Home Is Where the Heart Is (action/adventure)

[Mizukithepanda]

A/N: This is the first part of the prologue (which is two parts) of my new action/adventure story! I have posted this on FF.nazi as well and I'm glad I did because one of my reviewers there was willing to plothash with me and I got most of this story's amazingly complex plot sorted out. I hope y'all like it too....

Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy VIII, or Final Fantasy VII

Summary: Eventually every world that was ever destroyed was brought back and those who had collected at Hollow Bastion over the years were finally sent home. (FFVII/KH/FFVIII crossover)

Prologue

Part 1: Balamb

He walked down the hall, boots clanging against the floor, their sound lost amongst the scrabbling of students moving about their daily routine. They didn’t recognize him. None of them did. For this, he was glad. He wanted to blend in, not be noticed. He brushed a stray strand of choppy brown hair behind his ear. It was long. So much longer than when he had left. It was shoulder-length now with rugged, uneven ends.

He had had to sneak in, past the security and the watchful eyes of his former friends, the friends whom he had watched die one after the other.

Lionheart clanked against his thigh in its sheath and in his fist were two sharp, solid gold shuriken. She had given them to him as a parting gift when the worlds became truly separated. They were her favourite shuriken. She had gotten them made in Hollow Bastion by the gold smith that worked there and had the man inscribe The Great Ninja Yuffie on them. It was what made them so special to him now. He missed her silly, annoying antics, her extreme selfishness, and her thieving nature. A tear tried to escape the confinements of his eye, but he squeezed the golden blades into his hand and willed the tear to stop in its tracks.

A pink ribbon was tied around his upper arm. The ever-sweet woman had given it to him right before the end as well. He missed her mother-like concern for him, her motherly smile, and her tendency to always be there when things were just wrong. He wondered how she would fare without the ribbon to keep her hair in that weird twist that she always had it in.

In one ear was a wolf-shaped earring. Fenerir. The spiky blonde had given this to him the last time he had seen him at the coliseum. “This is Fenerir Squall. It may look like it’s only an earring, but thanks to this I’ve been able to survive lots of tough sh*t,” he had said. Cloud had been one of his best friends. One that he could truly say was his best friend. He had been able to talk to Cloud about almost anything. Whether it be stuff like if there were any girls for him out there or about serious things that were far too personal to talk to anyone else about. When Hollow Bastion had been taken over, Cloud had been left behind and was presumed dead, but he had come back after Ansem had been destroyed only to be hunted down by Hades and forced back into servitude.

A pair of flight goggles hung from his belt. The crude old man had given these to him before he died of lung cancer two years previous. Cid had been a disgusting man truly, smoking like a freight train and cussing worse than the crudest of sailors, but he had been one d**n good ship builder and an even better pilot. Things never were the same after he had died.

Two things were missing from his person however. His pendant and his ring. Griever. He had given those to Yuffie and Aerith as they had parted. Yuffie had looked up at him with tears in her eyes as he placed the thick chain around her neck and allowed her to call him Squall for the first time without correcting her. Aerith had placed the ring on a thin, silver chain and smiled that motherly smile at him. Then a blinding light had consumed them all. When the light cleared he had been standing outside the gates of Balamb Garden, looking his full 30 years of age, every item from his friends and his travels still on his person.

It had looked exactly the same as he had left it. It was even in the same place that Nida had parked it before the heartless came. He had headed towards the gate, but at the instant that he was about to enter, they came out, looking exactly as they had when they had been killed by the heartless. He had ducked behind a corner of the main gate hoping that he wouldn’t be seen. They had walked past him in a hurry to get to the city of Esthar. Why he had no idea, but at least they hadn’t seen him.

It had been easy to get in unnoticed then. Just sneak past the sleeping guard at the entrance gate and avoid anybody he knew while making his way to the commander’s suite.

He reached the elevator and pulled his worn, but still useable keycard out of his short-sleeved jacket. After swiping it, he pressed the button for the third floor and climbed in. He exited and quietly made his way past the headmaster’s office to a door on the left, the commander’s suite.

