A/N: Yes, this is an OC/self insert. Yes, this is still a Tiger-fic*

Chapter 1: Innocent Beginnings

They say some people are just born lucky. They say some people are just born cursed. Personally I'm really not into fate or luck, but holding the broken pieces of plastic in my hand makes me want to reconsider.

"Again," I sigh at my computer. I could understand one, or even two, but four!

"What happened, Alex?" my brother, Kyle, asks from his desk at the other side of the room.

"Oh, my stupid headphones stopped working again." I throw the pieces back on top of the keyboard, the exposed wires taunting me. You'd think such a small disconnection would be easy to fix, but as I've learned too many times this year, that isn't the case.

"Isn't that the fourth pair you've broken this year?" he asked. I could only nod in response. He was right. I had no idea how I managed to destroy so many headphones, but between tripping on the cords, sitting on them, and the sound going out for no reason I could think of, I find more ways to break them. I swear, they make these things too breakable. And it's really hard to concentrate on homework when I can't jam to awesome music.

"At least I learned my lesson and bought the warranty on these."

"So Chipotle run?" Kyle asks eagerly.

"What does that have to do anything?" I ask. I swear, his obsession with those delicious Mexican burritos scares me sometimes. Although, I can't deny their awesomeness.

"Well, Chipotle is right next to the mall, so we go there, get your headphones, eat awesome food and then all live happily ever after."

I can't really argue with his logic, and my stomach was starting to growl, so food sounded good. I grabbed my keys and headed for the door with my younger brother right behind me.

"You remembered the old headphones didn't you?" he asked which caused me to do a quick 180 back to our room before heading to the car with the defective merchandise. "What would you do without me?" Kyle asks smugly.

"Possibly still have some sanity left."

…

After reaching the mall, we head to the massive music store on the second floor. Upon entering, I am blown away by their vast merchandise. I don't think I have ever seen so many different CD's along the walls. There was rock, country, hip-hop, rap, jazz, movie, alternative, gospel, pop, and other things I had never heard of. It wasn't like this was my first time here, but it still amazed me.

"While you find the headphones, I'm going to check out their movies," Kyle says before walking to the other end of the store. Why is it when I need to buy something he seems to find more than me? Oh well, it's his money after all.

I walked over to the cashier with the old receipt and headphones and asked for an exchange.

"You run those over with a truck too?" a teen asks from behind me.

"How did you manage to do that?" I ask wondering what kind of crazy story that must have involved. Turning to see him, I notice he is wearing a Celtics t-shirt and blue jeans. Pro basketball isn't that popular in Ohio, especially teams from far away. He's probably on vacation or something.

"Let's just say it involved some pizza, a girl and a couple drinks," he responded with a chuckle.

Now I'm really curious. Pizza is good, but I've learned girls can be quite evil/crazy and adding alcohol is never a good idea. Although it does lead to some fun nights laughing at my friends especially the next morning when I'm the only one who remembers what happened and how that shovel ended up in the mattress.

"Wow, I think mine was just a manufacturing error." I would have loved to come up with a story involving killer penguins, but none came to mind.

"That's lame."

"At least the warranty covers that one."

"You might have a point there. Zack Martin by the way," he said holding out his hand.

"Alexander Bryson."

The cashier coughed reminding us of his presence. "I'd hate to interrupt you, but I'd like to go home sometime today and I don't really care how you broke them."

"Sorry," I said handing him the headphone and he gave me a gift card to buy new ones with.

"You might want to get some heavy duty ones so they don't always break," Zack suggested walking with me to the headphone rack.

"I'm not sure they'd be worth the extra money though."

"Well try out these TSL-2330, they aren't too expensive and have amazing sound. They can even survive a drop from a three story window."

"How do you know that?"

"That information is not important; just give it a try." I'm sure how good of an idea it was to trust someone who managed to drop his headphones out a three-story window or run them over with a truck. Still, I hate having to drive all the way to the mall every couple of weeks, and it sounded like he spoke from experience.

"Thanks, I'll see if they work."

"Zack!" a voice calls out from the other side of the store. I turn and see another teen that looks nearly identical to Zack running toward us. He's a little bit taller and slimmer than Zack, but I can easily tell they were twins.

"What's going on Codester?"

"They're here," he says in little more than a whisper. I doubt that anyone other than Zack or me could have heard him.

