Everything that appears in here is not mine, and is copyright Disney and/or Squaresoft or Donald P. Bellisario.
Ansem Leap
Part 1: "Chapters From a Self-Help Booklet"
"No admittance. Violators will be fed to Darkside."
So read the sign on the door to the laboratory on the top floor of Hollow Bastion castle. Cid paid it no mind (for he never did) and pushed the door open with his shoulder, as he was carrying a tray of hash browns and orange juice. Nothing like a little breakfast to start another morning of research and experimentation.
Cid was happy that the king had singled him out to be his assistant. Indeed, the name Cid was hardly uncommon in the world of Hollow Bastion, as roughly a dozen men of similar professions shared that name. Being the youngest, at just over 20, Cid certainly had a lot to live up to, and was glad to have this opportunity to prove himself to the king.
Cid kicked the door closed with his heel upon entering and smiled widely. "Good morning, everyone!" he announced to the denizens of the laboratory, which consisted entirely of machinery. Oh, how Cid loved his machinery. While the king came up with the theories, Cid designed the machines to test them. Therefore, his creations had greatly multiplied and found happy little homes in all corners of the lab.
"Good morning, Joselyn!" he chirped, patting an automated surgical device. The device did nothing in reply, but Cid was certain it had appreciated the gesture. He continued to the MRI-like tube and greeted it with, "Why, good morning, Rosalita!" The MRI also did not respond, but Cid knew it had feelings for him.
Setting the tray down on the lab bench, Cid approached the large computer in the back of the room. Waving heartily, he shouted, "Good morning, Ziggy!"
"Bite me," replied the computer in a monotone, female voice. Cid sighed in disappointment. Somehow, he thought that his relationship with Ziggy just was not working out. Although she always did what she was told, she certainly never sounded like she enjoyed her work.
All this was normal, of course, but Cid was beginning to feel that something else was amiss. Usually the king would have given him a dirty look by now for babying his inventions, or at least ordered him to go work on something. But, alas, the king had given no such response. He hardly ever left the laboratory anymore, so obsessed with his research he was. Granted, this did little to help his public image, as most of his subjects by now figured he'd either abandoned them or died. But as long as science was involved, Cid didn't really care what the king was up to.
Turning back to Ziggy, Cid queried, "Uh, where's the king?"
After some beeping and whirring, Ziggy helpfully responded, "There is a 93.2% chance that he is not here."
Cid sulked. Leave it to Ziggy to state the obvious, along with some made-up statistic.
He wandered over to the king's desk, hopeful that he'd left some sort of note or other such indication as to his whereabouts. After some rummaging, he came across a few loose pieces of paper, each with the title "Ansem Report" scrawled in the corner. Thank goodness the king still had the sense to keep notes.
Cid plopped down in the office chair there and rolled aimlessly around the lab while reading through the reports. Most of them were simply summaries of what they'd been up to until this point, so weren't terribly useful. Finally, he got to the last page of the reports and read the last line.
"I shall seek out the wielder of the Keyblade and the Princesses. My body is too frail for such a journey but I must do this. I will cast it off and plunge into the depths of the darkness."
Cid stared at this page flatly for a moment, occasionally turning it over to see if there was any more. Nope, that was it. No methodology, no timeline, no results, nada. If this was the king's desire, well, so be it, but the least he could do was tell someone what he had done in case something went wrong. Lack of notes made experiments hard to reproduce.
"Hey, Ziggy," said Cid, waving the final page in the air, "What was the king up to last night?"
"I wasn't paying attention," replied Ziggy in a monotone. This, of course, was a lie, since the computer was monitoring the happenings in the lab at all times, but she had probably stored the information in some obscure folder just to be difficult. Cid certainly had his work cut out for him.
Rising from the chair and tossing the stack of useless reports out the window, Cid snapped his goggles over his eyes and darkly announced, "Let's find the king."
