Er... this is um... well, it's a single chapter of what might end up being a serious fanfiction based on the little mermaid. Of course, being me, I love the villains so I made this the "Poor Unfortunate Souls" bit of the fic. There will be other chapters like this so if you don't like "serious buz'ness," you may turn away now.

Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the Little Mermaid do not belong to me, and I am just silly to make up my own versions with the KH characters. For those who want to know...

Song: Poor Unfortunate Souls: (Little Mermaid)

Youngest Princess/Little Mermaid: Kairi

Sea Witch: Original Character

Prince: Sora

King Triton/Daddy: Ansem The Wise

Other Princesses/mermaids: Princesses of Heart

Youngest Brother that is mentioned: Roxas

It is BASED on the song, therefore they are not singing. That's for the "Kiss The Girl" chapter I will eventually do. Heh. Hope you enjoy this!

Final note. This is happily dedicated to my friend LockePhilote for giving me suggestions on it, and to Henvdemon of the Heart for inspiring a bit of it. Thanks guys, you're both awesome.

Long chapter is long. I warn thee now!


Poor Unfortunate Souls

She swims through the dank water, her blue eyes darting around her surroundings in sheer fear. For all merfolk in the Western Kingdom, this place underwater is completely off-limits. Off-limits by everything but her father's law, even. It was common sense, really. No fool is idiotic enough to go into the Dark Waters, or so the saying went. But Kairi is a girl on a mission, and perhaps just foolish enough to go.

With that thought in mind, the youngest princess of the West swims faster, her powerful dorsal fin flicks in the water, propelling her forward even faster than she normally could swim. Her tail does all of the work, moving her body along in an S-shaped motion, her upper torso following her dorsal fin's movements. As she inches forward, the ocean around her slowly turns blacker, as if someone had liberally applied octopus ink into everything. The fish start to be less colorful, some even turning a dark shade of purple that the young Kairi had never seen before. The plants start to be a sickly dark green, as if they were suffocating under the intense pressure of the Dark Waters' miasma. Even Kairi herself begins to feel affected, her body weakening as she moves forward. Her heart feels heavy, as if it had suddenly become made of the poisonous lead that her father destroyed every time that the substance had the misfortune to come into his kingdom.

She feels weak and tired, like she had come all this way for nothing. Why had she come? The thoughts swirl sickeningly in her head, making her feel dizzy. Kairi had come for something, and she remembers what it is but what was the point? She just wants to curl up in the gray sand below her and sleep forever, never waking up from fantasy into the grim reality she now faced. The redhead touches her cropped hair before remembering what she came for, remembering the way that she had seen that expression for the first time. Her beloved's face appears in her mind, and for a moment, her head clears. She shivers, looking into the eyes of a black fish as it swims lethargically past her. It looks empty, and cold and she had very nearly fallen into the very same trap.

The witch's power is truly very great.

Kairi, her strength bolstered by her realization that her weakness is nothing more than a spell, swims on, and her bright lavender tail glows in the darkness of the Waters, giving light to all those who seek it. Those she swims past suddenly remember the things that they have lost, and some begin to find the strength to dig their way out of the graves that they had dug for themselves long ago. Others do not find the strength, instead recoiling from the Princess's light like a merfolk would from the darkness. Their golden eyes seek the light, but they are repelled by it nonetheless.

They remain heartless.

The young Princess pauses at the entrance of a cave, remembering the words of her eldest sister Snow. They are the warnings given to every child that passes into adolescence, like she had only a few years before. 'They say the witch lives in a cave at the very deepest part of the Dark Waters.' Kairi touches her hair, remembering how her sister had been brushing it as she spoke of the story. Particularly sensitive to the touches of Darkness, Snow had shivered even at the mention of the place. 'She lives in a cave at the deepest part of Dark Waters, where only the monsters live. But they do not bother her, for the sea witch is much more powerful than they are. Only the heartless beasts and the nobody betrayers are buried there, and they are her kingdom and her servants. She can make your wishes come true... but only in exchange for the most precious thing you own...' Her older sister had paused here before weaving a pearl flower into her little sister's bright red hair. Kairi had been watching her in the mirror and had noticed the way that her sister's normally cheerful eyes had darkened with sorrow. If she had been human, perhaps she would have been able to express what she felt. But she wasn't human, and so the young Kairi did not understand. Snow had picked up her brush again and kept working on Kairi's hair. 'Never go there unless you have a sincere wish to lose everything you've ever loved, Kairi...'

