Notes: This idea hit me at work one day, more specifically on my lunchbreak as I was reading fanfic on my phone. I was reading a collection of one-shots from an author on ff.n named sunflowerb called "As If We Just Went to Buy Milk," about things that could have happened after the Trio returned home at the end of KHII and were readjusting to living everyday lives. They're very funny and cute - and she can SPELL - so I highly recommend you check it out.
...And then I asked myself, what if some of those issues that had cropped up on the journey came to them when they were just trying to live a normal life?
This is still for Lynx and Kia, even if they already know it XD Enjoy!
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The chalk danced across the board, making mystic impressions as it left twenty-two minds befuddled in its wake. "Suppose that there exists a rectifiable curve given by a function f(x). To approximate the arc length S along f between two points a and b in that curve, construct a series of right triangles whose concatenated hypotenuses..."
Sora's eyes slid shut as Mr. Dagero droned on about arcs or tangents or something or other - something he honestly couldn't bring himself to care about. His pencil dangled loosely from the fingers of his right hand, his left elbow propped up on the desk with his head resting in that hand. He should be taking notes, he knew he should, he was already held back a year because he was off saving the universe twice and he kind of wanted to graduate with Kairi and not a year behind both her and Riku, but...
...But it was so hard to care about this.
Having been out around the worlds, Sora was having trouble appreciating much of anything his school was teaching him now. His grades had never been top of the class but they'd at least been solid before he'd vanished into the ether, but now after becoming the hero of the universe they'd dropped into almost the sub-basement level due to lack of interest. If he looked at it realistically, he knew he'd probably never need most of this stuff. Whether he'd intended it or not, he'd found his calling. The Keyblade was his, now and forever more, and if he was being really realistic he knew it was probably unlikely he'd get to finish high school at all, pending further crises of existence. College was completely out of it, he'd never be able to maintain the proper grades to keep whatever scholarship he earned, if he earned one in the first place with how his marks were doing now-
"SORA!"
"GAH!" His elbow slid off the desk and he faceplanted on his notebook with a muffled bang, barely saving himself from going all the way over by grabbing on to the edge of the desk with his chair tilted on two legs. The entire class burst into laughter at the look on his face, and it was a mark of just how annoyed Mr. Dagero was that he didn't bother to shut them up when he usually ran a very strict class. In fact, his teacher was standing at the front right now, arms crossed and one finger tapping in what Sora had learned all too quickly was his biggest indication of extreme displeasure.
Sora winced. His ass was grass.
"Once again, you're failing to pay attenion."
"I was! Really, I promise I was!"
"You were drooling." Oh. Whoops. More laughter exploded as Sora hastily ducked his head to wipe at his mouth and chin, but this time Mr. Dagero wasn't standing for it. "Quiet!" Twenty-one voices fell silent, with only the occasional muffled snicker as he continued to speak. "I don't care if you've saved the worlds."
"Twice," Sora muttered, but he made sure to do it quietly enough that his teacher wouldn't hear. He was already in enough trouble as it was.
"I don't care if you're friends with a king. I don't care if you can fly. You will pay attention in my class or gods help me I-"
His speech was broken by the sound of Kana, sitting closest to the window, shrieking at the top of her lungs.
"MONSTEEEEEEEERRRRRRRR!"
There were few words that could get a reaction quicker on the Destiny Islands than that one. While most people weren't aware that the world had, quite literally, been extinguished (and the Keyblade Wielders weren't telling them), everyone who'd been cognizant at that time remembered that terrifying night full of storms and dark shadows that leapt on you from the walls of your own home. Instantly the entire class was on its feet and rushing to the windows, Mr. Dagero's attention pulled there as well as fear started to slip over his face, crowding up against the glass to see. More screams started echoing from the classrooms next door and farther down the hall as more and more people caught sight of whatever Kana had.
"Is it like the other ones?" "Oh my gods, how many heads does that thing have?" "It's huge! It'll be able to crush the school with one foot!" "Is it spitting acid?"
Sora cursed under his breath as he put the words of his classmates together, trying to get through the press of bodies to see for himself and already having a good idea of what was waiting for him out there.
Sure enough, when he could get a clear view from the far-right window... "Oh great. HADES!"
