Kingdom Hearts fic: Potentials - Chapter 1
Jan. 20th, 2020 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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museficAs the organization teases a new conflict that could be especially dangerous for Riku, and corporate control tightens, Kairi begins to realize that her employers do not have her best interests - or those of the world - at heart.
In chapter 1: Corridor and Keyblade encounter something new on patrol.
Confidential: For Defenders of the Light internal circulation only
Radiance
Previous alias: Starchild
Age: presumed 23
Age of power manifestation: 6 or earlier
Civilian identity: Kairi Uchida
Hero type: Dimensional
Power set: Generates light, which she then has minor control over. The generation seems to be unconscious at its base level, though she can choose to manifest more or less. The light she generates is visual only (no heat or other physical substance,) though she can control its brightness, movement, and sometimes color. With training her control has increased. She does not seem to have any control over light that she does not generate.
Profile: Appeared as a child on the night of a meteor shower. Speculated to have come from another world or dimension, she had already manifested powers, despite appearing approximately 6 years old. Has no memories of her life before her appearance in this dimension, though efforts are being made to help her recover them. Was raised for a time within the Defenders of the Light organization, but was ultimately placed for adoption with the Uchida family. Was given the Hero name “Starchild”, as one of the few child-Heroes in the world. Changed this to “Radiance” at the age of 16 to cultivate a more mature image. She teams up most frequently with Keyblade and Corridor, and seems to have a close friendship with both.
The radio signal lacked the crystal clear quality of the official Defenders of the Light transmissions, the ones that would be cleaned up and polished and re-edited for broadcast. That was to be expected, since no one outside of Headquarters was allowed to access those channels. Of course, they also weren’t allowed to use their own unofficial radio devices; that would be even more sternly frowned upon than hacking into the official ones.
Fortunately, while Headquarters scanned for unauthorized devices (ostensibly to prevent any villainous groups from spying on Heroes, but probably more to protect against tabloids attempting to get story scoops), their scans were aimed at particular types of technology. Some long-retired Heroes had devised a low-tech radio system that didn’t show up on scans.
The loss in quality was an unfortunate side effect of tech that would escape notice. But still, Kairi was grateful to hear the shifting and rustling of motion, the jarring of footfalls interspersed with static, because it was confirmation that the other two were doing all right. They couldn’t speak to her directly, not without it being picked up by their official transmission devices and prompting questions from Headquarters, but they’d say things for her benefit sometimes, letting her follow along with the action. She did the same when she was on patrol, and one or both of them was sitting home.
“Nothing yet,” Corridor’s voice cracked over the connection. “Let’s move to the next building.”
“Sure thing,” Keyblade responded, and Kairi heard and felt, even through the rough connection, the empty drop sensation of Corridor opening one of the dark doorways that inspired his codename.
The signal cut out entirely for a few seconds while they were within the corridor, then resumed on the other side.
“Maybe they aren’t going to hit this stretch today after all,” Keyblade said. “If I found out there was going to be a patrol, I’d move my crime elsewhere.”
“Maybe…” Corridor’s voice trailed off. “Look down there. Is something moving?”
“A person? Or a Shadow?”
“No, it wasn’t dark like a Heartless… maybe it was nothing. Paper or trash or something.”
Kairi bit her lip, picturing the alleyway behind the city block she knew they were patrolling today. She hoped it wasn’t Heartless, since their primary objective had been to watch for human criminals. But it wouldn’t be the first time the Shadows surprised a hero on patrol.
Then a strange, fluttering hiss, wholly different than the hissing static of the shaky connection.
“What the hell is that?” Kairi asked out loud, even though the other two couldn’t hear her—the transmission was one-way.
“What is that?” Keyblade echoed her words just before the thud of impact, of scraping across a gravel-topped roof.
“Hey!” Corridor yelled sharply, before more confused sounds of motion and contact, with that wavering hiss overlaying it all.
“Three of them,” Keyblade said, either for later broadcast use or for Kairi, “Never seen them before.” He bit the words off quickly, before his attention was presumably diverted to the continuing fight.
