The World Of Destiny Island
A/N: Kingdom Hearts is the property of Square-Enix etc, etc... A/N 5/29/06: This chapter has been rewritten since it was posted. I just wasn't happy with a lot of elements the first time around.
Undun is by and copyright The Guess Who, from The Greatest Hits of the Guess Who album.
Undun
The four people (Frega and Kairi, Wakka and Chappu) converged at the Blasted Heath, a burned out spot in the woods with an old well in its center. All the kids on the island simply knew it was haunted.
"Kairi," Wakka pulled up short when he saw her and blushed.
"You," Frega said to Wakka.
"Wakka?" Kairi said.
"And Chappu!" Chappu said.
"I said come alone," Frega said coldly.
"He's my brother," Chappu said, giving him a what-could-I-do smile, "he just wanted to make sure I'm doing okay."
Frega glared at Wakka, who glared right back.
Time passed...
Wakka looked away first, because there is no human that can out stare an elf. Damn blinking reflex.
"I see. You're a comedy duo..." Frega said humorlessly when they broke off the staring contest. He sighed. "This way children." Frega led them out of the Heath into the woods.
Frega made a beeline through the woods and barely slowed when he reached the untamed jungle that served as a border between the town of Destiny and the Island's wilderness. Nobody came here, not the children and usually not the adults. They walked for a little while, and then quite suddenly Frega stopped.
A wide set of concrete stairs descended a short distance to a large set of steel double-doors.
"Has this always been here?" Wakka asked Chappu. His brother shrugged. He could feel the ground vibrate beneath their feet. There was something that stood out from the structure– so eerily familiar and yet if he had seen such a thing for the first time it still would have struck him as canny.
"Well, kiddos," Frega said jovially. "Let's go, spit-spot!" He jogged down the steps and pushed open one of the heavy doors. The door swung open without a sound and they stepped through into a hallway five times the length of the town hall.
Everyone gaped.
"Welcome to Isla Symphonic, or Isla Luminos," Frega said to the children. They stared at the minotaur guards flanking the door. "Soon to be the Earth side offices of Lunarian Concern."
"Looks expensive," Chappu said as he cleared the doorway. It slammed shut behind him.
"When did you build this thing? Does the Mayor know?" Wakka asked. Frega ignored him completely.
"Why'd I have to pack if you're already here?" Chappu asked.
"The job of assistant requires that you travel with me," Frega said. "And I'm always on the move."
"Really?" Kairi looked adoringly at the elf. "Where are you going next?"
"That's company business," he said tersely. He led them down the lavish hallway.
The hallway ended in a large chamber, five stories of balconies, every floor ringed with openings to hallways. Machinery roared in the center of it all. Sparks floated down from the steel heart suspended in the hive. Technicians of every shape measured and adjusted instruments everywhere.
"Shouldn't this be visible above ground?" Wakka asked.
"Maybe," Chappu said.
"Ingr," Frega called to a harried woman. She immediately changed direction and ran to meet her boss. "This is Chappu. He's my new assistant. Take him to HR for orientation."
"What about my brother?"
"Take this one to the guest quarters, Level 1," he cocked his thumb at Wakka. "And I'm going to be busy for the next hour, I don't want to be disturbed."
"No! Kairi, don't go off alone with this guy," Wakka said. "I don't trust him." Frega still paid no attention to him.
"Don't be so uptight," Kairi hissed, embarrassed at his rudeness. "It's just a tour!"
"But Kairi!"
"This way please," Ingr said, digging her pincer-like fingers into his shoulder and forcing him to leave his friend.
Frega smiled as he waved goodbye to Wakka.
Ingr and the boys left them.
Kairi couldn't wait to see the entire complex. She barely paid attention to the fate of her friends, and she couldn't tear her eyes away from the complicated– beautiful machinery around her. All of it looked so decorative as well as powerful, useless filigree everywhere!
"What's this do?" she asked.
"This just powers our facility."
