Author/s: Skitts et Lamatikah –two fingered salute-
Summary: They were never a perfect family, but they always tried. Even if trying wasn't good enough… AkuRoku .:RikuxSoraxKairi:.
Disclaimer: If I said I owned Kingdom Hearts, would you really believe me? But, if I said I owned Kingdom of Hearts… that would be something else… -shufty eyes- Does anyone, anyone at all, know what I'm talking about?
Full Circle
●◦●----------------------Xx
--Chapter 2—
x-Freaky Family-x
●◦●----------------------Oo
Sora had been very excited that morning. Some people thought it was because he was always happy. Others thought it was because he was an attention seeker. But everyone else knew that it was because there were going to be four new students who'd be joining the school.
Some of the big tall people with red hair and eyeliner (to be precise) were looking forward to the new kids coming so they could bash them around... or find any cute girls.
Other students, also with red hair and eyeliner (to be very precise) just wanted to find a new friend amongst the rabble that would be coming to the school.
Other students just didn't care at all and were just trying to get their stupid little best friend to, "Calm DOWN, Sora!"
Sora sank back into his chair. His grin didn't fade in the tiniest though – he was thoroughly content with life, the universe, and all other things his Physics teacher tried to tell him that he didn't understand.
Maybe it was the pancakes he'd had for breakfast, maybe it was the LOVE in the air (Inanimate Physics teacher in Background: "What love? All I see is BLAH BLAH BLAH!" Riku: "Where the hell did you come from?") or maybe it was the fact Sora had been sniffing glue before school, which he hadn't anyway.
As the physics teacher 'blah'ed on about some soap that could kill you... or something along those lines, a knock could be heard at the door. At this moment, the soap dropped from the teacher's thoroughly gloved hand and fell onto the front row boff's head and then bounced off their head and onto the floor.
As the headteacher, and six other people along with him trundled into the classroom, the first thing they saw was a girl running round in little circles screaming bloody murder with a silver haired kid at the back laughing, and his friend beside him was giggling a little nervously as he watched the girl clutch her head.
And... wait... wasn't that...
"Sora...?" Sora turned at the sound of his name, and his eyes brightened as he saw his cousin. He grinned, rushing up to his dear cousin and hugging him. Roxas grimaced. He guessed Sora wasn't the most popular kid at school with his personality and touchy-feely nature.
As the kid Sora had been next to watched Sora's friendly nature depart from him onto this other boy he didn't know, his eyes narrowed.
Roxas bit his lip, "Sora... Sora, get off, everyone's looking..." he whispered. Sora looked up and grinned. He rubbed the top of Roxas's hair with his knuckles.
"Don't worry, Roxie! They won't get jealous! And if they do, then I'll give them a hug after!" Roxas blinked. That wasn't exactly what he had meant, but if that's what Sora said he meant, that's what he must have meant.
"Yes... Sora... Yes..." he muttered, blushing slightly from Sora's death-like hug. That boy was still glaring at him, and it was starting to scare Roxas somewhat. Like that time when Rikku went parading round in just a towel and a Spiderman mask when Meg had stupidly let her go to the cinema with far too much munny for candy.
"Follow me, Roxas!" cried Sora.
"Erm... Sora... I'm walking round the school, I'm not meant to go in the lessons..." Sora ignored his cousin's pleas and instead kept on carrying him off to meet the kid who was ... still giving Roxas the evils. Roxas turned round and curved his mouth to form a clear 'help me' shape.
Rikku paid no attention however and hollered back at him, "Go, Roxie! You made friends!"
Rikku didn't know Sora since his family hadn't gone to another family reunion ever since that one day; they had left shortly after Meg had.
Roxas shook his head and instead tried to catch his parent's attention. However, these two were too preoccupied watching the girl who was now screaming in agony writhe and squirm over the floor.
He spluttered in protest, but instead got pulled to sit down next to... that boy... And by then, Roxas knew that all the kids in the room had grown tired of watching their peer 'die' and had their eyes fixed onto Sora and this new kid.
Roxas sat in the seat that had been pushed beneath him and tapped his fingers carefully, his eyes shifting nervously around the room.
"Roxie, this is Riku, and Riku, this is Roxie!" squealed Sora happily.
As Riku glared at Roxas some more, Roxas could hear his mother shouting his name as the background noise of an ambulance could be heard. He jumped up and ran after it. Sora merely shrugged and sat back down next to Riku.
