"Now: make your choice. What say you to returning to us, or being destroyed along with 'Mr Slater'?" Luxord's mouth curved around the words, enjoying every bit of finally having power over Mr Slater. He didn't have his gun, and, now, I realized with a gulp, every nobody in the room was pointing a weapon at him, or ready to lunge if necessary. Mr Slater and I stood up immediately, but we knew how little we could affect them.
"Normally," chatted Luxord, as though it was only a tea party. "I would prefer to use my own nobodies, but they rely on chance, which, this time, I cannot do. I have given you ample time to decide between the man who told you that you had a heart, or the Organization that could rescue it. Choose. Now."
"You do not rescue hearts!" Roared Mr Slater, but he fell silent as a Dragoon prodded him with its spear threateningly.
This time, I held back the tears, like Xigbar had told me when I was recruited. I masked over my face, and said, trying to sound emotionless, "He lied to me. I want a heart back. Any heart." Luxord's face lit up of pure glee.
"You make sense. I told you about him, but you found out the difficult way…"
"I want to do it myself. To kill him." Mr Slater looked at me. I could see nothing in his eyes again. Maybe the dull gleam of sorrow, again…?
"You're sure?" Mr Slater didn't speak. This was Luxord.
"Yes." The nobodies around us slipped back, and the portal slowly closed itself once more, with only a small portion of the vortex still visible. Luxord warned me that it was no longer working, and I would be killed if I tried.
I drew my sitar. Mr Slater pulled his jacket's sleeves back. Pitiful.
I couldn't believe what I was going through with. A low minim, and we both stood our ground. I started playing again. Balls of ultra-dense water rushed at Mr Slater, whose only hope was to jump to the side, as he did. Next, water jets from non-existent geysers blasted from the ground, and he wasn't so lucky, knocked up into the air, and plummeting down. Nevertheless, he got back up again.
I continued to play, and I'd pulled my gloves on beforehand, to protect my frail skin from the sharp wires. Water was again cascading around me in a huge dome high above my head, but not even making contact, and there was nothing he could do. Rapidly, the same water figures as before started charging out of the head of my sitar, hurtling at Mr Slater.
He was buffeted by the constant storm. With no visible protection but the bed on which I was standing, he tried to dodge the hurtling gravity-defying forms, but only so they would turn around and strike him from behind.
I was working him towards one of the massive white doors in the room. I didn't know what was on the other side, but as he tried to run inside as an escape, I saw that it was an empty tight corridor, the end roughly cemented over. This must have been the exit, once, before Mr Slater had nobody-proofed it. Luxord had followed us inside from a safe distance, and even Xigbar had tagged along for the show. The nobodies were behind them.
Mr Slater took a few more hits from water, until he finally fell down, kneeling, holding his hand out in a futile protection against my last strike: the figures were now spiralling around me, joining together, working a huge typhoon-like storm in appearance, and all the while, my sitar's became more and more intense and louder and louder.
Luxord spoke to me, shouting above my disharmonic tunes.
"Do it! Now!" I looked at Mr Slater.
"Please… please, Demyx. All I wanted was to be with you…" I didn't think Luxord could hear him, but I tried to block the sound from my mind, as I slammed my fingers on a string, and plucked as hard as was feasible to keep with the tune. The water raged forward. Mr Slater didn't scream. He wanted to go with dignity.
