Author's Note: Well, Hawkblade here. I'm giving you guys one hell of a sign before badgering me: I did not write this fanfic. This fanfic is written by a good friend of mine, and since she doesn't have a account, I offered to put this story up. Now, to the Disclaimer!

Disclaimer: Alex Karsath, Erica Karsath belong to Alexander Karsath (Newbie-Spud); Gregory Zivaku belongs to Gregzilla; Sephiros belongs to Square Enix. This story idea belongs to Umiyuri Papaeyra of the Interference Legends site. I own nothing... yet!

Fifteen-year-old Alex yawned and hit the button on the top of his alarm clock. Today was the day, his birthday. And although most kids would have spent their holidays moping around and sleeping in, wasting around the house by playing video games, eating, surfing the net and sometimes going out, if only to play a quick game of baseball, he would spend it completely differently than those people. Although... this 'differently' actually dismissed the regular commodity of presents. Today, he was going to do the one thing most kids would never think of doing on their holidays:

He was going to hang out with his own younger sister.

He stretched, got out of bed and immediately fell on the floor, his face making contact with the wood panelling. He pushed himself up, rubbing his face and grumbling, then began slipping his day's shirt and pants on. It was nothing too special, mind: just some short trousers, a black long-sleeved shirt and wrist bands. Alex had never been one to dress according to the weather; as the sun was beating down and he would certainly sizzle like a strip of bacon in a frying pan. Alex would not find it very comforting to be compared to a piece of pig meat, but the message was very clear. Alex would need to at least wear a hat or something white and reflective in order to keep the cool.

Cool, however, was not something that was very commonly on his agenda. The best description he had ever had of himself was, 'He thinks cool is a temperature reading and by "I threw on whatever was lying around", he means "on the floor, but I turned the underwear inside-out first."' and it wasn't one he liked, but it certainly suited him. After all, he was pretty much a self-confessed nerd with a love of role-play video games, sea salt ice cream and bed hair. None of those were very cool (except for bed hair).

And today, if any noise was made, his only chances of becoming popular were completely shot down by firing squad, the body picked up and thrown on the fire. Any days with pre-teenage girls were always those days he would try to stay low-profile. He'd keep in the shadows - hence the dark outfit - and not draw attention to himself. Pity his sister was the least low-profile person he had ever met. And her name was...

...Erica. Loud, obnoxious and the biggest FullMetal Alchemist fan-girl you would ever meet in your entire life, if you were unfortunate enough to. Most of the time he was embarrassed to be around her. But underneath her particularly damaging exterior was a sweet, caring soul. This was what Alex always tried to reach for. There were times she would become completely quiet, very thoughtful and coated in cherry-flavoured zen with no added sugar. Those were the times he wished his sister was always around to talk about. Whatever her problem was, it didn't last long, though. She'd spring back up without warning and soon he'd wish he were never born.

The main problem with the girl was not her filling but her wrapping paper and, with him around her for the entire day, that wrapping paper was sure to be bright pink and covered in fluffy white bunny rabbits. In other words, today she would be as hyper as a hummingbird on magic mushrooms.

The only reason he was taking his sister out with him was because of his mother. Ms Karsath was at work for the early morning and had been for most of the night. To give her a rest, he'd offered to take himself and Erica off her hands. Nothing could possibly go wrong...

...right?

"Alexander?" He looked up from the breakfast table. His grandfather Sephiros sat at the other end.

"Uhh..." He looked down at his corn flakes. He had never been on very good terms with his grandfather. The man had taken one look at him when he was five and told him that he needed a lot of work, otherwise he wouldn't be able to follow the Karsath family tradition, whatever that meant. Every weekend, Alex had been sent down to the local fencing club to train in the handling of a sword. Sephiros himself was a champion at the sport, and also knew how to kill a man with one quick movement of his wrists.

