Warning: Health Hazard

Chapter Seven

"What did you do to Naminé?" queried Riku, driving Sora further and further back into the depths of aforementioned blonde goth-girl's humble abode. The brunet looked around anxiously as he attempted to side-step piles of CDs and assorted items of clothing that had been slung haphazardly on the floor, thus creating minor health hazards. It was like a game of minesweep – step on a mine or, in this case, a CD emblazoned with the grinning faces of the bubblegum pop band, the Gullwings, and break your neck. All the while attempting to flee from a crazy guy wielding a bunch of thorn-covered roses. It's not an easy task, I assure you, as there's a good possibility it will all end in tears and a funeral service. Much like Russian Roulette.

Now, you must remember that Sora had been in a coma-like state of unconsciousness for a good half hour, and he was not as his best. So waking up to find a murderous, silver-haired beast braying for your blood and tossing accusations willy-nilly was not exactly going to help matters. And to top it all off, Sora had only just found out Kairi had a sister that she'd been keeping pretty hush-hush all these years, and now he was being told he was going out with her when he hadn't even known she'd existed until ten minutes ago!

Talk about confusing – it's a sure-fire recipe for disaster, all set to explode when the pin is taken out or the stopper is uncorked in a frothy haze of loud noises and pain. To sum it all up, the whole situation was a complete and utter catastrophe.

"I didn't do anything to Naminé! I swear I didn't! I promise!" Sora cried, nearly falling over backwards through an open window that Riku had used to enter the room.

"Ha! Like I'm going to believe that when you're in her bloody room! No wonder Kairi got all pissy with me at the door! She didn't want me in here 'cause I'd find you and she didn't want a bloodbath on her hands. Well, I'm sorry, but Kairi isn't here to protect you and your scrawny hide now!"

And then a punch was directed at the poor boy, a punch that was destined to send Sora on a one-way trip to meet his makers and see stars all at the same time.

It would've done, if the boy hadn't ducked at the last moment, obviously sensing something like that would happen. He'd hardly exactly been expecting Riku to offer him a box of chocolates, thump him on the back and say 'good one, mate', at any rate.

"You stupid little motherfu-"

Riku's insult was cut in two courtesy of a neat little jab aimed at the general vicinity of his face, his nose seeming to explode with red goo once the fist made contact.

Sora looked down at his hand in alarm, wondering how the hell he'd managed to deal damage to foe about a head taller than him with his cooked spaghetti arms and general lack of upper body strength. It must've been stress and worry combined to create a sudden burst of power and adrenaline, like a shot of extra-strong coffee.

"YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER!" Riku roared, finally managing to finish off his previous insult, but with a lot more roaring and screaming and flailing of the fists, feet and that nifty little bouquet of roses.

The brunet ducked a particularly violent swing that probably could've cut through metal, tripping over a pile of One-Winged Angel albums in the process. The CDs scattered across the floor creating an obstacle course.

Sora retreated to the safety of the bed, Riku attempted to follow but found his foot caught amongst an extensive collection of hairspray and hairstuffs, most of them claiming to 'revitalise red hair to the extreme'. They were obviously all Kairi's, and Sora couldn't help but embrace a sudden warm rush of love for the red-head who cared a tad too much about the very same red-coloured head. She'd managed to save him yet again. Indirectly, of course.

The boy decided to take advantage of Riku's dilemma, and launched himself towards the teen like a torpedo.

The collision seemed to play in slow motion, just like in one of those bad action films with stunt doubles that look nothing like the actual actors and 'it's raining men' playing in the background.

There were looks of desperation and looks of fierce determination, as Riku attempted to raise his battered, broken and bashed-about bouquet as if it might double up as a shield as well as an effective clubbing weapon and a gift to give to your lady love.

Sora smashed into the boy with force, power, agility and 'extra might', the two bodies flying through the air to land with a crash into the wardrobe. The roses were lying atop of Sora's face, his arms covered with scratches, head starting develop a nice, bluey-purply bruise.

