I find it hilarious that within the few weeks I decide to make a KH fic, the world explodes with them. D: D: :O THE UNIVERSE IS LAUGHING AT ME. IRONY IRONY IRONY.
Ahem. :3
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a Kingdom Hearts fiction, having nothing to do with the original story line of Kingdom Hearts and Kindom Hearts II. In fact, it's about an entirely NEW cast of characters, in entirely NEW (some old) Disney worlds.
:O This, my friends, is Kingdom Hearts: Shining Raid.
The chapters in this story aren't as well thought out as my other fictions, so the table of contents will be updated as I go along. Also, chapters will be posted around every week and a half to two weeks. D:
Most important of all: Thanks for reading!
Disclaimer: All related indicta and worlds/references/etc. belong to Square Enix and Disney. Original characters and worlds are credit to the author of this fiction.
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Table of Contents:
*NOTE: -- Chapter Titles Indicate a Finished Status.
~~ Chapter Titles indicate an In Progress Work.
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~~Chaptaire o.o1: (SYSTEM FAILURE)
~~Chaptaire o.o2: (Awakening System)
~~Chaptaire o.o3: (Defense System)
~~Chaptaire o.o4 (Meeting System)
~~Chaptaire o.o5 (Destiny System)
~~Chaptaire o.o6 (Savior System)
~~Chaptaire o.o7 (Time System)
~~Chaptaire o.o8 (Deadly System)
~~Chaptaire o.o9 (Unexpected System)
~~Chaptaire o.10 (Resurrection System)
~~Chaptaire o.11 (Happiness System)
~~Chaptaire o.12 (Floodgate System)
~~Chaptaire o.13 (Star System)
~~Chaptaire o.14 (Homing System)
~~Chaptaire o.15 (Darkly System)
~~Chaptaire o.16 (Shining System)
~~Chaptaire o.17 (Neverworld System)
~~Chaptaire o.18 (Typhoon System)
~~Chaptaire o.19 (How the Universe Came to End)
~~Chaptaire o.20 (SYSTEM RESTORE)
~~Epilouge
(To be added....)
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Chaptaire o.o1: SYSTEM FAILURE
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It starts with me falling into darkness endlessly and then I hear snow falling even though snow can’t fall because its silent, only then do I realize that it isn’t snow it’s glowing lights falling, flailing into the darkness and as I fall I see worlds blossom forth like flowers from the glowing things and these tiny fireflies of hope create worlds around me, most of them strange looking on their little planets with their little people all living their little lives-
-I suddenly find myself standing in this endless field of flowers and flowing grass, no horizon in sight and I’m alone, alone like only lonely people can be until the others come and they run toward me, two people I know like family, I know them and hold out my hands for them, but they pass through me like they are ghosts and I feel like crying even though I haven’t cried for so long-
-And then the falling fireflies appear again and I touch one through my tears and it takes away my sadness, it transports me in a flash of light to a castle with high ceilings, and an empty throne that yearns to be filled but no one can fill it anymore because there is no one here in this empty place so I decide to fill it and I sit tentatively in it-
-As I seat myself in this beautiful chair I look up and see hundreds of people in white swarm toward me, their cloaks flowing as they race to me in haste, as if to a battle that isn’t really there, something I can’t see until they hit me and the world explodes again in a flash of light and I’m falling up into the sky or the ceiling, whatever its called here-
-Here is the final stage, a world all too familiar that I see when I open my eyes and spot the tropical islands that make up my home and as I fall into the sky I’m dragged down onto an island, the city buildings zooming up to greet me as I pass them and land in an open amphitheater, with screaming people and lights and music that I’m singing to on stage-
-I feel overjoyed while I sing, up until the time where everyone’s cheers become dim and I look up and realize I can see myself falling downward, and as my two selves collide I’m pushed below the surface of the stage which has suddenly turned into a hall I walk down endlessly, a hall of black stone and white stone and everything in between and I jump off the end of the hall which has suddenly turned into shadow water and I’m falling, falling, falling, falling---
Falling….
I felt like I was falling, with no end in sight. My eyelids were as heavy as lead, but I forced them open, slowly.
Everything was blurry for a few seconds. When things cleared, I realized I really was falling.
Just upside down.
Shadow waters…
I was receding like a bullet through what felt like the ocean, slow, inconspicuous. There was no blue in the water I fell through, just shadows and the occasional wisp of light. It didn’t even cross my mind that when I hit the bottom-if there even was a bottom-my head would receive severe trauma.
‘Didn’t even cross my wandering mind.
I just lay there, letting gravity or whatever it was pull me downward. It was pleasant, almost, as if I felt entirely safe for the first time in my life.
And then suddenly, the pleasantries ended. I was gently righted by some invisible force, turned so that my feet hit ground.
I looked around, warily. Side to side at first, and when I saw nothing but more shadow water, I looked down.
I was standing on nothing.
The watery darkness was all around. Even below my feet. I took a hesitant step forward, and felt my heart jump in surprise as thousands of white birds erupted from the floor below me. The umber shadows melted away as each bird took some of the dark covering with it as it flew. Light seeped from under my feet, and I looked down as the mosaic of birds and feathers and light came together as a blinding whole.
I was no longer residing in darkness.
I was standing on a stained-glass replica of a face of a person in a white-hooded cloak, head shrouded in the faint shadows the covering produced. The picture of the person took up most of the oval, stained-glass plateau I stood on. I watched as the birds vanished into the walls of the deep water, I watched as they lost their purity against the endless sucking void that served as a boundary in this still place.
WHY WERE THERE WALLS IN THIS PLACE-
Whatever thoughts I might have had about the mysterious birds was put to an end as the floor below me glowed. I got a better look at the picture depicted on it this time, and saw that the white figure was surrounded by a ring of fancy patterns on the outer edge. The figure was in the middle, hands out with their palms up, as if expecting something to drop from the sky.
WE WERE EXPECTING YOU-
On either side, a tangle of silver vines sprouted, thorns striving to touch the figure, but not quite managing the feat. They instead hovered around its frame, as if uncertainty had taken them over.
The backdrop glass of the picture was a searing, tranquil blue.
THE COLOR OF YOUR EYES-
It was then I heard the voice. It echoed across to me, coming from a nowhere that was only present when one was alone. The voice was wordless, but I knew what it said. It emitted the sounds of nothing, but then again, so did I.
In soundless harmony, we understood each other.
I had no idea what this voice was talking about. I was about to say that, when something in the back of my head silenced me and spoke for me to the mysterious voiceless person.
IT knew what the door to the light was.
IT knew what to say.
The other voice seemed to almost nod in acceptance.
As soon as the voice said this, a cone of white brilliance pierced through the dark water and fell on the platform. It illuminated one circle on the glass, a single elliptical wedge of brightness.
I walked forward. The light swallowed me whole.
It was then I felt a tingling at my side. My hands glowed, and the brightness shaped itself into a blade-like protrusion. My fingers closed around a handle, and the light receded to reveal a weapon of the most peculiar kind.
First glance told me that it was a key, the regular kind you stick in a lock, that this one was just a super-sized version. But upon closer inspection, I found it to be much different. The handle curved around at the ends, creating a box, a guard for my hands. The blade-the key to be more precise-was silver, and the handle was a glowing obsidian, wrapped around in the middle handrest with green fabric. A keychain hung from the tip of the hand-guard, silver as well, with a curiously shaped symbol on the end, looking almost like a(-dare I say-)mouse head. In total, the weapon was as half as long as I was tall, and hung in my hands limply.
And suddenly, breaking through the calm voice with no warning….something came.
There was suddenly a malicious presence all around me. Creatures rose up from the floor, a pale yellow with shining white eyes like bulbs in the darkness. They had slender necks that held up their flat, lily-pad-like heads. They walked on two feet, backs as straight as their arms pressed to their sides. They didn’t walk normally, they pushed themselves forward and slid on large, plank-like feet to match their hands. With automatic, gliding movements, they circled in around me, bulbous eyes greedy.
