Usagi: hi guys… Sorry I'm late. I've been working on this chapter even since BEFORE I uploaded the last one and frankly… Sigh… I don't quite like how it turned out. But I just had to make it somehow.

Zakura: what? So you can bug Morty some more?

Usagi: yes. That's exactly why.

Chapter 25

Mothman Worries

"What is that?"

"It looks icky."

"It's just a bug…"

"Yeah giant bug…"

"Do you think it's still alive?"

"I think it's breathing…"

"But I don't feel any heartbeat…"
"What if it's a heartless?"

"Ugh."

Whatever Morty expected to see when he woke up he wasn't sure, but it sure as hell wasn't expecting to see three fairy girls staring at his face.

"Hey! He is alive! Hurray!" a blonde one yelled.

"I though you said it was icky" a black-haired one said, raising an eyebrow.

"Are you okay? You look pretty beat up" a brown-haired one said.

Morty quickly moved his wing up to his head, trying to find the camera Mao had fitted over his eye, all he felt was a broken piece of metal sticking out and some wire.

One of the propels had fallen of too, the other was burnt and broken, his radio only picked up static.

"Are you a cyborg?" The blonde fairy said.

"What? No!.... I hope not" Morty said, suddenly he wondered if Mao had put anything in his body that he didn't know about, like a self-destruct mechanism…although if he had the mothman would probably be dead by now… But since he hadn't… Could Mao still hear him? Or had he actually escaped?

After meeting the nobody, he had simply opened a portal at random, not caring where it went, it turned out it opened in mid-air and with a broken wing and broken propels, he had fallen directly to the ground, hitting several buildings on the way.

The fall must have broken the camera too, and the communication equipment.

He grinned. If that was true he was free!

"He's a heartless".

Well unless these fairies killed him first…

"What? Nonono. I'm not a heartless" Morty said.

"Yellow eyes, no heartbeat. Sounds like a heartless to me" the black-haired fairy said.

"Hey…you girls wouldn't happen to know what world this is?" Morty tried asking.

"I'm getting Leon!" the blonde fairy said and flew of; the other two suddenly pulled a pair of guns at the mothman.

"There now…don't be hasty" Morty said and crawled backwards away from the fairy girls.

"Who sent you? Was it Maleficent? Or The Organization?" the brown-haired fairy asked.

"What Organization?" Morty asked. "No one sent me! I'm on your side…I think…I just escaped from my former boss and trust me I do not want to go back."

"We don't side with heartless" the black-haired fairy said.

"Although it is rather unusual that you talk" said the other.

"I…I'm a magical nice talking heartless?" Morty tried.

"Very funny. We know of one other talking heartless and he's neither magical nor nice" the black-haired fairy said.

Damnit! There went that plan… Time for plan C.

The mothman shrieked loudly, causing the two girls to have to hold their ears while he ran for it, as fast as he could, crawling on his wings.

He knew he couldn't hide for long, he had no idea where he was but giant moths were obviously not a common thing around here. But where else could he go? He had no idea where he even was.

"Stop there!"

And now he was caught again.

Morty turned and saw a man standing behind him, along with the blonde fairy.

"Is this the creature Rikku?" Leon asked.

"That's the one. What have you done to Yuna and Paine you meanie?" Rikku asked.

"Nothing I swear…or I may have confused them a bit, they'll get better" Morty said quickly. "Don't shoot…or chop me up or however that thing works."

"Who or what are you?" Leon asked, still not lowering the gunblade that currently stood only a few inches away from the moth's face.

"Have no fear, the great ninja Yuffie is here!" someone else said. Yuffie stood upon a pile of crates and gazed at the moth. "Is this the Monster of the week? What a disappointment, looks like someone already defeated him."
"Uhm… Actually I kind of broke most of these myself… except my wing" Morty said. "My name is Morty. And yes I am a heartless… But I don't work for…whoever you think I work for."

"Then who do you work for? Xehanort? Maleficent? Sin?" Rikku asked.

"What's Sin?" Yuffie asked.

"Never mind…" Rikku said.

This could be a good time to escape, Morty thought. However since he didn't know where he was he wasn't sure if it was a smart idea to open a portal. The last time he'd tried he'd fallen 20 feet straight down, and what if he ended up inside a wall?