"These are generators?"
"A few. Most of these are capacitors and regulators. Does any of this honestly interest you?"
Kairi folded her hands behind her back and nodded.
"Well, whatever," he muttered. "Let's go see the star."
He led her through so many hallways that if she had bothered to try and memorize their path she would've been lost anyway. Many technicians and more than a few androids or robots passed them but gave little indication of noticing her or Frega. At most a couple of the obviously higher-ranking workers nodded to the elf, who didn't nod back.
He pointed out many minor points of interest, but kept her moving along. They reached a darkened hallway, and he had to submit to a hand scan to enter the next room.
"It's name is Castor 4. The techs have been calling it the Jewel of Isle, or some such nonsense," Frega pulled Kairi into the dim observation room. The large viewscreen showed an unimpressive grayish image of a slowly rotating star. The star's surface rippled and ebbed hypnotically. "We encased it in a Dyson sphere, and we're gathering a massive amount of energy from it."
"And here it is," he walked to a small circular table with a sphere mounted in a nest of cables sitting on it. A forcefield glimmered around the table.
"That little thing's a star?"
"You'd be surprised at how small they can get," Frega said. "This one was on it's way to Earth, and we caught it."
"That's so... unscientific," she said distantly. She wondered how much power the little sphere generated, what materials were used, that kind of thing. Her grasp of astrophysics was as bad as her grasp of world events. "Surreal."
"You can do anything, if you're motivated enough," Frega said and smiled mysteriously.
"Where do you work?" Kairi asked. She stood on the tips of her toes she was so excited. It was just like a futuristic sci-fi flick! Maybe she could convince Mom to let her come back another day to take a closer look.
"Right this way," Frega said. He sounded almost bored.
"There must be a lot of exciting things in the life of a... what are you anyway?" Kairi said almost skipping behind him.
"Middle management," Frega said. She could hear a tiny sliver of distaste and self-loathing in his voice.
They stepped onto an elevator (even the elevators were elaborately decorated) and Kairi grabbed his arm as the platform started to move. She could feel him breathing hard, as though trying to control a panic attack. He stared straight ahead while the floors flashed past and except for the rapid breathing he'd be as still and solid as rock.
He's so defensive, she thought.
"Let go of me," he ordered coldly as soon as the elevator stopped. He looked visibly ruffled, his tail twitched back and forth.
"Sorry."
He smoothed his hair back and calmed down.
"This way, it's just around the corner."
It was the only door in the corridor. He unlocked it and they stepped into a dark office with a very realistic wall to wall photo of the galaxy.
"Whoa. Very swanky!" Kairi whispered. Frega ignored her and shut the door. He turned up the lights and started to rustle through the drawers of the enormous, posh desk in front of the window.
"You could live in a space this big," Kairi said as she admired the office. The office was lined with bookshelves and packed with interesting gadgets.
"I do."
"All alone?"
"Yep."
"Where do you sleep? On this couch?"
"Sometimes. Ah." He found the item he searched for, a stack of papers, and tucked them under his arm.
"Where to now?" she asked excitedly.
"Oh, the tour's over." He said without looking up at her. He strode to the door. "Now you behave, and don't put your lips on anything."
"What? Is this a joke?"
"I have to keep you out of the way," he said. "I need you to stay put for the next day or two."
"I can't stay here for two days, silly!" Kairi giggled, though she would've been happy to. "Why do I have to stay here for two days?"
"Revenge."
"Oh, this again. That sounds more like an inconvenience than a revenge," Kairi pointed out.
"Well... yeah, but think about how... um... worried– yes, think about how worried your mother will be. Ooh! I'm so villainous."
"Are you making fun of me?"
"Look, kid, just do what you're told. I've got things to do." With that he left the office. The door shut behind him with a loud click.
"Heeey, I think he's serious." Kairi stood up and tried to shake the dopey feeling that weighed her down.
The lights in the office turned off.
"Hey!"
