Author/s: Skitts and Lamatikah –five toed salute-
Summary: They were never a perfect family, but they always tried. Even if trying wasn't good enough… AkuRoku .:RikuxSoraxKairi:.
Disclaimer: LOL.
Full Circle
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--Chapter 7—
x-Hangovers-x
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Mothers and fathers were the most oblivious species to walk the planet, but none were as happily oblivious as Lenne's parents.
For, most mothers and fathers – even the thickest of them – would at least question why he little daughter and her two 'hooligan friends' were currently enjoying the company of two fifteen-year-olds tied up on chairs with rope.
Nope, not Lenne's parents – he mother just figured they were 'school friends' who had 'popped in for some late-night tea' and had started playing a game called 'the electric chair'. Well, they were obviously playing 'the electric chair' judging by the way they were bound to chair, wriggling around frantically and attempting to sever the ropes with their teeth.
"Made some new friends, Lenne darling?" asked her mother, watching as Lenne slotted an apple into Yuna's mouth, limiting her ability of speech. No more obscenities could be heard.
"Sure I have…" Lenne smiled her delighted little 'cat-got-cream' smile, to silence any suspicions her parents might have.
"They're like our babysitters…" giggled Mindy, attempting to hide the evil glimmer in her eyes.
"Very good… Fafenfictioners know you need some babysitters, somebody to keep you in line and stop tying random strangers to chairs… Anyway, would your friends like some soup too?"
Lenne took a look at the two extra bowls of soup in her mother's hands, and nodded instantly.
"Yeah, they would."
Her mother put the soup down on the carpet, ruffled the top of Lenne's head and planted a quick kiss on her messed-up hair, before exiting the room with a cry of: "Play nice, children!"
As soon as her mother's back was turned Lenne made a mock vomiting noise, shoving a finger into her mouth as she did so.
"Tetsuya Nomura… She's so annoying! I'm not a little kid!" she exclaimed, taking her finger that was wet with saliva from her mouth as she started to use it to fix her hair back.
Yuna made a muffled sort of noise against the apple in her mouth, rocking on her chair with large eyes, thrusting her head in the general direction of the soup.
"What, you think this is for you? You're my half-sister and you've been living in the sewer for so long that rich food will upset your stomach. You'll be sick if you eat fine foods like this," Lenne said simply, flopping down on the carpet, taking the bowl of soup and drinking the scalding hot red liquid straight from the bowl.
Yuna rolled her eyes and flopped back down into her chair.
There were numerous other different ways to spend your Saturday afternoon, and being tied up on a chair, tortured by crazy kids who were obsessed with the idea you and your boyfriend were their siblings only ranked up to about twenty-six on that list. It fell behind shooting tin cans off picket fences and came in front of listening to your mother play the violin.
Anything was better than listening to your mother play the violin…
A loud screeching sound could be heard from downstairs, as Lenne's mother (or father) started doing something that can only be described as strangling a cat.
Or playing a violin…
Very badly…
Yuna growled into her apple-gag, banging her head into the back of her chair, succeeding in knocking herself out.
There was something worse than listening to your mother play the violin…
And that listening to somebody else's mother play the violin…
At least at home you were PAID to appreciate and put up with it.
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"Roxas… Roxas…" Roxas's blinked slowly as he tried to focus on the person calling his name. Platinum blonde hair… big baby blue eyes… pale skin… NAMINÉ! He was home! "Roxas? Why are you at Denzel and Marlene's house?" Roxas's spirits fell with a 'KAPLUNK'.
"Five more minutes Nammie…" he muttered, sinking back into the bedding. But then again… why was he at 'Denzel and Marlene's house'? Naminé sighed, and tapped her feet impatiently.
He wished she'd clear off somewhere and stop confusing his poor brain. His brain was already twisted into unrecognisable shapes and throbbing painfully and he didn't appreciate Naminé stood there, telling him ludicrous lies like he was at DENZEL AND MARLENE'S HOUSE. Pfft… How silly was that?
How could he be at Denzel and Marlene's house when Naminé was there?
How could he be at Denzel and Marlene's house when his own house had blown up in a mixture of broken toilet and sewage water?
How could he be at Denzel and Marlene's house when … Naminé … had gone to live with them?
…
Damn…
His head really hurt right about now.
