[Mark Skarr]

I press-ganged ChaosCoyote to write the majority of this. I just had to polish up the end to get it posted.

Three high school girls: Kaydence (or Kay) Tyler, considered a cool outcast because she had actually gotten in trouble with the law; Ruby Martinez, a bit of a diamond in the rough, a member of the hockey team and generally good person; and Karyl, a lonely girl who filled the emptiness of her friendships with theories from the internet.

On a Sunday night in mid-March, they were asleep. Dreaming. Each found herself walking through the city of Oceanside alone. Each was dressed in whatever nightclothes she had been wearing. There was no moon in the night sky. Eventually, each girl arrived at the steps of the high school. The front doors were open.

Though puzzled, or with a look of misgiving, dream logic said to enter the school, and each girl did. Through the halls they walked, out into the central courtyard. Here each paused for a look around. Each was still the only person in their separate dreams. Across the courtyard, a maintenance door swung open. None of them had ever seen it open in the real world. Again, dream logic said to investigate.

Beyond the door was a flight of concrete stairs, descending into darkness. Karyl hesitantly descended. Ruby commented to herself about the strangeness of this, but was pleased there were no clowns this time, and descended. Kay, however, announced to the darkness that she was coming down the stairs, and would appreciate it if the monsters would leave her alone.

At the base of the stairs was a door. But not a door one would expect in a school. This was a wooden door, with a stained glass window. The image appeared to be a woman in stylized armor holding a sword-like object. Ruby and Karyl opened the door and entered. Kay, ever the oddball, knocked on the door before reaching to open it. The door opened of its own volition, and a beckoned, “Come in.”

Through this door was a path. The path was perhaps four feet wide, of inlaid stone, delineated by a pair of glowing yellow ribbons of light. Karyl and Ruby began down the path, Ruby with a shrug. Kay hesitated. “Hello?” she called. After a moment, the distorted voice responded, “Welcome, Kaydence Tyler.” A little freaked out, Kay carefully started down the path.

The path appeared to travel through a star field, rather than a school corridor. Dreams can be weird. Before long, they reached a raised dais. On this dais were three pedestals. Above the first, floating and slowly rotating, was a three dimensional, cartoon-stylized sword. Above another hovered an exaggerated shield, somewhat badge-like. The last supported a cartoon-like magic wand or wizard’s staff. All three girls stood and regarded the strange objects before them.

Kay spoke up. “Are you gonna tell me it’s dangerous to go alone?”

“You won’t be alone. You and the others will choose your destiny and go together.”

Kay shrugged minutely. “So I need to pick one of these? Where are the lockpicks?” She started to look around the bases of the pedestals.

“That decision has already been made.”

Kay frowned, and looked between the strange items for a long moment. “None of these are right.” Finally, she took the sword. The light from above that had been illuminating the sword faded. Kay stood holding a rather plain broadsword.

From the surrounding darkness, the distorted voice spoke. “You have chosen The Sword. Will you accept the roll of the fighter and the soldier? Will you take upon yourself the destiny to stop the army of darkness that encroaches? Will you fight for the light that struggles until it can shine, unimpeded? Will you accept The Sword?”

“Uh, yeah, sure, I guess,” was Kay’s less than confident response. A scabbard appeared on her hip.

Before the other two girls, as the sword faded into darkness, the light above it also faded. Empty, that pedestal sank into the dais. Only the shield and the staff remained.

Ruby looked at the shield. Thinking to herself that it rather looked like a badge, she reached to pick it up.

Again the distorted voice spoke, but only to Ruby. “You have chosen The Shield. Will you accept the role of the protector and the savior? Will you take upon yourself the destiny to protect your allies from the darkness that encroaches? Will you be a beacon of hope in the unrelenting wind of chaos and uncertainty? Will you accept The Shield?”

“Yeah,” the young woman said. “I can protect them.”

The shield lost whatever quality it had gas before, making look like a three-dimensional artwork, and now seemed to be an ordinary shield. The light over the pedestal dimmed.

