A/N: I don't think any of you fully appreciate how weird it is for me, and how weird it's going to be, writing this story. My brain right now is all NOM NOM NOM, ZOMBIES, WRITE ABOUT ZOMBIES. And the thing is, I don't even like zombies! I don't like zombie movies, zombie apocalypses don't really interest me…so I'm kind of going wtf at my brain right now. But yeah, this story is going to be very different from anything else I've written so far, at least in my opinion. So we'll see how this experiment goes.
Anyway, there is going to be quite a large amount of Final Fantasy characters appearing in this story, and a great number of them will not be ones introduced in KH, though those ones will be present as well. So, for the uninformed, as I was, once upon a time, I'm going to include a little bit of character info as they appear, and I'm basically just going to tell you what game they're from. It'll only be once, at the head of the chapter they're introduced in, so pay attention. Mind you, if you don't know a character and do want to know something about their canon self, then do the research on your own. If you ask nicely for me to elaborate on one character, then I will. But I don't want my next author's note to be a giant list of character explanations that don't necessarily fit into this story. Yeah?
Axel: Chain of Memories, 358/2 Days, KHII
Vanitas: Birth by Sleep
Sora: KHI, Chain of Memories, 358/2 Days, KHII, Re:coded, Birth by Sleep
Aerith Gainsborough: FFVII, Crisis Core, Advent Children, KH1, Chain of Memories, KHII
Kairi: KH1, Chain of Memories, KHII, Birth by Sleep
Rinoa Heartilly: FFVIII
Genesis Rhapsodos: Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus (FFVII spin off games)
Marluxia: Chain of Memories, 358/2 Days, KHII Final Mix
Larxene: Chain of Memories, 358/2 Days, KHII Final Mix
Saix: KHII, 358/2 Days
Isa: Birth by Sleep
Warnings: This story is rated M, due to what's probably going to be extreme profanity, gore, blood, violence, and possible sex scenes, but we'll see when we get there. Also, there's going to be romance and sexual encounters of both the heterosexual and homosexual persuasion. And keep in mind, as you read this fic, that one of the genres I chose is 'Horror' for a reason. Remember that.
Dedication: To Lys and Clyde.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything whatsoever. Though I should also probably mention that the summary is also mostly comprised of lyrics from R.E.M.'s "It's The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)".
Don't Get Caught in Foreign Towers
Chapter 1: Run As Fast As You Can
A booted foot inserted itself into my ribs. As in, the motherfucker kicked me.
"Axel, I hope you don't think that I'm just kidding. Because I'm not. Get the fuck up, or you're getting my keyblade rammed down your throat for breakfast, and I'll take your ration instead."
If you're still hoping to pick up tips from me, here's another thing that should be on the top of your priority list: know thy enemy, blah blah blah, but also know your traveling companions, if you're lucky enough to have any. Seriously, be fucking grateful if you've managed to fall in with a pocket of humanity.
Like, Vanitas may be one of the biggest dicks on what's left of the planet, but damn if he doesn't pull his weight around here, and he has managed to save my ass on more than one occasion. But I also knew him well enough to know that acts of supposed altruism were not coming out of the goodness of his heart. Out of everyone in our ragtag group, Vanitas was the most pragmatic. People like Sora or Aerith were all about doing noble shit and believing that we dregs of humanity still had souls or what the fuck ever, and hell, Sora especially wouldn't hesitate at sacrificing himself for all the rest of us. But not Vanitas. No, he's saved my ass before because he had deemed it to be the most pragmatic and logical option at the time. See, Vanitas was all about serving Numero Uno. I mean, we've unfortunately developed a certain degree of trust and reliance on the guy, but if Vanitas thought that slitting our throats and tossing us to the zombie pit would be pragmatic and save himself, then he would do it. And I'd be willing to bet that he wouldn't lose much sleep over it either. The dude's just ruthless and cold that way.
Vanitas was pretty much your prime example of what this apocalyptic world does to you.
But for now, Vanitas was sticking with us. Because at this point, the only way that you're going to survive is within a group. By yourself, you're easy pickings for the zombies, right, because most of the global population is now comprised of zombies. More of them now than there are humans. In the beginning, it was alright to try to strike it out on your own. Nerve-racking as hell, I would think, but you could do it. But at this point, you've come too far for that. Now you shack up with every person you run across that's not foaming at the mouth. Safety in numbers, or some shit.
