6
6: The Enforcers
"All right," Mulan said to her rather sleepy fighting students the next morning as they gathered in the palm grove in the cove. "Today, I want to see you really tested. We have a few volunteers from the Organization today who are going to fight you. We have here the most skilled, the most clever, and the most driven by blind rage."
By that, Mulan meant Xaldin, Zexion, and Saïx.
"The battle rules shall be this: the two teams will be the Organization three versus the rest of you. I shall see how long it takes for the rest of you to beat them, if at all."
"They won't," said Xaldin.
Saïx fingered the blunt wooden claymore he had been given for the practice fight. "Can I not use my own weapon?"
"NO!" everyone present chorused.
"May I call a session for strategizing?" Sparrow asked, raising his hand.
Mulan sighed. "Fine. But in a real battle, you wouldn't get time to plan."
Sparrow gathered the others around him. "Okay, here's the plan," he said. "Leon, Hercules, Simba, you're the strongest, so you take on the guy with the dreadlocks. Prince, you join them, 'cause you have a gripe against him for the rose incident. Aladdin, Skellington, Tarzan, and I will gang up on Big Blue over there. The Silverhead looks like a pushover, so Pan can handle him on his own. Ariel, sorry, love, but you have the fighting skills of a stick of celery, so I'm gonna ask you to sit this fight out. Ready…let's go!" The huddle broke.
"Ready…go!" Mulan cried.
Within five minutes, the Organization three had the others screaming for mercy.
"OW! OW! OW! STOP BEATING ME WITH THAT THING!" Sparrow yelled, writhing on the floor.
"Shut up! You're so annoying! If I had my REAL claymore, I wouldn't have to put up with your whining much longer!" Saïx growled.
Most of the others had been pinned to palm trees by Xaldin's lances. Mulan smacked her forehead before asking, "Where are Peter Pan, Leon, and Simba?"
Three muffled groans came from within the pages of Zexion's Lexicon. Zexion grinned maliciously.
"You turned them into ILLUSTRATIONS?"
"That's how I fight."
"That barely took ten minutes," Xaldin bragged, crossing his arms and leaning against a tree. The other two followed suit.
A coconut dropped out of the tree, hitting Xaldin on the head. A second coconut hit Saïx, and a third hit Zexion. The Lancer, the Diviner, and the Schemer hit the ground, unconscious.
Ariel dropped from the palm trees overhead. "Thank you for telling me to sit out of the battle, Jack," she said with a wink.
"But…but…" Jack suddenly switched demeanors. "Exactly what I was planning all along. I'm glad you picked up on it."
"Nice work, Ariel!" Mulan cheered. "Excellent use of the element of surprise! As for the rest of you, good work, but we can't be so conventional when we're up against villains who know our fighting style. Now, somebody wake up Zexion so he can get the others out of that book."
Walking off the training field, Leon approached Mulan.
"You're a good coach," he droned.
"Thank you."
"Where did you learn to teach others to fight?"
"I trained with one of the best myself." Mulan blushed, remembering the days she had studied under the general Li Shang.
There suddenly came the sound of raspy panting approaching from the direction of the sea. A disheveled ball of red planted itself in the sand in front of Mulan and Leon.
Mulan bent over to pluck the creature from the ground. "Who are you?" she asked.
"Name's Iago…" the bird panted. "Friend of Aladdin's. Listen…ya gotta listen to me…the Enforcers are coming!"
"Who?"
"I was in Maleficent's lair. She locked me up in some kind of jar. She called all her villainy friends over to talk about how she wanted them to be some kind of police force or something. Something about enforcing the rule of the Keyblade Master Xehanort…well, they got in a fight, which tends to happen when you get a bunch of villains from different worlds in the same room…"
"Not just villains," Leon testified.
"Anyway, Jafar launched a lightning ray at Oogie Boogie, but he missed, and it hit the jar I was in. It broke, and I escaped, and I came flying here as fast as I could…"
"Come on," said Mulan. "We have to get this news to Sora, Zexion, and the King."
