The World Of Destiny Island
A/N: Kingdom Hearts is the property of Square-Enix etc, etc...
Stars and Boulevards is by and copyright Augustana, from their You'll Disappear album.
Stars and Boulevards
"So what's a bird like you doing with a cat like Fry?" Edward lounged across the desk. "Why did you pick him over the strapping lad with the stars in his eyes?"
"I'm being held prisoner," she said again. "Please, sir, could you help me out? Help me out of here, I'll give you anything."
"I don't know if I should get involved," Edward said. He got up and flopped down onto the couch. "You didn't answer my question: why Fry? Do you really have feelings for him?"
Kairi pulled at her handcuffs nervously.
"I didn't pick anybody," she said.
A strange look came over him.
"Fry is my friend, if you play your cutesy little games with his heart I'll make sure you live to regret it. Understand?"
Kairi flushed.
"You jerk! You, you stupid, stupid jerk! I'm not interested in your freak friend and he's not interested– not like that! Do you understand? So screw you!"
He laughed. His voice soothed her, and his laughter was friendly. The change happened instantaneously, and that frightened her.
"You are cute," he said. "I can see why Fry wanted to keep you close, instead of in the guest quarters with... the rest of us…" He leapt to his feet. "Oh no! I left everyone behind! Yikes, what have I done? Stupid me! Stupid, stupid!" He held his head in his hands and muttered.
"Are you okay?" she asked. What if this loony snapped? She wished Frega would hurry up and return.
"We were going to escape!"
"You were? Of course you were..."
Where are you, Frega? She looked for sharp instruments to defend herself.
"Yeah," he sank down onto the couch. "Yeah… I thought I'd come and say goodbye to Fry! What the hell was I thinking?"
"We could escape right now," Kairi offered. She could get this guy to help her get free and then ditch him...
Aw, I can't do that to somebody, Kairi thought. The man was so pathetic.
"You're right," he brightened. "Of course. I... went to find you. Yes! I went to find you to help you get away."
"Good job, Edward! Now help me find the keys," she pulled open another drawer.
"Here you go," he held up a tiny key ring.
This guy might not be so bad after all, Kairi decided.
She thanked him as he unlocked her.
"Do you know the way back to the guest quarters?" she asked.
He scratched at the stubble on his chin.
Scritch-scratch. Scritch-scratch.
She grew impatient.
"Never mind, we'll just go with our gut," she didn't want to wait around too long.
"Wait!" he said. She nearly tumbled over she stopped so fast. "You should have a disguise!"
He opened the closet and pulled out a long blue jacket, cut for a short person and covered with pockets. It smelled like patchouli and something indefinable; someone buried it in incense in order to cover up another smell. He draped the jacket over her shoulders, pulled a large pointy hat out of the closet and dropped that on her head.
"Great. I don't see how this is supposed to help me not stand out, but great," Kairi said.
"But look," Edward opened the closet door all the way so she could see herself in the full-length mirror behind the door.
"My face," Kairi reached up to touch her nose. The whole area where her face should've been visible there was a dark impenetrable shadow and a pair of glowing eyes. She took the hat off– normal Kairi. She put the hat back on– black mage Kairi.
"Neat!"
"People will think you're Fry," Edward said.
"He walks around looking like this?"
"Sometimes. He's a nostalgic kinda guy. Here's the gloves, and now the boots."
Kairi modeled the outfit for Edward.
"Try to mince a little less, and don't stick your hip out like that," Edward advised.
Kairi held her arms out from her body and stalked around.
"It'll do. After you, pussycat," he opened the door. "Fry always goes first, since he's in charge."
They proceeded down the deathly quiet hallway to the elevator.
They took the elevator to the lowest level, presumably the lobby or the lab (whatever the scripty "L" on the button stood for) because surely they could find a directory or a map. Perhaps they could even walk out the front door.
She bravely stalked out of the elevator once the doors parted.
The lobby looked like it was tiled with rose marble and much larger than any lobby should be. The costs for getting this material all the way out to the island would make her mother weep. Potted plants added wild splashes of color, exotic varieties she recognized from the island, and more that she didn't recognize, they looked too strange to be real.
A woman and a Kill-Bot stood at the desk nestled in the artificial jungle. The KillBot held the woman in an embrace. Kairi and Edward hid from them.
"what... is... this..."love"... you... speak... of..." it asked the woman.
