Kingdom Hearts III

The Boy in Black

Long ago, in a white city, two boys sat across a game board in a classroom full of light. Above the blackboard hung a Keyblade, and the boy in black kept looking up at it. "Have you heard of the ancient Keyblade War?" Xehanort asked. His friend Eraqus did not look up from the board. "Huh? Of course I have." He moved a piece. "Yeah, the Master's favorite story." Xehanort was still looking at the Keyblade. "Long ago, Keyblade wielders waged a war over the ownership of light. I wonder what they planned on doing with Kingdom Hearts after, making it appear." Eraqus shrugged. "Who knows? I don't get why anyone would initiate a war."

Xehanort turned back to the board. "So, you know the 'Lost Masters'? They're the ones who started the Keyblade War. Or, they're the ones for whom the war started." Eraqus looked blank. "Never heard of 'em. Where'd you hear about that?" Xehanort did not believe him. "You can drop the facade. 'On that land shall darkness prevail and light expire.' A prospective Keyblade Master should know this." He looked up at the Keyblade on the wall. "The Gazing Eye sees the fate of the World. The future, it's already been written."

Eraqus was not having it. "Really? I'm not so sure about that. Besides, who's to say I can't change it? And maybe light will prevail." Xehanort glanced at the board, where Eraqus was losing. "Pretty confident. But things aren't in your favor." Eraqus only smiled. "Perhaps. But unlike darkness, there is more to light than meets the eye. You might be surprised." Xehanort seemed to like that. "Oh, I hope so."

The Three We Lost

Mickey told it standing in the middle of Yen Sid's study, with the old sorcerer at his desk behind him and the stars turning slowly in the window over his shoulder. He started with the part he had carried alone for a long time. "I saw her. In the realm of darkness."

Riku and Kairi already knew some of it. They had not known the rest: the empty worlds Aqua had walked through, the silent shapes of Terra and Ven that met her there and would not speak, the long years before Mickey found her, and the shore where the Heartless came for Riku and she put herself between them. Mickey ended where it had ended for him, with a voice he could no longer place. "I thought. I heard her voice in the distance."

Riku had listened with his head down, and for a moment after Mickey finished he kept it there. "She sacrificed herself to save me?" Then he looked up and turned on the king with one hand held out, as if the answer could be put into it. "Why did you keep it from me for so long?"

Mickey did not try to make it sound better than it was. "I had to respect her choice."

That was not good enough, and Riku's hands closed into fists. "What about us? You could've given us a choice. We could have gone and helped her."

"I know," Mickey said. He let it stand for a moment, and then he gave Riku the thing he had been waiting to give him. "But, now we can help Aqua. You and I, we're gonna go find her!"

Yen Sid took it from there. The great battle with Xehanort was close, he told them, and the seven pure lights had to be kept safe, which meant gathering seven guardians of light before it came. "It is time to return to our world the three Keyblade wielders we lost over a decade ago. Ventus, Terra, and Aqua must be saved from their sad end, for they have more to achieve." Ventus's heart had refused to wake after the first battle with Xehanort, so Aqua had hidden him somewhere safe and gone after Terra, and she had fallen to a place no one comes back from without help.

Riku asked him straight out why it had been kept a secret. "Do not be rash, Riku," the old man said. Finding a way into the realm of darkness had not been simple the first time, and even if they had found one, none of them had the means to bring Aqua out again. So he had forbidden Mickey to tell anyone, and forbidden him to go after her. He looked at Riku over the top of his beard. "That much is obvious. If not you, then certainly Sora would have staged a reckless attempt at rescue."

It was not an accusation Riku could argue with, and he did not try. "Yeah!" Riku said. "Count me in!"

Kairi had stood a little apart through all of it, one hand resting against her chest. Now she studied Riku as if he were someone she was meeting for the first time. "Who's this new Riku and where's the old one?"

"New me?" Riku asked.

"Yeah," Kairi said. "You're more like Sora."

He thought about it, and seemed to decide he did not mind. "Should I be flattered? I try too hard to be the role model. It's more fun to just listen to my heart. Which is Sora-esque."

"Well, we still like you," Kairi said, smiling. Then she turned to the desk, and the smile went. "Master, I came here because I wanted to help somehow. What can I do?"

"I have entrusted the wizard Merlin to oversee the training for our new Keyblade wielders," Yen Sid said. "Yourself and Lea."

"Lea?" Kairi asked.

"He means Axel," Mickey said.

Kairi spun around. "What!?"

Mickey threw both arms wide, the way he did when he wanted a thing settled. "He's a regular person now. He even saved Sora for us. You can trust him!"

There was one more thing before they went. The three good fairies had sent new clothes for Riku and Mickey, made to shield them from the darkness, and Yen Sid handed them over. "Thank you, Master," they said together. Then Mickey was already at the door. "C'mon, Riku. It's time for us to go. First, we gotta find an entrance to the realm of darkness."

These Things Take Time

Sora came back from the Sleeping Worlds pleased with himself, with Donald and Goofy on his heels. "Heh heh heh. Secret. I'm back!"

The study was emptier than he expected. "Huh? Just us?" Nobody had waited, and nobody had said good-bye. "That's great. They coulda said good-bye."

Donald had something to say about that, and Sora bent down until they were nose to beak to argue it. "It is not. I just like to say good-bye to all my friends." He straightened up with his hands behind his head. "I'm here now, right?"

When it came out that he had lost most of his strength again, he shrugged that off too. "Whatever! Happens all the time."

"The others all had important work to do," Yen Sid said. "So I sent them on their way." He let the bickering run a moment longer and then put an end to it. "We have matters to discuss."

The allies they needed against Xehanort were still asleep, and Sora's exam had been meant to give him the power to wake them. He had not come out of it with that power. The darkness had nearly taken hold of him, and he had not learned to use what he had gained. "Furthermore, Xehanort nearly made you his vessel, and in the process stripped you of most of the power you had gained by then. I suspect you have already noticed this, correct?"

Sora had noticed. He had no argument, and he did not make one.

Chip and Dale were working through the data Ansem the Wise had given Riku, Yen Sid went on, and he had high hopes for it. But the best chance of stopping Xehanort was still Sora, if he trusted where his heart led him. First he had to get his strength back, and above all the power of waking. "There's someone who lost his strength and found it again, a true hero to whom you ought to pay a visit. Perhaps he can point you in the right direction."

He looked past Sora to the two who had been at his side every time. "I would have it no other way. I put Sora in your hands."

"Donald! Goofy!" Sora said, delighted with both of them all over again. "Let's go! Count on us!"

Getting there was another matter. On board the Gummi Ship none of them could find a way to anywhere, and Sora, stuck at the controls, was not in the mood to be rushed. "How're we supposed to get there now?" Then, when that was met with the obvious: "Gimme a break, I'm trying. These things take time!"

It was Goofy who remembered. "Master Yen Sid always said that, right before we went off on any of our real important adventures." Sora looked round at him. "Huh? What's that?" Goofy said it again, and Sora went quiet, turning it over. "Really? Ring a bell?"

It did. His face cleared all at once. "'May my heart be my guiding key.' I've got it!" He grinned at the other two. "All right! Olympus Coliseum, here we come!"

Olympus

The guiding key got them most of the way. Sora's steering was a little off again, as he was the first to admit ("Sorry!"), and instead of the Coliseum they came down on the slopes of Mount Olympus with no idea which way to go except up. After a while of climbing in circles they gave up and shouted for Hercules, and the one who answered was Hades, who wanted to know who was yodeling that yutz's name. He saw who it was and deflated. "Oh, it's just you. Oy vey." Sora told him that was cold even for him. Hades reminded him he could always turn up the heat, then talked himself back down: he was cool, he was good, because Wonderboy would be out of his hair soon enough. With that he had his Titans blow all three of them off the mountain and down into Thebes.

Hercules found them where they landed, and grinned. "You guys are here! Sora, Donald, Goofy! You literally dropped in. Gotta say, I'm impressed." He could guess who had sent them down that way, and it seemed to worry him very little. When he asked what brought them, Sora told him the truth. He had lost his strength, all of it, and the last time they had seen each other Hercules had been in the same place. "How'd you get your strength back, when you jumped in and saved Meg?"

Hercules had to think about that, and the answer he came up with was not much of a recipe. "Hmm, that's tough. All I know is that she was in trouble. Suddenly, I wanted to save her with all my heart, but, it's not like I could tell you how."

Before they could get any further, Heartless came down on Thebes in flames and the city started to burn. Hercules sent Megara and Phil somewhere safe on Pegasus and threw the three of them into the fire, and between them they pulled a little girl out of it and the people out of the streets. In the smoke Sora ran into two faces he knew. He asked Maleficent if this was her doing. "Certainly not," she said. Pete thought the Keyblade kid looked puny enough to finish off while they had the chance, but she never so much as glanced at Sora. "Waste no time with the boy. He's inconsequential. We have a far more pressing matter to attend to."

The last of the citizens were out of a temple as it came down around them when someone called out to them. "Oh, wow! Very nice, full marks." Xigbar had been watching, and he had come to talk. He asked whether having a heart of light came with an extremely good insurance policy, and told them no good would ever come of putting other people first; a hero who leapt into danger only dragged someone else in after him. Then, more quietly, he gave Sora something that sounded almost like advice. "Yes, hearts are powerful when they're connected. But if you put too much of that power in one place, some of those hearts might end up breaking. Still, Sora, that doesn't mean you should change. Accept the power you're given. Find the hearts joined to yours."

Hercules had heard enough. "I was able to save Meg's life because I was ready to risk my own." Xigbar laughed at that. "As if! You don't have any choice but to follow this sweet little trail of bread crumbs." At the end of it, he promised, Sora would find out what destiny had in store for him. "You're so close!" Then he was gone, and Hercules spoke up before the words could settle. "Sora, don't let him bother you. He's just trying to get under your skin 'cause he thinks he can. But we'll prove him wrong. We'll show him that our sacrifices haven't been for nothing."

The rest of the trouble was on the mountain. Hades had taken Zeus prisoner, and Hercules flew up ahead of them to his family. Sora, Donald and Goofy climbed after him, and together they broke the Titans, freed Zeus, and watched the king of the gods seal Hades away in the middle of a threat he never got to finish.

Maleficent's more pressing matter had nothing to do with Hades's plans. She had gone to him with one question, whether there was a distinctive black box somewhere in this world, and he took her for someone after the one Zeus had hidden on earth and sent her off to dig for it. Digging was Pete's job. He thought little of it, or of whoever had put the idea in her head. "I think that dingbat in black was pulling your leg." She told him to be quiet and dig. "I must find that Book of Prophecies and make it my own. His was the only clue we have." What Pete finally turned up was Pandora's box, which was not what she was looking for. "That is not the box which I desire. We are finished with this world. Come."

Xigbar had watched the whole dig from above. "May your hear," he began, and stopped there. Luxord had come up behind him. He wanted to know why a black box had suddenly become so important, and who Xigbar really was; Xigbar gave him no answer, and after a moment Luxord let it go.

Down in Thebes, Hercules had made his choice. He could have gone home to Olympus, and he did not want to. "I can see my family anytime I want. If I stayed, I'd have to be apart from the person I love most. And that life would be empty. I finally know where I belong." When he remembered that he still owed Sora an answer and offered to help, Sora shook his head. He had it already. "Mmm, it's okay. I think I'm meant to figure it out for myself. I'll find my strength the way you found yours. Something to fight for, with all my heart. I guess you did have the answer." Hercules told him he had heart, and that if he kept at it he would be stronger than ever.

Poor Thing

At the Dark Margin the water came in and went out again without a sound, and Aqua sat beside Ansem the Wise and watched it. "I can't shake the feeling that these waters touch another shore I've visited," she said. He asked her whether she would stay there, and the shore she half remembered turned out to be one he knew. "You've heard of them?" Aqua asked, looking round at him.

"The Destiny Islands," the old man said. "Yes. They are quite lovely, a far cry from this wasteland."

Aqua turned back to the water. "I'm staying. Someone will come for me."

He did not try to talk her out of it. If anything he gave her a reason to go on believing it. "These waters are the in-between of dark and light, its shores the margins of day and night. They brought you and I together, so why not also you and another?"

Something moved in the dark behind them, and Aqua was on her feet. "Who's there?" A man in a black coat came out of the shadows, and she knew enough to be afraid of him. "I think you should go," she told him. He did not even look at her. He had come for the old man. "Master. I must have a word with you." Ansem the Wise heard the word for what it was. "'Master'? So now you mock me." It was the Heartless of his old apprentice, the one who had taken his name.

The Heartless wanted something from him. "Do you recall those experiments of the heart you bade me cease? Among the test subjects was a girl. She had lost her memory, just as I had. But, you can reconstruct memories. You did with Sora. I believe you have seen the girl's memories." The old man turned his face away. "Please. I have created enough victims." When he spoke again it was firmer. "I told you I did not take her. Her disappearance was why I put a stop to the research." The Heartless did not believe him. "Where did you put the girl?" Ansem the Wise would not tell him anything. "Roxas and Naminé. If there is any reason that I still draw breath, it is to atone for what I did to them."

"Very well," the Heartless said. "If you won't tell me here." He looked past him at Aqua, amused. "A lost guardian of light? You wait here, for the King and his fool." Then, with interest: "Where's your Keyblade?" She had none to show him and squared up to him anyway. "Don't need it!"

