Author Notes from iSpazzeh14: w00t! SisterFic to I. Write. Love's "Friends and Alibis" =D So, yes, co-written story as well as hers. =3 So know, in addition to dealing with her in R.L. I now have to deal with her here. (I.W.L: DON'T HUG ME AND TELL ME YOU LOVE ME. BITCH IMMA KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP NOW) Well, now I'm afraid to go to sleep. O3o Oh, well, it's already 3:00 in the morning. Might as well stay up the rest of the night, right?
"Welcome to next Kingdom Hearts chapter story! Weee! This time it's got randomness and humor, romance and adventure! Not to mention you'd get what I'd call a peek in on my boring ass life! W00t!
No, I'm kiddin'. If this actually happened, [we'd] own Kingdom Hearts right now. Literally."
~Just to quote I.W.L
"Disclaimer: Although I might own the rights to use [I. Write. Love (Rachell)] Cody, Paul and I in this story, I don't own anything else, including PlayStation, Kingdom Hearts and the creepy dark portal guy... -shivers-"
~Still quoting I.W.L
Shout Out From I. Write. Love: I'm getting this over with so I can find my pencil and write Cody a letter (when he reads this, YUP! Imma stalker ^^). So, um, what am I supposed to say? She steals ideas from me but ends up co-writing the same exact story? (iSpazzeh14: IT WAS YOUR FREAKIN' IDEA!) I guess. And no, I'm not going to counter that statement with "LOVE YA!". Sorro.
Well, have fun reading this story. Mine's better, though. GO READ IT!
Baaaaaaai. (Off Screen: "NOW HELP ME FIND MY PENCIL!" "Oh goodness… OH! That's what was making the keyboard shake when you typed, Rachie.")
And, btw: The last names and R.L. locations have been changed to avoid stalkerishisms. O3o
Enjoy!~ =D
Chapter One:
"Rachell! Xemnas got Sora!"
"Cody, shut up and stop telling me the obvious!"
I watched as she pushed the brunette away, and reattached her hand to the controller, smashing the buttons wildly. Cody growled, and I settled back into the arms of my boyfriend, the both of us chuckling.
"Ya'll are more fun to watch than that game." Paul's voice dripped with sarcasm and apathy as he pulled out his phone to text random friends that I knew nothing about.
"Well, I have to agree," though I didn't mean it sarcastically, "you two are interesting when you argue."
Cody spun around to look at me. "Shut up! She's fighting like crap!"
"Doesn't mean you need to tell me, Cody!" she snapped. On screen, Sora suffered from a round of laser bullets. "Besides, I'd like to see you do better!"
The impatient boy reached out for the controller, only to have it jerked away from him by the current gamer. "How am I supposed to prove you wrong if you won't give me the damn thing?" I rolled my eyes.
"I'm in the middle of a boss battle! You can wait!" After losing about half of what was left of her health (again), Rachell paused the game and turned toward her pest. "If I keep losing health because of you, I swear I'll get a Keyblade and kick your ass!"
"That's not a threat!"
"Like hell it is!"
That's when I lost my tolerance. I picked up a pillow, and threw it to Cody's back. Paul wrapped his arms around me again after texting to try and calm me down. "Both of you shut up and play the game already!" I was glad they knew better than to argue. Cody tossed the pillow back, and it landed on the couch next to me.
Paul whispered into my ear, his Southern accent (that he denied he had) crystal clear, "Your friends are such dorks, baby." He had never even heard about the Kingdom Hearts series before I had come along, so he couldn't truly understand the love between gamer and game character. But I didn't hold that against him.
"I know," I whispered back, "but they're my dorks in a way."
"Then whose dork are you?"
"Yours?" I smiled at him. He pecked my lips lightly. Looking back to the TV screen, I realized how silent the two were being, and, I have to say, it worried the crap out of me. Regardless, I was silently cheering Rachell on as she only had one more combo to fulfill before she beat the game for the first time.
I gasped as Cody lunged for the remote once more, earning himself a kick to the stomach. I had a hard time keeping from laughing while he writhed in – minor – pain on the floor, but I managed. Hey, it was his own freaking fault. "What the hell?" Rachell had yelled to him.
"I tackled you and you kicked me!" Cody screamed in return, still clutching his stomach and glaring at Rachell.
"Yeah, I kicked you because you tackled me, dumbass! Maybe next time you shouldn't do that!" After my laugh attack I grew serious, and was pulling a "Leon" by pinching the bridge of my nose in annoyance. Conflicts like this had happened all the time between them, and I had learned to just live with it. That is, once I got so used to them fighting that I no longer found them hilarious to watch.
"That's it…" I heard Cody mumble. He dove for the controller again, this time managing to grab it and bring it toward him, but Rachell still had her hold and refused to let it falter. They wrestled on the tan carpet of my home. I turned away to Paul who was, once again, texting, about to offer him something to drink.
