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damned_lounge2007-10-30 08:22 pm
theheirshinra.livejournal.com) wrote in damned_lounge2007-10-30 08:22 pm
Entry tags:
Oktoberfest '07 Entry, Stranger Things by Vegas/Dal
Title: Stranger Things
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
withalacrity
Word Count: 3,134
Rating: R - No sex, but lots of gore.
Character(s): Reno, Rabastan, Yuffie, Elena, Cid, Barret, Schuldig, Head Doctor, mention of Jack/Alec/Mr Radio, Harry Potter, Severus Snape, Wesker, and a few others by name only.
Pairing(s) (if applicable): None.
Summary: If I gave you one, it would give it away.
Notes (if applicable): Gore. Fair warning. Mind screwing and bad language.
"Reno, don’t. He’s not right in the head.”
Reno scowled at Yuffie, not about to let this go because she was showing some squeamishness. He never had forgiven her for what she'd said that night.
“We agreed on this, Yuffie,” Barret spoke up quietly, watching the man they were talking about. Said man was currently applying what looked to be a lot of sparkling glue to macaroni, gluing the whole mess together in some strange structure. Given his occasional giggles, he was having far too much fun doing so.
"Damn right. There's too much about him that sets my teeth on edge. He never gets a mark on him. Everyone else limps in from Nightshift looking like they’ve been through a grinder, but him… not a scratch. He even tells everyone that he's never seen a monster here. I bet that’s not quite true. I think the monsters just don’t attack him. They sure do everyone else who’s been where he's gone.”
"Maybe he sits in his room all night," Elena offered. "People who stay in the rooms never get attacked from what I've heard."
Reno shook his head. "Nah. I've seen him out in the hallways before. He's been spotted up on the second floor before and in the kitchen for sure. I know he wanders around the blocks at night. Seen him doing that enough myself."
Barret sighed, watching the little man a minute longer before turning back to his group. He didn't flinch from anything, but there was something about this whole plan that sat in his craw. Yuffie was right in that Rabastan Lestrange wasn't right in the head, acting more like a kid than an adult, but Reno was right too in that a lot of weird shit went on around him. "What did that Potter kid say, Cloud?"
Cloud Strife had been silent up until now, nothing new for him. Barret could see his own misgivings about this idea on Cloud's face though. “Potter said he was a Death Eater or something like that, a pack of evil wizards that tried to kill everyone who wasn’t a wizard or any magic-users that stood up to them. Said there was some big evil wizard named Voldemort that told them what to do. The wand that Lestrange carries is real according to Harry Potter and while they all come from the same place, he and the other wizard, Snape was his name, from there don't have their wands. Only Rabastan has one."
"We need to get him tonight," Reno said, leaning back in his chair and itching for a smoke. "Magic brought us here, and it has to be what's keeping anyone from using their own powers or other shit. Then there’s his ‘friends’. He makes them, and then they up and vanish. There was that one wizard, Raistlin; Leon the swordsman; Yazoo; and who knows how many more. I know he's been here as long as I have, maybe more, and everyone he gets around ups and vanishes. River goes and pisses him off, and all of a sudden her brother is gone. Who’s next? That Wesker guy? I’ve watched him a bit, and I think he’d love to know Lestrange's track record. He looks like the sort that would have a short temper when he finds out someone’s fucking with him. Let’s not forget about Kadaj. I don’t like Kadaj, but if he found out Lestrange was all buddy-buddy with Yazoo just before he vanished, I bet he’d take a slice out of his hide too. Neither of them is stupid, and we don't know how long it's going to be before they put it together and take Lestrange out before we can question him.”
“It does make sense,” Cloud said. “He’s small and easily ignored. Who listens to a madman? I’ve seen him a couple of time talking into that radio of his. It could be a two-way radio. He reports to the Head Doctor who’s planning on doing what, the Head Doctor kidnaps people for his experiments or makes sure there’ s a monster there.”
