Note: Thank God! I finally got this chapter typed up! Amazing as it sounds, it is true, and I am sorry it took so long, especially considering how long I've had this written up. You would not even recogonize the story if you read the written version though, I tried to bring it up to speed with my current writing talents. Well, I hope you enjoy this, and sorry I don't have any dedications this timer around, I just wanted to get this out quickly.
I finally started stirring. I had no idea how long I had been out, or any clue as to where I was now. I still felt a little groggy, but I was at least able to move again. Wherever I was though, it was a lot more comfortable then anywhere I had rested in the past year or so. It almost felt like I was in my nice warm bed, back on the islands. Maybe that's where I am. Maybe this whole thing has just been a dream, and when I wake up mom will have pancakes ready for me downstairs.
I opened my eyes to the not my bedroom, but a white metallic room. Damn…Why couldn't I be right for once? My surroundings didn't seem familiar at all, and for a brief moment, I thought that maybe I had gotten captured by those Shinra guys again. Then I spotted a familiar looking Raven haired girl sitting at the end of my bed.
"Hey guys, I think he's coming to!" The voice was familiar, but for a split second I forgot her name, but then it hit my lack a jab to the face.
Of course…How could I forget? As her eyes met mine she threw out her chest and started to announce who she was.
"Hi, I'm—"
"The great ninja Yuffie. I know…do you have to do that every time we meet?" I gave an exasperated sigh and sat up slowly in bed.
"Wait, how do you know my name, and what do you mean every time we meet? I've never seen you before in my life." Yuffie gave me a strange look, hopping off the bed, and placing her hand over her star that was hanging at her side.
"What do you mean you've never met me? It's me, Sora. You Leon and Aeris all helped me out when I was in Traverse Town and Hollow Bastion. Speaking of which, what are you doing here?"
"Look…Sora, or whatever your name is, I don't know who you think you are, but I've never even heard of this Leon guy, and Aerith is dead." She snapped open the case holding her star to her waist, and I quickly pulled out my keyblade. I blocked her stars as she hurled one after another at me.
"Yuffie!"
Klank! thwack! shink!
"Stop…It!"
Thud! Whack! Klank!
After a minute or so, a gigantic red lion…tiger…thingy came running into the room.
"Yuffie, Stop!" The…umm… (yeah…I'll get back to you on what it was later) had a loud commanding voice…wait a second…it could talk?
"Why, Red? He's a spy or something. He knew my name, as well as Aerith's before I even told him." She pleaded her case, sounding like a child trying to work her way out of a punishment. Definitely the Yuffie I remembered.
"Did it ever occur to you he might know because of something besides that fact that he is a spy? He's from the future you moron!"
"The future!" both Yuffie and I screamed in unison.
"Yes the future, my grandfather mentioned to me this was going to happen before we left Cosmo Canyon that first time. Now if you would both sit down, I'll explain things." Red, as Yuffie had called him, shut the door and locked it. That's one really smart cat thingy…
"First off, Sora," Red said turning towards me, "You cannot tell anyone else that you are from the future, the fact that Yuffie found out is going to screw your future up as it is. Plus, you cannot let them think you knew Yuffie from before just now."
"Tell them! I didn't even know it myself!" I said, still shocked at the unusual turn of events. How the hell did I wind up in the past? It didn't make any sense! Was that overgrown city actually the true face of this world, and not vice versa? My brain was starting to hurt trying to figure this all out.
"Next, Yuffie, he does know your future self. So if he does accidentally say something, you're gonna have to go along with it so as not to screw the timeline up any worse than it already is."
"Humph…not like it's my fault if future boy screws up, so why do I have to cover for him?"
"As I said, so you don't screw the future up even worse. You're gonna have to think of someone besides yourself this time around Yuffie. The future is already screwed up enough for Sora, tonight is gonna be very hard for him."
"What do you mean, Red?" I questioned, puzzled as to why tonight would be weird aside from the fact that I thought I was going insane sitting here talking to a giant cat.
"Because tonight you are going to get all new memories. It'll most likely simply erase all of your old ones and you won't be able to tell the difference, but there are a select few people who have retained their old memories along with their new ones, otherwise we wouldn't even know anything had happened now would we?"
"Why is it tonight, why don't my memories simply rewrite themselves right now?"
"Because they rewrite at night during your dreams in order to keep your head from exploding, and I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have gray matter all over the carpet in here."
"So my memories are gonna change? Why won't I keep all of the old ones as well?"
"I really don't have an answer for you Sora. All I now is that that is the way things are, so you'd better get used to it. Well, I had best get going, I'm supposed to be on guard duty right now, and Vincent is covering for me. You know how he get's when people keep him waiting. Don't forget to take Sora down to tell Tifa that he is up, ok Yuffie?"
