[Zeu]
by caitlin_chan
This was not posted with the rest due to the mod. It's not eligible for guessing, but it's still part of the Hikago celebratory fun!
Heartstone
It was a route that Akira and Hikaru had walked a hundred times before: from the train station to their apartment, taking a shortcut through a surprisingly brightly lit alley next to Hikaru’s favourite ramen stand. It was only about fifteen minutes to walk, and sometimes they would stop for ramen if Akira was in the mood (Hikaru was always in the mood for ramen). It was a night almost like just any other night, really. They had been watching a game at the Institute, taken the train back, and were walking through the alley just like they did every other night.
Except that the lights in the alleyway winked out one by one and there appeared literally out of thin air a number of strange creatures with eerie, glowing eyes.
Hikaru reacted before Akira did when the creatures moved towards them; he threw a garbage can at the group behind them, and then grabbed a couple of discarded pipes and gave one to Akira.
“Shindou-”
“There isn’t anything else we can do, Touya - we’re blocked in!”
“I was going to say,” Akira began, and then paused to hit one of the things as it approached him, “that we should be back-to-back.”
“Oh.” Hikaru shifted to stand with his back to Akira’s, fighting off another creature as he did so.
Determination saved them for a little while, but neither Hikaru nor Akira really knew how to use a sword - or a pseudo-sword - past the basic instinct of ‘swing wildly at one’s target’. The creatures seemed somewhat intelligent, keeping them moving and on the defensive and then attacking in bursts, wearing them down with the constant onslaught. The pipes Hikaru had picked up had no visible effect on the things, and both of them had realised that they weren’t going to come out of the attack in one piece, if they survived at all.
Akira was bleeding from claw marks on one arm, and Hikaru had fallen to one knee as he blocked the weapon of one of the creatures when two figures fell from above with loud battle cries, and the creatures turned to face their new opponents. They watched in amazement as the pair dispatched the things quickly and efficiently, wielding-was that a giant key?
The lights in the alleyway came back on with the disappearance of the creatures, and the newcomers turned to Akira and Hikaru. They brought their pipes up warily, though Akira knew they didn’t stand a chance against these obviously expert swordsmen. One was tall and silver-haired, carrying a red and blue sword with what looked like wings, and the other was short, with unruly brown hair, and carried what they saw really was a giant key.
The short one held up his hands. “Whoa! We’re not gonna hurt you, we’re the good guys!” He grinned at them. “I’m Sora, and this is Riku.” Riku nodded at them, a slight smirk on his face. “We - well, we kill the Heartless.”
“Heartless?” Akira asked. “Those things - they’re called Heartless?”
“Yeah, they steal hearts - they don’t have any, see?”
“Wait,” Hikaru interrupted, “how can they be alive without hearts? That’s stupid.”
Sora looked taken aback, and Riku stepped forward. “We don’t mean actual hearts. More like the seat of your emotions.”
“Oh,” said Hikaru, with a look of dawning comprehension.
Akira nodded. “The metaphysical heart, then,” he said half to himself, then froze. “But - that isn’t possible. Creatures like that don’t exist!”
Sora shook his head. “They didn’t before, but they do now. Someone’s let them into your world. Me and Riku are here to stop them, whoever it is.”
Hikaru opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by Riku’s sharp cry of “Sora!” and suddenly the odd pair were grabbing Akira and Hikaru and shoving them out of the way of the giant thing - Heartless - that appeared in the alleyway.
This time the fight was brief and brutal, but in the wrong way - Sora and Riku got tossed around like children’s toys while Hikaru and Akira watched in horror. A sudden burst of fire stunned the Heartless, but withdrew, grabbing the pair of go pros as they retreated, dragging them out of the alleyway.
“We need to get inside!” Riku said, limping heavily. “Sora, can you see anywhere?”
Akira made a split-second judgement call. “Our apartment is just on the next block,” he managed through his pants as he was pulled behind a surprisingly fast Riku.
Riku pushed Akira in front of him with a grunt. “Tell us when we’re there.”
At the speed they were moving, it only took them a few minutes to reach the building, though both Hikaru and Akira were panting heavily by the time they did. Akira came up with his keys first and let them in with trembling hands, and opted for the elevator instead of four flights of stairs.
Once they were in the actual apartment, Riku and Sora visibly relaxed, and Sora helped Riku over to a chair to sit down and get the weight off his leg. Akira checked the door over to make sure it was locked up tight, and then turned to their saviours. Hikaru had disappeared into the kitchen, but Akira leaned on the door, catching his breath and examining Riku and Sora with a critical eye.
