To Demyx above all others, the sewer system of Hollow Bastion was one of the worst places in all the worlds to be in. Water flowed everywhere, but it was desecrated, filthy, and shackled by the dank and disgusting walls which confined it. "Ugh! Glad I remembered that last part," thought Demyx, quickly straightening from his leaning position and looking Xigbar in the eye. "Why me? Why do I have to track Sora down?"

Other than "What happened to your eye?", that was the worst question for Demyx to have asked. Xigbar was in a dangerous mood today – not that the innocent observer could tell from his attitude. One had to have served under him in Organization XIII to know that he tended to crack more jokes and act more laid-back as he became angrier. It was a deadly trap for the neophytes (including, on more than one occasion, Demyx), who hadn't yet learned and would mistake the Freeshooter's mood, egging him on. By the time Xigbar crossed the barrier between the extremes of sarcasm and hostility and the smirk left his face, it would already be too late.

This was the situation Demyx faced, his query having pushed his superior over the edge. "It's a valid question. I don't see why Saïx couldn't do it. He's a lot better at fighting, and-EEK!"

Demyx's thoughts were cut off when Xigbar disappeared, quickly reappearing behind him, grabbing him, and thrusting his top half under the running water. Granted, Demyx could breathe underwater, but it was the shock of the sudden attack and the filth of said water Xigbar had been focusing on. Demyx struggled against the other Nobody's grip, desperately trying not to breathe in the unspeakably awful depths.

After what seemed an eternity, Xigbar pulled Demyx out of the river of sewage and spun him so the two were eye to eye. "Let's get a few things straight, waterboy. I sent you to strike a deal with Hades. What happened?"

Demyx quivered in Xigbar's iron grip. "I didn't?" he squeaked.

The sewage again. Thirty seconds later, Xigbar pulled a spluttering and frightened Melodious Nocturne from the water and held him off the ground, at eye level. "You took one look at that glorified zombie and ran. Then you found Sora and ran again." Demyx hung his head, ashamed. "Hades laughed at me. At least I tried…" Xigbar dropped him on the concrete walkway, looking down on him disapprovingly. "See, in the Organization, we frown on that kind of thing. And when I say 'we,' you should think 'me.' I don't want to be the guy that hauls cowards from world to world. I do that, I start to wonder whether you're more of a liability than an asset." Xigbar fixed Demyx with a one-eyed glare that drilled straight through the young Nobody's chest. "And man, I bet you'd hate to be a liability."

Demyx simply nodded, shrinking back against the wall, not caring that he was getting splashed. A little magic, and the water curved away from him. "Just tell me what I need to do."

Xigbar chuckled, pacing through thin air over the running water. "I already did. Get to Sora, liberate the true disposition, all that jazz. Only this time you do it right, or I find a polluted lake for you to swim in. We clear?"

Demyx lowered his gaze to the water, pitying again the sorry state of his element. Finally, he whispered "Crystal," just loud enough for Xigbar to hear.

He heard a whooshing and popping as air was displaced; suddenly Xigbar teleported in front of him, grabbing Demyx's chin roughly and forcing him to look into his single yellow eye.

"Didn't catch that," Xigbar whispered menacingly.

Demyx struggled for a moment, then went limp. "Crystal," he sighed, louder this time.

Xigbar smiled. "I'm glad we had this talk. I feel like I accomplished something, you know?" He threw Demyx to the ground, and summoned a portal of darkness. "You should try it sometime," he added with a smirk, right before he disappeared.

---

Demyx lay crumpled on the sewer floor for a few moments longer, shivering and trying to shut out the trauma of the preceding minutes. "Xigbar's gone. The man with the guns can't hurt me. I'm alone in these sewers." In the back of his mind it occurred to him that he shouldn't fear Xigbar; as a Nobody, such emotions were beneath him. But even from a purely logical standpoint, Xigbar was excellent at threats, and the memory of fear – what his Other's response to the situation would be – haunted him every time the one-eyed Nobody crossed his mind. It almost seemed right to respond in such a way to Xigbar's coercion. His taunting grin heralded a not-so-secret enjoyment in making Demyx squirm.

