Author's Note: FYI, my protagonist ain't shy about swearing, so this is Rated T for language.

Also Quick Disclaimer here and now for the whole story: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, or any Disney franchises.

Thank you so much for reading and welcome to the insanity!

SVAROG

Passage 1 of a Prologue in 6 Parts

~*~
Cars and Curfews
~*~

"What are you doing?"

Crap. Busted.

I didn't move a muscle. Maybe if I stayed low, the person would think that they had just been seeing things and would leave.

Who was even out here at this hour besides me? Bet it was one of those damn prefects. Like Saïx. Man, he used to be cool, but had become such a teacher's pet lately.

But that wasn't who it was, the voice had been female. Maybe it was that chick with the hair longer than the frigging Great Wall of China. Not even joking. What was her name again… Rapunzel? She seemed nice enough, but she was way too eager to please the faculty just because her mother was on the school board. What was the deal with the hair anyway? If she was trying to get into Guinness Book of World Records, she had the next person beat by at least a mile. Guess she wasn't the type to quit while she was ahead.

"I can see you, you know. You're breaking curfew."

Fuck, I'd almost forgot that person was out there. So much for hiding.

I straightened up to sit normally in the driver's seat of the car and looked out the open window on the passenger side, already having come up with seventeen different excuses to get me out of the situation. I opened my mouth preparing to spin one epic yarn, but came up short when I saw who it was.

She was pretty, with eyes like glaciers of the frozen north and long, platinum blonde hair done up into a loose braid that fell forward over one shoulder. She was wearing some pale blue, off-the-shoulder sweater with a pair of jeans. She stood there, boots sinking deep into the snow-blanketed parking lot, her arms folded under her chest as she peered into the vehicle, expression unreadable.

Shit, it wasn't a prefect. It was just the new girl.

How had she even gotten out here? The gates were locked up tight for the evening and the walls surrounding the place were huge. Even I had had to jump so I could pull myself up and over them, and I was tall enough to give the Empire State Building a run for its munny. How a petite thing like her had managed to perform the same feat was beyond me.

Oh well, didn't matter. This whole thing just got easier.

Smirking, I said, "Correction. I'm going on a approved, late night supply run. You're breaking curfew."

She arched an eyebrow at me. "Approved? By who?"

"Headmaster Yen Sid himself. Old boy's got a bad case of the munchies. Figured I'd do him a solid."

Her head tipped to one side. "...this isn't your car."

"If it wasn't, would I be able to do this?" I reached under the steering wheel once more and started fiddling with the wires that I'd left exposed. From where she stood, I knew she couldn't see what my hands were doing. A second later, the car engine roared to life. I gave her a smug grin.

Boom, baby.

Her brow furrowed and she said nothing.

Now I had two options here. I could put the car into gear, drive off and be on my merry, leaving her behind to possibly go snitch on me. Or I could take her along for the ride.

Lord knew the girl could probably use it. She'd been at the school for a few days now and she hadn't spoken a word to anyone. Not one single person. Just stayed quiet and kept to herself. These were literally the first words I, or anyone else on the whole campus as far as I was aware, had ever heard out of her mouth. I had been beginning to wonder if it was a religious thing.

"Tell you what," I said, discreetly shoving the wires back up into the steering column and snapping the cover back into place with one hand, scratching the tip of my nose with the other. "I'm gonna help you out. Even though you're out after curfew, I'll keep this little incident between us if you come with me. I'm going to need a hand carrying stuff anyway."

She frowned. "The snow has to be at least a foot deep. How do you plan to drive through that?"

"Heh." My hands grew hot for a few seconds as they rested on the steering wheel. And no, it wasn't one of those fancy heated ones. "What snow?"

Her head turned and she blinked at the sight of what was now a clear path through the snow leading out of the parking lot. She blinked a second time.

No, girl, you're not crazy. That wasn't there a minute ago.

She looked at me again and I gave her a crooked half-grin. She hesitated briefly, then came to a decision. The passenger side car door slammed shut as she took a seat beside me and buckled herself in.

Atta girl.

