I cheated and wrote this chapter right after Chapter 8. My Internet was down, so I decided to just keep writing. It's just an interlude chapter that, of course, fills in the gaps of everything that's been going on so far. Well, almost everything.
And sorry if some of this stuff confuses you. It was really hard to write this so that it would fit in with the current plot and that of the next story. Yes, there's gonna be a sequel. I plan to call it A Heart's Wortha Thousand Words. I'm-a gonna shut up now, okay? Okay.
Interlude - Filling in the Gaps
"The password, please?" a Wizard whispered from within the bushes.
Midnight leaned in and whispered something in the language of Darkness. I gasped as I realized that it was exactly what he had said to me before he fell into the hole. So that's what it was, I thought.
"You may enter," the gatekeeper said, ducking his head back into the cluster of green. The sound of a hatch opening was heard, and Midnight proceeded into the bush. I looked behind me to my Imperfect friends. They all nodded, and I followed the Black Fungus into the secret passageway.
Now, you must all be wondering how I suddenly had the trust of this "Imperfect Hunter" after the multiple times he had tried to harm me. Well, sometime between the points where he had defied the outnumbered thing and where we were talking outside, he explained the whole concept of how the Imperfects came to be. Apparently, Maleficent was running out of human subjects to turn into Heartless, so she decided to try and create one from scratch, and that one was Midnight's father. Sadly, she had failed to notice that she had created him with a working heart, giving him feelings and the need to rebel against evil.
"Oh, yeah?" Cherry had asked, hands on her hips. "If you have a heart, then let's feel it."
He let us. It was true, and Cherry had a bit of an embarrassed moment.
So, Midnight continued with his story on how he pretended to be pure evil, so Maleficent continued creating these Heartless. She made one of every species in the exact same way that she had created Midnight, including Coral's mother and mine. Eventually, she realized that all of her creations had failed, so they had to go into hiding and disguise their hearts. She continued creating Heartless using a different method. They had no hearts, but most of them were still good.
Eventually, the Imperfects, as the good Heartless came to be called, began mating, creating more and more Imperfects until an entire army was formed. In fact, I had been born around the time that the Imperfects first battle was about to start. Both my mother and father had hearts, so that trait was passed on to me.
Unfortunately, just days after I had been born, my mom and dad fought in the first battle of Imperfects vs. True Heartless. They battled with great skill but were killed during said battle. In fact, almost the entire Imperfect army was eliminated or seized for later execution, explaining why the Imperfects are so short in number these days.
Midnight had to suffer the same fate, but in a bit of a different way. He was a few months older than me, and he lost his parents to Imperfect Hunters about the time my parents were murdered.
But enough of the fill-ins. Back to the story...
"So, this is Imperfect HQ," I observed, looking around at all of the Heartless in the room. The area was pretty dark with only torches lighting the rooms, but it was good enough for a headquarters full of rebellious ones.
"The only ones who don't know me to be an Imperfect Hunter are the ones who are in this headquarters," Midnight explained, looking over at several Heartless surrounding a large piece of paper on the wall. They were obviously battle plans of some sort. "And the only ones allowed in here are those who can pass my tests."
"So that explains the part where you tried to kill me," Cherry said. "That's pretty smart, pretending to be evil to benefit the good."
"As simple as it seems, the job's not very easy. You have to plan everything out perfectly, otherwise someone could get hurt."
"That does sound hard," I contributed. "How do you manage it?"
Midnight turned his head toward me and seemed to be smiling. "It takes practice. In fact, before he died, my father had to teach me a lot of this. The rest, I sort of taught myself."
"Wow..." I whispered. My face felt a bit... warm. Was I blushing?
"Lilac?" Midnight asked as he halted his steps. "Do you remember how the pronounce the words I said to you before my near-death experience?"
"Uh... I think it was... Sola fra'adon al'n, right?" I repeated, hoping to Walt that I was right.
"Right. Do you know what it means, though?"
"I... I don't speak Darkness very well... In fact, not well at all."
"Well, it actually translates to 'Light free all,' which basically means that goodness will free us all," Midnight explained. (A/N: I made that up. Go me!) "That's a very important saying among Imperfects. It gives us hope that we can rise up against Maleficent and destroy her once and for all!"
"By the way, how did you survive that fall, anyway?" Truff asked. (Cherry had told him about it before we came here.)
"Like I said, it takes planning," Midnight replied. "The rumor about the Wyvern catching me was true, but I didn't have amnesia or anything. I just did that so you would think that I hit my head on something during the fall. The Wyvern, Camilla, was part of the whole plan."
"Master Midnight!" someone called just before Midnight had finished his sentence. A rough-sounding Air Pirate with an eyepatch over his left eye flew up to the Black Fungus. "Sorry to interrupt, but a posse of Maleficent's best Heartless has gathered outside! They know of our headquarter's location!"
"T'shi!" Midnight growled, obviously swearing in Darkness. "Round up the troops! Send out a signal to all Imperfects and get everyone here as quickly as possible!"
"Yes, sir!" the Air Pirate confirmed before flying past us to a rather large cluster of Heartless.
Midnight turned to us with a serious look in his eye. "See the eyepatch over his eye?" he asked. We all nodded in affirmation. "That's the result of what happens if you don't plan everything out perfectly."
To be continued...
Our normal plot will resume in Chapter 10! Or rather, Chapter 9.
And, just because I can, I'm going to explain how I cam up with each Darkness word!
Sola, or Light, has two origins. The Japanese word for Sun is Soleli, and solar is a word related to the sun.
Fra'adon, or Freedom, is basically spelling freedom but with A's where the E's are and an N instead of an M. The apostrophe was added at random.
Al'n, or All, is simply replacing the last L with an N and adding an apostrophe.
T'shi, or the 'S' word, is spelling said word with the T at the beginning instead of the end and the apostrophe that a lot of Darkness words have.