Box-like creatures that showed no emotion, even in their actions.
The most startling thing about them was that they seemed to glow with an inside light against the dark waters and almost out-shone the luminous stained glass platform below us.
The voice demanded.
I looked around, over my shoulder, and found that there were a total of three light beings. The first to reach me was struck down as I swung the blade clumsily over my shoulder and brought it down on the creature’s head. The thing was stunned for a few seconds, and I took the opportunity to bring the Keyblade up underneath it, knocking it into the air.
The other beings shrank back as I jumped in the air and smacked the single one back down to the floor. It wavered for a moment, and then melted into a shining puddle, evaporating in a string of white stars as quickly as it had melted.
I panted. This fighting business was difficult. I’d never raised a hand to harm someone in my life, especially not with a weapon. Instinct told me to bash the thing over the head as fast as I could so that it couldn’t strike back against me.
The two remaining shining things ganged up on me. One slid stealthily around behind me while the other openly charged. I held up the Keyblade with both hands and stopped the head-butting assault with the blade, pushing backwards so that the creature lost its balance. I saw my opening and struck it clumsily over the head until it melted and evaporated.
I had forgotten about the other creature until it teleported before my eyes in a flash of shining sparks. I blinked and swung, my heart beating rapidly. My attack missed by inches, and the being rammed me in the stomach with it’s sledge-like head, my ribcage screaming in protest as I staggered.
Out of the corner of my watering eyes, I saw the thing begin to charge up for another head butt, but this time I told myself I’d be ready. My hands gripped the Keyblade tightly, and I spread my legs apart, waiting until the being got close enough to hit.
As if knowing I was ready for it, the being disappeared in a flash of sparks again, though this time, I could see the glowing of its now transparent body. It had turned invisible. The light blurred the colors around the thing, like a heat wave, and I focused on the shimmering. With three solid swings, I dispatched of it, victory swelling in my chest for merely a moment before it was replaced with terror.
The glass platform below me had, during the battle, fractured, and then in a suspended moment of silence, it broke, crippling beneath me. I fell through darkness again, but this time amongst shards of shining glass, like the fireflies of light in my dream……
The voice sounded as if it was trying to comfort me, prevent me from losing it. Mentally, I scoffed, not the least bit concerned I was falling toward another glass platform with no signs of slowing. I was over the shock of this now, all this seemed almost normal, so I answered the voice back in a haughty tone.
”Easy for you to say. You ain’t the one falling five stories down.”
And the voice did something I didn’t expect it to.
It laughed.
I landed, gently right-sided by some kind of invisible wind. I looked down, and saw that the glass platform had changed. This time, it showed a beautiful white flower opening its petals to reveal a boy, sleeping. The mosaic pattern circling it was red, and the background was a vibrant orange.
There was a door at the end of the platform, opposite of where I stood. It was a beautiful door, something like one would find in a church. It was a peachish bronze color, decorated with gold handles and joints. Stained glass of all colors created an arch above the scalps of the two slab arms of the doors, marking the pathway they opened onto.
The voice was now devoid of amusement.
With confidence I strode toward the door and struggled to pull its handles apart. With great difficulty I pried the door open, and with even greater difficulty my pride realized that when the light that emitted from the door swallowed me, I ended up in the same place I was a second ago.
The voice seemed to mock me.
The beam of light pierced through the darkness again, beckoning.
I walked forward hesitantly, into the light that shone down from the murky waters. It warmed my face, illuminated my eyes…
What I didn’t notice was that the light was gathering around me, and when my body absorbed all it could, it expulsed it, creating a huge shape that at first, looked like me, and then began to mutate.
The light grew long, pointed ears and feet and fingers. Its limbs were panoramically skinny, its head grew broad and flat with shining, jagged wings on the sides of its skull. Its torso grew to anorexic proportions, flaring out widely at the hips as spikes protruded from the bone of the pelvis and the shoulders. Below its creamy-yellow translucent skin, blue designs were highlighted by a throbbing light that ran through them, over and over, like a pulse, like some kind of demented blood.
And all the while, it grew bigger and bigger….now seeming to scrape the sky.
The voice reassured me calmly.
I swung my Keyblade at the monster, and the blade swept harmlessly through its hands. It lunged at me, and I blocked, cringing as if expecting a blow.
The hand rammed into the hilt of my Keyblade, sending me flying and scrabbling to regain my balance before it hit me again.
My Keyblade vanished in a flash of light. I was utterly defenseless as the being charged at me, monolithic body and all.
And then the being of light enveloped me, searing in its heat and intensity.
My eyes were blinded.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She woke from her sleep, ruffled. The T.V. before her played the annual Music Awards, and she had dozed off to the commercials.
But now she was up, wide awake and terrified.
The being of searing light was gone. She was…back in reality.
It was all just a dream…
The dream again……the one that had visited her over and over…
But it had never felt as real as that before….she had never fallen through shadow waters before, or fought with demented creatures glowing with light…
The dream began to slip from her memory, as dreams often do, leaving a deep void in its place. She sighed, pushing her back into the couch and resolving to write the dream down next time.
For now, she was back in the present.
Her eyes narrowed at the plasma screen before her.
She thought that if she stared at the T.V. screen long enough, it would melt. Theoretically, in her quantum-physics-lacking mind, it was possible. It wasn’t an impossibility, oh no. Not when that bi*tch was on the screen. Not when that bi*tch was performing in the stadium with fifty thousand people and making them cheer and scream themselves hoarse with her dancing and pop-star looks and her vocals.
The bi*tch didn’t even own the voice she was singing with.
That was HER voice. Not the bi*tch’s. HERS.
So why was the singer using it?
She really didn’t know. Well, she knew the technical reason. The voice synthesizer in the back of the stage gave the voice and played it while the girl on stage lip-synced.
Earlier that afternoon, the girl on the couch had gone into the studio and sang the song for them, which they took and gave to the bi*tch. Just like they gave everything else. Always. All the time.
‘The girl with the voice’, as she was known at the studio, did not like the pretty-faced pop-idol, Renne. In fact, the girl with the voice despised her. Renne was everything she was not. Gorgeous, pleasingly slender, and graceful in her words and motions.
The girl with the voice was skinny in an underfed, sharp way. She had dark brown hair, dyed a brilliant red at the tips, shaggily layered and hanging around her face like a curtain. Her eyes were a clear blue, slanted so that it looked like she was always on her guard. Not sweet, or innocent, or any of the things media managers appreciated. The extent of her bodily grace was walking the sidewalk edge without falling into the gutter. Her words, however, were graceful, but were usually used in a sarcastic and scathing manner, and therefore, disregarded as a lack of respect.
Renne, on the other hand, was the epitome of teenage beauty, and consequently, was in every wet dream of every teenage boy in the city, and, quite possibly, the entire Sol archipelago.
Therefore, the girl with the voice wished for the T.V. that displayed Renne performing to melt in a violent conflagration of sparks and molten lava.
Once upon a very distant time, the girl with the voice started out her hopeful career by becoming the Palm Ocean Studio’s hired paper girl at the tender age of thirteen. Her job was to deliver papers between the office and the various media specialist’s cubicles. It was a simple job, and if she was lucky, the janitor she had made friends with let her into the sound booth after everyone went home. She sang there, into the microphone, for hours until the janitor had to leave and lock up.
The girl with the voice had been graced with a beautiful singing voice, despite all her other lacking bodily and temperamental qualities. Her hopes were geared toward becoming a star, and singing to feel the excitement of the crowd well up inside her and make her truly, blissfully happy.
Life as the paper girl was good until she forgot to erase the recording of her voice from a previous private session with the sound booth. The next day, the manager gave her a money-laden proposal. Instead of becoming the diva herself, she’d be the VOICE of the diva. All she had to do was come to the studio and perform when they wanted her to. She’d be getting a fat check in the mail every month without fail, and a neat little space in the “Special Thanks” corner on the back of the diva’s album cases.