And hey, if you get absolutely desperate, it gives you something to throw at the zombies other than yourself. But I wouldn't recommend sacrificing your comrades unless if it's like Armageddon, and even then, keep in mind that since you've survived one Armageddon, it's entirely possible that you'll survive another one.
You see, shitty noble people like Sora wouldn't take kindly to you being the worst kind of selfish, and perhaps especially because the load that I figure someone like Vanitas would choose to dump would be Kairi, aka Sora's best friend. Feeding group members to the zombies would lead to your ex-communication, and most likely to your certain death. And good luck trying to find someone else to take you in at that point, because I was totally not lying when I said that there's hardly anyone left now.
Somewhere to my right, I heard one of Vanitas's boots scuffing the concrete. He was probably contemplating waking me up with a swift kick to the face. I know this because Vanitas is an ass that actually does shit like that. I guess it's kind of not his fault, seeing as this attitude is the result of his social development being stunted, to a pretty severe extent. I mean, to the point where it doesn't compute in his brain that a kick to a person's face would result in blood leakage out of their nose. And that this would be an especially bad thing.
But that train of thought is derailed by Vanitas lifting his foot off the ground in a more purposeful movement, to contrast with his previous indecisive shuffle.
"Fuck off, I'm awake, okay?" My voice sounds like I'm trying to talk around a mouthful of marbles, but I think I get a pass, seeing as it's barely dawn. To prove my point, I open my eyes as well, glaring past the grit, letting them rake up over his body until I find his face.
Let me tell you something, Vanitas is one fucking weird dude. Like, I don't even know if I could ever possibly have seen a weirder person. Remember what I said, about how cold he is? Yeah, that doesn't even begin to cover it. He's not just cold, he's cold. Fuck even that, I'm convinced he's coldblooded, like some kinda lizard. But the first time you look at him, you would never suspect that, because the fucker's so goddamn short, and he looks so young. He claims he's actually twenty-two, but I'm still not sure that I believe that. Like, talk about baby face there. The scavenged clothes that he's forced to wear don't help his case either; they're faded and tattered in patches, and obviously belonged to someone who was much larger than him, because they drape around his body like old sheets, making him look even smaller than he actually is. I'm not even sure what color they were supposed to have been originally, but now they're permanently stained this dark brownish-black that you get when you mix up too many different paint colors. Oh, and there's also the ever-present streaks of blood to accent it all. Somehow, this bastard makes the color suit him.
Pollution has sky-rocketed since Z-Day came, so maybe it's the fucked up, toxic air that's to blame for the rat's nest that Vanitas claims as his hair. It's as black as fresh asphalt, and is just this mess of tangled, uneven spikes. No lie, his hair spikes as naturally as mine does, and really it's deeply freaky how common that sort of phenomenon is. Eight times out of ten, the people you run across have spiky hair. Like, what the fuck. Oh, and I should add 'unwashed' to that list.
… What? Come on, we're trying to save ourselves from being zombie chow. You really think we spend a lot of time worrying about hygiene? Get it memorized—the old rules are dead.
So yeah, Vanitas's hair is an unholy disaster. But one of the creepiest things about this dude is his eyes. The eyes that are currently narrowed into yellow slits, staring down at me in a kind of apathetic glare. And yes, you heard me right. They're as yellow as a fucking traffic light, the ones that are no longer operational in most places.
He says that he was born with that color. Vanitas claims a lot of things, you may see, and there's not a hell of a lot that I take his word for.
And he's peering down at me, like some kind of demonic fucking bird. He's surprisingly bird-like, Vanitas is. I tend to think of him in a lot in bird-related terms.
After a long moment of observation—although what exactly he was looking for, I don't even know—his assessment is this: "Whatever." And that was stated in an emotionless drone.
Did I mention that he's apathetic? Yeah, this guy is, from what I've seen in the months that I've known him, utterly implacable. My guess is that he gave up on emotion in favor of his precious pragmatism.
Rinoa has said that Vanitas reminds her of some guy she knew Back When, who would have what she describes to be 'Whatever Fits', and from what I have gathered, this basically involves him snubbing people. Apparently, that was like his favorite word. Rinoa looks back on those memories with nostalgia, which under normal circumstances I would find mystifying, because who looks back on being blown off all the time with a smile? But seeing as how it's more than likely that he's dead, if that was Rinoa's way of remembering him fondly, then whatever floats her boat.
