A/N: So… There is finally Riku, a whole chapter of him. His last name means, "one reality." So yay for Riku! Um, let's see… college food. Right. Well, I suppose it's better than high school food, but it's still so… mass-produced. And Sora and the gang are in high school, by the way. Sora's just not used to eating food like that, he's used to fancier stuff from home. Other than that, the manga can be found at a lot of sites, I got mine from but it's out there in other places, too.

Disclaimer: I do not own the lovely KH. Because everyone expects me to. Right.


Everyone in the room looked up as the door was nearly torn from its hinges, himself included. He had to stop a grin from forming on his face. Whoever was at the door had come at a wonderfully perfect moment: Mr. Mendalson had just finished the attendance and introductory speech and was now getting into the wonderfully boring lesson. Riku decided that he liked distractions.

Snickers wound their way around the classroom. Lazily, Riku looked up at the door. His lips stretched into a smile.

Wow.

Can we say pathetic?

A scrawny little kid stood just inside the room with a face as red as a cherry and a uniform that looked like it hadn't seen an iron in a decade or two. Riku briefly wondered if the kid had ever bothered to look in a mirror while he was dressing himself. Well, either that or he had been party to a particularly rough quickie that had had run overtime or something.

Riku had thought that his amusement level couldn't go any higher. But the first four words out of the boy's mouth certainly proved him wrong.

"It's Barbie from Hell!" the boy cried, dramatically flinging out a finger to point at their teacher.

At that, the entire class lost it. There was a moment of stunned silence for a heartbeat and then the class erupted into full-blown laughter. Riku buried his head in his arms in an attempt to block the laughter welling in his own chest and failed miserably. He dared a glance at Mendalson, who was standing motionless at the blackboard except for one arm which was trembling in anger, grinding the chalk into the green surface. The longer he stood there the more the class laughed, and the boy still stood pointing accusingly at him. All heads were turned expectantly in the instructor's direction.

The staring contest continued until, without moving his gaze, Mendalson uttered a single word: "Kazuma."

Riku's amused grin slipped from his face and his laughter immediately died as his name was spoken. "Sir?"

"Show Mr. Maemi to the headmaster's office."

Slightly creeped out by the smirk that suddenly twisted his teacher's face but quite relieved that he wasn't in trouble, Riku rose from his seat to a chorus of "oooooh"s from his classmates. "Yes, sir." He walked calmly down the center aisle, fighting hard to keep himself from laughing all over again at the look on the kid's face.

The boy's mouth was opening and closing without sounds, huge blue eyes all but popping out of his head as he stared at Mendalson in shock. Riku paused for half a second as he drew even with the disheveled teen. "Quit gaping, you look like an ugly carp," he murmured, smirking. Then he walked on.

He was almost to the intersection down the hallway before he realized that he was definitely lacking the person that he was supposed to be escorting. He turned around, placed his hands on his hips, and started tapping his foot impatiently. At long last (about five seconds later) the kid came stumbling out of the classroom. Riku scowled as the boy slowly approached, tapping foot stopping as he saw the expression on the scrawny delinquent's face. No, he wasn't- was he? Yes, he was!

He was pouting. And not just any pout, no, it was a full-blown I-want-this-brand-new-toy-but-mommy-won't-buy-it-for-me-'cause-she's-mean-and-hates-me pout that would have given even Kairi a run for her money. It was so cute it was disgusting.

He raked the kid over with his eyes as he finally caught up. "Nice hair," he told the brunet dryly. "I didn't know they allowed rats in this school, much less full-fledged nests." He smirked, pleased as he achieved his goal and the pout wavered a bit as the kid stared at him uncertainly.

One hand rose in defense to the wild hair. "Yeah, well, you're one to talk, meanie!"

"'Meanie'?" What are we, five?" Riku rolled his eyes and realized that they weren't walking. He abruptly ser off at a brisk pace, eager to deposit this kid in the Headmaster's clutches and be done with it.

"No!" Said kid was half jogging to keep up with him, but Riku didn't bother to slow for him.