Reno snorted. “Yeah, he's got to have some kind of direct line to the Head Doctor, doesn't he? Everyone else just laughs when he says he talks to the Head Prick all the time on that radio, but I’m starting to think it’s true. He's just too crazy to keep it quiet. Or too smart to. Hiding in plain sight. He's crazy, no doubt about that. Even Schuldig won’t go near his mind, but that helps him, doesn’t it? If fucking Landel sent in anyone sane, a telepath would sniff them out quick.”
It was hard to tell which had annoyed Reno more: the fact that there might have been a spy there among the patients or that he'd had to go to Schuldig to ask his help.
"Tonight then. Meet at Rufus' room, and we go from there," Cloud said grimly, not liking this plan at all but something had to be done. They were running around in circles every Nightshift.
"Yeah, tonight."
-------------
“Where the hell did he go?” Reno hissed.
They had all kept their flashlights off, following the bobbing light of Rabastan’s wand easily up the stairs and hallways. Until now that was. That bastard had rounded the corner with all of them right behind him and then up and vanished.
“He was right there,” Barret grumbled. “Right fucking there. There’s no way he got past us.”
From down the hallway came the banging of a door slamming shut. Beside Reno, Elena swallowed thickly. This was worse than the haunted house her sister had dared her into. At least President Shinra wasn’t with him. Whatever flu he had was keeping Rufus down for another Nightshift. “Reno, are you sure…?”
“I’m sure. Let’s get him. These are the MU rooms. There’s no way out.”
-----------
It was easy to guess which room the crazy wizard had gone in. All the others were locked up tight, but one was open. Even though none of them felt a breeze, the door swung open on creaky springs and then banged shut again. Stilling it with a hand, Reno crept in first. Elena came next with Cloud, Barret, and Cid bringing up the rear. It was pitch dark inside.
“SHIT!” Barret yelped, making all of them jump. Nothing like a yell in the middle of utter silence to scare everyone all around.
“What the fuck?”
Barret pressed a hand to his chest, trying to calm his heart. He was going to have a heart attack before this was all over. That Turk growling at him wasn’t helping any either. He had to remind himself that punching Reno wouldn’t make him feel better. “A cat, I think. Ran right by my ankles.”
“No sense in sneaking in the dark after that,” Cloud muttered flicking on his flashlight. Caught in the beam was a white cat. The feline waved a paw at them and ran deeper into the room.
“Did that cat just wave at us?” Cid asked, turning on his own flashlight.
No one answered as the wound their way through the room. Reno’s beam climbed upwards, trying to find the ceiling. It swung to the side, not finding the walls either. “I don’t remember them being this big.”
“It’s like a cathedral.”
“That’s one word for it, Strife.” Reno was thinking more of the Interrogation Room under Shin-Ra Company. The light in there was always too dim to make out the walls or ceiling, not to mention the faces of the interrogators.
As if on cue, all of their flashlights began to flicker, fading in and out.
And then the floor vanished.
“Barret, can you remove your hand from my… you know, please?”
“Elena, I swear you’re the only woman I know that-”
“Well isn’t this just a surprise?”
That ghostly light they had followed lit up again, far off to their left this time. Rabastan Lestrange grinned cheerfully at them, smile turned into a skeletal rictus by the bluish glow. “Here I thought it would be a dull night of thieving from patients again!”
A hand on Barret’s shoulder kept him from running headlong into the trap that Rabastan had laid out from them. Stretched all above and around them were thin wires, each one glinting wickedly though patches of some sort of muck clung to them.
“Razor wire,” Reno said. “I heard it snap into place when we hit. Wasn’t sure what it was at first. Sprung more than a few of these traps myself. It'll cut anything that hits it to pieces.”
“Shit,” Cid grunted from somewhere behind them.
“You think that’s bad, check out the floor.”
They could barely see it in the sickly illumination from Rabastan’s wand, but they were standing on some sort of grating. It was large enough for a man’s arm to go through, but not the rest of him. From beneath it came a sickly odour of spoiled meat and bodies churning with maggots. Worse yet, something moved down there, glimpsed when its slick body was caught in the wand’s light as it wriggled through whatever was below.
