[KH] - Equal & Opposite Reactions (Xigbar/Xaldin) (Part II)

[quakewithfear]

            When Xaldin rose again, the first thing he saw was Xigbar crouched over the two bodies on the table, his face deep in Roxas’ remaining chest cavity.  He grunted as he pushed himself to his feet and glared at the cannibal.

“Xigbar, give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now.”

“’cause you won’t have anyone to fuck you.”  Xigbar didn’t even look up from where he was ripping out one of Roxas’ lungs with his teeth.  He sat back on his heels and grinned over at Xaldin.  “Deny it.”

“Get the fuck off of that table and get Vexen.  Don’t take another bite or I’ll rip out your other eye.”  Xaldin looked around at all the wreckage.

“What’re you gonna do to me if I don’t?”

“Don’t.  Try.  Me.  You’re already in enough trouble.”  Xaldin surveyed the four half-eaten corpses strewn around the room.

“Oh fine.”  Xigbar hopped off the counter and walked over to where Vexen was still groaning on the floor.

A few minutes later, when all three of the Nobodies were once again standing, Vexen looked around at the mess with an icy, impassive eye.

“Well.  One experiment completely ruined.”

“Sorry, Vexen.”  Even if he could have been apologetic, Xigbar wouldn’t have been.

“I’m sure.”  Vexen crossed his arms across his chest.

“You know, it could be remade.”  Xaldin looked down at the bodies.  “There’s still enough between the four halves that we could attempt a second try.”

“Really?”  The Academic came over to inspect the bodies for himself.  “Hm.  I suppose we could.  If certain people would cease interfering.”  At this point, he looked sideways at Xigbar.  “If we continue, you are going to be restrained.  Heavily.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

It was some time before they were ready to try the experiment again.  The mess made by the first attempt had to be cleaned and all of the still-viable parts gathered for use in round two.  A new way of restraining Xigbar had to be implemented.  That by itself took a fair amount of time since Xigbar was notoriously good at getting out of any sort of restraints.  Xaldin knew that there wasn’t a perfect method of restraining Xigbar, as he could literally bend space and escape at his leisure.  However, Xaldin knew that there wasn’t anything that he could really do unless Xigbar just decided to behave.

The chances of that happening are next to nil, but stranger things have happened.

Between Xaldin and Vexen’s efforts (and Xigbar occasionally chiming in to arrogantly inform them that “That’s not tight enough.  I’ll get out of that in two seconds.”), they managed to restrain Xigbar in such a way that satisfied all three of them.  His wrists were tied together and behind him and his ankles were similarly shackled.  A collar had been placed around his neck and fastened to the wall with a heavy chain.  But all of that wasn’t enough for Vexen.

“I want you to sew his mouth shut.”

Xaldin turned and looked at Vexen for a long, hard moment.  The academic didn’t respond in any way - he just looked back at Xaldin with his expressionless eyes.

“No.”

“It’s the only way to ensure that he’s not going to destroy our project again.”

“Not really.  I could just rip out the stitches.”  Xigbar grinned over at them.

“Shut up.”  Xaldin growled at him, then looked back at Vexen.  “I’m not going to do it.”

“You’re known as the most sadistic out of all of us and you’re unwilling to sew your lover’s mouth shut?”  Vexen raised a brow and continued acidly, “Is it because you have a soft spot for him or is it because the idea turns you on and you won’t resist being able to fuck him right here in the middle of the floor?”

The Lancer’s eyes bored into Vexen’s but he didn’t answer.  Correctly, Vexen guessed that he would in fact be more turned on and shrugged.

“Fuck him on your own time.  I don’t care.  I just want to get this accomplished.”

“Give me the needle.”

Vexen handed Xaldin the curved needle and black thread that he had previously used to stitch up the hybrid creature.  With these in hand, Xaldin turned to where Xigbar was sitting on the floor, chained to the wall.

“Vexen’s got you all figured out, Xally.”  Xigbar bared his teeth in a grin up at his lover.

“Shut up and keep your damn mouth closed.”  Xaldin crouched down and slid a hand under Xigbar’s chin, forcing him to look up.  He threaded the needle and pressed the tip against Xigbar’s lower lip, pausing for a few seconds before he punctured the skin.