Mickey, Zexion, and Sora sat around the table in Riku's dining room while Iago recounted his story.
"And Maleficent said something about binding them," he gushed, "so if one of them called, they could bring the rest of 'em to the same place."
"So we can't let ANY of Maleficent's flunkies get here," Sora clarified. "Hey…wait a minute…what were you doing in Maleficent's lair anyway?"
"What? Oh, that! That's…nothing. The point is, the Enforcers are COMING! And they said you, Sora, and your friends were the most wanted people they were going for FIRST!"
Mickey stood. "We have to get a protective barrier around the islands."
"We can do that?" Sora asked.
"It takes an awful lot of magic…but we've got all of your friends here, Sora, and most of them are skilled in magic."
"A lot of power is needed…" Zexion clutched the lower half of his face thoughtfully. "This is also where I come in. I will retrieve the others from Twilight Town."
A dark portal began to open behind him. "Besides," he said, "it will be good to hide them behind the same shield." He faded into the portal, which closed.
In mere moments, all of the heroes and the Organization were lined up on the beach.
"Ready?" Mickey asked.
"Ready!" everyone chimed.
Goofy, Hercules, Tarzan, Aladdin, Ariel, Skellington, Peter, Mulan, Sparrow, Simba, and Leon all concentrated on focusing their limited powers into a barrier around the territory of the mainland and the smaller island. Each member of the Organization forced their element into the mix, strengthening the barrier with the powers of space, wind, ice, earth, illusion, the moon, fire, water, time, plants, and lightning. Donald used his powerful sorcery to weave all of the magic together into a strong shield. Mickey, Sora, and Riku lifted their Keyblades, coating the shield in light. Kairi was the last to add to the barrier, feeding it the others' memories of Maleficent's usual crowd so that the barrier would keep out them and them alone.
(It should be noted that just as her Nobody controlled the power of memory, Kairi too could work with that power.)
Olette, Hayner, and Pence just looked on in awe.
"It's done," Mickey announced. "We should be safe."
"Does this mean we gotta stay on this dump of a world?" Larxene asked.
"Hey!" Sora yelled. "Don't call my world a dump!"
Axel sighed with happiness, or as much happiness as one lacking a heart could attempt to have. She was staying…
The castaway washed up on the cove later that afternoon.
Sora and Riku walked through the palm grove, chatting. "And here's where Ariel dropped the coconuts on their heads," Sora explained, laughing slightly.
"I wish I could've seen the looks on their faces before they passed out," Riku joked.
"Riku…who's that?"
A woman had washed up on the shore; face down in the sand, unmoving.
Both boys chivalrously rushed to her to see if she needed help.
"Hey! Miss!" Sora called out. "Are you okay?"
The woman, a beautiful brunette clad in a blue gown, looked up at Sora. "I think so…" she said in a British voice that sounded oddly familiar, though Sora couldn't place it.
"What happened to you?" Riku asked.
"I was on a ship that was sailing nearby…there was a horrible storm, and it was wrecked…I swam here for my life…oh, it hurts all over…"
"Don't worry," said Sora, "we'll help you. Come on." He extended a hand to help up the unfortunate castaway.
She needed support to walk; she did so only with one arm around Sora and the other around Riku. They brought her to the dock, where they settled her into a rowboat and proceeded to bring her to the mainland.
"What's your name?" Sora asked.
"Vanessa," the woman answered.
That night, Sora settled down into his bed, hoping no more nightmares would plague him that night.
He sat up. He remembered where he had heard that voice before…
"Jane," he said, remembering the young woman he had met in the Deep Jungle. Vanessa's voice was a dead ringer for Jane's.
Vanessa, at that moment was sleeping on a pile of cushions that Sora had dragged out for her in the kitchen. The house was starting to get cramped…a few Organization members, Zexion included, had decided to camp out there as well.