I shifted gears, put the pedal to the metal and sped off into the night.

Confession time. This car I was driving? Not mine. Shocker, I know, seeing as I had hotwired the thing. But hey, maybe I had just lost my keys, you don't know. Eh, who am I kidding? The thing was a Ferrari. That's right, a freaking Ferrari. I never could have afforded this masterpiece of automotive art, not in a million years. Hell, I could barely afford the Chuck Taylors I was wearing on my own two feet.

Don't get the wrong idea though, I wasn't stealing it. Not technically. I mean, I was going to bring it back, so it didn't count, right? Right. I was just borrowing it… without asking…

Bah, the owner probably wouldn't even miss it anyway. The car had just shown up out of the blue one day in the campus parking lot. I'm guessing one of the instructors had bought it on impulse in a pathetic attempt to recapture their squandered youth or something. My munny was on Professor Xehanort. That old fart reeked of midlife crisis. Anyway, wherever the car had come from, there it had appeared and there it had stayed. It was always there. No one ever showed up to take it out for a spin or anything. It just sat there, gathering dust.

Then the snowstorm had started up. Now I know what you're thinking. A freak snowstorm in the middle of July? That shit's weird, man. However, weird stuff happens at this school all the time. You get used to it. But I'll get to that later.

So anyway, the blizzard hit and we weren't allowed to go outside for days. Let me tell you, I was going stir crazy, being all cooped up indoors. Then tonight, not fifteen minutes ago in fact, I had looked out the window to discover that the storm had let up. Know what else I saw? The Ferrari. Just sitting there, all sleek and shiny and new, calling my name. Axel, it had said. Come drive me, Axel.

And who was I to deny the wishes of the magical, talking car?

It was a crime really just leaving it out there to rust anyway. So really, I was the hero in all of this. One day they'll immortalize my heroic deeds in song, I'm sure.

Anyway, that's how I came to be on the wide open road at a quarter to midnight, racing along at about 103 (and climbing) miles-per-hour in a stolen - I mean, borrowed car, with a newly acquired Girl Friday at my side.

My Girl Friday wasn't much of a talker. She didn't even look at me, nor did she seem alarmed at the speed we were going. She just propped her elbow against the armrest, chin in hand, and stared out of the window on her side as the wind whipped her braid around.

Wonder what she was zoning out about.

I switched on the radio to fill the silence and started flipping through the stations. Eventually I landed on one that was playing "Love Runs Out" by OneRepublic. I left it there and leaned back in my seat. A second later, she reached a hand forward and cranked up the volume.

At least she had good taste in music.

Eyeing her hand as she withdrew it back into her lap, I asked, "So what's up with the gloves?"

She seemed taken aback by the question for a split second before reassuming her mask of indifference. She shrugged. "Maybe you haven't noticed, but it's cold enough for Hell to freeze over out there. I don't know about you, but I'm a fan of not losing my fingers to frostbite."

The chick had a bit of bite to her, I'd give her that. Plus, she made a valid point. I was wearing a pair of gloves myself - fingerless though, mind you, because cool guys don't worry about a little thing like frostbitten digits - and had a red and black striped scarf wrapped around my neck to fight off the chill. However, there was a hole in her logic. "Fair enough. But you forget the snow only started up three days ago. You've been wearing those things since you showed up here four days ago, when it was still all sunny beach weather."

She stared hard at the dashboard. "...you noticed that?"

"What can I say, I'm observant. It's almost like you knew a blizzard was coming. So, what, are you psychic?"

You're probably thinking that was just me making a halfassed attempt at a joke. And if almost anyone else had been asking that question pretty much anywhere else, you would have been right. But I wasn't anyone else and we weren't anywhere else. I was me and we were here, at Yen Sid's Institute for the Gifted.

Well... not here here. The institute wasn't in the Ferrari, that'd just be silly. When I say here, I mean back there. You know, where we had just driven away from, the-

Bah, you know what I meant.

