My World
Chap 11 – Sleeping Serendipity
A few days of looking for a woman dressed up as a clown fish had led Sora, Riku and Kairi all physically and mentally drained. They had thought they had gotten a lead – the real deal – but it looked to be only a dead end and a waste of time.
They had hoped and prayed that this would be the end of their research, to finally reap what they sowed, and show the worlds that they weren't incompetent hoodlums. But as the leads kept turning up blanks and their notes began coming up negative – their hopes began to die.
Sora fervently scoured the lands to find such a woman, and continued to do so even when all answers pointed to a blind alley. Kairi once again fell into her depressive sleeping spell and was currently snoozing on her bed while Sora was looking through his notes to find something they MUST'VE missed and Riku nonchalantly was leaning against a wall watching him work.
Sora could feel his stare boring into the back of his head, he felt uncomfortable. He also felt a little bubble of anger slowly building up inside him as he noticed Riku slacking off in his work. He could forgive Kairi for slipping off into sleep, she was an innocent and delicate thing and she needed all the time away from this case as she possibly could so as to not lose her carefree touch. But Riku – Riku could NOT be easily dismissed. Sora knew that the letters they've been getting have been picking at Riku's nerves – everyone in the castle could see that – but it didn't mean he had to completely disown his responsibilities. In fact, they should only fuel him further to try and catch the criminal. At first, he saw Riku's devil may care attitude as only his way of getting some relaxation time, but soon, after constantly watching him do it over and over again it was annoying him to no end, he had to put a stop to it. He put all his papers together, not as neatly as Kairi probably would've made her pile, but he understood his own mess and crossly looked over his shoulder at Riku.
"So what are you doing?" Sora's voice was laced with annoyance.
"Ah, nothin'," He gave him a smug look, "You know you're so cute when you're mad."
Sora furrowed his brow. Riku was mocking him! Of all the nerve! He quickly turned to face him and marched himself towards him, back straight, shoulders stiff and mouth ready to give him a piece of his mind!
"Look here!" Sora pointed an accusing finger directly into Riku's face, his smug exterior gave way into his own annoyance as Sora continued to talk, "I'm trying to do everything I can to stop this – this – LUNATIC! And you're just standing around wasting time! So what if a few letters of critique dampened our scenery? Deal with it and move on!"
Sora rarely ever talked so crossly to someone like that before, in fact, as far as he can remember, he has NEVER done such a thing. Now that his feelings were all let out, and he can see clearly past his haze of anger, he now thought that perhaps yelling at Riku wasn't quite the right way to deal with the situation. But he couldn't take it back now, it was already out there, and he blamed all the rigorous work that seemed to be chewing away at the logical part of his mind.
Riku batted Sora's hand away from his face, if Sora was going to start this business, then surely he will be the one to end it.
"Letters of critique? Is that what you're calling them? More like threat letters sent by the very people we are working so hard to protect! They don't understand the mental and physical strain this puts us through! How we go without sleep or even food – for sometimes days! And they treat us as a disposable lot simply because we're younger than most of them! They don't appreciate the effort we put in for them! The time! And I say I'm not doing any more of their work until I get some respect from them! Do you here me? RESPECT!" He had started shouting and when all he needed to say was said he resumed his casual composure. "How the mighty do forget."
Nothing was said between the two, they were both highly affected by the letters they were receiving, and each had their own unique way of dealing with it. However, Sora wished Riku's methods were more productive than aggressive. And he was hoping that now that both of their pent up anger had been spent; he can now try to steer his friend towards a direction of a more righteous path rather than vengeful. And right when Sora was about to share these ideas with his comrade, a piercing scream diverted both of their attentions to the cause of such a ruckus.
Kairi was sitting up in her bed now.
Beads of sweat were running down her face, her cheeks were flushed, and her skin uncommonly pale, she almost looked like a drowned corpse. Her eyes were opened wide with fright and her fingers were tightly grasping onto the thin sheet of blanket she was covering herself with. She was muttering something under her breath as she uneasily rocked herself back and forth. Sora was the first one to reach her and hear her inaudible words.
"It's there – it's always been there." She said in an eerie tone – it didn't sound like her voice at all, Sora gently placed his hand on her back and leaned in for a hug to try and calm her nerves.
"It's there." Without taking a notice to Sora's comfort she pushed him out of her way and got out of her bed and bolted toward the notes Sora had been looking at earlier.
"W-what are you talking about?" Sora called after her; a little bit put off by the fact that Kairi had so rudely pushed him away.
"There!" She pulled out the crime photographs and scattered them across the floor.
Riku slowly crept up towards Kairi, obviously she wasn't in her right frame of mind to go around screaming in her sleep and then waking up to talk about something being "there". And he was taking extra precaution as he came towards her.
"Now Kairi," Riku said reassuringly, as he stepped ever so much closer to her, "what's there?"
"Look!" She fell to her knees and Riku immediately sprung after her – afraid that she might end up hurting herself in her state of mental lapse, but saw that she was rummaging around through the scattered pictures and picked up the photos that captured the images of the madman's writing.
"I've been having dreams about these riddles." Her sudden madness slowly ebbed, as her voice soothed back to a more normal state – but she still seemed a bit off. Sora moved towards Kairi and Riku and quietly sat in front of her, watching as she fidgeted the pictures around to pick up the ones she needed. She cradled each photo delicately between her fingers as she continued to talk.