He growled like a trapped animal and slapped a hand to one eye, leaving the other unexposed one rolling around aimlessly in its socket. His mouth was contorted into a look of utter PAIN! as creatures that looked strangely like Oogie Boogie continued to tap-dance around in the blank cavern of his mind.
"Roxaaas! It's been five minutes! Axel and Rikku and Denzel and Marlene are all waiting for me and you!" she cried. Roxas sat up groggily. He couldn't remember anything. Sure, he knew his own house was a bomb-site, but who really forgets that? And he knew why Naminé was there, but why was he there? And what about Axel? What did a CAR-PART have to do with anything? All of last night was amazingly blurred, as Oogie Boogie started to dance FREESTYLE in his mind, making the pain about a trillion times worse. He beat his head with his hand and cried out again.
"My heaaad!" he whispered, in pain.
"Tifa says she's got something for your head downstairs, because she knew that you would have a killer headache." Naminé rocked on her feet as she spoke her words with an air of knowledgeableness.
Roxas winced as he lifted a leg off the bed, and another, until both legs were off the bed. His eyes twitched a bit, but he managed to make his way downstairs.
In the living room, there was a cluster of kids, all crowding round a little TV set. He didn't want to look at that TV set himself… It was so small all the colourful moving pictures were making the Oogie Boogie in his head start to break dance.
He spotted Rikku with an ice pack on her head, in the lap of a lanky red-head. Vague memories of this teen came flooding back to him. He was some sort of car part… Exhaust…? Gear box….? Engine…? Eh, screw it. Who really cared?
"Ah, Roxas, our Sleeping Beauty!" came a voice from outside the room. All of a sudden, in came what Roxas presumed to be the mother of the house.
But the first thing he noticed was her chest…
As this was what first most people noticed when they first met her.
Roxas suddenly realised he was staring, and he quickly turned away.
"C'mon, babe, you look like you need something for that head of yours!" the woman joked, indicating for Roxas to follow her to the kitchen.
In the kitchen was a man, with bright blond hair, similar to Roxas's. And a big, big sword.
"Cloud, if you wanted to make yourself a sandwich do you have to cut it with that monstrosity of yours? We have a perfectly good knife in the drawer…"
"No we don't," said 'Cloud' darkly, slicing up bread smeared with peanut butter and jelly with his giant sword. "Vexen stole them all, melted them down, and is using them to help him further his experiments about 'running'."
"Oh… Well, that sounds like Vexen alright… Why does he even live here anyway?" she started to mutter to herself, as she led him (him being Roxas, not Cloud) over to a freezer, form which she took an ice pack, and handed it to him. Roxas pressed it against his forehead, and flinched at the extreme temperature. Tifa opened a couple of drawers and laid on the table, a glass of water and some hangover-pills.
Tifa pushed them in front of Roxas, "Axel tells me that this is the first time you ever had any alcohol at all. Do you know how to do this?" she asked, sitting opposite the kitchen table to Roxas.
Roxas looked at the water and the tablets, "Yeah, I think so… I had a headache once in grade seven and the nurse gave me some…"
He picked up the aspirins and popped them in his mouth before flushing them down with the glass of water.
He gagged as soon as the water and pills cascaded down into his stomach, screaming bloody murder as an uncontrollable urge to flop down onto the floor and wriggle helplessly over took his body.
The Oogie Boogie in his head had gone past the boundaries of dancing… It was SINGING now, whilst battering around like a pinball on roller-skates.
Singing something like 'I WILL SURVIVE!'
"Now, your headache won't go immediately, but it will soothe it, is that okay, honey?" Roxas nodded, clutching the ice pack harder, feeling less and like 'he would survive'. "You can go in the living room with the other kids now, darl'n."
Roxas stood up and sheepishly shifted his butt off the chair in order to start his long trek across the hall to the living room. It would've been quicker to get across the room if he didn't have to side-step plates of pizza, a weird little cricket, some colouring books, a pair of ice-skates and a gun.
Once he got in the room, Rikku motioned Roxas to come and sit beside her.
Once he had sat himself down, his 'sister' grabbed him by the waist and forced him on her lap. So, she was on Axel's lap, and he was on her lap. She probably wanted to get Naminé in on the 'let's see how many people I can get on one person's lap until it turns into a dog pile' game.