As he laid back in the stool, clinging onto the rungs on the legs, he stared blankly ahead.
"Sora, who was that?" asked Riku, slowly and carefully.
"That was my crazy cousin, Roxie. My mum and dad don't like his family so I haven't seen him for ageeeeeeeees and now he's here. Heh, he's got a big family now. I remember my mummy saying that they were stupid and the family was a big disgrace and that I should never talk to Roxie ever again or he'll stick my head down a toilet again, but I told her that when he did that it was fun!" Sora mumbled as the ambulance troop took away the girl who had now probably passed out from the pain, the class were asked who her closest friend was and Sora stood up to go with Kairi.
Riku didn't notice this however and instead carried on thinking about Sora hugging Roxas. "Incest..." he muttered under his breath. Then, noticing Sora had gone he slammed his fist on the table, "Damn you, Kairi..."
●◦●----------------------Oo
"Of course, our school is the best," said the headmaster/bus driver (budget cut), Cid. The old man turned to usher the group of people into the nearest classroom he saw. Turning around to salute the happy ambulance people who were romping down the corridor, he sighed with relief - they hadn't seen that. Though their school was the best, it had a high teenage mortality. Well, that was the sixth kid that week, and it was Monday. The kid was all wrapped up like a pizza on a stretcher, to be delivered to the friendly local hospital that was conveniently located next to the school. Nobody needed to know about that, though.
"Woah... This sure is a classy ... class-room... Heh... Forgive the pun..." said Hercules, laughing, LAUGHING LIKE A FOOL! Well, he was a fool. How convenient, how fitting, how touché, as it were.
All the kids assembled around random tables turned to look at the big freak and his big family.
"Well," said Cid, clearing his throat and sounding oddly like a bullfrog. "This would be the Technology room – Tech 4. Today the 10th grade class are making ..." Cid bent down to examine a pile of wood and nails sat on one kid's desk. The kid was a rather short girl with dark hair, and she was giggling as she pointed at her 'unique' take on making a shelf.
"It seems like the tenth grade class are making lovely ... er ... birdbaths..."
"That's a shelf, Cid."
Rikku giggled as she flipped her blonde hair over one shoulder and skipped over towards the girl who had corrected Cid, the one whose table looked like a bomb site and made the shelf that looked like a birdbath.
All the boys were watching her.
"And, class, this is Rikku..." said Cid, producing a piece of paper from his pocket. Hercules had given him all the details of his family, their ages and whatnot, but now Cid was finding it very hard to read the paper. It wasn't even paper – Hercules had written the details on a piece of toilet roll in green wax crayon. "This is Rikku ... Ha- He- Ho- I'm sorry, I can't read this terrible childish writing."
Hercules hung his head in shame and Meg gave him a quick smile.
"Please excuse my gormless husband. He went to one of them special sports schools with people with basketballs for brains."
"Hello!" trilled Rikku brightly, as the dark-haired girl on the other side of the tech table smiled at her. The girl had a chisel, a chainsaw, a hammer and numerous other clubby/stabby/pointy objects within reach, but Rikku was never one to be intimidated by weapons of mass destruction.
"Hi. I'm Yuffie and I'm making a SHELF!" cried the girl in merriment, stabbing her shelf with the chisel. She succeeded in making it collapse ... even more ... than it already was...
"Here, let me help!" said Rikku, as she pulled Yuffie's disaster towards her.
A cloud of dust flew around the shelf, as Rikku's hands seem to multiply. Roughly 0.82 seconds later a perfectly constructed shelf seemed to magically appear in place of the crappy one. And thus, from the clouds of dust, the grand continent of Atlantis rose up from the sea and started distributing shelves to needy children.
"Wow..." said Yuffie, a grin on her face. "I'm gonna be getting rich A's for this! Your my friend... Rikku!"
Roxas scowled, scuffing his shoes against the surface of the tech room floor, not caring if they got covered in sawdust. He didn't like this school. He'd barely been there an hour, and already he fit in just as well as a sore thumb on the hand of somebody with four normal fingers.
Rikku was in her element, chatting to the dark-haired girl as if they'd been separated from birth. Everybody would be tripping over themselves to ask her to sit with them at lunch.
If Roxas knew how to make a shelf, maybe he'd have a best friend already, but noooo, Roxas's special talent was ... that ... he didn't have one ...
Yeah.
"Can we go see the other kids now?" asked Mindy.
"I want to show them my drawings," chipped in Naminé, acting for the first time in her life like a real child. Not a porcelain dolly, but somebody who wanted to make friends and go to slumber parties and paint toenails.