He was about to swipe the card, but a voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Hey! Who do you think you are? That’s the commander’s room! No one’s allowed in there but the commander!”

It was Nida.

“Nida,” he sighed, his voice gravelly, “I am the commander. It’s me. Squall.”

Nida blinked. “Squall…? But… that’s impossible. You’re far too old to be Squall.”

“Just trust me Nida. I’m Squall.”

He slid the keycard through the lock and entered the room, slamming the door shut behind him. He moved like an old man, unhooking Lionheart from his waist and setting it on the floor. He flopped onto his bed and let the tears fall.

He was home.

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A/N: Squall is not out of character if you're wondering. I mixed his FFVIII and KH personalities so technically he IS in character. I have plothashed this out with Tairako like I said up there and hopefully soon I'll have the next section of the prologue: Wutai. I hope you liked!

Ja ne

Mizuki Kurenaida

[Mizukithepanda]

It makes me sad that no one has "reviewed" this.... oh well. I have a new chapter. (Took me forfuckingever to write...) I'm posting it now...

[Mizukithepanda]

Sorry it's been a very long time again... *bows deeply* I'm so very sorry... luckily this chapter was only finished a few weeks ago... I hope you people like it. ^-^

Part 2: Fragments of Memories (Wutai/Midgar)

She looked around the pagoda with tears in her eyes. Memories bubbled up from long lost places and spilled over the edge of their confinements, blurring what she knew was reality.

“But Shake! I don’t wanna be a lady!” she cried.

The short attendant turned around and grabbed Yuffie’s hand, pulling her through the pagoda.

“Oh but being a lady is fun Yuffie-sama. You’ll get to make beautiful flower gardens and have exciting parties that the whole of Wutai will come to! You’ll get to be married to a strong husband and will get to watch him rise to glory as a…”

“NOOO!” Yuffie screamed. “I don’t wanna be a lady! I wanna be the strong one! I don’t wanna be some pathetic little arm hanger-offer-thing like mommy was! I wanna protect myself!”

Shake looked at Yuffie with some slight disbelief, but his eyes crinkled up in a smile anyways, and he let go of the young child’s arm.

“Of course Yuffie-sama. You will be the strong one of Wutai and bring it back to its former glory, correct?”

“YEAH!!!”

She walked through the halls, shoulders shaking and legs unsteady, looking as though she were about to collapse. The Lionhart pendant reassured her steadiness though as her fingers wrapped around it in a vice. Squall had given it to her at the true separation of the worlds. She missed him already.

A six year old Yuffie jumped around the rocks of the Great Falls, her medium sized shuriken in hand.

“Squaaaaaall! Squaaaaaaaaaaalliiiieee!” she called.

A head covered in feathery strands of brown hair popped over the edge and cold grey-blue eyes locked on her fast moving form.

“What do you want Yuffie?” the fifteen year old Squall asked.

She jumped the last few rocks before landing right next to Squall’s head.

“I wanna play Squallie!”

“Well I don’t want to play Yuffie.”

He sat up and shook out his hair.

“You should go play with someone your own age.”

Yuffie plopped down next to him and said, “But I wanna play with you!”

They sat in silence for a couple of minutes before Yuffie asked, “Hey Squallie, what’s that thingymabobber around your neck?”

He looked at her like she was crazy for asking.

“It’s a pendant. I haven’t taken it off in years.”

Her eyes went wide when he said ‘years’.

“Years Squallie? But how do you take a shower without it getting all rusty and icky?”

Faint annoyance glinted in his eyes, but he answered her anyway, with a question.

“Why do you need to know that?”

“I dunno… I was just wondering. Oh hey! Does it have a name Squallie?”

Squall looked at the pendant, then at the large ring on his finger and back at the pendant.

“Lionhart. The pendant is called Lionhart.”

“What about that ring Squallie? Does it have a name too?”

He nodded.

“It’s called Griever, Yuffie.”

