Survival Guide

~*Author's Note*~

This is a SoraxRiku fic with slight RoxasxAxel in the background. It's situated in an alternate universe, with cities being extremely corrupt and controlled by powerful gangs who are in turn controlled or supported by rich companies. The Government is all but a joke, and the police department stuggles to help when they can, but there is strong corruption throughout thier ranks. With a slight Air Gear cross over, the gangs use Air Trecks, but not as thier main weapons. In this universe they are considered more of like fighting essentials, like a hand gun, and mastery is the key. Religion remains a strong force of hope in the community, and churches, temples, and the like are all considered neutral territory.
In this story Sora is 16, while Riku is 16 at the begining, but turns 17 quickly (on 10-31), Roxas is the same age as Sora and Axel is 18 and out of school.

**Sorry if things are confussing at first, this is my first fic ever, and I'm really trying to make it good. So, any reviews are welcome.
Okay, so...
Hope you enjoy the story!

EDIT (3/29/08): changed ages and Riku's schedule


Chapter One: Good Luck on a Gray Day


The apocalypse was coming. Everything would soon be destroyed as judgment day arrived.

Or, at least, that’s what Sora thought as he drove smoothly down the highway. Smoothly. No one (or maybe just Sora), ever drove down the highway “smoothly”. The cesspool city of Hollow’s Landing was jam-packed with people, none of which knew how to drive. The sheer multitude of accidents that happened on this road daily led to several new safety laws being named after it, and made this city hell’s scrap yard. Only the insane (and Sora) drove on this road regularly. The insane because they had a death wish, and Sora because it was (unfortunately) the fastest way to get to school. Even with the normal bumper to bumper traffic, it was still faster than taking the service roads.

He really needed to think about moving closer to school.

However, the road on this day wasn’t exactly CLEAR, per-say, as cars were still packed together like sardines, but everyone was moving along efficiently with only the occasional red flash of tail-lights in the silver early-morning gloom.

It was WEIRD. This kind of thing just DIDN’T happen, and Sora was utterly dumbfounded not knowing whether to take this as a good or bad sign. He subconsciously let his magic flow through the worn steering wheel and into the faded brown dashboard of his car, raising the volume of the stereo as yet another of his favorite songs came on.

This was also unusual, as normally he had to constantly shift stations to find something good on in the morning.

Tears for Fear’s “Shout” filled his car as he got off at exit ramp 52. Sitting, not realizing that he was humming along with the music (as absorbed in his thoughts as he was), he waited for the despairingly long light to change and toyed with the thought that maybe these differences were signs of a good day, and not an impending doom.

Rethinking through the past couple of hours, he realized that many of the oddities that had happened so far today had been good things. His alarm clock had woken him up on time, the hot water had been working, no one had tried to break in the night before, his car had started on the first try (thanks to the fact that no one stole his gas tank… again), the gang that had claim over the territory where his apartment was had been incarcerated last night, and no one had attempted to stab, mug, or rape him. So, today was turning out to be a good one, not a threat of impending doom. He could live with that.

Green light relieved his eyes from harsh red, and he was unconsciously singing along with the music as he continued on the way to school.

~~

As Sora’s jalopy of a hover car hauled itself, clunking and whirring loudly into the parking lot, he glanced at his watch seeing that it was still really early in the morning, and that school wouldn’t start for another hour or so. He groaned loudly into his otherwise silent car.

Earlier the signal to his favorite radio station had been booted by another, unwelcome radio station signal, so he had just turned off the radio to save himself the pain of hearing good 80’s songs interrupted frequently by paid programming.

So now it was quiet (except for the terrible dieing-electronics noises coming from his car) and it was still early. What was he supposed to do now? Usually he had to sprint to first hour because the hellish traffic always made him late. He had no idea what to do with all this extra time.

