A/N: Yay, I’m back! So, I decided (for no real reason other than boredom) to write a fanfic the likes of which have never been seen! Sure, it’s a Kingdom Hearts SI. Those have been done. Well, this one is based on the concept that there’s an entire PLANET full of people who know about Kingdom Hearts (wave guys, that’s you) and that to get one of these fabulous people anywhere requires something known as ‘The End of the World’. Chilling thought when you consider that it’s OUR world.

This fic is rated T for swearing, violence, and a SI who could almost be Cid’s illegitimate lovechild.

I do not own Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, or any Squenix products. I own one copy of Kingdom Hearts, a decent internet connection, and I know the web address of the Kingdom Hearts wiki. I also created Fionna and Ed, and claim ownership of this fanwork and the little ball of lint in my left pocket. That is all.

Enjoy!

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Requiem of A Heart

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Prelude:

In Which The World Ends or The First Two Days

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‘I remember once, when I was old enough to think these sorts of things and young enough to not know that it was a tender subject, I asked my father why God was so cruel if he was supposed to be kind. He didn’t know what to say, and neither did my mother or any other adult I asked. No one wanted to tell me the answer, not when my life was whittling away with every second and my body betrayed me slowly but surely with every passing breath. It’s not fair to damn a child to die from the first day, rather surprisingly cruel how I even grew at all. Fairness? That’s not in the nature of gods. ’ – Fionna Preston

Wouldn’t it be so wonderful if there was an afterlife? What if the only thing keeping you from finding your place in life was the fact that you hadn’t died yet? Is the universe out to kill you or is it all just a figment of your paranoid imagination? These are the sorts of questions that one normally doesn’t ask oneself, as one usually is quite content with their lot in life. But there are exceptions to this rule, and Fionna Preston was most definitely one of them. If anyone would ask her how she felt about the concept of dying, this girl would have laughed and said she was just biding her time patiently, didn’t feel quite right in this life of corruption and decay. Not even the cruelest person could blame her if they knew her reasons, watched her try her hardest to live despite all her own body’s best efforts to make her die. Fionna was sick, diagnosed with a disease no one could figure out, let alone cure. It had started off so well, a healthy little girl with the brightest emerald eyes and the prettiest golden hair, but faded into dire misery when she started coughing up blood into her pillow.

Yes, Fionna Preston was destined to die and didn’t mind at all. It was with deft precision that she killed her relationships with her friends, burned all her bridges and left herself alone on her proverbial little island. She was determined to spare anyone pain from her loss, folded her skeleton fingers around all her hopes of survival and squeezed until the pulp of any fruits of labor dribbled off her hands and squished into the tile floor by her rather delicate feet. Fionna was dying with all the dignity she could muster, went to all her appointments and suffered every needle and pill, just so she could listen with quiet grace as the soon to be changed doctor would gravely tell her parents that there was no cure for their beloved daughter. The years went by and Fionna grew, lanky and bony with a pale beauty that made her seem to be a walking corpse. There were days when she couldn’t look at herself in the mirror without screaming in her shaky soprano, days when she wouldn’t even take a bath because she couldn’t stand to let anyone see how the bones stuck out in all the strangest places.

She went to school in clothes three sizes too big, held it all together with a belt and a prayer. Her classmates called her funny names because she couldn’t even carry her own books, sometimes couldn’t make her fingers bend around a pen long enough to write notes. After awhile, no one cared that she sat out on the sidelines in gym class, had to be rushed to the hospital if she so much as got tapped in the head with a basketball. But Fionna tried sometimes, when no one was around to watch her falter. She danced with the radio turned down soft at two in the morning, didn’t care so much for the look as much as she did for the feeling of wind under her limp platinum hair and the sensation of elated freedom. It wasn’t that Fionna was a particularly graceful teenager, but for some reason she always managed to move like a bird trapped on the ground, and she found that she longed for the wind more than anything else in the world.

