Disclaimer: We don't own Kingdom Hearts or Titanic or the very small bit of Monty Python goodness... along with a very small part of Napoleon Dynamite… AND a very small part of South Park… and Bruce Almighty... and… I think that's about it. We also do not own any of the online flash animations references were made to.
Riku took out his pencils like tools of death, his sketchbook open and ready. He looked up as Sora came into the sitting room wearing a silk robe, toying with the fabric.
"The last thing I need is another picture of me looking like a twelve-year-old. As a paying customer, I expect to get what I want." Sora smiled, handing him a dime. He then stepped back, parting the fabric, the blue stone on his pale chest. He watched Riku's stricken reaction before lowering it. It was almost comical as the cloth dropped to the floor, the way his eyes seemed to grow ten sizes. "Tell me when it looks right to you."
"Oh, it looks right," Riku replied suggestively, his eyes glued to Sora's pelvis.
"I meant my pose."
"Oh." Riku nodded in understanding and grinned widely, watching as Sora sat on the divan, settling like a cat, his body draped over the cushions. Riku cleared his throat. "Just bend your left leg a little and lower your head. Eyes on me," he said competently, beginning to sketch. He, turning a deep red, suddenly dropped his pencil, and the eye-opening, naked, but godly in his childish right, Sora stifled a laugh.
"I believe you are blushing, Mr. Sexy. I can't imagine a bishie blushing. I mean, don't you like, live off these sorts of things?" Sora teased.
Riku kept his eyes down. "Heh." Despite his nervousness, he drew with sure strokes. Sora's pose was graceful, his hands beautiful, and his blue eyes radiated his energy. Over the top edge of his sketchpad, Riku's eyes appeared briefly, much like a frightened child. The brunette laughed. It was a sight Sora would carry for the rest of his life.
"My heart was pounding the whole time. It was the most erotic moment of my life… up until then, at least." Old Sora's wrinkled lips came to a close.
A semicircle of listeners stared in a rapt, frozen silence. "What, uh... happened next?" Rikku coughed out.
Sora smiled, a cocky look upon his face. "You mean did we do 'it'?"
Rikku nodded wildly like she was about to whack her own head off. I guess there is a fan girl in all of us.
"Sorry to disappoint you," Sora said, almost sadly. He gazed at the drawing, returning to the past. "Riku was very professional."
"Date it, Riku. I want to always remember this night." Sora whispered. He was in his silk robe once again, staring over Riku's shoulder. The silver-haired male did as he was told, writing "4/14/1912" on the bottom-right corner of the drawing. The brunette, meanwhile, scribbled a note on a piece of Titanic stationary. He then accepted the drawing from Riku and crossed to the safe in the wardrobe.
He put the diamond back in the safe, placing the drawing and the note on top of it. Sora closed the door tightly.
Titanic glided across an unnatural sea, black and calm as a pool of oil. The ship's lights were mirrored almost perfectly in the black water. The sky was brilliant with stars, and a meteor traced a bright line across the heavens. On the bridge, Captain Highwind peered out at the blackness ahead as Quartermaster Xigbar handed him a cup of hot tea with lemon; it steamed in the bitter cold of the open bridge. Second Officer Demyx was next to him, also staring out at the sheet of black glass the Atlantic had become.
"I don't think I've ever seen such a flat calm in twenty four years at sea," Demyx oddly announced.
"Am I supposed to care?" Xigbar grunted.
"Listen, you, Mr. Yo Ho Pirate," Demyx warned, grabbing Xigbar's eye patch. His hand was swatted away.
"Yes, the sea is like a mill pond. Not a breath of wind," Cid agreed.
"It's make the bergs harder to see, with no breaking water at the base," Xigbar reported. If only he realized the irony in this statement. Had he realized it, thousands of horrible, painful, ridiculously gory and bloody deaths may have been prevented. With so many tortured souls at once, Sora's 'special ability' might go haywire.
"Well, I'm off. Maintain speed, Demyx," Cid said, turning away.
"Yes, sir."
"And wake me, of course, if anything becomes in the slightest degree doubtful." He smiled, sipping his tea.
Sora, fully dressed, returned to the sitting room, suddenly hearing a key in the lock. Fearful, he took Riku's hand and led him silently through the bedrooms. The door behind them opened, and Kairi entered by the sitting room. "Sora? Hello?" She heard another door opening.
