esp_dragon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
esp_dragon) wrote2018-06-03 09:12 am
esp_dragon) wrote2018-06-03 09:12 am
Light
Fandom: Noblesse
Summary: “Your…” M-24 gestured to his face before pursing his lips and looking around. “I think your transformation’s changed.”
It had? M-21 ran his fingertips over his face and froze, finding sharp indents that hadn’t been there before.
Notes: Inspired by givethispromptatry's 'She clawed at the cracks in her skin, gasping at the light that started to pour through the marks.'
This ended up…slightly longer than anticipated, ahaha. 8′D
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General
Word count: 2,706
Status: Work in progress
M-21 huffed, wiping his bloodied hands on the remains of his sleeve. It was useless now anyway; one of the agents had caught him in the shoulder with a bullet, the fabric already stained red.
He held out his hand, watching as his black sharp nails shrank back into something more human, flesh coloured and rounded at the tips. The agents hadn’t expected him to transform so he’d been able to kill a few while they were off guard, and M-24 got the rest in the resulting confusion.
A trick up his sleeve he hoped the Union scientists never found out.
M-24 was studying his face and M-21 wiped a cheek with the back of his hand. “What?” He hadn’t been hit in the face, he was sure of it, and M-24 had never been bothered by blood on his face before.
“Your…” M-24 gestured to his face before pursing his lips and looking around. “I think your transformation’s changed.”
It had? M-21 ran his fingertips over his face and froze, finding sharp indents that hadn’t been there before. What was that? It was like he’d been sliced with a knife, his skin splitting open, but there was no blood, no pain.
“Here.”
M-21 caught the bright shard M-24 tossed at him and when he turned it over, he saw his reflection in the glass.
His face was cracked like the plains of dry earth that hadn’t seen rain in months, the insides ashen grey. He sucked in a breath, his eyes wide, but as he watched, the cracks sealed over until his skin was smooth again.
“What…?” His transformation had never done that before. It had never reached his face before — and he’d already let go of his transformation by the time he’d seen that. There had been no rush, no boost that usually accompanied a transformation so… “What the fuck was that?”
M-24 shrugged, tugging at the rim of his hat. “Did it hurt?”
“No,” M-21 said, frowning. If M-24 hadn’t pointed it out, he wouldn’t have known it had happened. “Whatever,” he said. “We finished the mission so we need to report in.” And they could find out more inside the lab.
* * *
There was nothing about what happened in the lab database. They’d found notes on Jake’s transformation before and thought M-21 had been a prototype for his transformation, but Jake’s notes never mentioned anything about his skin cracking.
“Probably my body failing,” M-21 muttered, scowling at the streets far below them. The scientists had nodded absentmindedly while they’d given their report and handed over the goods they’d retrieved from the agents before letting them loose to wait for their next orders.
“You haven’t been needing the pills as often as me,” M-24 reminded him. As if to make a point, M-24 was already throwing a few down his throat with a grimace.
M-21 watched him swallow from the corner of his eyes, frowning. That was true… He’d been needing the pills less and less, so much that he could share his bottle with M-24 when a mission took longer than expected.
“You’ll start needing them less too.” Because they were the same. If it was happening to him, of course M-24 would need them less as well. And then they wouldn’t need to rely on the Union for the pills anymore.
Not that they could escape the Union’s reach, but it would give them a better start if they didn’t have the leash still around their throats, strangling them as they tried to get away.
* * *
Their next missions were uninteresting, a few retrievals that didn’t involve a fight.
It made M-21 wary. He couldn’t go complacent just because he hadn’t needed to transform. Normally it was good, because there was no chance of the scientists finding out what he could do, but if he forgot, if he was too slow to react…
So he practiced at night, when neither he or M-24 could sleep, nightmares keeping them awake. M-24 could practice his mind control at the same time, and eventually, M-21 found it easier to resist M-24′s attacks.
He just hoped it wasn’t because M-24 was dying. His skin was paler, and M-21 knew he was taking the pills more frequently, the pain and shakes getting worse than it had been when they’d first started taking them.