He had never heard of a heartless opening a portal into a wall but once had to be the first, and with his luck he wouldn't be so surprised.

"Whatever he is he doesn't look all that dangerous" Yuffie said.

"Oh thank heavens" Morty said, before he even realized he had said that out loud and pondered how strange it was for a demon to be thanking heavens…

"And he's cute, can't we keep him?" the ninja asked with a grin.

"You said that when you saw Sora's heartless too and I still hope you're joking" Leon said.

"Sora wasn't evil even as a heartless and this one don't look so bad either" Yuffie asked. "Maybe Vexen can help this one get back to normal too!"

"Oh…wait… Normal how?" Morty asked. He'd been looking from one human to the other as they spoke, not knowing much what they talked about. But they mentioned "Sora"…wasn't that the guy he'd been asked to stalk previously? He'd better not mention that… if they were a friend of this Sora they probably wouldn't like to hear that.

"I'm still not sure if we can trust that guy… neither Vexen nor… whatever that is" Leon said.

"Let's ask the others then. Come on little guy" Yuffie said and before anyone had time to protest she picked up Morty and ran towards Merlin's house.

--

Meanwhile at Merlin's house the door suddenly flew open.

"We're back! Who's missed me?" Axel said as the main party entered.

Cid looked up from the workbench he was sitting by and raised an eyebrow.

"Aerith, get the water hose" he said.

"Oh you're a riot. Are you still working on that robot?" Axel asked.

"It's not as easy as it looks. It's got some really advanced parts in here I've never seen before. Maybe it's some kind of super-intelligent robot or something" Cid said.

"That could be pretty cool. You've got to tell us when it's finished" Sora said. "Where's Leon and Yuffie?"

"Rikku showed up asking for help with a giant insect-infestation or something" Cid said. "As if the native heartless weren't bad enough now we're getting freaks from other worlds too."

"Insects? Do we know any heartless like that?" Sora asked.

"Other than the giant moths that attacked us back in the Spargus Wastelands… I'm not quite sure" Ienzo said.

"Ah never mind about that. I'm sure Leon and the girls can handle it" Cid said. "Oh and your mother called."

"Why am I not surprised" Kairi sighed.

"How many times?" Ienzo asked.

"Five times a day since you left, she also sent six emails" Cid said. "Don't any of you guys carry a cell phone?"

"Yeah, but it's hard to get one that works on every single world in the universe" Sora said staring at a phone that was clearly out of its reception area, not that he would have given Nanami his number if it had been possible he thought to himself. "I don't think that jungle would have had very good reception even if I had one from that world and they definitely didn't have receivers for a phone registered at Destiny Islands."

"Ah… good point. But you still have the transmitters in the Gummi ship that I installed on your first adventure right?" Cid asked. "I could try to make that send the signals to your phone while you're out of the gummi ship."

"Oh you don't have to do that" Ienzo said.

"You're just saying that so you don't have to talk to her right?" Cid asked. "It doesn't hurt to let her know you're not dead or turned into a heartless once in a while you know."

"Kairi can't be turned into a heartless, since she's a princess of heart there's not a hint of darkness in her" Ienzo said.

"Say that to your mom" Cid said but before they could argue some more the door opened again and Leon and Yuffie entered with the fairy girls. Yuffie was carrying a giant moth.

"Oh, I didn't know you guys were here" Leon said. "Oh and Kairi, your mother called."

"We know…what's that?" Kairi asked.

"OH SHIT ITS THEM!" Morty cried and tried to break free of Yuffie's grip, but she wouldn't let him go.

"Uhm… do we know that thing?" Riku asked.

"So is this the mysterious bug heartless? He doesn't look dangerous… he looks like a broken robot" Axel said. "Maybe he's a friend of Cid's cat."

"Er… nono. I'm not a… I mean I've never seen any of you guys before" Morty said quickly.

"Then why did you shout "its them" just now? Hey, aren't you one of those moths that attacked us back in the Haven City Wastelands?" Sora asked.

"No not at all! I don't even know these guys" Morty said.

"You definitely look like them, although you seem to have gotten a few new accessories. Similar to that behemoth we saw now that I think about it" Ienzo said. "How about you stopped lying and tell us the truth. Who are you, why did you attack and what are you doing here?"

