[KH2] - Bad Affection (Xigbar/Xaldin/Replica) (Chapter 7)
"Hey Roxas, wanna go hang out with me after you get out of school?"
"No. What the hell are you stalking me for? Go away."
“Awww c’mon… Don’t be like that! We always have lots of fun together!”
Axel tossed uneasily in his sleep. The night's exploits had placed him in a strange frame of mind and now he was paying the price for his fun in his dreams.
He hated dreams. They were just memories that he couldn’t escape, an endless repetition of terrible thoughts that he couldn’t distract himself from.
Axel sat straight up in bed, his entire body seized up and tense. His chest heaved and he panted for a few minutes before he was able to relax again.
“Shit… That does it, ‘m never going to Braig’s that late at night again. Ever.” Axel ran a hand through his hair and kicked the covers aside. He felt stifled. “Cool it, Axel. You’ve got to keep it together until you go to the lab on Sunday… You have to keep your head or that fucking cannibal will take it. You’re on a mission. Don’t fuck up.”
But all that was far easier said than done and Axel knew it well. He grabbed a pack of Gold Chocobo cigarettes off his bedside table and lit up. Ash fell into the blankets but Axel didn’t care. He exhaled deeply.
Roxas wouldn’t know what to make of him now… Shit, Axel hardly knew what to make of himself. Hard to believe how much he’d changed in so little time. Would Roxas even recognize him now?
“I doubt it.” Axel answered his own question and mashed the cigarette out in a mostly-empty glass of whiskey. “But I’m gonna find him… I made a promise.”
~
The room was still pitch-black when Riku was awakened. A spidery hand slid down its torso, over the ribs and across the taut belly, past the navel and then back up again, languidly trickling sensations across its skin. Eyes still closed, Riku tilted its chin up.
“Master…” It murmured.
“Hush.”
The clone quieted at the command. The hand wrapped around his neck and squeezed gently.
“It’s fun when Dilan’s out of town, isn’t it?” Braig squeezed a little tighter. He couldn’t see in the dark, but he could hear Riku’s breathing gradually become more labored.
“Yes, master…”
Braig squeezed tighter, grinning to himself in the dark. He could crush Riku’s windpipe right then and there and the clone wouldn’t protest. It would just continue to exist until it died. Absolutely nothing gave Braig a bigger thrill than the thought of the boy’s body just stopping at his command. Not a scream. Not a whimper. Not a sigh. Just silence.
Riku could feel its breath rush past its drying lips and hitch in its throat on the exhale. Master was good… Master wouldn’t let it die. And even if he did, Master would have a good reason. The clone wasn’t important, after all.
But Braig released his hold on the clone’s throat and oxygen flowed once again into Riku’s burning lungs. It inhaled deeply, gratefully and rolled onto its side to face its master.
“Touch me again, Master. Please.”
A laugh dripped from Braig’s lips.
“Still hungry for more after all the fun we had last night, mm? Looks like you’re my kid after all.” Braig reached over and played with Riku’s hair. The clone practically purred at the compliment. It loved the idea of being Master’s son. Master’s prodigy. It hardly dared to hope that one day it could even become Master’s legacy.
“Why do you like me to touch you, Riku?” Braig rolled onto his back and pulled Riku on top of him, making it so that the clone was straddling him. He loved getting to just lay back and look at his perfect little clone. His pet, his son, his victim… and now his lover.
“Because you like it. It makes you happy and I want to make you happy.”
“Oh yeah?” A smirk twisted Braig’s lips in the dark. “What a good son. Do you know what makes me happy?”
“Please tell me.” Riku was desperate for more ways to please its master. Maybe Braig would even praise him. Or, if it was extremely good, Master might even reward it. The thought of another reward like the one Master had given last night made it tremble with excitement. The things master had done in the bloody alley with the still-warm corpse… how badly it had hurt, but how much Riku had craved it. Master had fucked Riku brutally on the asphalt and up against the cinder block walls, so hard that they’d taken almost all the skin off Riku’s back. But Riku had loved that too, just because of the happy sounds Master had made in his throat when he’d dug his fingers into the raw flesh. Braig had licked it clean too, nibbling off the stringy bits of skin that still clung on…
“Going and sneaking around in Even’s lab, which is what you and Red and I are going to do tomorrow. But you and I still have to find some way to occupy today, don’t we?”
