Look, I wrote it anyway! I got bored, and decided to write it. It's all AU and stuff. And yay! I get to use humour! XD Of course, it's sort of subtle humour, not like the stuff in my fic "Panic!" which sort of jumps out at you. Your sense of humour has to sort of be like mine to find it all. Uh…
ooo
-Ansem and the Dragon Lady-
In a faraway world with a very mountainous geography, called Yama ga Oi, there lived a prince named Ansem. He had curious orange eyes, and long hair the color of the silver his people mined in the mountains. His skin was tanned from all the time he had spent outside, trying to escape… them. All the girls in the kingdom, common or noble, desired the prince's hand in marriage, but none of them met with Ansem's expectations. He therefore went to great lengths to avoid them.
"They are all too feather-brained, Mother!" he complained one night. "None of them could carry on a decent conversation to save their lives! It's always clothes, and fashion, and 'Oh, did you see the duke's new mistress?' with them!"
His mother shook her head. "Don't worry, Ansem. Someday you'll find your someone."
Ansem made a wry face.
His father said much the same thing, blustering on about "True love" and "Happiness" and "Look at your mother and me!" and "Where the hell are my damn golfclubs!"
Again, Ansem made a wry face. He resigned himself to the fact that he would never be married, and that was that.
Ansem's best (and so far ONLY) friend was an enormous silver dragon named Sephiroth. Often, Ansem would go to Sephiroth's cave, and the two of them would chat about whatever for hours. Ansem frequently complained about the maidens of the kingdom.
"And they always get this glazed look in their eyes when they see me!" Ansem had said once. "Why is that?"
Sephiroth merely shrugged his scaly shoulders. "Dunno, mate. D'you want me t' eat a few of 'em?"
"No, they'd probably give you indigestion. Best not to."
"Yer fun'ral, mate. Suit yerself."
Sometimes Sephiroth would turn himself into a young man with long silver hair, and he and Ansem would go to the local taverns. On these occasions Ansem could enjoy some obscurity, for the girls were too busy mooning over Sephiroth and his cold blue eyes. Sephiroth always politely rejected them. Ansem usually stumbled out dead drunk.
Ansem frequently spent long hours in the mountains to avoid the presence of the maidens. On one such walk, he was exploring a little-known region behind the castle. Well, little-known to everyone but him. Then he saw her.
She was leaning against a rock, a book open in her lap. The strong mountain winds were blowing her jet-black hair around. Her skin seemed exceptionally pale, and she had an intense look about her. Ansem observed with some surprise that her book was a strange poem called "Inferno." This shocked him somewhat. He didn't think any of the maidens were intelligent enough to even consider that poem.
She's so pretty… Ansem thought. Then he shook his head. She's probably just as stupid as the rest. She's probably only enjoying the illustrations, as eerie as they are.
"Hey!" he called out.
The woman looked up, startled. Ansem noted her eyes were two different colors, blue and brown. She leapt up and raced off up the mountain. Ansem gave chase. She bounded among the rocks with the ease of a billy goat. Ansem had trouble keeping up. Then they came to a ledge. The woman jumped over it. Ansem raced to the edge just in time to see her spread large wings and fly away.
Was she a dragon? Ansem thought.
The next day, Ansem went to see Sephiroth. The dragon listened patiently to Ansem's tale.
"She could be a dragon," Sephiroth said. "There're loads of 'em living in these mountains. I'm not th' only one."
"But you know what was weird?" Ansem mused.
Sephiroth gave a dragonish snicker. "She didn't swoon th' minute she saw ya?"
Ansem glared at him. "No, that's not it. She just didn't seem to know who I was. I thought everyone knows who I am."
Sephiroth gave Ansem one of his condescending looks he reserved special for humans. "Typ'cal royal a'itude. Yew always 'spect ev'ryone knows ya. Seems roight pig'eaded ter me."
Ansem didn't speak to the dragon for the rest of the day.
-End of Part one. Intermission-
(Cue the Beethoven music!)
