The Freeshooter

Sorry to everyone I had a thread with, but there’s no easy way for me the find what I still owe. :( 

If you’d like me to continue something with you, drop me a ping or a link!

Slow activity the next couple of days. Gotta get everything packed and ready to move into my new apartment.

Of course, he knew that this day would be coming too. Xehanort would want his x-blade wielder back sooner or later. Vanitas sighed heavily, his hands remained at his side, his body covered in white clothing as the raven haired boy kept his back turned on the vessel. His right eye, the single ebony orb moved on it’s own, glancing over Vanitas’ shoulder to the vessel.

“Perhaps, but I’m not going back with you.” Vanitas spoke up, but it wasn’t just his voice. There two other voices, a male and a female voice. “I am not his…”

Xigbar watched the youth with a hollow golden stare and a blank face. The vessel simply chuckled at first, simply taking time to analyze the other’s appearance from where he stood. Vanitas had been a difficult target to track down, elusive to the point that the old coot had requested the sniper’s service in particular, and now he understood why. 

The white, that voice... 

That piercing golden eye narrows with suspicion. What all had happened after the boy wrenched himself away from Xehanort’s grasp?

Seeing the boy free from the Master’s heart ignited a brief spark of dark anger in the sniper’s chest. Xigbar had carried his shard- this blight- for years, been forced to sit captive as it ate him alive...

How dare this boy walk free.

He could feel his eye twitch at the mention of Axel. The red-head had always been a thorn in his side. Ever since the kid had realized something had been happening up in the castle, the brat had been trying to sneak in.

Of course it was suspicious that the second-in-command’s friend had made it out. The two of them had each other’s backs. Much unlike how his and Xigbar’s trust had dwindled to practically nothing.

Xaldin took a step closer to Xigbar and then another until he was close enough that he needed to look down on him. He spoke quietly, threatening almost with the controlled anger in his voice. “Do you really think Lexaeus would have fallen by Axel’s hand? Some other force is at work here. And I will not be lead to think it was merely the work of a single boy.”

He took one more step closer getting into the other’s space. “What other traitors are lurking in the Organization?”

Something about it was almost ironic. How quickly that red-headed punk and his buddy had gone from being nothing more than a thorn in the apprentices’ side, to killing half of them off...

Those two had gall, he’d give them that much.

The Freeshooter’s eye narrowed as Xaldin moved a bit too close for his own comfort. He took a measured step backwards in a halfhearted attempt to maintain the space between them, but the small prick of a dragoon’s lance in his spine stopped him in his tracks. 

“That’s why I think Red had help... I took a peek at the records. The only one not accounted for was that one Replica... See what I’m gettin’ at?” The smaller man taunted, shrinking down ever so slightly under the other’s threatening gaze.

It was the second question that caught Xigbar off guard. Technically, there were no other traitors, but if he were to take the hidden agenda, the *true* purpose of the Organization and all the lies that came with it, into account...

... Wouldn’t that make *him* a traitor as well? 

He sighed and used a healing spell….. cura, on his arm. it healed a good amount of the damage. Not all of it but enough to stop the blood flow. Drops of crimson on the ground beneath him shined in the light of sun, making it very noticeable. Crimson stream lines from where the wound had closed down to his fingers, remnants still dripping to the ground. “Yeah it is… “ He had never seen an unversed move that fast before, it had caught him off guard but it wouldn’t happen again.

Braig watches curiously as the keyslinger heals himself, brown eyes narrowed with slight disbelief. Healing magic was still a bit of a foreign concept to the young sniper, an art he had previously thought was limited to either talented mages or bottled potions. 

Deciding to finally make himself useful, the sniper hopped down from his perch. He fishes in the pocket of his uniform jacket for several moments before producing a small bottled potion. 

Xigbar had been oblivious to his surroundings when the Flurry had stumbled upon him. A vacant look was frozen on his face, his yellowed gaze locked on some distant, unseen point on the horizon. 

A single sound, the soft flutter of movement caused by the other’s movements, was all that it had taken to draw the attention of the Freeshooter’s addled mind. He whipped around, moving surprisingly fast for someone who had been staring off into space for who-knows-how-long.

“…” The Freeshooter didn’t respond at first, his gaze never straying from the reddened panels that seemed to fill the Proof of Existence with an eerie crimson glow. 

First Vexen, Zexion, and Lexaeus…

… Now Xaldin, too.

Xigbar’s expression remained emotionless, guarded as he stared back at the crimson glow. The lack of a heart should have kept him numb to their destruction, yet the sniper could have sworn that a flicker of grief had somehow taken up residence in his hollowed-out soul. 

Memories of days long gone.