Out of absolutely nowhere, came the sound of plastic crashing to said tan carpeting. I looked in the direction it had come from, wide-eyed, hoping – praying – that it wasn't what I thought it was. Of course, it was. There lay my PlayStation2 in a pitiful exhibit of sparks and smoke. Their fighting had stopped for once, and the four of us gapped at the pile of black plastic and wires. Oh, I was so going to kill them. A high-pitched whine escaped my throat.
"M-My PlayStation…" I whimpered. Paul was trying to pull me back down to the couch, but I refused to be moved.
Cody glanced from the destroyed system to me, then back again. Quickly he untangled himself from the cord, and passed the once-fought-over controller to Rachell. "What the hell did you do?"
"ME? I didn't do it!"
"You're the one with the controller in your hand!"
Was he really that much of an idiot?
Rachell then threw the remote at his face, missing. "The cord wrapped around your ankle!"
"Like that happened!" It was thrown back at her, but she – surprisingly, knowing her coordination – dodged it, and it struck the ground, shattering and joining the console it controlled at the great TV in the sky. I stared at it in disbelief. Oh well, I guess I don't need it anymore, right? I kept telling myself that, but I couldn't hold back the second pathetic complaint.
"Look what you did!" Rachell yelled again.
"I didn't dodge it!"
"You threw it!"
"SHUT UP!"
The three of us turned our attention to Paul. I may have been used to their bickering, but he certainly wasn't, and I could tell it easily got on his nerves. "Yellin' ain't gonna fix that thing."
"Then what is?" Cody chose to be sarcastic; smart. After a quick glare, I slumped back onto the couch, holding my head in my hands.
"I wonder if I could create a torture chamber," I mumbled to myself. "Oh yes, and with lots of chains, so many chains!" From what I heard, Rachell was moving about. What was she doing? She would take a step, then stop, take a step, then stop. Wait, don't tell me; she was collecting the remains of the controller? That sounded like something she would do.
I felt the couch sink as Paul took his place next to me, apparently not having a comment to Cody's sarcastic remark. He mumbled something along the lines of, "Anything but fighting," but I ignored it, too distraught to be sociable anymore.
"Well, I guess you won't know how it ends," Cody was telling Rachell.
"Of course, I won't," she replied, more annoyance then before creeping into her tone. I truthfully did not blame her. "All I needed was one more combo. ONE MORE COMBO. Yet, you had to be stupid and try to get the controller away from me, and now I will never know. IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT."
"That's really what you're worried about? You just broke my PlayStation, and you're worried about the ending?" I glared daggers at the two of them, glancing up from my hands. "Fine. You wanna know the ending? Roxas dies. The end."
Her mouth fell open in shock. "That's not the ending," Cody snorted. "The real ending is-"
"SHUT UP! Don't tell me how it ends!" Her fist connected with Cody's arm.
He rubbed the spot that would've probably been sore if she had punched him any harder, stalking off to the kitchen. "Hey, Alison, anything else to eat?"
I glared at him… Again. "Yeah, I think there's some bleach in there somewhere…" I said thoughtfully.
"That's not funny," he said, poking his head back into view. "Really, I'm hungry."
"Really, my PlayStation's broke now because of you and Rachell. Food should be the least of your worries."
Rachell stood and followed Cody into the kitchen. Paul placed a quick kiss on my cheek, and I fell back into his arms. I assumed Rachell was trying to pull out the pizza box that held our leftovers from earlier judging by the sound of cardboard struggling to escape the fridge. Once the noise had stopped I heard their conversation.
"Here. Food," Rachell said.
"But we already ate that…" Cody complained. I heard the box open. "Sweet, there's still pepperoni!" I shook my head, lowering it back to my palms. I was only subconsciously aware that Paul then rose from the couch, and Cody took his place, bouncing with half of a slice hanging out of his mouth.
I heard plastic shifting, and was too afraid to look up. Paul reached a verdict. "There ain't no way we're gonna be able to save it. They wrecked it."
I groaned, painfully, pathetically, and any other adjective beginning with a "p" that would describe this feeling. "You… you owe me so much now…" I stated, allowing my voice to drop two octaves below its normal pitch.
The pizza box was set down on the coffee table in front of me, and I heard a scurrying of footsteps retreating. She may have been out of reach, but there was nothing stopping me from throwing something at her… "Well, uh, look on the bright side…"
"We have pizza!" Cody interrupted. Actually, I don't think it was much of an interruption due to the fact that Rachell most likely couldn't have finished that sentence anyway. We all glared at him. Wow, I was doing that a lot today. "Sorry for being optimistic…"
"I'll return to optimism when I've got another PS2 and a copy of Kingdom Hearts II," I said, once again, returning my face to my hands to mope. "Until then, the positives are not on my mind."