Before Karyl, the shield vanished and that pedestal also sank into the dais. Only the staff remained. “It appears it has been decided for you,” the distorted voice remarked to the girl. Sheepishly, Karyl took the staff. “You gave chosen The Staff,” the voice continued. “Will you accept the role of the sage and the wizard? Will you take upon yourself to guide those who will follow against the darkness that encroaches? Will you let your pure light show and shine that light into the deepest shadows? Will you accept The Staff?”

“Uh, I guess?” Karyl mumbled.

Again the voice spoke, and all three heard these words. “You gave chosen your destinies. You are now entwined. The Keyblade Wielder locked this world’s heart so you could not follow her. But follow her you must.” The three girls could suddenly see each other. The knowledge of their existences, and their names, were imparted somehow.

And their Monday morning alarms went off, waking the girls to prepare for school. Kay shouted something and fell out of bed. She had a sword in her hand, and a scabbard on her hip that had gotten tangled in her sheets. Quickly she sheathed the sword and pushed it under her bed. Ruby had her shield, and Karyl had her staff.

Discovering that putting their item down caused it to vanish, all the girls experimented with banishing and summoning their new item. Also, after the first recall and subsequent banishment, a large round pale blue gemstone, about the size of their fist, appeared. Each girl quickly gathered this up and tucked it away.

Before long, they were ready to leave for school. Ruby arrived first in her subcompact car. She waited on the steps for the other two she somehow knew would be coming. Kay pulled up on her motorized bicycle. As she was securing it, Ruby moved quietly to stand just behind her. When Kay turned, she was startled at the other girl’s closeness. Before she could recover her wits, Ruby said, “You had a weird dream last night?”

Kay spluttered and mouthed a few expletives before managing to be articulate. “I have to go check in.” And she hurried into the school.

A nice car pulled up, and Karyl exited the passenger door. Ruby started toward her. After a brief moment of panic, Karyl walked to meet her. They established that each was indeed a girl from the other’s dream, and exchanged contact information on their cell phones. As Ruby opened Karyl’s phone, she noticed an odd image as the wallpaper. A girl about their age, dressed in ceremonial armor, and wielding a giant key as a sword. She said nothing, merely finished adding her contact information. Then they separated and hurried to class.

Kay also discovered this strange image as her own phone’s lock screen. Puzzled, she changed it back, but also saw that the image was saved in her pictures. Examining it longer, she realized that the girl in the image was a girl that had recently gone missing, named Raquel. She also vaguely recalled the distorted voice from her dream mentioning something about the Keyblade Wielder. She puzzled over these ideas until lunch.

Ruby spotted Kay at lunch; the latter girl’s blue-and-pink dyed hair made her easier to find. Ruby sat down across from her. Kay looked up. “Oh, good. Look.” She turned her phone so Ruby could see, showing her the Keyblade girl. “Do you have this?”

“Yes, it’s on my phone, too.”

“I was thinking, I think this is the girl who’s missing. Raquel? The voice said something about there being a Keyblade Warrior or something. And we had to follow?”

“That sounds right.”

And then Kay lost the connecting thread. “So what do we do?”

“First, we exchange info so we can reach each other.” The two girls entered their own contact information in the other’s phone. “And I talked to Karyl. We’ll have to meet after school.”

“Ok, yeah. We have to figure out what’s going on.”

And then they went on to their separate school days.

Karyl, being a year younger, had the next lunch. When she sat down to play her favorite phone game, Cryptid Hunter, she saw the new lock screen image. And burst into tears. Raquel had been the only friend she had. Blurrily, she called Ruby.

Ruby was in class, but being a good student, she was excused when she requested it. She answered her phone to the hyperventilating, teary Karyl. Calming the younger girl, Ruby advised her to go to the nurse. The nurse, aware of Karyl’s attachment to Raquel, let her grieve.

Immediately after last bell, Kay contacted her guardians, her aunt and grandparents, and told them she was staying after school to work on a project with other students. Then she went in search of Ruby. The two girls met up and headed to the nurse’s office. The nurse was only mildly surprised to see Ruby, but gave Kay a suspicious look. Kay rolled her eyes and waited outside. Ruby went in to see Karyl.