M-24 couldn’t…. There was…no-one else left if M-24 died.
But M-24 was still taking the pills, the pills were still helping, so that had to mean something.
They leaned against each other after a spar, the night air cooling M-21′s skin as he stared up at the sky.
“How is it?” M-21 asked, still looking up as he reached up to his face.
“…Worse,” M-24 said. “They’re almost at your nose.”
M-21 sighed, following the cracks. M-24 could be dying, but so could he. Every time he transformed, the cracks spread further, going deeper. They shouldn’t, not without hitting bone, but they split apart anyway with no tell-tale whiteness underneath.
“I should probably stop transforming,” M-21 murmured, feeling his skin closing again. He didn’t like it, but if he was destroying himself, he couldn’t leave M-24 alone either.
“Until we find out what it’s doing.”
“Yeah.”
* * *
M-21 dreamed of blinding light, of being weightless as he tore through a forest like he was flying. He moved differently, but what did it matter? He was dreaming, he was aware of that much.
“-21.”
He paused, cocking his head to the side, an ear swivelling. That voice was familiar.
Of course. M-24. Why-
“-UP.”
M-21 jolted awake, M-24′s palm on his shoulder, still shaking him. M-21′s heart hammered, but something was wrong.
It was the lights. There weren’t any in the deserted building they’d found, and they’d holed themselves up in the rooms with no windows, so they couldn’t be seen.
The room had been pitch black when M-21 had gone to sleep. So why was M-24′s face lit up like light was coming from the floor?
Tears shone in M-24′s eyes and M-21 finally grasped what he was saying.
“Don’t go, please, I don’t want you to-”
“M-24!” M-21 said, yanking M-24 closer, wrapping his arms around him. “I’m here; you’re dreaming.”
M-24 struggled. “I’m not! Your - your skin-”
M-21 sucked in a breath, his eyes going wide. What was happening with his skin? Nothing, probably, M-24 still caught in whatever he’d had a nightmare about, but M-21 lifted a hand to check.
He saw his hand in the light and his stomach dropped. His hand got brighter the closer he brought it to his face.
Past M-24′s back, on the ceiling was lit up but the more concentrated areas were in the same shape of the cracks M-21′s face had.
A sick dread in his stomach, M-21 touched his face, finding one of the cracks. A shadow appeared on the ceiling.
“Fuck.”
It was coming from him. The light was coming from him.
Except it was fading, his skin closing up again and M-21 gripped M-24′s shirt, his hand trembling. What the fuck just happened?
“‘21…?” M-24 breathed into his shoulder.
“Still here.” Somehow. Maybe not for long. He didn’t feel different, but what if that light fucked with his senses like the scientists’ drugs did?
“Good.”
M-24 didn’t let him go and neither did M-21. They stayed like that for the rest of the night, M-21 staring up at the ceiling, waiting to see if it would light up again.
* * *
Nothing in the Union databases mentioned anything about light coming out of the body either. The closest thing they found talked about auras, but they were different, M-21 knew that much.
M-21 shut the machine down and stepped away from it when he heard steps approaching the room from outside. He relaxed when he saw M-24 in the doorway. “You got them?”
M-24 nodded, tossing him a small pill bottle.
M-21 caught it and then frowned, turning it over. When…was the last time he’d needed one? He couldn’t check now so he slipped the bottle into a pocket.
They left the lab in silence, making sure not to do anything that would draw attention.
* * *
“South Korea…?” M-21 shoved his hands in his pockets, his jacket getting buffeted by the wind as they stared down at the streets below them. “We haven’t been back there in a while.” It was for a standard retrieval mission: get in and then get out. They were only meeting one person and the goods had already been collected for them. Easy.
M-24 nodded. When he didn’t say anything more, M-21 glanced at him. His gaze was distant, not looking at anything.
“What?”
M-24 exhaled, placing a hand on his hat, adjusting it. “How’re you feeling?”