The day Fionna Preston turned sixteen was to be her final visit to this particular doctor, she didn’t say a word as they marked her new statistics down –five and a half feet and still hasn’t managed to break a hundred pounds-, didn’t make a fuss even when they underestimated her vein and she went dizzy with blood loss. Her parents dealt with their grief loudly and sent her out into the hallway so they could vent their frustrations on the staff, couldn’t bear to look at their ghost daughter as she slipped out. She didn’t say a word as she kept walking down the hall, listened to her grey sneakers squeak on the too polished linoleum. It was like something called to her, whispered promises of a fate unknown and untested. Something sweet and good, a power that tasted of green things and life, and the legacy of some creator older than time. But it’s more than enough to sweep her off her feet and give her a shove in the proper direction of karmic rightness and justice.

Karma had a funny way of being a window on the fifth floor of St. Michael’s Center for Disease Therapy. But Fionna doesn’t mind... she’s far too busy feeling her blood ooze out on the concrete, wondering why her limbs were arranged so very gracelessly -oh look, there’s a blue jay-, and most importantly, why she can hear screams and sirens –tick tock goes the clock before it- stops.

The world’s fuzzy, doesn’t want to focus so she can see it bleed away into darkness, carried away by tendrils of glowing green. She feels better for some reason, can move her body and look around without feeling that light headed elation from before. It doesn’t make sense, watching fleck of light drift away into an unending span of green, and she rubs her hand across her eyes as if to rub out all imperfections. She blinks slowly, almost like she can’t remember how, and lets golden amber relay unclouded information to her steadily panicking mind. Gathering her feet –stronger now, what happened to the corpse?- beneath her, she gets up, collects herself and looks around. Her once blue shirt is dark purple in places, clumps of blackish red in spots she isn’t sure she wants to think about, light blue jeans torn and frayed. She looks like she fell from a cliff into a blender, but that can’t possibly be right because she’s just fine now, no bones broken and only her clothes damaged. Its instinct as she takes stock of her surroundings, turns around and studies a strange statue of the Virgin Mary.

It glows so brightly as she walks towards it that she has to cover her eyes to give herself some darkness before her fragile eyes burn out and leave her blind. There’s a flash so bright she stops and looks away, notices with a great amount of shock that she’s standing on a lake of glowing green-blue, walled in by so many blossoming cherry trees it’s a wonder she missed them. She’s quiet, almost reverent as she looks back to where the marble and alabaster statue had been. The Virgin Mary’s got all kinds of strange armor on, and she glows and is perfect, and probably isn’t the Virgin Mary at all. Fionna can’t help but want to touch her, make sure she’s real and not quite dreaming up this wonderful amazing place.

“You don’t belong here anymore, daughter of Earth. It is time to end this dream…” Her voice hurts, makes Fionna want to clap her hands to her head to block out the sound of baying hounds and a thousand breaking mirrors. It is in that moment that she realizes that this woman is not the Virgin Mary and may just possibly end her life with that wicked looking sword of hers. In this same moment, Fionna realizes that may actually be the least of her concerns. Because this is a GOD and there is a god out there who ordained she needed to die. Her heart almost stops at this epiphany.

“Please… let me go home.” She’s not crying, tightens her fingers and marvels to herself how it doesn’t hurt, how the bones aren’t cutting out of her skin and shredding her hands to pieces. It’s strange, how the fury builds low down in her belly and simmers her heart to a rapid boiling rage when she’s never felt this way before and shouldn’t even know the name of this feeling. “That’s… all I want. Please, let me go home.”

