I'M BACK!

Sorry, got so busy I had to put this on hiatus. But I'm back.

I hope you guys are ready for the rest of this crazy adventure!

Kingdom Hearts © to Disney and Square Enix!

Chapter 14: Monstropolis- Scares

Roxas looked out the window at all the children playing in the mansion courtyard. Viktor sat on the wall, watching the smaller ones run around. In times like these, Roxas wished he'd had a home like this when he first became a Nobody, but at least he could give these kids a home.

His eyes drifted to the stars. "Xi, Yake… be safe."

"Mr. Mukxo! Eve made another giant needle again!"

Of course…

With a sigh, the man turned around and hurried downstairs before their strangest kid could go out searching for dead bodies… again.

"I have never liked these worlds. Never."

"Dad, you said that last time. But at least we look kinda cool."

Unlike Pride Lands, they all stood on two legs, but their forms looked quite different. Lea looked like a dragon, but instead of scales, thick, stiff fur covered his entire body, though he still wore his long coat over it. Long claws replaced his fingers, horns like that of a ram poked up from his head, and a long tail flicked back and forth.

Xion's, now purple, skin seemed human-like but now black spots covered it; her feet looked like lizard feet and her hands were similar and a short tail with spikes poked out behind her. Her long purple shirt covered the top of her body. Her black hair fell around her head but in long, thick pieces that were solid(1).

Yuyake looked similar to his mother, but with a more lithe, lizard-like body. A burnt orange color tinted the dark green scales on his body, and he still wore his leather jacket. The long tail behind him had little fins on it and his fingers and toes looked more like those of a gecko. His hair looked just like his mother's.

Blaze looked like a bird, a phoenix. Bright red feathers covered her body, with the tail feathers colored various shades or orange, red, pink, blue, and purple. She still wore her black tank top and headphones.

Brimstone looked similar to his dad in form, with a draconic appearance. The same fur than his dad had covered his body, but he had brown feathers on his head and tail. His feet and tail were like those of a bird, and his draconic snout had a beak-like shape. He also wore his red jacket still.

Xion looked down at her clawed hands. "What a weird world. We look scary, but not in the same way as Halloween Town."

"Yeah, more like monsters." The bird-like girl stepped out of the alley they'd disembarked into. "And that doesn't surprise me looking at this now." The others followed her out to see a large factory with monsters of all shapes and sizes walking into it.

Above the factory doors, they saw a logo that looked like an M with an eye in the middle. Underneath it were the words "We Scare Because We Care".

"Doesn't sound caring to me."

Xion stepped out into the open. "Let's check it out. We can try and figure out what's going on here." They all walked toward the building, following the crowd of monsters, some of which talked to one another and others looked at files.

"This looks like any other business on any other world."

Walking inside, they found a fancy entrance hall with a reception desk at the far end of the room. A female monster with snakes for hair sat behind the desk taking phone calls. Xion led the way across the room and stopped at the desk.

The female monster glanced over with her one eye. "Please hold." She turned with a smile. "Hello, how may I help you? Oh, are you the student group?"

"Uh, yes." Xion fibbed. "We were wondering where to go."

"Of course. I'll call your tour guide. My name is Celia; if you need anything, let me know."

"Thank you Celia."

Celia turned back to her computer and made another call. Monsters began to walk into different rooms until the main hall was all but empty.

"Hello." A female, orange, snake-like monster with fins around her eyes strode over. "I'm Ms. Flint, I supervise new scarers. I'll be your tour guide. I assume that these three are your students?"

Lea smirked. "Kids actually. These two are mine, and that one is hers. We agreed to chaperone."

Flint smiled, the fins around her eyes heightening in excitement. "Well we are glad to have you all here. It's always good to find young monsters interested in a career in scaring. Well, welcome to Monsters Incorporated. We are the number one in scream energy. Our factory powers this entire city and many other suburbs around. We have one of the largest collections of doors for human children in the world, carefully matching every child to their ideal monster, to produce superior scream refined into clean, dependable energy."

The group paused, glancing at each other, partially out of confusion and partially out of concern.

"And don't you worry, security is our number one priority. You may have heard that a single touch from a human child can kill you, and that is the truth. Human children are highly toxic." Flint led them into a long room with desks going along. Doors came in on a conveyor belt and lowered down before each station. Smaller monsters put in canisters while big monsters ran into the doors.

Screams of children echoed throughout the room.

It was an awe-inspiring and disgusting sight.

"This way. There are some chairs in the back for guests. If you have questions, you can ask me later. Enjoy!" She led them to a set of chairs in the back.

As they sat, watching all the scarers work, Lea bit his lip. "I don't like this… I don't like it at all.