"It's a human emotion, awful and wonderful," the woman murmured.
"Maybe we should look somewhere else," Kairi whispered to Edward.
"does not compute..." the KillBot said. "Let us explore the other human tradition. Let's "bunny-custom"..."
"You claim you don't know Love, but you're all about "bunny-custom?" You men! You're all alike!" the woman shook off the KillBot and stalked away. The Kill-Bot followed her and called out pathetic consolations.
Edward went through the receptionists desk, looking for useful items. Kairi didn't think paperclips and pens would help them. She took the moment see if she could open the front door. Where did it lead? Would there be guards?
But there was no front door. She couldn't find it.
"Jackpot!" Edward called. "I knew the receptionist would get a little something in case of trouble." He held open a secret compartment he found at the bottom of the top drawer. She expected to see some weapon, a gun most likely. Edward picked up the only two items in the drawer: a shiny gold hourglass and a rock.
"A rock?" Kairi arched an eyebrow.
"It's a warp stone. Magic. This company knows how to treat its employees."
"Talk about overkill." More extravagance. The way the hourglass shimmered Kairi judged that it had to be magic too.
They found the directory for the building in the last drawer; guest quarters were on level five.
"We're lucky we haven't run into any KillBots. I heard one of them developed a love for killing," Edward said fearfully. Kairi shrugged, she'd have to worry about it when the time came.
The elevator doors opened on the fifth floor. They stopped at the first set of double doors in wonder, for it appeared to be a completely unguarded set of glass doors. The jungle of Destiny was a mere two feet away. The glass double doors opened easily at her touch.
"The map didn't have an exit marked here," Kairi said stepping out to the edge of the concrete porch.
"Sunlight! How I've missed it!" Edward said. Kairi took off her hat and they stood there for a moment to soak up the warm rays. All around them vibrant green plants and trees flowered and birds twittered to each other.
"How did all this get built without anyone knowing about it?" Kairi asked Edward. He shrugged. They should be looking for Wakka and the others, but she didn't want to leave this place yet. This place felt weird to her.
She spotted a trail and decided to follow it just a little.
"Kairi, I don't know this is such a good idea," Edward whispered. "There might be something dangerous out here."
"There are no dangerous animals on Destiny Island. Besides, it that was so," she smiled impishly, "they would've locked it, wouldn't they?"
"Stop being cute."
"I'm not being cute."
"Not on purpose. Disgusting," he teased. She punched him playfully in the arm.
The trail was wide enough for someone her size to pass through without brushing the branches of the overhanging trees. That feeling that something wasn't right came on stronger, and that made her a little anxious.
Why?What am I seeing that's giving me the heebie jeebies?
The trees were ordinary trees, just like the trees that you could find anywhere. The flowers were the same too. She bent down and picked up a handful of dust. She let the dust fall through her fingers.
"Feels real enough," she said without knowing why. What an odd thing to say, she thought.
Further up the path the trees opened up to the sky. The sky was clear, and the wind gently moved a couple of puffy clouds through the upper atmosphere. She sprinted for the end of the path.
Kairi kept up the pace, but she paused when she came to the large stone sculpture by the side of the path, a spike of dark-colored rock that jutted out of the ground. A perfectly circular indentation had been carved into its front long ago. Dark blue ribbons twined around it and several weeks worth of flowers lay in the indentation.
"What is that?" Edward asked her.
"It's a mother stone. Mom and some of the other islanders say that it's the home of an earth spirit. They leave flowers for it," she said, and felt a little embarrassed for her mother's backward ways.
"I'm... Home…" she said. "But I'm... not."
"You guys live here?" Edward shrieked. He leapt on top of the mother stone and looked around excitedly. "This place is a paradise," he said, "Zeph, you lucky dog!"
"Zeph?" Kairi looked up. "You know my father too?"
"He's my best friend," Edward said. Kairi just stared at him. Dad never mentioned a guy named Ed, Eddie, or Edward... She decided to let it go, there was something more important that needed to be addressed.
"Something stinks!" she declared.
She ran down the path with Edward at her heels. They reached the end of the forest.
"The town would be just over this hill," she told him. Kairi came to a screeching halt at the edge of the forest.
Three huge metal towers could be seen over the hill, Kairi had never seen any building so large in her life. Their perfectly smooth, metal surfaces glinted in the sunlight, they might've been gorgeous in a cityscape, but the natural beauty of Destiny made them look monstrous. A circular bridge connected them roughly two thirds of the way to the top, arcing out so that altogether the sections resembled a giant ring.
