Usagi: I don't have anything clever to say so here's a new chapter.

Chapter 9

Fighting Water with Water

The gang had gathered inside Nekomata's house to explain the newcomers what had happened and find out what to do next.

As soon as they were done telling what happened, the tailed demons immediately started an argument.

"Have you lost your mind? We can't ask him to help us he'd murder us all!" Shukaku yelled.

"How do you know? Did you ask?" Soukou yelled back. "Orochi won't pass down a chance to beat Kyuubi and you know it."

"I hate to admit it but Shukaku is right for once" Nekomata said. "It's too dangerous."

"As much as I hate to intrude on your "discussion", just who is Orochi?" Riku asked.

"Yamata no Orochi" Kaku explained. "The Hachibi, a giant eight-tailed, eight-headed snake and the meanest bijuu you've ever known".

"Eight-tailed eight-headed snake? Sounds like eight snakes in my ears" Axel said.

"Oh no, he's one demon alright, well more or less, at least all heads agree on one thing, weaker demons like us are just fleas ready to be swapped!" Shukaku said, directing the final one on Soukou.

"So he's a little aggressive, like the rest of us aren't the same" the four-tail said shrugging. "But he's not the strongest bijuu there is, Kyuubi defeated him, but with our forces combined we could finally defeat that heartless!"

"Hear hear!" Raijuu said.

"If you side with the Hachibi you're going to end up getting killed!" Samehada cried, he'd been placed in a large fish tank Nekomata's living room, which was noticeably devoid of fish, and was now sitting over the edge.

"You don't have voting rights" Soukou said. "You're not even a bijuu!"

"I agree with Samehada" Isonade said, and Soukou glared at him.

"Well in that case…my vote counts as two!" the four-tail said stubbornly.

"It's still three against three, four counting Samehada, and since I'm the leader I say no go" Nekomata said.

"Who made you the boss?" Raijuu asked.

"I'm the strongest of us, unless you want to challenge me?" Nekomata snarled.

"Oh that could get good" Etna said.

"This is no time to be fighting! We need to find a way to defeat the heartless before it's too late!" Flonne said.

"You're asking demons to stop fighting?" Kaku asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Forgive her, she's a fallen angel" Etna said.

"That explains quite a bit" Kaku said nodding.

"Arguing still doesn't get us anywhere" Kairi said. "We've got to think here, we need to defeat the heartless, seemingly our strongest enemies are Deym, Laharl and Kyuubi. What we've got on our team are six tailed demons, four keybladers, a magican, a knight, one fallen angel and a humanoid demon with an army of prinnies, so we have an advantage of numbers."

"Yeah, but they have Kyuubi, you saw how he beat us down last time" Nekomata said.

"BUT with Orochi's help we could stand a chance" Soukou said. "After all he's almost as strong as Kyuubi".

"And what do you think he's going to do with us once he's finished Kyuubi?" Shukaku asked. "We're NOT waking him up, and that's final!"

"Why not ask some of the keybladers?" Samehada suggested.

"What's the point? They didn't even know him like we did!" Soukou said. "This is a matter between bijuus onlyyAAAAAAAH!"

Suddenly the four-tailed got knocked over, as a tiny creature ran into the demon's feet from behind, before zooming towards Sora and bouncing up into his lap.

"WHO'S THAT CREATURE WHO DARES INTERRUPT ME? LET ME EAT IT! NO! LET ME POISON IT AND THROW IT INTO A VULCANO! THAT'LL SHOW IT NOT TO MESS WITH US!" Soukou yelled as Shukaku and Raijuu held the squirming demon down, and Sora got to investigate whatever just ran into him.

"Trixi? What are you doing here?" Sora said in surprise, as he picked up the smirking cat.

"Aw… it's just a cat" Nekomata said.

"OH THAT ROTTEN LITTLE…"

"Soukou shut up!" Nekomata yelled. "Could somebody please knock that…thing out?"

Shukaku was more than happy to do that, and threw a ball of sand into Soukou's head.

"Thank you. Now who's this little cutie?" Nekomata asked, looking towards Trixi. "And why is she missing an ear?"

"This is Trixi, my cat, but you probably noticed that, she must have snuck aboard the gummi ship and fallen asleep or something, she does that sometimes" Sora said. "About the ear…well, we don't know, she's had it for as long as I've known her".

