Hello, everyone! I've had this idea for a bit since I was playing Kingdom Hearts II for the first 25 minutes. I thought, "What if I was following in Sora's footsteps as the Keyblade wielder?" And so, this story came in mind.

Now, let me first tell you; my English is not perfect. I'm a Danish resident, which means my English is a bit terrible in comparison to native speakers. If anyone can help me out to be so kind as to point of errors, I'll fix them right away as they are spotted.

This'll be a long story, which has been split into nine continuing "seasons"--the chapters are "episodes" that follows each other despite being a new story separated from this one.

Enjoy the first chapter of "Phantom Monsters: Season One", my fellow ponies! Have a good week!

(Earth, distant city: Year, 2013)

I walked down the road of my city as I got time off of school today. My blue eyes looked ahead in front of me to where I was going. A calm breeze swept by, blowing against my brown hair as I sighed.

I wore a black jacket with red trims on the shoulder and bottom of it. I also wore black jeans, and I wore black gloves on my hands.

My name is Daniel Black. I’m a fifteen year old boy who has been born immature after my big brother. I’ve been the target of most of the older kids in nearly all of the schools I’ve attended to learn and get friendships.

Let’s just say, making friendship has been taking a hard time for me after being bullied throughout my life. I’ve not been feeling well for some time now, and all I need is a decent break from this hellish life on Earth.

But, that’s just in made up stories. I mean, how can anyone even make it to other worlds? It’s basically impossible for it to be happening in real life. Those stories—in those books and fan made works—they’re not reality. They’ve never been that at all. It’s just fiction.

I sighed, lowering my gaze a bit before stopping near a scrap container as I leaned on it with my back resting against its metallic surface. I folded my arms as I did so.

All of this: the bullying, the reality of me being abused even by my own family. I hate it. I hate it all. Why can’t I just have a long vacation away from it and stay in my own way of life? Did God forbid it for me? Or was he not interested in such a weak human like me?

For my entire life, I’ve endured the whole thing: the abuse, for the most part.

I want a new life. I want a life to have something to have refreshment to me. I want something to make me feel loved by them. I want to make me feel the need of being in assistance. I want that kind of life.

Not one of these.

But, as I stated before, all of that is just fiction. It cannot be real.

It’s a sad thing, truly.

I need to go away. I want to be far away from this place, far away from this so-called home.

As I started to walk again, I turned a corner around the wall of a building and headed to where the edge of the city was to be.

I continued to walk, and it wasn’t much until I felt something in me that needed to freeze myself up in a frozen state while I tried to make my body move.

Shaking my head to get this sensation away, I brushed it off before continuing towards the city’s edge. I really need to get so far away from this hell hole as much as possible.

I don’t belong here. Not anymore.

While I was walking down the streets, I saw multiple people in the daylight as they minded their own business. Good, they haven’t noticed me yet…

“Ah, there you are.”

Me and my Goddamn mind…

I looked frozen, and I saw a gangster coming up to me with a ‘friendly’ smile on his expression. His appearance was that of a muscular thug with black hair, and he wore a dark blue suit with crimson trims running down where the zipper was.

“I was wondering where you were,” he spoke to me. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

I was still frozen, unmoving before I was dragged away from the crowded area by the gangster. The crowd was minding their own business.

The gangster pressed me against the wall of a warehouse - as it was here he dragged me to - and he looked straight at me with his reddish brown eyes. “I looked all over for you,” he said icily and unfriendly to me. “You really had to disappear on me, didn’t you?”

“Well, my instincts told me to mind my own thing,” I stated to him with a dry tone in my voice.

“Right,” he mockingly nodded. “While I looked for you, I had my gang come to your house, and they did it ever so kindly to you, my boy.”

I had my blood run cold at his darkened tone. My forehead dripped with sweat as he chuckled darkly.

D-Did they kill my abusive family? Despite their uncaring treatment to me, they were still family to me, and I couldn’t get to school without them.