My name is Edwina Stange, and at this moment I have no idea what my English professor has just said. To be perfectly honest, I don’t really need to know. Over the past half a century, the interpretation of William Shakespeare hasn’t changed a single bit, and this is my third nonconsecutive year covering this material in an academic setting. Oh, right, I was supposed to be introducing myself. I’m nineteen years old, a measly five foot two inches tall, a hundred some odd (remind me later to step on a scale) pounds, and my most defining features are my hair and my chest. You’d think that having golden brown eyes would be enough to get me noticed, but no. Oh it’s been confirmed, my most noticeable feature is much simpler. I give Tifa Lockheart herself a run for her ridiculously sized breasted money. So I cover up my massive chest with as much unflattering punk rocker gear as I can find, paint my chewed on nails black, and bought the hippest geek chic black frames for my would-be-blinder-than-a-bat-without glasses. I’ve had my bleached almost blonde hair chopped and whacked (repeatedly, it could have been a weed whacker at work for all I care) so that I could, with proper application of a flat iron, have what is known in the geek community as ‘Sasuke chicken head’ and ‘a really odd reverse bob’ to the rest of the world. As a result of my rather unorthodox appearance, it can be inferred that I am not the nicest of people and the very style of my writing could be said to be solid proof.

I’m about as happy with my lot in life as a lobster is before it’s thrown in the pot kicking and screaming. There’s something incredibly off with the world, something that’s not quite clicking right in the hustle and bustle of the day. It might be that I’ve spent the better part of the lesson writing what is known in the writer community as a ‘drabble’, might be that my professor has just mentioned a quiz next session. Or it might be the fact that not a single one of my so called friends is paying the slightest bit of attention to me when I announce my glorious presence in the cafeteria.

So I clear my throat rather loudly and wait. I’m not very good at waiting.

They’re all staring at the television, eyes near glued to the pixels. This isn’t uncommon, considering how we’re a bunch of avid gamers and geeks. What is uncommon is the fact that they’re staring at the news like it’s somehow the end of the world. No one’s saying anything, no one’s calling for the remote. Not even our dire archenemy of All Things Fun, the manager of said cafeteria, is trying to get us to move. So I pay attention.

“At six forty five this morning, reports from all over the world were called in to police and media stations. From Hollywood to Tokyo, witnesses are claiming to have seen strange black shadow creatures moving in broad daylight. Happy April Fool’s Day everyone. Now on to today’s breaking news…”

“Back that the fuck up right quick. Shadow creatures all around the world don’t count as real news? Silly Americans…”

“ED!” And like that I’m noticed, one of the crowd all over again. My best gal has her arms wrapped around me like I’ll float away in the breeze if she lets go, which I have been known to do upon extreme boredom. Some of my friends are frantic, some of them look like they’re contemplating cracking out the booze at eleven in the morning and swapping mixer recipes, and the rest are breaking off into discussion groups. This is college and we’ve seen worse things for Psychology finals than the news has ever popped up with.

But we’re all spooked and trying to hide it as best as we can.

“So… I’m going to take this to mean I’m sleeping with my sword out of the box today.” I shrug nonchalantly at the exasperated looks this gets me and grimace just a little bit at the solid slap to the back of my head. “Oooooww. Come on, if I did it for a B horror flick, I’m gonna do it for national news. I’m paranoid about that shit.” But I’m grinning and laughing at the same time, and if I’m not even taking it seriously why should anyone else?

We get kicked out after lunch and laze around upstairs for awhile before packing it in and calling it a day. I sleep on the bus as per usual, headphones on and music cranked up as load as it can go. I don’t even think about it until I get home, head in the clouds and desperate to finish at least half a chapter in my masterpiece. I’ve got better things to do than consider that an elaborate joke could even possibly be reality. Because this is the modern world, there’s no room in logic and science for fairies and magic. And just like that a little piece of me dies away.

I slept with a long green and white cardboard box right next to my bed, within easy reach of even my child sized hands.

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Tuesday is double Bio and life drawing, my nice way of saying that I’ll be spending the better part of five hours between lecture and a lab full of chemicals before spending another two and a half drawing other people’s faces in weird contortions. I go on auto-pilot for about half the day, burn down my entire college, kill myself in a blaze of glory, and end this story before it has even begun.

What kind of a lame death would that be? Did you seriously think I’d go out like that? Blaze yes, chemical based NO.

