Title: Playing With Fire
Summary: It was an ordinary day until Riku decided to burn the island down. Apparently the paopu fruit offended him. Post-KH2.
Final Disclaimer: KH is not ours, and you should be damn grateful for that.
A.N: This fic is rather made of crack. (A lot of crack…)
In the hands of different people, it probably would have been serious. With us, though…yeah. Crack.
A working knowledge of FFVII is highly recommended for this fic. We've been pulling from several FFs, ranging from VI to X-2, but VII is the most significant. It's possibly understandable without, but yeah…Maybe not.
I'm sure there's more we could say (would you want to hear it?), but right now, we're waiting to get the 7th Harry Potter book. I've (read PM) obviously got better things to do than try to explain this fic (which really can't be done…without bursting something important), so just read forth and don't blame us for lost brain cells.
There was a certain smell that accompanied roasted paopu. Which was why most islanders knew that paopu is best eaten raw. Even though it was slightly bitter raw, almost everyone preferred that over the smell of raw eggs and sour lemons mixed with vinegar that permeated the air once paopu hit fire.
So, naturally, Destiny Island stank when all the paopu trees were set on fire.
And in the center of this, looking slightly maniacal from the fire reflecting in his eyes, was a familiar figure who was laughing maniacally. Donald had always known there was something off about that Riku boy, but this was taking insanity to a whole new level as he and Goofy stared the teen stab viciously at the remaining fruit, causing them to explode and splatter Riku with their innards.
The two off-world travelers stared at the crazy boy in morbid fascination while Riku continued onto the small village beside the beach. But once Riku started burning down the seaside shack, Goofy asked Donald hesitantly, "Uh... Shouldn't we stop him??"
As obvious as the answer was to that question, Donald found himself unable to answer. This was possibly due to shock, but most likely due to a burning piece of wood crashing down on his head. So, instead of saving the innocent islanders, Goofy spent his valuable rescue time nursing a large lump on Donald's head. But as soon as he moved away from the unconscious duck and towards a screaming girl, Sora and Kairi came running onto the scene.
Keyblades raised, it seemed like the two would be unstoppable in protecting the defenseless villagers, but before Goofy could even make his presence known to either of them, a silver blur ran by him and jumped Sora. Next thing anyone knew, Riku was nuzzling Sora with a psychotic grin, while the brunet looked ready to faint due to a combination of oxygen deprivation and the excessive amount of blood running up into his face.
Donald chose that moment to wake up. In his grogginess and upon seeing one of his best friends in what seems to be the death grip of a once sane, now crazy boy, the slightly coherent duck charged at said crazy boy when Sora squeaked, "Can't breathe."
Still, it seemed to be a bit of an overreaction when Donald tried to set Riku on fire. Unfortunately the spell missed and hit Sora instead, who managed to shriek despite the continuing issue of oxygen deprivation.
Riku, seeing that his squeeze toy was becoming charred, promptly stuffed squeeze toy, aka Sora, into a large burlap rucksack and tied off the ends, leaving Sora's spiky head and slightly blue face above the closing.
This however, did nothing for the fact that his hair was still on fire. Out of reflex, Kairi immediately reached over to try and put out the fire, but her attempts were cut off when Riku let out a scream of bloody murder and attacked her.
Kairi probably would have gawked when Riku shrieked, "No touchy! Mine! Mine! Mine!!!" at her, but she was too busy dodging a deadly keyblade aimed for her neck. After a close call involving Riku slicing off a good inch of the hair above her right shoulder, Kairi panted as she crouched on the beach, taking a quick breather as Goofy distracted Riku by flinging his shield at Riku's head.
"Riku, you idiot! Stop this!" Kairi cried. And in an attempt to try and get through to him, she lobbed a small pebble at Riku.
Too bad he caught it. And sent it flying back in her direction.
And beamed her right on the forehead
The pebble probably did more damage to her sanity than it actually caused any pain, so it was hard to tell why she fell back down. Whatever the reason for it, the lapse gave Riku the edge he needed. Kicking Donald out of the way, Riku stood over Kairi in order to deliver that final blow when he was suddenly sent toppling.
