itneverwas
in
damned
Night 52: East Wing, Hall A
[From here]It was before long Xemnas reached the final corridor he required to pass through in order to reach his destination. Though he was only three doors away from his goal, it hardly meant that the Nobody would already delusion himself with the fact that he had accomplished all this easily. Furthermore, he couldn't tell with certainty whether
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Scott edged toward the closet door, giving that . . . thing a huge-ass berth. Slowly, carefully. The slightest off movement could make things even worse than they were. At least, he was assuming. That would just be his bad luck that an inadvertent sneeze or something would unleash the fires of Hell. Almost there. Almost theeeeere-
Crackling from the intercom. Scott's muscles seized up, caught off-guard. The mad doctor himself was back again, and the woman's voice was conspicuously absent. He spoke of many things, things that started hitting closer to home than Scott would have liked. Risks, things never intended, sacrifices, rules, less concrete, fuzzy methods . . .
"Not me . . . I'm the exception."
Scott had started to lose track of which words Landel was speaking and which were his own thoughts.
And just like that, the writhing shadow before him reverted with a hum of electricity. It mirrored Scott's pose and form exactly, just as it should have. Scott breathed lightly, staring the shadow in the face and watching for any sudden movements. Nothing. He raised the bat experimentally over his shoulder, clutching the handle tightly. The shadow followed the movement to the tee. Seemingly normal.
It was only a few moments after that, however, that Scott noticed that something was still off - his shadow wasn't trembling the way he was.
That's when the voices started. At first they were muffled, as though he were hearing them in the background at a loud party. There was yelling, and somehow Scott could tell that it was at someone who maybe deserved it and maybe didn't. Whatever was going on, the person doing most of the yelling sounded fierce. Unforgiving. Soon enough, the yelling faded, replaced by something a little closer, but still fuzzy. Some words got through: "Moving . . . Toronto . . . Haven't told . . ." Scott stayed frozen where he was, transfixed by what he was hearing, though he didn't know why yet. The voice was drifting closer now. More words could be made out. ". . . should break up or whatever . . . it's not going to work out."
And suddenly the voice was right up close to him, clear as day. It was apparent now why the voice sounded familiar. It was his own.
"No. I cheated on Knives with you."
Scott's shadow gave one final shiver of triumph. Then, Negascott stepped out of the wall.
He looked the way he always did - just like Scott in every way, only with a monochrome, darkened colour pallet and a reversed logo on the front of his shirt. The only parts that stood out amid the dark tones were his eyes and permenent grin, like a malevolent Cheshire Cat smile. He gripped his own shadowy baseball bat, bouncing it against the palm of one hand. Clearly, he was ready to have some fun with Scott Pilgrim.
Scott's breathing had quickened. Matt and Roxas were starting to fade from his mind already. This always happened when this guy showed up. He felt locked in his own head with Negascott, and the only way to make him go away was to run as far as he could go. That wasn't an option here, though. There wasn't much hallway left behind them to run through, and he didn't even know if any other doors here would be unlocked. One wrong door picked and Negascott would be splattering him across the Institute walls. That only left one other only way to make him leave. Scott had to fight him - kill him. It was the only way to move on.
Scott raised the bat high overhead like a katana. Negascott mirrored the move gleefully, staring Scott straight in the eyes and daring him to come at him. Scott charged forward with a guttural yell:
"I don't need you!"
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Once he made it through the doorway, the psychological barrier that had prevented him from moving any faster than at a snail’s pace suddenly dissipated, and the Canadian scrambled back beside a small pile of pipes. Taking a deep breath, Matthew clutched his own pipe, gathered his courage and spun around to face his shadow.
However, rather than facing a twisted mass of death, his shadow actually appeared to be…normal. What? "It's...gone?" Struggling to believe it, Matthew brought his hand to his face, adjusting the glasses that were about to fall off his nose.
Oh hey, there it was again. Back in all its terrifying, churning and 'I'd kill you in an instant if I could become 3-dimensional' glory. Good to know that it hadn't forgotten Canada for long. Plus the way it spread itself across the cupboards and wall to tower above Matthew was very effective at making it look even scarier than it was previously.
A part of Matthew wanted to go into a corner and shut his eyes until all this disappeared.
However, before he could weigh the pro's and con's of doing that, the revival of the intercom stole all of Matthew's attention that wasn't targeted towards the terrifying existence covering the area around him. He swallowed, steeling his mind for more taunting from Mr. Landel or more upsetting messages from the poor girl.
But instead Mr. Landel seemed...resigned. Normally Matthew would take it as a good sign, as though Mr. Landel had somehow gotten himself into a losing position since the last intercom announcement, but its contrast to the messages before it only served to make this one seem even more sinister.
