I did sooo much editing to this chapter, it's not even funny. Now that it's almost been a year since I last looked at this story, I realize that it sucks. Majorly. It lacks detail, and other refined things, (variating verbs, maybe?), and has too much OOC-ness.

I don't like it at all.

But since it's the only story that I've ever finished (EVER), I shall continue to type it up from my flimsy little notebook. If only for the few of you that like it.

Blah, blah, blah, I do not own Kingdom Hearts, Naruto, Final Fantasy VII, or Inuyasha. Just Ophelia.

Ninjas, Demons, and Hearts! Oh My!

Chapter Eight

It was strange for Ophelia, driving through town with skilled fighters in the vehicle. Their group consisted of Itachi and Kisame, Cloud, Marluxia (so they wouldn't have to break a window to get in), Inuyasha, Gaara, and Sora. She could tell that the keyblader was trying to stay quiet, since you could cut the tension with a knife. No one, with the exception of the loud-mouth Inuyasha, spoke during their short trip.

"This is it."

The thirty-story hotel loomed before them, looking strangely eerie. The big sign that said Elements Inn no longer lit up.

Ophelia handed Sora her cell phone.

"If you guys need back-up, just hold down two. It'll call the mansion."

He nodded and took it gratefully, exiting the vehicle. "I'm sure we'll be fine."

And then they walked into a Corridor of Darkness that Marluxia created, disappearing from her sight. She sighed to calm her nerves and slouched in the driver's seat to wait.

5 minutes... 10 minutes... 15...

There were 30 floors to check, she reminded herself. Even with seven people, that could take a while. But what if they did find something? What if Sora lost the phone during a fight? What if they were being picked off, one-by-one like a horror film?!

Ophelia's panicked thoughts eventually got the better of her, so she scrambled out of the car and clicked on the heavy duty flashlight she brought. She walked up the steps of the hotel and, to her surprise, the doors were unlocked.

"Weird..." she whispered to herself, stepping inside.

Boy, was it dark! If the flashlight died right then, she would be stuck. The dark wasn't exactly one of her favorite places to be, especially when the clouds covered the moon and the street lights were out on either side of the hotel.

The building was basically a giant cylinder. If you looked up you could see all the doors to the rooms, and the ceiling was a giant glass dome. If she remembered correctly, the pool was in the middle of the lobby. When she flashed the light towards it though, she discovered the water was all gone and it was just a big hole now. Nice.

A little shiver ran up her spine as she walked, but not because it was cold. A sound that she had heard, not too long ago in her own kitchen, came to Ophelia's ears.

She snapped the flashlight around to see a big, yellow anaconda in a piece of shrubbery. It was Emily, she realized, the reptile house's biggest snake.

So they had been here. Or worse. Still were.

She was suddenly on edge more so than before. As she kept the flashlight on the snake, she backed away. Getting eaten wasn't exactly on the agenda for today.

Falling into a hole, on the other hand...

Just as Ophelia opened her mouth to scream, her back hit concrete, knocking the wind out of her. The flashlight rolled from her grasp as she struggled to breathe.

When she had recuperated enough, she realized that she'd fallen into the shallow end of what used to be the pool. The light had rolled all the way down the slope and into the deep end.

"Brilliant," Ophelia grumbled, standing up shakily. She could hear Emily hissing nervously, wondering where her prey went.

Other than the small spot of light, Ophelia was blind as a bat. No, worse. Bats have at least some way to orient themselves.

In order to get out safely, she needed that flashlight. So she stumbled along, feeling for the hill, then slid down. Once the light was in her hands again, she had to run back up the hill to prevent gravity from taking her back down.

Emily was still waiting for her when she got out of the pool. Ophelia just dodged around the shrubbery and made a mad dash to the door. Just as she touched to handle, footsteps alerted her to another presence. She was all but deaf with her heartbeat in her ears. When she turned the light in the direction of the sounds, nothing was there.

Then the sky lit up suddenly, the moon no longer hidden by clouds. The lobby flooded with light through the glass dome, revealing who the footsteps belonged to.

Ophelia couldn't breathe. If she thought her heartbeat had been loud before, now it was like thunder.

He stood, not eight feet away, as colorless as the light illuminating the room. Emily was wrapped around his arm, looking as harmless as a puppy compared to the ninja before her.

"It seems you've discovered our little hide out," Orochimaru hissed, looking amused. Then the clouds covered the moon and plunged them into darkness.

"That's too bad," he whispered. Directly in her ear!

To say she freaked out would be an understatement.

Ophelia hurled the heavy flashlight in the general direction of the voice and flung herself at the door. Her landing on the sidewalk was anything but graceful, considering she also fell down four steps. She groaned in pain, but was too charged by adrenalin to really feel any of it yet.

"I told you she followed us," Inuyasha bragged.

"Ophelia! Are you alright?" asked Sora, who was now kneeling beside her, along with Cloud. "What did you jump out the door like that for?"

"He... Orochimaru was in there," she began, but cringed when she tried to sit up. Between falling in the pool and down concrete steps, she wasn't feeling too good.

"You look like you saw a ghost," Marluxia pointed out.

"Well, it was Orochimaru," Kisame said, chuckling at his own joke. Itachi's lips twitched, as he also found humor in this.

"Yikes..." Ophelia mumbled when she stood up with Cloud and Sora's help. Gaara's sand helped her into the vehicle and they drove back home.

The only thing I could think after I finished typing it up was, "Wtf? Why did they leave if they found what they were looking for?!" And I realized...

I really was a fucking idiot back then.