Riku stared up at the dragon. It was small, as dragons go, and its stance looked more...confused than threatening. He lowered his Keyblade.
"Where am I, good sir?" The dragon asked in an oddly high and feminine voice. "One minute ago, I was at a cafe reading my latest poetic masterpiece, and now I'm here."
"This is the Enchanted Countryside," Riku explained. "Who are you?"
"They call me the Reluctant Dragon. Just because I'd rather have tea parties than eat people and destroy towns."
Riku looked confused. "Don't the Rolling Stones do both?" The Dragon stared blankly. "Never mind. You write poetry?"
"Indeed I do. Want to hear my latest?"
"Sure."
The Reluctant Dragon cleared his throat. "This is called 'To an Upside-Down Cake'. Sweet little upside-down cake, cares and woes – you've got them. Poor little upside-down cake, your top is on your bottom. Alas, little upside-down cake, your troubles never stop. Because, little upside-down cake, your bottom's on your top!"
Riku stood still for a few minutes, then forced himself to clap. "That was terrific!" He was lying, of course. He actually thought the poem was terrible.
"I'm glad you like it," the dragon said. "Why don't we travel together? You can ride on my back."
"OK..." Riku replied, praying that the dragon wouldn't share any more of his poetry. "Where can we go, though? We're in the middle of nowhere."
"There's a castle in the distance," the Dragon said.
"How convenient for us," Riku responded.
XXX
Lulu, Tidus, Wakka, and Chappu stood on the edge of Weeping Lily Pond.
Lulu held up a sepia-tinted photograph of a girl. The girl's throat had been cut, and her pale skin was marred by cuts and bruises. "Is this the girl, Chappu?"
"I don't understand," Chappu said. "Why are you showing me this? What's the matter with you?"
"Is it her?" Lulu asked again.
"Yes, it's her," Chappu replied. "But she didn't look like that."
"Her name was Giselle," Lulu said. "This is an old crime scene photograph. She was a murder victim. Her body was found in the pond. Well, Weeping Lily Pond isn't technically a pond. It's a cenote. The Sacred Cenote."
"Sacred Cenote?" repeated Wakka. "What's a cenote?"
Lulu smacked her forehead. "It's a natural sinkhole made when surface limestone collapses and exposes groundwater."
"Why is it sacred?" Tidus asked.
"A long time ago," Lulu began. "There was a sea monster that terrorized the village. The villagers made a pact with the monster. The monster would be given a yearly tribute of young maidens in exchange for not destroying the village. And so six maidens were sacrificed every year."
"That's...barbaric!" Tidus cried.
"So what happened?" Wakka asked.
Lulu continued. "The maidens were devoured on the beach, and the monster would return to the sea. The villagers took the bones and threw them into the cenote. They called it 'the Sacred Cenote' to prevent people from disturbing the maidens' remains. Still, the locals considered it haunted by the spirits of the dead maidens."
"What's that got to do with Giselle?" Chappu asked. "And whatever happened to the sea monster?"
Lulu explained further. "Because the maidens and Giselle were denied proper burials, their spirits are trapped in the cenote and they cannot rest. As for the monster, a 'noble maiden' eventually came and slew it."
"Who was this maiden?" Tidus asked.
Lulu shrugged. "I do not know. Her name's been lost to history."
XXX
Sora found himself drifting off to sleep again, soothed by the peaceful ambience of the Garden of Gods.
The sun was shining in a bright blue sky. Sora and Kore were swimming in a crystal-clear lake. Kore was wearing a white one-piece bathing suit. Sora wore a pair of black, red, and blue swimming trunks.
"Shall we get something to eat?" Kore asked.
Sora nodded.
Kore swam toward the lake's shore, where two pairs of sandals lay on the ground. Sora followed, slipping the larger pair of sandals on his feet. Kore led him through a verdant field. They reached an ice cream vendor. Sora ordered a strawberry ice cream cone, while Kore had a vanilla cone.
"This was my world," Kore explained. "Do you like it?"
"I do," Sora said, licking his ice cream. "Someday, I'll show you my world. The beaches, the smell of the ocean..."
"I can't wait."
For a few minutes, neither spoke. They simply enjoyed the taste of their ice cream.
Kore finished her cone. "The heart is shaken more by actions than by words. I'm about to shake my own heart. It's a sin, but I don't care. Close your eyes."
"Why?" Sora asked.
"So you don't witness my sin."
Sora closed his eyes. Kore kissed him softly on the cheek.
Sora felt himself blush. "Why?"
"I wanted to show you how much I care, rather than just telling you. I know I'll never take the place Kairi holds in your heart, but..." Kore trailed off. "That girl is your tomorrow, and I belong to yesterday."
"You are in my heart," Sora said.
"Sora, before you wake up, there's something I must tell you. There are going to be times on your journey when you'll be surrounded by darkness. But there's a light that will always shine through."
