The City of Naught: Chapter One
Empty Melodies
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Introduction
Welcome to my new fan fic, The City of Naught. It is an alternate universe fanfiction based of Kingdom Hearts II, but I'm going to warn you now, if you haven't played the game all the way through, it will contain spoilers for you. Also, another note, you might want to memorize the map of "The World That Never Was." Much of the story will take place there, although it will have a different name. Whoever can guess what I'll be naming it gets a cookie!
Well, anyway, this story is told mainly from a third-person intimate, with Roxas as the focus. It is a little bit slow getting started, but the pace does pick up.
Also, one last note, this story is not a romance, but it will have some romance in it. The pairings will be (Roxas x Naminé) and a slight amount of (Sora x Kairi.) Other will be mentioned, but not focused on.
Well, I bet you're sick of my little introduction already, so why don't we just head on over to disclaimer land, and then you can take a train to the first chapter! Whoo! Hooray for cheesy analogies!
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Disclaimer Land
I admit it…I couldn't resist. Well, anyway, I do not own Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, or any other related titles. Nor do I own any of the characters. Oh, wait! I own Roxas…No, no that was a dream. :le sigh: Square Enix and Disney own it. They own it all….
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Dry notes cracked in the air, a desperate, broken sound of the utmost despair. The sad noise fluttered, trying in vain to make music, but all that was formed were empty, empty melodies.
No one was around to hear it. That pathetic excuse for music piping out, its plea was heard by none…save for him. He was always there. Always heard it. He looked up hopefully at the sky, but all he saw was the swirling blackness. All he saw was the eternal night. Around him, there was even more black, different tones of darkness extracted from the color. Smoke, onyx, jet, so subtly different, but still the same thing. All of them were nothing but black, in the end.
The scene cleared, and he was standing in a dank alley, black water dripping from decrepit black walls onto a black ground.
But there was a glow from around the corner, and it beckoned him, his soul was straining to see the light once again. He followed the alleyway out of that smelly dead-end where he had been standing, and pursued the soft glimmering, past black buildings with black windows, where only blackness could be seen beyond. He followed that tiny radiance through tunnels and concourses, only wanting to truly see it. His very being cried out to be in the light again.
It led him up a steep path, twisting as it nestled against an impossibly smooth wall. And then it ended, a sudden drop-off. He stopped barely in time, fragments of the broken path breaking off under his feet to tumble into the infinite blackness that lay below.
And then he looked up. What he saw was certainly not black. In fact, it was a blaring white, shining like a star in the inkiness of the city. It seemed to be a castle of some sort. Or maybe a fortress? It floated, suspended by some unseen force, above the chasm, which, he was sure, had no bottom. A strange, intricate symbol was traced onto the body of the castle, silhouetted in a light grey against the perfect white.
He had been following the light from this building, hoping for relief from the darkness, but now, as he gazed up at the fortress, he knew that he would rather face the blackness any day. The floating citadel filled him with an immense terror, a soul-devouring fear that left him wide-eyes, too horrified to move. And then, the tension broke, and he ran. He ran down the twisting path into the black city, back through the alleys and tunnels. Anything to get away from it…
And the sad, sad music began again, the empty melodies floating brokenly around in the stale air.
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Roxas sat straight up in bed, panting hard. His ocean-blue eyes were wide, his pupils dilated. His hair was plastered to his head, and he felt like he had been running. Running away…but from what?
With a soft groan, he rolled a bit to his left, and picked up his clock. 2:27 AM. Great, he would lose another decent night's sleep. It was always that way when he had the dream. And that was starting to be more and more frequent. At first, he would only have it every once and a while, and figured it was just from stress. Then, it started occurring more and more often. At this point, the dream came almost every night. That black city…the floating citadel. The broken music…He didn't have a clue what it all meant.
He shook his head and grimaced. There was no hope for him to go back to sleep. Besides, now he was fully awake anyway.
For lack of anything better to do, the blonde-haired boy opened his window and let in the fresh night air, a welcome relief to the stuffiness of his room. Leaning on the windowsill and setting his head on his forearms, he gazed out at the sleeping city.
Twilight Town was always so quiet, peaceful. It was reassuring, the serenity of this town, when the city he visited in his dreams was so…menacing.
The stars above twinkled innocently in the indigo sky, the infinite heavens clear and pure, like a sky should be. Not swirling with darkness. Not pure black.
He shook his head again.
'Think of something else, Roxas!' He told himself, forcing his mind off of the dream.
He mind flickered over his events the previous day. He had gone on a short trip with his three best friends, Hayner, Pence, and Olette, to Sunset Hill, the highest point in Twilight Town. You could see for miles from the crest of the hill; the entire city was beneath you. They had watched the sun set, as the day put on its festive colors. It had been a beautiful sunset. The sky was an array of brilliant golds and reds, shades of orange and lavender spun into the myriad of warm tones. Indigo touched the edges of the clouds as they drifted lazily. The first stars peeked out, eager to begin their nightly frolic in the infinity of the night, and the brilliance gave way to deeper tones on the eastern horizon.
