Riku versus The Cobra Part III
AN: "Just repeat to yourself 'It's just a show, I should really just relax.'"
Thanks again to Jupiter-Lightning for the swell review of chapter two (yes I wrote that this way because it rhymed.)
Kingdom Hearts is the property of Square-Enix etc, etc...
Selphie fell to her knees when the first blue-white, clawed hand reached out of the mouth of the cave and planted itself in the mud.
Agar was a giant.
He wasn't particularly healthy-looking either. She could could see through his shriveled and translucent skin in places. He was hairless, half-naked and couldn't walk upright under his own weight. He didn't appear to have teeth, and he may have been blind in three out of five his extraneous eyes.
Agar crabbed his way to the dais and Selphie bit her lip to keep from screaming. He plopped down on the ground, and leaned over her. Selphie did scream when a thick, forked tongue flickered out between his lips.
A group of chupacabras scampered out of the crowd, each holding a small instrument. They presented these instruments to her.
"Play!" Agar growled.
The water exploded upward, and showered Riku with leeches. He flapped his arms over his head to ward them off.
Wakka struggled with a giant mutant squid. How they could've missed its presence in the pit, Riku couldn't guess. The fight between boy and squid was loud and brutal, there were a couple of instances where Wakka was nearly pulled into the creature's snapping beak. He was covered with claw marks and bleeding profusely, but somehow his hair was still perfect.
This is exactly the kind of situation where a sword would come in handy, Riku thought.
"Surrender your hockey hair!" the squid roared. Riku screamed like a little girl.
"Never!" Wakka yelled and punched the creature in the eye.
What followed was a confusing flurry of punching and kicking followed by a gory explosion of squid guts and fetid scum water. The boys were thrown clear of the pit on a wave of the awful mixture.
"Eww! Why did it explode?" Riku asked Wakka, brushing a stringy bit of goo off his shoulder.
"I have no idea," Wakka scrubbed the awful stuff out of his eyes. "Lucky we weren't killed, yeah? Pretty weird, really..."
"No time to wonder about that," Riku said.
"You're right."
"I'll go get Selphie," Riku said, "You go look for Tidus."
"Do you think we really ought to split up?"
"I work better... alone."
"I don't know... I don't think if Murray caught Tidus that he would actually hurt him, he needs him, but Selphie could be sitting in a giant cauldron right now… with vegetables… and a little salt."
Selphie strummed the old guitar very carefully. The thing didn't have much time left, it was so old and the sounds it produced were so bad.
The only thing she could do was cover up the noise with her super-duper awesome voice and her sultry moves. She sang:
"She's a superfreak! Superfreak! She's super freakaaay!"
"What's that noise?" Riku paused.
"Our shoes, man, I think we'll have to get new ones after this," Wakka wrinkled his nose. "And burn our clothes too."
Wakka gasped.
"We were soaking in mining chemicals! The very same chemicals that made everything mutate on this island! What if–"
"Easy, man! We were only in it for a few minutes," Riku tried to calm him down.
"Yeah, but do you know what could've been in that water? Mercury! I can't get brain damage before finals!" he hyperventilated. Riku felt he had no choice, he backhanded Wakka.
"Keep it together. Selphie needs you! Remember? Selphie Soup, just add crackers! Or Selphie-kebob! Rotisserie Tilmitt!"
Wakka took a deep breath.
"Selphie under glass?"
"Okay, you can stop," Wakka said.
Riku led the way towards his approximation of Happy Funtime Island's center. Surely they'd find a clue to the whereabouts of Agar's lair, if not the lair itself. Riku thought: if he were a despotic kind of demigod he'd want his lair centrally located, that way he could keep track of everyone and squelch any uprisings or bouts of atheism before they got out of hand.
But that was just him.
"Hear that?" Wakka asked. "Sounds like a… well…. I don't know anything bad enough to compare it with, really."
Agar sang along with Selphie around the middle of her eighth song. He seemed happy, and the snakes seemed happy, and the chupacabras seemed happy.