She heard/felt another of Corridor’s dark tunnels open, and another scuffling noise after he went through it. The clang of Keyblade’s codename-sake striking against something hard came through, and a grunt of effort from one of the men.
Then sudden silence. Not the quiet static of nothing happening, or even the dead air that accompanied traveling through one of the dark corridors. Just… nothing. A dropped signal. Kairi put her hands over her ears, pressing on her headphones as if that would somehow bring the signal back.
Seconds stretched into minutes, her skin prickling cold as her heart seemed to shudder in her chest. Light sparked off of her fingers and the skin of her arms involuntarily, and she didn’t even try to stop it, barely breathing in case it made her miss a sound. She’d pressed on the headphones so hard they were hurting her ears, but she couldn’t stop.
Finally, another brief crackle of static, and Corridor’s voice, “We’re okay,” before the connection dropped again.
A pitch-black portal opened across the room. Kairi sat up a bit straighter on the small couch, looking over at the dark oval that had already grown to the size of a door. It looked like a hole in reality itself, though she knew if she stared long enough she might see distant swirls of color in the depths.
She didn’t have long enough to stare as the two men stepped out of the rift that had just appeared in her living room, and the hole promptly closed behind them.
Both of them were out of costume, having presumably cleaned up at Headquarters. Riku gave a short wave toward her as Sora bounded across the room to land next to her on the couch, scooting into her to make room for Riku on his other side.
Once Riku let himself fall into the offered seat, Sora swung his legs over Riku’s lap and leaned back against Kairi. Riku tipped his head back with a long exhale and shut his eyes.
Kairi let the two of them settle into their mutual sprawls on the narrow couch before asking, “So what happened out there?”
Sora looked at her with wide eyes, suddenly anxious. “You got Riku’s transmission that we were okay, didn’t you?”
She nodded, and he visibly relaxed. “I did, after you just about gave me a heart attack worrying through the longest minutes of silence ever. What knocked out your transmitters?”
“It was supposed to be a basic, easy patrol. We were supposed to be looking for a group of regular, human robbers who had been hitting stores in that area through the alley entrances. The things that ambushed us were not human.” Riku sounded exhausted in a way that wasn’t usual, even after a long patrol.
“I don’t know what those things were, but Riku is right. Not human, not regular.” Sora sagged even more against her.
Kairi shifted to run a few fingers through Sora’s hair in a comforting gesture. “Some kind of Heartless? A new type?”
“Anti-Heartless, maybe,” Sora answered, closing his eyes. “The things were all white. They moved creepy-like, almost like they were made of paper, just drifting along.”
“Hit harder than paper. But he’s right, they seemed to float toward us, but felt like a truck when they hit us. We just gave a full report to Headquarters, too. According to them, nothing like that has been reported before, but they’ll ‘investigate’ and ‘keep us informed.’”
Kairi rolled her eyes. That probably meant they’d hear nothing more official about it for weeks at best, while The Defenders of the Light collected their information. And all the while, these things would likely keep attacking.
“You didn’t go out today, did you, Kairi?” Sora asked.
She shook her head. “Not today, no.”
“Have you heard anything else from the field today?” Now Riku did look up.
The way he said that wasn’t comforting. Kairi’s brow furrowed. “No, I haven’t. Did something happen?” Her first thought was an injury among the Heroes. While all encounters were supposed to be non-lethal, accidents still happened. People still got hurt. Sometimes they had to, to keep the stakes high enough.
“Not yet,” Riku answered.
It was Sora who elaborated, “Apparently, we’re about to have an Event.”
Kairi could hear the capital letter. She groaned. “Oh no, what this time?”
“Nothing very concrete yet, just friend-of-a-friend-who-heard-something rumors, but with the appearance of these monster things? I’m betting they’re connected. And with Headquarters being so quiet about them, I have to wonder if this was some kind of deliberate test run,” Riku said.
“I don’t know that I’d go that far,” Kairi said. Riku sometimes verged a little close to paranoid. “But it sounds like there’s definitely something about to happen.”
