This is yet another challenge from my dearest sis, The Writer, You Fools, and shall be two chapters. The challenge was thusly!

Dearest Bro of mine:
Since you asked for it, I challenge you once more!

The challenge is thusly:

An AU, PWP (Alternate Universe, Point-What Point?) oneshot (one chapter) of Kingdom Hearts. You must use the three main characters (Sora, Riku, and Kairi) and two other supporting characters.

Bashing is encouraged!

Item list

3 fish, 1 seagull egg, 3 mushrooms

1 log, 1 cloth, 1 rope, 3 Coconuts

Chapter 1: Mushrooms and Destiny

Sand. Sand. Sand.

Sora gritted his teeth against the pervasive thought of that foul substance. Neither soil nor stone, sand seemed absolutely incapable of making up its miniscule mind as to what it wanted to be. Even during the incoming tides the sand barely qualified as mud. What time was ever better to be oneself than when soaking wet? Sand, it seemed, had a complete case of life-ignorance and, of course, only the people of Destiny Islands paid for it.

The situation was simple enough. Sora hated sand, and sand hated Sora. Even so, that hatred juxtaposed nicely with a more intimate love-love relationship. Sora loved to write his name on the beach without using his hands, and sand loved to get in his shorts and chafe. So far the ridiculously large shoes he had purchased from Tidus had prevented the worthless stuff from bothering his feet, but if Sora knew sand, and he thought he did, it would find a way.

"Hey, Sora, what's taking so long? Too short to hang the flag?"

Sora could not quite stop himself from sighing. He turned his attention away from the task at hand to glare at Riku, his eternal nemesis, best friend, and possibly the most androgynous man he had ever met in his entire life. Riku, with his shimmering silver hair. Riku, with eyes as crystalline blue as the ocean. Riku, whose smile made Sora feel things he never felt with anyone else. Powerful, perspective altering emotions of the highest order.

In short, Riku, into whose pretty boy ass Sora prayed for a chance to stomp an island-sized mudhole. The two of them had been best friends for as long as either could remember, but the last several days of raft-building and inane attempts to impress Kairi had etched into Sora's mind the notion that no one else really lived on their island. They were best friends by default; nothing more, and maybe a little less.

"It's done, anyway." Sora smiled an imperious smile at the ever-smirking Riku, whose 'bi-curious Arabian Warrior' outfit lent him all the menace of a gaggle of tie-dyed geese. "We're ready to go! Um… if you found all the things we needed, that is."

Riku stepped off the treetop where he had been standing. Sora rolled his eyes, practically nauseated by his friend's endless over drama, but had put his game face on by the time he touched down. "Of course. Now we just have to wait for Kairi, and we can leave this place at last. Thanks to her… I'm not afraid anymore. I want to leave this island, and see what else is out there. I…"

"Hey look, there's Kairi!" Sora pointed excitedly down the brightly lit beach. Riku turned his head to look, thankfully ending his impending soliloquy. "And she has the coconuts. We can sail right now!"

Riku chuckled his poorly disguised villain's chuckle. "She is the only girl her age who doesn't have the coconuts, Sora."

Sora opened his mouth to reply, but closed it almost immediately. Kairi possessed a number of wonderful traits, but a set of curves was not among them. Wakka had compared her chest to a pair of mosquito bites on more than one occasion, to which Tidus usually pointed out that a man with Wakka's moobs should not remark on such deficiencies.

"Hey, guys! Are we ready to go?" The ever-cheerful Kairi inquired of them.

Sora and Riku looked at one another and back at her. In perfect unison they cried, "Yeah!"

Half an hour later the trio found themselves coasting along the rolling surface of the sea, bound for glory, honor, and whatever else they might discover at their inevitable destination.

Three days pass without incident. Largely because the difficulties of using the bathroom on a tiny raft do not require presentation. We rejoin our heroes at the shores of a place called West Haven.