Meanwhile, on another side, another story, Riku was executing a deep dive in search of a special secret. There was absolutely no reason for him to be doing this except to make one huge pun, so he surfaced and swam ashore.
On the shore sat Sora and Kairi, building a sand castle. Now, Riku had figured Kairi to be evil the moment he saw her, but considering his own inner bad-ass, he decided that this was pretty cool, so thought little of it. Sora, on the other hand, was quite possibly as far from being evil as a human is likely to get. However, due to that old saying that opposites attract, the three of them had ended up the best of friends.
"There!" announced Sora, patting the final clump of sand into the side of the castle, while Kairi added a little lift platform to the outside (for she insisted that castles all must come with lift platforms suspended on wires of energy). "What should the name of our castle be?"
"Castle Anthrax!" suggested Kairi, excitedly. Receiving some weird looks from the other two, she shrugged sheepishly and admitted, "It's not a very good name, is it?"
"How about Highwind Castle?" said Riku. For some reason, he was really stuck on the name "Highwind", naming everything from his sword to his shoes to his toothbrush "Highwind". Turning to Sora, he asked, "What do you think it should be called?"
Sora crossed his arms in deep thought. A little text box appeared in front of him, prompting him to enter the name of the sand castle. After some more thought, he finally submitted the brilliant name, "Castle".
"'Castle Castle'?" wondered Riku, raising an eyebrow. He certainly didn't want his precious word "Highwind" to be beaten out by something that obvious. The only way to settle this would be a ridiculous challenge that really had nothing to do with the matter at hand.
Before he could suggest such a thing, an errant wave came ashore and wiped the castle off the face of Destiny Island. The three stared blankly at the wet mound of sand left in its place for a moment, until Sora simply grinned and said, "Oh well! Whaddaya wanna do now?"
Kairi was about to suggest digging for oysters when she beeped. The lack of a startled reaction from the boys indicated that this was a normal thing for her, though.
"Oh, is it time for your, um, 'Secret Girly No-Boys-Allowed' thing?" wondered Sora, poking his finger to his temple in thought. Riku sighed in embarrassment, not really wanting to get into the private life of girls. He already knew more than he really cared to.
Kairi sighed in annoyance and trotted behind a rock, knowing that the boys had already learned not to follow her or ask questions. She tapped on her bracelet and a little monitor popped up. The image was riddled with static, but since the transmission was crossing worlds, this was to be expected.
"What do you want now, old man?" Kairi muttered into the receiver. "I've been looking for the Keyblade Master like you told me to, so what more do you want from me?"
"Hiiiiii, Kairi!" came a voice that was waaay too chipper to be Ansem. Well, maybe he'd had too much coffee. He'd been pulling all-nighters as of late, making caffeine essential to his survival. Instead, the face of a young man with ruffled blonde hair, blue eyes, and mechanical goggles popped on the screen. "It's me, Cid! The king's not here right now, which is why I called you."
Kairi facefaulted and ended up hitting her head on the rock she was hiding behind. "Cid?! Whaddaya mean he's not there? The guy would sooner wet his pants than leave that lab!"
"Those were my thoughts as well, but he's gone missing," explained Cid. "All I know is that he's cast off his body so he could become one with the darkness or something. Since you're involved in the project, too, I was wondering if you had any idea what that might mean."
Kairi shrugged nonchalantly and replied, "He's probably trying to become a Heartless." She paused a moment, blinking at a sudden realization. "Hey! I thought he said he was gonna come get me when I found the Keyblade Master! No fair! I don't wanna be stuck on this dumb little island forever!"
"Calm down, please, ma'am!" said Cid, waving frantically on the little monitor. "I understand how you feel, but I don't believe the king became a Heartless, or else Loren would've registered him." He held up a little device that kept track of the number of Heartless currently wandering around Hollow Bastion.