Sora nodded. “It’ll probably start cropping up on some more of the fansites in the next day or two. After that buzz builds for a few more days, then there’ll be an official announcement. That’s usually how these things go.”
“Well, what are the friends-of-friends saying so far?” Kairi asked. Not that it would do any good to pick apart the rumors for clues. But any warning was better than no warning.
Riku sighed. “The current word is that it will ‘redefine our concepts of hero and villain’, which already sounds… worrying. Especially for me.”
Sora frowned. “You really think they’d have you switch sides again?”
“Well, Corridor’s powers aren’t exactly suited to the whole ‘Hero’ thing, are they?” Riku said, just a touch of bitterness creeping in.
Kairi shook her head. “Just because you open dark corridors doesn’t mean you’re less of a Hero.”
“Tell that to the Defenders of the Light.”
“They already know that,” she said, though it sounded less convincing even to her.
“Not likely,” he laughed, though it was mostly devoid of amusement. “I think they just know it’s good for drama. Keep it in question if I’m going to betray you again. And some of my anti-fans would enjoy the smug satisfaction that they always knew it wasn’t an if, it was a when.”
Sora rolled his eyes.
“Maybe they’ll go for the real plot twist and have me betray you this time,” Kairi suggested.
At least that earned a real laugh from Riku. “Sure thing, Starchild.”
“Excuse you, it’s been ‘Radiance’ since I was sixteen.” Kairi pretended to pout, flicking a bright spark of light at him across the couch. “Seven years, and you still don’t remember?”
“Ooh!” Sora scrambled up from his reclined spot and faced the other two. “Kairi, I bet if you betrayed us this time, they could have Riku convince you to come back to the good guys. You two could bond over having ‘made the wrong alliances’ or something. Might reinvigorate the DarkLight shippers!” He made a heart with his fingers and held it up, framing the two of them on the couch.
Kairi tapped her chin in mock-serious thought. “Hm, think we could get Riku to be the hinge of the shipwar for a change? The DarkLighters sure that we have so much in common now? Or my betrayal held up as proof that I was always an evil harpy cockblocking the true love that is KeyCore?”
“Oh, you laugh now…” Riku said.
“I’d laugh even harder if we could really shock them all,” Kairi said, prowling closer across the couch, until her face was barely an inch from Riku’s. “Let everyone know that the arguments and the tabloid rumors have all been for nothing…”
Riku looked like he was going to make a sarcastic comment back, but then his expression softened and he reached a hand up to pull her closer for a kiss.
Sora watched for a moment, then fell forward onto both of them, half-crushing them into the back of the couch in an awkward long-limbed hug before stealing his own kiss from Riku and then one from Kairi. “Oh yeah, could make some fansites absolutely explode.”
Kairi laughed, but tugged them both closer. “I really was scared today.”
Sora buried his face in the crook of her neck. “We’re okay. We’re going to be okay.”
“Barely even a scratch, I promise,” Riku added.
“I got a great bruise, but that’s all!” Sora announced, scrambling back up and lifting the hem of his shirt to show her.
The bruise was rather spectacular, already a deep purple-black, spreading up the side of his rib cage. Kairi winced in sympathy.
But then Sora stripped off the shirt entirely and tossed it toward her before heading toward the small bedroom at the back of the apartment.
“Subject changer!” she called after him, before she and Riku were both following him.
Kairi hadn’t been kidding when she said she wished they could shock everyone by making their relationship public. But the Defenders of the Light had made it clear that that wouldn’t be good for their images, at least not at this point. None of the current roster of Heroes here were in publicly known relationships.
Hero couples in other regions had been given permission—even encouragement—to marry in the past, but usually only if they were also years-long fan favorites. By comparison, Corridor, Keyblade, and Radiance got a good percentage of their page hits and fan engagement from the tension of their supposed love triangle, and Headquarters had no desire to risk that by making any pair “official”. And the three together? That could be scandalous to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue over their projected careers.
