Alone in the Darkness

[seasaltkeys]

Who: Roxas, Emizel, and whoever dares enter Twilight Town
What: Experimenting with nightmares. For Science.
Where: Twilight Town
When: Sometime after the dreams start
Warnings: Copious amount of nightmares, Roxas's Hayner-worthy idea, and potential yelling.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

At least, that's Roxas's rational. Emizel had been worried that if they defeated all the nightmares, he'd be in trouble, so what better way to test if there was a connection than if they could get a lot of nightmares.

The plan was simple. Get treats, and then get the nightmares to follow them to a location, see if Emizel felt more energetic, and then fight off the nightmares before it got out of hand.

Roxas supposed he underestimated how many nightmares they could summon with a few treats, but they could manage, right? It's not like there were any big ones or anything.

They'd be fine.

Comments

Several Hours Previous

[seasaltkeys]

"Alright, so here's what we'll do," Roxas said, pulling out some spirit treats he had collected and ignoring the longing gazes his spirits were giving them. "We use these to attract the nightmares here. Then we see if they have any effect on you, and once we know, then we can fight them off and figure out where to go from there." Even if the test was positive, Roxas didn't think that a large concentration of nightmares was going to go over well.

Re: Several Hours Previous

[trademark_skull]

"R-right.." Emizel nodded. He had been rather cool with this plan for awhile now, but now that they were finally doing it, he was getting a little suspicious. After all, he was perfectly aware of the larger ones. If this did end up attracting one of those, maybe they would cause a lot of trouble. However it wasn't like there was any other options given. If he can't find out where he was getting his Fear Energy from, or if he is really using it in these worlds, it could very easily be his end doing.

That said, he pulled out his own pile of treats. And yes, keeping them out of the way of Spirits this whole time was not an easy task. And still really isn't. It doesn't seem any of them were happy these treats were going to waste. And by waste we mean not going to them instead.

"Knew I should've stored all that munny for a reason. Just didn't think that reason would be this."

[seasaltkeys]

"Yeah, no kidding, but hopefully we'll make up the different," Roxas replied, shoving Bouncer away and then wiping his hand on his pant leg due to the drool.

"Collect as many as you can and get back here in...I dunno, five minutes? Do you think that will be enough time?"

[juniorganymedian]

This is Jeeves' first foray into another world. He'd chosen Twilight Town based on what he'd seen in the archives. He wanted to see the sun again. A sun. Even if the sky stood at sunset, it was something different from the eternal night of Traverse Town. And he still wasn't entirely eager to find himself with four legs in Ponyville.

He'd meant to just have a look around, possibly take some notes on his observations from the relatively safe area around the portal with his Komory Bat, Descartes, nearby for insurance. Only it wasn't relatively safe.

Descartes went shooting off ahead of him almost as soon as they stepped through the portal, drawn by squeak, grunts, bleats and the other noises of dream eaters. Not wanting to be left without some form of protection - he should have gone to the Mother of Invention for a gun first - Jeeves hurried after the spirit, then stopped in his tracks when they came to a place where the nightmares appeared to have thickened to a mob.

Jeeves had yet to see anything like this in the few days he had been here and no one talked about masses of nightmares joining in one place. Certainly not this many. "Descartes, come away," he ordered, but they had already drawn the interest of some of the outlying crowd. Roughly five nightmares - two Toximanders, and three Necho Cats broke away from the pack and headed for the valet and the bat, circling around before the pair could escape.

"Confuse them as much as possible," he ordered the bat, raising his gloved hands in a standard fighting stance. All he had at the moment were fisticuffs if Descartes couldn't ward them off. If Jeeves survived this, he resolved that his first task would be to correct that oversight.

[seasaltkeys]

Roxas was tired.

He didn't know how long he'd been fighting for, but it felt like the number of nightmares wasn't going down. But still, he had to keep fighting. This was his fault after all, and he'd clean it up.

It was near the train station that he found the next group of nightmares, and the guy trying to attack them with fists. Bouncer meow wounced his way into the throng, doing his best to help.

[juniorganymedian]

Jeeves had mostly just been attempting to dodge while his Komory Bat handled the actual fighting. He was trying to find a way out of the direct fray considering punching or kicking wild, magic-wielding animals was probably a poor decision. The arrival of the new spirit hailed an avenue for escape that the man took full advantage of.

Looking so animated as he ran out of the encircling nightmares and toward the young man who had appeared to accompany the animal was improper, but sometimes these things had to be set aside. He reached the young man - Roxas, his memory supplied from his review of the archives - and turned on his heel to look back toward where the dream eaters were fighting.

"Sir, we may wish to remove ourselves from this situation." Because whatever the situation was, it happened to be more dangerous than anything Jeeves had encountered in Traverse Town.

[seasaltkeys]

"Yeah, sure," Roxas replied. "Just as soon as I get rid of the nightmares."

He swung his keyblades in the direction of the nightmares, letting off a Fire spell, followed by blizzard. He was going to need an elixer or something after this. And ice cream. Definitely a lot of ice cream.

[juniorganymedian]

That would be counter to the purpose of removing themselves from the situation, Roxas. But then the boy loosed magic at the creatures and the protest against remaining died on Jeeves' lips. He'd seen Luna's variety of magic in her appearance spell, but this was more akin to 'witchcraft' than anything he'd witnessed thus far from a human. It was one thing to hear the others talk of their native magics in the communicator archives and very much another to see it. How did he gather power for such a thing? Was there an incantation to recite in his head?

