Tone Shift

A/N: A look at Demyx, Number IX of Organization XIII, and what caused the creepy shift in his personality right before Sora fights and eliminates him halfway through Kingdom Hearts II.

While I am fully aware of the various plot twists revealed in KH3D, Demyx was not aware, and so for the purposes of this look into his point of view, Nobodies are beings who lack hearts, plain and simple.

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Demyx had heard all the names he was called behind his back. The drippy faucet. The slouch on the couch. Slacker. Cheater. More likely to run down the drain than face the music. The other members of Organization XIII weren't subtle about their dislike of him. Or perhaps it was non-like, considering...nah, thinking about the whole no-hearts thing would be too much trouble.

He didn't need their opinions to know the facts of who he was. He was Demyx, Number IX in Organization XIII, a master of water, and the commander of the Dancers among the Organization's Nobody servants. Who he used to be before becoming a Nobody didn't matter anymore. It wouldn't even matter if he had a heart to feel the difference between significant and mundane. It was in the past.

Nowadays, everything the other members called him was supported by evidence. He would much rather sit on a couch and play his sitar, which he named Arpeggio, than go on missions for the Organization's benefit. And why should he go out there and risk his neck? In the end, none of the things he could be assigned to do really mattered. The Organization's only shared goal was to complete Kingdom Hearts and restore the hearts of all Nobodies. They all knew how to accomplish that goal, and it wasn't something Demyx could ever do. Only Roxas, with his flashy Keyblade, could free hearts from the Heartless and recapture them to form Kingdom Hearts. Now that Roxas was gone (the report never said terminated or eliminated; what happened to him?), the Organization had to rely on Sora doing his heart-following thing and defeating the Heartless throughout his journey to gather the required hearts, which was another thing Demyx couldn't help with. So Demyx was assigned busywork and pointless reconnaissance missions in worlds they'd already scouted, which seriously cut into his chillax time. His complaints fell on deaf, uncaring ears (obviously), but he did manage to uphold the ruse he'd fooled them all with.

Everything the Organization thought they knew about Demyx was correct, but their view of each fact was too narrow to really know the full scope of what the Melodious Nocturne was capable of.

As a musician, Demyx liked to compare the facade he presented in public to the effect of shifting a song between major and minor key. Simply playing the next lower or higher note instead of the marked notes throughout a song could alter the whole song's impact, changing a dark, serious piece to a lighthearted one or vice versa. In the same way, Demyx's symptoms of apparent laziness and cowardice would have revealed his brilliance, if any of his colleagues had bothered to examine him from a different point of view.

He didn't do work if he could avoid it because the work would have no purpose, showing that he prioritized efficiency. He concocted intricate plans to avoid useless work and passed any tasks he could to gullible people like Roxas, which was a display of both creative incompetence and real creativity. He used his water clones to fight instead of entering the fray himself, which required a level of control over his element that few of his colleagues could match, and also assured his own safety in a World where Nobodies were abominations to be eliminated on sight. He never missed a beat while playing his sitar, even while taking hits in combat, and could retaliate against a combo with his magical music faster than any of the other Organization members (except possibly Xemnas, who fought even less often than Demyx).

And to top it all off, his complaints and wimpy attitude were just as much of an act as Xaldin's sweet-talking sessions with the Beast. Demyx was better at maintaining a facade of emotion than most of his kind - so much better that he sometimes even fooled himself. But he could also drop the act at any time, revealing the force of a tsunami that he normally kept hidden under a placid sea, just waiting to rise up as suddenly as a summer storm and crush his enemies into the watery depths.

...Yes, Demyx had a lot of free time to think up water-based metaphors. He probably could have won a metaphor-quipping competition with Luxord, but that would have revealed the deception and gotten him slammed with more work, which would be like exercise, which would be like sweating. Which is gross. What was he talking about?

Still, Demyx was looking forward seeing to the looks on those naysayers' faces when the scales he'd put on their eyes fell off. He was being sent to fight Sora for real, probably as a way to be rid of Demyx forever. He would be sure to prove that you shouldn't judge anyone by appearance.X-Face was sending the wrong guy...because he never knew the guy he was sending.