Let it be known, that this is the rewrite of my very first story. This revision project is dedicated to my editor/partner/good friend Neassa.

Everything blacked out for a moment. My eyes scanned every direction they could but all I saw was black. I looked down at my hands. I could still see myself but I just stood there somehow in a void of nothing. The beads of sweat collecting atop of my brow were running down my face and neck. The darkness was getting…hot? I couldn't understand it myself but it was happening. My body grew tense under waiting for anything to happen in the darkness.

'C'mon' I thought. 'Let me be able to see…'

Small waves of grey started to form all around the black. They were all vibrating slowly but oddly enough they seemed to act as erasers, clearing the black and revealing the landscape that surrounded me.

Finally the dark cleared away and blue was its substitute. I looked down at my feet to see a blue stone pillar beneath me. It was raised only a couple of feet from the rocky floor which was also colored blue. By the looks of it, I was in a cave. A strange wind rolled into the cave with a calming coolness that hit my hot face. White and blue crystals were jutting out from the cave floor in an interestingly ornate design. They glowed brightly while they seemed to create a large round circle around me.

I heard the noise of a soft hum and I whipped around in its direction. There was a black and purple oval-shaped vortex floating about a couple of yards away. Something was coming from there.

A black mist began to slowly spray from the smoke. Next thing I knew I could make out little dark spots against the purple center. The spots turned into fingers. After the black fingers came a spiked black hand that curled up into a fist. I had to ready myself. I stretched both of my hands out just as I had grown accustomed to doing but this time there was no grand flash of light, only glimmers.

'Damn, damn, not now! I know what I did but please not now!'

Following the fist was a wrist, and then an arm. The pace at which it was exiting was quicker. Before I could think of anything else, a shoulder was jutting out.

My heartbeat began to race in desperation. With each attempt to call my weapons I only received more glimmers of light but they were growing into small flashes, almost like a bright light turning on and then abruptly going out.

An upper torso began to emerge while the black hand was beginning to flash sparks of its own.

"C'mon, c'mon!" I began to shout at my hands. The flashes were getting bigger but they were fading in and out at the same rate of a slow pulse. I looked ahead to see a sinister black ball of dark energy growing in size in the black hand. In a matter of seconds its size went from that of a basketball to the girth of a bear.

'Crap, if I can't get any kind of defensive help I can only hope to dodge'

It was with that thought however that the cave seemed to eavesdrop into my mind. There was a hefty rumbling as the cave and the crystals inside all began to shake. The pillar I was standing on suddenly started to sink down until it seemed to melt into the ground.

A sharp crash resonated through the cave followed by several others. I looked around to see crystals flying from their stuck roots and surrounding me. The points planted themselves neatly to my side and behind me. They began to stack and before I knew it, there was a makeshift crystal corridor enclosed around me. I was at one end with the huge threatening ball of hurt at the other. My jaw dropped in disbelief at the added disadvantage tossed at me.

"I hate caves" I croaked with a dry throat. My attention snapped back to my desperation as I felt the pulses in my hands getting larger. I felt a floating piece of hope.

'Just a little bit more…'

There was a deafening boom. I looked straight ahead to see the ball of darkness whirling straight towards me, fiercely closing the distance and sinking my formerly rising hope.

"Think fast!" I shouted to myself. A combined split-second choice of instinct and reflex threw my hands forward in an attempt to at least keep the ball away from my face. I could only close my eyes and look away. My face was going to be the least of my worries in a moment…

Time seemed to slow to a frame by frame rate in my mind.

I felt the heat of the ball wash over my hands inches away as it was about to collide. I gritted my teeth and tensed my arms to try anything to deflect the ball. There was a strong pulse that shot from my shoulder and ran straight to my hands. The second I attempted to open my eyes, a white hot flash blinded me completely and I lost all feeling in my body.

'No…too late…not enough…' I thought in broken pieces. My mind seemed to fly away in a mental vacuum.

Other than what seemed to be my impending (and unfair) death, I couldn't help but think where was that moment? That moment people say comes right before you're supposed to die, how your whole life is supposed to flash before your eyes. Where was my standard final replay of my existence?

Oddly I couldn't think about my whole life. That was the life I had left behind, a life gone and done with. I could only think back to the last day of normalcy I had before everything went wrong…

***

There was a little bit of warmth falling upon my closed eyes. There were two shafts of light falling through the two windows at the head of the bed. The sunrise was gently attempting to move me awake. It worked, I mean I was awake but I insisted on keeping my eyes closed, wanting more sleep.

