[Episode 147602] [Episode 147602]He didn’t want to traverse it, he never did but his legs moved on instinct, padding slowly into the hall of the macabre. He found himself young again, the same age he was back when this hallway first came to haunt his nightmares and memories. He stopped and turned his head; a corpse that wasn’t there before leans against the wall, head hung low with a bullet through the helmet visor that the corpse is wearing, blood and brains splattering the wall behind it.
The lifeless head lifted up as a decomposed face could be seen through the bullet hole. ”Back again so soon boy? I bet you probably killed a buncha stiffs to grace us with your presence again. So how horribly did they die this time, or were you merciful for once?”
He steps away from the corpse even as its head lowers again to a life-less state. His legs make him move again, this time to a door which he is forced to look inside. Inside was a lab with a broken stasis-tube and equipment that took up most of the space in the room. Laid over a broken console was a dead woman in a white lab coat, stained crimson with blood. The body suddenly lifted to the air like a marionette on strings; turning to face him showing off a slit throat among many stab wounds.
”Are you back for another injection my dear? You shouldn’t neglect your medication now, you might go crazy!” the dead woman laughs with an eerie voice. She holds up her right hand, her fingers had become syringes with hypodermic dripping with fluid at the end.
Screaming in fright he grabs the door handle as best he could with his height and pulls it closed to shut out the frightening cackles of the dead scientist. He turns to look down the hall again and this time a series of dead zombie-like soldiers slowly pace toward him. Their death-wounds varied, but all seem brutal and vicious. The leader of this undead troupe was a red-haired woman with a blue streak down her front bang. Her body was riddled with bullets and a knife was stuck in the left side of her brain. This one made him wish he was dead; he never wanted to see her image again!
”Back so soon boya? My, my you’re racking up a body count…” the voice was seductive yet cruel, her smile smug and vicious. ”I guess you need punishing again, doesn’t that sound nice? Maybe if you’re a good boy I’ll let you be on top before you can sleep, but first I’ll let the boys here work you up first.” Her sadistic laughter was the last thing he heard as the undead horde was upon him, their hands all over him as darkness engulfed him.
“No…no…God please….NOOOOOOO!!”
”Kou, KOU! Wake up, wake up!”
Shooting straight up from the bed, Kou began to pant for breath, he felt like he had stopped breathing and every little bit of air his lungs could intake were as precious as water to a thirsty man in a desert. His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness of the room, he wasn’t in the hallway, but in a bedroom somewhere far, far away from that God-awful hallway.
He feels a hand gently touch his shoulder, causing his head to turn looking upon a familiar and concerned face. “Kou…what’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare?”
”C-Cagalli…” He choked out her name, his throat felt dry and hoarse; his entire body was nearly numb. A shudder runs up his spine, making him tremble as he looks down at the bed sheets. “S-sorry…I didn’t mean to wake you.”
”I don’t care about that, what happened to you? You just started talking in your sleep like you were in pain then you started to yell and then shot up like that.” Her expression of concern deepens as she takes his hand into her own. “Was it a nightmare…or something else?”
The hallway flashed in Kou’s mind for an instant before he shudders. “If it was just a bad dream, I wish it was just that.” He murmurs, leaning into her, seeking the familiar, comforting warmth of her body.
Cagalli’s arms wrapped around him protectively stroking his head softly, she’d never seen him look so disturbed or pale, not even when he went into shock during that one battle. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
Kou’s first reaction was to say “no” but however he didn’t. He rested his head on her shoulder, softly tucking his face against the nap of her neck. “It was that God damned hallway again.”
She blinked, puzzled. “A hallway?”
“Yeah the main hallway of the Obsidian Abyss’s R&D Building #668,” he answers. “About four months before I ran away from the OA’s control, I had been selected by a special program. I dunno why they wanted to use a seven year old, but at the time I thought it was something special.” He closes his eyes, shuddering more in fright. “But instead I found a hell.”
Cagalli softly bit her lip, keeping back a fleet of questions she wanted to ask, and simply let him continue.
”First thing they did was inject me with some sorta special drug meant to expand my mental capacities, and then I was shoved into a stasis-tube where a team of scientists added more enhancements into my already enhanced genes. The top priority of those enhancements besides skills with robotics, computers and piloting was the main focus of their experiments; the IDLOA enhancements.”
”IDLOA?”
“Instinctive-Desperation-Lash-Out-Actions, a sorta super-soldier enhancement they were experimenting with to see if they could help “breed” people into becoming soldiers with half the necessary training.” Kou explained with no lack of hatred in his voice. “Somehow my DNA was idle for testing it on, so I got roped into it despite my age. Apparently between my unique genetic enhancements prior to the OA taking me in, my ESP or “Newtype” powers as they classified them made me idle for a lot of their plans.”
Cagalli nodded, understanding the gist of what he was saying. “So what happened?”
“Well despite my “idle genetics” I was still a seven year old kid, and scared to fucking death, so every time they tried to test me I cried and got frightened which pissed them off. They kept getting harsher and harsher, trying to trigger the IDLOA enhancements kick in during tests but I kept wimping out.” He closes his eyes, trying to steady his nerves to continue. “Then one prick of a soldier got tired and started to try and shoot me with his side-arm, he kept yelling “If you don’t shape up and show results boy I’m gonna kill you!”, and that he did I ran around the training room trying to avoid being shot. He nicked my thigh and my face. He then had me cornered and loaded a fresh clip to finish me off, my mind was all in an uproar of fear, I was going to die and there was no way to escape.” He closes his eyes, his breath shaky. “I spotted his knife on his belt…and that was when I first saw the Seed…it exploded in front of my eyes and…everything become slow and fast at the same time.”
