Author's Notes: A certain important event at the end of Disc One in Final Fantasy VII is mentioned. If you don't already know what I'm talking about, then it's a major spoiler for the said game.
Chapter VII: The First Step
Tracy was looking at a dream. In the living room of a decaying house, the boy was confronted with the sight of a crew of Final Fantasy heroes as real as his need for action. Maintaining an outward calm, Starlight leaned against a wall and watched the party silently.
While Tracy had used his time to himself to run into Riku and Sora, it seemed that Zidane, Vivi, and Felicity had also discovered some old acquaintances. In different places throughout the room, Cloud, Cid, Leon, Yuffie, and Aerith were standing, speaking with Sora, Zidane, and the others. According to what Tracy had heard, Cid's gummi ship, ironically called the Highwind, was able to stop by Destiny Islands long enough to find out that Sora had left already for Traverse Town. With speed that made Cid proud, their ship arrived at almost the same time as Sora's ship. With all of the major participants in place, Tracy knew that it wouldn't be long before the true adventure would begin.
Tracy glanced beside him, where Felicity stood, fuming towards a certain person in the room. With a heavy sigh, he said to her, "Hating her won't change anything."
"So?" she challenged him, keeping her voice down to a minimal volume while still plainly showing her anger, "I can still hate her! That God damn Aeris!"
"Aerith," corrected the boy.
She shrugged it off, uncaring, "Whatever! The fact is that Cloud should've been with Tifa!"
Tracy wanted to tell Felicity just how childish the reason for such vehemence was, but he chose not to anger her any further. The girl was passionate in her opinions about Aerith, and meeting the one person that she actually enjoyed seeing die in Final Fantasy VII didn't help to calm her. Instead, he focused on an interest that they both held in common.
With a mischievous grin, Tracy commented to Felicity quietly, "Cloud's kinda cute, ain't he?"
"Cloud, Leon, Riku," she enumerated, "Squaresoft sure did a good job designing 'em."
"Just don't tell them that, eh?" he told her jokingly, though he was truly serious about the meaning of the words. "It'll be easier that way."
Felicity raised her shoulders, "Fine with me."
With that out of the way, Starlight set his sights on another interesting specimen. "You think Riku and I could," the boy smirked with enjoyment at the idea, "You know..."
Felicity shook her head as she admitted, "We're in a room with Cloud, Squall, and Zidane. If we can manage that, then anything's possible!"
"So, guys," Sora finally spoke up to the room, "Exactly where are we going to start?"
Riku added onto that, "If we don't move fast, the Heartless will be all over the place in no time."
"Umm," Zidane began to say, "Quick question."
The room glared at the boy with the tail curiously before Cid responded to him, "Shoot."
"These gummi ships that you guys travel in," he asked of the whole group, "the pieces are elastic and rubbery, right?"
Most of the room, i.e. those who knew what a gummi ship was, nodded in confirmation.
Zidane then reached into a pocket and pulled out a curious object. "Is this what you call a 'gummi piece'?"
Tracy took a step towards Zidane as he tried to gain a look at the strange cube that he had produced. It was small and fit into the palm of his hand, and it was bright red. Even though Tracy was hardly an expert on gummi pieces, he knew enough to guess that it was actually a part to one of those ships. How Zidane obtained the piece, however, was a different mystery.
"That, my boy," Cid said to Zidane, "is a navi-gummi."
"Navi-gummi," Tracy whispered to himself. How did Zidane get one of those? More importantly, where will it take us if it's installed onto a ship?
"A navi-gummi?" Sora asked reflexively, "Cid, could you install it on the Excalibur?"
Cid grimaced at the Keyblade master as he answered in a question, "Is water wet, boy?"
"I guess that's a yes," Riku stated plainly, glaring at the crusty engineer.
"This navi-gummi," Leon rationalized, "will most likely take you to new worlds, worlds that you've never before witnessed, Sora."
Yuffie added, "It might even lead to the part of the universe where the Heartless are invading."
"We're fairly choiceless here," finished the gunblader, "Unless there are any other surprises, our only choice is to let Sora go to those new worlds and protect them from the Heartless."
"You mean seal the Keyholes, right?" Tracy butted into the talking.
Leon shot a confused look towards Tracy. "Yes," he answered.
"How do you know about the Keyholes, Tracy?" Sora asked him.
"It's in the mythology of his world," Vivi explained to the room, "Before his world was destroyed, he and Felicity believed that the Keyholes and everything were just myths."