And, as always, he had never approved of him no matter how skilled he had gotten. Sometimes it made the teenager wonder what was really to gain in a world where you climbed until your hands and feet got sore and yet everybody still was able to look down upon you.

His lack of articulation made Sephiros draw a worried breath. "Snap out of it, young man," he said. Immediately, Alex stood to attention, catching his spoon on its handle and sending it onto the floor in the process. Sephiros sighed again as the boy sheepishly dove down to pick the utensil back up from the rug and reseated himself. "It is your fifteenth birthday, and the sign that you are ready to take on the burden of this small family." Alex blinked. Burden... he'd never heard of any burden from his mother. "A long line of Karsaths has proceeded you, and all males of the family have been trained from a young age to their fifteenth birthday. You have undergone the same hard work."

Once again, he blinked. Was this the news he had been awaiting? "You mean... it's all done with?" he asked, and Sephiros shook his head.

"The burden is to be placed upon your shoulders tonight." A quick look to the window and Alex already found himself asking whether the man was insane. There was still more work to be done... but training should have been over. The new challenges would have to wait.

"But I can't make it, remember?" he said. The elder raised an eyebrow. "I'm letting mom relax for the day. Me and Erica are going to be out until ten o' clock, when mom's next shift starts."
Sephiros closed his eyes. "It will be passed on no matter what plans you may have had for tonight." Alex groaned. "It must be given to the firstborn male on his fifteenth birthday, no older, no younger and no excuses."

Erica stood outside the door already. She was dressed in what could only be described by an onlooker as 'cheerleader garb'. Bright, matching clothing with the Portland Junior High shield tattooed on the front, she stood in a white long-sleeved jumper, a white mini-skirt lined with green and tall socks with pure white trainers on top. Her long blonde hair was held back by a red Alice band and her pale brown eyes shimmered warmly. Meanwhile, Alex stepped out of the door, his clothing a complete contrast to hers.

"Alex! How are you going to cool down?" she asked him, scolding her older brother.

He simply shrugged. "I dunno. We're not going to be staying out so long anyway," he reported. "Grandpa said he's 'passing down the burden of the family' to me, and tonight. I think that means going home pretty early tonight instead of what we had planned."

At this, she sank down into a state of... unhappiness. To put it rather lightly. "Oh, come on!" she whined, and he made a point of covering his ears with his palms. The sun was still rising and it made a halo effect around the head of Erica. He would have considered her an angel if it wasn't for the sulking look of her puppy-dog eyes and the hefty pout crossing over her face. "You know, you don't have to listen to Gramps, do you? Maybe he can give you this burden later or something!"

He crossed his arms. "Not according to him," he said, and placed his fingers to his head, reciting. "'It must be given to the firstborn male on his fifteenth birthday, no older, no younger and no excuses.' It's gotta be tonight."

She grumbled, and they climbed one after the other down the fire escape ladder to the next landing, and then down the next ladder to the next landing. The process was very much like a good game of Donkey Kong, except they weren't a Italian-American plumber madly jumping over barrels and bombs in order to gain points and save their girlfriend from a giant cartoon ape. And the fact that they were climbing down instead of up also helped the concept fail, even if it was just a tiny little bit.

The clacking sound of their shoes upon the rusting iron became music to Alex's ears for some unknown reason. It was melodic, the perfectly timed movements of their hands and feet and the percussion created by the noise. He stopped, listening to the hypnotic beat as Erica continued downwards. It was so loud in his ears, even the sound of his own heart was drowned out when it came to that ticking. Almost like a clock... like a countdown to tonight... Somehow, he concentrated solely on the noise, missing the fact that his little sister was now down on the next landing.

The summer sky brought him slowly back to his senses, making him blink several times from its brightness. It was a clear enough day and the heat was already beating down upon them. Tiny, rough strips of cloud dotted the sky, nothing too grey but nothing too white, all pointing towards the prevailing sun like a hail of hazy arrows. The sky blazed blood red, although it was not too early in the morning. It was a sign of something bad to come, he noted. They predicted bad weather, terrible rainstorms. Red skies were the skies of war in his mind and, although he was only fifteen years old to the day, something in his mind told him it was a war nobody, not even he, and would be left out of.

