looking for you."

The hooded man had turned to go. Kairi would not let him. "Riku, don't go!" Sora looked at him, and at the face under the hood when it came back, and for a moment he saw Ansem, and then he did not; he saw Riku, and he was crying before he knew it. "I looked for you! I looked everywhere for you!" And the question that had been waiting a year: "Why didn't you let me know you were ok?"

Riku told him the truth. "I didn't want you to find me." Donald and Goofy were staring at him, and Riku was almost fond of them. "I was starting to worry you guys weren't ever gonna catch on. Sora never did pick the brightest friends." Goofy understood it at last. "But it was him that was helpin' us, wasn't it?"

Riku told them about his face. "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 said why he still wore it. "This battle isn't over. And until it is, I still need the power of darkness."

And the rest, which was harder. "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." Sora would not hear it. "Then, let's finish it. You're still Riku, no matter what."

Goofy was delighted with all of 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!" Donald was still getting over it. "It's amazing Kairi and you recognized Riku. He looks just like Ansem. I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw him." And Kairi saw what Sora still had, on a string, all this time. "You held onto that charm. That talisman of reunion really worked! I wanted to see you so badly, Sora. I missed you so much!"

The One They Called Roxas

Riku turned them towards the top of the castle. "The path is open. Xemnas is waiting up ahead. He's the leader of Organization XIII. Try not to slow me down, Sora." They went up together, five of them now, through white halls that went on and on.

Kairi walked beside them instead of behind, and she had things to say about it. "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!" And more seriously: "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." Donald told her she had been wonderful. "Kairi, you were great!"

Goofy was worried about the King. "I wonder how far the King went? I know he's strong enough to take care of himself, but I'm still worried." And about the castle. "I wonder what this castle was built for? It's pretty mysterious." In one room tall stones stood in rows like markers, and Kairi did not like it. "I don't like the feel of this place. It's almost like. a graveyard. Just about everything is in ruins. Do you know what it all means, Sora?"

Riku warned them about the next one. "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."

Sora was walking a little ahead when Luxord stepped out of the air between him and the others, and with a sweep of his cards the others were gone, shut away behind a wall of them. He was not interested in talk. "I'd rather we just skip the formalities." He fought Sora with cards and with time, and in the middle of it he called him by the other name, and Sora shouted at him. "That's SORA!"

Sora wore his time down. At the end Luxord held up his cards to shield himself, and Sora cut through them. Luxord looked at him, puzzled, as he faded. "How could you. Roxas."

The cards fell away, and Donald was indignant. "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!" Riku was looking at Sora with something like respect. "Hmph. Not bad, Sora. You've grown stronger. You don't need my weapon, Soul Eater, or the power of the dark yet."

Higher up, Saïx found his Superior standing before the great window and the nearly finished moon. Xemnas was speaking to it. "Yes. Kingdom Hearts. Rejoice, and feast on these hearts we offer! Shine your pale light on this empty realm. Share your power with all Nobodies!" Saïx waited for him to finish. "Xemnas. Is Kingdom Hearts ready?" "Very soon."

Saïx asked the thing he had wanted to ask for a long time. "Then, I can end this charade?" Xemnas gave it to him. "Indeed." And Saïx, for once, said something that sounded like feeling. "How I've waited to hear that."

Riku felt him ahead of them. "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 saw the doorway first. "Look! Now this entrance is glowing. Could this have something to do with your enemies, Sora?"

Saïx was waiting for them out in the open under the moon, and he greeted Sora by the other name. "Only you could have made it this far in one piece. Roxas." Donald corrected him. "Yeah! He's Sora!" Saïx did not care. "Different name, same fate." Sora was sick of it. "That's really getting old!"

Saïx struck the floor and the shockwave threw Kairi and Riku back behind a barrier, Riku turning to take it for her. Sora and Donald and Goofy fought him alone under the moon. He drew strength from the moon while they fought, and they took it from him, and at the end he reached up towards it. "Why. Kingdom Hearts. Where is my heart?" Then he was gone. Donald sat down. "Gwah! I'm exhausted! Let's rest before we go."