“Yes, Master. What are we going to do?” Riku placed tentative hands on Braig’s chest and felt the scars there from Dilan’s playing. Dilan always stitched Braig up afterwards, but the sheer number of scars on the cannibal’s body was amazing. It was one of Riku’s favorite sights in the world - walking into their room on a lazy Saturday morning to find his masters still in bed, Dilan calmly stitching up Braig’s back. Braig always sat hunched over, bleary-eyed and snappish from blood loss and lack of sleep. Dilan would lean forward and kiss the back of Braig’s neck softly as he pulled the needle through. They would usually allow Riku to join them on the bed, especially if it brought them their morning coffee or tea. It would sit on the edge of the bed, completely enthralled by the sight. And if Riku was behaving itself particularly well, Dilan sometimes allowed it to sew a few stitches.
“What the hell - am I a pincushion now?” Braig would grunt irritably as Riku began to stitch up another open gash. But he would stay still nevertheless.
“It’s got to learn somehow and you’re a good test subject. You only learn so much from cadavers. No, the needle goes in here,” Dilan would correct Riku. “And I want it to be able to take apart and put an entire body back together by the time it’s fourteen.”
“Does it have to be my body?”
“Why do you think I’m teaching him to do this? Someone has to know how to put your ass back together the morning after. I get tired of doing it.”
The two of them would argue for the rest of the morning, but it wasn’t the snarling kind of arguing that they did when they were angry. Instead it was almost kind of fun and they usually ended up going to the kitchen and making a big breakfast together afterwards.
“What we’re gonna do, kiddo, is we’re gonna teach you something very important. More important than most anything you’re gonna learn in school.” Braig pushed Riku off him and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The clone could tell from the light gleaming in Braig’s eye that today was going to be interesting. “Today we’re gonna teach you how to fight. Do you know why?”
“Why, Master?”
“No, I’m really asking you.” Braig was terribly amused. “Why is it important for you to learn how to fight?”
The clone thought hard for a few moments as it got off the bed. It wasn’t often that Master asked it a direct question, so it wanted to be sure to provide a satisfactory answer.
“So that I can defend myself if anyone other than you tries to touch me.” It looked up at Braig, hoping that it had answered correctly.
With a cackle, Braig reached out and ruffled Riku’s hair.
“Good answer. But listen to me, Riku, this is very important.” Braig’s voice lowered as he drew the replica close. Their bare chests touched and Braig’s unbound hair fell forward over his ears, tickling Riku’s skin. He put one long-fingered hand on Riku’s shoulder and used the other to force Riku to look up at him. “There are men out there who don’t like people like us. They want to find us and try to hurt us, especially you. They would separate us forever and do horrible experiments on us. Even worse than what Ev does to all your yummy little brothers. So I’m going to teach you to recognize these bad men and how to fight ‘em if you have to. Because you don’t want us to get separated, right?”
“Never, Master.” Riku tried to put as much force as possible into its words.
“That’s my boy.” Braig scratched Riku’s scalp. “Now find my pants and get dressed too. We’ve got a long day comin’ up.”
There was a closet in the hall beside Braig and Dilan’s room that was always kept closed and tightly locked. Despite the fact that Riku had been living with them for over a year, it had never seen what was behind that door until Braig opened it now.
It was a rather large walk-in closet lined wall-to-ceiling with weaponry - guns and knives and swords and spears, strangely enough, something that resembled a stringed musical instrument. On another table was a battered and bloodstained deck of cards.
“Riku, over here.”
The clone had gotten distracted by the sight of so many amazing weapons and hadn’t noticed Braig standing in the back of the closet, clearly waiting. Riku hurried over and stood at its master’s side attentively.