“Looks like he’s taking it well, Splinter,” said a member of the warehouse gang as he came up to us. He was another muscular thug with blonde hair instead unlike Splinter. His black eyes looked at the gang leader with expectation. He wore a short-sleeved jacket and blue jeans.

“Indeed,” Splinter - the one who was holding me by my jacket’s collar - nodded to his fellow gangster. He looked back to my sweating form. “Ah, gotten cold have we, kid?” He smirked.

I didn’t say anything. My sheer shock and fear of hearing my family’s death terrified me to the core. H-How could they do such a thing?!

“Well, you’ll be joining them in Hell or Heaven soon, kiddo,” Splinter told me. “Oh, but first, I must ask you one thing.”

“W-Wha-What is it?” I was too terrified to utter the word in my normally calm voice.

Splinter smiled; and this was not a normal smile, mind you. His smile was cruel and dark. “Let us get your stuff, kid,” he spoke. “We want your money and video games. Heck, even your head. We could use them as our trophies over your death.”

My blood seemed to stop there. Those things...they were the only things I could live with; my games for spending the time, and my money for food and other stuff.

“No words?” Splinter raised a brow at me. “You’ve gone into a deaf silence, I see. You want your death quick, then.”

With that, he raised his hand into the air and closed it into a fist. He was prepared to punch me…

When I suddenly screamed and kicked his guts before he skidded backwards in surprise. I tried to run away from them, but the whole gang blocked my only escape routes.

“You’ve got nowhere to run now, you bastard!” I heard Splinter’s yell. “You’ll pay for that, you know!”

I was scared. I was scared out of my bloody mind at being surrounded by murderers.

I saw one gangster run to me from the corner of my eye. I ducked under his fist he threw at me, and I kicked him on his leg, and he cried out in pain before I delivered a punch to the face, causing him to stagger backwards.

I ducked underneath another thrown fist from a thug, and I gave him a punch to the guts. He let out a painful cry before I delivered several punches to him on his stomach. He coughed up saliva from his mouth before he held his belly with his hands.

“A not-so skilled fighter, are you, kid?” I heard Splinter call from behind me as he grabbed the collar on my jacket tightly.

I gasped for air before he punched me on the back with hard hits. I coughed up saliva, the coughing worsening as I received another series of punches on my stomach by a second gangster. I tried to resist the hits, but they were so strong that I couldn’t manage it.

Suddenly, out of literally nowhere, a bright shining light came from between the thugs hitting me with their fists. This made them stop their assault and let go of me while I fell to my knees and gasped for air.

“What was that just now?!” Splinter demanded loudly.

He received no answer from his men as they were all in shock while they watched me.

Or, more specifically...what was in my hand.

Heck, even I was shocked out of my mind as I stared at the weapon I held. It looked like a big, key-shaped weapon that had the form like that of…

“A Keyblade…” I muttered to myself, a bit audible for the thugs to hear. It basically looked like the shape of Roxas’s Keyblade from the sequel game, which was pretty cool.

The gangsters didn’t know what I mumbled in words, as they were uninterested in the weapon. Their gazes returned to me.

“You think your key-like weapon can stop us?!” Splinter called out to me. “Get ‘im, mates!”

His men obeyed their leader’s order without questions.

“Let’s see what this Keyblade can do,” I told myself low, and I raised the blue-silver Keyblade into the air as I uttered: “Fire!”

A fiery ring formed around me as I looked at the flames in astonishment and amazement. I did not know I would be chosen by the Keyblade. I only thought it was fiction and in a game called Kingdom Hearts.

Yet, here I was. I was holding an actual and real Keyblade. And I uttered one of its many magic powers in self-defense against these murderers.

The gangsters were afraid of the flames surrounding me, and they stopped dead in their tracks after Splinter had ordered them to attack me.

I gave them a grin on my expression. “Surprised, you motherfuckers?” I called them from my position in the fire ring.

“How did-?” Splinter yelled angrily, “How are you able to do magic, kid?!”