Riku himself was faring no better, what with his swollen up nose that was still bleeding profusely, an arm bent back at an arkward angle and a one-hundred pound Sora lying on his lap, crushing many of his vital organs.

"Ow…" moaned both boys almost in unison, Riku attempting to disentangle himself from the younger.

Of course, no such fight of that magnitude that results in two teenage boys squished under each other and angled at impossible positions by a wardrobe can go unnoticed for too long, especially when such a fight breaks out at the home of the most popular girl in school who just so happens to be throwing a wild par-tay of sixty plus kids downstairs.

As the muffled shouts and screams and bangs that accompanied the fight started to worm its way down through the floorboards and incorporate itself into the techno songs downstairs kids stopped dancing and started questioning.

A few were huddled up into corners discussing Kairi's weird house in low tones, primping out their stories and ballooning them into grotesquely overweight, gossipy sagas about mad relatives in the attic.

Hayner, Pence and Olette (the girl who owned the killer converse that Sora had tripped over) were looking up at the ceiling worridly, as if the whole thing might fall down and cover the room in dust, plaster and assorted pieces of furniture.

When the track came to a close and the noise upstairs continued during the silence, punctuated by whispering teens wondering what was going on, Kairi decided she had to take action.

She sent home all the teens with profound apologies, and then marched straight up three flights of stairs (that was partly why she was so worried – something so loud it could be heard through three floors didn't herald good news) and entered Naminé's room, which just so happened to be the room the noises were coming from.

And then a horrible revelation hit Kairi: what if it wasn't just Naminé dancing (nay – galumphing) along to one of her (loud) gothy heavy metal songs like she'd first suspected, but something more sinister?

Something involving Sora?

And maybe knifes and blood and pain and god knows what else?

She was like a hurricane of red hair and red lipstick and all-out panicky pandemonium as she flew into her sister's (and hers, for the time being) bedroom, looking about wildly for her blonde twin.

However, there was no twin.

There was Sora.

On the floor.

And Naminé's ex-boyfriend, towering over him, looking smug.

The expression of triumph quickly lifted when his aqua eyes met Kairi's dark blue, however, the twisted smile scrubbing off pretty sharpish thanks to the swift slap the fiery red-head aimed at his head, the cheeks stinging, burning into a colour known as rosy apple red.

"You've hurt him, you bastard, and he didn't even do anything to you! He was unconscious! And you're not even meant to be here anyway, you son of a bitch!" roared the girl, swinging her hand down for another slap. Her nails were manicured and painted lilac, and it'd sure as she was standing there hurt when she scraped them down his face. Maybe they'd even draw blood…

Kairi didn't have a morbid fascination with the stuff like Naminé, who oftentimes would watch live footage of liver transplants and blood transfusions on TV whilst curled up on the sofa cradling a bag of popcorn and a can of coke when nothing else good was on (sometimes with her weird, gothy, pierced, arsty friends from that lonerville looserland school of hers), but she wouldn't mind watching Riku stagger about with red rivulets coursing down his cheeks.

Riku managed to catch her oncoming hand, however, and diverted it away from his face by means of his 'manly' muscles.

"What do you mean, hurt him for no reason? If he's in my girlfriend's bedroom then I have a fucking good reason to beat him senseless – don't look at me like that, Kairi, he's fine. We're both fine, he just slammed into me and knocked himself up against a wardrobe. Stupid bugger."

"I told you to keep away!" sobbed Kairi, hysterical, snatching her arm back from Riku and bending down in front of Sora. Yes, he was fine, she could tell that now – his eyelids were fluttering and he was attempting to help himself up and nurse a bruise the size of Bavaria stuck crudely to the side of his head, but that wasn't the point. He could've been hurt. Horribly hurt. It could've turned into one of those blood-soaked traumas live from the hospital in Hollow Bastion Naminé liked to watch with 'Larxene' and 'Saïx' and other such scary friends who's habits involved wearing eyeliner, swearing at fat people and listening to songs about people who wore eyeliner and swore at fat people. "I told you! You've upset me and Naminé one time too many and now you go and hurt my friend-"

"Hey! I'm not the one so ashamed of my sister that I pretend she doesn't even exist! You don't care about her at all, Kai, you're just using it as an excuse to get rid of me! You're so fucking ashamed you go to a completely different school at the other end of the city in order to get away from her!"