Her time was almost up: she was going to run out of songs soon, and the guitar was about to crumble in her hands. On top of that, she didn't think her friends would get back with that massive rescue party they surely meant to round up in time to save her.
What more could go wrong?
Man, this guy's breath could kill, she grimaced during Agar's ad-libbing solo.
"There they are!" Wakka whispered. They reached the large clearing and peeked at the scene through a screen of vines. "Think we could drive 'em away with the stench?" he asked ruefully. Indeed a couple of the closer cobras were looking around and giving each other accusatory glares.
"Indubitably, I am the worst thing I've ever smelled," Wakka said.
"Shhh!" Riku pulled him behind a handy tree. A couple of tree cobras slithered near, stopped in their tracks and gagged. They retreated the way they came.
"You might have something there," Riku said, though it humiliated him a little.
"We should probably stay away from those torches though, in case the fumes are flammable."
The awful sing-along suddenly halted.
"Eep!" Selphie said when the guitar finally snapped in half. She looked up at Agar in alarm.
"Play!" Agar roared again.
"I can't play any of those," Selphie shook her head frantically. "How 'bout an a capella version of Real Emotion–"
Agar roared angrily.
"Thank you!" Wakka said.
"Shhh!" Riku elbowed him in the stomach.
"Oh dear," Selphie started to pray when a bit of metal caught her eye. "Just a minute."
She went to the instruments and picked up the bow of the old violin. Then she sprinted to the pile of tools in the clearing and carefully picked up a not-too-rusty old handsaw.
Agar impatiently tapped his foot while she arranged herself on the dais and started to play the saw.
The sound made her skin crawl and her hair stand up, but everyone else liked it. Agar smiled hideously and the cobras and chupacabras settled down peacefully. She wondered if she could put them to sleep with a song.
Who knew this stupid trick would prove so useful, she gritted her teeth and played on.
"Maybe he won't eat her after all," Riku said.
"I don't think she wants to become Mrs. Agar, either," Wakka said.
"Here's the plan. We could grab one of those torches," Riku said. "And then set fire to the forest, that'll confuse them–"
"Did you forget that Tidus is still out there?"
"Oh, uh," Riku struggled to come up with an answer.
"You did didn't you!" Wakka put his hands on his hips and said: "Well, lucky I came with you or me and little Tidus would be runnin' for our lives in a forest fire! Shame on you!"
"Alright, forget it," Riku groused. "What do you thing we should do?"
Selphie stopped playing.
"I'm sorry, my arms are getting really tired," she told Agar.
"Don't matter," Agar rumbled. "Pass judgment now."
The tree cobras hissed excitedly.
"Agar take vote from tree cobras whether you become Agar's Queen–"
"WHAT?" Selphie screeched. She didn't know that all this was leading to this abomination against nature.
"–or you become Agar's Dinner. Marriage prospect looks good, however."
"Okey dokey," Selphie stood up and gave him her best smile. "But first, where's the little girls' room? I need to take a powder."
"Agar can't see why not." He pointed into the trees.
Selphie looked as innocent as she could while she headed for the forest.
"Yes!" Wakka whispered. "That's it, come closer…"
"Fear not, fair lady!"
Every head in the place whipped around and looked up at Tidus standing in the tallest tree wearing a very large and feathery hat. He brandished a rapier in one hand and grabbed a hanging vine with the other.
"Hey! Where'd he get that sword?" Riku said.
"They shall sample my blade! Touché!" Tidus cried and stepped off the branch.
"Tidus, no!" Selphie cried. The little boy fell twenty feet before the vine snapped tight and he swung right into Agar.
SMACK!
Tidus bounced off the creature and landed in the mud. Selphie dashed to him and gently cradled his head.
"Tidus, can you hear me?"
"Where'd all these birds come from?" he muttered dazedly.
Agar turned around very slowly and gaped at them.
"What that?"
"The maid of honor!" Selphie said, and burst into tears.