Ansem the Wise stepped in front of her. "No more! I'll go."

"You are wise," the Heartless told him. Then he turned back to Aqua with something like pity. "Poor thing. I mustn't leave you with nothing." The darkness he gave her went into her before she could move, and when she spoke again her voice had gone small. "What. Is this feeling?"

The Dark World

The realm of darkness was not the place Riku remembered. He stopped partway in, looking round at a landscape he felt he ought to know, and Mickey asked if he was tired, if he needed to stop. "No, just. I've been here. I should know this place. But that all seems like another life." What was different, he said once they were walking again, was him. "I remember my first time here. I was so scared. But now, my doubts and fears are gone. If anything, I feel exhilarated." It was not the darkness in him, he knew that rush too well, and it was not nerves. "I know Aqua needs us, but I'm ready. I'm in control now. Maybe it's because you're with me this time."

Riku had done years of growing in almost no time at all, Mickey said, and he would not take the credit for any of it. "It's not me. I think it's because you've finally found inside you that special strength to protect what matters. Sometimes you care so much for somebody that other feelings disappear. And then, there's no room for fear or doubt."

Riku turned the words over. "Is that it? 'Strength to protect what matters.' It reminds me of a promise I made."

They came out at last on the Dark Margin, the grey shore where the sea runs up against the realm of darkness. Riku knew it, because he had been there with Sora; it was where the two of them had found their way back to the light, and for a moment he let himself hope. "Hey, maybe Aqua did, too!" Mickey was quiet. He had come this far by following his heart and letting Aqua show him the way, he said, and the closer he got, the hazier their connection felt. "It's gone. I'm positive Aqua was here. But now, her trail's gone dim." She had fallen further, into an abyss even darker than this one, somewhere he could not see her. "And I don't think we're equipped to dive any deeper than we already are."

The Heartless came before they could decide what to do about it. "Oh no! Riku, be careful," Mickey called. "Even the least threatening Heartless are stronger in this realm." He was right. They piled up out of the dark into a tower of bodies, and the tower came down on Riku and dragged him under.

He came to himself in the water off the Margin, and someone was there with him, someone with his face. The Replica had been drifting through the Dark World for a long time, barely holding together, and had seen Riku in trouble. "Didn't expect to see you again," he said. "Why did you even come here?" Riku told him the truth. "Because somebody needs me." The Replica seemed to think about that. "Do you want some help?" He began to answer the question on Riku's face, "Me? I'm." That was as far as Riku heard before everything went dark.

Mickey's voice brought him back. "Riku. Wake up. Riku. Are you okay?" He had got more than half of the Heartless, he said, and the rest had vanished, but not before they spat Riku out. Mickey was shaken, and it showed. "I know ya feel invincible, but we're not." Riku's Keyblade lay broken beside him, and Mickey's was damaged too. "The Heartless here are stronger than what we expected," Mickey said. "I think we need to go back to Master Yen Sid's tower so we can regroup."

Riku knew he was right, and hated it. "But Aqua's still down here, alone. Facing enemies like that. What if she's feeling as scared and alone as I felt the first time I came here? How long are we supposed to keep her waiting in this awful place?"

Mickey thought about her for a moment. "But Aqua. She's like Sora." Riku looked at him blankly, and Mickey shook his head and tried again. "No no no. Strong like Sora!"

That, Riku understood. Some of the worry went out of him. "Okay. Good. Then I guess she's gonna be all right. Sora could fall into any darkness and swim his way out." He picked up the two halves of the Way to the Dawn and looked at them, and then he left them there on the shore, for the one who had pulled him out of the water. "Right. Can't use this Keyblade anymore. Might as well leave it here, for the other me."

What About My Outfit

Sora came back to the tower without a shortcut. Olympus had not given him his strength back, he told Yen Sid, so he would just have to build it up again the old-fashioned way. The old sorcerer nodded slowly. "I see. You could not regain your strength." It did not change what Sora needed. "Regardless, Sora, you will need the power of waking." But whatever it was Sora had brought back with him seemed to interest Yen Sid more than it disappointed him. "Perhaps it could be something that is as simple as that. Whenever you are in need, magic happens. That is your greatest strength, Sora."

Mickey and Riku came in on the tail of it, looking the worse for wear. "Hey there, fellas," Mickey said to Donald and Goofy. "So, what've you three been up to?" Then he told Yen Sid how it had gone for them. Aqua's trail had led them to the Dark Margin and stopped. "All traces of her vanish into the great abyss, beneath the realm of darkness." Without her, they had nowhere to turn. "I'm not sure who's even left to ask. Ventus is hidden, and Aqua's the only one who knows where. Plus, nobody's seen Terra in ages. Aqua was the last."

Riku put it together out loud. "So Aqua, she's gonna be the key to finding all three."

"Yes," Yen Sid said. "Their teacher, Master Eraqus, would have been another possibility, had Xehanort not mercilessly struck him down." He turned from one of them to the other and handed out the work. "Sora, you must focus on regaining your lost power of waking. Mickey and Riku, I recall that Master Aqua journeyed to many worlds, and connected with others who could be the link we need."

Mickey liked the plan, but there was a problem first. "Good plan, sir. Riku and I will retrace her steps and see if we can find any sort of clues, but first. We got hit pretty hard in the realm of darkness. My Keyblade was damaged, and the Heartless broke Riku's clean in half. So, we're gonna need to get replacements before we can continue."

Yen Sid had an answer ready for that too. "In that case, rendezvous with Kairi and Lea. They are continuing their training under the tutelage of the wizard Merlin. Also, I would like you to deliver these for me." He set out two sets of clothes, and when Mickey and Riku recognised them, he nodded. "Yes, they are the same as the ones I gave you. Special vestments to shield Kairi and Lea from the darkness."

Sora looked at the vestments, at the new clothes Riku and Mickey had already been given, and down at himself. "What? No fair! What about my outfit, Master?"

"Settle down," Yen Sid said. "I have new clothes for you, too, Sora. A gift from the good fairies." There was a suitcase waiting for him. Flora, Fauna and Merryweather had taken their time over this one. "Those are no ordinary garments, Sora. Like before, they have very special powers, so it took extra time to prepare them. In addition, there is a gift from Chip and Dale inside."

Sora was grinning before he had the case open. "I knew you'd come through for me. Thanks!"

Yen Sid had one more thing for him. "Good. Now, to mark the beginning of a new journey, I wish for you to have this, Sora. That is a Heartbinder. Think of it as a good luck charm made just for you. You have a gift, Sora, for connecting with others, and this makes that gift stronger." When they were ready to go, he saw them off quietly, with the words he always sent them away with. "May your heart be your guiding key."

Mickey and Riku left for Merlin's. Sora did not wait for anyone to give him a lead. Roxas's heart was with him, and he knew where Roxas had belonged, so he took Donald and Goofy and set a course for Twilight Town.

Twilight Town

Twilight Town gave them no time to look around. Nobodies were waiting for them, and out of them rose a whole tide of Heartless that swept across the square toward three people Sora knew. Pence was running and shouting "What? Hold up!" and Olette was hauling him along, "Get the ice cream later!", and Hayner was with them. Sora, Donald and Goofy got between them and the tide and drove it back.

Pence caught his breath and was delighted. "So does this mean that weird stuff's going down again?" He answered himself before anyone else could: the creatures last time had been bright white, so these had to be new. "Man, I can't wait to get to sleuthin'." Olette had already spotted the other two. "Donald! Goofy! How are ya?" Then she looked at Sora, and her face turned serious. "Whatever's going on, you wouldn't be here unless you had a good reason."

He had a photograph with him, and he showed it to them: a boy, and the name that went with him. "Roxas?" Olette said. None of them knew him, though Hayner frowned at the name as if it ought to mean something. Olette took the picture and studied the building behind the boy. "This photograph," she said slowly, and then she knew it. "Mm-hmm. Sora, you three should go to the place in the photo. It's the old mansion. The three of us'll cover places in town."

In the old mansion, on Ansem the Wise's machines, they found the way into a second Twilight Town, made of data, the town Roxas had lived his last days in. It had its own Hayner, Pence and Olette, and they had a photograph that matched Sora's. "It's like one of those 'spot the differences' puzzles, except really easy," Pence said, looking at the two side by side. "I guess in that town, we're friends with this 'Roxas' person." Asking around town turned up nothing more, and the transporter that would have carried them across into the other one would not open. Pence typed in the old password and groaned. "Oh, man. The transporter's been protected."

That was when Sora's Gummiphone rang. It was Ienzo, calling from Radiant Garden, whom Sora had last met under another name, in the castle, when Ienzo was one of the Organization. "I'm Ienzo," he said, when Sora did not place him. "Aeleus is here too." They had come back when Sora and his friends defeated their Nobodies, and they were not the Organization any longer. "We're just students of the heart, exactly the same as we were before all of this began." They had been working on the code Ansem the Wise left behind, and they had found something. "In order to piece your memories back together, our teacher, Ansem the Wise, took a close look at your heart. And what he found is that your heart doesn't belong just to you."

Sora told him what he thought that meant: that Roxas was in there with him. Ienzo took it seriously. "It's incredible enough that you and your Nobody are able to coexist. If you share a heart, no wonder someone as remarkable as you caught Ansem the Wise's eye. We'll keep investigating based on your hypothesis. I'll be in touch."

He was in touch sooner than that. Someone had logged into Ansem's computer from another terminal, and it turned out to be Pence. Between them Ienzo and Pence networked the two machines, so that Ienzo could work on the mansion's computer from Radiant Garden. Somewhere in it, he explained, there had to be a record of Roxas's full data, because Ansem the Wise would have needed all of it to build the virtual town. "Don't worry, we'll handle it. Chip and Dale will be helping me out here on this end. I'll call you back as soon as we know anything more."

Outside the mansion, two men in black were waiting for them. Sora knew them both: Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, and Xemnas. "So, you think you can bring Roxas back?" Ansem asked, and did not wait for an answer. "Do you even realize what you are saying? The other Twilight Town is just data." Xemnas was colder still. "Roxas should never have existed in the first place. What you seek is impossible." He let that sink in. "And in the unlikely event you did manage to separate the two, where is it you think you can put his heart?"

Sora told them he would do it anyway. Ansem only spread his hands. "In that case, by all means." Xemnas said nothing would please them more than Roxas's return, and then he told Sora the price. "A Nobody is what's left behind when one gives his heart to darkness. There is only one way to bring Roxas back, which is for you to give your heart up as well. Sora, have you finally decided to call upon the darkness?"

"Now," Ansem said softly, "set your heart free." Sora would not.

When Sora had gone, Xigbar came to find the two of them. "Aren't you making it a little too obvious?" Ansem was scornful of Sora and his friends. "Yes. Just look at them. They wouldn't get far if we did not spell it out." Xigbar was less sure. "Fair enough. But let's not forget how many times Sora still managed to rain on our parade." Xemnas was more measured. "We were instructed to guide him." Ansem did not argue with that, as far as it went. "If he wavers from the path we lay, we destroy him." Xigbar shrugged. "But in that case, we'll have to find ourselves another vessel." Nor was Sora the only plan they had. "That is why," Xemnas said, "we never have just one iron in the fire."

Radiant Garden

Merlin had the vestments for Kairi and Lea, and Riku and Mickey went on from there to Radiant Garden, where Dilan, once of the Organization and now a guard at the castle again, walked them down to the Central Square. Riku looked around the square. "Where Aqua fell into the realm of darkness after she dove in to save Terra."

Mickey nodded. "Yeah, she said he was acting strange." Aqua had sensed darkness in Terra, he said, and the two of them had ended up fighting, here, all those years ago. Riku knew the rest from the other side. "Right. And in the aftermath, the two of them disappeared. Around the same time, the guards found a stranger with white hair lying unconscious here in the square, a man calling himself 'Xehanort.'"

Mickey took the story on from there, and it was a long one. Ansem the Wise had taken the stranger in, and it had been a mistake: Xehanort betrayed his master, stole his research, and with the other apprentices cut his heart away from his body. The heart took the name Ansem and went back in time to teach its younger self, and once, for a while, it had even had control of Riku. The body stayed in the present as Xemnas and founded Organization XIII. "Their goal was to prepare thirteen vessels for Xehanort's heart."

Riku carried it forward himself. Then they had put an end to the Organization, but all that time Young Xehanort had been visiting the future and choosing thirteen vessels of his own, the real Organization XIII, and now it wanted a fight. Something did not fit, though, and he frowned over it. "But what happened to Terra? I thought you said that Aqua saved him."

"Yep, she did," Mickey said. "The problem is we didn't notice." The Xehanort they had seen at the end of the exam was an old man. Ansem and Xemnas were not; they were young, because Xehanort had been in a different body when his heart and body split. The face in the portrait he had told Riku about had never been a stranger's. "It was the young man whose body Master Xehanort possessed." He let Riku catch up. "Yep. Master Xehanort told us 'another on our list' belonged to him. He was talking about Terra. Turns out, Aqua saved more than just her friend that day."

Riku stared at him. "No way! That was Terra? Master Xehanort was using Terra?" He worked through it and came up against the obvious question. "Okay, but Master Xehanort is an old man again now. Where did Terra's body go?"

