Not owning Kingdom Hearts.
If yougo down to the woodstoday...
By Skitts and Lamatikah
chaptertwo
greasycid'sgrub
Roxas rocked back and forth on his heels. This sure was boring; Leon should have been here over an hour ago, and there was still no sign of him. Or was there...?
"Larxene... Larxene, isn't that Leon's car?" Larxene looked down at her brother who was intent on pulling her shirt at the bottom, trying to get her attention. She couldn't hear him so she decided it was best just to ignore him. Yes, just focus on the music, boom boom boom…
Roxas rolled his eyes, and looked around a bit more.
"I think that is Leon's car…"
No answer.
"And is that them waiting for us by the window over there?"
No answer.
"Larxene, it's them, they're waving."
No answer.
"I'm going now, 'kay?"
No answer.
Roxas shrugged and walked away, heading in the general direction of the doorway to the inside of the restaurant/gas station named 'Greasy Cid's Grub'. Inside, there would be warmth and people and food. All those things were good. Sometimes. Just sometimes.
For example, warmth was not good when it was 100F outside and there's a water strike.
And people was not good when you felt like being emo and sitting in the corner with music blasting into your poor ears.
And food wasn't good when you are feeling ill because more often than not, it comes out in a rather nasty way.
But, apart from those small catches, warmth, people and food were, in general, a good thing.
So, on walking into Greasy Cid's, Roxas felt the warmth and smelt the food and saw the people. Good times they were. Good times. He walked over to the people, and recognised them all as either Larxene's friends, or Larxene's other half-brother or Larxene's half-brother's friends. These people were Demyx (whom Roxas talked to most out of her friends), Axel (who was known as 'freak' to Roxas), Riku (who was in the year below Larxene and talked to Roxas when he didn't know when Biology homework needed to be in for), Kairi (who was Riku's friend, and talked to Roxas a bit) and Sora (who was Larxene's other half-brother and went to a different school, but was also Riku's cousin).
All in all, Roxas knew he was screwed from this point onwards. Well... he was screwed after he had felt all the warmth and seen all the people and ate all the food. Only after them, would he be screwed.
Roxas was amazed at his own brilliant capabilities at remembering all their connections. Like they were all written in a not-so-good fanfiction story... Yes, just like that.
But then he realised that this mixture of people, with its mixture of personalities, genders, tents and emotions would just cause world-wide panic and chaos.
He grinned. And Larxene would be missing it all...
The blond boy watched in mild disgust, as the aptly named 'Greasy Cid's' lived up to its name.
All the waiters were, indeed, greasy, as were the black and white, chequered lineal floor that was stained with remnants of long-ago meals and … well …. Roxas was pretty sure it was only shiny because of the grease that sparkled proudly on it.
And when Leon – who was Riku's dad, who owned the car – ordered 'big breakfasts' for all of them to 'stoke' them for the big car-journey ahead, Roxas found that the plate piled high with fat and … grease … that was plonked down in front of him by a waiter called 'Cid' – maybe the original Greasy Cid – was quite inedible.
"Dig in. You better bloody well enjoy it…" muttered 'Greasy Cid', wiping his blond hair out of his eyes and chewing his stick as he departed. It is needless to say his hair was greasy too, but I just said it so 'ha ha'.
Roxas studied what he supposed was his 'food' critcally, spinning the plate around so he could look at it from every angle. Every so often he poked it with his fork.
He guessed what was on his plate was bacon, eggs, beans and some toast, but the bacon was covered in a white, three-inch thick coat of pure lard. The beans were as hard as bullets, the sauce around them cold and congealed like blood. The eggs were runny, bright yellow yolk that looked like the paints in the art room trickling across his toast. The toast was the only edible-looking object on the plate, but it was soggy from his eggs, and Roxas despised soggy toast.
The boy watched in horror as Axel – who was sat next to him – gave the plate of pure, undiluted grease a thoughtful prod. Deciding that it was obviously edible and 'up to his standards' (which were obviously an awful lot lower than Roxas's, as he would not touch the meal with a ten foot pole) the boy shovelled up a load of the grease onto his fork and shoved it in his mouth. And then he repeated that motion, again and again and again, grease trickling down his chin.
"S'ouh," he said thickly, through a mouthful of food. "Wh'e's Larx?"
Roxas shuddered and backed away from the boy who was spraying his food at him, his crappy plastic chair squealing against the lino. "She's waiting outside."
He had previously thought, before going into Greasy Cid's, that Larxene would be 'missing out' on a 'big treat', but food here was certainly no treat. She was probably better off outside – that way she wouldn't risk getting food poisoning.