As it turned out, Riku—in his hysteria—had not bothered to tie off the rucksack ropes too tightly, making it relatively easy for Sora to wiggle out and keep Riku from killing their friend. There was still the matter of his head being on fire, but this was taken care of as the two fell, Riku somehow managing to land on top of Sora as he landed in the mud, which while making him rather icky looking did have the benefit of finally putting the fire in his hair out.
Regardless, to everyone's amazement, his hair was still perfectly fine.
Sora, despite all his childhood romps, had grown out of novelty of playing in the mud and decided that being coated in the slimy mess was not pleasant. But, before he had a chance to do more than grimace and wipe the mud off his face, Riku came charging at him, crying, "How could you!"
Relying on reflexes, Sora rolled out of the way (into the mud) and asked, "How could I what?"
Each word accented by a swing of his blade, Riku responded, "How could you choose that whore over me!?"
"But... but Kairi's our friend!" he said in a very manly squeak as he nearly missed getting his throat taken out.
"Our friend? Would a friend steal the one person I love? Would a friend betray me like that? Would a friend give another friend's friend a paopu fruit despite knowing how much that friend's friend mattered to the friend?! Would she?!" Riku shrieked (1).
"I don't know what you're talking about!" Sora wailed, but Riku would have none of that. Instead, his ignorance seemed to make the other teen even more angry, causing his attacks to become increasingly frenzied and dangerous.
Fighting a jealous, raving, and well...insane Riku was just plain hard when you were trying not to hurt him and talk sense into him at the same time. But Sora tried anyways. It was just too bad that he wasn't very good at multitasking. And even with Donald and Goofy helping, Riku couldn't be convinced to stop his crazed attacks.
"Mommy," Sora whimpered as Riku, after giving him a nice, vicious stab in the left thigh which effectively prevented him from moving anywhere, came barreling down with what looked to be the finishing blow.
Luckily for Sora, a spear came flying down from the skies into Riku's path.
"Wow, you turning blind or something? You missed him by a mile!" Yuffie yelled at the pilot, who glared at her. From behind them, Sora could just see Leon (who looked like he had a terrible headache), Cloud (who looked bored), Aerith (who smiled and waved), and Tifa (who looked slightly worried about the insanity surrounding her. Either that or the smell of rotting paopu fruit was making her grimace) standing there with varying degrees of disbelief on their faces.
"I was trying to miss so shut your damn mouth!" Cid snapped back.
"Why the hell are you trying to miss, Cid? You should have skewered him!"
"What the hell is wrong with you? How about I fucking skewer you?!" Cid growled, looking quite ready to carry out that particular threat.
"Ha, as if you could! Because it seems like you've forgotten that your spear is over there, where crazy boy is... oh my god, what is he doing?"
"Hey! Stop chewing on that!"
"Bad doggy! Bad rabid...foaming at mouth...doggy??"
Really, Yuffie just didn't know how to lecture and scold properly.
"Uh...Riku? Are you trying to say something about you're sexuality?" Tifa asked, trying her hardest to keep her tone of voice supportive. But it was hard when the whole island surrounding you was burning down. And the boy in question was really frothing at the mouth.
"No, of course not!" Kairi screamed angrily, having woken up from the pebble-meets-face incident. "I think him trying to skewer me with his keyblade for trying to flirt with his boyfriend is making a statement about him being gay!"
"Riku's gay?! Who's he dating?"
Sora stared blankly at Kairi who was giving him a death glare in return.
"I don't think that is the point, Sora," Aerith said kindly as she cast a quick healing spell on him. The effects were immediate; the wound closed up and Sora shrieked from the pain of flesh melding itself back together without warning.
"Um, guys? You do realize that he's still—oh shit," was Cloud's oh so eloquent observation as Riku suddenly realized that chewing on metal was much less satisfying than chewing on something more fleshy. This led him to stop what he was doing in favor of launching himself at Sora once again, who while healed was still on his knees due to the power of Kairi's awesome glare o' doom.
Luckily, Squall-Don't-Call-Me-That-It's-Leon-Damnit-Why-The-Hell-Can't-You-Remember-Yuffie-I'm-Talking-To-You was a little quicker to react, quickly swinging his gunblade out so that Riku's head slammed into the flat of the blade with a loud smack, sending him flying ten feet away. But what would have laid anyone else out just caused Riku to shake his head looking slightly dazed, making Leon step back with a slight frown on his face.