Sora crouched on the floor at Riku’s feet, easing his shoe off of an obviously swollen foot and ankle, shadows of bruises just beginning to appear. Riku tipped Sora’s head to the side after he set the shoe down, prodding gently at the bloody knot on his forehead near his temple, his brow furrowed. Sora stood with a hand from Riku and swayed, and Akira moved forward to grab another chair before he could fall down.
“Thanks,” said Sora as he sat, reaching up to touch the knot and wincing a little.
Hikaru appeared out of the kitchen with four glasses of water balanced on the tea tray and gave one to each of them, then handed RIku an icepack wrapped in a dishtowel. Akira had bought it after Hikaru had fallen on the stairs and twisted his knee.
“We’ve only got one icepack, sorry. But if you want, I think I could find something else for your head... Sora, right?” Hikaru asked.
“I’m-”
“That’d be good,” Riku interrupted Sora as he settled the icepack on his ankle. “Do you have a flashlight?”
“Riku-”
“You might have a concussion, Sora. That’s the third time you’ve gotten hit on the head this week.” Riku gave Sora a look that Akira couldn’t decipher, and Sora flushed a little.
“We’ve got one,” Akira said, ignoring the - whatever it was. “Shindou, find something in the freezer to use as another icepack, and I’ll get the flashlight.” He set his half-empty glass on the table next to their guests and fetched the flashlight.
Riku accepted the flashlight with quiet thanks and flicked it on, shining it in Sora’s eyes in a couple of quick flicks. “Your pupils are both reacting evenly to the light - are you still dizzy?”
Sora shook his head slowly. “It’s gone. I think I stood up too fast.”
“It’s a good thing you have such a hard head, huh?” Riku said with a sudden grin, and Sora grinned back.
Hikaru came back just then with a frozen... something that Akira couldn’t identify, wrapping it in another clean dish towel, and gave it to Sora, who put it on the significant lump with a small flinch.
“So what the hell’s going on, anyway?” Hikaru asked, leaning against the wall next to the kitchen and taking a sip from his glass of water.
“I would like to know myself,” Akira added.
Riku and Sora exchanged glances, and Sora nodded.
“We don’t know much yet,” Riku began. “Like we said before, we fight the Heartless, following them from world to world. They’re here, but we don’t know who let them in, or why. We entered your world not far from where you were being attacked and sensed the Heartless, so we went to check it out. This is the first time we’ve been here - you two are the first people here we’ve talked to.”
“If you have never been here before, then how can you speak Japanese?” Akira asked.
“What’s Japanese?” Sora was obviously puzzled.
“Our language. The language you’re speaking.” Akira was getting a little impatient. Those creatures had been odd, certainly, but lost hearts? Other worlds? It all seemed very much like something from one of Hikaru’s games or comics to him.
Riku shrugged. “We’ve never had a problem with languages before. I don’t see why it would start now. It may be a function of the magic we use-”
“Magic?”
“Wait, Touya,” Hikaru said in a tone Akira didn’t think he had ever heard before. “You don’t want to believe this, I know, but you saw those things come out of nowhere, you saw how these two fight, the crazy huge thing, and the fire. Where did their weapons go?”
Akira was taken aback - he hadn’t noticed that the strange sword and the key-thing were not to be seen anywhere.
“They’re here,” Sora said, placing a hand over his heart. “The Keyblade is mine, and mine alone now.” He shot Riku a pained look, but Riku only smiled a little and shook his head, and Sora smiled back.
Riku held out his hand. “Watch.” His fingers flexed, and his sword appeared in his grasp.
Akira took a reflexive step back, and then the sword vanished again and Riku dropped his hand. “No, this isn’t-”
“Stop it, Touya. You don’t know everything. Stuff exists that you don’t believe in.” Hikaru was still using that same odd tone, and when Akira met his eyes they were distant, as if he was looking at something very far away.
Akira swallowed and brought a hand up to rub gingerly at the claw marks on his forearm. “Okay. But what do we do? We can’t fight these things, that much is obvious.”
“That’s what we’re here for.” Sora took the makeshift icepack away from the lump on his head and poked at it carefully, a flash of pain crossing his face, and Riku grabbed his hand.
“Don’t,” he said quietly, and laid the icepack back over the knot.
A hand touched Akira’s shoulder, and he found Hikaru standing next to him. “Come on, Touya, I’ll bandage your arm.”
