Original AN: Surprise! I did Chapter 6 on my dad's computer! I'm cut off frommy computer, but I refuse to let that deter me!
You'll probably notice that this chapter centers on only a few characters, but that's because I didn't want too many people ruining the kind of "theme" in this chapter.
I also wrote this kind of fast (in six hours) so it might be a little less...stellar? from what I normally try. ^_^" sorry.
Well, yeah. Enjoy Chapter 6!
The air was tense at the Castle That Never Was.
Anix's recovery was going slowly and at most times, unsteadily. The teen often slipped in and out of consciousness, and in those brief moments when he was awake, he was quiet and subdued, often with pounding headaches. The only thing that kept from disappearing completely into a coma or worse, was the Life Code X-176. If Anix went completely comatose...it would be nearly impossible to save him.
His friends visited him often and helped him in any way they could. To an outsider, the fuss wouldn't be too great, if Anix was kept in a quiet space.
"That's not it, though," Vexen explained to Xemnas and Saix when the two superior Nobodies came by, "the sound-waves he was already producing, coupled with the Avalanche's high-pitched frequencies, made an ultrasonic blast that would have deafened anyone else. The shockwave of a blast like that not only damaged his hearing, but caused a concussion as well. The overload of that kind of trauma could have quite possibly killed anyone else. For now we will be sustaining him on Life Code until he wakes up again. There is not much else we can do."
This did not please either Superiors, but nonetheless they withdrew all scheduled missions for Anix, Kyrox, and Cavex, for she would be helping while Vexen worked on a more permanent cure in the basement laboratory.
When the rest of the Organization had been given the news, the heavy atmosphere that had already claimed the Castle noticeably thickened, particularly among the neophytes.
"Leixym, Axille, Kyrox, Anix needs to rest." Cavex said to the three Nobodies. They had taken up positions beside Anix's bed and refused to leave, even after Anix had fallen asleep again.
"Aww...fine." Leixym whined, getting off of her chair, "C'mon, Seal, let's go do something."
Axille looked up at the use of her nickname 'Seal.' She wasn't endeared to it, but she didn't mind very much.
"M'kay, Ly; c'mon, Ky-ky, let's let Nixy sleep." the young mimic said, pulling on Kyrox's sleeve gently for emphasis.
"Hm? Oh, okay, Axille." Kyrox said distractedly as he let himself be led away from his friend's side.
Axille looked at him searchingly before saying, "Ky-ky's not feeling well. Are you okay?"
Kyrox shook his head and looked tiredly down at the kid.
"It's nothing. I'm fine." he said. He knew the child wouldn't understand, she was only eight after all.
Axille was unconvinced. More urgently, she pulled on his sleeve, putting on a serious face.
"No, Ky-ky's not fine. What's wrong?" she asked.
"I'm fine, Axille. Go play with Ly or something." Kyrox said, pushing the kid towards Leixym.
Leixym grinned as Axille came to walk by her.
"Aw, don't worry about Kyrox, Seal." she said, "He's just worried about Anix, is all."
When he was left alone, Kyrox looked back at the mostly empty hospital ward and sighed dejectedly.
"It's all my fault, Anix..."
"Hey," Axbrem said as she saw Leixym and Axille enter the Grey Area, "how's Anix?"
"Still sleeping." Leixym answered.
"Oh...how's Kyrox?" Axbrem asked.
"Ky-ky's worried!" Axille said, "He looked all sad when we left him by the hospital ward."
"Well I'd be sad too." Xavier, who had been listening, said, "I mean, if my best friend was slipping between a coma and consciousness, I'd be worried too."
"But he looked sadder than that." Axille insisted.
Leixym put on a smile and ruffled Axille's hair, enticing a growl of protest from the mimic. Only Roxas, Axel, Xigbar, and Demyx were allowed to mess with her hair!
"Don't worry, Seal, Kyrox's just being a worrywart." Leixym said.
Cavex looked over at Anix as he stirred in his sleep. She waited, but he settled back into slumber soon enough. Disappointed and still worried the healer Nobody pulled up her sleeve and checked her Life Code.
"Almost out...I had best go visit Vexen and ask for more..." she murmured worriedly. She looked over at Anix again and an anxious expression crossed her face.
"I'll be back soon, Anix." she promised.
"Here are your mission assignments." Saix said, handing the papers out to the gathered neophytes, excluding Anix, Cavex, and Kyrox.