It must have hurt like hell, but Xigbar sat still and hummed a tuneless little song as Xaldin methodically began to sew his mouth shut.  Black bars of thread criss-crossed his full lips and pressed them together.  When Xaldin was one, he sat back and looked critically at Xigbar.

“Try to open your mouth.”

Xigbar obeyed.  The threads stretched tight and pulled at the holes as he worked his jaw.  If he had still been human, blood would have been gushing from the holes, soaking the threads, dripping into his mouth and down his chin and to the floor.  But as it were, the fact that there was no blood and no apparent pain made the scene even more inhumane.

“That’s enough.  Now sit there and don’t try anything.”

Xigbar just blinked up at Xaldin and grinned, the threads pulling at his lips.  The Lancer turned away and walked back over to Vexen.

“So how are we going to do this?”

“The parts we originally used are largely destroyed.  We may be able to use scraps from them, but we’ll have to primarily use parts from the halves that we didn’t use.  He seems to have left most of those intact.”

“Fine.  But we can’t just sew two halves together.  He ate the heart.”  Xaldin paused.  “I’m assuming he ate the heart.  Did you, Xigbar?”

“Mmmmmmm…”

A shiver went up Xaldin’s spine upon hearing Xigbar’s low moan.  The temptation to go back over and bite Xigbar’s lips until the stitches ripped was so strong.  But like Vexen said, on his own time.

“He ate the heart.”  Xaldin repeated softly.

“Of course he ate the heart,” Vexen replied irritably.  “We’ll just have to combine the pieces of the remaining parts and do what we can.  I’ll salvage parts and you start putting them back together.”

Xaldin glanced over his shoulder and gave Vexen a distasteful look.  Of course, he got the really messy job.  Vexen loved to talk big about the pursuit of science and all that, but when it came down to it, he really disliked getting his hands dirty.  This is why Xaldin hadn’t ever, in life or as a Nobody, respected Vexen as a scientist.

The work was long and grueling.  It was difficult to assemble the assorted slabs of meat that Vexen placed on the table, even despite the fact that Xaldin was an expert on anatomy.  The pieces were often little more than scraps of skin.  Luckily, Xigbar hadn’t eaten the bones, although most of them had obviously been chewed on.  The muscles and innards themselves all had to be stitched back together as well since Xigbar’s rampage had destroyed the interior of the bodies as well as the exterior.

Xigbar certainly did his job well, Xaldin thought drily as he used a scalpel to cut the chewed edge off of a piece of skin.  This is going to take hours.

It did take hours.  Hours and hours of sewing slick, slimy innards and muscles to each other and then pulling a coat of patchwork flesh on over that.  Xaldin pushed eyes back into the empty sockets and then stood up, feeling his back crack for the second time that day.

“Finished.  Again.”

The finished product was truly a horrifying sight.  From the gnawed bones and slivers of flesh and fragments of gore, the two of them had constructed a body.  From the carnage and gore of utter destruction, they had hewn a new             life.

And what a life it was.  The boy on the stainless steel table was a monstrosity.  The skin had been stitched together from the remnants of Sora and Roxas’, giving it a patchwork appearance.  Black thread connected thousands of patches of skin, each one just slightly different in hue than the ones surrounding it.  Rows of stitches bisected the face that was a fragmented combination of Roxas’ and Sora’s.  The black lines made the face look like a stained-glass window that had been cracked into dozens of pieces, but had not yet broken.

“It’s…”

It was rare that Xaldin was at a loss for words, but there were none that could adequately describe what this… thing was.  It was beautiful.  It was grotesque.  It was a miracle.  It was a monster.  It was…

“Mmmm…”

Xigbar’s moan once again interrupted Xaldin’s thoughts.  The cannibal was sitting on his knees, staring hungrily at the proceedings like a starved animal.  His lips were curled into a horrific smile.  The strings that wired his mouth shut were stretched and tugged fiercely at his lips.  The pain would have made most mortals scream, but Xigbar didn’t appear to even register it.

“Shut up,” growled Xaldin.  It annoyed him that Xigbar found ways to be distracting, even while tied up and mostly mute.

