Young Writers Society

Baba held on tight. That was a good idea.

The floor tiles went from jittery to slippery, like a sagging balloon over-full with water being pricked at the bottom by a pin. It burst and dropped them all. First they fell weightless and slow, then quickened with rude suddenness and fell down onto the hat of a large mushroom.

When Kate stopped moving, Baba peeked their head out the top of her pocket.

They had landed in a dimly lit, but richly colourful wood filled with mushrooms ranging from the size of horses to the size of giraffes, all spotted and rich, bulging and thin, bright and dank. A cosy, earthy smell engulfed the whole scene.

Baba looked to the canopy to see if there was any trace of the room that had dropped them, in time to spot miniature tiles speckling out of view. When Wonderland got bored, it wasted no time.

Baba looked back down again, to see how this forest floor was going. It seemed happy with itself.

It was VERY, VERY far down for Baba.

Baba anticipated a lot of turbulence in their immediate future.

Wonderland, like it always did, decided to shift again. Instead of being deposited back in the forest he had been earlier, it had decided to throw their group all the way into the Lotus Forest.

A pit formed in Vil's stomach.

Even if Wonderland changed the scenery with a mind of its own, the Lotus Forest was usually close to the castle. And while the queen could be dangerous on her own, he already knew that she was with Luxord. If he caught them...

The pit grew a little more.

He took a deep, shaky breath. The puppy and Terra squirmed in his arms, but he didn't dare to put them down. He needed to think. He need a plan. Axel thought he had one, but he didn't, and standing here with a normal-sized Kate and a miniature Baba was making him all too aware of that. Not having Lira here was making him notice that more, too-

Vil froze.

...Baba had never answered his question earlier.

He looked over at Kate and Baba, nonexistent heart racing as he tried to come up with an explanation. They had been together at Neverland. Why wouldn't she be with them now?

What had happened after he had left?

"Where's Lira?" he asked.

Baba was so distracted by attacking Vil's head earlier, they had forgotten entirely that he had asked this question to begin with.

How could they have forgotten that their friend was still missing? Baba felt horrible. Wonderland was immensely distracting, but that didn't make it right.

"Lira was steering the pirate ship, and it got pulled into the big swirling hole in the sky- there were big, black and purple tentacles coming out of it- Goofy and Donald got pulled in, too- We don't know where any of them are! Baba hopes they're together..."

Vil was already incredibly still before Baba answered his question, but the words made him feel like he was covered in ice. He should have known what that meant. He had known everything about the organization back before he left. It sounded like a corridor of darkness, but he had never heard of one being so large.

And even though he could easily make one of his own now, he had no idea how he could possibly get to Lira without knowing where she was.

He let out a tiny shaky breath.

"It must have been the organization," he quietly said, more to himself than to Kate or Baba or the two animals currently tucked underneath his arms. "If not them, it must have been..."

He knew how ironic this whole situation was right now. He was standing here looking exactly like the person he was trying to blame, and had once been a part of the organization that could have been at fault.

Kate crossed her arms. "Where would they take her then," she helpfully snapped. "Since you're such a big shot in the organization that you couldn't visit your friends for years, how about you tell us where they might put a whiny little goody two shoes."

"That's not-" Vil started to say, but fell silent when he realized that Kate was right. It wasn't the full story, but it was some of it. Vil didn't have the right to make excuses right now.

He wanted to comment on Kate's comment about Lira, too. He knew Kate was abrasive, but his younger self would have been horrified to find out his friends weren't friends with each other.

He put Terra and the puppy down on the ground. Terra gave him a questioning look before tussling with his newest friend.

"I don't know," he said. "I haven't been part of the organization for the past few years, and it wasn't like they told me where they brought their prisoners before then."

...Axel might have, once. Demyx, too. Assuming someone had actually told Demyx something so important—sometimes, it had seemed like Demyx was just as out of the loop as Vil had been.

A memory suddenly came to him.

"I heard a place get mentioned, once," he said. "By my..."

He thought of Axel and Saix, and then promptly pushed the thought away.

"...other members," he said. He could have added that they were the ones who had raised him. He could have said that even though Kate had probably guessed he was part of the organization from how he was talking about, it had been more like a family than anything else. She had met some of them, too, from a distance. They had been good at staying away from his friends. "It was called Castle Oblivion. I've never been there before, so I can't bring us. But if we could find someone who has been there, we could get them to show us the way."

"Stop being fucking cryptic and just say what you know," Kate spat, "Who, where, and how long will it take to get there."

She was at the end of her rope. The very last thread of her patience was fraying down to its last hair.

Vil felt a twinge of irritation.

Which was strange, seeing that he had never once felt that way when hanging out with Kate before all of this.

"That's all I know," Vil said. He crossed his arms and looked down at her. "I've never been there, so I don't know where it is or how long it would take to get there. And presumably the organization's members know where it is, but it's not like we can go up to them and politely ask. The only one we can maybe ask is Demyx, and he would drag me right back to the organization's headquarters if he saw me."

...There was also Axel, but Vil didn't want to owe him a favor. Not when he had already betrayed Vil's trust.

"So what do we do right now," Kate said irritably. "I'm not just going to hang around here doing nothing in this fucking dress." She gestured furiously down at the bell-shaped skirt and all of the attached frills and bows.

