(In a Strange Dream)
It was a black space that, was what Marisa opened her emerald green eyes too slightly unsettled by the empty darkness, that she assumed was surrounding her. "Wh..what's g...goin on?" Marisa muttered out struggling to even push herself up from her laying position enough to allow herself to sit on her knees. After finally getting her shaky legs to position themselves semi-comfortably under her calves, she shook from the cold that rubbed against her legs from the darkness below her. "Ju..just what i..i..is this place?" those thoughts came out stuttered and, hazy from the clouding effect the strange space seemed to have on her head.
After a few moments of sitting in drowning silence, Marisa who had finally got fed up with it forced herself to stand up. The Witch fought to get onto her feet and after that struggled to keep standing. "I..Is this place some sorta dream maybe?" At this point, she started trying to walk forward slowly stumbling as the shadows serving as the floor, distorted like water with each one of her steps. In the end, Marisa could only muster a few steps before falling to her knees and, noticing the feeling of glass come from below her. She blinked in surprise at how the darkness below her had a transition from pure darkness to stained glass.
The glass portrait was circular and, showed a bright red heart next to a boy wielding what looked like a giant key. The boy was in a relaxing position with the key hoisted over his shoulder as the heart sat in front of his eyes. Within the heart, there were portraits of the faces of different girls that all seemed to be from different places. "Geez," Marisa grumbled " whatever's causin this dream is somethin I'm avoiding eatin it again." she honestly figured this was some delusion caused by one poisonous shroom or another.
Marisa got back up onto her feet going to continue walking when she took notice of the portrait just below the other faces in the heart. Unlike the other ones who were colored gold, this one was dimmer dark copper with black streaks that appeared to be cracks going along the portrait. As she stepped into the middle of the stained glass circle, suddenly she heard a low growl come from behind her and, she turned to look at where the sound came from to see darkness pooling on the stained glass. The darkness then twisted before stretching up into a small shadow creature with yellow eyes and two tiny antennae. Two more of them appeared to create a triangle around Marisa, and they slowly started to approach her.
"So I'm gussin yer the welcomin party huh?" Marisa asked before she had to toss herself out of the way of the three creatures lunging for her. They slammed their faces into one another bouncing off of each other and, falling on their rumps. "Well, there's mah answer huh,?" she quickly flung her arm up and, blasted a bolt of magic at the creatures though, because of her weakened state she was sent into a backward tumble "I really wish this situation would get mah body to kick back inta gear!"
The complaint seemed to be answered as she felt a burst of energy soar through her body allowing her to narrowly a second attack from one of the creatures. Marisa grinned while looking at the creatures "Now let's see if ya monster have any neat tricks up yer sleeves." the creatures glanced at one another before nodding in unison, two of the creatures went directly at the witch getting a yawn out of her. As the both of them leaped at her while aiming for her face with their outstretched claws she snickered out"Yer jokin right,?" she tossed two small vases out that after hitting the ground and shattering shot an equal amount of energy beams destroying both of the creatures.
As she did this Marisa didn't seem to notice the last of the creatures had flattened itself on the ground and, slid to take a shot at her back. In seconds, the creature had peeled itself from the ground lunging towards her. Marisa jumped to the side as the creature's attack grazed her cheek before she fired a green bolt of energy into its body causing it to explode. The witch then let out a small sigh while opening and closing the hand she had fired the bolt from before thinking "I feel a bit slow but, " she looked up from her hand to see more of the creatures pooling out of the glass ground "It should be good enough for now."
After that, she began to fight off the twelve or so creatures that had started attacking her. Marisa blasted four of them before they could even start moving towards her with two orbs of magic then, as she gracefully dodged three of the creatures before blowing them up as well. Taking a breath she slipped past the claws two others of the shadow creatures, having a red beam of energy come from their left flank to decimate them. Afterward, the beam bent in an irregular direction to catch another one of the creatures off guard dusting it completely.
This left two creatures that seemed to be wondering what exactly they should do after observing the strength of the witch that served as their opponent. Marisa feeling more than confident after handily dealing with a large portion of the swarm decided to get cocky with the remainder of the monsters. Her lips curled into a smirk as she shot into the air to avoid the coordinated attacks from the last two shadow monsters, and revealing her mini-hakkero she called out "Master Spark!" with a sheer amount of overconfident overkill the giant rainbow beam of energy. It slammed into the shadow monsters that tried to scurry away from the attack, Mariss grinned not noticing the cracks in the stained glass.
As the glass shattered from the beam's power Marisa felt as if the gravity within the black space had shifted suddenly and, she was dragged out of the air. She fell for a straight minute holding back a scream of both terror and excitement until she collided with another stained glass surface. This time as she pushed herself up she noticed the platform was directly the shape of a heart...sorta, the heart's bottom part curved into a three-pointed tail(the heartless symbol). On the right side of the curve, a more detailed portrait of the girl was presented to her.
The girl in the stained glass portrait had a red and black cracked crown hovering just above her mop of blonde hair with black highlights and, a singular braid went down her head with a red ribbon on it. After that was her strange yellowish-green eyes that seemed to be tilted down in despair while her mouth was a wispy half smile filled with pain. The girl held a strange orb in her hands with a bright red heart within it, her fingers having black cracks going up to her strangely sharp nails. Next, her dress was frilled down to the hem with a black and, dark grey coloration alternating. The same symbol as what made up the platform was printed onto the chest of the dress, though this one had darkened angel wings off to the sides of it and the same three-pronged crown as the one that sat above the girl's head.
