Chapter Text
Roxas glanced over at Aqua before turning his attention back to the road ahead.
“Road” might have been the wrong word; they were in a gummi ship, in the Lanes Between. Was “lane” more accurate? There was no ground.
Yen Sid had asked them to travel to a world neither had been to before, on the trail of someone the retired Master hadn’t heard from in decades; a missing Keyblade Master.
Roxas’s initial question had been why this missing Master hadn’t been on the list of people to track down in the run-up to fighting Xehanort. Yen Sid had explained that, the last he’d heard, the Master in question was likewise retired. Further, although Yen Sid knew which world the other retiree was from, he wasn’t in contact with them.
Hence, his request that someone travel to the retired Master’s world, to pass on a gummiphone (or mirror, depending on the world’s technology level). Roxas and Aqua had both been available and willing, which was why Roxas now found himself in a gummi ship, sailing through the Lanes Between.
Slowly.
Who the hell had thought that making an engine run on the emotional state of the ship’s occupants was a good idea?
Roxas glanced at Aqua again. They’d thus far spent the entire trip in silence, simply because they frankly didn’t know each other all that well. Despite cohabiting in the Mysterious Tower for months, Roxas couldn’t recall a single time he’d had a private, one-on-one conversation with Aqua.
The lingering awkwardness in the air did nothing for Roxas’s mood, which did nothing for their speed. And as the trip stretched longer, so did the awkwardness. Which made them go slower. A “vicious circle”, if Roxas had the term right.
Well, the only way to fix it was to break it. “So, uh…” Roxas said, before really figuring out what he wanted to say.
Aqua looked up from the book she’d brought along. “Oh, yes?” she asked.
“Uh…” Roxas said, still fishing for a conversation topic. “So… how’s… how’s Naminé doing, living with you guys?”
Aqua blinked. “Oh, um, she’s fine. It’s nice having another girl around, and she seems to be getting on well with Vanitas.” She frowned. “She also… spent the first day after she got there lying on her bed and whispering ‘it’s finally over’ to herself. Any idea what that was about?”
“Final exams,” Roxas said. “Xion and Riku and Kairi did the same thing last year, and it was Naminé and Sora and my turn this year.”
“I… see,” Aqua said, frowning. Often, during the years he’d attended high school on the Destiny Islands, he’d come across an experience that was universal to his classmates, but not to him, due to his upbringing. It was weird being on the other side for once.
They lapsed into an awkward silence again, until Aqua asked, “And, um, how are you and Xion doing in Twilight Town? How was the move?”
“Oh, it was fine,” Roxas said. “It’s taking a bit of getting used to, living with Axel and Isa.” He glanced at Aqua, wondering if what he was about to say was too much information. “We, uh, had to get a different mattress a few days in.”
“Oh? What happened?” Aqua asked.
“It… uh… it was an inner-spring,” Roxas said. He glanced over at Aqua again to see her frowning in confusion.
“What’s wrong with an inner-spring mattress?” she asked.
Roxas looked back at the lane before them. “Well, they… they squeak,” he said.
“Squeak,” Aqua repeated.
“Yeah. When… um… when you… bounce on them,” Roxas said.
“…You two are a bit old to be jumping on a bed,” Aqua said.
Roxas flinched. “Well… I didn’t say we were jumping on it,” he said.
“…Oh,” Aqua said. Roxas chanced a glance over at her; her face had gone red.
“So, uh, yeah, we had to get a different mattress,” he said, hurriedly. “Cause you could hear it from the kitchen, and… yeah.”
“I see,” Aqua said. “Um… good for you? How… how is college going?”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Roxas said, grateful for the rapid subject change. “Xion’s having a rougher time than I am. There’s this one person in some of her classes that just rubs her the wrong way.”
“That can’t be fun,” Aqua said. “Xion’s taking computer science, right?”
“Right,” Roxas said. “It’s a really new course, so her class list is a bit… fucky.”
“I see,” Aqua replied. There was no comment about his language; Roxas attributed it to living with Vanitas. “How are yours?”
“Well, I’m doing theatre, so it’s… It’s very different from what she’s doing,” Roxas said. “I like it fine, I don’t find it that hard.”
“That’s right, you were with that group on the Destiny Islands in high school,” Aqua mused. “What made you want to stay with it professionally?”