Sora wondered why the voices were so similar…Vanessa must have been related to Jane somehow. They did have almost the same hair. Perhaps they were cousins.
Myed twisted and turned in his sleep once more. He dreamed he was reliving his horrible experience in the Underworld…Cerberus salivated, the Fates cackled, and the Styx swirled with its accursed chartreuse waters. Above it all, he could hear the omnipresent voice of Hades, teasingly calling out, "Hello, little thief…"
"I said HELLO."
Myed's eyelids sprang up. His line of vision met up with the last being he ever wanted to see…again…in the multiverse.
"What, not even going to greet me in return? Well…now how would you put it? That's just plain rude!"
Myed opened his mouth wide to scream, but his lips were clamped shut by a bony blue hand.
"Ah, ah," Hades chided, "no screaming, now."
Sora was jolted awake by several screams…the screams of his friends…
And the last and loudest belonged to Zexion.
Sora bolted into his living room, Keyblade drawn, to come face-to-face with a horrible sight: all of his houseguests were tied up with thorny black vines and lying on the floor in the form of writhing bundles.
All but one…where was Zexion?
Sora's neck was squeezed tightly, and he was thrown violently against the wall. There, his assailant pressed him to the wood of the wall, not releasing the hold on his neck.
"It seems you two dears have been rejecting the ways of the Chosen One," came the blubbery voice of Ursula the Sea Witch.
Sora realized that what had ahold of him was a black tentacle. But what did she mean by "two"?
He strained to turn his head to the left. There, he could see the body of Ursula in his peripheral vision…and directly in his line of sight, he saw Zexion pressed against the wall next to him, also caught by the neck, trying to speak but only emitting the rasps of a choking man.
"You see," said Ursula, "your little resistance goes against everything the Chosen One stands for. Don't worry; once the rest of the world submits to the Chosen One's rule, they will find that it's all for the best. Oh, and don't worry about all your other little friends…they're all coming with us!"
Sora couldn't believe that Ursula was there, and wanted to ask her how she had crossed the barrier…
But he blacked out first.
"Shall we kill them?" Ursula asked Maleficent.
"No," said Maleficent. "Xehanort specifically required that the resistance is to suffer as much as possible…and I am in agreement. I much prefer that they become shanghaied."
Sora awoke, groaning, in an unfamiliar room. The bed was hard and uncomfortable, the walls were made of plain wood, and there was no décor about save for some wooden sea chests. Sora looked down at himself. He wore loose white garments and a strange metal armband. He tried to pry the armband off, but it was stuck fast.
Captain Hook entered the room without even knocking. "Time to inform you of your duties," he announced.
"Duties?" Sora yelled, enraged. "What duties? WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY FRIENDS?"
"They're fine…for now," said Hook. "The little bilge rats are going about the tasks they've been assigned as we speak…and you'll be joining them." He brought a bucket of water and a dirty bar of soap into the room. "Your particular job will be to polish every mirror on the entire ship until it shines twice as brightly as before. If the soap doesn't work…spit shine them."
Sora leapt up to punch Hook in the face, but was arrested halfway through his course by a shot of the worst pain he had ever dreamed of having. He sank to the floor, trying to clutch the areas of his body that hurt…except EVERYTHING hurt…
He noticed Hook clutching a pendant around his neck. Hook let go of the pendant, and the aching stopped. Sora lay on the floor in submission.
"Did I forget to mention the Cruciatus bands?" he said, gesturing to the armband clamped on Sora's wrist. "All the prisoners have got one. Whenever one of your superiors sees someone doing something that's a no-no, we just touch our pendants like this—" More shooting pain "—and the band does the rest." He let go, giving Sora a rest.
"Now get on those mirrors," Hook ordered. "The ship's gotta be in tip-top shape if we're going to round up all the beings in this multiverse who've defied the Chosen One!"
The mirrors were filthy; it took Sora hours just to scrape the grime off the first one he found in the hall outside his room. In fact, the whole ship was filthy. Sora wondered what the rest of his friends had to be put through…
Ariel came wandering by, a feather duster in her hand, clearing cobwebs from corners.