“I’m as confused as you are, Splinter,” I replied to him over the burning flames.

I was just in pure shock that I, a mere boy from Earth, had been chosen by the Keyblade to possibly fight off evil and its darkness. I couldn’t express the amount of words I can put into this development.

I could feel the emotions of excitement, amazement, astonishment, fear, anxiety.

Just after it appeared in my hand, I felt those emotions come out of me with the Keyblade I was holding. But, I was worried that I might have to fight for my life against Heartless and the Nobodies, if they truly exist.

In my emotional state, the flames disappeared as Splinter saw his chance and charged me while I was preoccupied.

But, at the last second, I noticed him from my eye’s corner and ducked under his fist. I decided to play fair with him, and let the Keyblade vanish from my hand and deliver a punch to Splinter’s stomach.

Not much damage came from it.

A laugh escaped the gangster as I gulped nervously.

“A puny attack like that is nothing compared to the pain you’re about to feel, boy,” Splinter spoke to me in a voice that sounded cruel. “Prepare to feel pain!”

He gave me a punch that was hard on my chest, and I flew off my feet and crashed into the wall of the warehouse. I screamed in pain before falling to my knees. I let my hands on the ground’s surface and started to exhale for breath. I saw him raise his foot and lashing out with it at me. I was kicked back as another kick from Splinter came. Then I was grabbed by the collar of my jacket up a bit.

I could see the satisfying grin on Splinter’s expression as he began to speak again.

“It looks like you’ll never be able to wield that strange key again, boy. You’ll wish you never crossed our path either. Your regret will be in for a painful sight. Your world will be plunged into darkness, and with it, your death.”

I groaned and struggled in his tight grip on my collar. “You…” I started to say.

“Yes?” A gleam of a strange light in Splinter’s eyes came for a split moment. “Continue.”

“You’re...going to…” I continued in my struggle. “Regret...this...Splinter…”

Laughter came from him after my short response. “Those will be your last words, kid,” Splinter told me. He raised his free hand…

Shit! I forgot about his other arm!

He had taken out a knife from his pocket, licking his lips in excitement. “I feel a sense of thrill coming from my veins,” he said to me. “Do you feel fear, Danny? I do. It tastes delightfully for us gangsters to hear your horrifying screams of pain, and the sorry excuse of a family will soon meet you in the afterlife.”

I gritted my teeth, briefly closing my eyes for a moment before I sensed Splinter raise his knife into the air and was about to strike me, when…

When suddenly, he screamed painfully and loosened the grip on my collar and I fell down on my knees as I coughed for air and gasped to breathe.

That was close. Too close for comfort. But...who saved me?

We all looked at the savior who came to my rescue, and all of our eyes widened in shock. It was like a shadowy creature which had claws invisible from the sight. It had a strange standing position, as if it was the weirdest thing ever. It stood upright, though, like a human. Except for one thing; it had blood red eyes that looked creepy as Hell. The pupils, it didn’t have any. Its ears were longer than a human’s, and the ears curved forward.

“Is that a Heartless?” I asked the gangsters.

“What’s a Heartless?” They all asked in unison back.

“It’s a creature from a game called...never mind,” I shook my head.

“I have come to...take you, boy,"the creature, from what I heard in my head, spoke to only me.

“Huh?” I tilted my head in confusion. “Why?”

The gang to my left looked at me, confused.

“Your time...has come…”the creature told me in its dark voice.

“What? Am I really going to abandon Earth, or what?” I demanded the creature, summoning my Keyblade in my right hand.

“Keyblade-wielder,”the creature growled dangerously. “You’ve shown yourself.”

I don’t understand what it is saying to me, but I haven’t given up my fight yet. I can be able to defeat both this creature, and then the gangsters, by myself.

“A key to open the door…”

Huh? Did I just hear a voice in my head?

“This world has been connected…you understand nothing.”

What the Hell? Why am I hearing voices all of a sudden?