"The most precious thing..." Kairi murmurs to herself in the present, not knowing just what exactly she would be able to give up. She clutches at the thick chain around her neck, the metal pressing deeply into her pale hand. The silver crown seems to glitter in the darkness of the Waters, and she knows what exactly her most precious thing was. The young Princess, made an adult by the desires of the heart, swims into the cave, unafraid of what exactly she might encounter thanks to the bravery of love.

It is cold and dark inside, and it is much more inhospitable from the miasma. Even knowing that it was only a spell, Kairi's strength begins to falter again and her swimming becomes slower. Her tail stops flickering in that erratic way it normally did, as if sensing that something was wrong in the water. The miasma of the spell is heavy in the princess's lungs and she goes much more slowly. Oh, it is not from fear for she is unafraid. It is not from caution, as she does not understand it. It is from hope, as the flames of desire within her begin to burn brighter from the sheer hope of getting what she wants. As she moves forward, Kairi's hand trails across the cave wall, feeling the cold stone beneath her fingertips with the air of a dismally lost child. When a sudden hotness sparks between her fingers, she recoils, letting out a surprised gasp. She looks to her hand, and upon seeing the thick blood beginning to trickle into the water, she covers it with the other.

As a child, the most fearsome thing that ever haunted her nightmares was a shark attack. The predators are merciless, unrelentingly hunting down whatever was bleeding. This is among the first times Kairi had ever been injured... the other times were when she was a child, and she had been immediately bundled off to a safe location where a shark couldn't get to her. She hides the cut, looking around in fear that a shark would suddenly appear and then gulp, off with her head.

She hadn't even seen the witch yet.

Kairi swims faster into the cave, knowing that she probably only had a few minutes at the most. Panic fills her and she swims into a small hole in the wall. She can practically feel the creature's teeth on her shoulders, and she shivers in fear as the imagined threat of a shark's shadow looms in her mind. She is afraid now, and Kairi now clings to the black stone walls as if it was the safety of her mother's arms. She trembles harder, holding her injured hand as dry sobs shake her body.

She doesn't want to die. All she wants is to see the witch, to beg her for help... Kairi touches the crown-shaped necklace at her throat, and her strength begins to ebb back into her body, despite her fear. The metal is cool to her warm hand, and it makes her feel better. Knowing that it had been around the boy's throat... and knowing how brave he was gives her just that much courage. She lifts her head and looks into the darkness of the cave before her, her eyes shining with the power befitting a princess of the West Kingdom.

She can almost feel her father Ansem's hand on her head, the gentle way that he would caress her cheek and tell her in that loving voice not to be afraid. If she had been human, this would be the point where the tears would have begun to trickle down her pale cheeks, the warmth giving her strength to keep moving forward. She is her father's child, after all, and the King never would have curled up into a ball and cried. 'Do not be afraid, Kairi... they will never hurt you, not as long as I'm still here.' His voice says in her mind, giving her the last bit of comfort she needs before she lets go of the necklace. She is an adult now, grown up and without the fears of childhood that she had once allowed to cripple her so terribly. It is with the same strength that her father possesses, the same strength that Ansem the Wise had passed onto all of his children, that allows Kairi her next motion.

"Get a grip, girl..." Kairi tells herself as she moves forward just a little bit. It is a baby step, nothing significant... though it feels like it to her. As if in response to the movement, a low chuckle emerges from somewhere ahead of her and sends chills running down her spine. For a moment, she forgets how to breathe water even though she had been doing it since she emerged from her egg sixteen years ago. The voice is cold but curious, and very strange. It calls to her, telling her that this was the person she had been seeking since the night she realized she fell in love with the human. "Hello?" Kairi asks weakly as the voice chuckles again.

This time, it is full of warning. It is just as dark as the waters that surround the princess's body at that very moment, merciless and cold.

