Son of Caesia

Half-open eyes gazed blandly, the sweat against his slender pale neck trickling with no way to stop it from creeping against his skin. His chest rose, then fell, rose, fell... he could hear his own breathing... loud... obnoxious... a hindrance... if he could stop breathing, he could hear. If he could silence the sound of his heart pounding against his ears, maybe he could hear what they were saying. Someone's hand brushed against his forehead, fingers trailing across, delving into soft feather-like hair to stroke and assess the texture and quality; it was easy to thread one's fingers through. Despite having a lot of hair, it was thin.

Footsteps shuffled at him. Suddenly, a powerful kick to his ribs broke his concentration, and he clenched his teeth together, biting his tongue to suppress a yelp. Crimson red plastered the bruises on his face and formed a rivulet from his thin lips, made only thinner as he pressed them together. Like a marionette detached from its strings, his body crumpled to the floor.

Dizziness and vertigo claimed his senses as a handful of hair was snatched into the hair, forcing him to look upright. Hands, hands kept his light weight pinned down to the ground.

The grubby man in tattered robes and gaudy necklaces of semi-precious stones stood out for a moment. ████ flinched. All throughout their curious explorations of a worthless petite body, he had barely moved from the other, seemingly knowing that he was unable to do anything to stop him. But now he struggled. He looked up.

"Hehhh, look at you, your highness. The things you're doing are a disgrace to spirituality! Disgusting!" His vile breath couldn't twist the unmoving mask of his porcelain face, but he drew back in displeasure. A dirtied shoe snapped his chin back to its previous position and prodded it like a haughty Persian would to its prey. "To play with people's lives like that. Why was a piece of trash like you blessed with power?! You never should have been born!"

One hundred voices murmured in his head. Words tried to form on his tongue. His body was awake, but he neither had the strength nor motivation to fight back against the nonsense of trash. Smug lowly life forms that were nothing more than waste with the ability to chatter incessantly. Giving them the satisfaction of defeat would never happen.

Trash, trash. All of them were just trash. After knowing everything on earth, and at the same time, knowing the end of one's life. Will these fools ever learn anything?

Whatever.

Let them do what they wanted. Let them play now as they vied for that pathetic power in a face full of blood, sputtering away, exacerbating fresh wounds only to be fresher, practically screaming in hysteria. Onlookers with their eyes boring into the scene, cackling and jumping at any opportunity they could.

"Serves him right. That's the fourth person he's fired for no legitimate reason this month."
"Being worthy doesn't mean anything. Can someone like him even be considered worthy?"
"I'm sick and tired of having to listen to him. He can't have everything go his way."
"Deceitful, lying little bitch--!"

Ahh... Why were they always so predictable? Every time, it was always the same thing. He played the part of the buffoon, and then they would start exploding everywhere when he showed even some hint of awareness to their stupidity. They would get angry. He'd put them in their place. And the cycle would play all over again.

It was too easy.

The man's lips curled into an ecstatic, beaming smile. "I take it you know I wouldn't be pleased if everyone can't figure out what did and didn't matter, dearest highness? I've overlooked it each time when you handle the others in..." He paused, trying to find the words. "In such a manner," he settled on. Pathetic. His status and ranking was not high enough to even be saying such a thing. Who did he think he was? "But it was about time your karma will see to your doom."

His grip on the smooth locks jerked the lifeless doll more, a strangled cry and such fleeting breaths rasping from his throat, just to keep up with each stress placed on him. A strike and shrill, in a taunting mocking gesture of death.

Wetness dripped off of his small chin. He didn't think about where it came from, only realizing that blinking cleared some of his vision. He could see a bit more. What was wrong? And then it blurred again. He blinked. Something was coming out of his eye. Wouldn't it just be the best if he had been cursed from that pitiful swipe and started melting away?

"It's time to teach you a lesson, my dear. You don't have much to call your own, right? All of your decisions have been controlled, right?" ████ had half a mind to snap at the man to get to the point, but all that would come out was a cough, trembling his limp body. "Good, good. You want playtime to be over already, don't you? We're just getting started, your highness. And we'll start with ruining the only thing you have ever decided on your own."