"Why?" asked Axel, finishing off the last of his food and downing it with about a gallon of orange juice.
"She hasn't realised you're here yet. Anyway – not enough room on the table, is there?"
"I suppose."
Roxas turned around to avoid watching Demyx give Axel the rest of his meal 'which he found quite delicious but couldn't quite manage'. Heh, Demyx had taken a bite out of one baked bean, winced as he felt it crack his teeth, and then put his fork down and refused to take another bite.
He didn't want to watch Axel massacre any more plates of poor, poor grease. What did the grease do to anyone?
After looking around at the people sat at the table, he found that Axel and Leon were the only ones eating their (and other people's) food.
Kairi looked like the sort of girl who'd starve herself skinny on some stupid diet and resign herself to eating one lettuce leaf a day. She was slim and didn't really curve anywhere at all, and Roxas could see why. She was simply sipping black coffee in a prim, proper way. Or at least, she had been, until she gagged mid-sip and extracted an unidentified object from her cup.
They probably put grease in the coffee too – a special 'Greasy Cid's' special.
Sora was cutting up his toast enthusiastically with his knife, making a little army of soldiers to guard the 'bubbling pit of lava' – a.k.a. his beans. At least Sora could make the best of a bad thing Roxas thought, as the brunet giggled contentedly. Roxas wished he could live in Sora's head.
And there was Riku, attempting to look 'cool' and 'dashing', scraping the contents of his plate onto the one his dad was holding out for him.
"You kids will be regretting not eating this, you know," said Leon in a sort of 'I-r-an-insightful-adult-listen-to-meh-yayyyyyy' voice, waving around his fork with some bacon stabbed on the end of it with each word, just to make his point.
Roxas was just about to take the jug of orange juice when some lard went flying across the table and landed in the yellow-ish liquid with a sizzling sound.
The boy gulped and put the jug back to its rightful position on the table, not feeling very thirsty any more.
"Do you know how many calories are in that?" Kairi asked Axel, leaning against her chair with her mobile phone in one hand, furiously texting one of her friends.
"Yeah, well, its food isn't it?" asked Axel, reaching across the table for Sora's napkin. He'd already used and crumpled up the napkins belonging to those around him.
As soon as Axel's (grease-covered) fingers brushed against the napkin, Sora slammed his fork down into the table, watching as it rocked back and forth in the breeze. If he had swung it a few centimetres to the right Axel's hand would've been stuck to the table with it.
"What was that for?!" cried Axel, quickly bringing his arm back to him, where Sora couldn't stab it.
"I need my napkin for my tower!" explained Sora, picking up the piece of material and folding it several times.
"That's nice, Sora," Kairi smiled, patting the boy on the back. It seemed like they'd gotten to know each other pretty well for the hour they'd been sat in the café mulling over what to buy and waiting for Roxas to get there.
Axel shrugged and wiped his hands on his trousers instead, giant grease stains spread up the dark fabric.
Kairi sighed at this act – God, it was so typical of men – and went back to texting a funny little 'anecdote' to her friend, Selphie.
"Hey… Are you gonna eat that?" Axel asked Roxas, leaning over to him.
Roxas had no time to respond, however, as Riku slammed his fists against the surface of the table, making the crockery jump in fright.
"Right, we're going to go and get some decent food from the vending machines in the store opposite. I got money," he declared. "Axel, put your fork down."
Axel glared at Riku, swallowed his last mouthful of grease and set down his fork. All the while he was muttering something inaudible to everybody expect Roxas, sounding an awful lot like 'damn kid… Younger than I am… Thinks he can tear me apart from my grease just because his dad owns the fucking car…'
"Oooh, can we have chocolate?!" asked Sora, bouncing around excitedly like a Tigger on his seat, eyes wide.
"Do they have bathrooms?" Demyx chipped in.
"And DDR?" That was Kairi.
"Most likely."
"Yayyyyyyyyy!"
After about two hours of non-stop chocolate eating, dancing, and bathroom going, Leon forced the party to stop and told them to 'get in the damned, fucking car before I bloody drive off without you'.
After another four hours the children decided that it would be best to actually listen to Leon, who slowly getter redder and redder in the face from his consistent shouting. They all ran out of the service station (after buying a few more bags of skittles and playing a few more games of DDR, which took roughly another hour) and hopped into Leon's falling-apart car, fighting about who sat where and whatnot.