Mickey had been afraid of that one. "Hmm. It's 'cause Master Xehanort's collecting vessels! He claimed to have two of our seven lights. We got Sora back, but Terra must still be on Xehanort's side." Riku took that in. "He's with Organization XIII? We should warn Sora."

Sora beat them to it. His call came through before they could make theirs, and what he wanted to know was how to bring Roxas back. "No, Riku and I are visiting Radiant Garden," Mickey told him. "Actually, we were just about to call you guys, but it looks like you beat us to the punch."

It was Riku who had an answer for him. "Replicas. Well, replicas are basically human." Sora did not know the word, and Riku remembered why. "Oh, yeah. You wouldn't remember. The previous Organization XIII developed 'replicas': realistic vessels to place hearts in. They're so real, in fact, that you'd actually mistake them for people. And with hearts, the replicas will become people." He had known one. "Yup. The replica takes the form of the heart inside it."

Mickey promised to take it to Ienzo, who had been in the Organization back then and might know more. When Sora started to apologise for landing it on them, Mickey waved it off. "Aw, it's okay. But there's something you guys should know about one of their members." He told him about Terra. "So, let the rest of us worry about Roxas and Naminé for now. You journey on, and keep an eye out for Terra."

When the call ended Mickey shook his head, smiling. "They don't change, do they?" Riku was smiling too. "Nope, that's their best quality."

"Welp, we gave Merlin the vestments for Kairi and Axel," Mickey said. "Let's go stop by Ansem the Wise's study." Ienzo was there, and he could not help them. "Yes. Even would know all about the replicas from his time as Vexen in the Organization," he said. But Even had come back without waking, and then he had woken and gone, and Aeleus and Dilan had turned the town upside down without finding him. What he had left behind was no use either: his notes on the replicas were old, from long before he made any real progress. Nor could Ienzo see how he had gone anywhere. "There's no place that he could go now that he's human. He has no means of leaving this world." Mickey thought of the obvious way out. "The dark corridors." Ienzo shook his head. "Are beyond his faculties and mine now."

Riku thought of a worse one. "But not everyone's. What if Even was taken?" Mickey saw where that led. "Of course! The Organization could also use the replicas!" And Riku finished it for him. "To fill out their ranks." The thought of Ventus came after that, and it only led them back to where they had started. "Maybe, except Aqua's the only one who knows where he's hidden," Riku said. "We still have to find her first."

Mickey was already heading for the door. "We'd better go tell Master Yen Sid. And Sora, and the others, too!"

Sora heard about it from Ienzo, who called him sounding worried. "Oh, before I forget, a bit of troubling news. It's about one of the Organization's former members. You knew him as Vexen, but to us he was Ansem's apprentice Even." He had come back like the rest of them but had not woken, and then he had vanished. Aeleus and Dilan had gone looking for him, and found nothing. "He's just gone. And I'm starting to worry." Sora asked if the Organization could have him. "I think it's a real possibility," Ienzo said. "He's a devious researcher. You should be careful."

Toy Box

The next world was a boy's bedroom, and Sora, Donald and Goofy came down in it no bigger than the toys who lived there. Those toys were in the middle of a fight with Heartless, and after the three of them had helped to finish it, Woody, a cowboy doll who seemed to be in charge, decided they were all right. The room had not always been so empty, he told them. One day the toys had woken up and found themselves alone: the rest of Andy's toys were gone, and so were Andy and his family. "Nobody's heard from Mom, Molly, or Andy. We keep waiting for Andy to come home."

Buzz Lightyear, a spaceman who trusted the newcomers less than Woody did, told them what had come with the Heartless. "They arrived with a guy wearing a hood, dressed in black, just like you." Woody would not leave the hunt to Sora. "If that guy had something to do with our friends vanishing, then he's our problem too. We've got to work together." They went looking for him together, out of the window and down the roof, bound for a toy store called Galaxy Toys.

The man in the black coat was waiting for them there, and Sora knew him: the young Xehanort. He set a Heartless inside one of the store's great display robots and brought it to life. "One heart's shadows fill the emptiness of another. See how they bring him to life? Like Heartless and Nobodies, they fit together." When Sora demanded to know what he wanted with this world, he told him, as if it were an interesting problem. "There's a darkness we are missing and must reclaim. The way hearts connect in this world can provide us with a clue. So we made a copy of the world, and then pulled those hearts apart. I wonder how you'll handle the strain."

So Woody and Buzz were in a copy of their world, cut off from Andy, and the lost toys were somewhere in the store. Buzz would not believe a word of it, and it took the whole search to bring him round. They found the others one by one. Then, at the store's entrance, Xehanort stood in their way again, and a Heartless closed over Buzz. He went stiff and turned on his friends as if he had never known them.

They found Buzz again deep in the dark, and Xehanort beside him, admiring what he had made. "Look. Such tremendous darkness. All because he was ripped away from the boy who cares about him most." Sora told him that friends were where you got your strength, and Xehanort agreed, after a fashion. "But if the light of friendship is a form of power, the darkness of being alone is a power even greater. Darkness is the heart's true nature." Sora shook his head. "Xehanort, you're so caught up in finding the shadows, you forgot about the light that cast them."

Woody had had enough of both of them talking. "Whatever you're talking about, I don't care. Put Buzz back the way he was, then get lost!" Xehanort looked down at him. "Or else what, toy?" Woody did not back off an inch. "Yeah, I am a toy. And a friend. My guess is no one's ever loved you before. Because you know nothing about hearts and love." It was Woody who reached Buzz in the end and pulled him out of it, and Buzz came back to himself bewildered. "Woody. Wait, how did I get here?"

Sora had the answer for the toys' fear now, and for Xehanort too. "There are hearts all around us, trying to connect. Your 'loneliness' only made Woody and Buzz's connection stronger. That's the heart's true nature, to never, ever let go." Xehanort took it the way he took everything, as data. "So, even empty puppets can be given strong hearts. I am going to have to remember that." And then, more to himself than to them: "But now I know a heart can be placed in the vessel of our choosing." He left them a giant Heartless shaped like a toy king to play with, and a parting word Sora had heard before. "Find the hearts joined to yours."

Andy was still missing when Sora left, and Sora was sorry for it. Woody was not. "If we follow our hearts, we'll find him again," he said, and saw them off as friends. "You've become part of our hearts. So let us become a part of yours."

Corona

In the forest outside the Kingdom of Corona, Sora, Donald and Goofy fell in with a thief who called himself Flynn Rider and a girl who had never set foot outside her tower before that day. Rapunzel had lived her whole life shut away by the woman she called Mother, and now she had a bargain with Flynn: he would take her to see the lanterns that rose over the kingdom every year on her birthday, and she would give him back the satchel she had hidden. The forest was full of Heartless and worse, so the three of them came along as Flynn's hired help.

Out among the trees they met a man in a black coat who seemed to think he knew Sora. "My name is Marluxia," he said, "and yes, that is correct. How interesting it is to see you again, Sora." He smiled. "A shame you've no memory of me, because I remember you exceedingly well." Sora had no patience for him. "That's the old Organization," he said of the Nobodies. "Why? Are you in the 'real' one too? Good for you." Marluxia had not come to fight. He had come to ask a favour. "You should know that maiden with you, Rapunzel, is the very light of this world. I would see you guard her from its dark horrors." The Organization only wanted balance, he said. "Use that Keyblade, to keep Rapunzel safe."

He had already made the same offer to someone else. At the empty tower, Rapunzel's mother, Gothel, had come home to find her gone, and Marluxia had been there to meet her. "Missing someone? She's such a precious gift. Allow me to assist you in getting her back."

Rapunzel saw her lanterns. The kingdom lit the whole sky with them, and it was during that night, with Flynn called away, that Marluxia found her alone and Gothel took her home. When Sora tried to go after them, Marluxia was in the way. "Show some decorum. The girl has found her dear mother. You should let them be." Sora wanted to know why the Organization cared, and this time Marluxia told him. Rapunzel's hair could heal, and Gothel wanted it for herself, and so did others. "If Mother Gothel's actions will protect Rapunzel, preserve her, then she is doing the Organization a favor." He seemed pleased with the arrangement. "Let's say she's keeping Rapunzel on the shelf for us. An extra pawn in case you fail to find the remaining guardians of light, and we have occasion to call on other hearts of light instead. A New Seven Hearts to fill out the ranks."

Sora knew what that meant. "Yes," Marluxia said. "Seven who inherited the princesses' light after their role was fulfilled." When Sora would not let it go, he sighed. "Hmph. I just knew you would go and make a scene. Very well, then it's lights out for you. You always were such a sound sleeper." And Sora went down.

Maleficent and Pete had been in Corona too, and had found nothing. Pete was losing faith. "You sure this box thingy's even real?" Maleficent did not waver. "Yes." When he asked how she could be so sure, her answer was two words long. "It is etched."

The next day Flynn got free, woke Sora on his way, and rode for the tower. There Gothel stabbed him, and Rapunzel offered her mother anything, even her freedom, if she could heal him. He would not let her. He cut her hair, and all its magic went with it, and Gothel, who had kept herself young with it, aged to dust and fell from the tower. Marluxia was waiting for what was left. "Fallen to darkness. We can't allow her near our pure light now. Her presence would only cast a pall over it." What rose out of Gothel was a huge Heartless, and Sora, Donald and Goofy fought it down.

Rapunzel's tears brought Flynn back, and the girl in the tower turned out to be the kingdom's lost princess, home at last with her real family. Flynn told them his real name was Eugene Fitzherbert. For the Organization, what mattered was that Rapunzel was safe, and in the light, and one of seven.

Monstropolis

In Monstropolis the three of them were monsters themselves, which took some getting used to, and the company that had once scared children for power now made them laugh instead. Sulley and Mike were trying to get a little human girl called Boo home through her closet door. Creatures Sora had never seen before had got into the factory ahead of them, using the doors to frighten children all over again. Sora did not know what they were. He found out on the Laugh Floor, when Boo's door was nearly in reach and a boy stepped out to meet them.

Sora knew the face, from a vision he had had once, far away, and he was in no mood for it. "This is the part where you spout some mumbo jumbo and disappear, right?" The boy smiled. "We haven't ever met in the flesh. I am Vanitas."

The creatures were his, Unversed, and this world had been everything he could have hoped for. "This whole world was powered by scream," Vanitas said. "It's as rich a source of negative emotion as we'll ever find." He had found a monster whose heart was full of revenge and used him, and he had had his Unversed gather every scream and every sadness they could. "My heart is made of just one thing. And the Unversed collected enough screams and sadness from those children to reconstruct it."

It had not been enough. "But, even with all this negative emotion, my heart is still incomplete. I need something else. The half of me that sleeps on, inside of your heart." He was looking straight at Sora, and past him, at someone else. "Ventus. What a strange place to slither off to, you insignificant speck." When Sora did not understand, Vanitas explained it, as if it were obvious. "Oh, you wouldn't remember. When you were little, you formed a special bond, with a boy named Ventus who joined with your heart."

"Now, you will return Ventus to me." Donald and Goofy moved to stop him, and he waved them off. "Stay out of this." Then he reached for Sora. "Join your heart, with mine!"

He never finished. Sulley came up behind him and got both arms around him, "Made you look," and Mike had a door open and waiting. Vanitas fought and shouted, "Let me go!", and Sulley threw him through one door and the next and the next, and tore the last one to pieces before he could come back through it.

Sulley and Mike promised Boo they would play again. Sora left with something new to think about. There was someone in his heart besides Roxas, and his name was Ventus.

Arendelle

In Arendelle the sea was freezing over, and the woman who had done it was running across the ice. Elsa had kept her power hidden all her life, and now it had got away from her; when Sora chased after her to ask what had happened, he only frightened her more, and she threw up a wall of ice between them and fled for the mountain. Larxene broke through the wall with a crack of lightning a moment later. She had been watching Elsa too. "We'll take care of Elsa, so don't you worry," she told Sora, and when he objected: "No one's gonna hurt her. But we're not about to put up with your meddling. Stay here and behave yourselves."

They caught up with her on the mountain, where Elsa had raised a palace of ice for herself, and Larxene was there again. She was not sure yet what Elsa was. It might be the light the Organization was looking for; it might be the opposite. "Can't pick out that 'special glimmer' unless you're standing in the shadows. And maybe, Elsa doesn't have it. I mean, just look how icy her palace is, made of magic she forced herself to keep hidden until now. What if it's dark magic?" Sora would not hear it. Elsa would never turn to darkness, and he meant to help her. Larxene laughed at him. "It's her choice to make, not yours. You know, I'm starting to understand why she gave you the cold shoulder. You wanna help her? Then stop trying to be her hero! Let her figure things out her own way!" Then she blasted all three of them down the mountain.

Elsa's sister Anna had come looking for her, and Sora, who knew something about going after a friend, told her not to give up. It went badly before it went well. Elsa struck Anna with her power without meaning to, and the cold began to freeze her from the inside. On the frozen fjord, with a man named Hans raising his sword over Elsa, Anna threw herself in the way and froze solid. Elsa wept over her, and Anna began to thaw, because what she had done for her sister was the act of true love that could save her.