They went into the bathroom, leaving Riku and Sora sitting at their small table, and Hikaru pulled their small first aid kit out from under the sink. Akira sat down on the edge of the bathtub and held out his arm to Hikaru after he had wet a cloth in the sink. Hikaru tended to his arm quietly, still seeming like he wasn’t quite there, though he did offer a soft apology when Akira hissed in pain as Hikaru disinfected the gashes before bandaging them.
“You really believe them?” Akira asked, his voice low so that only Hikaru would hear him.
“I really do,” Hikaru replied, closing the first aid kit with a snap and meeting Akira’s eyes. They were hard, like chips of greenstone, as Akira had only seen them when they were playing a truly fierce game.
“Okay.”
Hikaru blinked, surprised, as though he had expected Akira to argue with him more about it.
“I’m going to bed; you’ll...” Akira trailed off, not wanting to say ‘watch them’, though that was what he meant. He trusted Hikaru, but he didn’t trust these two strangers very much.
“I’ll take care of them,” Hikaru said, though from his expression Akira knew that Hikaru knew what he had wanted to say.
Akira nodded and stood, and took himself off to bed with a curt nod and good night to Riku and Sora.
--------------
Hikaru sighed heavily as Akira went off to bed. And Akira wondered why he hadn’t told him about Sai yet? There were some things that Hikaru just did not think Akira was ready to believe quite yet, and the fact that Hikaru had had a ghost living - un-living, whatever - with him for a few years was one of them.
Wearily, he rose to his feet and took the first aid kit out of the bathroom with him when he left it, going back to Riku and Sora.
“Is everything okay?” Sora asked, looking genuinely concerned.
“Touya’s kind of a stick in the mud sometimes,” Hikaru replied with a slight smile. “There’s some stuff he just... doesn’t want to believe, I think.”
“And why do you believe us so easily?” Riku asked, and Hikaru recognised the emotions on his face - wariness, and calculation. It was what he felt every time that the subject of Sai came up; he knew his friends were still suspicious that he had some connection to Sai, and he wasn’t ready to tell them yet. It had been four years, but he wasn’t ready.
At least, not ready to tell his friends, which was weird. Because he felt like he could tell these strangers, like they might understand at least a little.
“When I was twelve, I found an old goban in my grandfather’s storage shed with a friend of mine, with bloodstains only I could see. The next thing I know, there’s someone talking to me that I knew wasn’t there: ‘Can you hear my voice?’ he said, and then I passed out. And when I woke, up, I had a ghost inside me. Or attached to me - I never actually figured that part out, but it didn’t matter that much.
“So, you see,” Hikaru said with a grin, “I don’t find it that hard to believe - if there’re ghosts, and they don’t have bodies or anything but can still talk and feel and stuff, why can’t there be things that are alive without hearts? Ghosts don’t have hearts, either, at least not beating hearts like we do. I guess they must still have the kinds of hearts you mean, though. The meta-whatever heart that Touya was talking about.”
Riku nodded, appearing satisfied, and Sora looked intrigued. “Is he still around? Your ghost?”
Hikaru found that he had to look away from Sora’s earnest gaze. “No. Sai is... he’s gone. To the other side. It’ll be four years tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry,” Sora said, and it was so heartfelt that Hikaru found himself tearing up.
He put the first aid kit on the table between Riku and Sora and turned towards the kitchen. “There’s bandages and stuff in there, and a wrap-thing you can use on your ankle, Riku. Are you guys hungry?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Hikaru managed small, private smile. “I know I am. I’ll cook.”
‘Cook’ was perhaps a strong word for the amount of effort that went into instant ramen, but it was hot, quick, and filling and it making it wouldn’t make too much noise for Akira to get to sleep. He would sleep through almost anything, but only once he had actually fallen asleep - it didn’t take much noise to keep him awake. Hikaru actually could cook decently when he was in the mood or had the patience, but it was late and the evening had been more than a little stressful and exhausting, so he definitely wasn’t in the mood for much work.
He used the tea tray again when the ramen was ready because it was easier than trying to juggle the three huge bowls he had dishes the noodles into. Hikaru thought that Riku and Sora were probably at least as hungry as he was, if not more so - they had that pinched sort of look that Akira got when he got so busy he didn’t think he had time to eat regularly, though Hikaru had gotten pretty good at forcing him to stop for a few minutes and eat something.
When he brought the ramen out to the table, Sora had Riku’s foot in his lap and was wrapping his ankle. The split in the knot on Sora’s head had been bandaged, as had a number of other small cuts and scrapes on both of them.
“I don’t want to use Curaga on this when we aren’t sure if it’s broken or not because if it is it could heal wrong, but a Potion will help speed up the healing enough that you should be able to figure out tomorrow if it’s broken,” Sora was saying, and Hikaru winced when he glanced down at Riku’s ankle. It was more swollen than it had been earlier, and almost black with bruises.