M-21 shrugged, tracing where he knew the cracks appeared. “Fine. Not dying.” Not painfully like when his body was breaking down. “You?”
M-24′s eyes darted to the pills in his hand. “I haven’t gotten worse.”
Which meant he hadn’t gotten better.
There wasn’t much else they could do but carry on with the mission, hoping their bodies wouldn’t fail them half way through.
* * *
“No, nononono-” M-21 stared at the mountain of rocks in front of him, tears streaming down his face. “You can’t — you can’t-” He couldn’t breathe, his throat refusing to work as he strained his ears, desperately trying to hear any sign of life.
But the communication device was silent apart from the rare crackle.
His vision was brightening, M-21 seeing the jutting cracks spreading down from his shoulders, silver light shining through.
He didn’t care.
Why did it matter anymore?
M-24 was dead.
Alone. He was alone. He didn’t…
His heart -did he have one? Was it just a ball of light?- ached, squeezing whatever was inside him, but M-21 didn’t do anything to try and stop it. What was the point?
There was a buzzing in his ears.
A touch on his shoulder and M-21 jerked to look. It was the blond…man. M-21 had his suspicions about what he and his master really were, but he had nothing to confirm it.
“Do you want to come with us?” the man said, his voice softer than M-21 had heard it before.
M-21 barked out a laugh, pulling away. “Why?” Why did he care? They had the brats now; that was all that had mattered to them before.
Except…M-24 had saved the brats, hoping that would get them into the pair’s good graces. Shit. If he wasted M-24′s sacrifice for his only way of getting out of the Union…
The man glanced at M-24′s grave and M-21 wanted to snarl, bare his teeth and shove the man away. He shouldn’t be looking at M-24′s grave, no-one else should. But M-21 didn’t do anything, knowing he would be killed for that, even if the man was being friendly right now.
The man looked at him again, a soft smile on his face unlike M-21 had seen before there either. “I’m sure you need something warm to eat and drink right now, and we have a room you can stay in as well.”
That wouldn’t bring M-24 back. M-21 held his tongue, glowering instead.
The man didn’t seem to take offense, waiting.
“Fine,” M-21 muttered, staggering to his feet.
When M-21 looked down again, the cracks were gone.
* * *
The man -Frankenstein. He’d introduced himself as Frankenstein- kept watching him. So did his master, but M-21 knew a scientist’s stare, the way Frankenstein’s gaze followed him around a room.
Frankenstein never demanded a check-up or scan though. That was…weird. Unless the scientist wanted him to volunteer? Hah. Like fuck that would happen.
Neither of them asked about his cracked skin or the light that was inside him either.
A part of him was glad for that.
* * *
“Do you wish to see proof?”
M-21 didn’t have power. Not real power. He had some strength, but it was nothing in comparison to the newer modified humans. There was the light inside him, but all that was was his body breaking down.
He never expected Frankenstein’s master would be able to do anything.
As soon as Frankenstein’s master swiped his blood across his own lips, M-21′s heart thudded, a rush of energy overflowing him.
The room brightened, and M-21 distantly knew what it meant.
He didn’t care. He casually tugged the skin of his arm off, revealing silver whispy fur made of light, his arm ending in clawed paws. He could feel himself expanding, so much larger than his human skin would allow.
He dropped the remains of his skin onto the floor and turned his attention on the infected. He was twice the height of him now, even when he was on all fours, and he bared his teeth, preparing to pounce.
This would be an easy kill.
* * *
He swivelled his ears towards the sound of approaching footsteps, and he turned his head, growling. The infected had gone down easily, but if someone else wanted to attack him, he was ready.
“M-21,” the human said, except he wasn’t human. He knew what humans smelled like, and even modified humans still had a common scent he could pick out.
This person didn’t have that.
He squinted at the person. Frankenstein’s master.
“M-21,” Frankenstein’s master repeated, looking up at him.
Him? Was he talking to him?
“Yes, I am.” Frankenstein’s master didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “You should return to your skin, M-21.”
He snorted, shooting the skin a disdainful look. Why should he? He was powerful like this. He could do something. Take down the Union. He had the ability to.