I roll into a sitting position, hands scrubbing at the sand in my eyes, although now that I think about it, this gesture might actually be counter-productive, seeing as we all have acquired a layer of dirt by now that's like a second skin. But whatever. I also take this time to question Vanitas; the fact that he hasn't left yet is what I have figured out to be his indication that it's his turn to give me a status report.
"So? Anything happen last night?" It hadn't been my turn to be on watch last night. Genesis and Vanitas were the ones that inevitably ended up taking the most turns, seeing as for one reason or another, those two didn't need to sleep as much as the rest of us. But Sora, with his fucking wide, pretty blue eyes and an innocence that no one seemed to be able to resist, had insisted that it was only fair that the rest of us didn't just let this burden fall onto their shoulders. Last night, it had been Genesis, Marluxia, and Larxene on duty. But Vanitas was one of the earliest risers anyway, so somewhere along the way he'd ended up being roped into waking the others.
"No," was Vanitas's quiet, impassive response. Those golden eyes of his were now examining the cracks in the walls of the warehouse that we'd barricaded and rested in for the night. His piece apparently said, Vanitas wandered off to the next of the poor souls on his wake-up list.
Saix was the closest to me, but his eyes had already been blinking open at the sound of my voice, so Vanitas passed him by without a word. That was lucky for Saix; if Vanitas had had to wake him up, he really wouldn't have hesitated to put a foot into Saix's face. Again, Vanitas just didn't understand why there should be a fuss over a broken nose when we had a perfectly capable healer with us that could basically just wish the injury away. He kind of got the point that it plain wouldn't be pragmatic for Aerith to waste her energy on something that could have been avoided, but Saix seemed to be a special asshole in Vanitas's book. But if he did end up giving Saix another broken nose to match the ones he had given a few times in the past, Vanitas couldn't see why Saix couldn't just tough it out.
Vanitas just didn't have a normal perspective on anything.
Skipping over Saix made Sora the next prophesized victim on the list. But for one of the youngest members of this team, Vanitas just bent down to grab Sora's shoulder and shake him awake. If he did it roughly, at least he wasn't kicking Sora.
If I didn't know any better, I would have sworn that the two were brothers. Seriously, it is fucking eerie how much they look like each other. Sora had those pretty pretty blue eyes that I'd mentioned before, and his hair wasn't black, but rather was this rich shade of coffee brown—the kind of coffee that you knew had all sorts of cream and stuff in it to enhance the sweetness. But his hair still looked like a chocobo had made a nest in it. Anyway, but apart from a difference in coloration, the two could have been twins. But on the inside, the two couldn't be more different. I was pretty sure that Sora was, hands down, the sweetest kid that I'd ever met. The harsh planes and angles of Vanitas's face were softened and tempered by smiles on Sora's. Vanitas's eyes had a kind of cold glitter to them. Sora's shined with the light of incorrigible optimism.
But nope, as weird as it was, and as difficult as it was to believe, the two weren't related, and had never met each other before the day we'd found Vanitas. Who knew? But by now, you should have learned to just go with the flow with a lot of things. After all, because of Z-Day, you've gotten to meet people that you probably never would have, otherwise.
'Course, if I'd had a choice, I would have chosen to have never met any of these people, if it meant that the zombies would never have come, and that I could go back to when I could look Saix in the face for longer than a few seconds at a time.
I avoided Saix's golden-eyed gaze, the one that was so different from the blue-green one that was now only in my memories, as I got up and went to inspect the barricades.
Correction, as I guess that there's no point in lying to myself. If I could, I'd go back to when I had Isa instead of Saix.
Marluxia had drawn the stick of having the dawn shift of guard duty. He was currently positioned in front of one of the peepholes we'd made in the barricades. You know, so that we wouldn't have to be totally blind in guessing the potential whereabouts of the zombies. Genesis and Vanitas, the freaks that they are, and aura-sensitive people like Aerith and Rinoa, would sense any zombie-encroachment on our position, but we had to be thorough. I, at least, thought it'd be a fucking lot to ask them to be infallible. Especially when any slip up of theirs would result in my death. And, you know, thanks but no thanks.