Hikaru set the tray on the table just as Sora finished wrapping Riku’s ankle, and set a bowl next to each of them, along with a pair of chopsticks.
His hands now empty, Sora grabbed the bowl and the chopsticks with enthusiastic thanks, and set to eating, pausing only long enough to blow on the noodles he had lifted from the bowl.
Riku wasn’t quite so enthusiastic - he stared, bewildered, at the chopsticks, then eyed Sora, trying to copy the way he held them. He cursed softly when he dropped them, glaring at the innocent pieces of wood, and Hikaru had to try not to laugh.
Sora paused after his first couple of mouthfuls when he seemed to realise that Riku wasn’t eating. “What’s wrong?”
“How do you hold these things?”
The image of Riku, a swordsman - and a really damn good one, at that - being defeated by a pair of chopsticks had Hikaru giggling madly, all the insanity of the night finally peaking with Riku’s defeat by eating utensils.
Riku glared at him, and Hikaru stopped laughing - it was an impressive glare, really. It reminded him of Morishita-sensei when he was really mad, and that wasn’t quite so funny a mental image. Especially after the last time he had reamed Hikaru out for losing to Akira.
Sora laughed, too, but didn’t react at all to Riku’s glare - Hikaru assumed he was used to it, with how close the pair seemed - and put his bowl down, then bent down and picked Riku’s chopsticks up off the floor. “I learnt to use these when I was in the Land of Dragons. I’ll show you.”
Hikaru ate quietly, watching Sora teach Riku how to use the chopsticks. After the fifth time Riku dropped them, even Hikaru could see how irritated he was getting, and he felt a little guilty for laughing at him. The guy had saved him, after all, and gotten pretty banged up doing it, too. Hikaru went into the kitchen, poking around to see if he could find the one fork that he was sure they owned. A little rummaging in their drawer of miscellaneous kitchen items finally unearthed the elusive fork, and Hikaru brought it out to Riku.
“Here, would this be easier?”
Riku looked up from where he was concentrating on holding the chopsticks - still incorrectly, Hikaru noted - and nodded. “Thanks.”
“Sorry I laughed,” Hikaru said. “It wasn’t very nice.”
“It’s okay,” Riku replied with a shake of his head. “It’s been a long week.”
“He gets all snappy when he’s tired,” Sora put in with a grin at Riku, who glowered at him, but Hikaru could see the glint of humour in his eyes.
They all went back to their food after that, Riku and Sora inhaling theirs with a speed that impressed Hikaru; the only other person he had even seen eat that fast was Kurata-san. They finished before Hikaru did, but when Sora moved to take their bowls into the kitchen, Hikaru shook his head and directed him back to his chair.
“I’ll get them; you saved us tonight. Me and Touya definitely would’ve been toast if you two hadn’t shown up, so feeding you and letting you stay is the least I can do.”
Sora looked embarrassed, and Riku shrugged. “It’s what we do. You don’t need to thank us.”
“No, I really do.” Hikaru put the bowls on the tray, staring into the drops of broth left at the bottom of one. “You - I’ve never even told my friends about Sai. He was my best friend, and I lost him, but... I felt like you guys would understand.”
“We do,” Sora said solemnly, and he sounded so sad that Hikaru had to look up.
Riku reached over and grabbed Sora’s hand. “I’m back now,” he said quietly.
Hikaru took the bowls out to the kitchen with the feeling that he had been intruding on something very private, though when he came back out it seemed that the moment was over. He yawned hugely, which in turn had both Riku and Sora yawning, and Hikaru grinned sheepishly.
“I’m about ready to drop, and I bet you guys are, too. You can have my room,” Hikaru pointed to his open bedroom door, “and I’ll sleep out here.”
“We can’t take your bed,” Sora protested.
“I told you: you saved us. I can’t help you fight, and I can’t give you any information, but I can do this.” Hikaru wasn’t going to let them take no for an answer. He wasn’t used to being useless, and he didn’t like it.
“Thank you,” Riku said sincerely, and Sora added his own, though he still looked like he felt a little guilty about it.
They stood, and Sora looped an arm around Riku’s waist, and Riku flung an arm over Sora’s shoulders, and they hobbled into Hikaru’s room, Riku closing the door behind them.
Hikaru checked the door again, and took the spare futon out of the hall closet and went to bed. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep, though when he did, his dreams were dark and disturbing, and filled with more of the creatures that had attacked them, and a somehow familiar voice....