Nevertheless, Kairi swims forward, presenting herself fully to the witch, wherever she was. The pearl flowers in her hair and the oysters pendants on her tail glitter in the darkness, proving her rank as the seventh child of the King. Hidden in her place among the rocks, the girl can feel the witch's eyes narrow on the symbols of her heritage. "You've come a long way, Princess," the voice says after a few minutes of silence. The girl can only nod, marveling at the exotically deep voice of the witch and how different it seemed than her own high-pitched one. It is almost a man's voice, but somehow not, since the full sensuality of the witch's sex is so obvious you could practically break a clam on it.

The voice is silent again and so Kairi takes it as a sign of approval and swims forward, her eyes looking around the now small cave she enters. She slips through another opening, now so obvious as an entrance that she doesn't know how she missed it before. This room is full of shelves, all built into the walls and filled with items. From her scavenging of sunken ships, Kairi recognizes a few human items, like the strange bound things full of pages made of that weird paper. Books, she remembers as she reaches out to touch one of the spines. There are gold letters on the book, and they read a name. "Anderson's... Fairy Tales...?" Kairi says to herself when the voice chuckles again.

There is yet another emotion present in the voice, this time amusement. Kairi flushes scarlet, letting go of the object and turning around. She is still alone in the room, but she knows that the witch could see her very well. "Sorry... I won't touch them." The Princess promises, tucking her hands behind her in embarrassment. She wants to make a good impression on the witch, why she didn't know but she does know that she needed the witch to like her. The witch says nothing, but in front of her, a purple seaweed curtain begins to peel away from the wall, revealing another doorway.

The Princess swims through quickly, not sure if the witch's good will would last long enough for her to ask her question. Snow had warned her that the witch was extremely volatile, even downright insane when it came to her emotions and the wants of others. The witch is curious about her, that much is true, but would she be willing to help?

Kairi pauses in front of a large bed of black kelp, suddenly confused. Where was she? The bed is empty, save for a large cloth that was on it. Curious on it, the Princess picks it up, and nearly falls over from how heavy it is. Clearly an object from the human world, it had absorbed the water around it until it could barely be lifted. Even so, the fabric is soft and warm to the touch, making Kairi want to run her face against it from how nice it feels against her skin.

A hand presses against her shoulder and Kairi lets out a hysterical scream. She whips around, her heart hammering in her chest from the sheer shock. The girl who had grabbed her blinks slowly, her dark brown eyes full of some unrecognizable emotion. She looks normal, as if she had just been waiting there for Kairi to show up. There is almost no doubt in the Princess's mind that this was the witch but she hadn't expected her to look...

"So normal?" The girl asks in a quiet voice as if she had read her mind, a smile briefly appearing on her lips as she turns from the Princess and picks up the blanket she had dropped. Without any sign that it was heavy, she throws it onto the bed and sits down in a very delicate sort of way, like she had been trained how to do it since her childhood. "Were you expecting some kind of octopus or something?" The sea witch asks curiously, her deep voice going up a few notes out of amusement.

It actually takes Kairi a few seconds to realize just what was so different about the girl.

Her eyes drop to her legs, and she watches as the sea witch crosses them at the ankle. The Princess's breath stops in her throat as the witch settles herself on her bed. She knows she should look away, this was probably rude but the witch's legs are long and thin, and oh so pretty. She realizes once again that she could have legs like that and she grins happily, imagining how it would be like to feel the sand between her feet, not her fins but her feet! Oh, she's so happy!

"You're human!" Kairi gushes in excitement as she drops her gaze to the girl's feet. Strangely for someone considered a monster, she has delicate features all the way down her body and Kairi remembers that the little fingers on the feet are called 'toes' or something similar. The witch tucks her feet beneath a part of the blanket that hangs over the bed and nods.

"Once I was human." The witch corrects in a quiet voice, and as she spoke her legs begin to glimmer with a soft purply light. Kairi swims back a few feet as the brown legs are enveloped in the light. With fascination, she watches as the shins suddenly snap together, molding to each other. A growth of dark brown scales begin to inch their way up her flesh, and the feet that Kairi had been so excited about elongate and thin to a paper-fine fin. "But not now." The witch finishes as she floats a few inches above the bed now, her previous weight now gone and replaced with the airiness of all merfolk.

