Usagi: Woot! Now this can't classify as a slow update can it?
Decided to introduce a new character in this chapter, even though I didn't plan to introduce him until LiD3.
Mao: Now that would be boring wouldn't it?
Usagi: Maybe. You'll learn more about this guy in this chapter, or at least one of his hobbies…. And you'll also find out what crazy scientist made the behemoth with the laser on his head. But first: a scene from the World that Never Was, as promised:
Chapter 19
Mystery of the Demon Heartless
"This is just odd" Xemnas said.
He was staring down at a laser gun on the table, which he was currently standing on.
In the past he'd found it quite humiliating having to stand on the table rather than on a chair but in his current form it was either that or getting a baby chair, which was even more humiliating.
"And this was on a behemoth?" he asked the man standing on the other side of the table.
"The heartless said so" the man said, or heartless, since it was in fact Xemnas' own heartless Xehanort who stood on the opposite side. "It came along with two demon heartless, one of them we killed the other got away. I would have thought those guys would be more submissive after their home world was taken but they still seem to be following the orders of someone else."
"The overlord?" Xemnas suggested.
"If you're talking about Laharl I highly doubt that" said a strange little man standing next to Xehanort. His face was covered by a hood, and all one could see of his face was a single yellow eye, and a brown snake-tail that came out behind him. "He won't send his lackeys to do any work for him, and he's definitely not smart enough to attack a fully functional laser on top of a behemoth."
"Well Orochi, if you know so much do you know someone in the Netherworld who could attach a laser on a behemoth?" Xehanort asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Well I haven't really been around much since that fox beat me now have I?" Orochi replied coldly. "Laharl has made himself pretty well known since the uproar he caused 3 years ago when he decided to take over his father's throne, and once he'd done that he went ahead and attacked Celestia and a human world too."
"Are there more overlords than one?" Saïx asked, the dog was standing on the floor, but with both front feet on the table. No longer a puppy he looked almost taller than the little snake-man when he stood on his hind legs.
"Oh yeah, there used to be quite a few" Orochi said, and started thinking. "Let's see… There was Overlord Krichevskoy, Laharl's father who died choking on a dumpling" Orochi seemed to snicker a bit at this. "Overlord Zetta; he hasn't been seen in a while, I heard a rumour he'd been turned into a book, but that's just ridiculous of course. Also the rumoured god of all overlords, Overlord Zenon, but no one's seen him like…ever…at least no one's been able to live to tell the tale, but no one's heard from him in a while either."
"If no one's ever seen him and lived how can you tell he exists?" Xemnas asked.
"Look who's talking about existence" Orochi muttered. "There's also Priere, who was once a demon hunter, can you believe that? I think she died too, I'm not quite sure."
"Are there any overlords left who are alive?" Saïx asked.
"Well there's….no wait he died too…And…I think Zenon killed him…uhm…and… no, she tripped over a hellkitty and fell into a volcano…I think…. no wait, I ate him…" Orochi said snickering to himself. "Hold on… As far as I know the Dean Overlord of Maritsu Evil Academy is still alive. He's pretty strong too, and huge. Might be a bit too big to handle a gun like this even…and clumsy"
"Well that doesn't help much now does it?" Xehanort sighed. "If we'd only caught that demon heartless that got away…we could have interrogated him."
---
As it turned out, said demon heartless was already on his way back to whoever he was working for.
He'd been able to escape the battle by using a dark portal, but not without injuries, currently the moth was on his way to a large castle, crawling on the ground, since one of its wings was broken and he was unable to fly.
He struggled his way up the stairs, where a tall demon dressed as a butler opened the door for him.
"I take it the mission was a failure?" a voice said, the moment the moth had entered the door.
The mothman looked up; in front of him was a staircase, a young whitehaired demon boy stood on top of it.
"I-I'm sorry prince" the mothman heartless said. "It wasn't our fault really; we were attacked by the other heartless, I'm the only survivor and…look what those bird-heartless did to my wing!"
He lifted his front left wing, which was indeed missing a large piece of it.
The demon prince's expression changed from annoyance to…could it be? Concern?
Still, whatever was left of emotions in the moth heartless told him to be afraid, be very afraid.
"That looks pretty bad" the demon said, and took one step down the stairs. "You want me to take a look?"
The demon wasn't able to hide the excitement in his voice at the end, and the moth suddenly wished he'd never mentioned the wing. In fact he wished he'd never bothered to show up here at all, sure the demon might send out his other lackeys to kill him but even that had to be better than letting the other demon "treat" his injury.