"Ariel!" Sora called out.
"Sora…" Ariel replied. "What happened?"
Sora told her the whole story.
"Oh, no…" Ariel shook her head.
"She usually steals someone else's voice, to erase all doubt that she isn't Vanessa," Ariel finished. "Don't you remember when she took my voice in order to keep me from breaking the curse?"
"So Vanessa was Ursula the whole time…" Sora just felt like a fool.
"She must have been able to slip through the barrier because none of us thought of her as being in that form," said Ariel, "and that means Kairi couldn't have put a block on Vanessa specifically. Then, once she was in, she used that bond Iago was talking about to call the rest of the villains."
"I'm so sorry," said Sora.
"Didn't I tell you all your being polite would be your downfall?" came a voice from around the corner.
"Axel!" Sora cried.
"Yeah." Axel looked rather green. "Don't make me talk too much. I might lose my lunch anytime. I hate boats."
Sora saw a hammer and a bucket of nails in Axel's hands…he must have been in charge of fixing leaks on the ship.
Donald came around the corner next with a mop and bucket, swabbing the floor. "All of Maleficent's lackeys are here," he informed Sora. "I just had to clean Oogie Boogie's room. It was DISGUSTING!"
Axel's eyes locked on Donald's bucket of water. "Bucket…" he murmured. He tipped it over, emptying out the water, before righting it and vomiting heavily into it.
"HEY!" Donald screamed. "I was using that to CLEAN!"
Axel backed away from the bucket, doubled over. "Sorry," he mumbled.
"Now I've gotta find another bucket to put in water to clean out THIS bucket!" Donald cried.
Myed came staggering into the hallway with a toothbrush. "Have to get grout out of bathroom tiles…" he gasped. "Mildew…" His eyes locked onto the bucket. "Bucket!" He rushed over and threw up into the receptacle.
"HEY!" Donald screamed again. "DOUBLE vomit!"
"How can you get seasick?" Axel asked. "You're a water mage!"
"Yeah, well, we're NOT on the sea," Myed explained. "We're flying through interspace. I heard Maleficent say we were charting a course for the Land of Dragons to round up Sora's 'followers'. There's a whole wing of the ship that's sealed off so we can't get in…I bet that's where they're going to keep prisoners."
Donald stared sadly at his contaminated bucket. "Could this get any worse?"
Zexion came barreling around the corner, stopping right in front of the bucket and gripping its rim so he too could empty his stomach into it.
"WAAAAAHAHAHAAAAK!" Donald went completely berserk.
"No…more…no more rocking…" Zexion panted. Sora noticed for the first time that the boat was actually gently rocking as it sailed through interspace.
"I'm just throwing this bucket over the side!" Donald yelled.
"GET BACK TO WORK!" a voice boomed. Sora, Ariel, Donald, Axel, Myed, and Zexion hit the floor, suffering the pain of their Cruciatus Bands.
A monster of a man stepped into view. Sora had never seen him before. "Who…" he managed to spit out, "who are you?"
"I be Davy Jones," said the man, letting go of his pendant. He was quite grotesque in his appearance, tentacles squirming around his face with all its squidlike glory. "And I be your task supervisor."
"Oh, so you're the nanny making sure we get our chores done before we can go out to play," Axel snapped, still clutching his stomach.
Jones was angered by that, but instead of using the Cruciatus Band, he simply approached Axel and stroked his face with his squidlike appendages. "You be a fire elemental, be ye not?" he asked.
Axel shuddered. Jones' very touch was burning his skin…
"That's what I thought." Davy let him go. "Ye won't be talkin' back to me no more."
"Why…how…"Axel sputtered.
"Ye don't mix with the sea," said Jones, "and I am the sea."
"You're the sea?" Myed asked.
"I be the lord of all the waters, and the guardian of the souls lost at sea before Will Turner took the job from me! I be the true master of the Kraken, the most fearsome monster in all the seas! I be the ocean personified!"
