The Cruise of the Zephyr Princess, Chapter One

Disclaimer: Magic Knights Rayearth and all characters pertaining thereto are copyright CLAMP. "The Love Boat" is copyright to whichever American TV network produced it. "Gilligan's Island" is copyright Sherwood Schwartz and whichever TV network produced it. However, this story is copyright Raye Johnsen, because I came up with the situation and all events myself. No infringement of existing rights is intended; please inform me if there are any, and I'll give credit in this disclaimer. Please don't bother suing me, you'll only be wasting your money, I don't even own my own computer. Many thanks to Dave Hsing, who came up with the original idea.

I won an all-expenses-paid seven day cruise aboard the Zephyr Princess for myself and up to six other people! Okay, so I was going for the Mercedes Benz — it would've been a cool sixteenth birthday present for Kakeru — but this is even better, 'cause now EVERYONE can come!

Kakeru, Masaru, Satoru and Mama are coming, of course. I rang Umi and Fuu, and they're checking with their parents now, but I'm pretty sure they'll be coming too — after all, both Mama and Satoru are adults, so we won't be unsupervised!

"'This is going to be so much fun,'" Lantis Shields murmured sarcastically to his best friend, as they stood in the embarkation line, waiting to board the Zephyr Princess.

Eagle Vision sighed. "Mmm. No Playstation, no computer, no Internet access, no TV, no videos, just sun, sea and deck croquet. I can hardly wait."

Innova Alicorn, Lantis's elder brother's best friend, looked back at the two sixteen-year-olds. "It's not that bad. Lie back, get a tan, sleep all day — if you look at it right, this could be the greatest holiday you ever had. Think of the girls you'll meet."

Both boys gave him a Look. Innova sweatdropped. He'd thought Lantis and Eagle were past the 'girls give you cooties' stage.

Just then, Lantis's brother Zagato returned, bearing softdrinks. "Did I miss anything?" he asked.

"No," all three chorused, as Zagato handed round the cans. "We haven't moved an inch," Lantis elaborated as he popped the tab on his Sprite.

"When does the boat leave?" Eagle enquired innocently. "I have to be in bed by ten pm."

"I hope we're called soon," Innova said worriedly. "If we're not, these two will start committing mayhem — always assuming I haven't murdered them first."

"Shields party," the girl in the little booth at the gangplank called. All four hurried over to her. At last! Something to do!

Debonea D'Malicia and her daughter Nova inspected their suite from the carpet beneath the beds to the taps in the ensuite. The stewardess, Alcione, was unsure what to do — should she remain in the suite in case they wanted something, or would she trust in the cleaning staff and leave?

Fortunately for Alcione, Mrs D'Malicia completed her inspection just then. "These chambers are adequate," she informed Alcione. "You may inform the Captain we will be happy to dine at his table this evening."

Once outside, she released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Two sentences! Only two sentences, and the old battleaxe had managed to reduce her to a scared little girl!

Little Nova D'Malicia looked like a real spoiled brat, so used to having her own way that she saw the rest of the world as toys for her amusement, but for a moment, Alcione felt a touch of pity for the girl she'd left in the suite with Mrs D'Malicia.

Hikaru was hopping from one foot to the other in excitement. A cruise! A real cruise, with her mother who needed a rest from work, her brothers, her two best friends in all the world, and their families, too!

Mr and Mrs Hououji had said that Kuu, Fuu's older sister, had been studying so hard she deserved a break too, and they would come along so that Mrs. Shidou wouldn't have to supervise six active teenagers all by herself.

Meanwhile, Umi's parents had actually been planning to go on a cruise on the Zephyr Princess anyway, for a second honeymoon. "Though it's more like their fourth or fifth," Umi had shrugged. "It's nice to have parents who love each other, but sometimes it's a little embarrassing."

Hikaru didn't see what was so embarrassing about it. She wished her parents had been as much in love as Mr and Mrs Ryuuzaki — maybe then they would still be together, and she could see her dad instead of just writing him letters.

And now they were in line, just about to board! Up until this moment, Hikaru had been half-convinced she was dreaming it all. Now, however, it was all happening. It was all real.

Ahead of her, there was a group of four men — well, two were really boys, a little bit older than Kakeru, but still, older than her. They were all cute, but there was something about the younger one who had black hair — he just seemed, well, nice, even though the younger blond was handsomer. Hikaru shook her head. What was she thinking? She'd never even met these guys!

The group boarded, and Hikaru turned her attention to the rest of her own group. Masaru and Kuu had hit it off already, for all that Masaru was a freshman at university and Kuu was only in the second year of high school. Hikaru wondered a little at why Masaru, who avoided Fuu and Umi the way he would dental surgery, was so amenable to spending time talking with Kuu. Hikaru understood that Masaru liked Kuu. But why couldn't he be nicer to Fuu or Umi?

