Work Text:
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
That’s all Sora had been hearing for the last ten minutes. The ticking of that stupid clock was driving him insane. He didn’t know how but the ticking of the clock had suddenly become louder and everything else around him became muffled, and by everything else he meant the teacher’s voice.
Sora never thought he’d have to go to school any time soon, much less for a mission. When Riku told him that this specific world he was on needed to be looked on because of a sudden appearance of Heartless, Sora had agreed to take on the job without question.
He definitely should have questioned it. This world was so strange. It looked very different first off, almost like how Port Royal had looked. It was also a bit strange that the students here didn’t wear uniforms. When he had attended school on Destiny Islands, they had to wear school uniforms every single day without exception. Another weird thing was the complete lack of Heartless so far. He wasn’t detecting any hints of darkness yet. Maybe he just had to wait longer and expand his search.
Sora had taken on the guise of a student. After all, he was sixteen so he could easily pass off as one. Maybe his clothes were a little out of place but hey, teenagers were weird, right? He’d just say he was a transfer student or something if anyone asked.
Now if only the stupid ticking could stop.
He didn’t know why that particular noise had suddenly become loud. He wondered if he was the only one hearing it. He looked around and noticed that yes, he wasn’t the only one hearing it. Many of the students in the class had their eyes trained on the clock, eagerly waiting for something.
And then the voice of one of the students, a boy with dark skin and an afro – Chad if he remembered correctly from rollcall – startled him.
“Summer.”
He said the word with such glee, but what did that have to do with the clock? And then another student joined in.
“Summer.”
And then another.
“Summer.”
And another.”
“Summer.”
More students kept joining in the chant all the while that obnoxious clock and its ticking kept growing louder and louder. The teacher for some reason unbeknownst to Sora was completely unaware of the room of chanting students, for she just kept on talking.
The only student beside himself that wasn’t joining in on the chant was the boy that sat in front of him, one with brown hair and blue eyes – Troy he remembered clearly.
Okay, now Sora didn’t know what was worse – the ticking or the chanting. If he was being honest, the chanting was starting to get a bit creepy. He wondered if he wasn’t in the middle of some summoning ritual or something.
And then, with a final loud tick, the school bell rang and the students cheered and threw their papers in the air.
Ohhhh. So that’s why they kept chanting summer. It was the end of school and summer vacation had begun. He still didn’t understand why the ticking and chanting was necessary. And wait, hold on. Why was music suddenly playing around them and why was everyone acting like this was a completely normal thing that occurred in their day-to-day life?
Sora looked around, trying to find the source of the music but couldn’t find any radio or any sort of speaker that could be behind the music playing. If anything, the music seemed to be coming from all around so it couldn’t be coming from just one source.
And now people were dancing. They were dancing to the music.
“What time is it?”
And now they were singing! Specifically, Chad was singing. What the heck was going on? Did people just break out into song around here all the time?
“Finally summer’s here
Good to be chilling out
I’m off the clock, the pressure’s off
Now my girl’s what it’s all about”
Now Troy was singing. Great. It wasn’t that the singing was bad. If anything, Sora didn’t mind the voices he had heard so far. What bothered him was that he didn’t understand a thing about this scenario. He didn’t understand why people were just breaking out into song and dance.
When Troy and a girl with dark brown hair began singing together, Sora decided to make his escape and headed out into the hallway. Maybe if he got away from the people singing, then the music would stop playing and he could focus on his mission.
Sora instantly regretted walking out into the hallway for once he did, Chad and many other students broke out into dance and wait. Wait a minute. Why was Sora dancing with them? He couldn’t dance to save his life! How was he dancing? And whoah, okay. Somehow he was breakdancing in the middle of the hallway, and he had no idea how he was doing it. He had to admit though, it was pretty cool.
“Play by the rules
No summer school
I’m free to shop till I drop”
Now they were in the cafeteria and a blonde girl dressed in pink began singing. Sora had to admit, she did look pretty pretentious, like those popular girls you saw in movies that thought they were the queen of the social hierarchy in high school.
