Author's Note
This was burning a hole in my word processor. "Screw it," I finally decided, "I've sat on this long enough."
I do want to hop back into this story. This is where I left off, unedited from my sophomore year of college (I'm a junior now). My writing style has changed for the better since I wrote this. You'll see how, God willing.
In Twilight Town, the sun neither rises nor sets. The world simply exists in a state of perpetual afternoon, its people marking time by the shifting of stars and the accuracy of clocks.
Night still exists in the forest - so thick and so deep that outside of a few clearings, one would swear someone had simply turned off the sun. Yet even within the forest, if one cared to explore it, there would be little to worry about - nothing and no one that might use the darkness as cover for darker things. Until the Heartless began devouring worlds, this was true.
It was through this forest that the Twilight Town Disciplinary Committee found itself walking, deeper than any of them had ventured before. Why would they? Nobody went to the forest to break the law. Besides, whether anyone would admit it or not, the whole town had heard the rumors about the forest beyond its walls. Countless urban legends told of youths' Halloween parties in forest clearings, which ended in brutal murder or simple, unexplained disappearance. Others claimed that the forest was host to some unseen force of darkness, watching the town and waiting for the day it would pull the sun beneath the horizon and plunge the world into night at last.
Stories, nothing more. The sort of lies one tells for their children's safety. But every parent wondered on some level what exactly they were protecting their children from.
Seifer led the group, Gunblade at the ready, a flashlight in his hand. He cast the beam here and there, cutting through the blackness of the tightly-knit forest and throwing twisted, hulking shadows across the trees. Behind him walked Fuu, scanning the surroundings, stepping lightly and prepared to leap into battle on a moment's notice. Rai and Vivi guarded the group's rear, Rai shooting periodic glances behind them and carrying a shivering Vivi on his shoulders. "Are we there yet?" whispered Vivi, his voice seemingly caught in the thickness of the trees as they moved on and left it behind.
"Shhhh!" Seifer commanded. "I think I see something..." He suddenly picked up speed, racing toward a point directly ahead of them. Fuu, Rai and Vivi were after him instantly, dodging low-hanging branches and leaping over fallen logs as the forest came alive with the sound of crunching leaves and muffled, running footsteps. "There! There's light up ahead!" Seifer called, putting on another burst of speed as they drew nearer to their goal.
Seifer emerged first. He found himself on the edge of a large, sunken clearing, pocketing the flashlight and shielding his eyes from the sudden glare of the sun. The impact area was like a giant hole ripped in a blanket of trees, laying the forest floor bare to the afternoon light. Fallen trees, wider than even Rai was tall, littered the ground in a mess of splinters, logs and sawdust. Small fires burned here and there, the ground still steaming and smoldering from the impact of the falling star. Whatever had landed had made a terrific mess of this part of the forest, save for a long, blackened gouge in the earth where the thing had skidded to a stop. "Right over…There!" Seifer followed the forcibly dug trench with his free hand, pointing at last to the resting point of a black-and-purple mass on his left.
"Where is it? What do you see? Is it big? Maybe it's –" Rai ran up to stand at Seifer's left side, coming to a sudden stop and nearly throwing the excited Vivi off of his shoulders as he leaned down to catch his breath. Fuu jogged up to Seifer's right, showing no sign of exhaustion and following her friend's gesture intently. Her visible eye widened, then narrowed as Fuu's surprise melted into apprehension. "Ship," she muttered. "Alien."
Rai immediately snapped to attention, standing up to his full height and ignoring Vivi's cries as the tiny wizard lost his balance clambering to the ground. "Aliens?" he repeated, suddenly alert. "No way! I knew they were somewhere out there, y'know?" He fell into a battle stance, whipping his head back and forth, eyes searching for any sign of humanoid creatures with laser guns. Seifer sighed and rolled his eyes, choosing to study the wreckage across the clearing as Vivi and Rai chattered excitably about space invaders.
It was indeed a ship of some kind, although it was too battered and burned for its origins or purpose to be recognizable. The dark purple hull was scarred and melted in places, dented from the impact and warped by the temperature of atmospheric entry. Seifer saw a darker place on the hull where the metal did not reflect the sun, and craned his neck to get a closer look.
"It's not part of the hull…No, it's –"
"Window."