“Now, today we’re going to start you out with something fun… Lessee here…” Braig stroked his chin as he looked over his immense collection. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. “Sniper rifles! Kids love sniper rifles. Lessee now…” He pulled one off the wall and handed it to Riku. “This is an L96. Pretty standard and you won’t be able to screw it up too bad. If you get good enough with that, maybe I’ll let you play with my baby.” He patted a monstrous rifle sitting on its own shelf. “Barret 50 cal. You can miss whoever you’re aimin’ at by a couple of inches and the air displacement from the bullet’ll cause their brain to hemorrhage. It’s awesome.”
Riku held the L96 and listened carefully as Braig spoke. It was heavy, but not unmanageable and Riku found that it was excited about the prospect of being allowed to shoot it. Probably because Braig himself was obviously so excited about the guns.
“When Dil gets home, I’ll have him teach you hand-to-hand shit. I’m actually better at it than he is, but I tend to get a little too rough. Maybe when you’re a little older, I’ll teach you to fight for real.”
“I would like that, Master.”
“’course ya would. What kid doesn’t like fightin’?” Braig patted the Barret one last time and then shepherded Riku out of the closet. “Now listen close ‘cause this is important. Do not ever go into this room unless I tell you to, understand?”
Riku nodded. “Yes, Master.”
“Good. We’re gonna go practice - we can grab breakfast on the way.”
Breakfast consisted of two schoolgirls on their way to a Saturday morning matinee. They ate only what Braig called “the goodies” - the brain, the eyes, the heart and a few other particularly tasty vital organs - and left the bodies to rot in a dumpster behind a seafood restaurant.
“Always know the location of a good seafood restaurant.” Braig looked down at Riku as they walked away. “Seafood restaurants always have the best dumpsters to hide bodies in. Can you tell me why?”
Riku thought a long moment before it answered.
“The restaurant employees throw the fish remains into the dumpster, so the smell of the fish rotting would cover up the smell of a body?”
“Boy, your parents musta taught you good ‘cause you’re a genius.” Braig ruffled Riku’s hair. Riku beamed proudly and tilted its head so that Braig would continue to show affection.
“Where are we going, Master?” Braig seemed to be in such a good mood that Riku felt brave enough to ask a question.
“Actually, we’re going right over there.” Braig gestured to a long, low building just across the street. A peeling red and yellow sign on the front proclaimed it to be “G & C Gun Shop & Shooting Range.”
“I know the two guys who own this place, Gaston ‘n’ Clayton. They fuckin’ fight about everything like an old married couple. I don’t know why they deny the fact that they both wanna fuck each other up a wall.” Braig rolled his eyes as he grabbed Riku’s hand to cross the street. “In any case, this is the best place for you to learn how to shoot. Starting with paper targets and all that jazz.”
“Targets? Not humans, master?” Riku assumed that Braig meant for it to eventually use this training to hunt prey.
“Not yet, kiddo. See, if I let you start out with people, you could miss or fuck up somehow and then we could get caught and Daddy would get sent to jail and then Dilan would be a pissy bitch about it for years.” Braig pushed the door open.
The interior of the shop was crammed full of any sort of firearm, accessory and type of ammunition imaginable. Two strapping men, one in yellow, one in red, stood behind the counter. Both of them stopped what they were doing and watched as Braig walked in.
“No need to get up, boys, I know what I’m doing.” Braig raised a hand and grinned at the two of them. “Just showin’ my kid here the ropes.”
Braig led them to the back, where the actual range was, and pulled two pairs of heavy-duty earmuffs and goggles off the wall and handed a pair of each to Riku.
“Put those on. Safety first.”
Riku did so obediently and looked at the range. Several booths stood side by side on one end of the long room and paper targets hung from tracks on the ceiling that ran from each booth. Braig leaned the cello case on the wall beside one of the booths and gestured Riku over to him.
Braig showed Riku how to operate the mechanism that moved the targets back and forth and then showed it how to operate the L96. As expected, Riku took to it like a cannibal to blood and within minutes was shooting as though it had been doing this for years. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but Braig didn’t expect even Riku to do it perfectly right away.
They spent a few hours there before Braig decided that they’d had enough for one day and that it was time to go hunt down some dinner.
