Chapter 7: Heartless

Larry stepped out onto a platform near the entrance to an underground tunnel. The whole area appeared to be in a forest mostly made up of pine and other trees Larry did not recognize. Must be indigenous to the Halos, Larry thought.

He was at the head of a formation of about twenty men and women, all of them carrying an odd mismatch of weaponry and wearing an odd assortment of clothing. Many wore jeans and random tee shirts as though this is what they wore when hanging around the house on their day off. Talk about 'weekend warriors,' huh?

Larry was happy to see Spacer again. Spacer was happy to see Larry hadn't gotten cut up by shrapnel, but was sad that he had missed the action.

"You know I would have just blown him into bitty pieces," he had said while they had loaded into the back of another Gou'ld cargo ship and taken off for the Library.

Allied -- the peculiar, tall man -- was another interesting case. Apparently, in addition to the odd sword on his back, he also had a number of medium-sized bladed disks inside of specially-made holsters. When Larry and several others had asked about them, he had said, "Wait and see," with a crooked smile on his face. He was questioned so often, Assim seemed on the verge of making it an order, but relented.

The group began to start off again, as a UH-60 Blackhawk piloted by a Master Chief named Hero flew overhead. Two Crewmen inside the helicopter manned the two mini-guns on either side. Assim was comparing sizes between those guns and the one he carried. Oddly, he seemed quite willing to pick up another weapon to add to his collection, but the Admiral in charge -– Ownage -- had given the weapon to another person.

Ownage looked up at the helicopter and frowned. Then he pulled a half-moon ax from his belt and began moving toward the entrance. With his cloak and his beard, Larry was reminded of another character he had known out of a book. He wondered if John Call had included him in DreamLand as well…

With the people who used blades and swords creating the forefront of the box, the flanks just behind them were CH members who used guns. Behind them were the people who -- like Spacer -- had too much fire power to be used at close range. Turkey was here as well, ready to cast magic.

One surprise had been the addition of a White Mage by the name of "Doc D" who decided to come along. No one knew what the "D" stood for, and the Doc wasn't telling. Ready to help heal anyone who would need it, he carried med kits and other supplies with him.

The air was thick with excited anticipation. Except for Ownage and those who had taken his warning about SeeDs seriously, many thought, These are computers whose programs cannot be that difficult to dismantle. Could they? They knew Fury had single-handedly captured the Pride of Clan Hunters and destroyed the Jaffa and Gou'ld army inside of it by himself.

As they entered the underground tunnel, Larry noticed something on the ground, illuminated by his lightsaber and the flashlights of those who brought them. Bodies. Two of them. Dressed in blue…and lying with their faces in the ground.

Ownage looked generally startled, "They're wearing the typical SeeD uniform, but I wasn't expecting to find them already dead."

Spacer muttered something in Dutch behind them. It sounded like a curse against evil, or perhaps a blessing for the dead. Everyone had their weapons drawn now, as the mood went from confident to somewhat sad. This puzzled Larry, Why that? When, just a few minutes ago, they were so confident that the abilities of the SeeDs were overestimated.

"Maybe they just tripped over their shoelaces," Assim waved his gun in a dismissive fashion, the barrels spinning slightly.

As Ownage rolled the bodies over, someone gasped loudly as the faces of both bloody and gashed. The smell that came from the bodies made the contents in Larry's stomach -- which were reflections of reality -- churn uncomfortably.

They continued onward. The way to the Library continued to get darker and darker the deeper they went. Soon though, the ramp leveled out and a large door stood in front of them. The door was so large it extended all the way into the ceiling of the room and spread the width of the walls. There was no way around it.

Alpha Two came forward with a laptop, reminding Larry strongly of Dabby before he got shot by Outlaw. Alpha Two noticed a funky-looking pad with spinning circles and holographic projections by the side of the door.

"I think this is the Forerunner version of a touch-screen," he said, tapping the long and rectangular screen in several spots randomly while trying to find the effect. His fingers began to fly across the keyboard. The clicking made an eerie sound as it reverberated around the walls.