TBC...
This was not posted with the rest due to the mod. It's not eligible for guessing, but it's still part of the Hikago celebratory fun!
Heartstone
It was a route that Akira and Hikaru had walked a hundred times before: from the train station to their apartment, taking a shortcut through a surprisingly brightly lit alley next to Hikaru’s favourite ramen stand. It was only about fifteen minutes to walk, and sometimes they would stop for ramen if Akira was in the mood (Hikaru was always in the mood for ramen). It was a night almost like just any other night, really. They had been watching a game at the Institute, taken the train back, and were walking through the alley just like they did every other night.
Except that the lights in the alleyway winked out one by one and there appeared literally out of thin air a number of strange creatures with eerie, glowing eyes.
Hikaru reacted before Akira did when the creatures moved towards them; he threw a garbage can at the group behind them, and then grabbed a couple of discarded pipes and gave one to Akira.
“Shindou-”
“There isn’t anything else we can do, Touya - we’re blocked in!”
“I was going to say,” Akira began, and then paused to hit one of the things as it approached him, “that we should be back-to-back.”
“Oh.” Hikaru shifted to stand with his back to Akira’s, fighting off another creature as he did so.
Determination saved them for a little while, but neither Hikaru nor Akira really knew how to use a sword - or a pseudo-sword - past the basic instinct of ‘swing wildly at one’s target’. The creatures seemed somewhat intelligent, keeping them moving and on the defensive and then attacking in bursts, wearing them down with the constant onslaught. The pipes Hikaru had picked up had no visible effect on the things, and both of them had realised that they weren’t going to come out of the attack in one piece, if they survived at all.
Akira was bleeding from claw marks on one arm, and Hikaru had fallen to one knee as he blocked the weapon of one of the creatures when two figures fell from above with loud battle cries, and the creatures turned to face their new opponents. They watched in amazement as the pair dispatched the things quickly and efficiently, wielding-was that a giant key?
The lights in the alleyway came back on with the disappearance of the creatures, and the newcomers turned to Akira and Hikaru. They brought their pipes up warily, though Akira knew they didn’t stand a chance against these obviously expert swordsmen. One was tall and silver-haired, carrying a red and blue sword with what looked like wings, and the other was short, with unruly brown hair, and carried what they saw really was a giant key.
The short one held up his hands. “Whoa! We’re not gonna hurt you, we’re the good guys!” He grinned at them. “I’m Sora, and this is Riku.” Riku nodded at them, a slight smirk on his face. “We - well, we kill the Heartless.”
“Heartless?” Akira asked. “Those things - they’re called Heartless?”
“Yeah, they steal hearts - they don’t have any, see?”
“Wait,” Hikaru interrupted, “how can they be alive without hearts? That’s stupid.”
Sora looked taken aback, and Riku stepped forward. “We don’t mean actual hearts. More like the seat of your emotions.”
“Oh,” said Hikaru, with a look of dawning comprehension.
Akira nodded. “The metaphysical heart, then,” he said half to himself, then froze. “But - that isn’t possible. Creatures like that don’t exist!”
Sora shook his head. “They didn’t before, but they do now. Someone’s let them into your world. Me and Riku are here to stop them, whoever it is.”
Hikaru opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by Riku’s sharp cry of “Sora!” and suddenly the odd pair were grabbing Akira and Hikaru and shoving them out of the way of the giant thing - Heartless - that appeared in the alleyway.
This time the fight was brief and brutal, but in the wrong way - Sora and Riku got tossed around like children’s toys while Hikaru and Akira watched in horror. A sudden burst of fire stunned the Heartless, but withdrew, grabbing the pair of go pros as they retreated, dragging them out of the alleyway.
“We need to get inside!” Riku said, limping heavily. “Sora, can you see anywhere?”
Akira made a split-second judgement call. “Our apartment is just on the next block,” he managed through his pants as he was pulled behind a surprisingly fast Riku.
Riku pushed Akira in front of him with a grunt. “Tell us when we’re there.”
At the speed they were moving, it only took them a few minutes to reach the building, though both Hikaru and Akira were panting heavily by the time they did. Akira came up with his keys first and let them in with trembling hands, and opted for the elevator instead of four flights of stairs.
Once they were in the actual apartment, Riku and Sora visibly relaxed, and Sora helped Riku over to a chair to sit down and get the weight off his leg. Akira checked the door over to make sure it was locked up tight, and then turned to their saviours. Hikaru had disappeared into the kitchen, but Akira leaned on the door, catching his breath and examining Riku and Sora with a critical eye.