Seifer glanced at Fuu, who searched his eyes for confirmation. "Broken," she said, completing her thought. "Survivor?"
"You're right, Fuu. There might be someone still alive in there," Seifer said. Even so, his knuckles were white on the hilt of his Gunblade. He turned to Vivi and Rai, back to back – or back to legs – and waiting for the aliens to strike. "Yo! Spacemen! Let's go check for survivors."
Seifer led the way as the Disciplinary Committee descended into ground zero. The four picked their way through fallen, jagged branches and piles of burning foliage, hemmed in on both sides by the towering corpses of trees. A pair of eyes always scanned the tops of the trees, expecting an attack from over the side. Nothing greeted them as they left the corridor of ruined trees to stand in the massive gouge bisecting the clearing. There was an uneasy pause as they watched the wrecked ship carefully, just a few hundred feet from the wreckage.
Vivi broke the silence with a careful whisper. "Guys…do you hear what I hear?"
"What is it, Vivi?" Seifer answered. "I don't hear-"
"Nothing," Fuu finished, suddenly back to concern from apprehension. The sound of her voice faded into the crackling of fires and the rustling of leaves in the wind. The four friends listened, none of them daring to make a sound, waiting for anything else to make one. Nothing did.
The whispering of the trees and smoldering flames were all that accompanied the Disciplinary Committee. No birds sang among the branches, no leaves were crunched under the hooves of a wandering deer, no insects buzzed that any of the four could hear. Except for them, there seemed to be nothing alive in the forest.
Rai shrank in on himself, clutching his staff tight across his beefy chest and casting worried glances here and there. "N-no way! We can't be the only ones here, y'know? Where's the people on the ship? Where's the birds and all the animals?"
"RAI!" Seifer roared, shutting up his panicking friend. At that moment he felt a hand on his shoulder. It took all the willpower he had not to jump as he turned to see Fuu, trying to get his attention. "Survivor?" she asked, pointing at a small figure watching them from atop a fallen tree. Seifer turned to look at it, then Rai, and then Vivi.
The diminutive black thingcrouched on the felled tree trunk, its head cocked as if trying to figure out who or what they were. On its little round head it had two jagged black antennae, which were twitching rapidly, still excited by Seifer's cry. Its stubby limbs ended in flat, shapeless feet and long, spindly claws, but it was the eyes that drew the most attention. They were shocking pools of yellow in a sea of black, seeming to shine with the light that refused to touch its dark body.
Seifer smirked, lowering his Gunblade slightly. "Is this what you were so afraid of, Rai? You eat bigger breakfasts than this thing!"
Rai watched the Shadow for a moment longer, and then dropped his guard, laughing nervously. "Heh…I guess you're right. Hey, Vivi – it kinda looks like you, y'know? Ow!" Rai earned an annoyed kick in the shins from Vivi, and they glared at each other for a moment before breaking into relieved laughter. The Shadow on the tree trunk watched them, amused, and hopped down to the forest floor. Only Fuu kept a skeptical eye on it as it crept closer and eyed its reflection curiously in Seifer's Gunblade.
"It's kind of cute, I guess. I wonder if it was on the ship. Are there more?" Seifer jogged away from the thing, past its tree and closer to the wrecked shuttle.
Fuu gasped, running after Seifer. "Maybe!" she called in a warning tone. There was a whoosh from her right, and she saw a black blur fly past her, looking up just in time to see it stop in front of Seifer. Somehow the Shadow had jumped, faster than any of them thought possible, and was now scratching experimentally at Seifer's boots. "Vivi! Rai!" Fuu called, looking back to check on her friends as she called for them to help.
The color drained from her face. The Shadow was right where she had left it, hopping around as Vivi shot sparks at its feet and Rai chuckled. "New creature…" she thought, turning back to Seifer.
"What the…hey, get off me!" Seifer had turned around now, and was batting at the second Shadow with the flat of his Gunblade. "These are new boots, you little troll!" The Shadow dodged one swipe of the sword, then two, and finally lost an antenna, too slow to avoid a third strike. It shook uncontrollably, as if with a silent scream, and clutched its wound, scampering behind a nearby log. Seifer stalked angrily after it, cocking his Gunblade and preparing to finish it off. "Little jerk thinks it can just-"
Seifer rounded the corner of the fallen log, and was greeted by an almighty roar. The little Shadow was cowering behind a huge, floating ball of concentrated darkness, streaked with gray and possessing glowing yellow eyes as menacing as the smaller monster's eyes were curious. Three massive horns arched out from the creature's body, tapering off into purple tendrils and framing a gigantic mouth. Its mouth wasn't full of deadly sharp teeth – it simply was teeth. The Darkball roared again, gnashing its teeth hungrily as it hovered before Seifer.
