Return to the Drake World

“So where is he now?” Keyblade asked.
“He used one of the function-changing devices…” Lloyd said hesitantly.
“Which one?” Bookworm asked, although she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
“Umm… I forget…” Lloyd’s face reddened as he admitted this.
“Great! Any idea what we should do now?” Shade asked, very frustrated.
“Yes! We should label all the devices! Then we won’t get them mixed up all the time!” Colette suggested happily.
“That’s a great idea!” Lloyd agreed enthusiastically. “Let’s go ask the Professor for writing supplies!” They both ran away, eager to begin this project.
Bookworm sighed. “So now what do we do?”
“We can’t just wait around for Lloyd to remember. How about we try a random guess?” Keyblade suggested.
Shade sighed. She didn’t like this plan, but there didn’t seem to be any other choice. “Fine, that’s what we usually end up doing anyway.”
“Let’s try that one!” Fates pointed to one.
Keyblade activated the Sorcerer’s Ring. A moment later, they were standing in a world that looked strangely familiar.
“Cat!” Tyrsis appeared out of nowhere and glomped Keyblade.
“Oh my God! We’re in the drake world!” Fates cheered. Unlike her friends, she had never been to the drake world and did not realize how unlikely it was that Mithos would come there.
“Tyrsis! Stop strangling Keyblade for a second!” Shade said sharply. Tyrsis let go of Keyblade, who was indeed having difficulty breathing. “Have you seen Mithos here anytime lately?”
“You mean the assassin with the height issue? I haven’t seen him since the party.” This reminded Tyrsis of something. Grinning, he turned to Bookworm. “Why did you just vanish like that? You knew you were gonna lose that DDR round, didn’t you?”
“No! I was winning! And I can beat you anytime!” Bookworm yelled, being overly competitive as usual.
“Sure you can,” Tyrsis laughed sarcastically.
“Can we meet Rainheart now?” Fates asked randomly.
“Yeah, let’s go to the palace! Rainheart will be really glad to see you!” Tyrsis grinned at Keyblade. She was looked like she was about to protest, so he added, “He was really sad when you vanished without even saying good-bye.”
“It can’t hurt to just say hi, right?” Bookworm said sympathetically.
“Alright,” Keyblade reluctantly agreed.
Everyone shifted into drake form, except Fates. Tyrsis shifted into full-drake form to carry her. Everyone noticed the effects Borakk’s sphere had on him. His size had increased and his scales now had a metallic sheen. His shiny scales glinted in the sunlight as he flew towards the palace.
“It looks like Tyrsis is coming back,” Jade observed. He was a green drake skilled in ninja arts and a friend of Rainheart. He munched on an apple as he watched Tyrsis approach.
“He shouldn’t shift into full-drake form to travel such a short distance. It uses up too much energy,” Orion said. He was a pitch black drake. Like Jade, he was a ninja. In fact, they had even studied with the same teacher, a purple drake named Violet.
“Yeah, wasn’t he just at Violet’s village?” Jade asked.
“Yes, I sent him to supervise its reconstruction. The village is recovering from Borakk’s attack much faster than we expected,” Rainheart said, glancing up at his brother. “I’ll have to talk to him later about going full drake so often.”
“He’s probably just doing it to show off. He is the only drake here with a metallic sheen, after all. And he’s a lot bigger too,” Jade pointed out, grinning. Orion just nodded. He didn’t talk much.
“Rainheart!” Tyrsis landed, dropped Fates, and shifted back into human form. Keyblade, Shade, and Bookworm landed soon after.
At the sight of Keyblade, Rainheart completely forgot all about scolding Tyrsis. “Cat!”
“I’m not Cat,” Keyblade said, already tired of telling him this.
Fates had been too busy poking Bookworm for no reason whatsoever to pay attention to what Keyblade had just said. She now stopped annoying Bookworm and decided to share her opinion. “Oh my God! Cat and Rainheart are meant to be together!”
