Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. Also, I do not own the rights to Sora's backstory. His mom is still more present than the disembodied voice in the first game, though...

Warnings: This fiction contains and is not limited to boy/boy moments, the use and abuse of stereotypes, hints at original pairings, very despicable people, emo-Riku, lustful teenagers, underage drinking, a mix of the last two points, questionable situations, morally ambiguous choices and a few, occasional and really shy attempts at humor.

Chapter 39: A Troublemaker Boy's Story - Part 1

Many years ago

Sora was not a bad guy!

Yeah, when he was eight he may have accidentally set his house on fire. 'Accidentally' being the key word, here. Because it was a mere coincidence that his mother had confined him to his room earlier that same day. It wasn't like they had any proof that he was the responsible: he had made sure to dispose of all of those.

By the age of ten, he had already met pretty much all of the school counselors and a good amount of pediatric psychologists, most of which hadn't even managed to get a single word out of him. And those who had, had probably regretted it.

Because Sora was not a bad guy, and so he didn't need a headshrinker.

One of them had even said that he was acting that way to get his mother's attention.

'Bullshit!' Sora had thought. He didn't need his mother. He liked her, but he didn't need her. And any case she had no time to lose with him, as since his dad had left when he was five -without even bothering to say goodbye- she had had to work double shifts just to sustain the two of them.

...but that was beside the point.

Sora was not a bad guy. He was just... exuberant.

When Sora met Leon at the age of eleven, the two of them quickly bonded together. 'Kindred spirits' one could say.

It was a Thursday morning. Or maybe a Wednesday, who remembered it? Some schoolmates were playing football... or rugby, or tennis, maybe? Well, it didn't matter. What mattered was that there was a ball involved. And said ball had somehow ended on a tall tree in the school courtyard.

As soon as he had heard said schoolmates saying that the tree was too dangerous to climb, Sora -as the brave boy that he was- had immediately started climbing it.

And when he had recovered the ball, the people had started cheering him.

And the feeling of being at the center of the attention felt good.

...at least until he caught sight of a tall brunet starting to climb the same tree he was sitting on. And, just as before, people had started to cheer him on.

The voices quickly shifted from: "Sora! Sora!" to "Leon! Leon!". And Sora didn't like that.

"Well, I didn't think someone else had the balls to get up here..." Sora coldly welcomed the other boy as soon as he had reached him.

"And faster than you did, I might add."

"Ah, you wish!" Sora smirked. "I can get down from here in half the time you need."

"Fine, you're on." the other boy simply answered. A second later, he had launched himself back down.

Sora didn't lose any time and quickly followed him. And if he accidentally kicked him on a shoulder on the way down, it definitively was an accident.

That said, when they reached the ground and the other boy tried to punch him in the face, it definitively wasn't an accident.

"Hey, what was that for?" Sora asked angrily, just barely avoiding the hit.

Despite Sora's clearly hostile behavior, the other boy was smiling quietly, as if he was just having fun. "Well, you kicked me, didn't you?"

"You have no proof that it wasn't an accident." Sora quickly answered, the way he usually did when someone accused him of something.

To his surprise, the other boy laughed at that answer. He then smiled widely and offered him his hand. "I like you, what's your name?"

Sora tilted his head on the side, wary, but still somehow intrigued by that unusual reaction. "Sora, and I don't like you."

"Oh, too bad, because I was looking for someone brave enough to help me." He then lowered his voice in a conspiratorial tone, even if the crowd around them had already dispersed, having already found something else to entertain themselves with. "You know, people here are wimpy, as soon as things start to get dangerous, they just run away. I thought you could be different, but maybe I was wrong..."

"Try me!"

"Have you heard of the underground room in the left wing of the school?"

"The one that is strictly off-limits because of the risk of cave in?"

"That one. I think it deserves a visit, doesn't it?"

From that day on, Sora and Leon quickly got a reputation as the school's troublemakers. And people seemed to like that. After all, it wasn't like they were bullies or something like that: they were just a couple of crazy bastards who did everything that came to their mind, be it painting the car of a teacher with pink paint, sabotaging the principal's opening year speech by projecting some... amatorial video behind him or just plainly removing the bolts from the table of the school's council.

And then high school started and Zell joined them. And then Irvine. And by the time they were fifteen, the four of them had reached the point of no return: their pranks were getting out of control and, even worse, they were getting out of control.

