Disneyland was epic! Visiting America was great (minus the plane food and the fact that I couldn't find any Kingdom Hearts merchandise anywhere) and gave me a lot of time to think about what to write next. Here's just a humorous little idea I thought of when I was walking around California Adventure.
Disclaimer; Disneyland, and all that reside within it belong to Walt Disney. Everything else mentioned belongs to Squeenix.
Note that me and Sora do not share the same views. I loved the place.
the churros are a lie!
"Guys… you have got to be fucking kidding me."
Clichéd lines aside, I was completely and utterly shocked to see what I was seeing. Before my eyes swam mass amounts of colour and what commercialized scandal claimed to be living dreams in the form of massive metal structures, an atrocious waste of paint and deep fried everything's. Around him regular people, many with cameras, sneakers, and merchandise depicting the king bumped and screamed and cried and fought and screamed and ate and complained and awed and SCREAMED.
Why is there so much screaming?
"What is this? I am so confused!" I panicked. None of this strange world made any sense. When Riku explained that there was a strange and special place that brought every single one of the worlds together, I thought they were talking about something like Radiant Garden you know? As in 'Did they make another Traverse Town?' Not this strange… AMUSEMENT PARK! We even had to pay to get in, what kind of world made visitors pay? Some shitty place this is.
And absolutely everywhere was the word 'Disney'. What did that mean anyway? When I think Disney, I think the castle. Or Master Yen Sid's name backwards, but the castle usually came first. Plus they were speaking about this strange guy named Walt. And nobody was explaining what was going on to me! Kairi tried to calm me with a strange thing that looked kind of like the body of keyblade, only it was brown and edible. It helped somewhat, but as we sat on one of the elaborately decorated benches I demanded an explanation for this.
Kairi was fondling something strange that she put into her wallet; it was called 'Money'. At first I thought they just misspelled 'Munny' but apparently that's what they do here in 'Los Angeles'. God this place is strange. She had to get all of her munny exchanged at the bank and then learn the way of currency here, with the strange green paper notes with numbers scribbled all over them and the faces of strange people he had never seen before.
Riku was drinking from a strange bottle black-brown liquid that he claimed wasn't a potion, but tasted better than one. I'd never tasted anything better than a potion. Something that tasted better than that was absolute nonsense. The wrapper was read and the writing said 'Coca Cola', I know absolutely ridiculous right? I refused to taste the stuff, but Riku was drinking bottle after bottle. I couldn't trust anything that colour, it might have been poisoned or something.
He finally put down the black thing and looked at me properly, pushing up his bangs so I got a brief flash of his turquoise eyes, "Alright Sora, here's the deal. In this world… actually, you know all the stories that you helped complete in the other worlds?"
"YES! You told me that I could meet my friends! All in this one fantastic magical place! All I see is screaming weird people and poisonous beverages like that!" I yelled pointing to the bottle in his hand.
He rolled his eyes and Kairi patted my knee, finished with handling the strange currency, "Sora calm down, you see the worlds you visited are movies here."
"Movies?" I screeched, gaining attention from those around me. I hadn't seen many movies, I wasn't the kind of teenager that lived off technology and then the heartless came and I didn't bother with any kind of electronic devices until I met Tron so… yeah. To think that all of their stories were documented, it's a monstrous event.
"Well, you'd think a place that knew about people like Aladdin and Alice would be using better special effects than dodgy paint jobs and overprices merchandise," I tried to reason with them exactly how much they weren't making sense.
"No Sora, no. Here, that's all the stories are…" Kairi explained, "Stories."
"…What?"
"Sora," Riku put down his bottle of dastardly liquid and gripped the sides of my head to look straight into my eyes while I looked into his curtain of a fringe "here, everything that you experienced… to these people, is make believe!"
"WHAT?"
"You heard me." Riku pushed back his hair and picked up the bottle again, taking another gulp of the black stuff.
"It's all fake Sora," Kairi gestured towards the pier and the fair grounds, at the people and the nearest churro stand, "all these people are unaware of what happens outside their universe. Just like we were, but they know about the stories, they know of what Simba and Stitch and Tinkerbell have done, they just think it's not real."
This still wasn't makingsense. Does that mean that here I haven't done anything for the sake of the worlds? I'm just another ordinary human here? I have this sudden urge to draw the Keyblade, and I almost do, but Kairi grabs my hand and shakes her head.
"There is no magic in this world! We can't give ourselves away, I hear they're afraid of everything that doesn't really belong and have done some bad things to the people that haven't," she said in a hushed tone, pulling her hair off her shoulder. It really was a scorcher here, one of the reasons why Riku was buying so much 'Coke', he also said it tasted pretty good, but I didn't believe him.
Sora rolled his eyes and relaxed his hands "Why did you think I would enjoy this place?"
