The Next Life: Creative Expression -Wings (theme 44) [rough draft], a Kingdom Hearts fanfic written by Raberba girl
List of themes by DavisJes, Variation 3 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt
Inspired by Medli45
Summary: Riku agrees to star in a recruitment ad for the Shinra Company.
(Hey WarriorKing, if you're reading this, I got your message; sorry I didn't get a chance to reply! I'll write kid-Xemnas again if I get any ideas for him, but I don't have any at the moment; sorry...!)
o.o.o
The only reason Riku didn't immediately delete the e-mail in disgust was because he'd been stressing out about his younger brother's college tuition for months now. He was pretty sure he had enough saved up to get Dawn through the first year, and Dawn, to his own great excitement and Riku's pride, had managed to score a small grant that was worth several hundred munny.
But Radiant Garden University was ridiculously expensive, and Riku made enough munny now to disqualify Dawn from financial aid, and he really didn't want to have to take out any loans further down the road if he could avoid it, and Dawn worked so desperately hard to make good grades that Riku didn't want him to have the added stress of a job, so...the offer on his computer screen was very tempting. Since Sephiroth had apparently refused to do a recruitment ad for his employer, the Shinra Company had decided to turn to its next best option for an extremely attractive Jenova-enhanced warrior: Riku, Sephiroth's least insane son.
Riku gritted his teeth and closed the e-mail without either deleting or responding to it. He needed time to consider before making any decisions.
o.o.o.o.o
Five days later, Riku, feeling dead inside, was in a prep room allowing a team of makeup artists and stylists to have their way with him.
After being changed in and out of outfits like a Barbie doll and having cosmetics applied and listening to everyone making unrestrained comments about his body, he was beyond caring when he noticed a woman surreptitiously taking pictures of his hair. He knew enough to understand that, depending on what sort of fan the woman was, those photos were either going to be plastered all over social media within minutes, or hoarded by Riku's fan club on Gaea (an offshoot of his father's) and auctioned off to the highest bidders.
It didn't help Riku's mood that Dawn was present, being fawned over and looking like he was having the time of his life. "Can I be in the commercial, too?"
"Maybe!" one of the producers said brightly. "If we'd known about you before now, we'd have-"
"Dawn will not be involved in this production," Riku said in an icy tone. He sounded enough like his father in that moment that there was a brief hush.
It was broken by Dawn's whine. "Why not?"
"Because if one of us is going to be selling our soul here," Riku snapped, "it will be me. End of discussion."
"Why do you get to have all the fun?" Dawn pouted, but soon subsided.
Once they'd finally settled on an outfit, someone picked up one of Riku's forearms and started wrapping bandages around it. "The point of these," the stylist explained, even though Riku hadn't asked and didn't care, "is to contrast the formal outfit and indicate that Shinra agents in the upper level are expected to look professional and continue performing potentially dangerous fieldwork..." Riku had tuned him out by that point.
When Riku was finally on set, the director prompted him to produce his wing. "I...I can't...it's not the easiest thing in the world to just pop in and out..." Riku tried, but nothing happened.
"Any day now, Riku," the director said. "As soon as you're ready, we can start."
"Just give me a minute." Frustrated, Riku took off his suit jacket, hesitated, then started unbuttoning his shirt as well.
"Riku-"
"I'll put it back on, just wait." Then he tried to ignore the person on the sidelines who whistled appreciatively and remarked that they ought to just film him shirtless.
Riku, with his shirt now dangling around his waist and hoping that his wing would feel more inclined to materialize from an unrestricted back, tried again, but this situation was so unlike all the other times he'd sprouted his wing that his deliberate efforts seemed to be making things worse instead of better. "Can't we just do the commercial without the wing?"
"We need to portray ELITE! This is why we're paying you, Riku, because no one else can pull off the Sephiroth Effect like you can."
Riku gritted his teeth, but before he could think of a reply or try again, Dawn called out, "Are you trying to go One-Winged Angel?"
"I've never done it on purpose before," Riku called back in frustration.
"You probably need to fight someone!"
"I'm not gonna fight someone in the middle of a studio-"
Too late; Dawn had summoned his Keyblade and was rushing at him, forcing Riku to defend himself. They went leaping and lunging all over the room, inevitably knocking things over and prompting screams from the production crew as they went. "What are you doing, Dawn?!"
"Helping you!"
"This is not helping!"
"Wing! Wing! Wing! Wing!" Dawn chanted as he bashed away at his brother.