The girl turns her gaze away for a moment before swimming idly to a shelf on the wall. Kairi watches as she plucks a bottle filled with a bright red liquid from the shelf. The label is faded with age, but apparently the sea witch knows exactly what it is because she then tosses it into Kairi's direction. Startled, the princess cries out and nabs it before it could drop to the floor and possibly break. Water reduced some weight but not all, and so the seventh princess cradles the ancient bottle to her chest in shock.

Kairi has to suck in a few more breaths of water before she can calm down over the sudden assault. She had been taught that all things were precious, sacred in some cases, but here was the witch just flinging things around like they were nothing. And human artifacts, too!

The witch's fin twitches when she notices the younger girl's glare. For a moment, she looks amused before her smile fades into an irritated scowl. "Get out. You've gotten what you wanted. Pay me later, don't come back until you win the heart of your little prince." And with that, the witch drifts lazily back onto the bed and throws the heavy blanket over her fins.

It seems that Kairi had been dismissed.

Kairi only looks at the bottle, recognizing it as the kind that some human drink called wine came in. It is sealed with a much newer piece of coral, showing that the witch had either drunk it or drained it and then refilled it with whatever this potion is. "'Win the heart of your prince...'" Kairi repeats to herself before the reality of what it was suddenly smacks her in the face.

A love potion! The witch had given her a love potion!

"Does this work on humans?!" Kairi demands eagerly, swimming up to the bed and kneeling on the sand besides it. The witch's body twitches hard, as if she had suddenly been shocked by an electric eel. She sits up immediately, her brown eyes hardening to black.

"Humans?" she demands, an irritated grimace suddenly appearing on her face. Kairi nods nervously, not understanding the look that the witch was now giving her and she begins to clutch at her heart. The girl pauses for a moment when she notices the gesture, biting her bottom lip in a way that would have drawn blood, her hand stroking the side of her face in silent contemplation. A sickly sort of smile cross her lips and she grins. "Why, my dear sweetheart!" She declares before throwing the blanket off of her, swimming over to Kairi and threading her arm through the Princess's with the same kind of familiarity that Kairi's own sisters would never dare use.

"Why my dear sweetheart! You should have said something! Now that is a completely different story!" The witch says in a much more amused voice, flicking her finger against her cheek in a caring gesture. Kairi blinks, her face flushing at the bizarre treatment. So many of the other merfolk were terrified to even be in her presence, the might of her father being so powerful. And yet this witch was unafraid... because she didn't need to worry about the King attacking her...? The witch giggles in a cheerful way, her eyes darkening as she pulls Kairi towards the shelf where she had gotten the first bottle of love potion. She loosens her grip on Kairi's arm and pulls a large book from the shelf, placing it in her lap and beginning to flip through the pages so quickly that a stream of bubbles began emanating from the book.

Kairi curls up into a little ball, watching the witch as she frowns with concentration. She pauses on a page, looking up at Kairi with that same sweet smile. "Princess, the only way for you to get what you want... your man..." She says in a questioning voice, looking much more friendly when Kairi nods eagerly and hugs her heart in such giddy happiness that it is almost impossible not to smile at her. She is so full of hope, just so full of hope... The witch flips the page, pressing her finger against the image of a merwoman floating in the middle of the page. The drawing's head is thrown back and her lips open as if she was singing... or screaming. Strangely enough, there is an eery resemblance between her and the Princess, something in the eyes of both girls that seems so bizarre and familiar. "The only way to get what you want is to become a human yourself." The witch licks her finger, turning the next page idly as if what she had just said wasn't earth-shattering news.

Kairi recoils, feeling the intensity of just what the words mean slap her in the face. Human? Become a human? How was that even possible? She could... become human. An image rises in her mind, an image of the boy she had fallen so deeply in love with and he holds his hand out to her. A burning sensation fills her body, her body trembling in want. She could become... just like him... She takes in a deep breath of water as she imagines it, having legs just like those human women, of being able to walk on the sand like a human... of being able to be on a boat just like she's always dreamed of...

