And thus, Witchey said LET THERE BE AN UPDATE! …But nothing happened, so she had to do it herself in the end. And so the moral was: Only God gets away with that kind of stuff, the rest of us work for it. T_T

LISTEN UP! If you're interested, ask any characters in this fic, canon or OC, any questions you wanna ask them! I cannot guarantee you'll always be satisfied with the answer, but hell, do it anyway! …Please, I live on feedback, for bloody sake. T_T

DISCLAIMER: Simon the Geo Monster shall… you know what? Why am I bothering? Clearly, I, a fanfic writer, have no owning rights to the Disgaea series, but why do we put down these disclaimers? Starbucks. IT'S A CONSPIRACY I TELL YOU!


Ruffled Feathers

Beatrice had been going about her usual routine. To prevent the already existing draft within the castle from getting colder than necessary, she was going about through the corridors and closing the tall windows. But it was one window that she happened to look out of that caught her attention and delayed her routine. Through the open air, she watched as a burning blur of red and yellow came plummeting down from the sky. Beatrice pulled some of her blonde hair away from a pointed ear and listened carefully, and through the roar of the ship, she heard voices.

"ETNAETNAETNA, WHY ARE WE FALLING?"

"ONE OF THE WINGS IS GONE! THAT STUPID METEOR!"

"Aww, how are we gonna return this ship now - "

"PRIORITIES, FLONNE!"

The maid looked out over the windowsill, and took notice of the direction the ship was falling in; right into the abyss.

Beatrice went into motion. She jumped onto the sill and kicked herself up into the air. She shot straight up to the ship, spear suddenly in hand, and began to twirl and spin it around until it sparked with dark energy. The maid and the ship met, and things felt like they had slowed. She could now see two young demons, both female, through the window of the little ship, both terrified at the canyon below and too distracted to notice the maid. She brought the spear over her head and smashed it on the roof of the ship, diverting it from its current path and guiding it on a different course. The little ship continued to descend, and instead of the empty abyss it crashed into one of the lower walls of the crooked castle.

KA-BOOM!

Beatrice slowly floated down back towards the open window and stepped down into the hallway again. She turned to close the large window, but paused. Something was coming…

"WHAT THE FRICKIN' HELL WAS THAT?"

And the castle started shaking again. Beatrice would have to wait until Lord Laharl calmed himself before she could return to her rounds.


"Ooowww… well, that was painful…" Etna moaned, rubbing her head. She opened her eyes to look at the mess of their crash.

They had broken through a thick stoned wall of, what she barely remembered to be, some kind of building, and she was sitting on top of most of its rubble opposite the ship itself. There were pieces of glass here and there, from where Etna and Flonne had crashed through the windshield, and on top of all that there was a mix of smoke and dirt and dust and filth in the air. Bleh. It smelled like the last meal Flonne cooked for them. Speaking of Flonne, Etna didn't know where her friend was.

"Mmmmfff! Mmnnmmph!"

"Flonne?" Etna called, sliding down the little hill of rubble. She could hear a muffled mumbling that vaguely sounded like her, but the fallen angel was nowhere in sight. "Alright, where'd you g – "

WHU-PAH!

"OW!" Etna fell back onto the rocks and rubbed her stinging forehead. She'd found Flonne. The blonde was stuck headfirst in a pile of dirt, with only her legs and tail free, the latter whipping about frantically. Etna grabbed the tail before it could whip her again. "Damnit, Flonne, was that really necessary?"

After a few minutes of clearing rocks away and avoiding more tail whips, Etna managed to help Flonne get out of all the mess. The blonde sunk to the floor and took in long, deep breaths, coughing out anything that wasn't supposed to be in her mouth. "Thanks, Etna. I thought I was gonna suffocate in there!"

"Flonne, we can manage underwater for long periods of time, I don't think dirt is any different," Etna muttered, taking a closer look around the place.

It looked like they had crashed into some kind of dungeon. Their ship had busted through the end of a long corridor, with doors of rusted metal dotting the stone walls here and there on either side. It looked pretty old school and basic, outdating the dungeon back home and pretty much any Etna had seen for that matter. But there was something odd. Etna walked over to one of the doors and eyed the lock in the middle carefully. It didn't look rusted like the others, so it must have been used recently. She tapped it.

BZZT!

