Title: Birth By Fire
Full Summary: When Agni is dragged into an adventure and forced to make her way through seas of spikey hair, themes of friendship and light – and is that Utada Hikaru playing in the background? – she is forced to confront how awfully she's dealing with her own life. . . and the fact that she's either participating in an unreleased Kingdom Hearts title or an author avatar in a badly-written fanfiction.
Rating: T for swearing, sarcasm, themes, and innuendos to come. Basically, it's written by a teen, in the point of view of a teen, for teens and tweens. I think that counts as a T.
A/N: So hey, this is your lovely fanfictor X Is For! I am ashamed to present my very first work of fanfiction, a blatant self-insert game-follower, cheesily titled "Birth By Fire" because, well, you'll see. It's kinda obvious. Anywho, enjoy; don't be too put off by the lemony narrator, and review, whether you like it or not!
Things I own: An alarm clock; snarkiness; an iPod; a necklace with a key pendant; Agni and Chris and all those other filler OCs.
Things I don't own: Anything by Utada Hikaru; KH:BBS; a gaming console to play it on; anything else mentioned here. Oh, and especially not the opening (prologue?) scene or much of the dialogue. :|
Okay, that's way enough noting to start us off. Are you sitting comfortably? Is your Utada Hikaru remix of choice playing? Well then, let's begin!
Chapter One: Earth
A tropical island, studded by piers and boardwalks, wooden platforms and wooden sheds, that curve with the trees and land. Waves beat against the shore, lapping the boots of a silver-haired man who stands contemplating the sunset.
"This world is just too small."
The sun sets, and a man now stands in the same place – whether the same man as before or not, it is impossible to tell from the back of his long black coat. He holds a large white bundle under one arm.
The island that was so bright and vibrant in the light seems dreary when shrouded by night. The man stands with his bundle in a circle of palm trees.
"There, you see?" It is a gravelly voice, one that had seen many years. "An empty world, like a prison. I imagine you'll be right at home." He seems to be talking to the contents of the bundle, which he lays on the curve of a tree. A young boy, it looks like, with blond hair. Asleep... or unconscious.
Hey, where am I?
"Who's there?" The voice matches the boy's face, young and innocent. A light shines brightly, and then the boy is dropping slowly through dark waters. He lands gently on a blank white surface and gazes around confusedly as the silent voice speaks again.
I'm a brand new heart.
"But this is—" the boy starts to say, then stops and tries again. "Why are you in my heart?"
The light brought me. I saw it shining in the distance... and followed it here.
"Yeah. That was my light." The boy touches his chest. His eyes closes halfway. They are bright blue, and blank. "But my heart is fractured. And now, the little I have left is slipping away." The surface he stands on appears to be a representation of that heart; it looks as if it used to be a perfect circle, but a large chunk had broken away, leaving it a jagged crescent.
Then you should join your heart with mine.
"Huh?"
Light suddenly shines through the surface, repairing the circle and bringing it back to a full white cylinder, the sides black with designs reminiscent of stained-glass windows.
Now our hearts have touched. Nothing else will slip away. And one day... you'll be strong enough to win back the part that already did.
"Right. Thanks."
It's time to wake up now. All we need to do is...
The boy looks straight up and speaks, his voice joined with another, alien one – the silent voice? "Open the door."
The whiteness bursts away from the surface like cherry blossom petals, revealing a glass portrait of the boy, a city, and five empty circles. The petals drift up into the dark sky, and the boy watches dispassionately.
The man in the black coat begins to walk away, hunched over as if his back pains him. But behind him a hand slowly lifts from the boy in the bundle.
"Ahh..." The man turns around slowly, raspy voice pleased.
With a flash of light, a weapon appears in the boy's hand – an oversized, stylized key. Or, no—
"A Keyblade?" The man sounds thrilled now. A beam of light slices from the tip of the Keyblade and bursts in the sky. The man in the black coat smiles, satisfied.
Ventus's eyes open.
