A/N: I don't know how to say this nicely. I guess if you dislike furries, you either give this little fic a try or hate on it. This is the fifth time I've re-written this author note, the other four times I didn't post, so... yeah. I'll respect your choice for not wanting to keep reading. If you find the second-person view unattractive, read the next chapter, it's third-person pov over there.

A friendly reminder from Storm

Tempest's Requiem

Prologue

Wonderings of a Child

You run down the alley, the old leather-bound book in your hands. You duck into a vent and worm your way through it, popping out on the other side. The other side, so to say, was just a small room full of knick-knacks, a pile of blankets in a corner, and a run down clothes drawer containing what little you have to wear on your body.

You dump the fairly small book on your bed, take off the lizard skull you always wear while outside, then walked over to your pile of 'trash', dropping some nuts and bolts into it. People call you crafty, enigmatic, and someone who isn't supposed to exist. You believe it's because of your orphan status. Or your face. That's the reason you wear that stinky skull in the first place; to hide your face and cover your emotions the outside world.

You dig around the bottom of the pile, looking for a piece of single, linked chain. You tend to make things for yourself as no one in that town would want to be friends with a freak of nature like you. You find one, only that it's already attached to a keychain. After a little while, you decide that the little gem wrapped inside the delicate metal weavings is worth more as it is, so you shove it into your pant pocket for safe keeping.

After a few more minutes of fruitless searching, you give up. You decide that doing the laundry is more productive than sitting here in this dark space doing nothing.

You pick up what little clothes you have and shove them all in the tattered backpack you own. Putting on the skull, you put the pack in front of you and push it out through the vent. Now outside, you pick it off the ground and run to the nearby washing store. You don't go to the front door; that a death sentence for a person like you. No, you crawl through an open window and use the abandoned, but still randomly operational, washing machine. You never questioned why it still worked, or if the shopkeep would notice the small spike in water fees, but after a few weeks, you started to use it more often and leniently.

Dumping the clothes into the machine, you set the heat to low. Before you start it, you open the door into the main room, sneak around the small space and grab a capless bottle of detergent. You absolutely hate the smell of detergent, so you hold your breath as you slip back into the room. You finish all the preparations and start the machine, watching as it chugs along melodically.

At some point, you must've fallen asleep while watching the hypnotic spin of the machine, as the window is no longer filtering harsh, mid-afternoon light, instead evening reds and oranges stream from it. Seeing that your clothes are finished flipping around, you dig them out and shove them into your pack and crawl back through the window to get outside again.

Back inside your 'lair' (you like to entertain yourself with things like that), you hang all the wet garments on the ceiling beams before crashing onto the worn out mat you call your bed.

In your mess of newfound boredom, you flip open the book, only to find out it was a journal. Someone called a 'Keyblade Master' wrote it too. Historical pieces of an unknown religion? Now that peaked your interest.

.

.

.

And that died down as soon as you turned the page. The whole book was devoid of pages except the last two. And those two are depressing, even more so then your current living situation. AND this page is old. Even older than your seven years of living. Sure, you're smarter and more mature then the other kids, living most your known life on the streets can do that, but that doesn't mean you can handle someone else's pain and sorrow.

To whom it may concern: This journal was passed down to me by my teacher, who has recently disappeared. Although, she gave me one last request before wiping herself off the map: "Spread his memory, will you?". To honour her request, I did as I was told, to spread the pages of this journal across the worlds. To be honest, I'm not quite sure what she had in mind for this request, but I trusted her judgement.

The keychain that my teacher enchanted herself is here in this book. I hope whoever finds this journal can make use of it, as I could not.

You flip to the ending cover, finding an indentation containing the keychain. It was like the other keychain you found under a stack of nuts and bolts; a wire link chain with a gem interwoven inside a cage of metal. Only this gem was a light turquoise, and the metal tarnished and more of a brass, gold colour.

You pick up the dinky little thing and shake it around. Nothing happens. Now you are thoroughly disappointed with it. Thoroughly. Disa-fricken-pointed. It was supposedly enchanted, guess it couldn't stand the test of time.

