You guys rock! Now that that's out my system-Ahem- This chapter should clear up any questions about Sora and Roxas's age and Institute13. If anyone noticed that mistake I made in chapter 1 when I wrote that Namine was ten, yeah when I went back and changed all the characters' ages in editing I missed that by accident. In chapter 1 Sora, Roxas, Namine, and Kairi are all seven, Riku and Hayner are a year older, and Tidus is the youngest at six.
And Daifuku Obsessed, glad you liked my Uncle Jack.
Disclaimer: You ruined a perfectly good delusion. I don't own Kingdom Hearts, happy now? I also do not own Return to Neverland or anything copyrighted(well duh, it's copyright) to it.
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Sora could remember a time back when he and Roxas were four and had spent a day with the Kisaragis while their mother went to work. Mrs. Kisaragi had attacked the twins hair with a wet comb determined to get it to lay flat. When there was no such luck she pulled out a pair of scissors and cut Sora's hair. He distinctly remembered spending the rest of the day crying after that. Within a week, though his hair had grown back. Now as he passed his comb through his mess of tangle free brown quills he knew it was an scientific law. Strife men were destined to have spiky hair. No amount of combing, brushing, cutting, or gelling would change that.
Sora put the comb down and grabbed his shirt, pulling it over his head just as Roxas walked out of the bathroom in black checkered boxers, towel drying his hair and singing.
"So I'll try, cause I can finally believe. I'll try, cause I can see where you see. I'll try. I'll tr-What?" His brother always grinned at him like that when he heard him sing and it was always a little disturbing. "If you've got something to say about my singing then say it." Sora himself was totally and completely tone deaf. He was the total opposite of his brother who actually had a pretty decent voice.
"Man, have seen these uniforms?" Roxas fell over. Either his brother really didn't have anything to say or this was a very pitiful attempt to change the subject. "Seriously, Rox, check these things out. Are we going to high school or joining a cult?" Sora picked up the long black hooded cloak that had been laid out on his bed. "You realize that we'll die in this when the sun comes out."
"If you had bothered to read the rule book you'd know that we only have to wear that during class for the school year and on the first day it has to be on from the moment we step on campus to the moment we leave." Roxas grabbed his own black cloak and threw it on. "I look like an ass," he said, assessing his self in the mirror. He was wearing an extra small and the uniform still looked too big on him. Their father wasn't exactly a little man so why at fifteen were he and his brother so tiny for their age? "At least we're big where it counts."
"Who reads the school rule book?" Apparently his brother did. "They probably have rules about how long our sideburns can be and how many times we can get our ears pierced."
"Actually they do. It also says our shoe strings have to be pointed at two and ten o'clock and there's six boring pages worth of crap telling us what an honor and privilege it is to be attending Institute 13." It really was a privilege to attend the institute. To say it was prestigious was another way to say it was a school for the wealthy. Only the sons of the rich could afford the tuition and the institute didn't offer scholarships, but just having money wasn't enough for enrollment. The entrance exam for Institute 13 was true torture created to separate the intelligent rich kids from the spoiled, but it had little effect on rich kids who were both spoiled and smart. The twins would have been just as happy with going to a public school, but as they were the sons of Cloud Strife there was an image that needed to be kept.
"I could have sworn I ordered extra small." Aerith commented. Sora yelped and covered his self with his blanket even though he was fully clothed and Roxas blinked. When had she come in and why hadn't they noticed?
"Mom, don't you knock?" Sora, realizing how ridiculous he looked trying to hide what didn't need to be covered, dropped his blanket. "This is extra small." The only problem was that the twins were extra small too.
"Well I'm sure you'll grow into them." She handed them their book bags and said, "Unless you want to hitch a ride with your father you better leave now." Roxas glanced at his wristwatch.
"Oh crap! We're going to be late." Yelling a goodbye over his shoulder he ran out. Sora hugged their mother and then fell in step behind him. Aerith looked back at their unmade beds. Stretched across the foot of Sora's bed was a large gangly black dog and curled up on Sora's pillow was a slightly smaller black pup. Goofy and Max, still asleep. In the nest of blankets on Roxas's bed was the large white duck that had followed them home from the park when it was a tiny yellow duckling, Donald.
