Author's Note-School sucks! ...But oh well.. sigh Anyways, I don't own Kingdom Hearts and this is where Final Fantasy 7 comes in (which I don't own either.) In fact, I'm planning on bringing one of the characters in on this in the next chapter. Come and find out!
Riku yawned as he sat back in the copilot's seat. So far the trip had been quite tedious. Yukiro had been piloting. After a minute, Riku finally said, "So...how 'bout dem geebas...?"
Yukiro rolled his eyes. "Dem what?" he repeated, raises an eyebrow. He glanced over at Riku to see him yawning again and said, "If you're going to sleep, then I suggest going and lying back on one of the cots in the back and burning some Goldenwood while you do."
"We've been flying for five hours in silence. Can't we at least put on some music?" Riku asked boredly.
"Yeah, yeah, sure. Pop a CD in. There might be some in the glove compartment." Yukiro said. At the glare that Riku gave him, he blinked and said, "Oh. Oh right. You're blind..."
"...Yeah..."
"My apologies..." Yukiro said a bit absently as he popped open the glove compartment and rooted around, keeping his eyes on outer space. He pulled out several CDs and popped a random one into the CD player.
"What's the CD called?" Riku asked.
"I...don't know..." Yukiro said. He glanced at the case, then read it aloud. "'Walt Disney Rides.'"
"That sounds promising." Riku muttered a bit sarcastically, crossing his arms over his chest as he put his feet up on the dashboard and leaned back.
Yukiro shrugged as he hit the play button. "Iiit's a small world after all! Iiit's a small world after all! It's-" little children's voices sang.
Riku nearly fell out of his seat and Yukiro flinched and clapped his hands over his ears. "Good god, turn that off!" Riku exclaimed.
"I'm workin on it!" Yukiro assured him as he pressed the stop button. There was a moment of relieved silence.
Finally Riku said, "...If the Heartless could sing...then that would be it.."
Yukiro nodded in agreement.
"Why is there even a CD like that even on this ship...?" Riku wondered aloud, frowning.
"...No idea. Let's try another CD... That one." Yukiro said, shrugging and popping in a new CD.
"Oh god... What's this one called?" Riku asked warily, a bit apprehensive.
"Hm... Final Fantasy Seven..." Yukiro read as he hit the play button.
Riku listened to the orchestra music beginning to play. Yukiro only grinned. "Heh...this music sure brings back memories." He said.
"You mean your royal life?" Riku asked, turning his head to 'look' at the boy beside him and raising an eyebrow.
"Yep." Yukiro said.
There was a bit of quiet that stretched on-save the music-that was suddenly ripped through with a resounding crash.
"What the-?!" Yukiro started. But Riku had already guessed what was going on.
"Heartless ships!" he cried.
"What?! No way! They're only supposed to surround our sector!" Yukiro exclaimed.
"Well, apparently they've spread farther across space in the past five hundred years." Riku shot back.
"Shit..." Yukiro growled, trying to manage the controls the best he could in the building tension.
Riku stood up. "Need some help?" he asked.
"Yes...no... Yes. Yeah. All right, Riku. I know you can't see so I'm going to aim for you. You just take the laser cannon and hold down the button." Yukiro said.
"Then who's steering?!"
"The aiming and the steering can be connected so I'm fine. Do you know where the firing button is?"
"Yeah. I think so." Riku said going over to the battle stations chair. Yeah. This ship was just like his old ship. Only this ship didn't have buttons that were written in Braille. ...I think they cheated us out of our money by saying that this was a brand new model. Damn mechanics. He thought. To Yukiro, he called over as he flipped the switch of the weaponry to 'on', "Yeah. I got it."
"Gotcha. Locking aiming onto steering now." Yukiro announced. He watched as he aimed carefully. "Alright, and fire!"
Riku's palm slammed down on the big red button.
"Great. We might just be able to get out of this with only a couple of scratches." Yukiro commented. There was suddenly a crash as the ship shuddered, nearly knocking Riku (who hadn't been strapped in) out of his seat. "...Or not..."
