Chapter One: A World Not Right
Sora stood in the surf, his face shining in the sunset. He spread his arms wide and began to tip over. He fell and fell and fell, as if Benny Hinn had slayed him in the Spirit. He plunged beneath the waves like a knife through 'I-Can't-Believe-It's Not-Butter' and immediately smacked his nose into the sandy bottom.
Kairi and Selphie sat on the beach, idly playing with 'Triple Triad' cards. "What the hell is that idiot doing now?" said Selphie, an incredulous smirk shooting up her mouth.
"How should I know?" said Kairi. "He and Riku have been acting very strange lately." She gestured toward Riku, who was standing by the Paupu tree with his eyes shut, chanting a fell incantation. Suddenly, he cut it off and raised his arms to the heavens, screaming the four unknown names of the dark gods:
"ELLIPSIS OMNICRON BEETLEJUICE QWERTY!"
There was a long pause. His eyes opened slightly. "Damnation!" he screamed, his long hair flapping carelessly in the wind. "Where in Sheol is that accursed plague of darkness?"
"Yeah, well, they've never been the brightest two headlights, if you know what I mean," said Selphie. "I've been worried about Riku since he started that whole 'effeminate' stage. You know, I found him rooting through my purse yesterday? He says he was looking for a breath mint, but now I can't find my eyeliner."
"Riku's just struggling with normal teenage stuff, Selphie. If he wants to prance around like a reject from a Marilyn Manson video, I say let him. What worries me is Sora. Think about it: he goes swimming in no less than three layers of clothing, not to mention those heavy chains. One day, he's not gonna come back up."
Sora bobbed to the surface of the water, choking on the salty brine. He just couldn't understand it. In the dream, he fell into the water, which became the sky, which became the water, which became a magical land filled with goodies. He clenched his teeth, pinched his nose, and belly flopped.
"Wakka and Tidus do it too," said Selphie.
"Yeah, but Sora is cute, not to mention the hero of the story. If something happens to him, we're all out of a job. Wakka and Tidus are just cameo characters. They're expendable."
"Hey, I'm a cameo character too!"
"My point exactly."
Wakka, who was playing Blitzball with Tidus, shook his head at Sora's underwater gymnastics. "That Sora be one crazy mon, Ja? Calllyyypsooo…"
Behind him, the Blitzball shot out of the waves in a long, high arc. A second later, Tidus shot out behind it, arms stiff to his sides, his body shaking. He hit the ball at the height of its arc with his nose, sending it sailing into the distance. Wakka threw him a fish. Tidus cackled gleefully.
Sora stuck his hands in his pockets, turned his back on the water, and began whistling innocently. Then, he spun around and flung himself into the waves, who weren't fooled one bit.
Selphie sniffled indignantly. "As long as we're criticizing people's fashion tastes, what's with you? Slinking around in tiny skirts and tank tops like some prepubescent hooker. Why don't you just throw your non-existent breasts into Sora's hands, ya big-headed freak of nature?" And with that, she stomped off to go attack helpless animals with her jump rope.
"You know," sighed Kairi, "I wonder if it's possible to have worse friends than mine?"She looked up at the sky, gazing into its blue depths. "Is there anyone out there," she whispered, "Who's as miserable as me?"
Little did she know, hardly could she suspect, that past those skies and clouds, and even past the stars the shone in the night, were many, many worlds filled with people more miserable than her. Not that knowing this would have cheered her up.
Among those myriad worlds, there is one that Kairi should've known about, the most miserable world of all. It is separated from the others, locked away in lonely mystery. It is a world trapped in the innermost darkness, with no magic or wonder, nothing but jaded, calculated hatred for itself. In our worlds, this dark, dark place is known as "Earth."
Now, of all the peoples of Earth, the greediest, wealthiest, and most self-loathing were called "Americans." Despite their vast power and privilege, they all felt sorry for themselves and moped around rotting their minds with a thing called "television." But they were not all bad. In fact, two of them helped save our worlds. It may seem like an odd thing for such people to end up as heroes, but this story, though true, is itself very, very odd.
On the fine day that our story begins, two American teenagers decided to sit around and do nothing. They did an awful lot of it when they hung out together. The first boy was Noel Kleidon, a foul-mouthed, skinny-as-a-rail, 6'5" monstrosity who didn't do much apart from nothing. He just sat around all day illegally pilfering music from the internet, playing video games until his eyes bled, and telling his mother that he never loved her. Noel dressed in skateboard punk clothes, although he had the board skills of an elderly Amish gentleman with milk-churning-related arthritis.
The second boy's name was Blake Avery, a shy and sensitive male whose sexual orientation was a matter of fierce debate. He did an awful lot of things (like musical theater, crypto-theology, and the culinary arts) but he didn't do any of it very well. This lack of talent, combined with a demanding schedule and a poor immune system, made him tired, angsty, and filled with hatred for his fellow man. He was dressed in the trenchcoat that never left his body, a black T-shirt, and oversized black pants.
Needless to say, neither of them had a girlfriend.
On this particular day, they were playing Final Fantasy X-2: Charlie's Gullwings, or rather, Noel was playing it. Blake was sitting on the couch watching him, or rather, watching the scantily clad female protagonists fight evil in a highly fashionable way. It was an unspoken rule that when they hung out that Noel could play single player games as much as he wanted, but Blake was expected to sit on the couch and make snide comments. They tried playing multi-player games for a while, but Blake had a knack for killing his friends in Deathmatches and Noel had an anal obsession with never losing.
Once, at a church picnic, Noel sabotaged the three-legged race by entering with a Vietnam Vet who had stepped on a land mine. While all the other groups were still trying to work out things like "teamwork," Noel strapped the poor man to his side and ran down the field to the finish line, dragging him over rocks the whole way. Unfortunately, this caused the Vietnam Vet to have flashbacks of prison-camp torture and he subsequently torched the picnic grounds, the picnic lunch, and the pastor's wife.
The point is, Noel was beating up on helpless video game animals and Blake was brooding a safe distance away from the controller. And as Blake was brooding dark thoughts of how Square-Enix was ruining the Final Fantasy franchise, Noel was having thoughts of an entirely different nature:
"Yuna wears pink panties!" he cried.
Blake, being the self-righteous prude he was, turned very red and screamed, "What? You can't say things like that! Even if it is true, which I wouldn't know, seeing as how I would gouge out my eyes before laying them on that part of a woman, it's still wrong to acknowledge the existence of panties and their colors. No matter how cute the owner of said panties may be. Besides, Rikku is cuter."
"Too bad I'll never get to see them crumpled up beside my bed," mused Noel as he totally ignored his friend, "That is, outside of some poorly drawn doujinshi on my part."
Blake's liver collapsed from the strain of pumping every ounce of bile in his body directly into his throat. He fell over backwards, choking to death. Noel glanced over at the noise.
"Damn Al Behd lover," he muttered, turning back to the game just in time to notice that his party had died. Unfortunately, he completely failed to check his friend's vital signs. Had he, this story might have avoided ever being written.
Author's Notes:
Not much to say...this was the first part of the fan fiction to be written. I guess that's an interesting fact. Not really. Oh well.
Next time: Part Two - The Happiest Place on Earth
