Honeymooning

[Mickey Mouse]

They had been reunited for all of an hour when she started to nag.

“Give me your Dataverse Device,” she held out a hand, the toe of her high heel clicking impatiently against the white floor of the Nexus. The male mouse obliged, fishing the tiny little thing out of his pocket. He had to admit that his experience with the thing was rather limited—he’d been window shopping one of his days in Coruscant, and one of the shopkeepers had convinced him that he needed the thing. To “keep up with modern times,” or whatever. Either way, Minnie snatched it from his gloved hand and began typing away like she’d been doing it for years. Mickey supposed the Camelot ladies she’d been hanging around probably kept themselves glued to the things.

The King plopped down on the featureless ground, glancing back over his shoulder at the huge, metallic gates to Coruscant that now lay pretty far off. He rubbed the back of his neck, nursing the bruise one of the stormtroopers guarding the gate gave him when they had first passed through. The idea that the Empire would have a few guards posted there totally slipped the minds of the mice, and so the troopers surprised them; luckily, the pair made a pretty good team, and easily overwhelmed the ambush, escaping further into the Nexus.

Undoubtedly, the Empire would send more people after them. Heck, Mickey knew that they might be on the run for the rest of their time in the Omniverse—however long that ended up being. At this point, he could only hope that they could escape this place soon. He liked his new friends here well enough, but now that he had Minnie, nothing could stop him from wanting to go back home and reunite with the rest of his subjects. Between Pluto, and Goofy, and Daisy, and Donald, of course, and… well, he never thought he would ever say this, but he even missed good ol’ Pete.

“What are you doing?” Mickey asked the lady mouse, who paced throughout the empty space of the Nexus, typing away at the Dataverse Device.

“Sending out a distress call,” she responded curtly, not looking up from the thing. Why the heck is it taking so long? the male mouse thought, and Minnie’s head snapped to look at her husband, a scowl growing. “I heard that,” she narrowed her eyes, “and I’m encrypting it, duh.”

Mickey did not know what the world “encrypting” meant, but he decided it would be best to just shut the heck up and let Minnie do her work. He had always been less of a strategist and more of a doer—she would make the plans, and he would execute them. They had always worked that way, and now it seemed like a good plan to just keep up the routine.

It bothered him, though, to see her so worked up when he overflowed with happiness. They had been apart for so long—now, he thought, would be a time for celebration. Of course, she was just looking to get them to safety. That was all her mind focused on, he knew: making sure that they would survive this ordeal that they had gotten themselves into. The King figured that he might have benefited from having her around during Dante’s Abyss—she could have saved them a whole bunch of time wandering around the woods, he knew, and the mouse couldn’t help but feel like Erza, Samus, and Harry would have absolutely loved her.

And they still will, he smiled, whenever they get the chance to meet you.

There we go. That thought pleased him. Despite his overwhelming desire to go home, a part of him wanted to find out where Erza Scarlet had run off to, or what Samus Aran was up to, or who the heck Harry Dresden had started hanging around with, and pull them all back into one place, so they could meet Minnie and just… have a nice time.

Have a nice time. Mickey’s brain perked up with an idea. He got up, and looked over at his wife, turned away from him in frustration at her “encrypting” activity. He pursed his lips, and held out his hands, trying his best to focus all of his omnilium into this next activity. He had never used omnilium to summon anything quite so big, so hopefully he would be able to carry this out effectively. As the energy flowed forth from his hands, he began to feel the task getting easier and easier, and it made the mouse think back to his first attempts to escape—maybe now, stronger than he used to be, he might actually be able to summon a working gummi ship.

Of course, that thought had no place here—this set up, however extravagant, was nowhere near as complex as a ship that could travel between worlds. Omnilium danced up into the shapes of the things he wanted for several minutes before some colors shifted and finally, his goal lay before his eyes. Sitting in the midst of the great white void of the Nexus, a little circular, wooden table had been erected, surrounded by two chairs. On top of the table, a small glass cylinder held a floating, glowing red rose, and a single bowl of spaghetti with two forks completed the set up.

“Alright, I think I’m done,” Minnie nodded, spinning around and reaching out to hand Mickey his Dataverse Device back. Her eyes grew wide when they landed on the little date the mouse had set up, and she couldn’t hold back a smile.

“…Mickey.”

The male mouse gingerly took the contraption from his wife’s gloved hand and shoved it in his pocket before wrapping her in an embrace. “Good to have you back, honey.”

She grinned uncontrollably, and Mickey held out a hand, gesturing for her to sit in one of the wooden chairs. She slid into the seat, picking up her fork and wrapping a few noodles around the end of it. Her eyes flitted up to meet Mickey’s as he sat down across from her. “I know what this is,” she winked at her husband, lifting up the noodle. He smiled, caught. It was a reference that she had become all too used to. Their dates often consisted of a spaghetti dinner under the moonlight—they didn’t have moonlight here, but Mickey hoped this would be close enough.

