Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, sadly.

Running With Scissors

-Prologue-

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What the fuck was with the rain?

He slammed the door shut and sighed, his hair dripping and looked a wet, deep grey as opposed to its normal shining silver consistency. Eyes fell closed as he slid down the door, onto the floor. His jacket decided to make him uncomfortable as it settled and wedged itself into all the worst places.

Control. It was all about control.

He hated What-Was-Once-Wales, or anything to do with the damn city. Could he even call it a city? It was more like a stupid cage – no, a bubble from the rest of the technologically-advancing world.

Or maybe he was thinking too much.

What was he doing here again?

Oh, right. Daddy dearest. Something about him needing to live a month away from home for a while, while they established a spot in some new boarding school for him. He groaned as he dragged himself up, shoving against the wall for balance, and staggered toward the kitchen, dropping his bags onto the floor as light as he possibly could.

They fell with a thud anyway, and something, his eyes were too blurry to see what, rolled out and under his glossy table.

What kind of school had a requirement like that, anyway? Somewhere inside his head, it irked him that he had to live in the middle of nowhere for a month to make some school happy.

"Probably just wanted me outta their hair for a while," He murmured, shrugging off his jacket and hanging it up. Drops of water flung onto his nice clean tile floor, but it didn't matter. Water evaporated and all, right?

He was asking himself a lot of questions today, he noticed while shifting through the contents of his bag. There it was. He pulled out one of those crappy vitamin drinks he hated and snapped the cap open. Blegh, aloe.

He sipped it as he settled on his windowsill, making a face at the initial taste. It was getting kind of dark out, now. He studied the people outside his window, for lack of something better to do. There was a woman leading her kid across the street. The kid was laughing while he jumped in a puddle. The kid had muddy overalls on, and for a moment he thought he should've gotten out his camera and saved that moment.

Then he asked himself why he cared.

Near them, a business-looking guy was talking on his cell phone. He looked annoyed when the water splashed on his nice grey suit.

Like it wasn't wet already, he thought. Those black hotel umbrellas really didn't hold up against the wind well.

And suddenly, he wished with all his might that that guy would just drop the phone and…that something would happen. Maybe just to entertain him.

No such luck. He was never that lucky of a guy. Sure, he won at half the poker games and all. But it was always the half where they DIDN'T bet anything.

There were two teens, too – one had her hood on, and one didn't. They were hooked arm-in-arm and apparently were checking whether it was safe or not to cross the street. The one without a hood on was laughing as she threw her head to the side to get her coffee-colored hair out of her face.

A white plastic bag blew by (was that a takeout logo?) his window. He was idly reminded of those old westerns where those bush things blew by during dramatic scenes. What were they called again? Tumblers? Right, tumbleweeds. Something like that.

His phone rang.

He glared across the room as his piano, techno-like ring tone filled the air. Mentally, he was debating whether or not it was important to go answer the phone, especially since his month was almost up, or whether he should just stand where he was now, comfortably leaning on his nice, cool window seat.

Having reached the end of the tune, the ring tone started over. That crossed out his parents – they never stayed on the phone longer than three rings or so. And he really didn't feel like talking to any of his friends at the moment. He knew he was just going to blow up on them and have them ragging his nerves for days after, anyway. Some of them were really prissy when they were mad at him.

After what seemed like hours, or a half hour at least, his phone started talking. Or he thought it did, with a start, until he realized he'd left it on driving mode. So someone's picture-perfect voice started humming out've his cell phone.

Beep. "Hello, you've been accepted to Cenni, or Cognoscenti Academy. We've been informed about your position, and we've found…"

He tuned the rest out as his eyes narrowed. That wasn't a voice he recognized. And he's never applied to…Cenni, or whatever the woman was talking about.

So then this was his dad's doing. Good ol'dad. Messing with his life again. He'd come to expect it by now. Really, this wasn't worth all the money he was leaving him.

"…so we hope you'll call us back and verify that you've received this call. Thank you for your time, and we hope you'll enjoy your experience at Cognoscenti Academy." Beep.

…It's was funny how phones held up all these years. In this day and age, hell, he wasn't sure why he still had one, other than he didn't feel like learning to use one of those newer things, with video screens that you couldn't hide from and whatnot.

Cenni. So that was his new academy's name. Or was that the short version? That other word…Cogno-something, was it? That was probably it. Probably some fanciful daydreaming unicorn-loving headmaster named it. (Later, he would realize that he was way off on that one.) Or maybe he was just being biased, and it had some really deep meaning that he couldn't bring himself to care about at this wretched hour.

His phone rang again. They probably timed it that way, he thought, getting himself up off the seat and picking it up, glancing at the Caller ID before he answered.

"Hello?"

"Son, did you get the call for your new Academy?" Ah, dad. Straight to the point, as always.

"Yeah, a minute ago."