"You don't understand anything!!! You don't know what it's like being a twin! When we were little everybody acted like we were one person, they never even bothered to tell us apart! Even the teachers! They just said 'oh, twin, would you mind handing out rulers for our English test? And would the other one pass out the paper?'. We may have looked the same but we were different on the inside, but nobody paused to figure that out! Nobody! Nobody! We got so sick of it we changed completely – Nami grew her hair and I dyed mine! We tried to look as different as possible and act as different as possible so people would actually bother to get to know us! We went to separate schools so we could be treated as whole people, not just halves! Not just twins. We never told our friends about the other because we didn't want them to know in case the whole primary school thing happened again and we'd have to move and start afresh as separate people again just like last time! But despite all this I still love Naminé, we're still sisters, and I'm just about sick of you barging around and making everything a misery! You think I'm ashamed of my sister? I'm not ashamed! I'd have loved for us to stay together but, quite frankly, we couldn't! It would have driven us insane. It wouldn't have worked because when you're a twin you have no freedom. You have no personality. You have no nothing. We wanted our lives. This was the price we had to pay. Separation."

Riku stood there, flabbergasted at Kairi's explosion of words and phrases, watching as she tried to help Sora up.

"So now you know. And if you dare annoy me or Naminé or Sora – who had nothing to do with this at all – then I'll kick your ass from here to Hollow Bastion general hosp-"

And then they were cut off, by means of gothy blonde girl tumbling rather ungraciously through the window, head first, bottle of banana milkshake cradled in one hand and a rather sheepish expression on her face.

"How long were you stuck to the drainpipe listening?" asked Kairi, raising an eyebrow.

Naminé attempted a devil-may-care smile, although the overall expression was ruined somewhat by the grimace of pain attempting to seep through her mask, as she dusted herself off and picked imaginary lint and dustbunnies of her clothes. "Oh… Um… Not too long? Ehehe…" she giggled nervously, hugging the drink close to her chest as if it were a child's cuddle blanket or a float tossed to a drowning non-swimmer at the deep end of the pool. "If you don't mind I'll go n-"

"No," Kairi smiled a sweet little smile. "You may be my sister and I may love you, but that doesn't mean I can't be really, really, really pissed off at you 'cause you did a crap job keeping my guest safe and you didn't put your mad ex on a lead."

"I… Er… Oops?"

Sora's head hurt an awful, awful lot, and he knew it wasn't all down to banging it on the wardrobe. It was like trying to follow the plot of a soap opera.

In fact, he was finding it hard trying to separate Kairi's life from a soap opera at that exact moment of time.

"Look, Sora…" Kairi sighed, seated on one of her parent's chic, expensive sofas in their chic, expensive living room. The sigh was partly due to fatigue (cleaning up after a wild raving party, putting the furniture back in place, wiping sick stains off the aspidistras in the front garden, placing all bottles of beer back into the correct cupboards and then locking your sister and her crazy ex-boyfriend in the bathroom and refusing to let them out until they'd sorted the whole sordid relationship out can do that to you) and partly due to shame. Shame at her family affairs and awful party and managing to drag Sora down into it.

"I'm really sorry. You came here to have a good time, and instead you ended up getting knocked out and beaten up and a crazy guy with a bunch of roses. I guess it could've have been much 'fun'," Kairi sighed again, looking at the brunet who seemed tremendously at ease on her sofa as if he'd spent his whole life with a packet of chips slobbing out in front of a TV screen.

"No. It doesn't matter, Kai. I don't like parties anyway. This was a lot more interesting," Sora laughed as he attempted to reassure her, smile spread out across his face about a mile wide.

And it was all worth it (even the scary being-attacked-by-psycho-with-bunch-of-flowers bit) because here he was now, seated next to the crush of his life on a sofa. And sofas are grand, are sofas – he'd grown up on a sofa and it was where he felt most at home.

