Organization XIII DDR Party 2

...”Ordinary World”.

No lie. That’s what he picks. The one by Duran Duran.

“'Ordinary World'?” Axel scoffs, shaking his head. “Sounds lame.”

It’s all I could do to keep from laughing my mohawkmullet head off. “You’ve never heard it?” I ask, unable to hold back a chuckle.

Axel furrows a brow. “No. What’s so...” But at that moment, the music begins to play. “...funny...” he finishes, staring at the TV, mouth agape.

Marluxia grins evilly, saying nothing as the arrows begin to scroll upwards, gaining a ‘perfect’ each and every step.

Axel, on the other hand...

“IT’S GOING SO SLOWWW!” he groans in agony as he tries to maintain a rhythm, but his half of the screen consistently shows ‘good’ or ‘almost’ or sometimes even ‘boo’. Roxas’s jaw drops, half-empty Mountain Dew bottle still against his upper lip.

“Dude, Axel, you rock at DDR!” he finally manages to sputter. “What’s going on?!”

The redhead only growls at the TV in response, emerald eyes narrowed into slits as he continues to struggle his way through the song.

“It’s quite simple, really,” comes a voice behind me.

Now it’s my jaw’s turn to fall.

“You’ve actually been paying attention?” I ask Zexion, whose book is now resting on his lap.

“It’s rather difficult not to with you dense neophytes making so much racket. Anyway, it’s obvious that most of the songs on this asinine game of yours are fast-paced. Logically, it is easy to imagine one’s random stomping on one of these would result in reasonably good marks. The ratio of arrows to seconds would increase, thus also raising the probability of a successful step. The slower speed of this particular song renders one incapable of effectively utilizing such a method.”

Now Roxas, too, is paying attention. For a moment, we both stare blankly at The Cloaked Schemer. It is Number Thirteen who manages to speak first. “So... you’re saying Axel’s been faking it the whole time and his stomping around randomly is able to pwn my actual effort?”

“Basically,” Zexion replies.

Roxas and I exchange glances. “That’s kind of depressing,” he admits, dumbfounded by this new revelation. After shaking his head, he drains the rest of the bottle of Dew.

By this time, the song finally seems to be coming to a close- thank Moogle. I think if Axel had to endure one more verse, he’d yank every spike of his red hair out. As it is, he’s jerkily stomping out the last few steps and nearly tripping over his own feet in the process. It’s quite a sad sight.

I half expect the Flurry to go after Marly for putting him through that once it finally ends, but all he does is grumble about getting it over with and chooses a faster song as his first selection. He comes out the victor this time, which is to be expected considering the song’s title is “Burn, Baby, Burn”. The final round he comes back fully with a vengeance, promptly owning number eleven. Confidence restored, he reclines against Zexion’s bed with a smirk. “Eat that, Marly.”

To which Marluxia replies with the beginnings of a growl along with an attempt at a glare that’s nearly enough to send little children running to their mommies. Quite an accomplishment for him, considering it’s really hard for someone with pink hair to actually come off as scary- aside from the weird kind of scary, anyway.

Fortunately for the red head, Marly doesn’t get a chance to resort to any kind of violence.

“Now me and Roxas!” I cry, giddily springing onto the mat and effectively interrupting him. My opponent chucks a plastic bottle into the trash and moves into position, an odd look in his usually calm blue eyes. It makes me hesitate, but only for a second.

“SITAR SONG!” I squeal, not even bothering to ask Roxas if he wants first pick but instead taking it upon myself to skip right to my favorite song. Oh, how I love it- I think Dr. Bombay must be some sort of genius to come up with something so... perfect.

I expect Roxas to roll his eyes when the music begins to blast through the speakers, but he instead looks almost- dare I say it?- excited. When the arrows start to rise, I see why.

He’s moving across the mat so fast; I can barely keep track of him out of the corner of my eye. If not for the fact that I have every single step of this song memorized, he would easily beat me. I’ve never seen him this... energized. It isn’t until I hear Marluxia’s voice over the music that it hits me.

“Hey, what happened to all the Mountain Dew?!”

I glance away from the screen just long enough to see an alarmed expression flash across Roxas’s face.

Marly storms over and stomps on the pause button. “ROXAS! How many of those did you drink?!” he demands, waving one of the many empty bottles littering the floor threateningly in front of the boy’s nose.

At this point, number thirteen begins to count on his fingers. When he reaches nine, Marly throws up his hands, exasperated. “You know what? I don’t even want to know.” With that, he spins around and plops back down on the floor, angrily shoving a handful of Axel’s Cheetos into his mouth.

Roxas only shrugs in response, unpausing the game and settling right back into his quick-stepping rhythm.

But of course, my skills cannot be surpassed when it comes to “My Sitar”. It’s close, but I pull off the victory in the end. The next round, however, is even more interesting.

No sooner have we made it halfway into the song than the caffeine apparently hits Roxas full-force. He starts doing all these elaborate jumping steps, often hitting an arrow with both feet or spinning in the air. “Yeah! Can’t beat these mad skillz!” he cries.

...Just before slipping on the mat and knocking his head against the Playstation, immediately falling unconscious.

Which is why, kids, you never wear socks while playing DDR. Especially after downing who-knows-how-much Mountain Dew.

------------

After Axel and I finish laughing our butts off, we try to awaken the little Nobody, but to no avail- he’s out cold. Zexion graciously gives up his bed so Roxas can be comfortable while he snoozes- who knew the cold Schemer had it in him?- and instead retreats to a corner in which to do his reading.

Emo corner. Ha!

Ahem, anyway...

“So I guess that eliminates Rox from the competition,” Axel mumbles, throwing a concerned glance in his friend’s direction.

Only then do I realize something’s missing. “Hey, where’d Marly go?” I inquire, glancing around.

Axel shrugs. “He said if we were out of Mountain Dew, there wasn’t much reason for him to stick around. What a jerk.”

“Maybe he was just tired,” I suggest. “It is getting kind of late.”

“Oh well. Guess it’s down to you and me then,” he says, seeming to be largely unbothered by Marluxia’s exit.

“Yup!” I reply happily, hopping back on the mat. I’m fairly confident in myself, so I decide to let Axel pick first. He browses through the songs, sometimes sampling the tune a moment before moving on. This goes on for several minutes before he finally says, “This one!”

I turn my attention back to the screen to find that Axel has chosen...