“Remind me again why we picked Sunday fuckin’ morning to do this?”
Braig clawed the sleep out of his eyes as he stood with Riku outside of the front entrance of the XIII Corp building. A cigarette dangled between two fingers and trickled smoke into chilly morning air. Riku stood nearby, gnawing on a bone from breakfast. It knew better than to actually answer its master’s rhetorical questions, especially in the morning. Braig was not known as a morning person.
“And I’m still hungry. Where is that red-haired sumbitch? I’ll eat him if he doesn’t show up soon.”
“Good thing I always try to arrive on time…”
Axel walked up then, smoking a cigarette himself. He threw it down and ground it under the toe of his boot as he dug in his coat pocket for his keys. Being the head of security afforded him certain advantages, not the least of which being access to all the security codes. Even though the building was completely shut down and locked up, Axel could still get inside.
“Good morning, sunshine.” Axel grinned over at Braig as he swiped his card.
“Fuck off and just open the damned door. I wanna get inside already.”
“And Riku. Good morning to you too.”
“Good morning, Uncle Axel.”
The kid’s polite tone and cute face almost made up for Braig’s crankiness. Almost. .
“Are you looking forward to seeing your brothers again? Dilan told me about that the other day. He said it was quite the sight.”
Automatically, Riku looked over at Braig questioningly.
“Master, may I see my brothers?”
“I think we can arrange a reunion, yeah.” The cannibal pushed the door open once Axel’s card cleared. “It might be fun to give Uncle Axel a show.”
The three of them walked through the dark and deserted lobby to the elevators that led up to the laboratories. Even’s facilities encompassed nearly the entire second floor of the building, so it was a short ride.
“You know…” Axel tried to strike up a conversation to cover up his anticipation. He had been waiting for this opportunity for so long and now it was finally here. He had to force himself to remain calm and objective, especially around Braig. “I’ve only been in here once but I don’t remember seeing anything unusual while I was in there. I’m fairly sure I’d remember seeing something if all of his experiments are as cute as Riku here.”
“Was it a routine inspection?” Braig stepped out of the elevator and started walking down a narrow corridor.
“Yeah it was. I had just started the job and I was inspecting all the labs to make notes of the emergency exits and stuff, just for future reference.”
“I figured. He keeps most of his more illicit shit hidden most of the time so that nobody official sees it. He lives in constant terror of the X’s finding out about Riku and the red of the brood. It’s this one.” Braig pointed to a nondescript door and stood back so that Axel could open it.
“Xemnas and Xehanort? Why would he care if they knew about Riku?” Axel began to enter a long string of numbers into the keypad. “The way you have him walk in here every other day after school, I figured they knew all about him.”
Braig’s sudden low chuckle made the hairs on the back of Axel’s neck stand straight up.
“I only let him come here when I know for a fact that they’re both out of town on business trips. Fortunately, that’s been quite a bit lately.” Braig leaned against the wall and watched Axel intently. A sinister light danced in his eyes and his smile stretched across his face unnervingly. “Can you keep a secret, Red?”
“Of course.” The light on the keypad turned green and Axel turned the handle, but didn’t push the door open yet. He looked right into Braig’s eyes. “What is it?”
“Riku’s a clone. Have you ever thought about where the original came from?”
Axel frowned deeply. Come to think of it, he hadn’t ever considered Riku’s origins. All he had known was that Braig had acquired it from Even and that Even had made it in his lab. Beyond that, he hadn’t ever thought about it. He glanced over at Riku. The clone itself did not appear to seem fazed by the fact that they were talking so brazenly about its origins. But what disturbed Axel more was the fact that the clone didn’t appear to be curious either. It simply stood at Braig’s side, loyal, attentive and polite, listening to the conversation but apathetic towards the topic.
A child would have been curious… a child would have been hanging on every word, thought Axel to himself. But he isn’t a kid. IT isn’t a kid. It isn’t even human…
Fighting back a shudder, he pushed the door open at last.
“Where does he come from?”
“As a matter of fact,” Braig pushed Riku inside. “Riku’s donor, the original Riku, is the dearly beloved younger brother of our esteemed employers, Xemnas and Xehanort.”