"I'll get this straightened out, I promise," Chappu left with Ingr. The door to the "guest quarters" slid shut and locked.
Locked!
"Aww, man!" Wakka mumbled. He turned to confront the benign horrors of the guest quarters.
A man with long blonde hair that was graying at the temples pounded at the piano in the center of the room. Wakka approached him cautiously. He didn't recognize the tune, but the style reminded him of the sort of things that you heard on classic rock radio stations.
"You know," the man said without missing a note, "guest quarters level one is actually a place where the company keeps prisoners it can't afford to kill." Wakka backed away from the man.
The only other occupant in the room was a little girl with long, black hair and the oddest little pet he'd ever seen. The little creature sat next to her while she wrote furiously in her notepad. She looked perplexed. He felt an instinctive desire to cheer her up– it was just the way he was, a rare individual that liked children.
"Hi," Wakka said cheerfully.
"Hi," she said slowly, suspicious of him. She visually gauged him and was unable to drag her gaze from his amazing cowlick. "Are you lost too?"
"Just waiting." Wakka sat down on the couch with her. The little pet sniffed him, decided he wasn't a threat, held out a paw and said: "Hi!"
Wakka yelped and crabwalked to the end of the couch.
"I'm not lost," the guy at the piano suddenly stopped playing, "I know exactly where I am! Exactly!"
"Don't worry, he doesn't bite," the little girl said to Wakka. "His name is Stitch. I'm Lilo."
"My name's Wakka." He forced himself to relax. Stitch looked at him curiously.
"And my name is Edward," the piano guy got up and threw himself across another comfy couch. The quarters were filled with soft couches, beautiful tables covered with diversionary games and books. Sunlight filtered down from the skylight.
"Been here long?" he asked them for lack anything better to say.
"Nope," Stitch said.
"We found a new place to play," Lilo said, "and then some mean woman showed up and put us here."
"I've been here about a week," Edward said. "I'm getting used to being confused. You know, according Fry, or Frega–"
"Grrrr," Wakka and Stitch growled.
"You know him, I see. Well, I woke up in some mountain village last week– looking like this– and he tells me that I've been in a coma for the past twenty years! I'm too young to be old, man! Anyway, he drags me out of there and sticks me in here. Do you know why? Does anybody have a cigarette?" he asked.
"How should I know? And no, I don't smoke," Wakka said. This guy was a little intense. He already grated on Wakka's nerves.
"I mean, what's his deal?" Edward appeared to unexpectedly lose interest in the conversation. He looked away and started to twiddle his thumbs.
None of the other prisoners knew what to make of their unusual new friend.
"Nani', my sister, she's probably worried about us," Lilo said. "It's been hours."
"My mom flips out when I don't get back by dark," Wakka sympathized.
"I wonder what my mother's done with herself," Edward mused. Wakka dared not encourage a conversation with the man and said nothing.
Edward happily scratched the stubble on his chin.
"He's obnoxious," Wakka whispered conspiratorially to Lilo, who shrugged.
"He's alright. He let me have all the candy in the candy bowl. And he gave me a gil," she showed him the green-blue paper currency of Burmecia, Destiny Island, and many other surrounding countries. "Do you think I could get an ice cream cone with this much?"
Kairi wandered around the office– in the dark, because no matter what she did she couldn't induce the lights to come back on. She walked straight from the couch to the other side of the office and bumped into Frega's display cases.
As soon as she tried to approach the lavish desk and received a fantastic jolt of electricity from out of nowhere. She squeaked and backed away from the desk.
"Warning! This desk is protected by the Ramuh-lama Security Company! Please do not tamper with this desk or lethal steps will be taken!" an electronic voice informed her.
She began to think that Frega was a jerk.
It's over! Baralai stepped lightly through the Temple doors into the cool of the evening with a big smile.
"Nice ceremony," the unfortunate father of the bride commented.
"Thank you," Baralai said.
