A/N: You can totally blame this idea on my sister. She started this facebook meme that involved randomly choosing people from your friend's list for your party in the zombie apocalypse. And then the idea wormed its way into my brain, and now it won't go the fuck away. So I figured, what the hell, let's make this Kingdom Hearts style! And this will be the start of my contribution for AkuRoku day. I hope to get another chapter finished before the day is over, but this, I think, will do nicely for a start.

Warnings: This story is rated M, due to what's probably going to be extreme profanity, gore, blood, violence, and possibly sex scenes, but we'll see when we get there. Also, there's going to be romance and sexual encounters of both the heterosexual and homosexual persuasion.

Dedication: To Lys, because fuck you for putting this idea into my head. I love you anyway. Also to Clyde, her girlfriend, for being infected right along with me in this story idea. But I still disagree with you. If someday there ever is going to be a zombie apocalypse, I still bet that I'm going to be amongst the second, maybe third wave of people to die. Because I'd totally be the load, common sense and intelligence be damned. ;)

Disclaimer: Uh, yeah, I totally don't own Kingdom Hearts, or Final Fantasy for that matter, or anything recognizable. That honor belongs to Square Enix. I'm just taking the characters out for the crack ride of their lives. The title of this story is a snippet from the lyrics of R.E.M's song "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)". I thought it was appropriate, all things considered.

Don't Get Caught in Foreign Towers

Prologue: Survival Guide

After surviving the first few waves of a zombie apocalypse, there are several things you should keep in mind.

The first is that you've past The End of the World As You Know It. Meaning that everything you'd ever thought was stable in your life, all the little golden rules and moral codes and commandments to living a good life, shit like that? All those rules are dead. Tossed out of the forty-second floor window of the old ShinRa tower, with the guts all splattered on the pavement for the zombies to consume, along with everything else they'll have taken from you. If you're still alive at this point, it means that the zombies have taken a fucking hell of a lot more from you than you would ever care to admit. They've broken any moral compass that may have existed. Fuck trying to find due north on that broken piece of shit anymore. North doesn't exist for you anymore. The World As You Know It has been shattered to pieces, and now that you're past The End, you now have to deal with a brand new world, with anarchy and chaos out the ass. You don't have any dignity anymore, to have survived this long.

That brings us to the next thing. So you want to keep surviving the apocalypse, scrape a living off of ashes and entrails? Then you've just got one rule to remember:

Kill. Or you're fucking screwed.

Remember? The zombies took your high standards of living and stole the passwords to the codes you've lived your life by up until this point. And they've probably taken heaven and salvation and all that shit right along with them. If you're still alive, the only place that's left for you is hell.

You're currently living in hell on earth. And if the zombies get you? Well, sucks to be you then, eh? Can't imagine that it would be a pleasant way to spend the rest of your existence—being an animated corpse, shuffling around, maggots burrowing into your flesh, red strings of meat dangling, losing a finger here and there. And if you just die? Take your last bullet, shoot yourself in the fucking head because it's the only mercy you think you have left?

Oh yeah. That's the third thing. There is no mercy in this world. Mercy's a thing that falls from heaven's tears or some shit like that. And heaven's gone, right down the zombie's gullet along with everything else.

Who said that there was an escape? Because there's your fourth thing to keep in mind. There isn't any escape, and you don't get any fucking choices, got it memorized?

Yeah? Then welcome to the new world. Sure, there's a zombie pretty much around every corner, and a pile of them probably slobbering on your front door, but hey. If you're an enterprising sort of person, there's a shit ton of brand new possibilities waiting to be had. Kind of comes with the territory of a significant portion of the population on the planet getting eaten. If you can look past that half-empty bowl with that gigantic crack spilling shit everywhere, life may not be so bad. As for me personally, I'm an optimistic kind of guy, if maybe a weird one that dreams in monologue. But hey, I've got to practice somewhere. If I manage to survive all this bullshit, I'm going to publish my memoirs of surviving a zombie apocalypse. I'm pretty awesome, so I'm sure it'll be the first book on the bestseller charts, once those get reestablished or something.

"Axel. Wake your ass up, or I'm using it as zombie bait."

And there's a rude shove added in there. But I suppose my dear compatriot is right; after all, in order to publish anything that's not my obituary in a non-existent newspaper, I've got to survive and shit first.

So with that said, here's your Survival Guide, sound facts and tips provided by yours truly. Who am I? Oh, my name's Axel. Commit it to memory.

I'm going to be the one shooting you in the back of the head, and using your convulsing body to distract the zombies so that I can make my escape. Nice knowing you.