"Customs? What is that?" Sora demanded furiously, shrugging off the guiding hands of two exceptionally burly Heartless. "We didn't do anything wrong?"

"Of course you did," grumbled the state official who led Riku, Kairi, and Sora down the long, dark halls of West Haven's Immigration Organization. "You were trying to enter our borders with three illegal mushrooms on your person. We do not tolerate addicts. In addition, you were found carrying a rare seagull egg. That is a serious offense, my young friend."

Riku, much unlike Kairi and Sora, refrained from struggling against his great, dark captors. "So how are you going to punish us?"

Sora might have been mistaken, but he thought that he detected a hint of eagerness in Riku's voice.

I'll bet he's hoping for a whip.

A sound not unlike the roar of the ocean droned over the party, growing cacophonous the further their progress. The customs agent strutted along, waving his rifle proudly about as if it served as his badge and rank, apparently oblivious to it. Sora didn't ask about it. He decided that such a nasally gifted man, ever dressed in yellow and babbling now and again about gorillas, should be pressed no further than absolutely necessary.

Before long a titanic gate of steel and stone loomed before them. It was a masterwork where doors were concerned, save for one small detail. The doorknob clashed horribly against the silvery steel, and had what Sora considered to be the ugliest of carved faces set into its body.

"Let us through. Clayton, customs agent OAF, transporting prisoners into custody."

The doorknob yawned a drawn-out yawn. Before Sora could produce the courage to ask, though, the great gate swung open on noisy, heavy hinges.

Revealing the pit to his eyes.

And the roaring crowd, set all around an rectangular cage.

"You get to serve your sentence in there," Clayton explained with a smooth smirk, "in the Cage of Rascal-slapping!"

Sora could swear Riku's eyes grew as wide as saucers at that.

"What do you mean by that?" at last the island boy demanded of his ostensibly British captor.

"Get inside. Brown hair, you go to the left side of the ramp. Silver hair, to the right. Young… lady, I suppose, you come with me." Clayton aimed his rifle directly at Riku's head, still smiling. "You will receive your instructions from Hades. Hurry! This crowd is merciless. A man would have to be daft to secure their ill favor."

Before Sora knew what was happening he found himself shoved headlong into a very small chamber just beside and below the cage. A ramp led from this room, a waiting room for certain, and into the cage. Its bars were thick, though, and he would not be able to escape through there. Worried, terrified, he clung to his knees to await this Hades person and find out just what was going on.

The crowd began a slow decrescendo, bottoming out at a dull hush. Sora lifted his head, listening closely to what was beginning to sound remarkably like a commentary transcript.

Oogie Boogie: Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Chump Fight 23! We are comin' to you live from Immigrations and Customs Arena in beeeeautiful West Haven, to give you all the juicy commentary from the world's cheapest fight program! I'm Oogie Boogie, and I'm joined by none other than the Bottle Blondes from Across the Pond, Cloud and Tinkerbell."

Cloud: ……..

Tinkerbell: (flitting about)

Oogie Boogie: Aren't they just cards? Jeez but I love this gig. We're just about to mosey down to ringside where our special guest ring announcer, none other than Lord Hades straight from the underworld, is gonna give us the special fight preview! But first, let's have a look at our special guest ring girls! For that, let's go to that pasty-faced tomb rat, Jack Skellington, at ringside.

A crackle of static can be heard, as Chip and Dale have fallen asleep at the production truck.

Oogie's microphone is still on.

Oogie Boogie: (In a distinct New Jersey accent) Workin' next to you two mooks is like workin' with gahden gnomes. If you jagoffs would open your noise-holes occasionally I might get half a chance to take a breath… wait, my microphone is still on? Oh, mothah fu--!

Another crackle of static can be heard, as security rouses the chipmunk duo to switch the microphone feed.