Thankfully, he could get a good parking space for once and slightly savored the experience as he pulled into a space close to the breezeway along the bus loop. He sat there for a moment, looking around and thinking he had been fortunate for his timely luck. Though once the novelty had worn off (far too fast in Sora’s opinion) he realized that no one he knew would be here yet. Getting out of his car he was all alone in the silent, unusually-empty parking lot, and he hurriedly trekked his way up to building nine, hugging himself against the harsh wind whipping around his small frame, to exchange the crap in his backpack for the (unfortunately) necessary crap in his locker.

The chill of the wind made goose bumps erupt on the exposed flesh of his arms, and he thanked his paranoia that he always kept his other sweater in his locker for those cold class rooms. Picking up his pace, he raced up the stairs in front of the building making it to the warm interior of building nine before his muscles started to involuntarily shiver.

~~

Once the exchange was completed his anti-grav backpack was considerably emptier, and his stomach was reminding him of its lack of food. Since he was now warm, thanks to his spare black hoodie, and the fact that he still had loads of time before class, he decided to relive both his boredom and hunger and go to the café down the block.

Once-white walls made up the entirety of building nine, also known as the Visual building. Sora made his way back towards the center lobby, looking around at the structure that had become so familiar to him over the past year or so. With a Modern style this building clashed against the old, classier styles and facades of the other buildings that made up the school. Smells of paint, charcoal, metal and other materials permeated the walls, where countless art works hung or leaned against in varying states of being completed. A feeling of contentment and warmth lingered in the atmosphere and made Sora’s muscles relax, boots clopping softly on the dirty, tiled floor. Building nine was only used for visual arts classes, except for one random English class, that migrated from year to year. Other than that it completely belonged to the visual majors.

The Visual Arts building was one of nine buildings that made up the campus of HLSOA; or Hollow’s Landing School of the Arts, where Sora majored in Visual Arts.

HLSOA was a high school for those who had a magic of the arts. It was a tricky business trying to figure out where someone’s gift would be classified as. Most of the time a person’s gift was connected to more than one area, making it all the more confusing. Everyone was subjected to a magic-scanning and placing at a young age, and routinely checked every time they moved from one type of schooling to the next (like from elementary to middle school). The thing was that magic would sometimes grow and shift in certain areas, and kids would then have to be transferred to another type of specialized schooling.

Even rarer was when a child was born without any specific genre of magic. This was called general magic. Sora himself had had general magic, until around the beginning of 8th grade, when he could feel his growing attraction and ability in drawing and painting. It hadn’t been until the high school magic-scanning that he discovered that he no longer had general magic, and had manifested an area or genre with visual arts. Apparently his magic connected to his reflexes and agility had also been affected, but to a smaller degree.

This happened a lot to those with general magic, so he wasn’t all that surprised when it was discovered. He was sad, however, when all of his other friends (or all of those also in his class, which consisted of about 6 people including himself) were sent to different schools than him, having manifested different powers. All of them, that is, except for Roxas.

He and Roxas had practically grown up together at their previous school, and were inseparable ever since pre-kindergarten, when they had first met. They had shared their childhood together, and were like brothers. With both of them having petite frames, heart shaped faces, tan skin, and bright blue eyes they even resembled each other, but that was only a mere coincidence.

It was still kind of nerve-racking, though, to suddenly be going to such a huge school when he was coming from one such a small one (that he had been going to all his life). Sora was a naturally charismatic and witty person, thankfully, and easily made friends with the people in his classes. He had especially connected to some other people coming from other general magic schools. And he always had Roxas. None of these people, though, were here right now.

He sighed. Why weren’t they here? Wouldn’t their travel patterns have changed too? Oh, wait a minute… he had forgotten, Kairi was always late since she flat-out refused to get up in the mornings. At least she’d get here on time today, he thought smirking. Namine took the train, he knew, and that had its own messed up schedule, completely separate from the rage of the road. But Roxas should be here, he took the bus, which also had a time table adjusted to incorporate the hellish traffic.