“You cannot stay like that forever, M-21. I have shown you a glimpse of your true power, but as you are, you cannot hold that form for long.”
Yes, he could. He could feel it.
He wavered, flopping to the side, breathing harder. He tried to stand, but his body wouldn’t listen to him, feeling like he was getting smothered by something wrapped all around him.
Frankenstein’s master was right. If he stayed like this… He looked at his skin again. He wouldn’t fit in there anymore. It was too small. Damaged.
“You will fit.”
He was running out of time, his strength weakening with each passing second, and he dragged himself to the skin. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do, how he was supposed to do it, but as soon as he touched his skin, he was sucked back into it.
M-21 coughed, gasping heaving gasps as he clutched his chest.
Clutched his chest with a furry arm, and he wanted to fling it away, not look at it.
“The fuck-” Shit. He’d been so close. He’d completely lost himself in the power. Lost his fucking humanity.
“You are still human,” Frankenstein’s master said, watching him.
“And you can te-” M-21 started, then stopped. Frankenstein’s master could tell. He was a noblesse, M-21 was sure of it now.
Frankenstein’s master nodded, then looked at his arm. “Hold your arm out.”
M-21 pursed his lips, but did as he was ordered. Was Frankenstein’s master going to rip his arm off? He couldn’t hide it as it was.
Frankenstein’s master didn’t say anything and after a few seconds, the surface of the arm tingled.
M-21 looked down and saw his skin reconstructing itself, spreading out over his arm. It wasn’t his regeneration. His regeneration wasn’t that good, or that fast.
It took less than a minute for M-21′s human arm to be back, including all the small scars and nicks his regeneration had never quite been able to heal.
M-21 flexed his hand. It felt like his. Human. But if the light overwhelmed him again…
“I showed you a glimpse of your power,” Frankenstein’s master said. “If you can take that form again will be up to you.” He paused, considering M-21. “If you do, you will have more control.”
Frankenstein’s master seemed to have a lot of faith in his abilities. More than he did. Assuming he even lived that long.
But…
M-21 flexed his hand again. Maybe he could achieve that, some day.
Summary: “Your…” M-24 gestured to his face before pursing his lips and looking around. “I think your transformation’s changed.”
It had? M-21 ran his fingertips over his face and froze, finding sharp indents that hadn’t been there before.
Notes: Inspired by givethispromptatry's 'She clawed at the cracks in her skin, gasping at the light that started to pour through the marks.'
This ended up…slightly longer than anticipated, ahaha. 8′D
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General
Word count: 2,706
Status: Work in progress
M-21 huffed, wiping his bloodied hands on the remains of his sleeve. It was useless now anyway; one of the agents had caught him in the shoulder with a bullet, the fabric already stained red.
He held out his hand, watching as his black sharp nails shrank back into something more human, flesh coloured and rounded at the tips. The agents hadn’t expected him to transform so he’d been able to kill a few while they were off guard, and M-24 got the rest in the resulting confusion.
A trick up his sleeve he hoped the Union scientists never found out.
M-24 was studying his face and M-21 wiped a cheek with the back of his hand. “What?” He hadn’t been hit in the face, he was sure of it, and M-24 had never been bothered by blood on his face before.
“Your…” M-24 gestured to his face before pursing his lips and looking around. “I think your transformation’s changed.”
It had? M-21 ran his fingertips over his face and froze, finding sharp indents that hadn’t been there before. What was that? It was like he’d been sliced with a knife, his skin splitting open, but there was no blood, no pain.
“Here.”
M-21 caught the bright shard M-24 tossed at him and when he turned it over, he saw his reflection in the glass.
His face was cracked like the plains of dry earth that hadn’t seen rain in months, the insides ashen grey. He sucked in a breath, his eyes wide, but as he watched, the cracks sealed over until his skin was smooth again.
“What…?” His transformation had never done that before. It had never reached his face before — and he’d already let go of his transformation by the time he’d seen that. There had been no rush, no boost that usually accompanied a transformation so… “What the fuck was that?”