"I don't like this, man," Spacer groaned.

"Stow it," Whitestar said.

A sound began to reverberate around the room that was not the eerie clacking of Alpha Two's keyboard. He stopped and looked over his glasses at the walls. A scratching sound could be heard. Every gun and eye swiveled over to where it was coming from.

"Get that door open," Ownage growled from the back of his throat to a now pale-looking Alpha Two. "We must get the Index."

Alpha Two chewed his lip nervously as the sound disappeared. He tapped several holographs in a certain order. "It's been sealed from the other side, Sir."

Ownage furrowed his brow. "You, Jedi, get up here. Cut through that door!"

"Actually, Sir, if he just damages the door in the middle, it should slide open. Some fail safe system or something…"

"FINE! Just do it!"

The scratching sound began again on the opposite side of the room. This time louder and more desperate sounding.

"Some of us don't have all day!"

Larry moved forward, igniting the purple blade to slice into about the center of the door, but he did not put the blade where he intended. Rather, he felt as though something else had just guided his strike…

With a hiss the door slid open, and Larry jumped back as something lunged at him. His blade came in a swift uppercut and he felt a body fly into two pieces. Looking into the room beyond, Larry saw a huge hallway, easily miles long. Looking down at what he had cut, he noticed it was actually human, or was. It was wearing an outfit similar to the two dead SeeDs back by the entrance.

Allied walked over to the body with Ownage and said, "He's a SeeD candidate. This was probably his exam…"

"Well, he just failed!" growled Ownage. "And, we have a long way to walk, so let's get moving!"

"I know, but only one of them…"

The group began walking forward, as though expecting an attack, but not walking at a crouch. Guns and eyes and swords all moved backward and forward, as the scratching sound followed them through the door and along the passage way. Larry figured the hallway was so large they could fly several of those shuttles that CH had through it.

"This is becoming a problem!" Rouge shouted to everyone around him.

"If we don't find out what those are," shouted a Crewman named Epic, "I'll start shooting the walls!"

"I'll admit," shouted Larry, "I have a bad feeling about this!"

Ownage rolled his eyes, "Now he tells us!"

Turkey began jogging from behind pushing on everyone in front of him. This caused everyone to panic, and everyone began jogging. Larry could feel the panic welling up in his comrades, heightened by the ticking clock he could practically feel on his PDA before DreamLand would forcibly kick him out of the World of Dreams. Larry suddenly felt a jolt through his system -- a sense of utmost danger hidden before by the panic and fear he felt in everyone around him.

"STOP!" he cried, a moment too late. A massive door similar to the one they just came through began to slide shut behind them. It was slow. Larry lunged toward it. A sharp electric jolt went through him as he dove at the threshold. He heard his own scream and the screams of several others as they all were electrocuted by a force field. Getting up, he desperately tried to stab the lightsaber through the field, only resulting in a shock strong enough to force him to drop the saber.

"Over there!" Ownage shouted, as a door on the other side of the hallway began to slide shut. Everyone sprinted the distance to where the door was closing, but bounced off the force field formed there.

"Everyone, just stop!" came a command from the group's doctor and White Mage, Doc D. "We need to think clearly!" Some of the people who had lunged at the door were now groaning around on the floor. He bent over to check them.

The scratching suddenly stopped.

In the unnatural silence that followed, Ownage ordered everyone to form a box around the wounded and Whitestar ordered Alpha Two to try and get the door open. Larry and Allied went over to where Alpha Two was working on his laptop by the door that impeded their forward progress. Muttering to himself, he seemed extremely agitated and was gnawing furiously on his bottom lip.

"Nothing's working!" he moaned.

Larry was about to reply with confidence, when he felt an itch between his shoulder blades -- a sense of danger he knew was not wrong. Spinning, he saw a pair of bright orange eyes staring at him from a corner between the door and the far wall. One pair quickly became two, and then four, and eight…sixteen…thirty two! The number of eyes staring at him was now too large to count. They slithered toward Larry. Rouge shouted the alarm. Larry saw a bullet streak in-between a set of orange eyes. The pair of eyes quickly faded to black.