Sora and Riku rushed out of the stateroom, closing the door. Looking around, the brunette quickly led them along the corridor toward the deck foyer. They were halfway across the open space when the sitting room door opened in the corridor and Kairi walked out, curious. Riku smiled and squeezed Sora's hand, swinging their arms. The brunette smiled back, but as he locked looks with his fiancée across the way, his face fell.
"Come on!" he yelled, and they broke into a run, surprising the few ladies standing about. Sora led them past the stairs to the bank of elevators. They quickly stepped into one, surprising the operator as they pushed him into the wall. "Take us down! Now," Sora demanded, closing the steel gate. The Operator scrambled to comply.
The red-headed beauty into the lift as it started to descend. She slammed one hand on the bars of the gate, injuring her delicate hand. "Shit! God that hurt, damn it! " Sora made a very rude gesture, sticking up his middle finger, and laughed as Kairi disappeared above. The operator gaped at him.
Kairi emerged from another lift and hurried to the empty elevator the men had taken, the operator closing the gate to go back up. She ran around the bank of elevators and scanned the foyer; there was no Sora or Riku. She decided try the stairs going down to the lower deck. Down on said deck, Sora and Riku were leaning against a wall in the corridors, laughing while trying to catch their breath.
"Pretty tough for a wife, that woman," Riku panted.
Sora laughed through his gasps. "I never knew that she could run that fast."
"I'm surprised she can actually run in those heels and that dress—oh, no."
Kairi appeared in a cross-corridor nearby. She quickly noticed them, turning and charging toward them. Sora squealed as they ran around a corner into a blind alley. There was only one door, marked 'Crew Only', and Riku flung it open.
They entered a small white room, with no way out but a ladder going down. Riku latched the deadbolt on the door, which Kairi slammed against a moment later. He grinned at Sora, pointing to the ladder.
"After you, m'lady."
Sora narrowed his eyes, but dismissed the some-what insult.
The two climbed down the escape ladder into the boiler room, looking around in amazement. It was a vision of Hell itself with the roaring furnaces and black figures moving in the smoky glow. Sora and Riku turned away from the ladder and ran the length of the boiler room, dodging surprised stokers and trimmers with wheelbarrows of coal as they held hands.
Riku shouted over the persistent noise of the furnaces. "Carry on! Don't mind us! You're doing an excellent job, whatever the hell you guys are doing!"
They headed through the open watertight door into next boiler room over, through the fiercely hot alley between two boilers. They wound up in the dark, out of sight of the working crew. Watching from the shadows, they watched the stokers working in the hellish glow, shoveling coal into the insatiable gaping holes of the furnaces, amazed.
Riku and Sora entered a large storage room, laughing as they calmly walked between the rows of stacked cargo. The brunette hugged himself against the cold after being in the dipping heat of the boiler room. They came upon a brand new Renault touring car, its shiny windows drawing Sora in closer. It looked like a royal coach from a fairy tale, its brass trim and headlamps nicely set off by its deep burgundy color. Everyone knows this car. This is the car, the one car that will accommodate the moment people have been waiting for.
Sora looked at the car. "I just had a great idea!"
Riku looked at him quizzically. "And what might that idea be?"
"Let's…have…JUICE!" Sora gave that ever-bright, ever-annoying grin of his. Riku, seemingly taking this all wrong, went slightly bug-eyed. Sora laughed cheerfully.
"I was only joking. My real idea was…" Sora looked up at Riku with a dreamy, seductive look on his face. "You know what I really want to do?"
"Me?" Riku replied hopefully. Sora scoffed.
"No, silly. I want to steam up these windows!"
Sora climbed into the plushy upholstered back seat, acting very royal. There were cut crystals and vases on the walls, each containing a rose. Riku gained a special glint in his eyes, once again assuming perverse thoughts. He then jumped into the driver's seat, enjoying the feel of the leather and wood.
"Where to, sir?" he asked, putting on a snobby English accent. The brunette's hands came out of the shadows and landed on Riku's shoulders
"To the stars," he whispered, smiling. Sora pulled him over the seat and Riku landed next to him, his breath loud in the quiet darkness. He looked anxiously at the still-smiling Sora.
"Are you nervous?" Riku asked, running his fingers through Sora's hair.
