We already know I'm too poor to own any of the bishies. You know it.
So we're now in the phase where a world will finally take two chapters. Whoopdee freaking doo. There's lots of surprises in this chapter, and I have found a new equation for scientific purposes.
Auron pissed off while being CidAuron pissed off in any world with a costume change.
And there will be lots of those XD. And to those who can't figure out Xaldin's costume (because Demyx barely has one and Auron's is obvious), you should study your anime.
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Landing on this new world was certainly a shock. Neither of the travelers had ever heard of this…Halloween…and didn't know what to expect. They were in a shadowy forest full of dead and burned trees with glimmers of possessed eyes behind them. There were hills all around them, especially the curved one that could touch the moon. Then they noticed something a little more disturbing.
They were dressed like complete idiots, as Xaldin and Auron said.
The swordsman had found that his red coat had been replaced with a long black cape and underneath was some sort of suit. And his teeth…to him, they seemed a little sharper than usual. Demyx was ranting on how scary he looked, with his deep circled eyes and his stitches in his skin and his well-torn clothing. Even his wings were tattered at best. And Xaldin just stood to the side, in a black robe and a half-mask that resembled a skull, but with red streaks on the forehead and eyes.
"Aw, but Xaldin looks the best! What are you supposed to be, anyway?" Demyx asked.
"Why should I care? We look like fools dressed like this and we're stuck in the middle of nowhere. We should be walking away from here and into a town, if there is one."
They hiked out of the forest and scaled the mountains. There were signs of civilization as they walked further, like small chambers in the shapes of pumpkins and tombstones lining paths. They could see a manor on a hillside up ahead, a quite unsettling one, but ignored it as they saw the glow of a village up ahead.
The summoner and his guardians entered the rickety gate and walked down the cobblestone gap into the town square. A huge stone fountain in the middle of it was spewing green water and not much else could be seen but the silhouettes of the buildings. They saw a slender man walk out of one of them, pacing in the square. His pinstripe suit lengthened his already ridiculously tall body, and his hands, and head…there was nothing on them. Not like bare, but nothing as in no flesh. Bones…yes.
He saw the trio in the corner of his eye and turned to greet them with his vacant eye sockets. Demyx flinched, Xaldin jumped, and Auron has gotten too used to seeing dead things.
"Welcome to Halloween Town! I'm guessing that the three of you are new around here, yes?" the skeleton asked.
"Yes we are!" Demyx joyfully replied while shaking his bony hand "and we'd like to thank you for giving us these awesome costumes for this place! I'm Demyx, and those guys are Xaldin and Auron!"
"My name is Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King! And you just look your scariest in them! We appreciate your input. So how have you been enjoying your visit here so far?"
"It's been great so far, and we really like that fountain…" That was where the others stopped listening. Demyx had an unnatural talent for small talk.
"Demyx," Auron growled "just ask him the question!"
"Oh yeah, I'm sorry!" He bent down and made the curved prayer symbol. "O great aeon, may I borrow your powers to help save these worlds of Lust?"
"Not that question, you dumbass! And it's Sin, not Lust!" the lancer said to the disgrace of Yevon. "I've barely been with you guys for two hours and I still know more than you." The Pumpkin King still had a puzzled look on his face.
"Alright, alright, I'll start over. Has there been anything strange going on lately, you know, any weird monsters or incredibly evil people walking around and killing stuff?"
"Well," Jack said, stretching his arms behind his back and looking to the ground, "I don't think you could have come at a better time. You see…" He was cut off by the screeches of a mechanical wheelchair, and a very interesting man in it. His head's cap was barely held on by nuts and bolts and he was carrying a green jar with what looked like a brain and spinal cord.
"Jack, get back inside! If you want those plans on Diablos, we need your full attention!" the doctor said .
"What's a Diablos?" the summoner pondered.
"Please, come inside, all of you. Doctor Finklestein is helping me try to get rid of Diablos…and the Princess of Fright."
Demyx is a fraidy cat, as some would say. He couldn't tolerate any of Lexaeus's horror flicks, and always hid his face in a couch pillow. But they always seemed to drift back to the screen when the killer made his appearance.
