Disclaimer: I do not own anything in this story that is currently copy-righted to any of the following: Square-Enix, Disney, Capcom, Microsoft, gohangeorge, and the owners of the songs/lyrics that will occasionally appear in later chapters. If I have left off any owner's name, please pm me or mention it in your review and I will add the name to this list.

Hello everybody and welcome to KH: Linked Destinies. *stretches a little* It's been a while since I wrote anything but I finally got my muse back and I decided to try to ease back into the Kingdom Hearts fandom with a new story. Hopefully, this story will be much better than some of my previous almost cringe-worthy stories.

Okay then, let's get back to the story at hand. Before you start reading, I kind of want to make a few things clear about this story so that I won't be hearing any flames or anything later on about not mentioning them in the first place. If you would not mind, please read this entire paragraph before you decide to either start reading the first chapter or hit the 'back' button in your browser. Yes, this story is a self-insert; it's actually a multi self-insert. Though unlike a good many self-inserts, I'm not trying to write anyone into the story as a Mary Sue or anything like that. The reason that I decided to write this story this particular way is because of something that I realized when I went back and read over some of my old stuff, mainly stories that I never got around to uploading on here. As it turned out, I had a bad habit of unintentionally having characters—my own OCs and canon characters alike—to fall OOC by the end of the story. That's why I decided to write this story as a SI—to try to overcome that problem. I realized that you can never be one hundred percent certain about whether a fictional character is still IC or OOC because you can't directly ask them. You can guess fairly well but it's impossible to be absolutely certain. That's where the SIs come in for me right now. I can actually ask these people directly to make sure that I have their selves in this story completely IC and not one little bit OOC.

I suppose that what I'm saying is that I'm not taking this story as seriously as I probably should since I'm using it more like a writing exercise in trying to keep people in character. It's definitely not an epic or something that will become a classic for fanfictions but who knows, maybe one of you that reads it will get a kick out of it. Well, that pretty much sums it up. Oh...one other thing, since I did say that this was being treated as an exercise I'm not putting a ton of work into it so if you see some plot holes or something; just mention it to me in a review or message me. Either way, I'll explain it probably at the beginning of the next chapter since I've got a lot of info that I haven't got around to putting in the story proper tucked away in some notebooks. Whew...that should sum it up. Well, I'm going to shut up now and hope that you enjoy the story.

I sighed and ran my hand through my hair as I continued to stare at the computer screen in front of me, occasionally clicking on something of interest. It was just the first day of Spring Break and I was already bored out of my mind. I'd even gone back and read through an entire fanfic trilogy that I had dubbed the Dark Knight Chronicles just to try to get rid of the boredom. I sighed again. I glanced over at the phone for just a moment and thought about calling my friend Daniel...Nah, he's probably either busy with chores or playing Halo. And on that note, I really have to try to do something about him getting addicted to Halo again; once was bad enough already.

Well, I guess that I should introduce myself. My name's Dustin Howell and I'm just your average high school senior. I guess that you could kind of call me a tech geek and a video game addict, mainly RPGs and action games but I'm not really all that picky.

I turned my focus back to the computer screen in front of me. I still had an essay on the Civil War and a book report to do for AP U.S. History and ten problems for Pre-Calculus, but they could wait until later. I'd get around to them eventually. I know, I know, ten problems for Pre-Cal. Should be easy to go ahead and get done quickly, right? Wrong, a lot of people say that I'm one of the smartest people in our school, definitely in my graduating class, but I'm a complete dunce when it comes to anything math-related. It's just impossible for me to actually wrap my mind around some of the crap that they try to teach us. It also doesn't help that we seem to have some kind of virus going around school when it comes to math teachers. We can't seem to hang on to our math teachers and the few that we do hang on to are usually out of school because of something.

I leaned back a little in my chair and tried to think of something to actually do. That was the only problem about living in rural Mississippi, there's nothing to do at all. I wasted several more minutes trying to think of anything and then finally just said:

"Ah, screw this."

I got up from my chair and left my room, grabbing my I-pod from the top of my dresser. I flicked the power button to on and placed the ear buds in my ears. I glanced down at the small screen on the I-pod and selected, 'Shuffle'. I placed it into the pocket of my blue jeans as I heard the first song start up.

I closed my eyes for a moment and started bopping my head to the music for a moment. 'Baccano no Theme', the theme song of Baccano, an anime that I had finished downloading a couple of months back. As for the song itself, if a character was going to do something awesome enough for the audience to go, 'Holy Shit', that was the song that would start playing. I smiled a little to myself as I opened my eyes back up and continued to listen to the song.