Her thin slender legs then stretched to the left curve of the heart while being crossed strange black thorn-covered vines spiraling down to her shoes. She had one pure black dress shoes that showed off how regal she was supposed to be despite the offputtingly dark attire. "Well, guess this dream ain't the work of any type a shroom which boils down to some type a yokai then," Marisa mused thinking over everything she had been experiencing in this "dream" as she was referring it to "Now da big question is whose the one pullin the strings round here." Not having any other ideas of figuring out where she was Marisa decided to do the quickest thing possible to get attention.
"Hey, whose ever got control of this place, get yer ass out here so I can teach ya why ya don't go invadin the dreams of this witch!" Marisa roared that out at the top of her lungs not noticing the remains of the monsters she had defeated before started to slither together in the middle of the platform. As Marisa screamed more obscenities towards the sky the large creature despite its size pulled itself from out of the pool of darkness silently. After getting completely out the creature took a large swing with an open claw that rammed right into Marisa's side. The witch's back smashed against what felt like a magical barrier just before she could get flung off of the platform.
"That smarts," Marisa grumbled picking herself up while popping her back, glaring at the large shadow monster. It towered over her being around the height of a 3 story building, it's large claws having enough power behind them to crush her instantly. "Alright big guy you wanna fight let's go!" the monster roared in response, it's powerful howl shaking the blackened space around them.
(The Deep End KH1 play)
Marisa immediately took to the air to avoid another heavy swipe from the monster's huge hand, while firing her magic at the creature. The basic orbs did little to impede the giant's assault against her in fact, it would be accurate to say they did nothing at all. Marisa scowled at that while rocketing around the monsters swings, though the creature proved to be intelligent. It feinted it's one strike to make Marisa go running right into its other arm throwing her right back into the ground. It flattened out its palm going to squash the girl making her roar out "Light-Sign: Earthlight Ray!"
She threw out dozens of small vases that shattered releasing dense blue beams that sliced into the shadow's left hand. To go with the beams she fired, Marisa sprayed hundreds of bullets into the hand as well. This blasted the hand clean off of the creature and, gave her an opening to launch herself back into the air. The monster didn't show any sign of physical pain as its arm was as easily replaced as it was destroyed, it did, however, let loose a howl with long black tendrils erupting from it's back. The tendrils flung towards her rapidly aiming to rip her out of the sky, Marisa retaliated by releasing another spell card "Love Sign: Non-Directional Lasers!"
The random beams of pure energy clashed against the tendrils of darkness canceling one another out. Marisa glared at the creature as it aimed its eyes at her raising its arm again, this time it warped with dark power gathering in its open palm. The orb that was made pulsed before shooting out at the witch who stood her ground raising her Mini-hakkero at it orb calling out "Love-Sign: Master Spark!" shooting a beam of rainbow light towards the purple-black orb.
The two collided for a few seconds before blowing up in a flash of pure white light blinding Marisa for a moment. She felt herself get blown back moments after the light consumed her vision, tumbling backward until she was able to catch herself. After finally being able to open her eyes back up she blinked a few times the environment had changed again, this time the darkness that filled the void surrounding the stained glass platform had shattered into a bright white. Small orbs of darkness fell like snow melting into the stained glass as Marisa took a look at the monster.
It seemed that the creature had shrunken after the explosion possibly from taking too much damage as it now stood at a measly single story compared to its original towering visage. Marisa grinned realizing that this was more than likely the moment she needed to take this thing down for good. (Play Love-Colored Master Spark)
"Raaaagh!" The monster seemed to notice her intentions to finish the fight and, went to deliver Marisa darkness powered punch with the aims to crush her in one go. The witch responded by covering herself in magic calling out "Comet: Blazing Star!" Slamming herself against the fist and, dumping as much magic as she could into overwhelming the monster's power. It had been a near minute of pushing before Marisa snickered and completely sliced through the monster's attack and, went onto to bust through the monster's arm completely making it howl.
Marisa quickly then went into another attack stance as the creature bent its neck around, opening it up to charge a powerful blast of dark energy. "Yer a good fight but, sorry ta say yer did for big guy,!" she then charged up all of her remaining power into one blast small crackles of magic energy either striking into the ground below or being lost in the pale white void before crying out "Magicannon! Final Spark!" The blast kicked her backward as the monster released its own blast of darkness to counter the giant wave of rainbow magic.
Marisa's magic eclipsed the power of the darkness from the weakened monster consuming the creature completely. (Cut Music) the creature faded into nothing from the blast as Marisa huffed in exhaustion before falling into the middle of the platform, right onto the red heart. Marisa tried to push herself up but, weakness had overtaken her body to the point where she was forced to breathe softly while laying against the slightly warm red glass. Finally, despite her resistance, she fell on her face allowing the slight warmth to lull her to sleep.
"Are you really sure that country bumpkin's the real deal, not to give off the wrong impression but, all I'm getting is a bit of the old hocus pocus from her?" A voice said with a joking and non-caring tone to it only for another person to follow up his tone cruel and conniving "Hmm even if she isn't what she's supposed to be I'm sure we could make use of that power,"that's when before any of the others in the room could make a comment a strong female voice regarded them all "I can tell you all that for certain she is truly the backup plan were looking for," she paused for a moment her eyes scanning the room before continuing "Anyone who wishes to tell me I'm wrong do say so now."
No one dared to question her and, the woman's eyes turned to Marisa through her magic and whispered: "Hmm I can't wait to watch how you develop little witch."
Chapter 1 End