FOUR: and a city of lights

21

6 months 4 days and 16 hours later...

"How... do you feel?" Raxen was asking.

A girl with black hair sat up, wearing literally nothing but a cloak, which was strongly wrapped around her waist versus being worn properly over her body. She ran her claws through her hair, sitting up on the bed in her room.

"I'm rather bored, where is my Jhada Khin?" She asked, super annoyed with the lack of the man's presence. "No offense Raxen, but I find you rather boring." She muttered, looking at her long clawed hands.

Axel wandered into the room, his eyes wide. "So this is what you wanted to show me?" He asked, eagerly sitting down on another chair beside Raxen. They were on the other side of the glass, speaking to a female creature living in a glass box.

"Meet Angel 2.0. Or as I like to call her, Whisper."

Axel blinked, then looked over to Raxen. "You named her after Jhin's gun? What the f-"

"It's fitting to her, don't you think?" The scientist grinned, looking over the strange demon that was lying there against the white of the bed. "She's brilliant. Perfect in every way."

The red-head was almost too afraid to ask, but he did anyways. "Where's the other half of her?" He looked over at Raxen rather nervously, suddenly concerned with his sudden acceleration of progress. He'd already produced an aged clone, who was to say he hadn't produced all of them around the same time behind his back.

"I'm sorry that I kept them a secret Axel, it's nothing against you. I just wanted to make sure that there were no mistakes." Raxen chuckled, before waving over a man that stood behind them, one of his many armed guards. "Go get Jhada Khin please."

"There's no way you actually flipped his name around." Axel frowned. "Are you serious?"

Raxen smirked. "Don't worry, we normally just refer to him as The Painter since he really has a thing for paint brushes and... well, he really likes red paints."

Axel raised an eyebrow, echoing his boss. "Normally? The fuck you mean, how long have they been alive without our knowledge?" He demanded, crossing his arms over his chest.

The blonde shook his head. "About 3 weeks now, forgive me, it was just to guarantee that they received their imprints. Can't have them thinking that they work for someone else." Raxen said the last part with a bit of a sneer. "Also had to make sure they didn't die before I got a chance to formally introduce them. You know how clones are, sometimes they falter early."

Axel would have thrown up if he hadn't forced himself to keep it together. Over the last few months, he'd actually become quite fond of Angel, Jhin, Umbra and their friend Cree. Unfortunately, Star never made it, and was cremated since the medication had deeply destroyed and infected her. He had found out that Raxen had been giving her injections from Umbra's blood, his desire being to turn her into something more like Umbra, to see if they could eventually produce a stronger creature type between them. But since she died, he tossed the idea, and resorted to just taking Umbra's DNA and using it to create more war beasts. He had about five of them growing in tanks, their bulky bodies taking a lot longer to develop then the more humanoid types.

Cree had been the only one that Raxen hadn't messed up at one point or another. The man was rather calm through most of the process, just doing as he needed to stay alive. He seemed rather depressed, never really shaking it away once Star died. Unfortunately they'd cloned him when he was feeling the most of the depression, which had resorted it a very dark clone being born from his DNA. Cree's clone hadn't a special name or reference to anything. It was simply called "Joel" and was insanely pale and undead-looking. Raxen had attempted to fix the being's color pigmentation, but he remained one of ashen-colored skin, and strange green eyes which had resorted due to a toxin finding its way into the clone's blood. Joel was half human and half machine, his strange appearance consisting of tubes, metal, and very white hair. He wasn't very friendly, and was instead a lot more snobby then Cree was.

Jhada wandered into the room, carrying a rather large rifle and a wipe. He completely ignored Raxen and Axel, and sat on the bed beside his deviant female. He began to wipe down the weapon, and Axel noticed something rather peculiar.

"He's not wiping it only four times." He muttered. "Jhin always does it four times."

Raxen smirked. "His gun doesn't only fire just four bullets either. He is the new and improved Khada Jhin. Better in every way, fixed, and corrected. A satisfying beast."

Axel shook his head. "I don't know how you did it Raxen, but you did it."

"Hi baby, how was your day?" The strange girl known as Whisper asked. She moved over beside Jhada, and pawed at his hair.

The Jhin clone narrowed his eyes at her. "It was lovely, as you are my dear."

"I find it rather disgusting that they even have similar voices. I get that they're supposed to be better copies but they should have had some kind of uniqueness to them." Axel muttered. "Well, I suppose the fixes are what sets them apart. Kind of weird to see Jhin without his odd habits, you removed a big part of what made him the monster that he is."

Raxen laughed. "Oh dear, I feel as though you're missing the originals. Run downstairs and go get them ready to meet their better halves. We do our first test tonight."

Axel got up without a word, and quickly headed up a level. When he saw Siax standing there outside the corridor he grabbed him, rushing with his lover towards the rooms that still held the captives that had been there for almost 7-8 months or so now.

"Siax, the clones are done already." Axel hissed as they ran. "We need to get the fuck out of here before it's too late. All of us, we need to leave."

The azure-haired lad's eyes went wide. "What, how? He kept that from you? I thought you were in his good graces again Axel, how did you fuck this up!" Siax hissed back.

"Shut up and run we have to tell the others." Axel knew that Raxen had planned for them all to meet their clones and fight. If it would be just to test or to their deaths he didn't know. But with the perfected versions of them all completed, he knew that anything was possible. "Everything's almost ready we just need to make it past tomorrow."