"Hey, Axel?" Roman asked.
It was 8:50 PM, though the sky didn't show it. Roman had spent that day mostly insulting Xion and providing his two cents in an a conversation regarding the exact time period Amanto Edo was set in and where in the "world" Sweeper's Field was. Throughout the day, he thought of Namine and Castle Oblivion. If he remembered correctly, Axel was sent there to "take care of business" and watch over a certain someone. "What exactly went down over at that 'Castle Oblivion' place?"
"Well, it's sort of hard to explain…" Axel began. "You see, some imposters forming this so-called S.P.O.W. wanted my charge for reasons of their own, so I had to blend in with them until their leader, some old man, blew my cover. Apparently, that group means 'Special Provisions for Other Worlds,' which sounds like some other world's found out about the existence of others."
Roxas listening from across the Grey Area did not hear "Other Worlds," but "Kira." He had had these types of moments, where he would hear and/or see things. When Axel said "Other Worlds," Roxas's mind was overcome with static and briefly caught a glimpse of what looked like the inside of a police building. That was about all he got, as the image quickly disappeared and he was thinking his own thoughts again. "Kira?' Roxas asked himself.
"I fought the old man myself once, but man…" Axel said. "He was a pain in the ass! He teleports more than any of us in the Organization, but you always know when he does because there's like an explosion and a puff of smoke. Somehow, someway, my charge got him. That is… one of them."
"Huh?" Roman asked. "You were talking about only one earlier."
Axel shrugged. "My bad. Not only did I have to look over the kid that took out the old man, but one of our VIPs which went missing after the incident. She's not one of us, but we're the same kind of being, though."
"I take it that she's a Nobody?"
"Yes, siree. Her name is Namine. Got it memorized?"
Roman put his hand to his chin in thought. "Already did. I've heard that name before along with Castle Oblivion, which is why I was asking. So a bunch of imposters were there because…?"
"They were just a reconnaissance team, though out of all of them, the old man didn't seem to belong. Dunno how, he just did. One name out of them caught my interest, Loxleom," Axel added.
"What the fuck is that? Some sort of foreign candy or something?" Roman asked.
"Hell if I know, though he really did like to chow down on chocolate. I had to take care of the little bastard myself because of some unique circumstances."
[He what?] Roxas thought when he heard that.
"Wonder what those were. I think that'll do for tonight. Tomorrow's the last day Vexen's got for that recruitment thing. If he comes back empty-handed, I'm going in myself," Roman said, yawning and stretching at the end of his sentence.
"You really want to do that?" Roxas said. "They might take that as leaving the Organization."
"No prob," Roman said. "I'll just leave a note at the light bridge thing. Heh heh… Loxleom."
Roxas didn't hear Loxleom, but Mello. Another image briefly came to mind, this time of an oddly dressed blonde boy with what he thought was a bowl haircut. [What's going on…?]
Vexen was distraught as much as a non-existent being could be. [Who could have come in and possibly sabotaged my project! ?] he thought frantically.
He sifted through a possible list of subjects. The dog, Sadaharu, seemed as inept as any other dog. The Caucasian girl would rather smash the laboratory into pieces rather than simple sabotage. The other girl would have done more, but what? And the silver haired man… [Wait a second. The silver haired man! Of course!]
He called in the metal cover for the containment unit and opened the door to his laboratory to confront the one called Gintoki directly. [How dare that diabetic bastard waltz right in and mess with my work! Just how did he get through the first door? Furthermore, can I fix this before the end of tomorrow?]
When he opened the door, on the other side of the hallway lined with storage rooms, was Odd Jobs Gin, standing just outside the doorway. Vexen fixed his beady eyes on the one in question, standing between the two girls and in front of the dog. "YOU," he said, pointing a finger at him and bearing a grim face.
Roman suddenly felt a chill go down his spine. It happened so suddenly and without warning, causing him to nearly drop his manga. "Hey, what's wrong?" Demyx asked as he caught up to him.
"I dunno… I feel as if though a rape face is being used in the castle," Roman replied. After a pause, he added, "Wait, what?"
Gintoki shifted his head back. [Me?] he thought.
"You sabotaging prick," Vexen said, now walking down the hallway, continuing to wear his rather disturbing face.
"I'm innocent," Gintoki quickly said as he moved to his right and mounted his scooter once again.
"H-Hey! Gin-chan!" Kagura said.
But before either girl (or the dog) could grab him, he was off, riding his scooter up the twisting ramp. "Gin-san! Where are you going! ?" Rinoa cried out after him. "What did you do!"
"Nothing, but I don't want to catch androgeny! If you want to keep up, get moving now!" he shouted down to the girls.
They took almost no time in mounting Sadaharu, who took off with thumps at every stride. "If we don't get home in time, we'll miss my late night show!" Kagura exclaimed.
"WAIT! I demand reasons!" Vexen called after them, but by the time he got out the door, there was no way he could catch them on foot.