"Nervous about what?"
Riku raised his eyebrow. "Didn't… Don't you want to…?"
Sora looked disgusted. "What? I…eww! How the hell do you interpret sex from stars and windows?"
Riku stroked his face, cherishing him. "You're kidding, right?"
"Maybe," Sora laughed.
Riku nodded. "If you aren't, I'm about to kick you in a very uncomfortable place, you know that?"
Sora stopped laughing. Not about the pain that he could endure if Riku had hit him there, but what he was about to demand. "I think I'm ready, Riku."
Riku stared at him for a few awkward moments before kissing him, and he slid down in the seat under his welcome weight.
Junior Wireless Operator Zexion rapidly keyed out a message on the Marconi instrument. His long name title can be as intimidating as his looks. He looked through the huge stack of outgoing messages. "Look at this one. He wants his private train to meet him. La dee da," he mumbled to himself, slapping the paper down. "I'll be up all bloody night on this lot." Zexion started to receive an incoming message from a nearby ship, the Californian, which jammed his outgoing signal. At such close range, the beeps were deafening. "Holy sweet nibblets! It's that idiot on the Californian." Cursing, Zexion furiously keyed a rebuke.
On the freighter Californian, Wireless Operator Nero pulled his earphone off his ear as the Titanic's spark deafened him. He translated the message for his brother, Third Officer Weiss.
"Stupid bastard. I try to warn him about the ice, and he says 'Keep out. Shut up. You don't know what you're talking about.' Do you hear this asshole?"
"Now what's he sending?" Weiss asked.
Nero started to translate the message immediately. It was rather long. He read it out loud as he wrote. "'You're… an… ass… sucker... It… means… you suck… ass… You see… an… ass, you… suck… it…. You're… an… ass… sucker…"
Weiss looked like a man whose cat was just brutally flattened under a car's tire and magically caught on fire afterward. "Oh, no, he did not," he yelled before taking over the machine. He began typing furiously.
Zexion received the message, puzzled. "'Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries'? What?" He didn't understand, but he replied with the best thing he could come up with.
Weiss translated. "'Your mom goes to college'?" He hastily replied, "I'll bet your father spent the first year of your life throwing rocks at the stork."
"Why, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder!"
"You starveling! You eel-skin! You dried newt's tongue, you stock-fish!"
Zexion didn't even understand half the words in that last message.
"Go and boil your bottoms, you sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you."
Nero typed "Anal blowing butt monkey!" and shut off the receiver. Hopefully that ship full of bastards would sink or something. KNOCK ON WOOD. Ahem… onward!
The rear window of the Renault was completely fogged as planned. It looks like Sora got what he wanted. Come on, people. I'm sure some thought comes to mind. You all know what happens now. It's imprinted into the minds of people forever, the seductive hand with heavy implications, smearing the steamy windows.
A finger appeared from the window and drew a small circle in the fog. Inside it, two dots were drawn and the half circle on the bottom made a face. Inside the car was the muffled sound of Sora. "Look, Riku! I made a smiley face!" Inside the car, Riku's overcoat was like a blanket over them and they were huddled under it, intertwined, but still clothed. Their faces were flushed as they looked at each other wonderingly.
"You're trembling," Sora said.
Riku nodded. "That's… that's a damn good face, Sora!"
Well, I wasn't the first teenage boy to get seduced in the backseat of a car, and certainly not the last, by several million.
Riku half smiled. "Sora… can we do it now?"
Sora nodded. "Sure, why not? I've been waiting to do it forever!"
"Okay..."
"Gods, what the hell are you doing?!"
"I'm…you know—"
"I was talking about having the juice, you idiot!"
Riku sighed. "Shut up."
The car began to move. A few moans came from Sora. "Riku!"
"What? I haven't done anything yet!" Riku said.
"This seat is hurting my back! It's digging into my skin!" Sora complained. Riku sighed and the car shifted once again, with a few more whines from Sora.
"Riku! This seat is hurting my back!"
"Will you shut up already?"
"But it's hurting my back! I—"
The tiny half-cylinder of the crow's nest lured high above with lookouts Kadaj and Yazoo inside. They were stamping their feet and swinging their arms, trying to keep warm in the freezing wind.
"You can smell ice, you know, when it's near," Yazoo said.