"Ouch!" Etna swiped her hand away in time as black sparks spat out from the lock, landing on the stone floor with spits and sizzles. Dark magic, definitely. Etna looked at the lock again curiously. It was basically an emblem of demon wings with a keyhole in the centre of it, strapped and secured to the door with crisscrossing chains. Whoever sealed this door must have been extra cautious to use dark magic as well as this lock. What could they have been trying to hide? Treasure? Well, if that was the case, then she would just have to -

"Etna! Etna, come quick!"

Etna growled and pulled her attention from the door to where Flonne was further down the dungeon's hallway. "What is it? Did you get something in your eye again?"

"No! I need your help getting this door open!" Flonne was standing next to one of the dungeon doors, and then Etna noticed a small pair of hands poke through the little peeping hole in the metal frame. She walked over to the blonde and looked into square peephole that the hands were poking through, and she saw a pair of big, teal eyes staring at her.

"Is this a friend of yours, Flonne?" she asked Flonne with scepticism.

"No, I've never met him before, but he knows who I am!" Flonne explained, fiddling with the lock to try and get it to open. Etna looked at the pair of eyes staring at her again. There was a brief silence, with only the sound of Flonne's attempts to open the door in the background. Then a young voice spoke from behind the door.

"Hello, ma'am. You must be one of Miss Flonne's demon friends, it's a pleasure meeting you."

"See? He knows who I am!" Flonne pointed out, banging a rock against the lock to try and break it. She tossed the rock away when she found it wouldn't work and ran back to the wreckage to get something else. Flonne came back with a broken pipe and continued to hammer at the lock.

"Uh, Flonne, I don't think that's gonna work with this kind of locking system, y'know."

"Are you helping me or not?"

"Nope, it's more fun to watch."

"Et-naaaaa."

"Don't whine at me."

"Excuse me Miss Demon, but could I please ask what your name is?" the owner of the cutesy eyes asked. Etna waited for Flonne to give up and go get something else before she answered. She had to admit that watching Flonne's attempts to break the lock was pretty amusing.

"You can call me Beauty Queen Etna, as many… others… do," Etna said, starting off confident but trailing off. She wasn't quite focused on her introduction when she realised that Flonne was standing behind her, facing the door. With a missile launcher.

"I'm sorry but could you both please get away from the door as far as possible?" Flonne asked kindly, turning on the targeting system on the large weapon. Whilst the prisoner locked up on the other side complied, Etna was standing there with her mouth gaping open like a fish.

"Um… Etna? Are you… okay?"

"…Flonne… I thought we agreed that you'd get rid of your missile launcher? ...Y'know, after the whole 'Scarecrow' incident."

"I did. I found this on the ship."

"…Why the hell would a duck and a dog need a missile launcher?"

"Not a clue, but it's just like my old one!"

"Hey, don't swing that thing at me! Give it to me, I'll do it."

"Thank you, Etna!"

"Don't thank me. I rather be in one piece than splattered over the wall. Geez, did some of your brain just stay as a bunch of flowers?"


BOOM!

Axis grabbed onto the rail of the spiralling staircase as her home shook about for the third time that day. This was getting really annoying. Where was a disposable Prinny when you needed to vent your anger?

"Jeez, does your castle do this all the time? What kind of dump is this?" one vassal asked. She frowned and looked at the two demons behind her, neither of them paying much interest in where they were going. Axis warmed up a little mini-spear of energy in her hand and, frustrated, tossed it at the short, blue-haired one just a few steps behind her. His scarf deflected it with a small flick. "That's starting to get a little irritating now."

"Then stop countering and let them hit you!" Axis snapped, warming up what she believed to be the seventh one that morning.

"Axis, where are we going?" her taller vassal asked casually, lacing his fingers together behind his head and taking a look over the rail of the staircase. He was looking about with tired eyes and even yawned. "This field trip's getting a little boring."

Axis was a little more than tempted to aim her mini-spear at his heart but right now it wouldn't get her anywhere. Besides, the rules of this situation required two sidekicks to do the grunt work. She turned her back on them both and they continued to walk down the stairs. "I told you yesterday, the Dimension Gateway. What, you thought it would just be behind that door upstairs, simple as that?"

"Yes," both of her vassals said in unison, both equally bored. Axis growled under her breath. She really wished she could kill them, but she was restrained by the requirements of her goal to do just that. They would live, for now.

