Through all that had happened, Steven had enough. They were just asking for too much, pushing him over the edge.
He could still remember how it all started...
"Steven? Steven. STEVEN!"
"huhwha-?"
"I said what does this mean?" yelled his English teacher.
Like usual, Steven had been sleeping in English. He never understood what was so important about essay writing, so he caught up on the sleep he lost gaming into early hours last night. The teacher sighed, and continued his teaching. Seeing as it didn't interest Steven, he fell asleep again.
"Steven!" went the alarm, "sometimes I wonder if the only way you'll survive in this world is... well... frankly you won't."
On cue, the final bell of the day sprung to life, Steven being the first to escape his horror. He caught up with Josh, his best friend, who had class just next door. Nothing could set them apart. The student body had nicknamed them Fire and Ice, due to Steven bright orange hair and Josh's dark blue. Steven was also much taller than Josh, not to discredit Josh's height.
Josh walked in silence as their school blazers blew in the wind. Though the black and blue ties went well with Josh, Steven hated the way it made his hair stand out more. Their shoes clopped as they walked to Steven's house, Steven telling Josh how excited he was for the newest AAA title.
"Josh, you've haven't said a word," Steven said, "Was Math that bad?"
"Hey, you know numbers and equations and stuff is your thing," Josh replied.
"Yeah well if it wasn't you wouldn't have a working Xbox now would you?"
Josh nodded, laughed, and continued walking. Steven could tell when something was off with Josh, but he could also tell when to leave it be. Josh was cold, calm, quiet. He only spoke when he felt he needed to. Steven was quite the opposite, and filled in most of their conversations. They both preferred it that way.
The walk home from school was quite a long one for Steven, through the main streets of the small town they lived in. Though the town was suburban, the center towered in high rise buildings, the ground floors used as shops. Steven lived in a town where everyone knew everyone. Visitors to the town could sense the area contained a community spirit. Of the many businesses and stores, only one had been there longer than any other - the games store. Back in it's prime, the store was radiant and attracted people from the nearby city all year round. Since the rise of video games, the store began to lose income, and had succumb to technology. It had only been scraping the bottom of the barrel since then. Feeling bad for the faceless owner, Steven entered the shop to have a look around. Josh followed.
The bell on the door rang as it opened. The inside had a greater population of spider webs than people. The items on the shelf illegible under the dust. The walls faded from the bright colours of the shops prime, the floors covered in dark dusty rugs. The curtains concealed the windows, and made the shop quite dark. When Steven ran out of shelf he observed the final piece at the back of the shop. It was what appeared to be a DVD case, the cover labelled in two tiny letters in black in the corner.
"CC".
"Hey Josh, check this out," He said, handing the case over to his icy counterpart.
Josh opened it to find a blank, white disc with the same label stretched around the centre. The back of the case only read, "Dangerous software." Steven, looking over Josh's shoulder laughed, "yeah, they wrote the same thing on the Grand Theft Auto series."
"That is a dangerous item," a voice said behind him, making Steven and Josh jump and turn around, "I may have to see some ID if you want that."
Steven and Josh walked up to what appeared to be the counter, and handed over the strange casing and their Student ID's. The shopkeeper observed the card. His face jumped after reading one of their names, though they couldn't see his features. Steven paid for the unusual item and they left the store.
"What do you think it is?" Steven asked.
"No idea, but I used to love that store growing up," Josh replied.
"Yeah, at least the owner can live to see another day now," Steven said. Josh nodded.
They wandered up to Steven's house, said their goodbyes and parted ways. Steven was feeling tired after all the sleep he didn't get in English and went straight to bed.
It was common for Steven to lucid dream. It was one of the many things that he particularly enjoyed about himself. The different settings in his gaming life surrounded him. The only thing that could help Steven decide where he was going were the many places he had visited many times before. He wanted to be in the events, and the sheer number of environments in front of him only amplified that. He could somehow not just play these games, but be a part of their story - instead of being just the narrator.
Steven woke up, the idea had finally hit him.
He just couldn't stop thinking about his plan, how it would work, and particularly, where it would take him. Over thousands of ideas submitted by his imagination, Steven ended up choosing a giant machine. The machine would do exactly what he wanted to do.
Several weeks passed. Josh knew that his best friend was up to something, but was too reserved to ask. Rumours began to fly around the school. Josh had just as little clue as anyone. The only thing that proven was that Steven was far more jumpy, excited and eager than usual.
With a final twist of a wrench, Steven built his new machine, and stood back to look at it. The machine was a giant white cube, taking up most of the area of a decent sized storage cupboard. It was plain white, aside from the control panel. It featured various flashing lights and many buttons and levers. The cube could remind you of a dice, without the dots on it. There was also a several gaming consoles hooked up to the machine, and a PC. The other unique feature was a door, though obvious about where it was, it matched the rest of the design. Stevens's room was rather small so it took up most of his space. No he wasn't good at English; but technology was the one field he was excellent in.
His new machine created a virtual reality which the game inside would design. His favourite game, Kingdom Hearts, was the one game he wanted to test his new machine with, but a thought popped into his head.
"CC"
He rummaged through his school bag and found the disc he had bought all those months ago. He felt that he knew exactly what to do with it, and decided to insert this disc instead. He plugged the TV in, and the it sprung to life. The screen was like any other PlayStation 2 – a memory card and disk displayed on the screen. Unlike all other PlayStation's, a white cube had appeared on the screen, he chose that option, and the cube began to whirr and buzz. The lights began to flicker on and off due to the sudden increase in power usage. The television began to buzz in and out. Steven looked outside and saw the whole town and parts of the nearby city had flickered. Then the noise dimmed, and the cube hummed like a supercomputer waiting on idle. After the surge of power, he then stepped inside the cube. The inside was like the outside, aside from the fact that it was smaller and grey, not white. There was also a giant red button to stand on, which would activate the machine. He sighed, turned to have one last look at the world he knew, and stood on the button, not knowing he will never see it again...
A/N This is my first fanfic and therefore could use lots of improvement and all sorts of other stuff. :3
R&R will help me greatly improve my writing style.
Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, Playstation, or any of the other features in the fanfic. Kingdom Hearts belongs to Square Enix, and PlayStation belongs to Sony. The reason I say others is because I haven't decided what they are yet, and it also to remove spoilers from the disclaimers. To further remove spoilers my disclaimers are at the end of each chapter. :P