Also, Genesis is something of a high-strung bitch at times, and he would have objected to being completely entombed anywhere. Claustrophobic or something, but he was too proud to ever admit to anything like that.
Marluxia was standing as still as he possibly could, but he couldn't help the occasional fidget. The hardest to suppress, of course, were the shivers from the cold. The sky, the chink of it that I could see from the peephole, was a leaden gray, overcast with clouds. We had survived up to another winter. This would make it the, what, fourth year? The fifth, maybe? I don't know. The days start running together, and keeping track of them became another one of those things that just didn't seem to matter anymore. What were we supposed to get from knowing how long we had survived? Satisfaction? Hardly. To me, the longer I survive, the more nerve-racking it gets. Yeah, yeah, I've got pride still, and I won't admit it to maybe anyone except for Saix, but I'm scared that one day, I'm going to get too comfortable at this lifestyle. That I'm going to get cocky and shit. Because when that day happens, I know that's the day that I'm going to die.
Wait. No, I wouldn't even tell Saix these deep-seated fears of mine. I shouldn't have to.
Isa was the one who told me, years ago, that I didn't need to be scared. That he would be there to make sure that my…exuberant self-confidence would be kept in check. He said that he would never let me put my guard down enough to do something typically stupid.
But right now, as much as I hate to admit it, I'm not sure that I trust Saix to do it. And that kind of uncertainty fucking hurts. I don't want to think that I can't trust Saix. But…there it was. Sitting like some kind of a canker in my heart.
Okay, that's fucking enough, brain. I'll deal when the time goddamn well comes.
Marluxia is the kind of person that I can't decide whether I like him, or if I hate him. I hate him too much and he pisses me off too often for me to like him, and yet I like him too much to actually, truly hate him enough to do something like tie him up as zombie bait. Him and Larxene both are like that, although instead of pissing me off, Larxene just annoys the hell out of me sometimes. I think Larxene doesn't piss me off because I recognize her antics for what they are: she's just got some kind of sadistic bent in needling people with verbal abuse, and sometimes a tiny bit of the more physical torture thrown in there. I don't get angry because I know that she's trying to get a rise out of me, and my pride refuses to give her that satisfaction. Unfortunately, it doesn't make her any less annoying to deal with when she gets like that.
But the thing that really fucks up any feelings or relationship I may have with Marluxia are the twisted, unstable, and worst of all, undefined power politics at play in our group. See, this is something else that you should take note of, because it's very important. A pack of, say, wolves cannot function if there is more than one alpha wolf in the pack. To put in human terms, there can only be one leader, get it? Yeah, well we've fucked up and failed badly on that front.
I don't know where in the hell Genesis came from, but whoever he had been, Back When, he must have been someone pretty powerful, used to ordering minions about, and most importantly, he chafes at being told what to do by someone else. I get the sense from him that he thinks that he's superior to all of us here, but unfortunately for him, it doesn't work like that in this new world. We're all on uneven footing with each other, but roughly we've all now been brought down or up to the same level. And Genesis doesn't like it one bit. So we've got him constantly asserting himself into a leading position.
Marluxia, on the other hand, seems to be more the kind of guy who didn't have any power, but wanted it really bad. And so when the world ended and everything changed, Marluxia, the enterprising sort of person that he is, decided that this was an opportunity that he was going to make the most out of. Meaning that he all but has a slapping contest with Genesis over who should call the shots. And damn is Marluxia convinced that he is clearly the best choice for any sort of position that calls for leadership qualities. If Genesis wins the slapping contest of the moment, I've heard Marluxia frequently bitch to Larxene about how dismal of a leader Genesis is. He bitches to me sometimes about it too, when he forgets that we're quasi-rivals.
Vanitas is kind of like Genesis in that he obviously believes himself to be better than everyone else. But unlike Genesis, Vanitas doesn't really give a fuck about who the leader is. He just has some sort of bizarre complex about following orders. The conclusion that I finally came to is that what Vanitas really wants is independence, or simply to not have anyone boss him around.
Saix's main problem in this whole fucktard mess is that he really only listens to me, so with everyone else, he adopts this weird passive-aggressive struggle for dominance, simply because he doesn't want to take anyone else's orders.
And then, there's me. See, the thing about my inextricable involvement in this power struggle, is that at first, when the first wave of people had died in Z-Day, it was just me and…Saix. Between the two of us, I've always had the more aggressive personality, and plus I was quicker at thinking on my feet, so eventually it just became natural for me to be the leader. But back then, it was just two of us. A couple years later, two became three, and then four, and so on until we came to our present number at ten.
