A/N: This is just a self-indulgent side project I'm working on as a birthday present to myself, posted for the first time today, on my 18th birthday, and only started yesterday. Please bear in mind that I am A) not an expert in the storyline of Kingdom Hearts or how the characters act, and B) not going to make myself the most powerful character in the story. Sora technically has that covered, and I won't deprive him of that for a lot of reasons, not least of which being the fact that I hate Mary Sues and don't want to be one.

Anyway, I wrote this just because everybody, at some point, has a self-insert story, and I figured this might as well be mine. It was inspired, in part, by a story on here that I first read many many years ago, and if you're interested in reading that 100 chapter odyssey, hit me up and I'll link you to it.

Enjoy!

The clock on my laptop read 11:48.

I was trying not to concentrate too hard on it, doing as much as I could to pay attention to something else, anything else. Forensic Files played in the background, drowning out any other noises that I might possibly hear in the middle of the night. Once upon a time I'd actually watched the episodes, but I'd seen all of them so many times it was useless as anything except background noise. It did its job fairly well, regardless.

A google document was open on the screen of my laptop, progress halted in the middle of a sentence.

"The other didn't stir, so he took the opportunity to get up and go about some semblance of a morning routine while he waited for his left arm".

I knew where I wanted to go with the sentence, and where I wanted to go with the chapter in general. But I was distracted, unable to work on the only multi-chapter story I was updating at the time just because I was so concerned about something that wouldn't really change anything.

The time changed. 11:49.

In 11 minutes I would be 18 years old, and I wasn't sure how to handle that. On the one hand, that meant a great deal of freedom for me that I hadn't had before. On the other, it also meant that I now had a great deal more responsibility. Sure, I wasn't going to be out on my own yet, and I wasn't under pressure to get a job by my parents, but I knew that the moment the clock struck 12 I would start pressuring myself, and it wouldn't be good for me at all.

I already exist in a constant state of stress, after all. There was no reason to put myself under more, but I knew it would happen.

11:50.

I finally finished up the sentence, determined to ignore the mental countdown to my birthday. It didn't matter, it was just another day. I was up until after 12 every night for the past week, this was no different. This was no different at all. I wasn't staying up out of anticipation, no way.

Predictably, my attempts to convince myself of that were unsuccessful, but it did manage to waste some time while I jotted down a couple more sentences.

11:54.

Panicking? Me? No way, perish the very thought.

I clicked out of the tab I was working in. There was no reason to keep staring at it now that I knew I wouldn't be getting any work done. Instead I repurposed a tab I'd already had open, redirecting it to my email so I could check the state of affairs concerning all of my stories - you know, comments/reviews, faves, kudos, alerts and subscriptions - all that fun stuff.

There was nothing new, although one of the authors I was subscribed to had updated a story I was following quite religiously. I considered reading through the new chapter, but it didn't deserve anything less than my full attention, which it wouldn't have at this point in time. Instead I flicked my eyes down at the clock again. I knew it hadn't been that long since I'd last looked, but it's a bad habit I always end up indulging when I'm concerned about the timing of something.

11:55, now.

I swallowed and scrounged my email for anything I could distract myself with without feeling bad for not giving it my full attention. I found nothing, despite scrolling through two pages of emails in two different folders. And I mean that as two pages per folder, rather than just two pages altogether. Probably could have been clearer on that.

Anyway, again, it didn't take a whole lot of time to do so, even though I tried to be as thorough as possible. I just wanted 12:00AM to come and go without my notice so I could worry about this stuff later.

Why is it that, when you want time to fly, it drags by? But when you want something to last, it's over all too quickly? Seems like a scam to me.

I went through one of the pages of emails again, sure there was something I could pay attention to for a few minutes. All I found were previous chapters of the story I was investing a lot of interest in and a couple others I'd been following. There was nothing I could occupy myself with there.

