paixaorpg | Torture and Trouble in C Minor

Entry tags:

larxene,
sephiroth

Torture and Trouble in C Minor

Characters: Sephiroth, Larxene, bystanders/observers
Content: Sephiroth interrogates Larxene, and then experiments with drugs. Insanity ensues.
Setting: An abandoned warehouse.
Time: Evening-ish.
Warnings: Creative torture, blood, possible bondage references, Sephiroth and Larxene in the same room with torture gear, and drugs. Wheeeeeee!!!

Only a few people knew that Sephiroth had captured one of the elusive Organization's members, and fewer still that it was the original Ms. Sunshine herself, Larxene. Had it been common knowledge, at least five members of the fledgling Resistance would have been on hand demanding her head on a silver platter - or at least the pleasure of torturing her personally.

The only person actually in the room, though, was Sephiroth himself. There were maybe three observers in the room off to the side, and they had been carefully chosen. Timon was one of them.

Larxene was bound to a makeshift table with restraints of sturdy leather; her coat had been set aside, after it was searched, leaving her in the short, black dress she had worn beneath. A full body search had revealed no more weapons - indeed, her kunai had vanished before Sephiroth had managed to get a good look. One more thing to add to the list, he supposed.

Divested of his own coat, Sephiroth stood over the table, calmly observing the sleeping Nobody. She seemed human enough, though their brief fight had put the lie to that. What then was the fundamental difference? He would know soon enough.

A small dose of a strong stimulant was injected into her arm, before Sephiroth took a step back. No telling what she was likely to do on waking, after all...

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Larxene awoke swiftly--sleep spells had never held long on her--every muscle tightening as she took swift assessment of her situation.

Strapped to a table--okay, she expected something like that. Coat gone--how rude. They must have searched her--as if they'd find anything. Could she turn her head? She could. It seemed only Sephiroth was in the room, although that didn't mean others couldn't be watching.

Okay, more or less what she had expected. She relaxed somewhat, and focused on the man of the hour.

"I bet you're proud of yourself," she purred.

"I am never proud when I am forced to rely on such crude means of gathering information," Sephiroth informed her calmly. "You need not waste your time or energy trying to escape from those bonds. If you cooperate, this won't even hurt."

Not that he expected her to cooperate, of course. And, to put it bluntly, he -was- looking forward to hurting her.

"Give me the names of each member of Organization XIII."

She laughed. Oh how interesting this would be. Of course he didn't think it would be that simple. She prepared herself for injury. But really, pain--well, it reminded her she was real. So it couldn't be all that bad.

"No."

"I suspected as much." Sighing, he picked up a second syringe, this one loaded with a compound that would set every nerve in her body on fire at once - just like a thousand bee stings. "I am not a violent man," he lied smoothly, tapping the needle. "But you have done things to friends of mine I cannot so easily forgive."

And with that, he injected the poison into her arm. It would take about thirty seconds to circulate, in a normal person's bloodstream, and after about a minute of every nerve in her body screaming in pain, Larxene would find that all physical sensations had been heightened by an extreme degree.

"I'd say you're plenty violent," Larxene commented as she watched him pull out and inject whatever that was.

She expected it to hurt, and she wasn't disappointed. The poison flowed through her body a bit faster than it would have in a normal human, and soon her muscles were tightening again, reflexively trying to fight against the pain. Larxene gritted her teeth and flashed a vicious grin to spite him.

Every nerve in her body sang, and even while it hurt like a bitch she could tell that every nerve was there, that she was there and she wasn't nothing, she had defied death and here was the proof.

She felt pain, therefore she was.

"Compared to you, I'm practically a shrinking violet," he said, with a slight smirk. The grin despite the obvious pain was amusing, he had to admit; it took a lot to anger Sephiroth, really.

Turning to his selection of torture tools, he selected one seemingly at random. "Tell me the names of the members of the Organization," he requested again, as he very lightly brushed the feather over the bottom of her foot. ~~Yes, that's right; a feather.~~

A reflexive kick. "Oh, don't be so modest." She giggled a bit, though whether it was in response to the feather or simply her regular sugary sweet attitude was unclear.

"You have a little toolkit over there?" she asked, craning her neck to see and obviously ignoring his question.

All the while her body burned.

By now, the burning feeling should have been fading fast, leaving only the extremely sensitive nerves in its wake; it was on this factor that Sephiroth was now playing.

"It's a shame, really," he said, idly brushing the feather up and down along her foot. "We have so much in common, you and I; we could have been allies, were the circumstances different." He dragged the feather up her leg slowly, almost sensually.

Almost.

"Now, how about those names, hmm?" he asked, his voice smooth as honey.

Another giggle. "Funny how things work out, hm~?"

As the pain faded, her muscles relaxed once more, until she looked as comfortable as she could be given the circumstances. Still, the foot in question twitched. "But maybe you've helped more than you know."

And she left it at that.

"Yes... It's a pity," he said, and it really sounded like he meant it. No, really.