The creature took its chance at my startled state, and it charged me with lashing out its black claws. I managed to notice its movement, and I dodged to the side and blocked the next strike from the black creature.

The gangsters just looked on in confusion. “What in the world of God is going on?!” one of them demanded.

You tell me, thug.

I blocked a new claw strike from the creature, and I jumped away from it to see what this Keyblade can do. I raised it and pointed its end at the creature, before I shouted: “Fire!”

A fireball came from the tip of the Keyblade as the fiery ball soared through the air towards the black Heartless-like creature. I saw, however, that it jumped faster than I could see when it took notice of the flaming ball’s incoming movement with its blood red eyes.

Out of nowhere, on the ground and near the creature, more Heartless-like beings came from the dark portals that were surging with black energy, from what I could sense from them.

There appeared to be over sixty of them. My eyes widened in pure fear and worry.

“You...must pay the price...Keyblade-wielder,”the apparent leader of the creatures spoke to me darkly.

Oh, shit just got real! This wasn’t fiction after all! Now I am in real danger from having threatened that Heartless creature.

It gave me a dark chuckle, having apparently read my thoughts. “We’re not...Heartless...human,”it told me. “We are...Phantoms!”

What in Hell is that name for something as dark as you, creature?

Oh.

It’s their species. My stupidity got in the way.

The gangsters, from the corner of my eyes, took their chance to charge me. I was surrounded, literally on all sides.

How am I going to defeat all these enemies?!

Wait...the Keyblade...what if I do this?

I raised my Keyblade into the air. I uttered: “Thunder!” Bolts of thunder came then shooting down from the sky and electrocuted the gangsters as they screamed in pain and fell to their knees. I looked at the Phantoms, with my Keyblade still in the air. “Blizzard!”

A harsh blizzard came from the tip of the Keyblade, and the attack managed to catch some Phantoms to freeze like statues. Others were lucky to have evaded the blizzard by going underground in their shadows.

I looked briefly at the gangsters that were in pain on the ground, and that was when I heard some beeping of several cars coming to the warehouse location.

I widened my eyes in shock. The police!

“Halt!” One policeman ordered us. They then noticed the shadowy creatures around me, and their eyes locked on them as they pointed their guns at them.

“Wait!” I tried to stop them, but they did not hear my call as they began to shoot bullets at the Phantoms.

The bullets just pounced off the creatures; surprising the policemen as they were unaware their weapons had no effect on the Phantoms - which they had not realized were after only me.

The Phantoms growled in unison at the policemen, and the police grew worried with fear on their expressions. Then, what I saw was unexpected and rather bloody.

The policemen were ripped off with their arms torn away from their bodies and legs were also ripped off the bodies while the heads were cut off by the Phantoms’ sharp black claws.

I was horrified, let me tell you.

“That was...for interfering with our affairs,”the leader of the Phantoms snarled at the dead policemen. It looked back at me with its deadly eyes. “Come with us, wielder of the Keyblade.”

I was angry. I roared in response. “You killed innocent people. I won’t let you hurt more of us!”

The Phantom gave a dark chuckle. “Foolish human, we’ve already dealt with your species,”it told me with an evil voice.

I widened my eyes in horror. No...They couldn’t have...Could they? We are almost ten billion humans! How can they manage to kill all of us?

The Phantom chuckled evilly. “We are...more than you ever could hope, boy...we are into the millions as well,”it spoke to me. “The heart; it is a tasteful thing to devour while in the midst of fear.”

I then realized how they could kill the humans: the heart! How can I be so stupid?! They are basically monsters with Heartless-like features and abilities!

“So, I’m the only one left?” I hesitantly asked the leader.

“Yes,”it nodded. “You must come and see the Master at once. He has...plans for you, Keyblade-wielder.”

“Forget it!” I growled at it in anger. “I’m never going to go with you! Not in my life!”

The Phantom ‘sighed’. “So be it, human,”it decided as it raised its black claws into the air. “Attack him!”

