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Published:
2021-12-19
Updated:
2024-01-11
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190,401
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36/52
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Total Kingdom Hearts

Summary:

He was just a cringy awkward kid. He was never meant to be the hero, and yet, the Keyblade chose Cody of all people. Despite everything going against him, he's determined to find his "friends", Gwen and Trent, and save all the worlds from darkness. Whether anyone believes he can or not.

A Kingdom Hearts remake crossing over TDI with whatever I feel like.

Originally published on FFN back in 2008 and revamped and rewritten from the ground up because the pandemic broke my mind. It's not necessary, but recommended to read the beginning Author's Note before venturing further to get the full context.

Notes:

This note is going to be far less elaborate than the one I put up on FFN, lol.

Okay, since this is a different site, I want to make this as short and simple as possible. Back when I was like 12, I was really into TDI and made a Kingdom Hearts remake fanfic featuring the characters. And I had fun! As I entered high school, I began to suppress my love of TDI because the internet spaces I went to was slowly deciding it was a "cringe" show, and since KH has its own share of outside mockery, I decided this fanfic was the dumbest thing ever made and I should probably preserve my dignity and stop writing it.

Truth is, this fanfic became a comfort daydream, and even when I entered college, I kept expanding on it in my head because I was convinced I'd never let it see the light of day ever again. And when the pandemic started and everyone was desperately falling back into their childhood hobbies and fandoms just to stay sane, I realized, "Screw it, Cringe Culture is dead. Let's do this shit." And with that, I just decided to redo and rewrite my dumb fanfic I made as a literal child.

My goal with this fic is to try to keep going with it for as long as I can and make it as notorious as stuff like those Smash Bros and Loud House fanfics that have way too much effort put into them than neccesary. I have everything planned up to KH III and I have no clue how long I'll last, but I just want to finally get this all written down somewhere.

I currently have two ridiculously long outlines written out for TKH I and CoM and I plan to make ones for the other entries too as I go along. If you're interested in this fic, but have 0 interest in following it, feel free to PM me for the links. I also have a document archiving the original FFN upload version of this fic in case anyone is interested in that.

Whelp, I tried to shorten it and it still came out as way too long. Anyways, enjoy.

Chapter 1: The Dream

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, there existed but one world.

In this world, not one person was the same. There were different cultures, different species, different lives and meanings. In this one world they all shared, they lived in harmony…

…Until they no longer did.

As the age and lives of the inhabitants of the world grew, so did their greed and vices. They began to segregate themselves, shunning all who were different. It was no longer a shared world for all who roamed it. It was now a divided land of “us” and “them” and “our” and “their”.

If it belonged to “them”, “they” wanted it.

If it did not resemble “us”, “we” had no duty to comply.

As the inhabitants grew older and older, wars and chaos would plague the generations that followed them. To the elders, the olden days were merely a foolish fable of the past. Who could possibly live in a world like that? They happily embraced the darkness as it slowly consumed and devoured all.

But to the youth, the ones who had no memories of those days of bliss, they rejected this endless cycle of destruction. This war torn world that was shattered and corrupted by the dark, seemingly beyond repair, was embraced by the warmth of their light.

Putting together all their hopes and dreams that had miraculously survived in a realm where light was no longer supposed to exist, the youth slowly rebuilt what their elders had destroyed. And the world was whole again…

…But then it wasn’t.

The might of darkness proved much too strong, but the strength of light continued to fight on. In the end, the original state of the world was just as the elders decided; it was a distant past much too difficult to truly return to. And in order to prevent the darkness from consuming everything once more, the world was no longer one.

It was now many. Many worlds, all filled with their own light.

Just as one day the darkness may come back to devour everything piece-by-piece, one day the worlds may become connected again once more.

Someday, somewhere, somehow.

Someone out there will one day have the key to do just that.

…Are you ready?

oOo

 

TOTAL KINGDOM HEARTS

 

oOo

 

A young teenage boy was falling.

