Disclaimer: Nippon Ichi owns Disgaea, not me.
Author's Notes: Chapter 2 of Ad Astra Per Aspera is in progress, for those who are curious. I got my DS back (lent Disgaea to a friend of mine for about a year) and have been doing research on a few minor details in my save file and updating my story outline.
This one-shot was typed on an iTouch in double biology, when I really should've been catching up on homework instead. But I guess this helped me blow off some steam so I can tackle AAPA now (from the beginning, and not backwards, which I'm so tempted to do sometimes).
This A/N is getting long, so I'll shut up. Hope you have fun reading, and comments & criticism will be received with much love.
Warnings: There's a bit of graphic violence, mention of drug-abuse, and other vaguely implied nastiness in the introduction. It's not explicit at all, really, but it will be rated M nonetheless so no one tries to rip my head off. Paranoia sucks.
Summary: They are the incarnations of souls that have sinned. Follow the thoughts of Aqua and see what it truly means to be a Prinny.
In the Mind of a Prinny
She finds herself overlooking the cliff edge, dark hues of midnight blue and muted white snow lain out for miles and miles hundreds of feet below where she is standing—hovering—on slippery ground glazed with a thin layer of ice crystals. She can barely make out the puffy clouds drifting lazily in the sky. The night, she recalls, was never so dark before.
"..—... —...murder—"
The mysterious, chilling figure before her continues droning on, as it has been doing for what felt like the past decade. Her ears begin to tune out the low murmurings of the being as her mind begins to drift off...
The man moans in pain and struggles beneath her in an attempt to throw her off his prone form, but it is futile. Her nails—long and neglected, covered in a layer of chipped nail polish that must be at least two weeks old—bite into elastic epidermis and leave crimson gashes in their wake on his bare skin.
It's not enough, it's not enough, she thinks, as she pulls the rusty blade out of the small of his back with a sickening squelch and drives the knife back in deep between his shoulder blades. She rams it deeper in and twists the blade, finding that the reaction it brings forth barely whets her insatiable appetite.
There is another howl of pain, but she's not satisfied, still not satisfied, even as the metallic tang of flowing iron reaches her nose and the sickly warm liquid seeps through her bony fingers.
It's not enough, it's not enough. Because she is certain that if she could scream in a way that mirrored her own pounding heart, she would render the world deaf with her own shrieks of internal pain, of being abandoned by her boyfriend in that gritty alleyway, and of the horrible horrible sunken emptiness as her heart plummeted into the deepest trenches after the disorienting high caused by cheap crack—
"A-aq—A..aq-ua—" the man gasps pitifully below her. "Pl-plea—..sse..."
But the man only manages a small gurgle as blood wells up in his throat and he stops, his stuttered sentence left hanging in the air as his body finally gives out and falls limp.
She halts in her frenzied stabbing, taking in the sight of her former lover—dead—as her dazed mind makes weak attempts at processing the dozens of stab wounds all over the man's body. It had ended so quickly, she thrust the knife over and over again at whatever opening she could find as he desperately flailed against her—
She stumbles a bit as she slides off the now crimson mattress, and the blade clatters onto the floor as she slowly makes unsteady footsteps to the door.
The total silence brings her back from unpleasant reminiscences, as the monotonous rattling breath of the cloaked shadow—Death, she guesses—stills.
"For all the sins thou has committed prior to the death of thee—"
Death.
It had come swiftly, cruelly, before she had time to recover her senses and defend herself. Such was life on the street, where being caught unawares meant a quiet yet filthy demise, unknown to the rest of the world.
She was cruelly tossed into the pile of rubbish, and the rotten stench of moldy vegetables and rotten fruit bombards her sense of smell. And it is absolutely disgusting, the offending odors and the state of her own body, but she no longer has the strength to heave and vomit, let alone roll herself out of the garbage.
Her eyes flicker and then close.
"—thou must atone for thy sins."
Suddenly, the sensation of a thousand needles pricking into her skin makes her brain freeze. She bites down on her tongue, but there's no blood—not from her mouth, not from her arms or legs or anywhere—and all of a sudden, she feels heavy, pulled down, sewn into—
She glances down and releases a small yelp in shock. Her apparition self is literally being woven into some demented penguin suit, and she can only watch helplessly as she sinks further in her container.
"Thou art now a Prinny."
She groans and mumbles to herself as she swipes cobwebs and flops onto her belly to mop the floor, because really, this body of hers was not designed to bend and do such physical labor.
She whacks and grinds a spider to death using the rag in her hands—flippers—with unnecessary vehemence. She thinks of Master Etna, and internally hisses at the recollections of the pink-haired demon flitting through her memory.
"Get your sorry ass moving, or no food for you, you useless Prinny squad!" The girl snarls as she nudges her gun, safety undone, against Aqua's head.
Twenty-hour workdays with no rests, no holidays, no benefits, nothing. She had one-hundred-forty hours logged under her belt this week alone, and would be getting two scrawny fish for her efforts. Just like last week. Like, dood...
Needless to say, if this was back then, she would be yelling at this bitch across the hallway of her high school. But this isn't there, and she isn't a human now, but a Prinny, the lowest of the low, and she simply has no choice.
She recalls her second day of work, when she sneaked off into the Castle Library to try and learn something about her new identity in the afterlife. She was ordered back almost immediately to continue with the slave-labor, but she did manage to catch two lines:
"Legend states that inside the Prinnies are the souls of sinful humans. They work in Celestia and the Netherworld to atone for those sins..."
And she internally groans again as she thinks, dood, she's really in for it. If this was how she had to atone for her sins, then it really would take twice as long as forever.