Before anyone could move, everything stopped. The snow hung in the air, and Elsa and Anna stood frozen in time, and Larxene walked among them, delighted. "So, love has filled both their hearts with light. Two in one world. Definitely didn't see that coming." Sora demanded to know what she wanted with them now. "Oh, I see, so you bumped into Marluxia. Then why am I explaining this again? I told you before: the New Seven Hearts. If you mess up and don't find your seven guardians of light, we're gonna need another group to fall back on."

Sora told her to leave people like these out of it. Larxene only mocked him for it. "Ohh, look at this tough guy. Such a big boy now. Well, maybe you should do your job, and find the other guardians of light." He tried to get one back at her: the Organization was still a member short, wasn't it? "Oh no," Larxene said, "we're set." Then she let time go and was gone, and the sisters came back to themselves. Elsa learned that it was love, not fear, that let her master her power, and the winter lifted.

The Organization

Vexen was back in the Organization's coat. Saïx had come to see what that was worth. "Humanity is a precious gift. And yet you desire to return to the Organization?" Vexen sniffed. "Oh, yes. Of course. One eradication at Axel's hands was enough to learn where not to place my trust." Saïx reminded him that Axel's side had given him a second lease on life, and Vexen was contemptuous of it. "He ripped me away from the one thing I care about. I don't require humanity. Give me my research. I must see it to fruition, no matter the cost." Saïx knew which research he meant. "The replicas." Vexen nodded. "Yes. Soon they will replace, not just replicate. Given a heart, they can become just as real as any human." Saïx seemed satisfied. "What excellent tidings. I would hate to think we invited you back into our ranks only for you to fail to deliver our final vessel, Vexen."

The Organization met without Sora to see it. Larxene found Marluxia among them first. "Nice way to greet your old partner in crime," she said. "So, why do you think the old geezer took us back? He must know we backstabbed the Organization when Xemnas was running it." Marluxia had no illusions about why. "Xehanort doesn't care about you or me. To him, we're nothing but empty husks. The old Organization was the same. Xehanort needs thirteen vessels to hold his essence."

Demyx was there too, which Larxene could not forgive. "Why haven't you gone to any worlds? Are you slacking?" He had not been given the chance. "'Course not. I got benched." One of the replicas had taken his place. "The replicas are way more real than you remember. I mean, one stole my spot!" Marluxia knew where the replicas were coming from. "Saïx brought Vexen on board. They must be planning to use replicas." And they were not the puppets they had been. "The Riku replica we used in Castle Oblivion was just a prototype. The next replica, the one crafted from Sora's memories, was real enough to join our ranks. And Vexen claims the new ones will be human in every way. If he ever finishes them."

Larxene remembered something. "Oh. The thing is, I kinda told Sora and his nitwits that we're ready. My bad." Then Xemnas was among them, and she rolled her eyes. "Ugh. Xemnas." He had heard her, and did not mind. "Let them believe as much. If they think that we have all thirteen darknesses, then they will panic. And panic leads to a lack of preparation." He put a question to them. The first six members of the old Organization had been Ansem the Wise's apprentices, he said, the seventh and eighth had come after them, and the thirteenth had been Roxas, a Keyblade wielder. "So. What about you? How do you suppose I chose numbers nine through twelve?"

"Because our hearts are über powerful," Larxene said. Luxord came in on the end of it, and she groaned. "You're in too? What is this, Organization Rehash?" He happened to play an important role, he told her, and nobody had benched him; she wanted to know if that meant the stupid box Xigbar kept talking about. Luxord ignored her and spoke to Xemnas. "Xemnas, what is this 'purpose'? You didn't invite us back for old times' sake."

Xemnas did not smile. "Wrong. You have been brought together for another purpose." He looked at the four of them, Marluxia, Larxene, Luxord and Demyx, one after another. "You four are going to reveal your greatest secret: the ancient Keyblade legacy that slumbers within you."

The Caribbean

Sora, Donald and Goofy found Jack Sparrow again in a desert that turned out to be Davy Jones's Locker, and a war going on around him. Cutler Beckett was taking the seas for himself by holding Davy Jones's heart in a chest and making Jones hunt pirates for him, and Jack wanted that chest for his own reasons. So did the Organization.

Two of them were watching from somewhere out of sight. Vexen could not get over Davy Jones. "Oh, how does he do it? A creature absent a heart and yet somehow able to keep existing. Not even my finest replica can claim that achievement. The secret must be in that box." Luxord had no time for it. "I believe our orders were to find the box and seize it. No more. Put a leash on that runaway curiosity."

Vexen bristled. The Organization had sought him out the moment he was recompleted, he said, which proved what they thought of his research. Luxord's answer was dry. "Oh really? And what exactly are we striding towards?" Vexen caught the edge in it. "Luxord, do I detect a hint of treachery in your words?"

"What? Don't be absurd," Luxord said. "But to be clear, I serve the Organization. I don't share your need to please Xemnas. He's good at wrapping you around his little finger, always has been." Vexen did not care who used his work, or how. Ansem the Wise had refused to nurture him; Xehanort had not. "All that concerns me is that I complete the perfect human vessel."

Luxord met Sora on the open sea, calling a parley from his own ship. Sora asked if he was really back with the Organization, and Luxord seemed amused by the question. "Yes. Surprising, isn't it, that they'd do me the honor? Never count your cards until they've all been dealt." He was looking for a chest, and he proposed a race for it: whoever reached port first would win, and if he won, they would tell him all about that chest. Luxord lost the race and bowed out graciously, and it did not matter, because along the way he had got what he wanted out of Jack anyway. The chest was aboard the Flying Dutchman. "Actually," he said, "I outwitted him."

When the last battle came, in a whirlpool with the Black Pearl and the Dutchman circling inside it, Luxord was there, and Sora told him a heart in a chest was no use to the Organization. Luxord did not really know what was. "Regrettably, the higher-ups haven't deigned to tell us. But they did say the box contains 'hope.' That's all you'll get from me."

Vexen had worked out the rest, and was disgusted. "How disappointing. So this is all they meant when they said 'heart.' We've been chasing the wrong box this whole time." Luxord called up the Kraken to hold the Pearl down while he looked for himself, and left Sora to fight it.

Jones died when Will Turner, with Jack's help, drove a blade through the heart in the chest, and Will, dying, took his place at the helm of the Dutchman, bound to sail it and come ashore only one day in every ten years. Sora thought it was too little. Jack told him one day was enough for hearts to stay connected.

San Fransokyo

San Fransokyo was a city of bridges and towers, and a boy called Hiro lived in it with a big, soft, white robot his brother had built. The brother, Tadashi, was dead. Hiro and his friends had made themselves into a team of heroes, and for a while Sora, Donald and Goofy were part of it, racing through the city after Heartless and eating ice cream on the bridge afterward, while Hiro told them about Tadashi and how he was still alive, in a way, in everything he had inspired them to do.

Then, one night, the city filled with swarms of black cubes that took Hiro's friends down one by one, and on a rooftop Sora found the one who had sent them. He had Riku's face, and Sora knew him from the same vision that had shown him Vanitas. He was studying the chip that held Baymax's first programming, the one that had made him a fighter. "Looks are deceiving," he told Sora, "but the heart? You know that it's me."

It was not Riku, though, not the real one, and he enjoyed explaining the difference. He had come through time the hard way. "Unlike a certain wizard you know, I had to play by the rules to travel through time. Which meant leaving my body behind." Xehanort had done the same thing long ago, he said: sent his heart into the past to find his younger self, where it waited out the years and at last took hold of Riku and became Ansem, while the body it left took the name Xemnas. "It was all a part of a larger plan to bring Xehanort into contact with the right hearts, enough of them to form the real Organization XIII. They could come from anywhere, any when, just as long as he had the right vessels at hand to place their hearts in."

Donald and Goofy worked out what that made him, and he nodded. "That's right. The Replica Program was a success. We are as real as people." Sora asked what he wanted with this world. "To see if we can recreate a heart from data." Baymax, the others insisted, already had a heart, and Dark Riku sneered at the idea. "That walking balloon over there has a 'heart.' At least that's the nonsense I'm supposed to believe."

Somewhere else in the city he caught Maleficent and Pete looking around. "Why are you snooping around?" Maleficent told him it was none of his concern, and he warned her. "Overstep, and darkness will consume you again." She was not in the least afraid of him. "What an interesting thing to say. I shall do anything I please. As should you." When he had gone, Pete asked whether he was a friend of hers. "Yes," Maleficent said. "Though I could not tell you from 'when.'"

The next day Dark Riku had what he needed. The chip had gathered it: terror, despair, the longing for vengeance, and the last piece had come from the fighting itself. "That's why I made sure our creation fought you. Now the data contains a complete heart." He poured it into a vessel shaped like Baymax and dark all through, and turned to Sora with the part of the plan he liked best. "You can't have a heart without sadness, without loss. You see, you're going to destroy Hiro's friend right in front of him."

Sora and the others brought the dark copy down, and Hiro, who could have destroyed its chip in turn, chose to save Baymax instead, and Baymax became the seventh member of the team.

The Key to Finding All Three

Ienzo called again while Sora was still on the road. The replica was not going well, he said: Even was still missing, though they had found some of his research. But Ansem the Wise's data had given up something else. "We've discovered a very interesting passage. I'll read you exactly what he wrote." Sora listened while he read it out. "'I have discovered three unique hearts inside of Sora's. One is Roxas. The second has been with Sora for nearly as long. And a third has resided in Sora's heart for even longer, most of his life, in fact.'" The hearts had gone quiet inside him, Ansem had written, but Sora still held all their memories, each kept apart in its own box. "'Unite the heart with its memories, and provide it a suitable body within which it may flourish, and I believe any or all three of these people can be made real again.'"

When both groups were back at the tower, Sora had a great deal to tell. The Organization had a name for the girls it was watching, Rapunzel and Elsa and Anna and the rest: the New Seven Hearts. Yen Sid was not surprised. "Well, as the original princesses of hearts' time for protecting the pure light has ended, they have passed the light to others. Our enemy must certainly be cognizant of this. If the 'New Seven Hearts' is what they wish to call them, so be it." Kairi's light had never been passed on, and Sora asked the question nobody wanted to: was she one of them? Mickey did not pretend otherwise. "She must be. But still, she chose to wield a Keyblade and fight with us as one of the guardians of light."

Then there was Ventus. Vanitas had said Ventus's heart was inside Sora's, and Jiminy, who kept the records, pointed out that he was not the only one. "And so did Ansem the Wise in his data, so it almost certainly must be true." But to wake Ventus they needed Aqua, and Riku laid out how far they had got. "We know Master Aqua made it as far as the beach that Sora and I once visited, but that's where her trail ends." There might still be a way down to her. "Sora was dragged into the abyss during his exam. And I went in after him. So, I think if we find someone who was really close to Aqua, and they make the dive, they could reach her down there."

Something moved in Sora when he heard it, and it did not feel like his own impulse. He was already shouting that he would go. Donald and Goofy looked at each other, and Jiminy summed him up for them. "No, not exactly. He just doesn't think." Yen Sid asked the only question that mattered. "You need the power of waking, Sora. Do you have it?" Sora admitted, sheepishly, that he did not. "Without that power," the old man said, "you are not ready to face the realm of darkness."

Riku was almost apologetic. "Sorry. Master Yen Sid knows you a little too well. He said you'd try to stage a half-baked rescue." He put a hand on Sora's shoulder. "Sora, I know you're volunteering because you're worried, about me and Mickey. Well, thanks. But, the power of waking's important. You can come to the rescue once you've got that. Sound fair?"

It was settled. "Very good," Yen Sid said. "Sora will continue his journey to build his powers, while Mickey and Riku will focus on the search for Aqua." Riku and the king went back into the dark, and Sora went back out among the worlds.

Aqua

Word came that Riku and Mickey were in trouble in the realm of darkness, and Sora did not stop to ask whether he was ready. He had no way in, only the thing Yen Sid always told them. "May my heart be my guiding key. It'll show us the way." It showed them the Destiny Islands, of all places, and a Keyblade lying waiting there that Sora had never held before. "Why do you think that gate took us here? A Keyblade?" It was the Master's Defender, and with it he turned the little door in the Secret Place, the cave he and Riku and Kairi had drawn on as children, into a door to the realm of darkness.

Donald and Goofy meant to come with him, and he would not let them. "Not you guys. The realm of darkness, it isn't safe for you." When they argued, he made them see it his way. "Even the King and Riku struggled in the realm of darkness. Someone needs to stay out here, just in case. If something happens to the rest of us, you two need to carry on." They let him go, not happily. "Thanks, guys. But I'll be fine. I'll make sure Riku and the King are safe. Trust me."

On the moonlit shore on the other side, among trees twisted like bones, Aqua had found Mickey and Riku first. The darkness she carried had made her into something else, and she had caught the king in a tower of Heartless and taken his Keyblade for herself. "This Keyblade." She looked at Mickey through yellow eyes. "Mickey. You're too late."

Mickey did not try to defend himself. "I'm sorry. It's all my fault."

"You abandoned me, that's what," Aqua said. "Left me in this shadow prison for more than a decade, knowing what it would do to me." She turned away from them to the water, and it came out of her in a flood, everything the years had put there. "I reached this shore after endless wandering. Waited forever for help to arrive. But no one ever came. I lost my Keyblade. Had no means of fighting my way back through the Heartless. You should have known I was stranded. Do you have any idea how lonely it is here? How frightening it is to have no one? All that's left in my heart is misery and despair, and now, you can share it!"