"Who cares? It's not like that cat can be of any use against Kyuubi" Raijuu said.

"Should I knock him out too?" Shukaku asked.

"Hey hey, relax. I'll be quiet" Raijuu said, raising his hands in defence. "It's a cute cat".

"Thank you" Nekomata said, and started petting the cat, who started purring. "So… you two aren't even from the same world?"

"How did you know?" Sora asked, sure they had picked up Trixi as a stray in Spargus, but they never told anyone since normally it was illegal to take a living being from one world to another, it would mean "messing with the world order" as Donald put it.

"She told me of course" Nekomata said, like that was the most obvious thing in the world.

"You can talk to cats?" Riku asked.

"I am a cat in case you hadn't noticed" Nekomata reminded him. "Trixi tells me she grew up in a town called Spargus, she had her ear bitten of by a large hungry lizard and had been living with you for the past two years on an island community called Destiny Islands, correct?"

Sora could only stare in surprise. "She told you all that in one purr?" he asked.

"Yes, human language is so slow" Nekomata said. "Though in return, a normal house cat's language isn't very detailed and most have very small vocabularies"

"I know some cat language. Meow means "Give me your pancakes now" and hiss means "Stop putting my bed on fire or I will scratch you"" Axel said proudly.

Everyone else just gazed at him.

"But if you can talk to cats, perhaps you could explain why Trixi thinks she's a dog?" Riku asked, pointing to the cat who had now started licking Sora in the face.

"You should just be happy you have a cat who's affectionate, quite a lot of them don't care about you past dinner time" Nekomata said. "Unlike dogs."

"That's it!" Raijuu suddenly yelled.

"Didn't I tell you to shut up?" Nekomata asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Sorry, but I got an idea, if we can't ask Orochi for help, why don't we go find Houkou?" the weasel demon asked.

Nekomata just kept glaring at him. "No" she said.

"Why not? You're friends right? He's the one who's stronger than you, and you're the only one who knows where he is, right?" Raijuu said.

"I know where he is but I won't tell you" Nekomata said. "I told you he's not feeling well, he needs to rest, if he receives another beating from Kyuubi he might not make it!"

"Meeeeow!" Trixi said.

"No Trix, I don't think you'll be much help against Kyuubi either" Nekomata sighed.

"If he had been a nine-tailed rat perhaps" Riku said.

"Who says we have to fight Kyuubi first anyway?" Etna asked. "We defeated Deym and nearly Laharl even, as long as he doesn't call for that fox I think we may actually stand a chance. Finish them of first, and THEN we can concentrate on Kyuubi".

"Sounds okay in theory but how are we going to find them alone?" Zexion asked. "Deym appears to be running his own agenda but the last time we met Laharl he summoned Kyuubi almost immediately, how are we going to stop that from happening?"

"By fighting at the one place Kyuubi would never go?" Isonade suggested.

"And where would that be?" Riku asked.

"Well duh! The ocean of course" the shark-boy replied. "Kyuubi is fire element, he hates water, if anything that's probably the reason he lost to that Deym-guy too. But I'm the god of water, there's no way some wannabe rock star is going to defeat me in my own element."

Everyone seemed to think over this for a moment.

"What do you think Demyx?" Kairi asked.

"I don't know, I haven't seen Isonade in action but if he's as good as he claims he is… it might work" Demyx admitted.

"Awesome! Then where is this soon to be washed up rock star?" Isonade asked.

"How should we know?" Riku asked.

"He's 100 meters north of the Overlord's Castle" Demyx said suddenly. "Or what USED to be the Overlord's castle".

Everyone else stared at him.

"Oh yeah…nobodies can sense where their heartless are, I forgot about that" Riku admitted.

"I didn't remember till just now, but I think it's correct" Demyx said.

"Better than nothing, lets go!" Sora said and jumped to his feet, forgetting he still had Trixi on his lap so she fell to the floor. Hissing. "Oops, sorry Trix"

With help from the bijuu demons (Nekomata and Soukou in particular, since they could fly) it didn't take the party long to reach their destination, a crater near what the demons called the Stellar Graveyard. They landed behind a large rock, probably a meteor, out of sight of curious by-passers (or heartless).

"Careful guys. Deym is probably expecting an attack, so we must be ready for anything" Kairi said quietly. "Also, how exactly do you plan to get him to an ocean?"