Fuu was reading a book called 'How To Play Deck Croquet' to Umi. Hikaru had just decided to listen in when the girl in the little booth called, "Shidou party!"

Presea Smith sighed as the door closed behind the stewardess who'd just shown her and her twin sister to the cabin they were sharing, and decided to unpack straightaway, without waiting for the maid.

Puresea, however, had other ideas. "Let's go, Presea! Now's the perfect time to explore!"

Although she normally followed her elder twin into just about anything, Presea protested. "But there's supposed to be a dance this evening! And I haven't even looked at what we've got, what with each of us constantly unpacking and repacking for each other!"

I've got to get Presea to loosen up on this cruise! She thought, dragging her twin twin headlong down the corridor. She's far too serious for her own good!

Caldina D'Ance sighed as she stepped into the purser's office. "This has been one of those days."

"The first day of every cruise is always 'one of those days', Caldina," Lafarga Escadore replied mildly. "Thank you for helping, by the way. It isn't your job."

"No problem," Caldina replied cheerfully. "It's fun to do the boarding list — people are so happy to finally get on board. And what else is an entertainer to do while the ship is empty? You had the hard bit, love, coping with all the rich people and their baubles."

"It's not that hard. And it's after five now, so this office is officially closed. Care for a cup of tea?"

Caldina sipped at her tea, regarding Lafarga over the rim. Why had she fallen in love with this man? As well ask why the rainbow has seven colours and not eight, Caldina thought. In so many ways, they were so opposite; he needed roots, while she craved freedom. He was quiet, she a chatterbox. He was neat, she left everything in a mess.

She knew that he would always be there for her if she needed him. He would let her go if she asked him to, and he would always shield her from harm.

They had taken jobs with the cruise ship because it was solid enough for him and free enough for her. A compromise — but one she could live with. After all, that was what a relationship was all about.

"I love you, Lafarga," Caldina said suddenly. Lafarga lifted an eyebrow at her, and then quickly glanced around the room. Still shy, Caldina thought, with a smile. "I love you too, Caldina," Lafarga said softly. Caldina smiled at him happily. For those words, she could make a lot more compromises.

Sang Yung sighed. Why am I doing this? He already knew, of course. Because Aska had asked him to.

Aska Fahren was the daughter of the joint heads of Fahren Industries, the biggest conglomerate in the country. Her parents had married as part of the merger that created the company. Aska had been born early in their marriage, and no sooner had she been born than she had been handed over to a succession of wet-nurses and nannies. She and her parents rarely saw each other.

When Aska was two, her nanny had told Aska that she had a three-year-old son at home, and Aska had thrown a tantrum until the little boy had been brought to the house for Aska to play with. Aska had taken one look at the little Sang Yung, nearly flattened him with an enthusiastic hug and announced "I'm Aska! I'm going to be your friend!" They had been inseparable ever since. And if Aska was the one who led and he the one who followed, she would doubtless have charged into things far more recklessly if she didn't have him to consider, and he would have never have ventured as far nor as widely if he were not following Aska.

This cruise had been Aska's idea. Now it was officially summer, she wanted a holiday. A cruise, without any stops, would be safe from kidnappers for a rich little girl, and it was different enough from Aska's previous life inside the secure-but-boring family home that she would have lots of fun. She'd convinced Sang Yung, they'd got to work on their tutor Qiang Ang, and now they were really here, aboard the Zephyr Princess.

Now, the two were sneaking around the ship. They didn't need to sneak around, they were paying passengers after all, but Aska had thought it would be fun to see if they could. Currently they were lurking around the dining room, watching the staff prepare the room for dinner.

The girl looked to be around ten, Aska's age, with long tumbling red hair. She was dressed as richly as Aska was, but her prettiness was marred by a petulant, malicious expression. She pressed something — they didn't see what — behind the door of the dining room, and headed off.

Aska and Sang Yung immediately ran over to investigate, pulling the device off the wall and looking at it carefully.

"It's a timer attached to some caps from a cap gun. When the timer went off, the gunpowder in the caps would blow open the bag, spraying its contents everywhere," Sang Yung said wonderingly.

"The bag is full of ballpoint ink! Almost impossible to remove from clothes, and it stays on the skin for days, no matter how you scrub. And the timer's set to go off at six-fifty, when people would be arriving for dinner! Sang Yung, I've played some jokes in my time, but this is nasty. And it's not even aimed at anyone!"

"I know! But what can we do about it, Aska? Except from dismantling this one now?"

"There's only one thing to do, Sang Yung! We must follow this girl around without letting her see us, and dismantle all these nasty traps as she lays them! We'll be — child detectives! Don't look like that! It'll be fun!"

It was seven pm., and the first-night dinner was just about to start. Then there would be the get-to-know-you dance.