After that, they had strolled back to the train station, talking aimlessly as teens do. Once they had reached there are of the town, the four had stopped for a quick snack. It was the town's specialty, and couldn't be found anywhere else in the universe: Sea-salt ice cream. It was such an interesting, rich flavor. You couldn't find anything else even vaguely similar to it.
And then they had gone their separate ways, heading toward their homes. Roxas had greeted Seraph and Gabriel, his adoptive parents, and retired to his room for the night.
He had been dreading the sleep that would surely overtake him.
Oh yeah, there was one detail he left out of his recollection of the day: he would be moving far away from Twilight Town the next day. Gabriel's job had transferred him halfway across the world, to a place named Hollow Bastion. Neither he, nor Seraph knew anything about the town. Roxas vaguely remembered seeing it mentioned in a magazine. Or was it a newspaper? But it hadn't caught his interest. I mean, he never knew he'd end up having to live there some day.
He sighed dejectedly.
Roxas liked it here in Twilight Town. He didn't want to leave. His 'family' had moved here when he was only three years old, so he remembered very little of the place he assumed he had been born. He didn't know for sure. His birth mother had been unable to care for him, and had put him up for adoption. Seraph and Gabriel had adopted Roxas, and he had lived with them ever since.
They had never made any attempt to hide the fact that he was adopted, but it was rather obvious anyway. They had dark hair and dark eyes, rounded features and golden-toned skin. Roxas looked nothing like them. His hair was a dirty blonde, forming itself into unruly spikes that had a tendency to flip up in the front, rather than stand straight. His eyes were a deep, ocean blue, like clear water on a sunny day, and sparkling like it as well. His skin was paler than Gabriel's and Seraph's as well, and soon he would be taller than them.
But despite their differences in appearance, Roxas got along well with his surrogate family, albeit the only family he had ever known. Their personalities were similar, and they shared many of the same interests. They acknowledged his independence, and respected his opinion in matters, and Roxas, in turn, listened to their advice, and had a high regard for them, unlike many of the kids he knew from school.
Roxas sighed again, resting his head on the cool wood of his windowsill, chilled by the night breeze.
Between the lack of sleep he was getting, and the stress of having to move, Roxas was sure he was going to have an anxiety overload. Absently, he glanced back over to his clock. 3:19 AM. With yet another sigh, he leaned back and closed the window, flopping backwards onto the mattress.
His body was tired, very, very tired, but his mind was awake buzzing over things and details, flitting among the tumult of his thoughts. In a desperate attempt to get to sleep, he grabbed the nearest pillow and put it over his face. That didn't work. It just made it to where he was wide-awake…and to where it was rather hard to breathe.
He shrugged the pillow off, and started at the ceiling for a few minutes, until boredom overtook him.
"Agh!" He whispered fiercely, sitting up once more, "Why can't I sleep?"
Outside, a cricket began chirping loudly, as if mocking him. Roxas rolled his eyes at the insect, immediately feeling like an idiot for doing so.
'Man, this insomnia thing is starting to go to my head…I'm going to crazy if this keeps up much longer!'
For the next hour or so, he turned this way and that, twisting and trying different positions. Nothing worked.
4:30AM.
'Yippee, in, like, two hours the sun will be up.' The thought was only half-sarcastic. 'Yup, what's probably gonna be my last two hours in Twilight Town are spent restless, brooding over a nightmare.' For about the twentieth time that night, he sighed, closing his eyes. 'Woe is me…'
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Six-thirty found Roxas staring blankly at the window, an undisguised expression of utter boredom on his face. By now, he was so exhausted that his thoughts were totally incoherent.
'I wonder what time the train station opens…Pence says weird things in his sleep…I like ice-cream…Will my new school have tons of homework…Could that black city in my dream be real?'
That last thought startled him. He had never considered the possibility that the place in his dream could exist…it didn't seem possible. But now that the concept had planted itself in his mind, it kept growing and growing, possibilities forming into ideas, and ideas molding themselves into possibilities.
'What if it IS real? Could it be in some alternate-yet-parallel universe, or some twisted world similar to our own? Could it be a vision of what the world may become some day? Could it be…le gasp! What if it's Hollow Bastion! Wait, wait, no way. Calm down, Roxas…There's just no way that it can be Hollow Bastion.'
About that moment, Seraph knocked softly on Roxas's door.
"Roxas? You awake?"
The blonde-haired boy snapped into reality. "Yeah," He said in response, trying hard not to sound as tired as he felt.
It seemed to work, for Seraph said, "Okay. Make sure you have everything packed."
"Alright," he said, a simple one-word answer being all that was required again. Her footsteps became faded away, and Roxas got out of bed.
His room was full of boxes. Everything had been packed over the last couple of days, save for the blanket had had been 'sleeping' on, and the mattress, which wouldn't fit in a box, anyway.
Fastidiously, he folded the comforter and stowed it away in the nearest box, sealing it shut.
"Well, that's the last of it…" His voice was depressed, because now it seemed that there was nothing tying him to the town that he had grown up in.
He followed the morning routine, and went over to his closet to decide on something to wear for the day, and smacked himself on the forehead, scowling.
