Loud music blasted through the headphones covering Viktor’s ears. He had always been interested in studying the many creative ways humans put sounds together, but over the past couple of weeks he found himself using it more as a form of escapism than as an earnest learning experience. He found that music, like running, demanded so much of his attention that he could block the flow of thought entirely when it was blaring in his head. It was less effective than running due to the discomfort of exposing his ears to loud sound for a repeated length, but it still got the job done consistently enough. He found it particularly ineffective this time as well, as he could still hear the extremely loud sparring room crashing noises resonating through his room walls. He took his headphones off and considered Vanitas’s offer back in the Mother Room.
First and foremost, he wanted to remind himself that Vanitas must’ve been embarrassed by being outran. That was true and also a definite confidence boost. Secondly, he was undoubtedly referring to a fight in the sparring room. He must’ve noticed that Viktor had been skipping out on sparring sessions as of late, waiting for the perfect time to try and rope him back into it. A part of him didn’t want to give Vanitas the satisfaction of seeing him walk into the sparring room in the first place; but at the same time he figured that he needed to stop slacking at some point and that it was after all another pretty great way to take a break from his thoughts. He thought “what’s the worst that could happen?”, thought again about the fact that he was referring to Vanitas, and let out a sarcastic snicker before grabbing his sword and heading out to the sparring room.
The crashing noises were a lot louder and more intense up close than Viktor had recalled them being. The usual aura of casual training was not present as he entered the room. Whereas there would typically be some music playing and/or television broadcasts, now there was only the crashing sound and the main light of the room brightly illuminating the space. The atmosphere was almost as intense as in a real fight, going off of the few Viktor had experienced.
The source of the crashing was of course Vanitas, more specifically him running full speed at MetalBody brand target dummies and leaving them positively eviscerated with kicks and slashes from his scythe. He looked Viktor’s way after a particularly challenging looking kick involving a showy amount of flips and back handsprings and looked ever so slightly surprised to see him before settling on a familiar cold scowl.
“So what’s up with you, huh? Do you think we’re stupid? Did you really believe that the all-knowing robots with machine-learning computer brains would just remain stupidly unaware of you being called to meet with Maria and Jane, not only telling us nothing but doing your freak glitch shit that only happens when you’re put under pressure?”
Viktor narrowed his eyes in an attempt to match Vanitas’s attitude, doing so in such a quick and intentional fashion that it might have worked against him to reveal the surprise he was truly exhibiting.
“What are you-”
“Talking about? What am I talking about? Christ, were you not listening to what I just said? You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
He paused, seemingly still looking for some sort of acknowledgement from Viktor. The silence in the air hung for much too long.
“Fine. Since you wanna keep playing their stupid little game so bad, I’ll fill you in. Me and Viv suspect you’re withholding something from us. And, y’know, we just can’t quite figure out why that would be. You yourself agreed that we should tell eachother everything, right?”
Viktor was desperate for a way to take the heat off himself. This could get pretty bad if mishandled. Unfortunately, Viktor was never great at complex conversational skills. Plus, Vanitas just annoyed him sometimes.
“We just talked about the mission. The light investigation stuff, same as you two. Is this about something else? As nonsensical as this sounds, you’ve been weird and moody all day today. If you’re upset about this whole change in leadership dynamic thing, I actually agree with you, but–”
“Fuck off, don’t try to deflect this onto me! If you don’t wanna talk about it then let’s just get to what we’re both here for, yeah?”
Viktor supposed that comment should’ve eased his tension, but there was something odd about Vanitas’s willingness to get going that felt similarly unusual to the room’s atmosphere as a whole. Still, he hadn’t fought in a long while. His thoughts had basically been causing him to go against his created nature. He figured one fight with an opponent as unrelenting as Vanitas would probably do him some good.
“Fine by me.”
Vanitas chuckled.
“Good. Before we start, I just wanted to ask, you don’t mind me bringing some, uh… extra tools in, do you?”
Confused, Viktor looked around and couldn’t see what he was referring to until a white point started peeking out from behind Vanitas’s left shoulder, rising slowly until the whole intimidating mass was uncovered.
“S-Streya?” Viktor stammered.
The last clear thing he saw before his instincts kicked in was the horrible twisted grin on Vanitas’s face.