Sure enough, when he stepped out of the building people were spilling out of a yellow school bus that had just pulled up to the bus loop. One of them was Roxas.

Blonde, spiky hair hardly moved in the harsh morning wind, as the small, tan boy slowly trudged his way down the path past the cafeteria and (no doubt) towards building seven. His cerulean eyes were framed with sleep as he stared at the ground in front of his feet; he didn’t notice Sora standing there. Sora set out to immediately remedy the situation.

“ROXAS!” he yelled, jumping over the side of the stair case outside building nine to the grass below, and started sprinting down the slight incline of the hill to intercept him.

Dazed blue eyes looked over at the sound of his name only in time to see what was probably a blur of brown hair as Sora collided with him heavily, sending him teetering dangerously towards the cold concrete below. Sora hurriedly snaked a clothed arm around Roxas’s waist to keep him from falling over, and Roxas found himself staring at a now upside-down world.

“Hey, it looks like we’re doing the Tango!” came Sora, brightly, trying (in vain) to quell the slight anger and definite annoyance that Roxas would have at the rude awakening.

He groaned, obviously not amused by Sora’s antics. “What the hell, Sora!?” Roxas said as he grabbed onto Sora’s shoulder to pull himself upright.

“Sorry…” Sora let his arm fall back to his side, as he quickly explained, “It was an accident, I swear. You see, I was running down the hill, and the hill turned out to be much steeper than I thought, so I couldn’t stop in time, and I sorta… ran into you…so, yeah… sorry.”

“Sure…” Roxas trailed off as if he was skeptical of Sora’s story, hinting at his actual feeling.

But Sora didn’t catch this; all he heard was the tone in Roxas’s voice. “I said I was sorry!” he almost whined, but not quite. He was still a man, no matter how gay he was… right?

“I know, I know. I was just messin’ with you, man.”

“Oh…” Sora said before grumbling loudly and coherently enough so that Roxas could hear, “Meanie…”

Yup, still a man.

Roxas chose to ignore this, instead asking with slight sarcasm, “So where are we off to, this fine morning?” as he gestured lazily around him to indicate the scene. The sky was blocked completely by pale grey clouds, making the world around them dark enough that the school had the outside lights turned on. It looked as though it might rain. Icy wind cut right through the black hoodie that Sora had put on, and he shivered.

“That café down the road.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Do you think it’s going to rain?” Sora asked, now looking closely at the horizon, where even darker clouds had formed. It wasn’t a completely dumb question, because the sky was usually murky and overcast in Hollow’s Landing, and Roxas thought nothing of it; but he did gaze off thoughtfully, trying to remember if it would or not.

They had started walking back up the path that led to building nine and onto building one, the Communications building, and the wind was thrashing around them, making them shiver. Sora hugged himself in a vain attempt to keep warm, and started walking a little faster, Roxas doing the same.

“I’m not sure. I guess I forgot to check the weather report,” Roxas finally replied rather guiltily, as he was the one who could afford a television and was supposed to keep Sora update on things like the weather for each day. You could never trust those newspaper weather predictions. Not that Sora got the paper delivered to him either. It was a waste of time and money on his part, considering that his neighborhood was so bad that most likely it would get stolen or peed on before he got to it. And the other fact that the paper “boy” was in fact a fifty-year-old pedophile that Sora had had way too many close encounters with didn’t help to make him more favorable towards the idea. Sora chose to silently forgive Roxas, though. All was cool. It wasn’t as if he had an umbrella or any kind of rain protection anyways; so why be forewarned of a cold, wet doom if there was nothing he could do about it?

They had been walking in silence and Roxas glanced at building nine when they passed it, then asked, “Namine here yet?”

Sora sighed, “No, she takes the train, remember?”

“No…”

“Well you should,” said Sora in a slightly sarcastic tone. Ok, so maybe he was still a little bitter about Roxas shirking his duty.

Disregarding Sora’s tone, Roxas continued with his previous line or thought, “Is Kairi here?”