Fenrir: Guten Tag! Wilkommen! Welcome to the Intermission! And here to do this with me is Sephiroth, Ansem, and our special guest star, DiZ!
Sephiroth: Why am I a silver dragon with a Cockney accent? Why do I even have an accent?
Fenrir: Rush 2112 does strange things to my muses. Deal. Anyway, I'm having fun writing this side story! XD
Ansem: We know.
DiZ: You always have fun doing stupid things to us.
Fenrir: Bite me. XP (Blows Raspberry) And I don't care if Ansem and DiZ are one and the same, I'm still using them as separate characters!
DiZ: We know you don't care. You've already fucked up the KH storyline real bad. Who cares if you mutilate it further?
Fenrir: Screw you. XP
-End of Intermission. Part two-
The next day, Ansem was awake early as usual when he heard a booming at the castle doors. Bemused, he opened them to find Sephiroth standing outside in human form.
"There yew are! 'Bout bloody toime!" Sephiroth cried. He seized Ansem's arm and dragged him out.
"Wha—Sephiroth, what the hell do you want!" Ansem demanded as Sephiroth dragged him down to the village.
"'Urry up, already! There's someone Oi want ya ter meet!"
They hurried down to the village, and Sephiroth pulled Ansem towards the tavern.
"Bit early for drinking, don't you think?" Ansem said.
"Not what we're 'ere for, mate," Sephiroth replied, scanning the empty room. "Ah!" Sephiroth led Ansem to a table in the corner. Ansem tried not to stare too much at the occupant. Which he was finding difficult. Not much of the man himself was visible, except his eye and his mouth.
"You're Ansem, I presume?" the man said.
"Yes, I am," Ansem replied. The man stood.
"My name is DiZ. I am the dragon king," he said.
"You're the dragon king?"
"Yes. Sephiroth has told me about your encounter in the mountains. I believe you have encountered a rogue dragon by the name of Lokii Iotunheim," DiZ said. "If you see her again, approach with caution. She is very dangerous. You are lucky you caught her unawares. If you hadn't, she could have very easily torn you limb from limb."
Ansem suppressed a shudder. "If she is so dangerous, why do you allow her to roam freely?" he asked.
DiZ shrugged. "I tried locking her up once. She broke down the wall. That was, incidentally, the last time I saw her. I was just about to send my finest trackers after her to bring her back."
Sephiroth groaned. "Oh no. Not that lot. Yew know they'll kill 'er," he moaned.
DiZ shook his head. "I know," he said evenly. "But she killed many of us, and we have to do something."
"Anything I can do?" Ansem asked.
DiZ looked at him strangely. "Maybe you can," he mused. "First, meet with my trackers. Then I'll let you know what you can do."
The next day, Ansem went up to Sephiroth's cave, and found the silver dragon hunched in the corner, looking surly. Several other dragons lounged about.
"Who're they?" Ansem asked.
"The dragon king's trackers," Sephiroth said with distaste. A red dragon approached them. He had numerous, deadly looking spines around his head.
"You shouldn't speak of us with such distaste, you fool," he snarled. "After all, it would be so easy to kill you. And the king wouldn't care, because you're just an idiot living outside his control."
"Leave it, Axel," snapped a gold dragon with a busted horn. "He's not worth it."
Sephiroth bristled and rose. "Yew keep yer pointy snout outta this, Vexen," he snarled.
"I'm quaking," the gold dragon sneered. Sephiroth started growling, and Ansem was certain there would have been a fight had a brown dragon not stepped in.
"Down, you three," he snarled, wisps of flame issuing from his mouth. Axel had also started growling. Reluctantly, Vexen and Axel sat back down, but Sephiroth remained standing.
"Sephiroth, quit it," Ansem snapped. Sephiroth glanced at him, and ceased his growling, though his tail lashed, scoring deep gouges in the rock.
"Marluxia, why'd you have to stop them? It would have been interesting," said a dragon with a curious bronze color to her scales and two long horns.
