Disclaimer: Diabolically not mine.
A/N: Yet another entry for an LJ Community challenge with the prompt 'too late'. Pre-canon ruminations based on ages of characters. Reviews very much appreciated.
Hide and Seek
© Scribbler, June 2008.
Kairi's fun to play with, even if she is two years younger. She doesn't turn up her nose at climbing trees, doesn't call Yuffie 'that ninja brat' like the adults who don't approve of Lord Ansem letting them live here, and gasped with awe when Yuffie first showed her how to punch a guy without breaking your thumb. Of course, Kairi's grandmother wasn't pleased when she heard about that, but Kairi just snuck away to the waterways where Yuffie hangs out.
The other clan kids don't get it, but Yuffie's the only girl under fourteen and ninja boys aren't exempt from cooties. So if sometimes Kairi shows she's only six and wants to play baby games, it's okay. Yuffie knows she can play Skulk Attack later, or Raid on Midnight Castle of Evil Bad Guys.
"Hide and Seek," Kairi declares one day, and Yuffie agrees. She's brilliant at hide and seek, just like she is at everything. Eight years old and already her ego's so inflated it could power an airship.
"Fine. You hide, I'll seek."
"No peeking!"
They're near the castle, since they both have a fascination with the place – it's ugly and beautiful and great for making up stories about. The teenage girls in Yuffie's clan all have crushes on Ienzo, but Yuffie prefers pretending a dragon lives in the dungeons, and that she and Kairi have to save Radiant Garden because everybody else is too scared.
Yuffie doesn't peek, so she only hears a sudden 'whoomph' noise and a squeak like the time Kairi fell into the waterway and Captain Laguna, who was cool and didn't yell at them for getting too close to the edge, fished her out.
"Seven, eight… Kairi?"
Kairi's never been this good at playing hide and seek before. She doesn't have a ninja's talent for deception.
Yuffie keeps calling, but she can't find her anywhere. She stays calm on the surface, but below she's doing some frantic paddling. She darts from place to place, widening her search, but Kairi's nowhere to be found. It's like she's just vanished. "Kairi? This isn't funny anymore. Unlike me, you suck at practical jokes. Kairi!"
So it is that when the castle suddenly erupts with twisting black shadows, and creatures with eyes like decaying moons rise out of the floor an chase her, Yuffie isn't anywhere near her clan. She's caught next to that crotchety mechanic's place, where she's usually yelled at for stealing tools for their games because screwdrivers make awesome swords.
The mechanic rescues her, which is embarrassing because she's a ninja, and ninja aren't supposed to need rescuing, and she still can't find Kairi and the black things are everywhere.
"I can't find my friend!" she yells as she'd bundled with a bunch of other kids into a Gummi Ship. The shadow creatures are stealing hearts, and they have to get away, and she knows she should be more concerned about her clan but they can take care of themselves. Kairi can't. "She's only six. I'm supposed to be looking after her!"
"Too late, kid. We stay here, we're finished."
"But-"
"Get in."
"But I have to find her!"
Eventually a kid with a scar and another boy with worried blue eyes have to hold her down while the old guy buckles her in. She's still yelling when they take off, monsters dripping from their landing struts, and only falls silent when she looks down and sees Radiant Garden's lights go out. A black wave covers everything, shifting like muscle spasms until your eyes adjust and realise it's actually thousands of graspy little creatures devouring the place. She can't even see the buildings anymore, nor where she counted to ten.
She can seek all she wants, but anything hidden in there now is going to stay hidden.
Fin.