Kairi's eyebrow twitched. "You're still naming everything?" she muttered. "But if he didn't turn into a Heartless, then... was he trying to come and get me?" She poked her head over the rock and observed Sora and Riku bashing at each other with sticks. "But that means... one of them must be the Keyblade Master!"
"Perhaps that is the case," said Cid, shrugging helplessly. "But if the king intended to come get you, I would think he'd have arrived there by now. He disappeared over a week ago."
The background behind Kairi went dark and cracked, as a shadow appeared over her eyes. She was dead silent for a moment, as Cid pensively awaited her reaction to this. Finally, Kairi's face appeared to grow MUCH larger than it actually was, her eyes were set ablaze, and she almost appeared to grow fangs.
"You had better FIND that no-good excuse for a king and tell him to get his butt over here PRONTO or else I'm gonna get back to the castle MYSELF and grind him into HEARTLESS FEED! DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?!"
Cid, on the other hand, appeared to become very tiny as he meekly replied, "Y... yes, ma'am!" His image blipped off the screen and Kairi slapped her bracelet shut in an annoyed fashion. She sat there pouting for a while before she realized that no amount of screaming or threatening was going to bring Ansem back. Therefore, she'd have to make good on her threat and bring the Keyblade Master back to Hollow Bastion herself.
Sora and Riku watched Kairi emerge from behind the rock. Sora shivered momentarily and whispered to Riku, "I'm sure glad I don't have girly problems. She was screaming real loud that time." Riku nodded in solemn agreement.
Kairi skipped over to the two and smiled sweetly, all traces of her earlier bout either gone or cleverly masked. "Boys!" she said, grinning at them so forcefully that it looked like it made her face hurt. Sora and Riku gulped, not really sure what to expect.
"Let's go on... an adventure!"
"Yaaaaawwwwwnnnn..."
"Stop that! They'll be here soon enough."
Ansem sat up and draped his legs over the cliff, watching the world float by beneath him. He wasn't terribly sure what happened. He figured that becoming an existence of only the heart would lead him to Kingdom Hearts, but apparently something had gone amiss. Instead, he'd ended up on some sort of flying island. He found himself in the company of an old man with long white hair and a long beard, dressed in extravagant red and black clothing. The old man was apparently an emperor who was trying to take over the world or something, by using the power of three stone statues that were also on this flying chunk of land.
However, he apparently couldn't put his plan into motion until some members of a rebellion group tried to stop them. Thus, they'd been sitting there twiddling their thumbs for the past week and a half while the enemy group was undoubtedly leveling up or going on side quests on the ground.
Ansem really had no interest in the Emperor's meddlings, but being on a flying island, there really wasn't any other place to go. After a few days of complaining, he'd finally resigned himself to just waiting until the enemy party came.
That wasn't the only unnerving thing. A number of days ago, a rainstorm had not only drenched him (there wasn't really any shelter on this chunk of rock. Passages underground immediately popped him out on some other section of the island), but he'd caught a glimpse of his reflection in a puddle. And it wasn't what he remembered himself looking like.
He'd screamed the first time he saw it. The facepaint. The blonde hair. The gaudy green outfit. He ran around screaming incoherently for a while after that, but the Emperor's reaction seemed to indicate there was nothing unusual about this. Referring to both his appearance AND his attitude.
After some deep thought, Ansem surmised that his heart must have possessed someone else's physical form rather than be content to exist on its own. But he had no recollection of a place like this in Hollow Bastion. He must have crossed into another world.
"Wooooooow!" came a voice from beside him. He turned and saw a young man with ruffled blonde hair, a tight blue shirt and shorts, knee and elbow pads, and a large metal contraption around his chest looking over the edge of the floating continent. "This is simply amazing! How is it done?"
Ansem pointed at him. "Wait, aren't you...?"
"Cid!" said Cid, happily. "And I've finally found you, your majest.... EEEEEEEE!!" Cid leapt backwards when he caught site of Ansem's new appearance. Unfortunately, the direction of backwards did not have any land under it, and Cid would certainly be splattered on the surface of the planet miles below.
