[Halloween Fics] - TWENTY-FIVE
[TWENTY-FIVE]
The subjects were almost depressingly easy to obtain. There was a possibility that this disappointed Vexen - after all, there was something to be said for the thrill of capturing your prey - but any disappointment he felt was far outweighed by the excitement of being able to commence procedures. Experimentation had been what Even had lived for while a human at Radient Garden. The loss of his heart and subsequent transubstantiation of his body into Vexen had changed little about what pleased him.
Because Vexen himself had been deeply preoccupied in making the necessary preparations, Xigbar and Xaldin had gone to catch the subjects. The habit of referring to the object of experimentation as “the subject” was one that Vexen had acquired in life. It was an idiom of science, for one thing. For another, it had been a method by which he could harden himself to performing sometimes cruel experiments on living things. By reducing these living things to merely “subjects,” it became easier to do the things he did. Despite the fact that he now had no heart and was therefore incapable of feeling anything towards the beings he experimented on, Vexen retained the phrase out of habit.
“I’m disappointed, Vexen.” Xigbar returned first. His quarry was tucked casually under one arm, limp and unconscious. “You made it sound as if Sora was going to be the harder one to catch. This was easier than taking potshots off lost kids in Traverse Town.”
“I trust you didn’t damage the subject?” Vexen barely glanced up from his notes.
“Nope. I’m waitin’ my turn.” The Freeshooter dumped the unconscious boy on one of two stainless steel operating tables that were placed side-by-side in the middle of the room. He sat on one of the counters and looked at Sora with a gaze that wasn’t made any less intense by the absence of one eye. “…He looks awful yummy, though…”
“Is the subject thoroughly unconscious?” No longer occupied with his notes, Vexen walked briskly over to the table. “It would be inconvenient if he woke in the middle of the procedures.”
“Dontcha trust me?” Xigbar grinned over at the Chilly Academic, who gave Xigbar a look that would have been hard-pressed to be more frigid. Laughing, Xigbar rocked back and forth on the table. “Smart choice.”
“Only a fool would trust any of us, but not even a fool would trust you,” said Vexen.
“That’s a fine way to speak to someone who is doing you a favor.”
The harsh, low growl of Xaldin’s voice was unmistakable. Just as Xigbar had done a short while earlier, he stood in the doorway of the laboratory with a boy under one arm. However, this boy was fully conscious and very much struggling against his captor.
“What the hell is going on here?! Xaldin, you bastard, what are you doing to me?! Let me go right now!” Despite all his struggling, XIII remained firmly within Xaldin’s grasp.
“Some favor.” Vexen looked coldly put out. “I thought I asked for him to be subdued and unharmed, Xaldin.”
“I couldn’t subdue him without putting a big hole in his head. I could only assume you’d prefer him intact over unconscious.” Xaldin raised a brow at Vexen, daring him to protest further.
IV shrugged. “Xigbar, if you would be so kind.”
“I’ve been wantin’ to do this a long time,” grinned Xigbar. He hopped off the counter and walked over to Xaldin and Roxas.
Roxas’ eyes widened as Xigbar advanced. He had no idea what was happening or what was about to happen. A figure, familiar though Roxas was sure he had never seen it before was in a heap on an operating table. His blue eyes widened.
“Is that Sora?! What is Sora doing here?! What the fuck are you doing?!” His voice rose hysterically, nearly to the point of screaming.
“Shut him up already,” snarled Xaldin. His grasp on the boy was slipping as Roxas’ struggles for freedom became increasingly frantic.
In life, Braig’s scientific specialty had been the nervous system, mainly concentrated on the effects of sensory deprivation. He’d made an extensive study of pressure points in the body and knew more about physical weaknesses and strengths than the rest of them. It was a simple matter of pressing two fingers on a certain spot on Roxas’ neck. The boy went limp and sagged against Xaldin’s arms.
“Place him on the other table,” commanded Vexen. The lancer did so, arranging both Roxas and Sora so that they were both stretched out on the tables on their backs. Having the two of them side-by-side in such close proximity made the numerous similarities between them all the more apparent.
“Such a unique opportunity to study the relationship between Nobody and Other,” Vexen breathed. For the first time, his voice rang of something other than apathy. A slight note of fanaticism had snuck in. “This is the first time that it’s ever been possible to perform an experiment of this nature.”
“So what’s the plan?” Xigbar resumed his seat on the counter, content to just sit and watch the proceedings. As far as he was concerned, his part in this operation had been carried out. All that was left was for him to sit back and wait to reap the rewards.
“The plan is,” Vexen paused, readying a tray of tools. “Xaldin, as the most skilled surgeon, is going to perform the actual proceedings and I’m going to supervise. You’re going to keep your hands out of the way.”