It actually did help, eventually. When Riku let himself give in to the battle emotions rather than trying to resist them, power blossomed within him, and then he stood panting in the middle of the chaotic room with a single white, slightly trembling wing rising up from his back.
"RUINED!" the stylists were screaming, "Get him back into hair and makeup, get him back into hair and makeup...!"
So it was back to being a Barbie doll, except that Riku couldn't physically fit into the prep room now. All the stylists had to swarm around fixing him where he stood, awkwardly trying to work around the giant feathery mass that tended to flex and flare unless Riku firmly concentrated on making it stay still.
By this time, Zack and a few of his men had shown up, which would have pleased Riku in any other situation, but at the moment, he felt mortified to be seen like this by someone he respected so much.
"Ooohh! Mistook you for your dad for a minute," Zack teased, raising his phone.
"I need the money," Riku mumbled, his face burning. He felt too shy to ask Zack to stop taking pictures or filming or whatever he was doing.
"For Dawn, huh?" Zack said sympathetically. Riku looked at him in surprise, and Zack smiled. "Of course it's for Dawn. He's about to start college, isn't he? And nothing but the best for you Crescent boys, which means Radiant Garden University, which means more munny than you probably have."
"I'm not sending him there because he's a Crescent. He wanted to go because... Well, he wanted to go, and I want to support him."
There was a delighted cry. "Uncle Zaaaack!"
"Daaaaawn!" Zack and Dawn distracted each other with a happy conversation until Riku had been bundled back on set. Then they shut up and watched eagerly as Riku tried to choke out his lines without sounding like an awkward idiot.
"Hold the gun higher," the director instructed. "Look right into the camera, look right into the camera, Riku."
"I am looking into the camera!"
He did lots of different poses with lots of different weapons and props, occasionally submitting to more wardrobe and hairstyle changes, including having extensions added to his already super-long hair. "That's good," the director said as Riku sat in what he hoped was a casually elegant pose, trying to keep his wing gracefully arched, "except don't smile, you're a soldier, you're supposed to intimidate- Well don't look like you're going to kill us! We're trying to recruit people, not scare them off."
Then, later, after Riku had changed into some kind of uniform and was now trying another battle stance, "What the- You look like you've never held a katana before!"
"I'm a Keyblade Master, not a samurai."
Then in yet another outfit, "What do you mean, you can't float?!"
"I don't actually use this thing to fly with, you know."
"It's a wing!"
"It's ONE wing. By itself."
"Sephiroth flies with one wing."
"My father flies on sheer aura or something, not the laws of physics; the wing is just for show."
Riku got that 'signing away his soul' feeling every time he said the word 'Shinra' into the camera, and the fact that Zack and Dawn were watching made him want to die of shame. Just when he was debating whether to put his foot down and refuse to do any more takes, he suddenly felt like he'd been plunged into a vat of pure horror when he saw Sephiroth stalk into the room, hung about with weapons and looking like he'd just returned from a mission.
The production crew instantly flew into an uproar, and Zack's men all snapped to attention and saluted (Zack himself, although also acknowledging a superior officer, did not lose the amused sparkle in his eyes). "What is going on here?" Sephiroth demanded.
"Er...recruitment ad," the director stammered. "The one you said you wouldn't...? Ah, but if you've changed your mind, we would love to have your participation...!"
Sephiroth no longer seemed to be listening; his eyes were burning holes into Riku. Riku felt like he wanted the floor to swallow him, until he caught sight of Dawn trying to look nonchalant and hide behind Zack at the same time. 'I'm doing this for Dawn,' Riku remembered. He squared his shoulders and met Sephiroth's look squarely. "Hello, Father."
"How did you get mixed up in this nonsense?"
"I wouldn't have had to do it if you'd bothered to respond to Dawn's graduation invitation with tuition munny. Which is what normal wealthy people do when their grandchildren graduate." 'And was also the only reason I sent you an invitation in the first place.'
Sephiroth blinked slowly.
"Riku's doing this to earn munny to send your grandson to the best school in the multiverse," Zack translated cheerfully.
Sephiroth turned to the director. The mere act of shifting his body was so ominous that a few of the crew whimpered, three of them fled the room, and one of them fainted. "You are taking advantage of my son's superior genes to lure more people into the company's service."
"Th...That's...that's correct, s-sir."
"They'll get done faster if you help," Zack called. "You were their first choice, after all."
