Return to Darkness: Kingdom Hearts

Return to Darkness: Kingdom Hearts is an apparent sequel to Kingdom Hearts. Set several years after the apparent demise of most heartless as well as several other related threats, Return to Darkness: Kingdom Hearts follows the adventures of a boy named Toby and his two friends, Heather and Madison.

Toby's adventure almost mirrors Sora's first adventure at first, but it quickly diverges into its own separate path. Once again, worlds are becoming consumed by darkness, but what exactly is happening? Toby seeks to find out. However, how can he cope with the knowledge that he will never be the hero that Donald, Goofy, and Sora were?

Plot
Toby is a boy with an overactive imagination. To the point where it almost bothers his friends Heather and Madison. He wants to go see other worlds, but most people tell him that he should be happy - during the flood of darkness that threatened all worlds in the first Kingdom Hearts game, their world, First Nations, was completely ignored. It's thought that the light in the world managed to save it.

Toby plays hero with his friends Heather and Madison in the world. However, the two girls are starting to tire a little bit of Toby's childishness. As if to hold onto his youthfulness a little more, Toby goes exploring around some areas of First Nations. Madison and Heather humour him, and they split up. Heather and Madison seek to play a prank on Toby, but Heather manages to get separated, eventually meeting up with Toby in a cave under a mountain. Legitimately interested, Heather explores the cave with Toby. Much to her surprise, she finds a door and manages to open it, when Toby can't. The two go further and further into the cave, eventually finding a chamber with a suit of long-rusted armour lying on the ground, and something sticking out of the rock. Heather tries to pull it out, only for it to not work, until Toby helps. They noticed that the keyhole had been revealed, and that the item they pulled out of a rock was a keyblade. Frightened, the two ran away, meeting up with Madison just outside the cave.

Later that night, Heather noticed an odd storm... right above the cave, where she had seen a flashlight. She figured that must have been Toby - he had to have gone back. She ran on out towards the cave where Toby was. At the same time, Madison had also seen the cave - and had noticed Heather running. The two girls ran to the cave as fast as they could, before being assaulted by shadows. As soon as they reached the cave that had been sealed, shadows begun to rise out of the ground. Terrified, they ran towards the cave, where they saw Toby, nearly being swallowed by darkness. They reached out to their friend, but they were too consumed by the darkness.

Toby wakes up in Traverse town, which has slowly begun to repopulate itself over the years. He meets Donald and Goofy, who had come to the world to investigate the strange resurgence in population. He learns that more worlds are going out - and that they have to find the keyblade masters, now that they are seeing stars going out. Toby tells them that he'll stay around the first district, where it's safe. But he wasn't one to follow orders. Suddenly, when some heartless appear, a keyblade appears in Toby's hand. Smiling, he starts to fight them.

Meanwhile, Madison finds herself at the gate of Traverse Town, seeing some more strange people. Not long after, she wandered into the second district, where Toby came to her rescue. Madison couldn't believe her eyes after seeing Toby wielding a keyblade... and realizes for sure where she wound up since the bell for the Gizmo shop rings.

Heather finds herself not far from the other two - and manages to hole up inside the Hotel before the two come to her rescue. Now, Toby leads the two on an adventure to get home and save other worlds.

While initially, the three go off to save worlds fro the heartless, Toby is removed from the party after a great revelation on the Destiny Islands, and the focus shifts to saving Toby.

Characters
Toby: The Keyblade wielder of the group. He is a childish 13 year old who jumps at the call after having found the keyblade. He still keeps on fighting regardless.

The typical tropes played of Keybladers is deconstructed with him - when he and Heather accidentally unsealed the keyhole for First Nations, it started to flood the world of darkness. He was actually taken, having become closer to the darkness, but his body was protected. His heart itself turned into his keyblade, and he became stronger and stronger with every heartless he killed. He learns that the keyblade he wields is his heart, and is the only thing keeping him from mutating into a heartless. With tears in his eyes, Toby turns to Heather and Madison and orders them to erase him, and destroys his keyblade, turning first into his Neoshadow form, and then graudally becoming more and more monstrous, gaining an emblem due to the amount of heartless he subconsciously absorbed. Once his heartless form is destroyed, Tobias returns to normal, sinking further into the darkness whence he came. (The "Return to Darkness" of the title.) However, he soon finds himself human back in the realm of darkness...

Heather: Similar to Riku, she was the one who was actually chosen by the keyblade. The only reason she does not wield a keyblade (initially) is because her heart rejected it. Once Toby formally gives up his keyblade and fully transforms into a heartless, a keyblade appears in her hands, and Heather is mortified to find that it is the same keyblade that she had pulled out of the keyhole. She blames herself for both her world's destruction, as well a Toby's death. But Madison is there to comfort her and lead her back on the path.

Eventually, Heather finds herself aligned with Riku and King Mickey, traveling into the realm of darkness to recover Toby's heart.

Madison: The primary 'caster' of the group. She picks up magic along the way. She is rather assertive, and easily annoyed. Despite this, Madison knows very well of the emotional pain caused by Toby's eventual transformation into a heartless.

It's revealed that Madison eventually gains a keyblade herself - using a small one that is akin to a knife.