Sora crouched on the floor at Riku’s feet, easing his shoe off of an obviously swollen foot and ankle, shadows of bruises just beginning to appear. Riku tipped Sora’s head to the side after he set the shoe down, prodding gently at the bloody knot on his forehead near his temple, his brow furrowed. Sora stood with a hand from Riku and swayed, and Akira moved forward to grab another chair before he could fall down.
“Thanks,” said Sora as he sat, reaching up to touch the knot and wincing a little.
Hikaru appeared out of the kitchen with four glasses of water balanced on the tea tray and gave one to each of them, then handed RIku an icepack wrapped in a dishtowel. Akira had bought it after Hikaru had fallen on the stairs and twisted his knee.
“We’ve only got one icepack, sorry. But if you want, I think I could find something else for your head... Sora, right?” Hikaru asked.
“I’m-”
“That’d be good,” Riku interrupted Sora as he settled the icepack on his ankle. “Do you have a flashlight?”
“Riku-”
“You might have a concussion, Sora. That’s the third time you’ve gotten hit on the head this week.” Riku gave Sora a look that Akira couldn’t decipher, and Sora flushed a little.
“We’ve got one,” Akira said, ignoring the - whatever it was. “Shindou, find something in the freezer to use as another icepack, and I’ll get the flashlight.” He set his half-empty glass on the table next to their guests and fetched the flashlight.
Riku accepted the flashlight with quiet thanks and flicked it on, shining it in Sora’s eyes in a couple of quick flicks. “Your pupils are both reacting evenly to the light - are you still dizzy?”
Sora shook his head slowly. “It’s gone. I think I stood up too fast.”
“It’s a good thing you have such a hard head, huh?” Riku said with a sudden grin, and Sora grinned back.
Hikaru came back just then with a frozen... something that Akira couldn’t identify, wrapping it in another clean dish towel, and gave it to Sora, who put it on the significant lump with a small flinch.
“So what the hell’s going on, anyway?” Hikaru asked, leaning against the wall next to the kitchen and taking a sip from his glass of water.
“I would like to know myself,” Akira added.
Riku and Sora exchanged glances, and Sora nodded.
“We don’t know much yet,” Riku began. “Like we said before, we fight the Heartless, following them from world to world. They’re here, but we don’t know who let them in, or why. We entered your world not far from where you were being attacked and sensed the Heartless, so we went to check it out. This is the first time we’ve been here - you two are the first people here we’ve talked to.”
“If you have never been here before, then how can you speak Japanese?” Akira asked.
“What’s Japanese?” Sora was obviously puzzled.
“Our language. The language you’re speaking.” Akira was getting a little impatient. Those creatures had been odd, certainly, but lost hearts? Other worlds? It all seemed very much like something from one of Hikaru’s games or comics to him.
Riku shrugged. “We’ve never had a problem with languages before. I don’t see why it would start now. It may be a function of the magic we use-”
“Magic?”
“Wait, Touya,” Hikaru said in a tone Akira didn’t think he had ever heard before. “You don’t want to believe this, I know, but you saw those things come out of nowhere, you saw how these two fight, the crazy huge thing, and the fire. Where did their weapons go?”
Akira was taken aback - he hadn’t noticed that the strange sword and the key-thing were not to be seen anywhere.
“They’re here,” Sora said, placing a hand over his heart. “The Keyblade is mine, and mine alone now.” He shot Riku a pained look, but Riku only smiled a little and shook his head, and Sora smiled back.
Riku held out his hand. “Watch.” His fingers flexed, and his sword appeared in his grasp.
Akira took a reflexive step back, and then the sword vanished again and Riku dropped his hand. “No, this isn’t-”
“Stop it, Touya. You don’t know everything. Stuff exists that you don’t believe in.” Hikaru was still using that same odd tone, and when Akira met his eyes they were distant, as if he was looking at something very far away.
Akira swallowed and brought a hand up to rub gingerly at the claw marks on his forearm. “Okay. But what do we do? We can’t fight these things, that much is obvious.”
“That’s what we’re here for.” Sora took the makeshift icepack away from the lump on his head and poked at it carefully, a flash of pain crossing his face, and Riku grabbed his hand.
“Don’t,” he said quietly, and laid the icepack back over the knot.
A hand touched Akira’s shoulder, and he found Hikaru standing next to him. “Come on, Touya, I’ll bandage your arm.”