After a few more exchanged glances – and attempts from me to fight the urge to murder someone – we had gotten the remains of the PlayStation in the trash after I held my own, imagined funeral of my favorite game and console. Not to mention all of the memory for all of the PS2 games I had ever owned. Oh, such a loss. Such wasted potential…
We now sat in the middle of the floor, all motivation to find something to do swept away with our last shred of entertainment. Suddenly, there was a loud crash from one of the back bedrooms, and we all jumped.
"Dude, did you not get enough out of throwing that controller at me?" Rachell asked. I looked over to her, and Cody's phone was in her lap. She quickly handed it back to him.
"Shut up," I told her, trying to figure out which room it had come from. I had guessed my bedroom. Dangit. "What was that?"
Rachell shrugged and the two boys got up to investigate the sound. Seconds passed before a muffled yell was heard all in the house – I'm glad my parents or sister weren't home – and Paul reappeared at the doorway, quickly hiding himself behind the big screen TV. "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?" Cody was close on his heels, gripping his arm, some blood seeping out between his fingers.
"Cody, what the f-" Rachell started.
"That's a freakin' Dusk!" I froze. Had he just said Dusk? As in the most commonly seen Nobody in the game that my friends had just destroyed? Huh? Rachell and I looked at each other, each of us just as confused as the other.
"What?"
A flash of white danced at the corner of my eye. I turned, slowly, afraid that Cody wasn't as serious as he had been when I met him. Figures, the one time he was being serious was when there was a freaking Dusk in my house! What is up with that?
Paul was still behind the TV when the creature stood to its full height after slithering its way into the living room. I didn't blame him… Much. Even after watching Cody and Rachell play the game for three days in a row he still didn't know what it was. I wasn't going to be completely sympathetic. Cody stepped in front of Rachell and I. Why? I had no clue.
To our left, behind Paul, appeared a swirling black hole, darkness seeming to flow so easily from it. A cloaked figure entered my house from it, heels of his boots clicking on the tile. I couldn't see his face, but I got a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. "This world seems weak and pathetic." I would recognize that voice anywhere; Paul St. Peter.
"Who in the hell are you?" Cody yelled to him.
The man's head moved as he – I assumed – studied each of us in turn. "And you four are who connected it. Equally as pathetic." Hm… That didn't seem very nice for an actor to say. Oh…
"Who you callin' pathetic?" Paul asked, gaining more courage than before. That was my Paul; able to stand up against any man, but not able to do so against something that he had – hardly – ever seen before. Way to go! Yeah, Paul, you get the worst villain of them all; Cody, Rachell and I will get the easily-dealt-with Dusk. We'll be with you in spirit!
"You fool," the hood shook from side to side. "You think you're brave, but you could never handle yourself up against me."
Paul's anger was increasing, and I began to take a step forward, in case he sprang to attack the stranger. I was not going to let him get hurt in a fight with that man. "I could take ya," he growled.
"No, you couldn't, Paul," I said taking another step, a mischievous smile playing on my lips. Paul gave me an incredulous look, and the hooded figure tilted his head, in confusion, I think, but I couldn't see his face.
From behind me, Rachell chimed in with the same smirk. "But we know someone who can."
"What-" Cody started.
Before the man in front of us could stop us, Rachell had Cody's hand in hers and we dashed for the portal. I grabbed Paul's hand as I ran past him, unsure if he would feel comfortable enough to follow, positive that he had no idea where that hole in the wall might lead. But Rachell and I were certain it was some place wonderful, even if it was wonderful only by our standards.
As soon as we were completely immersed in darkness, a shadow fell over my eyes, and I blacked out.
Complaints from Rachell and Cody were the first things I heard upon regaining consciousness. Figures.
"Wha' the?" I sat up rubbing my eyes, to see Cody rubbing his head. "Where in the hell are we?" I was still bust trying to process what my eyes were seeing, but that wasn't an easy task for me by this point.
Rachell was the first one able to answer Cody's question. "I know this is going to sound crazy and unbelievable, but I think we're in the World That Never Was..."
"Huh?" Paul was, obviously, more confused about this situation than anyone else. Ah, the perks of being a Kingdom Hearts fan. "The World That Never what?"
No one answered his question; we were all awed, lost in our fantasies that just may become a reality. I studied my surroundings more closely, forcing my brain to comprehend them. "Well, I'll be damned…" I muttered, not catching the fact that I had cursed when I was trying to stop that habit. "We are… You can tell by the walls." I motioned toward the Nobody symbol carved into each one.
Rachell and Cody stood, possibly trying to find ways to disprove our theories. "But… How?"
"The dark portal…" Cody mused. "Either we're in some obsessive fan's house, or this is the real deal… We're in Kingdom Hearts."
I had to remind myself to breathe.