"Whatever, kid."

"My name isn't kid," the kid replied indignantly. "It's Sora."

"Good for you," Riku replied sarcastically. "Do you want a medal?"

"Yes."

"Sucks for you."

Apparently Sora couldn't come up with a reply, for there was silence except for the sound of their footfalls and the occasional piece of a lecture drifting out of the open classroom doors they passed. Riku finally halted before an elevator, glancing at Sora out of the corner of his eye as they waited. Sora fixed his shirt and then moved on to the tie, trying in vain to tie it. Riku almost said something, but shut his mouth at the last second.

"What?" Sora asked, looking up from his tie, which was currently in some sort of knot halfway down its length.

Riku scowled at him. "Nothing."

Sora raised an eyebrow. "Okay…"

Riku turned his head away, eyes focusing on the little lights above the elevator. 4… 3… 2… With a ding the doors slid open and Riku stepped inside first, pushing the appropriate button before going straight across to the window at the opposite side. Riku loved this elevator, though he had only been in it a couple of times before. The first floor was nothing special, the window merely faced a wall. But as it rose to the second floor and beyond, the wall fell away to reveal a panorama of the entire city, and you could even see a bit of the ocean way off on the horizon.

He heard Sora enter behind him and the elevator doors closed. It shook as it started to rise. As soon as the city came into view, Sora pressed himself against the window, eyes wide. "Woah," he gasped.

Ignoring the fact that he had mentally been thinking the exact same thing, Riku scowled at the boy. "Don't act like some dumb island hick," he snapped.

Riku almost burst out laughing as he saw Sora twitch slightly, on blue eye rotating in his head to glance quickly at him. "Oh, this is brilliant!" Riku guffawed. "You are some dumb island hick! No wonder you didn't know how to dress yourself!"

The brunet turned towards him, face turning in interesting shade of red. He opened his mouth to reply, but at that exact moment the elevator stopped with a ding and the doors opened, allowing a smirking Riku to smoothly step past the other.

With Sora trailing along behind him, Riku sauntered through a door and into the main office. He walked up to the front desk, smiling politely at the secretary. "Can I help you?" she asked, smiling right back.

"I was asked to escort him to the Headmaster," Riku said, jerking his thumb at the kid.

The secretary nodded, fluttering her eyelashes a bit at him before shooting a highly disapproving glance at Sora. "Go on back, he should be there."

Riku thanked her and once again set off, nearly laughing aloud as he glanced back and saw the nervousness splayed all across the boy's face. He spotted the office he wanted and whirled around suddenly when he was in front of the partially open door, quite ready to take his leave of the island boy. "Well, here we are. You enjoy yourself-" He was cut off by none other than the Headmaster himself.

"You," the man barked, appearing suddenly in the doorway, voice deep and gravelly. It took Riku a moment to realize that he himself was the 'you' in question.

"Sir?" he asked, trying not to smile at the picture that the leader of the school made. Goggles held back messy blond hair; he wore a tight white shirt, a huge brown beltish type thing, and blue pants. A piece of something stuck out of his mouth, and Riku had never seen the man without it. All in all, he looked more suited to working in a garage somewhere than being the leader of a school full of kids. Headmaster Cid was one in a million, that was for sure.

"Yer scholarship's been renewed."

Riku smirked. Like there had been any chance that it wouldn't be? And he had assumed that, since he had not been either billed or kicked out, his tuition was still being paid by the school, but it was still good to know for sure. He opened his mouth to thank the man but was once again cut off by a bark of, "You."

He saw Sora jump at the sudden change in targets. "Y-yes?"

"Yer mother not teach you how to dress yerself, kid?"

Riku knew he liked this guy for a reason.


"Detention."

A simple word, but one that had a profound effect upon the two boys. Riku's mouth fell open and he saw Sora out of the corner of his eye pout slightly. The bell signaling the end of class rang then, but it was quite obvious that Mendalson wasn't about to let them go any time soon. The rest of the class filed out around them as the two stood in the middle of the aisle, many shooting Riku sympathetic looks. Mendalson was infamous for his temper, and once you got on his bad side, you were there until the end of time.