“As long as you give me what you promised, I’ll be quieter’n an Assassin.” Xigbar reached for a scalpel and began to idly carve designs into his coat.
“Humph. Speaking of which…” IV turned to his dreadlocked associate. “Did you take precautions for VIII? This procedure is going to take some time and there’s no doubt that that conniving nitwit is going to wonder where XIII is.”
Xaldin nodded curtly. “It’s taken care of. He thinks that Roxas is exploring worlds or some such nonsense and has no doubt gone off to look for him.”
“Good. That would have been the last thing we needed.” Satisfied, Vexen turned back to his two subjects - the brown-haired Other and his blonde Nobody. Strange, they looked almost peaceful lying there side by side. In another time, another place, they could have been brothers asleep together after a long day of sunshine and making happy memories.
But no. They were not anything as romantic or sentimental as brothers. Sora and Roxas were fragments of the same person - two fragments who had been violently ripped apart and must inexorably be rejoined. It was the goal of all Nobodies. In actuality, XIII should be honored that he was the first of all of them to get the chance.
“Sora is to be known henceforth as Other and Roxas as Nobody,” said Vexen. He opened a thick book that was full of handwritten notes and diagrams. “After removing all clothing, the first incisions are to be identical - starting just above the navel and extended upwards in a straight line to the bottom of the ribcage.”
The operation proceeded that way for quite some time. Vexen would call out instructions to Xaldin, who would execute them with hands made swift and sure by years of practice. Although his desire to join in the fun and games was almost painfully clear, Xigbar kept his word and remained on the counter, though he fidgeted constantly.
Differences between the two bodies had been in Vexen’s hypotheses, of course, but the degree of difference surprised even him. Being a Nobody and thus lacking a heart, Roxas had no blood. Organs lay fully formed within his stomach and chest, but were completely dry. Dry and cold. Compared to the slick, wet, warm innards within Sora, it was as if he was made of paper.
“What are you going to do with those guts?” Xigbar leaned forward and twisted his hands in Xaldin’s dreadlocks, sliding them through his fingers as if pretending they were the intestines that he so wanted to play with.
Without even looking back at his lover, Xaldin lifted one of the long organs coiled neatly on the stainless steel table beside Sora’s unconscious body and tossed it back at him. The Freeshooter snatched it out of thin air and held it to his lips. With a grin of absolute delight, he began to devour it, slurping it down his throat like noodles. When he was done, blood ringed his mouth and stained his fingers and teeth, making his appearance all the more demonic.
“Give me something with bones next,” he leaned forward and kissed Xaldin’s jaw from behind, a hand sneaking around the lancer’s waist.
“Stop interfering,” Vexen said icily. “Don’t distract him.”
“Oh, Xally can handle a lot more distraction than this and still keep his focus, trust me.” Xigbar bit Xaldin’s ear and smirked at Vexen. “Look at his hands. Still as steady as anything.”
“I don’t care. Get off.” Vexen stooped and picked a severed right hand - Sora’s - and tossed it at Xigbar. “Here. Occupy yourself with that.”
Xigbar didn’t need to be told twice. He sucked on the fingers first, savoring the taste of old sweat mingled with the revenant tang of metal left by the keyblade’s hilt. Oh, but under all of it was still the part that Xigbar craved most - the flesh and blood. He’d never tasted Sora before. In fact, he’d never really even considered the possibility of consuming the boy, but now he wondered why. If he had known how delectable the boy’s flesh tasted, he would have had a much harder time bringing him back to Vexen in one piece.
As Xigbar occupied himself in methodically and gleefully eating the hand and spitting the bones out into a growing pile on the floor, Xaldin was reaching an end to his own endeavors. As per Vexen’s instructions, both Nobody and Other were now both severed down the middle, each half-person in two halves themselves. It was a strange and bizarre representation of duplicity - four quarters of one person lying exposed on stainless-steel tables, their intimate workings wrenched open for all the world to see. Roxas was still as clean and dead as a cut-open doll, but Sora was nothing but red and yellow and horror and gore. Blood dripped off the edges of the table and fell in long ribbon strands to the floor. Xaldin stepped into this puddle of life thoughtlessly and his boots left bright-read treaded patterns on the white floor as he circled the tables.
Vexen assisted Xaldin in placing one half of each subject aside and, using his own special power, froze them. They only needed one half of each for this particular experiment, yes, but there was no point in wasting specimens. It was clear that Xigbar would have preferred it if the discarded corpse halves had been entrusted to him to dispose of, but he was satisfied with the several bits of flesh and meat that Xaldin had tossed him over the course of the operation to placate him.
“The next order of business is the real part of the experiment,” Vexen turned to the Freeshooter and the lancer after he’d frozen the remaining halves. “We have successfully created the components for a new, whole being. With these remaining halves, we shall attempt to fuse them together to create what we hope will be a whole person that isn’t Nobody or Other, but both.”