She yelled and ran for the top of the hill.
What had they done to her town? Mom wouldn't have allowed this– what happened to Mom? She looked out over the area where her town used to be. Nothing of the old town remained, and even the coastline hadn't been spared the renovation. Instead of the town she remembered she saw acres of half-completed buildings and an enormous eyesore of a platform beneath it all.
She could've cried if she wasn't so angry. A couple of tears worked their way out of the corners of her eyes.
"My house," she cried weakly. Edward put a consoling arm around her shoulders.
"What are you getting so excited about?" Frega surprised them. He marched up the hill. Scorch marks marred his pristine suit and his hair looked singed but he still managed to look proud. "It's just a model," he said.
"A model?" Kairi wiped her face with the sleeves of the jacket.
"Eddie," Frega's lip curled, "Did you have to give her my things? Now I'm going to have to the whole outfit dry-cleaned again."
"Sorry, Fry."
"Looking for your friends, little one?" Frega said with no irony. "They're long gone you know. They didn't even bother to look for you."
"That's ridiculous," she said defiantly. "You know nothing about my friends. Why are you so mean?" He ignored her.
"As for this," he waved towards the towers, "it's the launch device we've sold to Zanarkand. Lunarian's own design, the cutting edge of technology." He stood beside Kairi and favored the monstrosity with an almost fearful look. "I don't know why my superiors are insisting that your town has to be the place to build it." The way he said it made it sound like he wanted her to know it was a lie.
"All part of the building process. We create a false environment for the preliminary building stages of the launch station in order to minimize lost time and materials due to weather and theft. The landscape is perfectly recreated to reveal potential setbacks that geography, topography and whatever else inevitably happens. Watch this.
"Set model to scale: 1 to .001," Frega called out.
Kairi grabbed Edward when the environment went translucent. Everything rushed past them, and the wind kicked up by their passing ruffled their hair. The forest flew by, the ghostly trees whipped past her as the entire island shrank down to a point. When the process ended a few seconds later there was a tiny sphere the size of a tennis ball hanging above Frega's outstretched hand.
"Easy packing, easy transport, but not so easy to install. That part is more involved," Frega held the sphere out to her. Her curiosity drove her forward, in spite of her germinating dislike of the little creature.
A perfect miniature Destiny Island floated within the dark sphere, a tiny world in a starless night.
"And now, little one," Frega tossed the sphere out into the empty room, a bright light flashed, and the model expanded again. "Take off my clothes before you foul them up any more!"
Kairi stripped off the gloves and dropped them at her feet insolently. She reached into the coat pocket and her fingers touched something she'd forgotten about: the warp stone. She snatched Edward's hand and thought with all her might.
Get me outta here!
She wasn't sure how the magic was supposed to work, but she hoped that it was something idiot proof.
When she saw Frega's face as she and Edward faded away she laughed. Edward screamed in terror. She tried to assure him that everything would be fine, but could barely form the words, they were already descending towards a bright light through the morass of swirling magic.
THUMP!
They hit the floor together, and Kairi thanked her lucky stars that Edward didn't land on her. The coward was still screaming his head off.
"Edward, it's okay!" she grabbed his shoulders and shook him. Edward fainted dead away.
"Oh, no. No!" she cried when she saw where they landed.
Frega flung open his office door, and growled at her.
"Don't you think that if something were to happen in the lobby, I'd want to be the first to know?" he asked.
The modest bridge sat four crewmen, with a captain's seat in the middle.
Just like on Star Trek, Wakka thought.
Unlike Star Trek, the bridge was quite cramped. The ceiling hung too low and sloped towards the front where the pilot sat. They had no elevator, just a narrow service ladder. And as for the other two decks– the cabin had a small living area with a kitchen, a communal sleeping area, and the bathroom; The engine room had more space than the other two decks combined, but that space was full of engine.
"Anybody claustrophobic?" Chappu commented wryly.
"Nope," Lilo said. She plopped herself down in the nearest seat with Stitch. Zidane assumed his seat at the front. The brothers eyed the Captain's seat and then each other. Chappu made up his mind about something.
"What the heck," he said, "have a seat, brother. I don't mind."
"Of course not," Wakka agreed. Why didn't he agree to this right away? This was almost fun.