Puresea would have been looking forward to it — if she could only find the right dress. She and Presea had done each other's make up and hair, and now the contents of the twins's joint wardrobe were strewn over the beds, the chests of drawers and the lamps. Presea was standing in front of the mirror, holding a black blouse against her torso, which she then threw onto the bed. "Not right either!" she announced.

It is terrible to be fifteen, about to go to your first dance, and have several dresses, none of which are suitable. No one believes you when you say you have nothing to wear.

Both girls stuck their heads into the wardrobe again, praying that their mutual habit of going through the other's bags and repacking them had left them with something else to try. Presea spotted it. A pale cream-gold sheath dress, adorned only with an embroidered golden rose on the left shoulder. And, hanging just behind it, a gold sheath dress with an embroidered cream rose on it's left shoulder.

"You two aren't ready yet? The boys are just about to come in to discuss tonight's plan."

Emeraude had come into the cabin, while the twins had their backs turned. Both scrambled into the dresses quickly, and so the boys were able to come into the cabin to join in planning How To Get Clef To Have Fun.

Clef Magid, the twins' uncle, had been devoted to his wife Capri, and when she had died six months before, he had been understandably devastated. Emeraude Cephirano, Capri's younger sister, had invited Clef on this cruise — officially because she wanted help supervising her sixteen-year-old brother Ferrio, his friend Ascot and the twins. However, all four of the teenagers were in fact conspiring with Emeraude to get Clef out of the moping-around stage of grieving. As Emeraude had said, "We don't want to throw a romance at his head. But we've got to get him to start living again."

Ferio seemed like a nice guy, but Ascot was a little quieter than Puresea had expected. Someone who hung around someone as bouncy and energetic as Ferio either had to be more than they seemed, or really good at not being noticed.

.After discussing it for about ten minutes, the five agreed that just talking and making sure Clef was involved in a conversation all the time would work, and headed off for the dining room.

Lantis and Eagle were grumbling at each other and at everyone else within earshot. First, Zagato had coerced them into dinner suits ("Would you prefer tuxedos?" he had asked in that special way he had that wasn't — quite — a threat), then Innova had confiscated the Gameboys ("You're here to eat, not beat Tetris," he'd said as he tucked them away), and now they were having a close encounter of the worst kind with sushi.

"Tuna sashimi — specially marinated tuna in rice." Eagle read from the handy printed guide.

"Is it cooked tuna?" This was a highly significant question, after the encounter with the cooked salmon sushi and the raw salmon sushi.

"Okay." Lantis tried it. Eagle watched him closely — after all, they both had chosen the same types of sushi,and took it in turns to sample and report on each. Lantis chewed, swallowed and made a face.

"No, it's actually delicious," Lantis replied, reaching for the second piece on his plate.

Innova grabbed Eagle before he could pound Lantis into the table. Fortunately for him, at this point the soup was announced, and the boys began to reach for all the non-fish sushi on their plates before they got cleared away.

Dinner had been cleared away and the band were just tuning up when Debonea D'Malicia found and spoke to her daughter.

"Exploring, Mother," Nova replied, her mind elsewhere. Why hadn't her inkbomb gone off? She'd constructed it most carefully, and set it just behind the door so it couldn't be bumped or ripped off. But there hadn't been any embarrassing entrances of pepole covered with ink, nor any unexplained absences at the tables. There hadn't even been any shrieks of horror or dismay outside the door.

Could someone have found it? But I deliberately built it to be inconspicuous. No, I accidentally used dud caps. That's the only explanation.

"... and so I expect you to be on your best behaviour," Nova came back to herself in time to hear her mother say. "Yes, mother," she murmured obediently. Obviously her mother had been reading her the riot act again — which was why she'd tuned it out so easily. Of course, she had no intention of doing as she was told.

Mother uses underhanded and dirty tricks to put companies into the deep part of a sewerage pit, buys them at a fraction of their worth, and then all the problems magically 'disappear'. And she expects me to behave?

"Go ask a girl to dance," Zagato had told he and Lantis. "It's better than sitting here scowling at the tablecloth."

Girls! Okay, so they could be pretty. But most of them didn't have anything useful in their heads. They couldn't fix a car or play a computer game decently. To be fair, he didn't know much about fashion or music, but he wasn't interested in fashion or music. And now he had to dance with o-

"I'm sorry!" Eagle said automatically, looking down at the girl he'd just bumped into. She was rather pretty, with long, dark blonde hair caught up in a high ponytail and warm brown eyes, and she was wearing a creamy-white dress. It looked very pretty.

"I'm Presea Smith," the girl said, and gestured over to a table on the other side of the room. "That's my twin sister Puresea, our Uncle Clef, his brother-in-law Ferio and Ferio's friend Ascot. Want to come over and talk for a while?"

Eagle looked over at Presea's table, and immediately saw that Ferio and Ascot were around his age. Obviously Presea had thought he'd like to talk to them, rather than her, and he immediately decided to be perverse.