The wind picked up just then, and it came in from the sea in a fortuitous direction.
A wave of gut-wrenching stench floated into the clearing and triggered a massive unified gagging reflex from every living creature within range.
Tidus bolted upright.
Selphie retched.
Agar scratched himself.
"Aww, now I feel terrible," Wakka said.
"We can't smell that bad," Riku sniffed himself.
"My eyes are watering," Wakka said. "I'll never eat squid again."
And he never did.
"Now's the time to act," Riku said. He picked up the nearest branch and ran screaming at the crowd.
"Ugh!" the snakes, chupacabras, (and even the insects) shot out of the way and made it easy for them to reach their friends.
"Oh, stay away!" Selphie and Tidus backed away with their hands over their noses.
Agar studied them for a moment.
"You popped the mutant squid?" he asked them. They nodded solemnly.
"What?" Tidus looked to Selphie, she always had an answer, even if she had to invent one.
"Sometimes it's better not to know, young grasshopper," she said.
"We're here for them," Wakka pointed at his two distant friends. "We don't want any trouble, we'll just take them and leave quietly."
Agar roared.
"Fools! Curse you for ruining Agar's special day!"
"So it's the hard way, is it?" Riku said. He hoisted his branch.
A sword would come in handy right about now, he thought. He looked around for the rapier Tidus had dropped when he smashed into the unhealthy-looking demigod.
"I'm a scholar not a fighter!" Wakka screamed.
"Search inside yourself! You can do it!" Selphie cried.
"Don't give up," Tidus said. "Or we're dead."
"But try to relax," Selphie added.
Agar reared back and bellowed loudly. Riku dove to the right and picked up the rapier.
"Wait a minute. This isn't a sword, this is a Hotwheels racetrack," Riku swung the blue strip of plastic. Agar took a lumbering swing at him. RIku countered by whipping him with the track.
Agar screamed and scrabbled backwards.
Meanwhile, Wakka was still trying to psych himself up.
"I can do this!" he said confidently. "I have to help my friends!"
"Stop right there!" Murray said in deadly voice that stopped the Riku in his tracks. The cobra looped himself around the huddled Selphie and Tidus and bared his fangs. "Step away from my disgusting god, or I'll bite! I can kill twenty people with one bite, ya know! I'll do it!"
"Over already? Awww," Riku moaned. He stepped away from Agar.
Agar, for his part, scuttled back into his lair.
"Poor thing," Selphie said.
"Okay," Murray said, "Now I am in charge, once again. Take me to Destiny Island, and I'll let you all live."
"No deal, snake!" Riku said. "You don't belong in man's world."
"Uh, Riku, what are you doing?" Selphie said out of the corner of her mouth.
"You've already proven to be untrustworthy, and way too eager to bite–"
"I'm only doing what's necessary," Murray argued. "Look around! If you were me, you'd want to leave too."
"You're not suited to live around people," Riku shot back. "You're a cobra, they'll be afraid."
"They'll adapt," Murray said, and Riku could almost perceive a shrug in that comment. "I'll adapt too. I've been waiting for this chance my whole life, to read the great works of literary masters, to see the wonders of the world, to eat the best fast food!
"You think anything with a developed cerebral cortex wants to feast on raw rats and hang around with the same incurious morons all its life? How stimulating is that?"
Riku thought the snake had a good point.
But Riku refused to negotiate with terrorists, and he felt nearly invincible now, having very briefly fought with Agar.
"If you want to leave Happy Funtime Island so badly," Riku said, "You'll have to fight me for the privilege."
"Huh?" Murray said.
"Are you crazy?" Selphie shouted. "Wakka, do something– the boy's clearly lost his marbles."
"Yes," Murray agreed. "But, the challenge does intrigue me a little..."
"If I win, you have to let us all go and promise never to leave this island, ever," Rikus said. "If you win–"
"You'll be dead," Murray finished. "You'll be beyond caring about the well-being of your friends or your precious town. Tch! You don't have a chance, kid, but you're on."
TBC