"And I suppose," Sephiroth said frostily, still to the director, "you want the usual display of Jenovian sublimity."
"I-If...it's not too much trouble...sir."
Sephiroth abruptly drew a normal-sized sword from his waist and tossed it toward Riku without looking. Riku managed to catch it without fumbling, though he thought furiously, 'Yes, that's right, Father, just THROW A NAKED SWORD AT YOUR SON, nothing dangerous or weird about that...!'
Sephiroth himself was now brandishing Masamune. "You have one chance," was all the warning he gave the director before he gathered himself, bellowed out a war cry, and unleashed his power.
Riku felt it slam into him. He was rising, his clothes flapping in the sudden wind, his wing almost fully outstretched, his long hair whipping about him with wild grace, his eyes glowing so hard they hurt. His body was arranging itself into a graceful warrior pose; he felt so full of power at the moment that he wondered if he really could kill someone with just a touch or a look.
He sensed Sephiroth beside him in the same state, most likely overshadowing him; he heard a cry - Dawn, too, was caught in the storm of power, floating and glowing with a single wing unfurling from his back. Zack had taken cover behind a pile of equipment, peeking out just enough to reveal that his own eyes were glowing as well. He was anchoring himself with one hand and clutching his phone steadily against the equipment pile with the other.
Riku was overwhelmed and confused and full of amazingness, able to think of almost nothing except POSING AS IF THE WORLD WAS COMING TO AN END, as if he was bringing it to an end-
Then it was over. He collapsed to his hands and knees, gasping, feeling ordinary again and drained, his hair draped over him in sweaty clumps that was as close to tangled as Jenovian hair could get. His clothes were frayed and his wing had dissolved into a haphazard pile of feathers, a few people were slipping on them...
The room was trashed. People were crying or calling out in fear, though fortunately no one, as far as Riku could tell, seemed to be seriously hurt. Sephiroth alone stood unscathed among the debris. He simply sheathed Masamune, retrieved his other sword from Riku, and paused in front of the gasping director to say, "I trust that will suffice?" before stalking magnificently out of the room.
Even though Riku still felt shaky and exhausted, he forced himself to his feet and staggered over to his little brother, who was whimpering in Zack's arms. Zack looked up and smiled. "He's okay, just a little shaken."
"Dawn?" Riku said urgently.
Dawn, his eyes still glowing faintly, flopped out of Zack's arms and into Riku's. "He's scary, he's so scary, I felt like I was killing the world, aaaahhhh...!"
Now that someone else was looking after Dawn, Zack started reviewing the video footage he'd captured on his phone. "Look at this idiot," he said affectionately as Sephiroth's image blazed on the tiny screen. "He could have just written you a check, but nope, he just had to go Full Glory on us and make a mess. It's like wrecking stuff is in his DNA or something."
"It is not," Riku huffed, "because then it would be in my DNA, and I don't go around destroying things as my default solution." He tried not to think about the fact that Dawn, who was essentially his clone, had taken after the rest of the family more than Riku in this respect.
The director recovered his wits enough to start wailing, "It's ruined, the ENTIRE THING is ruined, why did he have to fry every single camera...!"
Zack winked at Riku and then went over to join the growing huddle of dismayed crew members. "Not every camera. I got some nice footage."
The director gasped and nearly swiped the phone out of Zack's hand, but the SOLDIER waved it out of reach. "Nope. First I'm gonna be taking donations for Dawn's college fund, and then I'll let you have the footage."
"Wha-But we're already- This is extortion!"
"Riku," Dawn said, ignoring all the shouting in the background, "you looked really cool."
Riku smiled a little. "Thanks."
"Did you see my wing, Riku?!"
"I did."
"My wing! I have a wing, too!"
"It makes sense that you would."
"That's the first time it came out! I want to do it again, Riku. Fight me so it will come out again!"
"Dawn, you can't even stand up yet..."
o.o.o
Author's Notes: So Medli45 drew this picture: art/A-Riku-633748918 and as I wondered about possible backstories behind it, this fic practically wrote itself in my head. XD
Since Dawn is a clone of Riku (a much younger clone in this "Next Life" AU), his role in the Crescent family is a little complicated. Genetically, Dawn is Riku's identical twin and has the same biological relationships to the other Crescents that Riku does, and Riku is legally Dawn's adoptive father; but in practice, Seph & Jen are more like Dawn's grandparents, Riku is his older brother + father figure, and the triplets are his uncles.