Roxas shrugged. “I enjoy it. And I have an alternate source of income, so I can afford to do it for fun.” Radiant Garden would always need people to help take care of their ongoing Heartless problem, and Heartless, for some reason, had deep pockets. “And I’ll admit I… enjoy being told I have a nice voice,” he added, in a quieter tone.
“Well, you do have a nice voice,” Aqua said, smiling slightly.
“Thank you, so do you,” Roxas said, grinning.
“What?”
He looked over to see that Aqua was red again. “Remember when you sang that song for us? Just after we got Terra back?” Roxas said. “You have a nice voice, Aqua. Trust me, I’m going to be a professional in a couple years,” he added, winking.
“I… Thank you, Roxas,” Aqua said, still blushing, but unable to prevent the wide smile on her face.
The gummi ship jolted forwards. “Oh, there we go,” Roxas said, still grinning. “I was wondering if it worked like that.”
“We smile more, we speed up?” Aqua asked, a rueful smile on her face.
“Looks like it,” Roxas said. “So, what have you been up to recently?”
They made better time as Aqua started talking about the books she was reading, how Terra and Ven and Vanitas were doing, and how proud she was of Naminé. Roxas was just starting to get comfortable in the conversation when the gummi ship began shaking.
“Something wrong?” Aqua asked, half-rising out of her seat to look at Roxas’s console.
“I’m not sure,” Roxas said, tapping a few buttons and flipping a few switches. “I don’t see anything causing it, but the engines are shutting down.”
“Could it be that?” Aqua asked, tapping Roxas’s shoulder and pointing out the cockpit window.
A strange, multicoloured fog hung in mid-lack-of-air in front of them. “What is that–” Roxas started to say.
As he spoke, everything went white.
Roxas’s vision returned slowly. The first thing he noticed was that he wasn’t in the gummi ship anymore. The first thing he said was “Aqua?”
“Right here, Roxas,” she said; she was standing next to him. Standing, not sitting. That was odd.
They were at the bottom of a stairwell. The gummi ship was nowhere to be seen. Wordlessly, Roxas gestured towards the staircase. Aqua nodded. Both summoned their Keyblades, and Roxas led the way up the stairs.
The stairs opened up into a large room. To their immediate right, another staircase led up to a balcony above their heads. Further on the right, the room ended in a door that was held open. A large group of… Roxas wasn’t sure how to describe them. His initial thought was that the beings rushing across the room were Toons, but Toons were more ink, less… felt?
The not-Toon beings came in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some were animals, some were Hume-shaped, some were halfway between the two. Some, to Roxas and Aqua’s confusion, were foodstuffs, objects, and indescribable blobs. They all seemed to be rushing out to the other end of the room, where there was…
Roxas blinked. Through the opening in the left side of the room, he could see what looked like stage curtains.
Were they backstage at some sort of theatre?
Against the far wall, underneath an old-looking intercom system, was a small desk. At that desk was another one of those not-Toons, who looked up through the tumult as Roxas and Aqua entered. “Oh, oh, good, you made it!” it said, in a voice Roxas would guess was masculine. “Uh, one sec.” The being reached up to the intercom and spoke into it. “All right, everyone, places! Curtains open in ten!”
Roxas and Aqua glanced at each other. “Sorry about that!” the being said. He was green, with two bulbous eyes that looked to Roxas like someone had sliced a ping-pong ball in half. Regrettably, the only clothes he seemed to be wearing was as spiky collar in a lighter green. “Ah, we don’t have time for anything fancy, just get out there and smile, a-and wave when the curtains open!”
“What?” Aqua started to say, but Roxas tapped her shoulder. “Right,” he said to the green being. “Centre stage?”
“Yeah, right on the marker! Sorry, we’ve gotta start now; we can talk later,” said the being. “The show must go on, o-or something like that!”
“Right,” Roxas said. He’d figured out what the green being was: a stage manager. “Come on, Aqua!” He banished his Keyblade and headed out onto the stage, where an “x” was marked out in glow-in-the-dark tape.
“Roxas, what?” Aqua said, still utterly confused. “Shouldn’t we–”
“Best way to learn is playing along!” Roxas said. “Come on!”
Aqua banished her Keyblade and followed him, reluctantly. “But I don’t understand. What show?”
Out in the auditorium, the audience quieted as the lights dimmed. A drumroll began as a giant, stylized logo was lowered in front of the red curtain.
A door opened in the “O” in the word “Show”. The stage manager popped up through it, in all his froggy glory, and bellowed to the rafters:
“It’s the Muppet Show, with our very special guest stars, Roxas and Aqua!”