T r u e C o l o r s

A Kingdom Hearts fanfic

C h a p t e r o n e: D e s t i n y I s l a n d

Sora

"Wake up! What are you waiting for?" Riku tapped Sora on the head with his wooden sword again. "Come on, get up! It's so boring around here. Lets fight!"

Sora finally got up. He put on a shirt and started rummaging around his room for his wooden sword. And kept looking. And looking. Riku was getting really annoyed. "Hurry it up." at last Sora found his sword. The minute he got the first finger abound the handle, Riku yanked him out the door.

They raced each other to the island where they would always spar, hoping on the tops of the palm trees to get there faster. As the race got going, Riku started to pull ahead moving at almost an unreal speed. He yelled back to Sora, "Can't catch me!" but that was a mistake. While Riku was taunting Sora about winning, he ran right past him. "Ha!"

Sora was almost to the island wow! I'm really going to beat him! But as he took a quick look up, all of his hopes of victory were destroyed. Riku had used his wooden sword as a poll vault stick and had jumped over Sora and onto the island. "Yes! Another win for the amazing Riku!"

"Alright, alright. You win- again. At least let me keep my dignity."

"Fine. Have it your way…" Riku drew his sword, "…ready to loose again?"

"I hope you are!" Sora lunged forward and took the first swing at Riku. Riku blocked simply by putting his sword in the way. Then he jumped back and made a run for Sora. Sora panicked and ran. He almost evaded to blow, but he got grazed on the ankle. Sora gave a small yelp of pain. Why? Why do I always loose? I have to win this time! He pulled himself together and started to run at Riku again. He raised his sword and Riku raised his to defend. But instead of attacking then, Sora held off and made a mad dash off to Riku's left and then took his shot. He hit him right in the hips, making him collapse to the ground. "Yes!"

"You haven't beaten me yet!" Riku pulled himself together and swept Sora's feet out from under him. Before Sora could get up, Riku yelled, "Tie!"

Sora gave him a dirty look, "no fair!"

"What do you mean?"

"The one time I'm about to win, you call tie!"

"Oh well" Riku laughed and got up for the next round.

This time, Riku made the first move. He ran at Sora. "No more fooling around!" he shouted and started to move fast. Really fast. Sora could barely see where he was. Then out of nowhere, Riku appeared over Sora's head swung. Sora was able to absorb some of the force by blocking with his sword, but the strike was too strong. It broke right through Sora's wooden sword and him right in the middle of the head. "Ow!" Sora screamed in pain. "Ok! Ok! You win!"

Riku jumped in the air "yes! Victory! Tell you what, I'm feeling nice today. I'll count the tie as your win this time. That mans we need one more round to see who the winner is for today. What do you want it to be? Race or fight?"

Sora held out his broken sword, "I think we need to race." They laughed together. He was right, how would he stand a chance with a broken stick?

To start the race, they went up to the star tree. On the way, Riku started talking to Sora, "hey, Sora, have you ever thought about leaving Destiny Island? I mean going out to see what else is out there. This place is so boring. I hate the day-to-day life. Nothing happens."

Sora gave this some thought, "I see what you mean. But let's think about that later. I have a race to win." Just then they reached the star tree. Riku and Sora took turns counting,

"One…"

"Two…"

They shouted in unison, "three!"

They both took of at lightning speeds. Riku chose to take the path while Sora jumped along the palm trees like he always did. As he reached the end of the trees, Sora gave a leap of faith and jumped a far as he could. He hit the ground with a loud thud. It hurt a bit, but he realized that he was just ahead of Riku. That gave him a burst of confidence and took the pain away. He started to sprint ahead getting farther away from Riku with every passing second. But he was going too fast. Within the minute, he ran out of energy and had to slow down almost to a jog.

He looked back to see where Riku was and saw with horror that he was almost next to him. He squeezed the last of his energy reserves for one final dash. As he got up speed, he saw Kairi walk right into his path, munching on a palpu fruit. He gave a yelp of surprise and put on the brakes Kairi heard the screeching of his shoes on the path and turned around. She saw Sora, screaming and coming at her fast.

"Sora? What are you doin-"

With a loud crash, she slammed into her. Riku was about to cross the finish line when he heard the crash. He turned around fell over laughing. As the dust cleared, he saw Sora and Kairi just a foot away from each other, both biting into opposite ends of the palpu fruit. They both looked at the ground, then at the fruit, and last at each other. They both fell over backwards. Kairi took another look at the fruit and screamed again, "arg! I don't want my destiny to be linked with you! I was saving this for Rik…" Riku had heard their conversation and was looking at Kairi with a puzzled expression. Kairi blushed, "…rik- rik-… never mind that! Sora you are such a jerk! And don't even think of taking another bite of that palpu!"