But the then-innocent girl with the voice didn’t want to sing for someone else. She wanted to sing for her herself…by herself, on a stage, with adoring fans and the thrill of thumping music and applause in her chest.
When her parents separated, however, she had no choice. Her father gave the minimal child support, and her mother was struck with a post-divorce suicidal depression that only expensive medicine could lift.
She no longer had a choice in the matter.
The girl with the voice began singing for the diva, Renne, as her world began to crumble.
So she sincerely wished the plasma screen before her would burn.
“Akari!!! Turn the T.V. off and get the doorbell, will you? I’m busy with dinner!” Her mother, an aging blonde with enormous curls called, stirring a pot on a fancy conventional oven.
“Man…” Akari tapped the remote and the T.V. went blank. She lifted herself lazily off the couch, and trudged to the apartment door, grumbling the whole way.
She tilted the doorknob, and pulled. On the other side of the wood stood a boy around Akari’s own age, with sandy hair, deep brown eyes, and a shy, winning smile.
“U-Urui! What are you…..doing here?”
Urui. Head of Porta Sol High School’s Battle Team, Winner of Best Smile in the past three yearbooks, and Akari’s crush to end all crushes. The boy to whom she had sent every Valentine’s Day letter since elementary school, the object of her Truth and Dare sessions with her friends, and the specter of her constantly wandering thoughts.
Urui.
She knew she was flushing, but she did her best not to show it. Her mother banged a few pots in the background unceremoniously as Urui spoke.
“I…ah…was just going around the neighborhood, and I saw your house. I wanted to see if you were doing anything tonight…”
Akari stared up at him, mouth agape. “Uh….”
“If you’re not, I was wondering if you’d want to go watch something with me…there’s a new movie everyone’s been talking about, Lost-“
“Lost Identity!” Akari piped up, her enthusiasm for the movie outweighing her shock.
“Yeah…that one.” Urui smiled, and Akari wanted to take a thousand pictures just to capture that look.
“So…you wanna come?” He asked.
Akari’s mouth went slack again, as if just realizing what was going on.
“Uhhhh…….ermmmmm..uhhhh…..”
Her vocabulary was stunning in the presence of this boy.
“If you don’t want to, it’s c-cool.” Urui added, tripping over his words slightly.
She suddenly smiled. He was just as nervous as she was!
“No no, it’s fine! Just lemme get my coat, okay?”
“Don’t you need to check it with your mom?”
Akari smiled as she picked her jacket off the rack by the door and pushed past him, out of the apartment.
“The less my mom knows, the better.” She laughed, and in a fit of naïve ecstasy, tripped on the first flight of stairs leading down to the parking lot. She would have spiraled down the flight and landed in a very painful manner if not for the fact that Urui had caught her around the waist in mid-lurch.
Her stomach flip-flopped, and not with the loss of gravity she had just experienced earlier, but with a very familiar emotion.
It was there she experienced the first of many awkward moments of that night, moments mostly associated with first dates. She was dancing on air though, so the painful embarrassment of the rest of the awkwardly blundered seconds didn’t really faze her.
That was…..until it happened.
Until her world changed.
They were sitting in the cold movie theater, side by side. Akari was paying attention more to Urui’s face than to the movie, and when he caught her staring at him out of the corner of his eye, he laughed, and ruffled her hair affectionately.
She felt as if she would sprout a balloon out of the top of her head and simply fly away.
Life couldn’t get any better at that moment. She was watching her favorite movie with her longtime crush, alone. Suddenly her worries about Renne and her mother’s disappointing and rapidly deteriorating illness and her father’s indifferent attitude toward her and her mountains of homework and her drama with her friends at school and the secret she kept inside about her voice all seemed to melt away.
Here, she was truly happy.
Even the dream that had haunted her for the past week, the one about falling and gripping the strange, oversized key, had disappeared.
It was funny how one person could affect another so much.
As she thought these things, her stomach turned. Thinking it was out of nervousness at being in Urui’s presence, Akari shook it off, running a hand through her messy, layered hair.
A few minutes later, the feeling came again. Stronger, this time.
flip-flop
She shook it off, determined that nothing would ruin this moment.
Even a stomach ache.
A few minutes passed.
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Urui was laughing at something Akari commented about when the giant screen shut down abruptly. Darkness swarmed in, the dim lighting doing nothing to quell the terror that grasped the crowd. People were shouting, some where booing, and others began screaming in fear.
The dark was omnipresent. Only the faint orange side lights gave any hint that they were still among the living.
“Please remain calm. Power will be restored momentarily.” The mechanical emergency voice boomed from the loud speakers.
Everything was deathly still….and the silence seemed to drag on forever…..and ever…
for all eternity…
Akari had slunk lower in her seat when Urui flopped his cell-phone open. The screen’s flittering blue light lit a small area, and he motioned to Akari to stay quiet, his face wane.
She wondered why. Her head turned to observe the crowd around her just as they began to scream and make strangled noises. Her breath caught in her throat.
The audience was being plagued with a few glowing, luminous shapes that jumped on the people and opened their box-like mouth in what seemed to be sickening pleasure. An odd, pink-lighted crystal burst forth from the victim’s chest, shaped ironically like a petite valentine heart. The glowing shapes would then jump on the heart and wrestle it down. The hearts seemed to want to float up into the sky, forever, and would have, if the glowing things hadn’t of speared the crystal hearts before they could fly away.
The things in her dream….
Urui grabbed her hand and stood. She struggled to her feet, and watched as the bodies of the victims were consumed by black fire. In the body’s place appeared a small black creature with the same bulbous eyes as the glowing beings. They twitched and scurried around on the walls in gravity-defying steps.
The remainder of the crowd had fled, screaming. Urui dragged Akari through the emergency exit at the front, for the light and dark creatures were swarming by the exit and attacking the theater workers.
His only thought was to run. To survive. Their priorities had shifted in less than a millisecond.
She couldn’t believe this was happening. She pinched her face with her free hand and winced when the nails dug into her skin. Yes. This was real. The creatures from the strange dream that had been haunting her had come to life. They were here.
Did that mean…..the blade was real too?
Akari wrenched her hand out of Urui’s. The stark, white-washed maintenance hallway was empty, one red exit door on one end, leading to the parking lot, and a dark wooden door, guarding the way to the theater they had just come from.
Urui faltered, then yelled.
“AKARI! DON’T BE STUPID! RUN!!!”
Oddly, she wasn’t terrified. She couldn’t understand why Urui was screaming so. There was nothing to fear. They were only the creatures in her dream. Dream creatures she had beaten once before.
She looked over her shoulder, smiling.
A burst of white light shattered their vision, and a Keyblade fell uncomfortably into Akari’s hands, as if it was too big for her palms.
Both her voice and the words she spoke were calm.
“There is nothing to fear.”
Urui looked on in horror as the door behind her burst open. A flood of light and dark creatures surged out of the doorway, making odd clicking noises. They raced toward Akari, climbing on walls and on ceilings, flattening into the floor and running under her….
“Go!” She screamed. “Hurry!!”
The key in her hand glowed as she swung it over her head in a wide arc. Three shadow creatures were dispatched immediately, vanishing only to leave a trio of crystal hearts that floated upward into the ceiling. The shining beings immediately plagued the hearts and ripped them to shreds before continuing.
“I WON’T LEAVE YOU HERE!!” Urui yelled back.
“I told you. There is nothing to fear.” She smiled as the blade knocked back a box-headed light creature into the wall.
Urui inhaled, then barreled forward. He grabbed Akari’s hand and dragged her with him down the hall, and being much stronger than she was, she couldn’t escape.
They burst into the parking lot, Urui starting up his slender car. Akari leaned out the passenger side and bonked a few shadow creatures on the head as they crawled up the side of the vehicle.