"Wrong. A previous overlord didn't want the Gateway to be in plain sight, since pretty much anyone would be able to manipulate the Gatekeeper anyway," she explained in a very annoyed tone, continuing to lead the way down the staircase. It would have been nice and dark if a certain maid hadn't decided to light up all the torches for them earlier. Stupid Vassal. "So, they specifically kept it down here to stop so many vassals and enemies from using it."

"Is it really that easy to use?" La-something asked. She didn't like the smug tone in his voice when he said that. She stopped walking and snapped around to glare at him for an answer. Ugh, great, he was smirking too, with his arms folded in that 'I'm better than you' tone (AN: because he is better than you, Axis). "You know, if that overlord wanted your Gateway to be hard to use, why didn't they just change the Gatekeeper?"

"Shut up, Vassal! I forbid you to question that!"

"You're forbidding me from wondering why the overlord didn't use the most obvious choice? You must really hate free thought, huh?"

"I'M YOUR FREAKIN' BOSS, THAT'S WHY!"

"You know, one of these days you guys are gonna really hurt your vocal chords." Glen had walked past Axis down what was left of the steps, pointing towards whatever was behind her. "By the way, I think we're - "

THWACK!

THUD!

"…heeeere," Glen groaned from the floor, nearly knocked out cold from the blow Axis had delivered to his head.

The princess stomped two steps in front of him and didn't bother looking back at him to prove her point. "I thought I'd already made it clear on the way down that I am the one who's in front. Always."

"And what about the demon who's actually an overlord? You're a lower rank, bratness, so you should walk behind me!"

"Shut up, Vassal!" Axis snapped, glaring at La-something from over her shoulder. "You want those levels back or not?"

She turned away from him to look at the door in front of them. It possessed the familiar crest of this Netherworld's royal family, a pair of demon wings. It wasn't really as big as you'd expect, though. It was just a door. A small one. Axis was a little confused. Weren't the doors in this castle normally huge or doubled? Cautiously, she reached out a hand towards it, but then she stopped halfway, hesitant.

"…Axis? Somethin' wrong?" Glen asked from behind her, who must have recovered from that thwack on the head. Axis snapped out of her hesitation the only way she could think reasonable: by lifting a booted foot and bashing it against the door, sending it swinging inward and, as a result, detaching from its hinges. As it fell to the floor within the darkened room, there was a brief moment where all three of them paused.

"...Even I have to admit that was unnecessary."

"…Shut up, Vassal," Axis mumbled to the one in the red scarf, and she took the first steps in the room.

The darkness of the room was not dominant. There was a faint glow that was just visible within the room, emitting from a source that Axis could not see. She looked around to see if there was anything inside, but not even her demon eyes could pick anything up. There was the shuffle of footsteps behind her and out of instinct her axe materialised in her hands and she swung it around to whoever was behind her. It was stopped by the hand of her overlordly-vassal.

"Why the hell do you keep attacking me?" he growled, shoving the blade away from his neck. Axis reluctantly de-summoned her axe and stood over the one with blue hair, exchanging a glare.

"Exactly how many levels do you have against me?"

"Considering my opinion of you right now, all of them," he quipped.

"Got a light," Glen interrupted, holding up a flashlight and shining it at their feet. The other two would have to save their angry dialogue exchange for later. "Can we look for that Gateway now?"

"Look fer it? What a' ya talkin' 'bout, it's right 'ere!"

The two demon children whipped out their bladed weapons and got into their fighting stances at the sound of the extra, slurred voice echoing in the room. "Who's there?" they both snapped simultaneously.

"G-guys?" Glen carefully nudged the head of Axis's axe away from his neck. He looked at the two with a pissed off look more than the usual one of fear he had. "Why are you aiming at me?"

"Shut up," they both growled. A loud cackle made them react again and the sword and axe just got closer to Glen's neck.

"Seriously, what the hell?" he hissed, his visible fear coming back.

"Y-you guys a' hee-lair-ree-us! Sing-cra-niced an' ev'rythin'!"

"Take that back!" Axis yelled, pointing an accusing finger at the ceiling. She hesitated, unsure if she was even looking at anything in the darkness, and pointed in another direction of the ceiling. Damn, she couldn't pick up the direction of the echoing slurs or speech, other than the obvious 'up'. "Show yourself, you insolent bastard!"

"…First time I heard 'bastard' instead of the usual 'fool'," Glen muttered. He was promptly thwacked around the head again by a certain princess's fist.

"Silence, wimp, and stick with being the flashlight!" Axis looked back around the room and tried to pinpoint the voice again. "Gatekeeper, I demand you show yourself!"