Riku, not very happy with Leon interfering with his "Chase down Sora and make him mine!" game, turned to face the interloper and leapt at Leon with his keyblade leading the way.
Leon simply side stepped Riku and left him to go flying at Cloud, who blocked the Keyblade with his giant sword.
"Wow. Thanks, Leon," Cloud grumbled.
"Squall says you're welcome!" Yuffie replied cheerfully. "Cloud, do you mind if I hit you? Just in case I miss, you know. Not that I would miss, of course, seeing how I'm the great ninja Yuffie! But you never know and I want to make sure and you do seem like you need some help but if I hit you then you're going to be mad at me and-"
"Yuffie, will you shut up?!" Cloud snapped, swinging his totally-not-compensating-for-something sword and blocking another of Riku's attempts to take his head off. "You're distracting me!"
"Geez, sorry? That's the last time I try to help you! Next time some crazy guy comes for you and you need my help, I'm just going to say, 'But Cloud! You didn't need my help last time! And I was totally going to help you, but then-"
"Yuffie!"
"Stop distracting the man and try and get the damn bugger!" Cid snarled at the hyperactive ninja as he charged by, spear—slightly soggy from Riku's drool—in hand.
Riku, the nimble little bastard, seemed to be taunting his opponents, because no matter who swung at him or how many people attacked him, he just dodged or flipped out of the way. However, once Tifa and Sora joined the fight, Riku noticed that he was fighting one too many people and became quite upset.
Large patches of darkness began to appear on the ground and everyone scrambled to get out of the way of the large spikes that appeared in the darkness. Cloud, however, was not one of the lucky ones, since Yuffie left him to fend for himself after she used him as a stepping stone.
"Cloud!" As soon as she noticed what was happening, Tifa tried to make her way to the unfortunate blond. However, her efforts were rewarded when Cloud suddenly slashed at her. She pulled back in time to keep from losing an arm, but not quickly enough as he scored a long gash down her arm.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Cid demanded, but it turned out that catching Cloud's attention was not really high on anyone's list of things to do. Nor was ignoring Riku, as the teen used the distraction to his advantage to grab Kairi and pin her down, his keyblade's edge just touching her neck.
"Kairi!" Sora cried out in panic, ramming Riku from the side and knocking him a few feet away from Kairi. While Riku was shaking his head, dazed from the sudden blow, Sora helped Kairi to her feet and led her over to Donald and Goofy.
"Watch out for her would ya guys?"
Sora waited for Donald and Goofy to give an affirmative before launching over to help Leon and Yuffie fight off Cloud. Unfortunately, he was intercepted by an enraged Riku, and Sora tried to multitask again.
"Riku! Stop this!" Sora yelled as he blocked an overhead swing. "I'm sorry I didn't know you were gay, but I'm sure we can work something out! You'll always be my best friend!"
For some reason, these words seemed to make Riku only angrier.
"I think he wants to be more than best friends, Sora!" Yuffie offered helpfully as she ducked Cloud's blade. "Hey, watch what you're doing; you could have taken my head off!"
"I think that's the point, Yuffie," Tifa replied carefully, joining Sora to help him fight off Riku.
"Best friends with benefits?"
"What kind of benefits?" Sora replied cluelessly, still trying to do multiple things at once and suffering for it as Riku's blade nipped him in the side.
"Don't tell me you never got the talk! Goofy, Donald, what on earth did you guys talk about during all those trips on the Gummi ship?!"
"We played uno!"
"Oh brother," Yuffie groaned, slapping her forehead and jumping over the Buster Sword at the same time. "Leon! Since Donald and Goofy won't do it, why don't you give Sora the talk!"
"Yuffie," Leon growled, "Now is not the time!"
"But Leon!" Yuffie protested, "If not now, when? Sora's already being propositioned! He needs to know!"
"Maybe," Leon said scathingly, "A time when our comrades are NOT TRYING TO KILL US!"
"Oh. Yeah. Well okay then!"
