CHAPTER VII
UNEXPECTED VISITORS
Sora sipped some tea on the bridge of the gummi zeppelin. How long was this trip taking? In the Falcon Peak, his preferred model of gummi, traveling from Radiant Garden to Disney Castle wouldn't have taken more than a day, but the zeppelin seemed to be taking almost a week. He looked out at the stars, and almost spilled his tea when he noticed what was up ahead.
Disney Castle. In all its glory, he saw the planetoid and excitedly ran through the ship, telling everyone to get ready to disembark.
But as he was in the sleeping chambers, waking up Scrooge McDuck with some minor difficulty (a few whacks to the head with a cane), the ship rocked with a shudder that could only mean bad news.
"Sora, what's going on up there?" yelled Cid, up the ladder to the bridge. But Sora responded from behind him.
"I don't know! I was waking everyone up…"
"Sora! You're on lookout! The ship is on auto pilot and all you had to do was watch for any enemies!" Cid was furious. Instead of yelling at Sora, which he really wanted to do, he ran up the ladder to the bridge and turned on the intercom.
"Attention all crew of the Red Zeppelin, we are under attack from six unidentified ships. Repeat, unidentified ships are…wait a sec…these ships have heartless insignias on them! They're heartless ships, repeat, heartless ships. All crew, meet in the main hangar for defensive tactics, immediately!" The line went to static, and that meant Cid was already on his way to the hangar.
The ducks and merchants stayed in the sleeping cabin on Aerith's request. No sense in shaking up the whole ship. But Aerith, Yuffie, Cloud, Riku, Kairi, Sora and Merlin were in the hangar moments before Cid.
"Okay, listen up and listen good, ya'll. These things are pretty big, but they got no shields. I wasn't able to run a diagnostic on their weapons…if I had a little notice I might have…" Cid trailed off as he pulled huge white sheets off of big hulking masses in the gummi hangar.
Sora hung his head in shame.
"Now, these are Gummi Mechs. Kinda like Teeny ships. I been tinkerin' with 'em for a while, so for pete's sake don't get 'em blown up! They respond to almost every movement a person can make…except for some of the silly ones."
"So basically…just fight like we're on land?" asked Riku.
"Yep. Only…there's no gravity or anything…so it'll take some getting used to. But I only got three of em, so who's gonna go out? Make it snappy, we're taking heavy damage. I gotta head back up to the bridge, Aerith, you're my co-pilot. We can't take much more fire, so move it, boys and girls!" Cid and Aerith ran through the sliding door and up the stairs.
"Well, I'm going." Cloud said arrogantly, as he approached the black mech. It was about three times his height and had yellow markings all over it.
"Heh. Me too." Riku said, already climbing into his mech. His was blue with orange marks.
"I'll go too," said Sora. But as he looked up at the remaining red and silver mech, he saw it wave down at him…just like Kairi.
The booming voice of the mech said "See ya later, procrastinator!" as the three mechs flew out the bay roof and into space.
Sora stood dumbfounded in the center of the bay, while Merlin cracked a smile on one side of him and Yuffie outright laughed on the other.
"All right, all right. Cut it out," he said, as he stamped off toward the bridge to see if he could help Cid.
"Ya know, Merlin, some day he'll realize that she's every bit as strong as him." Yuffie said, still smiling.
"Yuffie, my dear, if I could cast a spell to make him realize, I would. But he's got to do it on his own."
Meanwhile, in the cold recesses of space orbiting the Disney Castle, the black and yellow mech piloted by Cloud was doing some serious damage on two of the silver heartless ships. Cloud was having a hard time not having a sword at his disposal…so the first thing he did when he ripped the wing off the first ship was bend it into an appropriate sword.
"Much better," boomed the mechanical voice, as Cloud slashed clear through the second heartless ship.
Kairi wasn't doing too badly herself. She managed to kick off of one heartless, go into a rapid spin and drill through two of the others. She was also the first to discover the repeating blasters located in the wrists of her ship…the heartless on the opposite end of that wasn't too pleased…
Riku did more damage to himself than any heartless ship. He couldn't figure out how to let go and let the ship work with him, so he spent a good deal of time spinning and knocking into asteroids until Cloud and Kairi towed him back into the hangar.
Cloud and Kairi jumped down from their mechs and nodded at each other, smiling. Riku jumped down from the mech and brushed the hair out of his face. He wasn't smiling. "Can it, you two. I just got a little…confused…in there…"
"Wait, Cloud, when you're confused, do you do this?" Kairi said, as she proceeded to spin around the room, acting drunk, until she fell into Riku's arms.
"Very funny, Kairi." He smiled and pushed her away. "Now let's go see King Mickey and the others!"
The three new pilots ran into the cabin to find everyone but Cid relaxing.
"Cid said he can have us landed in Disney Castle in no time. You guys were great out there! I watched the whole thing!" Aerith gushed.
"Yeah, you really kicked butt out there, Kairi," Sora smiled. Kairi blushed and gave him a hug. "And Riku! What was that? Some kind of interpretive dance?" They all had a good laugh as Cid's voice rang through the intercom.
"Now disembarking, Disney Castle. Please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle until we have come to a full and complete stop. Thanks for riding Red Zeppelin!"