Jack Skellington: Ladies and gentleman, for a special show we have a special treat. Three, count them! Three guest ring girls! First up, dressed fabulously in allover silver, we have the vivacious Ansem! Are… you guys sure that's a woman? Moving on. Tonight's second guest ring girl is a new face in this old crowd. Hailing from Destiny Islands and serving off a two day sentence for transporting illegal mushrooms, we have… Kairi! Where did you people get these girls that look like boys!? Apparently Kairi only barely got the ring girl job tonight. It would have been Sora, but he was chosen to fight! Hopefully the Round Three girl will have more curves than I do. Back to you, Oogie Boogie!

Oogie Boogie: Arright! Let's get this party rolling, ladies and gentleman. The tale of the tape is… not all that interesting, we confess. Riku has some inches on Sora, height wise, so he'll probably try to keep on his feet and use that reach advantage to his, uh, advantage. According to this, though, Sora's outfit is 25 more festive and daring than Riku's… gotta bet on the man in hip shorts. Personally, I gotta go with Riku in this fight… he looks like a half-baked midget version of Sephiroth, so he gets Oogie Boogie's bad guy nod. Sora looks more like a hedgehog.

It looks like the referees are ready! We go now to Hades, already in the ring.

Inside the Cage…

Sora forced himself up the ramp with all the eagerness of a pup at the vet. He could hear the catcalls of the crowd tumbling over him like a thousand blue-collar mosquitoes and, though his panic sent shock waves rumbling from his ribs to his rump, he dared not hesitate. Clayton had made certain to post a handful of Heartless there, just to make certain that Sora felt no impulse to chicken out. The islander gave them a backwards glance, extending his middle finger in perhaps the only piece of sign language ever to transcend the species barrier.

As soon as his feet touched the gray canvas flooring inside the cage, Sora's path vanished in a puff of acrid smoke. All around him, links of thick chain formed an impassible barricade to separate him from the diverse, raucous crowd. His heart sank to somewhere around his manhood, which meant his ankle, to hear him tell it, or Kairi's storage closet in reality.

Riku stood across the cage in all his "there is no freaking way he is staying a good guy" glory. He seemed to take little notice of Sora, as his pre-fight focus was absolute. The brunette was so lost in his deconstruction of Riku's stance that he hardly noticed a shadow descending over him until it spoke, and a pale hand extended his way.

"Hey there, short sheet. Hades, lord of the Underworld, how ya doin'?"

Sora looked up to see, perhaps, the second most frightening visage his short life had ever known. Hades stood head and shoulders above pretty much everyone else in the arena, and with his blazing hair and beady eyes, was a dead ringer for Kairi's mother. "I, uh…" he stammered, displaying the verbosity that living on an island one's entire life can create.

"Yeah, I know, I get that a lot. What's your name, kiddo? I gotta have somethin' to announce." Hades crossed his thick arms over his chest, waiting impatiently. "C'mon, I'm the God of the Dead, I got places to go, about a billion stiffs to see."

"Um… Sora."

Hades' face screwed up.

"Just Sora?"

"Yeah…"

"No nickname? No, striking fear into hearts kinda thing?"

"Nope."

"Aliases?"

"Nope."

"Do you even own pants?"

"Nope."

"Just checkin'. Alright, the ref's gonna tell you the rules in a minute, but you can't understand a word the man says. He's some kinda primate, or somethin', I don't know and it's not important enough to give much attention. So here's how it works. You punch him, he'll punch you, there'll be kicking involved, your basic back alley thug wrestling kinda thing. The judge is that round lady in the crown, with the schnoz you could swan dive from and the cards all around her. Don't get on her bad side…" Hades turned away from Sora a little, eyebrows lowered as if in deep thought. "Come to think of it, if you can find her good side you're doing a good job. Anyway, are we clear?"

Sora shook his head vigorously. A fight with Riku? "No! I don't…"

"Great! Wait for the bell." Before Sora could protest further Hades floated along the mat to the center of the ring. A gleaming silver microphone descended from the arena ceiling and into the Lord of the Underworld's sizable hand. The islander wanted nothing more than to run for that microphone and stop the impending announcement to buy himself at least a little bit more time, but refrained. The fat woman in the judge's booth failed to intimidate him, but the playing cards with halberds failed not to.

