No Need For A Sniper Kitten

Part V

Kingdom Hearts is the property of Square-Enix etc, etc...

There was one more explosion, unexpected and more destructive and colorful than any of them had ever seen from amateur fireworks. All three of them were caught in a spray of splinters and flame, Tidus got the worst of it.

"Everyone okay?" Selphie asked, gingerly she brushed the kindling out of her hair.

"Eh, it's no big deal," Riku shrugged. Blood spurted from the cut over his eye.

"Looks like a big deal," Selphie said.

"It's not."

"Ouch! Ouch!" Tidus whined. He felt like a wooden porcupine.

"The skin's peeling away!" Selphie argued.

"No. No. It's nothing," Riku said airily.

"Your arms are blistering."

"I heal fast."

"Can somebody pull the splinters out of my legs? I don't think I should move," Tidus said.

"At least bandage up your hand. That looks like a lot of blood– hey, your finger fell off," Selphie said.

"It's just a little blood, and it didn't fall off, there's some skin holding it on," Riku stuck his bloody fingers in his mouth. "Mmmm, the life of the body is in the bloooood." He waved his bloody fingers in front of her face.

"Stop that. Quit it! I'm warning you…"

"What? I'm not touching you…"

"The cops!" Tidus pointed to the ship approaching from the distance.

"I can't go to jail!" Selphie and Riku said at once. Selphie had a nightmarish vision of herself wearing a military school uniform and crawling under barbed wire with a bunch of other girls with names like Killer and Moe. Riku's nightmarish vision ran more along the lines of yodeling classes, luge lessons, and an endless succession of barely legal ski instructors wanting to become his friend.

"Fire in the hole," Selphie squeaked.

"Sock hats," Riku added.

"Snakes be damned! Into the swamp!" Selphie cried and took up the oars.

The children paddled their boat through the mangroves. The sirens made them jittery.

"Ouch."

"Stop picking at them," Selphie said to Tidus.

"They're itchy. And they have to come out or I'll get an infection," he argued. Riku plucked a particularly nasty-looking sliver from the little boy's arm. "Ouch! Don't do that!" There, he'd said the magic words that dig into a person's sadistic streak no matter how far they buried it under a veneer of compassion. "Ouch! Cut it out!" Tidus poked Riku's scabbed, seeping cut. Riku jabbed Tidus in the back, and Tidus tried to bite Riku.

"Stop fighting. Stop fighting!" Selphie grabbed the sides of the rocking boat. "We're supposed to be getting away from the cops! Quit that!"

The rowboat capsized just then, dumping the children into waist-deep, cold, fetid water.

"Idiots!" Selphie yelled at the boys. The boys both claimed innocence. "Urgh! I hate you both," she grumbled.

"You don't mean that," Tidus fluttered his eyelashes.

"Yes I do!" Selphie crossed her arms. The sirens started up again and she assumed a hunted look.

"Follow me," Riku said. "Leave the boat."

"They'll trace it back to us," Selphie argued. "With hairs and fibers! Law and Order! CSI!"

"They have no reason to think we were even out here," Riku said as they slogged along. "We'd need alibi's. Simple alibi's and some eye witnesses…"

"Eep," Tidus picked up a bit of floating detritus, turned it over and saw the empty sockets of the human skull.

"What?" Selphie asked. Tidus threw the skull into the bushes.

"Nothing."

"Doc? Sir?"

"Hmm?" Dr. Unne pulled the final splinter out of Tidus' face. It didn't look like he was listening, but everyone knew that he had great recall– especially when you were hoping he hadn't been listening.

"Do you know anything about vampires?"

"Nasty creatures. I don't abide them," Dr. Unne said.

"So you believe in them?" He asked hopefully.

"Does this have anything to do with why you stabbed your little friend?"

"Uhhh," Tidus trailed off into an embarrassed silence.

"My dear boy," Dr. Unne slapped another bandage over the leaking cut across Tidus' nose, "Everyone knows that token minorities don't get 'vampirized.' What you need to look for in a vampire are the obvious signs: thirst for blood, pale skin, and a tendency to wander around at night. It's just that easy."

"I know," Tidus hung his head. It was then that the metaphorical light bulb went on.

"It's just a little blood... Mmmm, the life of the body is in the bloooood."

"My god, you're right doctor!" Tidus said with an ironclad certainty.

"Well, I am a genius," Dr. Unne agreed.

"Riku is a vampire!"

Dr. Unne opened his mouth to say something, and then shut it.

It made perfect sense, Riku was a vampire, probably a new vampire. He and the visiting vampire fed on traveling salesmen and threw the remains into the swamp. Brilliant thinking, Tidus congratulated himself.

"We'll have to kill him."

"Honey!" Dr. Unne called. "Could you come here a moment?"

The Mayor gave Tidus some carrot cake and listened to his theory quietly. She smiled indulgently and ruffled his hair.

"Listen, silly," she said. "There aren't any vampires on the island– this is the tropics! Terrible place to live if you can't handle sunlight."