Larxene waited, happily – or sadistically as the case may be – outside, and watched as a blue seven seated car drove up outside her gas station which she had been guarding oh-so fiercely for the last six or seven hours. Four people had already run away screaming, two crying and three never got the chance to run away.
Leon, in the front next to his son, pointed his thumb towards the back of the car where Demyx was seated, all on his own, apart from the suitcases and Sora – who was in the dog cage in the trunk, due to general lack of chairs. And nobody would dare try to stuff Larxene in the trunk. She'd raise up a merry little hell, to be sure. Larxene threw her suitcases in the already full trunk (one of them hitting Sora on his head), and after closing the door, opened one nearer Roxas, bent his chair forward to wind him and crept over the seat into the back.
Overall, it was a very amusing scene, according to Axel, who was sitting on the other side to Roxas, next to Kairi who was sitting in the middle, and looking very unhappy about it, too. She wanted to lean against the window, dammit.
Roxas simply moved his chair back up, and scowled. Axel laughed. Kairi pouted with her arms crossed, Riku smirked, Demyx rubbed the back of his head, Larxene sniffed and Sora barked whilst prodding his water dish in appreciation.
"Right, kids. The trip is going to take exactly 23 hours, 42 minutes and 55 seconds. And you're only half of the lot coming. Now, I've brought two whole tents, kiddies, and guess what! These tents are only meant to fit two people in them! So, either all of you minus four sleep outside, or you cram as many of you as you can in one tent. Anyway, shall we get going?" Leon's lecture was over, and the children were all screaming to be on their way. The car drove out of the gas station with a screech and a shudder of wheels and engine. And that was when Roxas realised that this was going to be the one trip that could change his whole aspect of life, the whole meaning, everything he had always believed could be changed in this one trip.
That was also when he realised that he needed to go to the bathroom again.
And so, the journey was yet again halted by Roxas needing a pee.
And so, the journey began again, and Leon's lecture was over, and the children were all screaming to be on their way. The car drove out of the gas station and into the 'great unknown'.
Within a few minutes they had left the small little sanctuary of gas stations, restaurants and malls, and had hit the wide open road, which slowly started to branch off into the countryside. Complete with scenic winding lakes, tall trees, and a general lack of cars on the bumpy and unkempt road.
"Are we there yet?!" came Sora's voice from the back, as it did every minute of so since the journey started.
"No, Sora. We've just pulled into outskirts of Twilight Country. We need to weave around the main town and then head through Traverse Country and Radiant Garden, and then-"
By this time Sora had stopped paying attention to the geography lesson Leon was treating his ears to, free of charge. It was much more fun to watch Roxas's suitcase bounce about like it was possessed by a demon.
"Roxas, your suitcase is having a party," Sora said mildly from the back. "Maybe we should exorcise it? Evil demons be gone!"
"Yeah sure, Sora," mumbled Roxas. As if anybody would believe a boy who was in a dog cage in the trunk! The only demon in the car was Larxene, and she was happily listening to her MP3 player.
The volume was turned up so high on her portable little music device that everybody in the car was also treating to random snatches of verses. It was very hard to understand the words, but every so often Roxas would be able to pick out certain words or phrases such as 'suicide', 'pills', 'sex', 'bastards' and 'cabbage'.
Well, he was pretty sure the guy didn't actually insert a healthy green vegetable into his lovely ditty about the 21st century but it sure sounded like it.
Kairi was trying to read the problem page in her glossy girly magazine, but was finding it hard. Roxas was trying to read over her shoulder, and even if he thought he was doing it discreetly Kairi could see out of the corner of her eye that Roxas was reading a particularly 'cringe!' (it gained all five stars -gasp-) worthy story about a girl being shouted at by her mother because she'd taken pictures of her and her boyfriend naked.
And Larxene listening to a song about cabbages and Demyx sniffling like he had a cold and Sora barking in the back and Leon humming something that sounded a lot like 'Cotton-Eyed Joe' and Axel talking about some bitch from his school weren't exactly the most desirable of background noises.
Kairi growled and threw her magazine to the floor. Axel promptly put his boots on it.
Now she'd never be able to finish that story about some random hobos somebody decided would be superstars who turned into superstars and then became hobos again getting together. How could she read through all the grime that had been transferred off the red-head's boots to the paper?
"Leon, can we listen to a song please?" Kairi requested, looking beyond Riku and Leon's chairs to the mess of pretty buttons and high-tech looking equipment that lined the front of the car.
It probably the same as any other seven-seater car (maybe worse, judging by the way it jumped about when the wheels sank into potholes on the road) but Kairi wasn't one of those people who examined cars.
