Kingdom Hearts: A New Power

Chapter 1: Smile

Clash! Ching! Slash! The sound of metal on metal echoed all throughout the hall as hundreds of children fought each other with large, key-like swords, while a young man, hair as silver as the blades themselves, and eyes a deep blue, with just the slightest hint of green, looked on keenly atop a stage at the front of the room.

A woman about his age moved beside him, looking as if she needed to tell him something. He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, and she bowed respectfully out, her light brown hair obscuring her dark blue eyes as they moved towards the source of her concern: two young boys in the crowd of students, taking the training extremely seriously.

Both had been clearly training hard, and were showing the consequences of it. One of them, a child with long, dark brown hair and with an unnatural amount of muscle on his body, was beginning to allow his frustration show as his spiked, silver-haired sparring partner dodged his attacks with ease. The silver-haired child, however, was starting to feel exhausted, and pushed to his limits.'

Just as the brown-haired fighter moved to make the next blow, the man on the stage held his hand up to indicate of everyone that the training session was over. Everyone immediately froze, and watched him walk off the stage, before departing the training hall themselves.

The silver-haired boy saw the young man as he was leaving, and overheard him conversing with the young woman. Staying out of sight, he eavesdropped on the conversation.

"Riku, do you really think it was a good idea to match Aeros with Chorey?" the woman asked hesitantly.

"He's not going to learn to be strong if he just keeps up that dodging crap, is he?" the man named Riku replied in annoyance. "He comes from two long lines of families that pride themselves on their strength, and he has none! I can't stand for it any more, Terra, Chorey has to teach him how to be strong, and not just run away." Riku walked away in a huff, completely ignoring the boy as he left.

The young boy ran off to the nearby pond, tears streaming from his eyes. 'When will I be good enough, Father?' Aeros thought gingerly as he ran. 'Why can't you just accept that my skills are outside of where you want them to be.

Eventually, he reached a hidden grove at a nearby lake. He sat down at the edge, and watched as everyone else was practising water magic at the other side of it. There he cried bitterly for hours, until he heard movement behind him.

Reacting quickly, he summoned his Keyblade, and got ready to fight. After what seemed like ages of anticipation, his sparring partner from earlier appeared out of the bushes.

"Aeros! This is where you got to, huh?" The brown-haired boy yelled out.

"Go away, Chorey." Aeros muttered. "I just want to be left alone for a while." Turning away, Aeros resumed crying.

Chorey moved to sit down beside Aeros, and continued. "Everyone's been looking all over for you, man! Dinner's almost finished, and- Whoa, what's up, Aeros?" Chorey finally saw the tears sliding down Aeros' cheeks, and put a hand on his shoulder, in an attempt to comfort him.

"It's nothing." Aeros said simply, as he turned away from Chorey and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stop further tears from flowing.

Chorey kept a firm grip on Aeros' shoulder, and turned towards the lake. "I saw the Master today, he seemed pretty angry. Has it got to do with him?"

Aeros cried even harder upon hearing his father's title. 'A title I will never live up to... I'm not strong enough, I never will be... He never will accept me, no matter how hard I try.' "I overheard Father talking to Mother after training today." He said in between sniffs. "He was talking about how I needed to be stronger, how he wasn't happy with my technique. He said about how he wanted me to learn from you, that was why he always set us up to spar together." Aeros broke down even further after letting that off his chest.

Chorey was shocked to hear what Aeros said, 'The master really holds my skills in that high regard? But I've never been able to land a hit on Aeros, how can I be that good?' He then turned to Aeros, and moved his arm all around his shoulders. "Your father pays attention to one thing, and one thing only: strength. But he doesn't realise that strength is useless when you struggle to hit your opponent. Have you noticed that I never actually manage to hit you? You're too damned fast for me, and wear me down too easily. Granted, you don't have the physical strength to hit a lot of enemies hard, but with your ability to dodge, you could run an enemy in circles, and wear them down to exhaustion, then finish them off." Chorey stood up, and took a pose he hoped was inspirational. "Sometimes, we don't fit the moulds we've been put in to, other times, it's the mould that doesn't fit us."

Aeros looked up at Chorey in awe at what he just said. 'Am I really as good as he says I am?' He thought for a moment. "Father will never accept that, though. You gotta be physically strong, or you're useless. He just sees me as a coward." He looked down again,still upset, but slightly less than before.

Chorey sat back down, disappointed that his little speech didn't do a lot to help out Aeros. "Tell you what," he started, prompting Aeros to look at him. "You keep going just as you are, and we'll see how you go come graduation. I think you've got the potential to reach top of the class, myself."

Aeros looked in stunned disbelief. "Alright, I suppose we could see just how I go with graduating the Academy." Aeros smiled at the thought of being able to prove his father wrong, and got up. "Come on, Chorey, you said dinner was almost over, right?"

Chorey smiled at the thought of food. "Yeah, let's hurry. I'm starving!"

Aeros smiled a little mischievously as he said, "I'll race you there!", and ran off, leaving Chorey far behind him.