'Just five more minutes' I spoke in my head. 'Or ten. Or fifteen. Whatever, just let me take my time…'

I didn't want to leave my cocoon of warmth and comfort but a gut feeling reminded me of what was coming any moment now. My own self editing product of a heavy rim shot would be coming right about…

BOOM

'Damn it all…'

Next thing I knew, the chorus riff from "Some Skunk Funk" by the Brecker Brothers was blasting next to my head, saxophones, drums, keys and funk guitar in all its glory. Needless to say this was my signal to promptly jolt up, grab my cell phone and cancel the jazz/funk madness before I woke up the rest of my family.

I sat up in my bed, gripping the now silenced cellular device in my left hand while my right held my head up. Not the most elegant way to start up the morning but it had to be done. I couldn't wake up on time any other way. I opened my mouth wide and let my arms stretch up slowly before shaking my head to snap myself back to the real world.

"At least it's Friday" I yawned to myself. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed to stand up, I decided to more or less graciously take my time walking to the bathroom. It really felt more of a post-modern zombie shuffle but no judge of morning ceremonies would look down on that.

Walking inside, I turned on the light and glanced at the mirror to take a look at what exactly dragged its self into the light. It was male and looked roughly 5'6 in height with light tan skin. Its figure was overall thin. He wasn't the most muscular or chiseled of his race but he had a decent amount of strength to haul music equipment along with the lungs and legs of a sub-par cross-country runner to be considered a fit seventeen year old. On its shoulders was a head with dark brown eyes and the characteristic flat nose that came with being Filipino, though his was less flat than most.

'What is on my head…?'

His hair at the moment was a classic mess of a huge bed-head, one side going up while the other side attempted to go someplace else but apparently got lost and took many wrong turns. The whole specimen was dressed in long blue pajama pants, a black t-shirt and socks.

"Well" I spoke to myself. "Time to clean up"

After a good and lengthy hot shower I looked back to the mirror to see if the specimen's mane was more controlled now. It resumed its normal, uncharacteristically straight, yet up, yet thick, yet puffed out in a neat faux-afro/mullet like fashion. Upon realizing it was being observed it gave its mane a quick shake to loosen it up.

Leaving the specimen to resume its daily life, I headed back to my room to get dressed. A pair of dark blue straight-leg jeans went on first with a black leather belt around my waist before I opened the shelves of a dresser to take a shirt.

'What shirt says "I'm happy today's Friday?'

I pulled out a solid black v-neck graphic t-shirt, a shirt that I had come to enjoy wearing for two reasons. One was the design: a grey arm rising vertically with its hand throwing up the universal sign of rocking out with alternating yellow-red-yellow wording saying "Rock-Paper-Scissors". That was sweet. Second was the store in which I bought it from. I didn't know Forever 21 even had a men's section but I concluded my lack of knowledge was just ignorance. The fact that they always kept that section way, WAY in the back of the store behind the entire woman's clothing front could've been a factor too. I laughed at the memory of how I came to own this piece of clothing.

'Her suggestion led to a pretty fun day...'

I cleared my head of memories and the shirt was simply put on. The next daily motion was to grab my various pocket items and other various items/accessories that were on top of the dresser: a wallet, pen, house keys and guitar picks, or small, thin, wedge-ish shaped pieces of plastic guitar players commonly use for those who didn't know.

My right hand reached out to put on my high school class ring. It was a nice piece. Sterling silver body with an aquamarine gemstone along with my name engraved around the inner band.

"Francis-Raphael Garcia Muyalde" I read to myself. "Go parents for devising complicated and fancy sounding names"

I chuckled at that before I realized my left hand was reaching out towards a small blue gift box. I stopped my hand. It ended up hovering over the simple box.

'No, just bring your hand back and walk away'

I gave a sigh as I closed my eyes. My mouth had gone into a small frown. Pulling my hand back to myself I turned around, grabbed my phone off my bed and proceeded to head downstairs to put on my shoes.

I put on my selected pair of black sneakers (one of the few visibly existing pair of Ice Creams I once again happily told myself), treated myself to a cheese/sugar topped oriental pastry with milk for breakfast, grabbed my black/grey book-bag and headed outside to have my loving mother take me to school.

"HURRY UP!" she yelled from the wheel. "YOU'RE GONNA BE LATE AGAIN YOU MOVE SO SLOW COME ON HURRY UP!"

I heaved another heavy sigh as I walked to take my place in shotgun.

Time is near...