Just like... the Prince...

"Can you... do that? Turn me human?" Kairi asks weakly, the hope within her making her float a few more inches than she normally floated, she was just too excited. The witch nods and smiles even more widely.

"Why my dear sweet child... this is what I do. This is what I live for, challenges like this." The girl says in a voice that suddenly makes her seem about a hundred years older than she actually appeared. This semblance of intense age is emphasized by the twisted half-smile present on her face, the hidden sorrow within her brown eyes, and by the way that she moves so slowly to do as the Princess before her commands. There is a secret tale within the woman's heart, something that she remembers from her own life... a moral to be learned, perhaps. But whatever the moral is... she would not reveal it today. The witch snaps her fingers, the gesture making a loud cracking noise underwater when it should have been absolutely silent. From some hidden spot in the stone walls, bottles of goodness knows what begins to float out towards Kairi.

The Princess yelps in surprise, obviously shocked to see some inanimate objects with the ability to move by themselves. The bottles, each one sparkling with some bizarre powder or liquid, dance around her, circling around her head as if they were a swarm of the tuna fish that loved to follow her when she swam in her father's gardens. One particularly daring bottle clinks gently against her temple before jumping back up into the water and swirling just above her reach. They swirl even faster, moving around the girl's body as the witch stops on yet another page.

She smiles.

There is a moment of silence before the witch begins to speak again, her eyes closed and her smile sweeter than even the most delicious of candies. "Why, I'll admit that in the past I've been rather nasty," The girl says as one bottle with bright green contents suddenly floats over to her, plopping itself down on her hand neatly. "It's been said that I'm nothing but a witch." She pops out the cork, peering inside at the green powder with a thoughtful look. After a few seconds, she pours out the sparkling green dust into her palm, making a small pile of what almost looked like sand in her hand. She raises her hand to her lips, closes her eyes for a moment, and blows it out around the Princess with a strong exhale. The dust swirls around Kairi, clinging to her skin as if glued there. Kairi screams, feeling the dust press harder against her flesh, like it was trying to burrow into her and go into her body.

The witch licks her finger again, and turns the page. "But this is what I do, help poor unfortunate merfolk like you." She tells the Seventh Princess in a quiet, low voice and her shoulders roll back as she leans onto the wall, her hard black eyes staring at the girl with an amused sort of hunger. "After all, you have no one else to turn to... no one but me." She says as two sets of hands suddenly curl around Kairi's waist and fins, pinning their long nails into her flesh and she screams again, feeling the sharp stab of what felt like needles or even flames go into her. Her entire body shivers but the girl does not struggle out of the creatures' embraces, feeling her body slacken against them as if she was falling into her lover's arms. The dust... Kairi winces, trying to move but her body still remains limp and beyond any last bit of her control. The dust... had done this...?

The witch glances behind Kairi and chuckles in amusement. "Flotsam, Jetsam, behave both of you." She says in a very fond voice, giving whatever was holding Kairi down a little wink as if she was trying to scold them but didn't have the heart to do it properly. A pair of twin giggles emerge from behind the Princess, sending a series of chills running down her spine like parasites were crawling across her flesh. Flotsam... and Jetsam...? Kairi tries to look behind her, if only out of sheer morbid curiosity to see what the heck kind of monster that the witch had made to be her servant. But no, her head would not work with her neck and she remains completely still and with her gaze firmly on the witch. The witch smirks coldly and another much larger glass bottle appears before her, suddenly snapping itself into existence despite all logic or reason that should have denied it from doing that.