Riku stood his ground. "There's no need. Got my own."

That was where Sora found them. He broke the tower open and pulled the king out, and when Riku asked how he had got there, he only grinned. "I. Had a little help. Watch over the King. I've got this." He fought Aqua with the Master's Defender, and in the end the darkness gave out before he did. "So. This is the end," she said, and fell, and the dark went out of her like smoke. Sora dived after her as she sank through deep blue water, and caught her, and she knew him. "Sora."

She woke on warm sand under a blue sky. Two faces were bending over her, and for a moment they were the two she had waited for all those years. "Ven. Terra." Then the light changed, and it was Sora and Riku, and she understood. "It's you."

"You're in the realm of light," Riku told her. Mickey was sitting beside her on the sand, and she turned to him, bewildered. "Mickey. Are these the Destiny Islands? When did they fall to darkness?" They had not. Sora smiled at her. "You're home."

Riku had something he needed to say, and he said it with his eyes closed, as if it were easier that way. "Mickey told me that you saved me in the realm of darkness. I should have gone to help you right away. But I was too inexperienced. I'm sorry. I know that I let you down." Mickey was simply glad to see her awake. "Thank goodness. You're awake!"

Sora offered to take her to the tower to rest, and Aqua shook her head. "Thank you. But, Ven's expecting me. I promised to wake him. Said I'd be right back, but I'm not even close. I'm in for an earful." She was already getting to her feet, and Sora did not like it. "But. You haven't recovered yet."

Riku had not come back from the dark alone. His Replica had been with him, first down there, where he had mended the broken Way to the Dawn and brought it to fight Aqua, only to find Riku carrying a new Keyblade, and then on the way out, their two hearts held together as one. Now he stood beside Riku on the islands. "How long have you known that I was with you?" He had been ready to let go, he said, before Riku came. "I didn't make much of myself as a replica. I was a failure, and after you and Sora moved on, my body fell to ruin and the darkness took my broken mind. I was all ready to give up and let it happen, and then you showed up." Riku asked whether he had come here to end it. "Maybe. I'd rather face my end with you than in darkness." He looked out at the sea. "Yeah. But I'm not done yet. Got one last thing to see through."

Ventus

Aqua would not rest. She took Sora, Donald and Goofy to Castle Oblivion, the white castle that had been her home before she hid it, and with the Master's Defender she turned it back into what it had been, the Land of Departure. In the Chamber of Waking, at the heart of it, Ventus was still asleep where she had left him. She went down on her knees in front of him. "Ven. I'm sorry it took so long. Ven, wake up. Open your eyes, please!" He did not move. "Why? Your heart never found its way home?"

Someone laughed behind them. "That was a neat trick. No wonder no one could find him." Vanitas had followed them all the way, and he strolled toward Ventus as if he had been invited. "Oh, I'm sorry to interrupt your touching reunion, but surely you won't begrudge me a moment with my brother?" He looked Ventus over with mock sorrow. "So, Venty-Wenty wants to keep sleeping. What am I ever going to do with you?"

Aqua was on her feet between them. "Why are you here?" Vanitas only smiled. "You better settle down there, 'Master.'" Sora, Donald and Goofy started forward to help her, and she stopped them. "No. I'm ending this." She threw up a barrier around herself and Vanitas, shutting them out, and looked back at Sora through it. "Sorry, but you've seen me too weak, too often. Now it's my turn to shine."

She had the better of him, and Vanitas knew it. So he stopped fighting her and went for Ventus instead, hammering at the barrier to get to the sleeping boy, and Aqua threw herself in the way and took the blow meant for him. She went down. Vanitas stood over her.

Inside Sora something stirred, and a voice he had never heard spoke in his heart, faint and far away. "I. Have to wake up." Sora felt the other heart turn toward its body, and it told him what he had been looking for since Olympus. "The power of waking." The voice grew clearer. "You never lost it. It sleeps, until someone needs it. Call to it." Sora called to it. The heart that had lived in his since he was small went home, and it thanked him on the way. "Thank you for always keeping me safe, Sora."

Ventus opened his eyes. He was up before anyone could speak, and he broke Aqua's barrier from the outside and drove Vanitas back from her. Vanitas backed away toward a corridor of darkness, still smiling. "Three guardians is more than I care to face. But now that my brother is awake, I'm just certain that he'll come to visit." Then he was gone.

Aqua got to her feet. Her voice was not quite steady. "Good morning, Ven." But Ventus was staring at Sora, at a face so like the one that had just left them. "Huh?! You're. Sora?" He looked a moment longer, and understood what Sora had been to him. "I get it. You were my second chance." Only then did he turn to her, and smile. "Good morning, Aqua." Sora asked if she was all right. "Yes," she said. "I'm fine, Sora."

Kairi and Lea

Merlin had taken Kairi and Lea somewhere time did not touch, a forest full of low golden light, so that their training could take as long as it needed to. Lea found Kairi there one day with a pen in her hand. "A letter? To Sora?" It was, and she read him a little of it: that she was sorry she had left without saying good-bye, that she was training to be a Keyblade wielder so she would not have to wait for him to come home any more, that Lea was sorry for all the trouble he had caused and would not stop apologising, and that she had come to like him. "Every now and then, I catch him staring at me. When I ask what's wrong, he says, 'I'm not sure. I think I'm forgetting something. Don't know what.' Sora, I think it may have something to do with you." She ended it the way she meant it. "It won't be easy, but I hope you'll remain the happy and cheerful Sora I know. There's no heart your smile can't reach."

Lea told her to ask Merlin to deliver it. Kairi shook her head. "Mmm, technically yes. But I won't send it. It's more for me." When he pressed her, she only smiled. "Yeah, but it's okay. I just like talking to Sora, even if it's on paper."

Another day he turned up with ice cream. "Yeah, I asked Merlin to pick these up. Ya know, we did both summon Keyblades. Gotta celebrate." Kairi laughed at him. "Ice cream? Really?" But she took it. "You're sweet, Lea." They sat and ate it together, and after a while she noticed him looking at her again, with that same lost expression. "What? You're trying to remember what you forgot?" He mumbled something and looked away. Kairi let it go, and got up with a challenge. "So tomorrow, you and me in the ring. You ready? Don't hold back, Lea. Promise?"

She turned back to him for his answer and stopped. "Huh? Are you okay? Lea! You're crying. What's wrong?" He had not known it himself. He put a hand to his face and got up, not looking at her. "Something in my eyes. I'm, gonna go. Sorry."

Kairi had heard enough apologies from him to last her. "'Kay, but stop apologizing." He stopped at that, and turned round, and some of the old Axel came back into his face. "Fine, on one condition. Call me Axel from now on. Got it memorized?" Kairi grinned. "Yeah. Okay, Axel."

When the new clothes from Yen Sid reached them, Kairi came to show hers off with her hair cut short. "Hey, Axel!" He approved. "Hey. Liking the look. Cut your hair, too." But he would not put his own on. He would keep the black coat. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is how you pick me out of a crowd. I make myself easy to remember."

Near the end of their training he told her what else he had been carrying. "Way back when I was a kid, I met this other weird kid. Somehow we became fast friends. Never saw him again, nearly forgot about him, too. Then, I met Roxas. Couldn't believe it. The two of 'em were identical." He had never told Roxas. "The kid's name was Ventus. He's one of the lost Keyblade wielders we're looking for. Think he's still got me memorized?" Kairi did not doubt it for a second. "Oh yeah. Very memorized."

Kairi was thinking about someone too. Naminé was inside her, made when Sora freed Kairi from his heart, and part of her again now. "But she can't look at this forest, feel the wind on her face, none of it. And if she could, it would be different for her. Her time was short, but she lived it, and that makes it hers. What right did I have to take those feelings and experiences back? They don't belong to me. Nothing's as it should be. Not for her or Roxas."

The Guardians of Light

Kairi and Lea came back from Merlin's to a tower full of people. Lea made his entrance the way he made all of them, with a grin and a correction nobody had asked for: "Hey there. And that's 'future Keyblade Master.'" Yen Sid looked round at all of them together and let himself be glad. "At last, we are all assembled. First: Sora, Riku, Donald, Goofy, Mickey, I cannot thank you enough for what you have done. And you, Aqua and Ventus: we are fortunate to have you back." Nor had he forgotten the newest of them. "Lea, Kairi, you have made tremendous strides."

Aqua thanked them all for bringing her home, and wished she had come back sooner to help. Mickey still felt the one they had not found. "I feel bad for letting you guys down. We tried, but we still haven't found Terra." Aqua would not let him carry it. "Don't. He studied with Master Eraqus, just like us. He's our responsibility." She looked at Sora, older now than the small boy she had met on an island once, and smiled. "I'm happy to see that you haven't changed one bit. Sora, you probably don't remember." Then she saw Kairi, and stared. "Kairi? Incredible! It is you."

Mickey worked it out a beat behind her. "Oh, gosh! That little girl was Kairi?" Long ago in Radiant Garden, Aqua told them, the Unversed had gone after a little girl, and Aqua had saved her and put a spell of protection on her. "I guess it must've worked, the spell that I cast on you." Kairi did not remember, and Aqua laughed at her for apologising. "Please. You were really, very little. Anyone would forget, hazy memory or not." Kairi thanked her anyway. "I'm sorry. Those days are hazy for me. But it sounds like I'd have been in trouble without you. So, thank you."

Ventus knew Lea, and Lea could hardly believe it. "Yeah, 'course! We're friends," Ventus said. "I can't believe you became a Keyblade wielder just like me." Only the other name threw him. "Axel? Who's Axel?" Lea threw up his hands. "This is all very touching, guys, but where do I fit in? Ven looks just like Roxas, or is it Roxas looks just like Ven?" And now he would have to explain all of it to Ventus, which was a crazy long story in itself, and everybody already knew everybody. "See, see, see? Major brain-ache."

Kairi put a hand on his arm. "Well, you don't have to worry alone anymore, Axel." He sobered. "And I'll figure Roxas out. Don't know how, but, I'll get him back." Kairi had a promise of her own. "Naminé is right here, safe with me. I know that we'll find a way to help her. Trust me, I'm not giving up." And Ventus had one too. "Yeah, I made Terra a promise. I said I'd be there for him when he needs me." Sora looked round at all of them and felt the gaps. "Yeah. But, I do wish that Roxas, and Naminé, and Terra could be here with us too."

Still, it was enough. "Welp, we've got our seven guardians," Mickey said. Yen Sid agreed. "It is a shame that all of our friends could not be here. But our seven guardians of light have united. Perhaps you might say that we have nine guardians, with Donald and Goofy." Donald and Goofy beamed, and the old sorcerer smiled at them. "Today, you recuperate. On the morrow, you journey to the fated place." Jiminy had made sure nobody would get lost in the story: he had given every one of them a Gummiphone with a summary of everything so far. When Sora noticed Riku was not among them, Kairi told him to leave it. "He said he needed time to himself. Let's let him be."

That night Aqua and Ventus sat out under the sky together. "The stars here are so beautiful," Ventus said. "I noticed it when we arrived." He was quiet a moment. "We've gone without this for so long." He tried to tell her about the years he had slept. "I remember dreaming a lot. Of you and Terra. Of Sora and his friends too, I think. And there were some more people I didn't recognize. Oh, and I saw these weird animal creatures! It's like, I've been part of some big adventure." Aqua smiled at him. "I've been places, too. But pretty soon, things'll be back to normal." Ventus leaned back and looked up. "Let's share stories when Terra's back."

Lea went to Twilight Town, to the top of the clock tower where he and Roxas and Xion had once sat, with three sea-salt ice creams. "Well, Roxas. I shoulda been there for you by now, but here we are." Somebody else was already there. "Shouldn't you say good-bye to your real home?" Saïx asked, and when Lea tensed: "I'm not here to fight. Relax." He took one of the ice creams. "You can't eat all this. Why did you buy three of them? One for Roxas, and two for good luck?"

They talked about the girl. "Got it memorized?" Saïx said. "Back when we were still friends, we used to sneak into the castle. And we made a friend there, a girl. We apprenticed to Ansem the Wise to rescue her." Lea remembered. "Yeah, and we failed. One day she was just gone!" Saïx's answer was cold. "You gave up." Lea had not given up, he said; everything had happened too fast, Ansem gone, then Nobodies, then Xemnas, and he could not keep up. Saïx had followed Xemnas for her sake. "She was his lab rat." But he had never found her. "Nary a trace. I started to wonder if we'd imagined her. Maybe she never existed."

"Well, then, you blew it!" Lea said. "Wise up already and just quit." Saïx only looked at him. "Face it. Roxas is just like our other friend. Gone forever. You need to accept that." Lea was on his feet. "You wish. I'm getting her back. All of 'em! Especially Roxas! I'm even dragging you home." Saïx studied his face, and noticed something. "The marks under your eyes. They're gone." They were. "Yeah. Don't need 'em." Saïx had drawn those marks on him once, when they were boys. "Always told you they'd stop you from crying. The upside-down tears." Lea waved him off. "Would you get lost? I'll clobber you tomorrow." Saïx turned to go. "I expect no less."

