kh_drabble | (no subject)

Challenge: [141] Disturb the Universe
Title: What Science Does for Us All
Word Count: 386

Notes: KH2, Apprentice-centric fic. No real spoilers, unless you've never read the Ansem Reports. Thanks to

syvia for her quick beta of this. <3

Ansem really hadn't intended to bring others into his research. He was fine searching out things on his own and it was only because Xehanort was the subject of most of his studies did he let the young man work with him.

But he noticed others, bright and talented with an eagerness to learn. Scientists that were newly graduated from their fields and one prodigy student that stood out. He accepted them into his ranks and told them a little of what he was studying and introduced them to his student, his ward.

He couldn’t have known what would come of the simple meeting, of all those bright, inquisitive minds turned to a research that he never should have started. It was Even that suggested to bring animals at first—creatures that were at the end of their life and would have been put down anyway. What harm was it to take a creature and turn it to the glory of science?

It will fulfill a higher purpose, Ansem! He could still hear Even pleading and eventually he had given in. His own curiosity was to be his undoing and the undoing of those that worked with him. His folly would be the downfall of all of them.

When the first twisted creatures appeared, Ansem was appalled—how could this be? What had they done?

But the others were excited—eyes gleaming at the results. Charts were drawn and hypotheses were made—but they wanted to know more.

What if the creature wasn't old or sick? What then? How would it affect the results? Did the type matter?

Eventually, it twisted and spiraled downward, getting worse and traversing dark paths that they shouldn't have trod upon. They opened forbidden doors and finally Ansem declared that they should go no further.

But his apprentices weren't satisfied with the meager results of the start, they wanted to probe deeper into the Heart of a person. Ansem forbade his former students and they used him as the subject of an experiment that they devised and Ansem found what it was like to be at the end of things. He was lost in the darkness that he had a hand in creating.

But even as he fell, he wondered how much further his apprentices would dare to go.