He continued to toy with the feather for a few more moments, trying lazily to force an actual response beyond the twitching foot out of her. It never really succeeded; she apparently just wasn't all that ticklish.

His last movement with the feather was to trace a line with its tip up the curve of her throat to the point of her chin. "Maybe I have," he allowed, humoring her more than anything else. "But I fear you will be of some help to us, as well."

She smiled at him, almost seductively, but said nothing. She wasn't here to give away all her plans, she was here to learn about them. And she was learning. Sometimes sacrifices had to be made to keep plans moving along, was all.

She said nothing, however; simply watched for his next move.

The next tool off the table was a small, straight-bladed knife, no curve between the base and the tip. Rather like a paring knife, really, but for the serrations. "Are you certain you don't want to tell me those names?" he inquired, testing the point of the knife against a fingertip idly.

"Absolutely certain," she said, biting back the thrill of her anticipatory adrenaline rush.

This sort of thing made her feel alive.

"A pity," he said, and traced a slow line down her arm. A thin line of red followed the tip of the knife, not even a cut, just a slight welt. But it would feel like someone had just dragged a red-hot poker down her arm.

He didn't even bother asking for anything this time; just kept making those not-quite-cuts.

As Sephiroth painted lines, Larxene's muscles twitched beneath him, and again she found herself gritting her teeth. It was one thing to allow the torture, it was another entirely to permit herself to scream. He earned short gasps for his efforts instead.

And all the time she watched him, studying him. Were others watching? Pity she couldn't study them, too.

Once he had traced out his little patchwork grid, Sephiroth set the knife aside, and gently brushed a finger over the lines on her arm. "You know, you can scream," he said simply. "No one will think less of you."

Of course, he couldn't guarantee that.

Not waiting for her response, he picked up a second knife, this one a straight razor, and idly dragged it over her arm, the edge facing the wrong way to cut; it was probably actually soothing, the cold steel against the hot almost-cuts.

She was silent except for another gasp: she would never give them the satisfaction of hearing her scream. And she didn't lower her wariness when she felt the cold against her skin, relieving the pain of the previous few acts. If he was hoping to catch her off-guard, she wouldn't give him the pleasure.

Edited 2008-08-08 02:14 (UTC)

The first hint that something was wrong would have been the sudden, bright stinging feeling as the razor bit her flesh. Blood welled around the initial cut, and the blade slid along the first of the not-cuts, opening a shallow channel in her skin.

An angry hiss and she narrowed her eyes, trying to pull her arm away in vain. There was something about the small wounds that caused a sting that was almost more annoying.

"Not violent at all~," she said.

"This isn't violent," he said, just a hint of a smirk touching his face. "Not by a long shot."

He opened the second of the cuts, this one a bit longer, but just as shallow, all the way to where it intersected the first. No; this wasn't anywhere close to violent yet. Not even really painful.

Yet.

She quickly grew used to the almost-papercut feeling on her arm. So she smirked at him. "But you're not a violent man, right~?"

His memories said differently. But she didn't want him to know she knew those.

If she was used to the papercut feeling, she almost definitely wasn't expecting the skin to be literally flayed from her arm. But that's exactly what was happening, as Sephiroth slowly, carefully rocked the razor back and forth under the point of the V his cuts had created. "Not at all," he observed, smirking.

She realized it moments later, remembering what sort of pattern he had been tracing, and scowled. Really, how rude. He wasn't a gentleman at all. Again she jerked away instinctively, but it was pointless. She sighed.

This was getting annoying. It was still worth it--but really, she was going to be recovering for some time. At least she had told Marluxia to wait for her.

If she thought the fact that she was literally being skinned was rude, she was going to be positively livid when she felt the salt and the alcohol being poured into the wound. She really was being a tough cookie, Sephiroth mused. Not one scream yet, and by this point, people were usually passing out with the pain. If he let them.

"Now, now," he said, in that same honey-smooth tone. "You mustn't flinch. You'll make the scar jagged, and we must not allow that. Else you'll find it difficult to heal," he chided, still smirking.

She gasped and hissed in short order, clamping down on her vocal cords as she did so and tightening all her muscles once again. And still she glared. She was used to pain--this wasn't the worst she had dealt with--but still, her nerves protested the abuse.

Those reflexes were the closest she got to real emotion.

"I wouldn't want to mess up your careful work."

"Of course not," he said, with a small smile.

And then, the pain just -went away-. A cooling sensation washed over her entire body, and every single mark was gone from Larxene's body.

"Now, that wasn't so bad, was it?" he asked, smiling coyly.

She wasn't sure what to make of this--did he know healing magic? Either way, why bother healing her? Unless he was trying some sort of peculiar good-bad system to make her talk. He'd have to do better than that. Though Larxene was fairly certain he could, and would.

Maybe he just wanted the space on her arm free to start again.