I give it eighteen months, he added mentally. He felt generous today.
And now to head over to the Mayor's house. Hopefully there haven't been any new developments in the puzzling case of Frega.
"Myrna!" he rapped on the front door and waited.
He waited a full thirty seconds before pounding on the door again and still he received no answer.
Myrna wouldn't have left the house, he wondered, not after I told her not to?
The house lights weren't on, but that didn't necessarily mean anything– it was still pretty light out.
Surely she wouldn't have, he thought. They're in the back yard. Only explanation. He calmly hopped the short fence with the climbing vines of white flowers (he didn't know flowers, but they were nice. Dr. Unne always had a flair for making plants not die.) The Praetor walked with some trepidation, he was walking uninvited on hostile territory after all, around the house to the porch. He saw the large hole in the ground and paused. The backyard was completely silent– and the weird part that made the hair on his neck stand up, was that even the birds held their peace. He ran into enough of this sort of thing to know that something serious was about to happen.
He quietly looked through the kitchen window and saw nothing out of order– except that it was dark. But the back door stood open. This in itself meant little, no one on the island locked their doors. However, no one left their doors standing wide open when they left the house.
A man stepped out of the doorway. Baralai pressed close to the house. The man, a white mage by the look of him, completely missed Baralai's presence thanks to the potted moonflowers set upon the porch railing between them. The mage pulled the back door shut.
Baralai crept onto the porch and put his ear to the door. He heard a loud tearing noise and very little else. So this guy could possibly be working on his own, but what to make of the tearing noise?
"Mayor, you're starting to piss me off," the man said. "Wake up!" Something in the kitchen crashed against the wall. It was all he could do to keep from throwing the door open and rushing into god knew what. "You have only yourself to blame that it's come to this."
"My... ugh. My..." he heard the Mayor say groggily.
"Yes?"
"Ah, my back!" Then he heard the Mayor gasp. "My dress!"
"You have bigger problems, I think," the mage said. "Remember me?"
She yelped.
Yeah, this guy won't live to see a public execution, Baralai thought.
"Head as hard as rock..." the mage muttered to himself. Baralai listened for the girl and hoped that she was off doing whatever it was she did.
"I really don't appreciate having to stoop to things like this. But here we are," the mage said. "I just thought you'd like to see this. Do you see this? It's a contract, between the Mayor of Destiny Island and the President of Zanarkand. A bill of sale. Not a bad reproduction of your signature! Heh-heh! They're going to flatten this town and turn it into a testing range for experimental weaponry. Thought you'd like to know before I give you a proper sendoff.
"Don't look at me like that! You'll be famous– infamous! Just like in a melodrama! Can you guess what I'm going to do now?"
"Why are you doing this?" the Mayor asked calmly.
"What does it matter, Madam Mayor? And after all this time spent trying to get in the nice way, I'm gonna go through your house and touch all your stuff now! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha–" the laughter was cut short so cleanly that it could've been a recording suddenly shut off.
"Who is this?" the mage said so quietly that Baralai nearly missed it.
"That's my daughter," the Mayor said, with a question in her voice. Hadn't this guy seen the girl over the past two months?
There wasn't another word spoken. Retreating footsteps left the living room and ascended the stairs.
Baralai waited a moment, and then quietly and very slowly opened the door.
He found the Mayor in the large recliner, she was straining against the duct tape that the mage used to tie her down. He must have used a couple of dozen rolls by the look of it, except for her head she was completely covered.
"You okay?" he whispered in her ear.
"No! There's a stranger in my house!" she whispered back. "And do you realize how hard it is to get tape adhesive stuff out of fabric?"
"Where's your kid?"
"I don't know," she said, her eyes full of worry. "She should've been back by now."
"Is he alone?"
"I haven't seen anyone else."
"I'll be right back," he said. She may have told him to be careful. Why did women do that? Would he have forgotten to be careful if no one told him to do so?
He climbed the stairs, completely silent.