That made fairly clear to me, I clicked into another tab I had open, this one displaying a fic I'd been reading for what was probably the third time, to my memory. An older story from an author I was pretty fond of back when I was fairly new to fanfiction, in which the author had been transported into Kingdom Hearts due to a mishap with a magic book. It was, admittedly, an old favorite of mine, and one of the few stories from that time period that I still remembered the name of, let alone the author.

Presently, I was on chapter 26, and I wasn't feeling particularly inspired to continue reading. However, if I wanted to distract myself at all, it would be a good way to do so. After all, it wasn't like I had anything better to do, and I enjoyed the story anyway. What better way to pass the time?

Another glance at the clock. 11:59.

My mouth felt dry. It was almost time.

When it ticked to 12:00, a new window suddenly opened on the laptop, catching my attention. Pop-ups weren't common, for me, at least not on that laptop. They were actually few and far between, and to be honest they were usually pretty mundane stuff - advertisements for games, things like that.

This one, however, had the look of an error message or alert.

"Would you like to have your own adventure?" It read. My options were "Yes," "No," and "Maybe." After a moment's consideration, since I knew it could be a virus of some kind, I gave into curiosity and clicked, "Maybe."

The pop-up closed, and a new one opened in its place. "Where would you like to go if you did have an adventure of your own?" This time, my options were somewhat suspicious to me. "Kingdom Hearts," was the first, followed by "Sonic the Hedgehog (Games)."

Again, my curiosity got the better of me. I hovered my cursor over both options for a moment before deciding on Kingdom Hearts, as that was where my mind was at the moment. And, again, the pop-up disappeared only to be replaced by a new one.

"Which would you prefer?" The options were, "Follow the storyline," "Choose your own adventure," "In-Between," and "Wild Card."

This one took a great deal more time to decide. Following the storyline would have its benefits, of course, because that way I knew what would happen and could prepare accordingly. However, if Liam's misadventures had taught me anything, it was that knowing what would happen before it happened wasn't always a good thing. Meanwhile, choosing my own adventure also had plenty of its own benefits. That way I wasn't constrained by the railroad tracks of the storyline and I couldn't mess anything from canon up too badly since I wouldn't be pretending to be something (or rather someone) that I wasn't.

I glanced at the clock to see how much time I'd wasted thinking about this, but found it still displayed 12:00 as if no time had passed at all. I knew that it had been at least two minutes - that couldn't be right.

I decided to ignore it and considered the Wild Card option only very briefly before deciding I really wasn't keen on it. I wanted to know which level of Hell I was dropping myself into by doing this. No matter if it was just some crazy little dream or a weird virus or actually happening, I don't like having control taken from me in situations like that.

It was with some trepidation that I moved my mouse over "In-Between" and clicked.

The pop-up that appeared this time said, "When would you like to begin?" The options for this one were "Birth By Sleep," "Kingdom Hearts I," "Chain of Memories," "Days," and "Kingdom Hearts II." There was, also, of course, a button allowing me to go back, though it had been absent from the other pop-ups. Experimentally, I clicked on Birth By Sleep, and was met with a list of worlds to choose from in that time period. Clicking on each of the others had the same effect. I could even start on Destiny Islands at the beginning of KH1.

I chewed my lip thoughtfully, again noting that the time on my laptop hadn't changed the whole time. Something was off about that.

Oh, well. I was probably having a stress dream or something. No matter that I didn't remember falling asleep.

In the end, I decided to start in Traverse Town during KH1, regardless of the possible implications toward running into Sora or being murdered brutally by Heartless.

"Would you like companions?" The answer "yes" was swiftly chosen.

"Please enter the names of your companions, fictional or real." I noted I was given more than two slots to enter names in, but two of them were in a column by themselves, labelled "Primary Companions." Against my better judgement, I chose not to enter any names into that column. Not clicking into one of them first led to a small message popping up beside them that said, "You can change your mind later, and your choice of companion(s) will be assigned as your primary. You will also be able to change this at any time, should you want to."

