Chapter Text
"Widen your stance."
Another day has passed with Sora sleeping over. The solution to the oversleeping problem solved by a nail in a candle on a metal platter. A nail being one of the random things that was stuffed away in the bag.
Sora has agreed to go to the beach.
Sticks in their hands Sora's attempting to teach Riku how to swordfight. He fights unlike anyone Riku's ever seen swordfight. Which aren't many, but still. The botched bag lies to the side forgotten in a frustrated fury and being reused as a napping spot for Dee.
"What do you mean, widen your stance? I'm standing like you told me to."
He gets wacked with a stick and stumbles, "awch! What's that for?!"
"It makes you stumble." Sora simply says.
"You're a shit teacher."
"I teach myself everything and I think I'm doing pretty good."
"You have a teacher."
"Only a magic one. The sword fighting is all me. Though Leon does try to make me more 'civilised' or something when he comes around. He says I fight like a crazy person" He twirls his 'sword', "Now widen your stance."
"You-"
"Sora!" A shout interrupts him.
They both whirl towards the ocean, where the call came from. A pale girl with short red hair is standing in the water waving. She looks to be around their age.
The way Sora relaxes his defencive stance, but stays tense must mean she isn't a serious threat.
"Are we screwed?" Riku asks
"Not yet" and Sora starts walking towards the ocean, Riku shortly following after him.
"Everyone's out looking for you, you know." The girl says, she then notices Riku, "Who're you?"
Sora sighs,"Riku, meet Kairi. Kairi meet Riku. She's my little sister."
"The best little sister."
"My only little sister." He retorts back quickly. Kairi giggeling in reponse.
He gives her a nod, still wary,"Hey."
she smiles back at him,"Hello."
"You two are the youngest of all of your siblings?"
Sora nods,"Jup. The guppies as the others say."
"Or pebbles." Kairi adds on.
"Runts."
"Little pests."
"Kinda depends on who and when you ask someone."
Kairi laughs, "You tend to be the little pest the most though."
Sora rolls his eyes, "Yes yes" and places his sword on his shoulder,"What do you want from me for you not to snitch, little pebble?"
Kairi is positively beaming, her hands behind her back and swiveling on her feet,"I want to hang out too, see why you always sneak out."
That makes Sora finally relax fully,"okay"
She looks way too happy with herself, "What do you guys normally play?"
Sora shrugs,"Errr we race, we fight, we surf."
"Boringgggg. Typical guy stuff. Why don't we go swim with dolphins?"
"They'll snitch on me and you know that." Sora answers.
"I mean. If it was only you and him sure. But I'm here. Come on, it'll be fun!"
Sora gives a sideways glance to Riku, "You up for it?"
Riku's very excited if he's being honest, he has never seen a dolphin before. He has to act cool though, "Sure."
She pumps her fists and starts running further into the ocean,"Lets go!"
Sora sighs with a smile, throws his stick to the side and pulls Riku along.
Soon he's sitting on Dee's back as Kairi and Sora swim as mers beside him.
It takes a bit, but soon he notices other shapes swimming along them.
Dolphins, at least twenty of them, circling around and jumping up through the waves. They're bigger than Riku expected and seem very interested in his presence for as soon as Dee slows to a stop the dolphins surround them, chattering and clicking. One even pushes his nose against Riku's leg.
Kairi surfaces too, shaking her head,"Alright! I already told them all about you two and they swore silence."
He risks touching one of them. Their skin feels weird, way less slimy than Dee's.
"Boo!"
The scare almost makes him fall, his only save being his hold on Dee's mane. He whirls around to glare at the culprit, "Sora!"
Sora's laughing as are the others. Or he thinks the dolphins are laughing at least.
He attempts to kick Sora, but misses "You idiot."
A bump against his other leg distracts him again. It's one of the dolphins, a smaller one who immediately ducks under and swims away when Riku looks.
"If you want to you can swim with them,"Kairi pipes up from behind him, "They're crazy fast. No offence Dee."