Igniting his lightsaber, Larry stood between the things and the now-hysterical technician. Allied made a quick flourish with his hands and a disk flew into the darkness. The screech that followed told of his accuracy.

As they came into the light, Larry saw why they were so hard to see. They were constructed of darkness and shadow. Gunfire erupted into the swarms and fireballs leapt from the hands of Turkey to slow down the assault. There were just too many. Larry moved forward and attempted to slice through some of them, but this was difficult as they were just about as tall as his knees. Allied began swinging his mechanical blade one handed, hacking through them. The truly spooky part was that he met no resistance while cutting through them, almost as though he was fighting a shadow. But, they did die when they were cut, and Larry began to feel several of them cutting at his legs and thighs, so they were real.

The gunfire began to be more sporadic as the black creatures entered the ranks of the actual CH members. Ownage was swinging his ax, and Epic, Rouge, and several others were pulling out sidearms to empty clips into the ground. Spacer howled as a bullet went into his foot.

"Watch where you're shooting!" he snarled, as he stabbed at another thing with his knife, the grenade launcher being unpractical.

Just when it seemed like there was no end of the damned things, the door that had stopped them in the first place blew open, leaving a gaping hole where there had been a door. Alpha Two took cover behind his laptop as large pieces of stone flew over his head. Everyone swiveled to where light began streaming through the hole.

A large tank drove through the entrance, the same one Larry had seen on the Pride: an old Russian T-55. On top of the turret, a machine gunner swiveled and began opening up into the horde of black things away from the CH members.

At the sight of the tank, most of the black things simply dissolved and disappeared. They did not run; they just left. Completely disappeared. How unnerving

The tank shuddered to a halt and then began reversing out of the entrance it had made for itself. Ownage motioned toward the door. Amidst the sound of rifles and pistols reloading, wide-eyed Crewmen stared in every direction, expecting those little nightmares to return.

"Lt. Commander Fate, good to see you!" Whitestar said happily to the blonde haired, blue eyed man getting out of the tank.

"I see you've met the Heartless," Fate said, without a hint of humor in his voice.

Larry came forward, "Heartless?"

The man frowned at Larry, as thought trying to place him, "Yes, Heartless. I would have preferred the Flood myself, but these nasty buggers are from Kingdom Hearts. I'm not really sure what they are, but according to Wikipedia they are creatures that have no soul and have lost their heart to some darkness. They are the embodiment of all the bad emotions inside of a person's soul."

Allied raised an eyebrow, "That sounds…fascinating. What do you know about SeeDs being here? I would guess they did not know about the Heartless either, as three of them are dead back there."

Fate nodded and addressed the Admiral, who had begun tapping his foot impatiently. "Recon has been pinned down in between the SeeD forces and the Index. We need to make haste to help him. Nikita sent orders to me to hook up with you, so we need to get to him quickly." His eyes, which were usually calm, shone with a hint of urgency that spoke louder than the words he was saying.

Ownage looked ahead down the tunnel, where another tank sat waiting…an A-1 Abram. The tunnel sloped upward and exited into sunlight.

"Doc! How many people are injured?" Whitestar shouted back into the room where people were still filing out.

"Lots of scratches," the Doc said brushing his hands off. "And one bullet wound to the foot. Nothing a little Cure and Potion and some med kits couldn't fix."

Fate gave orders to his men -- what was left of them -- and they began to load onto each tank to move faster. The two tanks were now bristling with guns, swords, and humans all over them.

"This is going to do murder to the gas mileage," Assim noted, scanning around with his mini-gun.

"We don't have that far to go, Sir," shouted the gunner on the T-55. "But, you should hunker down, it will get rough!"

"Rougher than Heartless?" shouted Rouge from where he was sitting.

"Let's call the Heartless you encountered there a short sprint. This is going to be a freakin' marathon!"