What was he talking about though? Who was here? Why was it a secret?

"What's going on?" I ask.

Suddenly, the room begins shaking violently throwing CD's to the floor. The lights flicker, and several screams echo across the room while the lights start flickering. Several employees are trying to calm the more frantic guests, but it's no use as the power goes out. I fling my arms, looking for something hold onto and find the wall, though the shaking gets worse as now whole shelves are coming down. try holding onto the wall for balance as the lights go out. The customers full blown panic by now. "Get down!" I hear Zack say before something grabs my waist and pulls me to the ground. In the dark, I can't be certain what's on top of me, but judging by the hastened breaths close to my ear, I can only guess it's Zack.

Before I can ask what's going on, an explosion rocks the entire building. I can hear chunks of the room falling everywhere. I'm sure one of the shelves or the pieces of drywall falling would crush me if it wasn't for the fact that Zack is still on top of me protecting me. How did he know this was going to happen, and why is he protecting someone he just met?

Several more explosions echo through the building sending more debris flying. With all the dust filling the air, it's nearly impossible to breathe so I try breathing into my shirt to get some actual air. "Is it over?" I ask through several coughs.

"I think so," Zack says calmly. After this mess is over, I need to ask him how he knows what's going on. He starts getting up, but as he does so, the ground begins shaking again. A giant cracking noise fills the air "Oh shit," Zack says softly before the floor beneath us fails and we fall to the first floor, ceiling/floor coming down upon us along with all the supplies from upstairs.

"Ouch," is all I manage to say with everything on top of me. My leg hurts like heck with everything that fell upon us and I can't even feel my left arm.

"Hold on let me get you out from under there," Zack says as he stands up and starts freeing me from the random objects pinning me to the ground.

"You two okay?" Codester asks and I hear him walking over towards us. I'm amazed at how unfazed the twins seem to by all this.

"What was that?" I ask weakly while they pull me up to my back to my feet.

"It's a long story, but we'll explain once we get you out of here," Zack says. I don't see how it's possible to get out of here though with everything pitch black. As if to answer my unspoken question, a light came on. I turn to see Cody holding out a flashlight.

"Here, we'll need these to find our way out of here," he says handing one to his brother and me. With the light, I can see some of the damage on my body. My legs are covered with various scrapes and scratches with blood slowly flowing down my legs. I definitely picked the wrong day to wear shorts. My right arm has a large gash on it where I believe a shelf fell on it. Looking at the twins though, they don't seem too fazed by it. Other than dirt covering them, they seem fine, only a couple small cuts

"What about Kyle?" I ask. If it weren't for Zack saving me, I could only imagine the shape I'd be in. I could easily be dead by now. I can't get out of here without knowing if he is okay.

"Who?" Cody asks.

"My brother, he was at the other side of the store when the explosions happened."

By the look of concern on their faces, I can tell they are thinking about losing each other like that. "We'll try getting him out," Cody says and we walk to the other side of the store, or whatever place this is now. The wreckage from the explosions covers the ground and many mangled bodies litter the ground. This is horrible. I just hope Kyle is okay.

*Tiger-fic, definition: A fanfiction story written by tiger002, characterized by drawing its strength from suspense, plot twists, and cliffhangers. Also includes violence in some degree, (with or without purpose), comedy in varying amounts, brotherly love, and of course, some reference to a killer penguin. Often, but not always, includes character torture and fantasy elements.

I guess I owe you an explanation for this story.

I've wanted to do a self-insert for a while, I mean, what Suite Life fan wouldn't want to visit the hotel/ship and meet the twins? However, I wasn't sure I could make a good story with that, and we have enough of those already. However, I ended up having a dream where I met the twins in the mall, and for some reason started running from something chasing us. I started writing this chapter that day, and over time had a couple other dreams that led to ideas for parts later on, and a thought that came to me after getting some feedback from my SI parody chapter which I can't say without giving away some major plot twists. However, I knew that I couldn't keep this up along with my other projects, so decided to wait until I got at least 5 chapters written before I started publishing. Well, months later (I started this last summer), I got 4 written and decided that was good enough! Updates will be slow (monthly, I hope), but I have some fun plans here, and I hope you will enjoy them. As you can tell from this first chapter, it won't be like the other OC inserts.

Thanks to WoundedHearts and Snapplelinz for betaing