He could, had, and would. The third syringe came into play at this point, this one loaded with a mild hypnogen; essentially, a sedative that would make the subject pliable. "Now, we're going to play a little game," he said, tapping the needle. "Each time you refuse to give me an answer, I give you a dose of this, up to five. After that, we move on to the next level. Now... The names of the members of Organization XIII, if you please."

"Well don't you have all sorts of interesting chemicals over there," she said. "What's this one, hm~?"

Of course she ignored his question. What did it matter when she wasn't going to answer anyway?

"I have interesting friends," he replied with a smirk. "Strike one." He gave her the first injection, and gave it a little while to take effect. "What do you know about this city?"

She smirked. "It's a city in a dome. The money grows on trees~. Everyone looks the same. People just show~ up~ here~."

It was all true--and all things that were common knowledge, of course. She giggled.

"And run by a group of people in identical black coats who fancy themselves a proper shadowy conspiracy," he remarked with a smirk. "You're far too exposed for that line of work. What is the Organization's goal?"

She smirked. "It's fun~. Dangerous. Surely you know about that sort of thing... Given your line of work, General."

She tilted her head, regarding him.

"The details of my military career are common knowledge," he said with a shrug. "As are the details of your recent exploits. Alongside several of your compatriots." And the second dose was given. "Tell me about Luxord. What are his abilities, and where does he typically stay?"

She realized he was giving her some sort of truth serum, and frowned. Up to five doses? She wouldn't let him win.

"I don't know."

And there went the third dose. "Liar, liar, nerves on fire," he chided, brushing her arm with what felt like sandpaper.

"Oh that was terrible," Larxene said, wincing a bit. "Witty banter is not your strong point."

Luxord... Dice. Dice and time. But she really didn't know where he was staying. Why would she care when they could teleport to any sort of arranged meeting place?

But she had a game going with him, and lately she really hadn't minded him. So she wasn't about to go off to Sephiroth about his powers.

"Do you want me to bring the meerkat in here?" he asked, smirking a bit. "Because at this point, I think he would make a far more effective torture device than these knives and needles."

The truth of the matter was, he already knew the answers to most of these questions. The biggest question he had - the one he had only asked once, and half in jest then - remained unanswered. "What is Organization XIII's purpose?"

"Oh, we exist just to make your life difficult~," Larxene purred smoothly--and it was harder to keep lying than she was willing to admit. "I mean, what else would we be doing?"

She ignored the mention of Timon.

"The going theory speaks of hearts quite often," he observed. "But then, that's neither here nor there." The fourth dose was administered at that point, and Sephiroth considered tagging the fifth right onto it. "Again, same question," he said, voice raising only a small amount. Just enough to show that he was getting annoyed.

"Neither here nor there~," she echoed cheerfully; well, if he didn't know she was telling the truth--her heart was gone, and who knew where it was?--then too bad for him.

"It won't do for the interrogator to be an~noyed."

"If I were annoyed, you would be be in pieces," he said, shrugging. Sephiroth fought the urge to sigh resignedly; he had not wanted to have to resort to the stronger serum, but Larxene was a considerably tougher nut to crack than he had expected. So it was that he selected the final syringe, this one glowing from the inside, and injected it into her arm, just the same way he had done the others.

It was Larxene's policy to be wary about anything that glowed. And that it was being injected into her by an enemy was cause to be even warier. But she did not flinch as she was injected, and simply waited to see what this would do.

Unbidden, memories from before--from when she had been somebody--flooded her mind. She blinked, pushing them back. Those memories would do her no good now; why had they come up at all.

By now she had been silent far longer than she might have been otherwise, having even fallen quite still. She was confused.

Sephiroth observed the reaction, noting down things in his book as he watched. "Organization XIII. Where did it come from, what are its purposes?" he asked, voice cold and calm, just like before. "And where is the Organization's headquarters?"

"I don't--what's Organization--" she mumbled, and then snapped her mouth shut.

She didn't know what was going on; all her memories seemed to have run together, like a watercolor painting dipped underwater. She was fairly certain it hadn't been just a few days ago she'd joined the Organization--no, it had been years--but somehow her mind couldn't separate any of her memories into any sort of order.

"I, The Wo-- I don't know."

"Come now, don't be coy," he said, his voice dripping with honey and barely-concealed snark. "You can tell me ~anything~. I won't tell anyone, I promise. Now, where does the Organization gather, and what do they want?"

(no subject)

mercurialectric.livejournal.com - 2008-08-24 03:04 (UTC) - Expand

"Because you're one of them," he said, voice still smooth. "Which reminds me... What exactly are you, and how did you get that way?"

"I--"

That she remembered. If there was one thing she remembered, and if she forgot everything else, she would remember that. Still, she watched him for a long moment, her face entirely blank--not just as if she was hiding, but as if she had no emotion at all (and really, she didn't). If anything, her mask was down.

"I died."

"You... died?" he asked, quirking a brow in confusion. It explained at least a few things, such as why Death had no power over them. "How did you die?"

Her voice slipped to a whisper--as if she was scared, as if she was afraid something might slip out of the dark corners of the world and tear her apart.

"They came."

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