"Yeah, Yeah, I'll get right on that," Yuffie rolled her eyes as Red exited the room. "He sure is a cheery guy huh?"
"Yeah, he reminds me a lot of someone I know." I said, picturing Leon in my mind. They seemed to talk almost exactly alike, putting out a tough persona for some unknown reason. I chuckled a bit at the thought of Leon being compared to a lionish thing.
"What's so funny?" Yuffie said, interrupting my thoughts.
"Oh, nothing. Anyway, where am I?"
"Well at the moment we're on the Highwind, the latest in technology used by the Shinra that we stole right from out under there noses. It's my first time on an airship…" she seemed to get a slightly queasy look on her face as she told me about it.
"Oh yeah, I remember you saying something about one, you said that they were really fast but that you always got airsick!" I cracked one of my famous half smiles at her as she stared at me in shock.
"Hey, no one is supposed to know that!" Yuffie said, turning slightly pink. "You can't tell anyone, ok?"
"Fine, fine, but they'll all find out sooner or later."
"Yeah, but we'll just let them find out on there own."
"Ok, sure." I said, a slight chuckle escaping my lips. So anyway, what was that city we were just at?"
"That was Junon, a port military made by the Shinra. Tifa and Barret got sent there after Cloud—"
"Wait, did you just say Cloud? As in Cloud Strife?"
"Yeah, why?"
"I was supposed to find him, but I kinda forgot about it in all of the things that happened at the Junon place. Where is he?" After I said this, Yuffie turned her face away, a somber look crossing her features. "What's wrong?"
"We don't really know where he is right now. We were at a gigantic crater chasing down Sephiroth when Hojo, this weird mad scientist, told Cloud that he was actually nothing more than a clone of Sephiroth. Cloud went crazy, and started begging Hojo to tell him what his number was. Then Weapon woke up, and we haven't seen or heard from him since."
"Wait, back up a sec. Cloud is a clone of Sephiroth? I've fought them both though, and they both fight completely different. I thought they hated each other?"
"Wait, now you hold on. If you're from the future, then how did you fight Sephiroth?"
"It was at a place called the Olympus Coliseum. I was running through some exhibition matches when the person in charge, Phil, told me about this unknown challenger. It turned out to be a man named Sephiroth with a humongous sword twice as long as my body. He wore all black and had his silver hair back in a pony tail. He was insanely fast and powerful. He was able to shoot meteors at me and did this strange move that seemed to nearly kill me. I was lucky I survived that fight."
"How do you know it was the same guy?"
"Cause you Leon and Aerith were all watching me, and you and Aerith said it was him. You guys didn't tell me how you knew him, but I guess I can understand why."
"Were you able to beat him?" Yuffie asked me, wide-eyed.
"Yep, all by myself in fact. He was an incredibly tough opponent, and I've actually wanted to face him again. I wasn't able to kill him. He vanished before that could happen, though truthfully I wasn't to upset. It just meant one more strong rival out there for me to defeat."
"You're lying. No one can beat Sephiroth by themselves…there's just no way…" Yuffie stared at the ground, the thought turning itself over and over in here head.
"That's exactly what you said after I beat him. You were staring at me in disbelief, refusing to accept it." I sat there with a huge toothy grin on my face. Yuffie looked back up at me and smiled.
"You must be pretty strong then." She said, here voice dripping with sarcasm. "Don't tell me that key thingy you were using is your weapon."
"What, the Key blade? Of course it's my weapon; it is after all based around the strength of a person's heart. It can change shape too, so I can always have it ready for any type of situation."
"How do you do that?" she asked, eying my weapon curiously.
"It's simple really; all I have to do is change the keychain on the end out for a different one. Watch." I reached towards the back of my belt where all my different key chains were hanging, and grabbed the first one my fingers brushed up against. "This one is called Pumpkinhead." I said, replacing the mouse shaped keychain on the end with the one I had obtained from Jack Skellington. The blade grew in size, turning black as it did so. The square handle rounded as the ends started growing to a point, sticking out and giving it a much more menacing look.
"Wow!" Yuffie said, as she watched the blade transform. "You really weren't joking! I thought you were just trying to bluff me!"
"Yeah, this is actually one of my favorite blades. It isn't the most powerful, but it has an incredible reach, and it looks really cool."
"Yeah, no kidding…" Yuffie said as she marveled over the blade. "Could you show me another one?"