"I hate it too." Blaze leaned back, crossing her arms in annoyance. "Hey Dad, remember when I used to freak out about a monster in my room at night?"

"Yeah…"

"Think this why?"

Brim huffed. "I hate the idea of kids just getting scared for something like this."

Roxas walked down the halls of the children's home, making sure lights were out and everyone was asleep at this hour. A scream shook the air.

"Erin!?" Roxas turned, tearing down the hallway to the screaming girl's room. Throwing the door open, he saw the pink-haired girl clutching a pillow to her chest as she sobbed into it. "Are you alright?"

The girl threw herself into the man's arms. "I-It was a monster! It came out of nowhere!"

"Shh… it's alright."

"That scream!" Xion gasped. A purple lizard-like monster slithered out of a wooden door; past the door, Xion saw a small head of pink hair. "Oh no. That freaky lizard did not just scare one of my babies!?"

Yuyake grabbed his mom's arm. "Mom! You can't blow our cover! They think humans are toxic."

"That was Mika. They scared one of ours."

"And we'll have to deal with it on our end." Lea looked up at a scoreboard on the wall. "That says his name is 'Randall', and he's the number 2 scarer."

Xion glared at the purple lizard. "I'll deal with him sooner or later. No one hurts my babies and gets away with it."

"We will deal with him."

Roxas closed Mika's door, finally sleeping after that fright. Must have been some nightmare.

No one else seemed to have woken up, or perhaps they heard him dealing with it and went back to sleep.

It was no surprise that the kids had nightmares. These things happened all the time, especially with the younger children. Nobodies or not, they still had nightmares and envisioned monsters in the closet and under the bed.

The clock chimed at 11.

So late.

Stepping toward his own door, Roxas resigned himself to go inside and finally get some sort of sleep.

"AHHHHHH!"

"Ana!?" Turning toward the nearest child's door. "Ana!" The little girl ran out the door, throwing herself into the arms of Roxas. "Hey… hey, it's alright."

Ana sobbed. "Monster! It was a big monster!"

"Shh, it's alright."

"That was Ana!"

"Mom!" Yuyake sighed. "I know you want to go total mamma-bear on them, but the world order is still a thing. We'll have to do something about it in this world."

Xion heard her son's words, but she couldn't help but glare at the large, furry, blue monster with purple spots. He seemed so proud of his handy work.

Lea put his hand on her shoulder. "If you need to go back to the ship go ahead. This is a pretty stressful situation for you."

"No. No. I'm fine. I can handle this." She took a deep breath, paying attention to the claws on her hands and not even looking at the scarers.

"2319 WE HAVE A 2319!"

A monster ran over to the wall slamming his fist onto a big red button "RED ALERT! RED ALERT! RED ALERT!" The windows over the shutters flew open as alarms blared and robotic voices blasted from the PA system. "George Sanderson." The scoreboard on the wall changed into a camera feed of the back of an orange monster, who had a child's sock stuck to his back. "Please remain motionless. Prepare for decontamination." The monster began freaking out, trying to pull the sock off of him.

With a crash, monsters in yellow hazmat-style suits came through the windows.

"What's the emergency? It's a sock." Blaze gaped as the hazmat guys removed the sock with large tongs and blew it up.

"Don't know." George, the orange monster, found himself in a shower. Shaved. And the skin on his back ripped off where the sock had been. "But they take it very seriously."

"Ms. Flint said they think kids are toxic. So, that's probably why." Yuyake watched as the hazmat guys took off leaving the employees to pick up the mess left behind.

Flint came running over, eyes wide with horror. "I am SO sorry you had to see that! This job is tough and can be dangerous. What you saw today doesn't happen very often, but I guess it's good that you saw what some of the risks could be."

"Is that guy gonna be alright?"

"Mr. Sanderson? Yes. He'll be fine." Flint wrung her slimy hands together. "Look, due to circumstances, I'm going to have to cut this tour short. However, because of that, you can all come back tomorrow and we will actually have our top scaerer, James Sullivan giving a demonstration of good scarer techniques tomorrow that you can attend. Sound good?"

"Sounds great."

"Thank you. I'll be waiting for you in the entrance hall."

She strode away, not noticing the sinister grin working its way across Xion's face. "Good, I can give that Sullivan guy a piece of my mind then."

"Slow down, turbo. Can't disrupt the world order."

"Ugh… fine!"

Renting two hotel rooms for the night, the rest of the day, they spent indoors. Blaze had the unfortunate luck to be stuck in a room with a very angry, very vocal, Xion. The girl was thankful for her headphones and music player.

But still, the girl was happy when Brim and Yuyake came in to tell her they'd ordered pizza.