It was the same case in Doctor Finklestein's laboratory. There were contraptions, body parts, sharp objects, heads, hearts, brains, robots, cadavers, electric things that he couldn't even name, it all made his head spin and his stomach churn. At the same time, Auron was taking an interest in the collection of eyeballs he had, and Xaldin was a sadistic bastard who loved anything dead.
"Diablos is a monster controlled by this new woman who has shown up called the Princess of Fright, although we don't know her real name. The monster has unmatched strength and flies like a fire devil in the air!" Jack exclaimed as his hands waved in the air for exaggeration. "And she never shows her face, but has been causing problems in the lives of the citizens of Halloween Town, and that can't happen."
"So you want us to take care of someone who is extremely irrelevant to us and we get nothing. Wonderful. Call us back when you find an aeon." Xaldin scoffed.
"Don't you get it? Diablos could be an aeon!" Demyx raved. "He's just under a master that wants his power for evil! Then how are we supposed to save Sloth?"
"You know, you have been able to say Sin no problem up until today. Has that zombie outfit of your sucked your brain out?" Auron said while tossing a bugging red eye up and down.
"Well you get what I mean and that's all that matters! Tell us where the princess is and we'll take care of her!"
"She's in the mansion in the hillside."
A woman creaked into the lab with her trim patchwork legs and stitched-up body. She was basically a giant ragdoll, to some extent. "Jack, who are these men? Are they helping Sora or are they going to help the Princess of Fright?" Demyx shook at the mention of that key bearer's name. Why did someone that was genuinely helping destroy evil have to be with that damned savior and his pet duck and dog?
"Erm…we're not directly involved with Sora, we're just…for the same cause."
"This is Sally, a very good friend of mine and one of the doctor's creations. This is Demyx, Auron, and Xaldin." Jack introduced.
"Pleased to meet you all" the hodgepodge bowed. Xaldin stood up, glanced at Sally, then to the mad scientist, then back to Sally.
"If you made her, then you are a god" he simply said, making her blush. Auron facepalmed himself.
"Your friend is flirting with a corpse, Demyx. That is truly pathetic."
"Yeah, he takes his whole smooth-talker act a little too seriously. Maybe we should leave."
In case it hasn't been mentioned, Demyx is what some people would call a fraidy cat. Sadly, that has already been mentioned.
Backtracking to the castle of the princess had been easy. It was noticeably the creepiest thing around, save for the kid with an axe in his head who they saw on the way. It was like any dark and spiky castle with gloom written all over it. There were gargoyles lining the path to the door, with wilted rose bushes lining the gargoyles. Even the stained glass windows colored pink with contorted demons on them were giving the summoner chills. And nothing made it more suspicious than the fact the door opened for them, like someone knew they were coming.
The foyer kept the ominous theme with two winding staircases and a hallway lined with pictures of people this princess wasn't even related to.
"Maybe we should split up," Auron suggested "but we might fall into traps easier that way."
"No! Don't do that!" Demyx responded. Stares met him with confusion. "I mean…so we don't get lost…yeah."
"Oh, you should listen to him Mister! You don't know what you'll run into while you're in my castle!"
They looked up and saw nothing of where that taunting voice came from. Surely, that must have been their target.
"You're not going to find me in here! Try going through the hall and maybe you'll see me!" she giggled. "If you don't listen to me, Diablos might want to eat you. Then how are we going to use you?"
"Should we listen to her?" Xaldin asked.
"We don't have much of a choice. It's the 'we' part that's troublesome." Demyx groaned, and motioned for his guardians to run with him through the hall. They followed, of course, damning his righteousness all the way.
Demyx was currently damning his memory. He had heard hat voice before, a lot, but the face and the name weren't popping into his head. Even if people generally disliked him, he was very good at working with them. There must have been some mental block in the castle that was making him forget!
As they ran through the everlasting hallway the paintings' eyes began to wander and the shot stares at them. Those stares turned to arrows that made the trio duck and crawl to the dying candlelight in the parlor up ahead.