She came to a dead stop in her current hallway of choice when footsteps made themselves known. They clacked with a sound that only wood on tile could make. There wasn’t a time she could remember that someone she knew had worn wooden shoes except during festivals, and she was pretty sure there were no festivals going on today…

She was three this year! That meant she could finally go to the Shichi-Go-San festival! Mommy had even bought her a pretty purple kimono with a green obi and her first pair of traditional wooden sandals for it.

Yuffie danced around while her dressing maids tried to put the kimono on her. It all seemed hopeless until Lady Kisaragi herself stepped in the room.

“Oh Lady Kisaragi! Thank Leviathan! We’re trying to get it on her honestly but she keeps moving around and dancing! Could you please help us?” rambled one of the maids.

Lady Kisaragi smiled at the dishevelled maid and nodded.

“Of course I can. Yuffie-chan! Momma’s gonna help you put on your pretty new kimono now!”

Yuffie bounced over to her mother with the silk kimono half falling off her body and the obi tied haphazardly.

“Here I am Mommy! I really, really like my pretty new kimono too! Isn’t it done good?”

Lady Kisaragi smiled at her daughter.

“It’s almost perfect Yuffie-chan. Let me make it better though, okay?”

“Okay mommy!”

She proceeded to untie the haphazard obi, pull the other side of the kimono over her daughter’s shoulder, and wrap it tightly around her. A smaller obi tied around the tautly wrapped kimono and then the large green obi was tied in a complicated knot to finish it off.

“Now it’s perfect Yuffie-chan! Just don’t get any mud on it when you go out to the shrine, okay?”

“’Kay Mommy!”

Lady Kisaragi turned to leave, but mewled in surprise when she saw what lay at her feet.

“Yuffie-chan! I have one last thing for you to put on!”

Yuffie ran over to her kneeling mother and sat down next to her.

“Oooh! What are those, mommy? They’re made of wood!”

Lady Kisaragi turned to her daughter and said in a mysterious voice, “They’re sandals Yuffie-chan. You put them on your feet.”

Yuffie’s eyes widened.

“Coool!”

She grabbed the wooden sandals and jammed them on her feet, sticking the wrong toes between the thongs that kept them on there. She stood up and danced in them. The clacking of wood on tile filled the room.

“Oooh! They clicky-clack Mommy! They clicky-clack!”

“That they do Yuffie-chan!”

Her breathing sped up in anticipation of who would find her. She could hide. No. She WOULD hide. There was no alternative. She couldn’t face anyone like this.

She was panting heavily now and the clacking was only getting closer and closer. Her eyes squeezed shut with fear while the clacking got so close she could swear it was in her section of the hallway. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, they seemingly turned around and walked the other way, retreating back into the nothingness that was the pagoda.

It was a close one.

After catching her breath, she continued her unsteady walk down the hallway. There had to be somewhere where she could find a safe haven from all of this. There just had to be.

Screams filled the air as Squall dragged a seven year old Yuffie through the streets of Radiant Garden. Black shadows flitted here and there, occasionally rising up from the ground to plunge a long, lanky limb into some unsuspecting person’s chest. There was seemingly nowhere left to go and absolutely no places to hide.

This was why someone like Squall Leonhart was dragging an inquisitive little girl like Yuffie through the village as if their lives depended on it, which it did.

A shadow popped up in front of them and Squall swung the gunblade that was in the hand not dragging Yuffie at it. The shadow made a popping noise and disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

They had to get out of here. They had to get out of here. They had to get out of here!

That was the only thought running through both Squall’s and the – for once – silent Yuffie’s mind.

Something about all of this was distinctly familiar to Yuffie. She remembered the screams and the people disappearing like magic and she remembered others… people that could be called her friends… her enemies. All of them falling one by one, until only she and….

“CLOUD!!!” she screamed.

Squall turned to her in shock, his eyes wide and his ears disbelieving.

“Yuffie? Do you know that punk?”

Yuffie was frantic.

“Cloud! Cloud! Cloud! We gotta find Cloud!” she screeched.

Squall gave a quick glance behind him at the heartless gaining on them and then back at the small girl clutching his hand.

“Come on! This way Yuffie!”

He dragged her in a new direction: the castle.

It was bound to be their last hope for a safe haven.

And to find Cloud.