“It’s almost complete.”  Vexen approached the body, holding a second syringe full of the white-gold liquid.  Xaldin wondered briefly how much of it he had and if Xemnas knew that Vexen had been tampering with his precious Kingdom Hearts.

“Do you have any clue what’s going to happen when you inject that stuff?”  Xaldin asked as Vexen held the needle up against the creature’s neck.

“I can only assume that it will come back to life again.  As to its exact temperament and condition, I can only guess.”  Vexen looked over at him.

“Don’t you think we should play it safe this time and tie it down so that it doesn’t try to kill us again?”

“There are no more restraints.  Between the creature and your lover, they’ve all been destroyed or rendered useless.”

“Great.  What if it happens all over again?”

Vexen squared his shoulders and looked imperiously at Xaldin.

“The creature should be significantly weakened this time around.  The chances that it’s even half as powerful are extremely unlikely.”

“You had better be right about this.”

Vexen slid the needle into the creature’s neck, injecting the essence of Kingdom Hearts into it.

For a few moments, all was still aside from Xigbar’s heavy breathing and the clanking of the chains binding him.  Xaldin and Vexen did not even dare to inhale.

After a full minute of waiting, there was no change in the creature.  No breathing, no change of color, no movement.  Nothing.

“Did it work?”  Xaldin turned his sharp eyes to Vexen.

“It should have.  There’s no reason why it shouldn’t.”  The academic looked perturbed.  Clearly, he was disappointed.  According to all appearances, the experiment had failed miserably.

A sudden, muted outburst from Xigbar caused the lancer to turn and look back at him.  Xigbar was straining towards them, his jaw working up and down.  Saliva trickled from between the black threads and down his chin.

“What is it?”  Xaldin cursed Vexen for forcing him to sew Xigbar’s mouth shut.  “Do you see something?”

“Look!”  Vexen’s voice rose.  “Xaldin look!”

Xaldin turned and saw that the creature’s finger was twitching.  The tip was quivering loosely, despite the tightness of the stitches.

“It worked!”  Vexen’s voice, while still toneless, had risen with excitement.  “Look at that!  It worked!”

The lancer watched quietly, feeling a strange, growing sense of dread.  He had no idea why, but there was something very, very wrong.

“Vexen, stop.”

The academic was leaning down over the creature, studying it critically.  It still hadn’t moved aside from the twitching finger.  In the background, Xigbar was still slavering towards them.

“What?”  Vexen glanced up at Xaldin.  “What could possibly be the problem?”

At that second, the creature’s hand shot up and wrapped itself around Vexen’s throat.  The creature’s eyes popped open at that moment, revealing two mismatched blue eyes - one milky and the other bloodshot and wide.  Taken by surprise, Vexen began to claw at the creature, the table, anything to get away.

“Xigbar!”  He shouted.

“Fuck!”  The lancer moved to restrain the creature, but it was far stronger than last time.  It ignored his blows and pushed itself into a sitting position, its grip never loosening on Vexen’s throat.

Not even Nobodies can survive without air and Vexen was perilously close to losing even his miserable excuse for a life at the hands of the thing he’d just made.  Dimly aware of the fact that Xigbar was tearing at the chains that bound him, Xaldin summoned a spear out of thin air and sliced off one of the hybrid creature’s arms.

As the limb fell to the floor, the Soroxas turned to Xaldin, staring blankly at him with its lifeless eyes.  With its remaining arm, it threw Vexen across the room as though he were nothing but a rag doll.

What happened?  Xaldin readied his spear, staring at the thing in front of him.  Vexen said that it should be weaker, but it’s got to be at least twice as strong as it was before.

With a groan, Vexen picked himself off the floor where he had landed.  They hadn’t bothered to clean up the blood from the last incident, so it was sticky and smelled strongly of copper.  It had tossed him close to where Xigbar was tied and lunging eagerly against his bindings like a wild dog against a rope.

This was going wrong.  It wasn’t supposed to have been like this.  Vexen clenched his teeth.  It wasn’t anger he felt, or even disappointment - he was incapable of feeling them, after all.  But it had all gone wrong!  As a scientist, he felt the sting of failure more strongly than most.  Then again, there was the matter of the failure in question actually attempting to kill him.  This was not acceptable at all.  Xaldin was currently occupying it in some sort of bout of physical combat.  Whatever suited him, Vexen supposed.  He, however, had no intention of staying here where the possibility of death was so high.