Swerving away from the movie theater and driving down the highway, Urui could see that the city was in chaos, and that the theater hadn’t been the only target. Darkness and light beings were crawling over every surface of the city, and flames were enveloping buildings and homes. Skyscrapers swarmed with darkness, pierced by the occasional creamy-white light creature. Sirens wailed. The highway had been evacuated; it was empty and devoid of cars and life. Cracks ran down the middle where the occasional accident had happened, obviously caused by the beings. Their fragile city existence had been transformed into fiery panic in less than ten minutes. Suddenly, worrying about a science test on Monday seemed like a very trivial thing to ponder over when people were dieing, left and right.
The darkness had come.
“We’ve got to get someone to help!” Urui spat, and Akari looked at him, wide-eyed.
“Who? The police? They’re probably busy.” She stared pointedly out to the burning buildings.
“Alright then, do YOU have a bright idea?” He asked, maneuvering around an abandoned car wreck in the middle of the four lanes.
Her memory dredged up the stadium, the one which, in her dream, she sang on.
“The Star Staduim!” She pointed to the dome in the distance.
“And what’s there that will help us here?” Urui asked.
“I don’t know.” She answered truthfully.
“Then what good is THAT?! We should just go home to our parents and try to help them-“
”They’re fine.” Akari said simply. “They’ll be fine if we get to the Stadium first, before the creatures.”
”How do you know that?!”
“Hunch.” She grumbled, and Urui stared at her for a long time. When she was stressed, she began talking in one-word phrases to shorten her temper’s indulgence.
“Fine. The Star Stadium it is.”
She smiled.
As they drove, the city flashing by, Urui looked at the girl next to him uncertainly.
“What was that key? The one you hit those things with?”
”Hm? Oh….this?”
She held out her right limb, and the weapon materialized in a flash of light in her palm.
Urui jumped in his seat at the sudden appearance.
“Sh*it! Scared me….”
“It’s called a Keyblade.” Akari answered simply. “And it’s telling me there’s something at the Stadium.”
”Where did it come from? And what about those things?! What were they?” Urui asked.
“I’m….not sure.”
“And all those people? What happened to them?!”
“I’m…………not sure.” Akari repeated, her face stretched.
Urui’s jaw clenched, and he accelerated forward.
The stadium was close. The car screeched into the parking lot, and the two teens got out, both sprinting to the locked gates that guarded the stairwells into the arena itself.
“Locked!” The sandy-haired boy spat, hands gripping the bars of the gate. The large padlock rattled angrily.
Akari felt the Keyblade vibrate. She looked down and saw a bead of light condense at its tip. The light expanded into a beam of brightness that pierced straight through the padlock’s keyhole. The lock clicked open and the gate swung forward.
Urui raised an eyebrow at her, and she grinned.
“Keyblade.” She said simply, and ran up the stairs, a bewildered Urui running closely behind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The hallway of obsidian stone seemed to stretch forever. It vaguely reminded me of my dream, the same one that brought me here.
It was funny how calm I was. I was worried, of course. I was angry, and confused at the creatures and all the people that had appeared to die. As I ran, I got the feeling I was being watched, as if where I was going was being monitored by a thousand pairs of eyes.
I suddenly didn’t care if Urui was here with me anymore. I was afraid that he would perish like the others, yes, but I no longer cared if he was holding my hand or whispering to me anymore. Rampant chaos did that to you.
He ran with me, letting me lead. He knew that I knew more than he did. He knew I had an inkling of what was going on, an idea of the tip of the iceberg. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
The hall twisted, and I knew this was the part in my dream where I fell into the shadow waters. This was the part where the hall simply dropped away, and I was left to fall.
But I didn’t.
The hallway door opened into a monolithic stadium, twice the size of any Battle stadium I had ever seen. Its ceilings were glass, and the stands rose in a cathedral-like fashion, straight up into the sky. The heavens were sprinkled with pieces of night and foggy blankets of stars. The whole place was tomb-quiet, a silent, enveloping darkness most deadly. The stage was in the center, huge and iron-cast and imposing, a large archway of curtains and extinguished lights behind it.
“Now what?” Urui asked, his voice hushed. We both knew that talk would attract, perhaps, unwanted visitors.
“The stage.” I answered, just as soft.
Just then, behind us, the doors we had come through burst open.
The beings of light, with their square heads, and the beings of dark, with their erratic movements flowed forth, like a stream of freed wine uncorked from the bottle.
We were both quickly and efficiently surrounded. The mass of creatures pressed in, clicking away madly. The stage was lost from sight.
Behind me, as my mind raced with options, Urui placed his hand on my shoulder.
“Give me your weapon. I’ll fend them off while you get to the stage and do what you need to do.”
“Urui!” I protested.
“Hey, I didn’t become head of the Battle Team Committee for no reason, alright? NOW GO!”
I stared at his face for a few long seconds.
His hair was cut well above his eyes, which were gleaming with something I couldn’t place my finger on. Bravery, perhaps. Those seconds reminded me, in the first place, of why I liked him.
I liked him because he was righteous. Yes. He fought for justice.
He fought for delusions I couldn’t handle defending.
Somehow, in my heart, I knew that this was the last time in my life I would see him.
And I was right.
Those few looks, those precious moments represented what my life was like at that time. It summed up my pitiful existence up until those last seconds. The life where I was tied down by family, where I worried about mundane things like homework and what I was going to do with my life. The life where I was just a naïve, stupid, confused adolescent, wondering if boys were really worth all the hype and whether or not I would get a better job than my mother when I graduated, or when my father would call me next to catch up on my life so he could go on with his….
The life where I actually knew what was going on….
It was the last time I saw Urui in my old life.
I shoved the Keyblade into his hands and ran. The creatures seemed to take no more notice of me. In fact, they seemed fixated on Urui now, and attacked him relentlessly. I heard him shouting as he cut through creature after creature. As I waded through the darkness and light, I silently said my farewells to him.
The stairs that led up to the stage seemed infinite. Urui’s cries grew fainter and fainter, and when I took my first step onto the wooden platform, I realized that the hunch that brought us here had been completely accurate.
There, standing opposite me, backed against the archway of lights and curtains, stood a door. It was silver, finely wrought, with stained glass patterns adorning its head like a crown.
I walked toward it, and with sound of battle cries and clicking filling my head, I placed my hands on the handles.
I looked up to the sky for a brief moment, the sinking feeling in my stomach intensifying. I was saying goodbye. To what, I didn’t know.
My parents? Perhaps.
Myself?
Most likely.
That was when the glass dome developed a sea of darkness on top, dotted by shining things. The creatures had suddenly decided to crash the party, and they came for the door, just like I had.
The same door I was on the verge of opening.
I knew what I had to do now.
The voice in my dream visited me the split second before I opened the door, when my hesitation took over.
It was now or never. Was I really prepared to make this decision?
Was I prepared to lose my perception of myself….and of my whole life?
I nodded, yanked, and the doors slid open, the two halves gaping out into the world. Two halves forming a shining piece, an open wound into a world of light…
The light within the door seared my eyes. It filled the stadium, and I felt myself falling away, becoming immaterial, less.
As the light enveloped me, I looked down at my hand.
Did I?
What weapon did I hold now…
If my hands were empty?
And then the lighted darkness washed over the Seeker’s heart…..
Finite
+_+ _+_+_+
Ahem. :3
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a Kingdom Hearts fiction, having nothing to do with the original story line of Kingdom Hearts and Kindom Hearts II. In fact, it's about an entirely NEW cast of characters, in entirely NEW (some old) Disney worlds.
:O This, my friends, is Kingdom Hearts: Shining Raid.
The chapters in this story aren't as well thought out as my other fictions, so the table of contents will be updated as I go along. Also, chapters will be posted around every week and a half to two weeks. D:
Most important of all: Thanks for reading!
Disclaimer: All related indicta and worlds/references/etc. belong to Square Enix and Disney. Original characters and worlds are credit to the author of this fiction.
.~:Kingdom Hearts: Shining Raid:~.
+_+_+_+_+_+_
Table of Contents:
*NOTE: -- Chapter Titles Indicate a Finished Status.
~~ Chapter Titles indicate an In Progress Work.