Sora, who had the palpu an inch from his mouth, threw it away like it was beehive. "Sorry! Next time, don't get in the way of our race!" he shot back. They proceeded to argue to the next fifteen minutes with Riku sitting on the sidelines, bored out of his mind. Finally he got sick of it, "That's it! Stop fighting. I'm sick of it! And Sora, we have a race to finish."

Sora looked up at the sky. It was getting dark, "Let's do it tomorrow. I'm tired and it's late. I promise I will beat you in the morning, okay?"

Riku rolled his eyes, "Fine. Fine. I'll make a fool of you tomorrow"

"Night."

"Good night Sora"

That night, Sora's sleep was filled with dreams of something that he did not expect, Kairi. He kept seeing her in the strangest settings.

He would see her in a black robe, with a sword holster on her back. Only the handle of the actual sword was visible. It was simple enough. There was the metal handle; wrapped in a thin cloth to help make it easy to grip, and on either side was a thin metal rod that connected to the top and bottom of the handle. She would walk into the twisted castle (A/N hollow basin) and the minute she had two feet on the floor, it would brake and she would fall, screaming for her life, waking Sora from his nightmare.

Sora woke from his restless sleep into him messy room, sun shining in little rays through his curtains; he barley remembered what had kept him up all night.

He reluctantly got out of bed and got dressed; knowing that if he slept in and missed the race, Riku would never let him live it down. As he opened his door, the warm sunlight renewed his energy and his spirits. Yes! He could, no; he will win the race and finally beat Riku. He jumped down from his room in the trees and started to run to the star tree. When he arrived, Riku was standing there, tapping his foot. It was as if his foot was saying: where have you been?

After explaining that he had a rough night so Riku couldn't say he had thought about chickening out. Before they started the race, Riku held out a newly carved wooden sword, "here. It's for you. I even carved you name on it. Sorry I broke your old one."

Sora took the sword, "thanks. This is way better than my old one!"

"Are you still sure that you want to race and not fight?"

"Yeah, I'm too excited about the race to back down now. We can fight tomorrow."

"Alright."

They started their count down.

"One…"

"Two…"

"Three!"

They sped off toward the finish. This time, both Riku and Sora took the palm trees. When the came halfway, Sora climbed up the zip line pole and rode it to the tower. He took a moment to see where Riku was. He was about fifteen feet from the bottom of the tower. Sora hurried and climbed down; staying just ahead of Riku.

As they entered the final stretch, they were dead even, due to Sora tripping on a crab. They were only about five feet away from the finish when Sora pulled ahead… and won!

"Yes! In your face! I beat you!"

Sora went on like that until Riku stopped him, "you may have beat my this time, but what about aaaallllll the times when I beat you?"

"Yeah. Yeah. I know."

They both talked and laughed about how Sora had tripped on a crab.

The rest of the day went by with pretty much nothing happening. Sora practiced with his new wooden sword, Riku sat by the palpu tree looking up at the sky, wondering what was out there. Tidus was practicing his blitz ball moves with Wakka. Pretty soon it was nighttime and everyone was off to bed.

Sora was starting to wonder why he was cursed with all of these dreams. Tonight, he saw Riku fighting just like he had the day before, but he was fighting Kairi. The strangest part was that they were even. At times, Kairi was even pushing him back. After Sora got over the shock of them fighting, he saw that they were fighting in the same twisted castle that he had saw her in the night before. As the fight raged on, they seemed to be evenly matched, until, like the last time, the floor broke under their feet and Kairi fell into the abyss. Riku on the other hand, was suspended for about five seconds. It looked like he was trying to tell him something, but before he could get a word out; Kairi's scream woke him up.

Today, Sora wanted nothing more than to get out of bed and get going. This time, he remembered what had kept him up all night and was scared to be in his bed because he might fall asleep and be greeted by the nightmares once more.

So the minute the sun came through his curtains, he put on his cloths and ran out the door. On the way out, he grabbed his new wooden sword. When he got to the beach, he decided that he needed to relax. Between the nightmares and all of the contests with Riku, he was dead tired. He set his sword down next to him and lay down on the beach. As he lay there, he ended up being half way between being awake and being asleep. The result put him in somewhat of a natural high daydream state.

He thought about what Riku had said about leaving Destiny Island. Was there really something else out there? How would they get there? And most of all, why did Riku hate living here so much? Through the buzz of all these thoughts and questions, he heard Riku calling his name.