M-24 shrugged, tugging at the rim of his hat. “Did it hurt?”
“No,” M-21 said, frowning. If M-24 hadn’t pointed it out, he wouldn’t have known it had happened. “Whatever,” he said. “We finished the mission so we need to report in.” And they could find out more inside the lab.
There was nothing about what happened in the lab database. They’d found notes on Jake’s transformation before and thought M-21 had been a prototype for his transformation, but Jake’s notes never mentioned anything about his skin cracking.
“Probably my body failing,” M-21 muttered, scowling at the streets far below them. The scientists had nodded absentmindedly while they’d given their report and handed over the goods they’d retrieved from the agents before letting them loose to wait for their next orders.
“You haven’t been needing the pills as often as me,” M-24 reminded him. As if to make a point, M-24 was already throwing a few down his throat with a grimace.
M-21 watched him swallow from the corner of his eyes, frowning. That was true… He’d been needing the pills less and less, so much that he could share his bottle with M-24 when a mission took longer than expected.
“You’ll start needing them less too.” Because they were the same. If it was happening to him, of course M-24 would need them less as well. And then they wouldn’t need to rely on the Union for the pills anymore.
Not that they could escape the Union’s reach, but it would give them a better start if they didn’t have the leash still around their throats, strangling them as they tried to get away.
Their next missions were uninteresting, a few retrievals that didn’t involve a fight.
It made M-21 wary. He couldn’t go complacent just because he hadn’t needed to transform. Normally it was good, because there was no chance of the scientists finding out what he could do, but if he forgot, if he was too slow to react…
So he practiced at night, when neither he or M-24 could sleep, nightmares keeping them awake. M-24 could practice his mind control at the same time, and eventually, M-21 found it easier to resist M-24′s attacks.
He just hoped it wasn’t because M-24 was dying. His skin was paler, and M-21 knew he was taking the pills more frequently, the pain and shakes getting worse than it had been when they’d first started taking them.
M-24 couldn’t…. There was…no-one else left if M-24 died.
But M-24 was still taking the pills, the pills were still helping, so that had to mean something.
They leaned against each other after a spar, the night air cooling M-21′s skin as he stared up at the sky.
“How is it?” M-21 asked, still looking up as he reached up to his face.
“…Worse,” M-24 said. “They’re almost at your nose.”
M-21 sighed, following the cracks. M-24 could be dying, but so could he. Every time he transformed, the cracks spread further, going deeper. They shouldn’t, not without hitting bone, but they split apart anyway with no tell-tale whiteness underneath.
“I should probably stop transforming,” M-21 murmured, feeling his skin closing again. He didn’t like it, but if he was destroying himself, he couldn’t leave M-24 alone either.
“Until we find out what it’s doing.”
“Yeah.”
M-21 dreamed of blinding light, of being weightless as he tore through a forest like he was flying. He moved differently, but what did it matter? He was dreaming, he was aware of that much.
“-21.”
He paused, cocking his head to the side, an ear swivelling. That voice was familiar.
Of course. M-24. Why-
“-UP.”
M-21 jolted awake, M-24′s palm on his shoulder, still shaking him. M-21′s heart hammered, but something was wrong.
It was the lights. There weren’t any in the deserted building they’d found, and they’d holed themselves up in the rooms with no windows, so they couldn’t be seen.
The room had been pitch black when M-21 had gone to sleep. So why was M-24′s face lit up like light was coming from the floor?
Tears shone in M-24′s eyes and M-21 finally grasped what he was saying.
“Don’t go, please, I don’t want you to-”
“M-24!” M-21 said, yanking M-24 closer, wrapping his arms around him. “I’m here; you’re dreaming.”
M-24 struggled. “I’m not! Your - your skin-”
M-21 sucked in a breath, his eyes going wide. What was happening with his skin? Nothing, probably, M-24 still caught in whatever he’d had a nightmare about, but M-21 lifted a hand to check.