My problem is that now, taking charge, especially in a crisis, is just too wired into my brain for me to stop. Even if I abdicated or what the fuck ever, that urge would still kick in, and I wouldn't be able to help but revert to that state of mind.
The result of all this headache-inducing bullshit? A shit ton of squabbling, and a bit of petty sabotage, perpetually ruffled feathers, and all around disorder and just being a shade away from tilting into chaos.
It hadn't been that big of a deal, when the group was still relatively small. The key factor back then, of course, was that the first new members were there because of our mercy, mine and Saix's. They were joining us. And they had all been grateful at first, because we had held all the cards. Our weapons were keeping them safe; our (stolen) cars were their getaway vehicles to continued life as not-zombies.
Then again, the first person to join our duo had been Aerith. When I let myself, I still felt kind of bad, that her church had ended up trashed because of us. Although, how it had escaped zombie-attention before then was beyond me. Of course, what's more bizarre to me was the fact that Aerith has seemingly never once resented us for what had happened that night, three or four years ago now.
I mean, it's not exactly the most pleasant way to meet someone, when these two guys come crashing into your church with a horde of zombies right on their heels, tramp all over your flowers that grow inexplicably in the middle of the room, and end up dragging you out into the night with them with nothing but the clothes on your back. I had been surprised that she hadn't at least smacked us upside the head, or something. But nope, she didn't. There wasn't any kind of angry or annoyed ranting, no despair. No anything. She had just dusted off the front of her dress a little bit, straightened up, looked at us with a smile on her face that was like sunshine, and told us that her name was Aerith, nice to meet you.
Yeah. Fucking seriously.
But it's still a toss-up for me, which one had been the most bizarre first meeting. I can't decide if it had been Sora and Kairi, or Marluxia and Larxene.
Meeting Marluxia and Larxene had been memorable, because that had been in an old, long-abandoned factory that had apparently produced hair dye, as Marluxia and Saix had found out, to their detriment.
But still, it's either weird or really, really creepy, to meet two thirteen-year-olds standing on top of a flat-tired taxi cab and gunning the shit out of almost fifty zombies.
And there had been me, Saix, and Aerith, thinking to run in and try to give the poor kids a fighting chance. Silly us. To this day, I really don't want to know how a kid like Sora had gotten a hold of an automatic assault rifle. Or how on fucking earth he had known how to use it. But then, he and Kairi had been, like, eleven when Z-Day had hit. And miracles could only propel you so far in this world, so again, I don't especially want to know about the savagery that was apparently lurking behind those pairs of wide, innocent, eyelash-batting blue eyes.
Because honestly, there's kind of something disturbing about the fact that a now fifteen-year-old was still one of the best shots we had in this group. And with the fact that this same fifteen-year-old, when he didn't have a gun in his hands, seemed like he was such a sweet kid.
And like all the fifteen-year-olds I had ever met, human or zombie, Sora also had something of a bottomless pit for a stomach. 'Course, we never had enough food that would satisfy that sort of voracious hunger, but Sora was also pretty good about not complaining about things like that. But this little bit of info is to just give you some background on why the first words out of Sora's mouth, once Vanitas had successfully awakened him, was, "What's for breakfast?"
"Food," was Vanitas's deadpan reply, before he moved on to wake up Rinoa. Kairi had been cuddled up to Sora, and so she had been woken up along with him. I could see her tousled, auburn-haired head lift up from his chest, blue-violet eyes blearily taking in her surroundings. The two were like puppies, for fuck's sake, and they both claimed that they only slept together for body heat. Well, they couldn't exactly hide it if they ever had any kind of sex at night, seeing as all ten of us slept in the same room. And since we hadn't seen anything, then whatever.
Genesis had a rule about this kind of thing. (That was when my leadership-by-proxy-of-being-the-senior-group-member had started to deteriorate, because I had been a dumbfuck and opened the floor to some democracy, and let the others all state a rule that they wanted followed, within reason.) His rule was that if he wasn't getting any, nobody else could get any either. And apparently, nobody here was to his taste. Bastard.