"The light of Kingdom Hearts," Sora finished.
Kore beamed. "That's right. So don't run or hide from the darkness, and don't despair when all seems hopeless."
The color in the landscape began to dull.
"You're waking up," Kore observed. "I'll always watch over you."
"Wait..." Sora cried as everything faded to gray.
Sora? Roxas' voice sounded drowsy.
"I had another dream about Kore," Sora said. "I just got the feeling I won't see her again." He touched his cheek.
"You get dreams about hot babes. I get Axel dying on endless loop. I scream, but no one can hear me."
"Please don't scream in my head," Sora said. "I'll get a headache."
XXX
Erato was lying on a bed, unconscious.
Marjoly and a tall man were standing by her bedside. The man wore a white coat.
"I appreciate you coming here on short notice, Dr. Tendo," Marjoly said.
"No problem," Tendo replied.
"This is my poor daughter. As you can see, she's fallen into a coma. Unless she can get a heart transplant," Marjoly pretended to choke back a sob. "I have a donor heart, but I need a surgeon of your caliber to perform the operation. I'm willing to pay--"
"Beautiful women in trouble needn't worry about compensation," Tendo said. "However, I need time to prepare an OR. It's too dangerous to move your daughter to a hospital."
Marjoly smiled. "Yes, here is fine."
XXX
In the Velvet Room, Kairi looked at Gordon, who was reading a book titled Murder: Do It Yourself. She looked at the other books on the coffee table: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Rid of the Competition and Murder for Dummies.
"Aren't you going just a little overboard?" Kairi asked.
Gordon closed the book. "There's nothing in these books about killing something that's already dead!"
XXX
Pram, Sylar, Genesis, Gantu, Dragaunus, and Vayne were strapped to white chairs. The chairs were arranged in front of a large pipe organ. The organ loomed ominously, the brown and silver bright against the white walls of Castle Oblivion.
"What's next?" Gantu asked. "It can't be any worse than that last challenge."
Genesis agreed. "Whose idiotic idea was it for us to parachute into Halloween Town?"
"I sure hope Niska was faking those chest pains," said Dragaunus. "Jack Skellington was just trying to give him a hug."
"Whatever," Pram said.
Gant entered the room. "Since you all failed to get that information from Calliope, I have a new challenge for you. This is a simple endurance test. The first to drop out loses." He seated himself at the organ and began to play his theme music, which echoed across the castle and woke up a napping Loki and caused Lezard to drop a test tube of sulfuric acid on his left boot.
The candidates winced, except for Sylar. Sylar writhed in his chair. Blood poured from his ears. Unfortunately for him, his tympanic membrane would rupture, heal, and rupture again. The pain was becoming unbearable.
After two and a half minutes, Gant stopped playing and turned around.
Sylar fainted, blood still streaming from his ruptured eardrums.
"Whoops," Gant said. "Forgot you had superhuman hearing, Mr. Gray. Everyone else, congratulations. You pass to the next round."
"What?" chorused the temporarily-deaf candidates.
XXX
The Velvet Room was quiet. A grandfather clock ticked away the hours. Auron, Kairi, and the residents had retired to bed, leaving Gordon alone in the dark main room.
Gordon tossed aside his book with a sigh. "Who am I kidding? Dying only served to piss Auron off."
"Gordon?" Maia asked, entering from her guest room. She was wearing a green dress she bought in Port Royal before the unfortunate hostage crisis.
"What is it?" Gordon asked, shoving the books under the coffee table. "Are you having insomnia?"
"I wanted to show you something," Maia said. "Come with me."
Gordon followed Maia out of the Velvet Room. "Where are we going?"
"You'll see. Just trust me." There was a note of playfulness in Maia's voice.
XXX
"Eureka!" Euterpe cried. "I've found it."
"Found what?" asked Goofy.
"The solution to our 'little' problem," Euterpe said. "I knew we'd find something here. According to this, a human named Gregor Framkin created a televised puppet show called Smile Time. The show's ratings hit the skids, so Framkin made a deal with some devils to boost the ratings to number one in its time slot. Unfortunately, he didn't read all the fine print in the contract. The demons possessed his puppets and took over the show. They created some nuanced magic to turn the viewers' televisions into conduits that drained the viewers' soul energy. And since the show was aimed at children, several kiddies fell into comas."
"Um..." Goofy said.
"That sounds...ridiculous," Donald commented.
"So is our current predicament," Euterpe retorted. "These particular demons have a distinctive MO."
"MO? Mo?" Goofy asked.
"Modus operandi," Euterpe said. "I see someone slept through their Latin lessons."
"So they did this before Smile Time?" Donald asked.
