A/N: I. Have. Updated! Hurray! Unfortunately, it's a shortie. Sorry; work's been keeping me busy, and now school's coming up...ugh. This chapter was orignally a bit longer, but I haven't written the rest of it yet, so I decided to just split it and save the second half for the next chapter. Chapter updates are going to be a bit slower now, but I'll get this done, I swear! xD
(8) Denied!
"Hey, babe, it's about time you got here. What'd you do, take the scenic route?"
Iza scrowled as she walked down the white marble floor of the Hall of Empty Melodies. She came to a halt once she reached the center of the floor, looking up to give Demyx a burning glare.
"It's your fault; you're the one who summoned me here," she said in a biting voice, the annoyance on her face as clear as day."So it wasn't me who was slow, it was you. And by the way, call me 'babe' again and I'll take that sitar of yours and shove it up where the sun don't shine, got it?"
Demyx flinched back; not so much because of her threat but rather, the way she said it. She was in one of her 'bite-your-head-off' moods, which was always the mood she was in when she was around him. Not for the life of him could Demyx understand why exactly, but he had this feeling that Iza didn't like him very much. It didn't make any sense, though. Demyx was such a cool dude! How could anyone not like him?
It might have helped, perhaps, if he knew what the word 'ego' meant.
Whatever. It wasn't his fault that Iza was a grouch. And where was she getting off, threatening him like that? He was the higher-up here. He was in charge of her. He was the one who made the threats.
It took him a moment before he could think up one, though.
"Hey!" he shouted, hoping to sound authoritive. "How dare you talk to me like that! Know your place, or else I'll turn into a Dusk!"
"Go ahead and try, Idiot," snapped Iza, completely unfazed. Demyx seemed frustrated at this for a second, then sighed. He didn't have time for this.
"Look, just hurry up and give me your report," he said, sounding more pleading than authoritive. "Xemnas has called a meeting and I just know he's going to attack me for progress results on my mission. So please tell me you have something either progressive or resultive."
"Why can't I just go to this meeting and tell him myself?"
"Because," Demyx said, taking on the tone a parent would while explaining something to a child, "This meeting is for Organization members only, and you're just a minion, not a member. Also, giving the head honcho some useful information will make me look good!" He flashed Iza a 100-watt smile and she had to desperately resist the urge to knock his lights out.
"So spill," he ordered, and she could no longer could disobey. No matter how idiotic he was, he still ranked higher than she did.
"Nothing much. Sora and his friends are still traveling through the worlds, searching for their friends and that king. And probably plotting the downfall for the Organization while they're at it, especially after your failed attempt to "confront" Sora in the Underworld." Demyx carefully choose to ignore that remark, letting Iza continue. "I don't think Roxas has made any contact with him yet and Sora is still completely clueless on that matter. Oh, and two new people have joined Sora's party."
"New people? Are they significant in any way?" Demyx wanted to know.
"Not really," she answered. "They left their world by accident and are trying to get back to it. They won't pose a threat."
"Okay, good. And what about Axel? Did you see Axel?"
"No, he's still AWOL. Saïx is tracking him though, last I heard."
"Right," Demyx nodded and looked very thoughtful, which was a big shocker to Iza. Was he actually processing the information the she just gave him?
"Iza?" he finally said, after his rare pensive moment.
"Yeah?" It looked liked he had come to some sort of a conclusion. But what..?
"I need you to get a piece of paper and write all that down. There's no way I can possibly remember it all."
All hope of Demyx gaining some amount of intelligence just flew out the window. And right now, Iza wanted to jump out the window right along with it.
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Al had never seen anything like it. What were those things? They didn't seem to be either people or animals; creatures was a better fitting word. Although they had varying forms, all of them were dark and all of them had yellow eyes. And, for whatever reason, all of them were attacking.
So Al didn't waste any time trying to figure what the creatures were; they were trying to hurt the others, so stopping them was all that mattered. He whipped out a piece of chalk and began drawing a transmutation circle on the floor, some feet away from the battle. Many of the creatures attacked together in masses, he noted, so if he could transmutate part of the floor up into a cage around the ones in groups, the battle would end a lot quicker.