A hush fell over the arena as Hades's microphone buzzed for silence.

"Ladies and gentleman, welcome to amateur fight night! I'm your resident Stygian Sandman, Hades, and tonight we've got a brawl for it all, a match of the century, the millenium, between two guys who haven't sprouted the first whisker yet." Sora had to admit that Hades had a way with the crowd, as it ate up every single word he said. "Tonight's fight is a three-round non-title weapons deathmatch to be judged by her majesty, the swingin' Queen of Hearts! How 'bout that Queen, ladies and gentleman?"

The fat woman raised her generous bottom from her cushioned chair and waved to the crowd, her body jiggling like an attention seeking bowl of gelatin. Hades, sensing his spotlight deteriorating, quickly regained control.

"While I'm announcing people who aren't important, let's have a round of applause for the two manliest ring girls ever to grace the squared… hexagonal… circle. Kairi and Ansem, for the love of Zeus, put some pants on!" Laughter billowed over the crowd like smoke over a burning forest, or Hades's head. "Each round lasts three, count 'em three, minutes, and will have a special set of rules for your entertainment. Round one will be a bare-knuckle back to basics beat down. Round two, a three fish, three coconut, legal weapons match! And finally, round three…" here the Stygian paused for suspense, his beady eyes flicking back and forth as a sadistic smile crossed his pointy lips, "… an Atlantian strap match! One piece of cloth'll be used to tie our lucky victims' wrists together, while the ultimate weapon, a log, will be hung from the ceiling by a rope. The only way to get it is to climb the cage, and the last man standing wins!"

Hades made a long, graceful gesture across the ring, to a muscular, loin-cloth clad man with terrible posture. "Tonight's official will be everyone's favorite Simian Stutterer… Abu!" Sora nearly fell off his feet as a tiny monkey leapt up to his shoulder, squawked, and darted across the ring to do the same to Riku. "And his translator, Tarzan!" Mild applause sounded for the dim-looking ape man. "Tonight's fighters hail from Destiny Islands, which is a place no one with a future needs to go. In the red corner, representing Team Shorty Shorts, Sora!" A stream of boos issued from the drunken noise-holes of the crowd. "And in the blue corner, representing alternative pride, Riku!" More boos, though a few girls cheered loudly enough to make Sora grumble. "So, if I can get everyone to put down their booze for a second… let's get ready to rumble!"

Hades made his exit in typical deity fashion… through the cage door. Abu scampered to Tarzan's shoulder and proceeded to screech and cheep a short set of instructions, which Tarzan translated as essentially the same ones Hades had explained.

The clang of a bell nearly made Sora wet his festive shorts. He knew that Riku had a reach advantage, but doubted that his island friend possessed the same will to beat the stuffing out of a man that Sora did. The shorter boy lifted his fists and the two began a slow circling dance, neither eager to test out the other's quickness. Sora flicked out a jab that would never have connected, and Riku evaded it in kind.

"C'mon Sora, can't you do better than that?" Riku smirked his typical smirk, though this time his smugness infuriated the eventual Keyblade master. Abandoning all grace and tact, Sora lowered his stance and charged, ramming his shoulder into Riku's midsection and driving him to the cage floor.

Of course, neither knew anything about fighting and so it ended up looking more like a hugging contest than a battle for male supremacy. The clock ticked down, monitored closely by a suited white rabbit, until once again the ring bell sounded to end the round.

Oogie Boogie: That was the worst first round I've seen since the great Narcoleptic Battle Royal of '88.

Cloud: I had a fight just like that with Squall once.

Oogie Boogie: (disgusted) If you were gonna speak, that's not what I was hopin' to hear.

Cloud: …..

Oogie Boogie: Whatever. We're ready for round two!