“So, you all decided to follow me,” Bast said, peering down at them from his higher up seat. “I wonder why. First one to tell me gets to live!”
Reno nudged Elena, nodding towards Bast. Chances were the freak would kill them all or some other hellish trick of Landel’s, but if there was a chance out, he was making sure she got it.
“We thought you might tell us something about the Head Doctor,” she said quietly, hand reaching out in the dark to hold onto Reno’s. This wasn’t how she wanted to die.
Rabastan snorted, leaning on the railing. “And what makes you think I know the Head Doctor?”
“This is a pretty good fucking clue,” Reno muttered.
With a wave of his wand and a muttered word, the lights in the room blazed to life. The wire bowed above them, connected to a frame on the side. At most it gave them another foot of clearance. Had any of them stood up, they would have been shredded. Steel rose up on all sides of them except for where Bast sat, a tiny viewing area there. The wizard yawned as he dropped back on one of the overstuffed chairs there with all the grace of a drunken rhino.
“Oh my god…”
At Yuffie’s feet was a tangled hank of brown hair with a chunk of bloody flesh still attached. Caught in the grating of the floor was all manner of human remains. Splinters of bone stuck up from the floor in some places, whole strips of rotting skin hanging from others like snakes. A broken jaw bone with teeth intact grinned a few feet away. A green eyeball danged from above them, the optic nerve caught on one of the wires.
“Do you like it?” Bast asked, his voice brimming with lunatic glee. “I designed it myself after one of those Muggle Cusinart things.”
“Holy shit…” Reno said quietly. If those wires dropped, they were going to be cut apart.
“How do you think we make our hamburgers? Have you seen a cow since being here?”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Yuffie whispered, leaning heavily on Cloud who patted her arm absentmindedly. His attention was still on that hanging eyeball, its slit cat’s eye pupil staring blankly back at him. Yazoo, his mind whispered to him.
“We always hurt those we love,” Rabastan said with a note of sadness in his voice. “Usually at their request.”
"I don't recall requesting this," Reno said. I've been eating the food here, he thought as his stomache took a sickening plunge.
"I don't recall loving you either, but that's neither here nor there! Sooo, what to do, what to do? Wanna see how it works?"
The chorus of 'no' from the pit was nearly deafening.
"Spoil sports."
"Why are you doing this?" Elena shouted. Tears stung her eyes, ones quickly put down.
Bast waved off her question as he sat up enough to lean over the rail again. He pointed his wand at Barret. "Imperio!"
Beside Cloud, Barret stiffened, eyes taking on a blank look.
Bast giggled with delight, jerking his wandtip up. "Jump!"
Cloud tried to drag the big man back down, Yuffie screaming something in his ear as he tried to hold on.
"Jump! Jump! Jump!"
So this is what it's like to go insane, Cloud thought, fighting to keep his head down and Barret on the ground. He didn't understand the hot liquid that was on his hair and arm at first. He couldn't think straight with Yuffie yelling in his ear.
"Jump! Jump!"
It wasn't until something that looked like reddened oatmeal splattered on his arm that Cloud actually listened to what was being shouted at him. Recoiling in horrified disgust, he fell backwards on the grating, not paying any attention to Yuffie's short fingernails sinking into him as she dragged him backwards and away from the ruin that had been Barret Wallace.
Reno had been right about the deadly nature of those wires. There was hardly anything flesh left above the eyes on Barret, and yet he kept jumping whenever Bast told him to. Cloud felt a sick horror in that Barret's eyes were still open, still blinking every time he leaped and his skull scraped along those wires. Blood dotted his eyelashes.
The wizard's laughter bounded off the walls, filling up the whole room and drowning out Yuffie's screaming. Reno dragged Elena against the wall, the two of them clutching each other like an adult version of Hansel and Gretel. Cid was a few inches from them, the man's face gone the colour of curdled milk.
"Are we having fun yet?" Bast asked, laughter tapering off. "Stop jumping. Clever little spell, isn't it? It might even... oh, I don't know... make a certain Turk shoot his employer? He's aware in there too, knowing exactly what he's doing. Tell me, Reno and Elena, do you two ever have nightmares where you wake up screaming, thinking that you've killed people while under Imperius?"
