Malibu Keys by Chibi Gilbert

What happens when you crossover a square-enix game with a mediocre Disney sitcom? You get this.

WARNING: I do not own either the story in which I am reviewing or the characters that are in it. Neither do I own the properties of Kingdom Hearts or Hannag Montanna. Also on a side note, if you do not have a stable background in either Kingdom Hearts or Hannah Montanna you may not understand what is

going on.

Fanfic #1: Malibu Keys by Chibi Gilbert

When I first decided to review crossovers, I couldn’t figure out what to look at! There are so many different types of crossovers; I don’t even know where to begin! Then it hit me. What is the one thing that has the hugest fan base of arguably all gaming? Kingdom Hearts!

Kingdom Hearts, if you didn’t already know, is a game following a kid named Sora who can travel through different Disney licensed worlds and is accompanied by Donald and Goofy (both are indeed the Disney licensed characters.) Together they thwart the evils of the heartless and Organization XIII. Also in Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy characters are thrown in because…because. There really is not reason for it they’re just there.

As I looked through the thousands of crossover fanfictions to choose from, one in particular caught my eye. There were two crossover fanfictions between Kingdom Hearts and Hannah Montanna of all things. Hannah Montana is…OK, do I REALLY have to explain what Hannah Montanna is? I think you guys are smart enough to know who Hannah Montana is and what her show is about.

At first this crossover caught me by surprise. I mean seriously, how can you make a successful fanfiction between an action packed video-game and a Disney sit-com? It’s like having the Predator cross over with Saved by the Bell, it really didn’t make sense. But later I thought that maybe, just maybe this could be done right. I mean who knows, this could be a diamond in the rough.

Well let’s not delay this any longer, let’s dig into Malibu Keys!

The story begins with Leon and Yuffie just getting done beating on some Shadows in Hollow Bastion (not Radiant Gardens).

I always found it funny that Hollow Bastion was one of the most intimidating in Kingdom Hearts I and was renamed Radient Gardens in Kingdom Hearts II. It’s like renaming something called ‘The Death Pit’ to ‘The Pretty Flower Palace.’

The two make small talk until our main characters come in: Sora, Donald and Goofy. They greet eachother until Cid asks to see them. It turns out that there is a new planet that needs to be visited by the keybearer. The planet’s name is Malibu.

Malibu likes to think they're a planet, but trust me when I say it's all in their heads.

They trio are ready to go until they find out that there is a ‘hitch.’ “’Sora has to go to this world alone.’ Sora froze as his companions looked at him in disbelief. ‘A-alone? But Cid I've gone into a world alone!’”

Well then good, you will have no problem going into another one alone!

After Cid calms Sora down, he gives him a new gadget. The gadget is a portable GPS that is somewhat of a Swiss Army Knife. It has a world map, a communicator that connects to Donald and Goofy who will be outside the world on their gummi ship, and a taser.

I wish they gave you a taser in the actual Kingdom Hearts games. When you’re tired of always losing to Captain Hook or something, just pull out the taser and lock up the world.

Meanwhile, in the Steward home Miley, her father and Lily talk about how Miley thinks that she barely passed a Biology test and about how she’s going to have a concert next Thursday. After that conversation, Jackson burst in telling them about two spiky haired boys are in their driveway. One is a brunette and one is a blonde.

Oh great…Miley! Two drunken kids collapsed in our driveway again, can you grab the shovel?

Back in the galaxy, Sora says goodbye to Donald and Goofy and leaves.

It’s so haaaaard to say goodbyeeee…

At the Stewarts, Oliver has comes with a first aid kit immediately when the blond wakes up. “’Where am I?’ he groaned. ‘Who are you? What-‘ ‘Oh please don't say, 'Who am I?' we don't even know that question.’ The blond shook his head.”

Who wants to guess that that’s Roxas and the other is Sora?

The blond turns out to be Roxas, and the brunette turns out to be Sora.

Yep, that’s what I thought.