On the Destiny Islands, Kairi sat with Sora looking out at the water, and held one of the star-shaped fruit out to him. "Here. Tomorrow's fight will be our toughest yet. I want to be a part of your life no matter what. That's all." Sora took it. "Kairi, I'll keep you safe." She shook her head and smiled. "Let me keep you safe." Further along the beach Riku sat looking at the sea, and beside him sat his Replica.

The Night Before

That night Ansem, Seeker of Darkness walked his old master through Twilight Town toward the old mansion, where he believed the old man's secrets were hidden. Ansem the Wise stopped once on the way. "What now?" the Heartless asked. The old man had told him at the Dark Margin that he had created enough victims, and the Heartless had not forgotten it. "Yes, you have. All the children sacrificed in the name of your research. So make things right." He did not believe there was any mercy in him. "You used Roxas and Naminé and threw them away. I doubt there's a merciful bone in your body. You took the girl, and hid her." Ansem the Wise asked him what he thought would happen if he did find her. "The child's memory holds a mystery to unravel, one concerning the battle we seek between light and darkness," the Heartless said. "You know something and that is why you stopped the experiments."

"You are completely deluded, Xehanort," the old man said. "We shall soon see," said the Heartless.

At the mansion gates three young people stood in their way, and one of them, a boy, would not move. "Who are you?" the Heartless demanded, and when Pence did not budge: "No one lives here. Begone. No, no, no! Not one more step. Get out!" Ansem the Wise knew who they were. "You are Roxas's friends." Then Nobodies rose up between them and the Heartless, and the Heartless understood that he had been betrayed. "I serve the Organization. This is treason. I see what is happening. Have it your way then." He was gone into the dark.

The man who stepped out behind the Nobodies wore an Organization coat. Ansem the Wise looked at him for a long moment. "Even, is that you? So, those Nobodies were your doing." Vexen bowed his head. "My dear master. You are safe." He had given up a normal life to plant himself in the Organization, he said, and when he heard that Xehanort had gone looking for his master, he had seen his own chance to find him. "For you see, I, too, wish to atone."

He could not be seen to have done it, though, so he found someone nobody would suspect. Demyx was alarmed from the start. "But, dude, why would you pick me?" Vexen hushed him. "Quiet, you dunce! I cannot let the chosen catch wind of this, understand?" Demyx thought it was a terrible idea. "Backstabbing those guys would be stupid. If they find out, we are yesterday's toast. I mean, what's in it for me?"

Vexen told him the truth. "Forgiveness." He meant it. "Men like us, in the pursuit of science, we sometimes make terrible mistakes. Lose sight of our mission to help people. But now I can help someone with my research. Now, I can atone." And it had not been his idea alone. "The whole thing was his idea. He wants to atone too. But, he is one of the chosen, so his hands are tied." That was Saïx. Demyx considered it, and brightened when he understood that nobody expected him to fight. "Yeah baby! Sign me up. Yes! Demyx time."

In Radiant Garden Ienzo sat alone with the problem he could not solve. "We've come a long way toward reconstructing Roxas's heart. But a vessel. Without that." He laughed at himself. "Yeah, right. Bodies don't grow on trees, Ienzo." Then someone came strolling in. "Finally. 'Bout time. Ooh. Nice place. Hey, Zexion! Long time!" Ienzo stared. "Demyx? Is that you?!" Demyx was very pleased with himself. "I'm actually here on a top secret mission. Apparently I'm so off everyone's radar, that I'm just the guy to handle a special delivery. Ta-daaah!"

Behind him stood Ansem the Wise. "Ah, well met, little Ienzo." Ienzo could hardly speak. "Master Ansem!" Then it came out of him. "They told me you'd gone mad. That you abandoned us. I was just a boy, but I should have known better. I am truly, deeply sorry." The old man would not let him carry it. "Peace, Ienzo. It was I who was consumed by hatred, who failed you in my obligations as your mentor. Forgive me."

Demyx had one more thing. "Got ya a present from Vexen. One was all he could manage for the time being, but hey, he figured you guys would know what to do with it." Ienzo looked at what he had brought and could not believe it. "A vessel!"

Maleficent and Pete had come to the end of their search. Pete had had enough of it. "I've had it with this stupid treasure hunt. Every box we've found has been nothin' but a bust." To his surprise, Maleficent agreed. "I agree. Our search ends today." Pete gaped at her. "What-a-huh-now?!" "You cannot find the unfindable," Maleficent said. "The box does not exist." Pete had always known it. "I knew they was takin' us for a ride."

"Silence, imbecile," she said. "I mean the box does not exist now." It was out of reach in their own time, and she knew how it would come within reach. "Light and darkness are fated to clash. A Keyblade War is upon us. We need only wait for that destined moment. No matter the victors, the box will be revealed." Pete was aggrieved. "That's it?! But when's my big moment?" Maleficent was already looking ahead. "You will have it soon enough. Once I possess the box, our real work can begin."

The Keyblade Graveyard

The seven guardians went to the Keyblade Graveyard the next day, with Donald and Goofy, to meet the Organization there before it could go after the new princesses. The place was a wasteland of dust and rock, and it was full of Keyblades, thousands of them, rusted into the ground where their wielders had fallen in a war nobody remembered. Master Xehanort was waiting for them among them. "Legend has it that darkness once covered the world. We know so little about the Keyblade War, only that it was just the beginning. If ruin brings about creation, what, then, would another Keyblade War bring?"

His younger self stood near him. "And break you is what we shall do. It has been etched." The old man looked out over the buried blades. "Today, we join these other wielders and leave our mark on fate. I have waited patiently, but together, we shall unlock the Keyblade War's secrets. Now we forge it. The ultimate key. The χ-blade!" When Sora shouted back at him, he waved it away. "Settle down, boy. The thirteen darknesses and seven lights have clashed nine times, yielding these nine keys. We are four short. But those four keys will be produced here and now."

Then a man stepped forward whom three of them knew. Ventus saw him first. "Terra! Terra! We found you!" But the face was Terra's and the eyes were not, and Aqua knew it even as she begged. "Terra, please say you're in there." There was no answer in him. "I know that you're not him. Now, let our friend go!" The man who wore Terra smiled at them. "Today is the day you all lose."

"We're not gonna lose to you," Sora said. Master Xehanort was not troubled. "You forget I plan for every eventuality." And Terra-Xehanort told them what that plan was. "Before you even face the thirteen, every last one of you will be torn heart from body. But fear not. The χ-blade will still be forged."

He did it. He cut through them alone, one guardian after another, and while they were still down a tide of Heartless rose out of the Graveyard, thousands packed together into one vast shape that towered over the plain. Aqua got Sora and Riku beside her. "We stand together. Mickey, Kairi, Goofy, watch the others." It was no use. The tide came down, and one by one the others were gone into it.

Sora stood there with nothing left in his hands. "They're gone. Kairi, Donald. Goofy, the King. Gone forever. What do we do? Without them. I. All my strength came from them. They gave me all of it. Alone, I'm worthless. We've lost. It's over."

Riku grabbed him. "Pull it together, Sora! We haven't lost them. They still have their hearts. But we have to protect them." Sora did not answer, and Riku made him look at him. "Sora, you don't believe that. I know you don't."

The darkness was already over them. Aqua saw it coming and could not make herself believe it. "It can't be. No." Then the tide closed over all of them.

The Final World

Sora opened his eyes on a plain of nothing under a sky of nothing, and found he still had eyes to open. A small creature was watching him, round-headed, with ears like a cat's. "Can't stay away, now, can you?" it said, and then, more politely: "The name's Chirithy. And this is The Final World." It was the end of everything, Chirithy said, where hearts went when heart and body perished together, and Sora had wandered in before, in his dreams, without knowing. This time was different. "Something is holding you here, refusing to let you go. You're hanging by a thread."

Nobody else had come with him. If they were not here, Chirithy said, they were either gone for good or still clinging to the world he had come from. And to get back he would have to put himself together first, because he had arrived in pieces, and his body had come with him, which almost never happened. Sora brightened. "Okay, so, then if I can find my body, that means I'll be able to go back?" Chirithy nodded. "Precisely. But there's a lot of you to find. You're going to be busy."

The pieces of him were scattered across the plain among the stars of people who had not quite gone. One of the stars said his name. "Sora?" He knew the voice. "It's me, Naminé." She had been inside Kairi's heart when a great darkness struck them both. Sora had owed her a thank-you for a long time, and he told her so. "The datascape doesn't count. I need to say the words myself. But, not like this." She told him why he was still whole. "I can feel her heart. She's fighting with all her strength to keep you from fading away." Sora began to understand, and she nodded. "It's because she's holding you together. Go to her."

Naminé did not mind for herself. Kairi was where she came from; once Kairi was safe, she would go back there. Sora would not have it. "Wrong. What about me, Kairi, Donald, Goofy? The King! Roxas too, he misses you!" She did not believe him about that. "He's the one they all miss. It's, not me." So Sora made her a promise. "Well, then I'm gonna go save Kairi so at least you'll be free of this place. Okay?" Before he went, she stopped him. While sifting through memories she had spoken to Terra, whose will was strong enough to keep him tied to the realm of light, and she would try to reach him through it. "Umm. Let's just say I've got your back?"

Another star greeted him politely, and marvelled that he still had a shape. "No one's anymore," she said. "They took away my name, everything about me." She was waiting for someone. "He's been changed beyond recognition, his heart replaced with another's. But, were he to regain his old self again, he would be distressed by my absence. So I choose to wait here, where he can find me." Sora told her to believe he would come. "I thought it was all over for me, but a friend of mine looked me in the eye and said, 'You don't believe that.'" When he offered to tell her friend where she was, if he saw him, she told him the name, quietly, and asked him to keep it. "Our secret."

When he was whole, Chirithy was waiting. Sora asked if it was waiting for someone too, and Chirithy started to say no and then could not quite. "He doesn't remember the past. Besides, I'm sure that he's much happier with his new friends. But I'll wait. He'll arrive here one day." Sora told it they were friends now, and it did not know what to say. "Really? I've missed having friends."

But how was he to save the others? Chirithy stared at him. "Are you a Keyblade wielder, or aren't you? Haven't you already learned how to restore someone's heart after it's been lost?" Sora closed his eyes. "No. This'll take all my heart. Okay." Chirithy sent him off with the words he had heard all his life. "Look for the light in the darkness! May your heart be your guiding key."

He reached for them with the power of waking, and one by one they came back to him, Donald and Goofy, Riku, Lea, Aqua, Ventus and the King. One was missing. "But we're one short," Sora said. "Where's Kairi's heart?" A Heartless unlike the others had taken it and fled, down through the pools of shadow into other worlds, and Sora went after it from world to world.

In San Fransokyo the young Xehanort was waiting for him. "All that gallivanting through the Sleeping Worlds, and yet you learned nothing. Dream by dream, you nearly buried yourself in the dark of sleep. And now you're at it again? The Lich you've been fighting, it's not like other Heartless. It exists to usher hearts down to the depths of darkness. If you chase it, you will condemn your heart to that same abyss." Sora did not care. "You're wrong. My heart is strong."

Xehanort shook his head. "What do you think the power of waking is? It's for traversing hearts to reach worlds. Not for traversing worlds to reach hearts. There's a high price to pay for wielding such power foolishly." Sora laughed at him. "So what? You're worried about me now?" Xehanort only looked at him. "No. There's no saving you. You've paid the price. And it lies at the bottom of the abyss."

Sora found Kairi at the end of it, and understood who had been holding him together all along. "The light in the darkness. It was you. You're the one who kept me from fading away." Kairi smiled. "You see? I had no doubts that you'd pull through." He started to thank her, and she shook her head. "All I did was believe that you wouldn't." He took her hand. "I feel strong with you, Kairi." She pulled him toward the way back. "The others are ahead. Come on. I told you, Sora. You're safe with me."

The Thirteen

Sora and Kairi came back to the Keyblade Graveyard at the moment it had all gone wrong, and this time the guardians were not alone. As Terra-Xehanort raised his Keyblade over them, another figure in old armour met the blow and held it. "Who are you?" Terra-Xehanort demanded, and then he knew, and could not believe it. "This is impossible!" It was Terra's armour, and Terra's will still inside it, come to fight for his friends.

The tide of Heartless rose again. Aqua looked past it to something else rising from the plain, the old Keyblades of the Graveyard lifting out of the dust by the thousand. "Keyblade wielders, from long ago." Ventus saw it too. "It's the light of the past." Aqua took command. "Form up! Now!" They closed ranks around her. "I'll try and break through. Everyone, get ready!" Ventus would not let her go alone. "Alone? That's crazy! I'll help!" She sent him at the Heartless instead. "No, Ven! Them first. We'll hold off the others."

Then Yen Sid was there. "Go, my young champions. I will hold them all here for as long as I can." Mickey did not want to leave him. "We're not gonna leave you behind!" But the old master held the tide, and they went.

The Organization was waiting further in. "Only when your hopes have been broken by battle upon battle can the key be claimed to Kingdom Hearts," Vanitas told them, and Xemnas: "Your light shines far too brightly. It must be extinguished in order for the truth to be seen." Lea saw a figure coming up behind Xigbar and groaned. "Just send out the Big Bad." Xigbar grinned at them all. "We gotta make sure you're not blundering your way toward a second failure." Lea grinned back. "Blundering? I'll have you know we failed with style, chief." Xigbar almost laughed. "At least you admit it. Well, if you guardians think you brought the goods, you'll have to prove it to the old guy one last time. Kid, take it away."