But what about the creature?  It must be disposed of, to be sure.  Aside from being a failure, it was also highly dangerous and must be kept secret at all costs.  If it didn’t kill them, Xemnas certainly would.

Xaldin was faltering, even against a bastard creature with one arm.  Vexen allowed himself a moment of admiration and curiosity - why was it so strong?  What had occurred in the second resurrection process to make it this way?  With a quick shake of the head, Vexen banished those thoughts.  If it was able to kill Xaldin, he was certainly no match for it.  There was nothing to do.

A sudden flash of brilliance struck Vexen.  Xaldin couldn’t kill it… and he certainly couldn’t… but that was only because of their sense of self-preservation.  All he had to do was find someone who didn’t care about getting hurt.

He turned his eyes to Xigbar and grabbed a knife, intending to turn the madman on the murderous hybrid and let the two of them kill each other, but Xigbar was no longer straining against his restraints.  He was utterly still, his one eye staring straight ahead.

Vexen followed his gaze and found himself staring at a most unnerving sight.

The creature had ripped Xaldin’s head from his neck and stood before them now, holding the severed head by the dreadlocks.  The black-coated body lay awkwardly behind it, never to move again.

It dropped the head and began to walk towards the remaining Organization members.  In his horror, Vexen had dropped the knife, but he picked it up again and quickly cut the lock of the chains that bound Xigbar.

“Kill it!”  He screamed at Xigbar.  “Kill it now!”

But Xigbar did not move.  He seemed unable to.  His entire body quivered and his mouth was stretched in a grin so wide that the threads were in danger of cutting through his lips.  His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.

“What the fuck are you waiting for?!  Kill it!”  Vexen was beginning to feel nervous again.  If Xigbar wasn’t going to kill it, they were all going to die.

Without warning, Xigbar moved.  No, he didn’t move.  He was simply not there one moment and there the next.  His teeth were at the creature’s legs, ripping out stitches and skin and muscle, then the arms, then the chest, almost too quickly for the eye to follow.  The creature was almost as fast, knocking Xigbar away with surprising speed and strength.

Vexen stared at the spectacle, horrified and yet intrigued.  He wished that it were possible to stage such a display of combat and get real stats and information.  The data would be invaluable….

But there were footsteps approaching from the outside.

“Xigbar!”  He shrieked.  “We have to leave!  Come on!”

Xigbar jumped away from the creature and crouched on the table like a wild animal.  It was fun, yes, a fun fight.  A good fight.  A didn’t-have-anything-to lose fight.  The best kind of fight.  He bared his teeth for another round, tasting the strange, diluted coppery blood on his teeth.  The creature, with its mangled legs, wobbled unsteadily, but still stared straight at him.

“Xigbar!”  Vexen edged near the cannibal.  Normally, he would just leave Xigbar to fight with this thing to his content, but whoever was approaching would find out about this and he couldn’t afford to let anything jeopardize his chances of getting out of this unscathed.  If he left Xigbar, there was a chance that Xigbar would survive and reveal everything.  With Xaldin’s body here, there was a handy scapegoat.  Getting as close as he dared, he seized the sniper by one of the trailing chains and yanked him back.  “Stop, you idiot!”  With his other hand, he opened a portal and pulled them both inside.  Less than a second later, the laboratory was silent.

Axel slowly opened the door to the laboratory.  It had been locked, of course, but melting locks was old-hat at this point.  It was dark in here, but it definitely had that “Roxas” feel that he’d been following for the last six fucking hours.  If Larxene had kidnapped him and tied him up down here just as another one of her sick jokes, he was going to be pissed.  He was annoyed that Roxas was having his little “vacation” in Twilight Town too, but he wasn’t about to do something that asshole-ish.

The front half of the lab was dark, almost like someone had broken the lights.  Axel stepped inside and heard the crunch of broken glass under his feet.  There was also a peculiar smell in the air - an acrid smell, like a bunch of spilt chemicals, but with a familiar, coppery smell mixed in there too.

