nobody_number_8 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nobody_number_8) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
re_alignment2014-05-18 07:38 pm
nobody_number_8) wrote in re_alignment2014-05-18 07:38 pm
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Number VII: A brand new me is coming out tonight... [Action/Video]
[For five days now, Axel's been asleep in Knockout's clinic. Seeing such a normally dynamic individual so still and quiet, motionless except for his soft breathing, is probably strange to most people. One thing has changed about him since he was laid there on the bed, though; a day or two in, the small purple markings on his face mysteriously vanished.
Now, a few days later, he finally stirs again, his eyes opening for the first time since he fell asleep on Ven's glider. He blinks a few times, staring up at the ceiling in confusion before memory catches up to him. He's back here again. And he's still Lea. He grins, sitting up, though a little stiffly after those five days.]
I'm back...
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[A little while later, a familiar face appears on the comms... though slightly altered.]
Hello there, Haven! Guess who's back? And better than ever! Why, you may ask? Because I'm now 100% me again!
You probly know me as Axel, but now? The name's Lea. Got it memorized?
Now, a few days later, he finally stirs again, his eyes opening for the first time since he fell asleep on Ven's glider. He blinks a few times, staring up at the ceiling in confusion before memory catches up to him. He's back here again. And he's still Lea. He grins, sitting up, though a little stiffly after those five days.]
I'm back...
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[A little while later, a familiar face appears on the comms... though slightly altered.]
Hello there, Haven! Guess who's back? And better than ever! Why, you may ask? Because I'm now 100% me again!
You probly know me as Axel, but now? The name's Lea. Got it memorized?
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And I can do better than tell you about it; I'll show you, if you want. Once Ven's seen it, of course.
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I'd be interested in listening if you're open to telling.
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OK. First of all, before I get into it, I gotta give you you a little background on how things work where I'm from. There, every complete being is made up of three components: the body, which is pretty self-explanatory; the soul, which is what animates you and keeps you alive; and the heart, which lets you feel things, form connections to people, and generally holds the core of everything that makes you you and not just another living body. Not exactly the same thing as a spark, but if you think of that, you've got a rough idea of what I'm talking about.
Now, if your soul leave your body, you're just dead. But if the heart leaves- or rather, is taken- that's a bit different. Normally, once someone's heart is taken, the rest of them just fades away; nothing holding them to the realm of light any more. But sometimes, if the person's heart was especially strong, you get a kind of byproduct; Nobodies. They're the empty shells left behind, the body and soul with no heart. Something that was never supposed to exist, and in fact can't properly exist by my world's rules of nature. Without a heart, they can't contain either light or darkness, and are rejected by both, though because of how they're created, they're closer to the darkness.
Only the very strongest Nobodies keep their human form and memories. That's what I was when you met me; Axel was my Nobody. As to how I became him, well... that's where the long story comes in.
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And quite a story it must be. And you now have your heart back?
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Yep. And let me tell you, it feels damn good to be complete again.
You still wanna hear that long story, now that you know how bizarre it's likely to be?
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[He laughs] Of course I do! Assuming you're willing to share it all.
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Anyway, it all started, for me at least, about twelve years ago, in the city I lived in as a kid: Radiant Garden. Was just as nice a place as it sounds too, but that's not really important to the story.
Anyway, one day, there was some kind of explosion or something in one of the outer gardens. They found a young man there, injured and mostly unconscious and our King, Ansem the Wise took him back to the castle for treatment. Being a kid at the time, I didn't pay much attention to the story beyond that. The guy was in good hands, and anyway it really had nothing to do with me. Wasn't til later that I found out the rest.
The guy's name, as it turned out, was Xehanort. He was some kind of genius, and once he'd recovered, he became one of Ansem's top apprentices. Ansem encouraged the study of both the sciences and the magical arts, see, and had a number of researchers and apprentices that looked directly to him. And it wasn't long after Xehanort joined his apprentices that Ansem embarked on another research project; studying darkness of the heart, with the intent of protecting people from it. He even had anew lab built in the castle basement for the purpose.
Xehanort jumped at the chance to volunteer as both researcher and test subject for those first experiments, but what Ansem found disturbed him and he ordered the tests stopped. Only, as you might have guessed, they weren't. In fact, they just escalated.
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It started out slowly. A few people disappeared. One of the castle maids. An armorer's son. The guy who had that stall full of tacky rugs at the market. People were upset, obviously but they were assured investigations were underway, so they mostly went about their lives as usual, confident things would settle down eventually.
Only they didn't. There were more disappearances, and what was worse, monsters- what we'd later know as Heartless- started appearing, attacking people who were out after dark. Everyone was afraid, and assurances that the castle guard had things under control started sounding pretty hollow, even to a kid like I was at the time.
The last straw came when no one had seen or heard from Ansem in well over a week. I convinced my then best friend Isa that it was time we found out what the hell was actually going on. Find out what happened to Ansem, and maybe even where the monsters were coming from and how to stop them. We'd though maybe Ansem had been hurt or something, and the guards were trying to hush it up to prevent a panic, but we really had no idea what we were getting into that night when we snuck into the castle.
We found out what had been going on, alright. After Ansem had ordered the experiments stopped Xehanort continued them using Ansem's name on the records, presumably to cover his tracks. We found the records of the experiments he did on people in that basement lab, artificially twisting and amplifying the darkness in their hearts until their hearts collapsed, becoming the first Heartless in radiant Garden. Of further experiments with people being offered as 'living samples' to captive Heartless. We saw the prison cells where his 'test subjects' were kept. And we saw the machine that was pumping out even more Heartless.
Needless to say, we bolted out of there as fast as we could to try and warn everyone, but we never made it. We were caught and dragged back down to the lab by a couple of former castle guards. Xehanort had gotten a few of the castle guards and a few of Ansem's other apprentices in on his plans, though I gotta wonder how much most of them really knew about them. When the real Ansem found out what they and Xehanort had been up to and tried to shut it down, they turned on him, banishing him to another realm. Not long after that, Xehanort extracted their hearts before doing the same to himself, turning them into Nobodies, which is what they were when Isa and I ran into them.
They put us though the heart-extracting machine they'd used on others for experiments, intending to effectively kill us so we couldn't tell anyone what they were up to. They never counted on how strong the hearts of two punk kids could be. That night, our Nobodies, Siax and Axel were born and soon after we became members VII and VIII of the Organization.
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And well.... yes and no. See, it turns out that, while Nobodies are born without hearts, but humanoid ones at least can develop a new one over time if they interact with people and make an effort to form connections. A fact which Xemnas conveniently didn't mention, since his plans required the Organization to be empty shells.
So when we met, I'd already been developing a replacement for a little while so I technically had... part of a heart, I guess. Just not my original one.
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And now?
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Now? I'm completely back to being human and have my original heart back. Same as the other former Organization members.
Recompletion is rough though, and last I heard only myself, Ienzo, and Aeleus were fully back on or feet. Dilan and Even were conscious, but still kinda unstable. I was actually headed back to Radiant Garden to check up on things there when I woke back up here.
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