Reno decided that if he was going to die, he was taking Rabastan with him.
Bast clucked his tongue and waved his wand at Reno warningly. "You want to keep your happy thoughts, Reno. You don't want to imagine the things I can make you do. Slowly strangle Elena, sleep with Cloud, or slowly strip the skin off Yuffie. I can do it all and more. I could send you back to Rufus Shinra, intent on ripping his eyes and fingernails off. You've done things like that before, haven't you? How would you like to live with that? With knowing that you kept pressing your thumbs against her windpipe as she pleaded for her life and her lips turned blue? Or the feel of your fingers closing around an eyeball and jerking it out?"
The wizard continued to grin like a cat as he leaned back in his chair again. "Animals are easier, of course. Making them large is even easier. It's just a wave of the wand and a few words. Harry Potter could have told you that if you'd asked him. I'm surprised he hasn't put it together yet. Have you?"
It was Cloud that spoke up, finally tearing his gaze away from the ruin that was Barret. The man was still alive. That's what turned his stomache. His skull gleamed wetly under the peeled away skin, leaving the top of his head bare under the thin layer of blood, but he was still alive. "You're the Head Doctor. You're Martin Landel."
"How very right you are," Bast said, tipping his wand towards the swordsman. "That I am. Muggle devices are so fascinating! There's one that lets me record my little speeches so there I am in my room. With the right spell, why, I can even look like someone else. Severus could have told you all about Polyjuice. There's a place in Bath, England called Landel's Mills that was started by my uncle, Landel being her maiden name. Martin is my brother Rodolphus' middle name. While we're on family history, the Chateau du Landel is owned by the Lestranges. Funny how it bears a -striking- resemblance to Landel's Institute right down to the little nearby town, although the real name of the town is Bezancourt, not Doyleton."
Rabastan rose from his chair, pacing back and forth along the little stage. "So I had to go out and be among you all if I was going to help you. And such interesting creatures you all were! But storytime has come to an end. Maybe you'll all do better next time around when I decide to bring you back."
He reached for the lever on the wall, waving goodbye cheerfully.
"Stop!" Elena shouted.
"Why?"
"We could forget all this. You can do that, can't you?" she said, holding tightly to Reno. If she could talk them out of this...
Bast frowned. "I suppose I could. But why?"
"I... I don't want to die! I'm only sixteen."
Bast snorted. "That's not a very good reason at all."
With that, he pulled the lever and the wires crashed down on them. The screams stopped after awhile and the thing that squirmed through the chopped remains was content.
---------
"Little Bunny Bastie hopping through the forest."
Bouncing out into the hallway, Bast shut the door behind him. It vanished immediately.
"Scoopin' up the Muggles and boppin' them on the head," finished a far too familiar voice accented with guttural Germanic.
Bast frowned up at Schuldig, eyeing the telepath suspiciously. "What do you want?" he asked petulantly.
Schuldig grinned, something savage and dark flicking through the telepath's eyes. Bast had to wonder if Landel's finally had knocked the man over the edge. Wouldn't have been the first time.
"Is it done?"
Bast huffed, drawing himself up to his full 5'2 height. "Yes. I tried to get the redhead's hair for you, but Wormy got it first. I didn't think you'd want it after he chewed on it."
Schuldig waved a hand, already turning away and headed away from the MU rooms. "Have a good night, Bastie. I wonder what the real Head Doctor would think if he knew you were using his name?"
The telepath's laughter drifted back the hallway to Rabastan, the wizard watching him go with a wrinkled nose. When Schuldig's footsteps faded down the stairs, Bast sighed.
"He'd probably tell me to stop screwing around and get finished on those reports about the new patients coming in the day after tomorrow."
Shrugging to himself, Bast started humming his song again as he headed back to his room.
Author:
withalacrityWord Count: 3,134
Rating: R - No sex, but lots of gore.