"Leave that to me" Samehada said. "I may be small, but I'm still a demon you know".

"Okay everyone, get ready" Sora said.

Everyone suddenly ran out from behind the rock at the same time, and there they found Deym…apparently sunbathing.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" everyone (including Deym) yelled. Even Ienzo pointed at the stronger heartless in shock, but probably more to imitate the others.

"Well choose to believe I asked first, why are you out here on a cloudy day, wearing a black coat on a sun-bed?" Riku asked.

"Heartless don't like being out in the sun, too hot. But why are YOU here? Can't a heartless have some peace around here?" Deym asked.

Riku and Sora gazed at each other. "No" they said in unison.

"Never mind then" Deym said, as a couple of shadows ran in and removed the sunbed before disappearing to god knows where by portal. "I was going to talk to you anyway, I have a SERIOUS matter do discuss."

"Is this the guy you've been having problems with?" Isonade asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Hey, don't forget he did beat Kyuubi, so don't underestimate him" Nekomata whispered.

"Of course he did, he's a fire-type against a water-type. Water-types always wins. Now that I think about it I think Raijuu would be good against Deym, or if there was a grass-type Bijuu" Samehada said.

The rest of the party stared at the fish-demons.

"What? Don't you guys play Pokèmon?" Samehada asked. "It teaches you a lot of important stuff…. Like did you know grass-type creatures are extra vulnerable against flying ones? I certainly didn't".

"Don't interrupt me! I had something important to say!" Deym yelled. "I was planning to leave things nice and professional between us…"

"What the heck is NICE about turning our friends into heartless you moron?" Riku yelled.

"…But then" Deym continued, completely ignoring Riku's comment. "You just had to go on and HURT MY BABY!" He summoned his guitar in his hand; sparks still flew from cracks it had received when he fell of Gordon's ship earlier. "Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to fix this? I had to spend HOURS looking for a good repairman, but he was so extremely expensive! So I turned him into a heartless, but he only became a shadow…and how is a SHADOW supposed to fix my guitar huh? They're USELESS! The whole lot of them!"

Ienzo growled at him.

"Oh come on, you fell for the oldest trap in the book, box on a stick with ice cream underneath, and don't think I didn't see you!" Deym said. "Okay so I didn't, my vassals did, but the point is: YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT!"

But before he got time to attack, Isonade ran up between Deym and the others.

"Just one moment music-boy, care for a little brawl first?" the water-bijuu asked. "You guys should probably get up on one of these meteors, or you will get wet" he whispered to the others.

"Fine, I don't care who goes first" Deym said and pulled out a new, completely unscratched guitar, the others could just wonder why he needed his other one fixed.

Once again, he started playing his music, summoning the giant water dragon.

"So THAT'S your game eyh? Shall we go for it Samehada?" Isonade said.

"You show him whose boss, boss!" Samehada said.

Suddenly the two were surrounded by what looked like a massive whirlpool, but it didn't stay long, and as soon as it vanished, Isonade had turned into a giant shark, with what appeared to be dragon wings for fins and standing up on two legs, it had no arms however, unless you count the wings/fins.

Samehada….Samehada looked just like he always had.

"Let's take a swim" Isonade said, smirking, before he jumped right into the giant dragon… and started swimming inside it.

The dragon, quite obviously annoyed at having the shark demon swimming inside it tried to attack, but since they were in fact INSIDE it, that proved just about fruitless.

"So you wanna fight water with water?" Deym asked. "Well two can play that game, don't miss this show you will be amazed."

Usagi: It's the return of the cliffhangers! Have you missed them?

Sora: who misses a cliffhanger?

Zakura: Usagi does.

Riku: not too surprising, she loves torturing us so what says she doesn't enjoy torturing her fans too by leaving them with such open endings all the time? I wonder how many loose ends she's going to leave at the end of DoH…

Usagi: wouldn't you love to know? (Stares at Sora)

Sora: …why are you looking at me?

Usagi: You do not want to know.

Sora: I hate you so much.

Usagi: Aw…. Even when I turn you into cute little critters like this? (Holds up Ienzo)

Sora: GET THAT BLOODY THING AWAY FROM ME!

Ienzo: You don't like me? I'm technically your brother in law.

Sora: Kairi and I aren't married and even if we were, you're a shadow, I don't like shadows.

Ienzo: aw…

Usagi: don't be mean to him Sora! Please review people!