+_+_+_+_+_+_
~~Chaptaire o.o1: (SYSTEM FAILURE)
~~Chaptaire o.o2: (Awakening System)
~~Chaptaire o.o3: (Defense System)
~~Chaptaire o.o4 (Meeting System)
~~Chaptaire o.o5 (Destiny System)
~~Chaptaire o.o6 (Savior System)
~~Chaptaire o.o7 (Time System)
~~Chaptaire o.o8 (Deadly System)
~~Chaptaire o.o9 (Unexpected System)
~~Chaptaire o.10 (Resurrection System)
~~Chaptaire o.11 (Happiness System)
~~Chaptaire o.12 (Floodgate System)
~~Chaptaire o.13 (Star System)
~~Chaptaire o.14 (Homing System)
~~Chaptaire o.15 (Darkly System)
~~Chaptaire o.16 (Shining System)
~~Chaptaire o.17 (Neverworld System)
~~Chaptaire o.18 (Typhoon System)
~~Chaptaire o.19 (How the Universe Came to End)
~~Chaptaire o.20 (SYSTEM RESTORE)
~~Epilouge
(To be added....)
-------------------*----------------------------
-------------------*----------------------------
-------------------*----------------------------
+_+_+_+_+_+_+_
Chaptaire o.o1: SYSTEM FAILURE
+_+_+_+_+_+_+_
”Where are you now,
I ask myself.
Are we walking the same paths?
Or are we just living different lives?”
I ask myself.
Are we walking the same paths?
Or are we just living different lives?”
It starts with me falling into darkness endlessly and then I hear snow falling even though snow can’t fall because its silent, only then do I realize that it isn’t snow it’s glowing lights falling, flailing into the darkness and as I fall I see worlds blossom forth like flowers from the glowing things and these tiny fireflies of hope create worlds around me, most of them strange looking on their little planets with their little people all living their little lives-
“This….is what you call a beginning.”
-I suddenly find myself standing in this endless field of flowers and flowing grass, no horizon in sight and I’m alone, alone like only lonely people can be until the others come and they run toward me, two people I know like family, I know them and hold out my hands for them, but they pass through me like they are ghosts and I feel like crying even though I haven’t cried for so long-
”WHO ARE YOU?!?!”
-And then the falling fireflies appear again and I touch one through my tears and it takes away my sadness, it transports me in a flash of light to a castle with high ceilings, and an empty throne that yearns to be filled but no one can fill it anymore because there is no one here in this empty place so I decide to fill it and I sit tentatively in it-
”We were called the Shining-“
-As I seat myself in this beautiful chair I look up and see hundreds of people in white swarm toward me, their cloaks flowing as they race to me in haste, as if to a battle that isn’t really there, something I can’t see until they hit me and the world explodes again in a flash of light and I’m falling up into the sky or the ceiling, whatever its called here-
”So much for chivalry, huh?”
-Here is the final stage, a world all too familiar that I see when I open my eyes and spot the tropical islands that make up my home and as I fall into the sky I’m dragged down onto an island, the city buildings zooming up to greet me as I pass them and land in an open amphitheater, with screaming people and lights and music that I’m singing to on stage-
”This is only half of the story.”
-I feel overjoyed while I sing, up until the time where everyone’s cheers become dim and I look up and realize I can see myself falling downward, and as my two selves collide I’m pushed below the surface of the stage which has suddenly turned into a hall I walk down endlessly, a hall of black stone and white stone and everything in between and I jump off the end of the hall which has suddenly turned into shadow water and I’m falling, falling, falling, falling---
”Yes.
We are all walking the same path.
Just in different ways.”
+_+_+
We are all walking the same path.
Just in different ways.”
+_+_+
Falling….
I felt like I was falling, with no end in sight. My eyelids were as heavy as lead, but I forced them open, slowly.
Everything was blurry for a few seconds. When things cleared, I realized I really was falling.
Just upside down.
Shadow waters…
I was receding like a bullet through what felt like the ocean, slow, inconspicuous. There was no blue in the water I fell through, just shadows and the occasional wisp of light. It didn’t even cross my mind that when I hit the bottom-if there even was a bottom-my head would receive severe trauma.
‘Didn’t even cross my wandering mind.
I just lay there, letting gravity or whatever it was pull me downward. It was pleasant, almost, as if I felt entirely safe for the first time in my life.
And then suddenly, the pleasantries ended. I was gently righted by some invisible force, turned so that my feet hit ground.
I looked around, warily. Side to side at first, and when I saw nothing but more shadow water, I looked down.
I was standing on nothing.
The watery darkness was all around. Even below my feet. I took a hesitant step forward, and felt my heart jump in surprise as thousands of white birds erupted from the floor below me. The umber shadows melted away as each bird took some of the dark covering with it as it flew. Light seeped from under my feet, and I looked down as the mosaic of birds and feathers and light came together as a blinding whole.
I was no longer residing in darkness.
I was standing on a stained-glass replica of a face of a person in a white-hooded cloak, head shrouded in the faint shadows the covering produced. The picture of the person took up most of the oval, stained-glass plateau I stood on. I watched as the birds vanished into the walls of the deep water, I watched as they lost their purity against the endless sucking void that served as a boundary in this still place.
WHY WERE THERE WALLS IN THIS PLACE-
Whatever thoughts I might have had about the mysterious birds was put to an end as the floor below me glowed. I got a better look at the picture depicted on it this time, and saw that the white figure was surrounded by a ring of fancy patterns on the outer edge. The figure was in the middle, hands out with their palms up, as if expecting something to drop from the sky.
WE WERE EXPECTING YOU-
On either side, a tangle of silver vines sprouted, thorns striving to touch the figure, but not quite managing the feat. They instead hovered around its frame, as if uncertainty had taken them over.
The backdrop glass of the picture was a searing, tranquil blue.
THE COLOR OF YOUR EYES-
It was then I heard the voice. It echoed across to me, coming from a nowhere that was only present when one was alone. The voice was wordless, but I knew what it said. It emitted the sounds of nothing, but then again, so did I.
In soundless harmony, we understood each other.
”The door….to light.
Do you seek it?”
Do you seek it?”
I had no idea what this voice was talking about. I was about to say that, when something in the back of my head silenced me and spoke for me to the mysterious voiceless person.
IT knew what the door to the light was.
IT knew what to say.
The other voice seemed to almost nod in acceptance.
”…good. Now step forward, Seeker, into the light.”
As soon as the voice said this, a cone of white brilliance pierced through the dark water and fell on the platform. It illuminated one circle on the glass, a single elliptical wedge of brightness.
I walked forward. The light swallowed me whole.
It was then I felt a tingling at my side. My hands glowed, and the brightness shaped itself into a blade-like protrusion. My fingers closed around a handle, and the light receded to reveal a weapon of the most peculiar kind.
First glance told me that it was a key, the regular kind you stick in a lock, that this one was just a super-sized version. But upon closer inspection, I found it to be much different. The handle curved around at the ends, creating a box, a guard for my hands. The blade-the key to be more precise-was silver, and the handle was a glowing obsidian, wrapped around in the middle handrest with green fabric. A keychain hung from the tip of the hand-guard, silver as well, with a curiously shaped symbol on the end, looking almost like a(-dare I say-)mouse head. In total, the weapon was as half as long as I was tall, and hung in my hands limply.
”Keyblade…..
Keyblade…
This….is the weapon with which you shall seek.”
Keyblade…
This….is the weapon with which you shall seek.”
And suddenly, breaking through the calm voice with no warning….something came.
There was suddenly a malicious presence all around me. Creatures rose up from the floor, a pale yellow with shining white eyes like bulbs in the darkness. They had slender necks that held up their flat, lily-pad-like heads. They walked on two feet, backs as straight as their arms pressed to their sides. They didn’t walk normally, they pushed themselves forward and slid on large, plank-like feet to match their hands. With automatic, gliding movements, they circled in around me, bulbous eyes greedy.
Box-like creatures that showed no emotion, even in their actions.
The most startling thing about them was that they seemed to glow with an inside light against the dark waters and almost out-shone the luminous stained glass platform below us.
