He woke up.
Or at least, it felt as if he was waking up. The same grogginess and daze of waking up in the wee hours of the morning for school.
With newly added pain and estrangement.
His eyes felt dry, and sore, even after blinking repeatedly (with, as he realized, equally dry lids). Within seconds of 'waking up,' realization of two things struck him hard.
He was trapped. Inside a sort of thick, glass casing; colored maroon and dark navy, it barely allowed him 3 inches of room on all sides.
He couldn't breathe.
The panic of the latter slapped him the worst, forcing his eyelids to squeeze together in the discomfort of burning lungs and dry air.
A few seconds of airless, futile struggling against the glass later, he had calmed down enough to formulate a plan.
Bending his knees, similar to a car jack would, he attempted to lift the ceiling of his prison with pure force. The ceiling budged slightly, but did not move further.
Squeezing his eyes shut in pain that he felt in his lungs, his dormant muscles clenching tightly, he shifted and jolted from side to side, trying, praying, with all his might that something would happen.
And something did.
Amidst the struggling, there was a sudden falling feeling, before a shattering noise and shocking pain shot through his spine.
The barrier around him had shattered into pieces, leaving enormous, thick glass shards all around him. Sitting up a moment, he realized how painful and sore and...new everything felt.
Back to the floor.
Spinning, his head cried of it's recent abuse by throbbing proudly.
What on earth had happened?
The last of his memories was of a girl. An icky girl, who had invaded the clubhouse and refused to leave. She wouldn't. So that boy...he raced her...and...and...
Nothing.
His mind was wiped blank, much like a sheet bleached a pure white.
Shaking his head in bewilderment, he raised a hand to rub his abused scalp. Which was really the first time seeing his hand.
It looked...bigger. The fingers long and bony, pale, pale skin. He didn't believe them to be his hands at first.
Then there was his hair.
The last time he had been conscious, it was cut above his shoulders, ending around the lobe of his ear. Now the curly, silver strands were at his belly button.
The clothes he wore were little more than sewn rags, ending in shorts that went mid-thigh and a scrap of clothing that covered a majority of his navel.
He ran his hands over his torso.
The hard, jagged outline of rib bones jutted from tightly pulled, almost a snowy white, skin. His gut—he didn't have a gut.
His legs were no better- being mere twigs with shriveled-up, deflated balloon-gloves; the kind one would find at the doctor's office
Crinkling his brow in confusion, he looked around the freezing room.
It looked like the inside of an ancient shrine. Bare wooden floors smothered in dust and-...something else. After a closer look, he guessed them to be some sort of thin paper.
Shaking his head (and the bewilderment of paper being strewn across the room) he began to peer around.
The ceiling was pieced together from long planks of oak and thatch; the walls looked to be made of the same wooded material.
Jesus, it was cold.
He had began to examine the thick shards surrounding him, trying to sort the thoughts that slipped just as soon as they came, when the door opened.
A young man, around the age of late seventeen, stepped through the door. He wore a black, sleeveless, collarless shirt that allowed very toned muscles to become very obvious. Baggy, black cargo pants, completed with thick, black biker boots, and two large straps criss-crossing about his chest to his back. The handle of a sword was visible over his shoulder.
A dark crimson rose was clutched tightly in one hand, looking a little pitiful.
A small machine was in his ear. Spikes of a chocolatey color rose in several directions, bringing back a few fond memories. A gas-mask was secured across his face, covering his mouth, nose, and eyes, but still allowing Riku to see the bright cerulean in the eyes.
They looked...troubled, distant, cold, and sad.
He looked so familiar.
But so much older than the boy he knew.
"Sora?" He breathed, allowing his head to cock to the side in disarray.
The eyes snapped back, looking alive, at the whisper of the name.
The flower dropped to the ground.
Widening in utter shock at the silver haired boy before, he stumbled a few feet back. A seconds passed, before a rage spread across his features, a look of hatred.
The sword was in his hands, and pointed at Riku's throat within moments.
He growled, eyes narrowed dangerously, the mask making it sound mechanical,
"We told you this place was forbidden! Before I make sure you never come back, go. You aren't going to take anyone else away. Not again." The tip of the sword brushed against the pale skin, a shout, "Go!"
The silver haired boy, sore and confused, shook his head,
"You look...just like him. But you can't be... Sora..."
