No need for the Author's Note here, because this whole dang thing is one! At this moment, so that you can place the time in the story this 'takes place off set' I am in the process of writing the Battle for Radiant Garden at the end of Light's Growth.
Disclaimer: Yeah right, as if I own it. If I did, I'd ensure that the next game after DDD is the awesome Aqua/Kairi focused game that I'm imagining.
-A-D-
Party Time
A raven-haired eighteen-year-old girl in khaki short shorts, almost knee-high boots, and a black vest with a black t-shirt decorated by white flower designs near the hem stretched while making a moaning sound of contentment. "Mm, yeah. I am so glad the author decided to throw us this anniversary party," Yuffie said aloud to her companions out in the sunshine on a beach. The waves were crystal clear, crashing with white foam against the yellow-white sand.
"I know," said Kairi, the girl dressed casually in a light grey tank top with the picture of two talking cartoon muffins on the front, and white skirt. "I needed a break from that battle. So many Heartless."
"You're telling me," Naminé agreed, taking a sip from a drink in her hand while dressed in a plain green t-shirt and white shorts. "I think I'm going to have nightmares from the writing process of it."
"You're going to have nightmares?" a voice familiar to them asked, "what about me? I'm the guy who's writing them! Do you have any idea what I have to do when it comes to a huge battle like this?"
The three turned to look at the voice's owner. A young man wearing black rectangular glasses over blue eyes stood near a barbeque, again. His brown hair was cut short, and his goatee and mustache were neatly trimmed, though there was a day's worth of stubble on his face. On his chest was a black shirt with the heart logo of Kingdom Hearts II in gold and blue lines, seriously, and a pair of navy blue swim trunks with a turquoise lightning bolt on the left leg.
"Actually, no Shire, I don't," Kairi said. She frowned. "What do you have to do when it comes to writing one of our battles?"
He flipped the lid of the barbeque to check how the steaks he was cooking were doing, then replaced the lid. "I end up re-reading and searching through about eleven or twelve different chapters to recheck attack descriptions, Keyblade descriptions, descriptions of certain Heartless, I had to go way back to that one chapter in A Week of Troubles just to double-check what the walls look like and had to scour my room for the notebook in which I drew what they all looked like, even though I simply based them off of Jerusalem's walls in Kingdom of Heaven; chants for your Flame Styles and Naminé's Ice Styles, and then I have to go and at least plan out how the battle starts and who and what is involved and how everything changes.
"For example," he continued. "When I was writing your battle against all of Pete's Heartless including those Charr Heartless at the Ford of Bruinen, you used Gaira to make pillars of rock spear out of the ground. They were then part of the battlefield, so I had to constantly remember that. Granted, it was easier to write because I was just writing what you were doing for the most part and didn't have to concentrate on anyone else. The Ultimate Warrior was a harder chapter because there were multiple participants in the fighting, same with the last skirmish I'd written you guys having in Radiant Garden."
"Okay, we get it!" Yuffie said. "You put your blood, sweat, and tears into this thing until your fingers bleed at your keyboard. Can we just relax for a minute?"
"Sure," Shire answered. "The steaks will be done in about twenty seconds, so if you'd all like to grab your boyfriends it'd be great." They nodded their heads and Kairi turned her head.
"Hey! Sora!" she yelled. "Steaks are done! Get your lazy bum over here!"
Further down the beach the Keyblade Master waved and shouted back an affirmative. He turned away from the beach volleyball game that he and the others had been playing; Roxas, Sora, Riku, and a pair of tall, athletic boys (one with golden locks and the other a head crowned in luscious silver) had been going against Axel, Agatha, Olette, a girl with shoulder-length golden hair clad sparsely in a blue and yellow striped bikini, and a boy with spiked blond hair (who bore a startling resemblance to Roxas) in argyle swim trunks while a few others watched. Sora shouted out at the ocean. "Hey guys! Steaks are done!"
"Okay!" came a reply a few moments later from a girl dripping wet in a yellow bikini, her normally bouncy brown hair now plastered against her head and neck. Selphie started to splash out of the surf, Tidus, Hayner, and another pair of females following close behind; one with mocha hair and mismatched eyes in a blue and red two-piece swimsuit and another with indigo hair in a cobalt set.
Within a minute the whole group had assembled around the barbeque, leaving Shire Folk a little flustered as he tried to plate everybody's steaks. There were ones for the main six Keyblade Wielders, for Axel and the blonde nineteen-year-old handmaiden Agatha (one of only four OCs to be invited to the anniversary party), for the golden-brown haired archer Kia and the gold and silver haired twins Anar and Isil (the other three OCs), for Hayner, Pence, and Olette; Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie; Yuna, Rikku, and Paine; Ventus, Terra, and Aqua; and his own.
"Hey, this steak's undercooked," Ven complained.