Dee neighs like he's very much offended and shifts into a dolphin, making Riku fall off in the process.
Sora laughs,"Looks like Dee wants to prove himself. You up for it?"
"If we race." Riku answers.
"Let's make it fair then. We each hold on to a dolphin while in human form." Kairi turns towards the group of dolphins and starts doing clicks and whistles that definitely are not possible for the human throat. The dolphins answer with eagerness, seemingly competing for who gets to swim with who. After a bit of bickering the contestants get decided. Dee did not let Riku choose however, pushing away even Sora.
"Alright!" Kairi says, the three of them lined up with a few other dolphins who also want to compete, "We race till the buoy Sora sets up. Riku, we go when the Seashell over there gives a signal like this."
In response one of the dolphins lets out a high whistle.
"Noted." Riku replies, settling better against Dee.
The high whistle sounds and they're off.
Immediately a problem arises as he can't see for the life of him. The darkness and water obscuring his vision as he hangs on for dear life. Not knowing if he's winning or not isn't fun, but what's even worse is that he's losing his breath quickly and Dee is not giving him a chance to surface, unaware of his very human passenger drowning.
It turns bad quickly and he's forced to let go, his lungs burning and his mind desorientated. He tries to find what's up and down and hold his breath, but the burning in his lungs is making him frantic.
Sudden strong arms around him haul him up to the surface, his head breaching with loud desperate coughs, heaves and gulps of air.
Sora appears blurry in his vision brow furrowed in worry, "You okay?"
Riku calms his coughing, his vision clearing up,"I'm fine. Still in possession of human lungs sadly."
Sora pouts,"And they still haven't taught me that spell."
He notices Kairi swimming up behind them, eyebrows also furrowed,"You could look in one of Yen Sid's books?"
"You think Yen Sid would believe me looking in his books to just teach myself a spell?"
"Good point." She pats Riku's shoulder, "No more racing underwater for you."
"I don't mind" Riku coughs again.
He feels something slimy touch his hand and he jerks back in surprise only to see Dee surface with the most sad and guilty look a hippocampus can manage.
Riku places his hand on Dee's slimy snout, "I'm fine"
Dee licks his head in response, leaving his hair standing up with sticky saliva. The others of course start laughing at him, which makes Riku shove Sora away and dunk his head underwater in hopes of getting it out.
He surfaces again, only for Sora to immediately grab on to him again, the almost drowning thing must've freaked him out more than it did Riku. He lets him keep hold as Kairi speaks up again, "You're still up playing a game?"
"I'm ready to win at a game." Riku answers.
Sora rolls his eyes and shoves him, Riku shoving back in retaliation.
Kairi ignores their shenanigans"since you can't shapeshift you can use Dee. The goal of the game is to throw the ball into the barrel on the rocks." She points to a nearby rock, the barrel lighting up at her words,"the team that gets the most goals wins, also you're not allowed to hold on to the ball, you'll have to pass it on as soon as you get a hold of it."
"Sounds easy enough."
"You're on my team." Sora says and slaps a hand on his shoulder, his handprint leaving behind a blue glowing handprint.
"Don't call dips like that." Kairi pouts.
Sora sticks his tongue out at her.
She does it back and the teams are decided, each member having either a glowing blue or pink mark on their body.
They win, because of course they do and Riku's looking at the lowering moon. It's probably time to head back now. Like usual it's not something he wants to bring up.
He doesn't get a chance as Kairi suddenly yells, "Guys!"
Sora answers, "Yeah!"
"Ship! Over there!"
She points to the horizon and indeed there's a ship, much closer than he expected it to be for them to not notice for so long.
Sora squints, "Looks like a trade ship. You guys wanna mess with it?"
Kairi laughs,"Thought you'd never ask!"
Riku looks back at the moon. There's still time.
******
The Irine is Captain George's pride and joy. He always boasted in the inns and harbours about how sturdy she is, how storms never bother her even a little and that the goods transported on her were as safe as they can possibly be, even from pirates.
