Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts was created by Square-Enix and Tetsuya Nomura. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a Disney Production. Final Fantasy Tactics also belongs to Square Enix, and the Phantom of the Opera belongs to its original writer, Gaston Leroux. Some dialogue will be taken directly from HoND ...I think that's everyone now. Let's get this show on the road.
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Kingdom Hearts: Monster and Man
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Un
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Even before the construction of the great cathedral that marked its crystal blue skies as a jewel of religious expression, the city of Notre Dame had seen its fair share of strange travellers. From far off lands they came, seeking to pay their respects or simply a place to hide from the eyes of the law, for its underground was every bit as grand. All the same, today's visitor might have attracted a few odd glances at least, what with his foreign garments of black and white, short stature, spiky brown hair, and unusually large footwear. They might have looked at him funny, were today not the annual Festival of Fools, a day when no look was too strange or far-fetched. The city's common hustle and bustle had been replaced with the fever pitch of celebration in the square outside the cathedral, and the Festival had not even properly started yet.
Inevitably feeling out of place, the traveller kept walking... and nearly toppled over in surprise when a foam caricature of a man in a dark robe popped up before him in an expression of pure, if silly, rage. "Desoleeee!", someone exclaimed from across the way, rushing up to the traveller and catching the bouncing attacker spring. "A thousand apologies, petit garcon! Judge Claude-Frollo here wasn't supposed to go off 'till we got started. But you know how he is- perhaps someone mentioned the 'G' word, ha ha!"
Sora stood, still trying to make sense of what this hyper little man was saying. He certainly looked just as odd as his talk, dressed in a riotous combination of purples and yellows, complete with a drama mask obscuring the upper part of his face and a jaunty blue chapeau. The closest approximation he could think of was that of a court jester. "Uh, thanks mister. I just didn't expect that thing popping up on me like that."
The man chuckled again, carefully tucking the puppet back into the barrel he'd hidden it in. "But of course, now we know it works. And they say you can't depend on the Courts of Justice. You are here for the Feast of Fools then, eh?"
Having taken in the various colored banners and tents being put up around the square, he could at least figure what he meant by that. He smiled. "Well, it looks like it's gonna be pretty fun... But I'm actually looking for someone."
"And so you have found someone! Congratulations!", the man replied, enthusiastically shaking the boy's hand, only stopping when seeming that he'd failed to shake the gloom the boy had been carrying into Paris with him "Ah... sorry. I know what you meant. Forgive me. A boy of your age should not bear such a heavy heart. I can see it in your eyes." Straightening up now, he gave a formal bow, "J'mappelle Clopin. Et tu?"
If only for Clopin's sake, he cracked a smile at the man. "It's Sora. I'm looking for a woman named Relena. Do you know her?"
"Relena", Clopin whispered, pacing while hunched over, muttering the name over to himself as if in deep thought. "Relena, Relena, Relena-lena-lena-Iii'm afraid you are behind the times, monsieur."
"What do you mean?", Sora replied, accidentally shouting in disappointment. "She lives here, doesn't she?"
"In a fashion", Clopin noted, for once allowing sadness to dull his merry outlook. "If it is Madame Relena you seek, monsieur, I would suggest you ask around and find out yourself. Better yet, go ask them.", he jerked his gloved thumb over at a pair of lightly-armored figures any visitor could tell were soldiers. They were posted at the entrance onto Main Street. Both looked grumpy.
"Guards, huh", Sora observed, sizing them up from a safe distance.
"Frollo's thugs. Ask them and they'd probably arrest you", the jester deadpanned, for once in a serious whisper, though he still pantomimed what came next. "One show trial later and- Ragga-ragga-ragga-eeeeee-CLUNK!"
Sora grimaced and touched his neck's flesh gingerly, his memories of another world that employed that gruesome practice flooding back. "Thanks for the warning, Clopin. But you don't need to worry- I'm good fighter. I've beaten things that could eat those guys in one gulp."
"Fair enough", the jester remarked, still looking over the boy's strange, strange clothes, one hand on his shoulder as he bent over. "Gypsy or no, you're a friend, monsieur Sora. But I'd stave off finding Madame Relena until everyone's done with the Festival. Besides, it's a spectacle you won't want to miss!" His old jovial self again, the man jogged off to help set up the decorations.