"Sora! Why weren't you answering me? I was wondering if you wanted to brake in that new sword of yours? What do you say?"

"Sure. Lets go."

They went down to the island and got ready for a rematch. They drew their swords. Sora made the first move my climbing the palpu tree that was on the island and dropping off it for and aerial attack. Riku dodged his attack and went in for his own. As he ran at Sora, he jumped high in the air and raised his wooden sword for and early finishing blow.

But before he could even swing his sword, it became engulfed in a blinding light. He stopped his attack and landed hard.

As he stood up, the light subsided. What he was now holding was no longer a carved wooden sword. It was a strange metal blade with what appeared to be a key on the end of the blade.

Riku look at the blade with a look of pure confusion, "It looks like a sword. But it looks like a key."

Sora chimed in, "Let's call it a key sword."

"How about 'key blade'?"

"Sounds cool!"

Later that day, nobody could find Riku. They looked everywhere for him. In the trees, on the beach, the island, but he was nowhere to be found.

When Sora couldn't find him anywhere he decided to take a break. He went up to zip line tower and found Kairi sitting, looking out at the ocean. "Mind if I join you?" Sora asked.

"It's ok."

Sora sat down. "Hey, Kairi, what are you looking at?"

"Just looking out at the water. Nothing special."

"Oh. So, what do you think happened to Riku's sword earlier today?"

"I don't know. It was really weird."

"That's for sure." They sat together pondering all of the questions that they thought would never get an answer when Kairi asked a question that Sora didn't expect.

"Sora, what do you think is out there? Is there just water, or do you think there is something else?"

"I don't know, Kairi. Sorry."

"Oh, its ok."

After sitting and talking to each other, Sora went back to looking for Riku. As he was running around the island, Sora realized that there was one place where he didn't think to look. He and Riku's secret place.

When he got there, he found Riku, practicing with his mysterious new keyblade. Sora was about to talk to him when he noticed something: how fluid and graceful Riku was with it. It seemed almost as if he had held it with birth. Just then, Riku cut through his thoughts, "Isn't this amazing, Sora? I've barely hade this sword, but it's like I've always had it."

"That's just what I was thinking."

Riku made a slash so fast it made the mind whistle. "Wow." Sora was aw-stricken. He saw Riku start to practice the attack that he used on him when his sword turned into the keyblade. But he overshot his aim and the key end of the sword went smashing into the strange metal door that had always been there, but they had never been able to open.

But when the sword hit it, the key on the end fit perfectly into the keyhole. When the key was all the way in, it just sat there for a few seconds, then it rocketed out, sending Riku flying. Sora was about to run to Riku to make sure he wasn't hurt when a noise stopped him in his tracks. The noise that he heard was the sound of the door opening.

Slowly, we got over to Riku and helped him up. then they turned to face the door.

After about two minutes, a small black creature stepped out from the door. It looked almost like a shadow that was standing by itself. It came up to Sora and whacked him in the chest! He fell back a few feet and screamed in pain, "Ow! That hurt!" When Riku saw what had happened, he picked up the keyblade and charged at the shadow. He hit it and the blade sliced right thru. After it had been cut in half, it just disappeared.

Riku sighed with relief. Whatever that was was gone now. But just as he was feeling relaxed, he heard Sora scream again. Riku looked over to the door and saw what had made Sora scream. An army, thousands upon thousands of the shadow-things, were pouring out of the door.

Riku screamed to Sora, "Run!" and they did; they ran out of the cave and up into the trees. Riku yelled to Sora, "I have to get Kairi. Get Tidus and meet me at the raft that I built."

"What raft?"

"I've been making a raft to go exploring. It's right in front of the palm trees. Now go!"

Sora went looking for Tidus and found him pretty quickly, in the top room of the tree houses, scared half to death. "Come on! We have to get out of here! Follow me!" Tidus nodded and followed Sora back to the raft.

Riku found Kairi in her room, hiding under the covers. He pulled them off and grabbed her hand, "Let's go, Kairi. Follow me." He led her through the swarming masses of shadows. About half way there, Kairi got caught my one of the shadows. Riku cut it down with the keyblade. But then she was grabbed by another, and another. Soon she was covered by them. Them they all just disappeared into the ground, taking her with them. Riku let out a cry of anguish, "KAIRI!" he pounded at the ground with his fists, tears rolling down his cheeks. But he realized that he couldn't wait any longer.

Riku ran back to the raft and met up with Sora and Tidus. "Where's Kairi?" asked Sora. But then he looked at Riku's face, the broken eyes and tears gave him the answer. He too started crying. Then with a giant shove, Riku and Sora pushed the raft into the sea and away from the hell that had once been their home.