Guest Chapter by Amme Yasai
The Caged Bird Sings of Freedom
Allecto at on the edge of a cold, metal table, her arms crossed over her chest, her red eyes narrowed in chilly anger. They swept slowly across the room, back and forth, following the progress of the two black-cloaked figures that had their backs turned toward her. Zexion and Vexen were bent over a desk, comparing notes, checking diagrams, and basically squabbling like toddlers. Idiots. It made her blood burn to think that what they were examining were the equations that had
created her. The first man-made human Heartless.
Like the gods Zexion so desperately wanted to believe in, they had created her in their image. Why couldn’t she small and featureless, with glowing, round, yellow eyes? Instead she had to be tall [though not so tall by
his standards], with slanted red eyes and white-blue hair, the color of these stupid walls. Instead, she had to look half-way human.
What she really wanted to do was leave. She was less than a day old [though created to be older, because what use was a child human Heartless?] and already she knew that
anywhere would be better than
here.
Zexion and Vexen had promised she could leave as soon as they evaluated her. They had to be sure whether or not their experiment worked, they said. So here she was, sticking out in the shadowy white laboratory like a blue flower in a snowy field.
Something told her she shouldn’t trust them.
What else could she do, though?
The pair of Nobodies straightened up and turned around, both holding something. Allecto raised her head and eyed them warily. They both looked nervous. But then again, they usually were, around her.
Frankenstein complex, she thought suddenly. What was it? She’d have to look that up later.
"Hold out your hands," Vexen said edgily. She glared at him, really just to see if she could make him fidget more. He did. So she complied.
Her fingers, like the rest of her, were long and blue, her palms a duskier sapphire. Her nails were long, too, and as sharp as any Shadow’s. They were particularly good at leaving gashes in people’s skin, she remembered with a smirk as she noted the scratch on Zexion’s face, which he was trying to cover with his usual dramatic overshadowing of silvery-purple bangs.
Before she could react, the Cloaked Schemer grabbed her outstretched hands and quickly clamped one of those black handcuffs around her wrists, looking vilely smug. Allecto snarled and struggled against the binds, but they held firm, and she couldn’t reach them with her talons to slice through.
As she was fighting the bounds that kept her hands together, Vexen had moved around the table behind her. She felt him tug at the sleeve of her shirt, and a moment later, something white-hot was stinging into the skin below her left shoulder.
Allecto was silent, frozen by the unexpected pain instead of reacting to it, but not for long.
Hands still latched together, she jerked her right elbow up into Zexion’s chin, then spun around and delivered a swift kick to the Nobody behind her. Vexen fell back; something clattered to the floor. Allecto pushed herself off the table and landed cat-like on the floor, next to the item. Glaring at the black bounds around her wrists, she bared her fangs and slashed through them with the incisors, then reached out to what Vexen had dropped, standing up and backing towards the wall. She looked down at what she held in her hands.
It was metallic, white like everything else in the castle. Cylindrical but short, it reminded her of a syringe. One flat end was covered with innumerable needles. They formed a pattern she recognized.
Hate burning in her eyes, she threw the object onto the floor and reached back to her left shoulder, ignoring the tenderness of the area. She carefully traced the wound. Under her fingertips, the symbol of the Emblem Heartless was burned into her skin.
Allecto spat out several words which the author would be banned for repeating.
Vexen was just getting to his feet, his face an odd mixture of triumphance and unease. Zexion seemed to be muttering a prayer under his breath, rubbing at his lips, which were dripping blood.
"Tell me what you did," Allecto snarled. The Cloaked Schemer cast her a dirty glare, as though silently rebuking her for interrupting his moment.
"An ingenious invention, you know," he answered, gesturing towards the discarded object. Not only did it give you the permanent tattoo of the Emblem, it also injected a chemical which is absorbed through the skin and makes its way to-"
"I don’t
care, you overly dramatic twit, just tell me what it does!"
"It’ll give you some of the Emblem characteristics you lack," Vexen spoke up. "The only reason why we haven’t tried it on Hollow was because all that acid of his would eat away at the foreign chemicals."
Allecto had a sudden vision at the midnight of his hands against the black of her bounds the day before, how they burned the restraints to dust. "And what are those characteristics?" she asked in a low voice.
Vexen winced. "...obedience."
Without hesitation, Allecto put to use one of her natural Heartless abilities; she slipped into a shadow and darted along the ground, rising up again in front of Vexen, immediately punching him in the jaw. She pinned her knees to his chest as he hit the ground, wrapping one clawed hand around his throat, fangs bared.
"Give me a reason why I shouldn’t kill you, Vexy."
The Chilly Academic choked but didn’t reply, eyes bulging in terror.
"The reason is, I’ll bring the rest of the Organization in here," Zexion said, and she realized he was standing above her as a shadow fell across Vexen’s face, one hand to his wrist, as she dug her talons into his colleague’s skin. Almsot idly, she noted that Vexy was turning faintly blue. There was something ironic in there, but she’d think about that later.
"The chemicals will take some time to absorb. Come back in twenty-four hours."
Without a word, she released his neck and stood up with a look of disgust, shifting into a shadow again.
She knew that the darkness would lead her to Hollow.