See, the human race is an ever evolving species. Every day, hundreds of thousands of babies are born and with each of them, genetics rolls the dice and takes a chance for something weird to pop out. And I mean weird. For example, there are some people that can actually see using echolocation. Like a damn dolphin. Or there's this one dude who can eat literally anything. Glass, rubber, TV sets, bicycles… he even ate a whole effing airplane once. That shit's real, google it.

And those are just the D-listers. Now we get to the real heavy weights. The ones that can do all the stuff you thought only possible in movies and comic books. We're talking flying, invisibility, invulnerability, elemental manipulation, telekinesis, the list goes on and on. Call them what you will. Freaks. Super heroes. Mutants. Whatever they are, they're real, and they're out there.

I would know. I'm one of them.

And I can already hear you asking the obvious question: So then, Axel, what's your power? Well, if you've been paying attention, I've already given you a hint. Missed it? Don't worry, there will be more.

So this is where the Institute for the Gifted comes in. Get a load of that moniker. Sounds like we're all a bunch of mental cases. Maybe we are, but no one wants to go opening that can of worms. Anyway, this old dude called Yen Sid founded the school.

By the way, what kind of name is Yen Sid? Is it a first and last name? Or is it all supposed to be all one thing, like Cher or The Artist Formerly Known As Prince? Who knows.

In any case, he's supposedly one of us. Not sure what he can do, I've never seen him unleash, but I hear the old boy's got some mad juice and you seriously do not want to get on his bad side. Apparently he started the school as some sort of safe haven for us superfreaks. It's supposed to be a place where you can go to meet others like yourself, to understand your powers, to learn how to harness and control them so you can use them to make the world a better place.

At least, that's what the brochures would have you believe. Me, I have a different theory. I mean, come on. Here they are, rounding us all up in one spot, isolated out in the boonies, enforcing all these rules and regulations on us… like curfew. Fucking curfew. Who needs that bullshit? Really, I suspect it's all just a ploy by the government to lock us up together and hope we take each other out or nuke us from orbit or, I don't know, something before we realize just a handful of us could bring the world to its knees.

Or maybe I'm just an angry youth who has trouble with authority and likes spouting off conspiracy theories. In any case, now you see why when I asked her that question, I wasn't joking. It was a serious question looking for a serious answer.

When she didn't respond, I pressed, "Well? Are you?"

She shrugged and continued to keep her eyes focused straight ahead. "Maybe I just watch the weather channel."

I snorted. "Bullshit. First of all, only lame-os with no life watch the weather channel. And second of all, the weather channel didn't predict this storm coming."

She finally broke off her staring contest she was having with the dashboard to look at me. "How would you know?"

"Because I'm a lame-o with no life who watches the weather channel."

One corner of her mouth twitched upward. Ah ha, so there was a sense of humor lurking in there somewhere beneath her ice cold exterior. "Really? Wow, you need to get out more."

I scratched a spot behind my left ear. "Whatever, are you psychic or not?"

"I'm not psychic," she answered with a shake of her head.

"Then what's the deal with the gloves?"

"What's the deal with your face?" she shot back.

I grinned. "Like I can help how stunningly gorgeous I am."

"I was referring to the tats and hair."

"Oh."

Note she did not refute the validity of my stunningly gorgeous statement.

With a smirk, I ran my fingers through my long, unruly red spikes that scoffed in the very face of gravity. "It's natural. And these?" I pointed to the upside-down teardrop shape under my right eye. There was a matching one on my left cheek. "These are cuz I shot two men in Reno just to watch them die."

Her eyelids drooped and she looked remarkably unimpressed with me.

An involuntary snerk escaped me. "Wow, that face. Okay, fine, I'll give you a real answer… if you tell me the story behind the handwear."

Her eyes returned to watching out her window. "I'm good, thanks."

With a harrumph, I mumbled, "Well, aren't we a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Well, the offer stands if you change your mind."

Not another word passed between us until ten minutes later when we finally hit our destination, a little place known as Traverse Town.

Author's Note: Thanks again for reading, I super duper appreciate it! If you have any comments or friendly feedback, please make my day and leave a review! Catch you at the next update, lovelies! Much love, peace out, word to your mothers, and other such phrases that shouldn't be coming out of the likes of lil ol' me!