”Fight….”
The voice demanded.
I looked around, over my shoulder, and found that there were a total of three light beings. The first to reach me was struck down as I swung the blade clumsily over my shoulder and brought it down on the creature’s head. The thing was stunned for a few seconds, and I took the opportunity to bring the Keyblade up underneath it, knocking it into the air.
The other beings shrank back as I jumped in the air and smacked the single one back down to the floor. It wavered for a moment, and then melted into a shining puddle, evaporating in a string of white stars as quickly as it had melted.
I panted. This fighting business was difficult. I’d never raised a hand to harm someone in my life, especially not with a weapon. Instinct told me to bash the thing over the head as fast as I could so that it couldn’t strike back against me.
The two remaining shining things ganged up on me. One slid stealthily around behind me while the other openly charged. I held up the Keyblade with both hands and stopped the head-butting assault with the blade, pushing backwards so that the creature lost its balance. I saw my opening and struck it clumsily over the head until it melted and evaporated.
I had forgotten about the other creature until it teleported before my eyes in a flash of shining sparks. I blinked and swung, my heart beating rapidly. My attack missed by inches, and the being rammed me in the stomach with it’s sledge-like head, my ribcage screaming in protest as I staggered.
Out of the corner of my watering eyes, I saw the thing begin to charge up for another head butt, but this time I told myself I’d be ready. My hands gripped the Keyblade tightly, and I spread my legs apart, waiting until the being got close enough to hit.
As if knowing I was ready for it, the being disappeared in a flash of sparks again, though this time, I could see the glowing of its now transparent body. It had turned invisible. The light blurred the colors around the thing, like a heat wave, and I focused on the shimmering. With three solid swings, I dispatched of it, victory swelling in my chest for merely a moment before it was replaced with terror.
”Do not be afraid, Seeker.”
The glass platform below me had, during the battle, fractured, and then in a suspended moment of silence, it broke, crippling beneath me. I fell through darkness again, but this time amongst shards of shining glass, like the fireflies of light in my dream……
”Do not fear.”
The voice sounded as if it was trying to comfort me, prevent me from losing it. Mentally, I scoffed, not the least bit concerned I was falling toward another glass platform with no signs of slowing. I was over the shock of this now, all this seemed almost normal, so I answered the voice back in a haughty tone.
”Easy for you to say. You ain’t the one falling five stories down.”
And the voice did something I didn’t expect it to.
It laughed.
I landed, gently right-sided by some kind of invisible wind. I looked down, and saw that the glass platform had changed. This time, it showed a beautiful white flower opening its petals to reveal a boy, sleeping. The mosaic pattern circling it was red, and the background was a vibrant orange.
There was a door at the end of the platform, opposite of where I stood. It was a beautiful door, something like one would find in a church. It was a peachish bronze color, decorated with gold handles and joints. Stained glass of all colors created an arch above the scalps of the two slab arms of the doors, marking the pathway they opened onto.
The voice was now devoid of amusement.
”Now….let us see you open the door.
Can you do it?”
Can you do it?”
With confidence I strode toward the door and struggled to pull its handles apart. With great difficulty I pried the door open, and with even greater difficulty my pride realized that when the light that emitted from the door swallowed me, I ended up in the same place I was a second ago.
The voice seemed to mock me.
”Now now, we can’t have you opening the door just yet…
It is far too soon…
But you have proven your worth…
Even through the shadow that lies in your heart.”
It is far too soon…
But you have proven your worth…
Even through the shadow that lies in your heart.”
The beam of light pierced through the darkness again, beckoning.
I walked forward hesitantly, into the light that shone down from the murky waters. It warmed my face, illuminated my eyes…
What I didn’t notice was that the light was gathering around me, and when my body absorbed all it could, it expulsed it, creating a huge shape that at first, looked like me, and then began to mutate.
The light grew long, pointed ears and feet and fingers. Its limbs were panoramically skinny, its head grew broad and flat with shining, jagged wings on the sides of its skull. Its torso grew to anorexic proportions, flaring out widely at the hips as spikes protruded from the bone of the pelvis and the shoulders. Below its creamy-yellow translucent skin, blue designs were highlighted by a throbbing light that ran through them, over and over, like a pulse, like some kind of demented blood.
And all the while, it grew bigger and bigger….now seeming to scrape the sky.
”Do not be afraid.”
The voice reassured me calmly.
“You cannot be defeated by something that is within yourself.
After all…..”
After all…..”
I swung my Keyblade at the monster, and the blade swept harmlessly through its hands. It lunged at me, and I blocked, cringing as if expecting a blow.
The hand rammed into the hilt of my Keyblade, sending me flying and scrabbling to regain my balance before it hit me again.
”After all….”
My Keyblade vanished in a flash of light. I was utterly defenseless as the being charged at me, monolithic body and all.
”You hold the mightiest weapon…..
Deep inside.”
Deep inside.”
And then the being of light enveloped me, searing in its heat and intensity.
My eyes were blinded.
”Don’t be afraid…..”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She woke from her sleep, ruffled. The T.V. before her played the annual Music Awards, and she had dozed off to the commercials.
But now she was up, wide awake and terrified.
The being of searing light was gone. She was…back in reality.
It was all just a dream…
The dream again……the one that had visited her over and over…
But it had never felt as real as that before….she had never fallen through shadow waters before, or fought with demented creatures glowing with light…
The dream began to slip from her memory, as dreams often do, leaving a deep void in its place. She sighed, pushing her back into the couch and resolving to write the dream down next time.
For now, she was back in the present.
Her eyes narrowed at the plasma screen before her.
She thought that if she stared at the T.V. screen long enough, it would melt. Theoretically, in her quantum-physics-lacking mind, it was possible. It wasn’t an impossibility, oh no. Not when that bi*tch was on the screen. Not when that bi*tch was performing in the stadium with fifty thousand people and making them cheer and scream themselves hoarse with her dancing and pop-star looks and her vocals.
The bi*tch didn’t even own the voice she was singing with.
That was HER voice. Not the bi*tch’s. HERS.
So why was the singer using it?
She really didn’t know. Well, she knew the technical reason. The voice synthesizer in the back of the stage gave the voice and played it while the girl on stage lip-synced.
Earlier that afternoon, the girl on the couch had gone into the studio and sang the song for them, which they took and gave to the bi*tch. Just like they gave everything else. Always. All the time.
‘The girl with the voice’, as she was known at the studio, did not like the pretty-faced pop-idol, Renne. In fact, the girl with the voice despised her. Renne was everything she was not. Gorgeous, pleasingly slender, and graceful in her words and motions.
The girl with the voice was skinny in an underfed, sharp way. She had dark brown hair, dyed a brilliant red at the tips, shaggily layered and hanging around her face like a curtain. Her eyes were a clear blue, slanted so that it looked like she was always on her guard. Not sweet, or innocent, or any of the things media managers appreciated. The extent of her bodily grace was walking the sidewalk edge without falling into the gutter. Her words, however, were graceful, but were usually used in a sarcastic and scathing manner, and therefore, disregarded as a lack of respect.
Renne, on the other hand, was the epitome of teenage beauty, and consequently, was in every wet dream of every teenage boy in the city, and, quite possibly, the entire Sol archipelago.
Therefore, the girl with the voice wished for the T.V. that displayed Renne performing to melt in a violent conflagration of sparks and molten lava.
Once upon a very distant time, the girl with the voice started out her hopeful career by becoming the Palm Ocean Studio’s hired paper girl at the tender age of thirteen. Her job was to deliver papers between the office and the various media specialist’s cubicles. It was a simple job, and if she was lucky, the janitor she had made friends with let her into the sound booth after everyone went home. She sang there, into the microphone, for hours until the janitor had to leave and lock up.
The girl with the voice had been graced with a beautiful singing voice, despite all her other lacking bodily and temperamental qualities. Her hopes were geared toward becoming a star, and singing to feel the excitement of the crowd well up inside her and make her truly, blissfully happy.