Eventually, Demyx regained control of himself, and carefully rose to a standing position. With a final exhausted glance at the water, he turned and began to follow its path. He didn't know where exactly it would take him; Xigbar had brought him here seemingly on a whim, and hadn't bothered to tell him which way was out. "Nothing's stopping me from using a portal…no. I need to clear my head." Demyx shuddered, and continued on.

Since he had joined Organization XIII, Demyx had had an increasing sense of his own insignificance. As Myde, he'd had a few friends, surfed occasionally and played a few decent bars in Kauai. "I went through so many sitars in those days. Stupid dog – Scratch, or Fitch, whatever his name was." It wasn't much, but at least he'd had a life.

Then the darkness had come, and the islands had fallen. But Demyx had not.

"Why is that, I wonder? I lost my heart…but kept my body. That and my sitar."

And that, Demyx surmised, passing through an intersection in the catacombs of waste, was an even greater mystery. Why had he kept his music? Was nonexistence always this way? Did it leave you with a single defining characteristic of who you once were, taunting you with your former life?

"If that's true, Xigbar must have been some kind of hitman."

It certainly would explain his title. The Melodious Nocturne – he'd always liked that. It had a suitably musical ring to it; fitting, because his music was all that was left to him. Hawaii was gone, his family and friends long consigned to the darkness. From the moment he awoke on the streets of the Dark City, Organization XIII had owned him.

Demyx paused, leaning against a wall and closing his eyes. "All they want is to help. All we want are our hearts. That's what they said." Then why did the superiors – Xemnas and Xigbar and all the rest – treat him this way?

"Maybe I'm just no good. I can't fight. I can't plan. I can't even defend myself from the others." Demyx slammed his fist into the wall, sighed, and marched on. Xigbar had given him an order, and that was that.

"That's all I really am to them, isn't it?" he thought. "An errand boy. An afterthought. What good am I after they get their hearts back?"

As Demyx continued down the tunnel and with his train of self-defeating thought, it occurred to him that the sound of rushing water was growing louder. He looked up from the ground, seeing a dim light growing in intensity as the water crescendoed. "Just a little farther. Then maybe I can do something worthwhile."

In another minute or so, Demyx reached the mouth of the sewer tunnels, and with it the light of high noon. Looking around, he found himself at the edge of a hole, set in a cliff far below Hollow Bastion. The view was breathtaking; royal blue plains and mountains stretched as far as the eye could see and farther, with the immense castle of Villain's Vale looming out of the Dark Depths far beyond.

Below, Demyx saw a mass of black swarming over the blue: the Heartless army, laying siege to the horrendously undermanned town. The local militia defended the Bastion valiantly, led by Cloud, Leon, and the rest of their band, but nothing could change the fact that they were fighting a losing battle. Pinpricks of red rose up from the battlefield, as Heartless were destroyed and their hearts escaped. But for every Heartless defeated, five more swarmed forth. With his enhanced Nobody vision, Demyx saw Cid beating down a regiment of Samurai Nobodies with a sharpened broom, before ordering a retreat to the Crystal Fissure.

"It's amazing!" Demyx suddenly felt himself thinking. "Look at it! If the Heartless are defeated, their hearts make Kingdom Hearts stronger. But if we win, the Organization reclaims its original lands!"

He stopped himself almost as soon as he thought this. "What am I saying?" Demyx whispered. He wasn't even from the Radiant Garden – that was the six superiors. He didn't even know what Kingdom Hearts was supposed to do – only Xemnas did.

"This isn't me. This is what they want me to be."