Sora snorted at this. They both knew of Kairi’s sleeping habits quite well. That was the only time Sora had broken a bone.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It was a dumb question.”

“Yes. Yes it was.”

Roxas playfully swatted him on the back of the head, as they entered building one. The wind cut off abruptly when the heavy metal door swung shut behind them, thudding back into its frame. Both of pairs of shoes could now be heard clomping and echoing noisily in the unusually empty entrance way, echoing loudly due to the tilled floor. The place was deserted. No one was to be seen in the expanse of hall way in front of them, and the Student Services desk was still in lock down with metal shudders covering the service windows. The sight was unsettling, even with all of the lights on; it was an old building that smelled of dust and old wood and was normally bustling with people. Except for now.

“Creepy, ain’t it?” asked Sora, casually to disguise any distress. The lights chose then to flicker dousing them in a few milliseconds of pitch darkness, and that was enough to start making their nerves hum, slightly on edge.

“Yeah…hey, wait. Where is everyone?” inquired Roxas in looking around.

“Dunno.”

“Maybe we should leave…”

“Perhaps.” And quickly turning to their left, they headed down the office hallway. Nerves a little highstrung, they nearly jumped out of their skins when someone suddenly addressed them out of one of the guidance councilor offices.

“Pardon?” here came Sora’s manners as he quickly twirled around and asked for the woman to repeat what she had just said. Neither of them had heard heart first; as they had been focusing on getting out of the unnaturally empty building, even if it meant going back out into the harsh wind.

“I need you two boys to show this young man around campus,” she repeated carefully, as though they were slow.

Shocked, they realized that there was someone else in the room with the woman, and as they took in this new comer’s appearance, both of them wondered how they could have missed him before.

Icy silvery-blue hair framed a pale, angular face; a face that was just as fair as the rest of his luxuriously toned body. He wasn’t body builder material, but the muscles that were there were well defined, and (from the way he carried himself) well used. A sleeveless black shirt was loosely clinging to his torso, and somewhat covered by an open, white and yellow (also sleeveless) vest. His extremely-baggy jeans hung low on his hips, and when he moved a slight strip of smooth skin showed between his white belt and the hem of his shirt.

The whole combination was so alluring that both Sora and Roxas were looking him up and down with blatant interest before they could stop themselves. Both sets of blue eyes darkened slightly, and Sora resisted the urge to swallow, as his mouth had suddenly gone rather dry.

“Um, yeah, ok,” Roxas croaked out to answer the woman, who was now looking at the two boys curiously.

Neither boy dared to say anything more in fear of humiliating themselves in front of this epitome of god-like sexiness, but Sora did quickly raise his hand to gesture to the new boy to follow them as they walked away from the lady’s office doorway. They heard the new kid thank the woman hurriedly, and be responded with a “no problem, hun”, before he hastened after them. Seeing as they had only gone maybe about four steps away, it didn’t take him that long to catch up.

“Um…” he started to say, looking nervous and shifting his shoulder bag strap. The poor kid obviously felt awkward for being forced onto them like this.

Wait a sec. Forced onto them? Hmmm, that’s not such a bad idea, Sora thought to himself before mentally shoving the idea away. It was best to think kinky thoughts AFTER you knew the person’s name.

And, as Sora was not one to let first-meeting jitters last for long (even if the person was incredibly sexy), he took pity on the kid and cut him off, saying, “So, I’m Sora, and this is Roxas.” At this he gestured nonchalantly towards the blonde standing next to him and Roxas smiled and slightly inclined his head in a small nod. Sora continued, “And this fine (yet unusually empty) building we are all currently standing in is called building one, the communications and foreign language building.”

Sora quickly walked over to the silver-haired kid and linked their arms together, never once loosing the tour-guide manner. The new guy looked over at him and blinked in surprise, but Sora just responded by smiling and using their now-linked arms to steer the guy towards the exit that he and Roxas had tried to bolt out of moments before. They had been so close too, as it only took several strides before they found themselves outside in one of the many hidden alcoves located along building one’s exterior.

