Kingdom Hearts: Path of Shadows

Chapter 1: The Path Revealed, Riku's Journey Begins!

It always began the same as it always had for the past week; Riku would awaken from his sleep, sweating from a horrid dream and then attempt to figure it out to no avail. His dream played before his eyes, carrying him to the last time he had spoken to a rather peculiar Nobody who had no past, but only the memories she was made from; the memories of Riku's best friend, Sora.

Xion... What are you trying to tell me?...

His thoughts echoed for an answer, but they remained heard only by his own ears and unanswered all the same. Xion could be seen, in his dream, asleep yet reaching out to him as if to expect his hand to take hers and awaken her from her imprisoning slumber.

"Riku... Help m-..." Her words would be hindered by a distant and vicious howl of something that one would believe not to exist. Riku would then trace the howl to a towering form with none but dark yellow eyes glaring at him, motivating him to call Way To The Dawn to his hand. However, his Keyblade would not come, leaving Riku unarmed and vulnerable to the wrath of the dark entity that open its sinister maw to devour him and Xion both.

"Riku, please....." Xion pleaded weakly as Riku soon snapped awake. The next morning, Riku had come to a decision, "WHAT!? You're going to find Xion by yourself!?" Sora and Kairi were shocked as Riku told them of his dream and what he believed that he had to do in order to stop this cycle from repeating. He nodded and said,"Xion is in trouble, I might not know why or how she came back, but I want to help her all the same. I need to do this alone, guys... I'm sorry..." Sora simply grinned at his friend, "Hey, you know you can depend on us, right? Doesn't that mean WE can depend on YOU to come back in one piece?" Riku was taken back a little, but smirked as he said," You can be a real sap, you know that?" Kairi smiled as she interjected, "Just no disappearing acts, okay?" Riku nodded as he prepared his ship for departure, "No thanks, I think the last thing I want to do is leave you two lovebirds all alone." Kairi giggled at a blushing Sora as he yelled before Riku sped off into space, "Just call for us if you can't handle being the lone hero!"

"It's a good thing I kept a few Gummi ship plans on me, otherwise I'd have to hitchhike." Riku said to himself as he activated the auto-pilot. It had been a couple of hours since his departure and the lack of sleep from the past week had begun to take its toll on , he didn't have the same dream as before; it's possible that all the dream was meant for was to implore him to go on this an hour or so passed, Riku heard a loud thud echo from the right side of the cockpit that brought him out of his sleep and straight into a run for the pilot's seat. "What was that?" Riku searched left and right for the object that soon found itself in front of his vision. It appeared to be some kind of pod with an active distress beacon retrieving it, he opened it to find a video inside telling him about a mining ship, called the U.S.G. Ishimura, was seiged by her own crew after being taken over by... something... that had boarded the ship a week after they pulled up a strange red marker from the planet Aegis 7. The message was either incomplete or damaged because the message kept skipping when the woman inside it, cheif of security Alyssa Vincent as she called herself, said that the Ishimura and the marker must be destroyed. Following the fuel trail from the pod, Riku found the U.S.G. Ishimura and prepared to board it, completely unaware of the hell that waited within the bowels of the abandoned mining ship.