Kairi asked it before Sora could. "Roxas. I know that name. Once I spoke to him. He reminded me of you, Sora. Who is he?" Riku answered them both. "Because, Sora. Roxas is your Nobody."

Sora stared at him, and then he remembered the moment a year ago when he had given up his own heart to set Kairi's free, and it made sense. Riku told him the rest. "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."

He was quiet a moment. "Maybe I didn't need to fight him after all. I think he left the Organization because. he really wanted to meet you." Sora looked down at his own hands. "Roxas. I wish I could meet him too."

Riku told him how he had come to it. "I met Roxas because of a guy named DiZ. I didn't trust DiZ at first, but we both needed each other's help." And then he felt something above them, and turned. "It's the King and DiZ. I mean, Ansem the Wise. They must be higher up. We better hurry."

Ansem the Wise

The King had gone on ahead, and higher up in the castle he found the man in the red bandages beset by Nobodies and Heartless together, and cleared them off him. The man stood up, and took the bandages from his face, and the King knew him. It was the face from the picture in the dataspace. "It's been too long, my friend."

The King asked him the first thing. "Ansem the Wise. Why didn't you come to me before things got so bad?" Ansem told him. "Xemnas, the Organization's Superior, is the Nobody of Xehanort, my foremost apprentice. The burden was mine to bear." And then the part he was less proud of. "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 told the King who had helped him. "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." The King put him right. "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 about the promise. "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 took the blame for the face. "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."

His voice dropped. "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." He stopped, and when he spoke again it was not to the King. "Oh, how my heart ached. I could only laugh to hide my shame."

He had come to put it right. "My friend, the time has come. I must make amends to these young people." And he did not mean to wait for the others. "Sora and Riku are together. We have no part to play here." About Riku's shape he was honest. "Riku chose that form so he could use the power of darkness. It won't be easy."

He had a machine with him, and the King asked what it was. "What's this gadget for?" Ansem told him. "It's a device to reclaim Kingdom Hearts and encode it as data." He did not pretend to know how it would go. "I do not claim to know the outcome of this venture, either. After all. Hearts are unpredictable."

They set it up on a high balcony below the moon, and turned it on, and it began to draw the moon's light into itself. Ansem watched it and talked, as if to himself. "I'm a fool. I've spent years studying the workings of the heart. Yet it seems I still haven't learned a thing!"

Ansem shook his head at his own work. "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 machine could not hold what it was taking. It began to shake. Ansem shouted at the King to go. "All the more proof that hearts cannot be contained by data. Run, my friend! It's going to self-destruct, and anything could happen!" The King would not leave him. Ansem begged him. "My heart is telling me what I must do. Please allow me to do what it says!"

Sora and the others came out onto the balcony then, and so did Xemnas, from the other side. Ansem turned to Sora first. "Sora, the rest is up to you." And then to someone he could not see. "And Roxas. I doubt you can hear me. but. I am sorry."

Xemnas looked at the machine, and at the man working it. "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 blamed him for all of it. "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 did not deny it. "Have your laugh. I deserve as much for failing to see you for the fool you are." Xemnas smiled at that. "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 turned it 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?" And he called him by his 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!"

The machine was screaming. Ansem said goodbye. "We've said enough! Riku, you know what to do! King Mickey, my friend, forgive me! Farewell!" Riku took the King by the hand and did not let go. "His heart's decided. We can't change that."

The machine burst. The light took the balcony and everything on it, and the moon above the city broke, and hearts came raining down out of it into the dark city, hundreds of them, and Heartless rose where they fell. When the light cleared, Ansem the Wise was gone, and Xemnas was gone, and Riku was standing there with his own face.

The King looked at him. "Ansem did say 'anything could happen'." Riku did not look glad. Sora went to him. "Riku. C'mon, man. Why do you have to do so much on your own? You got friends, like us!"

The Heartless from the broken moon were coming up through the castle towards them, more than anyone could fight, and two people stepped out in front of them who had come to the castle for their own reasons. Maleficent waved Sora on. "Be gone from here! Leave these creatures to us!" The King held the others back from arguing. "They're doing what their hearts command. We can't interfere."