"Rikku!" he cried out, protesting to the utmost. But he knew it was no use, she'd always defeat him, and he'd never defeat her.
It was a lost battle before it began.
She giggled as she bounced him up and down on her lap, still clutching an ice pack to her head, and him the same. Axel laughed as Rikku did this, and Roxas noticed that Rikku seemed to be wearing different clothes.
The clothes she was wearing were mainly black, with the odd singe here or there. And Roxas knew that Rikku never wore black, or burnt her own clothes…
"Roxiee. Roxie-pie, is your head getting better?" asked Rikku, leaning her head on his shoulder. Roxas nodded, resting his head back. He was still pretty tired. Which reminded him:
"Rikku? What time is it?" Rikku looked to Axel who raised his arm.
"Quarter past six."
Roxas gulped, "What?"
"Quarter past six in the morning, didn't you hear?" asked Rikku, not realising that Roxas's previous question had been rhetorical.
He hoped Kairi hadn't wondered about why he hadn't been at her house.
He'd go later, because he'd have to of course, and when he did, he'd apologise.
At least, these were the general ideas running through his head, all mixed up along with flashing images of Oogie Boogie doing the cha-cha. Well, at least he was back to simply dancing, and had not broken out into song…
"Axel! You've gotta go feed MU-SHU!" cried a voice that sounded an awful lot like Tifa's from the kitchen. "I'd do it myself but Cloud appears to sliced one of his fingers off!"
An awful scream sounded through the timbers of the house a few seconds after her statement.
"Sorry, Cloud! WAIT, WHY ARE WE STILL SHOUTING SO THE WHOLE HOUSE CAN HEAR US?! WE'LL HURT THE KIDS' HEADS!"
"I'M SHOUTING BECAUSE I'M IN PAIN!!!!!!!!!" roared Cloud.
"SHUT UP! YOU'LL HURT RIKKU AND ROXAS'S HEADS!" Axel roared, as Rikku and Roxas promptly started a shouting match and clutched their heads.
Roxas just simply fell off his sister's lap and started to crawl around on the floor, his mind blurred with images of Oogie Boogie doing some more death-defying tricks on a skate-board, whilst singing 'My Heart Will Go' and doing the conga.
Rikku, however, appeared to go into the more 'I-r-on-crack-and-drunk-on-hangover-pills' way of coping with her head-ache, that is, she started to dance around and flap her arms about a bit, singing a song about being in pain. The lyrics of the song were just the word 'pain' repeated over and over to a cool tune.
"PAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAIN!" Rikku sung, hopping around in a rather frenzied way.
"I guess I'll go feed Mushu… You two… Just, er, hang on…" Axel muttered, getting up and closing the living room door behind him, hoping to silence the sounds of Cloud yelling like a harpy… Hah, and he called himself the 'alpha male'. Really…
Well, his finger had been chopped off, but Axel had expected him to at least take it a little bit more manly-like, more like Ken or Action Man…. Then again, Ken was a pouf and Action Man was made of plastic, so he guessed no amount of finger chopping off would have hurt them that much…
The boy made his way into the kitchen, noticing that the counter where you chopped stuff up like sandwiches and onions was sliced cleanly in two, and Tifa was attempting to bandage Cloud's hand, attempting to calm him down.
"It's just a finger Cloud, it'll grow back…" she soothed.
"R-Really?" asked Cloud, sniffling.
"No, of course it won't, you stupid boy… We'll just preserve it in a jar of pickles and hope somebody can sew it back on…"
"Would now be a good time to show you my invention?" asked Vexen, popping up from 'somewhere' – Xemnas would be displeased, as somewhere was not nowhere and in somewhere some things happen but in nothing-where nothing happens, go figure – with some metal roller-skates in his hands. "I call these roller-bubbards and they'll REVOLUTIONISE the face of WALKING for YEARS to come! Maybe even WEEKS!"
"… You melted down all our knives to create some roller skates?" Cloud growled, narrowing his eyes as he raised out his hand. "Tifa woman, get me my sword…"
Axel rolled his eyes, as he walked away from the scene of the crime, fighting music starting to play, swirling around the house, as numerous close-ups of Cloud and Vexen's eyes swallowed up the screen.