"I know–"

"Unless you're a day walker," she said darkly. "But I'm pretty sure that Riku's not one of those. And as for drinking blood, who hasn't ingested a little blood? I've done it once or twice."

"You have?"

"Sure, it's a tradition back in the old country. And as for that 'ghostly pallor' as you call it, he just has fair skin and probably wears sunscreen. He's a practical boy. It may be surprising to you, but for some of us there is no tan– just a severe burn."

Tidus' brain cells crashed into each other and furiously climbed the walls only to meet and crash into each other again.

"I gotta go!" he hopped off of the barstool and backed towards the door.

"Feel better, sweetie?" she towered over him and smiled. The Mayor was a big lady, but it never gave him the creeps before. At this moment, her canines looked a little too long from his perspective. "It's getting dark out, do you want me to walk you home?"

"That's okay," he said. "Uh, then I'd have to walk you home. Ha ha. We'd be going back and forth all night."

"Why don't you stay the night? You're welcome to the couch any time you know– what's the matter?"

"I can't stay," he said cagily. "I have to… feed my cat!"

"Cats are independent, Tidus," she stroked his cheek. "I think she'll be fine. Oh, look, you're bleeding." She wiped the trickle of blood away and put her finger in her mouth.

Tidus screamed and tore out of the house.

He did not see the Mayor laughing as he did so.

"Well?" Dr. Unne poked his head out of the living room where he and Kairi were watching Doctor Giggle's Most Tragic/Comic Home Videos. "Everything okay?"

"Messing with kids' heads. It's so much fun," the Mayor giggled. Dr. Unne frowned and hoped that he wouldn't have to attend to another stabbing.

Chappu had enough. He couldn't sleep with that little brat throwing rocks at his window all night. It would mean getting involved with his brother's (yech) bizarre love-triangle, but dammit, he was tired. Another half-hour of tap-tap-tap-tap and he'd have no choice but to kill E.C.

He stomped to the window and threw it open.

"Whaddayawant!" Chappu snarled.

"Not you!" Tidus hissed.

"Well, ya got me! Dumdum refuses to have anything to do with you!"

"But this is important!"

"So was last night's game!" Chappu shot back. "Do you know how many death threats we've gotten?" Not that they were serious death threats, just a bunch of gambling addicts making idle comments.

"But this is life or death!" Chappu shook his middle finger at him. "There are more vampires than I thought! And Riku's one of them!"

"Yeah? I sort of figured it was something like that," Chappu yawned.

"And the Mayor too!"

"What? Whatchoo talkin' about, Tidus?"

"She's a bloodsucking creature of the night!"

Not his sweet, beloved Mayor! The little bastard had gone too far.

"You take that back!" Chappu snarled and hurled an old cast-iron bookend at the kid. It missed blondie so Chappu threw the other one… and missed him again.

"Ha-ha! Missed me, Captain Suckatude!" Tidus picked up another handful of rocks, bigger rocks this time, and threw them at Chappu.

The noise should've woken up Wakka, probably only faking sleep, the big jerk. But he couldn't pretend after a golf-ball sized stone clattered through the window and bounced off his head. Wakka growled and rolled out of bed.

"Be right back." He ran downstairs. Chappu threw their Pac-Man clock radio and nailed E.C. in the knee. A rock glanced off of Chappu's chin. Wakka ran back into the room with the watermelon they were saving for dessert tomorrow. Wakka set up for a one-handed throw, and hurled the watermelon. The fruit hit E.C. dead center. Chappu shrieked with laughter, watermelon dripped down E.C.'s face.

Tidus grimaced, picked up the previously thrown bookend and flung it back.

But the kid didn't have Wakka's throwing arm, or any kind of throwing arm. What followed was the silvery tinkle of glass, and a loudly screamed expletive.

The boys all got that wide-eyed 'what in the Nine Hells do I think I'm doing?' look, followed by a frantic 'What do I do? What do I do?' side-to-side sort of gape. Fortunately, they were saved by a predictable complication of events.

"Grurrr!" the mummy stumbled through the fence and shambled towards the house.

"Yes!" Chappu shouted with joy. "We're off the hook!" But he had unfinished business. "You stay right there, you whiny bitch!" Chappu jabbed a finger at Tidus. "I'm gonna beat you like a redheaded stepchild!" He always wanted to use that phrase.

"Anytime, Jackass!" Tidus was frenetic by this point.

"You just wait–"

"What are you waiting for? Huh?" Tidus called back. "Let's go!"

Chappu knocked Wakka over on the way to the door, jumped down the stairs three at a time, and flung open the front door. Uncle Raijin stood by the gate with a suspicious looking bag.

"It was just sitting there!" Uncle Raijin said automatically.

"Uncle, do you have a tire iron you could spare?" Chappu asked.

"Oh. Sure!"

There were screams and a crash as the mummy climbed into the window, just as it had that first night.

A/N: According to family legend, one of my uncles had a serious misadventure involving his hand and a lawnmower blade. One of his fingers was so deeply cut that it looked like it was about to fall off! Did he make a sound? Nah, it was no big deal to him.

And that's when we knew he was crazy.