Summary: Fifteen years ago, the ShinRa Corporation commisioned Project Omega - the fusion of otherworldly Demons with human host-bodies. Ten years ago, Hojo tore the Demon Prince from his realm and his soul-bonded lover, killing his soul mate and binding the Prince into a mortal body with the blood of innocents. Half a year ago, ShinRa declared the project a failure and prepared to sell off the only survivor of the experiments.
And all the while, the forces of the Light and the Dark watch as their plans unfold...
Warnings: Heavy + explicit yaoi/slash content, m-preg, eventual violence, non-con, graphic torture, and a whole lot of general angst. If you don't like, don't read.
Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it's not ours. However, all OCs, origonal backstories, the Otherkin and their realm do belong to us, so please don't steal!
Prologue - The Buying and Selling of Souls
Vincent/Chaos
"Eighty thousand!"
"Ninety!"
"A hundred-twenty thousand!"
Bloodstone eyes looked on silently, a small smirk not his own playing over dark lips.
'They're so pathetic,' his inner Demon sneered. 'As if any of them have what it takes to control me.'
'Be quiet!' Vincent snapped. 'I'm trying to –'
He hissed in pain, hands flying to the sides of his skull as Chaos stabbed into his mind with a mental knife, snarling.
'Don't order me, Human,' Chaos hissed, and his host's vision went white with agony as the dagger twisted – in their cage, he fell to his knees, gasping, ignoring the glances of their guards, the burning pain inside his head demanding all his attention. 'I will never answer to you – or to any of your kind!'
'I – I'm sorry,' Vincent gasped, clutching his head desperately. 'I'm sorry, please, just – just stop!'
Chaos did so – abruptly, suddenly, and his host felt unexplained shock and confusion radiate from the Demon's presence in his body.
'What's wrong?'
Chaos didn't answer, but Vincent followed his gaze through their shared eyes, hiding his confusion from their face when bloodstone alighted on gold and sapphire – an older teenager, probably around the same age as Vincent; but that was where all similarities ended. Elegantly groomed blond locks had not a hair out of place; Vincent's ebony tresses, while silky, were knotted and tangled in wild snarls. White cashmere suit; simple black denim jeans, white t-shirt, both unmarked by any designer label. An unmarked, perfect body; a wreath of scars beneath thin cotton, and a golden gauntlet, clawed with razors, covering his left arm up to the elbow.
And most significantly, Vincent thought wryly, the rich-born brat, sitting at the side of President ShinRa – up on the seats of this mock-coliseum, instead of down in the bloodstained arena in a cage – was wholly Human.
Gold flickered in crimson eyes, and Vincent frowned, unable – and unwilling – to shake Chaos' concentration from the teen.
It was as if the Demon were entranced.
'What?' He asked again, curious – and abruptly, Chaos withdrew, jerked from the outer realms of Vincent's mind to curl up in the Dark within them both, gold vanishing from red in a flash.
'I don't answer to you, mortal,' Chaos sneered – but his heart wasn't in it; and in one of those rare moments of clarity, Vincent caught the vanishing wisps of the other's thought.
He reminds me of someone…Someone I've forgotten…
"A hundred and eighty-five!"
Sighing, Vincent adjusted his position, ignoring the guns cocked at the sudden movement, leaning back against the bars, one knee drawn up to his chest. The picture of indifference, as the gathered business men bid their gil to try and buy his soul.
'…Tilt your head back,' Chaos said quietly, and without question Vincent obeyed. It was the one thing on which they were allied – antagonising the ShinRa corp at every turn – and they both smirked to see the President's frustration, quickly masked, at the hybrid's seeming lack of concern.
)0(
Rufus
"One hundred and ninety thousand! Do I hear one ninety-five?"
Shut up.
The perfect avatar of Shin-Ra's golden future sat, unmoving and unmoved, as the price went up, and up--and why, God, why did he have to sit through this, he wondered, when he could be training with the Turks? Or studying? Or anywhere but here.
It was then that Rufus, Vice-President and acting CEO of Shin-Ra corporation, noticed that the "specimen," the hybrid, another one of Hojo's "failed experiments," was looking at him.
Even from his box-seat beside his megalomaniac father, Rufus could see the keen glint in gold-swirled crimson eyes, and he wondered. Who was he? What must he think of them, sitting up there, acting like gods--presiding over the sale of a soul? And since when did Rufus care? If the project was such a failure then why were all the suits so eager to get their hands on it? They didn't know, did they, that Shin-Ra was simply cutting its losses. What did it matter, when once the gavel went down, Rufus would likely never see it--him--again. Why did those eyes haunt him even when they hybrid looked away uncaring? How much was a life worth to these ravening wolves?
"Two hundred thousand gil!"