Euterpe smirked. "Ever see the last few episodes of Seinfeld? But the demons in the Smile Time incident were defeated by the vampire Angel. Not to be confused with Angelus, his bastard-coated bastard with bastard filling self. The energy was returned to the children. We're dealing with copycats."
"So what do we do?" Donald asked.
Euterpe held up a spellbook. "We go back to the egg-thing, and use this counterspell to break the seal holding the energy. We break the seal, the energy goes back where it belongs. And we turn back to normal."
XXX
Gant was holding four black roses.
"Please rise when I call your name," Loki said. "Cutthroat Bitch?"
"My name is Pram," Pram said indignantly as Gant handed her a rose.
"Whatever," Loki replied. "Vayne?"
Vayne stood up and quietly took his rose.
"Dragaunus?" Loki announced.
Dragaunus gingerly accepted the black rose.
"Gantu," Loki said.
Gantu breathed a sigh of relief.
The four candidates looked at Genesis.
Genesis arched an eyebrow. "Oddly enough...I'm relieved." He rose, red leather coat billowing behind him. "Even if the morrow is barren of promises, nothing shall forestall my return."
The other villains booed.
XXX
Polyhymnia stirred in her bed at the Hotel Rosenqueen. "Where am I?"
"One of the many Netherworlds," Terpsichore explained.
"We're going to Disney Castle once you feel okay," Mickey said. "Are you feeling better?"
"I hate this place," Polyhymnia declared. "The wallpaper is yellow."
"You don't like yellow?" Mickey asked.
"Lodovico's lab had yellow walls," Polyhymnia explained. "Yellow walls make me sick."
There was a knock on the door. "Room service!" came a voice from outside.
"We ordered no room service," Terpsichore said.
"It's on the house," the voice added.
Polyhymnia stiffened. "I know that voice...!"
The door opened, to reveal a tall, thin man with a cart of food. The man was not wearing a hotel uniform, but a tuxedo under a purple silk robe. "Hallo there!" The man smiled and held up his palm, fingers spread apart in a Vulcan salute. "Your Majesty King Mickey, Lady Terpsichore, my dear Pollyanna..."
"Lodovico..." Polyhymnia said, her voice shaking. "You better leave if you know what's good for you."
"That's Lodovico?!" asked Mickey.
Lodovico crossed the room to Polyhymnia's bed and bent down to give her a kiss on the cheek. "That's no way to talk to me."
Polyhymnia let out a whimper of disgust.
"I thought Calliope had destroyed you," Terpsichore said coldly.
"I took Pollyanna to a Star Trek convention," Lodovico explained. "Then Calliope came out of nowhere and struck me down. But I managed to sneak out of the Astral Plane. It took me twenty years to reconstruct my material body, but it was worth it."
"So you want to experiment on me all over again?" Polyhymnia said angrily. "Is that it? I'm not a little girl anymore."
"Is that so?" Lodovico asked. "If only I had the partnership of someone with a Keyblade, we could subdue all of Mnemosyne's daughters and drain their energy. Enough for all the worlds. What do you say, Your Majesty? Don't you want to be a hero with me?"
Mickey shook with anger. "A hero?! How does kidnapping and torturing little girls make one a hero?!"
Lodovico laughed. "Kidnapping? Torturing? What kind of a sick bastard do you take me for? Shiro Ishii?"
Mickey frowned. "Kidnapping and torture is kidnapping and torture. You can't get around that."
"What's one little organ farm against meeting the energy and health demands of the entire universe? The good of the many outweighs the good of the few or the one."
"No," said Mickey. "A wise man once taught me that an individual's fundamental rights are, at their heart, more basic than even the good of a society. You can't decide ethics by mob rule if you want any sort of coherent system of morals. It's been tried, and it's never worked."
"She has rights?" Lodovico sneered. "Her? That creature? She is the one who tried to seduce me! She's a dirty girl! Dirty! She deserves whatever she gets."
"Nonsense!" said Mickey. "That's not the Polly we know. You're twisting things for your own ends."
"You want to see twisted?" said Lodovico. His face twitched. Ominously.
"I think we already did," said Mickey.
"You're gonna see twisted now," said Lodovico, and he took a step back from Polyhymnia's bed. His face twitched again, and then it tightened, as if the skin were being pulled against the bones of his cheeks, and two nasty looking mandibles broke through the skin, which grew darker and, somehow, hairier. His eyes clumped together and merged into a giant eyespot, which then separated into smaller, black, buglike eyes. Extra limbs sprouted from his sides, four in total, segmented, covered in hair, with pointed toes where the hands or feet might have been were they more humanoid. And he began to grow. When his transformation was done, he was a ten foot tall spider cyborg, half mechanical, half venomous arachnid. His eyes flashed red.
Mickey drew his Keyblade.
"Come on, Your Majesty!" Terpsichore cried. "Let's leave footprints all over his stupid smug face!"
To Be Continued...