Here is chapter 3, as promised!
Obligatory: I do not own Kingdom Hearts or Boku no Hero Academia/My Hero Academia.
"Ready?!" Lauriam shouted as he spun into the ground and began his pinwheel attack back and forth, slicing the attacking group of Shadow and Darkball Heartless to shreds.
The Heartless disappeared and he dashed after three runaway Possessors that were flying towards the two teenagers cowering in the alleyway. With two swings of his scythe the Possessors dissolved into nothing and he turned his attention to the two teenagers, now that all the Heartless were taken care of. They were both girls and Lauriam had seen them fleeing from a villain attack, only to be ambushed by the Heartless when they fled through the alley.
"Are you two okay?" he asked.
"Ye-yeah! We are." they nodded in unison and he smiled.
"Good." he sighed in relief. "The Heartless won't come back for a while so you will be safe to go home. Stay safe!" he said, turned around and quickly jumped from wall to wall in the alley to reach the rooftop.
"Thank you!" he heard behind him and looked down behind himself to see the two girls waving at him.
His smile became wider and he continued on his way. The smile didn't drop away when, after traversing a few buildings, he felt a peculiar tingle down his spine of someone glaring at him and a presence following him. Lauriam stopped on a roof top as a man appeared, crouching on the roof of the little house to the stairs. He had shaggy black hair, black clothes, yellow goggles and white ribbons around his neck. Lauriam stopped and eyed the stranger, not de-summoning his scythe just in case.
"I'd like a talk with you, Seraphim." the man told him, crouching like a ninja on the roof of the building.
Lauriam was silent for a moment as the man's 'scarf' triggered a memory. He remembered Luxord and Elrena talking about a hero who had tried to tie them up with a white ribbon. They had both torn the ribbon to shreds with their weapons. It was probably why he hadn't been tied up now.
"Are you Eraser Head, then?"
"I am. What do you know of those villains that you just fought?"
Ah. Bisk had told them that the Heartless were treated as vicious villains or as the result of a villains quirk. Combining few people surviving an encounter and no bodies left behind once their heart had been stolen and they would be very high on the villain tier lists.
Not too odd then that heroes would try to collect more information about them from others who have encountered them. He guessed giving the basics was good enough, as long as he kept the world order.
"Those villains are called Heartless." Lauriam put his left hand over his chest. "They are born from the darkness in people's hearts and attack people to steal their hearts since they themselves have none."
"What does the quirk user do with the hearts once they get them?"
"Either the Heartless collects it for itself to become stronger or the heart manifests as another Heartless."
Lauriam had a feeling Eraser Head was narrowing his eyes at him.
"You said they do not have hearts."
"Technically, they do have a heart, but it is devoid of all emotion and not fit to be called a heart, which is why they steal others. Hence, they are called the Heartless."
"If they steal hearts, where are the bodies?"
Lauriam let his hand fall down to his side.
"Once a heart has been stolen, the body vanishes, unable to continue existing without it."
For a short moment, he could see the hero tense up but said nothing to his explanation. Eraser Head was silent for a while. Lauriam didn't know if that meant the hero was thinking about what he had been told or if he thought it was all a lie.
"Was that all?" he asked the hero.
"How do you know so much about this quirk?" Eraser Head asked, suspicion in his tone.
"I have had many run-ins with the Heartless."
"Who is the quirk user?"
Lauriam shrugged.
"If you are looking for the culprit, don't waste your time. Once the Heartless are created, they require no master to exist."
"What do you mean?"
"What I said."
Before Eraser Head was able to ask more, Lauriam began to warp away.
"Sorry to cut this short, but I do not want to be late for dinner." Lauriam called and disappeared in a rush of darkness before Eraser Head had left his perch in pursuit of him.
He appeared again in a small park on the other side of the city. He was sure Eraser Head had not seen Heartless for the first time that night, if him tensing up at the mention of the bodies disappearing was any indication. It was never a pleasant thing to witness.
Lauriam de-summoned his scythe and warped back to the apartment and found Luxord cooking while talking to Bisk and Elrena who sat at the dinner table. During the weeks they had been here they had collected enough from the Heartless to be able to expand the apartment. The kitchen was now a proper room, a small storage room had been added and their bedrooms had increased in size.
On Bisk's advice, they had also added a TV and a couch in the middle room where the entrance and all other rooms were connected to. His reasoning had been for them to be able to keep up with the news of this world.