Riku shrugged "We didn't think you would particularly like it. We were just really curious and wanted to see."
"You're using my birthday present as an exploration expedition," he stated blandly.
"Yep!"
"God dammit."
.
We spent the day scrapping our memories for anything relating to the worlds we visited both in the place they dubbed 'Disneyland' (where there was no castle he was used to) and 'California Adventure'. We'd cheer every single time something we remembered appeared, and then we'd confuse ourselves trying to figure it out. In a strange place they called 'New Orleans Square' we waited twenty, and I repeat twenty, excruciating minutes in a line we thought was to see Jack Sparrow. I was so looking forward to seeing my pirate buddy again… actually not really, Jack was weird and pretty selfish which was amusing… sometimes, but I wanted to see someone that was familiar. Riding on a boat and watching wax figures dance around singing 'A pirates life for me' wasn't what I was expecting or wanted. Once I tried to climb out of the dingy to see if the second wax figure of Jack really was him, a member of the staff told me off and shoved me back into the boat. I grumbled when the ride led us straight into the gift store where Kairi swooned about the cute merchandise, and she left with a full bag of items. I looked at them carefully, wondering when King Mickey had ever been a pirate… or Goofy, or Donald. I needed to ask them about that the next time I saw them.
She begged both of us to go into the Haunted Mansion, but nothing inside made any sense. I was pretty impressed with the special effects and yelped when I saw a ghost next to me in the mirror, but after leaving the ride I found myself in the original foul mood I had started out with. I needed to see something familiar. Kairi bought me another churro-thing to calm me down.
I cheered again when I saw the sight of Pooh Bear, but screamed when I saw he was around six feet high! Last time I saw the bear he was barely up to my hip. I jumped over the rope separating us lined with small little children handling stuffed toys and bored parents holding cameras.
"POOH!" I yelped confused "When did you get so tall? Why are you taking photographs with these kids? How's Rabbit and Owl and Piglet and Tigger and the rest? Hey why don't you talk?"
When a voice emerged from the giant Pooh it didn't sound remotely like the calm and relaxed bear, "Security! This loon is jumping the line and scaring the kids!"
I turned to find the entire expanse of the line behind him was now harboring crying kids tugging onto their parents legs. Riku gave park security a charming smile and pulled me aside, jerking me away from the children pelting toys at the weird kid that was speaking to the actors like real characters.
"Ri! What are you doing?"
"That wasn't the real Pooh!" he sighed scratching his head.
"You don't say?" I throw up my hands, I hope he hears the sarcasm I'm throwing into my words. Kairi's giggling, amused by the entire ordeal.
"They're actors Sora, they're paid to take pictures with the kids."
"WHERE DID YOU GUYS GET ALL THIS INFORMATION?"
The platinum haired boy and the red head looked at each other, shrugged and replied in the same tone, at the same time, "Internet."
I face palmed.
.
Kairi and Riku were enthralled and fascinated by the rides, going on the roller coasters in 'Frontier Land' and 'Tomorrowland' twice while I tagged along to find more cases of familiarity. Who was Nemo anyway? When I asked a kid waiting in line next to me he threw a fistful of ice cream in my face. I swore and hopped out of the line, mirroring the kid when he stuck his tongue out at me.
None of these strange attractions were very attracting to me; I could easily say any of my adventures were so much more exciting than anything this park had to offer.
We hung out at the pink palace (or 'Fantasyland'), an image that appeared almost everywhere, near a stage to rest our aching feet where they retold the story of Beauty and the Beast to a bunch of kids who later ran away to take pictures with the actors that pretended they were the Princesses of Light. Riku left to buy a snack and more poison, Kairi went down to inspect the stage, enchanted with the flowers while I stayed behind and propped my shoes onto the railing. A stage hand gave me a dirty look but I didn't change my position, it kind of reminded me of the way Donald looked at me when I did the same thing in the gummi ship. I watched a little girl as she strayed from the lines to walk up to Kairi, tugging on her skirt and asking her to take a photograph with her. I smiled in amusement at her surprise, she looked to me for a brief moment and I shrugged as an encouraging gesture. Kairi might have been a princess, but no one here seemed to know that.
I rubbed my hands over my eyes and thought about the letter that the king had sent me, it was a confusing piece of work, but an invitation nonetheless. It promised more adventure, and I really wanted to see all my friends again. Sure, arriving back at Destiny Islands with both my best friends in the entire world/s was huge. But life back at the islands had soon gotten very boring once again. I was so excited to go to this world because I thought I could see them again… and it was such a disappointment.
Somebody poked my shoulder and I turned around to see a small blonde child with bright green eyes, holding a small camera in his hands.
"Hi," I greeted him.
"Sora," he nodded, his face broke into a grin.