Seifer barely had time to cry out before the Darkball launched itself at him, snapping furiously as it shot through the air. Instinctively, Seifer leaped back and brought his Gunblade around, slashing as he pulled the trigger. Quite out of luck, he blasted a horn off of the attacking Darkball and threw himself to the ground, trying to escape. The monster screeched in pain as it veered off course, losing altitude and gouging furrows in the dirt before slamming into a nearby rock. Seifer whipped his head around, not interested in seeing whether it was dead, and looked for his friends.
Where once they had been utterly alone, Seifer and company were suddenly beset on all sides by a roiling mass of shadowy monsters. Bright, unblinking yellow eyes stared out from a sea of misshapen horrors crawling over the trees and moving to surround the Disciplinary Committee. Seifer scrambled to his feet, hemmed in with Fuu, Rai, and Vivi as they shifted to battle stances.
"I-I don't get it! Where did they all come from, y'know?"
"Look at them all! I knew it was aliens! What do we do?"
"RUN!"
Fuu didn't need to tell them twice. As Seifer was still speechless from his close encounter, Fuu had temporarily stepped into the role of leader. No sooner had Fuu spoken than a small armored monster crawled forth to challenge her; she leaped back and threw a chakram, knocking the thing off its feet and catching her weapon again. Another moved up to take its place; then another, and another, until the entire horde was surging forward to consume its prey. Fuu was grabbed roughly out of the greedy grasp of three Shadows, and she panicked for a moment until she heard Rai's voice boom out over the hungrily chattering masses. "VIVI! DO SOMETHING!"
Hanging limply under Rai's arm, Fuu's next sensation was cold – blood-chilling, wind-freezing cold – as a tiny voice shouted "Blizzara!" The wind around them whipped up into a frenzy of snow and ice, surprising the monsters and driving them back just long enough to create an opening. "There! Make a break for it!" Seifer had found his voice again; before his order died away, they were off. Rai slammed his way through the reforming line of terrors, screaming incoherently as Vivi struggled to hang on to his shirt collar and maintain the ice storm. Fuu squirmed out of his grip once they were free of the throng, hitting the ground on all fours. She ignored the sting of splinters and rocks on her skin, scrambling to her feet and taking off after Rai and Vivi.
Seifer was slowest in escaping, running along behind his posse to make up the distance. He could hear leaves rustling and branches crunching under the feet of the shadowy horde behind him, echoing all around and seeming to grow closer and louder with every frantic, sprinting step. He felt the scrape of a black claw against the backs of his legs and put on speed he didn't even know he had, struggling to keep his breath as the monsters swept through the forest after him. There was a sound like a gigantic match being struck, and a split second later Seifer felt searing heat on his back. He dove out of the way of a fireball the size of his head, feeling the hair on the back of his neck smolder as the spell smashed into a tree and burned a chunk out of it.
"They can cast magic, too!? What the hell are these things?" Seifer's thoughts leaped wildly from monsters to aliens to demons, settling on none. It didn't matter what these things were. All Seifer cared about was his friends getting bigger in his field of vision, blindly hoping that this was due to him getting faster and not them slowing down. They were so far ahead of him already, almost disappearing into the blackness of the forest in their flight from the insatiable blackness behind them. He heard Rai shouting ahead of him, couldn't make out the words over the sounds of pursuit, felt the roar of a Darkball shivering across his skin, and then-
CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK-FLASH-FLASH-FLASH-FLASH
Seifer was blind. The dark forest around him exploded into light, searing his vision and wiping away everything around him. He kept running, unable and unwilling to stop, knowing that he would be torn apart at the slightest slackening of his pace. Rai, Vivi and Fuu screamed incoherently ahead of him, lost in a world that moved around them in ways they couldn't begin to understand.
The ground fell away below Seifer, and he was plunged into darkness once more.