Therefore, he summoned a dark corridor. This one led to the hallway directly outside the entrance to the descent, so he could catch them on their way out. Before he entered it, though, he heard a girlish scream above him, and the sound of what seemed to be thrusters. He looked up, expecting to see the man falling, but there was nothing.
On the other side of the corridor, Vexen summoned his weapon, a shield named Frozen Pride. He expected that Odd Jobs Gin would be armed, though he doubted it. [It's just me they're running from. Still, I cannot let the rest of the Organization know of their presence here!] he thought.
The door opened and Vexen readied himself. However, he was greeted with a tire to the face. This tire happened to still be attached to a vehicle, which happened to be Gintoki's scooter that he decided to bring this day.
He fell to the floor on his back, with an imprint of the tire on his face. The dog soon followed, stepping on Vexen's chest as it passed, panting as it went.
"So then, there's this green dude—" Roman was telling Xion on their way through the Hall of Empty Melodies.
"Green dude?' Xion repeated.
"Yeah. Badass voice, though that doesn't change his oddness. Still, blows the 'little green men' thing out of the water by far. Wait up."
Roman stopped and listened for something. "What is it?" Xion asked.
Roman shrugged. "Shut up and listen, then."
The two of them stopped and listened for the sound. It was a soft shriek of sorts. "What the hell is that?" Roman said, looking down from the balcony.
There was nothing to be seen on the platform, so it could be assumed that the noise was coming from the chasm below, and it was drawing closer. "Maybe we should get down there and see what it is," Xion said.
"Like this," Roman said, jumping the railing and landing on the walkway leading to the platform below.
He dusted himself off afterwards and beckoned Xion to follow. She was reluctant to do so, however. He tried again, more insistent this time. She swung her legs over the railing and sat on it, having second thoughts. "Look, even if you crash, there's the walkway here. Albeit me," Roman called up.
Xion sighed lightly, closed her eyes tight and pushed herself off the railing. Roxas so happened to walk out onto the balcony moments before she did so, prompting him to run over to where she was and attempted to catch her. He succeeded, but by Xion's hood, straining her breathing. "Dude, let the girl go! You see me down here?" Roman called.
"Wait, what?" Roxas said.
"Let me go! Let me go!" Xion struggled to say.
Roxas did so, letting Xion fall into Roman's arms. "Good thing you're not top-heavy. No, wait…" Roman said as he put her down.
Roxas was intent on going down there the safe way, running through the door on the other side of the balcony. "This could take a while," Roman commented. "He's got that outer walkway if I remember correctly."
"Naught's Skyway," Xion corrected.
"Whatever. And here he is now in record time."
Roxas came at Xion and Roman from the opposite end of the Hall of Empty Melodies, not having broken a sweat. "It's not as long as you think," Roxas said frankly.
"Dude, we've got an unidentified noise coming from below over there, so the best plan of investigation is the quickest way to the source," Roman said. "It's, like, coming from that pseudo-infinity symbol on the platform. Probably a girly man scream."
The three of them turned to face said symbol on the platform. No one was sure why it was there. Many members thought it to be purely cosmetic, though why anyone would have put that there for such purposes was a mystery. "Oh, that? Hey, while we're the only ones here, Saix managed to make that into a stairwell that leads to the lower levels," Roxas said. "Wait, you said a girly man?"
"Yeah, probably because the poor dude's flying about at high speeds for some reason. I bet you 900 munny that it's Vexen, after an attempt at thermite, because he's on fire."
"He doesn't scream that loud. The mission he and I went on days ago had him set on fire because someone disposed of a cigarette in a dumpster we had to duck in at the last second. That, and he was sitting in highly flammable paper," Xion said. "Tell you what: if it is Vexen, I forfeit two manga you won't approve of," she directed at Roman.
"Hm. I'm guessing that if it's not, I gotta forfeit some of my own."
Xion nodded as the noise started to grow in volume. The three backed up towards the door, ready to escape in the event of something flying towards them. There was a loud thunk, followed by the symbol and some surrounding material rising up a few inches. The risen material then fell below the rest of the platform with 13 other thunks following. "There it is," Roxas said.
"Doesn't that mean then that someone's coming up?" Roman asked.
A streak of blue and silver trailing smoke flew from the stairway. The three trailed it with their sights and found that it looked like a man on a motorscooter. For some reason, it had a booster on the back of it. "What the…?" Roman said.
The object turned and arced down and to its left, towards the Nobodies. Its shriek matched the one heard earlier. "You lose," Xion said as she and Roxas summoned their Keyblades.
"Watch me," Roman said, stepping forward.
He ran out onto the platform as the object flew about the air, dropping a paperbound book and a bokken on the balcony above Roxas and Xion. A glass suddenly flew from it, nearly hitting Roman and shattering behind him into several pieces, with some falling over the edge, namely the base of it. The object turned and flew downwards, towards the three on the platform. It circled the platform in a clockwise position to Xigbar, who appeared on his favorite place to be in the Hall: the little sniper's balcony that he claimed. He tried to get a clear lock on it, but it was apparent that, even if he warped and manipulated the light bolt as he was capable of, he wasn't going to get a clean hit on this thing.
