Summary: Sora's the emo kid that all the popular kids love to hate. Kairi's the head cheerleader/ultimate prep/rich girl/ wears a lot of pink. What happens when DESTINY and a class assignment forces them to work together??
High School Fic: Emo vs. Prep
On the first day of High School Sora Strife walked to class through a sea of judging eyes and disgusted looks. Oh what a cruel fate to be an EMO kid in a PREP school. As he walked past a group of blond giggling cheerleads, they giggled. Sora knew they were actually giggling at him…giggling with judgment and hate.
"Hey Sora!"
"How was your summer, Sora?"
"Hey man! You going out for the blizball team?"
"Hey, Sora. Want to hang out during free period?"
"I love the pants, Strife."
Sora ignored their cruel taunts. They all hated him. The PREPS hated anything different. And he was different. He was DIFFERENCE itself. He wore girls' pants. He listened to My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy. Sometimes he did jazz hands walking down the hallways like Toby McGuire in Spiderman 3. He even wore dark colors and smoked cigarettes. He was like James Dean if James Dean had worn women's clothing.
Little did everyone know; under the flinty EMO exterior was an emotional and vulnerable soul crying out in pain. Sora longed for a kindred spirit, a soul mate; someone who could see past the eyeliner and tight pants to love the real Sora. Just because he spent two hours applying make-up and styling his hair every morning, didn't mean that he wanted everyone to focus on his appearance. Who could understand him at Destiny High…?
Sora's musings on true love were cut off abruptly as he ran into a soft and perfumed body and they both toppled to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Damn it, Sora thought as he hit the ground, I need to stop thinking and walking at the same time. I know I can't multi-task.
As Sora looked up to apologize, he found himself looking into an endless ocean of blue flecked with gold. Looking into those eyes was like watching sunlight dancing over the waves. They were filled with wisdom, love, and kindness; ponies, rainbows, and sunshine. Those eyes held everything good in the world. He was mesmerized. He felt like a sailor caught in a siren's song. As he lost himself in those angelic orbs, the ice around his EMO heart slowly began to melt. Al Gore immediately hired a filming crew to raise global awareness of this shocking new phenomenon.
"Sora? Are you okay?"
"Sora?"
"SORA!"
The girl's shout snapped Sora back into reality. With a start, he realized that his blue-eyed goddess was none other than Head Cheerleader Kairi. How could it be? Sora, the EMO kid, couldn't possibly be developing feelings for the biggest PREP in school, right? But those eyes…maybe she was different from the rest of them.
Kairi hit him on the shoulder playfully. "Sora, you klutz, get off of me. Class started, like, two minutes ago." She giggled at his dazed expression.
The red-haired girl's cruel words twisted like a knife in his gut. How could he have though that she was different? He jumped to his feet and stalked off to class leaving Kairi, and her heartlessness (HA! See what I did there?), behind him.
………………..
Sora threw open the classroom door and stomped angrily to his usual seat in the back row. (He always sat in the back, because being EMO meant he was very anti-social as well.) As he collapsed angrily into his chair his teacher, Mr. Ansem-the-Heartless, cackled with glee. "YES! Open your heart to the DARKNESS," the orange-eyed teacher hissed before returning his attention to the equation on the blackboard.
Mr. Ansem-the-Heartless resumed the lesson in a calmer tone. "When integrating equations with multi-variables OF DARKNESS, you use the blah, blah, the z-axis, blah, blah, multiply Y by X to the POWER OF DARKNESS, blah, blah, blah…" Sora's mind began to wander under the monotony of the teacher's voice. He began to think back to that fateful night two weeks ago when he first became EMO...
--
!FLASHBACK!
--
The sun hung low in the sky, turning the world to gold. Sora cheerfully skipped home with his two best friends Roxas and Namine, and his other close friends Kairi, Tidus, Wakka, Selphie, Leon, Cloud, Arieth, Axel, and Demyx, after another fabulous day at school. He was popular, handsome, although only 5'4'' he was the star of all the sports teams (even the girls' teams), all the girls wanted him, and all the guys wanted to be him. Sora was on top of the world.