The enraged eyes flickered for a moment, dreaded sorrow. It was only a moment.
The tip of the blade pushed into the flesh a millimeter.
"How do you know that name?" Riku blinked,
"Because I grew up with you."
The rage left for a moment, revealing a heart-crushed face with an angry mask.
"Why are you doing this to me? Why? First y-you…and now..." He swallowed thickly, "Now you mock my pain."
Hissing under his breath, the brunette moved the sword away from Riku's throat, looking away from Riku. His chest began to quiver.
"--Agent Sky. Report. You were supposed to check in."
The voice echoed in the silent room from the small machine in his ear.
The brunette didn't do anything.
"Sky."
Reaching for the machine, he pressed it against his ear,
"We will send out an operative, Sky. Respond."
"What?" He choked.
"Where are you? You were supposed to report in a few minutes ago. It's getting dark. You have to come back."
"Whatever." He replied bitterly, clicking it, and effectively cutting off a 'What??' The brunette looked over Riku once more, saying,
"Ordinarily, I would disintegrate scum like you. But you've messed with the wrong guy; this is the wrong body. You're coming with me."
Nodding, (at the bittersweet mix of escaping this freezing room, and having a familiar stranger hate you at first glance) Riku attempted to get up, only to drop to the floor. His legs were too weak.
His nose twitching, Agent Sky walked across the room, reluctantly (and cautiously) picking the silverette up by the arm.
His feet barely brushing across the wood floors as the brunette dragged him across the room, opening the door and leading him into the new world of green.
Where he promptly passed out.
When he awoke, they were moving.
A dry, desert-like prairie was passing them by at wicked speeds. The sky was a dark gray, angry clouds welling up as if provoked by the horrid landscape beneath it.
The two were on a bike- one Riku had only heard about from his father from his days in the war. Lodged between the handlebars and the brunette, who seemed to be lost in his thoughts, Riku felt very awkward. And alone.
He watched the wastelands zip away. There were few things to interrupt the sole, gray sand. Any that did were merely black blobs, which disappeared just as quickly as the rest.
This went on for what felt like hours. Riku felt himself silently thanking whomever was up there when the bike approached an incoming building.
Upon reaching it, aquamarine eyes widened.
It was enormous.
The fortress looked like the castles his mother had read to him when he was younger- the ones of princesses and gallant knights.
Well, if you didn't account the looming darkness that seemed to surround it. Instead of cheery bricks, it was, like most of the new land, a darker shade of gray.
Agent Sky dismounted the bike with practiced ease, grabbing Riku's arm once more to drag him the entrance of the fort.
Thick charcoal doors, detailed exactly like the fairy tales, met them.
There was an arch around the doors, reaching out about two feet, serving, as Riku guessed, protection from any rain (as unlikely it was that this desert death trap received any precipitation in any given year).
Decorative frame along the door, shaped like vines, (as well as the deep indent of a small circle,) gave the castle a Gothic touch.
"Bout time you got here. You're late, you know."
Riku jumped at the voice, peering around the area suspiciously for the figure-less voice. The brunette rolled his eyes.
"Let me in."
"Who is...that? You didn't bring a stray home, did you?" Riku blinked; how did this mysterious voice know he was here? Sky growled again, a harsher, more authoritative tone in his voice.
"Let me in." The unknown voice seemed to sigh,
"Show me the eyes and heart." Without batting an eye, the brunette lifted the flimsy cloth that shielded his chest over his head.
Scars.
Some faint, others new, scars etched themselves across his stomach and chest.
Muscles.
The shirt wasn't lying. He was very muscular, a set of washboard abs and very defined curves of his ribs.
What really caught the eye, however, was a circle.
Protruding about an inch from his tanned skin, at the top left corner of his chest it had flat sides that rounded upwards; a stubby cylinder with half of a sphere at the top.
It matched the size of the outline in the door's frame.
There was something alluring about it as well.
It was, for the most part, a brilliant white. But one could see, after examining it (as Riku had been doing) there was a light tint of blue. A cerulean that matched Agent Sky's eyes.
What he did next was strange.
He approached the door frame, and pressed the circle in his chest into the indent in the door. Agent Sky remained there for a few seconds, until the voice said,
"Eyes, Agent Sky, eyes."
Rolling said orbs, he turned his head upwards, staring, without blinking, into the ceiling of the arch. Riku looked up along with him.