"Oh, shut up," Kadaj replied simply. He was way too cold to deal with Yazoo beside him.
"Well I can."
Without hearing the words over the roar of the furnaces, stokers were telling two stewards which way Sora and Riku went. The stewards moved off toward the storage room.
Kairi stood at the open safe. She stared at the drawing of Sora, her face clenched with fury as she read the note again.
"Darling, now you can keep us both locked in your safe.
- SORA, a.k.a, the Love Monkey That HATES you."
Cloud, standing behind her, looked over her shoulder at the drawing. Kairi crumpled Sora's note and took the drawing in both hands as if to rip it in half. She tensed to do it, and then stopped herself, looking down upon it.
"I have a better idea."
The two stewards entered the cargo space. They had electric torches in their hands and played the beams around the hold. They spotted the Renault with its fogged rear window and approached it slowly. From inside, the torch lit up Sora's passionate smiley face, still there on the fogged up glass. One steward silently reached for the handle and quickly opened the door. "Got you!"
The back seat, unfortunately, was empty.
"Damn. And I thought we were going to see some action," the other steward complained.
Sora and Riku, fully dressed, came through a crew door onto the deck. They could barely stand as they were laughing. Up above them, in the crow's nest, lookout Yazoo heard the disturbance below and looked down to the well deck, where he could see Riku and Sora in each other's arms. Their breath clouds floated around them in the now freezing air, but together, they didn't feel the cold.
"When this ship docks, I'm getting off with you," Sora said, kissing Riku's neck.
"This is crazy," Riku laughed.
"I know. It doesn't make any sense. That's why I trust it."
Riku pulled Sora to him and kissed him lightly on the lips. In the crow's nest, Yazoo nudged Kadaj. "Would you look at that? It's that man that woman is supposed to marry, but here's the twist: he's with another man. Oh, the drama! His mistress must be awfully mad, probably plotting some sick revenge and generally being an evil character. She has to be evil if she tries to break these two up."
Kadaj was half asleep. "Oh, I don't care, damn it! They're warmer than we are."
"But then again, isn't that silver-haired androgynous freak the one breaking those two up? Shouldn't he be the rightful evil man?"
"Now you're talking crazy! Sora and Kairi? Together? You need to lay off the drugs. That's not canon at all!" Kadaj seemed to share the same beliefs of many, many people. "It's Riku and Sora all the way. I'm willing to bet—"
Kadaj's expression fell first. Glancing forward again, he did a double take. The color drained out of his face. A massive iceberg was right in their path, 500 yards out.
"Bloody Christ!"
Yazoo reached past Kadaj and rang the lookout bell three times, then grabbed the telephone, calling the bridge. He waited precious seconds for his call to be answered, never taking his eyes off the black mass ahead.
"Pick up, you bastard!"
Inside the enclosed wheelhouse, Sixth Officer Larxene walked unhurriedly to the telephone, picking it up.
"Is someone there?" Yazoo yelled through the phone.
"Yes. What do you see?" Larxene asked, flipping her blonde hair back. Yes, it is possible. Because it's written that way.
"Iceberg right ahead!"
"Thank you," she said, hanging up. She then called First Officer Pence, waiting until he answered. "Iceberg right ahead!"
Pence looked up from the phone and saw the dreaded iceberg. He rushed to the engine room telegraph. While signaling 'Full Speed Astern', he yelled to Quartermaster Xigbar at the wheel.
"Hard a starboard," Pence reported.
Larxene stood behind Xigbar. "Hard a starboard. The helm is hard over, sir."
Chief Engineer Marluxia was checking the soup he has warming on a steam manifold when the engine telegraph clanged, then changed to 'Full Speed Astern'. He and the other engineers just stared at it for a moment, unbelieving.
"Full astern! Full astern!" Marluxia yelled at them. The engineers and greasers acted like madmen to close steam valves and they started breaking the mighty propeller shafts to a stop. From the bridge, Pence watched the berg growing as it came closer straight ahead. The noticed the bow finally start to move left. His jaw clenched and he held his breath as the front of the ship turned with agonizing slowness.
In the crow's nest, Yazoo and Kadaj braced themselves. The bow of the ship thundered right, and the ship hit the burg on its starboard bow. Underwater, the ice smashed into the steel hull plates. The berg bumped and scraped along the side and rivets popped as the steel plate of the hull flexed under the load.
