Author's Note: AAAAND! Another chapter! This one was almost late... but I'm getting it to you! Erm... don't have too much to say about it, other than this scene took a completely different turn than what I had originally planned. But that's a story for the blog. So, enjoy!
"Have you ever tried lying to Aerith?"
xx
"Master Ienzo! We've got Heartless outside!"
Pi shouted these words up the staircase, in the hopes that Ienzo would actually hear him. Ienzo did actually hear him most of the time, he just chose not to respond just about all of the time.
"Can't you take care of them?" Ienzo replied. He felt no need to shout, he just allowed his voice to carry down the stairs.
"I was built for research and recon, not fighting!"
"You can summon a shield, can you not?"
"Yes! But…"
Ienzo was silent.
"Why can't you come help?" Pi said, sounding rather desperate.
"I'm in the middle of my own research!"
"If the Heartless get into the shop, you're not going to have any research to conduct!"
Ienzo sighed very audibly. He closed the book he was currently browsing through, but not before marking his page with a strip of cloth. He was above bending the corners of pages. It ruined the binding if the books were closed on earmarked pages.
He made his way down the stairs smoothly and quietly. Pi was waiting at the bottom, looking frantically between the Heartless outside and Ienzo.
"If you'd just agree to board up the windows like every other shopkeeper on this street…" Pi began.
"That deters business," Ienzo replied.
"What if you boarded them up, but created the illusion that they weren't?"
"Tempting, I may look into that."
Though, he didn't sound like he actually would look into that.
Ienzo stepped out of the front door and summoned the appropriate lexicon. The Heartless outside were unnamed. They were new and he hadn't bothered to come up with a name for them. Nor had anyone else as far as he could tell. What he did know about them was that they were pureblood and their only attack (except for physical slashes) was to form a pool of darkness under their victim in an attempt to suck them into the darkness.
The pools were small and ineffective unless several of the Heartless were creating the same pool of darkness. They were also easily avoided if one remained off the ground.
To start off, Ienzo muttered a levitating spell. Then he set to work creating pools of darkness to suck the Heartless back in. He was pretty certain it didn't destroy the Heartless completely, just sucked them back to the Realm of Darkness, but at the particular moment, he couldn't be bothered to take them to another dimension and destroy them there, and there was no purpose of absorbing any more of them into his lexicon. He liked these Heartless to come in a variety of other Heartless, so he had more attacks to mirror and reciprocate back on them.
Especially since it was becoming increasingly obvious that his methods of getting rid of the Heartless weren't doing any good.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Pi. Naturally, Pi appeared to be cowering slightly. He never did do well with enemies around.
Ienzo had an idea.
"Pi," he barked. "Summon your shield, please. And try not to stay in one place for too long. I don't want to have to send a rescue mission to the Realm of Darkness."
Had Pi been in a better state of mind, he probably would have combatted Ienzo's statement by saying that since he was a Replica, it wouldn't matter too much if he was sent to the Realm of Darkness. However, instead he just looked at Ienzo like he was crazy.
"I'm not built to fight!" he spluttered.
"I know that," Ienzo said. "But can you do me a favor and bash a couple of those Heartless for me? Just enough so that I can mimic the attack and use it against the Heartless myself."
"Don't you know any melee attacks?"
"You're stalling," Ienzo pointed out.
Pi grumbled and summoned his shield.
"To answer your question," Ienzo said. "I know a few, but none of them are in this lexicon, and I'm not about to start bashing it on their heads."
Pi started attacking. Ienzo paid close attention, memorizing the moves, feeding them into his lexicon.
Pi wasn't accustomed to fighting in the slightest. He wasn't programmed to fight. He spent more time accidentally killing Heartless than intentionally killing them.
"Hmm, melee attacks are quite effective on them," Ienzo thought aloud. "Good to know."
Pi yelped. His foot had slid into a pool of darkness. Without hesitation, Ienzo repeated the levitation spell and threw it at Pi.
"Thank you," Pi spluttered.
"Stay put for the moment," Ienzo told him. "But you don't have to keep fighting if you don't want to."
Pi nodded. However, he kept his shield out.
Ienzo began to mimic the attacks that he had watched Pi perform. Melee attacks were very effective. He'd have to bring out a different lexicon next time around. He had one that had both Riku's and Axel's attacks in it. (He'd gone searching through The World That Never Was to find it… only to locate it in Castle Oblivion instead. He'd then had to argue with a couple of older Vexen Replicas to get it back.)
Shaking his head to clear himself from that thought, he went back to focusing on the Heartless. With his new attacks, they didn't last all that long. Once the last of them had been disposed of, Ienzo spoke the release of the levitating spells. Ienzo himself dropped rather gracefully, knowing the let go was coming. Pi stumbled a bit, but for his ego's sake, at least, he didn't fall.
Ienzo snapped his lexicon shut. "Time to go back inside."
He strut back inside and back up to his office.
"What about the illusions for the windows?" Pi called back up after him.
"Another time," was the response.
Pi sighed.
xx
Ienzo was in the middle of compiling a single lexicon for the current Heartless fighting situation. He wanted one with a good balance of melee attacks and various spells. Of course, these lexicons always tended to be heavier than one that contained one or the other. But he was kidding himself to think that he could get by with magic and illusions alone. (Illusions were standard in all of his lexicons, so he didn't generally include them in his lists.)