"All right you three. Time to get up."
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Downstairs in the kitchen sat Cloud Strife fiddling with his tie. For the past ten minutes he'd struggled with the stupid piece of cloth and he still couldn't get it on correctly. Maybe Aerith was right about his neck being too thick. The typically white collar worker didn't have near as many muscles as he did so they probably had a more easier time getting a tie around their neck. "I blame the Olympus Coliseum." He yanked the tie off, giving up on fixing it and deciding to read the newspaper instead. At least he was going to read it before what could only be described as twin tornados tore passed him ripping the newspaper out of his hands and into the air and sending his hair flying back.
"Hi, Dad!"
"Bye, Dad!" The tornados said, slamming the kitchen door. Cloud caught his newspaper as it floated back down.
"I should start sitting downwind."
Sora snapped his rollerblades on and Roxas grabbed his skateboard. Together they raced outside and down the street, totally forgetting that they were still wearing their black cloaks.
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Riku played with the zipper of his uniform while he lounged on the stairs. Last year at this time he would have been standing outside on the campus grounds with the rest of the underclassmen dieing under the sun in black. Fortunately this time around he was a second year and could stay inside the building with the wonderful air conditioner. Eventually though, he'd have to go outside. "I wonder how many will actually be desperate enough to sign up for this stuff." He picked up the clipboard the assistant principal had given him. Written on it were two electives: Home Economics and Theatre Arts. His job was to weed out the boys who only wanted to meet girls from the boys who really wanted to take the classes.
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Roxas was only a meter behind him when Sora bladed around a corner and saw her. Again. She was walking down the sidewalk across from him with a few other people he faintly remembered seeing somewhere, but barely registered in his mind. He was at a really bad angle to truly see her, but his eyes were making the most of what was visible. The red hair, the slim waist and wide hips, those long slender legs her blue and white schoolgirl skirt did not and could not hide. She'd taken his breath away the first time he saw her and he didn't even know her name.
"Hey Sora, you're going to-WHAM!- hit that telephone pole." The brunette crumpled to the ground. "This is why Mom is always telling us to wear a helmet." Sora groaned while visions of his dream girl danced around his head. "Forget it." Roxas grabbed his brother's arm and hauled him to his wheels. "Just forget all about her, loverboy. That's a Destiny High uniform if I've ever seen one and once we set foot on institute property we won't see the opposite sex until the weekend."
"The weekend!" Roxas whacked him with his book bag. Sora hit the ground again.
"You make it very hard to believe that you passed the entrance exam without cheating. Isn't this," he pointed to their book bags, "a little too big and heavy to just be holding books?" Besides books their mother had also pack five days worth of clothes, socks, underwear, and toiletries.
"I knew that." Sora grumbled through a mouthful of grass. At seven o'clock AM on Monday Institute 13's gates were locked. No one could come in or out until the gates were unlocked at four o'clock PM on Friday. "I just.. kind of… forgot."
"Well just kind of forgot her too." Roxas helped him back up, which was reasonable since he knocked him down in the first place, and then the two brothers were off.
"Forget her, huh. Easier said than done." Especially when memory of their meeting was so fresh in his mind.
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Sora was sitting on a trust fund and was one of the only two heirs to Strife Enterprise. His father was a multimillionaire and his mother was a successful doctor. The was no real reason as to why he was working at a dinky fast food restaurant for minimum wage other than the fact that he liked the greasy employee discounted food. Seriously, Food of Wonders sold heart attacks on buns. Sora worked there for the experience.
"Hey Sora, could you do me a favor?" The teen stopped mopping the linoleum and gave the young man talking to him his full attention. "Listen, Genie and Carpet are getting backed up in the kitchen. Think you can bus the tables alone while I help them? I'd ask Abu, but he's handling the cash register and I haven't seen Iago since he took out the trash twenty minutes ago."
"No prob, Al." The Arabian boy clapped him on the shoulder.
"Thanks man." Sora put the mop away, found a pen and ticket book, and walked up to the first table that looked ready to order. It was a table full teenagers.
"Welcome to Food of Wonders. How may I serve you?"