The two make up a story that they’re fraternal brothers (Roxas being older by eleven minutes) and that they are not from around there so they do not arise too much suspicion.

You are two spiky haired teenagers wearing some of the weirdest clothes and you just passed out in front of a random person’s driveway. I’m sorry, but that ship has sailed.

After admitting that they have no place to stay and that they can’t find their parents, Miley suggests they stay in their guest room and asks permission from her father. Miley’s father is doubtful at first.

Of course the father would be doubtful! If two random teenage boys passed out on your driveway, would you want them to stay for a couple of nights with your precious teenage girl?

After explaining details about themselves, Roxas asks to talk to Sora in private. Roxas, of course, is confused on why he is still alive questions Sora on why he is alive. Sora doesn’t know and thinks that maybe the others would know. However, all of the GPS’s buttons, except for the taser works.

Wait a minute…I just realized something. Roxas didn’t know Sora on good terms until Kingdom Hearts II was over. If this is set in that time-set, then how come Radient Gardens is being called Hollow Bastion?

And after Sora tases Roxas, Roxas decides to hold on to the GPS.

Who wants to guess that that scene is the only scene where the taser is used?

The two then talk about how Sora is a fantastic guy, until they find out that Lily and Miley were eavesdropping. Before this Miley’s father agreed to let them stay if he knew where the boys were from and who their parents were. After the two girls try to pull Roxas out of his ‘depression’ that they believe he is in, they then pry about where Sora and Roxas live. They say Destiny Islands. Lily and Miley then assume that Destiny Islands is just a nickname for Hawaii and ask no further questions.

Wait, so Hawaii exists too? I thought the planet was just Malibu!

After that the two make up a story about them being orphans.

But you just said that you’re waiting for your parents, no one is going to believe you.

They all believe them, except for Miley’s father.

I stand corrected. ALMOST no one is going to believe you.

He is about to confront them about the fact that they just said that they were orphans, but then a Nobody (a Dusk to be specific) knocks on their door and tells Roxas that it ‘has come for him.’ It then attempts to drag Roxas out of the house.

It’s nice to know that the Nobody was at least trying to be polite.

After a futile attempt to get Roxas back, the Nobody snatches Roxas away, with the GPS being the only trace left of him.

And no one will ever speak of the GPS again.

The Nobody drags Roxas into the ‘Corridor of Darkness’ where a cloaked figure is standing. The cloaked figure turns out to be the Organization member with the Axe-Hammer (I forgot the Organization member’s name.)Who attempts to kill Roxas for betraying the Organization. At the end of the short but well written battle, Roxas got sliced in the stomach and was about to die until the Organization member got something in his neck. The wounded Organization member swears vengeance before disappearing. Roxas returned to Malibu, still wounded and gets treated by Oliver. Oliver says that he’ll be fine, because all he had was a black eye and a “little bleedin’ in the stomach.”

A little bleeding? From the description I read in the story, he should be going to the hospital right now! But this is just to get Sora and Roxas in the house so, it doesn’t really matter.

It turns out that Sora and Roxas can stay which ends Chapter 1. Later in Chapter 2, Roxas wakes up early and decides to go downstairs when he gets ambushed by Miley’s father. After the squabble has ended Roxas goes for a walk.

The walk does not go anywhere story wise, so let’s move on.

After the walk, Roxas explains who Kairi is to Miley and promptly embarrasses Sora for it. Then Jackson farts in their faces.

Ah yes, the fart joke. Clearly this is the funniest thing I have read since The Diary of Anne Frank.

Later on the beach, Sora and Roxas talk about how Sora misses home when Rico tells them to leave and delivers probably one of the two funniest lines in the entire fanfic. “’Well, we have this policy. It's called: Order something or get out!’ he yelled. ‘Who are you guys anyways?’ He looked at Sora and Roxas. ‘But, by the looks of it,’ he looked towards Sora, ‘a clown,’ he looked towards Roxas, ‘and some Jesse McCartney reject!’”