"Ienzo!" Pi called up the stairs.
Ienzo sighed and pushed his glasses back up his nose.
"Yes?" he called back.
"We have a visitor."
Ienzo noted that Pi did not say 'customer.' He frowned. He hadn't heard the bell to the door jingle, so he wasn't aware they had company in the slightest. He'd have to check into that.
"Give me thirty seconds," Ienzo said.
He pocketed his glasses and straightened up his shirt. He bookmarked all three lexicons that he was currently working on and then made his way down the stairs.
"That was thirty-four seconds," Pi said.
Ienzo resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
Their visitor was a woman. Ienzo had seen her around. She was with Leon and Aerith. Her most striking feature being her giant angel wings, it was impossible to miss her.
"Hello Rinoa," Ienzo said.
"Hello," she replied with a smile.
"Is there something I can help you with?" Ienzo asked.
"I have a question to ask you."
Ienzo motioned for her to go ahead.
"Did you happen to receive one of these recently?" she asked, pulling a letter out of her pocket. The letter was plain, save for one very distinguishing feature: the tell-tale Mouse Ear Seal.
Ienzo's nose twitched. "What of it?"
"Is there any particular reason why you didn't show up to the meeting a few days ago?"
"Is there any particular reason why you care?"
"Well, I happened to notice your magical ability, and so I wondered if you'd received an invitation. I suppose it's not my business why you didn't attend."
"There's no magical way to fix the Worlds we live in," Ienzo quipped. "The King is noble for trying, but the idea is bound to fail."
"So you're not going to search for a solution, then?" Rinoa asked.
"It's not my business."
"Anyone who knows of the danger should make it their business."
Her voice was calm, despite the argument plain in her words.
"I've had enough dealings with the balance and imbalance of these Worlds," Ienzo replied. "I would quite like to just stay here and not bother with anything outside of my doorstep."
"The Heartless in Hollow Bastion are getting worse, you have to admit to that."
"I haven't seen any ones except the ones that have been appearing in the streets lately."
"The Poolers?" Rinoa asked, cocking her head to one side.
"Perhaps. They're the ones that form the pool of… Poolers. That would make sense."
"Yuffie named them," Rinoa said with a shrug.
"Regardless, I haven't seen any Heartless besides those."
"They are coming more frequently," Pi interjected.
Ienzo rubbed his temples. "What are you getting at, Rinoa?"
"I'm asking you to look just a tad past your doorstep and help us find a solution to Hollow Bastion's problem at the very least."
Ienzo frowned. "I'll see what I can find."
"Really?" Rinoa asked, incredulous. "I expected more of an argument!"
"He may just be saying that to get rid of you," Pi said. "He does that with me frequently."
Ienzo frowned.
"Will you see that he actually looks into it?" Rinoa asked.
Pi threw up his hands. "I can't guarantee you how much good I'll be. He hardly ever listens. He's like a mad scientist!"
"No more than Vexen was," Ienzo muttered.
"Would you please look into it though?" Rinoa asked. "Hollow Bastion needs all the help it can get. And I'm not just asking for my personal benefit, this will help you too."
"I suppose it's a better use of my energy than illusions over the windows," Ienzo said.
Pi frowned.
"Thank you," Rinoa said with a nod.
"I didn't technically agree…"
Rinoa was already out the door.
"Are you actually going to look into Hollow Bastion's balance problems?" Pi asked.
"I'm strongly considering it. But mostly so that I can live a peaceful life."
"You're so selfish," Pi exclaimed!
Ienzo didn't respond.
xx
"Hello there," Axel said, startling Rinoa as she walked out of the door of Ienzo's shop.
She jumped just a tad. "You startled me!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing there?"
"Faulty star shard," Axel said, playing with said faulty star shard. "I came here in the hopes that Cid might know what's wrong with it. Of course, since it's faulty, I'm not too surprised as to why it dropped me off outside of Ienzo's shop than Aerith's house. I was just about to walk over there when I heard the wonderful argument going on between you two."
Rinoa's eyes flashed white for a second, showing her irritation. "How much did you hear?"
"Oh, practically the whole thing. It was amusing to say the least."
Axel started walking. Rinoa followed.
"You forgot to ask him a very important question, however," Axel said, once they were well away from the shop.
"And that would be?"
"He was one of Xehanort's closest men. Wouldn't you think he would know how to reverse some of the damage Xehanort's done?"
"Do you honestly think he would?" Rinoa asked. "I mean, you know him better than I do…"
Axel rolled his eyes. "Believe me, you can pretty much not count all that time spent in the Organization. None of us had emotions, making it ridiculously easy to lie and hide things from one another. The first six in the Organization were a completely different story than the rest of us. He was number six."
"Do you suggest I ask?" Rinoa asked.
"No, not now, it'll only look suspicious. Plus, he knows I was out there. If you go back now, he'd know I put you up to this. He's smart, he'd figure it out. Ask another time. Better yet, have Aerith go ask."
"Why Aerith?"
Axel raised an eyebrow. "Have you ever tried lying to Aerith?"