"Of course," said Cid in his gruff voice, taking one last sweeping look around the technology room, as if trying to see if anybody had been clubbed around the head with the mallets and stuffed under the brazing hearth. It wouldn't be the first time – and wouldn't be the last.
Satisfied the limbs of any dead children were not peeking out from under the numerous dangerous whizzy/spinny/stabby-stabby machines, he nodded his head in approval. Everybody in the class had been waiting with baited breath for the almighty 'nodded head of approval' and once it had been given they all sighed and slumped their shoulders.
Tidus absent-mindedly attempted to kick the tell-tale limb of dead creature under the sanding machine, whistling.
"Come on, Rikku," said Meg, beckoning for her to follow them on their happy little way out of the class.
Rikku turned to look at Yuffie, and shrugged.
"Can I stay here for the rest of the day, please? Yuffie can show me around and I'll have a head-start on everyone cause I can get my books and timetable and all that jazz today!"
"Well..."
Rikku pulled her puppy-dog eyes.
In the Rikku handbook to prevent accidents, pulling puppy-dog eyes was one of the best ways to get what you want, right up there with screaming Hakuna Matata non-stop at the top of your lungs and playing tennis in the greenhouse.
"Of course she can," said Cid warmly. "She's fitting in like a gem – our school needs more children like her, what with her shelf constructing skills. The art of high-speed-shelf-building is being dreadfully overlooked in these modern, hip and funky times."
Nobody bothered to tell Cid that nowadays you could just go to the local DIY store and pick up a shelf on the way home from school. Nobody wanted to burst his happy bubble.
●◦●----------------------Oo
Roxas scowled as the last of his sisters went into a classroom to actually spend the rest of the day there.
Every one of them fit in somehow. Except for him. The odd piece of the jigsaw.
Naminé plodded into her room, laden with her pictures as proof of her new-found popularity. The kids in her class seemed enraptured by the colourful paintings.
And Naminé was happy with that.
Mindy had gone off with some kid called Shoe and a girl called Lenny ... or something. Roxas could remember it like it was yesterday, even though it had only been ten minutes ago.
The day his Mindy had grown up (the day she had found people as crazy as she herself, claiming they had multiple brothers and sisters all called Tidus and Yuna)...
Roxas scowled, they were all gonna be popular. Even though he wasn't. It was all his fault they were moving, and he hadn't even wanted to. It just proved how little his parents knew or cared about him.
"Well, that concludes our tour, so... Rock, are you sure you wouldn't prefer to go to your class?" Roxas shook his head. Cid shrugged, "Well... I'll be seeing ya'll. Bye."
And with that he just left them, stranded in the desert with no food or water, only a weird physics teacher in the background, who suddenly disappeared in a whirl of snow... in the desert. A tumbleweed blew past signifying nothing interesting happened as Meg, Hercules and Roxas walked over to their car. Which was about four feet away.
"Well, off we go, back home to-"
"Mom, don't say its name. I hate it. You know I do..." commented Roxas, sulking in the back of their seven-seater. It was probably only the second time he'd been able to sit there in the two years that they'd owned the car because of all the other kids in the family.
"Sorry..."
●◦●----------------------Oo
"Rikku! Sit next to me!"
"Over here, 'Ku!"
Ku?
"Y0, wh55up, 5!+ h3r3, 700000001!"
As much as she hated to, Rikku had to very kindly flat-out refuse the invitations to sit at Tidus's and Yuna's tables. And she wouldn't have sat at the ... orange ... thing's (more formally known as Wakka's) table if she was forced at musket-point from some old lady sat in a rocking chair with horns on her head. Even through his verbal speech she could hear the N00b-ish numbers seeping into his conversation. Just by looking at the abomination sat with his followers picking at a tongue sandwich she could feel her IQ dropping.
Rikku sat her orange (oh shudder) plastic tray down at Yuffie's and table, just as she'd promised.
"H3110 9uy5..." Rikku started, before slapping her forehead roughly with her hand to gain control over her speech again. The rumours she'd heard were true – so much as looking at Wakka turned you into 'one of them'.
Yuffie shot a rather nervous glance at the orange table, where Wakka stood with a crown on his head, looking around at the assembled students who were worshipping the ground he sat on, no matter how peculiar it smelled.