Well that was nice to know.

I typed the names of two characters of mine (Ashlyn Rouse and Jay Evan Bannister) as placeholders for the people they were based on, so as not to chance putting those friends in danger on the off-chance this was real, and then added the name of my boyfriend while imagining him not as himself, but as another character, and then "Adrian" as a placeholder name for another friend of mine.

That done, I clicked "Ok" and waited for the next pop-up.

Still, no time had passed.

"Are you sure you want to take this adventure?" My only options were "Yes," and "No."

I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and, with an air of finality that I didn't particularly like, clicked "Yes."

Suddenly I felt very, very sleepy. The pop-up closed after only a moment or two to let me stare at my decision. I sat the laptop aside on instinct, took the glasses off my face, and laid down. When my eyes were drooping closed, I barely caught sight of a new pop-up appearing on the laptop.

"Transporting…" was all it said.

I didn't have time to think about it. My eyelids fell closed, and then very much out of nowhere… The feeling of being tired vanished.

My eyes snapped back open, but I was no longer lying safely in my bed. I was upright, standing on what I immediately recognized as a platform in the Dive to the Heart. Like Sora's, it held a shield, a sword, and a staff on pedestals. As I stepped forward, a voice called in my mind.

"Be careful what you choose." It said softly. "You know it will effect your whole journey."

That was very, very true. Whatever I chose here would strongly influence certain aspects of my battling later on. I couldn't remember how exactly, because it had been a long time since I'd actually played the first Kingdom Hearts, but I knew it was important. Common sense told me that the shield stood for defense, the sword for attack, and the staff for magic, and memory told me picking would ultimately leave me fairly strong in two aspects, and unfortunately lacking in one.

In the end, I decided that, due to my preference for staying out of trouble, picking the shield would be my best bet. From what I remembered, it would give me a nice boost defense wise, and open up some good attack moves too. That done, I had to pick which one to drop. After a bit more consideration, I chose to drop the sword, as I'm typically more of a magic user anyway.

Besides, dropping the staff would leave me with a permanent disadvantage where magic was concerned, and with my preferences in mind that would be very bad.

A stairway appeared, then, leading up to a second platform. On the subject of that, I was never really sure what the platforms are technically called, except that one of them is the Station of Awakening, so for the sake of my sanity I'll just call them platforms, because that's what I thought of them as at the time. Though, by the logic of one of them being the Station of Awakening, wouldn't all of them be stations? And if so, what of?

My second platform was a fair bit different from Sora's, although I was expecting that. What I was not expecting was for it to house a wardrobe, a full length mirror, and a… I think it's called a vanity? The little counter or table with a mirror mounted to it where ladies do their makeup? Yeah, one of those.

"This will be, essentially, your only chance to customize your appearance for this adventure. You will receive another come the second. Make full use of it while you can."

I took the advice, of course, starting with the wardrobe. Almost immediately I found it to be pretty much endless. One side held shirt after shirt after shirt, and the other held pants, shorts, and skirts in the same amounts. I got to my knees and checked the drawers at the bottom, finding fresh underclothes in one drawer, socks and gloves in another, and various accessories in the third and final drawer. Sitting along the bottom of the main wardrobe were pretty much infinite boxes of shoes.

I sighed - with this much to choose from it would take some work to find something I actually wanted to wear.

After quite some time, I picked out a couple of outfits and tried them in front of the mirror, discarding my plain clothes in a pile on the floor of the wardrobe, where the voice assured me they'd be kept safe until I needed them again.

At this point in time, I think it necessary to point out that I was operating under the assumption that I was dreaming, but I was working my way through it all as logically as I could. After all, there was no way this could be real. I wasn't really in a Dive to the Heart, trying on clothes for an adventure in the Kingdom Hearts universe. There was simply no way - so why not go along with it until I woke up?

