Ash from Ashnat Productions: I loved your review!!! Not too many people appreciate clichéd stories or short chapters, lol. Just don't EVER kill Riku again... huggles Riku
Mistress Manga: Thanks about the Keyblade designs thing, but there's more creativity in my brain!! Mwahahahaha!!! Just don't touch my Riku!!! Keeps hugging her bishie
Malignant-Paroxysm: We all know Squall's a butthead.... beats Squall with a sharp stick
REMEMBER: 3 good reviews before I put up the next one/ start writing it. 3 REVIEWS PEOPLE
see chapter 1 for disclaimer
Chapter 11: An Unknown Past
Soft snores, and the occasional random word from Sora, filled the Green Room of the hotel. Sleeping silently on the floor were the four Keybladewielders, along with Leon, who had fallen out of bed after Yuffie kicked him in her sleep.
Each one of them was all peacefully in a dream, some of them strange, others that they wished they could stay in forever, but nonetheless dreams. Each one of them, except Ari. Her dream didn't seem like a dream. It was more like, a memory.
Dream/ Flashback Start
There was a room, a small child's room. The floor was littered with dolls and stuffed animals and picture books. The walls were covered with colorful wallpaper, and the sheets on the small bed had tiny flowers embroided on them.
Everything seemed normal enough, except one thing. Underneath the bed was a little girl, no more than five or six years old, with brown hair and blue eyes, shaking with fear and clutching a small stuffed bear. Her eyes were wide, staring at her feet, as she listened to the screams outside of her second story window.
'Mommy said to stay here until she came back,' she thought, 'but it's been forever and my legs hurt, so I'll go find her and Daddy.' She crawled out from underneath her bed, still holding her teddy bear, brushed off her dark green tank top and deep blue shorts, and put her short brown hair behind her ears. 'Why is it so quiet now?' She thought. 'People were yelling outside just a few minutes ago'
The little girl climbed up on top of her bed, unlatched and opened her window, and stuck her head outside. Though everything seemed normal enough at first glance, there was something strange about it all. The normally bustling street was now abnormally quiet, and not one person could be seen. The air felt tense, and the wind had suddenly ceased, as if it were holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. Still, the little girl stood at her window, just watching and waiting for someone, anyone, to come by. She should have been more specific.
The girl saw off in the distance something that looked like a shadow without its person, and it was coming right towards her house. It moved very shakily, constantly looking left and right, and then it looked straight at the little girl, far off at her window. It seemed to stop for a moment, just pondering what it should do next, then it moved as fast as it possibly could towards the house. 'Oh no,' the small child thought, 'its coming for Mommy and Daddy!'
The little girl shot off out of her room, still carrying her teddy bear, frantically calling out, "Mommy!!! Daddy!!! The monsters from under my bed are coming to eat us!!!" When she was halfway down the stairs, a "monster" pulled itself up from the oak wood, and when it was fully standing, it just stared at the child. The creature was as black as an endless abyss, except for two glowing yellow eyes, which were each about the same size of the little girl's hand. Other than those two eerily shining discs, the creature didn't have any other facial features. Its face was expressionless, and two antlike antennas were sticking out of its head, constantly twitching. Its long fingers seemed to have minds of their own, as well as the tips of its long toeless feet, all of which were moving left and right in erratic patterns.
"Stop staring at me!" the little girl said as she thwacked the monster with her teddy bear. The creature just stood there for a few moments after the impact with Mr. Snuggles before it disappeared once again into the stairs. The young child then smiled proudly to herself, thinking that she had defeated the monster and saved the world.
'Now to find Mommy and Daddy...' The little girl thought as she resumed running down the stairs. She skipped from room to room calling out "Mommy? Daddy? Where are you? I made the monster go away, so you can stop hiding now!" Not once did she get an answer, the house was completely silent. The small child looked and looked, until she was climbing down the creaky stairs to her basement.
The old musty smell of the underground room filled the girl's nostrils as she made her way into its dank threshold. "I know you're in here!" She said happily as she looked behind every junk filled crate and in every miniscule spot that could be used to hide in. Her searching was quickly ended when she saw yet another yellow eyed monster. "Hey!" She yelled at it. "I thought you left!" The monster, with its freakishly large, shining yellow eyes, ran off into a far corner of the basement.
"Come back here!!!" The little girl yelled at the creature as she tore off after it, Mr. Snuggles in tow. She climbed over countless boxes and old pieces of furniture, all the while watching where the monster was going like a hawk. The small child maneuvered every obstacle between her and the monster with ease, but her chase was abruptly ended when the creature jumped into what seemed to be a huge portal.
The portal was enormous; it took up about half of the wall in the basement. When the little girl put her head inside of it to see what was inside, she felt an extreme cold take over her, as if her very heart and soul had been ripped out. Nothing could be seen inside the portal, it was pure darkness inside. And even stranger, it was in the shape of a keyhole, like from a door.
When the child took her head out of the giant hole, the empty chasm almost immediately began to disappear. Patches of it began to fall into it's middle in a purple and black haze, as if it were devouring itself. Once the gargantuan keyhole had fully disappeared, the ground around the little girl became black and purple, slowly oozing into nothing all around her. Paralyzed by fear, the child didn't move, but sat down on the ground crying and clutching her bear in fear until the ground beneath her too would disappear, and she would be swept away into another world.
And then, Ari woke up in a sleeping bag on the floor of the Green Room of the hotel. Still in her pajamas, covered with sweat, and a green sticky note on her forehead.