Tracy took another step into the group, offering to them, "And so far, every so-called 'myth' has been proven right. My world had a lot of myths, and those stories might prove useful to you when we start world-hopping."
"Ummm, Tracy," Felicity whispered into his ear, "What're you trying to do?"
"Trust me," was his only response.
Untrusting of the newcomer into their plans, Leon looked the teenager over a few times before he inquired of him, "Very well, then. What do you propose?"
—————
The meeting had been concluded an hour ago, and the separate parties went in their own directions after that. Zidane and Amarant left the house to be alone; Cid went to install the navi-gummi onto Sora's vessel; Felicity stayed with Freya and Vivi; Tracy made his way to the rooftops of Traverse Town via the Gizmo Shop; Yuffie and Leon went to the old waterway to discuss the recent developments; Sora decided to take a nap at Zidane's place; Riku walked to the Third District.
Within an old, empty house surrounded by water, the enigmatic Cloud awaited the arrival of his special someone. The setting was perfect for Cloud; there was no chance of an interruption. When he finally decided to tell Aerith what was on his mind, Leon had cut the moment short before he could utter his first word. This time, he resolved, it would be different.
"Cloud?" came the softly angelic voice of Aerith as she walked slowly into the dismal place.
He turned his head to spy the woman enter before turning totally. "Aerith. I'm... glad you came."
The worry on her face was self-evident, and her voice increased its clarity tenfold when she asked him, "Cloud, what is it? Is something wrong?"
Gathering his mental strength, Cloud took a deep breath and exhaled, "Yes, Aerith... I'm wrong."
Confusion added itself onto worry when she inquired further, "What? What's that mean?"
Cloud looked into her eyes for an infinitesimal moment before breaking the contact, "I..."
Suddenly, Cloud's apprehension was shattered when she said, "It's about Hades, isn't it?"
"How did you know about that?" Cloud queried her, his eyes finally focused entirely on hers. In the time it took to ask her, though, his answer was given to him. "Leon told you...?"
The bright-eyed girl hesitated to answer him, but only for a second. "He told me about your dark powers, about how you made that deal with Hades," she paused deliberately to emphasize, "to find me."
Once more, Cloud's eyes drifted away, as if he no longer felt himself deserving to look upon her. "I was a fool. I thought I could control the darkness, but I failed. This," he expanded the demonic black wing behind his left shoulder, "this is my reward. It is my penance. The darkness was inside my heart, and now it will never go away."
"I... I understand that, Cloud," admitted Aerith, "but no matter how dark you think you are, I know that there will always be that light inside of you, that light that was willing to leap into the dark in hopes of finding me. You will always have that light, Cloud. Don't lose sight of it."
Don't lose sight of it, the words echoes in his thoughts. He looked down and... smiled. Cloud chuckled to himself, and as he looked up at Aerith for the last time, his eyes showed something in them that Aerith hadn't seen in a long time: contentment and peace.
"Aerith... Thank you."
—————
Walking on the rooftops of a town that was already in shambles didn't seem like a good idea at the time, and it still didn't seem like an excellent plan, but Tracy maintained that no one with a shred of sanity would come up there. Therefore, it made an excellent place to be alone, even if the roof wasn't entirely stable.
"In all the worlds in all the universes," he complained under his breath, "I had to end up in Madison." Carefully, Tracy Starlight made his way across the rooftops, seeing the open hatch in the distance, the hatch that he knew led to the Third District. He had traveled the route many times when he played Kingdom Hearts, mostly to kill Heartless. At least then, he knew, he didn't have to worry about the ceiling caving in beneath him. "Could've been born on Gaia or Spira or somewhere... But I got Madison," he spoke loudly, not caring if he was heard.
"Boring as hell," he continued, "No adventure, no excitement outside my own mind! My best experiences are within the world of the written word." He scoffed as he remembered a poem that he had written weeks before Madison's destruction called "Just a Piece of Paper". He had submitted that work and nineteen others into the literary magazine that his school's Creative Writing classes created yearly, including a personal narrative describing the life given to him by his divorcing parents. "This world, this reality — this was what I should've been born into!
"And now, my time has finally arrived," he told himself as he leapt into the hatch to the Third District, landing on a high balcony overlooking the vicinity, "I'm about to embark on something that few living mortals will ever really experience!" He smiled as he remembered his words from earlier. "And I don't have a damn pencil!" he moaned to himself.