They stumbled into the parlor panting and gasping for air. A set of black bars sealed them from entering the hall again, and Demyx tried to rattle them. He really didn't think this was going to be involved in the summoning process.
"Yay, you made it to the second round! This is going to be fun!" the Princess of Fright jovially said. "We're going to play a game while we're here! Just get a hundred points and I'll let you meet us, okay?"
Dark pools spread around the huddled mass and Heartless invaded the room. Hundreds of Trick Ghosts, Graveyards, Wight Knights, and Neoshadows tried to drown them. They each pulled out their weapons, which had also been modified for the new world. Demyx's sitar had become a rock and roll guitar with black flames on white. Auron's sword had been switched from the Masamune to the Spider's Kiss, one he hadn't seen for a long time. And Xaldin's lances were black with sharper edges, sort of like a key called the Oblivion, or so he had heard.
"I don't want to kill a hundred of these things!" Demyx whined as he sent water clones to take care of his eleventh and twelfth.
"Oh, and t must look like I'm having the time of my life!" Xaldin scowled as six lances brought his body count to twenty-eight.
"Wait….Demyx, you're the worst summoner ever! Call on an aeon to take care of them!" Auron shouted as the kiss turned his thirtieth into stone. He removed himself from most of the Heartless and strummed away at the melody of the flying fire. At the last note, Phoenix was hovering and crowing with flames.
"Phoenix, burn them all!" the summoner commanded. In the last bird call, a wave of fire spa from the phoenix's mouth and burned the enemies below it. After the monsters disappeared, it wrapped itself in its wings and reduced itself to ashes.
"Congratulations Demyx! You won with one hundred points! Now you get to meet us in person!"
"Wait, what do you mean? Why can't we go see you?" Auron demanded.
"Really, Mister Swordsman, you don't think that I'd let all of you come see me, do you? That's just dangerous! I said that if you get a hundred points, you win! His aeon did all the work, didn't it?"
The guardians eyes widened, and widened even more when they found their bodies sinking into the blackness the Heartless came from. Demyx turned around and saw them falling through, but he couldn't do anything about it. He was too late.
He clenched his fists in fury and said to the princess "Who are you really? I know I've hear that voice somewhere, but who are you!"
"I dunno, you tell me! The door is open, you know."
He spotted the rich oak door that led to her throne room. He took a deep breath, turned the brass doorknob, and walked straight in.
No wonder he had recognized that voice.
The room was lined with tacky striped wallpaper and velvet bloody carpet. Her throne was golden with the shapes of lost souls screaming out of it. He saw his companions dangling in bird cages above, trying to twist and cut the bars.
Behind her chair was Diablos in his full devilish glory. His muscular body and grim wings made him flinch without seeing his power. But still, nothing surprised him more than her.
She wasn't different at all. She was still in hr formal Organization cloak and still had her golden hair styled and slicked back. It was that look in her eyes though that made all the difference. They had changed from an electric blue to a dazed and hypnotized green like Axel's, except without feeling.
"Larxene…why are you—"
"It's not the time for a reunion, Demyx," she sternly said. "I can't have you disturbing our plans!"
"Larxene, what are you talking about? We were on the same team, remember?"
"No, not anymore." She fanned a set of dark steel kunai in her fingers and threw them at the musician. He dodged them all perfectly, but they swerved back to him like a boomerang and went through his backside. He screamed out in pain and fell to the ground. He looked up with desperate eyes and saw the green glow in the nymph's eyes brighten as she wickedly smiled.
"Under the orders of Oogie Boogie, you will meet your demise here!"
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Okay, not much of a fight scene, but you get the picture. And Diablos is of FFVIII fame.
Did you guess Xaldin's costume? He's a Hollow! You know, from Bleach. My other obsession!
Anyway, here's a preview:
Chapter 4: Voodoo Baby
Seeing Larxene in this state is a shock to Demyx and Xaldin, but is this really her, or has she gotten herself into a inescapable trap? And why is Oogie Boogie alive? Can the three horsemen defeat the monster inside her and get back the aeon? Find out next time!