Not through the air or the sky or anything really.

He was falling in a void encased in pitch blank. Right then and there, nothing else but him existed in this plane he inhabited.

It was because of that that when he finally found himself landing gently onto a flat surface, his mind was almost sent into a frenzied state of shock.

Cody’s eyes shot open. He took deep labored breaths as he examined the area surrounding him. He was now standing atop what seemed to be a platform, but that did nothing to change the overall scenery that haunted him. He was still but the only person here in this mysterious world of pure nonexistence.

He looked downwards at what appeared to be a massive glass tapestry. It depicted a girl in red with her eyes shut tight and her hands together in a fist. Her pink hair fluttered in the wind and a circle of purple diamonds surrounded her as if they were shields for a battle ahead. He squinted, wondering if this image was perhaps a sign for his strange summoning to this unknown realm. There was nowhere to go but this one platform. Perhaps this was a puzzle of some sort?

Shrugging, his first instinct was to try repeating the girl’s pose. He took a deep breath in preparation and shut his eyes once more.

…Something was strange.

In his concentration, he could almost hear a faint sound. A voice perhaps? The more he zoned in on the sound, the more it seemed someone was trying to call out to him specifically.

...r…….ad…

A…y….re….

A…e…yo….re….y…

Are you ready?

His eyes jolted forward once more in fear. He frantically reexamined the space, desperately praying to find a source for the voice.

His search however drew to a quick close as the sound of small shimmers distracted him towards the opposite end of the platform. A trail of smaller glass surfaces were arranged into an aerial staircase leading to another large platform up above. Cody’s confusion and fright was now replaced with a cocky sense of pride. He had seemingly solved the puzzle. He gestured a silent fist pump before continuing onward.

Step by step, feet by feet, he continued on ascending through the seemingly endless set of floating stairs. No matter how much further he went, the distance between him and the next platform never seemed to close. In his head, he’d even swear it was growing. Cody could do nothing but blink in frustration. He craned his head backwards, fully expecting to see the previous platform just inches before him; a sure fire way to know he’d foolishly fallen for a trap.

In fact, it was an entirely different kind of trap.

The previous platform was gone and nowhere to be seen, as were the several dozen steps he diligently climbed.

Panic arose in him. After having spent who knows how long going upward at a below average pace, he now flew into a sprint. He could feel and see several dozen more steps pass by him and disappear just like the ones before. And all the while, the next platform still never came closer.

Curious.

…That voice?

Who is that?

You see that you cannot move forward. You know in your heart you can quit with no consequence. There is no air nor an end here, so you cannot fall if you leap. Yet you’re still moving on regardless.

Suddenly, at a speed too fast for a blink, Cody was propelled upwards through the steps as if he were being shoved by a fierce gust of wind. After all that time he wasted climbing that hopelessly endless staircase, he now made his first steps into his next destination.

Still disoriented by what had just transpired, Cody once again took to checking his surroundings. Yet another empty platform in a sea of endless dark. He sighed in exasperation and gazed downwards towards the ground. There was a new character and scene on display in this tapestry etching. A young child who appeared to be a white witch of some sort sat triumphantly on her broom as she waved her arm excitedly in the air. A trail of musical notes swept out of hands, slowly forming into the colorful pattern that circled around the edges of the glass,

Cody scratched his chin. The previous puzzle was as simple as repeating the pose laid out in front of him. Perhaps the same would go for here. With a light shrug, Cody took a deep breath and stretched his arm into the air as far reaching as he could. His eyes once again circled around. And around and around.

Nothing was happening.

He breathed out a strained sigh as he allowed his arm to collapse. Yet right at that moment, something peculiar happened. As his hand wiped down past his eyes and vision, a door newly presented itself on the other side.

He blinked. The door clearly did not lead to another room. If anything, if he sauntered on through, he’d probably once again be stuck in the unknown inbetween of falling and floating in the pitch black void. Still, there were no other leads on this stage, and he quickly decided there was no other choice but to continue pressing on.

