149- Pageant
Challenge: [149] Pageant
Title: Organization
Wordcount: 386
It was boring. Boring and stupid. At least VIII thought so, and XIII agreed with him. So did most everyone else, but they had the good sense to keep quiet about it in front of the Superior. They had far better things to do with their time than standing there 'perfecting their presentation.'
They were Nobodies, for crying out loud. They wouldn't leave anyone alive long enough to care if they looked presentable or not.
The Superior's plan was straightforward enough: infect a world with Heartless, watch it fall entirely to Darkness, and sit back while Roxas harvested the hearts from the ruins. It was short and sweet, perfectly simple. So there was no need to stand around like a bunch of prom queen wannabes, attempting to grin intimidatingly into mirrors and fine-tune their threats. There was no need to enter any situation standing in a perfect little line, arranged according to number (height, as it turned out, caused too much squabbling over who was tallest). And the problems with discarding their current wardrobes were obvious-- the new uniforms were too easy to mix up, they utterly lacked individuality, and (as Lexaeus discovered all too quickly) the fabric had a tendency to shrink in the wash. But there was no arguing with the Superior.
Not even when he had added a 'clean-shaven' facet to the dress code. Luxord had fought and whined to the bitter end, but at last his beloved goatee was stolen away. Luckily enough (if one can call that lucky) he looked so pathetic without it that the Superior decided to make an exception to the rule. Just this once.
It must be done, Xemnas continued to say in his booming voice. And then he would go on to add why it must be done, but very few of them cared to remember that anymore. Something about perfection, about ultimate something-or-other. Nothing really worth their time or energy.
Anyone who had heard their complaints would have thought it ironic, perhaps. Even when the castle was torn to shreds by the swipe of a key, even when its every last inhabitant was wiped from existence, a boy and his friends would wake in the dead of night with hollow screams on their lips, remembering the deliberate perfection of their Organization.