When he reached his house, he said goodbye to his friends and bounced through the unlocked front door. "Mom! Dad! I'm home!" He shouted, tossing his backpack carelessly on the kitchen table. There was no answer.
"Mom? Dad?" Sora tried again, uncertainly. His stomach clenched as he noticed the lights were off. He hadn't noticed when he walked in because he still hadn't mastered the skill of walking and thinking at the same time.
As the sun began to sink into the ocean, vibrant red beams of the dying light filtered through the windows and pooled like puddles on the tiled floor. The puddles looked like puddles of blood. As if someone, had been murdered violently on that very floor. Sora flinched as he heard a creaking noise, deep within the house. "Hello," he quavered softly, terrified by the descriptive foreshadowing.
As an athlete, Sora had cat-like reflexes and ninja-like stealth abilities, which he quickly used to sneak undetected through the empty house. As approached his parent's room he heard horrible pain filled noises, like something out of his darkest nightmares, and he was struck by a terrible suspicion.
He tried to turn back, but his hand reached for the doorknob as if against his will. He flung the door open and…Ah! Parents…naked…costumes…Oh dear God bondage gear… his brain's defense mechanism kicked in and erased the scene from his memory.
(Ha! I bet you thought his parents were going to be murdered because of all that murder foreshadowing I used earlier. What a twist! I'm like the M. Night Shyamalan of Kingdom Hearts parody writers!)
The next day, Sora went the mall and bought his first Fall Out Boy album. And the rest? The rest was history.
--
UN-!FLASHBACK!
--
"-and in conclusion, that is how you take control of a Heart with the power of DARKN- I mean CALCULUS!" Mr. Ansem-the-Heartless finished gaily as the bell rang.
Sora pulled himself out of his dark thoughts and jazz hands-ed his way through the crowd of shallow PREPS, to his next class.
…………………….
As he walked into his AP Lit class, Sora caught sight of a familiar flash of striking crimson hair. Goddamn it, he'd forgotten that spaz Axel was in his class. He caught another flash of red in his peripheral vision. Kairi, damn it! What was this, the Gingers United Club? Kairi's very presence reminded him of how she'd broken his heart earlier that morning with her carelessly callous words. He remembered it as if it had happened only moments ago…
--
!FLASHBACK!
--
Kairi hit him on the shoulder playfully. "Sora, you klutz, get off of me. Class started, like, two minutes ago."
Ago…
Ago…
--
UN-!FLASHBACK!
--
Bitch.
"Hey, Sora! Over here!" The gorgeous-no, the PREPPY red-head waved from across the room. It's like I don't even exist to her, Sora thought to himself bitterly as he took his seat in the back of the class. He examined his blue-eyed angel discreetly, as the English teacher Mr. Ansem-the-Wise (the only requirement for being a teacher at Destiny High was to be an Ansem, a hiring tactic that had backfired disastrously) began his lecture on The Once and Future King (Yes, they're reading The Once and Future King in AP Lit. Deal with it.).
What was with that tiny dress? She wore it every day, but it never got dirty. And just because they lived on a humid tropical island and spent all their time on the beach, Kairi thought that her skimpy outfit was socially acceptable. Call me old-fashioned, Sora thought to himself, but give me a good pair of skinny jeans any day. And it was pink! Gross. Who wore pink, anyway? Everyone knew pink was the exact opposite color of EMO. Sora came to the conclusion that Kairi dressed like a whore. Because she was a PREP and all PREPS dressed like whores… or something. It was just one more reason their love was not meant to be.
Turning his focus on the class, Sora watched as Roxas tried to argue one of the lecture points. "I think you're wrong," The blonde-haired boy was saying. "I think in this passage T.H. White is satirizing the institution of knighthood to underscore the hypocrisy of war. I think…"
"You can't think, Roxas" Mr. Ansem-the-Wise countered, "You're not a real person; you're an abomination that has no right to exist."