"Turn the fucking playstation off, Denzel…"
"Sorry, Axel…" muttered Denzel as he switched the game off, the fighting music coming to an abrupt halt.
"Hello, Mushu…" Axel said brightly, as he knelt down in front of his little lizard's cage.
He and his family didn't buy Mushu and his weird cricket companion Cri-kee (it was rumoured Mushu was a rare lizard who needed a cricket to groom him. Or maybe they were just inseparable 'pals') but they just … turned up… At their door-step one day… And Axel took them in because Mushu was cool and liked to horde matches and could make porridge with happy smiley bacon faces in them and looked rather fetching in pink aprons.
Yes, Mushu could cook better than Cloud… Now, that was something to be ashamed of… Although Axel wasn't sure who the pink apron suited the most.
As Axel busied himself with cleaning out his pyromaniac pet, the door-bell rang.
As Tifa was busy attempting to stop Vexen unleashing his newest experiment on Cloud (it was a Furby, but still, those things can be lethal, especially as Vexen had invented an assassin Furby, a.k.a, a Furby with a knife taped to it's chest) and the kids were still banging their heads on the floor to get rid of hangovers and watching TVs. Most of the other male members of the household were still asleep or shooting things, so that left only Xemnas to plod downstairs and answer the door, even though Tifa had forbade it several times.
Xemnas would constantly greet door to door salesmen and ask them what they were selling, and if they passed the nothingness exam he would let them in the house and never let them leave (that was why Vexen was there) and if they failed the nothingness test very often he would send Vexen's assassin Furby after them.
Many had died needlessly.
"Hello, little girl," Xemnas said, leering down at the indeed rather 'little girl' – even though she was a teenager – standing outside. "What are you here for?"
"Well, first my lizard and my cricket went missing, and now my horse has, and I was wondering if you've seen him…" the girl muttered, holding up a 'lost' poster, featuring a lizard that looked a lot like Mushu, a cricket that looked a lot like Cri-kee, and a horse that looked an awful lot like the one that Tifa had sent to go live in the garage last night when it came around looking for a place to stay.
Xemnas frowned – this girl, she spoke nonsense!
"That's wonderful, now you have NOTHING, goodbye!" Xemnas cried, slamming the door in her face.
Meanwhile, outside, Mulan scowled.
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Kairi had a slight skip in her step as she sidled down to the Pharmacy's. She wasn't going to let Sora be grumpy today, nu uh. She was going to make him happy.
Although it was strange, when Sora was drunk yesterday and now, today, whilst he was hung-over, he was the happiest she had ever seen him since… Since a long time, actually. Since when they were little and in preschool and he'd be the sweet little kid who played dollies with the girls and pinched Riku's cookies and gave them to other kids who'd dropped theirs. Kairi wanted that old Sora back – the sweet goofy one, not the one who worked on evil plans and schemes and hated everybody.
He was fine until Belle started poisoning his mind, instructing him to hate everybody who wasn't 100 percent perfect. And nobody was 100 percent perfect – least of all this 'new' Sora.
Maybe you were only truly perfect if you loved everybody…
God, what was she, a hippie?
It would only be a matter of time until she started to smoke weed, mix moonshine (whatever that was), grow her hair so it was down to her knees and start chanting about love, peace and saving the whales. Apart from the small little details, like she'd never smoke weed, even if it 'made the environment better', she didn't even know what moonshine was but it was probably the equivalent of glue-sniffing, she could never ever grow her hair that length without going crazy until she looked like: '.X' and of course she wanted to save the whales, but was too spineless to do anything about it.
And that just put the kibosh on all her little dreams of being a hippie.
Apart from the fact she'd never dreamed about being a hippie in the first place…
Kairi shrugged, as she walked into the pharmacy.
Reno had sent her there on a mission to get some pills for Sora, because the hangover had made the boy go crazy. Aparently he'd raided their fridge, eaten all the ice-cream (EVEN ALL THE CHOCOLATE, a mad, chocolate ice-cream deprived Reno had been shouting) and was now aimlessly running around the house circles, screaming and walking into random pieces of furniture and breaking things.
That sounded like her old Sora, alright.