Rico, I do believe openly threatening a kid that has taken down a couple of dragons, pirates (both alive and undead) and the greek god of friggin’ death is not a good idea. And that’s just a small portion of demons he’s destroyed!

Rico introduces himself, and then Sora and Roxas do likewise. They use the same joke that Sora is a ‘girly name’ during this scene. Rico then recalls that Sora was crying for his brother and gets the whole beach to laugh.

Seriously dude, you are treading on some thin ice right now…

Rico claimed he taped everything, including the keyblade being in use by Roxas. The two need that tape because they need to make sure no one sees the keyblade (even though it wasn’t a problem on other planets) and Rico makes a deal with them.

Let me guess, it’s going to be silly and embarrassing.

Rico needs a girlfriend and wants Sora to play a girlfriend who dumps him so Rico can get sympathy points with the ladies.

That’s two in a row for me, one more and I get the door prize.

After this the two decide to return to the Stewards house and figure out what to do. They tell Miley’s father what happened while they are there and he says he shouldn’t do it.

I agree. Maybe they can find some way to come to terms of agreement with the boy. Maybe they cou-

Then Sora and Roxas tell Miley’s father about the keyblades, Nobodies, Heartless, magic and how they are from a different world.

WHAT!?!? But you just…but he is…tape isn’t…WHA!?!? Are you HIGH?!?! Are you TRIPPIN’ OR SOMETHING!?! You don’t have to tell Miley’s father about all of the weird as crap stuff you’ve been doing to find a way to take a phone away from an eleven year old boy!!!

Then Sora turns into Kairi by using magic in order to do what Rico wants.

Wait. So after EVERYTHING that just happened, you are still going to go through with this plan? You just told Miley’s father your situation and that you are aliens from another planet and he tells you not to do it, you are STILL going to do what Rico wants? You are DUMB.

After Jackson starts checking out Sora/Kairi, Sora performs the ‘breaking up with you for sympathy’ act, and the girls on the beach do not even care.

That phone better have something on it…

Lily and Miley see the act and confront Sora and Roxas about it due to how Sora looked exactly like a girl. Sora and Roxas respond by saying that it was probably just the angle they were standing in and that they were glad to get the tape. And as the second chapter comes to a close we see that the keyblade wasn’t even on the tape, so they did all of that for nothing.

SCREW YOU RICO! SCREW YOU!

Chapter three begins with Lily and Miley trying to figure out what to wear for Halloween in Miley’s closet. After the two think of a couple of ideas for costumes, they wonder where Roxas and Sora are. After Lily suggests that they are probably at the beach, they go back to looking at costumes.

You know, I’m beginning to sense a pattern of non-needed events happening within this story…

They then go to find Oliver but need to find him quickly because she doesn’t want Sora and Roxas to know that Miley is actually Hannah Montana.

Believe me Miley, meeting a pop-star is not exactly shocking to them.

Meanwhile at the beach, Sora and Roxas chat about Haloween Town before Rico pops in to say the other joke I was talking about earlier. “’Nice costumes.’ ‘We're not wearing costumes,’ Sora explained. Rico shrugged. ‘Hrm, didn't tell the difference.’”

Don’t push Sora man or he will go firga on your sorry little &($.

After realizing that they do not have costumes, Sora drags Roxas back to the Steward home to get costumes. Sora and Roxas come in and see Miley and Lily coming out, and Miley is still dressed like Hannah Montana. Luckily, Sora and Roxas just believe that they are just wearing Halloween costumes.

Good thing the reader would already know that or that might have actually been a little bit climactic.

When Roxas and Sora get back to their room they figure out what they were going to wear. Sora decides to dress up in his Haloween Town clothes and Roxas decides to dress up in his Organization uniform.

And NOBODY will pick those guys out of a crowd.

Sora then drags Roxas downstairs to show their costumes off to the girls. Miley is dressed as a cowgirl and Lily is dressed as an “anime character.”

Yeah and I suppose if she had dressed up like Freddy Kruger she would have been dressed as a “horror character.”