Character(s): Reno, Rabastan, Yuffie, Elena, Cid, Barret, Schuldig, Head Doctor, mention of Jack/Alec/Mr Radio, Harry Potter, Severus Snape, Wesker, and a few others by name only.
Pairing(s) (if applicable): None.
Summary: If I gave you one, it would give it away.
Notes (if applicable): Gore. Fair warning. Mind screwing and bad language.
"Reno, don’t. He’s not right in the head.”
Reno scowled at Yuffie, not about to let this go because she was showing some squeamishness. He never had forgiven her for what she'd said that night.
“We agreed on this, Yuffie,” Barret spoke up quietly, watching the man they were talking about. Said man was currently applying what looked to be a lot of sparkling glue to macaroni, gluing the whole mess together in some strange structure. Given his occasional giggles, he was having far too much fun doing so.
"Damn right. There's too much about him that sets my teeth on edge. He never gets a mark on him. Everyone else limps in from Nightshift looking like they’ve been through a grinder, but him… not a scratch. He even tells everyone that he's never seen a monster here. I bet that’s not quite true. I think the monsters just don’t attack him. They sure do everyone else who’s been where he's gone.”
"Maybe he sits in his room all night," Elena offered. "People who stay in the rooms never get attacked from what I've heard."
Reno shook his head. "Nah. I've seen him out in the hallways before. He's been spotted up on the second floor before and in the kitchen for sure. I know he wanders around the blocks at night. Seen him doing that enough myself."
Barret sighed, watching the little man a minute longer before turning back to his group. He didn't flinch from anything, but there was something about this whole plan that sat in his craw. Yuffie was right in that Rabastan Lestrange wasn't right in the head, acting more like a kid than an adult, but Reno was right too in that a lot of weird shit went on around him. "What did that Potter kid say, Cloud?"
Cloud Strife had been silent up until now, nothing new for him. Barret could see his own misgivings about this idea on Cloud's face though. “Potter said he was a Death Eater or something like that, a pack of evil wizards that tried to kill everyone who wasn’t a wizard or any magic-users that stood up to them. Said there was some big evil wizard named Voldemort that told them what to do. The wand that Lestrange carries is real according to Harry Potter and while they all come from the same place, he and the other wizard, Snape was his name, from there don't have their wands. Only Rabastan has one."
"We need to get him tonight," Reno said, leaning back in his chair and itching for a smoke. "Magic brought us here, and it has to be what's keeping anyone from using their own powers or other shit. Then there’s his ‘friends’. He makes them, and then they up and vanish. There was that one wizard, Raistlin; Leon the swordsman; Yazoo; and who knows how many more. I know he's been here as long as I have, maybe more, and everyone he gets around ups and vanishes. River goes and pisses him off, and all of a sudden her brother is gone. Who’s next? That Wesker guy? I’ve watched him a bit, and I think he’d love to know Lestrange's track record. He looks like the sort that would have a short temper when he finds out someone’s fucking with him. Let’s not forget about Kadaj. I don’t like Kadaj, but if he found out Lestrange was all buddy-buddy with Yazoo just before he vanished, I bet he’d take a slice out of his hide too. Neither of them is stupid, and we don't know how long it's going to be before they put it together and take Lestrange out before we can question him.”
“It does make sense,” Cloud said. “He’s small and easily ignored. Who listens to a madman? I’ve seen him a couple of time talking into that radio of his. It could be a two-way radio. He reports to the Head Doctor who’s planning on doing what, the Head Doctor kidnaps people for his experiments or makes sure there’ s a monster there.”
Reno snorted. “Yeah, he's got to have some kind of direct line to the Head Doctor, doesn't he? Everyone else just laughs when he says he talks to the Head Prick all the time on that radio, but I’m starting to think it’s true. He's just too crazy to keep it quiet. Or too smart to. Hiding in plain sight. He's crazy, no doubt about that. Even Schuldig won’t go near his mind, but that helps him, doesn’t it? If fucking Landel sent in anyone sane, a telepath would sniff them out quick.”
