He ceased to exist.
Time passed.
He existed again.
A shell of the man he used to be woke up, unaccompanied by anything as tedious as ‘memories’. Gradually, however, those memories seeped back, and he sat up from where he was sprawled on an unknown surface. His head seemed heavier than normal, and then he caught sight of what appeared to be a light cloth on his head in the palish hue between blue and green, tipped in black. He reached for it and tried to pull it off, only to realize that it was his HAIR, and extended down to his waist, much longer than the short-cropped black hair he was accustomed to sporting. He studied it clenched in his fist, the abruptly let it go to scope out the area. He appeared to be on the top of a building, and it was raining and as dark as night. The only light to be seen anywhere was neon lights from signs on adjacent buildings. As he catalogued his surroundings, he was abruptly bombarded by sounds.
Footsteps seemingly right next to him caused him to whirl around, thinking himself surrounded by people, but no one was there. Words, thousands of words, complete conversations, snatches of singing, curses, mutters, whispers, shouts, screams, all of them were suddenly filling his ears. Movement of every kind, cloth brushing against skin, someone dropping a nail, the clash of various weapons, doors opening and closing, he heard it all. And over everything, there was the constant patter of rain as it hit millions of surfaces, each having its own specific sound. He fell to his knees and clamped the heels of his hands to his ears in a futile attempt to block the noise, and then screamed loudly, further adding to the noise.
Suddenly, a unique sound he had never heard before, that of something opening that wasn’t physical, reached his ears. He whirled around, and two people in black hooded cloaks were standing before him. The smaller one stepped forward, pushing back her hood and revealing blonde hair and blue eyes. For a second, Zavier saw a different face, and he stood up and took a step in her direction. He halted immediately, though, when she began to speak.
“Ugh, how annoying. Why did they have to send me to find out what was making that appalling racket?” she whined, and the image snapped back to a woman with short blonde hair and strands of hair like an insect’s antennae. Not Meg, then, definitely not. Meg never spoke to him in that tone of voice, as if he were a disgusting, excrement-covered insect crawling in front of her. He remained silent, and the cacaphony of sound gradually reduced to normal. Strangely, he didn’t feel anything like relief, just an aknowledgement of the fact.
“Hellooooo! Are you dumb or something? I’m talking to you.” the blonde-haired woman snapped, waving a hand in front of his face. “HEY!” Zavier remained silent, just watching her impassively. “Hmmph. This brings back annoying memories.” She growled, as if to herself, then turned towards the other, who also stood and watched silently. “Hmmph!” she held out her hand and knives appeared, then she turned around and slashed them at him. Before he could react, the knives cut into his face in a jagged pentacle pattern, blood seeping down his cheek immediately. He flinched back from her, hand moving to his face, and glared. “Hah, a reaction, finally. I was afraid you were a Dusk that somehow managed to keep its pathetic face.” The scorn practically dripped from her voice. “Do you have a name, or should I just call you ‘Dumb-as-bricks’?”
Stung by her insults, and with his hand still clasped to his wounded cheek, he narrowed his eyes at her. “Zavier.” He snarled back.
“Well too bad!” was the immediate response. “You don’t deserve that name anymore, so ex it out in your mind right now. Let’s see, x, x, x....” she looks upwards in thought. “Well Zaverxi seems well enough. No need to make it any more complicated than that, just move a letter and slap one in. Not worth more than that. There you go. Zaverxi. Enjoy your nonexistence.”
Zaverxi was stunned. He didn’t deserve his name? He mulled the thought over, then at her last words, which seemed like a farewell. This.... witch was leaving? Suddenly, Zaverxi’s vision became clouded in red, his fingers arched, and gauntlets, the tips sharp and tinged the bright color of blood, appeared on his hands. With a bestial cry, he leaped at her, reaching to claw her face. The second figure moved at this point, deflecting his attack with a long weapon of sorts that Zaverxi couldn’t see clearly, appearing just long enough to block the attack before disappearing again. The force of it drove Zaverxi sprawling back on the wet ground. “And here I thought Saïx was the only one who could become berserk.” the woman exclaimed, and the other figure spoke for the first time, his voice definitely male. “Larxene, this one is dangerous. We should leave.” And without another word, the two opened a portal into darkness, repeating the unusual sound Zaverxi heard when they appeared. The two disappeared just as Zaverxi got to his feet and prepared to attack them again, the portal closing.
