Darkened Hearts
Ch. 1: The Darkness Emerges
"AAAHHH!" Sora screamed as he shot up from the sandy beach. His eyes darted around for a few seconds before his brain caught up with reality and realized that what had just happened was just a dream. With a yawn he fell back down on his back only to look up and see a pair of blue eyes staring back at him. "Gah!" Sora shouted as he backed away only to hear laughing. "Geez, don't do that Kairi!" he said as he realized who was laughing.
He turned his body around and saw Kairi, who was wearing a red dress (KH2 outfit). She frowned at him. "You shouldn't be sleeping in the first place you lazy bum. We have to get everything we need for the raft!" Sora looked her in the eye and then pointed towards a pile near them. "Already got everything I'm supposed to get." He said with a shrug and he pushed himself to his feet. Kairi looked at the pile and saw he was telling the truth and then grunted. "Fine then, so what were you dreaming about?" This got Sora to pause from wiping sand off his back.
"It's hard to explain the whole thing but basically I was on this glass platform that had pictures of you, me and Riku. Then I was attacked by a bunch on small bug looking things! I had to fight them off with a shield." Sora demonstrated this by waving arms, causing Kairi to giggle. "Then after I fought a giant monster made out of my shadow, everything started fading to black and I heard someone say my name."
"Well you shouldn't be sleeping in the first place anyway." The two looked towards where the comment came from and saw it was Riku, who was carrying some supplies. "Hey I finished doing everything I had to do so I figured I could relax!" Sora countered. "Sure, I bet even if you hadn't gotten all of the stuff you would have fallen asleep anyway." Riku teased.
"Shut up" Sora grumbled, and then patted the sand on both sides of him, indicating that they should sit down. Riku sat on his right, Kairi on his left. When Kairi sat down Sora wrapped his arm around her shoulder. A moment of silence passed. "So…. We leave tomorrow" Sora said slowly. The other two nodded. Riku then said "We may never see this place again. This place or our parents."
This brought a moment of silence. After a minute Kairi shot up. "I've got it! We'll take a picture!" She pulled out a camera and then ran over to the dock where their friend Selphie was sitting. After a brief conversation they both walked back. "Okay you three, stand next to each other" Selphie said in her usual hyperactive voice. The other three walked in front of the water, Sora on the left, Kairi in the middle, and Riku on the right. "Okay I am going to take three pictures; one for each of you. Smile!" They all smiled as the camera flashed once, twice, three times.
The pictures developed after a while and each of them took one copy. By then it was sundown. "We should head back and sleep. We are going early tomorrow." Sora said as they walked to the docks where their boats were tied. They rowed back to the main island and then stopped at the fork where their houses separated. "Night" Riku said as he walked towards his house. Sora and Kairi looked at each other, hugged and said "Goodnight" at the same time and then left.
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Hours later, around three o'clock Sora woke up to hear a low rumbling coming from outside. He got out of bed and looked up at the sky and his eyes widened in shock. "Oh no." In the sky there was a dark purple orb, the size of the play island, and it appeared to be edging closer to the smaller island.
Sora got dressed and jumped out his window. For whatever reason, he also took the picture of him, Riku and Kairi. When he got to the docks he saw that two of the boats were missing and Sora assumed that Riku and Kairi were on the play island already. He got into his own boat and rowed as fast as he could to the smaller island.
After a few minutes he arrived on the island, but upon arriving he saw the island was crawling with small, black, bug like creatures. "Wait," Sora murmured, "I've seen these things before. In my dream!" he said as the creatures took notice of him and started running at him. Sora looked around for a weapon to try and fight them off but all he saw was a toy wooden sword. With no other choice he grabbed the sword and attempted to swing at one of the creatures, but the sword seemed to pass right through the monster and it clawed his left leg. "Ah!" Sora grabbed his injured leg.
Realizing that the sword was useless against the monsters, Sora started running towards the mini island that Riku always sat at, hoping he was there. Along the way he had to avoid more of the strange, yellow eyed creatures as the continuously tried to attack. Finally, he reached the mini island and breathed a sigh of relief to see Riku there, staring out into the ocean.
"Riku!" Sora called out and Riku turned around. "Riku, what's going on? Where's Kairi?" Sora was breathing heavily, trying to calm down when Riku said calmly, "The door has opened." "What?" Sora asked, having no idea what Riku was talking about. "We will now go to a new world. Kairi's coming with us too so don't worry." Riku continued as his feet was surrounded by a puddle of black liquid. Sora looked up to Riku's eyes and saw only confidence. "Come on Sora. Together we can do this. I'm not afraid of the Darkness!" He held out his hand for Sora to take as the black puddle started enveloping his entire body. Sora tried to grab his hand but to no avail as the darkness swallowed Riku up.