In reality, it was a lecture on light waves and why on earth you need to know about it. I spent the entire time wondering just why my professor printed everything in a size that required squinting and a magnifying glass while scribbling notes like a woman possessed. The things I do to attain a 3.0 amaze everyone I know… vast majority of the time. It’s like people have come to the conclusion that I have no idea what I’m doing. We ignore how I usually don’t… vast majority of the time. But I pay attention enough to get the general idea, note the page numbers to read in secret later and sigh in relief as I stretch my arms in front of me and feel the rather pleasant popping that means my fingers have gone back to normal functions again. I haven’t fallen asleep this lecture (I should have taken that to be a harbinger of what was to come) and I can hear quite a few people commenting about it behind me. While I do sit in front, there’s not a thing my professor has been able to do to keep me awake save mentioning that the material might be on a test. So I grin like a jackal as I slide my notebook in my bag and my pen back behind my ear, hidden in my hair to be pulled out later.

Lab is actually cancelled today, nothing more than a glorified study session that not even the professor wants to mandate and thus not something I need to go to. So I walk in silence for awhile, rub my nose when it itches from the sun and push my glasses up with two fingers to the bridge. It’s a short little walk, barely even four minutes from the science building to the cafeteria and only another half a minute before I reach my friends again. But today is the same as yesterday, only much worse.

“Authorities are unsure of the details surrounding these various disappearances and media coverage is being withheld at this time. We have been told that every site that reported these strange creatures has somehow been attacked. Unofficial reports say that not a single person, pet, or living creature has been found. The National Guard has been deployed to deal with the situations in Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Seattle, and Washington DC. The President was safely evacuated on Air Force One this afternoon and will be addressing the public around 4 PM Eastern Time. Officials have warned for everyone in the affected areas to evacuate immediately to designated shelters-“

“We’re all going to die.”

“ED!!” There it is, that ever useful smack to the back of my head that is really going to help the situation. But I don’t care right now, because the word ‘Dallas’ left that nice lady’s mouth and that is not comforting in the slightest to me or anyone else around us. My little group of friends hasn’t said a single word, hasn’t done anything but look at the screen with expressions of horror and fury on their faces.

Because we all know how this goes.

You can call us gamers anything you like, but we’ve all at least heard of this before. Whether it be zombies or monsters, lost technology or the invading darkness, we have all at least watched the struggles of a hero against the end of the world. In this case, every single one of us knows exactly what this ‘situation’ is and exactly how wrong it’s going to go. There’s a loud clattering sound as one of the group misses the table and drops her fork on the floor, eyes wide and mouth gaping like a fish as she tries so hard not to panic. I take a deep breathe, close my eyes and at least try and seem calm.

“Bullets don’t work. Hand to hand doesn’t work. Swords work. Sharp pointy objects work. Keyblades work. MAGIC works. If it touches your heart you’re dead. If it hits you too hard, you’re dead. We’ve got no potions, ethers, drive limits, magic, elixirs, keyblades, antidotes, tents, or AP skills. No one would believe any of us if we popped up and went ‘hey, these are people’s Hearts and they would like to assimilate you like the Borg’. Anyone want to take a guess how royally screwed we are?”

By this time I’m pinching the skin on the bridge of my nose and trying so hard to stay calm that I’m almost squeaking with effort. I’m the one with the strategy guides near memorized, sick and twisted methods how to smash Heartless and Nobodies into little fizzles of dark splatters and magic ether. It’s always Ed they ask when they can’t figure out the meaning to the random Easter Eggs, Ed who speculates how the next game is going to go or how one piece from the prior will work in the new. That’s why I’m useful, why I’m the Role-playing Queen who talks too much for her own good. Someone puts a hand on my arm and I don’t even look up as I keep rattling off everything that is going to go wrong.