The sun shining through my windows roused me early that day.
I groaned and rolled over in my bed, trying to go back to sleep, but ended up teetering on the edge, about to fall.
That woke me up.
I stumbled to my feet, dropping my blanket onto the floor in the process, and glared blearily across the room at my clock. 7:41 A.M., it proclaimed – no time to be up and about in the middle of summer vacation. But I was up, and up I would stay, it seemed. It looked a nice day outside, too, anyway; no heat shimmering on the rooftop of the house behind mine, and only a couple of clouds marring the cheery shine of the sun on the grass.
I'd had a weird dream last night, though. I had been up late last night (or rather, early. Give me a break, it was vacation, I was allowed to stay up until three in the morning), playing video games, and it seemed as though they had seeped into my brain and invaded my dreams. I could only remember fragments, but it seemed awfully reminiscent of either Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy... and I was pretty sure that had been Utada Hikaru singing in the background. No matter. Today, I would keep myself firmly off of the gaming consoles and my head out of Square Enix's beguiling creations.
I got dressed, stuck a beanie onto my long red hair, and slapped on some eye liner for good measure. Then, pushing book, cell phone, and iPod into my favorite black messenger bag, I flew downstairs and added a granola bar to the bag.
"Mom," I called, "I'm going out!"
My mother emerged from her home office, eyes widened in exaggerated shock. "Agni? Where're you going? And how are you awake this early?"
I shot her an indignant glance. "I can get up early sometimes," I claimed, then dropped the joke and my bag to put on my favorite green Converse. "I'm going to go find a place in the neighborhood to sit and read; I might also find Gina or Seiko or someone to hang out with. Do you see how beautiful it is outside?"
"All right, all right. Phone?" I produced it from my bag, tossing the strap over my shoulder, and waggled it towards her. "Breakfast?" I pulled out the granola bar and shrugged dismissively. "Hydration?" I shook my head, and she tossed me a bottle of iced tea. "Be back in time for lunch, then."
I shut the door behind me and dashed into the perfect day.
I was panting by the time I arrived at the park tucked into my suburban neighborhood, having jogged the entire mile and a half in an attempt to see how all those role-playing-game heroes could manage to move at a fast trot all the time. I really shouldn't have played all that Kingdom Hearts last night.
I half climbed, half slumped onto one of the huge rocks in the front of the park and settled down there to relax. I was a singer, and a good one, but my breath control didn't extend to athletics. It seemed that you had to be an athlete to jog everywhere like that... but then again, you kind of have to be an athlete if you spend your time swinging huge heavy weapons around. I smiled at that thought, remembering my time last night re-beating Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (I had really gone on a Square binge) – how about the Buster Sword or Sephiroth's Masamune for huge heavy weapons? Also total overcompensation for something, but I didn't really want to go there right now.
My breath regained, I lay myself down on the warm rock and soaked up the sun. Eyes closed against the morning brightness, I groped in my bag for my iPod, only to find my fingers closing on my phone. Right, I'd been thinking about calling a friend... maybe Chris would want to hang out, she lived in the area...
My lazy, warm bubble burst. I hadn't seen Christina for a month at the least. It was the twentieth of August, so four weeks? Five? And if it was the twentieth, that meant that... that she was leaving for college today.
Christina was a year older than me, but we had been best friends since middle school, when she had slid into my seat on the bus and introduced herself. It was so stereotypical, the way we got along. Chris, tall, blonde, and a perfect American girl: outgoing and easygoing, sweet-tempered and sweet-faced, athletic and popular; and then me, Agni, an erratic mix of Indian and Irish, with my mother's traditional Irish flame-red hair, green eyes, and acid tongue, and my father's golden-brown skin, ethnic name, and Indian perfectionist mentality. Somehow, as it always is in the books, we ended up to be perfect foils and perfect friends.