Demyx was stunned by this epiphany, so much so that for several seconds he didn't move. "I've been going about this all wrong. I wasn't working with Organization XIII – I was working for it. I was their whipping boy, their royal fool, their bit-"

Suddenly, a flash of black and silver on the cliffs caught his eye. Xigbar, come to punish him for falling behind? "Odd. I'm usually more afraid…" Indeed, Demyx had been struck with a sudden clarity, one that seemed to shut out all doubt and fear. "No, wait – Xigbar would come up behind me, and-"

An explosion cut off his thoughts, sending him stumbling. Demyx flailed his arms, frantically struggling to regain his balance. The noise of the explosion, however, faded into a deep rumbling, as a minor earthquake set off by whatever had happened shook Demyx's surroundings. With nothing to hold on to, Demyx slipped, screamed, and fell.

---

Wind. Blue. Panic. That was Demyx's entire world throughout his fall. He twisted to see what was passing him by, and nearly fainted as he saw the too-shallow lake below Hollow Bastion rushing toward him, beneath Merlin's permanent cleansing circle cast to purify the town's water. Demyx was unable to think coherently for the next few seconds, his thoughts a jumbled mass of shock.

Then he found the black-and-silver blur once more, and everything was clear.

It wasn't Xigbar at all. It wasn't even a Nobody.

It was Sora.

The Keyblade master carved his way through hordes of Heartless as he reclaimed the cliffs for the Bastioners, aided by Donald and Goofy. This was Demyx's objective. This was the person his nonexistence depended on. The key to – what, exactly? He didn't really know what they meant by "liberate his true disposition." Something to do with Roxas, perhaps? Demyx pondered this for a fraction of a second, and had another epiphany.

"What if it doesn't happen?"

It was the first rebellious thought Demyx had had in years of suffering under the Organization. He'd fight Sora. He'd prove himself to the others – make them see he meant business – and then trade Sora's "true disposition" for a little respect. Even better – he'd ask for a promotion! Demyx imagined Xigbar begging on his knees, and smiled.

Then he remembered that he was still falling. "Dance, water, dance!" With this perfectly timed cry, the water below him surged upward in an unstoppable geyser, halting his fall and allowing Demyx to stand, the liquid forming a stable surface. It was a few seconds before he found Sora again, but Demyx wasted no time in getting to him. One corridor of darkness later, the geyser collapsed, and Hollow Bastion's sewer system ran as it had.

---

Sora, Donald, and Goofy descended the stairs from the ruined Bailey, having finally cleared the town of Heartless. Beyond the cliff they now found themselves overlooking, a sea of Heartless advanced across the Great Maw. Their day had only begun.

Suddenly the darkness leaped up to the mosaic that covered the ground in front of them, as a portal split the air in two. Sora and company stopped in their tracks, immediately on guard. The black-and-violet oval enveloped the other side of the mosaic in darkness, soon dissipating and leaving Demyx behind.

"I'm here!...What now?" Demyx's plan to take control of his nonexistence was, admittedly, attractive, but the trip through the portal hadn't given him a lot of time to figure it out. "Maybe a quick one-liner to show them who they're dealing with…" Demyx opened his mouth, but nothing came to him except a strangled "Ngh." It was the sound of something brilliant killed in infancy, he just knew it. He sighed in frustration. "Man, I screwed up already?" Casting a furtive glance across the cliff, Demyx saw Sora raise an eyebrow, waiting for something to happen. Inwardly rolling his eyes, Demyx straightened, deciding on "Hey, you guys are looking lively." "It'll have to do…"

Donald wasn't nearly as friendly. "Scram!"

Sora, however, was slightly more articulate. "Didn't we catch you messing around in the Underworld? How'd a wimp like you get into Organization XIII?"

"He remembers! Think, think, think…" Demyx attempted a mocking gesture or two, but only managed a quick gasp as words failed him and he instinctively cowered. Sora's aggressive tone brought back flashbacks of Xigbar's punishments, causing Demyx's breathing to quicken. Almost as soon as he started shivering, Demyx stopped. "Oh, quit that! You're a new Nobody now. Act like it!" Tentatively, he faced Sora again.

But Sora was unimpressed. "I bet you can't even fight." Donald was right there to back him up: "Yeah, but we can!"