"Because there would have been dire consequences on our side, Larxene," answered a small silver dragon with a strange luster to his scales.
"You're such a brown-noser, Zexion," the bronze dragon said.
"No, I'd just like to keep my hide intact," the silver one responded acidly.
"Sephiroth, what the hell is going on?" Ansem asked as the other dragons started arguing.
"Th' dragon king sent 'em 'ere this mornin'. They're ter start huntin' fer Lokii," Sephiroth said. "Can we get goin'?" he shouted over the trackers' arguing.
They stopped arguing abruptly. "Yeah, sure, alright," they all said.
-End of Part Two. Intermission. A short one-
(Cue the Beatles music!)
Fenrir: (Laughs) The Organization got turned into quarrelsome dragon trackers! And DiZ is the dragon king! XD He's too hard to describe! XP Damn you, Tetsuya Nomura!
-End of Intermission. Part Three-
Ansem, Sephiroth, and the dragon trackers were crouched behind a rock, waiting for Lokii to show. Sephiroth and the trackers were each in human form. A book sat alone on a ledge below.
"So… what are we doing? Why don't we try to find her ourselves?" Ansem whispered.
"We're going to catch her when she goes for that book. It's a copy of a Dante poem. She can't resist Dante's poems. When she goes by, she'll see it, swoop down, and then we'll throw this net over her," Axel explained, hefting a heavy net.
"We aren't tracking her because she'd know we were there before we could get anywhere close to her," Larxene said.
"'Ere she comes!" Sephiroth said urgently. The others ducked down as they heard someone touch down lightly on the rock. Ansem cautiously peered over the top of the rock at her. Lokii was picking up the book and flipping through.
Axel pulled Ansem back down and threw the net. Lokii looked up just as it fell down. She released a fireball from her palm and flew away, still clutching the book. Axel swore as the charred remains of the net floated to the ground.
They tried unsuccessfully over the next several days to capture the elusive Lokii. One of their more extravagant plots involved a Behemoth Heartless, some honey, and several dozen salamanders. Ansem had not been present at that one.
"They say she'll survive," Sephiroth said, after telling him the gist of the plan, but not exactly what had happened.
"Should I feel sorry for Lokii?" Ansem asked.
"'Oo's talkin' 'bout Lokii? Oi was talkin' 'bout th' Behemoth."
Ansem blanched.
After the failure of a plan using electricity, fire, ice, and some depraved walruses that resulted in the injury of all the trackers (Axel's, Larxene's, and Vexen's spells backfired and Zexion and Marluxia suffered bruised ribs from laughing so hard), they gave up and returned to the dragon kingdom. Ansem and Sephiroth were the only ones left to continue the hunt.
They subscribed to the theory of "The simpler solution is the best", and they resorted to things like tripwires, spring-loaded nets, and the like. However, they failed also.
Summer turned to fall, and fall to winter. Sephiroth and Ansem were growing desperate, as was DiZ.
"If we don't catch her soon…" he was frequently heard to mutter.
One snowy day, Ansem had been writing down ideas. When he ended up writing "Catch her in a box propped up on sticks", he threw down his pencil in frustration. He stared out his window at the falling snow. He realized that, once again, his thoughts had been drifting towards Lokii. That had been happening a lot since the day he'd first seen her.
"Dammit. I give up. I'm out of ideas anyway," he muttered to himself as he pulled on a coat and boots. He headed out behind the castle, to the mountains where he had first encountered Lokii.
Once again, he saw her reading a Dante poem. Ansem recognized it as the one the trackers had baited her with. Her wings were folded in such a way that they protected the book from the snow. Ansem shook his head.
"Hey you!" he called. She looked up, startled, but didn't run this time. She surveyed him with her odd eyes.
"What do you want? Are you here to capture me?" Lokii asked. "Like those other fools?"
Ansem shook his head. "No, not today. I just want to ask you something."
"Ask away. I'm not going anywhere. For the moment, at least."
"Why did you run the first time?"