The subjects were almost depressingly easy to obtain. There was a possibility that this disappointed Vexen - after all, there was something to be said for the thrill of capturing your prey - but any disappointment he felt was far outweighed by the excitement of being able to commence procedures. Experimentation had been what Even had lived for while a human at Radient Garden. The loss of his heart and subsequent transubstantiation of his body into Vexen had changed little about what pleased him.
Because Vexen himself had been deeply preoccupied in making the necessary preparations, Xigbar and Xaldin had gone to catch the subjects. The habit of referring to the object of experimentation as “the subject” was one that Vexen had acquired in life. It was an idiom of science, for one thing. For another, it had been a method by which he could harden himself to performing sometimes cruel experiments on living things. By reducing these living things to merely “subjects,” it became easier to do the things he did. Despite the fact that he now had no heart and was therefore incapable of feeling anything towards the beings he experimented on, Vexen retained the phrase out of habit.
“I’m disappointed, Vexen.” Xigbar returned first. His quarry was tucked casually under one arm, limp and unconscious. “You made it sound as if Sora was going to be the harder one to catch. This was easier than taking potshots off lost kids in Traverse Town.”
“I trust you didn’t damage the subject?” Vexen barely glanced up from his notes.
“Nope. I’m waitin’ my turn.” The Freeshooter dumped the unconscious boy on one of two stainless steel operating tables that were placed side-by-side in the middle of the room. He sat on one of the counters and looked at Sora with a gaze that wasn’t made any less intense by the absence of one eye. “…He looks awful yummy, though…”
“Is the subject thoroughly unconscious?” No longer occupied with his notes, Vexen walked briskly over to the table. “It would be inconvenient if he woke in the middle of the procedures.”
“Dontcha trust me?” Xigbar grinned over at the Chilly Academic, who gave Xigbar a look that would have been hard-pressed to be more frigid. Laughing, Xigbar rocked back and forth on the table. “Smart choice.”
“Only a fool would trust any of us, but not even a fool would trust you,” said Vexen.
“That’s a fine way to speak to someone who is doing you a favor.”
The harsh, low growl of Xaldin’s voice was unmistakable. Just as Xigbar had done a short while earlier, he stood in the doorway of the laboratory with a boy under one arm. However, this boy was fully conscious and very much struggling against his captor.
“What the hell is going on here?! Xaldin, you bastard, what are you doing to me?! Let me go right now!” Despite all his struggling, XIII remained firmly within Xaldin’s grasp.
“Some favor.” Vexen looked coldly put out. “I thought I asked for him to be subdued and unharmed, Xaldin.”
“I couldn’t subdue him without putting a big hole in his head. I could only assume you’d prefer him intact over unconscious.” Xaldin raised a brow at Vexen, daring him to protest further.
IV shrugged. “Xigbar, if you would be so kind.”
“I’ve been wantin’ to do this a long time,” grinned Xigbar. He hopped off the counter and walked over to Xaldin and Roxas.
Roxas’ eyes widened as Xigbar advanced. He had no idea what was happening or what was about to happen. A figure, familiar though Roxas was sure he had never seen it before was in a heap on an operating table. His blue eyes widened.
“Is that Sora?! What is Sora doing here?! What the fuck are you doing?!” His voice rose hysterically, nearly to the point of screaming.
“Shut him up already,” snarled Xaldin. His grasp on the boy was slipping as Roxas’ struggles for freedom became increasingly frantic.
In life, Braig’s scientific specialty had been the nervous system, mainly concentrated on the effects of sensory deprivation. He’d made an extensive study of pressure points in the body and knew more about physical weaknesses and strengths than the rest of them. It was a simple matter of pressing two fingers on a certain spot on Roxas’ neck. The boy went limp and sagged against Xaldin’s arms.
“Place him on the other table,” commanded Vexen. The lancer did so, arranging both Roxas and Sora so that they were both stretched out on the tables on their backs. Having the two of them side-by-side in such close proximity made the numerous similarities between them all the more apparent.
“Such a unique opportunity to study the relationship between Nobody and Other,” Vexen breathed. For the first time, his voice rang of something other than apathy. A slight note of fanaticism had snuck in. “This is the first time that it’s ever been possible to perform an experiment of this nature.”
“So what’s the plan?” Xigbar resumed his seat on the counter, content to just sit and watch the proceedings. As far as he was concerned, his part in this operation had been carried out. All that was left was for him to sit back and wait to reap the rewards.
“The plan is,” Vexen paused, readying a tray of tools. “Xaldin, as the most skilled surgeon, is going to perform the actual proceedings and I’m going to supervise. You’re going to keep your hands out of the way.”
“As long as you give me what you promised, I’ll be quieter’n an Assassin.” Xigbar reached for a scalpel and began to idly carve designs into his coat.