Even though Leon and Yuffie had been parrying Cloud's swings during their whole exchange, Cloud did not seem pleased that they were not focusing fully on him.
He expressed this anger as a familiar black wing ripped through his clothing.
"Oh shit."
That was about as much Cid could come out with as at the same exact moment, Riku also got serious. Whatever skills the two had demonstrated prior seemed like child's play as both began to attack viciously, abruptly putting the small group on the defensive and hemming them in from both sides. It might have been different if they could have also attacked with full force, but something about killing comrades and friends seemed to not sit well with the group, making their attacks more conservative than normal. Their two attackers had no similar qualms, putting them all in what was a very bad situation.
That is, until the cavalry came.
It was quite literally a cavalry, what with the cowboy hat and propensity for cowhide. The only thing missing was a pair of spurs, but that lapse could be forgiven as a loud shot rang through the setting even above the crackle of fire and falling buildings.
Yuffie turned to Leon with a puzzled look on her face and asked, "I thought you didn't use the gun part of your gunblade anymore?"
"I don't," Leon answered monotonously while placing a hand on Yuffie's head and spinning her 180 degrees so that she could gawk at the newcomer like everyone else was doing already.
"Hi. You looked like you could use some help." The figure standing on top the right wing of Cid's new ship tipped his cowboy hat back to reveal his face and grinned at the group below him.
"Name's Irvine Kinneas. Hail from Cactuar Island..." Irvine's introduction was cut short by a loud screech.
"Get your dirty feet off my baby!!!" Cid screamed in outrage.
"I knew there was something wrong with you!"
"Now is not the goddamn time, Yuffie," Cid snarled, turning to point an accusing finger at the newcomer. "Who the fuck are you and what the hell do you want?!"
"Well, that was what I was trying to say before you so rudely interrupted—whoa!" Irvine barely dodged the Buster Sword. "What's wrong with him?"
"The hell if we know," Yuffie replied. "But I bet it has something to do with the angsty past. He's very angsty. Always angsting. You should hear him angst! He can angst like nobody else! Angst, angst, angst. It's all he does! Even when there's nothing wrong he'll angst because he has nothing to angst about, and-"
Leon cut off Yuffie's ramble with a hand over her mouth, "I don't know who you are, but you might want to watch out."
"Watch out?"
Riku appeared behind Irvine and took a swipe at Irvine's head, only to catch the cowboy hat as Irvine jerked forwards.
"Woah!" Irvine tumbled off Cid's ship and onto the beach, followed closely (and much more gracefully) by Riku and Cloud, who seemed intent on drawing blood from this newcomer.
Taking Irvine's fall as a cue, the rest of the slackers, aka everyone else, charged towards fight, weapons drawn.
From behind them, Aerith quickly cast a sleep spell at Cloud. However, although she had cast the magic perfectly, the spell bounced off and hit Leon instead, causing the brunet to abruptly fall over. This had the chain effect of tripping Yuffie, who in turn tripped Cid, whose cursing caught the attention of Irvine and distracted him long enough for Cloud to practically vault over all of them of them and towards Aerith.
"Look out!" Tifa yelled, which was really quite unnecessary but the sentiment was appreciated. Aerith quickly jumped back to avoid Cloud's attack, trying to get far enough away so she could try to cast another spell. Cloud was too fast for that though, keeping close and forcing her to keep moving if she wanted to keep possession of all working limbs and breathing capabilities.
In an attempt to save one of her very good friends and knock some sense into Cloud, literally, Tifa leapt at Cloud and gave him a solid roundhouse kick to his side. However, even though she was sure she connected, since she felt some ribs give, Tifa was thrown a few feet back having met face first with the hilt of Cloud's sword. After rolling a few times in the sand, Tifa recovered on her knees and swiped a hand across her lips, wiping away the blood from a split lip.
"You...you hit me!" Her eyes began to well with tears. "How could you Cloud?!"
"I don't think all the lights are on upstairs Tifa, if you know what I mean," Cid said while handing her a potion before charging over to Cloud, who decided to resume attacking Aerith.
"But what about friendship and camaraderie?"
"Keep that up and you're going to sound like Yuffie."
"Hey!" Yuffie shrieked from where she was trying to pull Leon's sleeping form up. "I heard that!"