At the end of it all, I chose a crop topped shirt, which I normally wouldn't have had the confidence to wear. It was black, with a lime green elastic band on the bottom that held it to my midsection so that I wouldn't accidentally be showing anything off. It had only one sleeve, and it fell to my hand, just above the start of my thumb, on my right arm. After that, I slid on some short shorts (and hoo boy do I mean they were short), then pulled a skirt on over them that only went about an inch further than them, stopping just above mid-thigh. It was ruffled and it had a cute little bow on the hip, which was honestly a lot of the reason I decided to wear it. The main skirt was black, and the bow, like the band on the shirt, was lime green. The shorts under it, though they hardly matter, were also black.

What can I say? I have a thing for wearing black - I look good in it, and I'm willing to suffer for it. Not to mention, black matches everything.

The only thing that was left to do, then, was finish up the outfit with some socks and shoes and I'd be done with this section. Or at least I thought so at first. Looking through the socks and gloves proved me wrong, however, as I decided maybe my look could use a little more spicing up. As such, I took a lime green knee sock from one pair and a black one from another and pulled them on, then pulled on a pair of black gloves, and dug through the boxes of shoes.

I spared a glance at some flats, some sneakers, and a few different pairs of skate shoes, but all of them were mostly ignored for the time being. Finally I came upon a pair of knee high black boots (thankfully without heels), and gave them a try. Finding them to be pretty comfortable (like all the others likely would have been) and highly functional (where flats likely wouldn't have been), I chose to wear them.

I very briefly browsed the accessories, nicked a hair clip with Jack Skellington's face on it in the center of a bow that looked like his tie, and then dropped by the vanity to see what there was to do there. There were a few bottles of nail polish, some eye shadow and eyeliner - the basics of makeup, nothing super complicated. A small stool appeared when I picked up a bottle of nail polish, and I took a seat to do what I needed to do.

Right before I began, something occurred to me.

Being genderfluid, as I am, could lead to the outfit I currently wore potentially being extremely dysphoric for me. It seemed, though, that the strange voice already had a solution to that problem.

"Finish what you are doing, and you may pick the outfit that suits your other needs."

A glance showed the contents of the wardrobe had changed to some decidedly more androgynous or male-aimed shirts, and had removed most of the shorts and all of the skirts from the selection, as per my preference on he/him days.

(A quick detour for those confused - being genderfluid just means that, some days I feel like a girl, some days I feel like a guy, and some days I don't feel like either or I feel like both. It is also, to my displeasure, a subject of a lot of discourse, and if you don't like it you can leave. I don't have time or patience for people who want to argue with me about my gender. That said, under most circumstances I go by she/her pronouns and will allow all others unless I specifically request a certain set, and if you message me or address me directly in a comment any honorific or pronoun is fine. Got all that? Good, now we can move on.)

I did, in fact, go ahead and finish up what I was doing, painting all my nails but the middle ones black, and painting those two bright green to match the rest of the outfit, even if you couldn't see them. I liked knowing that, should I ever take them off to give somebody the bird, their attention would be drawn to it. Then, once they were dry and I'd applied some minimal eyeliner and a layer of black lipstick, the voice assured me that those touches would only apply when I wanted them to, and that they would never smudge, smear, or wear off. As per video game physics, I suppose.

I got up and went back to the wardrobe, my current outfit disappearing as I did.

My male outfit was considerably less flashy than my female one, but again it was a preference thing. I picked a fairly plain black and green shirt, this time with both sleeves. The left side of the body of the shirt was black, the right side green, and the reverse for the sleeves. Underneath it I put on a binder I had picked from a drawer full of them, though I had to try a fair few before I found a decent comfort/flattening balance. A pretty simple thought brought back the gloves, socks, and boots after I'd grabbed some basic black jeans. Scouring the accessories again found me exactly what I was looking for - a beanie.