Roman turned around, trying to get a sense of what direction the object was going. To Xion, it was clear that he was going to do something involving his fist and the object. "Hey, you think a crazy stunt will save whatever malesafe material you were going to dump?" she said to him.
"Come off of it, will ya?" he said. "Alright, here goes."
He turned so that he was facing counterclockwise to Xigbar (who was not noticed by anyone else just yet). The object flew by once… twice… was that a face? Now Roman had a target. He reeled up a punch and tried once, but only managed to hit some sort of fabric. Trying higher, he missed by a hair. [This last one-!]
He let loose with a right, flaming hook, something he picked up from the Blazer Armors. The results caught the attention of all present. Things seemed to slow down in time as it could be seen that Roman punched half of the object clear off.
He hung in his smacked state for what seemed to be an eternity. [Maybe it's because of how freaking painful this is!] Gintoki thought.
Not only did something hit him, but the object was on fire. It tried to get him twice before, but that was before it somehow got immolated. It was also odd that even though he was falling backwards, he was moving forwards. Gintoki now knew the difference as time began to speed back up and he felt himself going down. He was bent so that even though his legs were above his head, he faced the ground, and it was coming up fast.
The next thing he knew, he did hit the ground with a hard thud and stopped his movement forward. His face was followed by his torso, then his legs. He could hear stomping below him as it passed his ear and to his right. He then heard a voice say, "And that's how it's done."
"Are you kidding me? You just got a random guy in the face with a flaming punch," another voice said.
"Is he breathing?" a female voice asked.
Gintoki was indeed still breathing. His face was just aching and/or burnt. A loud explosion followed what sounded like some sort of blaster fire going off. "Daaaaamn…" the first voice said. "Not sure if that was necessary, but I'll take it."
"Gin-chan!" Kagura said, with her and Rinoa riding Sadaharu who was bounding out of the stairwell he had flew through.
"Are you okay?" Rinoa asked as she got off the dog and ran over to Gintoki's side.
"Okay, what the hell's going on here?" Roman asked. "First, this dude and whatever that thing was get their asses handed to them, now he's got a hot girl to help him? And what's with this cultural defiance right here?"
He pointed to the red-clad, blue eyed, orange haired and Caucasian girl who was riding an enormous dog. Roman recognized the breed as Akita Inu, somewhat. "What do you mean by that?" the girl asked.
"Well, British skin, Chinese attire, Irish hair and my personal favorite to bother this girl right behind me," he pointed to Xion, "Japanese chest. But only because it's true."
The girl looked at him quizzically. "He means that you're flat-chested," Xion said, scornfully.
"Yeah, basically."
"Now that… was a low blow," the man Roman punched earlier said, standing up.
The mark on his face was black from the fire of Roman's punch, and it was impressed in somewhat. Xigbar warped in between the younger Nobodies and the man, pointing one Arrowgun in at him. "You know, a better conversation would be why you four are here," he said.
"I don't think we have the liberty of telling you," the girl in blue said.
"Hey, this is our pad y'all crashed. Therefore, we have the right to know what you're doing here," Roman said, keeping the girl in red away by her face with one hand.
"It's like she said," the silver haired man said, his voice becoming more muffled as his face swelled up from what Roman thought was the heat. "We're not at liberty to tell you, so why don't you mfmmffmmf…"
"Dude, I can't understand ya."
And then the man fell to the floor again.
[Journal Entry]
What the hell just happened? Apparently, some guy came up from the lower levels of the castle that no one really seemed to know about and started to fly all around the Hall of Empty Melodies. I got the sucker in the face, and Xigbar (the pirate) shot down his rather high motorscooter, and I don't mean that in just height. We took it easy on his crew, which was two girls, one being significantly more attractive than the other, and just took them back to their homeworld, Amanto Edo. That nasty punch I gave him should leave a hole in his memory, so I think we're good.
Oh, and before I totally forget, that same dream/nightmare/whatever hasn't changed much. I wonder what'll be added on from here, so I better wrap this thing up so I can find out.
Here we go. Anything new to report?
… still distorted, still echo-y, still male and female. Longer delay in the action. Not a whole lot, though.
WHOA! That gunshot was NOT there the last time, was it? Wait…
Okay, there's that thing in the distance. Is that… a doorway? There's something there. It's gone. Veered to the left.
"And whatever you do, don't look ba—"
ANOTHER SHOT! That was a little closer than the la—
JESUS CHRIST, a third! ?
[Author's Notes]
- I have no plans to do much of Sora's early adventures in a separate fic. Too much trouble to go through. I can tell you that I will find a way to kill off most of those who were supposed to go back at Castle Oblivion, and that Sora's gang did have some dealings in the Death Note world.
- This is part two of day nine. The last day of Vexen's deadline is to be recorded in the next one…