Life as the paper girl was good until she forgot to erase the recording of her voice from a previous private session with the sound booth. The next day, the manager gave her a money-laden proposal. Instead of becoming the diva herself, she’d be the VOICE of the diva. All she had to do was come to the studio and perform when they wanted her to. She’d be getting a fat check in the mail every month without fail, and a neat little space in the “Special Thanks” corner on the back of the diva’s album cases.
But the then-innocent girl with the voice didn’t want to sing for someone else. She wanted to sing for her herself…by herself, on a stage, with adoring fans and the thrill of thumping music and applause in her chest.
When her parents separated, however, she had no choice. Her father gave the minimal child support, and her mother was struck with a post-divorce suicidal depression that only expensive medicine could lift.
She no longer had a choice in the matter.
The girl with the voice began singing for the diva, Renne, as her world began to crumble.
So she sincerely wished the plasma screen before her would burn.
“Akari!!! Turn the T.V. off and get the doorbell, will you? I’m busy with dinner!” Her mother, an aging blonde with enormous curls called, stirring a pot on a fancy conventional oven.
“Man…” Akari tapped the remote and the T.V. went blank. She lifted herself lazily off the couch, and trudged to the apartment door, grumbling the whole way.
She tilted the doorknob, and pulled. On the other side of the wood stood a boy around Akari’s own age, with sandy hair, deep brown eyes, and a shy, winning smile.
“U-Urui! What are you…..doing here?”
Urui. Head of Porta Sol High School’s Battle Team, Winner of Best Smile in the past three yearbooks, and Akari’s crush to end all crushes. The boy to whom she had sent every Valentine’s Day letter since elementary school, the object of her Truth and Dare sessions with her friends, and the specter of her constantly wandering thoughts.
Urui.
She knew she was flushing, but she did her best not to show it. Her mother banged a few pots in the background unceremoniously as Urui spoke.
“I…ah…was just going around the neighborhood, and I saw your house. I wanted to see if you were doing anything tonight…”
Akari stared up at him, mouth agape. “Uh….”
“If you’re not, I was wondering if you’d want to go watch something with me…there’s a new movie everyone’s been talking about, Lost-“
“Lost Identity!” Akari piped up, her enthusiasm for the movie outweighing her shock.
“Yeah…that one.” Urui smiled, and Akari wanted to take a thousand pictures just to capture that look.
“So…you wanna come?” He asked.
Akari’s mouth went slack again, as if just realizing what was going on.
“Uhhhh…….ermmmmm..uhhhh…..”
Her vocabulary was stunning in the presence of this boy.
“If you don’t want to, it’s c-cool.” Urui added, tripping over his words slightly.
She suddenly smiled. He was just as nervous as she was!
“No no, it’s fine! Just lemme get my coat, okay?”
“Don’t you need to check it with your mom?”
Akari smiled as she picked her jacket off the rack by the door and pushed past him, out of the apartment.
“The less my mom knows, the better.” She laughed, and in a fit of naïve ecstasy, tripped on the first flight of stairs leading down to the parking lot. She would have spiraled down the flight and landed in a very painful manner if not for the fact that Urui had caught her around the waist in mid-lurch.
Her stomach flip-flopped, and not with the loss of gravity she had just experienced earlier, but with a very familiar emotion.
It was there she experienced the first of many awkward moments of that night, moments mostly associated with first dates. She was dancing on air though, so the painful embarrassment of the rest of the awkwardly blundered seconds didn’t really faze her.
That was…..until it happened.
Until her world changed.
They were sitting in the cold movie theater, side by side. Akari was paying attention more to Urui’s face than to the movie, and when he caught her staring at him out of the corner of his eye, he laughed, and ruffled her hair affectionately.
She felt as if she would sprout a balloon out of the top of her head and simply fly away.
Life couldn’t get any better at that moment. She was watching her favorite movie with her longtime crush, alone. Suddenly her worries about Renne and her mother’s disappointing and rapidly deteriorating illness and her father’s indifferent attitude toward her and her mountains of homework and her drama with her friends at school and the secret she kept inside about her voice all seemed to melt away.
Here, she was truly happy.
Even the dream that had haunted her for the past week, the one about falling and gripping the strange, oversized key, had disappeared.
It was funny how one person could affect another so much.
As she thought these things, her stomach turned. Thinking it was out of nervousness at being in Urui’s presence, Akari shook it off, running a hand through her messy, layered hair.
A few minutes later, the feeling came again. Stronger, this time.
flip-flop
She shook it off, determined that nothing would ruin this moment.
Even a stomach ache.
A few minutes passed.
and then the lightened darkness fell upon the universe…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Urui was laughing at something Akari commented about when the giant screen shut down abruptly. Darkness swarmed in, the dim lighting doing nothing to quell the terror that grasped the crowd. People were shouting, some where booing, and others began screaming in fear.
The dark was omnipresent. Only the faint orange side lights gave any hint that they were still among the living.
“Please remain calm. Power will be restored momentarily.” The mechanical emergency voice boomed from the loud speakers.
Everything was deathly still….and the silence seemed to drag on forever…..and ever…
for all eternity…
Akari had slunk lower in her seat when Urui flopped his cell-phone open. The screen’s flittering blue light lit a small area, and he motioned to Akari to stay quiet, his face wane.
She wondered why. Her head turned to observe the crowd around her just as they began to scream and make strangled noises. Her breath caught in her throat.
The audience was being plagued with a few glowing, luminous shapes that jumped on the people and opened their box-like mouth in what seemed to be sickening pleasure. An odd, pink-lighted crystal burst forth from the victim’s chest, shaped ironically like a petite valentine heart. The glowing shapes would then jump on the heart and wrestle it down. The hearts seemed to want to float up into the sky, forever, and would have, if the glowing things hadn’t of speared the crystal hearts before they could fly away.
The things in her dream….
Urui grabbed her hand and stood. She struggled to her feet, and watched as the bodies of the victims were consumed by black fire. In the body’s place appeared a small black creature with the same bulbous eyes as the glowing beings. They twitched and scurried around on the walls in gravity-defying steps.
The remainder of the crowd had fled, screaming. Urui dragged Akari through the emergency exit at the front, for the light and dark creatures were swarming by the exit and attacking the theater workers.
His only thought was to run. To survive. Their priorities had shifted in less than a millisecond.
She couldn’t believe this was happening. She pinched her face with her free hand and winced when the nails dug into her skin. Yes. This was real. The creatures from the strange dream that had been haunting her had come to life. They were here.
Did that mean…..the blade was real too?
”Keyblade.”
Akari wrenched her hand out of Urui’s. The stark, white-washed maintenance hallway was empty, one red exit door on one end, leading to the parking lot, and a dark wooden door, guarding the way to the theater they had just come from.
Urui faltered, then yelled.
“AKARI! DON’T BE STUPID! RUN!!!”
Oddly, she wasn’t terrified. She couldn’t understand why Urui was screaming so. There was nothing to fear. They were only the creatures in her dream. Dream creatures she had beaten once before.
She looked over her shoulder, smiling.
A burst of white light shattered their vision, and a Keyblade fell uncomfortably into Akari’s hands, as if it was too big for her palms.
Both her voice and the words she spoke were calm.
“There is nothing to fear.”
Urui looked on in horror as the door behind her burst open. A flood of light and dark creatures surged out of the doorway, making odd clicking noises. They raced toward Akari, climbing on walls and on ceilings, flattening into the floor and running under her….
“Go!” She screamed. “Hurry!!”
The key in her hand glowed as she swung it over her head in a wide arc. Three shadow creatures were dispatched immediately, vanishing only to leave a trio of crystal hearts that floated upward into the ceiling. The shining beings immediately plagued the hearts and ripped them to shreds before continuing.
“I WON’T LEAVE YOU HERE!!” Urui yelled back.
“I told you. There is nothing to fear.” She smiled as the blade knocked back a box-headed light creature into the wall.
Urui inhaled, then barreled forward. He grabbed Akari’s hand and dragged her with him down the hall, and being much stronger than she was, she couldn’t escape.