"Welcome back, Mr Lauriam, kupo!" Bisk cheered.
"Got hold up?" Elrena asked as he pulled down his hood.
"You can say that. I fought some Heartless, and I ran into Eraser Head."
"Did he try to tether you too?" Luxord asked, spatula in hand.
"No, he did not. I wonder why." he answered with a smile and meaning look at the other two, making Elrena snort and Luxord smirk. "What he did was ask me about the Heartless."
"What did you tell him?" Elrena asked.
"The basics. Not sure if he fully believed me though."
"Well, the existence of Heartless can not be explained by quirks, kupo. So I am not surprised if he didn't believe you." Bisk said and then narrowed his already narrow eyes at him. "You didn't tell him anything that would break the world order right, kupo?"
"Of course not." he answered and Bisk relaxed but still looked worried.
"It still might be an issue, since he has used his quirk on both Miss Elrena and Mr Luxord without effect, kupo. He probably has questions as to why he isn't able to erase your 'quirks'."
Lauriam frowned and tilted his head to the side.
"I wonder why he didn't ask about that. Did you find anything new?" Lauriam asked the others.
"Not really." Elrena answered. "We still only run into Pureblood Heartless when we are out and about. Unless the Heartless you ran into now were Emblem Heartless?"
He shook his head and she shrugged.
"With your friends having been gone for so long, Bisk, and the absence of Emblem Heartless, it confirms that the barrier has been here for longer than a decade." Lauriam said.
"But we still are no closer to what is the source of the barrier." Luxord interjects while platting the finished food. "Bisk, is there really nothing of note that has happened for the past two decades?" Luxord asked the moogle as he put four plates on the table.
"Hmm, nothing that I would describe as being able to create this barrier, kupo."
"Not that it is not nice to see you, Bisk, but did you visit for a reason?" Lauriam asked and sat down at the table.
"Oh, I did, kupo!" he exclaimed and pulled out three phones and three small cases and put them on the table.
"We always give travelers a phone to borrow while here so that communication is easier, kupo! I had wanted to give you these earlier, but sadly we only found some old models that weren't working properly. So, we have been working on fixing them up for you."
The phones were black while the phone case surrounding it was dark green and dark red and had a cyan gem decorating the back. These phones were a lot slimmer than the brick that Sora had been observed to be using during his recent adventure. In the small cases were black wireless earbuds for all three of them.
"So these will help us communicate?" Elrena asked while turning her phone around and giving the earbuds a curious glance.
"Exactly, kupo! It will save you a lot of time if you don't always have to meet up in one place to talk. You can also use it to search for information on the internet or keep tabs on the news while out and about. I also put my own number in, kupo." Bisk paused as he observed the three of them examining their phones.
"Do you three know how to use a smartphone, kupo?" he asked, a bit embarrassed.
"Not really, no." Lauriam said, trying very hard to recall how Sora used his gummiphone.
"Well, I guess I should have expected that, kupo." Bisk sighed. "I'll show you how to use them and the earbuds."
The next day Lauriam was patrolling in the morning when he got a call from Luxord. Pressing a button on one earbud, he answered the call.
"Hello?"
"Hello to you too. Meet me in the abandoned warehouse."
"Did you find something out?"
"I am afraid not, but I did learn of some trouble that is being set in motion."
"Alright. I will see you shortly." Lauriam said and ended the call.
Warping to the warehouse, he was met with Luxord and one of his dice on the open floor. It was jumping around and Lauriam could easily see the person that was trapped within.
"What is the trouble?" he asked.
"I caught this one after they started a fight. Before he lost, he boasted about an attack that is going to happen today."
That got him to raise his eyebrows.
"An attack? Where?"
"Hear for yourself." Luxord said and the dice jumped into the air.
The dice lit up and disappeared as it turned the captive back to their real form. Before the villain could react, man-sized cards circled him and kept him from running. The villain looked wildly around himself and at the two of them.
"Unless you want another stay as a dice, speak one more time about what you so confidently bragged about." Luxord told him while he flipped a dice over his knuckles.
The villain eyed the dice nervously.
"We-we are going to attack U.A. To bring down A-All Might." They answered.