In truth, Sora was probably aware of it: the way they kept challenging themselves, how they were keeping on pushing on the subtle edge between innocent prank and illegal stuff. Stealing a car definitively was well over that line, even if it was Zell's father's and he probably didn't care -at least considering he had like ten of them- and it wasn't like they were planning to keep it: they just wanted to take it for a ride.

...but there was something else that changed Sora's life.

It all happened when a fifteen years old Sora happened to walk past a boy who was getting aggressed behind the school by three upperclassmen. And he did the only responsible thing to do in that kind of situation: he called for a teacher.

...nah, of course not, he obviously intervened directly. He didn't even need to do much, he simply told them to scram, and they obeyed because reputation was something that wasn't to be underestimated and Sora knew it really well.

"Are you okay?"

The boy looked up at his savior. The first thing that Sora noticed was how, despite being quite messed up, he was smiling. The second thing he noticed was how his nails were painted black.

"I'm fine, thanks. Not the first time, probably not the last either." He chuckled a little. Weird.

Sora took another moment to study him: he had an... extreme sense of fashion, wearing a nearly fluorescent shirt and uneven ragged jeans. What hit him most, though, was his extravagant behavior the moment he stood back up and the -frankly girlish- way he moved.

As the perceptive guy he considered himself to be, Sora had no doubts about that guy's sexuality. Future Sora would've probably thought of himself as an idiot jumping to conclusions, but the mind of 15-years old Sora was simpler than that. "So... the reason those guys aggressed you..."

The boy pushed his brown hair out of his eyes in a kind of exaggerated gesture. "They didn't like my new shirt, I guess. Everybody's a critic." He then smiled widely once more. "Thanks for the save, by the way, I owe you one. How about a coffee? My treat?"

Sora had nothing against gay people. But he knew really well how, in high school, getting caught talking to someone even vaguely gay equated with painting a red target on your own back.

And so, none could blame him for thinking: 'Ok, he's hitting on me! I have to get away!'

"Uhm, sorry, I have to go. Maybe another time."

"Sure, I'm counting on it." the boy answered grinning.

Just as he was nearly out of sight, Sora suddenly turned back. "Name's Sora, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Sora. My name is Noel."

Since that day, Sora found himself crossing paths with Noel a little too often to believe it was a mere coincidence. And after the third time, he finally gave up and accepted to drink a coffee with him. As far as possible from the school, of course: should have someone seen them together, they could've gotten the wrong idea.

Because Sora wasn't gay. And so he should not be seen with gay people. That was just one of the numerous unwritten high school rules.

And that's how, in a peripheric bar in Radiant Garden, Noel and Sora started becoming friends. Yes, because despite his initial reticence, Sora quickly discovered himself enjoying Noel's company.

And that first coffee in a peripheric bar became a habit on every Wednesday.

Why Wednesday? Because it happened so. No special reason.

Why Sora kept spending time with Noel? Well, in part because he was cool, easygoing and honestly funny. But what Sora liked the most about the moments they were spending together was how he could relax and talk about everything. Noel was a good listener and had that rare quality of not laughing or criticize him when he talked about personal things.

"Your life must have been rough, Sora, you have a great strength. I admire you." he had once said.

Sora would not understand the meaning of that sentence for another couple of years. From his point of view, it was Noel who had it rough: as suspected, the guy was effectively gay and didn't do a thing to hide it, which was a behavior that in high school could not be described as something else than 'suicidal'.

Once the two boys were a little bit closer, Sora had asked him why he didn't try to tone down some of his mannerisms: first of all, his habit of painting his nails. "You know, maybe this way you wouldn't get aggressed every two weeks..."

Noel pretended to think about it for a moment. "Nah, too much work!" he then answered, his everlasting smile always painted on his face.

At Sora's troubled look, he had then added: "I am who I am, I don't want to hide myself. What's the meaning of living, if your existence is just a lie?"

To that, Sora had not replied.

"And anyway... if those guys would've not attacked me, I would've never met you."

Sora's life was not perfect, but it wasn't half bad either: he had friends, freedom to do what he wanted and... also his school grades were good enough (he had always been proud of his 'doing just slightly more than the barely necessary to pass' politics, it granted him some kind of margin of error in his speculations).

So, what happened that destroyed all of that?

Leon happened.

Well, that would be a lie: he was just the last straw but, let's be frank, they all should have seen it coming. The collection of disciplinary letters that Sora had at home should've had at least given him a clue at how close he was at losing everything.