"*gigglesnort* Nuuuuh-uuuuuh! Ya can' talk ta me like that!"

"GATEKEEPER! GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE NOW!"

"Ya didn' say puh-leeease!"

"I'LL SAY IT ONCE YOU'RE DEAD AND BURIED!"

"Axis, do you even have an indoor voice or is this just your default?" Glen mumbled, with a hint of sarcasm thrown in. Axis swung her axe around and held it to his throat again as a threat, seeing him in a reddened kind of vision. "L-Laharl, could you please help calm her down?"

"Nope, you're on your own." Axis let herself toss a glance in 'Laharl's' direction. He was standing there, looking 'thoughtful'. He smirked after a couple of silent moments, and lifted his sword up to the ceiling. "Show yourself, or you'll have to face me, coward! As an overlord I won't tolerate this behaviour!"

"…Ov'alord? Well why didn' ya say sooo?"

THUD!

And then, from the ceiling, came a monstrous creature. It slammed down to the floor, making tiny pieces of dust and stone quake beneath its feet. Axis could only assume this was one of those Gun Demons of some kind. It was a shade between dull purple and dreary blue, with big horns atop its head, red beady eyes and a big mouth with sharp teeth bared. On one of its big arms was a large gun barrel with multiple holes, hence her assumption previously.

The big blue-ish demon sat on the stone floor with a moronic grin, and he raised a clawed hand to show the bottle of a Netherworld-brand beverage. He hiccupped, and slurred, "Alrighty, Mista Ov'alord, I'm at yer service! So, when did good ol' Eliiise ree-tie-ya, eh?"


"Well, that did nothing," Etna muttered, looking at the charred cell door. There was steam and smoke from the blast of the missile, and a small chunk of the floor beneath the door had been dented in too, but the door and everything that it aligned with stayed perfectly whole. She strutted over and looked carefully at the dent beneath the door. Even a small part of it stayed perfect and flat to fit the vertical flat gap that would have formed beneath the door. (AN: You don't know how painful it can be to repeat a word like 'door' once a sentence) Etna sighed and stood up, fiddling with the controls on the launcher so that there was a 'safety lock'. She had a good reason. "Hate to break it to you, Flonne, but your new friend here's in a cell with a barrier."

"WHAT?"

Etna looked at Flonne. She was still crouched on the floor with her fingers in her ears, the position she had assumed when Etna was firing the missile. Etna didn't really want to be patient. She was on the border between grouchy and just-plain-pissed, after all, what with the crashing and the not-getting-the-hell-out-of-here-ing. She pulled out her favourite red spear from thin air and used it to poke Flonne's arm a distance from her ear. "I said, 'Dungeon cell plus magic barrier equals no rescuing your friend'."

"But we only tried once!" Flonne jogged up and grabbed the missile launcher from Etna, attempting to get the target system online. "I'm sure if we just tried again - "

"Flonne, we're getting out of here." Grateful that her brilliant thinking had prevented Flonne from using the launcher with the lock on it, Etna grabbed her angel friend by the collar and started to drag her back towards the ship. "Just a whack and a few tweaks and this bucket will be good to go again. Besides, the prince must be catching on that we're not back home by now."

"Nope!" Etna's grasp lost its hold and Flonne tossed the missile launcher to the floor. It started beeping rapidly after bashing into a piece of debris but neither of the girls were paying attention. "Laharl can wait! He's got a bunch of vassals to do all sorts of dirty work and stuff!"

"Flonne, I know you were raised as a goody-two-shoes and all, but why can't you think like a normal, mean and selfish demon for once? You DID fall, remember?"

"I can think selfishly just fine, thank you!"

"Oh really?"

"Yeah! Really! And I can be mean too! That top of yours makes you look like a whore!"

"*gasp* You did NOT just go there!"

"Oh no! I did! I just c-called you a whore! W-why did I do that, why did I do that?"

"Two can play at this game! Ever since you switched to that legless leotard of yours, you've never looked more like a slut since I've known you!"

"*gasp* Take that back!"

"Um, Miss Flonne, Miss Etna?"

"WHAT?" Both demon girls screamed.

The pair of eyes through the peeping hole of the door looked over at the missile launcher on the ground. "I think your gun is broken."