Instead, he just hovered there, as if still standing on solid ground. He looked down and noticed this. Shrugging, Cid stepped back onto the landmass and popped open a panel on the metal contraption on his chest. "I guess I'll have to re-work the boundary system in the holo-room a little," he admitted, tapping away on the keyboard.
"Cid! How the heck did you get here?" Ansem demanded, grabbing his assistant by the collar. Or, at least, he tried to, but he passed right through the young scientist.
"Whoops, sorry about that, your majesty!" said Cid. "I forgot to tell you that I only exist as a hologram. I compiled all of Ziggy's data on you to trace the characteristic waves of your heart and synched them with my own. Therefore, I can be projected straight into your heart, appearing as a hologram that only you can see and hear. See?" He bounded over to the Emperor and ran in circles around him, occasionally sticking his arm through the Emperor's head. The Emperor never noticed a thing.
Ansem stood there momentarily, thinking that that was kinda neat, but he needed to get back to the matter at hand. He was nowhere near Kingdom Hearts OR becoming one with darkness. Something needed to be done to remedy this.
"How do I get out of here?" Ansem asked.
Cid tapped at his console a little more, then shook his head. "Ziggy doesn't know." Ansem smacked his forehead at Cid's incessant need to name all his machines. "However," Cid continued, "She says that there's a 52.8% chance that if you seal off this world, your heart will go elsewhere."
Ansem sulked. "'Elsewhere' as in back to Hollow Bastion, or 'elsewhere' as in to some other crazy world?"
Cid poked the keyboard a few more times. "She just says 'elsewhere'."
Ansem was in the process of thinking that he had royally screwed himself over this time when the Emperor shouted, "They're finally here! Kefka, get ready!"
"I guess 'Kefka' must be the name of the person whose body you've taken over," Cid mused. Ansem's eyebrow twitched in annoyance. "But according to Ziggy, you need to effectively play the part of the person you've taken over to have a higher chance of getting out of here."
"Fine," Ansem grumbled, standing beside the Emperor. "What about 'sealing off the world'? How exactly do I do that? And if that 'Ziggy' of yours gives me some lame-brained statistic, don't bother telling me!" Cid was silent.
Ansem fumed and glared at the group of three that had just appeared before him. One was a woman with long blonde hair, a white cape, and a green leotard. The second was a man with short dark hair, a bandana, and a leather vest and pants. The third was a man with a blonde ponytail wearing an extravagant blue outfit and cape. These were the people who threatened Emperor Gestahl so? Well, if he was supposed to be in character (although he had no idea who this 'Kefka' character was), he figured he might as well give the role a try.
"I HATE YOU!" he shouted dramatically, pointing at the group ahead of him. Receiving a nonchalant look, he surmised that this was the sort of thing they expected of Kefka. He grinned.
"Celes!" shouted Emperor Gestahl. "Why did you betray us? Fight for us now, and we will overlook your treachery!" As he said this, beams of power erupted from the statues behind them, freezing the other two party members in place.
Ansem blinked in confusion, then quickly worked out that the woman "Celes" must have been an Imperial soldier at some point but had turned against the Empire. Going with the cliche, Ansem commanded, "Prove your loyalty to us by killing the others!" What a load of BS. But it apparently had some effect.
Celes held a sword over her frozen comrades, while obviously mentally fighting with herself. Ansem rolled his eyes, knowing that of course she wasn't going to kill them. She'd come to a final decision shortly, throw down the sword, help her friends escape, and be unswayed by the Empire's suggestions forevermore. Blah blah.
Unfortunately, that wasn't quite how it went. Rather than the ground, the next location of Celes's sword was Ansem/Kefka's stomach. Ansem looked down in shock. Yup, there was a sword in his stomach. It sure was uncomfortable. The only thing he could think of to say was, "Ow!" He looked up at Celes, at a loss for words. So, he fell back on the tried and true. "I HATE YOU!"
