What the Storm Brings --OUTDATED--

Part 4

A/N: A shorter chapter that brings the day to a close... It made sense to cut this one short, when it got to that point. Also, I apologise ahead of time to anyone who hates rhyming... but I literally could not resist. I am so, totally, completely, not actually sorry.

~*~|Before the Storm: A Dream of the Beginning|~*~

It was cold in the control room, enough so to force a shiver out of his body despite the fire still pumping through his veins. For once, Zet had come for a reason other than painstakingly teaching himself how to use the massive machine... he had come to finish things in the only way he knew how, the only way that had any true chance of actually working. Loath as he was to admit it, but she was too strong for him to be entirely confident in simply killing her the old-fashioned way.

That left him with Plan B.

Striding over to the control panel itself, the green-haired youth felt his chest clenching uncomfortably. Was it nervousness? He bit into his lower lip and shook his head rapidly as if to outright fling the hesitation from his mind. Everything had gone too far for him to give up, just as he was about to win.

...He was going to win, if he did this, wasn't he?

Alhazred was going to kill him... Zet was going to die, and it would all be because his 'uncle' had an obsession with someone who hated the insane scientist almost as much as that very same madman hated humans.

His fingers rested lightly on the keys, a small frown falling over his face when he noticed the scuff lines left by Doppelganger extremities –the ridiculous colour-blind creatures had been dancing on the controls... again. Zet closed his eyes, took a deep breath or three, and started to enter the sequence.

There was no true rhyme or reason behind the characters he typed into the machine; he'd learned a long time ago that, the more he didn't pay attention to what was inputted, the crazier the resulting transfer. If he felt that a particular symbol would fit next, he pressed the corresponding key without thinking it over. Besides, the stranger the input, the less likely it was that it could be reversed.

The redhead that had been a source of almost-unending irritation –and definitely, absolutely no jealousy, nope, not at all!– would disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.

If only Zet had better luck...

"What are you doing, Zet?" Deftly-controlled lightning speared through his left side, even as he spun to face the new arrival. The other's golden mask and glowering scarlet eyes filled his vision. "Are you trying to do something stupid again, or should I say 'like usual'?"

~*~|More Valuable Than Gold|~*~

Blackness was always an unpleasant thing to come back to. In fact, Zet hated it quite intensely. Stolen awareness returning at the speed of a thick sludge had never been a good sign, in his experience. His breath echoed eerily, although his quiet groan managed to do a much better job of ricocheting off of the walls –if his head was just a little less sore, he'd laugh at it. Keeping his eyes closed for the moment, Zet started to take stock of the room he was now in.

The first thing he noticed was that it was a bit chilly, like it was the depths of a large building, or simply maintained a colder temperature than would be considered 'comfortable' by most. The next thing was that he was lying on what felt like some kind of thin mattress, laid out on a hard surface. There wasn't much extra noise around him –which prompted a shiver all its own– but he could tell that he wasn't actually alone. In some ways, that made the silence all the more unnerving, but he swallowed down the jolt of near-panic that tried to raise its ugly head.