She couldn’t take anymore. The tears that had been pouring from her eyes as a light rain became a torrential downpour, soaking her face, neck, and clothes like nothing else could. She literally fell to the floor in a pool of her own tears and sobbed more out. It was a pitiful sight if anything, but the figure that had been watching her this whole time did nothing.

There was nothing he COULD do… except go to his superior of course and see what action must be taken upon this girl…. If she was who he thought she was. That was what he decided to do, but first he removed the wooden sandals he had become accustomed to as to not scare the poor girl out of her mind again.

As the tears subsided to the point where she could stand on her own two feet, she got up carefully, trying with all her might not to think of anything related to that. She had to be strong. That much at least, she knew.

The pagoda’s path deviated just up ahead and at one time, maybe she had known which path would take her where, but now that memory was in oblivion and with the disastrous effects the memories she wasn’t trying to call up were having on her, she didn’t want to try and pull it out. So, when she actually got to the fork she just trusted her gut and took the path to the right.

Memories still plagued her, but none were as horrid as her memories of her and Squall’s escape from Hollow Bastion which was once known as Radiant Garden. Rehashing her small, but not so bad memories wasn’t actually as bad once she got used to it. It was almost… joyful in a way, but all of that shattered as she saw who stood in front of her.

Godo…

“Y-Yuffie? Is that you my daughter?”

Godo… Kisaragi…

“Yuffie! I wish for you to use your master ‘treasure hunting’ skills to collect a large amount of this materia for our country of Wutai. We are in desperate need as it will return Wutai to its former glory. Please Yuffie, will you do it?” Godo asked her.

Yuffie bounced up and down, like the hyper 13 year old she was and nodded emphatically.

“‘Course I will pops! I’ll do anything to help Wutai!”

“Then it’s settled. You’ll leave for Junon first thing tomorrow.”

“Ya-Wait! Say WHAT?!!!”

“I said Yuffie; you’ll leave for Junon first thing tomorrow.”

“But… But… That’s so unfair! Can’t I at least have a couple days to get ready?”

“Yuffie… this mission is of utmost importance. You must depart on it immediately.”

The unspoken “you’re not wanted here so get the hell out” rang throughout the room with an eerily silent screeching noise. Yuffie straightened up from the slouching position she found herself in and nodded at Godo sharply.

“Right pops. First thing tomorrow. Guess I should get packing then, huh?”

“That would be appropriate. Chekhov will take you to the docks at 6 AM sharp. Don’t sleep in.”

Yuffie sighed heavily.

“I won’t pops.”

Kisaragi…

The Kisaragi name was well-known in the tiny town of Radiant Garden, if only because of the little girl that was of that family. She always ran around, annoying everybody to death, stealing and cheating and lying people out of their honest savings and hard work. It wasn’t secret that most in the town had a vendetta of some sorts against her; even Yuffie Kisaragi herself knew that, but still she lived her life happily, alone in all of her pursuits.

That’s why when a new person showed up in Radiant Garden, she decided that if this person was young enough, she’d stick to them like glue. She told her parents that as well, but they were less pleased than she thought they would be.

They said that the new boy was fifteen and she would be wise to try and find some children that were her own tender age of six, but she knew that she couldn’t GET a friend her own age. All of the children that were as young as her were simple-minded and boring. All they wanted to do was play silly children’s games, not steal, pillage, and annoy!

With her mind completely made up, she went to see this new boy.

Godo...

The tears fell down her face anew as she stared hard at the man who at one point could have been called her father. He stared back at her too, as if analyzing her, trying to see if she was really here, really like she was, really real. Heart heavy with pain, and eyes overflowing with tears, she broke his gaze and looked to the floor.

“Pops…”

She had to get home. She HAD to get back to the Pagoda where her father was most likely hiding from them. Those creepy crawly little creatures with the antennae and the claws… the ones who reached out to steal people’s hearts… the ones who killed Barrett and Marlene, that dumb cat Nanaki, Reeve, Vincent, Denzel, and those dumb-*ss Turkeys right before her eyes.