"They've haunted me in my sleep, and I didn't know why. Until now." She held the picture up to Sora; Riku had to lean over her to see what she was showing him.
"He's giving us clues, and at first they seemed so random and pointless but, he's been WANTING us to find him." She points to the picture taken at Agrabah, "'I LIKE TO PLAY WITH THINGS THAT LOOK LIKE HUMANS!' the monkey has genetically only one gene differing in their DNA sequence from humans – whom do we know differs from us in one way?" She pauses, as if waiting for an answer.
"The Organization, they're all missing hearts." Sora's eyes widen with Kairi's simple yet spectacularly insightful deduction and grabs the photo from her hand to look at it himself. It all made sense – and the heart being pulled out from his chest – yes, this was the break they were looking for! The keystone they needed to finally capture these vile beings and put this whole thing to rest!
Kairi's hand pulls out another picture, the death that had taken place in Never Never Land. As she was doing all of this, Sora took note on her casualness. In an awkward kind of way, she seemed a little too casual about the ordeal, and not to mention – she had gotten all of this from a dream? That seemed a little too – fortunate – for the likes of even himself who happened upon a few lucky strokes himself in the past.
Had she known all of this all along? And if so, why was she holding back on these ideas from them in the first place?
"The appendix, is a useless part of our body, he marks it with two eights and two aces, H…A…H…A – H is the eighth letter of the alphabet." Riku kneels down beside Kairi and pulls the picture from her hand. "It's a joke; it has no meaning besides to lead you off the trail."
"And why did he do this?" Riku looks at Kairi, then back at the picture he had taken from her.
"Because after this next one," she looks down into her hand at the picture of Flounder, "there were no more messages that needed to be sent." A small cryptic smile creeps onto her face.
"And to think you got all of this from a dream." Riku stated, though it sounded more like a question. He saw a glimpse of the smirk on her face, but it vanished before he could really make an inquiry about it.
"I guess in dreams all the pieces are laid out in front of your eyes a little better." She commented back handedly before moving on. Sora leaned closer to Kairi to see what she had come up with on Flounder's case.
"'HE WRIGGLED LIKE A WORM ON A HOOK', that's a line Ursula said about Tritan, perhaps the criminal; is working with other villain's from the pervious crisis, that's something I'm not sure about." She studies the picture for a moment, and squints, and appears to be a little flustered about what to say after this. Her elusive tone of voice soon began to die away, and the sleepy look in her eyes began to brighten, she seemed more like her normal Kairi self.
"Um, 'Drew HIM On LAND', these are suppose to be one of those, word riddles," Sora could see she was trying to find the right word for these "word riddles" and kindly helped her out.
"Anagrams?" He said smiling at her, she smiled back and nodded, yes, she definitely seemed to back to her perky self and Sora couldn't help but feel his spirits rise as they uncovered the mysteries behind the case as well as gain back a much valued friend.
"Ya, those things," she softly giggled, "thanks." She stared back at the picture, "Well, if ya rearrange the letters a little, ya get – ya get…" Another pause as she contemplated on what it was that "ya get".
"Wonderland." She said as she looked up at Sora and Riku.
Riku looked at the picture and made a face before shaking his head, "No, you can't get Wonderland from that, HIM, is ruining it."
"Hmm, I guess you're right," She made her own face along with him before brightening up again, "A HA! See, the rest of the phrase, it's all capitalized, so they're omitted, the only reason LAND isn't gone is because it's also bold."
Kairi handed over the picture to Riku to look it over and immediately got up and made her way towards a giant computer that sat itself right in the very back corner of the room. Most of their outer-world information came through the computer, and they kept a lot of copies on notes on it. Kairi immediately plopped herself down in front of it and began zooming through all the previous names they had gone over. "And, there's more yet to be revealed!" She stopped and looked over her shoulder at both of the boys, "Well c'mon! We're about to make the final breakthrough!"
Riku and Sora both looked at eachother, dropped everything, and were at Kairi's side in only a fraction of a second.
"We've already looked for people that followed similar gimmicks and riddles as this guy does, but nothing came up!" Riku said as he saw Kairi working her away into cyberspace, passing by all the worlds Sora and himself had already skimmed through more than once.
"That's because you haven't been lookin' in the right place!" Her mouse finally found itself in a different part of the web in which Sora and Riku had never seen before.
"They're different universes out there, with their own worlds," She clicked on a blue link – and it opened up to her a full list of different worlds and universes across the entire galaxy. She opened up a search engine and typed in the words Smiling Toxin, "you guys were simply looking in the wrong universe."
A/N:
A reviewer stated in the last chapter that Chap.11 was so good he thought Chap.12 was going to be a let down. Well - hopefully not too much of a let down xD. I do love Chap.11 - and it was suppose to be climatic for hte fact we now know Joker weilds magical powers now - but do not despair dear readers! More twists have yet to come!
In any case - just you know classic characterizatiobns here - if I was going to categorize Riku and Sora into comic book heroes - I would say Riku was Batman and Sora was Superman. And I think you'd all pretyt much agree with me - I can see Sora and Riku getting themselves into many arguements based on their different personalities but at the end of the day - they're still the bestest of friends - like Superman and Batman!