Chapter 9: Extremes


Luxord's PoV

Well, this simply won't do, will it? Frozen in ice, Vexen holding a grudge—against Axel, no less, I always wondered if he had something to do with the Castle Oblivion debacle. No no, if my time is going to end anytime soon, it certainly won't be as a hapless victim of another's past failings.

"Prepare for death, spies. I hope you make hell freeze o—"

Aaaaand that's enough of that: time to intervene. I froze the moment right then and there, stopping the Academic in mid-rant. Now that we were safe from death, it was simply a matter of moving us back a few minutes—Vexen back on the stairway, the ice back in its previous state of normal air, us hiding just below Vexen—and stopping at the new moment. Once I was free to move, all I had to do was snap my fingers to bring Zexion and Axel out of time to join me. The two of them collapsed on our card platform, gasping for breath.

"Duh…Damn, Lux. You couldn't have done that sooner?"

Typical Axel; don't misunderstand me, I trusted him now, he never could give a straight complement to any of us. Any of us besides Roxas that is…

"Me? Forgive me, but aren't you the one with control over fire?"

He looked up and directed a scowl at me. "Yeah, but I need some energy to work with first. No heat, no movement, no fire power. Got it memorized?"

"Just quit it, ok?" While Axel continued with his panting on the ground, Zexion calmly rose to his feet and looked into my eye with a cold yet passive stare. I must admit, despite his explanations of his…condition, Zexion never ceases to unnerve me when he makes the transition from child to adult like this. That kind of compartmentalization can't possibly be healthy… "Luxord, I need you to focus on the task at hand. Can you send us forward in time while keeping an eye on Vexen along the way?"

On the other hand, I must offer credit where it's due; the child is very resourceful. That is, he would be, except… "Zexion, time is not simply a reel of film to rewind and fast forward at whatever speed you wish. If I were to try to progressively move forward in time, as opposed to simply 'jumping' forward, the amount of power and strain it would take—"

"Can you do it?"

His eyes hadn't changed, but the forcefulness in his voice...he certainly wasn't going to take no for an answer. I took a relative moment—a relative one mind you; we were stopped in one second of time after all—and gave him the best answer I could. "If I were to shift us between seconds, it would be possible to watch events in real-time without the possibility of interaction or detection. However, the energy that would require, not to mention the strain on my person—"

"Axel, I'm going to need you to monitor Luxord's thermal readings. He's going to be working really hard, and if his temperature rises or falls I'll need you to regulate it." Axel looked at him in shock, then nodded and walked over and grabbed me by my shoulders. I wanted to protest, but Axel's confused expression told me that he had as much an idea of where Zexion was going with this as I did.

I couldn't believe it myself; Zexion was going to force me to, for all intents and purposes, tear myself apart in some mad time experiment! "Zexion, I beg of you, don't force me to do this! You have no idea of the kind of pain I'll be forced to endure through this!"

"You let me worry about the pain. Just focus on the task at hand, and I promise you that you'll have nothing to worry about." He looked me in the eyes and for what could have been a second, I saw that stoicism melt away. The child in him came back, and his eyes seemed to beg for me to do as he said.

"Does the 'innocent-eyes' ploy work very often for you?"

Zexion jumped back incredulously…then looked down at his feet, blushing. "Yeah, it kinda does."

I couldn't contain myself anymore; I burst out laughing, so much so that Axel started laughing behind me as well out of sheer anxiety. Manipulation, pure and simple: now this was something I was accustomed to working with. "Alright, little Schemer, I'll take the gamble on your scheme. Just remember, I am relying on you to ensure my survival—for all our sakes." With that, I closed my eyes, called all my power into me…and suddenly, my senses expanded far beyond what I had ever experienced.

It was as if my mind and the world had switched places; I could do anything, manipulate anything. Every single second of time that ever was or would be was under my full command! I swung my arms outward, and I could suddenly see an entire hour spread out in front of me, each window to the world a single minute in its domain. It was incredible, beyond my wildest dreams; I was omnipotent, an all powerful and all-consuming force of nature itself that could do anything my mind could imagine…


Zexion's PoV

"Zex, he's only been going at it for a minute and his core temperature's already spiking. Why isn't he screaming in pain?"

It took a minute for me to focus enough to answer Axel; I'd taken out Retribution, and it was taking all of my concentration to weave the illusion I needed from its pages. Once I'd finished, I looked up to find that it had worked; Luxord was sweating, but his mouth was frozen in a permanent grin of pure ecstasy. He began to stumble, but I managed to catch him before he fell. Right away, I could notice two things: he was heavy, and the muscles in his arms were contracting and relaxing out of control as the power surged through him. "Axel, take him, please. I've got him sedated best I can, but I need you to siphon the fever out of him before his organs start to fail!"