Maleficent turned to Pete. "I will be sending them after Xemnas. Or, perhaps, you would rather fight them yourself?" Pete could count. "But there's no way we can take 'em all!" She did not care. "Off with you then!"

Pete looked at the King, and grinned. "Well, if it ain't the boat-boy King." Then he looked at the Heartless and cracked his knuckles. "Now lookie here. Opportunities like this don't come along every day, ya know. Bring 'em on!" Maleficent called after Sora as he went. "Sora! 'Your Majesty'! Do not forget. when I've destroyed them all, this castle shall be mine!"

Victory or Oblivion

At the top of the castle there was a wide round platform open to the sky, and Xemnas stood on it looking up at what was left of his moon. He mourned it out loud. "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!"

Then he turned to them and asked a question, as if they were students. "Denizens of light, answer this: Why do you hate the darkness?" The King answered him. "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."

Xemnas asked another. "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?" Riku answered that one. "It's because of who's lurking inside it." Xemnas conceded something. "That may be. However, what other choice might we have had?"

The King saw what he was doing before anyone else. "Xemnas! No!" Donald shouted at him. "You'll never win!" Xemnas looked at them. "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 had had enough of him. "Just give it a rest! You're Nobodies! You don't even exist! You're not sad about anything!"

Xemnas took Sora away from the others, into a place made out of the dark city itself, the tall building with the screens standing up out of nothing, and waited at the top of it. "Come closer." They fought there alone. On the platform the others could not see him. Kairi called for him. "Sora! Where are you?" Riku shouted. "Sora, answer me!"

Sora beat him, and Xemnas seemed almost interested in it. "So, it wasn't a fallacy." Then Sora was back on the platform with the others, and the King was glad. "Gosh, you all did great!"

But Xemnas had gone up, into the broken moon. Sora shouted after him. "Xemnas, you can't hide from us!" Xemnas spoke to the moon. "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."

Xemnas reached up towards it. "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!"

A door stood on the platform where there had been no door, white and tall. The King understood it. "The worlds gave us this doorway. They want us to be the guardians of their destiny!" Goofy did not. "What's goin' on?"

They said what they had to say before they went through. Donald was grim about it. "Don't let your guard down. We may wind up getting separated at any time. Come on, let's save the world again!" Goofy was sure. "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!" The King thought of the man they had lost. "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 would not 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?"

Riku stood by the door with Sora. "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."

On the far side Xemnas was waiting for them, and mocked them for coming. "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 raised the Keyblade. "Get ready, Xemnas. It all ends here!"

He had made himself a fortress out of what was left of his world, a great white machine shaped like a dragon, and they went through it and over it. He cut Kairi and the King off from the rest of them with the ruins of his city. Sora would not stop. "We can take him on our own!"

In the heart of the machine Xemnas met them in armour, with the weapons of his fallen Organization, and threw Sora and Riku out of it into the open air. "Hearts are power." He fought them out there, and talked while he did it. "Sora. are you certain you can trust Riku?" And to Riku: "Riku. are you sure you're not jealous of Sora?" And to both of them: "Sora. Riku. there is falsehood within your hearts. Do you dare deny it?"

They beat him. He was fading when they came down, and still asking for more. "I need. more rage. I need more. hearts." Then they were all back on the platform at the top of the castle, and he was gone. Riku was quiet. "I had given in to the darkness."

Sora had said something to Xemnas at the end, and got an answer. "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 had told him the truth. "Unfortunately. I don't."

There was no way home. Riku could no longer open a way through the dark; there was no darkness left in him to do it with. Then a girl in white was there on the platform, faint as a reflection, and a doorway opened beside her onto the sound of the sea.

The King looked at the doorway. "Well, I'm not sure. But we'd better hurry and get through." He went, and Goofy went after him. "Wait for me!" Donald shouted back from inside. "C'mon!"

Only Sora and Riku and Kairi had seen her. Kairi went to her. "Thank you, Naminé." Naminé looked at Sora. "Sure. See? We meet again, like we promised." Sora did not remember any promise. Then someone stepped out of him, a boy his own age with fair hair, and stood in front of Naminé, and it was Roxas.