Roxas, who had linked arms with the new guy on his opposite side was last out, and before the kid could protest, both Sora and Roxas were steering him out of the recess and down along the school’s main driveway.

As they were walking, Roxas said, “Ok, so before we show you the whole campus, it’d be best if we saw your schedule so we can sort-of point out your class rooms as we pass each building.”

“And knowing your major would help us show you which building will be your designated ‘art area’,” added Sora.

“Um, ok…,” he said a little bewildered before passing his schedule over to Sora, who met him half way there as the kid’s arms were still somewhat pinned. When the skin of their hands made contact, however, a lick of warmth ran up Sora’s arm, and he pulled away quickly, confused and surprised with a blush forming across his cheeks. The feeling reminded him of the time when he had picked up a pencil (first of all the art mediums we had to have touched) in the beginning of 8th grade. It had been disorienting at the time, but he was told at the magic scanning that that was his magic telling him of its new affinity for the visual arts. Did he have some soft of affinity to this new kid? No, that couldn’t be possible. Could it…?

In order to distract himself Sora quickly looked down at the kid’s schedule.

At the top read the usual assortment of numbers and codes, and he skimmed over those carelessly, not really looking until his eyes caught on the kid’s name. Cole, Riku. Riku Cole, huh? An interesting name. [A/N: Cole means “outstanding seafarer” and since Riku means “land, shore” or “earth” his full name is actually very contradictory XD. Although, I’ve also heard that Cole means “black”, but, eh, that works too, no?]

“Riku?”

“Huh?” the kid answered confused, probably wondering why Sora had asked his name, and definitely caught off guard.

“Just checking,” Sora replied coolly before looking up at Riku’s face. Relieved that his faint blush had already disappeared, he continued, “Got to make sure this is your schedule, yah know?” Sora internally smiled. He was being a cheeky bastard, and it was fun.

“Of course,” said Riku who smiled a bright, disarming smile right at Sora (it seemed that two could play at that game), and their eyes locked, Caribbean with Sapphire. Sora felt his breath catch and that fading blush threatening to resurface, and was very thankful when the pressure of a chin on his shoulder diverted his attention to a Roxas who was trying to read over his shoulder.

Obviously the blonde had unlinked arms with Riku and circled around behind Sora so as to get a better look at Riku’s schedule. His vibrant blue eyes, so much like Sora’s own, were quickly scanning the page. Sora himself looked back down at the schedule, and for the first time reading the classes listed.

It read in order of period number, class name, to the instructor’s name.

1) Ballet II—Finkletoes, Robert
2) AP Language Comprehension—Scott, Henrietta
3) Chemistry I honors—Erhard, Nani
~*Lunch*~
4) Pre Calculus honors—Christopher, Francine
5) Spanish I—Juarez, Elena
6) AP American History—Vaughn, Eric
7) Hip-Hop I—Sanders, Charmaine

…

Sora stared down at the paper, unmoving. He didn’t realize that both Roxas and Riku had stopped along with him, looking at him curiously. It would have been an awkward silence as they all stood there (with two of them wondering if the third one was sane), if the wind hadn’t been blowing around them so loudly making it anything but silent. Sora didn’t notice any of these things, though. He was too busy looking at the first class listed. Ballet 2…

“You’re a dance major?” he asked, not letting himself believe it until it was confirmed by someone else.

It was. “Seems like it,” was all Riku said in response, and Sora was sure that if their arms hadn’t been linked he would have shrugged.

Sora’s eyes, which were still fixed on the paper, locked onto the instructor’s name. “And you’re being taught by a Mr. Finkletoes?” he asked skeptically, still not believing this to be real.

Riku looked over at the paper. “/Robert/ Finkletoes,” he said by way of an explanation, and that was all Sora needed to break out laughing.

He could tell that he and Riku would get along just fine.