"Oh...nono, that's okay Prince Mao. It'll probably heal right back soon, heck I feel like I can still fly already" the moth said quickly, and tried to flap its wings but was only able to bounce half a meter away from the demon prince.
"Such an injury isn't going to heal itself Morty, and hey, I could even give you some extra features" Mao said, suddenly sounding very exited, the glasses he was wearing was even fogging. "Like giant wheels to travel at extreme speeds, a flamethrower in your mouth, or what about electric antennas?"
"No thanks. I'm happy with the way I look" Morty the moth said nervously, and started bouncing towards the exit, as fast as a moth without legs and with a broken wing could go.
Mao started running after him.
"Hey come back here! Let me reconstruct you!" he shouted.
--
"Wow, this feels a bit odd…well the fact that I can feel at all is almost hard to get used to."
Back at the lab, Ienzo, now in human form again, was looking at his new/old body.
"You look great, way better than that old picture of mine anyway" Kairi said giggling.
"Well that was pretty much a washed up smudge" Sora commented.
"Yeah, congratulations. That's really nice and all but I have just one question…." Said a voice from the floor, everyone looked down at the red ottsel sitting there. "WHY AM I STILL AN OTTSEL??"
"He's right that is quite odd" Vexen said, and went to look trhough some files on the one computer monitor in the room that wasn't either burnt or ruined because GlaDOS sprayed water on it. "Both Ienzo and Relena regained their human forms soon after getting their hearts back but you look just the same."
"Hey Ax... or Ael, didn't you say you fell into a pit of dark eco after you came to this world the first time?" Sora asked. "And that you'd been like that ever since?"
"What? Oh darnit! Don't tell me because of that dark eco I can't become human again?" Ael complained.
"Aw don't worry; I'm sure you'll get used to it. Heck Daxter had a chance to turn back into to his original form once and he chose to stay an ottsel" Cornelius said. "He even got a girlfriend, girls like fuzzy animals."
"Wakana doesn't. She likes fish" Demyx muttered.
"Who is that? Your girlfriend?" Kairi asked.
"Ex-girlfriend" Demyx said shortly.
"Well fine then. If I'm doomed to live the rest of my life as a little fuzzy rat I might as well make the best of it" Ael said. "And hey, just keep calling me Axel if you like, that sounds cooler anyway".
"Sure, Ael sounds a bit like ale anyway" Riku said.
"I heard that!" the ottsel shouted.
"It sure is lucky it worked out for someone" said a voice at the door.
A pink very fluffy rabbit was standing there, and he had a rat on his head.
"Where have you been?" Sora asked.
"Gambling" The rat, Luxord said.
"Watering the flowers" Said Marluxia.
"Oh…alright then, that makes sense" Sora said. "And I see you're both still nobodies."
"Our heartless are proving a bit hard to find" Marluxia said. "Not all of us are lucky enough to have them just show up randomly when you turn around."
Axel grinned.
"Well I'm sure you'll find them some day, hey maybe we can even help" Kairi said.
"Since when did we help the Organization?" Riku asked.
"They're not with the Organization anymore, and besides they helped Axel and Ienzo right?" Kairi said.
"Yeah, thanks a lot" Riku said sarcastically.
"Don't be like that" Kairi said raising an eyebrow. "I know you haven't gotten along well in the past, but maybe its time we put that behind us? After all, they're only trying to get their hearts back, and hey, if we helped, maybe they can become allies once."
"That's a bit too optimistic don't you think?" Demyx said.
"Well isn't that the reason we've been having problems with them in the past?" Kairi asked. "If we told them we actually knew how to get them their hearts back, they would no longer have a reason to fight us, and might even help us fight the heartless."
"That doesn't sound like a bad idea actually" Sora said.
"I knew you'd say that, and I don't know about the other nobodies but I'm pretty sure it won't work on Xemnas" Riku said.
"Why not?" Kairi asked.
"Because his heartless is the biggest badest heartless that's ever lived, end of story" Riku said. "He wouldn't help us if he got all the hearts in the world, INCLUDING Kingdom Hearts."
"I agree with Riku on this one, Xehanort can be very stubborn. Especially if he's already working on this new heartless… he's not going to give that up very soon" Ienzo said.
"Then let's tell the rest of them and maybe they'd want to start a rebellion?" Sora suggested. "Surely they can't all be his biggest fans?"