Defeated once again by Mr. Ansem-the-Wise's superior rhetoric, Roxas sat back and reverted to his normal expression of dazed confusion. "Don't let him talk to you like that, Roxas," Axel jumped in.
"…What?" The blue-eyed boy responded predictably.
"Rrrrrrrrrrroxas!" Mr. Ansem-the-Wise shouted majestically, attempting to get the boy's attention.
"…Huh?" asked Roxas, drawing from his substantial verbal repertoire.
"Roxas!" Axel echoed.
"Rrrrroxas!"
"Roxas!"
"Rrrroxas!"
"Roxas!"
"Rrrroxas!"
"Roxas!"
"Rrrroxas!"
"Roxas!"
"Shut. The Hell. Up!" Roxas finally yelled, leaping to his feet and running for the door.
"…What's his problem?" Axel asked after several moments of awkward silence. Naminé just shrugged. Sora made a mental note to start skipping school. Flawless attendance records were so not EMO.
…………………
In Physics, taught by Mr. Xeonhart (he liked to be called Mr. Mansex by students in private), Sora and his classmates were paired off for a team project. To his complete shock, Sora was paired with Kairi the ultra-PREP and his secret crush. Everyone else was shocked too. No one had seen that crazy and totally unexpected twist coming. (Another twist!)
"Mr. Xeonhart," Sora protested, "Kairi and I can't work together. I'm EMO and she's a PREP. It'll never work. We're just too different."
"You would DARE interfere with my PLANS?" Mr. Xeonhart hissed darkly.
Sora quickly backpedaled, "I would love to work with Kairi, Mr. Xeonhart, sir." The skinny-jeans clad boy sat back and pouted. In an EMO way.
"Excellent. Excellent," the silver-haired teacher purred. "Now go forth and bring me my Kingdom Hearts...and boxcars, lots of boxcars!"
………………….
"Sora, wait up!" Kairi shouted as she fought through the after-school crowd towards the spiky-haired boy.
"What do you want?" Sora muttered resentfully, as Kairi walked up beside him.
"I thought we could start on the project." The light of his red-head goddess' smile shone like the sun. Sora was blinded by its light. Those Crest Whitening Strips had obviously paid off big time.
"Fine," Sora sneered, "But let's make one thing clear before we begin. I don't like you, and you don't like me. You're a PREP girl, I'm an EMO kid, and we're never going to be friends, so drop the act."
Kairi looked at him worriedly. "Oh Sora, are you still upset about the thing with your parents? I thought your therapist said you were moving past this whole 'EMO' phase."
"This EMO phase?" Sora laughed darkly, "Being EMO's not a phase. None of you understand. You can't deal with what I've become, so you pretend it's 'just a phase.' Well take a good look at reality, Kairi." The EMO boy pushed his wrists in front of Kairi, allowing her to examine the newly formed scars.
"Sora," Kairi started hesitantly. "You know that's just magic marker, right? You drew in those scars."
"Whatever helps you sleep at night, babe," Sora smirked as he pulled out a cigarette and a lighter.
"Sora, you don't smoke," the red-head warned him. "It'll just make you sick."
"Obviously you don't know everything about me, Kairi!" Sora inhaled deeply on the white cylinder. Ah, the sweet taste of tar and cancer. A garbled noise escaped from his lips as he choked back the coughs threatening to erupt from his lungs. Must not let stupid PREP girl win, he thought to himself, must smoke entire cigarette. He smirked painfully into the girl's anxious face and took another drag.
He managed to smoke half of the cigarette before his entire lunch ended up on Kairi's shoes ("Sora! You f#ktard!"). He hoped she would forgive him for that…eventually. Wait, no. He didn't care what that stupid PREP thought about him. They were stupid PREP shoes anyway, not like his sexy clown shoes, which complemented his skinny jeans perfectly.
"Okay, Sora," Kairi sighed. "Obviously you don't want to talk to me about this. Will you at least talk to Riku?"
"Who?" Sora asked blankly.