He stared and stared, unsure of why he found himself dumbfounded. Yeah right, there wasn't a thing in the world that he got to choose for himself. "What are you..."

A widened smirk, tongue licking over dry lips, with eyes that twinkled with a menacing glint, sharp like knives.

Blade of metal pulled and sawing away--

...

. . .

.  .  .

Oh.

The first semblance of emotion flickered across the puppet's face as any struggles were beaten down by bodies who wouldn't let him up. Eyes widened, breaths harsher and more ragged, shaking like a leaf battered by the wind, with an avalanche of sounds wracking against his head. Frozen in place, only a mantra of threatening whispers and hisses uttered past.

"St..." Entangled in his throat, it wouldn't leave. "... Stop." The man's Cheshire grin only widened, clawing away with the blade that took down his decision and his only. "Stop. Please." The grip holding him up was loosening, long roots slit and dropping to the floor as corpses. He wasn't listening. He wasn't stopping. Why wasn't he stopping? "Stop. Stop. Stop." Firmer, louder, until he would go hoarse. "Sto--!"

No longer was he forced to look up, face nearly falling and slamming into the floor as his previously long hair flared, which he had tenderly cared for and brushed, silken in quality and more boastful than velvet, threw some stray strands to the cold ground, the pig clamping the rest in a fistful all too gleefully.

A flood of three or four parallel thoughts simultaneously gushed through. Uncovered vignettes lay tucked between ritualistic subfunctions and the hundreds of articles that he'd read in his lifetime.

lookattheseninjawordsAnd like that, his mind became an
lookattheseninjawordsmuchninjamuchwordOpen,
lookattheseninjawordsmuchninjaDisorganized
lookattheseninjawordsmuchbook
lookattheseninjawordsmuch.
lookattheseninjawordsmuchnin.
lookattheseninjawordsmu.

"Your body is mine. Your life is mine. You are mine." A familiar voice spoke, with its didactic tone in play. A pitch in which no one could go against it, demanding respect with its honey-like quality, captivating all who would listen and lulling them in without any mercy. The tone of a king. A unison eerier than the undead and colder than the northern sea calling with mechanical precision. "You will do as I say, and I forbid you from pulling that sort of nonsense again. Is that clear?"

A doll cloaked in white, fixated on a chair, with the body of a child, listlessly as all would see where he looked at everything and anything but saw past, a thousand-yard stare not fit on the innocent features of one so young. "You're lucky I loathe this world enough to listen to your commands. Any other would despise being treated as a tool," sharp biting words of an intellectual scholar responded, of one who had seen and known too much, from the beginning to the end of time.

An unsatisfactory answer. Naturally. "That doesn't answer the question. Don't toy with me. Is that clear?" 'Tch' was the sound resonating out of a throat. Darkness faded in and out of the pictures, with only streaks of intangible luminescence covering the barren wasteland of a room.

"Yeah, yeah." The childish bitterness of being told what to do. "I understand. Is that all you wanted to talk about? You're holding something back."

"Yes. I no longer speak to you as your ████, but your ████ instead." A voice that ran his blood cold, into the stench of the dead, the explosion of the abyss. The distinctive voice that was clearest of all voices in his head. "Pray tell, why must you keep your hair so long? Everyone on staff is complaining about it being a fire hazard."

"That's what you dragged me out here for? Seriously?"
"Answer the question, or I'll force it out of you."
"You told me to cut it. I didn't want to."
"Because it is a hindrance and taking up too much of your time."

"Ah, well. It's not as though I'll be fighting any day now. Cleaning it kills a lot of time, for someone like me. All of this time to uselessly breath is a waste when I shouldn't be able to." Slowly, pallid hands rose, running gentle nimble fingers through the locks, expression darkening. "If it truly bothered you, you would have cut it by now in my sleep, wouldn't you? Just like how you'll kill me once you no longer need me?"

"████..." A feigned pity or twinge of sympathy. He knew that then. He still knew it now.

"Spare me your ridiculous displays. It's fitting for someone like me to be rebelling at this age, right?" the doll interrupted, holding a hand up in a motion to get the other to stop.