A sudden cry from Erica alerted him and he looked down over the side, bracing himself in the process. He was made to be able to fight, not to climb, and the height made him feel very dizzy. She was waving from two floors down. "Hey, get down here, daydreamer!" With a slight shudder he pressed away from the edge and gulped, throwing himself down another few ladders to reach her.

At least, that was the plan, anyway. Once again the beat caught him mid-climb, and he stopped, it still echoing through his mind. She put her hands on her hips, her cheeks inflating as she clambered up and tugged on the bottom of his shirt. He snapped and looked down at her, before continuing down.

"Ah, out in the open air!" she cheered and Alex, for once, had to admit she was onto something for once. It felt good that he was alive and breathing clean air instead of sitting around a stuffy bedroom while writing his fan-fiction and playing on his PlayStation Two. The room didn't even have good air conditioning.

He allowed himself a smile as he stretched his arms above his head and almost immediately bumped into somebody. He backed up and quickly apologized. The stranger simply looked at him. Tall, it was a pale boy with scruffy black hair. Blue locks hung down one side of his face. His sky-colour eyes peered through a pair of brown-tinted sunglasses. His dress was a yellow leather buttoned coat and brown shorts. He looked slightly imposing, but he wasn't anything too terrifying in appearance.

No, the reason Alex was now wary of him was the way his bored eyes were staring at him. They cut like lasers into his own. It felt as if his mind were being probed. He felt himself grow strangely weaker, and paralysis took his body. Suddenly, the beating footsteps took over his mind again. What was going on...?

"Hello, earth to Alex?" Erica tapped him on the shoulder. "Is it your zone-out day or something?"

Alex shook his head. "Sorry, sis. I don't know what's going on either," he said, brow furrowed and looked back at the black-haired boy. "Sorry, but do I have something on my face?" The other said nothing, instead simply smirking and turning around. Needless to say, Alex did not like being ignored. "Hey! I'm talking to you!"

"You have no need to." Alex took a sharp intake of breath as the boy actually spoke to him. Funny, he didn't seem like the type to talk about things, like... anything. "After all, tonight at eleven o' clock," he raised his hand and snapped his fingers mysteriously, suddenly catching his attention like a bird in a cage, "you will not be able to speak."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Alex exclaimed. She gripped onto his waist, either protectively or using him as a human shield; it didn't matter as long as she was still there. "What, are you going to kill me or something!?" He narrowed his eyes as the mystery man walked away, hands in his pockets. The sunglasses shone darkly, and Alex and his sister turned away. The snap of the fingers still held him entranced and he stared up at the sky, waiting.

Stop. Smirk. Disappear. "I found him, the link of the worlds..."

That night, Alex leaned back against the brick wall of the flat and yawned, until his sister thrust a muffin they had bought that morning into his mouth and he nearly choked to death trying to chew and swallow it. It was five minutes to eleven. They were intentionally playing hooky from the burden of the family. Besides, they were just a block away from the apartment. They could get there before midnight if they ever managed to lose track of the time which, judging by her glowing digital watch, was not going to be a easy task.

"Are you so sure about this?" he asked her, and she looked at him from the small wall bordering the raised flower bed. Her smile was almost addictive. Somehow he couldn't help but grin brightly himself.

She stretched out, something that if left unchecked would certainly have some perverts staring at her hungrily, and stopped mid-way, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. "Are you kidding me?" she said, gobsmacked. "I'm so sure about this that if I'm wrong I'll eat my shoes!" Not a usual bet from her but, then again, there was no strange scheme the girl wouldn't concoct. The poor older sibling crossed his arms and gave her a very strange look.