"Ok, ok." I said, grabbing for another one. I pulled it out to see which one I had latched onto, stopping from moving once I saw which one it was. Oathkeeper… It was Kairi's lucky charm that she had given me just before I had gone back to Hollow Bastion for the second time. It was powerful, not as strong as Oblivion or Ultima, but it held a special place in my heart. Kairi had entrusted it to me, and I had promised that I would return it to her once all of this was done.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Yuffie questioned, knocking me out of my daze. "Is that one broken or something?"
"No… It's just special to me; a very good friend gave it to me." I said, a sigh coming out of my mouth. "Is it ok if we do this later?"
"Um…ok?..." Yuffie said, obviously confused. "I needed to let Tifa know you were up any way.
"Good idea, I really want to see the rest of this Airship."
"Let's get going then." We both stood up, and I replaced the keychain on my belt.
As we walked out of the room, I saw for the first time just how massive the Highwind was. Across from me was a walkway that led to another room, and stairs on my left led somewhere else. How something so big was able to even lift off the ground mystified me. I'd seen jumbo jets before, but this thing was easily three times the size of any of those. The gummi ship I'd been using, the Excalibur, wasn't even any larger than the room I had just been staying in. Yuffie led me over to the walkway and into the room that it connected to.
The room was massive with machinery of all sorts everywhere. If this was the past, then they were really advanced. Maybe that's why the city had been destroyed…
There were a few people in blue uniforms running around, but it was the people that were standing around a table that caught my eye.
The man that Tifa had called Barret was standing next to a thin cloaked man. Red was standing next to who appeared to be Cid, but I wasn't sure, he looked a lot younger than the Cid I knew. Tifa stood at the head of the table, talking to all of them as if she was leading a squadron of troops.
"So you finally decided to get up huh kid?" definitely the Cid I knew. He sounded exactly the same, accent and all, and now that I got a good look at him, he did look like a younger version of the man I knew as well. He was the first one to notice me, and the rest of them all turned around once Cid had pointed out the fact I had finally arrived.
"Yep I brought him down as soon as he woke up. He said his name is Sora." She said, then grabbed ahold of my arm. "Com'on, I'll introduce you to everyone."
Arriving in front of Barret, Yuffie proceeded to formally introduce us. "This is Barret." The large man with the gun arm rolled his eyes at the ever cheerful Yuffie. "He's really just a big softie, don't let him fool you." Yuffie whispered to me. It was all I could do to stifle a giggle.
"The Pale dude in the cape is Vincent." The man gave a slight bow and then turned back to the table, studying the things that they had been discussing.
"Not very sociable huh?" I whispered over to Yuffie.
"Yeah, but you get used to it." She whispered back, adding a slight chuckle to her statement. "Moving along, this is Red, whom you've already met." Red stuck out his paw and I shook it, returning the head nod he gave me.
"The Tobacco smoker over there is Cid." Yuffie said, a hint of disgust in her voice.
"Hey Kiddo!" Cid said, walking up beside me and ruffling up my hair. "Don't you go a'listenin' to Yuffie now, I'm a kind one at heart." He meandered back over to the table, taking a long puff off of his pipe.
"…Anyway, The last one here is Tifa, who you've also already met."
"Nice to see you again Sora." Tifa said, extending her hand out as she walked over to me. I gladly took it and shook her hand. As I was shaking Tifa's hand another large one fell onto my shoulder. It was white, and had no fingers.
"Don't Tell me Yuffie forgot about me again!" The thing said.
"Oh, sorry, Sora this is Cait Sith." I turned around and looked right into the eyes of a giant monster. It had beady black eyes and enormous fangs, but no distinguishable features aside from that.
"MONSTER!" I yelled, pulling the Keyblade out. As I started my swing, I heard a small explosion, then something small, metal, and moving very fast, collided with my weapon, sending it spiraling out of my hand. As the blade went spinning across the room, it slowly evaporated from view. I had trained so that the Keyblade would only manifest so long as I held it in my hand. I had learned my lesson when Riku had stolen it from me at Hollow Bastion. I looked for the cause of the object, and saw Vincent pointing an old fashioned gun at the place where my Keyblade had been only moments before.
"Cait Sith is not an enemy." He said, then turned around once more and placed his gun in its holster. Looking towards the monster again, I noticed that there was a cat sitting on top of it.
"Sorry, terribly rude of myself to frighten you like that. You have pretty fast reflexes my little friend." The cat on top, which I was assuming was Cait Sith, was talking to me. Talking Tigers, cats that used monsters for transportation, and a past that was technologically advanced to my own future. This was going to be one crazy ride…
Second Note: Yeah, I'm definitly going to need to edit this sometime soon, but I wanted to get it out since it has been so long. Sorry again!