"Protective" and the general concept of "Protective" is completely copyright Orin Drake 2006. All characters contained within and terms like "Organization XIII" are owned by Square-Enix and Disney.

Background: Just a little bitty mental image I got earlier. Had to write it down.

Protective
by Orin Drake

She was livid. Clearly so. Her delicate features were the only soft things about her--those narrowed eyes, sharp look and balled fists screamed volumes.

Sora gulped. Riku dared to take a quick step backward. ...Oops.

"What did you do?" Kairi hissed at them both, barely contained.

Very subtly, Sora changed his stance to make a quick break for it. Or so he hoped it was subtle. He was pretty sure he would need to quite literally run for his life. With a deep breath and every single ounce of courage he had in him, he dared to ask, "What do you mean?"

She didn't even wait for his whole question, fists clenched impossibly tighter. "I mean, why did my suddenly pale boyfriend just show up at my house and apologize for not being able to see me anymore before he ran away?"

"Oh, that..." The gears in Riku's head were spinning double-time--and still coming up short of an explanation that would keep them both alive. "He's crazy."

How Sora managed to keep his palm from coming up and slapping his own forehead, he would never understand. "What he means is... um... see--"

"Is there any reason why you had to scare off the third boyfriend this year?" Kairi interrupted.

"We didn't scare him off!" Sora defended.

"Yeah." Riku jumped in. "We were just... giving him dating tips."

"Dating tips." The girl nearly snarled.

Both boys took another mild step back. Sora cleared his throat and attempted to think fast. "Look, he just... he wasn't right for you."

Kairi's lips formed a tight line as she stared down those increasingly frightened blue eyes. "And how did you make that assumption this time?"

Riku knew Sora was in trouble. He would have to do the unthinkable--blurt out the truth. "He's a nose-picker."

The silence that followed was quite possibly the most frightening thing the boys had ever lived through. There was absolutely no reaction on their friend's part, not so much as a blink as she attempted to absorb the information.

What could have been either minutes or hours later, Kairi finally let her fists unclench before letting out her breath in a slow sigh. "Okay, fine. I guess that's valid."

"Yeah." Sora tried to be comforting as his heart still pounded with fight-or-flight (mostly flight) adrenaline. "You don't want a bunch of little nose-pickers, do you?"

Finally the girl cracked a smile--but slapped him perhaps a little too hard in the arm. "Next time will you both just tell me before you run another one off, please?"

"We've only ever had good reasons." Riku assured, feeling a little better about taking a step forward--both to comfort Kairi and to protect Sora from another hit on the arm he was obviously trying not to rub and whimper about. "You can't date a guy that keeps greeting people by pointing at them and saying, 'Heeeeyyy', either."

She rolled her eyes and sighed again, turning to go home. "Alright, we've been over that."

"Or one who doesn't like ice cream." Sora added quietly. "What kind of a freak would rather eat frozen yogurt?"

"You have made your points, thank you."