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To put it in the simplest way possible, Sora was completely screwed.
Running down the back alleys of Traverse Town would only provide him safety for so long. Shadows appeared around every corner, claws of darkness slicing through the bricks on the edges of buildings like coconut shells being split by a machete. Trying to remember the layout of a town he had just entered mere hours ago, while wielding a magical oversized key that had appeared in his hand a few hours before that, and running from demonic shadows with glowing eyes that had started chasing him a few hours before that was enough stress to deal with at one time, thank you very much. And to make matters worse, apparently going through a shadow invasion that brought world-ending destruction wasn’t enough to kill these enemies that were trying to kill him. What good would it be to play at being a swordsman with a key as tall as he was?
Rounding a sharp corner, Sora was surprised to find a large divot in the cobblestone street. The rather unfortunate way he discovered said divot? By stepping directly into it. Sora’s massive yellow sneaker caught on the edge of the stone hole, forcing his ankle in a direction that it definitely was not supposed to bend. He cried out sharply as he pitched forward, the Keyblade vanishing into a multitude of tiny white sparkles as his gloved hands skidded across the cobblestone to try and break his fall. He couldn’t stop, he couldn’t take a break to see if his ankle was okay, the shadowy demons would continue attacking him whether he was wounded or not. There was nothing else to do but crawl on his hands and knees out of the divot he had tripped into, and then try to keep running into the night as best as he could.
With a quick assessment of his body, Sora knew something was wrong. He wasn’t as good as Kairi when it came to knowing if an ankle was rolled, sprained, or broken during playtime, and he certainly wasn’t as good as his mother when it came to patching up said egregious injuries. But there was definitely something wrong with his ankle. He could barely put any weight on it. Even standing up on his own two feet caused him to wince, a pained whimper escaping his lips unbidden.
Of course, the shadowy entities could smell weakness like a shark could smell blood in the water. Three shadowy forms with yellow eyes began to converge on him at once, swaying in each step as they approached.
Sora reached out his hand into the open air, concentrating on the space just around his hand. It was confusing and disorienting the first couple of times that Sora had attempted to summon the Keyblade. It wasn’t every day that objects would magically appear in your hand when you willed them to. But apparently Sora had been granted a day in which the Keyblade would magically appear in his hand when he willed it to, so he ducked behind the silver of the blade as he used it to block the strikes of the many figures made of darkness.
Running away would be a lot more productive if he knew where he was. But nobody had given him a map of the strange town he had been thrust into by the storm that sucked up Destiny Islands. Sora’s best bet was to keep running aimlessly around corners and hoping that he wouldn’t meet a dead end.
“Riku!” he called out desperately as he sliced a shadow clean down the middle. “Kairi!”
But… oh. They were both gone, weren’t they? Riku was taken by the darkness, and Kairi vanished when they were in the cave together, back when Destiny Islands was a land mass and not a particle wasteland floating through the multiverse of planets slowly being turned to darkness and dust. Sora was forced to kill another three shadow creatures as he frantically looked around for someplace to hide.
There. An open door.
Sora had run past dozens of doors in the chaos-filled minutes prior, but stopping and trying to open any of them was a risk to his continued status as “alive” if the door was jammed, or worse, locked. A sword-sized key wouldn’t open the lock on a regular-sized door. But a door that was already open… Sora could hide inside of whatever building it was. He could formulate some sort of plan to get past these persistent shadows. As much as Sora and Riku played with wooden swords in their youth, Sora never wanted to be a fighter. He much preferred making friends. Fighting wasn’t in his nature.
Limping backwards to avoid putting too much pressure on his injured ankle, Sora lashed out wildly with his weapon, the teeth of the key tearing Heartless to shreds. Fluid shadow splattered across his face, and somewhere in the back of his mind a faint voice likened it to blood spewing forth from an enemy soldier.
Every step was fire up his leg, and he was too afraid to look down to see if there was blood pooling in those footprints left behind by his too-large shoes that he had yet to grow into like his mother said he would. Tendrils from the shadows creeped around his legs, tearing at the edges of his clothes as he stumbled over them in a pitiful attempt to protest his lame leg.
Dark figures appeared at the end of the street, above the rooftops, manifesting out of dark alleyways, and Sora began to truly taste for the first time an emotion that most people knew by name: Fear.
The door was just within reach, and Sora leapt the last couple of feet to frantically grab at the handle. His grip slipped once, twice, and just as a dark being raked its shadowy claws across his back, he slammed the door shut behind himself. Heaving for breath, Sora desperately attempted to hold the door shut with his own two hands. His fingers were raw and red, the seams of his fingerless gloves beginning to fray with the sudden stress.
The beating on the other side of the door was enough to cause his chest to tremble with fearful breaths.
He was alone. Nobody was coming to save him.
Survival instinct began to take over. Sora looked at his surroundings, noticing a couple of broken wooden boxes near enough to the doorway that he could use one foot to pull some pieces of wood closer to himself. He might be able to splint his ankle, if he tore up his jacket for the cause. If he could walk, he could get back to the well-lit town square and see if they had a healer around. And he could push one of the larger boxes in front of the door to barricade it shut while he slipped out the back entrance of the building, which he could see from where he stood. Alright. He could do this. It wouldn’t be impossible for him to survive the night in this unfamiliar place, all alone… but it would be difficult.
He would have to save himself this time around.