He peeked into the first room at the top of the stairs and paused. Posters for boy bands, horror movies, and pictures of other kids covered the walls. A dusty clump of metal parts and mechanical devices sat in the corner. Science fair ribbons littered the surface of the dresser where a complete set of Spamalot action figures stood posed for a musical number with Batman and the Joker. Beads, cheap jewelry, ribbons of all colors, materials, and varying purposes hung over every possible corner in the room. The floor was littered with clothes, comic books (Batman, of course)… and ball bearings.
Oh my god, nerdity is contagiousBaralai thought with a smirk. The place was a disaster area–
He heard the sound of silverware being dumped on the floor from the second bedroom. Baralai took a deep breath.
This is it, he reached into his surcoat and pulled out the handgun he always carried with him since his last trip into the treacherous wilds of Sherwood. He quickly marched into the master bedroom to confront the man.
"Excuse me?"
The mage spun around.
"Who are you and what are you doing in the Mayor's bedroom?" demanded the Praetor.
"It's just not my day," the man smiled and shook his head. "Isn't it common knowledge that the Praetor avoids the Mayor's House at all costs?" He held up a bleeding hand and pointed to the pile of knives he'd pulled from under the bed; all in various states between rusted, broken, and brand new. "What's wrong with these people?"
"Answer the question, please," Baralai lifted his firearm slightly aiming at the mage's head. He'd gotten plenty of target practice lately. "You're trespassing."
"The name's Garm." Garm drew his sword, an elegant falchion with a hawk symbol etched into the metal. "What's it look like I'm doing?"
"Annoying the town's beloved Mayor," Baralai stood at the ready. He estimated the mage's age at about half his own– his hair was still dark and his face unlined.
"I didn't think mages carried swords," Baralai said.
"I know. You don't look like a crooked priest."
"Presentation is very important."
"Indeed."
Each man stared down his opponent and estimated what the other's opening move would be. However impressive Garm's fighting skill was, it would be severely hampered by the cramped bedroom quarters.
"So this is how it ends," Garm said good-naturedly.
"It doesn't have to end this way," Baralai said. "Put down your weapon and I won't shoot you."
"Look," Garm said reasonably. "I am not about to let myself get taken prisoner and put myself in a position to be tortured."
"You insult me," Baralai said. "I find torture absolutely abhorrent."
"You may, but the people of this town might see things differently," he said sadly. "Yes. Quite differently."
And then, in a flash he lunged at Baralai. Startled, Baralai blew Garm's brains right across the bedroom.
Baralai dragged the dead mage down the stairs by his feet.
The front door flew open just as he got to the bottom of the stairs. Fujin dashed to the stairs.
"GUNSHOT?" she said hoarsely.
"Just an intruder," Baralai looked back at the thick trail of blood on the stairs and nearly retched.
The Mayor still lay on the chair in her duct tape cocoon. Fujin cut her out of the chair, ruining both the chair and the Mayor's long blue dress.
"Is Kairi up there," the Mayor asked.
"No," Baralai said.
"Fujin? What are you doing here, isn't Law & Order on?"
"Wakka missed his curfew," Fujin said quietly.
"Remain calm, you two," Baralai said unnecessarily, "Do you know where they were supposed to be last?" Baralai asked them. Fujin shook her head.
"Kairi was supposed to be with Frega. She went to help him bring his things here. I was going to let him stay," the Mayor said. "And don't give me that look, Baralai. Frega's our friend. I don't know what's wrong with him, but I don't believe he'd ever harm us."
"Frega," Fujin said. "Chappu left today. Frega gave him a job. It's possible that Wakka could've gone with him."
"Then maybe they're all together," the Mayor said.
"But Wakka would never break curfew," Fujin pointed out. "Never."
"That mage could've done something to them," the Mayor said, starting to panic. Fujin glared at the body in the foyer.
"We must search the island before jumping to any drastic conclusions," Baralai said. "Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find them."
To Be Continued