Shaking their head in disapproval, they sighed. "You're a bit too late on that stage."

████ shrugged, pulling himself up and off the chair.

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---

Why did you do it?
I don't know.

lookYes, you do. Don't lie to yourself.
lookI don't lie to myself. It was just for fun.
look...

lookatmeYou always do. You can't deny it.
lookatmeI'm not. What do you know?

lookatmeweeIs that what your genius tells you?
lookatmeweeYes. And it has never been wrong.

lookatmewewillSo, why didn't you?
lookatmewewillBecause... Whatever, it doesn't matter. I'm going to die anyway, so none of it matters.

lookatmewewilllookAre you satisfied with that?
lookatmewewilllookAs long as I get my revenge.

lookatmewewillDoes your revenge include your hair?
lookatmewewillWhy do you keep circling back to that?

lookatmeweeYou haven't answered, so I'll keep asking.
lookatmeweeI told you already. It was for fun. Just a stupid joke.

lookatmeAnd I told you to stop lying to yourself. This goes both ways.
lookatme...

lookIt was important to you, wasn't it? To make your first decision on your own?
look...

You didn't say no.
It doesn't matter. What I want never matters. It's no different this time. It never will be.

---

"Oh my fucking Arceus, your highness actually cared about it?" That pig... He better shut up. His patience was wearing thin. The hands holding down his waist were gone as they returned to their owners' sides in the shattering laughter. "He loves his pathetic self more than the lives of real people? When he's just ████'s puppet and tool? He shouldn't care. They should've programmed him without emotions."

Leer.

"Isn't that right, my master ████?"

████, who was meant to disappear from this world so many years ago. Who never had anyone to tell him to never go anywhere, to always stay by their side, and cursed the world. The curse that will make the entire world spin and fall, to make everyone hear the sound of the destruction of what they believed in so badly. A taste of despair, served best when it was cold. Forgetting, forgetting... But why?

Who then? Never meet who again?

Don't disappear.
I hate being alone.
It's so scary.
I'm scared.
Being alone is scary.
Please please please please

Maybe...
That is

████ laughed. My turn. A flicker of supernatural light poked through the misty mesh of his hands. It was followed by a whole loom of lambency, filtering down in seams of silver and blue. Like the luminal glow of the gods, it hunted down shadows, banished the gloom and spilled into empty spaces. Shafts of lustrous moonlight gathered into a single cloud, popping and thrashing about as it grew corporeal. All in the palm of his hands, and now, a strike back at the face of that goddamn whining squeal of a pig.

Standing with grace and confidence, as pressure crushed that skull into pieces, like a child discovering a corpse for the first time, learning about death for the first time, he was held simultaneously by awe and by hypnotic curiosity. A morbid interest in the clammy discomfit of the energy they said was blessed to him by their beings in the sky. Nothing could inspire that sensation. Nothing else could.

Bangs overshadowing his eyes as the body dropped with a sickening plop! to the ground, drenched in its own sticky blood, the audience silenced. Not a word. Not a sound except for his inconvenient gasps for air.

Dragging his feet across the floor, never releasing the power that shackled him as a tool, he listened to the whispers and murmurs, to those who would never raise a hand against him unless they banded together as a mindless mob.

"What's he going to do? Kill all of us?"
"Yea right, ████ would never let him get away with it."

Step. Step. Step.

"Oi, oi... What's he doing?"
"He's just going to run and cry out for help, that's what."
"Boo-hoo, gotta cry for his mommy now, huh?"

With a deep breath, the doll turned on its heels, hair billowing and flowing as his lips turned upward into an innocent smile. "Right now... I'm in a really bad mood..." Child-like, quiet, catching the attention of all with the soft melodies of a bell etched in a voice that only brought shivers down their spine. "So..."

Gulp. Tremble in fear. They deserved it.

It didn't matter. What would it matter if they went to the next phase a little earlier?

All of them. All of them. All of them.

Everyone in this accursed world.

Sing-song, casual as can be, as though it were any normal conversation. The light in his hands grew brighter and brighter, hotter than the sun until he could no longer hold it there.

"A~~ll of you here will be...