It also found me something I hadn't noticed before, that being other sets of glasses frames. They were all essentially the same as the ones I usually wore, but were different in color and slightly so in style. I tried a set on just to see if they were the right prescription before I discarded my current purple ones on top of my pile of original clothes and put on a pair of black ones.

As an afterthought, I willed the glasses away into my female outfit and hunted around the accessories a bit more until I found a case of contact lenses. I just have a preference for them when I feel male, don't have a clue why. Maybe my glasses make me feel more feminine or something.

Anyways, I opened the case and found some regular clear contacts within. Good enough for me, I didn't need to change my eye color. So I put them in, stood there trying not to blink for a little bit, and then blinked a lot.

"You will not need to change your contacts for as long as you are in this realm." The voice helpfully told me. "They will never expire."

Again, nice to know.

That done, though, I wasn't sure what to do next. So I just stood there for a minute trying to will my female outfit back, and eventually it worked. Just took some concentration, which is admittedly more work than I would have expected. And more work than I liked. Still, it was easier than actually changing my clothes, and the voice told me that I would only have to concentrate like that if I wasn't feeling one or the other or felt like both, which I currently really wasn't. It then amended that statement by saying that any time I wanted to change clothes without a shift in what gender I preferred, I would have to concentrate.

If I felt like a girl and tried to change into the male outfit it would take work, and vice versa, but if I felt like a boy and was wearing the female outfit, it would change on its own. Obviously it worked the same in reverse.

My male outfit chosen and my worries about making myself dysphoric eased, a new staircase appeared, leading up to a third platform. I carefully made my way up, this time sparing a thought for the long, seemingly bottomless drop if I happened to fall off.

On this platform, I found something that confused me at first, but quickly caught onto.

It wasn an armory, and likely where I would choose what I'd be using for my whole adventure. There were many pedestals, each below a floating weapon, and each weapon was different. One was a Keyblade, another a large hammer (I guess you'd call it a warhammer), then a sword, and countless others. Okay, so maybe saying "each weapon was different" was an overstatement - there were multiples of each weapon, but each one looked different and appeared to have a different effect. All except for the Keyblade, which I knew was because keychains would change it on their own.

"This step is critical to your adventure." The voice told me calmly, "Will you become one of the Keyblade's Chosen? Or will you choose a more mundane path?"

That was a good question. What was I going to choose here? I wasn't sure yet, so I wandered around, examining each of the weapons in turn. Hammers weren't really my thing, so I soon decided against them entirely.

"A fair choice, to avoid becoming the fierce Warmonger. Brute force will get you few places."

That left me with the Keyblade, swords, staves, and the various other weapons, most of them small, that occupied the platform. All of the hammers disappeared completely, along with their pedestals, and everything else moved closer together to occupy the area left behind. I soon decided against swords, as well, because I'm very clumsy and I'd rather not cut myself. I do better with small blades than a huge one that I could easily cut my hand off with.

"The life of a swordsman was not for you, I suppose." The voice mused.

I was beginning to think maybe I should just pick the Keyblade - after all, it had the brute strength a hammer would have given, the swiftness of the sword, and the magic channeling of a staff. But it would also bring a great deal of trouble to me.

That made me laugh. All of this would bring me trouble. Might as well be well-balanced if it was going to happen, right?

I grabbed the Keyblade, which currently appeared to be a Kingdom Key. That wasn't right, I knew, since there were only two Kingdom Keys, and both were taken. One by Sora, the other by Mickey. It was, however, lacking a keychain, I noticed.

"That is correct. This is simply the form it will take until you gain your first keychain." A brief pause. "Speaking of that, however… Here."

A keychain appeared on the pedestal the Keyblade had floated over beforehand. It was a simple charm - a short chain with a small item at the end. When I picked it up, I found the item at the end was an old-timey fountain pen. The name came to me while I worked on hooking it to the previously chainless Keyblade in my hand.

Writer's Misfortune.

A fitting name for a Keyblade I'd be wielding, I thought.