The second-in-command was shot many a cold glare as he turned around to answer an inquiry from Xylle. Taking the chance, Axille transfigured herself to have straight, bluish-brown hair and cold yellow eyes, turning into a near-perfect clone of Saix. She turned around to the other neophytes and mimed handing out papers with the most ridiculous expression on her face. This little act of perfect mockery caused the members to explode into fits of stifled giggles, held back only by bitten leather and papers.
"Yes, Xylle, that's the—NUMBER XV, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Saix exploded as he turned around to see the kid miming him.
Blushing, Axille turned back and fled behind Darxet with a squeaky "Nothing!"
Saix's eye twitched and was interrupted from throttling the kid by Vexen, who had appeared in a puff of dark smoke.
"Oh good, you're still here." the Academic said, completely ignoring the furious glares Saix was shooting Axille.
"Yes, Vexen, what can we help you with?" Xylle asked.
"We are running low on Life Code X-176, and we need you neophytes to gather the components for it." Vexen explained.
"Wait...without the Code, how is Anix going to stay...awake?" Xisel's trusty doll, Alice, asked.
"He won't if we don't make more of the Code quickly. Here, I have marked out different worlds that you have to visit, as long as lists of what we need. I would ask your mentors to go with you, but all of them are busy with missions as well." Vexen said, handing out the new papers.
The neophytes took their new missions quietly, still worried.
"Wait...Vexy, where's my mission?" Axille asked after all of the papers had been handed out.
Vexen looked at her briefly before replying, "You are too young to attempt any of these missions, Axille. And as Roxas is away, there is no one who is not busy who can accompany you."
"What? I can handle it!" Axille exclaimed, "I'm not too young!"
"You're eight." Vexen reminded her, "That is too young in my opinion."
"But—"
"Make yourself useful and help Vexen and Cavex." Saix said coldly, "And don't question what your superiors tell you."
"Hey!" Xavier exclaimed, "Back off! She was only defending herself!"
Saix glared at her before turning back to Axille, his yellow eyes blazing.
"Get down to the lab and help out but don't just sit around and do nothing." he growled at her, obviously still annoyed after she was mocking him.
Axille glared at him before lowering her voice and hissing, "Accidenti a te..."
"What?" Saix demanded.
Axille just turned around to follow Vexen downstairs, "I didn't say anything."
"Ky-ky! Ky-ky, is Nixy okay?" Axille asked, running into the hospital ward.
Kyrox held a finger to his lips and nodded towards Anix. His breathing had gotten shallower and Axille noticed he was hooked up to an I.V., now being too weak to sit up and eat or drink anything. The sight of him so still and quiet unnerved Axille deeply.
"Ky-ky, is he okay? He's going to be okay, right?" she asked her older friend.
"He'll be fine, Axille. You'll see." Kyrox answered, though he sounded rather unsure himself. "By the way, shouldn't you be helping Cavex and Vexen?"
"No," Axille said, "I wasn't really doing anything 'cause they were doing it all. Then Cavvy told me to come up and keep you and Nixy company." She sat down on the floor beside Kyrox's chair and looked up at him, her honey-brown eyes searching.
"Is it okay if I sit with you?" she asked.
Kyrox blinked and nodded, "Of course, Axille."
Silence took over the ward then, broken only by the quiet, unsteady breathing of Anix. Kyrox held his head in his hands and Axille couldn't fathom why. What she did understand, though, was the fact that Kyrox needed some quiet time to think.
Vexen was busy pouring an explosive-looking mixture into a beaker full of water when Knexedy burst into the lab, the first of the neophytes to return from her mission.
"Vexen!" she shouted, unwittingly causing the mixture the Academic had been creating to explode in his face. Knexedy stared in surprise as Vexen froze (no pun intended) and turned to her, his face dusted black from soot and smoke.
"...That was an accident." Knexedy said. "Anyways, I got the stuff you needed from my world."
At this, she placed a small bottle of a bluish liquid on the table. She waved the older Nobody goodbye and ran out the lab, heading upstairs to the hospital ward.
Annoyed, Vexen picked up the bottle his protégé had left behind. He called Cavex over from where she was working and handed the vial to her.
"Here's the first component, but the others aren't even back yet. Are we going to have enough time?" he asked her.
Cavex took the vial and turned on her Life Code X. She pressed a button and the familiar bottle of Life Code X-176 popped out. It was dangerously low, with only a few drops of the medicine left at the bottom.
"I hope so." Cavex said.
"Sound's a dangerous thing..." Knexedy murmured to Kyrox and Axille when she had met them in the ward, "I have to keep some noise-cancelling ear plugs in whenever I go into battle 'cause I blow so many things up all the time."