It was hard to tell which had annoyed Reno more: the fact that there might have been a spy there among the patients or that he'd had to go to Schuldig to ask his help.
"Tonight then. Meet at Rufus' room, and we go from there," Cloud said grimly, not liking this plan at all but something had to be done. They were running around in circles every Nightshift.
"Yeah, tonight."
-------------
“Where the hell did he go?” Reno hissed.
They had all kept their flashlights off, following the bobbing light of Rabastan’s wand easily up the stairs and hallways. Until now that was. That bastard had rounded the corner with all of them right behind him and then up and vanished.
“He was right there,” Barret grumbled. “Right fucking there. There’s no way he got past us.”
From down the hallway came the banging of a door slamming shut. Beside Reno, Elena swallowed thickly. This was worse than the haunted house her sister had dared her into. At least President Shinra wasn’t with him. Whatever flu he had was keeping Rufus down for another Nightshift. “Reno, are you sure…?”
“I’m sure. Let’s get him. These are the MU rooms. There’s no way out.”
-----------
It was easy to guess which room the crazy wizard had gone in. All the others were locked up tight, but one was open. Even though none of them felt a breeze, the door swung open on creaky springs and then banged shut again. Stilling it with a hand, Reno crept in first. Elena came next with Cloud, Barret, and Cid bringing up the rear. It was pitch dark inside.
“SHIT!” Barret yelped, making all of them jump. Nothing like a yell in the middle of utter silence to scare everyone all around.
“What the fuck?”
Barret pressed a hand to his chest, trying to calm his heart. He was going to have a heart attack before this was all over. That Turk growling at him wasn’t helping any either. He had to remind himself that punching Reno wouldn’t make him feel better. “A cat, I think. Ran right by my ankles.”
“No sense in sneaking in the dark after that,” Cloud muttered flicking on his flashlight. Caught in the beam was a white cat. The feline waved a paw at them and ran deeper into the room.
“Did that cat just wave at us?” Cid asked, turning on his own flashlight.
No one answered as the wound their way through the room. Reno’s beam climbed upwards, trying to find the ceiling. It swung to the side, not finding the walls either. “I don’t remember them being this big.”
“It’s like a cathedral.”
“That’s one word for it, Strife.” Reno was thinking more of the Interrogation Room under Shin-Ra Company. The light in there was always too dim to make out the walls or ceiling, not to mention the faces of the interrogators.
As if on cue, all of their flashlights began to flicker, fading in and out.
And then the floor vanished.
“Barret, can you remove your hand from my… you know, please?”
“Elena, I swear you’re the only woman I know that-”
“Well isn’t this just a surprise?”
That ghostly light they had followed lit up again, far off to their left this time. Rabastan Lestrange grinned cheerfully at them, smile turned into a skeletal rictus by the bluish glow. “Here I thought it would be a dull night of thieving from patients again!”
A hand on Barret’s shoulder kept him from running headlong into the trap that Rabastan had laid out from them. Stretched all above and around them were thin wires, each one glinting wickedly though patches of some sort of muck clung to them.
“Razor wire,” Reno said. “I heard it snap into place when we hit. Wasn’t sure what it was at first. Sprung more than a few of these traps myself. It'll cut anything that hits it to pieces.”
“Shit,” Cid grunted from somewhere behind them.
“You think that’s bad, check out the floor.”
They could barely see it in the sickly illumination from Rabastan’s wand, but they were standing on some sort of grating. It was large enough for a man’s arm to go through, but not the rest of him. From beneath it came a sickly odour of spoiled meat and bodies churning with maggots. Worse yet, something moved down there, glimpsed when its slick body was caught in the wand’s light as it wriggled through whatever was below.
“So, you all decided to follow me,” Bast said, peering down at them from his higher up seat. “I wonder why. First one to tell me gets to live!”
Reno nudged Elena, nodding towards Bast. Chances were the freak would kill them all or some other hellish trick of Landel’s, but if there was a chance out, he was making sure she got it.
“We thought you might tell us something about the Head Doctor,” she said quietly, hand reaching out in the dark to hold onto Reno’s. This wasn’t how she wanted to die.