"You can hear that but you can't hear me yelling at you to shut the fuck up?!"
"Gawd Squall you're so freaking fat! And old man, maybe you should be helping Aerith instead of getting on my case about some minor detail!"
"Minor detail? Minor detail? That's the problem with you damn brats, you never fucking listen! Always jabbering on as if you know everything, when what you really need is a good smack on the face to knock some goddamn sense into you!" Cid snarled, demonstrating this point very nicely by using his spear (the blunt end, thankfully) almost as a baseball bat with Cloud's head as the ball. This move was met by simultaneous shrieks from all females present, which woke Leon up (and made his headache worse) just in time to watch Cloud fall.
"Snk...wha? Oh good job Cid," Leon mumbled, still slightly affected by the sleep spell. "Gerrof me Yuffie," he growled, pulling his arm out from her grip.
"What! Such ungratefulness!! See if I ever help you again!"
"Yuffie! Watch out!" Aerith cried, pointing at some unseen foe behind Yuffie's head.
"Huh?"
At the sound of a crash, Yuffie turn to see Leon's gunblade had intercepted Riku's sword inches away from her head. Screeching at thought of being nearly decapitated, Yuffie crab-walked away from the fight that erupted between Leon and Riku.
In the distance, Yuffie saw the new guy level his rifle with his eyesight and saw him target Riku. And Leon, who was in the way.
But instead of warning her partner, she just curled up into a fetal position and waited for the gun shot.
"What do you think you're doing?!" Before anyone could blink, Sora had barreled into the new guy and started throttling him mightily. "Don't shoot him! He's our friend!"
"Doesn't... ouch! Seem like it... hey, stop it! From my point of... damnit, ow! View!" Irvine growled. "He's trying to kill you!"
"He's just misunderstood! I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for this!" Sora wailed, even as Irvine shoved him out of the way of Riku's keyblade, intercepting it instead with his gun (wincing slightly at the damage that was sure to cause).
"He's sexually frustrated!" Kairi added.
"So that makes it okay for him to burn down your home and try to kill you?" Irvine demanded through gritted teeth, totally not bitter about the fact that Riku—who was completely oblivious to the fact that his friends were defending his insanity—was still trying to kill him.
"Everyone has their bad days," Tifa said from the sidelines as she and Aerith pulled Cloud toward the ship, wincing slightly every time his head bumped painfully against the ground.
"Look cutie, I'm sure your friend was good at some point, maybe at birth, but he's obviously not all ther...woah," Irvine was cut off as he had to dive to the side to avoid having his brain split in half by Riku's keyblade.
"Cutie?" Sora asked curiously, "Who's the cutie?"
Irvine rolled his eyes as he tried to get far enough away from the insane boy to get in a clear shot. "You, sweetie."
"Me?!" Sora wasn't sure if his squeak was out of embarrassment, or because Riku's blade got really close to his ear on that last swing at Irvine.
"Sora's mine! His cuteness can only be adored by me! No one else can appreciate Sora's cuteness except for me! Me! Me! Me!" Riku did not seem to like competition, even though he had nearly disfigured said cutie.
"Too bad crazy boy," Irvine replied, frowning when his last shot missed Riku by a mile. "I really like his ass." To drive his point home, Irvine reached over and groped Sora.
At this, Kairi shrieked and chucked her keyblade at him, hitting Irvine in the shoulder and causing him to fall. Whether or not this was her intention it was hard to say, but this caused Riku to miss cutting Irvine across the chest as the man fell to his knees. Having failed to let go of Sora's lovely ass, he took Sora with him, resulting in a rather messy and awkward heap that would drive any yaoi fangirl enthusiast crazy with sheer delight.
It also made them sitting ducks for Riku, who seemed to interpret the situation in the wrong way and was again frothing at the mouth. "You betrayed me!" he shrieked. "You betrayed me for this wannabe cowboy!"
"Now wait just a second," Irvine protested, but his words were drowned out as Riku continued to shriek.
"I lay my heart out for you and you cheat on me right in front of my eyes! How could you! How could you do this to me?!"
"Riku!"