But it was different now, of course. She was off to college all the way in New Orleans; I was staying at our New York suburban high school. She thought I should come with her and help her settle into her new dorm; I was über-rationally, pessimistically convinced that this was going to prove to be the end of our friendship, and we should just end it now on a happy note. She got rarely irritated; I got not-so-rarely furious; we had a fight, and now she was leaving today. And I wasn't going with her.
I sighed to myself and pushed my phone back into my bag, grabbing my book this time and unclenching my hand from where it had tightened around my necklace, a beautiful key pendant that Chris had given me. I needed to escape this hackneyed anguish. If I thought that life was reminding me of Square Enix, here was the last addition – the angsty backstory. I was a perfect Final Fantasy heroine; all I needed now was spikey hair.
As it turns out, I probably shouldn't have thought that.
I was wholly absorbed in my book, enveloped in the compelling trials of the vampire Lestat, when I heard the noise. It was all too familiar, but it took me a moment to place the hissing rush of sound. And when I did, it took me another moment to process it, put a bookmark in my book, look up, and speak. And then all I could think of to say was:
"What. The. Hell."
I sat on my rock and stared at the man who had just walked into the park.
From the hissing portal of darkness that had just elaborately sprouted out of the middle of the grass.
The man who had just walked into the park from the hissing portal of darkness, who was wearing an ankle-length black leather coat with silver trim whose hood completely covered his face, hunched over as if his back was stiff. He looked up and around as the portal closed, and I saw a shadowed hint of a grey beard and a flash of yellow eyes. I openly stared, my mind going on overdrive. This was impossible. This was a really, really good role player. This was a dream. This was somehow that guy from the secret ending of Kingdom Hearts 2. This was a fictional character... who had just looked up and spotted me.
The moment those creepy yellow eyes found mine, I squeaked and fell off of my rock. My poor forgotten Anne Rice book followed suit, adding insult to injury as it bounced off of my shoulder. The Kingdom Hearts dude's eyes, barely visible in the shadows of his hood, traced this, finally settling back on my own.
"...Hi?" I managed.
He looked at me a little more before seemingly deciding on something and walking towards me.
"Excuse me," he said politely, his voice rough and gravelly. My head spun. How was this happening? "Could I ask you where I am?"
"Um." I tried to gather my thoughts. "New Rochelle, New York... the United States... Earth?" It came out sounding as a question.
"Earth," he mused. "A particularly dark world, I can feel. And you..." He turned his gaze on me, and I was unnerved yet again by that yellow gaze. "You, I can tell, have the capacity for greatness and great darkness."
That took me aback. Greatness? That was... unexpected. And great darkness? That was not just unexpected, but I had played enough Kingdom Hearts and read more than enough fantasy books to know that that was not a good thing. But still, I didn't know... the way he said it was both unsettling and intriguing.
"Excuse me? W—what are you talking about?" I spluttered. "I don't have any—I—who are you?"
He pushed back his hood to reveal a middle-aged or older man with chocolate brown skin, slightly pointed ears, and those piercing yellow eyes, bald but with a little silver beard perched on the bottom of his chin.
"My name," he pronounced, "is Master Xehanort. I come from another world, the Land of Departure. Would you like to come with me, child?"
Okay, I know what you're thinking. Why would I want to go with him? I'd only just met him; for all I knew, he could've been a creepy child molester who liked to cosplay as Kingdom Hearts characters. In fact, that was actually more likely than him actually being a Kingdom Hearts character. I mean... really? A fictional world or a fictional character turning out to be real? What are the chances of that? So I really have no excuse for what I did next.
I stood up, drew myself upright. "My name is Agni," I said, "Agni Gadhavi."
"How fitting," he said cryptically. I think he was smirking. "Would you like to come with me, Agni?" He lost the smirk, and went back to giving me an appraising stare. "I can teach you many things, and unlock the power that lies in your heart."
This guy reminded me of Xemnas, from the other Kingdom Hearts games, with his melodrama and his preference for oration over just talking. And good grief, he was fictional. But still...
Aw, hell. I could do with an adventure, get away from my angst.
"All right. I'll go with you."