"Where did they hit us?" Riku demanded.
"...It's one out of two of our engines..." Yukiro said, wincing.
"The engine?!"
Yukiro nodded as he frowned. "That's what I just said, isn't it? Hang on. We're in for a rough landing."
"Landing? Where?" Riku asked as he buckled up.
"There's a planet nearby. I can manage to land over there and that's as far as I've planned." Yukiro informed him.
Riku sweatdropped, then sighed. "Well then, go on ahead. I ain't stopping ya." He said, leaning back and basically waiting for death on impact.
Yukiro blinked, then frowned and sighed as he tried to regain whatever control he had left of the ship.
There was a few moments when suddenly, a crash! Several seconds of silence ensued.
Finally, "...You still alive?"
"Yeah...ow... And you?" Riku asked as he sat up.
"I'll pull through." Yukiro replied casually.
"Good to hear it. Now where are we?" Riku asked.
"Well...um... Hold on..." Yukiro said, frowning at the computer. He sighed as he tried to operate it. "Great. The computer's on the fritz now..." After a couple of seconds, his face lit up a bit. "Ahah! Hey, this is great! Yeah, exactly where we wanted to be."
"Okay. Where are we?"
"The planet is called Project Shinra."
"Okay. And why are we here?"
Yukiro only grinned. "Riku, this is where we'll get your help."
This statement raised Riku's interest. He raised an eyebrow. "Oh really?" he asked.
"Yeah." Yukiro said, standing up. "Follow me. Oh, and...watch your step." He said, walking out.
Riku nodded, grabbed his staff, and followed. His staff suddenly plunged into nothingness, or so it seemed since the ground appeared to be that deep. He jerked as he almost stepped off, leaning a lot on his staff. Yukiro blinked at him, then sweatdropped.
"Um...yeah... Like I said, watch your step. We landed at a bit of a tilt..." he said.
"Now you tell me..." Riku sighed, hopping off the ship.
"Yeah. Follow me..." Yukiro said, walking off. Riku followed after him.
"Oi! Where are we going?" Riku demanded.
"This is a very small planet. There's probably only three notable landmarks on here. Cosmo Canyon, the city of Midgar, and this. Shinra mansion. The rest is all forest, water, and fields where there has been rumored to be some uncharted regions... Anyways, back in my time, this was only a military base for my father. But now I'm sure that it's grown to be a lot more than just that-especially since the kingdom has been lost for centuries. As I said, right now we're going into Shinra mansion. A long line of scientists lived here and I'm hoping that a descendant of the scientist that I knew might be here and will hopefully be an expert scientist his or herself." Yukiro explained.
"That's a bit of a gamble, isn't it? I mean, we nearly got killed to get here and the person that we're looking for might not even exist." Riku said.
"Like we have a better option? Look, we don't have much of a choice. If you don't figure out a way to control the darkness in your dreams and in your heart, then something horrible is going to happen."
"What? What's going to happen?" Riku demanded. At Yukiro's silence, he glared. "Hey, we're talking about me here. I think I have the right to know what's going on. What's going to happen to me."
Yukiro just sighed and shook his head. "We're here." He grabbed the doorknob and frowned as he tried to open the door. After a few minutes he rattled the door. "It's locked.
Riku sighed. "Of course it's locked. Most normal people do that to keep others from breaking and entering like what I'm sure that you were about to do. Why don't you try knocking? Here." With that, he knocked on the door. Unfortunately, because of the age of the house, the wooden door had rot...
Riku sweatdropped as he felt his fist go through something and splinter slightly into his hand. The door...
"...Nice..." Yukiro commented, raising an eyebrow.
"Er...right. Um...new plan..."
Yukiro sweatdropped. "Yeah." He agreed. His bladed staff (which oddly enough, Riku could see the light of) formed in his hand. Riku sweatdropped further.
"You're going to cut it down?"
Yukiro raised an eyebrow as he got ready to use his staff on the door. "You got a better idea?"