"No it's not," Shire answered him, closing the lid of the barbeque that was somehow able to hold twenty four sirloin tip steaks and turning it off. He picked up his own paper plate and liberally applied potato salad Sora had brought onto it, following with coleslaw.
"Yes it is!" Ven argued. "Look at this! Look at all of that red in the meat!"
"Mm," Sora moaned, his mouth full of the steak. "I don't even know who you are buddy, but you are dead wrong. Shire cooked these steaks well."
"They were on the barbeque for about three minutes, tops!"
"Which means that they're extra good," Shire replied, "since this thing was on full blast." He cut a piece out of it and marvelled at the choice colour. A moan came from his mouth at the flavour inside.
"I don't see why you're being so picky, Ven," said Aqua, about to place a bit of potato salad into her mouth. "The steak is fabulous."
"I'm sorry," Kairi started, "but just who are you three?"
Aqua swallowed. "Oh, I'm Aqua," answered the older girl with blue hair, "this is Terra and Ven. You guys haven't met us yet in the story, but you will. We're doing a bit of behind the scenes work with Heith and my friend in Valeria."
"What sort of work?" asked Naminé.
"Spoiler sort of work," answered the tall and strong brunet Terra. "We're under contract with the guy with the glasses over there not to reveal it." Shire waved. "But don't worry, you'll meet us later."
"Assuming I don't die from undercooked steak," Ventus mumbled.
Shire heard him. "Stop being such a baby. I'm not cooking shoe-leather steaks for anybody."
The company ate with aimless chatter filling their ears as they devoured the steaks and salads. Shire Folk looked at all the fictional characters, feeling lucky that he'd found the game series and realized that he'd liked it enough to start making fan work for it all. He laughed when Kairi lightly slapped Sora after he asked her why she hadn't changed into her swimsuit yet, only for her to then pull her shirt off a moment later to reveal the pink bikini top lined and tied with white string, all to whistles and hoots. Selphie then jumped on Naminé and forced the other girl's shirt off as well to bear her own swimsuit, all the while spilling half of Naminé's potato salad onto the sand and forcing Riku to make a diving save to keep the quarter of the remaining steak free from the contamination of the beach.
"What's up Shire?" Yuffie asked. "You got real quite all of a sudden."
Shire just shrugged and smiled. "I'm just enjoying watching you guys enjoy yourselves." He looked out at the beach. "It's still winter here. We got more snow. Most of it melted when it touched the pavement, though, but we've at least finally gotten our winter instead of sitting through a whole winter of nothing. This has to have been the mildest winter I've ever seen."
"Heh," Riku said with a smirk as he plopped Naminé's saved steak back onto her plate, "sucks to be you then."
"I don't see how you guys can take it," Shire answered, a bit of hysteria creeping into his voice. "No snow? I'd go crazy if we had a whole year without snow!"
A bit of fire appeared on Axel's finger. "I can fix that for you, got it memorized?"
"No Axel," Kairi said. "Shire doesn't need fires springing up all over Canada just because you want to keep it from snowing there."
"I could do it though," he boasted. Shire rolled his eyes.
"You've never been in my country before, have you?" he asked. Shire didn't even wait for an answer. "A few friends and I went skiing at Marmot Basin in Jasper a couple weekends ago. At the hostel we stayed at there were also a pair of Brits and a Belgian. Kay ended up making too much chilli for us, so we shared some with the hostel staff and the Brits, but anyway. So the Brits flew in to Halifax and had planned to do a bit of a tour of Canada, by car or bus, not by plane. They thought that it'd take them about a day or so to get to Jasper from Halifax, and figured that they'd be able to make stops in Fredericton, Montréal, Ottawa, and a bunch of other places in Ontario and Québec, before just hopping on down to Jasper and then Banff to go skiing."
"Shouldn't it be like that?" asked Kia.
"Thirteen days later," he answered with a grin, "they finally get to Jasper, and that's still another day away from the west coast. Axel, I'm sorry, but no one person can patrol the entirety of Canada to keep the snow from it, no matter how hard you try. And frankly, we like our snow."
"Here here!" Naminé cried. "Snow's awesome!" She pounded fists with the cook.
"Hey all," Hayner asked aloud. "Now that we've gotten these steaks into us, what do you say we start up the fire and break out the drinks?"
Cheers went up around them all. Sora called for another game of beach volleyball, and insisted that it be a tournament of couples facing each other. Shire just shook his head and laughed as he went to get the drinks. This whole situation was quite enjoyable and completely plotless.
In summation, as he grabbed a two-six of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum, a perfect party; so long as none of them fell into the fire, drowned, or started being total douches.
-A-D-
That essentially wraps up what I was thinking about this as I tried to finish it. It's completely plotless and not going towards anything. Sorry about how small it is because of that, but I hope you kinda enjoyed it.
Now, I need to get back to work on that battle! It won't write itself and my mind's drifting towards it!
May the Grace of the Valar Protect You
Shire Folk