The Lord of the Dead - the only villain Sora hadn't been able to kill because he was a very literal god - had been busy. The side of the school his math class was on faced the ocean, and standing on the beach, all seven heads waving around in the bright blue sky and roaring with every throat it had, was the Hydra. Its scaly tail flew back in forth in what would be a flick in anything smaller, while each nose sniffed the clean island air, probably searching for tasty Keyblade bearers to snack on. Even as Sora watched, head number three caught a scent and the notice quickly spread to the rest of them as all seven faces turned towards the school and the monster let out another seven roars.
As much as Sora - and most of the students - wouldn't have minded the school being stomped flat in a random monster invasion, he wasn't about to let that thing snack on anyone he knew.
"Get back!" he called, unlatching the window and pulling it open. His classmates, in a half-state of panic and willing to listen to anyone who sounded like they knew what they were doing, hurriedly complied, flooding across the room to stand at the opposite wall, as far back from the windows as possible. Sora fled along the same path, knocking desks aside in order to give himself a better runway. Then, when he was as far back as he could get, he turned and powered down the aisle he'd opened, jumping straight out the open window and kicking off the outside of the building, ignoring the yells and gasps coming from behind him as he streaked across the sky and his Keyblade appeared in his hand.
The Hydra saw him coming and roared again, but three of its heads were looking in directions on either side of him. Turning his own head quickly, he spotted two figures sprinting through the trees and scrubgrass, one a graceful blur and the other a silver streak, weapons held in both their hands as well. Sora grinned at the sight and faced the monster again, arriving there just in time to slash at one of its necks with his Keyblade and soar past as the wounded head tried to bite him.
"Watch out for the teeth! They're trouble!" he called down to his friends as he completely looped the monster's body and came in for a landing in front of it.
"Oh thanks Sora, I don't think we noticed that!" Riku yelled, dodging an acid splash as he unleashed a dark burst at the thing's main body.
"Sora, if you want to give us tips on how to fight this thing, can you at least make them more specific?" Kairi called, dodging a blow from its front paw and firing off a Gravija spell at another neck.
Sora just grinned. "Sure - GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK!"
Riku spared a second to look at him blankly. "You're a moron."
"Seriously! Watch!" Running forward and jumping onto the tail, Sora ran up the length until he could leap up the last portion to the back of the monster, dodging a bite from a head that was tracking him. Concentrating hard, Sora powered up an Ars Arcanum attack and started pounding away at the bases of the necks with successive heavy blows, eventually severing two of them with his final two shots just as the tail knocked him clean off the creature.
He hit the sand and rolled, yelling out, "Fire! Use fire, now!"
Riku and Kairi quickly caught on, both launching fireballs at the stump of the severed necks, catching it unaware as the spells slammed into the body. The other five heads shrieked in pain, giving them a momentary reprieve to down potions to fix the cuts and acid burns they'd acquired, and then Riku took his turn at running up the creature to attack while Sora kept it distracted down below and Kairi kept throwing Firagas hoping to burn anything she could. Another neck went down by Riku's blade, and Kairi jumped up herself as Sora cauterized the new wound with his own Firaga and Riku landed next to him.
Ten minutes later, it was over. The three of them were surrounded by severed monster parts and acid pools, and they sighed as they came to the unhappy realization that their job wasn't over and that they themselves were the cleanup crew. Further liberal use of fire spells burned away the body parts, and a Quake spell from Riku shook the remaining ashes and acid into the ground where it couldn't hurt anyone. They could feel the eyes of their friends and neighbors getting closer, and they didn't want anyone to be injured just because of curiosity.
Even if it would be kind of their fault.
Kairi sighed heavily as she finally dismissed her Keyblade and stretched, ignoring the fact that part of her uniform - well, parts of all their uniforms - were eaten away by acid and stained with blood. The school had given all of them extras for just such occasions, after all. "Well, that was exciting. Have you done anything to annoy Hades lately?"
"Aside from existing? I don't think so. He just doesn't like me," Sora replied, sticking his hands behind his head.
Riku smirked. "Maybe he's smarter than the rest of us."
"Hey! Come on, Riku, that's not fair!"
"What, are you averaging something more than a C-minus now? You're close to failing in all of your classes."
Sora pouted at his best friend's teasing. "Not in everything."
After all, the one class his grades had never been better in was physical education.
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Addendum: Cauterizing the stumps of the hydra's neck to prevent the heads from regrowing is from the original Greek myths of Heracles where he had to do exactly that (with the help of his charioteer) to prevent the heads from regrowing. Greek monsters are a bitch, eh?