“Humph. Speaking of which…” IV turned to his dreadlocked associate. “Did you take precautions for VIII? This procedure is going to take some time and there’s no doubt that that conniving nitwit is going to wonder where XIII is.”
Xaldin nodded curtly. “It’s taken care of. He thinks that Roxas is exploring worlds or some such nonsense and has no doubt gone off to look for him.”
“Good. That would have been the last thing we needed.” Satisfied, Vexen turned back to his two subjects - the brown-haired Other and his blonde Nobody. Strange, they looked almost peaceful lying there side by side. In another time, another place, they could have been brothers asleep together after a long day of sunshine and making happy memories.
But no. They were not anything as romantic or sentimental as brothers. Sora and Roxas were fragments of the same person - two fragments who had been violently ripped apart and must inexorably be rejoined. It was the goal of all Nobodies. In actuality, XIII should be honored that he was the first of all of them to get the chance.
“Sora is to be known henceforth as Other and Roxas as Nobody,” said Vexen. He opened a thick book that was full of handwritten notes and diagrams. “After removing all clothing, the first incisions are to be identical - starting just above the navel and extended upwards in a straight line to the bottom of the ribcage.”
The operation proceeded that way for quite some time. Vexen would call out instructions to Xaldin, who would execute them with hands made swift and sure by years of practice. Although his desire to join in the fun and games was almost painfully clear, Xigbar kept his word and remained on the counter, though he fidgeted constantly.
Differences between the two bodies had been in Vexen’s hypotheses, of course, but the degree of difference surprised even him. Being a Nobody and thus lacking a heart, Roxas had no blood. Organs lay fully formed within his stomach and chest, but were completely dry. Dry and cold. Compared to the slick, wet, warm innards within Sora, it was as if he was made of paper.
“What are you going to do with those guts?” Xigbar leaned forward and twisted his hands in Xaldin’s dreadlocks, sliding them through his fingers as if pretending they were the intestines that he so wanted to play with.
Without even looking back at his lover, Xaldin lifted one of the long organs coiled neatly on the stainless steel table beside Sora’s unconscious body and tossed it back at him. The Freeshooter snatched it out of thin air and held it to his lips. With a grin of absolute delight, he began to devour it, slurping it down his throat like noodles. When he was done, blood ringed his mouth and stained his fingers and teeth, making his appearance all the more demonic.
“Give me something with bones next,” he leaned forward and kissed Xaldin’s jaw from behind, a hand sneaking around the lancer’s waist.
“Stop interfering,” Vexen said icily. “Don’t distract him.”
“Oh, Xally can handle a lot more distraction than this and still keep his focus, trust me.” Xigbar bit Xaldin’s ear and smirked at Vexen. “Look at his hands. Still as steady as anything.”
“I don’t care. Get off.” Vexen stooped and picked a severed right hand - Sora’s - and tossed it at Xigbar. “Here. Occupy yourself with that.”
Xigbar didn’t need to be told twice. He sucked on the fingers first, savoring the taste of old sweat mingled with the revenant tang of metal left by the keyblade’s hilt. Oh, but under all of it was still the part that Xigbar craved most - the flesh and blood. He’d never tasted Sora before. In fact, he’d never really even considered the possibility of consuming the boy, but now he wondered why. If he had known how delectable the boy’s flesh tasted, he would have had a much harder time bringing him back to Vexen in one piece.
As Xigbar occupied himself in methodically and gleefully eating the hand and spitting the bones out into a growing pile on the floor, Xaldin was reaching an end to his own endeavors. As per Vexen’s instructions, both Nobody and Other were now both severed down the middle, each half-person in two halves themselves. It was a strange and bizarre representation of duplicity - four quarters of one person lying exposed on stainless-steel tables, their intimate workings wrenched open for all the world to see. Roxas was still as clean and dead as a cut-open doll, but Sora was nothing but red and yellow and horror and gore. Blood dripped off the edges of the table and fell in long ribbon strands to the floor. Xaldin stepped into this puddle of life thoughtlessly and his boots left bright-read treaded patterns on the white floor as he circled the tables.
Vexen assisted Xaldin in placing one half of each subject aside and, using his own special power, froze them. They only needed one half of each for this particular experiment, yes, but there was no point in wasting specimens. It was clear that Xigbar would have preferred it if the discarded corpse halves had been entrusted to him to dispose of, but he was satisfied with the several bits of flesh and meat that Xaldin had tossed him over the course of the operation to placate him.
“The next order of business is the real part of the experiment,” Vexen turned to the Freeshooter and the lancer after he’d frozen the remaining halves. “We have successfully created the components for a new, whole being. With these remaining halves, we shall attempt to fuse them together to create what we hope will be a whole person that isn’t Nobody or Other, but both.”