When the hurried transmutation circle was done, Al smacked his hands onto the ground, signaling for the flow of alchemy to begin. The circle began to glow faintly and then...
...nothing happened.
"Don't bother, Al!" someone shouted. Al looked up to see his older brother side-stepping a wide swing from one of the more lanky creatures. He watched, momentarily transfixed, as the creature melted into the ground like a shadow, then shoot up in its three-dimensional form behind Ed for a surprise attack. However, without missing a beat, Ed whirled around, slamming his metal fist into the creature's gut. The thing then vanished, turning into something like a black vapor and dispersing into the air. "Alchemy doesn't work here!" Ed quickly shouted in explaination before he jumped back into the fray.
Al pulled himself off the ground, but his mind was too busy thinking. It made him slow for a moment, being seeped in his confusion. Only when a flying creature came rushing at him, blazing with fire, did his mind finally snap to attention, commanding his body to move out of the way. But the thing was too fast. In one second, it was right in front of his face.
And in the next second, it too was cut through and vaporized. Where the creature had just previously been stood Sora, weilding some type of weapon that looked like...a giant key?
"Be careful," he advised, "They'll try to take your heart!" With that, he hacked his way back into the mass of shadow-creatures, destorying one after another with ease. Ed was still fist-fighting his share by the pillars, and farther down, Al saw Goofy plowing through them with a sheild and Donald firing blasts of ice and fire at them with some sort of staff.
No alchemy. Huge keys for swords. Talking ducks using what could only be described as magic. And to top it all off, dark creatures that relentlessly attacked and wanted to steal your heart.
And here Al had thought he'd seen some weird things on his world. The Homuncli, with their strange and dangerous powers; the subjects of Lab Five, like that annoying guy with the tail; Louis Armstrong, who was always taking off his shirt for no apparent reason...ha. All of that almost seemed normal compared to this. Even Al himself, an actual living suit of armor, paled next to the extremely bizarre situations he was encountering here.
Regardless of however weird it was, Al cleared his mind for now and joined in to fight off the creatures. Whether or not they could take your heart was of no concern to him, because technically, in his current state Al did not have a heart. Or...not the kind of heart he was thinking of, anyway.
For a while, it seemed as if the horde of enemies was endless. For every foe defeated, another would take its place. Yet eventually, the Colonnade cleared out, the group defeating every last one until no more appeared.
After checking to make sure that no one was injured (which they weren't), Al's mind went back to confused-mode and he was about to unleash a torrent of questions. Ed, however, beat him to it and managed do so with just a single question as opposed to a thousand:
"What the hell was that?"
--TBC--
A/N: I'm not really good at battle scenes, if you haven't already figured that out yet. I tried, okay? This was kinda small-scale anyway. But yes, there will be more fighting. Eventually. Now, because I just know someone will ask this if I don't explain, why doesn't Ed and Al's alchemy work? Simple. They're not on their world anymore. While they realize this, they will still be a bit unsure as to why that is. So let me tell you instead:
If you've seen some of the last few episodes, you'll understand. Remember when Ed ends up on the other side of the gate(somewhere in Europe)and meets his dad and, eventually, gets hit by a crashing zepplin? Okay, now remember what his dad told him about how alchemy works, and where the power for it comes from? There ya go. The Elrics' world is actually two-in-one, and their world depends on its parallel world for alchemy to work. Or, that's my impression, anyway. TA-DA! Yeah, you're probably still confused, aren't you? Just go with it, then, all right? All right.
(Random Extra!)(Beware of...that..one guy...you know...)
Sora: Sephiroth? What's he look like?
Cloud: Silver hair. Carries a long sword.
Sora: ...
Cloud: What?
Sora: Dude. You just described about half of all the male characters in anime and RPGs.
Cloud: Um.
Sora: I mean, come on! Am I supposed to be on the look-out for Inuyasha or something? Gee, thanks for the details, Cloud!
(Fin!)