A necessary thing in these times. The sea might have gotten calmer the last few years, it only meant pirates had it easier too.
So when he heard a crewman yell, "Man overboard at starboard!" He wasn't surprised.
Another ship got attacked and when he gets a look at the kid they hoist out of the ocean he knows the kid has seen things, poor thing is shivering and soaked,"You're lucky good old toms has an eagle eye or you would've frozen to an iceblock!"
The boy only mutters a soft thanks and soon his first mate runs up with blankets.
Captain George wraps the kid up, "Here. That'll warm you right up. Did your ship get attacked?"
The boy nods. That means he'll have to up security for a little while, "Dammend pirates."
"No. They were monsters."
"Monsters?"
"My dad's a fisher. We were much later today and he-. They were kids. Just kids like me. I didn't get it I just-"
Monster kids. That could only mean one thing,"God damn it. Nathanial, wake everyone, we need to get to port as soon as possible!"
"What's it captain?"
Against pirates one can fight. Against a child of the sea? Pray and hope that you reach land soon enough if you don't have the right weapons. They don't have the weapons. The rarity of both the weapons and the threat made them not worth the price. They might have to pay a much higher price now.
"Children of the sea. They could be following this boy and if they do then pray to god we've reached land by then."
The ship jolts into a creaking halt.
"Brace yourselves and everything we have! Get the boy in my cabin!"
Everyone moves into action. Releasing the life boats and tying as much as they can down. Most of them know how to deal with an encounter.
"Dave! God damn! What are you doing? Steer the ship!"
"Aye aye captain." A young unknown voice answers.
Ice fillS his veins as he looks over. The shape of his crewman falling apart in sand, revealing another young kid with spiky brown hair and a hissing cat on his shoulders. The boy laughs, his eyes lighting up blue, takes the wheel and spins it.
Captain George only gets to yell out a desperate cry as the ship lurches sideways, throwing everything and everyone that's not tied down to the side. He sees the ocean almost spill over the railing, the ship close to capsizing as the crew screams and the little light of their lanterns die.
It lasts a few everlasting seconds as the mocking laugh of the boy sounds and suddenly the ship sweeps to the other side, he loses his grip. He tries to hold onto anything as he slides towards the ocean. Falling in means death, he knows this deep in his bones.
The ship wobbles back right before any of his men fall out.
"Abandon ship!"
"Don't!" He tries to say, but he's too late. One of his men tries, tentacles made of water shoot up, one of them entrapping the man inside.
Why didn't he buy the bullets when he had the chance? He already has the gun for it. The tentacle drops the man, Nathanial he knows now, unconscious or dead, he doesn't know.
His men are freaking out and he doesn't know what to do, the ship is still lurching and carreening, not letting them get proper footing the body of Nathanial rolling along.
His first mate tries to shoot the vermin, but it's no use, the shot does nothing to it even if he somehow manages to hit it.
He finally manages to get a hold of the mast, holding on for dear life and his eyes fall ahead to another kid, a young girl.
By the seven seas there's two now. She stands there stable and unbothered.
Her hand raises and he can only pray.
The ship becomes stable and he's starting to think his prayers might have worked, until his stomach drops as he's forced to his knees.
The ship is being lifted into the sky at unbelievable speeds. They're dead, he doomed his men and he is so so seasick.
The girl drops her hand and they're falling.
He expects the ship to fall apart to smithereens, he expects himself to fall to smithereens.
Instead water swallows him up and spits him out.
Him and his men are laying scattered across the deck, groaning and soaked to the bone.
Then there's laughter, children's laughter. He cranes his neck.
The very first kid, the one they fished up is standing there and laughing along, bag in his hands.
"You little devil!" He shouts, drawing his gun.
He doesn't get a chance to shoot as he's knocked down by a heavy weight.
It's the hissing cat and it jumps to the boy's shoulder and both run over to the railing and jump over.
Captain George pats the deck of his beloved ship. Thank the heavens Irine survived