Rabastan snorted, leaning on the railing. “And what makes you think I know the Head Doctor?”
“This is a pretty good fucking clue,” Reno muttered.
With a wave of his wand and a muttered word, the lights in the room blazed to life. The wire bowed above them, connected to a frame on the side. At most it gave them another foot of clearance. Had any of them stood up, they would have been shredded. Steel rose up on all sides of them except for where Bast sat, a tiny viewing area there. The wizard yawned as he dropped back on one of the overstuffed chairs there with all the grace of a drunken rhino.
“Oh my god…”
At Yuffie’s feet was a tangled hank of brown hair with a chunk of bloody flesh still attached. Caught in the grating of the floor was all manner of human remains. Splinters of bone stuck up from the floor in some places, whole strips of rotting skin hanging from others like snakes. A broken jaw bone with teeth intact grinned a few feet away. A green eyeball danged from above them, the optic nerve caught on one of the wires.
“Do you like it?” Bast asked, his voice brimming with lunatic glee. “I designed it myself after one of those Muggle Cusinart things.”
“Holy shit…” Reno said quietly. If those wires dropped, they were going to be cut apart.
“How do you think we make our hamburgers? Have you seen a cow since being here?”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Yuffie whispered, leaning heavily on Cloud who patted her arm absentmindedly. His attention was still on that hanging eyeball, its slit cat’s eye pupil staring blankly back at him. Yazoo, his mind whispered to him.
“We always hurt those we love,” Rabastan said with a note of sadness in his voice. “Usually at their request.”
"I don't recall requesting this," Reno said. I've been eating the food here, he thought as his stomache took a sickening plunge.
"I don't recall loving you either, but that's neither here nor there! Sooo, what to do, what to do? Wanna see how it works?"
The chorus of 'no' from the pit was nearly deafening.
"Spoil sports."
"Why are you doing this?" Elena shouted. Tears stung her eyes, ones quickly put down.
Bast waved off her question as he sat up enough to lean over the rail again. He pointed his wand at Barret. "Imperio!"
Beside Cloud, Barret stiffened, eyes taking on a blank look.
Bast giggled with delight, jerking his wandtip up. "Jump!"
Cloud tried to drag the big man back down, Yuffie screaming something in his ear as he tried to hold on.
"Jump! Jump! Jump!"
So this is what it's like to go insane, Cloud thought, fighting to keep his head down and Barret on the ground. He didn't understand the hot liquid that was on his hair and arm at first. He couldn't think straight with Yuffie yelling in his ear.
"Jump! Jump!"
It wasn't until something that looked like reddened oatmeal splattered on his arm that Cloud actually listened to what was being shouted at him. Recoiling in horrified disgust, he fell backwards on the grating, not paying any attention to Yuffie's short fingernails sinking into him as she dragged him backwards and away from the ruin that had been Barret Wallace.
Reno had been right about the deadly nature of those wires. There was hardly anything flesh left above the eyes on Barret, and yet he kept jumping whenever Bast told him to. Cloud felt a sick horror in that Barret's eyes were still open, still blinking every time he leaped and his skull scraped along those wires. Blood dotted his eyelashes.
The wizard's laughter bounded off the walls, filling up the whole room and drowning out Yuffie's screaming. Reno dragged Elena against the wall, the two of them clutching each other like an adult version of Hansel and Gretel. Cid was a few inches from them, the man's face gone the colour of curdled milk.
"Are we having fun yet?" Bast asked, laughter tapering off. "Stop jumping. Clever little spell, isn't it? It might even... oh, I don't know... make a certain Turk shoot his employer? He's aware in there too, knowing exactly what he's doing. Tell me, Reno and Elena, do you two ever have nightmares where you wake up screaming, thinking that you've killed people while under Imperius?"
Reno decided that if he was going to die, he was taking Rabastan with him.