He saw his hand in the light and his stomach dropped. His hand got brighter the closer he brought it to his face.
Past M-24′s back, on the ceiling was lit up but the more concentrated areas were in the same shape of the cracks M-21′s face had.
A sick dread in his stomach, M-21 touched his face, finding one of the cracks. A shadow appeared on the ceiling.
“Fuck.”
It was coming from him. The light was coming from him.
Except it was fading, his skin closing up again and M-21 gripped M-24′s shirt, his hand trembling. What the fuck just happened?
“‘21…?” M-24 breathed into his shoulder.
“Still here.” Somehow. Maybe not for long. He didn’t feel different, but what if that light fucked with his senses like the scientists’ drugs did?
“Good.”
M-24 didn’t let him go and neither did M-21. They stayed like that for the rest of the night, M-21 staring up at the ceiling, waiting to see if it would light up again.
Nothing in the Union databases mentioned anything about light coming out of the body either. The closest thing they found talked about auras, but they were different, M-21 knew that much.
M-21 shut the machine down and stepped away from it when he heard steps approaching the room from outside. He relaxed when he saw M-24 in the doorway. “You got them?”
M-24 nodded, tossing him a small pill bottle.
M-21 caught it and then frowned, turning it over. When…was the last time he’d needed one? He couldn’t check now so he slipped the bottle into a pocket.
They left the lab in silence, making sure not to do anything that would draw attention.
“South Korea…?” M-21 shoved his hands in his pockets, his jacket getting buffeted by the wind as they stared down at the streets below them. “We haven’t been back there in a while.” It was for a standard retrieval mission: get in and then get out. They were only meeting one person and the goods had already been collected for them. Easy.
M-24 nodded. When he didn’t say anything more, M-21 glanced at him. His gaze was distant, not looking at anything.
“What?”
M-24 exhaled, placing a hand on his hat, adjusting it. “How’re you feeling?”
M-21 shrugged, tracing where he knew the cracks appeared. “Fine. Not dying.” Not painfully like when his body was breaking down. “You?”
M-24′s eyes darted to the pills in his hand. “I haven’t gotten worse.”
Which meant he hadn’t gotten better.
There wasn’t much else they could do but carry on with the mission, hoping their bodies wouldn’t fail them half way through.
“No, nononono-” M-21 stared at the mountain of rocks in front of him, tears streaming down his face. “You can’t — you can’t-” He couldn’t breathe, his throat refusing to work as he strained his ears, desperately trying to hear any sign of life.
But the communication device was silent apart from the rare crackle.
His vision was brightening, M-21 seeing the jutting cracks spreading down from his shoulders, silver light shining through.
He didn’t care.
Why did it matter anymore?
M-24 was dead.
Alone. He was alone. He didn’t…
His heart -did he have one? Was it just a ball of light?- ached, squeezing whatever was inside him, but M-21 didn’t do anything to try and stop it. What was the point?
There was a buzzing in his ears.
A touch on his shoulder and M-21 jerked to look. It was the blond…man. M-21 had his suspicions about what he and his master really were, but he had nothing to confirm it.
“Do you want to come with us?” the man said, his voice softer than M-21 had heard it before.
M-21 barked out a laugh, pulling away. “Why?” Why did he care? They had the brats now; that was all that had mattered to them before.
Except…M-24 had saved the brats, hoping that would get them into the pair’s good graces. Shit. If he wasted M-24′s sacrifice for his only way of getting out of the Union…
The man glanced at M-24′s grave and M-21 wanted to snarl, bare his teeth and shove the man away. He shouldn’t be looking at M-24′s grave, no-one else should. But M-21 didn’t do anything, knowing he would be killed for that, even if the man was being friendly right now.
The man looked at him again, a soft smile on his face unlike M-21 had seen before there either. “I’m sure you need something warm to eat and drink right now, and we have a room you can stay in as well.”
That wouldn’t bring M-24 back. M-21 held his tongue, glowering instead.
The man didn’t seem to take offense, waiting.
“Fine,” M-21 muttered, staggering to his feet.