The kid was Dark Riku, and he looked at Riku with his own face and smiled. "I'd say that was our finest hour." Riku did not smile back. "Wrong. My hour of weakness." Xigbar fought alongside Dark Riku, jeering at Sora and Riku to keep the line moving, and when he went down at last he was sulking. "Figures. If I had a Keyblade, it'd be different." Sora could not resist. "Like you're actually worthy to use one." Xigbar took offence. "Oh, I am worthy." They stared at him. "The old coot promised to bequeath me his. Why else do you think I would ever put up with all his nonsense?" Riku was unimpressed. "It'd be wasted on you." "As if," said Xigbar, and he opened a corridor of darkness behind him and fell backwards into it.

Luxord was next. Xemnas had given him more power, and he held Mickey hostage in a storm of giant cards. "Sora, one final game. The rules are simple. All you have to do to win is find me among these cards and strike me down." Before it began he gave Sora a card of his own. "You were born for these sorts of games." He held it out. "A wild card. You've earned it. Hang on to it. Could turn the tables." Sora found him and won, and he meant it when he said: "Play ya again someday, when we're just guys." Luxord smiled as he faded. "I should like that very much, Sora."

Larxene lost and hated it. "I didn't ask you for your garbage opinion. I lost! To a bunch of losers like you! But, could be worse. Become that geezer's heart tank? No thanks." Sora told her she would be recompleted, and she shrugged. "I was really just along for the ride." He asked her what she meant, and she kept it. "My secret." Marluxia fell beside her, and something came back to him as he went. "Oh. So, now it all comes back to me." Sora asked what he meant. "Yes. My heart is remembering how to feel." He was already fading. "And now, I am on the cusp of reclaiming my identity. My purpose for being. Thanks to you, Sora."

After that they split up, though Lea did not like it. "Yeah, splitting up's a bad idea!" Mickey went after Xemnas and sent Sora to find the others, and Riku went after Ansem. Dark Riku stood in his way. "Where are you going?" Riku fought him, and beat him, and Dark Riku would not accept it. "You're not real. I'm the real one." Riku understood what he was looking at. "Huh? Aren't you my past self? From when Ansem possessed me?" Mickey had worked it out: the Organization had used hearts Xehanort had reached in the past, and this one had come from that time.

Then the Replica stepped out of Riku's heart, where he had been all along. "No, you beat Ansem and you're still here. This guy, is me!" He looked at the body Dark Riku had been using. "I knew it. It's a replica. A soon-to-be empty vessel. I've been waiting for a chance like this." He drove Dark Riku's heart out of it. Riku wanted him to have it. "Hey! What are you doing? Take the vessel!" The Replica shook his head. "No. The world already has you. There's someone else who needs the replica more. You know who I mean." Riku did. "Naminé. You're saving her." The Replica smiled at him. "Good luck." Then he was gone. Sora said her name, and Riku nodded. "Yeah. Wish we could help her now. But first."

Ventus found Vanitas, or Vanitas found him. Ventus had had enough of being cut in two. "But I didn't ask for this. To be sifted apart, nice and neat. We should be free to choose. Not just light, not just darkness. We decide what we are." Vanitas turned to Sora. "I'm the piece of Ventus that was taken away. And you're the piece Ventus needed to be whole again. So, why shouldn't you and I look exactly the same? You define me, Sora, the same way that Ventus does." Sora asked him why, then, he would not stand with them. "Because I am darkness. And I do stand by your side. I'm the shadow that you cast. How much closer could I be?"

"And what you are is darkness?" Ventus asked him. Vanitas was almost gentle. "But, Ventus, I did decide who I am. You see?" Sora could not bear it. "How is that okay? Vanitas!" Vanitas only told him the truth as he saw it, and faded. "What I am is darkness."

Terra-Xehanort caught Sora, Aqua and Ventus in chains and swung Aqua and Ventus through the air. "You'll never be able to break these chains. They're our bonds. You have no power over me!" Ventus called to the man inside. "Come back. Terra!" Aqua begged him. "Terra, please." Terra-Xehanort raised his blade. "Farewell." Sora shouted at him with everything he had. "You have to fight the darkness!" And the dark figure that had always fought at Terra-Xehanort's side turned on him. "How?! You fell to the dark."

Terra fought his way back. It came out of him a word at a time. "Aqua. Ven." Then, as if he were repeating something he had sworn long ago: "One day, I will set this right. One day, I will set this right. I will return to this land, and protect my friends!" Aqua could hardly breathe. "Terra. Is it you?" He was himself, and he ran to where they lay. "Aqua! Ven!" Ventus smiled up at him. "Terra. I kept my promise." Terra knelt between them. "Yeah. You never stopped lighting my way back," he told Aqua, and to Ventus: "I heard you too, Ven. You found me, just like you promised." He held them both. "Thank you."

Sora left them together. "Aqua and Ventus need rest. Terra, look after them." Aqua waved him on. "Sora, go. We'll catch up with you." Ventus wanted to come anyway. "No, Sora. I'm going too." Sora would not have it. "That's what he wants. For us to make a mistake. Put ourselves in danger."

Lea and Kairi had gone after Saïx, and Saïx had not come alone. A girl in an Organization coat fought beside him, a girl Lea did not know and somehow almost did. "Who. Are you." Lea called after Saïx across the fight, "Stop it! Isa!", but Saïx drew back, because Xemnas had arrived. "There was a time when I trusted you to deal with traitors," Xemnas told Lea. "And now, your betrayal outstrips them all. What final words do you have for your superior?" Lea thought about it. "How about, 'You were never my superior.'"

Xemnas called him a rogue pawn, knocked from the board early and forgotten. Lea laughed. "You kidding? Do you know how popular I am? I got loads of people rootin' for me. Sorry, boss. No one axes Axel. Got it memorized?" Xemnas caught Lea's Keyblade in one hand. "Is this supposed to be a Keyblade? Or is it some sort of joke?" He threw Lea down. "Our plans have been dashed by you, far more times than I care to count. Now it ends. I will purge that light in you, with darkness!"

The girl stepped in. "We need him alive. You know that." Xemnas smiled. "We only need his heart in order to forge the key. We do not need his soul. Oh, but that's right. You were 'friends.' Then, you take his life." She raised her Keyblade over Lea, and Sora, running to them, called to her with a name he had not known he knew. "Don't do this. Wait. It's all right! You can stop now! It's all right. Xion." Somewhere inside him another voice said the same name. "Xion." She remembered. "Roxas."

She turned on Xemnas. "Changing sides again?" he asked, and struck her aside. "Useless puppet." He stood over Lea. "Your Keyblade is no more. And still you think you can play at being a guardian of light? You can wait your turn, also-ran." And then someone stepped between them. "Hands off my friends." It was Roxas, in a body of his own. He glanced back at Lea. "My turn."

Xemnas stared. "It cannot be!" He could not look away from Roxas. "This is impossible. Where did you get a vessel?" Roxas told him. "Same as you." Xemnas did not follow. "Same how?" Roxas told him. "Most of the Organization's members, they traveled here from the past as hearts. And you had replicas ready and waiting. One for each of them." Xemnas wanted to know who had told him. "I owe my return to many. Some of them people you knew." Xemnas named them himself. "Ansem the Wise. Zexion." Roxas nodded. "And others, too. It seems you're not as good at winning over people's hearts as you think." He looked round at Lea and Xion. "There was one last thing I needed in order for me to be whole again. A connection. Sora helped me find my way back here, to my friends."

Xemnas withdrew, and Saïx came back for them. Xion stood beside Roxas. "Rest, Axel. Roxas will fight in your place. And I'll fight for Kairi." Lea let them. "Yeah. When it comes to Keyblades, you're the old hands." Saïx fell to Sora, Roxas and Xion, and Lea was beside him when he did.

Saïx looked up at him. "Why, so sad?" His eyes went to Lea's face. "I thought you outgrew the marks under your eyes. You look like you need them." Lea knelt by him. "You let them reduce you to this?" Saïx did not answer, and Lea's voice hardened. "Stop it. The whole act. I thought this was all for her." Saïx told him the truth at last. He had given everything to find her, and Lea had gone off and made other friends and left them both behind. "I lost all sense of purpose." Lea shook his head. "I didn't forget you." Saïx closed his eyes. "Yes. I know. You wouldn't do that. But, I was jealous."

"You admit it," Lea said. Saïx almost smiled. "Well, if I make it back, you won't get it out of me a second time." Lea's voice broke on the name he had not used in years. "See you, Isa." And Isa answered him as himself. "See you, Lea."

Riku met Master Xehanort before he reached Ansem. "If you do summon Kingdom Hearts, we will defeat you, and we will close it again." The old man was amused. "Perhaps. That is, if you survive that long!" Xemnas took Kairi, snatching her away while she called Sora's name, and when Sora, Riku and Mickey came after him, three of Xehanort's selves stood against them: Ansem, Xemnas and the young Xehanort. Xemnas told them he did not need hearts. "What difference does one little light make? You have others."

Ansem fell first, and his last words were for Riku, as if the two of them had come a long way together. "What, a journey you and I have had." He looked up at Riku. "Your strength is vaster than darkness. I knew I never stood a chance." Riku surprised himself. "You know, it's strange. I think I'm gonna miss you." Ansem sent him on. "What? It is time to move on, boy. There is more to seek. So go forth now, and seek it."

The young Xehanort went back to his own time, and he could not leave without a warning. "I told you. There's a high price to pay for all of this." He looked at Sora as he faded. "I'll go back to my time, and live out my life. But Sora, you're done now. Your journey ends here." He smiled. "Good-bye, Sora. Your time, in this world is," and then he was gone.

Xemnas fell last. "Bested. Yet again." Sora stood over him. "I know that you have a heart. What do you feel? Was it worth it?" For the first time Xemnas seemed to feel something. "I feel the emptiness where my companions once stood. I took them for granted. And now, I have nothing. My first surge of emotion in years, for as long as I can remember, and it's loneliness. Do you see? A heart is just pain." Sora told him what he knew. "Pain is being human, Xemnas." And Xemnas, fading, seemed to take it in. "Really? It must take incredible strength."

The χ-blade

Only Master Xehanort was left, and he was pleased. "Twelve keys we have now. Leaving just one more! Now, Sora. Darkness and light's final clash." Sora almost laughed at him. "Yeah, sure. And what makes you think there'd ever be any way we'd help you with that?" The old man looked at him with something like patience. "You require motivation."

He turned and struck Kairi down. She turned to crystal where she stood and shattered, and Sora's voice broke with her. "Kairi! Kairi!!! Why her?! Why?!" Xehanort only nodded to himself. "I have done it." Mickey flew at him. "You'll pay! Ultima!" Xehanort stopped the spell in the air. "Stopza!"

Then Sora fought him, the last clash he had wanted, and it gave Xehanort what he needed. The thirteenth key was made, and he held it high. "Now, the Keyblade War will finally reach its conclusion! The χ-blade is complete. Kingdom Hearts! I call upon your true form. Open now and show me the World to come." Above the Graveyard, the great heart-shaped moon opened and began to bleed darkness.

Aqua stared up at it. "He did it. He opened Kingdom Hearts." Sora could not look at it. "Yeah, but, he controls Kingdom Hearts now. And Kairi." Xion came to his side. "Sora. Kairi will be all right. I can feel it." Roxas nudged him. "You, worried?" Mickey had a plan. "We've still got one hope." Ventus did not see one. "What hope?"

Riku did. "It's Xehanort. During the Mark of Mastery exam, we learned that he can transcend space and time. He's a portal. And we can use that to trap him." Mickey nodded. "But, it won't be easy. Aqua, Riku, I'll need both your help if we're gonna push Xehanort out of this world." And someone had to hold Kingdom Hearts shut while they did it. Sora stepped forward. "Wait. I'll do it. Kingdom Hearts is a much bigger threat. Let me handle Xehanort, while you guys keep it shut." Donald and Goofy were beside him before he had finished, and he grinned at them. "Three half-pints together again."

They did it. A portal opened out of Xehanort himself, and he had not called it. "What?!" It pulled him through, and Sora with him, into a white city of towers and stairways under an endless sky. Xehanort looked around, and understood where he was, and was not sorry. "Of all the places to be sent. Behold, this town. Once a seat of power for all Keyblade wielders. It is the nexus from which all worlds spring. Here, I and my other selves can be one. United, in Scala ad Caelum."

"We are just getting started," he told Sora. He had never meant to be contained. "You thought you could contain me here, knowing all that you do about connections? There is one sky, one destiny!" He called the χ-blade to his hand and Kingdom Hearts into the sky over Scala, and he nearly killed Sora with them. "It ends here and now."

It did not end. The others came through after them. "Kingdom Hearts is closing on the other side," Riku said. "But we managed to follow our hearts to you." Terra looked at the old man who had worn him for so long. "Master Xehanort." Then, to the rest: "Let's move. The darkness is spreading."

Together they brought him down. Xehanort could not understand it. "Why. How." Sora stood over him. "It's over now! You lost!" The old man pointed past him at the ruin in the sky. "No, look. You are too late." Sora told him the choice had never been his, and Xehanort told him what he had wanted. "A purge. The World will be returned whence it started." It had begun in darkness, he said, and from darkness came light, and people, and their hearts bred evil and more darkness, until the light was devoured and the World was a failure. "But, the first light, the light of Kingdom Hearts, it can give us a new start. An empty World, pure and bright."