This offended Demyx slightly – moments ago, he had proven to be quite skilled in water manipulation. This time, he was able to counter them with a touch more bravado. "You shouldn't judge anyone by appearance," he stated loftily. The strength of his words was exciting to wield, and Demyx found himself gaining more confidence.

The first real test of it came immediately. Sora, Donald, and Goofy drew their weapons, moving to fighting stances in a nonverbal challenge.

"Whoa! Let's back up a minute…" Demyx flinched, turning the movement into a halfhearted shimmy to hide his faltering resolve, and then about-faced. For a moment, he was the Organization's whipping boy again, on another mission he was sure to fail. "Ohhh...I told them they were sending the wrong guy…."

"Wait a minute. Have you forgotten your plans?" Demyx chastised himself.

Sora was momentarily off guard, more confused than alert. "Who is this kook?"

"Are you a Melodious Nocturne or a mouse?"

"Remember, the Organization's made up of Nobodies," Goofy offered.

Sora nodded, not really sure how this helped, but comfortable in the knowledge. "Right – no hearts!"

"You control water! That's everywhere! Are you just giving up after – excuse me?" Demyx was snapped out of his internal conflict by Sora's words. Grudgingly, he had to concede the point to him. Demyx didn't have a heart, but that didn't mean he had to like it. "So why not make that part of the charade? Might as well make up for 'Hey, you guys are looking lively.'" In keeping with his train of thought, Demyx affected an offended tone, casting an exasperated glance in Sora's direction. "Oh, we do too have hearts! Don't be mad…"

The Keybladers were unmoved, and Donald voiced their suspicion: "You can't trick us!"

At once the color drained from Demyx's face – purely on instinct, though Demyx had to admit this development was irritating. Deciding to stall for a few more seconds, he turned again and ran through his options for the situation.

"Okay, they're on to me. Let's see…I made a fool of myself, made them think I can't fight, and probably embarrassed myself in front of Roxas. Just like me to screw up in front of a newbie." At that moment, Demyx was struck by a devious thought, and an equally devious grin flitted across his face. "They don't think I can fight. I've got them right where I want them."

And with that, Demyx whirled, pointing a challenging finger at Sora.

"Silence, traitor."

Their reaction was beautiful. Beautiful! Sora, Donald, and Goofy jumped at Demyx's uncharacteristically threatening demeanor, which thrilled Demyx to no end. "All right! I'm not the one being intimidated this time! Let's keep it rolling…" Water seeped through the cracks in the ground, rising around Demyx in a dome shape. Carried along by a wave of empowerment, Demyx threw his hand up, catching the water in a ball of liquid power, which expanded into his treasured sitar. He spun it once, before planting his feet in a rockstar stance and flashing a winning smile. This was to be his magnum opus, his symphony of destruction, and today, the crowd would go wild.

---

Sora, Donald, and Goofy rushed Demyx almost immediately. His façade of mirth and his concentration were not broken in the slightest. With a roar of "Dance, water, dance!" and a powerful chord from his sitar, water flowed up through the ground and took the form of a hundred Demyx clones, sitars and all. As Demyx's hands glided smoothly across the strings, the Water Forms danced along with the music, twirling around and sliding past the boy, duck, and dog with the sound of crashing waves.

This had the dual benefit of shifting Sora's focus from Demyx and pitting him against a horde of merciless enemies. The Water Forms moved at Demyx's behest, extensions of the Nobody's will in a veritable web of music and violence. Though Demyx's eyes were closed, he saw the battlefield from a hundred different angles, and could easily take full advantage of the thirty-three or so from which he could attack each enemy. He felt powerful. He felt in control.

He felt alive.