As they chewed on their spaghetti, her eyes lit up with an idea, and she looked over at the empty void of the Nexus next to them, holding out one of her hands. Omnilium twirled up through the air, eventually taking the shape of an Italian chef, holding an accordion in his hands.

His beautiful tenor voice pierced the air. Mickey and Minnie’s smiles met as they chewed on the same noodle. For once in this cold, unwelcoming Omniverse, Mickey felt at home.

“This is the night,
It’s a beautiful night,
And they called it bella notte…”

[Mickey Mouse]

The Italian chef’s voice rang in their reunion perfectly. His song—an old tune of his own country, “Bella Notte”—spoke of a beautiful romantic night. Sure, the Nexus had no concept of time, but Mickey felt, with their fingers entwined together on the checkered tablecloth, like they were spending a beautiful night together. For the first time in a long, long time.

“It’s been too long,” Mickey sighed, staring at his wife’s gloved hand. Minnie giggled a bit.

“Indeed it has, handsome,” she replied, nodding. The mouse wondered what her time in captivity had been like, but he dared not ask. He did not want to hash out all the details of Dante’s Abyss with her—at least not at this point—so he saw no reason to dig into everything that had gone on while she had been a prisoner of Organization XIII. Certainly, it had been pretty terrible, right? Of course, he knew no one more resilient than his lady love, so perhaps upon being asked she would just shrug it off. She was not an inexperienced damsel in distress, to be sure, so perhaps it had been easier on her.

No, that was stupid. Of course it must have been hard. Stuck in the clutches of an evil enemy, wondering when or if he was going to save her; at least when she had been kidnapped in the past, she had known that Mickey would be on his way soon. Here, even if she had known that he, too, existed in the Omniverse, she must have realized he had no idea that she was here. How was he supposed to find her without that knowledge? As it stood, they had been reunited by pure luck, and nothing more.

Or had it been arranged? Thrall. The mouse thought back to his encounter with the wise old orc shaman. “I shall help you find what you seek,” he had said, “Beginning with this.” That part was important—beginning with the yellow light, beginning with Kingdom Hearts. More, obviously, had been on its way, and perhaps Thrall knew that the same people who held the secret to his mysterious new powers also had Minnie in their clutches?

The mouse smiled at the thought, that he had been meant to rescue his wife the whole time. His eyes flitted up from her hand to gaze once more on her beautiful face. The empty spaghetti bowl sat between them, untouched for several minutes. Mickey took his other hand and waved it over the bowl, reabsorbing the omnilium into him. Slowly, he broke down the tablecloth and the table itself into its raw form and reabsorbed the stuff for later use. He let go of Minnie’s hand, and she cast the same gesture over the secondary that continued to hum in absence of anymore words. Slowly, he dissipated into nothing, the omnilium dancing back into his wife’s fingertips.

Mickey felt a buzzing in his pocket, accompanied by an unfamiliar beep. His face grew puzzled, and he dug around, pulling out his Dataverse Device and opening it up. “Someone… responded,” he smiled, showing Minnie the reply to her distress call. Mickey examined it again. “Princess Guu,” he said aloud, trying his best to place a name with a face, when suddenly, it dawned on him. The girl who had asked him for his autograph, way back in the barracks. “Oh! Yes, I did meet her,” Mickey nodded.

“Do you trust her?” Minnie asked, concern evident in her voice.

“I trust few people in this Omniverse,” Mickey replied. It was true: the only faces that came to mind were Erza’s, Samus’s, Harry’s, and Luffy’s. He supposed Pepsiman, too, could be counted among those ranks, but the mascot was almost too much of a wild card. “But I don’t think we’ve got much choice, dear,” he conceded after a moment’s pause.

“Yeah,” she shrugged, “And I suppose staying with a Princess sounds right up my alley.” She mustered up a smile. The Queen, he knew, was not used to being on the run.

Nevertheless, she was determined to prove that she could handle it. Minnie stood, waving her hand over the chair she sat in and absorbing its omnilium before gesturing for Mickey to do the same. He obliged, and soon no trace of their little dinner date remained on the floor of the Nexus.

“Well, let’s get moving,” she smiled, and Mickey started to walk off toward the greenest gate in the distance. After a few steps, he became distinctly aware that no one was holding his hand, and so he turned around to see his wife tapping her foot impatiently.

“…what?” he asked.

“I’m tired of walking,” she whined, tilting her head matter-of-factly.

Mickey sighed. They would go the rest of the way on the back of a lion.