Such questions could wait, though. There were still the nightmares to take care of. Descartes has managed to confuse the Necho Cats into fighting one another. "Do you have some strategy for their eradication, sir? It may be easier to simply disperse them." Break them up into packs, lead them away from one another. "Why are there even so many? Has something happened here?"

[seasaltkeys]

There are some people in this world who would employ those sorts of strategies, and others who would just prefer to mash the X button and hope for the best. Roxas was in the latter category.

"Not really. I was just gonna keep whacking them until they were gone." It was a solid strategy, despite the lack of finesse.

"And, I was trying something, but it didn't quite work out. That's why I'm cleaning it up now."

[realmenknitplushies]

Kanji wouldn't have gone to the Mother of Invention solo after his first experience there. Wouldn't have gone to Ponyville without someone to show him the ropes. But Twilight Town? It was ... a town. It couldn't be any worse than Traverse was, could it? And besides... he was in a better situation as far as defending himself went, now. The shield currently slung over his back was going some way towards helping him there. (He hoped, at least.)

So he was heading down into town, his companion at his side as ever, when he started to hear the sounds.
"The hell?" he muttered, turning a corner-

And then the first of the Nightmares noticed him.

[seasaltkeys]

Roxas had severely underestimated the lure that a couple treats represented. It seemed that, deep down, Nightmares were just like spirits and wanted to be spoiled. They were just a lot more violent in showing it.

Roxas never thought he'd be thankful for the baleful looks and excessive amounts of drool.

He threw Oathkeeper like a boomerang to get rid of some komory bats while swinging wildly with Oblivion, before noticing Kanji. A well timed fire spell takes out the nightmare and Roxas darted over.

"You okay?"

[realmenknitplushies]

If there're no sweet dreams for them, perhaps they're going for whatever sweets they can find?

Kanji had barely managed to ready his shield - ready it by his standards, at least, holding the rim ready to swing it - before the Nightmares started to head his way. The fireball was definitely a welcome sight. He smiled with relief.

"Yeah, I'm fine... Thanks, man. Nice shot."

[seasaltkeys]

Roxas shrugged.

"No problem. Sorry, there's a lot of nightmares out here today, so be careful," he explained, looking around for any more that might have gotten away, but it looked like his spirits had it under control.

"I'm trying to clean them up though."

[realmenknitplushies]

"Guess I didn't pick a good day to come lookin', huh." He scratches his head. Well... he's here, now.

"So when you say there's a lot of 'em... how many d'you mean?" Is he going to have to start kicking some Nightmare ass around here, too?

[seasaltkeys]

"Enough that it's kinda hard to wander around the town. They're kinda showing up everywhere rather than specific spots like usual."

The only reason Roxas had for that theory was that they were looking for treats.

Finally getting is party started

[trademark_skull]

Once he found just the right spot, Emizel laid out all his bait. He really wasn't quite sure how long it will take for what he was waiting for to happen, all the more reason he had to wait on bated breath. No turning back now.

Nothing felt different so far though. Then again, he didn't quite know what Fear Energy even was supposed to feel like. Especially when he wasn't that strong to notice that there was hardly any left before. Probably will just have to wait until the Nightmares come....if any come. Right now, they were still being awfully quiet. Even more than usual.

And that of course, was when his Meow Wow tried to dig through the candy treats instead.

"Moxie, no!" the demon tried to yank on the Spirit's tail. "I still need those to-" As if on cue, black smoke appeared in front of them. Welp, there they are. Oh geez, there were so many of them.

Both Emizel and Moxie froze in place due to the shear number. But then, r-right, Emizel had to drag them back. Bait was a success, now on to phase two...

[letteropener]

"Emizel... What have you done?"

The alicorn spoke without condemnation as she descended from the sky to a hover just above Emizel and his Spirit, but her tone spoke of how very serious this situation was.

[trademark_skull]

Yeah, he can certainly hear the discontent. It hit him hard in the gut. But now that he had a whole squad of Nightmares before him, he needed to keep moving, to the center of town.

"I can explain later if I have to."

[letteropener]

Celestia dropped from her hover to land at his side, transitioning smoothly to a canter. Disapproving of this rush of Nightmares as she might be, she would stand with him, instead of hovering above in safety. "I'd like to hear the explanation. In the meantime, do you have a plan?"

[trademark_skull]

Sadly that decision may just make things worse, maybe. Emizel had better hoped that she wouldn't destroy any of them, they needed as many as they could get.

"I need them to follow me."

A few hours later...

[seasaltkeys]

[Having exterminated most of the nightmares, bringing the total down to an acceptable level, Roxas returned to where he and Emizel had started this ridiculous experiment.

The demon wasn't back yet, so Roxas leaned against the wall to wait. He was tired. That had been a lot of nightmares and he made a mental note not to try that again.]

Welp

[trademark_skull]

[Figuring it could end bad if all three of them arrived in the room at once, Emizel peeked around the corner first. Sure enough, Roxas was there. Well, that did settle that one worry that he did get badly hurt, admittedly.]

...Uhmm...

[Yeah, hi. He brought some company. Dun be angry.]

[letteropener]

[Around the corner comes Celestia, using a wing to half-guide and half-urge Emizel to keep walking with her.]

Roxas, are you all right? Uninjured?

[First things first, after all.]

[hiptobe_eraqus]

[And then Eraqus follows, with his two Spirits in tow. He doesn't need to say anything...his expression makes it obvious what he's thinking. And he'll step in to help heal if it's necessary.]

[seasaltkeys]

[Roxas stands when he sees Emizel, and waves, before seeing Celestia and Eraqus following. That makes him concerned and so his guard is up.]

Uh...yeah, I'm fine. What's going on?