Good Evening, everyone, this is KHVeteran.
I am pleased to announce that I have finally posted the first chapter of a story I've been trying to get around to doing in six months.
This is a story about a group of teens who become Nobodies, but Xemnas doesn't know about them, so he wouldn't be able to drag them into Organiztion XIII. But don't worry, they'll be in here eventually ;)
This is mostly a series that I and my gf came up with together, and both of our OC Nobodies are in here, as well as some others that I created based on some of my friends and other people I know.
Ok, now that's out of the way, Disclaimer time: I don't own, although I wish I did, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, Square Enix, Disney, or anything else related to them.
OC Disclaimer: Any mentions of persons, places, things, or ideas, real or imagined, are completely coincidental, so don't go suing me.
The above disclaimers apply to the entire story, not just to this singular chapter.
Thank you for your time. Please enjoy.
~Fata Nova: Chapter 1: Destruction~
The alarm clock screamed in Benji's ears, even though he had pulled his goose-down feather pillow around his ears.
"Skies above, son," His mother, Storm, said, "Can't you hear that?"
"Whuzzat?" He slurred drowsily, "I canno' 'ear a ting you's sayin'."
"Very nice, wise guy, get up," His mother left, leaving the door open as Benji slapped at his clock to make it shut up, "You got to go to school, young man."
Benji sweeped his legs out from under his covers, bare up until they reached the hem of his boxers. He rubbed the sleep from out of his eyes, before getting up and doing his daily reps of push-ups and sit-ups.
One of his little brothers ran past the door, yelling something about putting some clothes on. He ignored the little hellion, preferring the music he was about to stick in his ears to the annoying little brat's words.
As he listened to something about the "boulevard of broken dreams" he dug in his chest of drawers for his favorite t-shirt: sky blue with black felt skulls and roses, which he complimented with his black, naturally torn jeans and black suede jacket. Tying his steel-toed boots on, he went down to forage for breakfast.
Mmmmm, two-day expired fruity wheels, breakfast of champions, Benji perused the pantry, think I'll settle for some natural mountain instead…
His mom pulled on one of his speakers on his black, retro-style headphones, "Your friend's here!"
"Didja hafta yell?" Benji mumbled through the wrapper.
"Turn down the volume on your headphones, then," She said and let go of the speaker, letting it slap against his ear.
"And listen to the cretin?"
"I heard that!" Josh yelled.
"I know," Benji said, as he walked out the door, letting his long, blond hair shield his eyes from the sun until he could bear to look around without squinting.
The walkway wasn't all that crowded. No one walked through this neighborhood if they could help it. And those who lived in it didn't care. They knew this hood.
Benji found himself laughing softly at human ignorance again, warzone, my ass. The most dangerous things you run into in this place are the dogs and the wannabes, and all they do is bark. No bite whatsoever. Conflict's farther south, eejits!
Jason was leaning casually on one of the brick walls when Benji came jogging up.
"Nice mask, Jay," Benji complimented with a nod.
"Can't do the make-up," Jason replied from under the clown mask, all the color painted over with black, and Benji was willing to bet munny to doughnuts that white had been redone with glow-in-the-dark, "School's full of douchebags."
Benji snorted, "They're not all that bad. Scrags, for instance."
"I didn't say they were ALL douchebags, I only implied MOST of them were," Jason said, his long dreadlocks waving as he shook his head.
Benji smirked, keeping his comments to himself.
The two friends walked to school in silence, most of the crowd parted for the angst-looking teenagers, but every now and then a fellow classmate would wave or flash a sign and they'd respond in kind, Benji's responses considerably friendlier than those of Jason's.
Middletown High was decidedly not a school for the weak of constitution. Given the nature of the rumors of the school, many mothers did not send their goody two-shoes "babies" to a place that stunk of cigarette smoke and spray paint, and the teachers had worse reputations than the students. The entire city had a nickname for the school that many of its students used with intimidating pride: "Juvie High."
The façade that Benji put on was just to keep his potential enemies off-guard. Many of the people here already knew that the friendly, soft-spoken boy would cut their throats at the slightest provocation. While the neighborhood Benji came from was nice enough, he knew that the majority of Juvie's students came from the opposite side of the tracks, the wrong side that everyone in school referred to as "The Territories."
The Territories was a neighborhood that was under constant gang war. Even cops didn't patrol there at night: flashing your badge or driving in a patrol car there was just as good as signing your own death warrant. And where the police feared to tread, Benji sure as hell stayed away from, and did his best not to socialize with anyone from there. Problem was, they did their best to socialize with everybody, and Benji had yet to meet even one of them.
Sure, he had his reputation, but that would only protect him so much. One day, he'd run afoul of a member, and that would be the end of it. He'd either end up being shot, or worse.
Benji and Jason went up to their customary hang out joint on the roof, which they weren't supposed to be on, per se, but no one cared, not even if you used it to jump class or to smoke, which was it's primary use. Most of their days were spent up here, as Benji only stayed in a single class long enough to do the worksheet and Jason would just copy off of him. There weren't ever any objections, the teachers didn't care, and so long as the SRO's wallet remained fat, he didn't either.
Juvie High was about as corrupt and uncaring as schools could get and then some.
"I heard that Desa got passing grades," Jason said after a long drag on his smoke.
"The guy who only sticks around for the roll calls?" Benji said without looking up from his drawing pad. The character wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, either. Benji started looking at it objectively to see what he could improve.
"Yeah," came his friend's voice from behind a cloud of smoke.