Lauriam's eyebrows rose even higher. They were going to try to take down All Might? Although none of them had been in the crosshair of the hero, what they had read and seen videos of him do was impressive. He wasn't too worried about All Might though. What was a concern was that they were going to attack the school and probably didn't care if some students got in the way.
"You must really be something to take on All Might?" Lauriam asked mockingly and gave the villain an unimpressed look.
The villain gave him a smug smile and gloated.
"Some big shot got a weapon to beat him. And he got many others to join him as well. All Might is toast."
"Sounds like it is going to get cramped if you need all of this city's lowlifes to even stand a chance. How are you going to get in?"
The villain smirked and shut up. Which didn't last long when Luxord trapped him in another dice.
"Okay, okay! I don't know! I was only going with the flow of a guy who was joining up! He ditched me after you showed up!" the villain admitted. "Turn me back!"
Luxord did turn him back, only to trap him in the same kind of card he had used to trap the king back in the Labyrinth of Severance.
"That is some trouble." Lauriam commented.
"I do believe he is not lying but if it is the full truth is another question. But who are we going to tell such uncertain information to?" Luxord said.
"We tell All Might." Lauriam stated.
Luxord frowned in thought.
"Hmm, he is their target and a teacher at U.A. But, will he believe us? Will he believe him?" he asked, gesturing with the card the villain was captured in.
"He doesn't need to completely believe us. If there is any potential danger to his students, he will make sure the kids are safe."
"That is true." Luxord agreed and flicked the card to Lauriam, who easily caught it.
"You will need that if you're going to talk to All Might."
Lauriam chuckled.
"Brief Elrena and keep an eye on U.A while I'm gone." he told Luxord before pulling his hood up and entering a dark corridor to find The Number 1 Hero.
As the shining beacon of light he was, All Might was not hard to find. Lauriam used a main dark corridor to follow the man around as he stopped villains, helped civilians and resolved accidents. The hero shined bright as he smiled through every encounter and left people smiling when he left. He felt oddly reminded of Sora when watching the man, although their physical appearance differed greatly. It was not odd that the villains wanted to squash that light. Or the many Heartless that were following after him in the shadows. When they had followed the Heartless, many of them would follow The Number 1 Hero, but they almost never attacked. It made them wonder if All Might had a hand in the barrier.
When sorting out the scene of a robbery, All Might took the way over the rooftops to leave and Lauriam saw his chance. Creating a corridor of darkness in front of him caught the hero's attention and made him stop. Lauriam stepped through to the other side and hoped he wouldn't get immediately punched.
"Hello, All Might." he greeted him and the corridor disappeared.
"Haha! This is unexpected! Who are you, young man?"
"My name is Seraphim."
"Hmm, I haven't heard of you. I apologize for that, young Seraphim." he told Lauriam.
"Nothing to be sorry about. I have only been active for a few weeks."
"Understandable! With a wonderful quirk like your's, you will have no issue in helping people and rise from sidekick to full fledged hero!" All Might reassured him and laughed again.
Lauriam was a bit taken aback by All Might's friendliness. People did not usually have a positive reaction upon being stopped by anyone in this black coat, even if his vigilante activities had garnered positive reactions recently. Suspicion and hostility was what he had been used to as a Nobody, not outright comradie. It was probably because All Might currently thought he was someone's sidekick, oddly enough.
"Now, this was a great chitchat, but I need to get going on my morning commute!"
"Before you leave, I have important information for you."
"Oh, I'm listening!"
"We have reason to believe that U.A and its students are going to be attacked and that you are the target."
All Might's smile didn't leave his face, but his whole demeanor changed from jolly to serious. It was quite intimidating but Lauriam was unfaced.
"Young man, these are some serious allegations."
"It is." Lauriam agreed, pulled out Luxord's card and flicked it to All Might.
"That villain can tell you what he told us about the attack."
All Might caught the card, frowned and looked back at him.
"You're not a hero, are you?"
Lauriam smiled and warped away.
"Ask Eraser Head." he told All Might before disappearing.
If anyone are confused as to why Eraser Head's quirk doesn't work on Lauriam and CO, I equal his quirk to that of the Curse of the Aztek gold from Pirates of The Caribbean, rather than the effects of the Underworld. Since all three are not from this world, they can not be affected by Erasure, or similar quirks that specifically affect quirk factors. That and, you know, they don't have any quirks to erase, haha.
Next Chapter will be released: 21th of April