Baba thought it was a pretty nicely constructed dress, actually, but that wasn't important right now.

"Maybe we should find one of Vil's friends and ask them where it is, and if asking doesn't work, we can hit them." Baba suggested innocently.

"Or poke things in Wonderland until something else happens."

Baba poked the button on Kate's apron pocket, as that was all they could reach at the moment.

It made a clown horn noise.

Vil blinked when the button on Kate's apron made a clown horn noise. He honestly shouldn't have been surprised by Wonderland after all these years, but that was one of the ore unexpected Wonderland things he had seen.

"They're not my friends," Vil said. "They're...."

He faltered. Before leaving the organization, he would have said they were more than friends—they were the only family he had ever had. But things were different now. They were still the closest thing he had to a family, but they weren't all that much better than the parents who had abandoned him in a basket on the side of the street.

"I left the organization," Vil finally said. "They wouldn't be happy to see me. And you're underestimating how powerful they are. The organization's existed since before any of us were born, and the two you only just figured out how to use your keyblades. You fought Heartless. You haven't even fought a Dusk. If you went up against someone in the organization, you would-"

He caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye: a flash of light, light blond hair, and the swish of a black organization coat. Vil's eyes widened in horror. Luxord was here. He had been here, but Vil hadn't expected him to show up in the same place as him again. Luxord was still too far away to notice them—and still too busy talking to the Queen of Hearts—but he would be here any minute.

And the moment he saw Ansem's look-a-like standing in the middle of Vil's old friends, he would know that Vil was here.

Fighting Demyx would have been one thing. If they tried really hard, they might have won just because Demyx always had a soft spot for him. But if they tried fighting Luxord? In a place that was probably like a second home to him at this point?

They'd lose.

Vil opened up a corridor of darkness. He grabbed onto Kate by her collar and started to tug her towards the corridor—grateful that he had Ansem's arm strength right now instead of his own, and that Baba was currently in Kate's pocket. Luxord turned the corner and saw the three heading right towards the corridor. A brief look of confusion was quickly overtaken by recognition, and he reached into the pockets of his coat to whip out his cards.

"Vilex-" Luxord started to say.

"That's not my name," Vil said, hands shaking. He just needed to walk a few more steps, and then they would be safe in the corridor-

Kate shoved Vil off of her. "What the fuck-"

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

Vil's concentration broke at the shove. The corridor of darkness, already a little unsteady because of Vil's fear, became even less stable. Luxord pulled his cards and moved. The queen, voice high and irritated, started to call for her guards.

And even though Axel had told him hundreds of times to never got into an unstable corridor of darkness, Vil did the one thing he could think of.

He grabbed onto Kate with all of the strength he could get out of Ansem's arms and tugged, Terra and the puppy following along. The group was plunged into darkness and jostled around this way and that. Baba went flying out of Kate's pocket and returned to their normal size, which Vil only realized when he felt another person bump into him right after Kate did.

Then the corridor spat them out.

Vil went slamming into the ground. A second later, he felt someone else go crashing into him. He let out a groan as the corridor instinctively closed.

Then he looked up and immediately felt a jolt of fear.

They were in Twilight Town.

WOOSH

No no no no not AGAIN-

Oh. Actually nevermind. It wasn't all that bad this time.

The Corridor spat Baba at the foot of a gold and red bricked clock tower. An ornately detailed thing with stained glass windows and great heavy bells. Yet, cute and overpoweringly homely despite its attempts at stateliness.

How many worlds ago was yesterday? Baba felt as though they couldn't go five minutes without being flung into another dimension, another yelling match, another hearseload of Heartless and people in strange hoods. And Kate. Baba was beginning to actually get tired of Kate.

She and Vil were tough, weren't they? They'd be alright wherever they'd landed, wouldn't they?

As frightening as it should have been without their friends, as worried as Baba wanted to be- no, as worried as Baba was- Baba secretly felt a little grateful to have a moment to themself.



This was an eerily cosy town to be stranded in. The whole thing was bathed in soft ambiguous light. Sunrise? Sunset? Twilight? Whatever it was, it was quiet and nice.

But Baba's friends were still missing.

Kate was missing. Lira was still missing. Donald and Goofy were still missing. Vil- Baba wasn't sure yet if Vil was a friend, but they wanted him to be safe, all the same.

So many people to wonder about. So many people Baba couldn't do a thing about from where they stood. Baba frowned.


They dropped to their hands and knees, and furiously skittered up the tower like a spider. Artful and swift, but angry, and reckless. Baba knocked over several flowerpots and loose bricks on the way up. It was unlike the scarecrow.

They made it to the top, and regretted it. They'd only climbed the tower for something to do, after all. And now they'd done it. Their many missing friends were still missing, and the scarecrow was still guilty for needing this time without them.

But this was a soothing view. All warm terracotta brickwork and misty skies. This might yet be a good place to be lost in, Baba thought.

Kate hit the ground hard and stumbled, gaining her balance quickly. "What the fucking hell was that?!" she was growling when her hand went, unconsciously, to her pocket.

Something was off.

"WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT FUCKING GLITTER-MOUTHED SCARECROW!"