Sora, on the other hand, found the threat of death multiplied a hundredfold, and was swarmed before he could comprehend it. Six Water Forms mobbed him, swinging sitars with the force of a tsunami and collapsing into puddles when he tried to counterattack, reforming tireless and whole behind him. Sora struck wildly, turning the space around him into a storm of metal and kicking feet, and Demyx couldn't help but dance along with his minions, as he saw the ridiculous scene a hundred times over in his head. Donald and Goofy were similarly beset, and Demyx's thoughts soon turned to Xigbar's shocked face as he returned to the Castle That Never Was victorious. "I think I'll throw him Sora's body, and then when he catches it, I'll have its mouth blast him in the face with water, and-"

Demyx frowned. Somewhere there had been a crash of water that did not sound like an impact against flesh. Returning his focus to the Water Forms, Demyx found that eight of his pairs of liquid eyes were blind. Demyx opened his own eyes, and was greeted with a shocking reversal of fortune.

Somehow, Sora and friends must have figured out the beat of Demyx's war song, for they were fighting just as fluidly as the Water Forms. It was almost like dancing, the way they attacked; a few times Sora even took a Form roughly by the arms, magically freezing it to maintain his grip and twirling it fatally through its comrades in a waltz of death. Demyx's army was crumbling by the second, and soon the Melodious Nocturne would stand alone.

Demyx narrowed his eyes, growled, and cut off his song. The remaining Water Forms lost cohesion, the water that had comprised them running back towards their master.

"Guess you know that one. Time to change my tune." Demyx lamented the absence of his wit pre-battle, and then was all business.

Sora charged, leaping towards Demyx and flipping once – twice – three times, each spin adding more force to the Keyblade. Mere milliseconds from a hit, he was knocked skyward, as geysers erupted from the ground in an increasing circle around Demyx. Sora barely had time to right himself before he saw Demyx coming for him, riding a wave across otherwise solid ground and knocking Donald and Goofy aside. "C'mon, keep to the beat!" the Nobody taunted.

As Sora leaped to his feet and advanced, Demyx wondered for a moment whether his actions were truly his own. "Of course I want to prove myself to the Organization. It's the only way I'll get any respect." Sora's Keyblade, slicing through the air inches to Demyx's left, gave him another good reason to win.

Demyx flipped over Sora, whacking him with his sitar while upside down and slamming him into the cliff wall bordering the battlefield. "On the other hand, I'm being a little brutal, aren't I?" It was an immutable fact that Demyx hated fighting, and yet he took to it like a natural warrior.

"Maybe I'm just not used to it," Demyx considered as he summoned a waterfall to bear him gracefully to the ground. "Sora is the enemy, after all. And is anything too brutal for an enemy?"

Demyx dodged a shield bash from Goofy, extinguished a fire blast from Donald, and blasted them both across the field with jets of water. "Stop. That's Xigbar talking again." Demyx gritted his teeth, cursing himself for letting the Freeshooter get to him. Being a Nobody, he grimly noted, hadn't just robbed him of his heart – he had lost his ability to care for the well-being of others. In battle, he could be brutal and deadly, his leftover instinct of decency the only thing that could stop him.

Like right now. Demyx had let his runaway thoughts get the best of him, and before he could raise his sitar in defense he was assaulted on all sides by a flurry of Keyblade strikes. Water exploded from his position to drive Sora back, but not before Demyx suffered several bruises and a cracked shin.

Yelping in pain, Demyx summoned several balls of water, using his sitar to hit them at his attackers faster than they could blink. As Sora and company dodged the barrage of water, Demyx's shin healed, allowing him to walk without whimpering.

"That's why I don't like to fight," Demyx realized. "I don't know what I might do."

It wasn't out of concern for anyone else, of course. Demyx had lost that with his heart. But just like Nobodies retained the outward appearance of personality, as their instincts dictated, Demyx remained a reluctant warrior.

"A coward," he thought bitterly, shooting Donald up into the air with a geyser and causing a hard rain to fall on the combatants.

"An honorable Nobody!" his gentler instincts countered, as he swept Goofy back toward the stairs with a tidal wave.

Sora threw his Keyblade at Demyx, knocking him down. The Keyblade returned to its master, who ran toward his dazed enemy, leaped, and swung for his torso.