Her brother – he assumed since they looked alike and were wearing all pink together – joined in the song and the two began strutting through the school and crowds of students as if they were celebrities. Seriously? They were just teenagers trying to get through school like everyone else. Why was everyone making a big deal about them?
After trying to navigate his way past students, Sora eventually found himself doing dance choreography with a basketball. He didn’t even know that you could dance with a basketball. What the heck?! It was… okay it was actually pretty cool if Sora was being honest. Synchronized basketball choreography would probably be something he would fail at if not for the laws of this world.
Eventually the entire school made their way to a large room that might have been the entrance. Sora didn’t know anymore. He was being pushed and pulled in every direction he could think of. It was as if the world was placing him where he needed to go to fit in with the song. He noticed that while everyone was bunched together, the only ones that seemed to stand out were Chad, Troy, and four other students which consisted of the girl Troy sang with earlier, the pretentious siblings, and a dark-skinned girl with short black hair. The six of them were in the center of the room, spaced out from everyone else. Perhaps they would be able to help him on his mission.
When the song finally finished, and the bell rang one final time – why was the bell ringing again anyway? – all the students cheered and celebrated the end of the school year. Sora wasted no time in making his way to the six students.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“Hey,” Troy said with a smile. “You are?”
“Sora. I’m a transfer student.”
“Transfer student on the last day of classes?” Chad said. “That’s pretty odd.”
Sora shrugged, playing along. “That’s what I thought too, but they insisted so I could get a layout of the school for next school year. Anyway, I had a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Has there been anything… weird going on around here lately?”
Chad raised a brow. “Define weird.”
“Like, have there been any, I don’t know… attacks?”
All the students were taken aback by the question. The girl next to Troy tilted her head in question, a small frown on her lips. “Attacks? Is there something we should be looking out for?”
“Yeah. I don’t want to start off my summer getting mugged on the streets,” the dark-skinned girl said.
“No, no. I was just asking since where I come from there’s… that sort of stuff I guess.” Sora could only hope that his lying wasn’t too bad. “But there’s nothing that would pose a danger here, right?”
“Dude, relax,” Chad said, placing a hand on Sora’s shoulder. “This city is pretty safe, safer than most actually.”
“Yeah. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine here,” Troy assured.
“And plus,” the blonde girl all in pink added. “The only danger here is you for wearing that outfit. Like seriously? You’re going to combine gray, red, black, and yellow. Pick a color! And that hairstyle is sooo late 90s.”
Sora blinked in bafflement. Had he just been insulted in his clothing choice? He had only been here for a few minutes and the only attack that had been made on him was by a girl who thought she looked good in pink.
“Oh yeah, well you-”
He was suddenly cut off as his gummi phone went off in his pocket. The blonde girl rolled her eyes in disgust. “Even your ringtone is questionable in taste. Come on Ryan. We have some shopping to do,” she said as she and her brother strutted out of the school.
“Sorry about Sharpay,” Troy said. “She’s a bit of a handful. But hey, it was nice meeting you Sora. Hope to see you in classes this fall.”
And with that, the remaining four students left, waving goodbye at him. Once they were out of sigh, Sora answered his phone and the image of Riku popped up on his screen.
“Riku,” Sora said instantly. “I’m pretty sure there’s nothing on this world you sent me to. Everything seems perfectly fine here. Well, except for the fact that this world is absolutely insane!”
Riku broke out into laughter. “Yeah, I know. I was there for about a minute and couldn’t take it anymore. I’m surprised you lasted this long.”
And then, it hit him. He had been bamboozled.
“Riku you jerk!”
After screaming at the screen of his phone for a solid five minutes, Sora hung up and stormed to the gummi ship. Once he entered the cockpit, he looked at the digital clock and figured that he had enough time to make it back to whack Riku upside the head with his keyblade and get ice cream after.
Still, even though this clock didn’t make noise, he could still hear the tick, tick, ticking of the seconds that went by. Sora’s eye twitched as he realized that he was going to be traumatized by clocks for a good while thanks to his best friend.