However, that smile faded from my face almost immediately as I stopped in front of my living room window and saw the sky outside.

"...What the hell is that?"

The sky outside my house had turned pitch-black with tendrils of crimson red snaking in and out through the clouds. Actually, let me rephrase what I said at first:

"What the fuck!? That's not normal!"

At that moment, I also heard the song on my I-pod switch over to 'One More Soul to the Call' from the Silent Hill Homecoming game. I felt a shiver run down my spine as I dug around in my pocket for it and flicked the switch back to off. I did not need to hear that song in particular right now. I yanked the ear buds out of my ears and stuffed them into the same pocket as well right before I noticed something else outside my window...Something that made my blood freeze solid as my mind tried to rationalize what I was seeing.

"How—how can—how can a—a fucking Heartless be here?"

There was no other way to describe the creature slinking across my front yard. I know that those things only exist in Kingdom Hearts, but I couldn't have cared less at the moment. There was a frickin real-life Heartless staring at me from my yard. I saw it begin heading for the window and I got out of the living room as quick as I could. I forced the thoughts in my mind about how impossible it was for a Heartless to really be here away as best as I could as I ran into the kitchen. I yanked open the door to my dad's closet as quickly as I could and grabbed my grandpa's Browning Auto-5 shotgun that my dad always kept in there just in case somebody ever tried to break into the house. I checked the shotgun over, making sure that it was loaded and smiled a little as I realized that it was fully loaded. Before I walked away from the closet though, I grabbed a small box of 12 gauge shells and a medium-sized pouch. I dumped the shells out of the box and into the pouch before securing it to the left side of my belt for easy access.

With that done, I slung the shotgun's strap over my shoulder and let it hang against my back as I decided to grab one more thing before any more Heartless appeared outside. I headed back into the kitchen and started digging through the drawers trying to remember which one we had decided to hide it in.

"Thank god."

I pushed the rest of the junk in the drawer out of the way as I pulled out a Para-Ordnance P-14 1911-clone handgun. I sighed in relief as I also noticed several pouches containing fourteen-round magazines of .45 rounds next to its resting place in the drawer along with one magazine that wasn't in a pouch. I grabbed that magazine, sliding it into the base of the grip until it clicked into place, and spent a moment trying to get all of the pouches for the other magazines to fit onto the right side of my belt.

I headed towards the front door and caught a glimpse of my car keys still hanging beside the door. I remembered about how the Heartless were and if the only ones that were here were just Shadows like that one before then I might be able to get out of this without actually having to fight them. I placed the handgun in the front right pocket of my jeans—making sure the safety was still on—and grabbed the keys as I unlocked the door but didn't dare open it quite yet.

I shrugged the shotgun's strap off of my shoulder and gripped it in my right hand as I used my left to turn the door knob. As soon as I noticed that there was enough room to wedge my foot between the door and wall, I placed my left hand on the shotgun as well and used my foot to open the door the rest of the way.

"Oh crap!"

I jumped back as I saw that one of the Shadows had been waiting for me on the other side of the door. It jumped at me, knocking me onto my back on the floor. I struck out with my foot as I saw it try to jump on me a second time, catching it underneath its chin and sending it flying into the wall. I got back to my feet as fast as I could and took aim as quickly as I could with the shotgun while it was still dazed. I said a quick prayer and pulled the trigger. The shotgun let out a deafening roar as the buckshot flew from the barrel and hit the Heartless just as it was finally getting back to its feet. I watched as it fell to the ground and began to fade into a black mist that quickly disappeared as well. I was actually surprised that it worked but I couldn't hang around any longer. I had to get going and get out of here. I quickly loaded another shell into the magazine and headed out the door into the garage.

There was another two Heartless in the garage, which I quickly dealt with—a single shot of buckshot each. I suppose that's one good thing about living in the South; you definitely learned how to use firearms properly. I made my way around to the side of my car, a 2008 G6. I pulled my keys out and unlocked the driver's side door, laying the shotgun on the passenger seat and climbing into the driver's seat. I put the key in the ignition and smiled in relief as I heard the engine start up without a hitch. I drove the car out of the garage and onto the road.

The second that I was on the road, I hit the accelerator and sped towards one destination in particular. I probably broke the speed limit within a matter of seconds but I didn't care. It's not as if anybody was going to give me a ticket with what was going on right now. Besides, I never really did pay attention to speed limits before so why start now?

As for the destination I had in mind, there was only one place that I could think of right now: my high school. The main ones who were probably still alive right now were the ones who probably understood what those creatures were like I did and who else besides a bunch of teenagers would play games like Kingdom Hearts in the first place?