Disclaimer: I don't own and never will.
AN: WanderingSoulofTime has put out the call (Well actually he merely asked why so few stories exist about him) for us Dark Cloud fanfiction writers to write more stories about Aga. Naturally I decided to give it a go.
Hello children, gather round, gather round.
Yes, that's it, come closer. Even you, dear reader, sitting behind your computer screen. I don't bite you know.
What story shall I tell you of tonight I wonder? Perhaps a story of how Dran came to be the protector of Norune village or of his great victories against the darkness? But no, I think that is a story best told another time. No, I think I know the story for tonight. It is a story I remember personally, from long before many of you were born. It is a tale of great bravery and courage, of a monster and a man and a hero who made his mark across all Terra. I shall tell you the tale of Aga and the Beast of our town.
Our story starts with a time when our town was threatened. Unlike Mataki village, we are no hunters or warriors. We have no Guardian Beast like Dran of Norune village to protect us. Indeed we barely registered on the maps of the world at all, for all we were was but a mere hamlet. We were insignificant in the world and we knew it.
Now our Chief had big plans for our little hamlet. He wanted to expand it, build it into an ever larger settlement. Ha! It's funny how life turns out. Anyway, he had big plans. He really didn't like the fact that we were small and insignificant. He wanted more, he wanted us to be a big name town like Queens, with people moving and bustling about, trading left right and centre.
Unfortunately for him, we're pretty badly placed to emanulate Queens. We're not on a major trading route, we're far from the sea and the big mines you see today didn't exist. No we had nothing to offer and frankly we were happy to stay that way. But not him, oh no. He wanted to be important and damn the consequences.
Now I know not how he learned what he did, but we all learnt the results and suffered for them.
He raised what can only be described as a demon, a foul creature from the depths of the very Hells themselves. And with that demon, he raised an army of monsters, dark creatures that snarled and bit. He attacked and dominated the villages upstream of ours, enslaving and killing at a whim. The basis of an empire was formed, a cruel and vicious thing that drew wealth from its subjects.
There are people in this town who will tell you that his plan was ambitious and brilliant, that Aga didn't see the bigger picture, that he had no business getting involved with our affairs. Those people are talking utter moonshine. They never had to experience the sacrifices made to keep his demon in line.
The Demon was a creature that fed on pain, on darkness and cruelty. When he started, he obtained what he needed from a pair of twins. They were sweet kids, mischievous, but never nasty. A boy and girl, they were so alike it was often hard to tell who was who, with their round faces and sparkling blue eyes, they were adored by their parents.
One night, they went missing.
It was a warm summer evening when they set off, running an errand for their mother. What that errand was, I can't recall, but I can remember that there was a huge hue and cry about it. We rallied together and we searched everywhere we could think of, but we could see no sign of them. Even the Headman helped, full of platitudes and consolation.
It wasn't until two days later we discovered what he had done and by then it was too late. Much too late.
He told us to come to the fountain, an ugly thing with all sorts of silly bits on it at all sorts of angles. It looked like a wreck to be honest, but it was supposed to be a work of art.
We were all gathered and he stepped up onto a platform we'd set up for him. Then he started talking about destiny and glory and how we were destined for greater glory than this, especially him and how he alone had found a way to revitalise our little home. We all thought he was crazy at this point. Then he started talking about sacrifices and how some were needed for the greater good and that's when his Demon and his monster army appeared.
Those monsters needed feeding and so, as part of his deal, they took one person in four at purely random intervals. I expected to die that night, we all did. My sister, who was a little older than me and engaged to a wonderful man, did while I was spared. When they were finished with us, he told us to go home. He told us that we had a glorious future and that we had made the painful but necessary first step. We were too numb with shock to argue and so it began.
He led his Demon and his army to the village of Pikas and captured it with minimal resistance. Those he didn't feed to his army came back as slaves. There was one girl I saw, she was barely thirteen, who he inducted into his slave harem. The look on her face and the nightmares in her eyes…no girl her age should have to see that. He moved on to conquer the town of Niashra and the villages of Gria and Suvar, bringing riches and slaves back to our little hamlet and all with the power of his Demon and his army. We grew in size, but it was his richer cronies who benefited, not us. Soon we were a thriving town at the centre of what was a fast growing empire.
It was sometime about then that a powerfully built young man with deep green eyes came to our town from the village of Norune.
Now the Headman really wasn't interested in taking Norune. In fact, he made sure to avoid it, much like he did with Mataki. The Divine Beast Dran would have sent him packing and Master Utan and his hunters were far stronger than his monster army. And so, he sent an envoy to the man, offering him the comforts of his home. He even offered him slave girls for his amusement. But the man, he turned them down and declared.
"I am the warrior Aga and I am here to end your evil!" he declared and the Headman, he didn't like that, no not at all. And Aga, he drew his sword and pointed it at the Demon and challenged it to single combat. A duel of the heavens.
The Demon, it laughed. It laughed and laughed and any normal man would have cowered in fear at the sound.
Aga didn't even flinch.
The Demon saw this and was amused. He landed in front of Aga and drew his sword, a terrible and frightening weapon of fire and ash that was longer than a man is tall. The Demon himself was as tall as a house and towered over Aga. He raised his sword and swung it down with tremendous force towards Aga's head. Aga parried the blow with his sword, a golden two-handed weapon that shone in the sun. Any normal weapon would have broken, but Aga's sword was no ordinary weapon. It was a legendary sword known as the Sun Sword.
Yes, the Sun Sword, weapon of legend, said to rise again when the world has need and a hero rises. And we needed a hero, for we were too beaten to do anything else.
He parried the blow and struck the Demon, piercing the creature's legs. The Demon howled in pain and swung his weapon into attack after attack, but Aga deflected them all, his sword a blur of gold amongst the fiery red of the Demon's.
Then the Demon over-extended himself and with a swift blow, Aga defeated the Demon, thrusting his sword deep into the creature's foul heart.
The Demon, he screamed as he fell, not believing that a mere human could defeat him and we all watched with mute disbelief. Moments later, the monster army that had turned our little hamlet into the heart of an empire vanished. The Headman bellowed at us to seize Aga and we stepped forward.
I don't know who it was that threw the first stone, but soon we were all doing it, throwing stones at our old Headman and he fled screaming about how ungrateful we were and so on and so forth. He didn't make it far though. A member of his slave harem, scantily clad and leaving little to the imagination, stabbed him in the guts. The same girl I told you about earlier. I don't know what he did to her, but the hatred in her eyes….
It took mere hours to destroy the empire that had sprung up from his evil and had Aga not stepped in, we would not have survived, but Aga, he called for peace and restraint. He stopped the mob with his sheer charm and personality. He had that something special that all great leaders have and he inspired trust and loyalty in all who met him.
As for what he did next, well he left once more, seeking new adventures, but that is a story for another time.