They're on a rocky flatland riddled with rivers of lava. A battleground, obviously, given the butchering going on between both sides. The fight rages on and Master Etna stands directly behind them with a sinisterly gleaming lance, voice dipped in venom.
"March forth, my Prinnies."
Aqua stumbles into the fray right after the orders are issued. She figures that she'll be speared in the end either way, by her Master or an enemy unit or a blundering ally, even. But as she pulls out iron daggers and unleashes her little flurry of cuts, she wonders what the hell is going on, because she is now atoning for her sins by committing more sins?
This Netherworld place really didn't make any sense.
She wonders to herself, whether she would have ever come to realize it, if not for the fact that she stumbled on the truth because she was freaking bipolar.
She recalls the stupid memory of her and the rest of the Prinny Squad, which was aptly renamed "The Dark Durians".
"BAAASSEEEBAAAALLLLL!"
The unified shout of dozens of Prinnies—hers included—rises high into the sky above, reverberating off the ancient wood of the trees in the Heart of Evil, as they gather around the impromptu baseball diamond of the clearing.
And it's a ridiculously messy affair, because none of them really knows the rules; they just grab sticks and stones and old fish bones and god-knows-what and hurl them around or fling 'em like bats, all the while toppling over each other as they hop around the diamond to chase after something.
And then Master Etna steps out of the woods into the clearing, but none of them notice her at first in the chaos of "baseball". But they all stop and stare as they hear a childish burst of giggling.
They turn, and what they see is a girl sporting a flamboyant pink hairstyle, eyes sparkling with innocent mirth as musical—genuine—chimes of laughter burst forth from her trembling frame.
Master Etna looks back up to each of them, and her face breaks into a vibrant grin as she says, "Hey, why stop now? I'm joining in!"
The Prinnies sneak sideways glances at each other.
"Dood...what is Master Etna planning?"
And Aqua, in her hyperactive carefree state, thinks aw, screw it.
"BAAASEEBAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLL!"
It makes her want to bang her head on the wall, because she can't believe she never noticed before this. She was anything but a stranger to pain and suffering, so why didn't she see it before? The far-away look in her Master's eyes, those frequently furrowed eyebrows, the soft mutterings under her breath, and the way her shoulders slumped when she thought no one was around to see? All the signs of frustration and hurt and desperation and confusion—
Assassination, thievery, and all myriads of crime were common happenstances in the Netherworld. Demons they may be, dark may be the life they lead, but damn it—
Despite all the sadistic torturing and evil cackling and bouts of viral insanity, Master Etna was—the demons were—still human, in a sense, still alive and feeling.
And then everything snaps into place in her mind. The stubby wooden legs, the flippers too weak to cause true damage, the blue leathery skin that was too soft to serve as armor against danger, the miniscule bat wings that offered no assistance in terms of mobility, the over-all cuteness of their entire demeanor...
The anatomy of a Prinny was simply not designed for this dimension. The vessel is completely ill-equipped for the means of survival in the Netherworld. They were designed to be too clumsy to fight properly, too inflexible to do Castle chores properly, too—
And that was exactly the point, for them to be useless in their assigned task and to be comical in their futile attempts to do things right.
It wasn't about obeying orders to the letter.
It wasn't about the number of successfully completed missions tucked under their belts.
It was about how many smiles they could bring, the semblance of happiness and cheer they could deliver to the demons of this Netherworld, the inhabitants of this land that they should be able to connect to because at some point in their past lives, they all had committed the same sins as these demons—
"Legend states that inside the Prinnies are the souls of sinful humans. They work in Celestia and the Netherworld to atone for those sins..."
And that was how they were supposed to atone.
It was an instinctive, intuitive sort of sense; she just knew.
It was finally time.
She regards her Master with some sense of joy as she sees Master Etna prancing through the shadowed halls of the Netherworld Castle. She goggles a bit as she observes Etna dragging cannons, ball-and-chains, drills, scythes, axes, swords, and guns into what is apparently the Prince's room. But she sees those lips tilted up in a good-humored smile, so she wobbles on to continue with her menial task. Recently, her Master had been addressing everyone with a musical lilt in her voice. And while it seemed like pure sugary evil sometimes, she knows that it is a change for the better.
Finishing up with the storage of her Master's secret stash of candy, the wooden pegs that were Aqua's feet made soft echoes—tap, tap, tap—as she padded out to the Castle's grand entrance that led to the frozen darkness of the outside. She casts one last glance back at the heavy doors that have already slid shut behind her.
It was finally time.
She clambers up the hill of Lunar Snowfield awkwardly, struggling as her peg-legs sink into the fluffy white blankets of snow. Finally, her struggles bear fruit as the ground finally evens out. There, again, is Death hovering in the exact same spot, and Aqua moves to step behind him right at the edge of the cliff. Above them, the Red Moon hangs low in the sky, casting a soft glow of red and pink onto the blue and white monotone of the frigid landscape.
She feels something snap inside her, like links of a chain breaking away. She senses her body becomes lighter and lighter, and she begins to float up, up, gently like a drifting feather in the night sky. She looks up to the Red Moon, and waves of calm wash over her conscience.
Aqua's spirit transforms into a glowing orb of white that rises to the moon, and the body of a blue Prinny deflates and falls to the ground.
Red moon, red moon...
Cleanses the sinful and makes them anew...
Shining brightly in the night sky,
waiting for the souls...
Who will be born again tonight?
Who will be born again tonight?
She had finally atoned for her sins, and it was time for her to move on.