"Thanks," giggled Kairi. "I'm glad. And I'm glad I got to know you, Sora. I always saw you at school hanging around with Selph and the other loud girl. And you sat next to me in Chem. And… Well… You looked so nice, what with your smile. That's why I remembered you. You were always smiling. And I wanted to talk to you, I really did, but I was scared. I was worried you wouldn't like me. A lot of people don't."

"That's not true, Kairi! You're the most popular girl in the whole of Oblivion High! Everyone's falling about your feet. They are, to coin a popular phrase, your bitches! They all love you."

"No they don't… There are a lot of people who don't. All the girls who bitch about me behind my back and spray nasty things on the walls of the toilets. I've read them. I know what they say. They think I'm a whore."

"But you're not!"

"Well, I didn't want to talk to you because I was worried you'd think so too. No people write nasty things about you on toilet walls. Everyone loves you, Sora, even if they don't know you. Your smile and your jokes… You're so happy. People like being happy. Even scary gothic people like Naminé."

"Well, that's funny. 'Cause I always liked you, too, even though I didn't know you. And it wasn't just because of your skirts or hair or anything like that. It was because, beneath all the makeup and parties, you seemed like a nice girl. A really nice girl. And you are, Kai."

"Thanks…" Kairi smiled softly, leaning in closer to the brunet. "You know… It's getting kind of late… Do you want to go home now? I mean, you don't have too… You can stay over if you'd rather, 'cause it's getting pretty dark out and you might not want to walk home. My parents won't mind, they'll be away all weekend. And you can sleep on the couch."

"You know what? That sounds nice," Sora spoke softly, moving his face towards to meet Kairi's, brushing his lips with her strawberry-flavoured ones.

It was just like how he'd imagined it only so much better. You can't wrap your arms around a flitting fairytale or pull an imaginary ghost-of-a-person up against your chest and neither can you smell its fruity shampoo or taste its lip gloss. You can't cradle fantasies in your arms or run your fingers through a dream's hair. But Kairi wasn't a dream. Not this Kairi, not this time.

This wasn't a daydream. It was the real girl behind the skirts and the dress and the boys and the parties, the one Sora had managed to see all this time, concealed behind the badass attitude and make-up.

And it was much better than he could ever of thought of.

It was just like fireworks.

"Do you think they're going to let us out?" queried Riku for the thirtieth time after explaining to Naminé that he was not going out with Lulu Tiso and he never had been and yes, he really had been helping her with Biology studies after school not because she looked totally hot in her dress comprised of belts, but because she was an old friend and her mother made some mean strawberry tiramisu.

"No," sighed the blonde in melancholy tones, staring up through the glossy opaque bathroom window like a lubberly young maiden languishing in a tall tower, couting off the days on her calendar until prince charming would ride along on his snowy white horse and whisk her away. The whole regal effect was spoilt somewhat by the toilet in the background that smelt strongly of something nobody wanted to identify but what the heck. She was trying. "They're going to keep us in here until we turn into skeletons and feed us tuna mayonnaise through the gap at the bottom of the door."

"We'll go crazy. I could turn into a cannibal and try to eat you, mistaking you for a piece of tiramisu! Oh, woe is me!"

Naminé grinned, leaning against the bathroom wall with her fingers linked behind her back.

"Hey, Riku. I'm sorry I overreated over the whole Lulu thing. It's just that all the boys like her at my school, and she's also got those…" Here she made round motions at the front of her chest, seeming to indicate 'balloons'. "And… Yeah… When I saw you two together I didn't know what to think. I'm just paranoid, I guess. And sorry…"

"Well, I'm sorry too. I acted like a jackass."

"You could make it up to me now…" Naminé trailed off, voice hopeful.

"What? In your bathroom?"

"Like I give a damn."

And they all lived happily ever after.

a.n: ahh! But tis not all over yet! Find out what happened to Yuffie, Selphie, Axel & Roxas in the epilogue xP. Annndd sorry for the long time it took to update! I hope this chappie makes up fer it/\/\