Marluxia had been indignant about that. He had demanded that if Genesis wasn't going to bang anybody here, then who in the hell did he expect to bang? And I believe his words had been, "What? Do you expect the rest of us to be celibate for the rest of our lives, just because you have to be a bitch and picky at the most inconvenient of times?"
The only thing we'd been able to get out of Genesis was that he believed some lover of his or whatever was still alive somewhere, so we had nothing to worry about. And when questioned about the validity of that belief, he had muttered to himself, something about how, "You better not have picked now to be anything less than perfect, asshole." (This was the statement that had pretty much confirmed my belief that Genesis had some Issues.)
But we had all agreed to go along with it, not because we had shared Genesis's faith, but because we didn't particularly want to be forced to watch each other getting it on. Talk about Awkward.
Anyway. Where were we? Oh yes, Sora was pouting at Vanitas's back. It was Aerith who took mercy on him, and told him kindly, "Beef jerky," and tossed him and Kairi each a packet. Two more came sailing across the room to Marluxia and I.
In our group dynamics, if Vanitas was a dick, and Sora and Kairi were silk-coated killing machines, and Genesis was something of a drama queen, and Marluxia and Larxene were part-time nuisances, then Aerith was the mediator. I'd honestly never known a person who was just so…good. That was the only way to describe it. It might sound weird, but Aerith was like the last fucking saint on the planet or something. Sure, she killed and pulled her weight with the zombies just as much as the rest of us, but from her, it felt more like mercy. That she was bestowing benediction onto some pitiful, helpless creature, rather than a monster. I wonder if Genesis ever thought that she was like that Goddess in that stupid play that he recites from endlessly (he's still holding onto what he was, one of those literary types who thought that books and poetry held the meaning of the world in them. If that's true, then I want to know why they didn't warn us about a zombie apocalypse. Isa would say that I'm too literal-minded to get that kind of stuff).
But there are more important, pressing things to ponder. "We need more food," I announced to the warehouse, pitching my voice only loud enough so that they could all hear me, even if some of them were only half paying attention, like Larxene, who was rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
"We need to replenish supplies in general," put in Saix. He always had been my qualifier. Like, if you wanted to be metaphorical about it, he saw the forest, and I saw the trees.
"In other words, we need to plan a raid, scope out nearby areas." Genesis was kind of funny in that he was rather dramatic and put on a bunch of fucking airs and had an attitude that you might think would indicate that he was too flighty to come up with any decent strategies. But in reality, when he got serious and down to business, he actually had a brilliant mind. Almost like his brain had been made to think in military strategy.
Marluxia had drifted away from the window to be closer to the rest of us, so that he could pitch into the discussion. You know, because he was trying to be in contention to become the leader or whatever. Normally, I would have snapped at him to get back to his post. But with Marluxia, it was an unfortunate necessity to pick your battles. If we wanted to have a successful raid, I couldn't afford to have him hostile with me. I couldn't help but have a sneaking suspicion that, one of these days, Marluxia was going to 'fail' to protect my back. He was too much of a chicken shit to shoot me in the face, but if he just couldn't save me from the zombies? Hey, it happens, right?
Fucking Marluxia. If I did wind up as a zombie one day, I hope that there would be still enough of me present to remember to go for him first.
Anyway, Vanitas had slid up to take Marluxia's place as guard. I'm telling you, he truly does not care to participate in any of our discussions. He didn't care where we went. He didn't care if, when, or what we were going to eat. He didn't give a shit about who lead the group, or even ultimately about who lived or died in it.
Vanitas just plain didn't have a purpose. He drifted. Drifted, and killed zombies, just because he could. Perhaps he liked killing or hurting things; I wouldn't put it past him. So for now, he followed us, traveled with us. But if all of us either got eaten or turned into zombies, I knew that he would walk away, and he would never look back, except to blow our heads off with a dark firaga.
Nevertheless, I trusted him to keep watch, so I gave the current discussion my full attention.
The thing about food, or most any general supplies, is that you've got break into places, and raid their shit. Doesn't matter if it's a house or whatever, but usually some kind of a store was your best bet. But see, that's not the tricky part. The tricky part comes into play when you consider the fact that stores are only located in some kind of urban environment, no matter how primitive it is. So, like a town, or at the worst, a city, you follow me? But going to places where huge swathes of the population had once dwelled? That equals to a fucking shit ton of zombies. So, you've got to go carefully. Plan as much as you can, especially if you have a window of time to do it in, like we did now.