"Don't you feel sorry for them?" asked Rikku, pointing at one small girl who seemed to have hypnosis rings radiating in her eyes, as she gazed upon the evil Sith Lord, Darth Wakka. Wakka Vader. The ultimate evil villain in all the Destiny Islands School sagas.
"They're beyond saving. They've been in the presence of the Dark Lord too long that they've become one of him. As a good Lion King song hath taught us, they are one."
It was true.
Rikku could vaguely hear Wakka conducting some sort of speech to the poor misguided souls at his table, that sounded an awful lot like: "7h3r3 15 n0 900d 0r 3v!1, 7h3r3 15 0n1y h!r 4nd 7h053 700 w3 70 533 1+." Rough translation: "There is no good or evil, there is only hair, and those too weak to seek it."
Whilst the girls had been caught up in their mad little shudder-fest that looking at Wakka generally induced they had failed to notice that somebody else had taken a seat beside Rikku, folding up long and gangly limbs to actually fit their legs under the table.
"Damned kiddie-tables... They pay no heed to the average tall guy..." growled the ketchup-haired newcomer, his legs banging into Rikku's and knees pushing uncomfortably against the bottom of the table.
"Hey, hey, hey!" cried Rikku, before Yuffie could even introduce them. She was busy pin-wheeling her arms around in true Rikku fashion. She looked cool when she did it, but if anyone else did that they ended up looking like a spazz trying to flag down a taxi. "I haven't seen you yet."
"I don't know why not..." said Yuffie, picking at her salt-sprinkled fries. She needed to keep her carbohydrate levels up so she could annoy the hell out of the freaks in Maths after lunch. "He's in our tech class and sort of sort of sticks out like a pile of rubble in a fruit bowl."
Rikku didn't bother telling Yuffie that, for a large period of time, when they had been living in Olympus seeing rubble in the fruit bowl had been absolutely normal. Hercules claimed he had been renovating the house and left cement mixers left right and centre and bags of sand in the washing machine. Oh, jolly days.
"Maybe I couldn't see him because of that weird inanimate Physics teacher..." said Rikku.
"What weird Physics teacher?"
"You know, the one over there," said Rikku, pointing towards Wakka's table, where a weird inanimate Physics teacher was busy doing the conga on top of the table. As soon as Rikku pointed him out, however, the teacher's skin turned a gradient of yellow and orange and giggled in a funny heliumated way, flying onto Wakka's previously bald head. Wakka grinned evilly, and pressed a finger to his lips, mouthing: '7h!5 15 0ur 7!++13 53 r3+'. Translation: 'This is our little secret'.
"You know what, this is getting silly," mumbled Rikku.
"Anyway, this here is Axel-ol'-boy!" cried Yuffie jubilantly.
It seemed like the most fitting thing to say after that statement was to propose a toast and scream 'champagne, champagne for everyone!'. But as Rikku had no toast and no champagne, she merely settled for an thousand-mega-watt Rikku smile.
"Hello, Axel!" Champagne, champagne for everyone! "I'm Rikku. I'm new here. Hehe. Nobody knows my last name because Cid couldn't read Hercules's terrible childish writing!"
The one known as 'Axel' smiled at the blonde girl who was bouncing around in her seat, with some fries in one hand. She was cute, like a little kid.
"Axel's my boyfriend!" squealed Yuffie in her happy little way, tossing fries into the air and attempting to catch them, seal-like, in her mouth.
After about the thousandth attempt, she actually managed to win her little game, catching one of the fries in her mouth.
If choking on a falling fry and then regurgitating it back out onto the table counts as 'winning'.
Champagne, Champagne for everyone!
●◦●----------------------Oo
As arranged, the two sisters met outside the school, by the carpark, which was a pretty dangerous place to go. But, nonetheless, they still stood there until the third and final sister would get there. They would pay no heed to the bloodthirsty hollers of drunken drivers as they swerved in the way of kids who would go flying here, there and everywhere.
And Rikku was getting tired of waiting for Mindy. She looked at Naminé who was tapping her foot, staring at a kid the other side of the road.
She looked up at Rikku and gestured for her to lower her head so she could whisper something to her older sister. Rikku bent down, tucking her hair behind her ear, "Yes?"
"Rikku... Can I go to Denzel's house, please?" Rikku chuckled, and waved her away. Naminé skipped over to the boy across the road, who grinned and took her hand.
Rikku sighed deeply, waiting for Mindy to come. She was getting so bored of waiting for that little sulky looking creature to appear out of the school gates. And so far, it hadn't.