With a groan, you toss it aside and continue on with the other existing page in the book. It's not cursive this time, but really loopy writing. Jeez, is this so much harder to read.

Last of Master's line of light,

Never caught in Darkness' sight.

Of storm and fire the greatest fall,

Trapped between twin stone walls.

Two of six fall to sleep,

Two of six left to weep.

One of six has taken loss,

Of one he once called 'boss'.

The last of Master's line of dark,

Has fallen down a cave too far.

Well, wasn't that cryptic? Master is repeated a few times. So is 'six'. You make out that 'sleep' probably means two people (you think? You're not quite sure) are dead because literature depicts kids mourning their 'eternally sleeping' parents or something.

Suddenly, you're 'ceiling' starts making noise. Instinctively, you close the book and shove yourself into the vent, ready to when the time came. You hope it doesn't happen today.

The noise stops, signalling whoever lives above you has stopped doing whatever they were doing. You let go of your breath and re-enter your room. At least it didn't happen today.

You sit back onto your bed, leaving the book and picking up the keychain again. You don't know why you picked it back up, you're compulsive like that.

You take some time to look it over in detail, tracing the folding and twisting brass tendril-like things around the skillfully cut gem. You tap the crystalline rock with your finger out of curiosity, or maybe the gut feeling something will happen if you do. Maybe it's because nothing interesting took place today, there wasn't some unorganized Struggle match, or some random mugging that usually took place in the alleyways of you're home. Nothing. Today was oddly quiet, and that ticked you off quite a bit. Not that you cared, but that conflict brought a little excitement into your days, even though you knew it wasn't a good thing. Even if you tried to do something, like stop the offender, the police will just take you for a devil and give the offender a free ticket out. You tried that once. And it ended like how it was told.

In all your doom and gloom, the trinket in your hands starts glowing. At first, it's nothing, just a faint glow that most people won't catch. Then it gets brighter and brighter slowly until it catches your attention. You move your hand to examine it, only for it to flash you with its damnable light. The room is washed in it, the pale turquoise glow enveloping everything in its grandeur.

Then, everything turns pitch black, the sensation of floating filling your bones. In your fear induced state, you try and move, only to find your body cemented in place. Floating but stuck. Quite ironic if you think hard enough.

Suddenly, you're thrown backwards, flying though non-exist air before hitting something solid behind you. You closed your eyes as you recovered, finding you could move again, and rubbing your temples. You are now really confused, but not enough to make you stop thinking rationally.

Light forces your eyes shut as you reopened them, the sun harsh and unforgiving. Odd, because the sun was never like that. And that you were in your home, away from the light. The suddenly ground took form, becoming hard and rough right under your hand.

You open your eyes, to be greeted by the wide blue sky, not a single cloud in sight. Your home was never like this, as there were always clouds. Straight in front of you was red-brown sand spires, chasms and what can only be described as gravity-defying cliffs.

First thing's first, how the hell did you end up here. Something shines in the blisteringly hot sun. You squint to see that it's the keychain. Maybe it brought you here? Is that its enchantment? You stand back up and walk over to retrieve the little bugger.

As soon as you snatch it up, a piano starts playing. It sounds far off, its tone echoing against the massive stone pillars and cliffs.

Play The Other Promise. Any type will do, as long as it is a piano version.

Shoving it back into your pocket, you walk in the shade while trying to find the origin of the music. All you see is dust and sandstone, the sky is there too, but you just don't really want to think about it. It's hot.

Soon you reach a flat plane without any shade. With a growl, you pull up your hood as you don't have any protection for your face. Even if it doesn't cover your whole face. Whatever, it's better than nothing.

You walk near the edge of the plane, listening to the sombre music and scanning the oddly shaped metal swords stuck into the sandy dirt below. There's a long strip of barren land between the mass of blades, crossing with another barren line. The whole lower layer was like that, a giant cross right smack dab in the middle of it. Weird.

You enter into a different raven, the shade a welcoming sight for you. You really don't want heat stroke. You jump down a ledge and continue walking, the piano getting louder, telling you that you're getting close.

As soon as the music got loud enough for you to hear clearly, you're met by a roadblock… More like a tonne of boulders.