He watched the soldiers. For a moment, Sora considered doing exactly what Clopin had warned against. He could take them. He could take them easy. Strike them both down before they drew their swords. By the time the others called reinforcements, he could be gone. It would feel so good to work off some tension... NO. I can't.Events had not yet hardened his heart so much that he would attack men without reason, no matter how angry he was now at the hand he'd now been dealt. If he could keep on going on like that for several minutes without Kairi's terrified face flashing into his mind, he might yet make it through the day.
Breathe. What, then? The jester was right. Asking around about Relena during the Festival of Fools would only draw suspicion- the last thing he wanted to do was start a fight that ruined this celebration Clopin's people had arranged. As difficult as it would be for him to enjoy this revelry now, it seemed his best option of getting in touch with the people here-
"You were looking for Relena, sir?"
Sora spun around and saw another young man who clearly did not belong here. He had a dome of blond hair and an extremely small, nearly invisible nose, but those features did not alleviate the danger sense two years of fighting Heartless and Nobodies had created going off in his head like an alarm bell. This strange-looking man might have been only a few years past Sora's age, but he was as much a veteran warrior as he.
Slowly, cautiously, he stepped forward. "Yes. Do you have any idea where she is?"
The blond man shrugged. "Not a one. But as I've learned, hang out in the local tavern long enough and you hear the tales, rumors about the place. More specifically, that place." He pointed.
Keeping his hands ready just in case, Sora nonetheless gazed upon the Notre Dame Cathedral in wonder. Two square turrets split off from the main structure and towered over the city, both they and the 'base' decorated with the finest stained-glass and statuework he had ever seen in all the worlds. From within, one could still make out the sound of bells ringing from within the turrets.
"The cathedral of Notre Dame", the stranger remarked. "The locals say that a monster lives up there in the bell tower, a deformed hunchback who rings the bells every day. From that incredible vantage point, one might see all sort of things throughout the city, wouldn't they?"
"If he's real", Sora replied, still not fully relaxed with the blond man as he had been with Clopin. "My Island once had this rumor that the cave near the pier had a door to another world in it."
The irony of this statement was lost on the stranger. "No one's going to talk to you while the Festival's going on, and you don't seem to be in a partying mood", he observed neutrally. "When you're looking for a needle in a haystack, you start at the top."
"Good advice", the younger boy acknowledged, for once feeling flickers of adventure starting up again in his heart. "But how would I climb up that? They're not going to let me into that Cathedral while the Festival is going on", he noted sadly, pointing to two soldiers at the entrance. Like before, he could defeat them easily, but it would start an unwanted commotion. It wasn't worth it just to chase a rumor.
"Oh, I think you'll find a way", the stranger answered quizzically. "You look like the limber type. I'm afraid I can't follow with all this on."
Sora looked back, now seeing the hard shapes and symbols etched into inflexible carapace armor beneath the man's simple blue shirt, the same shade as his old 'Wisdom' Drive. "Then you enjoy the Festival. I'll tell you what I find when I get back, Mr...?"
The stranger smirked, though not unfriendly. "I'd prefer to keep that under wraps for now. Like Madame Relena, mine is a name that'll get you a short drop and a sudden stop around here. It's best if you don't know it."
"Fair enough, Mr. Blank. But I won't forget.", Sora grinned mischievously, dashing down an alleyway before turning his attention to what promised to be a long climb.
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Clopin had requested to his men that he be left alone in his tent until the appointed hour. It was not a request he made often. These aspiring entertainers were also his sworn brothers, after all, bonded to him in friendship somehow made even stronger by their collective persecution by the church. Yet, at the same time he knew there was precious little to his life outside the life of the gypsy entertainer. Everyone, both within the caravan and out there in the city knew the jester to be a source of great energy and mirth, able to make light of even an execution if the weight of such an event was too great to bear. The children of Notre Dame loved him and his puppet shows, his pantomimes, and he loved them back for their innocence and acceptance. Sometimes he still felt like a child himself.
Sitting here in the regal blues of his tent, with his purple mask removed, steepled fingers and his raven black hair brushed back, he had likewise let his other mask slip. It was not always a mask, true. Happiness was Clopin's nature from birth to death, for unlike money or friends it was something that required amazing amounts of effort for someone to take away from him. Still he could not deny how meeting the young boy named Sora had accidentally opened some old wounds.
"Relena", he whispered to the mirrors and the masks. "Oiiii, pauve mademoiselle... Is this your doing? Is the boy a sign, or is this simply chance? More than three years, and every day my heart still aches for you."