After about another half an hour she saw Mindy come out from the park across the road. Rikku's blood temperature rose.
"MINDY! GET HERE NOW!" she screeched. Mindy pouted, slouching as she crossed the busy road to get to her angry sister, "MINDY! WHERE WERE YOU GOING?! YOU ARE SO GROUNDED! So, no pouting, no sad faces... and no glaring either!" Mindy sulked off. Probably to make scary plans on how to find her long-lost siblings with some other 'friends'. The ones she had been walking around with all day, the ones who had their arms linked with her's. Rikku shuddered, she didn't like the look of those two... that boy had a maniacal twitch in his eye like he wanted to destroy the world with a gigantic piece of machina called Vegnagun... and that girl looked like she'd been shot... but then again... Mindy constantly looked like the two of them, and Rikku had gotten used to it. She could get used to the other two freaky kids as well, if they were her friends.
She swayed a little, momentarily forgetting what she was doing, before finally remembering the tiny, minuscule problem she had. Namely, how was she going to get home.
She slapped her head, and wondered if she could still ask any of her new friends for a lift, but then decided that this would be silly as they were probably all already gone. She had been waiting for Mindy a long time. So, she started on her way through the gargantuan car park before stopping at the last automobile left in there, her last chance for a ride home. She didn't to stoop so low as to call her mother for a ride. Imagine what people would say if they saw her speeding away from school in a 'funky' seven-seater people carrier.
"No way..." she muttered, as she examined the last vehicle. It was defiantly a better option than going home in a people carrier. "NO WAY!" she screamed, "WOW! Who does this belong to? Oh my God! I've got to have a ride on it! I hafta- Oh... hello, Axel..." she nodded at Axel as he moved forward to face the motorbike Rikku had been gawking at. He grinned.
"You like it?" he asked, his grin turning into a smirk. Rikku nodded her head as hard as she could before it would fall off. While other little girls had daydreams of riding around in horse-drawn carriages or snow-white limos, she'd always dreamed of going on a motorbike. Going fast. She was a speed-demon, which was the main reason why she hadn't got a driver's license.
"Y-Yours?" gulped Rikku, staring into its shiny surface and wishing it belonged to her. Axel threw his head back and laughed.
"Yeah, you wanna ride?" he asked, getting on the bike. He held out his hand for Rikku to take. She took it a little sheepishly.
"Won't Yuffie mind?" Axel laughed again.
He turned round to look at her, "You're such a worrier aren't you?! Is Yuffie here?" Rikku looked around, and no, Yuffie did not appear to be there... but that weird physics teacher was... and so was some weird shiny, (oh so shiny) silky (oh so silky) hair. "She's probably at home... with Leon..." Axel bent his head down.
"Is Leon her brother?" Rikku asked, innocently.
Axel looked up at the darkening sky, "Nope... but oh well... You better hold on tight! I go fast!" he smirked as Rikku gripped him round the waist, cursing silently how skinny he was.
"I like fast," she smirked back.
●◦●----------------------Oo
The weird lump of silver hair quivering behind the bushes swore violently in all the colours of the wind as he watched his only salvation from the hell-hole speeding away.
He normally got a ride home from school with Sora's mother, but the dozy brunet was at the hospital with Kairi after she had been attacked with the killer soap.
Riku sat watching Axel's motorbike speeding away, over the hill, across the bridge and over the state border, slamming his first against a mound of earth. And, as the sound of the revving bike faded away, he cast a nervous glance around the car-park. He could just go and try to find Sora in the hospital as it was next-door to the school, but the snag was that Riku was terrified from shifting from his position, which was currently in a holly bush, and Sora had most likely called his mother and gone home already, anyway.
The poor boy shivered as the wind whipped around him, stinging his arms and face and the red marks the evil prickly bush had made. He had heard several stories of pink-scythe-wielding maniacs who prowled around school car-parks long after the students had gone home. They only lived to murder those poor unfortunate souls who had no mobile phones or rides home.
Tap.
Riku's head twisted around frantically in search of the source of the noise. He couldn't see anybody, but saw a quick blur of a white lab coat disappear around the corner.
Stalker Physics teachers now, was it?
"This is getting ridiculous..."
A/N: Riku's gonna get EATEN by a demon Physics teacher! I wonder what will become of him.
Anyway, Axel may seem a little OOC, but later on he will prove he is not. He is just being nice to Yuffie because he's going out with her and he's being nice to Rikku because everybody loves Rikku. To everybody else he will be evil.