That’s why she was yelling at Cid, Cloud, Tifa, anyone on the Sierra who would listen to her.

“Please! Please! We have to get Pops outta there! He’s not that strong! I mean hell, I beat his *ss into the ground and I don’t have even a quarter of his experience with fighting! Please! Cid! Turn the ship to Wutai! I have to get my old man!”

Cid never answered her with words, because after about ten straight minutes of listening to her plead with all her heart, he turned the ship around and headed for that huge island way on the other side of the world at full speed.

My… my…

Cid didn’t dare actually LAND the ship for fear that the shadows would jump up and sink through the foot-thick steel outer walls and the countless inner walls to take the remaining survivors’ hearts. Instead, he flew about 6 feet above the top floor of the pagoda and opened a hatch in the bottom.

“Go on brat. Get your old man and hurry back. We’re leaving if you’re not back in ten minutes. That’s about all it’ll take for them to learn to jump up here and kill us all.”

“Right Cid,” she said, “Ten minutes. I’ll be back with or without him, because… I… don’t wanna die either…”

“Good thing too kid. If YOU wanted to die, well then… we’d probably all have to make sure we were still sane.”

She laughed.

“Sure thing Cid. Best be on my way…”

She jumped out of the hatch.

He wasn’t on the top floor, because technically that was reserved for her. He wasn’t on any of the floors below either. In fact, nobody was anywhere to be seen at all. Chekhov, Staniv, Shake, Gorky, Pops… all gone.

There were no bodies either. Not one shrine maid or attendant or civilian was anywhere within the complex. She ran out to where the path forked and turned right, her father’s private quarters.

Shadows popped up all around her, reaching, grabbing, and missing, only to jump at her and get sliced in two by her Conformer. She burst through the rice paper door and stopped short, her breath catching in her throat, her heart forgetting to beat.

He, Godo, her old man, pops, was standing there, a shadowy, clawed hand sticking through his chest, clamping like a vice around what she could only presume to be his heart.

“No!!! Pops! Daddy! Let go of him you freaky little bug!”

She ran over and pulled on the arm in his chest. At first, it wouldn’t move, but then, with a sickening pop, it came out, her father’s heart in hand.

“Yuffie… please… forgive me for being such a horrible father. Believe me when I say… that I never… meant… to… hurt you…”

“Pops!”

His body faded away and the heart held in the shadow’s hand rose up into the air and disappeared the same way.

She fell to her knees and cried.

Father…

She stared up into the now glassy eyes of her parents, Leila and Michael, as they faded into thin air and their hearts rose up, consumed by those with the darkness. The shadows that had taken them advanced on her, preparing to strike, preparing to take her heart along with theirs…

Godo’s eyes widened as he looked at the woman in front of him. It was her… it had to be… but… at the same time, it couldn’t… because his daughter, his Yuffie, was a gangly, giggly, mischievous little thief with a vehement love for the glowing orbs called Materia. This girl… this girl was a young woman, a woman who had far more than her share of troubles, a woman who was strong as a lion, yet defeated as a rabbit carcass hanging out of a wolf’s jaws. This wasn’t his daughter, his Yuffie. This… was an impostor.

She fell to her knees, tears flowing like rivers, dripping, dropping onto the ground in small puddles that were soaked up just as quickly as they had gotten there.

For she was home,

And she was miserable.

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In Midgar, a fairly short man with gravity-defying blonde spikes for hair, unnaturally blue eyes, a tattered red cape, and a metal hand covered in a leather glove stood in front of the door of a closed bar. He could hear children’s voices inside as well as that of a woman. None of them had noticed him at their door yet and he hoped that they never would. Not that he would truly care if they did notice him. He was nearly beyond caring, since the only people he cared about were either dead or scattered in places far away from him.

His hand reached out as if to rap on the door to be let in, but it retreated just as quickly and the man, with his metal hand and gravity defying hair, merely turned around and walked away into the sunlight.

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A/N: Again.... I'm really sorry this took so long... My friend Tally says that I have a way with angst. *snorts* It's rather funny actually. Well, til the next time that I decide to show my rather boring face around here.

Mizuki Kurenaida