"You might as well spill the beans mothman, you're not going anywhere soon" Yuffie said.

Morty knew he was surrounded, he couldn't use the dark corridors, and even if he did they'd probably kill him if he tried to escape.

Die now or die later… he didn't have anything to loose.

"Fine I was at the wastelands…but it wasn't my idea to go there I swear" Morty said. "My name is Morty, I'm a mothman demon heartless."

"From the Netherworld? Did Laharl send you?" Sora asked.

"Ugh no… there's more than one demon overlord in the Netherworld you know, many of them even worse than Laharl. My old boss isn't even an Overlord, but I think I'd rather work for Laharl" Morty said. "True I never met him… but it's because of my boss that I have all these electronic stuff on me. All I did was break my wing and he gave me a set of propels, a camera and who knows what else!"

"That doesn't sound so bad; at least you could fly again right?" Kairi said.

"He doesn't use anaesthetics, and he always does TOO MUCH! I'd rather just live with the broken wing, even if it'll probably never heal completely on its own" Morty sighed, he held up his left wing which had a large chunk ripped out from it.

"That's a pretty nasty wound you've got there. Mind if I take a look?" Aerith asked.
She walked over to the moth and held up his broken wing, as she did, a green glow engulfed the wound, and it suddenly seemed to be shrinking, at least a little bit.

Morty stared at it in amazement.

"That's incredible! How did you do that?" he said.

"It was just a simple cure-spell. It would take a lot of energy to restore it to its former shape but I can help speed it along" Aerith explained.

"You can do that after he tells us who he's working for" Riku said.

"Oh yeah… his name is… augh!" suddenly the mothman screamed and held his head.

"What happened? Does it hurt anywhere?" Aerith asked.

"Yes! Everywhere! Ouch…I think it passed" Morty said.

"If you don't talk soon it's gonna hurt more" Riku said.

"Alright already. It's… OWOWOW!" Once again the sentence was cut of by screams of agony.

"What is going on?" Sora asked.

"That metal headband he's wearing… I thought I saw a spark coming from it when he tried to say his boss' name, maybe its some kind of machinery in there that keeps him from revealing too much" Aerith said, as she examined the moth's headwear.

"We could just take it of" Leon said.

"No! I mean I hate this thing as much as you do but this isn't a normal headband. I've tried to pull it of before but it's stuck in my skull" Morty said.

"Ouch. Whoever that boss of yours is he must be a real bastard" Axel said.

"I know I'm not supposed to have emotions but even I think that's disgusting" Demyx added.

"Cid, can you do something about it?" Leon asked.

"I'm a gummi ship technician, not a surgeon" Cid said. "Aerith is the medical expert on the team."

"Healing and surgery isn't quite the same either" Aerith added.

"How about just removing it and then have Aerith heal the wound?" the computer said.

"Tron, he's not a machine. That could kill him" Ienzo said. "Though I'm slightly surprised he survived the first operation."

"Barely" Morty sighed. "I hear several of the modified heartless die during the operations."

"There's more? How many of you are there?" Sora said.

"I'd rather not say in case my head starts hurting again" Morty said.

"You know. I think Vexen might be able to remove the headband" Ienzo said.

"Why are you helping the guy who attacked you previously?" Riku asked.

"I'm not guaranteeing Vexen's attempts at taking it of will be painless either" Ienzo said. "Besides he might still want something to experiment on with his heartless-experiments."

"I don't like the sound of that…" Morty said.

"Too late. I already sent him a message, he'll be here in ten minutes" Cid said. "I don't want a giant bug flying around in here" he added.

"Whoever controls fate in this universe must either really hate me or be extremely sadistic" Morty sighed.

Usagi: it's the latter one.

Sora: thank you. We've noticed.

Usagi: Well anyway. Please review. I'll try my best to make the next chapter come quicker and not to mention: Be good.

Oh here's an idea. Recently the fic has been switching back and forth between so many different characters, and I'm not always sure which characters I should write about all the time, so is there a character/group you'd like to see more of in the future? Just let me know and I may try to write some more about them:3

Please review. The more reviews I get the more eager I will be to update quickly.