~
To Be Continued...
"No. What the hell are you stalking me for? Go away."
“Awww c’mon… Don’t be like that! We always have lots of fun together!”
Axel tossed uneasily in his sleep. The night's exploits had placed him in a strange frame of mind and now he was paying the price for his fun in his dreams.
He hated dreams. They were just memories that he couldn’t escape, an endless repetition of terrible thoughts that he couldn’t distract himself from.
Axel sat straight up in bed, his entire body seized up and tense. His chest heaved and he panted for a few minutes before he was able to relax again.
“Shit… That does it, ‘m never going to Braig’s that late at night again. Ever.” Axel ran a hand through his hair and kicked the covers aside. He felt stifled. “Cool it, Axel. You’ve got to keep it together until you go to the lab on Sunday… You have to keep your head or that fucking cannibal will take it. You’re on a mission. Don’t fuck up.”
But all that was far easier said than done and Axel knew it well. He grabbed a pack of Gold Chocobo cigarettes off his bedside table and lit up. Ash fell into the blankets but Axel didn’t care. He exhaled deeply.
Roxas wouldn’t know what to make of him now… Shit, Axel hardly knew what to make of himself. Hard to believe how much he’d changed in so little time. Would Roxas even recognize him now?
“I doubt it.” Axel answered his own question and mashed the cigarette out in a mostly-empty glass of whiskey. “But I’m gonna find him… I made a promise.”
~
The room was still pitch-black when Riku was awakened. A spidery hand slid down its torso, over the ribs and across the taut belly, past the navel and then back up again, languidly trickling sensations across its skin. Eyes still closed, Riku tilted its chin up.
“Master…” It murmured.
“Hush.”
The clone quieted at the command. The hand wrapped around his neck and squeezed gently.
“It’s fun when Dilan’s out of town, isn’t it?” Braig squeezed a little tighter. He couldn’t see in the dark, but he could hear Riku’s breathing gradually become more labored.
“Yes, master…”
Braig squeezed tighter, grinning to himself in the dark. He could crush Riku’s windpipe right then and there and the clone wouldn’t protest. It would just continue to exist until it died. Absolutely nothing gave Braig a bigger thrill than the thought of the boy’s body just stopping at his command. Not a scream. Not a whimper. Not a sigh. Just silence.
Riku could feel its breath rush past its drying lips and hitch in its throat on the exhale. Master was good… Master wouldn’t let it die. And even if he did, Master would have a good reason. The clone wasn’t important, after all.
But Braig released his hold on the clone’s throat and oxygen flowed once again into Riku’s burning lungs. It inhaled deeply, gratefully and rolled onto its side to face its master.
“Touch me again, Master. Please.”
A laugh dripped from Braig’s lips.
“Still hungry for more after all the fun we had last night, mm? Looks like you’re my kid after all.” Braig reached over and played with Riku’s hair. The clone practically purred at the compliment. It loved the idea of being Master’s son. Master’s prodigy. It hardly dared to hope that one day it could even become Master’s legacy.
“Why do you like me to touch you, Riku?” Braig rolled onto his back and pulled Riku on top of him, making it so that the clone was straddling him. He loved getting to just lay back and look at his perfect little clone. His pet, his son, his victim… and now his lover.
“Because you like it. It makes you happy and I want to make you happy.”
“Oh yeah?” A smirk twisted Braig’s lips in the dark. “What a good son. Do you know what makes me happy?”
“Please tell me.” Riku was desperate for more ways to please its master. Maybe Braig would even praise him. Or, if it was extremely good, Master might even reward it. The thought of another reward like the one Master had given last night made it tremble with excitement. The things master had done in the bloody alley with the still-warm corpse… how badly it had hurt, but how much Riku had craved it. Master had fucked Riku brutally on the asphalt and up against the cinder block walls, so hard that they’d taken almost all the skin off Riku’s back. But Riku had loved that too, just because of the happy sounds Master had made in his throat when he’d dug his fingers into the raw flesh. Braig had licked it clean too, nibbling off the stringy bits of skin that still clung on…
“Going and sneaking around in Even’s lab, which is what you and Red and I are going to do tomorrow. But you and I still have to find some way to occupy today, don’t we?”