I cocked my head to the side "Yeah, that's right, but how did you know that?"
The boy hopped down the bleacher to sit next to me, I saw his t-shirt adorn a picture of the crown on my necklace and I fingered it gingerly as the kid looked me up and down.
"My brother, he told me about you, he loves your games!"
I felt more confused than I had this morning, had this kid been drinking too much of that Coke/poison?
"I love it too! You're my hero!"
"Wait… you know about me?" I asked, pointing my fingers to my chest for emphasis.
"Yes! You're the Keyblade Wielder and you fight heartless and Riku and you save Kairi and beat Maleficent! Then you go to sleep and wake up in Castle Oblivion, where you meet Naminé and she erases your memories!"
"Wait a second, what?"
"Uh huh, and then you go to sleep for a year and everyone except Riku, DiZ and Naminé forget about you. In that time Roxas is all like, super cool and hangs out with Xion and Axel while trying to remember about you," he blabbers on.
"Excuse me? Kid slow down," he laughed nervously but the child probably hadn't heard him because he kept going.
"And then Xion dies because she's like, being returned to you… my brother understood the story better but he said that fighting her was a bitch."
I couldn't believe this kid, not only was he spouting nonsense but he was swearing.
"Too bad I don't know what that is."
Well… that was a little better.
"And then you wake up and fight all the Organisation XIII that are still left, visit worlds, find Riku, Ansem gets killed but he'd not really dead, Blank Points said so!" the boy cheered and my eyes widened.
SAY WHAT?
It's already amazing to know that our lives had been documented, but some of this still isn't making any sense… like the huge gap in my memory being filled by this child's clumsy explanation.
"Ansem's not really dead?"
"Nope, he's just somewhere in that creepy black water world that you were stuck in for a bit, and neither is Aqua, or Terra or Ven. Nu uh! He's somewhere inside of you! But then again, so is Vanitas."
"Really?"
"For the star of Kingdom Hearts, you don't know much about it." He giggled before asking, "Can I have a photograph?"
"Um… sure?"
After he took the picture, he cuddled closer to me and snapped again, both of us this time.
"I think your character's really cool. I wish I could be like him."
This boy was sweet.
"Why can't you?"
"Because none of this is real… Cinderella's just a fairy tale, and Tarzan's just a movie, I can't travel to other worlds like you can. This place is the closest we've got, and we've got to make the most of it," he smiled again and then ran off to what I assumed was his dad. I leaned back and relaxed.
If this place gives hope to the children of this world, then who am I to say it's horrible?
"Back." Riku announces plopping down next to him "Still hate this place with a burning passion?"
"Nope!" I smirked, stealing his pretzel.
.
We passed the pier during a light show using colours, fire and water. Kairi was entranced, having been stuck at the island; she hadn't seen anything like this before. So we leant over railings and sipped hot chocolate while she watched in total awe. This is the closest thing these people got to magic, and for that I felt sorry for them. I didn't think I could ever like this place, but I can't blame people for liking it. Besides… I'd had a tiny little bit of fun.
After the show we found our way to the main gates of 'Disneyland' and I went hyper and forgot that 'Donald' and 'Goofy' were not in fact Donald and Goofy and started to ask them weird questions… just like the other Disney Characters I had failed to keep away from.
I lost it at the entrance when some other rowdy teenagers were throwing milkshakes at the fake King Mickey and summoned the keyblade, they were royally freaked out and we were all chased out by the park security.
We're now in the gummi ship all prepared to go back home, but eighteen shopping bags heavier thanks to Kairi.
"Woo! That was fun," she cried, exhilarated "Can we do that for your birthday next year Sor-?"
"NO!" I screeched, "I'm sorry Kai but no fucking way."
Riku and Kairi both cracked up laughing as the ship started to take off. Riku was still drinking the weird stuff, he probably saw me staring at it because he lifted it up and asked, "Want some?"
"Umm…" I deliberated for a moment before tentatively grabbing it and taking a sip. Upon tasting it the intruding gas fizzled out my nose and I spit the offending substance out, dropping the bottle all over the floor.
"Fuck Sora…" Riku whined "They don't have that stuff back on the island."
You can grab some more on the new adventure you pansy.
But my thoughts came out something different. Words sounding something along the lines of 'I hate this world.'
.
Back in Disneyland Doug turned to Sam, who was wearing the Goofy costume today, took of his duck head and said "There must be something in the churros."
Well, it was a pretty amusing idea back in Disneyland, of course I loved it way more than Sora did. Don't get me wrong people, I like Coke. I just prefer juice and water to that. But still, water was so expensive. Whatever, it was awesome. Hahaha, I didn't even know what a churro was until I went there! They're fantastic!
lol. No more fizzy for Ri-Ri. Total bummer.
RnR, tell me what you think! :D