Be certain you want to open that door ,” the voice returned, halting Cody in place right as he was about to turn the knob. “ I will ask you once more…

“Are you ready?”

Did he have a choice?

Cody flung the door open, barely taking any heed to the words the voice was carefully laying out for him. There was a new platform before him. Whether or not he was “ready”, this was obviously his next destination.

The door he entered through faded away in a gleam of light, much like the impromptu staircase from earlier. He of course launched into the same routine of a doomed to fail search before once again looking into the tapestry for guidance.

A young pigtailed girl with an almost doll-like head, much too big for her body, stood plain and alone in a forest that shimmered like peridots in the glass arrangement. A circle of seemingly random objects surrounded her. A shovel, fishing rod, net, slingshot, stepladder, what did this all mean?

Cody scrunched his face. He couldn’t make heads or tails at what he was looking at. The previous two platforms, all he had to do was repeat the poses in front of him. But this girl here was simply standing idly. It couldn’t be that simple, could it?

The heck does it want me to do? He wondered as he furiously straightened his back. Minutes, or the equivalent of such assuming this place had a concept of time, passed by, and of course, nothing happened.

There had to be something he missed. He searched the platform again and again but to no avail. No matter how much he looked, how much he ran, and how much he shouted in frustration, there was nothing. The teen’s back arched downwards in defeat as he aimlessly paced around back and forth. Was he stuck here for good? What was he supposed to do next?

THUD!

He yelped as he felt his body crash to the floor. Or at least that’s what he would have preferred. Instead, his stomach was caught on the edges a thin metallic object, keeping him from falling face flat, but forcing him into an uncomfortable and agonizing sensation where it felt like his body was mere seconds away from being sliced in half. He wearily lifted himself up, wincing at the stubbed sore in his foot that had not yet dissipated. Any and all pain he felt flew fastly towards the back of his mind however as he finally got to look at what he had stumbled over…

A small shield.

He picked it up with a puzzled glower. It was small enough to be mistaken for a children’s toy, but based on the material, it was for all intents and purposes an actual functioning shield fit for combat. But what was it doing here?

As he took another look at his surroundings, he could feel his stomach churn. Far off from where he was, two more items manifested in two separate locations; a sword and what appeared to be a wizard’s wand. Just like the shield he held, they were small in size enough to resemble toys and discount curios, but their substance and texture pointed to the opposite.

It didn’t take a genius to realize that if actual weapons and armor appeared before him, shit was about to get down.

And before he could make a mad dash for the sword, a burst of light erupted from the grounds below him, engulfing the entire scene. It was so instantaneous, there was almost no time to process the kind of terror and panic any normal individual would have in that situation. One moment, Cody was trapped in the most intense blinding light imaginable, too overwhelming to even move. And the next, he was whisked away to a completely new platform with yet another new pattern. This time, a girl dressed in pink, with a build that seemed both lion and simian-like, kneeled on the ground as she definitely raised up a staff of her own.

The message was clear as he saw what was beginning to form in front of him. A darkened stain slowly emerged at the tip of the staff as if the glass girl was actually summoning it herself. A strange slew of pure black figments crawled out of the stain, mulling in the plane of the glass as if they were mere projections just there for show. But the true horror came when they emerged to life. They were no longer mere ink blotches spreading on a tainted canvas but actual gangly monsters flailing around like newly hatched insects. Their unnaturally yellow eyes glowed like shaking spotlights as their disturbingly fidgety bodies made their first real steps.

Cody knew what kind of message this new tapestry was trying to communicate with him.

Fight.

The monsters practically flung themselves towards Cody, and he was quick to hide behind his shield, forcing the creatures to smack right back down to the ground. He was already cursing under his wincing breath, wondering why he couldn’t have tripped over the sword instead. He was a sitting duck in this mess of mad monsters.