"So you're betting your shoes on... what?"

She shrugged. "On Gramps telling us off."

"So in order to prove-"

"That you don't have to listen to him!"

"In order to prove that I don't have to listen to our grandfather Sephiros Karsath, the great Swordsmaster Of Darkness, if he tells us off for not coming home on time you're going to eat faux leather." A nod signalled a positive answer. "So, what happens if he gives us a swordful instead of a mouthful?"

She held up a large broom. "Easy," she said. "You get into a fencing match, I flee from battle, you use your super-awesome battle skills to wear Gramps out, and I get to eat a wig instead of my shoes. Easy as blueberry pie."

He raised an eyebrow at the nonsensical rubbish forming from his own little sister's mouth. If she had gotten the looks, he had definitely received the brains at the very least. Sure, she was blonde, pretty and altogether rather adorable in the way that it made even him sometimes turn to mush. She looked like the perfect mix of their two relatively attractive parents, although slightly muddy eyes served to ruin that. She was the one they were very proud of, even though she only scraped through school. Meanwhile, he was absorbed in video games, books, he aced most challenges thrown at him and he wasn't really anything to look at. He was just a regular brunet with dark eyes and a less than jumpy attitude. He gained less of a positive note in response for his almost cliché bed temper.

And because of this, all of her plans were doomed to fail while he found the true result to be a little unnerving. He couldn't see any way in which he could win any battle, whether it was fencing, fist-fight or even good old Snap, versus the man he had dubbed the One Winged Angel. He was going to be nothing more than a slice of toast. With butter. And maybe some marmalade... "And how does this work with me living afterwards?"

She mimed stroking a beard. Of course, being a thirteen-year-old girl meant she didn't have a beard to stroke. "Hmm... I thought you were pretty good at sword fighting, actually..."

He tried not to laugh. "Pretty good versus the super-swordsmaster," he said to himself jokingly, although it wasn't meant to come out like that at all. "It sounds like a very bad wrestling match. And a very painful one too."

"Just think of it like a boss battle!" she said, and he sighed. He would never get anything that made sense from his little sister as long as she was not legally considered insane. He needed to take her to a clinic or something to get her sorted out. "Yeah, you know, when the bad guys always have, like, three-hundred times more HP than you, and they have the most über-cool attacks that rain fire on your head and set your butt on fire and throw miniature sculptures of Christ the Redeemer at your back when the timing's just perfect, and according to them you're always considered worthless in comparison, and-"

"Shut it." He closed his eyes and sighed. He was always very touchy about these things. When told he was worthless he was prone to lash out at whoever was telling him that, be they fictional and in video games or living and breathing and being. She knew that well herself; why wasn't she respecting that fact?
She crossed her arms, and her watch started beeping in the manner of the chimes of Big Ben: one for every hour passed. And on a twenty-four hour clock, that was a lot of beeping. She gasped, a little surprised, and looked down at it. "Twenty-three zero." She suddenly looked up at her brother, and gasped. "Alex?"

He stood there, completely silent. She couldn't catch a glimpse of his eyes as his head was bowed, but if she could she would see that they were completely blank. The beeping held him prisoner; as if chains were attached to his arms and legs he was completely taken by the noise. If she tried anything dangerous right now while the watch was counting twenty-three hours, he would remain completely immobile and unaware of anything going on around him.

"Alex? Wake up... Alex! ALEX!"

Sephiros looked up from his coffee. He had fallen asleep partway through the day. His daughter must have woken him up, but he couldn't remember. It was quiet outside. Not even a bird's wings could be heard. The streets were completely empty. All that he could hear was the noise of the watch beeping from over in the next street. He got up, abandoning his hot drink, and made his way to the window. The stars were all blinking out, one by one. He closed his eyes.

"It's time to inherit your destiny, Alexander."

Well, join me soon for the next chapter. Please R&R, it'd be appreciated by my friend Umiyuri. Sees ya!