"Good good. Well, you'll be moving there in the next few days – on Thursday, I think. I'll fax over the brochures with all the information you'll need, and one of our family friends will meet you there."

"Wait – that soon? You didn't even –"

"Sorry, son. I have a business call on the other line. Love you, call me when you get there."

"Wait Da-" He heard a click. At the same time, his slightly dusty fax machine started printing out a series of papers. One of them, he saw, had a picture of a nice, airbrushed-looking building on it.

He hadn't liked business people since his dad got caught up into all of it. With all the suits and the 'keep our economy alive' and the god damned timed appointments. So he did everything he could not to be like his dad.

There were two, maybe three, types of people in the world now. Type one, the people who kept their economy up, like his dad. They were the ones who looked at all the financial crap. They were important; he had never thought that they weren't. It's just that they seemed like that had no time for anything other than their companies.

Then there were the one who looked beyond science. Some fifty-sixty years ago, there had been a huge discovery. Something to do with the 'other' dimension and its connections with certain sentient things. (Humans were one of them.) So half the population had promptly settled into learning anything they could about this so-called 'magic' stuff and all the lost arts.

He recalled something, a few months ago, about a debate between the charmed version of healing, which used up 'spiritual' energy, and modern day medicines. There was a huge argument about which one was more necessary in the world, and which the government should give more funding toward.

One of his friends was pretty high in the industry of the charmed version of healing, so naturally he sided with that one. Another thing that put him against his dad.

There was magic too. Some elemental crap that he KNEW he couldn't do. And there was this rule that went with it – it only used up excess energy. Which meant if you were hyper and had a lot of caffeine to burn off, you could cast all you wanted. Otherwise…

He thought it was a silly rule.

He himself had settled into weaponry. To him, that was the farthest he could get from his father. His art included casting artifices during slashes, mostly using his sword, to confuse the opposite side, or dueling opponent.

Then there was that other thing that had been set up. Like ancient Greeks or something of the sort, he thought. That whole Coliseum event. It was a big tourist attraction, not to mention money-maker, for the more popular areas of the world. There was one in what used to be Asia, one in the south side of North America, and for some obscene reason, one in Australia.

He'd been to Australia once. Home of the world's oddest animals, he had dubbed it, fondly. With all the jumped and waddling things…hell, one of his childhood dreams was to adopt a platypus. (One of his friends had even teased him about it, and bought him a platypus plushy. Affectionately named Cheerio, the dopey smiling thing sat on a shelf in the corner of his bedroom.)

…Sad, no? He thought so, now that he had nothing better to do than think about odd things like that. Anyway…

Along with the opening of the Coliseum and the discovery of the so-called 'spiritual' side, came the opening of new schools everywhere. (And churches, but he wasn't religious. Never would be.) They still had some focus in academics, of course, but they also specialized in the other arts.

Then again, some of the schools were run by hot-headed officials who wanted the money and had no idea how to use 'magic'. He himself had been to some of these schools. (And promptly gotten himself thrown out again.)

Then there were others who were pretty good educationally, but didn't really help those who wanted to advance in the new world.

He really hoped that his new school wouldn't be like one of those, as he walked over to pick the sheets of paper. Diagrams of a lance were on the first sheet, bringing his attention to the line under it.

"Custom weapons made upon course advancement…" Yadda yadda.

That little line interested him, so he settled back onto his windowsill to leaf through the packet. He kept his cell phone in easy reach – just in case. (Didn't want to have to get up again, after all.) The next sheet had a description of the school's layout. There was a building for whichever class you were put into, he noticed. And dorm buildings were put everywhere, no specific order, it looked like.

So he was going to have to struggle to get one near his classes. Joy.

Oh, here was a section with teachers. He flipped to the page with sword teachers and frowned. The picture was missing.

Well, maybe the teacher had a less-than-attractive face and didn't want anyone to see it. Or maybe he was camera shy. (Again, he would later reflect on how absolutely wrong he was.) At least it said that the guy (or girl) had a few years of experience. Longer than himself, anyway.

…Gah. It was raining even harder now – was that hail? He could barely see out his window…it was like the world outside his apartment complex was ending. Turning into a mushy mix of grey and sleet-blue.

But that was okay. As long as he was all right inside. The rest of the world could dissolve as far as he cared. If only the world would collapse and something interesting took its place.

Maybe when he woke up the next morning, his dreams would come true.

…It was a girly statement, he thought, but that was half of what kept him going everyday. Live for tomorrow. Tomorrow will get better.

He was really going soft. Or being influenced by pacifists.

That company guy was still talking on his phone.

A stray car blew by, splashing street water all over the business guy, who dropped his cell into the gutter. He rapidly started moving his mouth, which he immediately interpreted as cursing.

And for some reason he didn't know himself, Riku smiled.

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-End Prologue-

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Good? Bad? Leave your thoughts in a review. Constructive criticism would be nice, too.

I mean no harm against anything he talked against in this chapter. :3

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