I put that aside and looked around to see if the next staircase had appeared yet. It hadn't, so I frowned and stepped away from the pedestal. What else was I meant to do? The pedestal disappeared when I stepped away, and then I sort of understood. I was being given the option to take a secondary weapon, and my options were all of the smaller weapons I'd passed over before.

I willed my Keyblade away for the time being and examined the plethora of daggers, throwing stars, and other tiny secondary weapons. I noted a bow was also one of my options, but I didn't think I'd need it and passed over it for the time being.

After examining more weapons and rethinking the situation, I doubled back and picked up the bow.

"A good choice." The bow seemed to change somehow, appearance morphing to match my Keyblade - which I now realize I neglected to describe. Remind me to get to that. "You do not need arrows for this bow. Instead, it will operate much the same way your Keyblade does in terms of projectiles - it will shoot beams of light. However, these light arrows are more precise and have a practical use in combat, while the light beam from your Keyblade is only precise when locking or unlocking a Keyhole. Should you need, however, it should do as an attack in a pinch."

That was nice to know - and I know I say that a lot about the stuff the voice told me. But that's just because it was nice, or helpful, or whatever I said about it. I'd have been lost without some of the information it gave me.

There was no staircase this time, but rather a door that opened onto the fourth platform. I know now that the first three platforms were called the Station of Serenity. The one I exited on was part of the the Station of Calling. There was only one other platform.

On my way through the door, I examined my Keyblade, and mentioning that only benefits me by giving me the opening I needed to give myself to describe the weapon. The short version is that it somewhat resembled what might happen if one took Oblivion and Two Become One and smooshed them into one Keyblade. The long version is essentially the same thing, but actually describes the result - it had Oblivion's base color and teeth (you know, the part of the key that would normally unlock stuff - would that be the 'blade' for a Keyblade, or would the section between the handle and the teeth qualify as the blade?), along with its chains, but Two Become One's handle, with green where Two Become One is white, and its 'bar' between the teeth and handle, which to me really looks more like a blade than a bar.

Here I was tasked with performing the major functions I'd need for my adventure: walking, running, and jumping. After I'd proved I could do all of them, although I suppose it was probably just some kind of protocol to make me prove it, a ledge appeared in front of me, and I was given the order to double jump up to it. It took a couple tries, but I did manage to discard enough logic to manage it. I was told to jump down, which I did with great trepidation because while I'm okay with heights, the idea of falling and hitting the ground scares me.

I landed without incident, and was ordered to double jump up again, just to make sure I could do it. Upon completing it in much less time than the first time, I was again told to jump down. This repeated until I did both without more than a couple seconds of hesitation.

"You will not receive this skill for real for quite some time, but I would like you to practice gliding."

At the voice's insistence, I double jumped back onto the ledge, then jumped off and used my temporary glide ability to the best of my, well, ability. It wasn't easy to get the hang of, but eventually I did.

All that done, the next staircase appeared and I headed up.

I now finally got some practice with my weapons, which I knew I'd need later on if this dream continued that long. I quickly found out that I'm not exactly great with melee weapons, something that I already had suspicions about due to frequent childhood "sword fights" using sticks with friends. Still, I was effective enough with my weapon to vanquish the Shadows that swarmed me, and then I was introduced to a few flying Heartless way earlier than I should have been in order to use them as target practice.

I had to spend a lot of time working on that, because not only is my aim Not Good™, but I've also never used a bow before and needed a lot of work to get used to it. By the time the door to the next Station appeared, I was at least mildly proficient in using the bow, although my aim could still use some work. The voice assured me that I'd get plenty more practice.

I believed it.

I stepped out onto the final platform, or what I somewhat hoped would be the final platform, and looked around.

"You know what will happen here." The voice deduced as I walked forward. This would be the final platform after all, it seemed. I checked behind me and watched as my shadow extended. "The closer you get to the light, the longer your shadow becomes. But you, who is so very close to both the light and the darkness, will be tested in your conviction, rather than set against your own shadow on its own. Are you ready?"