“Oh, might as well just run away then. Can’t exactly fight Heartless without any of that. Oh god no. That’s like stabbing your shadow in the anatomical face and praying it leaves you alone. If it’s a Nobody though, oh have fun. That’s a BODY. It bleeds and it takes damage, even if it is made out of darkness and runs around naked while coated in another layer of darkness. Oh god, we’re all going to DIE.”

This is the problem when I rant. When I rant, I come up with the horrible things that can go wrong, should go wrong, and definitely WILL go wrong. Every time I say something mildly amusing, something equally bad happens. For this reason alone I don’t go with my instinct and judo throw the owner of the hand now clamped on my mouth over my shoulder. It’s a gross invasion of my personal space, yes, but sometimes people just need to shut someone up immediately.

Someone reaches a hand up and turns off the television and that’s enough of that for now.

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My sword is the best I can manage on a college student’s budget. Forty inches of black carbon monosteel, wood, and cotton katana in a shiny black gloss sheath. Twenty eight inches of one and a quarter inch wide blade, sharpened and polished to ever constant battle readiness. I know it won’t cut armor, probably couldn’t match a proper katana in battle at all. My katana is a ninja’s blade, designed for quiet stealth on dark nights and as disposable and featureless as the fighter behind it. Its light, barely even costs me any effort to use, and if this goes the way I think it is, this katana is going to be my life. And right now, my life is balanced tied to my pants, banging into my left hip as I stand on my front porch and just wait.

Dallas is two hours drive away, one dark portal and a lucky shot from my front steps. And I live in the fringes of society, in a rich little suburb off the suburbs. My home is in the boondocks and I know it, too far away for police to be of any help and too spoiled to even contemplate fighting for themselves. This is sort of unfair, as my entire street is full of mothers and their children around age six. Not a single one of them can help it that all their husbands and fathers have gone off to war, off fighting the good fight in Iraq somewhere. I close my eyes and lean back, feel my corduroy newsboy cap stick on the rough brick pillar behind me. My house is nice in a Texas colonial sort of way, all imposing brickwork and far too much lawn for its own good. I nod at a little girl in the street, tilt my head towards her house and smile to myself when she just laughs and goes home. It’s a mark of how well known I am that she doesn’t even glance at the sword strapped to my belt loops.

I’m dressed to the nines for the occasion, staring at the ever darkening purple and black sky from under my black cap. I’ve turned up the fake fur collar on my silky black pseudo bomber jacket, rolled down the cuffs so the fluff could cover my bony little wrists. There’s a black corset vest with silvery metal clasps and zipper all up the front under the jacket, under that is a rather nice looking white blouse, and its light enough where I can breathe just fine and still have enough give in it to move. I pulled out my sturdiest looking jeans, thrown on my combat boots and tied them extra well like my father taught me when I was just a little girl. And just because I like being girly I threw on a thin black lace choker and a simple silver band on the middle finger of my left hand, my prized Final Fantasy 12 save crystal earrings firmly pinned in. Normally I prefer fighting in the comfort of my well broken in and somewhat disheveled looking tshirts and yoga pants. But this isn’t a normal kind of fight. This is a fight you go in with full armor and walk out either a monster or a vastly changed man. Since I don’t own armor, this will have to do.

The door opens behind me, my mother pokes her head outside and just stares at me. “They’re saying on the news that there’s a dead zone from here to Dallas. And this means you have to stand on the porch with… is that a sword?”

“Mom, you do realize something extremely bad is going to happen tonight, right?”

“… Have you lost your mind?”

“Creepy black monsters, everyone who sees them is GONE, the sky is purple and it’s only five, and oh YEAH, we seem to have lost our trashcan to the rather sudden storm.” True to my word, our dark green plastic trashcan (city provided so we don’t exactly care so much when cars back over it) has just gone bouncing down the street along with part of out neighbor’s roof.

“… Do you want dinner or are you going to watch the world end?”

“Do you want to die because I let the Heartless in the house now or later?”