I turned my head in the direction of the noise. There was no human being there. And no sign of anybody hiding or running away. There was only a squirrel on my neighbor's lawn. I hated squirrels. They looked like rats with furry tails that had a tendency to stare at you for extended periods. I shuddered at it, forgetting about the voice that I took as my wild imagination toying with me. I took my seat and my mom took off as she kept up her morning tirade.

"Yes" I nodded my head to her as she went through her usual morning interrogation. "No I'll be fine I have time to make homeroom. Yes I have all my stuff. No I believe I'm old enough to not have you coddle me. I'm a senior mom, not a junior. Yes. Yes. No. I love you too mom"

I shot her my usual cheesy big smile I gave her in the mornings. She responded by tussling my hair and smiling back. I hopped out of the car and stood in front of my semi-large high school. I realized it had quickly gotten warmer as the sun shone brightly on this spring Friday.

"Alright, let's get going I suppose"

So the day commenced with homeroom. Twenty minutes of "Good morning", random conversations with friends, people copying/doing homework due the period after, the pledge of allegiance and after that, morning announcements over the intercom.

European History was up for me afterwards. Revolutions, innovations, lots of counts and dukes and peasant uprisings on the current agenda.

A study hall came next, or as I like to call it, second breakfast/nap time. One of my friends has an iPhone app titled "Drunk Texts from Last Night" which always provides lots of laughs to brighten up sluggish mornings.

Psychology followed. Mental functions and theories abound for a full period.

Jazz band afterwards gave me a moment to finally plug in my guitar and play my feelings away. And head banging to metal with my band director helps get the blood flow going.

Gym was next. Oh gym volleyball leagues, how I absolutely have so much fun with you.

Computer programming: Can't say much about that class. Making a calculator is more difficult than I ever imagined.

Lunch. My table is like a live version of Manswers combined with a sports talk show. Except minus the steady stream of supermodels but I digress.

Calculus, now there's nothing like fresh derivatives and the occasional episode of 'Numbers' right after lunch.

English was the final frontier for me this year. I really disliked how everything and I mean everything seemed to slow down in this class. I looked outside the window and I could've sworn I saw a kid running in slow motion. My friend sitting next to me told me that it was just a junior high track runner.

"By the way, you want your Kingdom Hearts games back?" he asked me. I looked at him as my mind did a mental double take. I hadn't played any Kingdom Hearts game since I beat the second one and that was around two years ago. I had failed to play Chain of Memories and I was still saving up to buy a DS and 358/2 Days. I sat there in thought for a moment as I faded out my teacher's lecture on Macbeth.

'Those games were pretty awesome, and shooting people over and over again in Call of Duty is getting a tad tedious. Nazi Zombies was still pretty damn fun though…'

"Yeah sure, drop them in my mailbox after school?"

"You boys wish to weigh in on Macbeth's current condition?"

We both looked to see our English teacher, a well-built bald white male with a cleft chin, whose surprisingly vast knowledge of literature complimented his quite large frame. He was wearing a red collared shirt tucked into his khaki pants held by a black leather belt with a black velvet tie with, of course, black dress shoes. He was holding a copy of Macbeth in one hand, staring us down and clicking randomly with his computer mouse.

There was an awkward lull. The chirping of crickets was replaced by mouse clicks. One pair of male eyes and a dozen pairs of female eyes were on me and my friend. Our luck to have been the two brave men who ventured into an advanced placement English course outnumbered six to one by women. And we sat in the center of the room too. I decided to take chance, having read a bit of the section we were on.

"Well I think it's simple to say that the man is going mad for all intents and-"

DING DING

My friend and male cohort was named Hector. He offered me a high five on our way out the door. I gladly took it. I was reeling from the relief of finally being free for another weekend.

"Saved by the bell once again" I laughed. Hector simply shook his head in disbelief as we walked to our lockers. His purposely sagged light blue jeans and fitting white muscle polo with white sneakers contrasted with my belt held pants, shoes and small yet loose shirt.

"You and your clutch luck" he pointed out while scratching his buzz-cut hair. "I didn't think we were gonna make it out of that one alive"

"Yeah yeah" I replied. "Let's just make sure we actually read so we have a clue next time"

We both stopped walking and looked at each other for a moment. Then we started mock laughing to the point of really laughing to the point of needing to catch our breath. We both knew neither of us wasn't even going to look at what needed to be done till Sunday night, or in some cases Monday morning homeroom.

"I got track right now so I'll drop off your games after practice, cool?"