“Yes, Master. What are we going to do?” Riku placed tentative hands on Braig’s chest and felt the scars there from Dilan’s playing. Dilan always stitched Braig up afterwards, but the sheer number of scars on the cannibal’s body was amazing. It was one of Riku’s favorite sights in the world - walking into their room on a lazy Saturday morning to find his masters still in bed, Dilan calmly stitching up Braig’s back. Braig always sat hunched over, bleary-eyed and snappish from blood loss and lack of sleep. Dilan would lean forward and kiss the back of Braig’s neck softly as he pulled the needle through. They would usually allow Riku to join them on the bed, especially if it brought them their morning coffee or tea. It would sit on the edge of the bed, completely enthralled by the sight. And if Riku was behaving itself particularly well, Dilan sometimes allowed it to sew a few stitches.
“What the hell - am I a pincushion now?” Braig would grunt irritably as Riku began to stitch up another open gash. But he would stay still nevertheless.
“It’s got to learn somehow and you’re a good test subject. You only learn so much from cadavers. No, the needle goes in here,” Dilan would correct Riku. “And I want it to be able to take apart and put an entire body back together by the time it’s fourteen.”
“Does it have to be my body?”
“Why do you think I’m teaching him to do this? Someone has to know how to put your ass back together the morning after. I get tired of doing it.”
The two of them would argue for the rest of the morning, but it wasn’t the snarling kind of arguing that they did when they were angry. Instead it was almost kind of fun and they usually ended up going to the kitchen and making a big breakfast together afterwards.
“What we’re gonna do, kiddo, is we’re gonna teach you something very important. More important than most anything you’re gonna learn in school.” Braig pushed Riku off him and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The clone could tell from the light gleaming in Braig’s eye that today was going to be interesting. “Today we’re gonna teach you how to fight. Do you know why?”
“Why, Master?”
“No, I’m really asking you.” Braig was terribly amused. “Why is it important for you to learn how to fight?”
The clone thought hard for a few moments as it got off the bed. It wasn’t often that Master asked it a direct question, so it wanted to be sure to provide a satisfactory answer.
“So that I can defend myself if anyone other than you tries to touch me.” It looked up at Braig, hoping that it had answered correctly.
With a cackle, Braig reached out and ruffled Riku’s hair.
“Good answer. But listen to me, Riku, this is very important.” Braig’s voice lowered as he drew the replica close. Their bare chests touched and Braig’s unbound hair fell forward over his ears, tickling Riku’s skin. He put one long-fingered hand on Riku’s shoulder and used the other to force Riku to look up at him. “There are men out there who don’t like people like us. They want to find us and try to hurt us, especially you. They would separate us forever and do horrible experiments on us. Even worse than what Ev does to all your yummy little brothers. So I’m going to teach you to recognize these bad men and how to fight ‘em if you have to. Because you don’t want us to get separated, right?”
“Never, Master.” Riku tried to put as much force as possible into its words.
“That’s my boy.” Braig scratched Riku’s scalp. “Now find my pants and get dressed too. We’ve got a long day comin’ up.”
There was a closet in the hall beside Braig and Dilan’s room that was always kept closed and tightly locked. Despite the fact that Riku had been living with them for over a year, it had never seen what was behind that door until Braig opened it now.
It was a rather large walk-in closet lined wall-to-ceiling with weaponry - guns and knives and swords and spears, strangely enough, something that resembled a stringed musical instrument. On another table was a battered and bloodstained deck of cards.
“Riku, over here.”
The clone had gotten distracted by the sight of so many amazing weapons and hadn’t noticed Braig standing in the back of the closet, clearly waiting. Riku hurried over and stood at its master’s side attentively.