“... I’ll grab you something from the kitchen.” She closes the door even as I laugh to myself, grip my fingers on the hilt of my katana and sniffle. It’s hard knowing the world is going to end, harder still knowing that even if you could, you can’t save everyone. When it comes to Heartless you can only ever save yourself and pray that everyone you love comes out all right. There’s a rather long and silent pause as I stand at my door, trying so hard not to cry.

The door opens again and this time my mother comes outside, pulls me to her and hugs me like she knows how serious this is. “Edwina, you know I love you, right?” And I just tuck my chin on her shoulder, let go of my sword and just breathe in that vanilla flower smell that has always been her perfume. She sniffles and then I laugh a bit, squeeze my eyes shut so tight so I can’t cry.

“Yeah. Love you too Mom.”

Then she backs up, slips something metal and cold around my neck and backs off with a smile. “Those are your father’s. I want them back when you’re done with this madness.”

“Yes ma’am. Hehe… When this is over, think we can go out to eat?” I’ve got one eye on the sky and the rest of my attention on my mom, a hand resting on my hilt and the other one just itching to go. A normal person would be screaming and running away by now, but not me. Running away won’t solve anything at this point, won’t put off my death for more than a moment. What’s a metal door to the darkness? A wood one? I can stand here and wait for them to come to me for a fight or I can stay in there and hide with my mom and die.

The wind’s spinning now, pulls at the dark clouds and sucks them away into a purple sky. Its so quite I could hear a pin drop, feels like even time has just stopped. “Mom, go inside and lock the door. Go sit in the closet with the lights on and the biggest kitchen knife you can find. Stab anything that doesn’t look human. Don’t ask, just go. I’ll see you on the other side of Darkness. Head to Hollow Bastion, because that’s where I’ll be.” I push her inside when she doesn’t move fast enough, grin one last time while I close the door on her. And then I turn on a heel and walk down the driveway into the street.

Little clumps of shadow are following me, and I’m trying my best not to run and lose them. My entire life is on the line here and that simple fact makes a cold sweat break out on my skin. I don’t want to die here in the dark. I want to die when I’m old and grey, asleep in my bed where nothing can touch me and no one can see. Either that or I want to die where everyone can see, young and in my prime and struck down by battle. This… this is not how I want to go. I grip my fingers around the hilt and pull it out with a stifled whisper of smooth metal, turn, and face the things.

Heartless are not pretty. They are not cute, cuddly, or transparent. They smell like a cemetery and a church in one, move like disjointed robot insects, and there’s never just one. Heartless are everything you were afraid lived under your bed and worse because you can see them even in the dark. Those yellow eyes people draw them with? Those glow. Wait, glow is a bad word for that. Heartless eyes are two identical spots that burn, two little suns that by rights should light up the entire street but somehow can’t even illuminate what passes for a Heartless face. They fall apart and put themselves back together in an instant, little puddles of moving wrong that can’t exist but do. And I have to fight these things.

I throw up in my mouth out of fear and swallow the acrid bile back down, can’t spit it out because they’re going to jump me the moment I move.

Three basic Heartless. Just three. Not a score or a legion, just three little Heartless that only come up to my knee. And they come at me, slide over the ground as flat shadows even as I grip my sword with two hands and pray that I’ve seen enough samurai anime to make this work. I don’t need to be good at this, don’t need to have a technique or even a hint of skill. All I need right now is to find out how to kill three Heartless with a katana before they suck my heart out and make me one of them. I place my feet instinctively in the taekwondo ready stance, shift my weight so that I can compensate for the leg long sword in front of me. I refuse to die here.

The first one jumps me, dark little claws intending to take my head off before I can do anything against it. All I can think of is the simple step to the side and block move my sensei has drilled into me from day one. She always complained I never moved far enough. Well, seeing as how a high block with a sword somehow turns into a rather impressive sort of aerial stabbing slice, I suppose I can’t complain about it. It dies in a screaming wail that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, explodes in a gush of sticky black something and little lumps of hard matter that I really don’t want to think about right now.

