Okay. This is my first attempt at fanfiction, so please don't flame me! It's centered around Kingdom Hearts, one of my favorite games (and manga) ever. I'm going to try my best to make it good, but I probably won't be able to upload new chapters very often due to some other projects I'm working on at the moment.

So please enjoy! This is something I think every fan of KH dreams of… heh, at least I know I do!

Chapter 1

An overcast sky shadows overhead, and I can feel the first few splatterings of rainfall on my nose and hair. The air is wet and frigid, nearly 46° Fahrenheit, and I shiver in beneath my thick, fleece-interior sweatshirt. This thing was built for mountain terrain, so I wear it all the time out here, even inside the house. Our fireplaces are going pretty much 24-7, and even then it still feels like something from the Alaskan Frontier in my bedroom.

My body still hasn't adjusted to this climate, like my dad said it would several months ago. I guess I'm just not an adaptor. Maybe it's been bred out of me… years and years of people like my dad marrying into my mom's outdoor-junkie family have finally produced the unthinkable—a human being not addicted to adrenaline.

At least, unthinkable on my mom's side, the Jennings. Seriously—practically every single one of her relatives believe that if you haven't broken at least five different bones, (kudos if you break one more then once) by the time your eighteen, then you're some kind of frail, wussy, cookies-and-cream loving nerd who's never going to experience "what life's really all about" and is forever doomed to incessant ridicule at their expense.

I always have to hide my videogames, playstation, x-box, MP3, and whatever else has to do with any other kind of technology except that which has the potential to cause life-threatening havoc whenever one of them visits.

Thankfully my mom inherited a less excitable, more subdued end of their generic spectrum. Sure, she runs three miles every morning and goes back-packing (in bear country, if possible) every weekend but hey, other then that she's just a regular mother and wife. Yessir.

I happened to attain my dad's more relaxed demeanor, for reasons unknown (and in the Jennings case, bewailed) by the rest of our clan. On average, the most exciting activity of my day includes outwitting the sadistic Chihuahua that lives down the road, which I have to pass to get our mail.

A distant rumble of thunder breaks the heavy silence enshrouding the landscape, and I lift my eyes to the horizon, thick with the darkness of many trees. A few drops of water cling to my eyelashes, and I can feel the air stirring around me in anticipation of the coming storm. Our verandah is for the most part covered by a roof, though the part that I sit under has a heavy leak, and proves nothing against the ensuing downpour. With a sigh, I get to my feet and hurry through the sliding-glass door leading inside.

I enter directly into the kitchen, and find my mother chopping up vegetables for dinner. I try not to gag as I catch a sniff on what's brewing—another one of her experiments. Smells like failure.

"Do you need help?" I ask through my teeth, merely venturing the offer out of a fading sense of duty.

"Oh, not really. But thanks, Elise." Her short brown hair—newly cut in a simple bob, after she got sap in it a few weeks back—bounces as she replies. She's complained to my dad that the style makes her cheeks look too round, but I think it fits her personality—it's just that lately I've been too angry to tell her.

Over the past few months I've been shunning both of my parents. Ever since they forced me to move to this place where I can never get warm and have internet service with a speed rivaling that of a dying snail.

With a grumble, I trudge up the stairs—which have wood-rot and termites to spare—to my room, which is located on the second level. My door groans a death-rattle as I push it open and flop facedown on my bed. I lie there in silence, listening to the thunder as it grows closer to our house. I think of dad, driving home from work in his dingy 1985 Brougham, having to make his way through the approaching storm.

A twinge of worry clenches in my stomach.

To pass the time, I pull out one of my favorite games and pop it into my Playstation. The familiar theme song floats to my ears as the start menu fades onto the screen of my television. I hum along with it and log onto my last save point—this has got to be my fifth or sixth time playing through this thing. But I don't care; I'm already a nerd, so what does it matter?

Eventually I forget the world around me—forget the thunder and my previous qualms and simply lose myself in the role-playing fantasy world my pixel-formulated characters inhabit. Time passes all too quickly, and soon I can hear the front door swing open and slam closed against the raging wind. The murmur of my dad's voice greeting my mom in the kitchen brings me out of my trance, and I toss away my controller onto the bed.

I should at least set the table—I owe my parents that much. Even now, I'm beginning to feel a little sheepish about my behavior towards them. But my pride and stubbornness will not give out, and with a sour expression I begin to make my way downstairs to the dining room.

"Hey, Elise!" My dad hails me from the kitchen sink, elbow-deep in sudsy water. "How's it going?"

"Fine," I reply, with a little less frostiness then this morning. Perhaps I have been nursing this grudge for too long…

He notices the change, and gives me a warm smile. Wordlessly I pick up our plates and utensils and begin to set the table, straightening the napkins and cups while I'm at it. Darn—why not throw in a bonus every once and a while?

The meal my mother has prepared looks sad and inedible at its place in the middle of the table—and even she is eying it with uncertain apprehension.

"Don't worry," she assures us. "I've got a backup plan if this doesn't work."

"Define 'doesn't work'," my dad replies, raising his eyebrows and probing the food with a half worried, half amused expression. "Don't tell me we're going to have to wait until Elise suffers cardiac arrest before switching the menu."