"Buckle up, crew," Zidane said. "I'm taking her out!"
"Does anyone else not have a seat belt?" Lilo asked.
"I don't," Chappu said.
"We won't worry about that for now," Zidane said, "Just hold onto something."
"Say it, Wakka," Chappu prompted.
"I don't know what you're–"
"Come on, you know you want to!"
Wakka looked ducked his head and muttered very quietly: "Engage."
"What?" Zidane asked.
"Just go," Wakka said, he felt like a colossal nerd.
"Okay," Zidane sighed. "Annnndd we're off."
The crew felt a slight shift in the center of gravity as the Altoona's systems went online. The large view screen above their heads flickered on and they saw the ceiling of the ship graveyard pass very slowly.
Wakka expected some kind of resistance to their taking of the ship, or the trigger of an alarm once they reached the doors. Surprisingly, nothing happened, other than the bay doors opening and the ship entering the largest airlock he'd ever seen.
"Sure is dark in here," Chappu said.
"Chappu," Zidane spoke up hesitantly. "I'm not picking up any nearby planets on the navigation. Could you confirm this with the secondary systems?"
"Sure," Chappu said. Chappu tapped at the terminal for a few seconds, scratched his head and tapped at it some more. Minutes passed.
"Well?" Zidane asked.
"Give me a minute," Chappu said.
"I don't think we should hover here," Wakka said. "It might look suspicious. Can't you just pick a direction and… go really, really slow?"
"Well, you're the Captain," Zidane said.
"He's not the Captain," Chappu snapped.
More time passed as they cruised into the unknown.
"We should've hit the wall or something," Wakka said.
"He's right, and there's something wrong with these readings," Zidane said. "Chappu, are you finished yet?"
"In a minute."
"What's the problem? You said–"
A terrific crash cut the conversation short. The ship shuddered violently, and everyone on board was thrown out of their seats. Alarms clanged and the lights shut down to conserve power. Poor Zidane had an airbag go off in his face, it sprayed powder into the air.
The ship stopped shaking and the powder in the air slowly settled to the floor.
"Zidane? Zidane! What are you trying do, kill me?" A moogle climbed into the bridge and flapped at the cloud of dust that settled around him.
Wakka stumbled to his feet and went to attend to Lilo, who tried very hard to be impassive. She would have a terrible bruise on her arm and her forehead, but at least she didn't have any broken bones.
"You're very lucky," he said.
"Yeah, right," she groaned.
"Stitch, how are you?" Stitch made the okay sign, but he rubbed his head.
The rest of the group staggered to it's feet with no serious injury.
"That's Mog," Zidane (who looked like a ghost, covered head to foot in powder) said to Wakka. He nodded to the moogle working the navigation computer as he lectured Chappu.
"You've got to understand, computers are really, really stupid," Mog said.
"I know."
"Abstractions are useless to systems this old. I know, you're thinking they should've used a modern operating system on a modern ship– but who knows what they were…" he trailed off as a new set of readings scrolled down the screen.
"What's wrong," Wakka asked him. Mog held up his hand without taking his eyes off the screen. Numbers and terms flew by so quickly that Wakka missed half of them, and he prided himself on being a quick reader. The screen went blank.
"Guys," Mog turned around to address them. "I'm going to do something a little crazy…"
Mog threw back the top hatch of the ship and climbed onto the deck.
"Come on up, everyone," he called back down the ladder where everyone huddled together.
One by one they climbed out onto the deck.
The nose of the Altoona was undamaged but firmly embedded in what looked like a neon-colored plaster wall. There were hundreds of them floating over nothing and aligned in a path that stretched away into the distance.
"Where's the station?" Zidane looked around in all directions.
Lilo tiptoed to the edge of the deck and threw a coin over the side. Wakka leaned over and they both watched it disappear into the dark. Vertigo hit him.
"Okay, let's just stay away from the edge," he grabbed her hand and pulled her closer to the center of the narrow deck.
"Physics, schmysics," Chappu whispered.
"Uh-huh," Wakka said. Could this entire scenario be a hallucination, he wondered, or a hologram?
"According to the navigation system, we fell out of the universe," Mog said.
"You can do that?" Chappu asked.
"Sure, happens all the time."
"I was wondering why no one was chasing us," Zidane said.
"I'm glad everyone's taking this so well," Mog said, "Well, now that you're all paying attention, I have something else to show you. It's worse than it seems."