Viktor leapt up on programmed instinct, operating off of the assumption that Vanitas’s opening move would be a wide horizontal slash of the scythe. Just as he thought, the long curved blade sweeped below him, just barely missing his feet. He had seen this opening move a few times before: he’d dash forward to bait Viktor to jump, then thrust the scythe up into the air to try and get him while he had fewer ways to defend himself. This had quickly been proven ineffective once Viktor figured out he could still orient, control and defend himself quite well while in the air; however, the upward thrust didn’t happen this time, to Viktor’s immense surprise. What actually was heading his way was a mass of saw-like rotating blades moving in from both above and behind his head, causing him to have to quickly readjust in midair to guard with his sword. The clashing metal made a horrendous noise very close to Viktor’s ear, nearly causing him to lose focus. His blade had actually managed to get caught in between the blades, revealing the form of Vanitas’s companion. He was surprised both weapons were still intact and not blowing sparks everywhere.
“Streya!” Vanitas yelled in a commanding tone.
Hearing this caused a more pressing thought to occur to Viktor, and it was that he was now facing away from Vanitas completely unguarded. Blocking Streya’s onslaught had robbed him of the ability to further correct his positioning. He fell back-first, anticipating a wide arc of bladed damage and bracing for impact as best he could.
Vanitas’s foot met Viktor’s back with a disgustingly loud crunch. His body hit the ground and flew forward, flopping and turning until it hit the back wall. His brain felt jumbled and dysfunctional and his limbs felt numb.
Somewhere far off in the distance, he could hear Vivienne questioning Vanitas about something. Vanitas…that’s right. He had just completely disrespected Viktor, going as far as smuggling his ultra powerful companion just to one-up his own Corps partner. He should’ve known something was up from the very moment Vanitas was given the droid. Was it really that big of an issue for Viktor to have trusted his own teammate? No, he resolved. This embarrassment had gone on for long enough. He’d get up off the ground no matter how broken his body was and leave, taking the moral high ground and making sure to operate with extreme suspicion when dealing with Vanitas from then on.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
But it seemed his body had other plans. He stood up, took a wobbly step forward and looked Vanitas as close to dead in the eyes as he could manage before instantly taking off towards him at full speed as if he had heard the starting gun at a track race. His sword slowly lifted, starting off dragging against the floor and rising until Vanitas was staring at its point hurtling towards him at an intimidating pace. Vanitas began to try going on the defensive but fumbled with the latches on the sheath at his back. It took until the blade point was mere inches away from his face–and took most of his strength–for him to bring the blade of his scythe down and block Viktor’s charge. The arm that was holding his sword flew to the ground at his side. Vanitas smirked.
“Is that all you–”
His sentence was cut short when a sudden impossibly fast flurry of sword swings came flying at him. Sensing retaliation after being left vulnerable, Viktor’s body had actually sprung backwards and launched his sword at Vanitas fast enough to leave any poor unassuming soul completely minced. Vanitas was obviously not just anyone, so the slashes didn’t do much damage. In fact, none but the very last one had even connected with his body. Viktor anticipated this doing minimal damage, though, moving quickly to another position more to Vanitas’s right side. Another wave of blindingly fast slashes followed. He could tell his prey was getting outran. He was finding intricate pockets of tempo that were too complex to follow even for Vanitas. He was landing two swings, then three, then four, then ten, then twenty. Maybe getting his brain rustled around was just what he needed. Not being able to think straight was invigorating.
Just as Viktor started really getting into the groove of things, he felt a solid and pleasant-smelling mass grab hold of him.
“Vivienne,” Vanitas muttered, staggering backwards. “Thanks.”
He felt her pin his arms to his sides, causing him to drop his sword under her pressure.
“I don’t wanna hear anything from you, asshole. Why do I always have to mediate between you two? First you constantly mess with him about every little thing, and now you go against the creators’ orders to sneak your companion into a spar with him so you can enact some sick joke of a one-sided battle just because he kept you from fooling around with it in the first place?”
“I don’t need your lectures on morality, girl.”
“This isn’t about morality lectures. I like fighting too, y’know, b-but now in addition to whatever’s going on here you can’t spar with me without being extra cautious and holding back when you have the chance to strike? I really don’t understand what about this whole situation you’ve grown to interpret differently, but I’m not just some fragile defenseless glass figure or someone who’s sole responsibility is making sure you two don’t rip each other to bits. I’m an android, same as you. And both you guys need to get whatever you have going on figured out soon, because you’re for some reason beginning to act like you're not androids. It’s weird. I mean, have you forgotten about the mission tomorrow? Y’know, the one where we have to work as a team and do as we’re told? Can we not just…put the extra shit aside and focus on that for now?”