"Um, hello…" said Kairi to the burly guy with tattoos in the pharmacy, who was playing around with all the drugs that made you grow tentacles and stuff. Kairi didn't exactly trust him – she didn't want to feed Sora any concoction that turned him into an octopus – but she guessed the guy behind the counter was the one with the medical degree and she was not, and so she should just shut up and smile.
"Yeah, what'dyou want? You seem a little young to be coming here, girl… Do you want acid? Who'd you want to kill? I could over with a chainsaw if you give me their address… Because pain is good! Or maybe a poisonous venom from this snake… this snake right here!" the Pharmacist held up a snake, which hissed and snapped at Kairi, Kairi flinched, but the Pharmacist paid no heed and held up a goat as well, "You know they say goat's milk is the spawn of the devil, I could kill 'em with this!"
Kairi blinked, but to come to her rescue another doctor appeared, with a wooden spoon, to which he beat the Pharmacist behind the counter with.
"Now, Dr. Sid, you're a trainee, you know you don't have the power to kill anyone… yet."
Kairi blinked again.
"Erm…"
"So, little girl, WHO DO YOU WANT TO KILL?"
Kairi ran.
Kairi ran for her life.
"There goes yet another customer…" the doctor muttered before turning towards towards the next victim, "So, old lady, WHO DO YOU WANT TO KILL?" The old lady quickly scarpered off, "Why do they all do that…?" the doctor pondered.
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Kairi looked outside the shop, sure enough, it read 'Pharmacist' on the sign. And on the shop next to that read 'Assassin Agency'. She thought for a moment, before stepping into the grim looking store.
"Erm… excuse me… could I have some help, please?"
A pink-haired woman appeared from behind the counter. She had a black tee on, and some beige pants. Kairi noticed that she looked very… odd to say the least.
But besides that, she seemed nice enough.
"Hi, what do you need help with?" she asked, looking Kairi in the eye, making Kairi suddenly very aware of what she looked like. The younger hadn't done much to herself since last night because of Sora being there, and Sora being very drunk, and kept trying to kiss lampposts and trash cans and such. Kairi felt a bit left out – but she reminded herself that Sora still preferred her over 'Mrs. Skinny Lamppost'. But, this had meant that Kairi hadn't had much time to sort herself out, her hair was a complete mess, her make-up was running, her dress had been twisted round a little so she felt a little awkward, but other that that, she guess she looked fine.
"Hi, sorry about my appearance but it's a long story, but I need some pills that can make someone sober aga-" Kairi stopped for a minute – if Sora was sober, he was like a bastardy jerk. Maybe, if she kept him happy for a little longer… "On second thoughts, can I have some pills to make someone happy… and hyper… please?" asked Kairi, looked up at this odd lady.
She smiled, and called into the backroom for assistance. A shorter blonde came traipsing through, her hair seemed to be slicked back, but two antenna-like locks stuck up to make her look bug-like.
"Graceful Assassin needs help guys!" the other woman called into the backroom. A mumbling from the room behind could be heard, "Whaddya mean? Yes, this is Savage Nymph! Geez! I don't get why we need all these weird nicknames – it's not like we're real assassins! The kooks next door took all our trade!!" Some more mumbling, "Yeah, I stole all the pills and stuff from them… Oh shut up!"
"Hey Larx, the girl needs help!"
"Oh right… sorry…" said 'Larx' sarcastically, "So, what's up?"
The pink-haired woman explained Kairi's needs then the blonde sighed and went into the backroom.
"So… what do you need these pills for?" asked the woman, trying to create a conversation. Kairi rubbed the back of her head.
"Well, my friend sort of got drunk last night, but he's nicer with a hangover."
"I see... I used to know a boy like that. It was this one time when we all had some beer, and the consequences were horrible. My cousin, he was, his parents never approved of me though... hm. Well, good luck. See you soon, eh?" she smiled as she passed the pills to Kairi. Kairi smiled back.
"See you!" she grinned, as she skipped out of the store.
Kairi made her happy way back home, still looking like the creature from under the bed, when in fact she was actually the creature just from the bed.
If she were the creature under the bed she'd have teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red obviously, just like that Nightmare Before Christmas song, and Nightmare Before Christmas songs rule over everything in this tiny world.
They do reign supreme.