“Now, today we’re going to start you out with something fun… Lessee here…” Braig stroked his chin as he looked over his immense collection. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. “Sniper rifles! Kids love sniper rifles. Lessee now…” He pulled one off the wall and handed it to Riku. “This is an L96. Pretty standard and you won’t be able to screw it up too bad. If you get good enough with that, maybe I’ll let you play with my baby.” He patted a monstrous rifle sitting on its own shelf. “Barret 50 cal. You can miss whoever you’re aimin’ at by a couple of inches and the air displacement from the bullet’ll cause their brain to hemorrhage. It’s awesome.”
Riku held the L96 and listened carefully as Braig spoke. It was heavy, but not unmanageable and Riku found that it was excited about the prospect of being allowed to shoot it. Probably because Braig himself was obviously so excited about the guns.
“When Dil gets home, I’ll have him teach you hand-to-hand shit. I’m actually better at it than he is, but I tend to get a little too rough. Maybe when you’re a little older, I’ll teach you to fight for real.”
“I would like that, Master.”
“’course ya would. What kid doesn’t like fightin’?” Braig patted the Barret one last time and then shepherded Riku out of the closet. “Now listen close ‘cause this is important. Do not ever go into this room unless I tell you to, understand?”
Riku nodded. “Yes, Master.”
“Good. We’re gonna go practice - we can grab breakfast on the way.”
Breakfast consisted of two schoolgirls on their way to a Saturday morning matinee. They ate only what Braig called “the goodies” - the brain, the eyes, the heart and a few other particularly tasty vital organs - and left the bodies to rot in a dumpster behind a seafood restaurant.
“Always know the location of a good seafood restaurant.” Braig looked down at Riku as they walked away. “Seafood restaurants always have the best dumpsters to hide bodies in. Can you tell me why?”
Riku thought a long moment before it answered.
“The restaurant employees throw the fish remains into the dumpster, so the smell of the fish rotting would cover up the smell of a body?”
“Boy, your parents musta taught you good ‘cause you’re a genius.” Braig ruffled Riku’s hair. Riku beamed proudly and tilted its head so that Braig would continue to show affection.
“Where are we going, Master?” Braig seemed to be in such a good mood that Riku felt brave enough to ask a question.
“Actually, we’re going right over there.” Braig gestured to a long, low building just across the street. A peeling red and yellow sign on the front proclaimed it to be “G & C Gun Shop & Shooting Range.”
“I know the two guys who own this place, Gaston ‘n’ Clayton. They fuckin’ fight about everything like an old married couple. I don’t know why they deny the fact that they both wanna fuck each other up a wall.” Braig rolled his eyes as he grabbed Riku’s hand to cross the street. “In any case, this is the best place for you to learn how to shoot. Starting with paper targets and all that jazz.”
“Targets? Not humans, master?” Riku assumed that Braig meant for it to eventually use this training to hunt prey.
“Not yet, kiddo. See, if I let you start out with people, you could miss or fuck up somehow and then we could get caught and Daddy would get sent to jail and then Dilan would be a pissy bitch about it for years.” Braig pushed the door open.
The interior of the shop was crammed full of any sort of firearm, accessory and type of ammunition imaginable. Two strapping men, one in yellow, one in red, stood behind the counter. Both of them stopped what they were doing and watched as Braig walked in.
“No need to get up, boys, I know what I’m doing.” Braig raised a hand and grinned at the two of them. “Just showin’ my kid here the ropes.”
Braig led them to the back, where the actual range was, and pulled two pairs of heavy-duty earmuffs and goggles off the wall and handed a pair of each to Riku.
“Put those on. Safety first.”
Riku did so obediently and looked at the range. Several booths stood side by side on one end of the long room and paper targets hung from tracks on the ceiling that ran from each booth. Braig leaned the cello case on the wall beside one of the booths and gestured Riku over to him.
Braig showed Riku how to operate the mechanism that moved the targets back and forth and then showed it how to operate the L96. As expected, Riku took to it like a cannibal to blood and within minutes was shooting as though it had been doing this for years. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but Braig didn’t expect even Riku to do it perfectly right away.
They spent a few hours there before Braig decided that they’d had enough for one day and that it was time to go hunt down some dinner.
“Remind me again why we picked Sunday fuckin’ morning to do this?”
