The World Of Destiny Island
A/N: Kingdom Hearts is the property of Square-Enix and Disney (along with a few others; Tim Burton's the Nightmare Before Christmas for example.)
This fic is rated for fantasy violence, swearing, drug references, cross-dressing, rampant sexual innuendo (gotcha there!) and bad humor.
Pigeon Farm is by and copyright Marcy Playground, from their Shapeshifter album.
Prologue: Pigeon Farm
"Let's get this emergency town meeting started."
Destiny Island's current Mayor– Mrs. Unne, wife of the enigmatic genius Dr. Zephram Unne– was a large (six foot tall with shoulders so wide that many visitors suspect that she's a cross-dressing man) friendly woman from the Northern Kingdom. She tended to dress in overly modest clothes and had managed not to get a tan in the twenty years she lived among the pirates and wackos. Local legend stated that she had come from a nomadic tribe of camel herders and that she spoke seven languages (learned them just to learn new dirty jokes.) People liked to gossip. The truth was never as good as the stories the islanders made up for themselves.
Whatever her background and experience, she had deftly gained control of the panicky people that morning and led them to the town hall to give them something to do– other than panic and loot that was.
The Mayor threw the ceremonial gavel through the last unbroken window in the town hall. The drunken pirates in the back row yelled out: "Arr!" and did the wave.
"I'd like to start out by clarifying the situation– that's a statement of facts," the Mayor glared at Leaky Sam the town's Unreliable Newspaper editor, "as they stand. At approximately 3:38 this morning Captains Marshall and Dominguez were alerted to the disappearances of many of their night watchmen. A cursory search of the island failed to turn up the missing men. You're missing nine men altogether?" she asked the shifty-eyed old salt in the front row.
"Yarr," he affirmed.
"At this point Mrs. The Clamp," she pointed to the weeping wife of Eddie The Clamp, "woke up to discover that her family and her house had disappeared. I gotta say, wow!"
The Mayor quickly read off the list of names of people that turned up missing, or found themselves wandering out in empty lots where their houses used to be.
"And nobody saw anything?" she asked setting the list aside.
"Holy crap! I don't want to even think about how this all happened," Mrs. Awoloku shouted. It was quickly noted that she was one of the lucky few people to not wake up missing something or someone, and her house was where it was supposed to be.
That was the other weird thing– the way the town had been rearranged like one of those picture puzzles where you slide the squares around to get them back in the right position. Fisherman's Bayou was now right next to the Harbor, the lighthouse was underwater in the bay, and Captain Ziszou's ship now teetered on the edge of the cliffs on the other side of the island on Romantic Idiot's Easy Way Out Cliff.
"I think it's pretty clear what happened here," Old Man Lefty said standing up. Everyone turned to his calming sage-like voice. "Aliens!" he screamed… and screamed and screamed. It took a few moments to get him to stop repeating himself and a warm cup of rum-laced coffee got him to stop whining about probes.
The double doors of the town hall slammed open and a gust of wind blew the Mayor's notes all over the floor. Everyone turned to see who had made such a dramatic entrance.
"Hey everybody," Kairi panted. She leaned against the door frame to catch her breath. Everyone slumped. The mayor swept down the center aisle and wrapped Kairi in tight hug.
"Thank the ancestors, you're alright!" She kissed her daughter repeatedly.
"Mom? Mom, you're choking me," Kairi broke free and addressed the town. "You won't believe what happened!"
"Oh great, what else could go wrong?" someone muttered.
Kairi quickly related the tale of the Heartless' attack on the island.
"But everything's okay now– thanks to Sora and Donald and Goofy…" she trailed off.
Everyone was staring at her, and strangely enough a couple crickets chirped.
"He's a... giant... talking… ... dog…?" She paled under the stares.
There was a loooong silence.
Followed by another long silence. Someone coughed, but that only made the silence so much more noticeable. Everyone was looking at the Mayor with something like pity and a few looked at her in outrage; some people just don't suffer fools.
"Well, how about we dust off that alien theory?" the Mayor said cheerfully.
"But, Mom," Kairi said.
"This is serious, young lady," one of the old bats who lived in the bayou snapped, "how dare you–"
"Look," the Mayor interrupted, "We're all under a huge strain, right now. There's no telling how the children are going to take this."
"Yes! Think of the children," Someone yelled.
"But I'm telling the truth! There are other worlds out there!"
"Beaker, don't rave," the Mayor warned quietly, using her and her husband's secret pet name.
"And so what if I did meet a talking duck?" Kairi put her hands on her hips and stared challengingly at the town. "Open yourselves up to the possibilities, people! If that's what's out there, then– mmm-mph!"
The Mayor clamped a hand over Kairi's mouth and pulled her back into her bearlike embrace.
"Of course a fund will be set up to provide for the mental health needs of our minors," the Mayor quickly assured the town. Kairi struggled to get away from her. "It's too soon to worry about the cause of these mysterious events and as there is apparently no imminent threats and nowhere else to search, I propose we simply look to cleaning up the mess and getting things under control first."
The townspeople agreed unanimously.
"Your honor," a young privateer who had been left on his ship to keep an eye out for trouble burst into the town hall. "There's some white mages here to see you!"
Everyone got up and headed for the docks to see these newcomers.
The Mayor finally released Kairi as the crowd left them alone.
"I'm not crazy!" Kairi hissed.
"Kairi. Calm down."
"I am calm!"
"Kairi, I don't know what to tell you."
"And I'm not lying! I can prove–"
"Your father's missing."
To Be Continued