"Interesting…" Myed smiled mischievously.
There was a strangled cough from the floor; Zexion was still felled by his seasickness.
"You!" Jones cried, picking Zexion up by the neck. By that point, Zexion was really getting tired of being choked. "Stop yer lollygagging and get back to killing the rats!"
"No lollygagging going on here," Zexion mumbled. "Just gagging."
"Why you…"
Twang.
Jones unexpectedly set Zexion back on the floor. "What the…?" he asked.
Twang.
SMACK!
Jones hit himself in the forehead with his own hand. "WHAT?"
Twang, twang, twang.
SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!
Myed laughed insanely. He had summoned his Sitar, and was playing it joyfully. "Stop hitting yourself!" he cried. "Stop hitting yourself!"
Sora realized that Myed was CONTROLLING Jones…
"How are you doing this?" Jones growled. He made a snatch for his pendant, but his other hand stopped midway to his neck and decided to dig its finger into his ear instead.
"Well, you're the sea," taunted Myed, "and the sea just so happens to be my element. So there. Now…let's see the literal meaning of 'dance, water, dance'!"
Jones executed an abbreviated version of the Macarena, followed by a pirouette and an arabesque. "I'LL GET YOU!" he screamed, tap-dancing around the corner.
"That takes care of that," said Myed. "You know, I think I've got my interspace-boat legs."
"I haven't," said Zexion, heaving. That time he missed the bucket.
"I'VE GOTTA CLEAN THAT UP, YOU KNOW!" Donald screamed.
"Hang on a second," said Sora. Something had occurred to him. "Myed, you said there was an area blocked off where the prisoners were going to go?"
"Yeah."
"Well, if there weren't prisoners there already, why would we be locked out?"
Myed's mouth dropped open. "You're right…"
"I wonder what world they came from," Ariel thought out loud.
"I know what world they came from," said Sora. "Vanessa…er, Ursula…was using Jane's voice, remember? There are beings from the Deep Jungle locked up down there!"
Chapter 6.5
"Hi there. I'm Lexaeus, and I have a gripe."
"Huh?" said the author. "How did you get past the fourth wall?"
"Okay, am I mentioned in this story at ALL? Sure, you said my name…twice…but everyone else has had a moment except for me. I want a moment."
"The series isn't even OVER! Why are you yelling at me? There's still time left!"
"Well, I'm making sure I get into this fan fiction one way or another. I know I'm not one of your favorites, so the odds are slim."
"I put SAIX in it…"
"Yeah, well, a lot of people pick him first."
"Can we stop? This is awkward. I mean, I'm the author. I'm not supposed to be in this fan fiction, as much as I wish I could be. Believe me, if I could, I'd so be Demyx's…or Myed's…love interest right now…"
"Oh, Demyx, Demyx, Demyx! I'm sick of hearing about him and all his fangirls! It's like EVERYONE has more fangirls than me! Even Vexen! And he's practically older than Hades! And Hades is IMMORTAL!"
"Ha…you said 'Even Vexen'…pun…come to think of it, I wouldn't mind being his girl either…"
"I have a demand."
"What is it?"
"You have to swear to give me a big heroic moment sometime during this fic, and also proclaim yourself one of my fangirls."
"WHAT? No!"
"You see this tomahawk right here? You see the fourth wall over there?"
"Yeah…"
"I'll break your end of the fourth wall so you don't have control over the fan fiction anymore."
"YOU WOULDN'T!"
"I would."
"But…this one is my masterpiece thus far!"
"You know what else I can do? I can throw rocks at people. I can throw rocks at Myed and Vexen."
"Okay, okay! You'll get a real heroic moment as soon as I can manage it! And…Iamyourfangirlasofthismoment. THERE. I SAID IT. Just leave my side of the fourth wall and my favorite characters ALONE."
"Good. I am satisfied."
"Gosh, for the Silent Hero, you talk too much."