They went into the bathroom, leaving Riku and Sora sitting at their small table, and Hikaru pulled their small first aid kit out from under the sink. Akira sat down on the edge of the bathtub and held out his arm to Hikaru after he had wet a cloth in the sink. Hikaru tended to his arm quietly, still seeming like he wasn’t quite there, though he did offer a soft apology when Akira hissed in pain as Hikaru disinfected the gashes before bandaging them.
“You really believe them?” Akira asked, his voice low so that only Hikaru would hear him.
“I really do,” Hikaru replied, closing the first aid kit with a snap and meeting Akira’s eyes. They were hard, like chips of greenstone, as Akira had only seen them when they were playing a truly fierce game.
“Okay.”
Hikaru blinked, surprised, as though he had expected Akira to argue with him more about it.
“I’m going to bed; you’ll...” Akira trailed off, not wanting to say ‘watch them’, though that was what he meant. He trusted Hikaru, but he didn’t trust these two strangers very much.
“I’ll take care of them,” Hikaru said, though from his expression Akira knew that Hikaru knew what he had wanted to say.
Akira nodded and stood, and took himself off to bed with a curt nod and good night to Riku and Sora.
--------------
Hikaru sighed heavily as Akira went off to bed. And Akira wondered why he hadn’t told him about Sai yet? There were some things that Hikaru just did not think Akira was ready to believe quite yet, and the fact that Hikaru had had a ghost living - un-living, whatever - with him for a few years was one of them.
Wearily, he rose to his feet and took the first aid kit out of the bathroom with him when he left it, going back to Riku and Sora.
“Is everything okay?” Sora asked, looking genuinely concerned.
“Touya’s kind of a stick in the mud sometimes,” Hikaru replied with a slight smile. “There’s some stuff he just... doesn’t want to believe, I think.”
“And why do you believe us so easily?” Riku asked, and Hikaru recognised the emotions on his face - wariness, and calculation. It was what he felt every time that the subject of Sai came up; he knew his friends were still suspicious that he had some connection to Sai, and he wasn’t ready to tell them yet. It had been four years, but he wasn’t ready.
At least, not ready to tell his friends, which was weird. Because he felt like he could tell these strangers, like they might understand at least a little.
“When I was twelve, I found an old goban in my grandfather’s storage shed with a friend of mine, with bloodstains only I could see. The next thing I know, there’s someone talking to me that I knew wasn’t there: ‘Can you hear my voice?’ he said, and then I passed out. And when I woke, up, I had a ghost inside me. Or attached to me - I never actually figured that part out, but it didn’t matter that much.
“So, you see,” Hikaru said with a grin, “I don’t find it that hard to believe - if there’re ghosts, and they don’t have bodies or anything but can still talk and feel and stuff, why can’t there be things that are alive without hearts? Ghosts don’t have hearts, either, at least not beating hearts like we do. I guess they must still have the kinds of hearts you mean, though. The meta-whatever heart that Touya was talking about.”
Riku nodded, appearing satisfied, and Sora looked intrigued. “Is he still around? Your ghost?”
Hikaru found that he had to look away from Sora’s earnest gaze. “No. Sai is... he’s gone. To the other side. It’ll be four years tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry,” Sora said, and it was so heartfelt that Hikaru found himself tearing up.
He put the first aid kit on the table between Riku and Sora and turned towards the kitchen. “There’s bandages and stuff in there, and a wrap-thing you can use on your ankle, Riku. Are you guys hungry?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Hikaru managed small, private smile. “I know I am. I’ll cook.”
‘Cook’ was perhaps a strong word for the amount of effort that went into instant ramen, but it was hot, quick, and filling and it making it wouldn’t make too much noise for Akira to get to sleep. He would sleep through almost anything, but only once he had actually fallen asleep - it didn’t take much noise to keep him awake. Hikaru actually could cook decently when he was in the mood or had the patience, but it was late and the evening had been more than a little stressful and exhausting, so he definitely wasn’t in the mood for much work.
He used the tea tray again when the ramen was ready because it was easier than trying to juggle the three huge bowls he had dishes the noodles into. Hikaru thought that Riku and Sora were probably at least as hungry as he was, if not more so - they had that pinched sort of look that Akira got when he got so busy he didn’t think he had time to eat regularly, though Hikaru had gotten pretty good at forcing him to stop for a few minutes and eat something.
When he brought the ramen out to the table, Sora had Riku’s foot in his lap and was wrapping his ankle. The split in the knot on Sora’s head had been bandaged, as had a number of other small cuts and scrapes on both of them.
“I don’t want to use Curaga on this when we aren’t sure if it’s broken or not because if it is it could heal wrong, but a Potion will help speed up the healing enough that you should be able to figure out tomorrow if it’s broken,” Sora was saying, and Hikaru winced when he glanced down at Riku’s ankle. It was more swollen than it had been earlier, and almost black with bruises.