Riku opened his mouth to argue, then shut it and sighed. "Nope. Go on ahead." He said.
He watched the staff slash-no, fly-in front of them, practically leaving trails of fading light due to the speed of it all. There was a clatter before them, the sound of all the wood falling in a heap.
Yukiro looked back at him before stepping inside. "C'mon..."
Riku followed. Being blind, his other senses had hightened. He could smell a musty smell, the smell of age that would wait for nothing.
Riku's nose twitched, then sneezed. "There's a lot of dust in here... Are you sure if anybody still lives here or not? I can't even detect the faintest traces of light, next to ours..."
Yukiro sighed. "I guess... Wait. What is this?" He picked up a sheet of parchment. "Ha ha ha." He read aloud. "I have followed my prince's orders and hidden him in the basement. You can find him and release him if you'd like. But it's only a game, merely a game. If you wish to find him, follow the clues on the next page? Oh geez..." Yukiro sighed and dropped the parchment. Riku heard it flutter to the ground. "Bah. Forget that. We don't have time for this. C'mon. I know where the basement is."
They walked a bit, Riku following the being of light until...
"Ow! Hey!" he suddenly exclaimed as he tripped.
"Oh yeah. There's some stairs there. Careful." Yukiro said, rolling his eyes at the blind boy.
Riku glared up at him. "So I noticed. Thanks." He said.
"Well hey, you have a staff. Why don't you be smart and start using it? Geez..." Yukiro sighed, continuing.
They progressed up the stairs and into one of the bedrooms (or at least what Riku assumed to be a bedroom), and stopped. Riku sighed. "What are we doing now? Basements are supposed to be downstairs. You know, like...dungeons or cellars or something..."
"Right. But this basement is secret in this house."
"Then how do you know where it is?"
"I know just about every nook and cranny of this house. As I said, my father owned this military base, he owned this very planet. I stayed here for a month or two every few years with Professor Gast and his wife, Ifalna. Think I just sat around doing nothing all that time? Now, let's see...Darkest Secrets of the Cetra...Darkest Secrets of the Cetra... Ah, here we are." Yukiro said.
Riku felt a bit of cool air wash over him as he heard a 'swoosh.'
"Careful here. There's a rickety spiral staircase right here." Yukiro warned. Riku heard creaking steps in front of him and nodded as he followed them.
They reached the bottom and came to another door. "Not again..." Yukiro sighed.
"So Professor Gast set this all up, huh?" Riku asked, catching up to him. Yukiro held his staff out, stopping Riku from walking right into the door.
"No. Professor Gast was captured and experimented on, as was his wife, when...when he came into power..."
"He?"
"My brother."
"Oh."
Yukiro sighed. "Here. Stand back."
Riku took a step back and watched several quickly fading trails of light come into view. There was the clatter of wood before him and Yukiro stepped inside.
Yukiro looked around at the open coffins housing skeletons, the pile of skulls in the corner. There was a look of disgust on his face. "His replacement was Professor Hojo. I never like him, the sadistic little creep..."
"Do I even want to know?" Riku asked as he followed him inside, raising an eyebrow.
"Eh, no, probably not." Yukiro said, stopping in front of a purple coffin. He sweatdropped, then rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Great, he's already dead. C'mon, Riku. Let's go." He sighed, turning towards the door.
Riku frowned a bit but didn't move. "No, wait. There's light in there. If he were dead, then I wouldn't see it." He sighed.
Yukiro stopped and turned back as he frowned. He then raised an eyebrow as he walked over to the coffin. "Well, I guess that means that we have no other choice than to just open this coffin and just deal with whatever pops out. Savvy?" he asked. As he placed his hand on the lid, he then muttered, "Geez. I wonder why I feel like we're grave robbing..."
Then he lifted the lid...
Author's Note-To those of you who has done this part of the game in Final Fantasy 7 (it's optional), you probably know who it is already. For those who haven't...um...you'll find out? Anyways, this chapter was long, so I had to cut it a bit short and decided to make a little cliffy right around here. I'll update soon so please review! Ja ne!