The red-head giggled happily, as if she could sniff those happy pills straight through the brown paper bag they had been wrapped up in and the effects were going straight through into her brain, making her feet skip and turn and pivot and dance and her heart sing. Of course, her dad had told her the equivalent to having your heart sing was a heart attack, and the song your heart would be singing would eventually turn into a funeral march, no matter how happy it started off to begin with, no matter how much it sounded like the song 'Dr. Jones'. And of course if you were skipping it meant you had gangrene.
Or ants in your pants.
Kairi continued her happy-skippy-hoppity-hop dance routine right up to her front door, as she walked in and kicked her shoes off and hung her jacket up.
"How's Sora?" Kairi asked Reno as she passed the living room on her long, intrepid trek up the barren wasteland of the 'stairs'.
"He's up in your room wearing one of your skirts and one of your bras, singing something about the 'coco-ca-banana'," said Reno very helpfully, drinking some suspicious-looking liquid from a glass bottle. Some liquid that would undoubtedly take root and make him join in with Sora's hang-over jovialities as well.
"Okay then. I got the hangover pills, dad," she said as an afterthought charging upstairs.
"You're a good son, Kairi…"
Reno's praising tones trailed after her as she opened her bedroom door to the scene of utter chaos that awaited her.
Sora was dancing around in half her clothes, singing about Lola being a showgirl and Riku being a blindfold, throwing her old Pokemon toys around the room that she was sure she'd thrown out years ago. She laughed, dismissing the silly thought of Sora rifling through a land-fill site for her old toys… Despite the fact all the evidence seemed to point towards that, as he was covered in dirt, as were her toys…
"Hey Sora, I got you some pills…"
The brunet crept towards her, doing a neat little roll across the floor and rising nimbly up from it, fingers shaped into a James Bond-esque gun, as he pointed his fingers towards the door, in case assassins from the pharmacy had been following Kairi towards her house.
"It's safe, pretty civilian, you may come over here in fear of not being shot…"
Kairi smiled as she walked towards him, holding out the paper bag.
"Reno says you have to take these."
"I WILL NOT TAKE YOUR PILLS!" cried Sora, sniffing them cautiously before throwing the brown packet to the floor in distain, nose in the air like a pampered, pompous poodle. "They … are … healthy… I know you women's tricks… To think, MY OWN MOTHER HIDES LETTUCE UNDER MY MASHED POTATO! My own mother forces vegit-it-it-it-it-t-bulls into my diet! I will not eat your broccoli or cauliflower! I turn my nose up at it!"
"Sora, it's not healthy…"
"All pills are healthy."
"Drugs aren't healthy."
"… Aye, you've stumped me there. So, are these pills DRUGS you have, Kairi?" Sora asked, shuftying his eyes. "The only unhealthy pills are drugs, or so you claim. SO YOU HAVE DRUGS!"
A few doubts began to rush in Kairi's head, like whether they actually were drugs, and if she would really hurt him feeding them to him.
Wasn't she being selfish, forcing him to act like a little kid with mental difficulties who'd been at the Kit Kats? Wasn't this just as bad as his mother who snuck vegetables in his gravy and under his mashed potato, wrapping him bubble wrap and never letting him grow old?
But one look from those giant eyes told her she was doing the right thing.
The serious Sora wasn't the real Sora, he was an act he put on to make himself popular, to make himself accepted, and Kairi never bothered to make herself a double personality she could revert to when she wanted to win friends.
That was why Kairi was more childish than Sora, more able to have fun.
She wasn't self-conscious and she didn't care what people thought.
The old Sora was like that, and she wanted to bring the old Sora back. The real Sora, the doormat Sora, was sleeping behind his smooth and winning façade.
And she would do anything to re-awaken him.
Sure, the woman who gave her the pills looked a bit odd, and she had PINK hair, but then again, if you compared her to the guys at the pharmacy she was as sane as … as a VERY sane thing.
"Sora, you can take your pills with some chocolate ice-cream if you want…"
There was a long pause, as Sora's eyes lit up.
"R-Really?"
"Yeps."
"And can I have all the rest of the ice-cream that's left over?"
"Sure, Sora."
"YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!"
And with that statement, Kairi knew she'd beaten the horrible 'new' Sora.
At least for about five hours, at least.
She had earned five hours with the old Sora, her BEST FRIEND.
And she wasn't going to waste them.
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A/N: I could sing it….