Braig clawed the sleep out of his eyes as he stood with Riku outside of the front entrance of the XIII Corp building. A cigarette dangled between two fingers and trickled smoke into chilly morning air. Riku stood nearby, gnawing on a bone from breakfast. It knew better than to actually answer its master’s rhetorical questions, especially in the morning. Braig was not known as a morning person.
“And I’m still hungry. Where is that red-haired sumbitch? I’ll eat him if he doesn’t show up soon.”
“Good thing I always try to arrive on time…”
Axel walked up then, smoking a cigarette himself. He threw it down and ground it under the toe of his boot as he dug in his coat pocket for his keys. Being the head of security afforded him certain advantages, not the least of which being access to all the security codes. Even though the building was completely shut down and locked up, Axel could still get inside.
“Good morning, sunshine.” Axel grinned over at Braig as he swiped his card.
“Fuck off and just open the damned door. I wanna get inside already.”
“And Riku. Good morning to you too.”
“Good morning, Uncle Axel.”
The kid’s polite tone and cute face almost made up for Braig’s crankiness. Almost. .
“Are you looking forward to seeing your brothers again? Dilan told me about that the other day. He said it was quite the sight.”
Automatically, Riku looked over at Braig questioningly.
“Master, may I see my brothers?”
“I think we can arrange a reunion, yeah.” The cannibal pushed the door open once Axel’s card cleared. “It might be fun to give Uncle Axel a show.”
The three of them walked through the dark and deserted lobby to the elevators that led up to the laboratories. Even’s facilities encompassed nearly the entire second floor of the building, so it was a short ride.
“You know…” Axel tried to strike up a conversation to cover up his anticipation. He had been waiting for this opportunity for so long and now it was finally here. He had to force himself to remain calm and objective, especially around Braig. “I’ve only been in here once but I don’t remember seeing anything unusual while I was in there. I’m fairly sure I’d remember seeing something if all of his experiments are as cute as Riku here.”
“Was it a routine inspection?” Braig stepped out of the elevator and started walking down a narrow corridor.
“Yeah it was. I had just started the job and I was inspecting all the labs to make notes of the emergency exits and stuff, just for future reference.”
“I figured. He keeps most of his more illicit shit hidden most of the time so that nobody official sees it. He lives in constant terror of the X’s finding out about Riku and the red of the brood. It’s this one.” Braig pointed to a nondescript door and stood back so that Axel could open it.
“Xemnas and Xehanort? Why would he care if they knew about Riku?” Axel began to enter a long string of numbers into the keypad. “The way you have him walk in here every other day after school, I figured they knew all about him.”
Braig’s sudden low chuckle made the hairs on the back of Axel’s neck stand straight up.
“I only let him come here when I know for a fact that they’re both out of town on business trips. Fortunately, that’s been quite a bit lately.” Braig leaned against the wall and watched Axel intently. A sinister light danced in his eyes and his smile stretched across his face unnervingly. “Can you keep a secret, Red?”
“Of course.” The light on the keypad turned green and Axel turned the handle, but didn’t push the door open yet. He looked right into Braig’s eyes. “What is it?”
“Riku’s a clone. Have you ever thought about where the original came from?”
Axel frowned deeply. Come to think of it, he hadn’t ever considered Riku’s origins. All he had known was that Braig had acquired it from Even and that Even had made it in his lab. Beyond that, he hadn’t ever thought about it. He glanced over at Riku. The clone itself did not appear to seem fazed by the fact that they were talking so brazenly about its origins. But what disturbed Axel more was the fact that the clone didn’t appear to be curious either. It simply stood at Braig’s side, loyal, attentive and polite, listening to the conversation but apathetic towards the topic.
A child would have been curious… a child would have been hanging on every word, thought Axel to himself. But he isn’t a kid. IT isn’t a kid. It isn’t even human…
Fighting back a shudder, he pushed the door open at last.
“Where does he come from?”
“As a matter of fact,” Braig pushed Riku inside. “Riku’s donor, the original Riku, is the dearly beloved younger brother of our esteemed employers, Xemnas and Xehanort.”
~
To Be Continued...