Riku was getting angry. "What? Why do I have detention?" he demanded irritably. Okay, so he had lingered around the bathroom for a while before leading Sora back. Okay, so he had done that completely on purpose so that class would be almost over by the time they got back. But even still, he hadn't done anything deserving of detention. Mendalson should have had no idea that they hadn't been up at the Headmaster's office the entire time, and it had been the kid that had pissed him off in the first place. So why was he in trouble?

The only response Riku received was a stony stare. "Fine," Riku said, fixing the teacher with a stiff smile. Without another word, Riku retrieved his schoolbag from his seat and walked out of the classroom, inwardly fuming. He stomped down the hallway, glaring at random people and off in his own little world where he was dismantling the teacher limb by limb.

"Hey, um…"

Riku stopped dead in his tracks as the light voice broke into his thoughts, shattering his lovely image of revenge. He whirled around so suddenly and with such a scowl on his face that the source of all of his problems jumped back in surprise and nearly smashed into a pack of girls (who were, Riku noted, giggling at him and primping as they tried to attract his attention). "What?" he snapped.

"I- um- uh…"

"Spit it out."

"It's just, I- I wanted to say I'm- why do you have such weird hair?"

"None of your concern," Riku said snidely. He then turned and resumed his path through the hall. But he noticed that there was still another set of footsteps mirroring his own. For the second time the silver-haired boy spun around without warning. "Why are you following me?"

"I'm not!" Sora exclaimed defensively.

Riku narrowed his eyes. "You are too."

"Am not!"

"Is ruining my day really not enough for you?" Riku snapped.

"What, one detention is enough to ruin your day? Your life must be really stupid." Sarcasm was heavy in his voice.

Riku didn't exactly see the logic, but he didn't bother to tell Sora so. Instead he scowled with as much force as he was able to. "Stop following me." The three words carried all the weight of a royal decree. Frowning, Riku started walking off again.

And then his eye twitched.

Riku frowned more, hoping that it was a one-time thing. Eye twitches were one of the few things on the planet that immediately defeated him, and they only came when he was overly stressed- or massively annoyed. Riku managed to make it two steps farther before…

Twitch.

"ARGH!" Riku cried, rubbing furiously at the offending eye. He felt no twitches under his fingers as he rubbed, and after a few moments he took his hand away, holding his breath. After a few more steps with no muscle spasms, Riku released his captive breath in a whoosh of air and relaxed.

Step, step.

Twitch.

Ready to rip the kid's overlarge head from his scrawny neck, Riku whirled around yet again, quite tired of doing so. But he stopped and blinked, confused when he faced nothing but a quickly emptying hallway. All right, Riku, you're going crazy, he thought. Whatever. At least the kid was gone…

Riku nearly had a heart attack as he turned again, only to find himself face-to-face with a set of huge, shiny, blue eyes. Riku automatically jumped back a couple of feet, heart pounding wildly. "What the hell is your problem?" he yelled, not caring that the last people in the hallway stopped what they were doing and stared at him.

Sora smiled infuriatingly, linking his hands behind his back. "I'm going to class," he stated simply.

"Then go," Riku snapped, the bell signaling the beginning of the second hour chiming in its agreement. "Brilliant, now you've made me late," he growled.

Sora ignored the last comment. "I can't," he said. Riku glared at the smaller kid, not happy that he was late for his second class. After a moment, Sora sighed and pointed at him. "You're in my way?"

Riku finally realized that he was blocking the doorway of a classroom. "Oh, no," he said, catching the room number. "This is my class."

Sora nodded, looking at him like he was a slow little kid. "And mine, too…"

Riku stared at him for a second. He was not happy.

Without a word, Riku stalked off away from his class, feeling the kid's eyes on him. His eyes started twitching again, and it was all he could do not to hit something.

Class could go to hell.