After making it a point to dramatically turn his head away from Vivienne, Vanitas reluctantly nodded.
“Fine.”
Viktor, on the other hand, was still reeling. The sharpness of his reaction time did not end up helping him regain his sharpness of mind. Trying to focus on Vivienne, he pushed out a groan in a way that he hoped would properly indicate to her that he was barely conscious.
“Shit, right. Vanitas, can you please help me carry this fool to the service station?”
“...fine.”
✯ ✯ ✯ ✯
“...up…Viktor…Get up…Jesus Christ. GET UP–”
Viktor’s senses were forced to recalibrate with strange timings due to hands on his shoulders that he was only just barely starting to see shaking him violently. He made a sound like “Wuh–uhhm” and batted the arms off his shoulders. He was already starting to recognize the source of this assault based on the unique reckless abandon exhibited in the approach when his eyes finished recalibrating.
“Oh. Vanitas. What’s your problem now, are you here to kick out my spine again or something? We have a mis–”
“Yeah, yeah, a mission tomorrow, Vivienne already made sure to remind me fifty times over while you were sprawled out on the floor, just hear me out alright?”
“Sure, whatever.”
“I was being dismissive of that stuff you were saying earlier about me being weird, but honestly I really do think there’s something wrong with me. I guess I’ve always been, uh…more sensitive to things then you and Viv–like having a bit of a hard time dealing with changing plans and being oddly defensive and stuff–but over, like, the past couple of weeks or so it seems like it’s gotten more intense. Whenever I’ve sparred with Vivienne recently I just haven’t been able to fight at the top of my game. I can’t bring myself to swing as hard as before and I can’t focus on defending myself either. And on top of that, I’ve just generally been noticing myself getting caught up in strange states of being that I never noticed before. I’ve been trying not to think about it but to be completely honest it’s starting to freak me out. I mean, it’s almost like…like I can feel?”
Viktor was thoroughly blown away by the information he was being given by his normally standoffish teammate. He supposed he had to be the one Vanitas went to for this talk since Vivienne, his usual thinking-things-through outlet, was directly related to the main subject of his concern. Still, to be supplied with such thoughts was a fascinating occurrence, and the fact that Vivienne had told him something similar the day before made it all the more so.
“Yeah, I thought there was something abnormal going on with you, but feeling things? How would that work? Even if you’re a prototype or whatever, it’s impossible for us to feel. We don’t have organ systems like biological lifeforms.”
“Yeah no shit, I know that. I’m just saying before we go on this mission that there’s definitely something messing with my programming and it’s getting hard to control myself. I’m hoping I can channel it in some way through fighting something other than you guys, because that’s just been utterly disastrous as of late.”
Viktor sat thinking for a bit about possible preventative measures for if that got in the way of things during the mission.
“Alright, I know what you should do. First and foremost I just want you to try your best to focus as well as possible on the mission and only the mission tomorrow. Other than that, if you start to notice…that shit flaring up to an uncontrollable degree, I honestly think the best thing for you to do would be to just duck out for a bit until you can collect yourself. I’m thinking we should have a word known only to us for these situations that you can quickly vocalize so I alone can be made aware.”
It was Vanitas’s turn to sit thinking for a while, but before long he gazed back towards Viktor.
“Supernova.”
“What?”
“The fail-safe word. I’ll say ‘Supernova’.”
Viktor rolled his eyes.
“Fine. Figures you’d think of some extra shit like that.”
“Yes indeed. Listen, one more thing. Thanks, genuinely. You didn’t have to entertain all that, especially after that whole display back at the training room. I appreciate it.”
Viktor kept his eyes trained on Vanitas as he exited the room. Why did it seem like he was lying around and recovering so much lately?
“It’s nothing at all, man.”
A small alarm sound played from out of another wall screen to his left side. It flashed:
“CRITICALLY LOW ENERGY LEVELS. YOU SHOULD GET SOME MORE REST.”
Amongst all the chaos swirling around him over the course of the day, he must’ve forgotten that he hadn’t rested his body or mind in quite a long time. He figured now, still hours before the dawn of the mission morning, would be a great time to do so. He had a troubling thought before he switched off that he wouldn’t be seeing much rest after this period.