I gave him the approving nod and we both headed to our respective lockers. I grabbed my book-bag and walked out the school doors. Since today was Friday that meant my mom was out on errands while my dad was at work. Simply put, I was walking home. I started my trek uphill as I slipped my earbuds into their respective ears and hit 'shuffle' on my Apple relic of a first generation iPod nano.

'Gah, curse you school for being situated at the bottom of the hill'

I made my way over the hill and onto the sidewalk lining the main road. I kept crossing streets and making turns, the directions I knew well guiding me. I was walking down another hill since my house was also at the bottom of a hill. I trudged along

Francis!

A female voice. A too familiar female voice. I stopped walking and turned around.

Nobody.

I felt the familiar small frown and sadness come back. Ninety nine percent of me knew it was impossible for her to be here but the remaining one percent still wanted her to.

'Stupid brain, playing tricks on me…'

My attention waned long enough that I realized the music in my ears had stopped. I pulled the small rectangle out of my pocket to see what had happened. The headphone jack had come out which prompted the player to stop playing. I looked at the title of the song it stopped. It hadn't even started yet. It was her song. I hit skip.

Roughly ten songs of an average length of three minutes later I finally made it home. I smiled at the red brick goodness that was my home and I walked up the front steps. I noticed that the mailbox cover was raised up.

'Props to punctual mailmen for being good at their job'

Opening the mailbox I found no letters, nor any paper. Instead there were two familiar plastic rectangles housing PS2 games. I pulled them out and confirmed my thoughts. My copies of Kingdom Hearts one and two were back in my hands. My attention shifted to a third object in the mailbox that was being covered by the two larger ones. It was a manila colored square envelope. There was a sticky note attached to the front written on in a very neat yet childish handwriting. My inner office geek yelled 'Comic Sans'.

'Terribly sorry for this but say your last goodbyes soon! The disc is your ticket!'

I stood dumbfounded at the front of my door. I knew track practice lasted longer than the half-hour it took for me to walk home. But this handwriting wasn't Hector's. His writing had its own Rosetta stone I used to decipher his notes. I shook my head. It had to be nothing. But then again they all had to have reached my mailbox in some way.

"What's this so called disc?" I muttered to myself. I looked to the flap covering the opening. I stared at it questioningly for a moment as I held the two games in one hand and the envelope in the other. I shrugged my shoulders. I opened the flap and reached inside. I pulled out an average looking disc. It was colored white on top and had all the attributes of a normal disc. I felt relieved at not finding a bomb or something stupid but I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Semi-cryptic notes usual mean either dangerous things or cool things were coming but I shrugged my shoulders at the plainness of everything. No blood, no foul. Taking my house key out of my pocket I unlocked the door and headed inside carrying the contents of the mailbox with me.

"I'm hooooooome!" I shouted. A silence answered me back. Slipping off my shoes and putting them aside I walked from the tile area around the door to the maroon rug carpeting that lined the house floor. I put down my book bag and the games on the dark brown coffee table with the white disc in the envelope on top. My stomach began to cry for food. I looked down at my complaining friend and patted it. "Yeah I think its time to eat too" I casually walked into the kitchen with its wooden floor, stone countertop and various appliances in sleek silver metal jackets. I scavenged around for food. There was no note on the fridge so everything seemed to be typically normal. Opening the freezer I found the bag of frozen hot wings and I instantly grinned.

'Epic wings of fire coming right up!'

Just before I about to rip the top off the bag I felt a pulsating vibration in my left pocket. I put down the wings to dig inside for my phone. The caller ID gave only 'Private Caller' and I groaned in protest at the familiar situation.

'Please don't tell me you're another person who's looking for a Doctor whatever the hell…'

I ignored my want to hit 'reject' and answered the call out of politeness. "Hello?"

"You should've said your goodbyes like the note said" The voice was dull and monotonous. My brow furrowed at its sullen words.

"Hold it there have you been following me? I've only been home for two minutes-"

"More than enough time"

The logic of his words flew over my head as I still hoped not to be interrupted again.

"Did you put that disc inside my mailbox with my games?"

"That does not matter. You have your key"

"The white disc? What kind of key is-"

"Goodbye"

Silently the call ended. The caller's last words had more venom in it. Now I was purely freaked out by all of this. I heaved a heavy sigh to recollect my mind. My stomach again complained and I looked down. It had to be nothing. Right now I was only fifteen minutes away from hot wing heaven and I aimed to reach it.

SCREEEEECH

The sound of a car braking hard interrupted my hunger again. Naturally like all human beings who hear any trace of a noise I headed to the front window to take a look. I fiddled with the thick draped azure curtains to catch a glimpse.