Hikaru set the tray on the table just as Sora finished wrapping Riku’s ankle, and set a bowl next to each of them, along with a pair of chopsticks.
His hands now empty, Sora grabbed the bowl and the chopsticks with enthusiastic thanks, and set to eating, pausing only long enough to blow on the noodles he had lifted from the bowl.
Riku wasn’t quite so enthusiastic - he stared, bewildered, at the chopsticks, then eyed Sora, trying to copy the way he held them. He cursed softly when he dropped them, glaring at the innocent pieces of wood, and Hikaru had to try not to laugh.
Sora paused after his first couple of mouthfuls when he seemed to realise that Riku wasn’t eating. “What’s wrong?”
“How do you hold these things?”
The image of Riku, a swordsman - and a really damn good one, at that - being defeated by a pair of chopsticks had Hikaru giggling madly, all the insanity of the night finally peaking with Riku’s defeat by eating utensils.
Riku glared at him, and Hikaru stopped laughing - it was an impressive glare, really. It reminded him of Morishita-sensei when he was really mad, and that wasn’t quite so funny a mental image. Especially after the last time he had reamed Hikaru out for losing to Akira.
Sora laughed, too, but didn’t react at all to Riku’s glare - Hikaru assumed he was used to it, with how close the pair seemed - and put his bowl down, then bent down and picked Riku’s chopsticks up off the floor. “I learnt to use these when I was in the Land of Dragons. I’ll show you.”
Hikaru ate quietly, watching Sora teach Riku how to use the chopsticks. After the fifth time Riku dropped them, even Hikaru could see how irritated he was getting, and he felt a little guilty for laughing at him. The guy had saved him, after all, and gotten pretty banged up doing it, too. Hikaru went into the kitchen, poking around to see if he could find the one fork that he was sure they owned. A little rummaging in their drawer of miscellaneous kitchen items finally unearthed the elusive fork, and Hikaru brought it out to Riku.
“Here, would this be easier?”
Riku looked up from where he was concentrating on holding the chopsticks - still incorrectly, Hikaru noted - and nodded. “Thanks.”
“Sorry I laughed,” Hikaru said. “It wasn’t very nice.”
“It’s okay,” Riku replied with a shake of his head. “It’s been a long week.”
“He gets all snappy when he’s tired,” Sora put in with a grin at Riku, who glowered at him, but Hikaru could see the glint of humour in his eyes.
They all went back to their food after that, Riku and Sora inhaling theirs with a speed that impressed Hikaru; the only other person he had even seen eat that fast was Kurata-san. They finished before Hikaru did, but when Sora moved to take their bowls into the kitchen, Hikaru shook his head and directed him back to his chair.
“I’ll get them; you saved us tonight. Me and Touya definitely would’ve been toast if you two hadn’t shown up, so feeding you and letting you stay is the least I can do.”
Sora looked embarrassed, and Riku shrugged. “It’s what we do. You don’t need to thank us.”
“No, I really do.” Hikaru put the bowls on the tray, staring into the drops of broth left at the bottom of one. “You - I’ve never even told my friends about Sai. He was my best friend, and I lost him, but... I felt like you guys would understand.”
“We do,” Sora said solemnly, and he sounded so sad that Hikaru had to look up.
Riku reached over and grabbed Sora’s hand. “I’m back now,” he said quietly.
Hikaru took the bowls out to the kitchen with the feeling that he had been intruding on something very private, though when he came back out it seemed that the moment was over. He yawned hugely, which in turn had both Riku and Sora yawning, and Hikaru grinned sheepishly.
“I’m about ready to drop, and I bet you guys are, too. You can have my room,” Hikaru pointed to his open bedroom door, “and I’ll sleep out here.”
“We can’t take your bed,” Sora protested.
“I told you: you saved us. I can’t help you fight, and I can’t give you any information, but I can do this.” Hikaru wasn’t going to let them take no for an answer. He wasn’t used to being useless, and he didn’t like it.
“Thank you,” Riku said sincerely, and Sora added his own, though he still looked like he felt a little guilty about it.
They stood, and Sora looped an arm around Riku’s waist, and Riku flung an arm over Sora’s shoulders, and they hobbled into Hikaru’s room, Riku closing the door behind them.
Hikaru checked the door again, and took the spare futon out of the hall closet and went to bed. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep, though when he did, his dreams were dark and disturbing, and filled with more of the creatures that had attacked them, and a somehow familiar voice....
TBC...