Even in their secret civilian identities, Riku, Sora, and Kairi didn’t dare make their relationship known. None of them wanted to risk the Defenders of the Light finding out, resulting in reassignment, or some negative turn for one or more of them in a planned storyline.
So they took advantage of the privacy they made for themselves. Kairi rented this small apartment under a false name; an identity that even the Defenders of the Light didn’t know about. Riku’s ability to open the dark corridors was a very useful way to sneak them in and out without detection. Since it had—barely—been made illegal for organizations like the Defenders of the Light to track Heroes once they were off-duty, it was the safest the three of them might ever be from discovery.
Kairi had promised herself that she would never take it for granted.
Sora’s bruise was the most visible injury either man had, but Kairi still took the opportunity given by bared skin to check them both over. It had become habit, their romance always interspersed with the checks, the reassurance that yes, all three of them were whole and here and okay. They each mapped new spots to be careful of, while cataloguing the places that had healed.
Her hands ghosted over the scar on Sora’s chest, just over his heart. Riku traced the faded lines a Heartless’ claws had left across her back. Kairi’s fingers tangled with Sora’s as they both skimmed over burn scars spread down Riku’s shoulder.
And this was how she knew they’d been scared, too. That they weren’t quite as unshaken as they appeared. Because Riku was pressing her down into the mattress like he thought he wasn’t going to get another chance, and Sora was holding her hand so tightly it verged on painful. Riku placed a hot kiss on her neck, and then Sora was pulling him back, hand fisted in long, silver hair, seeking his own desperate kiss with him. Probably their first opportunity since the patrol.
A few bits of light sparked off of her hands, briefly haloing the pair of them. It had been completely unconscious, but Sora laughed, as he leaned down to kiss her, too. Riku’s knee was in between hers, his hips already pushing them into a rhythm, grinding against each others’ thighs. Sora pushed close next to them, Riku putting a hand on him to help bring him into their same rhythm.
Kairi was the first one to hitch in the motion, barely stifling a cry as someone’s hand helped her along, and suddenly all three of them had little sparks of multi-hued light flickering over their skin. Sora and Riku followed her over that edge, and they all collapsed, not ready to get up or move away yet. That was all right, they had time. Kairi listened to both Riku and Sora’s breath slow and deepen as they fell asleep, and she dozed with them.
Kairi was unsurprisingly the first to wake up. Letting the boys sleep, she went back to the couch and pulled up her usual feed of mingled news and blog posts. She half-dreaded what she was going to find, but if anyone had even a hint of something major coming up…
She’d carefully curated her list of sites to check. Included were, of course, the official sources that would provide the “genuine record” of every Defenders of the Light (and affiliated and allied groups) Hero action. Down to the most minor of Heroes, every patrol, altercation, apprehension, and team-up would be recorded and reported. She also checked most of the local sources, since those more prominently featured the big headlines for the three of them and the other Heroes they worked with. But until an official announcement was made, none of those sites would have new information to provide.
And then there were the blogs, with their wide variety of quality and scope. Some were little more than fast-updating tabloids, filled with clickbait and doctored photos, but those could still be useful to follow from an image-management standpoint. Same with some of the fansites, which provided insight into public perception and what they liked to see. While none of the Heroes had the ability to completely control their own image—as evidenced by Riku’s current concern—all of them knew how to work within the constraints they were given.
Her favorites, and the ones most likely to give her something now, were the more serious blogs: independent news sources not beholden to the whims of Headquarters. They often drew conclusions that the Defenders of the Light were unwilling to acknowledge or even actively tried to hide. Headquarters had to—maybe grudgingly—tolerate the existence of those blogs, or risk making obvious their own tight control over the Heroes they employed.
She probably shouldn’t have been as glad about those blogs existing as she was, but sometimes she was frustrated by the information Headquarters chose to conceal. Plus, Headquarters had allegedly found their own use for these independent sources: by occasionally leaking a story to these blogs, they could essentially outsource the marketing of upcoming events and team-ups. They would never admit they did that, but it certainly allowed hype to build in a way that seemed much more organic than if an official outlet was the first to tease it.