Then either Lily or Miley decide to break the fourth wall. “’And Sora, now that I think about it, your voice sounds like Haley Joel Osment's.’ Sora and Roxas gave a look of confusion.”

Get strapped in folks, there are a LOT of fourth wall jokes ahead that will get very old, very fast…

Just then Oliver’s car appears to take them to the party and Miley decides to invite Sora and Roxas to the party. At the party, Miley says that they all have to use different names to get into the party (if you couldn’t already tell, this was to make sure that Roxas and Sora don’t get confused when people call Miley “Hannah”, Lily “Lola” and etc.)

Ok, if they did know who Hannah Montana was, I’d think that they’d already would have figured it out by now.

When prompted for their names while talking to Jesse, Sora calls himself “Riku” and calls Roxas “Axel.”

Of course the two give themselves the same names as their ‘lovers.’

During this conversation another Jesse notices his voice sounds exactly like Roxas’s. (This is due to Jesse being the voice-actor for Roxas during Kingdom Hearts II)

Here come the fourth wall jokes…

As the party drags on, Roxas and Sora begin to wear out when they are introduced to another person followed by another fourth wall joke.

It may not seem like a lot, but when you read the actual thing, it’s very tiring.

Sora and Roxas decide they want to leave, and they wait outside for the others to leave. Roxas, tired of waiting for them, goes into the party to find out where they are leaving Sora alone. Then a woman’s voice “cooed” the following statement at Sora: “’Poor little boy..all alone.’”

That’s a very nice fanfiction you have there…shame if something happened to it…

Meanwhile in the party, Roxas is still looking for Miley, Oliver, or Lily to find out why it is taking them so long. During this, Lily and a girl at the party named Tracey (I don’t know who Tracey is so, forgive me if she’s an important character) argue about which one of them Roxas finds cuter.

Ah yes, this is EXACTLY what I wanted to read when I’m reading a Kingdom Hearts fanfic…girls arguing about boys!

When they attempt to find out, Roxas just asks Lily to take them home. Lily agrees to find Hannah, when Roxas realizes he left Sora all alone outside. Roxas bolts outside and finds that he is missing. After Oliver calms the group down, a Corridor of Darkness appears showing a woman and holding Sora captive which ends chapter three. Chapter four begins with Roxas trying to figure out what to do. If he attempts to save Sora, the keyblades will be exposed. However if he doesn’t Sora may get die.

I would suggest using the taser on her or trying to contact Donald and Goofy again, but since the whole GPS thing has been swept under the rug, I don’t know.

After some dialogue it turns out that the woman is actually Larxene. And after firing some shots Vexen appears next to her.

Wait wait wait. Larxene and Vexen are alive? Larxene was killed by Sora and Vexen was killed by Axel before Sora even MET Roxas. If they are alive and Sora and Roxas know eachother…what time in the Kingdom Hearts timeline is this set in?

After Roxas attempts to fight them off with his keyblades, the two leave with Sora. That leaves Roxas with the partygoers who just saw him and the keyblades.

I just realized that Sora hasn’t really done anything productive in this fanfiction. Think about it, Roxas saved himself, the phone he got from Rico had nothing on it and he just got captured by Organization XIII. Speaking of not doing anything, WHERE’S DONALD AND GOOFY?!? They are the two of the three main protagonists in the game and they get no, for lack of a better word, “screen time” outside of the five paragraphs that they were in? What the heck?!?

However Roxas cries over losing Sora and Miley finding out what just happened takes Roxas home.

Oh bo-ho. We all got problems.

When they get home, Roxas bawls about losing Sora and needs to talk to Miley’s father alone.

This isn’t how Roxas reacted when he lost his friends and basically everything he knew back in the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II. When he saw what happened, he just summoned his keyblade and trashed the place where he was watched from. He didn’t get sad, he got mad!

After Roxas explains what happened to Sora to Miley’s father while he cries the chapter then ends.