The other two move in a strange and disjointed concert, one slides into my shadow to attack from the back as the other one comes headlong at me. I react with instinct, jump to the left and swing wide for the homerun. The Heartless explode like the first, two little glowing hearts rising out of the gore to join the third before winking out of existence. All I can do is scan the ground for more little clumps of wrong, sword upright while I hold myself precariously on the edge between pissing my pants from fear and screaming in feral rage. A sharp sound breaks the stagnant silence, shocks me enough to make me spin on the balls of my feet and point my sword in the general direction. Someone’s applauding, and judging from the hairs rising all over, I’m going to guess this person is not my friend.

“Well, well, well. Looks like you little Earth dwellers aren’t so pacifistic after all.” It’s a male voice, one that slides over consonants and vowels like a lover’s caress. A voice that’s masculine and proud, far too proud for this night at the end of my world.

“And who the hell are you to say that huh? You don’t even have the balls to show your face to a pacifistic little Earth girl!”

The minute I say it I regret it.

He laughs, one of those creepily sexy arch-villain laughs that mean this person is important to an evil plot and you had best not like him because you and your Keyblade are going to be smashing him to bits relatively shortly. But I don’t have a Keyblade. I’ve got a cheap katana that hasn’t got a name and I have about as much of a clue how to use it as a sushi chef can bake a cake. Oh, I am so going to die. He steps out from the shadows, but there’s no real point.

“Oh wow. From the shadows rises the cloaked Mysterious Stranger. So, how many evil villain clichés are you going to be following today Mister ‘I Serve the Darkness and Will Be Eaten by It’?” I roll my eyes, sounding as caustic as I possibly can under the conditions.

“Brave words from someone whose world is going to fall to my power.”

“Minions. You have too many. Do your own work for once.”

He just laughs, walks around me in a slow circle as if he’s assessing both the damage to his ego and my ability to beat him off. It’s really creepy how he walks, like he’s not quite sure why he’s on the ground instead of in the air where a cloaked weirdo like him belongs. “Your Heart is strong. You’ll make a good Heartless one day.”

“Or I could kill you now and save the world from your monologue. I like that plan BETTER!” And on that note I rush at him, sword level with my eyes and not wavering as I push my feet against the ground in a distance eating sprint. “HORYAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!”

The last thing I see before the world goes to pieces is a swirl of purple, blue, and then pure unrelieved black. Well… that didn’t go as planned.

Fionna’s eyes go wide as a dark figure blasts into existence in the sky next to her, hand goes to her mouth as it lands, curses, and stabs a thin black sword into the ethereal lake of green-blue below them for balance. Little shards of darkness are still flaking off the figure as it stands, pulls the sword loose and sheathes it in one furious move.

“God damn cloaked ASSHOLE!” The figure is a girl, one with a pretty voice that’s just a bit scratchy from screaming so much and rises in a sort of fevered anger that honestly frightens Fionna enough to make her shrink away from her. The girl notices her then, turns her head just enough to look at Fionna and just smiles at her. There’s black splattered on her cheek and her glasses are sliding down her nose, but she looks so nice that it’s hard to imagine she said such horrible things.

“Yo. I’m Ed.” There’s confidence in her voice, a sort of open friendliness that Fionna has never really had pointed in her direction. Ed is like the wind, a harsh winter tempest or a spring breeze whenever it suits her, and it’s rather shocking.

“F-Fionna.”

“It is time for the dream to end, daughters of Earth.” And there’s that terrible voice again, drags the two girls back down to reality and forces them to stare at the race-less beauty in front of them. She sounds a bit impatient, like they’re really running out of time in this glowing plane.

“Uh… lady? You do know the world’s ending, right?” But the ethereal woman has no patience, points her sword tip at Fionna. Neither of them seem to blink as Ed slides between the two and clumsily draws her own sword. The goddess, for what else could she be in this place, frowns at this fumbling little fool in displeasure.

