Disclaimer: Not mine in any way, shape or form.
A/N: Written for Nilmiel-Chan o the LiveJournal community KH Request. She asked for Xigbar/Larxene and the prompt 'Which of us is crazier, I wonder?' This turned out … a lot darker than I was expecting. Then again, Larxene usually does when I try to write her.
Crazy is as Crazy Does
© Scribbler, August 2008.
The Organisation didn't often spar with each other. There was no need – each member was an expert in his or her field, and when it came to combat few of them knew how to give quarter. Pulling back at the last moment, showing mercy, not finishing the job when you had the advantage? When your next opponent could be a keyblader or worse, that was just crazy talk.
Larxene in particular was all about the killing, but unlike the others there was an unhealthy gleam in her eyes when she did it. Without hearts, her teammates saw killing in one of two ways, both of them boiling down to basic necessity: you killed because someone was in your way, or because they'd kill you first if you didn't. Larxene, on the other hand, challenged the fundamental fact of their existence when she killed.
"You almost look like you're enjoying yourself," Xigbar remarked.
Standing in the middle of a concrete jungle, where death was usually from being hit by a bus or mugged for your wallet, Larxene threw back her head and laughed. It exposed the pale curve of her throat to the moonlight. Astonishingly, despite the circle of carnage, there wasn't a speck of blood on her, and coupled with her fair hair and skin this gave her an ethereal look, like some bloodthirsty spirit come back from the grave to wreak revenge on the living.
"This world is full of pathetic losers," she sneered, bringing her half-dead opponent close to her face. They were supposed to work as a team when exploring new worlds in pairs, but Xigbar hadn't had to lift a finger. Instead, he leaned against a building and watched her work. "Right?"
"Gruh …" replied the dragon, breathing restricted by her hand around its throat and the blow that'd shattered quite a few of its ribs.
She shook it. "Tell me, what are you?"
"Gonna kick your … skinny butt … all the way to Queens an' back."
"Wrong answer." Quick as lightning, she summoned a fresh kunai and took its eye out. It screamed, but she just examined the tip of her blade before flicking away the bloody pulp. For a dragon, it sounded surprisingly human. "Now, what are you?"
"The Am … Drag …"
"Not very bright?" Xigbar suggested.
Larxene didn't acknowledge him. She rarely acknowledged anyone when she was like this – ice queen cold and hotter than an inferno burning an entire world the ground in the same breath. It was obvious from the way she worked that her Other had been born to this – if the traditional ninja weapons she used didn't already give her away.
The dragon screamed and kept screaming, even more than the little pink one had. Xigbar toed the corpse with his boot, noting the clean slash from throat to groin. You could put a ruler against it and find it straighter than a surgeon's incision.
"What," Larxene said at last, kunai now replaced by a dripping sai. She'd probably move on to throwing needles in a minute. They were going to be here all night at this rate. "Are. You?"
The dragon rasped wetly around the blood in its mouth. When she raised the sai again it whimpered, nothing at all like the roar it'd released when it and its allies first confronted them. "A pafetic loother," it slurred around its broken teeth and broken jaw.
Having reduced this world's champion to a pleading wreck, Larxene smiled, then frowned when a bullet took off the back of its head. She threw the body to the ground and marched over, thrusting a finger into Xigbar's face.
"That was none of your business."
"As if." He pushed her away. "And get out of my face. This mission was strictly recon."
"They attacked us."
"So? Now you've got to tell the Superior why you went bugfuck when he specifically told us not to engage anyone."
Her frown deepened, and you might be forgiven for thinking it was from displeasure rather than thought – provided you didn't expect that forgiveness to come from Xemnas. She was obviously trying to think up a good reason for why she'd disobeyed orders.
"How about you plead insanity?"
Her eyes flashed. A kunai thunked into the wall beside Xigbar's head. Unperturbed, he brushed brick dust from his shoulder.
Struck by an idea, Larxene went back to the pile of dead dragons and began prising out their teeth with the aid of whatever pointy bits of metal she could summon – quite a few, as it happened, some of them nothing Xigbar had ever seen before even from her. She was just full of lethal surprises. Still, no bullets, which was a damn oversight, he reckoned. Forget slicing and dicing, you couldn't beat a bullet for sheer destructive power at long-range, and he'd yet to meet anyone, from any world, who didn't sing like a canary with a bullet in their knee.
"Dragon's teeth have magical properties," Larxene muttered, yanking so hard he heard the old blue one's jaw dislocate.
"A bribe? You think he's a god who'll accept tributes or something?"
"All divinities are like cats eager for mice, but they like to use someone else's claws," she said cryptically. "Tom cats and blue-eyed kittens, and one queen, all singing their midnight chorus to a moon shaped like a heart."
Xigbar shook his head. Bugfuck only just about covered it.
But as he watched the elegant way she twisted and popped the entire lower jaw right off the dragon he'd shot, and his eyes lingered on the curve of a leg that could shatter his sternum with a single kick, he couldn't help thinking: But which of us is crazier, I wonder?
Fin.