Rainheart took this as affirmation that Keyblade was indeed Cat. He hugged her tightly. (Fortunately for Keyblade, Rainheart’s hug was not as tight as Tyrsis’s strangling glomp.)
Keyblade gave Fates a death glare. Could she have been any less helpful?
She was about to move away from Rainheart’s embrace and inform him once again that she was not Cat, but then she decided against it. He clearly wouldn’t believe her. And now that Mithos was not around to start a fight, she couldn’t see any harm in getting hugged by Rainheart. She smiled and hugged him back.
“Aaaw! They’re so cute together!” Fates said. Bookworm decided that it would be a good idea to distract her before she said anything else that would bother Keyblade. And so, Bookworm decided that it was absolutely necessary to start another poking fight.
“AAAAAHH! Her evil pokes made me bleed!” Bookworm wailed. One of Fates's pokes had accidentally given her a tiny cut on her hand.
“Can you two behave at least a little maturely?” Shade asked, very irritated.
“She started it!” Bookworm announced, as if this made everything Fates’s fault.
“No I didn’t! You poked me first!” Fates protested. Bookworm decided that she needed to respond to this by poking Fates again. Within seconds, they had resumed their poking fight.
“That’s it! If you two can’t behave, we’re leaving!” Shade yelled at them. “We should probably go find Mithos now anyway,” she added. Indigo nodded in agreement.
“Wait! I want to go with you, Cat,” Rainheart said.
Shade nodded. “It should be okay for you to come to at least one world with us, as long as Keyblade doesn’t mind.”
Keyblade thought for a second. Maybe Rainheart would be able to help them defeat Mithos without killing him. It couldn’t hurt to bring him along. “Yeah, he can come.”
“Can we come too?” Jade asked eagerly.
After making sure Keyblade had no objections, Rainheart allowed Jade and Orion to join them on their journey.
“What about me?” Tyrsis asked eagerly.
“No,” Shade answered before Rainheart or Keyblade could say anything. “At least one member of the royal family should stay here.”
“She’s right. You need to make sure there’s no trouble in my absence,” Rainheart told his brother. Tyrsis was disappointed, but didn’t disagree.
“So can we get going now?” Keyblade asked impatiently. She activated the Sorcerer’s Ring.
As soon as they arrived in Derris-Kharlan, they were greeted enthusiastically by Lloyd and Colette. “Look at the labels we made!”
Everyone looked at the function-changing devices. The one that led to the mall had labels saying “Fascinating Magitechnology” and “Exploding DDR Machine”. The Hogwarts one said “Fluffy’s Home”, “Quidditch World”, and “Magic School”. Feudal Japan had the labels “Cute Rin” and “Sesshomaru’s World”. Monty Python World was “Silly Place”, “Slightly Dangerous Rabbit”, “Stupid Witch-Burners”, and “I Saved My Hunny Here”. Krynn was labeled “Dragon World”, “Tas’s World”, and “Where Shade Turned Evil”.
“I’m really sorry about that label, Shade!” Colette apologized. “I told Lloyd that you’re not really evil and you’re actually very nice, but he insisted you had turned evil there! I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt your feelings!”
Bookworm and Keyblade had a hard time not laughing. They knew Shade had been evil long before she went to Krynn.
“And guess what! Genis remembered where Mithos went! I forgot he was with us when Mithos came here,” Lloyd said.
“Do you ever pay attention?” Genis shook his head at Lloyd’s short attention span.
“Shut up Genis!” Lloyd snapped.
Genis rolled his eyes and pointed to an unlabeled device. “He used that one.”
“Thanks!” Keyblade started to walk toward the device.
“Wait! I’m coming too!” Sheena said. “We need to know what to label this world, so I volunteered to go with you.”
Keyblade nodded and activated the device. A moment later, they appeared in another world. Keyblade felt a weight on her head. Looking around, she discovered that everyone now had metal headbands with a picture of a sphere on them. She recognized that kind of headband. “YES! We’re in the Naruto world! We’re gonna be ninjas!” she cheered.