Riku didn't look like he was in the mood to listen to any explanations, but it didn't really matter as Leon slammed into his back, knocking him down. Gunblade held ready, he turned to the two with a frown on his face, "If you two are done with your... activities, get to the gummi ship. This place isn't going to last much longer, and at this rate there isn't any way we can win this in time."
"But we can't just leave Riku behind!"
"Actually, we can," Irvine corrected, picking himself up and grabbing Sora by the wrist. "We're listening to Scarface and getting the hell out of here."
"That's Leon!"
Seeing as to how Aerith and Tifa had made little progress with dragging Cloud onto the ship, Yuffie rushed over and grabbed him by the arms. "Let's go girls! This lump of man needs to be on that ship pronto! Move! Move! Move!" Yuffie craned her head over her shoulder and yelled at Donald and Goofy, "Hey, you heard the boss man! Let's go!"
"What about our ship!?" Donald squawked back.
"You left it in orbit right?" Cid said, scooping up Kairi and throwing her over his shoulders. "We'll get it on the way up!"
"How do you plan on doing that?" Goofy asked.
"Questions later! Move now!"
And so they ran. Or in Kairi's case, let the others do the running for her.
"Kairi!"
Looking up at the sound of her name, Kairi saw Tidus, Selphie and Wakka running up to the beach.
"Hey guys!"
"What's going on? The whole island is burning!"
"Really? Because we didn't fucking notice already!" Cid yelled. "Who the hell are those brats?!"
"They're our friends! Please, you have to take them with us!" Kairi screamed.
"Gah! Don't scream into my ear like that!" Cid replied. "Tell them to hurry their asses up if they think they're coming with us!"
Luckily the three were already quite close to the ship, reaching it just as the combined efforts of Yuffie, Aerith, and Tifa managed to get Cloud's useless weight into the ship. Seeing that everyone was safely aboard, Leon let fly a quick firaga spell, which exploded in Riku's face but seemed to accomplish nothing except for throwing the teen back long enough that he too could reach the gummi ship. As soon as he was inside, he slammed his hand into the control panel to close the door, and was admittedly satisfied to hear the loud smack of someone running face first into a recently closed metal door.
"Yuffie! Get out of the fucking pilot's seat! No you can't drive!"
"Cid, get us out of here!" Leon yelled up to the cabin as he made sure the door wouldn't fall in from the pounding coming from the other side.
"I would if Yuffie would get out of the fucking way!" was the heated reply, followed by an "Ow!" and thud.
As he felt the plane rise, Leon rolled his eyes before surveying the stragglers left in the back.
One unconscious blond. Check.
Female fretting friend of said blond. Check.
One keyblade master, moping in the corner. "Riku...Did you want to play uno with us too?" Check.
One stowaway. Che... Did he just wink at me?
One Princess of Heart, one duck, one dog, and three bums. Check, check, check.
One pink monstros... not check.
"Cid! Did we leave Aerith behind!?"
"What?" Sora gasped, "We left another friend behind!? NO!!!"
"I'm up here Leon! Holding Yuffie away from the controls."
Leon returned to his mental check list.
One pink monstrosity, bow included. Check.
Oh yes, he thought to himself as the ship started to lift off, causing the pounding from outside to cease. Life was good. Well, as long as you ignored the unconscious guy, the hyperactive-sex-drive stowaway guy, the emo guy, and the growing argument at the pilot's seat that was quite possibly going to cause the ship to spontaneously combust from internal pressure. Not to mention the fact that the island behind them was in a state of ruin, the trees still ablaze and the buildings falling, their residents probably trapped inside and now condemned to horrible deaths. And the problem that they now had no idea what to do, where to go, and even what was going on.
Still, other than that, life was good.
"Our ship!" Donald screamed from beside him. "What about our gummi ship?!"
"We're leaving it!"
"You said we could get it from-"
"I fucking lied!"
"Why you-!"
"Leon, where are you going?" Tifa asked from where she was fretting, frowning as Leon suddenly started walking purposefully for the storage room.
"... I'm going to go fling myself off this ship."
Notes:
(1) Wish we knew what Riku was talking about, too.
End Notes: This fic will be updated when we feel like it. Which will be sooner than you want us to, and later than we should.