"Yeah, uh.." One of them, a blond boy with long hair, said while squinting at his nametag, "Sora. I'll have a double cheeseburger, cut the onions, and a coke." He carefully recorded each person's orders.
"And you miss?" He asked of the only one at the table still studying the menu. She looked up and suddenly he couldn't remember how to breathe. She said something. He didn't hear a word of it, but nodded anyway and walked off. It took him three seconds to realize he didn't have her order, two minutes to go back to her table and embarrassedly ask for it again, five seconds to get his hands to stop shaking long enough for him to write her order down, and only six seconds to ride cloud nine back to the kitchen.
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Yes, their meeting was very fresh in his mind.
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"My God, if there's a fat kid some where in there I bet you ten munny he's out cold." Roxas said, staring at the black sea that consisted of their fellow first years.
"Heh, he wouldn't be the only one." More than half of the boys outside were sweating buckets Sora noticed as he surveyed to area, but the dieing students weren't the only thing that caught his attention. "Why's that fence on the east side different from the others?" It was built a few feet higher and the top was lined with barbed wire.
"Check out what's on the other side." He crossed the field to do just that.
"Rox, is that-?" Destiny High sat directly next to Institute 13. There was nothing more than a metal fence between the schools. A single obstacle separating them. Separating Sora from her. This lifeless barrier was what stood in his way of knowing her, but not for long if he could help it.
"What the hell are you doing! Get down from there, idiot!" Roxas jumped on his brother and latched onto his waist hoping to bring him down with added weight, but Sora kept climbing like he didn't have a fifteen year old clinging to his middle like a chimp. "Sora, I don't want to get a demerit on my first day, maybe second or third day okay, but not on my first! Get down! Whoa!" One minute he was on the fence. The next he was kissing the pavement.
"Ouch."
-/-
"This kind of stuff needs to be filed under cruel and unusual punishment." And yet for some reason the sight of so many pampered boys panting in the heat and fanning themselves was oddly amusing to Riku. Of course it might have had something to due with the fact that he'd be back inside the air conditioned school once he made a quick round outside.
"What the hell are you doing! Get down from there, idiot!" Riku had seen his fair share of stupid stunts, especially those performed by inexperienced and gullible underclassmen, but this one took the cake. What kind of desperate fool tried to scale a barbed wired fence? "Sora, I don't want to get a demerit on my first day," he wasn't sure if he was doing it on a whim, "maybe second or third day okay," but his feet were carrying him towards the yelling, "but not on my first!" They carried him all the way to the two boys on the fence and he jumped. "Get down!" He caught the brunette's legs and with his weight added to the blond's they all came tumbling down. "Whoa!" And landed right on top of him.
"Ouch." Riku managed to raise himself to his hands and knees and the boys rolled off. "There are easier ways to meet girls." The blond sent the brunette a withering glare. "You two are first years, aren't you?" They nodded.
"I'm Sora Strife and the scowling one is my brother, Roxas. Who are you?"
Maybe he was still doing all of this on a whim, but then did the reason really matter? "Riku Yasutora, second year." If I get in trouble for this, it'd probably be worth it. "Your ticket to the only coed classes Institute 13 has to offer."
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Sora being tone deaf and Roxas having a great signing voice? Yeah I'm making (harmless) fun of their English voice actors Haley Joel Osment and Jesse McCartney. The song Roxas is singing is I'll Try from Return to Neverland. Jesse sings it on the Disney Mania 4 CD.
Roxas and the skateboard is understandable, but Sora and the rollerblades? I got the idea while watching him glide along the ground in Wisdom Form.
The Food of Wonders? What can I say? I have no imagination and my first and second choices were Happy Burger and Burger Fool.
It is an absolute must that I finish this fic before July 12, 2006 so expect updates often. Why is it an absolute must? Because July 12, 2006 is the day I ship out for Basic Training for the US Army Reserve and we aren't even allowed to email our families during training so I'm just going to practically drop off the face of the earth for about a year. Oh well, that's why I'm up at 5:35 AM right now writing.
Check back for Chapter Three: Sora meets Kairi! Roxas meets Namine! The Strife twins meet big brother Hayner! And Riku has an unfortunate accident with an egg! Oh the joys of Home Economics.