He might have waited two minutes, five, ten, before someone parted the curtains. "Here you are! I was starting to worry."
Clopin wasn't angry. He brushed off his tears and arched his neck backwards over the chair, beholding how the woman looked upside-down. A rare beauty she was, her dark skin and darker hair accentuating a pair of glittering green eyes. But he had known Esmerelda long enough to know well that she was more than merely eye candy beneath that simple white peasant's tunic. This one, she had fire in the belly, driven onwards by the same reckless energy as he, unable to lay low for long even in these circumstances. She was even more stubborn an apprentice than her pet goat, Djali. Perhaps if she had been many years older and of fairer skin, he might have believed her to be the reincarnation of his beloved Relena.
"Ah, madame Esmerelda, but you should know Clopin does not seek out Trouble, for Trouble is blind as justice. I suspect Trouble has tripped and fallen into mon sewer again."
Esmeralda snorted dismissively at the upside-down head. Despite all the time they had spent together in the Gypsy caravan, there were times when she failed to grasp that this was his job. To make people laugh. To show them a good time. The Lord knew there was too little levity in the world as things stood. "Guess again. Trouble's coming up main street, and he's not happy."
Now it was Clopin's turn to snort as he pulled his head back up, again donning the mask- Esmerelda was one of the few that had ever seen him without it. "Is he ever? Trouble makes great use of the palace, Clopin is certain. Testing out how many different ways there are to frown and scowl while he eats alone. If he eats."
Not even this could make her chuckle, not where their mutual antagonist was concerned... and that concerned Clopin. Even his leftover distaste from three years ago was but a spark before Esmerelda's inferno towards their embittered host, and she was the more reckless between the two of them. One of these days, she would go too far, and then... The inevitable results were something he dreaded above all else.
But he let none of this appear on his face. There was a show to run after all, and he was the ringleader. "Are we set, then?"
The young woman gave back a mock-military bow in the affirmative, cracking a smile at its peak. "And then some. You should get a load of some of the ugly crowd this year, I saw this one guy with a mask that-"
The jester hushed her with one finger to the lips. "Hush now, child. Let us allow the results to speak for themselves, eh?"
With that, they both strode from the tent into a blossoming rain of confetti, interspersed with all manner of wind socks and tableaus. Here a flying paper dragon, there a fat man posing as a king. He was glad to see such variety this year- he'd had a hand in making several of them of course.
He did not look at the one guest they had who was not partying or drinking. He already knew the wrinkled pale skin, upturned lip and graying hair of the famous Judge Claude-Frollo just as well as he knew his history of persecution and countenance, sitting in the upraised podium and flanked by soldiers. The same priestly purple and black robes, all the time. Clopin forced a grin onto his game face by imagining what Frollo's wardrobe might be like as he strode towards the main stage.
They did notice, though, that Frollo had a new captain of the guard. A round-faced lad with rust-brown hair complimenting rust-red armor. So young! It was amazing to think that the lad could be capable of carrying out the kinds of orders Frollo's previous elderly captain had been given, but the large, ebony hilt of the blade resting at his side spoke volumes. This one was a trained killer, and likely had been for quite some time before being summoned to Paris to serve under Frollo. Desole.
There was no time to dwell on it. Clopin cleared his throat and arranged a formal bow to the man as though he wasn't the one who had burnt his Relena alive. The mask was safely in place again. Frollo would not see the slightest inkling of wrath, only a harmless, simple fool of a clown. Let him keep on believing. No one escapes the judgement of God forever.
"A-hehehem. Gentlemen, ladies.... HERE IT IS! OUR ANNUAL FEAST OF FOOLS!"
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Why be chained bound around this cold and dismal place?
Not for any mortal sin, but the wickedness of abhorrent face
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M: Perhaps an explanation is in order. This story is set after KH2, and will detail the events of Sora's adventures in a world based off the Hunchback of Notre Dame, which I consider to be one of Disney's best animated films back in the day. I previously created a summary of such a crossover in my previous story, 'Evil's Call', but this story will go much deeper and cover large tracts of the movie's events with Sora and other characters, such as the stranger in this chapter, thrown in. I hope you enjoy it.
Owing due to lack of reception, I'll be putting my Death Note fiction on hold for now, but I'm open to requests to proceed with one or the other.