"Meaning everyone but Saïx" Axel said. "That old dog would probably follow him to the end of the world…and I mean like if the world they were on like literally exploded or something, not the place the end of the world…although he'd probably follow him there too now that I think of it".
"Do you think Xemnas knows about Xehanort's plans?" Kairi asked.
"Probably" Riku said.
A crashing sound was heard, and the party turned around to see Kyuubi back in his demon-form, having crushed the last pod.
"Well it's been fun listening to your boring conversations guys, but I really gotta go. Since two of the other bijuu got turned into heartless, someone's gotta round them up. Ciao" he said, before he jumped out of the hole he'd made in the roof and took of.
"He could not do that WITHOUT breaking m machine could he?" Vexen sighed. "Those things weren't easy to make."
He looked over at the others in the room.
"You know… We should probably go too, I'm sure Kairi and Ienzo's mom is anxious to know how it went" Sora said.
"And I just remembered I forgot to feed the meat-eating plants, they get cranky if I don't" Marluxia said.
"I promised to play a game of poker with some elves down in Spargus, and I really don't want to keep them waiting" Luxord said.
"I gotta go to the store to buy toilet paper" Relena said.
With that, everyone left, leaving only Vexen behind, well Vexen and GLaDOS.
"You can't help me fix the machine can you?" the polar fox said.
"I can offer you food while you work" GLaDOS said and a mechanical arm came out of a hatch in the wall carrying a cake.
"I didn't think so" Vexen said.
Usagi: Finally! Axel and Zexion got their hearts back and Vexen got some work ahead of him.
Vexen: you're evil.
Usagi: also a new character was introduced. Another demon, so I guess then you can guess he's from Disgaea…
Mao: It's not like I haven't been here before… You just never let me appear in the fic before now!
Usagi: oh sorry about that. Mao is from the newest game in the Disgaea-series, Disgaea 3: Absense of Justice. Like Laharl he started out the game as the son of an Overlord (The Dean Overlord Orochi mentioned…ironically enough…whoever said the Overlord himself was the mastermind huh?) he's also an honour student of Maritsu Evil Academy…which means he never shows up in class (making people wonder why they made the school in the first place, when they don't even expect the students to show up) and spends his time doing crazy experiments on live…things… Right now he's set his eyes on the heartless. Ever since before the Netherworld was taken, probably since the heartless showed up, he'd made himself quite an army. You might notice that he's not a heartless…if you didn't; well I just told you.
Normally any creature who stays at the end of the world would turn into one, but somehow Mao doesn't…
Mao: Common sense doesn't work on me!
Almaz: this isn't really a question of common sense, it's like breaking the laws of nature…
Mao: and living without a heart doesn't?
Almaz: ah…good point….
Usagi: Mao has his own method of making sure he doesn't turn into a heartless. How? I'll explain that later.
Other overlords were mentioned briefly here too, so I might as well tell you something about them:
Overlord Krichevskoy is as mentioned Laharl's father, he died before the start of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness.
Overlord Zetta is from Makai Kingdom (and also had a cameo in Disgaea 2). He describes himself as a "Badass Freaking Overlord" and yeah…he did get turned into a book.
Overlord Zenon is from Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories. The rumoured god of overlords killed 100 overlords in the past. Gone missing….if you've played Disgaea 2 you'd know what happened. If not, well I had a Disgaea 2-arc planned out in LiD3.
Zakura: still you start with Disgaea 3.
Usagi: sure. Why not?
Priere…I don't know that much about her to be honest…I would say its because I haven't played her game (La Pucelle) but I haven't played Makai Kingdom, Disgaea 2 or 3 either XD What I do know is that she started out as human, but appear in cameos in Disgaea as a demon overlord XD She's said to be dead here since there's little chance of her ever showing up.
Then there's the Dean Overlord of Maritsu Evil Academy. I'm not sure if he has a name or if that IS his name… but he's Mao's father, HUGE, and steps on Mao's toys a lot.
Mao: He'll pay for that. YOU HEAR THAT DAD? YOU'LL PAY FOR RUINING MY SLAYSTATION PORTABLE!
Almaz: all this for a game console (facepalm)
Zakura: who is that guy?
Usagi: what guy?
Zakura: (points at Almaz)
Usagi: …. Friend of Mao?
Mao: I don't need friends!
Almaz: Never mind me. I'm not important.
Usagi: Not yet you're not. Please review people!