Kairi raised an eyebrow, "Our best friend, Riku? Tall, hot, Silver hair, occasionally evil, always gay?"
"Never heard of him."
"You spent years searching the universe for him? He's been your best friend your entire life? He's the bacon to our lettuce and tomato; the Curly to our Larry and Moe; the Ron Weasley to our Harry Potter and Hermione Granger; the Beyonce to our Kelly and Michelle?" The red-head rolled her eyes in exasperation, "Does any of this ring a bell?
"Kairi, I have absolutely no idea who you're talking about," Sora replied. "Does he go to our school?"
"Um, you know what? Never mind, let's just go do the project montage."
…………………………………..
Insert Generic Project Montage of LOVE
Music: "Something There" – Beauty and the Beast
(What? You didn't think I was actually going to write the whole freaking montage, did you? If I was that motivated I'd write a real story instead of a parody.)
……………………………………
"Wow, Kairi I can't believe all the crazy wonderful romantic stuff that happened in that montage," Sora laughed. "You've completely melted the EMO ice around my EMO heart. I can smile again for the first time in several weeks."
The Crimson-haired goddess stared lovingly into her EMO prince's eyes, "and you've helped me see beyond the strict stereotypes of our High School social structure. Sora, I want to thank you for helping me become a better, less POPULAR, person."
"Wait…weren't we supposed to make something for class during that montage?" Sora questioned.
"Don't worry. It probably won't have any consequences," Kairi shrugged.
EPILOGUE
Kairi and Sora both failed physics and were forced to repeat senior year. The two Lovers were NOT ostracized for daring to go against the norms of the High School hierarchy; instead they were embraced with open and tolerant arms. Kairi quit the Cheerleading squad and took up smoking, making her parents very proud. Sora slowly relearned how to interact with others, after his two weeks of self-imposed exile.
Roxas and Naminé fell in love and also started going out. So did Leon and Yuffie, Sephiroth and Aerith, Cloud and Tifa, Tidus and Yuna, and Wakka and Selfie. A beautiful girl named Amethyst Aurora Goldheart III (got it memorized?) washed up on shore the next day and she and Axel fell madly in love. Three more mysterious women washed up on shore and fell in love with the three Ansems. And Demyx started going out with Yuna's friend Paine. And Rikku Married Cid.
Cid was NOT later found guilty of violating the Miranda Statuary Rape Laws for marrying a teenager and did NOT go to jail for a very long time.
Kairi befriended a herd of unicorns, which carried them all to school every day, so no one had to pay the expensive gas prices. No one got expelled for underage sex either.
And they all lived happily ever aft-
"What?... No! What the Hell? What about me?" a mysterious figure complained.
"Oh! Hey, Riku!" Kairi looked curiously at the older boy, "where've you been?"
"Oh yeah!" Sora interrupted, "I remember Riku now, duh."
"Gee, thanks Sora," Riku rolled his eyes and turned to Kairi. "Apparently I'm not in this story at all. I'm never in SoKairi stories."
"Of course you aren't silly," Sora laughed. "It's a SoKairi story."
Riku raised one perfect eyebrow, "So?"
"Well," Sora explained. "It's a het story. For straight characters."
The other eyebrow went up, "So?"
"And you're," Sora laughed and scratched the back of his head. "You know…" He waved his hand around vaguely.
"For the last time, Sora, I'm not gay!" Riku objected.
Sora and Kairi both laughed. Their laughter quickly died under the older boy's poisonous glare.
"Two words," Sora countered gleefully. "Hula. Skirt."
"That was one time!"
"Face it Riku," Kairi said gently. "Your obsessive stalking is a threat to the SoKairi pairing."
"I could obsessively stalk Sora platonically," the older boy grumbled. "No one ever gives me a chance."
Kairi hugged the boy's arm, comfortingly.
"Besides," the red-head added. "It's physically impossible to make Sora more EMO than you. Your angst would have destroyed the whole parody."
"Whatever," Riku growled. "But if I'm not in the next one, I'm going to cut a bitch. You know who you are."
Um…And they all lived happily ever after.