The puddle started to take Sora too. 'This is just like my dream' Sora said. He struggled to get out of the puddle but he only sunk further. He finally shouted, "GET! OFF! OF! MEEEEEE!" There was a bright flash of light and when Sora opened his eyes, the Darkness was no longer trying to drag him down. He then felt a weight in his hand and looked at what now was there.
It looked like a giant key. The blade was a long, silver pole, and at the teeth was in the shape of the crown pendent on Sora's necklace on the right side of the blade. Around the handle was an open yellow square, with a chain connected to it. Right above the yellow was a small blue band around the blade. At the end of the chain were three circles, one big one, and two small ones connected to the big circle.
'Keyblade' 'Keyblade' 'Keyblade' The word echoed in the silence around Sora. He looked at the weapon once again. "A, Key….Blade?" he whispered. Then, more of the creatures crawled up the side of the mini island and attempted to strike. He looked at the weapon one more time, then at the creatures and made a decision.
He swung the "Keyblade" at one of the creatures that had jumped at him and was surprised as well as satisfied to see it connect with the monster, and destroy it, making it disappear in a puff of smoke. The other creatures noticed this, paused, and then rushed the boy with fervor. Spinning the Keyblade in front of him, Sora then stopped it, pointed it at the monsters and said in a quiet, yet deadly voice, "Come and get some" and then sliced through the nearest creature with the teeth of the weapon. Not stopping with the attack, Sora then spun around and hit another one with the flat side of the Keyblade, whacking it like a baseball, where it struck another monster, both disappearing in puffs of black smoke.
The remaining monsters, now realizing they were to be destroyed as well, sunk into the ground and ran away. Sora stood there for a few more moments. "What's going on?" Then remembering what was going on he looked up with a jolt. 'Kairi! I have to find her!' he thought with slight panic. He started running around the island, noticing that the dark sphere above the island was coming ever closer. 'Where would she be?'
Almost as if to answer his thoughts he heard the voice from his dream whisper 'Go to the Secret Place'. Sora looked around for a moment, trying to find where the voice came from but the other voice shouted at him 'Stop looking for us and get going you idiot!' Sora decided to just go with what the voice said and ran to the cave where he, Riku and Kairi used to explore.
Inside the cave it is nothing impressive on the way in. It was just a slightly curved one way path that stopped at a dead end. But it was the dead end that was important. At the dead end there is a door. It is pretty plain, but has no handle, no lock, but does seem to lead somewhere. Whenever Sora went near the door as a child he would get a strange feeling that there was something important about that door.
Sora and Kairi once came into the dead end as six year olds and decided that they would each draw a picture and then show the other. After they had both finished they looked at each others work and laughed when they saw they drew crude pictures of each other.
Sora ran into the cave, through the curved path, and halted at the dead end. Standing there, looking at the door was Kairi. "Kairi!" Sora shouted. She turned around and Sora noticed she looked unusually pale. "Sora" She whispered, and then a huge gust seemed to come from the door, causing her to go flying towards Sora. He held out his arms, trying to catch her, but when she reached him she seemed to pass right through him, like a ghost. "What?" Sora shouted, but before he could think about it, an even stronger gust of wind carried him out of the cave and then all he saw was black.
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Sora groaned as he slowly woke up from unconsciousness. He slowly stood up and his eyes widened in shock at what he saw.
There was almost nothing left of the islands. The play island, as well as the main island, was gone. All that was left was a large circle of sand floating up towards the black orb as debris from the islands was sucked up into it.
Sora felt immense shock, then incredible rage. He looked up at the orb and glared at it. In a flash of light the Keyblade appeared in his left hand but he was too angry to notice.
"COME AND GET ME!" Sora shouted, pointed the keyblade up at the orb. What appeared to be a bolt of black lightning struck the ground a few feet away from him. When the lightning cleared, the giant shadow monster from his dream appeared, its yellow eyes looking down at him. Sora looked up at it and yelled, "COME ON!" and jumped out of the way as the monster slammed its hand into the ground he was standing a few moments before.
Sora noticed that it was very slow, and using that to his advantage, ran towards the hand that was still on the ground and started wailing on it with a rain of slashes from the Keyblade. The creature had no mouth, so it could make no noise, but it appeared to be in pain. It fell onto one knee and its head slammed onto the ground. Seizing the opportunity, Sora rushed the downed creatures head with an angry shout, jumped into the air, and stabbed the keyblade into the monster's head.
For a moment, it seemed he did no damage. But after a few seconds, black smoke started coming out of its head, then its hands and feet, and finally it exploded in a huge puff of black smoke.
That same explosion, unfortunately, also shot Sora into the air, where he started floating towards the orb. His last thoughts as the darkness started to engulf him were of Riku and Kairi, and of the picture they took only hours ago.
(And that's the end of chapter 1! Hope you liked it and please Review. Feedback is appreciated)