Matthew felt particularly upset at Landels closing words. Wrong about…what? If he was talking about Canada’s current goals, Matthew felt his goal in taking down Mr. Landel was quite correct, but he doubted that Mr. Landel had meant that…
As the electric hum filled the institute, Matthew watched as his shadow suddenly shrunk in size back to its normal shape. He didn’t relax at all. This was probably just another mocking transformation like the one before, and he was certain that it would spring back into its grotesque shape in a few moments.
‘…-na-da!’
Wait…did he just hear a voice?
‘I’m not America, I’m not anything like him!’
Who was that?
’…I’m better than him.’
Suddenly, Scott's shout echoed inside of the room. Forgetting the voices and shadow completely, Matthew rushed back to the entrance of the closet and skidded behind Scott as he charged something ahead of him. “What is it?!” He glanced past Scott quickly, to see that rather rushing towards a monster, Scott was instead attacking a person…more specifically himself.
“….Eh?” Confused, Matthew clutched onto his pipe tightly as he tried to understand what was happening and whether he should attack as well. However, if Matthew had remembered to look at the ground, he’d realize that his shadow was acting quite odd…twitching and shifting repeatedly; as though it were working away at an invisible barrier.
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The bats ricocheted off one another, the strikes perfectly mirrored. Negascott laughed silently through that obnoxious grin of his, winding up for another attack as Scott fell back a few steps from the impact. A whoosh as the shadow bat came rushing down toward Scott's head. Scott gave a grunt, taking advantage of his momentum and turning his stumble into a backward roll, just short of taking a hit. He almost rolled straight back into Matthew, who was dashing out of the closet right then. The only thing that kept that from happening was the sight of Matthew's own twisted shadow out of the corner of his eye ("Gah!" he exclaimed at it), causing him to add a turn to the side at the last second. Scott ended up crouched low to the ground, one hand on the floor for support as he tried to catch his breath.
A miss wasn't going to deter Negascott, it seemed. He was already going for yet another attack. Scott had to focus. Negascott was aggressive and totally evil; he wasn't going to let up, no matter what. The only way to beat him was to go at him with that same aggression, hitting his dark double before he could hit back. "Get the hell away from me! You're not supposed to be here! You're not supposed to be anywhere!" Scott shouted as he took a vicious swing at Negascott's legs.
Negascott hopped high up toward the ceiling and over the swing like it was nothing, however. He knew all of Scott's moves, could predict Scott's tactics, and had Scott's reflexes - it was almost cheating, really.
But then, that's fitting for you, isn't it? said a voice in Scott's head, which froze him for a moment.
"But... But I didn't-"
Coming down from the air, Negascott stuck his leg out downward, aiming a gravity-assisted kick straight for Scott's shoulder.
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If that were the case, Roxas couldn't think of what the experiment entailed, the events of each night seemingly random to him with only one common thread: they all worked to hurt the patients.
All of those thoughts ran through his head in the few seconds it took for the hum buzzing over their heads to run through the lights and eventually silence themselves... and for Scott's shadow to become something real, something tangible. Like a shadow should, it mirrored the other boy's moves perfectly with Scott wasting no time in heading an attack against it. If he had the mind, Roxas would have been impressed with Scott's movements - he definitely moved like a fighter, like he'd done this before -
"Watch out!"The Nobody reacted to the fight he saw without thought, gripping the pipe he held and twisting his hands around it - the movement seemed to cause a spark of light that started at his hands and moved downwards, shifting the pipe into golden metal, the end shifting into the teeth of a key. With the warm texture of the Keyblade under his gloves, the weight familiar and secure, Roxas swung his right arm back with the Keyblade held tightly and thrust it forward, throwing the key towards the shadow still in the air.
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But now that the shadow had materialized itself into something that appeared mostly human and normal, Matthew suddenly felt inexplicably less disturbed by this situation. While he couldn’t see the spirits that rumors sometimes said England could, accepting weird things like this wasn’t exactly difficult for Canada. Other than Ku…joshi?, there was his occasional run ins with General Winter, and he himself was also quite an abnormal part of the world.
Overall, Scott’s shadow clearly had a conscious mind, and although Matthew didn’t know what this shadows goal was, if Matthew assumption that this shadow worked on a similar level to him was correct, than he could possibly be talked out of attacking them.
In any other situation, he might have been impressed by both Scott I and Scott II fighting skills, but right now he was focused solely on getting the two to stop fighting before somebody hit the other a little too hard.