In our group though, the first hurdle was always getting everyone to agree on where to go.
But in this overrun world, you always had a second hurdle. Expect anything and pretty much everything to get interrupted by your friendly, neighborhood zombies. They just want to invite you to tea where you get to be the biscuits.
It was Vanitas who hissed out the quiet warning, but Genesis was on his feet in the same breath. Aerith's hands had risen to cover her soft gasp, and Rinoa had shivered, hands rubbing at the gooseflesh rising on her arms. Everyone else had tensed as well, hands immediately reaching out to pull weapons closer. Sora seemed to have grabbed his gun from nowhere; his hands were cradling it in his lap.
I glanced at Vanitas and saw that his hands were still empty, his fingers clenching at the place where his keyblade should have been resting. But he didn't dare to call it just yet. The zombies were in the area, but they didn't know we were there, not yet. A keyblade would be a beacon that would give us away; its light would draw the zombies and other creatures of darkness and unbalance to itself, because it alone could vanquish them utterly. It was kind of a double-edged sort of weapon deal.
I drew in a deep breath. Stupid brain. Why did I have to be so good at coming up with spur-of-the-moment plans?
"Vanitas," I said, in the softest whisper that I could manage. His head inclined slightly in my direction, indicating that he was listening. "When I give the okay, use your keyblade to open a dark portal." A fraction of a nod. "Genesis and…Rinoa." I waited to make sure that I had both of their attention. Genesis looked a little impatient; I bet he already knew where I was going with this, what I wanted him to do. Unfortunately for him though, Rinoa wasn't a soldier, and so she needed to have things explained to her more. "I want you two to go out there and distract the zombies. Lead them away from here. Use fireballs, flashy stuff." Genesis rolled his eyes, but they both nodded in understanding. "Sora and Kairi." Those pairs of too-old blue eyes were looking at me expectantly. "I want you guys to cover Rinoa and Genesis, on their way back to the portal, you follow me?" By the Planet, I hope their nods weren't too eager. "Larxene and Marluxia." Larxene had been pouting a little at the thought of being left out of the action, but they both perked up at the sound of their names. "You two are going to go through the portal first, and I want you guys to start securing the area." Larxene gave me a rather bloodthirsty grin at that. Zombie eradication, this was her kind of game. "We don't know where we're going to end up." They both gave me short nods, Larxene practically humming with cheer at the thought of imminent violence. "Aerith, you're third to go through. Me and Saix are going to be right behind you. We're going to stay and guard the portal from our side." I received affirmative nods from both of them.
I glanced around one last time at them all, this group of people whose lives were all that I had left in this world. I wondered if I was going to get to see all of them again. If I was going to have to watch them die, or if they would fall as one more bloody corpse that I would have to leave behind without being able to look back.
"Alright, got the plan memorized?" I received a few pairs of rolling eyes, but no negative responses. "Genesis and Rinoa, move out. Remember, run like hell." Of course, Genesis was already moving, pulsing red sword slid soundlessly out of its sheath, leaving Rinoa to scurry a little bit to catch up.
I've never gotten used to it, listening to the pounding of the running feet of our companions, the howls and hunting snarls of the zombies that chase after them in that loping gait of theirs, made chilling by the unshakeable fear that you might not be able to run fast enough.
Lucky for Genesis then that he was some kind of super-human.
I waited until I heard the first evidence of their handiwork: zombies screeching, the boom of distant fireballs.
"Now, Vanitas," I breathed. My face was already twisting in an anticipatory wince.
Vanitas flexed his fingers, and then it appeared in a dark flash of purple fire. The faint light in the warehouse seemed to be drawn to the surface of the Void Gear, I'd heard was its name, like a moth to the flame, the metal shining with what seemed to be like an unholy gleam.
Keyblades, after all, were the weapons of chosen Hearts, be they aligned with the Darkness or with the Light, destined to keep the balance. The balance that was currently being upset by the zombie apocalypse.
Vanitas brought his Void Gear up in a smooth motion, tendrils of darkness gathering around the tip of its teeth as a swirling portal was opened several feet behind us. And all around us, we were surrounded by all the howls of the zombies within a mile or so radius of us, garbling voices raising in a dirge to challenge the presence of a keyblade in their midst. And in anticipation of the promise of the flesh of its wielder.