"Yeah...I don't know why we never gave Anix a thought about noise-cancelling earplugs. They seem like such a good idea." Kyrox whispered back.
Axille was still watching Anix. She tilted her head to the side and watched him intently. Something was wrong.
"Ky-ky? Knexedy? There's something wrong with Anix..."
Kyrox burst into Vexen's lab three minutes later, shouting.
"Vexen! Vexen, Cavex come quick! Anix is going into a coma!" he yelled, not noticing the other neophytes who had finally gotten back from their collecting missions.
Vexen dropped what he was doing and so did Cavex. A horrified look crossed her face and she looked frantically at Vexen, who was turned towards the other neophytes.
"Give me your components. I will have to make it when we get to the ward. Kyrox, Cavex, come with me. The rest of you, stay outside." he said. This rose many protests from the younger Nobodies.
"What?" Axbrem exclaimed. "We need to be with him!"
"It is out of the question. Wait outside the ward." Vexen repeated. He turned back to Kyrox and Cavex and ushered them both into a portal to the hospital wing.
Kyrox's face was a mask of pure anxiety as Vexen stood by, mixing the Life Code. Axille was clinging tight to his hand, as she had refused to leave, and they were both watching Cavex trying to keep Anix awake.
"Anix...Anix, man, stay awake. Come on, stay awake..." Kyrox murmured as he watched Anix's breathing seem to get slower and slower.
Axille was mimicking him, but in a voice that denoted more fear and uncertainty than Kyrox was showing.
"Nixy...Nixy, man, stay 'wake. C'mon, stay 'wake."
Vexen apparently finished mixing the potion and he held the vial to Anix's mouth. The liquid ran down his throat and they all waited in tense silence as Anix slowly reacted to the Life Code.
Anix took a deep breath and his eyes opened for the first time in five days.
"Anix...!" Kyrox exclaimed, releasing a breath he didn't known he had been holding.
"Kyrox...man, what happened?" Anix asked, "Head hurts...er...have I been sleeping?"
Axille moved towards Anix's bed with Cavex and she smiled for real, for the first time since he had collapsed.
"Uh-huh...asleep for five days! You lazy bum!" the mimic teased.
"Anix, you were mostly unconscious all week. We just barely saved you from going into a complete coma. If that happened...well...let's just be glad you're alright." Cavex said.
Anix laughed softly, and then noticed the saddened, guilty face of his best friend.
"Kyrox, what's eating you?" he asked.
"You...you could have died. You could have died and it's all my fault!" Kyrox exclaimed, "If it wasn't for my stupid idea, you wouldn't have had to go through all of that!"
Anix looked at his friend, surprised, as did Axille and Cavex.
"What? Kyrox, I don't blame you for that. That Avalanche was bound to attack anyways." Anix said.
"But it was my stupid idea to have it target you!" Kyrox insisted.
Anix smiled and let out a low laugh.
"It was going to happen anyways. In case you haven't noticed, I'm bigger than you." he laughed.
And it was true. Kyrox was skinnier and not as thickly built as the former blacksmith Anix was.
"But, still...!" Kyrox said.
"It wasn't your fault. Stop beating yourself up over this." Anix answered.
Axille blinked up at Anix before climbing up to sit on his bed. She looked at her friend and asked him, "Nixy's gonna be okay, right?"
Anix smiled, "Yeah, I'm gonna be just fine."
Satisfied, Axille turned to Kyrox, and fixed him with a stare.
"And Ky-ky's gonna stop being a bonehead and stop blaming himself. Right?" she questioned him.
Anix and Cavex burst out laughing. Kyrox tried glaring at them but was soon overcome with laughter himself.
"Yes, Axille," he told the tiny mimic, "I'll stop being a bonehead and stop blaming myself."
"Good." Axille nodded to show her approval in his choice.
"Alright!" a voice shouted from the hallway, "I hear laughing so I'm coming in!"
Sure enough, Leixym and the other neophytes ran into the ward and crowded around Anix's bed, welcoming him back.
"Don't scare me like that again, alright?" Axbrem said, playfully punching him on the arm.
Vexen had long since departed the scene. Living with fourteen neophytes was hard enough, but cram them all into one confined space and he was going to kill somebody.
But still...the dark, dreary atmosphere of the Castle had changed drastically within the few minutes he had left the hospital ward.
Maybe the neophytes were a good thing after all.
Kind of an...odd way to end the chapter. Oh well.
See you next time!
-Az.