They burst into the parking lot, Urui starting up his slender car. Akari leaned out the passenger side and bonked a few shadow creatures on the head as they crawled up the side of the vehicle.
Swerving away from the movie theater and driving down the highway, Urui could see that the city was in chaos, and that the theater hadn’t been the only target. Darkness and light beings were crawling over every surface of the city, and flames were enveloping buildings and homes. Skyscrapers swarmed with darkness, pierced by the occasional creamy-white light creature. Sirens wailed. The highway had been evacuated; it was empty and devoid of cars and life. Cracks ran down the middle where the occasional accident had happened, obviously caused by the beings. Their fragile city existence had been transformed into fiery panic in less than ten minutes. Suddenly, worrying about a science test on Monday seemed like a very trivial thing to ponder over when people were dieing, left and right.
The darkness had come.
“We’ve got to get someone to help!” Urui spat, and Akari looked at him, wide-eyed.
“Who? The police? They’re probably busy.” She stared pointedly out to the burning buildings.
“Alright then, do YOU have a bright idea?” He asked, maneuvering around an abandoned car wreck in the middle of the four lanes.
Her memory dredged up the stadium, the one which, in her dream, she sang on.
“The Star Staduim!” She pointed to the dome in the distance.
“And what’s there that will help us here?” Urui asked.
“I don’t know.” She answered truthfully.
“Then what good is THAT?! We should just go home to our parents and try to help them-“
”They’re fine.” Akari said simply. “They’ll be fine if we get to the Stadium first, before the creatures.”
”How do you know that?!”
“Hunch.” She grumbled, and Urui stared at her for a long time. When she was stressed, she began talking in one-word phrases to shorten her temper’s indulgence.
“Fine. The Star Stadium it is.”
She smiled.
As they drove, the city flashing by, Urui looked at the girl next to him uncertainly.
“What was that key? The one you hit those things with?”
”Hm? Oh….this?”
She held out her right limb, and the weapon materialized in a flash of light in her palm.
Urui jumped in his seat at the sudden appearance.
“Sh*it! Scared me….”
“It’s called a Keyblade.” Akari answered simply. “And it’s telling me there’s something at the Stadium.”
”Where did it come from? And what about those things?! What were they?” Urui asked.
“I’m….not sure.”
“And all those people? What happened to them?!”
“I’m…………not sure.” Akari repeated, her face stretched.
Urui’s jaw clenched, and he accelerated forward.
The stadium was close. The car screeched into the parking lot, and the two teens got out, both sprinting to the locked gates that guarded the stairwells into the arena itself.
“Locked!” The sandy-haired boy spat, hands gripping the bars of the gate. The large padlock rattled angrily.
Akari felt the Keyblade vibrate. She looked down and saw a bead of light condense at its tip. The light expanded into a beam of brightness that pierced straight through the padlock’s keyhole. The lock clicked open and the gate swung forward.
Urui raised an eyebrow at her, and she grinned.
“Keyblade.” She said simply, and ran up the stairs, a bewildered Urui running closely behind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The hallway of obsidian stone seemed to stretch forever. It vaguely reminded me of my dream, the same one that brought me here.
It was funny how calm I was. I was worried, of course. I was angry, and confused at the creatures and all the people that had appeared to die. As I ran, I got the feeling I was being watched, as if where I was going was being monitored by a thousand pairs of eyes.
I suddenly didn’t care if Urui was here with me anymore. I was afraid that he would perish like the others, yes, but I no longer cared if he was holding my hand or whispering to me anymore. Rampant chaos did that to you.
He ran with me, letting me lead. He knew that I knew more than he did. He knew I had an inkling of what was going on, an idea of the tip of the iceberg. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
The hall twisted, and I knew this was the part in my dream where I fell into the shadow waters. This was the part where the hall simply dropped away, and I was left to fall.
But I didn’t.
The hallway door opened into a monolithic stadium, twice the size of any Battle stadium I had ever seen. Its ceilings were glass, and the stands rose in a cathedral-like fashion, straight up into the sky. The heavens were sprinkled with pieces of night and foggy blankets of stars. The whole place was tomb-quiet, a silent, enveloping darkness most deadly. The stage was in the center, huge and iron-cast and imposing, a large archway of curtains and extinguished lights behind it.
“Now what?” Urui asked, his voice hushed. We both knew that talk would attract, perhaps, unwanted visitors.
“The stage.” I answered, just as soft.
Just then, behind us, the doors we had come through burst open.
The beings of light, with their square heads, and the beings of dark, with their erratic movements flowed forth, like a stream of freed wine uncorked from the bottle.
We were both quickly and efficiently surrounded. The mass of creatures pressed in, clicking away madly. The stage was lost from sight.
Behind me, as my mind raced with options, Urui placed his hand on my shoulder.
“Give me your weapon. I’ll fend them off while you get to the stage and do what you need to do.”
“Urui!” I protested.
“Hey, I didn’t become head of the Battle Team Committee for no reason, alright? NOW GO!”
I stared at his face for a few long seconds.
His hair was cut well above his eyes, which were gleaming with something I couldn’t place my finger on. Bravery, perhaps. Those seconds reminded me, in the first place, of why I liked him.
I liked him because he was righteous. Yes. He fought for justice.
He fought for delusions I couldn’t handle defending.
Somehow, in my heart, I knew that this was the last time in my life I would see him.
And I was right.
Those few looks, those precious moments represented what my life was like at that time. It summed up my pitiful existence up until those last seconds. The life where I was tied down by family, where I worried about mundane things like homework and what I was going to do with my life. The life where I was just a naïve, stupid, confused adolescent, wondering if boys were really worth all the hype and whether or not I would get a better job than my mother when I graduated, or when my father would call me next to catch up on my life so he could go on with his….
The life where I actually knew what was going on….
It was the last time I saw Urui in my old life.
I shoved the Keyblade into his hands and ran. The creatures seemed to take no more notice of me. In fact, they seemed fixated on Urui now, and attacked him relentlessly. I heard him shouting as he cut through creature after creature. As I waded through the darkness and light, I silently said my farewells to him.
The stairs that led up to the stage seemed infinite. Urui’s cries grew fainter and fainter, and when I took my first step onto the wooden platform, I realized that the hunch that brought us here had been completely accurate.
There, standing opposite me, backed against the archway of lights and curtains, stood a door. It was silver, finely wrought, with stained glass patterns adorning its head like a crown.
I walked toward it, and with sound of battle cries and clicking filling my head, I placed my hands on the handles.
I looked up to the sky for a brief moment, the sinking feeling in my stomach intensifying. I was saying goodbye. To what, I didn’t know.
My parents? Perhaps.
Myself?
Most likely.
That was when the glass dome developed a sea of darkness on top, dotted by shining things. The creatures had suddenly decided to crash the party, and they came for the door, just like I had.
The same door I was on the verge of opening.
I knew what I had to do now.
The voice in my dream visited me the split second before I opened the door, when my hesitation took over.
It was now or never. Was I really prepared to make this decision?
Was I prepared to lose my perception of myself….and of my whole life?
”Do not be afraid.”
I nodded, yanked, and the doors slid open, the two halves gaping out into the world. Two halves forming a shining piece, an open wound into a world of light…
The light within the door seared my eyes. It filled the stadium, and I felt myself falling away, becoming immaterial, less.
”You hold the greatest weapon of them all.”
As the light enveloped me, I looked down at my hand.
Did I?
What weapon did I hold now…
If my hands were empty?
What weapon did I hold now, if my heart was empty??
And then the lighted darkness washed over the Seeker’s heart…..
”Yes.
We are all walking the same path.
Just in different ways.
And yes.
All worlds end eventually.
Just in different ways.”
We are all walking the same path.
Just in different ways.
And yes.
All worlds end eventually.
Just in different ways.”
Finite
+_+ _+_+_+
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). Like Revelation, description is excellent and very easy to picture, making for a truly exciting read. Good luck with the next chapter!