”The next thing I know I’ve grabbed the guy’s knife and stabbed his wrist so he drops the gun, and then I manage to grab the gun and shoot him through the head. The rest of the soldiers tried to avenge him but, somehow I ended up killing them and much of the staff at #668 before escaping.” He sighs on a shaky breath. “I don’t know which was worse, the fact or killed or how savagely I killed some of those people before I ran, even though I felt they deserved it.”
He continued on, despite it was getting harder to talk. “I wish that was it, but a few years later down the road when I was ten or eleven I got captured again after…some bad things happened. They wanted me alive for some project but wanted to break me to their will so I was tortured in a variety of manners. Nothing that would cripple me or disable my ability to pilot or fight but, it was harsh.” He pulls off his t-shirt, and throws it aside revealing a few knife cars along his back, chest, right and left side and a few burns on his back
Cagalli gasps, covering her mouth at the sight. While Kou’s scars weren’t numerous or horrendous as say Vash the Stampede’s but it was still something you’d expected to see on a young man’s body at his age. “So that’s why you wore a t-shirt even when we went swimming at the resort.”
”Yeah…s’not something I like to show off.” He pulls the shirt back on. “There was one ”interrogator” who really made my skin crawl, she was the one hired to break me so to speak. However her method of trying to break me was a sexually themed in a sadistic way. She played mind games, trying to bend me to become like her pet so I’d be obedient to the OA, but once again something snapped within me and I killed everyone in my way and got away.” He lowers his head. “That’s one of the reasons I despise the Obsidian Abyss, not just for being a organization following the same doctrine of hypocrisy and genocide as Blue Cosmos, but for what they did to me, just to further their goals or to make me their tool.”
He holds up his hands, staring at them as if they were an eyesore. “My hands are stained with so much blood, I feel like a monster, no better than the-“ he was cut off as Cagalli suddenly wrapped her arms around him from behind and held her to him tightly. “C-Cagalli?”
“Don’t you dare bad mouth yourself for what you did back then. You had no choice, my God you were just seven the first time and…they tortured and molested you!! I’d fucking lose it and go psycho if they did all that to me.” Her voice was cracking, anger, and compassion melded together along with many other emotions. “That’s just too cruel, how can anyone use a child for experiments and then torture him when they re-capture him? Oh God Kou…I’m so sorry.”
”It’s alright.”
”No it’s not!” She turned him around to face her. “Nobody should have gone through all that and have to put up with the psychological after effect crap. You’re a good person Kou, a brave, self-sacrificing individual who protects others from harm at the cost of himself. If you were a monster, you wouldn’t have nightmares over killing those bastards, or feel remorse when you can’t save people like when you cried about that school bus.” Her own tears were cascading down her face. “Those people…they’re terrible…nobody, especially someone as wonderful as you shouldn’t have suffered like that.”
Being on his own more often than not, Kou was still not quite used to other people’s kindness directed towards him so…openly or with such unwavering compassion. “Cagalli…”
She held him tightly. “Please, let me help you ease your pain. You don’t have to be alone anymore, let me help you share the burden and the pain.”
His eyes go wide; save for two other people in his life, nobody else had even shown him such upfront affection or compassion. His eyes mist over. “You want to help me?”
She smiles, cupping his cheek. “You’ve been protecting me, so why not do the same for you? I told you I care about you, I can’t explain it but…I can’t stand to see you in pain, I feel this want to keep you safe, to shield you from the nightmares, the bad memories, the evils of the world and combat.” She smiles a warm, loving smile. “Its unexplainable but I just know I need to be here for you.”
The dam broke, Kou’s eyes explode with tears as he holds Cagalli, her neck softly becoming wet from his crying but she didn’t mind. While she hand one arm around his waist, another softly rubbed up and down his back soothingly, letting him vent. After awhile she slowly eased them both back onto the bed, watching him as Kou’s crying slowed down till he sniffled his last sniffle.
”S-sorry I *sniff* just its not often someone showers me with genuine affection and care.” He wipes his eyes.
”Don’t be,” He nuzzles his face.
Kou smiles, accepting the warm nuzzle from Cagalli. He then found her staring at him softly, his face flushing at the close proximity of their faces from the other. He didn’t expect it but he did not protest or fight it when she leaned her face down to kiss him softly. One of her arms curled around his neck, while his own went around her waist, both of them just enjoying this moment.
After the kiss broke, both Cagalli and Kou had bright tomato-red faces. Kou regained his voice first. “W-wow…” was all he could manage to utter at that moment. “Um not that I’m going to complain but why?”
“Partially because I felt like it, part I wanted too, and part because in your eyes I could see you wanting one.” She smiles softly, leaning her forehead to his. “I said I wanted to help ease your pain, and I meant it. Anyway I can let me.”
”Cagalli.” Kou murmurs, sighing softly as she nuzzles her neck, “You don’t…have to do anything for me.”
“I want too though,” she entwines her fingers through his own, clasping his hand. “Let me help you drown the bad memories with good ones.”
With a soft whimper, Kou relents, feeling her lips on his again as he welcomed her embrace.
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(Posted Mon, 03 Oct 2005 22:41)
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