"Someone there?" a voice, Riku's voice, called from below, "Hello?"
Tracy thought as he heard the other teenager, Riku? This looks like an excellent chance...
—————
"I know someone's up there!" he continued to yell from the center of the Third District, "I know I'm not crazy!"
In answer to Riku's shouts, a figure leapt from high above, but Riku couldn't see from where. In the space of a few moments, the silver-haired Riku was watching as someone, a male boy, landed gracefully on the ground barely three meters in front of him, bent down to the ground. A brief second later, Riku's mind caught up with his eyes.
"Tracy?" Riku queried, "Is that right?"
The other kid rose from his crouched position and smiled at him gently. "That's right."
What is it with this guy? asked Riku, There's just something... weird... He turned the thoughts away as he started up a friendly conversation, "So, you're coming with us now?"
"That's not a problem, I hope," Tracy returned, "I'd hate to get in the way."
"With that stick of yours as your only weapon," joked Riku, "it'll be hard not to get in our way."
The other exhaled a sigh as he reasoned, "I have knowledge that you might need, Sora has that Keyblade of his, and you have—" Tracy cut himself short, as if he didn't want to finish the sentence he had started.
Riku, on the other hand, couldn't let such a tempting mystery go unanswered. "What do I have, Tracy?"
"Well, it's..." He stepped to Riku and whispered secretively, "Promise not to tell?"
"Mark my word," Riku swore.
Tracy restrained a childish giggle as he complimented the other boy, "You have the most handsome eyes that I've ever seen!"
Riku was efficiently caught off-guard by the peculiar line that Tracy muttered, and he was soon laughing aloud like never before while he managed to ask him, "Wh-what?"
Tracy's own amusement also seemed too great to hold within, and he, too, was almost to his knees in laughter. "I... I... I said," he said in a high-pitched voice between laughs, "that you're... eyes are... pretty!"
Their laughing fit intensified between Riku and Tracy until neither of them could remain standing upright. Riku's hands were to his stomach as is he had been kicked there a dozen times, while Tracy was actually reduced to his knees by his own foolish giggling.
What's so funny? Riku pondered to himself. He said my eyes were attractive. What is it, then? As he looked at the stranger from a strange world, Riku couldn't help but remember that the last time he'd laughed this hard... Actually, he never recalled laughing this hard. And yet I'm laughing all the same...
"Well, Tracy," Riku finally uttered quietly as he made an effort to peek into the eyes of his new acquaintance before stating, "you're eyes are pretty, too."
The kid of Madison regained his balance and got to his feet as he heard the countered compliment, and he said back to his new ally, "I'll remember that, Riku."
—————
"Well, kiddies," Cid announced to Sora, Tracy, Riku, Felicity, and, of all people, Zidane, "the gummi's installed! Just hop in and fly like the wind! Give those Heartless one for the home team!"
"Sora," Zidane said suddenly, "I'm coming with you." Sora and the others eyes the thief in surprise as he continued, "That was my gummi block you installed, and I, for one, wanna see where it leads!" He paused before recalling another detail. "Oh, Tracy!"
Tracy raised an eyebrow to Zidane, "Yeah?"
"Catch!" He tossed the boy's stick to him, and it was caught with great ease on Starlight's part. "Vivi and Aerith gave it a bit of magic power. They say it'll be more effective against the Heartless."
Felicity's face tightened in an irate fashion as she complained, "Don't I get a weapon, too? What about me?"
"You had a weapon?" Sora chose to ask.
"No!" she yelled, "That's why I need one!"
Zidane pondered over it for a second as he reached into his inventory. "Here!" He threw a rod at Felicity, "It belonged to a special friend of mine named Dagger. It's called the Wizard Rod."
"A rod?" she continued to complain, "What am I—"
"Be glad you have something, Felicity," Tracy intervened, "Are we leaving?"
"Born ready!" Riku boasted as he jumped into the Excalibur, "Let's get this ship in the air!"
Sora smiled in his traditional, toothy smile as he climbed up into the cockpit, declaring, "I'm pilot!"
"God help us," Felicity whispered as she, too made her way to the cockpit.
Zidane was next to enter, followed by a very pensive Tracy. As the ship lifted off, setting its sights on worlds and stars beyond what he could have dreamed of, holding dangers that he never desired to face, he remembered an old saying from his hometown.
The journey of a thousand miles, he thought as the Excalibur zoomed towards the newly opened warp hole, begins with the first step.