"Logically, neither, because without emotio-AAAAGH!" Demyx screamed, his thoughts interrupted by a horrendous CRACK. He felt half the ribs on his left side snap like toothpicks, and rolled, his entire body seized with agony, to escape the source of the pain. The water that had pooled on the battlefield, undisturbed since Demyx had gone down, rushed to its master, shifting under him and lifting him to his feet. Demyx stood, nearly blind with pain, and sent the aiding water to kill.

It flowed from behind Demyx, striking Sora and stopping him in his tracks. Donald and Goofy rushed Demyx, but were flung into the walls by twin waves. The water attacking Sora trapped him in a bubble, cutting off his oxygen and causing the Keyblade master to grab his throat in a panic.

Demyx watched the scene with cold satisfaction, eager to see his oppressor perish. Sora slashed at the bubble with his Keyblade, but for every drop of water that fell from it more arrived.

Through his pain, Demyx wondered briefly why the Organization had sent him to kill Sora. "Xemnas is making Kingdom Hearts out of a whole bunch of hearts, right? Doesn't Sora help when he kills Heartless? Why would they want him dead, even if Roxas would come back?"

Sora fell to his knees, his strikes growing weaker, and an answer suddenly came. "Maybe this is what they meant. Maybe they wanted to liberate my true disposition." Demyx stared at the struggling Sora, and shuddered. "Is this my true disposition? Drowning someone where he stands?"

The dull throb in Demyx's side caught his attention, and Demyx shook his head. "I can't kill him like this. It would be just like Xigbar." Lingering on this thought for a second longer, Demyx snapped his fingers.

The prison of water collapsed, spilling Sora onto the ground. Sora gasped for air, pushing himself up with shaking, oxygen-deprived arms.

Demyx idly fingered the strings of his sitar as he healed and waited for Sora to rise. "I'll do this like a gentleman. He deserves that much." As soon as Sora stood, he would attack once more, this time fairly.

He never got the chance.

Sora, still on one knee, took his Keyblade in hand and lunged for Demyx. Demyx's eyes widened as the boy shot toward him. "No! Not like this!" "DANCE, WATER, DAN-"

Before Demyx could finish his sentence, Sora stepped on the body of his sitar, jumping and hooking his legs around Demyx's neck. The two screamed – Demyx in shock, Sora in anger. Sora raised the Keyblade, and then brought it down, skewering Demyx through his lack of a heart. Demyx's scream was cut off with horrific suddenness.

Sora jerked his arms, pulling the Keyblade out of Demyx's back and standing on Demyx's shoulders. He backflipped, landed, and regarded the convulsing Nobody without pity as Donald and Goofy stood at his sides.

Darkness leaking from the hole through his body, Demyx fell to his knees, his sitar shaking in the tenuous grip of his left hand.

"I blew it again…"

This was the last coherent thought Demyx had time for. His sitar shimmered, dissolving into pure water and fading away in seconds. Demyx's horror suddenly overcame his pain, and he picked himself up. He brought his hand in front of him, unable to comprehend its emptiness. His music – all that he was – was lost to him.

"Ohhh, noooo wayyyy!" Demyx screamed, grabbing his head in a fit of anguish and defeat. He fell to his knees once more; the darkness spread greedily from the hole in his chest, devouring his entire body. His cry dissolved into a steadily weakening gurgle – not unlike a sob – as he drowned in it.

---

Howdy. Sorry this one took so long, but school started between Fire and Water, so I was a lot busier. More work to do, more things to study for, etc. Also, I kept putting it off for some reason even I can't understand. I'm just a procrastinator, I guess.

Oh well. Y'all are stuck with me.

I realize I'm taking a few liberties with how exactly the Nobodies die, but that's because I really, really like death scenes. Uncomfortably so. There's nothing I enjoy more than the art of killing characters, and that's why Demyx died with a hole through his chest. I'm trying to keep it more or less with what you saw in the cutscenes, but from start to finish, all bets are off.

Speaking of bets, I'm sure you know who's up next. The Gambler of Fate will definitely die before Halloween, but that's all I can say with any certainty. In the meantime, keep those reviews coming!

Love and thanks to all the readers

Zellarius Burvenia