In the bottom storage room, the two stewards staggered as the hull buckled in four feet with a sound like thunder. Like a sledgehammer beating along outside the ship, the berg split the hull plates and the sea poured in, sweeping them off their feet. The icy water swirled around the Renault as the men scrambled for the stairs.
On the steerage's bottom deck, Axel and Roxas were tossed in Roxas' bunk by the impact, hearing a sound like the greatly amplified squeal of a skate on ice.
In one of the boiler rooms, two men staggered as they heard the rolling thunder of the collision. They saw the starboard side of the ship buckle in toward them and were surprised by a rush of water coming in about two feet above the floor.
On upper deck, Riku and Sora broke their kiss and looked up in astonishment as the berg sailed past, blocking out the sky like a mountain. Fragments broke off and crashed down onto the ship, and they had to jump back to avoid death by impalement via flying chunks of ice.
On the bridge, Pence rang the watertight door alarm. He quickly threw the switch that closed them. Two men below heard the door alarm and scrambled through the swirling water to the watertight door between two of the boiler rooms. The room was full of water vapor as the cold sea hit the red hot furnaces. One man yelled to the stokers scrambling through the door as it came down like a slow guillotine. "Go, lads! Go! Go!" He dived through into the next boiler room just before the door rumbled down with a clang.
Sora and Riku rushed to the starboard rail in time to see the berg moving aft down the side of the ship.
In his stateroom, surrounded by piles of plans while making notes in his ever-present book, Leon looked up at the sound of a cut-crystal light fixture tinkling like a wind chime. He felt the shudder run through the ship, and Cloud, who was sitting across from him, saw it in Leon's face. Too much of his soul was in this great ship for him not to feel its mortal wound.
In the first class smoking room, Merlin watched his highball vibrating on the table. In the next area over, the Palm Court, with its high arched windows, Olette held up her drink to a passing waiter. "Hey, can I get some ice here, please?" Silently, a moving wall of ice filled the window behind her, disappearing afterward.
In the crow's nest, Kadaj turned to Yazoo. "Smell ice, can you? Bleeding Christ," Kadaj yelled. Zexion appeared out of nowhere. Literally.
"You shouldn't trust this bumbling idiot! Of course he can't smell ice. That's my job. It makes me wonder why I wasn't given his role, even if I do prefer my own. I am the one with
SuperScent, and my SuperScent is telling me of impending doom, horrible mass death and pain. Brutal mauling and vicious shredding in the prope—"
He was interrupted by loud emergency bells. On the bridge, the alarm bells still clattered mindlessly, seeming to reflect Pence's inner state. He was in shock, unable to get a grip on what just happened. He just ran the biggest ship in history into an iceberg on its maiden voyage.
"Note the time. Enter it in the log," Pence said stiffly to Larxene.
Captain Highwind rushed out of his cabin onto the bridge, tucking in his shirt. He was wearing pink bunny slippers which Pence noticed immediately. Larxene laughed as she walked by. "What was that, Pence?"
Pence looked up from the fuzzy slippers. "An iceberg, sir. I put her hard a' starboard and run the engines full astern, but it was too close. I tried to port around it, but she hit, and I—"
"Close the emergency doors."
"The doors are closed."
Together, they rushed out onto the starboard wing and Pence pointed. Cid looked into the darkness aft and then wheeled around to Quarter Master Vincent Valentine.
"Find the Carpenter," Cid instructed.
In steerage, Axel came out into the hall to see what was going on. He saw dozens of rats running toward him in the corridor, fleeing the flooding bow. Axel jumped aside as the rodents ran by.
Roxas jumped out of his top bunk in the dark and dropped down to the floor into the water. "What in hell?"
He turned on the light. The floor was covered with three inches of freezing water with more coming in. He pulled the door open and stepped out into the corridor, which was also flooded. Roxas and Axel started pounding on doors, getting everybody up and out. The alarm spread in several languages.
Axel pounded on one specific door that didn't open.
"Open up, damn it! Emergency!"
A very familiar, very tired Luxord opened the door. Both men looked at each other, dumfounded.
"You… But…"
"You didn't see anything." With that said, Luxord slammed the door. Axel shrugged and started skipping down the hall, whistling a jolly tune in contradiction to the events unfolding around him.