I growled angrily as I ducked under the claws of a Phantom monster and jumped above another strike from the next monster. I chose to make my move now, and I slashed at my two attackers as they disappeared into nothingness with the hits of my Keyblade. I continued to dodge, block, jump, and strike at the Phantoms as much as I possibly could do.

However, more and more Phantoms came out of their black portals around the place. I was soon cornered against the wall of the warehouse, my Keyblade pointing at the monsters in warning. The Phantoms just cackled darkly to me in response. Then, the first Phantom in front of me raised its dark claws into the air and was prepared to strike me.

I blocked the strike, and then quickly I slashed at the black chest of the Phantom as it screeched in pain as it disappeared from the view. I growled, and finally, I recklessly charged into the horde of Phantoms with only my Keyblade and its magic as my defense. I struck out to a Phantom, slashing its side as it screeched before disappearing into nothingness.

I continued to attack them with my Keyblade, with some managing to block my attacks with black shields and nearly landed hits on me. I rolled to the side before they could hit me, and I slashed at their chests one after the other with my weapon, as they disappeared like the others I managed to defeat.

I narrowly ducked under a claw strike from a new Phantom that was attacking me. I did something I hadn’t guessed I could do; I did a jump into the air, rolling as I did, before roaring out as an icy frost came from my body and froze some of the Phantoms surrounding me. I was surprised, and I grinned before I used my next magic attack.

“Aero!” I called out as the frozen statues of the Phantoms around me flung into the air with a gust of wind. I took my chance in this move, and jumped on each Phantom that was frozen before I cut their heads off with my Keyblade, one by one as the body statues fell back down on the ground, shattered to pieces as they crashed down.

I grinned giddily at this, as I never expected to be using magic at all. I thought I was a weak human with no talent. I was dead wrong.

I then realized I was still in the middle of the fighting with the Phantoms. I ducked under the strikes of a claw attack from a Phantom creature, and I struck its head with my Keyblade as it screeched in pain before disappearing into nothingness.

I fought the creatures off one by one as I was soon panting for breath while there was one last standing in front of me. It was the leading Phantom. I grinned at its ‘shocked’ eye expression while it looked at me.

“Not bad,”it complimented me.

Wow, first compliment from an enemy.

“You’ve clearly shown capability to wield that Keyblade, human,”the Phantom continued. “However, all light must come to an end with darkness in its stead. You’ve just entered the war between the Light and the Dark, boy.”

So, I need to fight for my survival, then. That was just perfect.

Yeah, I’m not cool about this, let me tell you.

“So, what if I did?” I questioned the Phantom. “I am just hoping for my own survival. If I need to fight for it, so be it. I can win against you; I just proved myself here.”

It chuckled. “That, you did, boy. However, the proof of you able to unlock the door is far from being true,”the Phantom reminded me. “You’re only a boy. There’s nothing special about you.”

I growled. “I’m not special? Well, let me prove you wrong, Phantom!” I challenged as I pointed the tip of my Keyblade at it. I uttered: “Fire!”

A fireball soared through the air and managed to hit the Phantom, and it screeched in pain slightly before it regained its balance.

I continued to bombard the remaining Phantom with fireballs from my Keyblade, which seemed to be working until it disappeared into nothingness after the tenth fireball had landed on its chest. I panted heavily, holding my hands on my knees while I stood there in my victory against the Phantoms.

That was…awesome! I was, unexpectedly, shown as being capable of using my Keyblade on that horde of creatures. I was happy and excited. Happy for being alive and I was excited for being a Keyblade wielder.

Then, something broke above me in the sky. I looked up as I watched in horror as a black whirling vortex was sucking everything in it from the area I was standing. Realizing this, I took hold on a broken wooden plank to try my best in keeping myself from being sucked in the vortex.

My fingers were slowly loosening their grip, as I was then thrown into the air above after a moment had passed. I screamed in fright as I had no idea where I would be making an appearance to.