"Gah! I'm an idiot! I packed all my clothes. Now…which box did I put them in…." He began rummaging through the boxes in his room, checking the labels on each, until he came across the one named "Clothes" in black marker, scrawled in Roxas's barely legible handwriting.
He carefully took the tape off and grabbed the first thing he saw. After all, he was a guy, and guys really don't have much interest in their clothes. Absently resealing the box, he dressed and combed his hair with the pick that he had been intelligent enough to leave lying out.
Gabriel's voice sounded through Roxas's door.
"Roxas, son?"
The blonde haired boy grunted in reply.
"There are some people here I'm sure you wanna see."
"Hmm?" Roxas cocked his head slightly and wove through the boxes to his door.
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"We couldn't let our best friend leave without coming to say goodbye," Hayner said, putting Roxas into a headlock and giving him a noogie.
Roxas laughed slightly and said, "Cut it out!"
Hayner released him, and Olette said, "That's right. And, we brought you something to remember us, and to remember Twilight Town by."
She gestured to the large bag she had brought. Roxas looked quizzically at her, then at the bag, and then at her again.
"Go on, Open it!" Pence said, snapping a picture of Roxas's confused face with his omnipresent camera.
"O-kayyyy…" Roxas said, taking the bag from Olette and looking inside. It was like taking a stroll down memory lane.
The first thing he noticed was a large homemade scrapbook, obviously Olette's handiwork. Flipping through the pages, he saw such familiar pictures. There were photos of them when they were all young. He smiled when he came across the picture of their first Halloween together. Hayner had gone as a pirate, and had gone around hitting everyone with his toy sword. Pence had been a reporter, complete with clipboard and fake camera. Come to think about it, that was similar to how he looked now…Olette had gone as a fairy, one of her wings drooping, and Roxas, who hadn't known what he had wanted to be, was wearing an assortment of objects. Hayner snickered at the tiara.
"I was four!" Roxas growled at him.
"Go on, keep looking," Olette gently prodded.
Roxas nodded and flipped the page. It was pictures of all of them, age seven, at the beach, eating Sea-salt ice cream. Hayner had his all over his face. It was Roxas's turn to snicker.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh all you want, tiara-boy." Hayner scowled at him.
Roxas turned another page. The four of them were standing outside the gates to the old, abandoned mansion outside of town. Roxas had always loved that picture. He grinned, and closed the book.
"Thanks, Olette."
"Hey," she said, waving a hand, "Don't thank me yet. There's more." Pence nodded and gestured toward the bag.
Blinking, Roxas reached into the bag again. He pulled out a neatly folded map of the town, as well as some postcards from the local gift shop.
"You know," Hayner said, "So the people in Hollow Bastion will know what it's like here, in Twilight Town."
Everyone sat in silence for a long moment.
"Well, look in the bag. That's not all." Pence smiled broadly.
"Wow, you guys must like me or something." Roxas joked, grinning as well.
"No, we hate you." Hayner said, his tone dripping with sarcasm.
There was only one thing left in the bag. It was a large parcel, wrapped carefully in plain brown paper. Roxas began to pull at the wrapping, only to be interrupted by Olette.
"Nope! You don't get to open that one until you get there." She smiled warmly. "You'll understand when you do."
Roxas only nodded. "Alright. Thank you all. I'm never gonna find any friend in Hollow Bastion that will be as awesome as you three."
"Of course you won't," Hayner said, arrogantly puffing out his chest.
Everyone laughed.
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The train whistle blew shrilly, signaling that departure was about to take place.
"Well," Roxas said dejectedly, "I guess that's my cue…"
"Dude, don't be so down," Hayner sympathized.
"Yeah, we'll see each other again." Pence quickly snapped a picture.
"And don't forget to write, and tell us EVERYTHING about Hollow Bastion, and we'll keep you posted on what goes on here," Olette added, "Now, you better get on the train, or you'll miss it."
"Oh! Right…" Roxas said, offering a half-hearted smile to his three best friends.
They waved, and the blonde-haired boy sauntered over to the train, trying to take these last moments in. He paused, just inside the doorway, and glanced back.
"Bye…" He said softly.
Olette called back, "Goodbye doesn't mean forever! We'll meet again! And soon!"
And with that, the door closed, shutting Roxas off from Twilight Town.
Feeling numb, he took a seat opposite Gabriel and Seraph.
And his soul seemed full of empty melodies.
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Author's Notes
Well, how'd you like my first chapter? Like it? Love it? Hate it? Preferably one of the first two!
Anyway, I'm now going to tell you how I got this idea. Muahahahahahahaha. Get over it. Well, this idea started out as a romantic drama, but then another idea popped into my head, and I combined the two. It will be…interesting…to say the least. Now, I'm not gonna give away any more, so I guess you'll just have to wait for the next chapter to find out what'll happen. I feel so evil. Muahahahaha….XD
Well, if you read this, you are awesome, but if you review, not only will I love you for all eternity, but I will update sooner. Reviews are my bread and butter as a writer!
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Stay tuned for chapter 2: A Hollow Radiance