What the heck am I supposed to do? Cody darted his eyes rapidly back and forth. The monsters just kept coming and there was no clear way out. He would’ve expected some kind of exit to appear by now like the times before, but it appeared that whatever force controlled this space no longer had any mercy for his current situation.

The monsters only kept creeping forward, and all he could do was stand there pathetically with a shield no larger than a toy. He was drenched in sweat, completely unsure of what his next plan of action would be. As if sensing his blatant fear, one of the monsters took this as an opportunity to latch on to his arm like a bug ready to infect its prey. He screeched like a wailing banshee as he flailed around wildly, only having the sense to knock the creature away with his shield at the very last second.

There was no way he could stay here. He didn’t know where he would go, but he was as good as dead if he just continued standing idly by.

…!

It was a dumb idea, but he did indeed have one.

He charged right into the gooey mass of pitch black sentient shadows, smacking them hard with his shield as he went. With how little damage they felt to even a hard metal shield, he had doubts how much better that sword would have fared, but there was no time to think about combat.

Now was time for his escape.

Cody leapt off the edge of the platform, returning to the airless plane that was neither a sky nor anything at all. It was just like the voice said much much earlier. He had no danger of falling or dying here. This was his safest bet.

Interesting decision I must say. I can’t say I was expecting it.

However, this is not what needs to be done.

No sooner had Cody escaped the mass of black that he landed feet first on to a completely new glass tapestry. It was like the forces beyond had scrambled to fix a contradiction he just created. And unlike all the previous tapestries before, this one did not greet him with the might and story of an unknown heroine. Rather it contained all of the previous four heroines all in one place, now gathered around the center in a deep sleep.

Cody gulped. An image as ominous as this could only mean something even worse than before was about to transpire.

A dark stain tainted the glass just like before. But unlike last time where the creatures came crawling away like droplets in a spreading splash, this remained a dormant stain that only grew larger and larger. So large it almost encompassed the entire platform itself.

This was the most fear Cody had ever expressed in his life. He backed away, hoping to escape this cursed task only for his back to be met with the touch of a wall. A wall that didn’t exist yet existed all at once. He was trapped.

The stain was finally taking form. Instead of the same insect-like creatures, a more threatening figure sprang to life. It was the very manifestation of a nightmare. A godlike creature with a face that posed no known human emotion, but a stature that spelled out an overwhelming sense of dread. It peered down below towards Cody, its malformed head winkling in the nonexistent sky like tattered ribbons.

This was the monster known as Darkside.

The tables had turned. Now Cody was the mere insect.

Darkside slammed its flat onto the platform, just barely missing Cody who leapt as vigorously as he could. With how violently the world shook, it was almost a wonder how the glass platform itself didn’t shatter from the force of the attack.

In his heart, Cody knew that the battle was lost as soon as it had begun. And he was right. He was so distracted by this new foe that he didn’t even notice the cursed ink stain was still alive and well and spewing out dozens of the smaller creatures like a factory pump. Darkside only had to repeat its actions twice before it knew that their overwhelming numbers could take the scrawny teen all on their own.

He couldn’t describe the feeling he had as the creatures piled onto him like a swarm ready to feast. It was like drowning in a vacuum that was squeezing the very essence of his soul straight out of his body. And as he met his end being buried alive in the stain, all he could do was stare at the blank expression of the large monster above.

Until there was nothing left.

This entire time, you’ve refused to answer the question I repeated over and over again.

But seeing that display…I already have my answer.

“... Cody… Cody…”

“Man, he is really knocked out, huh?”

“Should we just leave him?”

“He does this all the time. Don’t worry. He’ll be up in a sec. Just you wait.

“Yo, wake up dude!”

Notes:

I feel this is important to point out: Only the first season of Total Drama is canon. TDDDDI and beyond never happened and this fic will work on the assumption that the ships and character relationships of S1 are still intact.