Bottles zoom into place around her, each one popping itself open when she reaches for it and pours its contents into the empty jug-like container before her. "Now here's the deal. I'll give you a potion that'll turn you into a human. But there's a price, and we'll talk about it in a minute. You'll have one year-" She pauses as she pours a few drops of a black liquid into the glass bottle and momentarily seals it, picking it up and shaking it vigorously, mixing all of the ingredients together as best as she could for that stage of creation. "One year and that's it. You have that long to get a kiss of love from your little man." The witch grabs a floating tin from the air, plucks something that looked suspiciously like a human tongue from it and crushes it in her hand, pouring the juice into her concoction. "If you do get the kiss, you'll be human permanently. On the final day, if he hasn't kissed you and if there wasn't any emotion of love in this kiss, you'll turn back into a mermaid." She pauses again, sealing the bottle and mixing it up again. She smirks and looks at Kairi, her cold gaze making the girl's breath catch in her chest and stay there as if it was hiding from the intensity of the witch's eyes. Kairi is frightened, much more frightened than she had ever been in her life and for a moment, her mind shuts down as the witch finishes her comment. "And if you turn back into a mermaid, you belong to me."

Belong... to this witch...? She would never see her brother and her sisters again, never be with her father... She can see her little brother's happy face in her mind, the cheerful look in his blue eyes, the eyes that she shared with him and her older sisters Ella and Alice. Her family was all that she had in the world, her one precious thing... Snow's warning echoes in her mind and Kairi raises her head, her eyes taking on the steely appearance of her father's.

"And the payment?" She demands in the same way that her father had once spoken to the witch about her powers, in the same way that the old King had demanded her head after he found out about what she could do. It is the same voice that ordered her banishment from the Western Kingdom after the death of the Queen. The witch smiles at the memories, sweeping her black locks behind her ear as she drops one last ingredient into the bottle. It begins to foam, turning a bright emerald green before shifting into purple and then to pink. "It's nothing really, just a trifle. What I want is your voice." She says calmly, as if she was talking about the weather or even just the currents condition.

Kairi stares at her, wondering if she had even heard her right. Her voice? How could she give her her voice? Kairi pauses, looking at the bottles being propelled through the air and knows that if the witch says she could do something, she could probably do it. The witch grins, giving her a bored little shrug. She is already getting tired of the whole business, and Kairi could tell from the way she was beginning to look past her and at the two things holding her back.

"If I give you my voice...?"

"Well, your voice is the most intoxicating voice in the world. It will soothe me," the witch says honestly enough, shrugging again as she snaps her fingers. The two creatures suddenly drop Kairi, allowing her to fall slowly to the floor of the cave with a soft thud. "And anyway, even if you can't talk, you should never underestimate the power of body language, my dear." She chuckles and winks teasingly, running her hand over one of the creatures that had swum up to her. Kairi recoils at the sight of it, recognizing it as... no... it couldn't be... the corpse of a child, bloated and purple with age, nuzzles up against the witch's hand and kisses it, its lips crackling in a way that in no way a child should ever make with any part of its body.

They... were both...

The corpses of the two children, a boy and a girl, sit down on the floor underneath the witch, their gray and rotting eyes peering up at her in animalistic adoration, as if they were the pets of the girl above them. As if in response to these expressions of love, the witch holds out the bottle of now bright red liquid, idly swirling it in the bottle as she presents it to the Princess. The expression on her face is almost taunting, as if she was daring Kairi to take it or as if she thought that the girl was afraid and would run away than take the chance for what she wanted.

Kairi is afraid.

But she holds her hand out anyway, suddenly finding the effect of the green dust had disappeared or at least, didn't affect her ability to raise her arm. The witch swims over, her fin trailing gracefully in the wake of her movement, and she very quietly places the bottle into the girl's hand and curls her fingers around it. Without even pausing to think about it, Kairi pops the cork out and briefly wonders how the heck that the liquid was even able to stay in the bottle before she puts it to her lips. She closes her eyes as she feels the creature called Flotsam swim behind her and wrap his fingers around her throat. There is a moment of brief pain as she swallows the liquid down, drinking only enough to fill her mouth before she swallows.

It doesn't matter anyway. A single gulp is enough for the full effect of the potion to take place, it was all she needed to become what she wanted. As the girl crumples for a moment, her hand clutching at her stomach, the witch wretches the bottle of her grasp and bends down to whisper to the girl.

"My dear, if you want to cross the bridge, you'd better learn how to pay the toll. I would start swimming."

The Princess's eyes widen just enough as she realizes what she had done, and as the oxygen she now needed begins to run out.