But there's some kind of naivety when you're fifteen, some kind of 'tomorrow is too far ahead to think about it' attitude. That was the kind of attitude that Sora and his friends had when they started organizing brawling matches. Betting real money, no less.

It all started at a party, when some guy had challenged Sora at arm wrestling. Sora didn't remember his name, or his face, or the reason he had challenged him. But after Sora had totally destroyed it -and people had started cheering for him- Leon had decided that they needed to capitalize on that. The beginning of the end.

And that's how Sora, Leon, Zell and Irvine started organizing a little amatorial 'arm-wrestling' club: people could challenge one of them for five bucks and could get back double if they managed to win.

'If' was the key word there, as they had made sure to never lose: after all, arm wrestling is about 30% strength and 70% technique, Leon had once said.

None of them probably expected the success that they experienced, with people searching for them all over the school. And in just a few weeks, they were already talking about hundreds of bucks.

...and still, that wasn't enough for them.

Instead of challenging people during breaks between classes, they started organizing evenings dedicated to those events. And when even that wasn't enough, they upgraded it from innocent arm-wrestling to not-so-innocent fistfights. And when they started admitting weapons like baseball bats, the goose was cooked.

The goose happened to be Sora, of course.

The next sign that things were slowly but inexorably going out of hands came from someone that had nothing to do with all of that.

Despite all that was happening with Leon and the others, Sora was keeping on seeing Noel every Wednesday. But recently, their meetings weren't as pleasurable as before.

"Can we take a moment to talk?"

Sora knew that when Noel started that way, it was to criticize him. And he didn't like it. "It's about your friends." he then added without giving him the time to answer.

"What do you have against them?" Sora asked, trying (uselessly) to fake a certain degree of indifference.

"Nothing, but I think that what you're doing may put you in trouble."

Sora sighed. "Come on, Noel! We already talked about it, you're making too much of a deal about a few bets at arm-wrestling, what could go wrong?"

"Strange, I didn't remember that you could use baseball bats during arm wrestling. I wonder where you stuff them during the match..."

Sora paused for a moment, having been caught red-handed. "...how do you know?"

"Not certainly because of you, considering that you never invited me to your 'parties'." There may have been a trace of resentment in Noel's voice, but Sora wasn't sure of it.

"I... I didn't think you would've been interested..."

"Is that so? I think it may have something to do with the fact that you're afraid of being seen with me." And this time, Sora was sure that there was no malice in his words: he was merely stating a fact. "Don't worry, I'm not angry and that's not the point. I'm just worried about what could happen to you."

"Again with that? It's just a game!" Sora said rolling his eyes. And Noel clearly didn't like that. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply.

"Ever heard of the Event Horizon?"

Sora looked at his friends, surprised by that unexpected question. "Uhm... isn't that the limit around black holes after which not even the light can escape its gravitational attraction?"

Noel nodded, satisfied. "Yes, it's a limit that, once crossed, you cannot come back from. The Event Horizon is a point of no return."

Sora didn't answer, so Noel continued talking. "Maybe it was a game at the beginning. But that line has been crossed a long time ago. What would you do if someone get seriously hurt? Or if some adults start wondering how all that money comes from?"

A heavy silence fell upon them. It was Sora who broke it, this time.

"Even if I wanted to stop it... I'm not sure I'll be able to at this point."

"Then just stop being part of it!"

"But... my friends..."

"They consider you a friend only if you do what they want?"

"It's not like that..."

"Then how it is?"

"It's easy for you to say!" Sora finally exploded. "You don't care at all about what other people think about you!"

"Well, maybe you care too much about it!"

"It's not my fault if you don't have any friend!"

Sora realized that he had gone too far, as the words were already out of his mouth. "Sorry, I didn't mean..."

Noel simply stood up. "...yeah, I guess you're right, I don't have any friend."

As he started to walk towards the exit, Sora stood up to try and stop him. "I... I thought we were friends."

At those words, the other boy stopped and looked back. And for the first time, Sora realized that his everlasting smile had disappeared from his face. "Curious, I thought the same."

Sora seemed to be, for once, at a loss for words. He observed silently as his friend slowly walked out of the door.

End Notes: This is for you, JH24 ;). I planned this chapter since the beginning of the story, but wasn't sure where to place it. In the end, the only reasonable place -without spoiling half of the story- was close to the end, but I'm quite satisfied with the result. More next time.

Preview: Sora's past: part 2. Things will go wild.

Next Chapter: A Troublemaker Boy's Story - Part 2