Lokii shrugged. "I thought you were a bounty hunter, hired by DiZ. Plain and simple."
"Are you really a rogue?"
"Yep."
"How many did you kill?"
"Do you really need to know?"
As they talked, Ansem had been trying to measure Lokii's intelligence. Her speech hinted at an intellect nearly level with his own. After a while, Ansem's questions drifted away from trying to hunt her down, and turned to such things as Dante's poems.
"I rather like the 'Inferno', especially the bit with the popes having their heads in the holes," Ansem said, laughing.
"Yeah, that's a good one!" Lokii said enthusiastically. "I like the sign on the gateway to Hell. 'Abandon every hope, who enter here.' "
A low growling noise interrupted them. Ansem turned to see an immense wild boar. Its red eyes were aflame, and its ribs were visible through its leathery skin. It had clearly been driven mad by lack of food. It snorted, and roared at them.
"Oh shit!" Ansem cried as he and Lokii prepared to run. The boar squealed at them, and the duo took off. They raced over the snow-covered passes, trying to avoid the mad animal. Finally they lost the beast amongst the maze of rocks. Ansem skidded to a halt, stopping shy of an edge. Lokii was not so lucky. Her foot slipped as she was jumping off a rock just behind Ansem. She skidded along the narrow ledge and shot off, unable to open her wings, which had been broken when she landed on the rock. Ansem lunged forth, and caught her hand.
"Hang on!" he yelled. He started slip in the wet snow.
"Let go! Or you'll fall too!" Lokii said.
"No! You can't fly, you can't save yourself!" Ansem said fiercely. "I won't let you go!" Brave words indeed, but Ansem was close to falling himself. He had to do something. But he couldn't think. All he could think of was "Don't let her fall. Don't let her fall. Don't let her fall."
Desperate, Ansem grabbed Lokii's arm with his other hand, and pulled. His desperate idea worked. Lokii shot forward, having been trying to get herself up with her feet. The two momentums caused her to fly forward faster than either of them had bargained. Lokii flew forward like a cork out of a bottle, landing on top of Ansem.
They stared at each other for a moment. Lokii blinked a few times.
"Uh…"
"Um…"
"Oh, what the hell!"
Ansem kissed Lokii then. At first Lokii was surprised, then she returned the kiss. Ansem fully realized then what had been bothering him since he had met her. He loved Lokii, and it seemed she felt the same. That's good, Ansem thought.
As Lokii pulled away, Ansem distinctly heard a very familiar snicker. Lokii heard it too.
"Oi! Yew tew gonna be'ave, or do Oi 'ave ter tell yer folks?" The duo looked up at the rocks. Sephiroth was sitting on one, in human form, laughing hard. Lokii and Ansem stood up.
"Would you like to kill him, or shall I?"
"You may."
"With pleasure."
Sephiroth stopped laughing immediately.
"'Ey! Oi wasn't serious, mate! 'Pon moi honor!" he cried nervously.
"Sure, Sephiroth. Right," Ansem said, cracking his knuckles. Sephiroth shot away like an arrow, turning into his dragon form and flying away. Ansem laughed, and turned back to Lokii.
"So… how'll we explain this to DiZ?" he asked.
"I don't think he'll mind."
-end-
Fenrir: And there we go, the real end of "Locked Hearts"! I swear, this is the real end! Can boars growl? Oh well! Now excuse me as I switch to the yaoi side of the Kingdom Hearts fandom! XD
(Ansem and DiZ are laughing at Sephiroth)
DiZ: You sounded like a mole from the Redwall series!
Ansem: XD You sounded so stupid!
Sephiroth: Shut up! (Chases them)
Fenrir: (Shrugging) Oh dear. Auf wiedersehen. I have to deal with these idiots. (Running over) Hey you morons! Quit it! Sephiroth, DOWN! Shit. I seriously didn't want to do this, but… OSUWARI!
(The three quarrelers fall down)
DiZ, Ansem, Sephiroth: What the hell?