"It's perfectly safe," my mom sniffs, somewhat affronted. "…But well, I'm not so sure about… the flavoring…"

"Sure, sure." My dad shakes his head and hides a grin. I can't help but notice how tired he looks—a little more drawn, a little… older. Suddenly, my guilt breaks the floodgate and I'm filled with shame. But still my pride is intact, and I refuse to show signs of folding.

My father says grace, and we begin to eat in silence. Well, we all manage the first bite, and then end up gagging everything back up.

"I think it's time for plan B, hon," my dad rasps, and my mother, one hand over her mouth, nods in agreement. But I can see that their both trying hard not to laugh.

Another day, another bloody war fought against that frickin' Chihuahua. As I make my way back home, I brood smolderingly on ways to extract my revenge. The image of those buggy, wet, grotesque little eyes waft before me, and I furiously add another scheme to my numerous plots fabricated to put this conflict to a… heh… permanent end.

It's Saturday, so I'm free to spend the entire morning, afternoon, and evening doing perfectly, absolutely, nothing at all. In a rare moment of bliss I dance inside our house and slap the mail onto our dining room table.

My mother, just back from her three-mile run, sits at one of the chairs around the table, untying her shoes. She glances up at me and smiles, wiping sweat from her forehead. "Hey, sweetie, do you think you could do me a favor today?" she asks brightly.

"Um… what is it?" I ask, somewhat wary. Hopefully it doesn't involve raking the gutters of rotting slime or scrubbing the outside walls of scum, spider nests, and other gross little insects.

None of the above.

"Could you please clean out the fireplace downstairs? It's really dirty. We haven't thought to use it yet, but who knows? Maybe it'll help keep us warmer."

I freeze, and inwardly moan. Please, please, please… oh… that fireplace has probably been the burial grounds for all sorts of mice, flies and… funnel web spiders. Uuuugghh…

"O-Okay," I reply shakily.

"Great! I'll be out hiking soon, so you'll have the whole house to yourself today. Thanks so much, sweetie!" she ruffles my hair and disappears into her bedroom. With a sigh I deflate, and slowly lumber my way upstairs.

I put off this task for as long as I can, doing all my others chores beforehand as though in slow motion. Sweep… mop… vacuum… bake cookies… dust…

At long last, there is nothing more to stall for. It is time to meet my fate head-on. With a grim face and squirming stomach, I tramp downstairs with a 3 gallon bucket of water and several dozen towels thrown over my shoulder.

The basement's one freaky place. The walls are concrete, the floor is concrete, the pipes are rusty, and the sounds are echoic. It's like a hybrid-mix between a dungeon, a labyrinth, and a black hole. Maybe mom's right in a way—a flame in the fireplace might help brighten up this place some.

One can only hope.

I stand before the object of my imminent agonized labor—which may possibly end with a mad dash for the bathroom. This fireplace is the largest in our house, and probably the most ornate, with a mantle made of black-veined limestone, cut into elegant curves and tresses. The masonry behind the fireplace itself is coated with ash, as is everything around it. I first work at pulling away the smoke screen, and pray that the aged, dented mesh was enough to keep out unwanted critters from making a home inside.

But the screen proves harder to extract then I initially thought, and I end up having to pry it loose with the claw of a hammer. After some effort, I at last pull the irksome mesh free and toss it as far away from me as possible, fearing the unsightly little insects that may be clinging onto the back of it. Accomplishing this, I set to work levering an chic little brush from a rack nearby. In the darkness, I can't see how dirty the firebox is, but I assume, like my mother, that it is undoubtedly filthy. Armed with my little broom, I crouch forwards into the mouth of the beast and lean in to begin raking at the loose soot.

I reach, and reach, and reach… and…

My brush hits nothing. For a moment, my heart leaps in my throat, and I feel myself loosing my balance and pitching forwards. With a strangled scream, I tumble head-first into the firebox, which has not bottom at all. Panic claws at my throat and my heart throbs sharply in my temples, though I hardly have time to think. My hands instinctively stretch out to grab hold of something, anything to stop my plunge, but already I'm too late. The light of the firepit's mouth dies away as I plummet downwards, faster and faster, the wind soaring past my ears in a whistling roar.

Inside, the fireplace is larger then I would have ever imagined—even as I fall, I can feel no wall on either side. With the light of the opening far above long gone, I no longer have anything to measure the speed of my decent, and disorientation sets in like a flock of vultures. The wind is still strong, so I believe I must be traveling fairly fast. But how can I be sure…? The blackness is stifling. There is no light, no color, nothing for me to see no matter where I turn my head.

I try to scream one last time, hoping, praying that someone would come and save me… but who would hear? Mom is miles away, hiking somewhere deep in thick woodland, probably in the process of wrestling a grizzly; dad is at his office somewhere deep in the nearest city, and our closest neighbor—that Chihuahua-pampering sociopath—wouldn't come and help me even if she did happen to hear my cry.

No longer able to tell if my eyes are open or shut, I drift into numbness, a kind of paralyzed slumber that I don't even recognize as such.

And before I know it, I have lost coconsciousness altogether.

--End of Chapter 1

Author's comments:

Thank you for reading! I'll see you at chapter 2!