This one is entirely the fault of lightning_hope on LJ. She mentioned writing a fic with pirate!Kairi and we talked bout it for a bit. A few days later, I made a joke regarding a "ninja-crossover" (as in, secretly a crossover without anyone knowing) and LH mentioned that that gave her a plotbunny about a ninja-fic. After turning the idea over for a second, the plotbunny bit me too, and I jokingly wrote a summary of Pirate Kairi versus Ninja Riku... only to end up actually writing it. Whoops. Anywho, here it is. I'll try to keep the fic alive, but I'm a procastinatorpants and in college, so I'm making no promises on a schedule.
Rating: T for violence. May go up later.
Warnings: AU, one yaoi-pairing (later on), character death (later on), drama llama's (later on).
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, Square Enix and Disney do.
Caveat lector!
Prologue -Everyone Knows...
The sun had risen above the horizon at last.
At the sight of it, some of the younger men huddled around the fire relaxed visibly. Their seniors, on the other hand, did not – they had seen too much to be lulled into a false sense of security by the daylight.
"Lighten up!" one of the newer recruits laughed, smacking another boy on the back. "They won't do anything during the day, everyone knows that! If they do show up, we'll kill 'em. It'll be easy!"
"Really, Stephenson?" came a cold voice from behind the boy. "Would you mind telling me what makes you think that?"
Stephenson's heart started racing at the sound, proving that somewhere deep within, his body, at least, had a sense of self-preservation and was putting its energy into the fight-or-flight response. His brain, however, was slow to catch up. "Well," Stephenson ventured, "everyone knows they attack during twilight or night because there's not much light then, right? So since it's day right now, I thought -" Stephenson fell silent at the captain's glare.
The other boys he'd been talking to a few seconds ago knew a dead man when they saw him and immediately made way for the captain as he walked towards the now-abandoned rookie.
"Yes, that's true. Everyone knows they don't attack during the day," the captain said in a calm, level tone that nevertheless spelled out disaster. "Everyone knows that they attack with dozens of them at once. Everyone knows they use karate moves and shuriken and katana's to kill their prey. However, what everyone knows is wrong."
"I – captain Luxord, I -" Stephenson tried, but the captain didn't seem to hear him, or didn't care what he had to say.
"In real life," the captain said, coming to a halt about a foot away from the boy, "they work alone or in very small groups. They'll get close to you, bide their time, win your trust, and then..." Captain Luxord snapped his fingers. "...you're gone, just like that. If you're lucky."
"How do you... know that, sir?" someone else asked, taking pity on poor Stephenson.
Luxord glanced at the person who'd asked – a girl of hardly fifteen years old. Probably joined up just to see some of the world or get away from someone back home. "...my first mate was killed by the Ninjas a few years back," he eventually said, apparently deciding the girl was trustworthy. "The Ninja who did it joined us claiming bandits had killed her husband and left her to die. We should have known better than that. I woke up in the middle of the night to see she just slit his throat and was starting to walk towards me. Naturally I took out my sword and killed her, but it was too late for Wilson." The captain was silent for a moment, apparently lost in thought, before he grabbed his pack from beside where he'd been standing before Stephenson made his comment. "All right, pack up, people. Someone erase any signs that we've been here. Her Majesty will be waiting for us, we've got to get her to the safety of the ship before those bastards get to her. You're Pirates, act like it!"
On the edge of the encampment, a young man with silver hair raised his gaze a fraction of an inch. So the tip had been true after all... The silver-haired boy grinned. Exactly as planned...