My name was Ela Hisaki. Got it memorized?
I lived in Twilight Town. Sunset Terrace, to be exact, with a mother who worked in the bake shop and a father who worked at the garage. They were nice enough parents, but they weren't around all that often. Just enough so that I can remember the way the smell of Mom's cooking would fill the house whenever something special was going on (and let me tell you how thankful I am that all Hisakis have a freakishly fast metabolism), and how Dad would always stomp in, talking at the top of his booming voice about some trolley engine that just wouldn't run or something.
I wasn't always known for my flaming red hair, either. It used to be black, straight, and shiny, falling to my shoulders so that, more than once, I was mistaken for a girl. It used to drive me crazy, and by the time I was in kindergarten, I started beating up kids at school for saying I looked girly. Not enough to cause any lasting damage, but just enough to get me sent to the principal's office and get me labeled a troublemaker, a title I took pride in even after kids learned their lesson and stopped calling me Ella.
I may have had issues behaving myself at school when I was younger, but when I was almost ten, my parents came home with some news that scared me at first, but led to the best thing that ever happened to me.
"Ela," I can still hear my mom saying sweetly, her slanted green eyes that I had inherited glowing with excitement. "Your father and I have something to tell you." I had paled, knowing from the way they were looking at each other, and how they had just gotten back from the doctor, that this was going to be big. Mom's smile widened until she could no longer contain her excitement. "We're going to have another baby!"
The news that I was going to have a little brother or sister was taken just like any other kid who knows their life is going to be turned upside down. I turned sulky and resentful at the prospect of having to share the already limited attention I got from my parents with my new sibling, especially because the age difference was so big. But all that changed nine months later in Twilight Regional Hospital.
My new sister's name was Lea. The minute I saw her tiny, wrinkled pink face peeking up at me from in my mom's arms, I knew I was going to love her. My mom let me hold her, and I saw that Lea had gotten most of her features, just like me— same ski-slope nose, same slanted eyes that were already turning green, same pointed face…. She looked up at me, and I felt her tiny hand grab onto my long hair. I laughed in surprise and said, "Hi, Lea. I'm your big brother."
Time went by, and Lea grew. Since our parents worked so much, the task of raising her fell mostly on my shoulders from the time she was four and I was fourteen. This gave us plenty of time to grow extremely close, so we didn't mind in the least. I would pick her up from Sunset Smiles, the local daycare, or, later, Twilight Elementary, and we'd walk for the rest of the day, just talking.
"Ela?" she'd say, her big green eyes full of wonder, her hand clutching mine for dear life as we crossed the trolley tracks. "Why were you in trouble again today?" Yes, even in middle and high schools, I never got over my tendency to get in trouble. I guess some of that got carried over… later… when everything became more serious and caused me to become an assassin, but you already knew that.
I'd look down at her and smile mischieviously. "You know how it is. Some kid gets on your nerves enough and you just wanna blow them to smithereens. Since you don't have any dynamite, you've just gotta punch them right in the face." Lea would giggle, and we'd go on. You know, in retrospect, I probably wasn't the best influence, but Lea never showed my behavioral problems, so it really wasn't a big deal.
When I was fifteen, I got my first chakrams, made from some pieces of scrap metal from Dad's work and his friend at the weapon's shop. Mom frowned on the idea of giving me a weapon, let alone two with such sharp points, but I promised to leave them home during school and only use them to practice and for self-defense, a promise I only broke once or twice when some little jerk-in-training named Seifer was threatening to beat up my sister, and she allowed me to use them. By the time summer had come, I was already good enough a fighter to enter the Struggle tournament.
I remember entering the Sandlot, electric blue bat slung over my shoulder carelessly as I faced down some little neighborhood punk. I saw Lea with my parents in the crowd, cheering, "Ela! Ela!" Then the referee would yell, "Let's Struggle!" and I would dodge and parry the kid's attack until I could get in with a vicious combo that left me with almost every single orb. This continued with different opponents until I had moved up the ranks and had the Four-Crystal Trophy and Champion Belt in hand. Not only did I win the tournament that one summer, but for every summer up to my nineteenth, totaling in four straight years of victory.
It wasn't like I wasn't planning on going for it that year. I distinctly remember the day when Lea (who was nine that year) and I were walking through the Terrace, headed home after our usual exploring. We had gone through an alley as a shortcut, and when we passed a Struggle poster, Lea asked me, "Ela, are you going out for the Struggle again this year?"
"What, four years in a row aren't enough for you?" I had joked.
"I like watching you fight!" Lea said indignantly, nearly dropping the bar of sea-salt ice cream she was holding.
"Lea, I was kidding."
Lea had blushed, and tried to imitate the superior, haughty way I held myself. It didn't work, but you've gotta give an A for effort. "I knew that."
I laughed a little and continued like my sister hadn't interrupted. "Of course I'm going out for it again. I've gotta defend my title, don't I?"