Ansem ripped the sword out of his stomach and tossed it aside. Well, at least he tried to. The next thing he heard was "OW!", and he looked over to see Emperor Gestahl staggering backwards. He staggered a little too much and ended up falling over the side of the floating continent, shouting, "Holy craaaaaaaappp!"
Ansem's lip twitched in disbelief. "Oops." He may have had a thing for darkness and Heartless and all, but he wasn't really the homicidal type.
"Are you okay, your majesty?" said Cid, appearing next to him. Ansem jumped at the man's sudden appearance, then checked himself over. Remarkably, he didn't appear to have any lasting injuries. This Kefka fellow sure was a force to be reckoned with.
"Look, Cid," grumbled Ansem, "I'm not any closer to getting out of this crazy world and this crazy man's body, so you can tell Ziggy where to stick it and I'll get out of here my own way!"
Cid was somewhat taken aback, but queried, "What did you have in mind?"
Ansem turned to Celes and her friends. "Look, I'm supposed to be their enemy, right? Instead, why don't I just let them escape? The Universe already seems pretty ticked off at me, but if I mess it up even more, maybe it'll have the sense to boot me outta here."
"But, Ziggy says there's a..."
"I don't CARE what Ziggy says!" roared Ansem. He looked at the two men that were still held in place by the magical field. Since the field originated from the statues, he figured that if he just pushed the statues off the cliff, the field would disappear and the group would be able to get away.
Ansem rolled up his sleeves and braced himself against the closest statue, pushing it towards the cliff.
"Oh, that's real smart, Kefka," came Celes's voice. "Disturb their delicate balance and they'll go haywire!"
Ansem bumped his head against the statue he was pushing. "Heh?" Come to think of it, he had no idea what these statue thingies were, or why they were so important. Messing with things he didn't fully understand was what got him into this mess in the first place, so maybe...
He didn't have time to think as a man dressed as a ninja came flying in and knocked him into the center of the three statues. The statues released their hold on the other party members as the ninja pushed one of the statues towards Ansem, pinning him between them.
"CIIIIIDDD!" Ansem shouted, trying to pry himself out from between the statues. Fortunately, he was shaken loose when the ground started to rumble and give way.
Cid came bounding over to him, completely oblivious to the quaking rocks. "Your majesty, you've done it!" Ansem gave him a blank look as Cid tapped frantically on his console. "According to Ziggy, there's an 88.4% chance that destroying a world or completely messing it up is the key to sealing it off. Apparently the balance of those statues was what was holding this world together."
Ansem continued to look blankly at Cid. "Heh?"
He didn't have time to say much else, as he was engulfed in a rush of darkness. Ah, darkness. It was what he most desired. It felt just like when he had discarded his body initially. This must mean that he was finally ridding himself of Kefka's body and going "elsewhere". Hopefully this meant Hollow Bastion.
Ansem opened his eyes groggily and rubbed his forehead. Bright. It was far too bright. This definitely wasn't Hollow Bastion. It was loud, too. It sounded like there was some sort of festival going on, and he was in the middle of it.
He finally focused on the outside world and noticed a female dancer in front of him. She had dark skin and cascades of black hair tied back in a ponytail. She was wearing a suggestive red dress and twirling a patterned piece of purple silk.
Without warning, the dancer jumped into his lap and wrapped the piece of silk around the back of his head, caressing his face. Ansem gulped, and muttered to himself, "Oh boy..."
Just a note, since I'm sure most people reading this don't know: The Cid in this fic is from the recent TV show "Final Fantasy: Unlimited" (currently, the only way you'll find this series State-side is through fansubs). The role was originally going to be given to Lucca from Chrono Trigger, but after a suggestion from a friend, Cid Unlimited seemed to be a better fit ^_^*.