At the sound of organs Axel pulled Luxord off of me, set him down level on the card, and positioned himself in a rush at Lux's side. As quickly as he could, he called out his chakrams and held them over Luxord's body. The weapons began to glow neon red, and when he let them float on their own, Luxord began to glow the same way. Then, after a deep breath, he flung his arms out, and in response the glow shot out from Luxord, through the chakrams, and into the air as an inferno of flames. Thankfully it seemed to do some good; Luxord's convulsions began to slow down, and eventually he lay completely still.

Axel himself looked absolutely terrified; I don't think he'd tried anything this big before, nor had he done so on a fellow Number. "He…he's not cooling down, Zex! The fever's just growing stronger!"

"You won't have to worry about that much longer, Axel. Look!" I pointed up to the staircase, where time seemed to be back on track. Vexen was moving, albeit in very choppy motions; I suppose Luxord's efforts weren't going to be quite as precise as I would've liked. Still, the overall goal was reached; Vexen looked pissed as hell, but he couldn't see us at all. I wanted to see what he would do next, but Axel seemed determined to occupy my full attention.

"Why are we doing this, Zexion? You…you could've just hid us with an illusion, couldn't you?"

"It doesn't work that way, Axel; I can't make something out of nothing, that's Xemnas' field. I can only make an illusion by either pulling it out of a book or expanding on my surroundings. I tried to disguise us as part of the nothingness in this castle, but Vexen saw through it, so I had to take extreme measures." I looked back up to see Vexen running off down the staircase, towards the labs. Good, that meant that either the rewind of time made him forget about us or he was going off to hide his work; either way, it gave us the chance we needed to follow him without too much trouble. "Ok Axel, you can stop now: time to downshift back to normal time."

As Axel let the flames die down and the glow fade, I knelt down by Luxord's face. He was still drooling in euphoria, even as the convulsions began to return and his fever began to rise. "Luxord? Can you hear me?"

"Ah…Zexion…it's amazing…!"

I stroked the top of his hair, pulling the dream out as he began to whine at the returning pain. "I know, Luxord, but you need to let the power go now. We need to get going."

"Uhh…ok…" For the first time since this madness had started, Luxord opened his eyes…and released an explosive shockwave, nearly throwing us off the card. Apparently, the energy Luxord had been using decided to explode out all at once, and it was only Luxord's card maneuvering that kept us from falling to our deaths. He flew the card up over the staircase just in time, and we all collapsed onto its glass surface.

"Owwww…Luxord, c'mon!" I wasn't too hurt, but Axel, who had somehow ended up at the bottom of the heap, seemed ready to tear through the both of us. "You couldn't have just…held it in longer?"

For a second, we all just stayed completely still, taking in the full absurdity of what Axel had just said. Then, for reasons that still completely baffle part of me, we all just burst out into laughter, rolling off each other and lying side by side on the glass floor. It was an amazing feeling; we laughed for what seemed like forever, and we did so without any purpose or goal in mind. Our laughter wasn't meant to demean another or send a message of superiority; it was simply laughter, the purest expression of that which we had been unable to feel for so long: joy.

And believe it or not, I loved it. I know that it is hard for those not in my position to understand, but it's the little things like laughing at an accidental joke, or talking without an agenda, or just breathing and enjoying life that makes all of this pain worth it. From that point on, if I ever felt my hopes dying or my heart numbing, I remembered that laugh, because that's what I was fighting for: the chance to escape this world of darkness and live again.

Eventually, I managed to catch my breath, and I turned my head to the left to check on Luxord beside me. "How…how are you doing? Any pain left over?"

"I feel sore…all over…" He turned to me, coughing through his laughs as his chest began to spasm from the strain of laughing. "What…what did you cast on me? That…was some good stuff…"

That just had me laughing harder then ever before; I have never, in all the time I've know him, heard Luxord say a common word like "stuff". "I…I…I drew an illusion…from Xemnas' Secret Reports. From back when he was Xehanort? He…He wrote…so much stuff…his delusions of grandeur and power practically oozed out of his writing!"

And at that, I just let go and kept laughing, enjoying every minute of it. Once I finally calmed down I looked up, and Luxord and Axel were there, grabbing either side of me to help me up.

"Oh…ok, I'm good now. You…you guys wanna…get going or what?"


I love writing with a lot of imagery! It just opens up so many doors as to what I can do with it!

Also, I just found out that this story's been added to a community, my first one. Thank you, Super Shadow the Hedgehog!

While I'm at it, thank you also to my faithful reader, whose name I can never seem to get, but he knows who he is! Gosh he's insightful. To him, I say this: yes, I am aware of Axel and Zexion's past relationship, but thank you for reminding me to address it. I will be doing so in the next few chapters, so keep a look out!

Please review. Reviews to me are like those light blue properties in Monopoly: they don't seem like much, but put them all together and they can change the whole game.