"True," said Lea, sticking her popsicle back into her mouth as we kept walking. We hadn't gotten very far when a bunch of tiny black creatures materialized in front of us, blocking our way. I learned later they were called Shadows… Heartless. I heard Lea whimper and hide behind me as I whipped out my chakrams to try and get rid of them. "What are they?" Lea asked, terrified.
"I don't know," I replied, "but I don't think they're going to leave us alone any time soon!" I hurried into the fray, cutting down the circle of Heartless that had surrounded her, but more started to come, and I knew what I had to do. "Lea, get goin'!" I ordered.
"Why?"
"Don't ask, just do it!" I snapped, a little harsher than I'd meant to. I had to protect my sister at all costs… even if that cost was my heart and the life I had led up until then like it turned out to be.
"I don't want to leave you!" Lea cried. I fought my way over to her and grabbed her shoulder in one hand while the other continued to slash at the Heartless with my chakram.
"Lea, listen to me. I don't want you getting hurt. Go home," I repeated. "I'll handle them."
"What if they hurt you?" Lea squeaked.
Looking back, I think Lea knew a little more about the Heartless than your average nine-year-old. "I'll be fine," I said, even though I wasn't sure if I would survive even then. "I'll meet you at home." Like I said, I didn't know about this, but I was more worried about my precious sister's life than my own.
"Promise?" asked Lea.
"Promise," I lied. As I jumped back into the fray, I heard Lea's feet against the stone as she ran home, and that was the last I ever saw of her.
I fought long and hard, until the Shadows knocked me to the ground and dug their sharp claws into my skin. There was no blood, but my heart flew out of my chest where the Heartless had struck, and as my vision faded into darkness, I choked, "Lea…. I'm… sorry…."
I came to in a white room, and immediately noticed that I was surrounded by people. "Where… am I...?" I murmured, trying to sit up, but every muscle in my body screamed in protest. Strange… I was never this sore after a fight. Then again, I usually fought against humans…. "Who are you?"
"Welcome to the Organization," said a man with blue hair longer than mine in a flat monotone."As for who we are… perhaps we should ask you the same thing." The other six nodded in agreement. I started to answer, but stopped, wondering why I almost said Axel.
"Still can't find it?" said a surfer dude kind of guy with a long, greasy black ponytail streaked with white, an eyepatch, and a deep scar on his cheek. "Don't worry, you'll find it eventually."
"Yes," agreed the blue haired man. "In the meantime, tell us what happened to you to bring you here."
I closed my eyes, trying to remember something besides the fact that my head felt like I'd been hit by an elephant attatched to a tractor trailer. Not that I would actually know what that would feel like (and if you do, my sympathies), but you get the idea. "I was attacked by these black creatures while I was trying to protect my sister…." I sat bolt upright, and vaguely noticed that my long hair had turned from black to bright red. What. The. Hell. "Lea! How is she? Did she get out okay?"
A boy— not a man, a boy, even younger than me, with long purple hair covering one side of his face stepped forward. "If Lea is your sister, she's fine. No harm has come to her."
I fell back against my pillows, but my relief only lasted for a second before I thought of something else. "I'll never be able to see her again… will I?"
"Not until you retrieve your heart," boomed a deep, slow voice from a man with long silver hair and glowing orange eyes.
"Here we go again," muttered the man with the eyepatch.
"You have become a Nobody," continued the man with the really slow voice dramatically. "Your heart has been stolen away by the Heartless, and you are now an empty shell, left to hover forever between light and darkness. However, there yet remains a glimmer of hope." He turned to the window, and I could see the heart-shaped moon that hovered above. "Kingdom Hearts! When it is complete, our hearts will return to us, and we will once more prevail in our human forms!"
What? I'd lost my heart? How was that even possible? Besides that, I'd have to leave my little sister alone except for our almost estranged parents until this Kingdom Hearts thing was complete? "How could this happen to me?" I murmured, more to myself than anything.
""The Heartless were attracted to the darkness in your heart," explained an elderly man with long, dirty blonde hair and the most annoying nasal voice I'd ever heard in my life.
"What darkness?" Yeah, I wasn't perfect, but it wasn't like I was on Twilight Town's Most Wanted list!
"There is darkness within every heart," said the old guy with the annoying voice. "The Heartless will stop at nothing to eat that darkness, and with it… they swallow your heart."
"So, have you found your name yet?" asked a large man whose huge, thick sideburns and black dreadlocks made him look like the son of Medusa and a gorilla. Fear the mental images.
This time, I let the weird name fall from my lips. "Axel," I said, then I added something that I'd always said back home to annoy Lea… until she'd started saying it herself. "Got it memorized?"
A/N: If you're wondering about Ela's hair not being red, Kairi's a redhead and Namine's a blonde, Sora's a brunette and Roxas is a blonde. So, I didn't fall to tradition and make Ela a redhead! And he doesn't start spiking his hair until after all this. 'Kay? Now, no reviews about how you have no idea why I made Ela different from Axel. But I do love reviews
Next up will probably be Luxord when (if XD) I ever get to it!