And there it was, one semi-innocuous headline: Incoming? Unverified Reports of Mysterious Creatures.
She read on:
While none of the sightings have been reflected in the official reports, multiple sources have mentioned off the record that there have been a new type of creature encountered by Heroes on patrol. We’re told these creatures are not Heartless, those relics of a previous crisis, though they appear equally inhuman.
One source mentioned that they could be heralding some new, broader threat. “I feel like they might be the first wave of something more. They seem to be intelligent, despite their apparent violence. This could be the kind of thing that will redefine our concepts of Hero and Villain, if we’re brought into a conflict against something this unknown.”
Well, there was that line Riku had quoted earlier. She frowned, skimming the article for any more information. The rest was just drawing the obvious parallels between the last major Event, the Heartless Crisis, where the Heartless had first appeared, and these new creatures.
Riku stepped up and brushed a hand over her hair. “Hey.”
She looked back up at him. “Just looking through the blogs.”
“Find anything?”
“Nothing you hadn’t already heard. Found that pull quote, the ‘redefine concepts of hero and villain’ one…” she trailed off.
Riku sighed. “Do you think I’m overreacting?”
“I don’t know. I do understand why you’re worried.” After a pause, she continued, “But it could mean something else. To me, it reads more like they anticipate a team-up with some current Villains, in some kind of an ‘enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend’ deal. Banding together against a new threat.”
“I hope so,” Riku said. Then, “Want something to eat? I was going to make something quick before we have to head home.”
“Sure. I’ll have whatever you feel like making.”
She listened to Riku pulling out utensils and food from the fridge and she glanced over the article again. She hoped she was right. The lines between Hero and Villain did often feel artificial, knowing how often interactions were guided and scripted by Headquarters. That didn’t mean it would be comfortable or pleasant for any of them to be on opposite sides again.
She heard eggs being cracked into a bowl, a whisk mixing them, and the hiss of food hitting a hot pan.
Even if she was right, that nothing truly bad would come of this “Event,” it still didn’t remove the anxiety. And that anxiety was probably at least double for him. So she closed her laptop, moving to the kitchen.
She pulled herself up onto the counter, barely out of the way, just watching Riku cook. She swung her feet, bouncing her heels into the lower cabinet.
“Spatula.” Riku held out a hand.
She set the requested utensil in his hand. “Yes, doctor.” She was rewarded with a quirk of his mouth.
Like magic, the smell of scrambled eggs summoned Sora out of sleep, and he joined them, still trailing the blanket behind him.
“Smells good.” He stifled a yawn.
“Figured we could do dinner before heading home,” Riku said.
“Feels like home to me,” Sora grumbled. “But dinner still sounds good.”
Riku dished up plates, and they took them back to the couch in the living room. A kitchen table and chairs were still on the list for future additions to the secret apartment.
Once they were about halfway through their meal, Riku put down his fork. “If I find out anything about this Event, if they do tell me I’m going to be switching alliances or anything, I’ll tell you. I know we aren’t allowed to discuss assignments or plotlines or anything, but I will tell you. And I’ll give you some signal before it actually happens.”
Sora reached over and grabbed his hand. “Of course you will. And if it comes to that, Kairi and I will still be dutifully shocked.”
“We are pretty good actors,” Kairi agreed. “Let’s hope that’s a plan for nothing, but of course we’ll always tell each other.” She reached out and grabbed Riku’s other hand.
He squeezed it back before very deliberately turning back to his food and changing the subject. “I assume you both want a ride home?”
Sora nodded, and Kairi smiled. “Can’t beat your travel time.”
The dark corridor opened into Kairi’s “real” bedroom, in the little stand-alone apartment behind her parents’ house. Riku and Sora stepped through with her, though Riku’s doorway remained open behind them.
Sora pulled her into a hug and gave her a quick peck on the lips, and Riku did the same.
“Goodnight,” she said, as they stepped back into the corridor.
“Talk to you tomorrow,” Riku said, as Sora blew a kiss.
Then the tunnel closed, leaving Kairi alone.
[next chapter]