'Probably just somebody who went a bit too fast on the local roads. Can't be-'

My thoughts were cut off by the scene before me. There was a grey sedan parked over the sidewalk and a quarter of a way into our front lawn. There were what looked to be scratch marks lining the entire body. Windows were white with scratch patterns in all directions. The front left wheel had been popped and the driver's door was open. On the floor was a man sprawled on his stomach. My mouth went dry as it hung open in horror of the strange scene.

'How in the world could…oh forget about how! Is he okay?'

I shot for the door and threw it open. I skipped the stairs and jumped down to run to where he was. Once I got there my body froze. Something had to be done but what could be done? I was only in my school's first aid course for a week and all we had learned was how to identify emergencies, as if we were blind to know it's bad if somebody was bleeding profusely from the head. My heart rate had picked up fast and I felt my hands sweating. Kneeling down I gently tried to turn the man over onto his back. I desperately hoped I wasn't going to kill this man by trying to help him. I started to feel a warm liquid on his arm. He was bleeding. Halfway through turning him I got a look at his face and my heart dropped as my gag reflex shot up. I quickly shut my mouth and held my breath to avoid throwing up. Closing my eyes, I settled him on his back as gently as I could before slowly opening my eyes.

He has cuts, lots of cuts. Cuts were strewn over his face, too many to count. There was a particularly deep cut running from his left cheek and across his eye. It seemed as if he didn't lose either of his eyes as there was no bleeding from his sockets. The cuts were bleeding though. His grey shirt and black zip-up sweater were shredded too. Cuts were there too on his arms and torso. His black jeans weren't too bad. The holes already there looked to be more of a style mark than a battle scar. He kept his shoes luckily too but they didn't seem to help him much here. I could see him breathing heavily.

"Sir…" I tried to speak loudly in case he was too out of it to hear me. "Can you speak to me?"

The only response I got was a cough that shot blood from his mouth. I suddenly became very cold and felt sick at the sight.

'Oh crap, what do I do, what do I do, what do I do…oh damn it of course!'

The very first day of first aid came flooding back to me. The question: What's the best thing to do when encountered with an emergency on the spot?

Answer: Dial 911. Jeez.

I reached into my pocket for my phone and immediately started to dial 911. Only problem was that the screen wasn't responding. My phone only stared at me with my wallpaper of my friend balancing four legged stools atop one another at a social gathering. I opted to remove the battery to shut if off the hard way but after opening the cover and taking the battery out, I was still greeted to my friend's goofy smile and those stools stacked on one leg each.

'You've got to be kidding me'

The man gave a painful groan. I dropped my useless phone on the ground and hovered over the man's body. "Sir, please sir can you say something? Anything?" His eyes kept shut and his cut mouth was gaping open trying to form words. My teeth gritted at what was happening in front of me. The man gave one final heave that pulled his chest upward. And it kept it there despite the man's limbs going limp. My hands fell to my sides as I stared at his levitating upper torso. From under him I could see trails of what almost looked like red glitter trickling down.

My eyes went wide at the sight. There was a red glow coming from the man's chest. Slowly a shape floated out. It looked crystal-like, colored red and was gently floating upwards. It gave a bright reddish glow from its center as the red glitter kept falling down in a thin fashion. It was in the shape of a heart. It kept floating for a brief moment before too familiar black vortex of its size swallowed it whole. The man's chest fell back down with a dull impact on the grass. His wounded body started to grow transparent before finally fading away into nothing.

I remained on my knees. There were small pools of drying blood that darkened the grass a crude black. A man had just died in front of me. He died. And his heart was taken away. But what took it away? My mind flashed to almost dormant memories of my first play-through of Kingdom Hearts years ago, walking into the Second District of Traverse Town for the first time. That's when I saw the unlucky 3D model of a man simply fade away while his heart was taken by the darkness. I had just witnessed a man lose his heart to the darkness in real life.

'No…this isn't happening, it can't be happening! It was all just a game…a freaking 'T' rated game…'

It didn't change the fact that it all did happen. The scene in front of me was proof enough.

My breath was gone. I felt weak, my limbs had no feeling. My own heart was heavy as my right hand clutched the place it was supposed to be.

"That was…nothing like they made it seem in the game…"

I realize that a rim shot sound is more of a 'flam' than a 'boom' but oh well, 'boom' translates better. Review por favor? I'm just coming back so I could be a bit rusty with everything. Let me know what you think though, all words are greatly appreciated.