Fashion and make-up was more Kairi's forte, so to her any modern car was a confusing, high-tech one.
Her dad was one of those annoying people who spent hours a day washing their cars, and he often despaired about her lack of technological knowledge.
Why, little Rikku (who wasn't little, but fifteen) was already off riding motorbikes and she was locked up in her room drawing and putting on make-up and why couldn't she take an interest in cars and stuff?
"Leon? Music, please," Kairi requested again.
Music was the only thing to take her mind off her poor magazine and the poor gossipy story she'd never be able to read. Maybe there'd be something on by Mandy Moore or Jesse McCartney...
Leon leant forward and pressed a button, resulting in the wind wipers moving around sluggishly before breaking off onto the road. There was a clunk as the car drove over the long-forgotten wipers, and Sora turned to watch as the beloved wipers got further and further away.
Sora started to weep, muttering about happy memories, and Kairi growled. And Roxas backed away from her as best he could. He ended up with a bruise on his side.
Roxas cursed himself for being so silly – he'd tried to back away from Larxene multiple times in many different cars and it all resulted in pain. Why should backing away from Kairi be any different?
"Leon... I said I wanted to listen to some music!" Kairi requested again.
Leon growled and leant forward to press another button and no doubt loose another car part. Riku, however, stopped him by pressing a different button.
In about 0.12 seconds a song by Jesse McCartney blasted through the car, ripping through the eardrums of everybody assembled. Apart from Larxene's, who eardrums were already ripped to ribbons.
"I DON'T WANT ANOTHER PRETTY FACE! I DON'T WANT JUST ANYONE TO H-"
Roxas's face contorted into many different expressions, shapes and colours. He tried to hum to block it out.
"-OLD, I JUST WANT YOU AND YOUR BEATIFUL SOOOOOOOOO-"
Roxas clapped his hands to his ears and squirmed about in his seat as if he had ants in his pants. Maybe if he burrowed himself into the back of the car he wouldn't hear it any more.
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-"
Damn – it failed.
Well, no matter. Maybe if he sung along he'd defeat the crap blasting out from the front of the car. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, that's what they always say.
"-UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!"
"UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!" Roxas cried along with the song.
Kairi suddenly noticed that there were two Jesse McCartney's singing, and screamed, at just about the same time Roxas noticed that he sounded just like Jesse McCartney...
Oh sweet Jeebus no...
Roxas took a deep breath.
"Turn it off! It burns! It burns! It burns,GODDAMNIT!"
Leon smiled an evil smile, and inserted a CD into the slit meant for CDs. Riku, meanwhile, sighed. Roxas, without knowing it, had unleashed a monster...
And he had really hoped Leon wouldn't have an opportunity to play this song, because once he put in his specially made CD he never turned it off. Ever. He remembered one horrible fateful car journey about eight years ago when Riku had been screaming because he wanted to buy a wooden sword from this gift shop at a castle. And so, to keep Riku quiet, Leon had introduced him to 'that song'.
The song was excruciatingly painful, and Riku guessed that Leon only listened to it because it was the only thing that could discipline Riku. Nothing scared the silver-haired boy apart from that song, and it was that song that had kept Riku in line for the past eight years.
Riku knew that if he didn't tidy his room or set the table then Leon would put the song on his life would fall apart around him. And Leon would sing along and click his fingers.
The CD player made an odd clunking sound as it digested the shining disc into the cavernous, mechanical heart of the machine. And then the first few chords of the song blasted through the car at full volume.
It even succeeded in making Larxene jump.
"WHERE DID YOU COME FROM, WHERE DID YOU GO?! WHERE DID YOU COME FROM, COTTON-EYED JOE?!" screamed the CD player.
Riku turned white and started shivering.
And Roxas turned his head, wondering what sort of a monster he'd unleashed.
They passed under the sign that proclaimed they had just entered the heart of Twilight Country, as the people inhabiting the houses that lined the road jumped out to watch the rather amusing sight that was a car, trundling – yes, trundling - along at 70 mph without the window wipers, about six children and a dog (?) crammed inside, all screaming/sobbing for lost window wipers/humming.
And as the car drove on, the strains of 'Cotton-Eyed Joe' and the screams of poor, tortured children lingered on in their hearts and minds.
A/N: Well, here we go. I haven't even read through this o.O -slaps self- The page breaks prolly don't work. & there could be a page break underneath this -ponders- But oh the well. Enjoy, review, live, life. Etc.