Bast clucked his tongue and waved his wand at Reno warningly. "You want to keep your happy thoughts, Reno. You don't want to imagine the things I can make you do. Slowly strangle Elena, sleep with Cloud, or slowly strip the skin off Yuffie. I can do it all and more. I could send you back to Rufus Shinra, intent on ripping his eyes and fingernails off. You've done things like that before, haven't you? How would you like to live with that? With knowing that you kept pressing your thumbs against her windpipe as she pleaded for her life and her lips turned blue? Or the feel of your fingers closing around an eyeball and jerking it out?"
The wizard continued to grin like a cat as he leaned back in his chair again. "Animals are easier, of course. Making them large is even easier. It's just a wave of the wand and a few words. Harry Potter could have told you that if you'd asked him. I'm surprised he hasn't put it together yet. Have you?"
It was Cloud that spoke up, finally tearing his gaze away from the ruin that was Barret. The man was still alive. That's what turned his stomache. His skull gleamed wetly under the peeled away skin, leaving the top of his head bare under the thin layer of blood, but he was still alive. "You're the Head Doctor. You're Martin Landel."
"How very right you are," Bast said, tipping his wand towards the swordsman. "That I am. Muggle devices are so fascinating! There's one that lets me record my little speeches so there I am in my room. With the right spell, why, I can even look like someone else. Severus could have told you all about Polyjuice. There's a place in Bath, England called Landel's Mills that was started by my uncle, Landel being her maiden name. Martin is my brother Rodolphus' middle name. While we're on family history, the Chateau du Landel is owned by the Lestranges. Funny how it bears a -striking- resemblance to Landel's Institute right down to the little nearby town, although the real name of the town is Bezancourt, not Doyleton."
Rabastan rose from his chair, pacing back and forth along the little stage. "So I had to go out and be among you all if I was going to help you. And such interesting creatures you all were! But storytime has come to an end. Maybe you'll all do better next time around when I decide to bring you back."
He reached for the lever on the wall, waving goodbye cheerfully.
"Stop!" Elena shouted.
"Why?"
"We could forget all this. You can do that, can't you?" she said, holding tightly to Reno. If she could talk them out of this...
Bast frowned. "I suppose I could. But why?"
"I... I don't want to die! I'm only sixteen."
Bast snorted. "That's not a very good reason at all."
With that, he pulled the lever and the wires crashed down on them. The screams stopped after awhile and the thing that squirmed through the chopped remains was content.
---------
"Little Bunny Bastie hopping through the forest."
Bouncing out into the hallway, Bast shut the door behind him. It vanished immediately.
"Scoopin' up the Muggles and boppin' them on the head," finished a far too familiar voice accented with guttural Germanic.
Bast frowned up at Schuldig, eyeing the telepath suspiciously. "What do you want?" he asked petulantly.
Schuldig grinned, something savage and dark flicking through the telepath's eyes. Bast had to wonder if Landel's finally had knocked the man over the edge. Wouldn't have been the first time.
"Is it done?"
Bast huffed, drawing himself up to his full 5'2 height. "Yes. I tried to get the redhead's hair for you, but Wormy got it first. I didn't think you'd want it after he chewed on it."
Schuldig waved a hand, already turning away and headed away from the MU rooms. "Have a good night, Bastie. I wonder what the real Head Doctor would think if he knew you were using his name?"
The telepath's laughter drifted back the hallway to Rabastan, the wizard watching him go with a wrinkled nose. When Schuldig's footsteps faded down the stairs, Bast sighed.
"He'd probably tell me to stop screwing around and get finished on those reports about the new patients coming in the day after tomorrow."
Shrugging to himself, Bast started humming his song again as he headed back to his room.
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XD Good job.
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Wow.
That kind of scared me. But I was impressed. Though Cid and Barret needed to do more swearing ;)
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Otherwise holy crap this was good and messed up! ♥
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Um. Wow. D: Holy fuck, Shachou. That was creepy and amazing and amazingly creepy and other adjectives (positive ones! Except for the reiterations of "creepy" and "scary" and... other variants) that I totally fail at providing right now, but still! ♥ ♥ ♥
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adl;sjfds CREEPY. ♥ And much love.