Larxene. That’s what the other one called her. Zaverxi will never forget that name! “I’ll kill you!” he screamed after them, then turned away and strode off, letting the darkness of the night swallow him.
Over the years, Zaverxi gradually learned about his powers, how to control them and prevent them from overwhelming him like they did that night. He fine-tuned them by listening for the approach by any being, big or small. Not even appearing in midair through one of those dark portals allowed people to approach him, for at the first sound of a portal nearby, he made his own and disappeared. It was clearly evident that the people in the black cloaks were hunting him, but aside from the hateful Larxene, he didn’t care who they were even though he learned who they were by eavesdropping on their conversations in their castle. Names such as Xigbar, Xaldin, Luxord, Roxas, Lexaeus, Demyx, Axel, Saïx, Zexion, Vexen, Marluxia, Larxene, and most especially Xemnas became familiar to him, but Larxene was the only name he was interested in hearing. There was, of course, another girl, but she wasn’t even around for a year before she disappeared so he dismissed her from his thoughts.
Larxene quickly learned not to search for Zaverxi by herself. If he saw her alone, he would launch an attack swiftly, using all the skill he taught himself to try and bring her down. Several times, it was only by sheer luck that she was able to get away unharmed. If she had someone with her, it would often prevent him from showing himself. Soon enough, she stopped venturing out into the dark and rainy city altogether, and he nursed his hatred in the meantime, even after the wound on his cheek healed, leaving behind an angry red scar.
Eventually, Zaverxi learned that there were more worlds than his own and this one. There were two towns, bustling with energy and filled with normal people, a desert, several castles, a savannah, a world consisting of islands, and an underwater world he stayed away from, among many others. He learned about them by accident, as one day he was using a portal to get away from another group of strange black cloaked individuals and ended up in the desert, a startling contrast to the constantly raining city.
Zaverxi found the desert to be the most soothing. Out in the middle of it, people never came, so he could avoid human contact easily, and the heat didn’t really bother him that much. The same couldn’t be said of the strange creatures that showed up occasionally, however. They seemed lured by something he had, and he honed his skills on them. Most were weak, and easily destroyed, but a few challenged him and nearly brought him down. Nevertheless, day after day, night after night, he fought against these creatures and got stronger. He used them to experiment with his powers, learning the full extent of what it can do. He also learned to summon those gauntlets at will, using them as an amplifier for his power over sound as well as the more mundane, physical attacks.
One particular type of creature always made him fly into a rage. It was a weak enemy, a mere step above the weakest, clad in armor and bearing red-tinged claws almost exactly like Zaverxi’s. Those, he killed immediately. It almost seemed as if they were saying he was just like them: weak. So he worked hard to get stronger, sometimes taking on a horde of enemies at once.
More years passed, and the black-cloaked figures finally stopped looking for him completely. Zaverxi simply didn’t care. When the desert started getting tedious, he traveled to a different world, much like a tourist only without the enjoyment. That was another thing Zaverxi learned over the years: he simply couldn’t feel any emotions except hatred and guilt. Why those two only? He didn’t have an answer, and never really cared much about it. He felt those emotions, and that was that.
Eventually, people in black cloaks started looking for him again, each one of them different from the original dozen or so that had searched for him initially. They seemed to be a different group, for they knew nothing of him, making it absurdly easy to avoid them. Most of the time, he didn’t even need to make a portal to escape, he just found a place and hid so he could observe them. This group seemed to consist of nine individuals, and for a while Zaverxi studied them. A phrase he remembered from his old life was ‘know your enemy like yourself’, and so he learned about them, learned names. Rextanse. Ruxel. Xodyc. Charxai. Zixan. Xishn. Vaxti. Castex. Zhymarx. All of these people he learned about, learned their behaviors, their reactions to certain events, how they treated everyone else. And most of all, he learned their methods for trying to catch him.
Every attempt to approach him failed, although Zaverxi started letting them see him before he made his escape, taunting them. A few times, he even fought them to see how they compared power-wise to him, all so he could learn about them. They had entirely different powers than that other group, although they dressed very similarly. The weapons were also varied, and the only one that came close to hitting him was an arrow shot by the girl, Vaxti. It was only by hearing it in the air that allowed him to dodge to the side and avoid it, so he avoided her more than the rest.