Whoa.
There was intensely complicated, advance white equipment.
Amazing how silent it was.
A few moments of awe passed, before the bored voice spoke yet again,
"Alrighty then...What should I do about your stray?"
Riku frowned.
Why was he being treated like a dog?
Sora glared at the ceiling,
"Get Agents Fair and Z. He's not a stray. We need to have a look at him."
The voice was silent for a bit.
"Okay. You may proceed now."
Sora pulled Riku under the arch, and pulled on the handle of the door; it didn't open.
Before Riku could ponder the strangeness, there was a burst of wind, making the rags on his body float and pull them upwards.
A sudden wave of dizziness overcame Riku.
And he collapsed in Agent Sky's arms yet again.
"What do you mean?"
"He's... Not normal, to say the least, but he's-"
"That's not possible! It's-It's impossible for anyone to come back. It's just...just..."
The silverette opened his eyes to a very bright room, and voices, mere meters away.
"Look. I've ran every test I could think of-"
Everything was white. He was laying down on what felt like soft cotton sheets. His stomach didn't feel as horrid as it had earlier, and the dizziness had been sedated. Riku could feel a sensation pulsing up his right arm; although he didn't need to look down to see it was an IV.
Using what little strength he had gained (in the time of unconsciousness), he strained the cells within his neck and shoulders to lift his head from the soft, clean pillow beneath him.
The figures were at the far side of the small room; there were three of them.
Of course, there was the young man known as 'Agent Sky,' the only difference in him being there was no gas mask covering half of his face.
God, he was so much like...him.
The other two were new faces- with very strange hair.
One had light blue, periwinkle, hair that was moderately short. He shrouded himself in an inky coat that ran to his ankles. The rest of him wasn't facing towards him, but, judging from the height and tone of voice, he sounded around eighteen at most.
The other, while having an average color of blonde, had it spiked into a mullet (a style that hadn't seen the light of day for decades). He wore a similar charcoal coat, although there was a distinguished difference in the details (such as sleeves, and cleanliness). He looked to be, from behind, twenty or so.
The blue haired man shook his head,
"-and he's not a heartless, nor a nobody. His eyes are normal; he has a heart. A very bright heart."
"B-but he was breathing in the air, and there was no effect on him whatsoever." Nodding, the blonde said,
"Yeah, we thought that was pretty strange. So we took a look at his insides. And he's pretty messed up." The shorter cloaked man sighed, an 'eye-rolling' tone in his voice,
"What Demyx means to say, is that this young man's lungs, down to the very cellular levels, are very, very different from you and I."
The brunette arched an eyebrow suspiciously,
"How different?"
"Somethin' like a plant's and a human's combined and jumbled."
"Yes, hence why he could breathe outside and how he sti-...Well speak of the devil..."
The shorter, blue haired man had finally taken notice of Riku's awakening.
The brunette stared, mindlessly almost, at the silver haired teen, a blank, sorrowful expression implanted in wide cerulean eyes.
The blue haired man's face was youthful, and pale, while his eyes were aged, as if they had seen too, too many things in the years of life he had lived thus far.
The shortest scientist approached Riku, asking,
"How are you feeling?" He was speaking slowly, as if Riku had been identified as mentally handicapped, and deaf. "Can you nod for me?"
Blinking, the silver haired boy looked clueless. The scientist arched an eyebrow,
"Can you understand me?" Riku gave him a hesistant nod. The blue haired man smiled softly, and nodded.
"At least we know he speaks english. That's fortunate; I've never quite liked Spanish." The blond offered the shorter a snort. The silver haired boy took a deep breath, managing a very hoarse, weak whisper.
"What happened to my home?" Although the scientist seemed impressed with the speech, Riku wasn't finished, "Where's Sora? Or Axel? Or Cloud?"
As soon as the names passed his lips, the three men who stood stiffened.
The blue haired man turned, moving his dark blue-slate gaze to the brunette, whose eyes had widened.
"Sky...Enlighten him. Where did this...'Sora' person go?"
The question's tone was a mix of sarcasm, genuine curiosity, and amazement.
But a millisecond later, the same blue eyes were rolling to the back of the brunette's skull. Muscular legs quivered a bit, and gave in, leaving the body crumbling to the floor.
A/N:
o.o So...there you go. Do you like it?