“What the hell is that?”  Axel asked aloud as he crossed the floor, his boots crushing the broken glass underfoot.  “Guess the cleaning Nobodies have the day off.”  He cracked jokes to nobody in particular.

Axel realized that he’d spoken too soon once he reached the section of the lab that was still lit.

It was a display of total and utter chaos.  Equipment and furniture lay everywhere, upturned and most broken beyond any repair.  Beakers and vials of chemicals had been shattered or destroyed and their contents had spilled everywhere.  Papers were strewn about and all around, there was wreckage.  But the shock of that was nothing compared to the horror of the blood that covered everything.  It had been splashed on the walls, the ceiling, the tables and it coated the floor.

“What the fuck?”  Axel’s voice was strangely hoarse.  “What happened here?”

His eyes traveled over everything.  He wouldn’t normally be so shocked, but there was that feeling - the one he got whenever he was around Roxas.  Why would he have that feeling if Roxas weren’t here or hadn’t been here?  Suddenly, he caught sight of a body.  A headless body.

“Holy shit!”  Axel ran over to it, staring with utter horror.  He’d seen bodies before and killed his share of them, but never one without a head.  “What the hell?”

It was Xaldin.  Axel found his head nearby a few moments later and sat on the ground, staring at them.  He was trying to comprehend what he was seeing, but his head just wouldn’t accept what his eyes were telling him.

“Something came in here… and wrecked the lab… and managed to kill Xaldin.  Shit, I hope Xigbar doesn’t find out while I’m around.  And where the hell is Roxas in all this?”  He was beginning to feel anxious.

“Aaaaaa….kssssss…lllllll…”

A guttural voice hissed from the dark.  A shudder of sheer horror ran up Axel’s spine and he found himself momentarily paralyzed.

Something crawled slowly out of the dark in front of Axel.

It was a monster.  Pieces of flesh hung from a mutilated, patchwork body, dangling by black thread or by thin pieces of gore.  Blonde and brunette hair spotted the scalp and hung in lank sections, crusty with blood.  A face that Axel had once known so well stared out at him from the patches of skin on the thing’s face.  It leaned heavily on one arm and dragged the remains of its legs behind it.

“Aaaaaaaaaaks…llll…”  It moved towards him, reaching out with its stump of an arm.

Axel’s eyes were wide and he found that he couldn’t move.  He was paralyzed.  What was this thing?  It wasn’t Roxas….  It couldn’t be Roxas…

“R…Rox…”

But it was too much for Axel to even say the name.  He felt his body rebel against him and he hunched over, vomiting the contents of his stomach violently onto the bloody floor.  Even when his stomach was empty, he continued to dry-heave, convulsions wracking his body.

“Aaaaakslllll…”  It began to move closer.

Axel knew at that moment that he couldn’t let it touch him.  He began to scramble to his feet, slipping on his own vomit and falling again.

“No, get away from me!”  He shouted at it, pushing himself backwards.  “Don’t get near me!”

But the hybrid continued on, undeterred.  It clawed at the floor with the one hand that remained.  The stitches that held the fingertips onto the rest loosened and a few of them fell off, rolling in circles on the floor around the deformed hand.  Even with only bloody stumps, the hybrid continued to pull itself towards Axel.

A burst of adrenaline, fueled by Axel’s horror, surged through the Flurry and he kicked at the hybrid, scrambling to his feet.  Glass cut into his hands, but he didn’t even seem to notice.  With blood and vomit all over his coat, he pulled himself over the piles of wreckage and stumbled as fast as he could towards the door.  He heard it moaning behind him.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaakslllll….  Aaaaaksssssssssssssslllll…”

The sound of its voice made him want to vomit again, but Axel didn’t stop until he had thrown himself through the door and slammed it shut behind him.  The lock was broken, but that didn’t seem to even register in his mind as he pawed at it fruitlessly for a moment and then leaned back against the door.  Slowly, he slid down until he was sitting on the floor against it.  Axel held his head in his hands, his wide eyes peering through his gloved fingers.  He was only vaguely aware that there was still vomit on his face and that he was shaking.  There was horror behind that door.  The horror of something gone terribly, terribly wrong.