That Has Such People In It

[Mickey Mouse]

Continued from The Dante Verse.

Loose ends needed to be tied up.

The mouse stood in the same room as he had when he’d first volunteered to enter the competition on the behalf of Bree. Now, however, almost nobody remained with him in the chamber. Berthe lingered by the door. The mayor stood at his usual spot, behind the lectern.

Before him, Mickey Mouse stood holding enough omnilium to effectively construct more suitable fortifications to protect the little village from any more unwanted visitors.

“…I don’t know what to say.” The mayor of Bree was aghast. In just a few days, this… non-human, of all people, turned their luck around. No longer would they live in fear of the orc tribes that lurked in the shadowy forests nearby.

“You might try thank you,” Mickey sassed. Under normal circumstances he would have remained pleasant, but he had been through heck thanks to these people who probably still didn’t even like him that much, even after all he had done for them. Dante’s Abyss had not been easy.

He released the omnilium and watched as it floated up into the hands of the Secondary. The mayor grasped it and stared dumbfounded at it. They underestimated him. All of them. Never would they have expected he would place high enough to fulfill his promise. He had proven them very, very wrong. Perhaps they would not let their prejudices so heavily influence their judgments from now on.

Honestly, though, the mouse doubted it.

“Yes,” the mayor nodded, “thank you very much. The town of Bree is in your debt, Mr. Ears.” Mickey’s brow furrowed. He had almost forgotten about his alias.

“It’s Mickey Mouse,” the king corrected.

Hesitantly, the mayor nodded, his face contorting a bit. Behind him, Berthe chuckled a little bit. The mouse shot his friend a glance, and she simply smirked at him. “Anyway,” he said, turning his attention back to the mayor, “if ya want, I’ll get to work on summoning your wall. You don’t have any other Primes here, right?”

The mayor nodded, casting the bright white orb of omnilium back toward Mickey. The mouse caught it and turned on his heel. He placed a hand on the hilt of his keyblade, which he had summoned almost immediately upon his exit from the Dante Verse. It was good to have it back again.

“Your majesty.”

Mickey’s eyes narrowed at Berthe. Just as he had expected.

The guard-captain bowed dramatically—and rather sarcastically, Mickey noted—as he passed through the door back out into the town proper. “Not anymore, Berthe,” the mouse waved her off, “Obviously.”

Nobody would let that detail slip by unnoticed, though. Between that and his bronze medal placement in Dante’s Abyss, he had been given a celebrity’s welcome upon his return. Random passersby tipped their hats to him, and everyone in the town square called out to him, offering a discount on their wares. Honestly, Mickey did not even know why these people cared. He ruled over the Disney Realms, far away from the Omniverse; he wasn’t even their king. That title, according to information he had gleaned on his first visit to the village, belonged to some fella named Aragorn. And as far as Mickey was concerned, he could keep it.

He liked Camelot, don’t mistake him—he still held the same admiration for its beauty that he had felt upon his first trip through the portal from the Nexus. And the people, despite their inherent prejudice against any non-human, had good hearts. But something about this whole place—the Omniverse, that is—felt off, even after finding some friends in Dante’s Abyss. Trying to establish himself in any way, at this point at least, felt futile, and so he resolved to continue to search for a way out of here, back to his home, his friends, and his lady love.

On that point, though: he still had absolutely no idea how he could get home.

Granted, he had been mildly distracted. The competition, it seemed had turned out to be a much more involved and draining effort than Mickey had anticipated—far more than a simple tournament, to say the least. And between dealing with the realities of “kill or be killed”—he still felt some shame about accidentally killing that man while traveling with Deadpool—and trying to survive in the forest with Erza, Samus, Harry, and Pepsiman, he had not had much time to dwell on his eventual exit from this place.

In general, the events of Dante’s Abyss continued to haunt him incessantly. His guilt from the excursion with Deadpool lingered. The lasting effects of his temporary bond with that creature—the Orgosynth, it had called itself, when it telepathically spoke to him—still danced within his mind. The mystery of the energy he had been able to tap into at will twice during the tournament, where the large, yellow energy beam had come from, continued to mystify him. Though he knew now the deaths of his friends had not been real, the emotions that he had experienced had broken through the mouse’s traditional optimistic demeanor, and even now thinking back to those moments troubled him greatly.

He decided to focus on his work.

The wall went up quicker than he expected. Several hours passed as he summoned it brick-by-brick, but he would admit that it took far less time than it would have in his world, where a myriad of his subjects would have to scavenge for the materials and then make sure they fit just right. Here, only he had to work on it, and by nightfall, it rose up above the highest rooftop in Bree.

Finishing the job so quickly absolutely wore him out, however. Luckily, thanks to the hospitality of Berthe, he had a place he could retreat, where he could step back and reevaluate while letting the exhaustion of the tournament and the mass summoning slip away. Truly, the hulking Guard-Captain had been a blessing.

“So…” she said through a full mouth later that night at dinner, “Mickey, huh?”

The mouse nodded, “That’s what Pop tells me.”

“Cool little name,” she chewed. “Suits you. Way better than Ears.” She chortled heartily, placing her fork down on her plate. “Like, seriously, where’d you come up with that? I mean I guess you’ve got pretty gargantuan ears, yeah, but—”

“Okay, okay, Berthe,” the mouse smiled, shaking his head. The two continued casual conversation for a little while alone, and Mickey began to realize something: the Guard-Captain’s son had not come down for dinner. Mickey eyed the boy’s chair, wondering if Berthe would notice and say something. She followed his gaze, but seemed content to leave the stone unturned, so Mickey pressed a little bit. “Where’s Robbie?” he asked, eyeing Berthe suspiciously. She could sense his misgivings, certainly.

“He’s upstairs in bed,” the woman glanced up toward the boy’s room, “He’s been feelin’… just a bit under the weather lately. In fact, I wanted to talk to you about that.” Mickey perked up, curious as to what she meant. “I, uh… I wanted to say, you need to sleep in my bedroom tonight. I’m gonna stay with Robbie and watch him. I’m worried.”

“What’s wrong?” the mouse inquired, but Berthe shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, “But I aim to find out.”