Presea blushed — very becomingly, Eagle noted. "Uh — yes! Yes, I'd like that."

Eagle smiled as he led Presea out. She proved a very good dancer, and Eagle soon found himself enjoying dancing with her.

Zagato was getting a lemonade at the bar when the beautiful blonde sat down on the stool next to him. He almost fell off his own stool. She was glorious.

"I'm not that fond of alcohol," Zagato had sheepishly explained. With a glass of lemonade in his hand, he couldn't possibly hope to impress such a sophisticated beauty.

"Thank you. So is yours." Just say it, Zagato. The worst she can do is say 'no'. "Uh — would you care to dance? That is, if you're not with someone already — "

Zagato just knew he had a silly grin on his face as he and Emeraude danced, but he was too happy to care.

She hadn't really expected any of the boys at this dance to ask her to dance — at least, not the ones she didn't yet know. But she had expected one of her brothers, at least, to take her around the floor at least once!

Masaru was dancing with Kuu, okay. But Kakeru or Satoru could have danced with her. Ohh, it was annoying!

"But you can't ask anyone to dance if you're not good at dancing," the disembodied voice replied. A young man stepped out of the shadows and smiled at Hikaru. She blushed. It was the young man she'd admired that morning! "I'm Lantis Shields," he introduced himself. "My brother got four discounted tickets through his work, and so he, his best friend, me and my best friend are here on this cruise."

"I'm Hikaru Shidou," Hikaru said. "I won seven tickets, so me, my family and my two best friends are here."

Hikaru and Lantis shook hands. "I'm out here 'cause I can't dance very well," Lantis said cheerfully.

"I'm out here 'cause nobody asked me to dance," Hikaru replied, equally cheerfully.

"I'd dance with you, but I've got two left feet, and you're too nice to step on," Lantis said seriously. "Would you mind talking to me instead?"

"That sounds okay," Hikaru replied. "But I'm not that good at conversation. You don't have to talk much when you're doing kendo."

If anyone had told Hikaru a week before that she'd have a great time talking kendo with a total stranger at a dance, she'd have laughed at them, she thought.

"Go and ask those two nice girls over there to dance," Clef ordered Ferio and Ascot. "Hanging around me like this — one would almost think you were babysitting me! Look, Presea's out there dancing!"

Puresea had been wondering where her sister had gotten to. She looked out at the dance floor, and, yes, there she was! Presea was gliding around in the arms of — of an absolutely delicious blond! Well! And here she'd been thinking that she'd have to drag that twin of hers into having fun! In fact, Puresea was a little jealous. Presea wasn't going to be the only one who got to dance! She, Puresea, would go and find a partner too!

There had been a really cute group of guys at one of the tables, but it looked like only one was still there. However, Puresea's luck was in; it was the cutest one of the four, the older blond.

Umi was bored. Bored, bored, bored. The only one of Hikaru's brothers who was interested in dancing at all was too busy romancing Fuu's older sister to pay attention to anyone else. Hikaru had disappeared and she was just about to grab Fuu and persuade her to do the same ...

"Uh, miss — would you like to dance?" The voice was soft and hesitant, and Umi looked up into a pair of clear blue eyes. This guy looked to be about sixteen, and he seemed sweet. Umi decided then and there — this guy seemed nice, and she was sick of not dancing.

"Sure. I'm Umi Ryuuzaki," she introduced herself, standing up and leading the way to the dance floor.

"I'm Ascot Summons," the boy said, as the dance started. "My friend Ferio Cephirano's the one who asked your friend to dance."

Umi craned her neck, and saw Fuu also starting to dance too. She smiled. Good. Let Kakeru and Satoru Shidou be the wallflowers. She was going to have fun.

"So, did we have fun?" Lantis asked as the four headed back to their suite after the dance had broken up.

"Wasn't bad," Eagle conceded. Presea had been nice, and she was just as interested in cars and mechanics as he was. They'd spent at least two dances blundering into everyone else while they argued over the merits of Mustang suspensions. It was the absolute delight of everybody else on the floor when they'd decided to sit out the rest of the dance and argue instead.

The two boys wished Zagato and Innova a good night at the door of their cabin. Innova suddenly stared at them as their door shut, and then let out a long, low whistle.

"I never thought I'd see the day," Innova commented, displaying the contents of his pockets, "that they'd forget to collect their Gameboys off me."

Yes, I know! Gilligan's Island comes in next chapter. But it is coming!

About the Smith twins: Yes, I know that both the Pharles were called 'Presea' in the Rayearth manga and anime. But I wanted to see what kind of sisters they were, and I didn't want to do the 'Presea One' and 'Presea Two' "thing. The elder one is called 'Puresea' because that's what the Silverwynd sub of MKRE first season calls Presea.