When M-21 looked down again, the cracks were gone.
The man -Frankenstein. He’d introduced himself as Frankenstein- kept watching him. So did his master, but M-21 knew a scientist’s stare, the way Frankenstein’s gaze followed him around a room.
Frankenstein never demanded a check-up or scan though. That was…weird. Unless the scientist wanted him to volunteer? Hah. Like fuck that would happen.
Neither of them asked about his cracked skin or the light that was inside him either.
A part of him was glad for that.
“Do you wish to see proof?”
M-21 didn’t have power. Not real power. He had some strength, but it was nothing in comparison to the newer modified humans. There was the light inside him, but all that was was his body breaking down.
He never expected Frankenstein’s master would be able to do anything.
As soon as Frankenstein’s master swiped his blood across his own lips, M-21′s heart thudded, a rush of energy overflowing him.
The room brightened, and M-21 distantly knew what it meant.
He didn’t care. He casually tugged the skin of his arm off, revealing silver whispy fur made of light, his arm ending in clawed paws. He could feel himself expanding, so much larger than his human skin would allow.
He dropped the remains of his skin onto the floor and turned his attention on the infected. He was twice the height of him now, even when he was on all fours, and he bared his teeth, preparing to pounce.
This would be an easy kill.
He swivelled his ears towards the sound of approaching footsteps, and he turned his head, growling. The infected had gone down easily, but if someone else wanted to attack him, he was ready.
“M-21,” the human said, except he wasn’t human. He knew what humans smelled like, and even modified humans still had a common scent he could pick out.
This person didn’t have that.
He squinted at the person. Frankenstein’s master.
“M-21,” Frankenstein’s master repeated, looking up at him.
Him? Was he talking to him?
“Yes, I am.” Frankenstein’s master didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “You should return to your skin, M-21.”
He snorted, shooting the skin a disdainful look. Why should he? He was powerful like this. He could do something. Take down the Union. He had the ability to.
“You cannot stay like that forever, M-21. I have shown you a glimpse of your true power, but as you are, you cannot hold that form for long.”
Yes, he could. He could feel it.
He wavered, flopping to the side, breathing harder. He tried to stand, but his body wouldn’t listen to him, feeling like he was getting smothered by something wrapped all around him.
Frankenstein’s master was right. If he stayed like this… He looked at his skin again. He wouldn’t fit in there anymore. It was too small. Damaged.
“You will fit.”
He was running out of time, his strength weakening with each passing second, and he dragged himself to the skin. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do, how he was supposed to do it, but as soon as he touched his skin, he was sucked back into it.
M-21 coughed, gasping heaving gasps as he clutched his chest.
Clutched his chest with a furry arm, and he wanted to fling it away, not look at it.
“The fuck-” Shit. He’d been so close. He’d completely lost himself in the power. Lost his fucking humanity.
“You are still human,” Frankenstein’s master said, watching him.
“And you can te-” M-21 started, then stopped. Frankenstein’s master could tell. He was a noblesse, M-21 was sure of it now.
Frankenstein’s master nodded, then looked at his arm. “Hold your arm out.”
M-21 pursed his lips, but did as he was ordered. Was Frankenstein’s master going to rip his arm off? He couldn’t hide it as it was.
Frankenstein’s master didn’t say anything and after a few seconds, the surface of the arm tingled.
M-21 looked down and saw his skin reconstructing itself, spreading out over his arm. It wasn’t his regeneration. His regeneration wasn’t that good, or that fast.
It took less than a minute for M-21′s human arm to be back, including all the small scars and nicks his regeneration had never quite been able to heal.
M-21 flexed his hand. It felt like his. Human. But if the light overwhelmed him again…
“I showed you a glimpse of your power,” Frankenstein’s master said. “If you can take that form again will be up to you.” He paused, considering M-21. “If you do, you will have more control.”
Frankenstein’s master seemed to have a lot of faith in his abilities. More than he did. Assuming he even lived that long.
But…
M-21 flexed his hand again. Maybe he could achieve that, some day.