Now everyone would share her pain.

But Xion, finally done venting, sat silently eating her pizza and watching some show on the television.

As the sky grew dark, they just sat inside, watching television together. Things felt… well, peaceful.

Until…

"We interrupt this program to bring you a breaking news bulletin." The words Kid-Tastrophe flashed across the screen. A newscaster appeared onscreen. "If witnesses are to be believed, there has been a child security breach for the first time in monster history."

Lea nearly coughed up his drink. "Oh. That is not good."

One of the hazmat guys appeared onscreen. "We can neither confirm nor deny the presence of a human child here tonight."

The faces of monsters who witnessed the event began flashing across the screen. "Well a kid flew right over me and blasted a car with its laser vision!"

"I tried to run from it, but it picked me up with its mind powers and shook me like a doll!"

"It's true! I saw the whole thing."

Xion picked up the remote, shutting off the television. "Well, we have to do something now. If they find that kid, who knows what they'll do it them."

"Obviously, they have no idea what a normal human kid is capable of doing. They're probably so freaked out that they're just making up stuff."

"Well, duh they're making up stuff!"

Lea rubbed feathers on the top of his monster head. "I say we get some sleep and head back to the scare factory tomorrow."

"And leave the kid out alone all night!?"

"Mom." Yuyake laid his hand on hers. "If the dude in suits can't find the kid, I doubt we can. The kid probably will try to get home, which means the scare factory. We should get a few hours of sleep and then head that way. We can get there before dawn and try and find the kid."

Xion took a deep breath. "Yes. The kid is probably hiding and will try to get back the way they came in." She stood up. "Three hours of sleep and then we go."

"Got it."

Hours later.

"Dad! You've returned!"

"And I come bearing gifts." He held up portable cup holders full of steaming cups of coffee. "Pretty sure monster coffee is not the same as our coffee, but still."

Blaze held out her hands. "Gimme the good stuff!" Taking a cup and guzzling down half of it in one sip, she sighed. "Yeeeeees! This is some good stuff!"

As the sun rose over the city, each of them downed the amazing goodness that is coffee. All night they sat, looking for the child. But no kid came. Every so often, Lea would go find somewhere with a television to check and see if the child had been captured.

The child was still at large.

Monsters began once again to pour into Monsters Incorperated. As did the hazmat guys, or as they now understood them to be, the CDA.

"I guess we go inside."

"Fine…" Xion groaned. She hated this place.

They went inside and saw more CDA members than actual company employees.

Ms. Flint stood near the door, looking around nervously. Her smile, much more forced than the day before, spread as she saw the group. "Hello again. I am so sorry that this is what you see. Apparently, the child that escaped last night came from this factory. Rest assured that we will contain this situation. Now, let's continue the tour."

Xion barely paid attention to most of the tour. She continued looking around the building for anything she could use to bring this place down. Any back room. Any power station.

Of course Flint couldn't show them anything useful. Just the tourist stuff.

Xion stopped.

A little monster. As they passed a hallway, Xion saw a child monster scampering away from them.

"Hey." Breaking away from the group, she followed the little monster. "Hold on, little one."

The little monster stopped, turning on her. "Boo!" The purple monster with two eyes on stalks jumped. Ok. Her trying to be scary was cute.

"Hi, little one." Xion knelt down. "I'm Xion. What's your name?"

"Boo!"

"Boo?" The woman picked up the little monster. "What are you doing all alone."

The child squirmed slightly. "Kitty?"

"Kitty?"

The child monster bounced slightly. "Kitty…"

Wait, why didn't her mouth move when she spoke? The monster bounced slightly and Xion saw… something inside the mouth.

Slowly grabbing the top jaw, Xion felt it… soft, like fabric.

She lifted it up. A little cream-colored face with black pigtails appeared.

"Boo!"

The human!?

"Xion?"

Xion pulled down the girl's monster head as she turned around. Flint and the others stood behind her. "Oh, sorry. I found this little one wandering alone."

"Oh?" Ms. Flint gasped slightly. "She must have wandered from the childcare personel. Bring her along and we'll probably run into them again."

"Sounds good."

As the tour continued on, Xion held Boo close.

She held the wanted human in her arms.

What would she do now?

What would she do now?

Maxine looked at her hands, clenching them to stop them from shaking.

She had to tell Yuyake.

She couldn't do anything else…

Welp!

What a way to come back to this!

Oh and there will be no more devos from now on.

Please review!

Footnotes:

(1) These two designs are done by True-In Tha-Blue from the SoKai discord group I'm in. And also, Xion's design is similar to Sora's KH3 Monstropolis design.