Jeez, what a baby…(by the way, I’m being sarcastic, I understand that losing a friend is very hard for people and crying about it is understandable)

In the beginning of the final chapter of the book (as of yet), Sora is bound in vines by Marluxia on a wall. After the two exchange ‘witty’ comebacks, the focus returns to the Steward home with Miley making her father breakfast. When it is apparent that Miley did all of that just to get information from her father, he tells her that it is none of her business and leaves. When Miley’s father leaves Miley gets puffy about him not telling her.

The kid’s best friend got kidnapped in front of his eyes and you expect for daddy dearest to just tell you about what happened? Jerk!

On the beach, Roxas sulks and and attempts to talk to Jackson but is chased out by Rico. Oliver then attempts to talk to him about Sora, but Roxas just brushes him off.

How could this happen to meee…

Meanwhile Sora finds out that he can’t summon his keyblade where ever he is. During this time, Axel (the real one, not Roxas) notices Sora and decides to say hello. When Axel get’s Sora’s attention he does his little ‘Got it memorized’ shtick and Sora tells him this: “’I-I never felt so...v-violated.’ Axel raised a brow. ‘He kept touching me...even after I told him to stop.’ The tears spilt. 'I-I'm just scared.’”

...uh…did he just get…did Marluxia…erm…I got nothin’

Axel then leaves to pay “a friend a visit.” Meanwhile in the Steward home, Roxas continues to be apathetic until you-know-who shows up.

Let me guess Axel’s going to-

During which he does his “Got it memorized?” shtick again.

Where’s my door prize? I deserve it by now!

After greeting each other Axel then leaves through the Corridor of Darkness he came through telling Roxas that he has to finish “the job.” Back with Sora, Sora is still struggling when he meets Namine. Namine lets him loose and the two run off to escape Sora’s place of captivity. During this, Miley’s dad explains to Roxas what a kiss is because he doesn’t know what love is because he is a Nobody.

But at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II he did know what love was. He had friends; he had acquaintance; heck by the end of the game he was fading away with Namine!

Axel promptly returns with Sora and delivers him to Roxas and the two reunite bringing an end to the final chapter.

Final thoughts: I came into this crossover thinking that the crossover was going to be odd and strange and I leave feeling as though I just read someone’s fantasy about Roxas falling in love with Sora in the middle of a mediocre sitcom. For the most part, the writing depends heavily on the audience being the SoraXRoxas crowd. And it shows heavily. Roxas is not Roxas but is instead a shy girl with has a secret who is in love with a boy (Sora) who has the same secret.

Other flaws I noticed throughout the crossover were a large amount of pace changing. Sometimes it was silly then sometimes it was dead serious. And sometimes the pace changes made no sense. For example, the ‘Raping of Sora’ was completely out of the blue and made no sense next to ‘Sora dressing up like Kairi.’ Pace is everything when it comes to writing, you can’t forget that.

On the bright side the grammar was fairly good and some of the lines were funny. It wasn’t a pain to read, but it was just a bit confusing and very SoraXRoxas-ish.

Tips for the writer(s): 1. Work on your pacing! If you want a campy happy story, make one! If you want a dark and tragic tale, make one! Don’t try to make both at the same time. That’s not to say can’t try to make your campy happy story serious, all you need to do is make sure that you understand the difference between a serious moment and adjusting the tone of the whole story.

2. Look at the source material! As I said before, Roxas in this story isn’t Roxas. Roxas is supposed to be headstrong, won’t turn down from danger, he wouldn’t talk down to himself, he would make sure not to make the same mistake twice and attempt to fix it. Also, if I am right, those Organization members should be dead. Sora and Roxas didn’t meet face to face on good terms until after at least Vexen, Marluxia and Larxene were dead. I don’t know if that was going to work itself out the later into the story you got, but overall it was confusing. And another thing, where were Donald and Goofy? They are two of the three main protagonists in the video game and they didn’t even show up? Come on!

Well there is Fanfic #1, and I hope you enjoyed or found my review informative. Next time we’re digging into the Hunger Games series! Until next time!

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