Sora shook his head. "If so, you're not that person, Xehanort. A real leader knows that destiny is beyond his control, and accepts that." Xehanort was unmoved. "Then whose was it? The World needs someone to stand up and lead. Someone strong, to stop the weak from polluting the World with their endless darkness. Someone to dictate their destiny." But he was looking at Sora as he said it, and something in his face changed. "You, make me think of an old friend."

Terra stepped forward. "Master Xehanort." But it was not only Terra's voice. "There's more to light than meets the eye. As I told you." Xehanort knew who was speaking, and almost smiled. "You sly fox." Out of Terra came Eraqus, his old friend, his hand held out. "Now, hand over the χ-blade, Xehanort."

"It is too late," Xehanort said. Eraqus did not think so. "For us, perhaps, but not for them." Xehanort tried once more. "No. I can do this." Eraqus's voice was gentle. "Enough. Checkmate." And Xehanort gave Sora the χ-blade. "Very well done."

Eraqus turned to his students. "Terra, Aqua, Ven. Forgive your foolish teacher." He looked at each of them in turn. "Ven, I put you through such a harrowing experience. And Aqua, I left you with such a heavy burden. Terra, look after them for me. Please." The three of them ran to him and held on. "Master!" Then Eraqus looked at the old man beside him, and held out his hand. "Here. Ready, my friend?" Xehanort took it. "Yes." They went together, and Kingdom Hearts closed behind them. "It's finally over," Mickey said.

Safe Journey

Kingdom Hearts was closed and Xehanort was gone, and Kairi was still gone with him. Riku tried to be sensible for both of them. "We'll find Kairi. Let's head back to Master Yen Sid. We can figure it out." Sora would not wait. "No, I know what to do. My whole journey began the day I lost her. And every time I find her, she slips away again. I thought we'd finally be together. But she's out there, alone. Not for one more second."

Mickey knew what he meant to do, and was frightened for him. "Sora, listen. The power of waking isn't to go chase hearts around! Even if you do locate Kairi, you might never come home to us again." It was Riku who answered him. "Let him go, Mickey. His heart and his mind are made up. Now, believe in him."

Donald and Goofy wanted to come, as they always had. Sora smiled at them. "Thank you, Donald, Goofy. But this time, I have to go it alone." Mickey asked him to come back safe, and he promised. "I will. And we'll both be back before you know it." The king let him go. "Yeah. Safe journey, Sora."

He reached for Kairi with the power of waking one more time, and he found her, and he brought her back.

Afterwards everyone found their way home to someone. Ventus found Chirithy. Roxas and Lea and Xion found Isa, himself again. Naminé woke in the body the Replica had won for her. And in the end all of them came to the Destiny Islands, to the beach, to rest in the sun.

Kairi sat beside Sora by the water. He had used the power once too often, and it was taking its price, the price Xehanort had warned him of. Kairi stayed beside him while he faded, until he was gone.

I Hope You Like Long Stories

Somewhere far from the islands, four people found themselves standing where they had not been a moment before. One of them said what all of them were thinking. "What happened? Why are we here? You tell me." A man in a black coat stood in front of them with Master Xehanort's Keyblade in his hand, turning it over as if it were an old friend, and a black box beside him. "Finally, back where it belongs."

Another asked if he had summoned them back. "Yep," the man said. He took down his hood, and the one who had asked stared. "Is that you, Luxu? You look different." Xigbar grinned. "Haven't heard that name in a long while. These days they call me Xigbar, but hey, whatever suits you." A third was not sure. "Is it really you?" Xigbar shrugged. "Yeah, but some time ago, I had to cast my old form away. Been through plenty more semblances since, but it's still me underneath it all."

The first of them had heard enough. "Luxu, what was your role?" Xigbar did not seem to mind telling them. "I had a role to play. And after all these years, it's done." Then he looked along the line of them and noticed who was missing. "I guess Ava didn't make it after all." The fourth wanted to know what that meant, and whether he had left her out on purpose. Xigbar snorted. "As if. Ava had her own mission, and she carried it out." He settled in. "I hope you like long stories."

Maleficent and Pete watched it all from afar.

And long before any of it, in a white classroom in Scala ad Caelum, Xehanort had moved his last piece against Eraqus. "Checkmate. And so darkness prevails, and light expires. You need a new strategy." Eraqus studied the board. "My move, isn't it? It's not over." He picked up his king. Xehanort stared. "Huh?" Eraqus did not put it down, and Xehanort protested. "C'mon. That's not fair. I know I had you." Eraqus grinned at him. "Yes, you nearly did. But, a game's no fun if you know where it's going. There's more to light than meets the eye. I told you. Some light comes from the past." He made his move. "I told you that you might be surprised."

Xehanort looked at the board for a long moment. "Yeah, you got me." Eraqus blinked at him. "Huh? Really? It's just, you never admit it when you lose." Xehanort laughed. "That's 'cause I never lose." He began to gather up the pieces. "Good game today." Then, more quietly: "Maybe I won't go as far as you. When the World needs a defender, they'll pick you, Eraqus. But that doesn't mean that I can't be there for you." Eraqus smiled at his friend. "Yeah. And I'll be there for you."

Then Eraqus began to set the pieces out again. "Oh, right. I heard about this new game." Xehanort watched him. "What's this?" Eraqus pushed seven dark pieces across to his side of the board. Xehanort counted them. "Seven black pieces. And?" Eraqus held up a single white one. "Just watch." And he set it down.

Nothing Left to Teach

When it was over, and Xehanort was gone, Terra sent for Riku, and Riku went to the Land of Departure. Terra looked at him for a while before he said anything, and there was something close to pride in it. "Well, look at you." Riku smiled back at him. "Thanks. I finally fulfilled my promise to you."

Terra did not make light of it. "You did. Now there's nothing left for me to teach you. You're a true Keyblade Master, not to mention a great leader to those around you. You've even found the strength to save your friends." He told Riku why he had asked him to come. "The very fact that you were able to make your way here proves just how strong you are. That is why I called for you." Riku waited, as if there should be more to it than that, and Terra laughed at him. "You expected more?"

The two of them were still laughing when Ventus came looking for them. "Hey, you two, what's so funny?" Neither of them told him, and he did not like it. "Aww, come on, tell me!" Terra only shook his head at him. "It's a secret."

They had not called Riku only to say goodbye. Terra, Aqua and Ventus were going into the Realm of Darkness to look for Sora. Aqua had spent ten years lost in that dark, and Riku knew it, and she answered the worry on his face before he could put it into words. "Yes, but don't worry, I'm not alone this time." Then the three of them put on their armor, and Riku stood and watched them go.

No Sign of the Boy

A year went by, and nobody found Sora. Riku came to Radiant Garden, to Merlin's house, where Leon and his friends had been working on the same problem. Cid was bent over his computer as he had been for most of that year, and Yuffie was losing patience with him. "Come on, Cid! Can you throw us a bone here, please?" Cid did not look up. "Be quiet! I'm tryin'! I'm this close to somethin', I know it!" Yuffie threw up her hands. "Cid, you are a million times worse than a broken record!"

Riku did not sound hopeful. "But we've been searching everywhere for Sora, and we haven't found a single clue. If he's really out there, don't you think we would have found something by now?" Aerith would not give that up. "But if we still remember him, then he must still be with us." Leon agreed with her. "Yes, that would stand to reason." Then he turned back to Riku. "Cid's been looking into the data for a year now. Aren't the people at the castle doing the same thing? No one's found anything yet?"

The people at the castle were Ansem the Wise and his apprentices, and Riku shook his head. "Well. It's outside their field of expertise." He told them where everyone else was looking. "Well, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are searching for clues in every past world that Sora's been to. Terra, Ven, and Aqua went to the realm of darkness. And the Twilight Town gang are studying Roxas and Xion's memories."

Aerith asked the question he had left out. "And what about Kairi?" Riku was quiet for a moment before he answered. "Kairi. She believes her heart might hold a clue about Sora. For a year, she's been sound asleep while they search her heart." Aerith looked down. "So there's been no progress."

Cid sat up so suddenly that his chair nearly went over. "What in the. What in the world is this?!" They crowded round the screen, and he explained, too excited to slow down. "This computer, the one in Twilight Town, and the one in the castle are all connected to the same network. They sent me all of their data and I merged it with the stuff I already had, and looky here." What was on the screen was Sora, and Yuffie nearly shouted. "Sora's inside the computer?!"

Cid waved that away. "No, no. That's just the data I constructed based on Sora and his fightin' abilities." Yuffie glared at him. "So you gave us a heart attack for nothing?!" But it was not nothing, Cid said. "No, that group Sora was fightin'. You know. Battalion somethin'? Well, I recreated their data too."

Aerith saw what it might mean before anyone else did. "The real Organization XIII. Maybe their data will lead us to where Sora is." Cid had thought of that, and it had got him nowhere. "Well, it crossed my mind, but I must be better at this than I thought 'cause their data, it's so powerful, I can't access any of it." Leon looked at the image of Sora on the screen. "Can you use Sora's data to gain access?" Cid brightened. "Oh, good idea. Worth a shot!"

So Riku fought them, through Sora's data. Cid had built a place for it inside the simulation, a copy of a hall called the Garden of Assemblage, and waiting in it were all thirteen of the real Organization, remade from their data and stronger than they had ever been. Riku faced them one after another until the last of them fell and their data opened to Cid at last.

It gave them nothing. Sora's data had not changed, and Cid read the result off the screen flatly. "No sign of the boy." Yuffie spoke for all of them. "What a bummer."

The Other Two

There was a shimmer in the air in the middle of the room, and a little round woman in a blue cloak was standing in it, beaming at them. "Oh-ho-ho, I hope I didn't startle you." She had come for a reason. "Well dear, I was asked to come by Merlin and Master Yen Sid. Now, where is. Oh, Riku! Yes, Riku is his name." She turned to him. "Why, it's nice to meet you. Now, I'd like you to tell me about the dreams that you've been having, dear."

Nobody in the room knew why she should want to know that, and she explained. "Oh, because Master Yen Sid was worried. You weren't having any luck finding Sora. And because Riku had been in Sora's dreams before, he thought perhaps Riku just may be the key. That's why he and Merlin asked me to come here and look into his dreams, since of course dreams are my specialty." Aerith turned to look at Riku. "So Riku's dreams might. Hold the key?" The Fairy Godmother nodded. "Yes, dear. I'm sure there's something there that leads to Sora."

Riku had not thought his dreams were worth mentioning, and he had to reach for it. "Huh? My. Dreams? There's one. It was dark. And I was surrounded by tall buildings. I was looking around for Sora, when I felt someone watching me from way up high. And that's all I remember." Cid folded his arms. "I hope you're not expectin' me to turn a dream into data."

The Fairy Godmother did not need him to. She said Riku's dreams might hold what they needed to find Sora, and then she added something that none of them understood yet. "And. The other two."

Across the city, in the castle's laboratory, Kairi lay asleep, as she had for a year. And far beyond any world, the Final World lay under a clear sky, quiet and empty.

A Weird Dream

Sora woke on a plain of stone under a night sky, and knew it. He had been here before, in pieces. He looked down at himself, at his hands, and was relieved at least by that. "This place. At least. I'm all here." Then he cupped his hands round his mouth and shouted into the dark. "Heeey! Is anyone out there? Hellooo!"

Someone answered him. "Hey. Hey. Where are you? I see you." A young man came out of the night toward him, and Sora knew who he was. The young man stopped, wary. "You know me?" Sora nodded. "Yeah, you're Yozora, right?"

That did not reassure him. "How do you know that? Who are you?" Sora told him. "I'm Sora. And actually. There's something I have to ask you." Yozora looked at him hard. "Sora? You're Sora?" Then, more carefully: "Sure, I've heard of you."

Sora was working something out aloud. He had heard the name from a girl among the stars, the last time he was here, and he had not thought the one she was waiting for could be real. "If you're here, then this can't be the real world, can it? But wait, that girl, she told me about you. Maybe you are real after all."

Yozora had heard enough. "Are you done? No, this isn't the real world, and I am here. But this isn't what I really look like. How'd you recognize me as Yozora? Why are you using Sora's name?" He did not wait for an answer. "If you are who you say, and it was fate that brought us here, then. My path is clear."

He told Sora why he had come. "I accidentally wandered into this place, and went through some trials. Then, I was told to 'save Sora.'" But there was a sword in one of his hands and a crossbow in the other, and Sora stared at them. "Huh?! Then what's with the weapon?" Yozora was not going to explain. "Time to end this."

The plain was gone. They were standing on top of a tower in a city of towers, under a night sky full of lit windows, and Yozora came at him. It was a hard fight, and Sora won it. Yozora lowered his weapons. "I guess. That my powers aren't needed yet." Then he broke apart into light and was gone.

Sora found himself back on the stone plain, and now it was day.

Somewhere else, a young man woke in the back seat of a car. The driver called him Commander, and asked him whether he did not think it impressive. Yozora looked out of the window, still half in the dream. "I've been having these weird thoughts lately. Like, is any of this for real or not?"

And alone on the plain in the daylight, Sora could not make it add up. "None of this. Makes sense to me."