Roxas remembered what she had told him. "You said we'd meet again, but when we did, we might not recognize each other." Then he understood why they did. "I think I understand. I see myself the way you remember me. And you see yourself the way I remember you."

Naminé was surprised they were there at all. "I always thought Nobodies were doomed to fade back into darkness." Roxas knew why they were not. "Yeah, but you and I didn't. We got to meet our original selves." Kairi asked when they would see them again. "Right. Anytime Sora and Kairi are together." Kairi promised it to all of them. "We'll be together every day. Right, Sora?"

Naminé was delighted. "So, we can be together again!" Roxas grinned at Sora. "Look sharp!" And he stepped back into him, and Naminé into Kairi. Riku told them what they were already feeling. "Don't worry. You're all still you."

Kairi stood at the doorway and turned round. "Hey, let's go home!" And she went through.

Sora and Riku were a step behind her when the dragon came up over the edge of the platform, and the doorway closed, and there was nobody left on the platform but the two of them.

Closer Than You Think

They beat the dragon, the two of them, and went after Xemnas into the place he had made, and on the way Sora said something he had been carrying. "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 told him he would get the chance. "Don't worry, we'll make that happen. Once this is over, you can thank her all you want."

It was a white nothing with a grey floor, and Xemnas was waiting in it with the light and the dark and the nothing all at his call. "Anger and Hate are supreme." They fought him, and he nearly finished them, and he would not stop. "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 answered him. "You're right, light and darkness are eternal. Nothing probably goes on forever, too. But guess what, Xemnas?" Sora finished it for him. "That doesn't mean YOU'RE eternal!" Xemnas laughed at them. "No more eternal than that radiance of yours."

At the end of it Sora was open to a blow that would have killed him, and Riku took it instead. Then the two of them held the Keyblade together and turned it on Xemnas, and the light went through him. "Curses. Keyblade." Riku had the last word. "I wouldn't be too sure of that."

Xemnas had left an order behind him, and the Dusks came to carry it out, to finish the Keyblade wielders, and the two of them destroyed them and got out.

They came out on a beach they did not know, a dark shore of black sand and blue rocks under great broken arches, with a cold pale light far out over the water like a sun that gave no warmth. Riku was hurt and could hardly walk. They sat down on the sand together, and for a while neither of them said anything.

Riku spoke first, and it was a joke of a sort. "You know. I always figured I was better at stuff than you." Then he looked at the shore. "This world is perfect for me. If this is what the world really is. just this, then maybe I should fade back into darkness." He thought he had worked out where they belonged. "If the world is made of light and darkness. We'll be the darkness."

Sora would not have it. "Aw, c'mon, Riku. You've been hanging around darkness for too long. You gotta try and think positive." Riku was quiet for a while. Then he said the true thing. "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 at their feet: a bottle, with a letter in it. Riku picked it up and looked at it and held it out. "Sora? I think it's for you." Sora opened it and 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."

When he looked up there was a light on the water that had not been there. "Hey, Riku. What's that light?" It was a door, standing open. Sora got up and held out his hand, and Riku took it, and they walked into the light together.

They fell out of the sky into the sea, into warm water, under the sky they had grown up under, and someone on the beach was calling them. Kairi was standing at the water's edge. Sora swam for her, and came up out of the sea onto the sand in front of her, and she smiled at him. "You're home."

He gave her back her charm, on its string, the way he had promised. Donald and Goofy threw their arms round him, and the King ran to Riku.

Later, when the noise had settled, Sora asked Riku about the thing he had not been able to find words for. "Hey Riku, what do you think it was, the door to the light?" Riku laughed a little and tapped Sora's chest. "This." Sora put his hand over his heart and looked up. "This?" Riku nodded. "Yeah. It's always closer than you think."

Some while after that a letter came in a bottle, and Sora held it up. "From the king?"

And some while after that, Sora went back to the secret place in the cave on the little island, where they had drawn on the walls when they were small, and there was a new drawing there next to his old one: Kairi, holding out a paopu fruit to him.