“You have a long way to go and no time to get there. One of you is dead and the other is dreaming in darkness, and you would turn away my help? Foolish children… But you must wake and end this dream. Take us back to Kingdom Hearts and the way it once was. And this… is all I can do before I must pass into shadow and despair.”

Fionna feels light all of a sudden, can feel her hair fan out behind her in a wind that only seems to affect her. She reaches a hand out to Ed, feels her fingers slip through the black clad girl as she fades. Ed turns, screams wordlessly as she too reaches out and tangles her warm fingers with Fionna’s frozen ghostly ones. “NO!” But it’s too late, for the goddess has guided Ed’s sword and plunged it through Fionna, ignored her soundless screams of agony even as the ghostly girl fades away in a flash of light. The sword itself glows bright white for a moment before the light subsides and the blade becomes just a little bit heavier and silver tinted.

“Your sword will sever any chain, break any binding, cut a path through even the most impossible. It is the body, soul, and heart. Neither of you will ever be alone again, for you will always have each other. Go now, daughters of Earth!”

And before Ed can even voice a protest, the goddess waves her porcelain hand and the world empties out beneath her feet, leaving her in unending darkness once more.

-----------------

My body shakes, like someone is attempting to shake me awake. Really, people should know better by now exactly how badly I react to this sort of thing. I grumble sleepily, pull on their arm so they’re unbalanced and force them to fall over beside me while I wrap my own arms around theirs as my captive. “Mmm… Ten more minutes Mom.” This new pillow of mine is a bit too hard for my tastes, smells too much like machine oil and metal to be even remotely comfortable. But I burrow my head in the warmth anyway and fall back asleep like only I can.

“-dammit girl, don’t laugh!”

There’s suddenly a very large clanging sound far too close to my head to be comfortable, jolting me awake and making me cling to my nice warm pillow with a dead man’s grip. “Dammit Mom, sleep is important shit! Leave me the hell alone and let me go the fucking hell back to fucking sleep!” There’s wonderful blessed silence and I’m all prepared to go back to sleep. But then my ‘pillow’ clears its throat, making me sit up and look… and then scream like some pervert’s in my bed as I back up as much as possible, falling off the bed in the process.

“FUCK! SORRY! SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!”

Then there’s laughter, two different sets of girlish laughter accompanied by a gruff manly sort of chuckle. I pull myself to my feet, brushing my jeans off and attempting to wipe the drool out of the corner of my mouth with my blouse sleeve. I’m really not good at these ‘morning’ things, and I get this sneaking suspicion that I’m missing something important. A quick look down tells me exactly what that ‘something’ is. “Shit, where’s my sword?!?”

“Girl, calm the hell down before you hurt yourself or somebody else.”

My head jerks automatically towards the man on the bed I just fell out of, takes in the sturdy black shoes and blue pants, the orange hued stomach wrap and white shirt. Hell, there’s even a toothpick in the man’s mouth. “Oh… shit. I just used you as my pillow.”

“You even drooled on him! Hahahaha, funniest thing I’ve ever seen!” So I turn around, make it as far as a flash of pink and brown, blue and khaki green. My eye twitches slightly, which makes my hair flop into my eyes and covers my vision with silky blonde. All I can do is stand there and stare, pointing like an idiot and gaping like a fish.

“Yuf- Ci- Aer-? HUH? OH MY FUCKING GOD I DROOLED ON CID!?!?” Mercifully, the world washes out in a wonderful screen of darkness, takes my exhausted mind out of the clearly overwhelming situation. I don’t even register that I never hit the floor, or the looks passed over my head.

“Hey Squallie, think the Heartless left her in the Darkness too long?”

A/N: And that’s it for the first chapter!! Did you like it? Yeah? See that little green script down there that says ‘Review’? Push it and tell me what you thought! Please? I shall endeavor to do my best and answer any questions you have…. Unless it’s a spoiler. Then you’ll get some odd commentary on the weather.

--- LdL