He herded them into the engine room, giving them a rundown of the situation as they went along.
"There are no weapons; the engine's new, but nearly dry, no fuel; we've got no replacement components, and no tools but what I brought; and then I found this!"
He led them to a very odd looking space, the only area that wasn't crammed with some engine component. They walked onto a platform that contained a thick circular track and within the track, three perfect equilateral triangles hovered in midair.
"'I am the Wish-Fulfillment Drive,'" Lilo read the plaque at the edge of the platform. "'I'm an engineering marvel, a true blend of magic and z-space technology. You have only to touch me with a wish in your heart. Take care that your wish is clear, you only get three.'"
"Why only three?" Chappu asked.
"It's impossible to get more– according to z-space physics," Mog explained.
"Like a magic lamp," Lilo said. Wakka thought the same thing.
"Okay, sounds reasonable, considering everything else," Wakka brushed off his disbelief. "I just wish to go home and we go there?"
"Exactly," Zidane said with a sigh of relief. "So make a wish, Captain." Chappu and Wakka both reached for the Wish-Fulfillment drive.
"Wait!" Mog blocked their way. "You didn't let me finish explaining." They ignored him.
"What are you doing?" Chappu said. "I'm the Captain!"
"But I'm the oldest!" Wakka said.
"But I got us out! Clearly I'm the smartest and I should be the Captain!"
Wakka glared down at his brother. Chappu glared right back.
"Hey guys, why don't we just vote?" Zidane said.
"Yeah," Chappu said. "Nice and democratic. All in favor of Wakka– a guy with no useful skills in this area–"
"Hey! I'm captain of the blitzball team and student body president. I'm a natural leader."
"–and an all-round egomaniac being our Captain, raise your hands."
Zidane raised his hand.
"Those sound like good enough qualifications for a powerless figurehead to me," he said.
"Wha? You traitor!" Chappu said.
"I don't know, Chappu," Zidane said with smirk. "You're not bad. But Wakka's better."
Lilo and Stitch raised their hands.
"Figures," Chappu huffed, "Should their vote even count?"
"Hey, we're valuable, contributing members of your crew," Lilo said. Stitch agreed.
"It doesn't matter, kid," Mog said, "I'm voting for Ginger too."
"Tch! Buncha ingrates!" Chappu muttered. "Okay, so you're the Captain. For now."
"Good. Now that we've settled that, here it goes," Wakka nervously put his fingers out toward the nearest triangle.
"Stop that!" Mog said. "You should let me finish! What I was going to say was that given the experimental nature of this ship and with all those vital parts missing, we shouldn't discount the possiblility that it's this thing that's caused the alteration to our course!"
"Which we should be able to fix by wishing," Zidane pointed out. "Come on, Mog. You and I both know that Wish Fulfiilment Drives are a proven technology. They've got all kinds of fail-safes. What's the big deal?"
"We should hurry," Chappu said. "There's no telling what they'll do to Kairi when they realize what we've done!"
"What you've done!" Wakka corrected.
"I want to shut it down!" Mog shouted to get their attention again. "Before we end up in worse shape than we are now."
"Then how will we get home?" Wakka asked.
"He's right, this is the better risk," Zidane said.
"Just let me inspect it," Mog argued. But Wakka had enough of arguing. He reached out and lay his fingers on the nearest of the triangles. It stopped rotating at his touch, flashed once and turned a dazzling gold color. "I wish for us to go home– to Destiny Island!" he added hurriedly. He crammed his mind full of images of Destiny Island: the Cove, his parents, Tidus and Selphie…
The ship started to tremble again.
"Is this a g-g-good thing?" Lilo called over the rattle of the machinery. The ship shook so violently that everyone could see multiples of everyone else.
"Zidane," Mog said to his friend, "I just want you to know, I've always considered you a good friend."
"Goodbye to you too, pal!"
"Please remove all limbs and articles of clothing from the Wish-Fulfillment Drive Field," the ship's computer ordered. A klaxon went off somewhere above them. Wakka did as ordered, lost his footing and stumbled backwards out of the ring as it started to move. "Lunarian Concern would like to thank you for choosing our products and wishes you all the best in future purchases of our high-quality technology. Lunarian Concern: We just want to be your friends!"
The concentric rings in the dais spun at their different speeds as the lights flickered violently.
"I think I'm gonna be sick!" Zidane yelled.
The lights went out.
To Be Continued