"Juvie's getting' worse, but no surprises there," Benji erased something and went back with greater detail.
Jason grunted and had another drag, "You been hearin' the news?"
"Nah, three-quarters of it is murder and chaos," Benji snorted, "I get enough of that in school."
"Damn straight, but," Jason laughed briefly, "There's all this junk about black critters going around eating people."
"'Black critters'?" Benji frowned, "Is that a scientific term?"
"Shut up, man, I'm serious," Jason doused his cig under his boot, "They're saying that they eat everything, the whole body, even the bones. The last attack was over in two-shoe-ville, five blocks over! What if Juvie's next? I'm getting freaked out, man."
Benji paused, "Have you been smoking weed again?"
"I told you, after the raid next door, I kicked that shit! This is shit that's been on national tv! You gotta believe me!"
"I'll believe it when I see it," Benji said, closing his piecebook, "No offense, Jay, but you haven't been entirely honest in the past," or reliable, Benji added in his mind.
"Yeah, no, I got you," Jason made a "no offense" gesture, "It's just, the 'hood's already fucked up. I don't need another thing coming around the corner and screwing everything up the asshole."
Benji only nodded.
"You going to class today?"
"No, I got three more days I can play hooky, and I have places to be today," Benji said.
"Like where?"
"Just places," Benji said, "I promised I'd be somewhere to help a guy out, that's all."
"You need a hand?" Jason offered.
"Nah, we got it," Benji shrugged, "Thanks for the offer, though."
"Fine," Jason said, "I'm skipping out, too. I'm just really freaked, y'know?"
Benji nodded and opened the door to go back inside. Truth was, he had no one to help out, he just wanted to see someone. No one could know of their relationship, though, it had to remain secret. Benji did feel a little guilty about lying to his one and only friend, but he had little choice: if this woman's father found out, he'd kill them both.
Benji decided to finish his piece before heading out. No point in planning on spraying it up tonight if it wasn't complete. It was a graffiti design based on his feelings of frustration and resentment at being stuck in a school he didn't deserve to be in. The words he eventually ended up using in wild style lettering were "Broken Dreams."
Benji sighed; he'd never get out of this joint. His destiny was set the moment he was entered into this hell hole.
A student ran past Benji, whom he ignored. You got that all of the time in Juvie High.
But then another ran past him in the same direction, guy A must have pissed off guy B, Benji figured, none of my business.
Just as he finished that thought, he vaguely heard the sound of a large mass of people screaming and the distinct sound of stampeding students.
It was then Benji frowned and took off his earphones to hear what was going on, did someone get shot?
The sound was quickly approaching him and he had to fight the feelings in his gut telling him he should be running, too, as a large swarm of people came surging down the halls, past the side hall Benji was hiding in. He could poke his head out and see what was happening because everyone was packed in so tight, they'd take it off. Someone tripped near Benji, and started getting trampled.
Benji gritted his teeth and drug the bloody mass out, much to his lower left arm's complaint. After many attempts, Benji managed to find the boy's pulse and discover he was fine, but by then all of the other students were long gone.
Benji took the opportunity to peek around the corner of his hiding place, and saw something exceedingly strange. Small black creatures, no bigger than the size of a fat housecat, were picking and crawling through the students unfortunate enough to be the victims of the crush. Some of the creatures were eating something, but Benji couldn't see what.
The creature closest to Benji stopped and made a sniffing motion, its antennae twitching.
Benji crawled back and grabbed the student next to him. If this were any other sort of creature at all, like a cougar or a bear, he would have known how to deal with it, but these creatures were completely unknown to him. He didn't think they even had a scientific name, much less a common one.
He had only drug the body a short distance when the creature looked down the hall. Moonlit eyes locked with Benji's green ones and the creature hissed, running his way. Benji panicked and started dragging the body faster, not caring for stealth anymore. If he could beat the creature to the band hall doors, he and his unconscious cargo would be safe!
But the little creature was faster than it looked, running faster than Benji could drag. It leapt up and time slowed down as Benji thought of his life and how exceedingly worthless it had been!
The creature landed feet-first on Benji's chest, shoving him into the wall and then onto the floor. Somewhere along the line he had let go of the other guy.
Through the pain and the fuzzy feeling, Benji heard his brain scream "RUN!" but his body wouldn't respond, and before he could, he felt a feeling of something being drug out of his chest.
He looked down and saw that the creature had plucked something vaguely heart-shaped from his chest.
Mayans were so skilled at cutting the hearts of their victims that they could see it before they died, Benji thought as he watched the creature devour its meal through slowly closing eyes, Go figure. My last thought is a piece of random trivia.
Benji closed his eyes and felt himself drift away.
Benji heard a beep, repeating after itself over and over, that sounds like a heart monitor.
"Doctor, he's waking up," a woman said, and Benji opened his eyes and felt his chest, how am I still alive?
He sat up, but a hand gently pushed him back down, "Whoa there, son, you're not quite ready for physical activity quite yet."
"But I feel fine!" Benji complained, and he did feel whole and healthy…but something was missing.
Outside he heard a distraught woman, growing louder, "…want to see him! I want to see my son, Goddammit!"
Before he knew it, he was embraced by his mother's bear hug, ignoring all of the doctor's protests about protocols. Benji reached up and hugged his sobbing mother, "Its okay, mom, I'm fine."
It was right then he knew what was wrong: despite what was happening around him, he did not feel a single emotion.
Not one.
~Destruction-END~
Phew, one character intro/origin down…..however many left to go XD
Nothing much more to be said, please review!
KHVeteran, signing off.