Even before it finished asking, the Darkside (or was it a Dark Follower that I fought?) formed. And before I had the chance to answer, even sarcastically, it began to attack. Having my bow put me at an advantage that Sora didn't have, I'll admit, so I decided to put it to good use… And get some more practice in the process.

Shooting the big guy in the face took a couple of tries, but when managed it brought him crashing down onto the platform, dazed. I quickly rushed over to him and landed as many hits on his head as I could before he got up. When he did so, I very much needed the sudden crash course in the use of dodge roll, though it took some convincing to get me to throw myself onto the ground even if I was doing it to avoid being attacked and I would be able to get back up afterwards due to the fact that it was a roll, not a dive.

Still, I had to do a lot of running and rolling to avoid its hands.

But the Shadows it summoned? Well, lets just say I quickly grew very adept at sending them flying off the platform, perhaps because I have a tendency to use anything I can hold with two hands as a makeshift baseball bat, my weapon of choice back home. Or maybe just because it's easier to send them flying than it is to pin them down.

Anyway, once I managed to get to a reasonable distance again, I gave brief thought to how troublesome it was to dismiss one weapon to call the other while I was doing so. The it occurred to me that, if they shared a color scheme and overall appearance, maybe I could simply switch between them like Serah switches between her bow and sword in Final Fantasy XIII-2. I resolved to give it a try the next time I had the chance to.

I shot it in the face again with much greater success than the first time. While it was falling, I tried to figure out how I could possibly make my switching idea work, and finally tried just giving my bow a slight twirl around my hand. To my surprise (and eternal delight) it actually worked, and my bow had transformed into Writer's Misfortune by the time it had made one trip around my hand.

Twirling the other direction brought the bow back.

I'd wasted too much time, however, and now the big guy was up and at 'em again. Shooting him was exponentially easier this time, and then I was rushing him mid-twirl and wailing on him almost as soon as he hit the ground.

I'm pretty ruthless sometimes, I've noticed. Even moreso in places where I can get away with taking my frustration out on things. Obviously that doesn't fly around here, in the real world, so part of my initial encounter with Shadows was to get me over my deep-rooted reflex to hesitate when I want to hit something until the very last second possible. Usually that makes me miss my opening, allowing me to avoid real fights, but it would only hinder me in this universe.

Luckily, that reflex had temporarily abandoned me by this point, since there's no point holding back in a dream or against Heartless. Especially not dream Heartless.

So after a couple more repetitions of my little routine, the Darkside (or Dark Follower) did not fall, to my displeasure, but instead finally caught me under its hand, flattening me into an Allie pancake for a minute or so. It hurt, and it brought the realization that, maybe, just maybe, I wasn't dreaming, and I was in real danger. Predictably, this scared me to death, and before I could get back up I was being swallowed by the darkness.

I didn't struggle, like Sora and Roxas did. I just laid there and let it happen, because no one would be able to save me anyway, and Sora had woken up just fine.

When I jerked awake suddenly after what seemed like only a couple of seconds, I admit I still expected to find myself in my bed at home, with the morning light streaming in through a crack in my curtains. But that was not where I was, and not even close to the situation I was in. Instead of my bed, I laid on what was presumably someone's trash, and instead of my room I was in an alleyway in a place I recognized unquestionably as Traverse Town.

I almost screamed, but managed to stop myself as the reality that I was really in Traverse Town, had really become one of the Keyblade's Chosen, and was really in trouble came crashing down on me. Instead I stumbled off the bag of trash to the other side of the alley and plopped down into a sitting position. I tried to calmly process all of this. I knew panicking wouldn't help. But I was panicking anyway, and within a minute I was pulling my knees to my chest while I barely avoided hyperventilating.

This was off to a great start, wasn't it?