Swallowing back his nervousness, Matthew yelled out to the shadow as he dodged Scott’s attack. “Why are you fighting us?! We don’t have anything to do with Mr Landel! We are…trying to..” Oh look at that, they were too busy fighting to actually hear anything that the invisible Canadian said. That should have been more than a little predictable. So from the looks of it, instead of talking he would need to step in and pull them apart himself if he wanted to make them stop fighting. And-wait….was that a giant key?! Did Roxas just toss that?!
Matthew internally sobbed as he realized that the key had indeed come from Roxas. Now that Roxas was involved, the fight was probably only going to escalate from here on out. His hopes of stopping them before somebody ended up splattered across the floor (over what could be some terrible misunderstanding) was rapidly fading away on itself. Sure, Shadow-Scott seemed to have some crazy fighting skills that made Matthew want to get nowhere near him, but he needed to step in before it was too late!
Taking a deep breath, Matthew gathered his courage and began to move forward-
-and quickly stopped again when a figure materialized in front of him.
Matthew’s mouth opened and closed as he stumbled backwards, momentarily unable to comprehend what he was seeing. He had been so focused on Scott’s fighting that he forgot that his shadow might do the same thing that Scott’s had done.
But…if one ignored the darkened colouring, this guy looked identical to Canada. He was even dressed in Canada’s favorite white jacket- but how did this shadow know about that? His jacket had been missing since he arrived here!
Adjusting his glasses, Matthew stopped looking at the shadows jacket and forced himself to make contact with the shadow. That was when Canada discovered one more aspect completely off about this shadows appearance; he wore a sneer that Matthew didn’t think he could ever make. It wasn’t even an expression that America would carry; while America’s smirking was always filled with obnoxious confidence, this one consisted of nothing but cruelty and utter hatred. And all of these emotions seemed to be directed towards the person currently gawking at him.
Matthew’s mind was numb; he just stared, unable to recognize the silence hovering between the two of them. Fortunately, before the silence continued on for too long, his shadow decided to shatter it for them.
Hypocrite.
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The shadow spun in mid-air, twisting himself out of the path of the Keyblade and landing to the side of his originator. Just because he had missed getting hit didn't mean he didn't make contact with the Keyblade, however. Just before he hit the ground, as the thing was passing him by, NegaScott stuck out an arm and caught the weapon in his free hand. It pulled his arm back some with its remaining momentum, but stayed in his grip otherwise. His grin widened. Was that stupid blond yelling at him or something? Well, he wouldn't be for much longer with any luck.
Only just then did Scott the First start getting his wits back together. He could see NegaScott winding his arms back, preparing to launch a weapon each at his companions. Scott's eyes widened. I- He's going to hurt them! I gotta do something! Gotta do it fast! Doing the only thing that came to mind, Scott launched himself forward in a head-on tackle aimed straight at NegaScott's mid-section. He made contact just as his shadow self let go of the weapons, sending the bat flying at Matthew and the Keyblade back at Roxas. Both projectiles flew in such a way that they would be easier to dodge, but both men were still going to have to make an effort if they wanted to avoid getting hit completely. Whether that was thanks to the tackle or not was unclear.
NegaScott didn't stop grinning, even as the accuracy of his attack was thrown. See what happens when you try to hurt someone? the voice in Scott's head echoed as they tumbled back through the hall together. They have to scramble to avoid the worst of it. Even if you don't hit 'em hard, they're still gonna have to deal with the shock of what happened, or what could have happened. Don't you ever think about that? Don't you ever think?
NegaScott socked Scott in the jaw. Scott shoved forward and dealt his double the same straight back. Hurts, doesn't it? Hurts like you hurt Kim.
Scott punched his shadow to the ground.
Like you hurt Nat.
He shouted incoherently and started to throttle NegaScott by the neck.
Like you hurt Knives.
He dug his knee into NegaScott's solar plexus and squeezed his neck hard. He just had to kill him. He just had to kill him and this would all go away forever.
"So how's Ramona these days?"
Scott stopped when NegaScott spoke aloud. The words had been crystal clear even though his thumb had been a centimetre away from crushing the shadow's windpipe. Did Scott see yet, thought NegaScott? Was he going to . . . ? No. No, he wasn't ready yet. Whatever. The shadow chuckled low in its throat.
And just like that, he was gone.
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If he hadn't expected the shadow to catch the Keyblade, it was even more surprising when it was thrown back at him - the only thing that stopped Roxas from possibly getting his nose broken was his reflexes being quick enough to bring his arms up in front of him, squeezing his eyes shut -
- only for the Keyblade to disappear into fragments of light and reappear in his hand, held out in front of his face.
The effort of doing something even as simple as that made him nearly fall over, strength fading out of his legs. He saw the bat but couldn't see where it was going besides the general direction of Matthew. Knowing he wouldn't be able to move fast enough now, he called out to Matthew, "Look out!"
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