Now you're ready to throw a fit. You got this close, only for fate to through a boulder in your face. You got so worked up that you kicked the base of the pile, and a tiny rock popped out of it.

Rumbling, then the entire stack tumbles down. You manage to jump out of the way before one of them crushes you. All of those buggers whipped up quite a lot of dust, so much so that it made you cough.

After it settles, you continue down the rocky corridor, thinking how convenient that was. God was this place weird. Physics-defying, and random music that came from a piano, but where would someone find a flipping piano in a wasteland like this?

As soon as the corridor ended your question was answered. A man was playing a rundown piano. Weatherbeaten and cracking along the sides, it still gave a mournful sounding music.

The man himself wore a long, tan trench coat with dark red trimmings. Blond hair was tied back forming a short ponytail, and a golden brown pauldron covered his left shoulder. The shoulder plate didn't look like most typical pauldrons as it had more of a complicated design than needed. The most prominent part was the inlaid circle just around the spot where his shoulder was.

As if he sensed your presence he stopped playing and rested his hands on his thighs. He turns to face you, and you stop your advance.

He looked like a dragon that walked on two legs. Grey scales and ivory horns, you're surprised you had missed that feature. That and he was semi-transparent, his edges fading into the sandy background.

"It's been ages someone had visited," He says, a forlorn expression on his face, "I thought I'd fade alone."

Confused, you asked him what he means. He forces out a chuckle, looking back down at the piano.

"I'm just a memory, can't you see?" He gestures to his half faded body, "Bound to this place by things that held value to my friends." He pushed away the piano with his feet, revealing a nameless grave marked by the same pauldron as the ghostly one and one of those oddly shaped blades. A keychain hung from the end of the front heavy blade, brass in colour and a red gem in the center. The dragon man sighs,

"I wonder what happened to them… Maybe they died, maybe they gave in…"

Gave in to what?

"You're just a kid, why should you care?"

You're not just a kid, you're an orphan being called a demon by the very town you live in.

"Humm?" He looks at you again, "You don't live on Reverant?"

You angrily ask him what that is.

"Oh. I see. How about Traverse Town?"

No. You live in Twilight Town.

"Twilight? I didn't know… never mind." He puts his hand on his chin.

You tell him that it's your turn to ask questions. He nods aimlessly, deep in thought, though you are too pissed off to notice that. You ask what that blade thing is.

"Oh, that? That old this is a Keyblade. It can be used to tip the scales of balance them." You growl in annoyance, more cryptic nonsense.

"In addition to balancing light and darkness, it can open any lock. A nice perk if you ask me."

Where the hell are you?

"The...Keyblade…Graveyard…" He looks like he's having a panic attack, even as a ghost, "Sorry… its name brings back memories that I rather keep locked up."

So.. it's a different world?

"No hiding this from you, huh?" He puts a hand on his cheek to look at you, "Yes, this is a different world. In fact, every star you see up there in the night sky is a world."

Why the hell are you here and who are you?

"Ha!" He stands up, putting his hands on his hips, "My name's Christopher, but just Chris is fine. I was a Master of the Keyblade once, before my fall of course." You walk up to him, looking up at an angle to stare into his eyes. He looks you dead in the eyes and says,

"Even if I just met you, would you care if I took you in as my student? I'd feel more useful to the world if I did so."

For some odd reason, you are compelled to say yes. And so you did. He kneels down and pulls down your hood.

"It's nice to meet another Armonian after all these years." He says, vaguely smiling. As if you reminded him of someone long gone.

A/N: So... Furries. It's more of a representation. It also gives me options to play with because of his appearance. Like the summary said: I added four new characters. Two of them are present in this chapter, the other two may not appear for a long while. Yes, all are 'Furries'. I started out drawing 'Furries' so I have a natural attachment to them. So I'd rather not have to deal with hate because I wrote something that involves 'furries' and the sin of all fanfics: Insert fic. I don't care. I grew up dreaming of this thing, so this is what naturally comes to mind when I have the motivation to write.

Now my rant is over. Reviews are nice, constructive one mostly. No hate, please. If you don't like this prologue because of it's second-person style, don't worry, it'll switch to either first or third next chapter.

~Storm