The two looked at the launcher as well. They saw how it was shaking and growing and shrinking in a cartoon manner, and how it started glowing a hot red. They both squeaked 'uh-oh' and dove to the ground with their hands over their heads. The missile launcher exploded into several pieces, whizzing and shooting around the hallway of the dungeon in quick and unresting motions. They exploding into the walls, onto the indestructible doors and onto the floor, sending whatever chunks of rock they could flying into the air. It was the last of the missiles, though, that was the most cunning. It mischievously shot straight towards the rubble of the colourful little ship and erupted into a shower of sparks on contact, pushing the space vehicle just enough out through the hole in the wall for it to lose balance. It screeched out and began a long, loud decent into the chasm beneath it, making one last 'KA-BOOM'.

Etna and Flonne sat up from the ground, hugging each other and looking at the empty hole in the wall. They both looked frazzled, shocked.

"…I-I'm sorry I called you a whore, Etna."

"…P-priorities… b-but I'm sorry about the slut thing too."

"…Miss Flonne? Forgive my asking, but what is a 'hor-rer'?"

Etna glanced over at the door they had previously tried to break down. "Geez, kid, didn't anyone ever call your mom that? Or even your parents call someone else that?"

"No, never. Mother never taught me any bad words because she said I would go straight to the bad place if I did."

She sighed and shoved Flonne away from her, smoothing down her frizzed hair whilst she ignored Flonne complaining about hitting her head on the floor. "What is she, an angel or something?"

The pair of teal eyes blinked from behind the little block of a peephole. "Oh course, Miss Etna. Why else would we live in Celestia and not the bad place?"

"WHAT?" Flonne screamed, shooting up from the floor and bumping into Etna. Etna was accidently knocked aside, and she hit her head against the floor. Ow, no wonder Flonne was complaining, that really hurt! Speaking of Flonne, she was standing right in front of the cell door looking so shocked that her jaw would have fallen off. "Y-you mean you're from Celestia?"

"Yes, Miss Flonne. Oh, I haven't introduced myself yet. Mother would be upset about that." One of the hands holding the unseen little angel up to the peephole pulled away from the gap and they heard him clear his throat. His eyes looked at Flonne, and if ever Etna had seen a pair of sincere and polite eyes before, this kid's eyes beat them. "My name is Emrys, Angel Apprentice. It is a pleasure meeting you both."


Etna: Next time, on Super Duper Clinical Procedure! The beautiful and talented nurse Etna continues to find fame to rescue her from changing bedpans!
Flonne: With the help of the Happy Sunshinse Volunteer Group Scout, cutesy miss Flonne!
Etna: Hey, get your own preview!
Flonne: What's wrong with sharing?
Etna: Since when did we share?
Flonne: …Um… we… shared… screentime in a non-Disgaea game?
Etna: Now that I think about it, you still haven't really gotten used to being a Fallen Angel, have you?
Flonne: Not really.
Etna: It's a good thing I'm here then, otherwise you'd be dead by now.
Flonne: …Um, Etna? Aren't we meant to be sticking with the –
?: WHAT'RE YOU GUYS DOING WITH MY SLOT?
Etna: In the next chapter of Endless Night! Axis's Building Temper!
Flonne: Will she and her vassals make some progress?
?: HEY! Don't ignore me! HELLOOOOOO?


This. Has got. To stop. I can't keep delaying chapter progress! UGH! Damn you college! *kicks poster representation of college*

Ooooooh, I TOLD you the title wouldn't be relevant until the last part of the chapter! I'll clean up any errors and misspellings later, just so ya know. I gave Beatrice a little action, because I like her, and a reader named OverlordEtna (thank you for your message by the way =)) has told me that Axis seems to be a lot like Etna. Lately I've actually noticed some similarities between my OCs and canon characters that weren't intended (save for ACE MAXIMUS, who was intended to be an annoying stand-in for Gordon XD). And that's when it finally dawned on me whilst writing this chapter.

Axis = Laharl (Demon royalty)
Glen = Etna (Non-royal demon)
Emrys = Flonne (Angel, sort of)

I don't mean with personalities or anything (save for Axis maybe, though she'd louder and more annoying and less powerful), just the roles they take. So yeah, you might be thinking they're rip-offs or something. 0_0 Fear not though, they'll bring their characters to development and to light as the story keeps going… I hope… someone shoot me T_T

?: Don't worry! You've still got me coming up soon! And I'm completely original!

…O-oh yeah. I um… nearly forgot that… (Why do I get the feeling that this one's gonna reduce my readers?)

Later Days! Don't worry, I'll be sure to get the next chapter on the go ASAP!