AKA, this is what they didn't wanna talk about when someone asked about Professor Red :D

TW: Injury, medical equipment such as syringes and scalpels, blood, body horror. I BELIEVE I NEED TO REMIND YOU, I HAVE NO FILTER WITH THIS STUFF.

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[Sabre's POV]

Run, run, we need to RUN

I know, I know Rainbow. Please stop freaking out, I need to focus-

Sorry.

Dashing through corridors and up and down staircases, we're trying to get away from this whack job Professor. We met him earlier and he seemed okay, just a little eccentric, but while we were walking with Dark and Shadow after defending an area he just- showed up and kidnapped us. He teleported us away from them and into the Red Kingdom, which we're very not welcome at right now because of the Red Leader having some kind of problem with us, so we're not gonna risk trying to get outside and sneak out from there.

We jump over a stair banister as I spot the psycho rounding the corner, and quickly climb up the stairs. We reach an observatory, and run around to the other side of the circular room, far away from the stairs.

Professor Red appears shortly after, catching his breath for a split second before facing us. Now he's blocking the only way out, because we just discovered that there is no other staircase or something up here.

"Please, I just want to ask you a few more questions! Nothing more!" He says with an eerie smile. "Well- maybe run a few tests, but other than that-"

"No means no, buddy!" Rainbow shouts.

"And you already asked a few questions" I add. "And then you came at us with a NEEDLE!"

"I just wanted to take a blood sample!"

"SCREW OFF!" We yell, our connection starting to fail because of the stress of the situation.

"Now what in the name of sanity was that?! Interesting! Do you have two voice boxes or something?"

"I SAID SCREW OFF!"

With that, we climb the railing of the opening in the center of the room, and drop down to the lower floor. I hear the Professor sputtering as he questions out loud how we didn't get hurt doing that. Gonna need to be a lot higher of a ledge in order to get hurt from a fall, idiot.

Where do we go now?

I don't know! Down?? Just away from him!

Sounds good to me!

We descend down another, much longer staircase, the same spiral staircase we were chased up earlier. The layout of this place is weird. But this time, we pass the room Professor Red teleported us into and go even further below.

We hear the Professor catching up to us.

"Come back! I don't mean any harm, I just want to know what you are!" He shouts.

"Fat chance! You probably want to dissect us or something!" I shout back.

"So cut it out and stop chasing us!" Rainbow continues.

"Nonsense! Just please stop running and let me do a few things! It won't hurt or anything, I promise!"

"NO!"

We run faster.

The design and atmosphere of this lab starts to get more and more unsettling. Wood and stone walls suddenly shift into metal. Signs of the building's age show everywhere. I can hear whirring and humming of machines somewhere... wherever this staircase leads to.

We must be going towards some kind of basement.

Good, the last place he'll expect us to hide! We just duck behind a machine for a few hours and wait till he's gone!

You're not the type to sit still for hours, more like we'll wait thirty minutes after we don't hear him anymore and bolt.

Shut up.

The staircase suddenly ends, and opens up to a large, open room. Of course, there's more hallways around. And a big, wide staircase leading... somewhere. I can't see into the room it goes to despite it being short.

We hear the Professor coming after us, and before either of us can think we're running down the staircase ahead. He keeps yelling after us.

"Just stop for a minute!"

"Nope!"

"I uh- I have cookies?"

"We're not idiots!"

"Please, I only want to get a few answers!"

The staircase ends, and we're at another balcony. Below, in the back of the room, is a big computer. Something in front of the balcony has a lot of wires running down to it from the ceiling. A hum rumbles in the floor we're standing on. This is... a much higher drop than the observatory earlier.

Professor Red appears behind us, and we're backed into a corner. We almost have our back to the balcony's railing.

"If you both just calm down, we can come to a mutual agreement on this. How about that?" He says, now eerily calm. "No more chasing. No more running. Just some exchanging of information between friends."

"We know who our friends are, and you are not one of them, you maniac." I say, while Rainbow freezes up again. I don't blame him.

"Well, that's just hurtful."

"So is stabbing somebody with a syringe."

"I didn't actually stick you, now did I? No. You started running before I had the chance to say anything."

The Professor reaches into his lab coat's pocket and pulls out the empty syringe again.

"Look, I'll get rid of this. Just to prove I'm not going to hurt you." He says.

He stretches his arm to his side, and drops the syringe. It clatters to the floor. Then, he kicks it away.

"See? Nothing to be scared of."

"I- We don't trust you..." I reply. "You... y-you're crazy..."

We step back. We hit the railing and freeze.

"Now, no need to be like that..." Professor Red says, his voice lowered slightly. He's treating us like a wild animal. "I proved I'm not going to hurt you, didn't I? So just cooperate with me..."

He steps forward.

I panic and try to step back again, but...

We topple over the railing.

And fall.

*Crack*

Next thing I know, we're crumpled on the floor. Pistons and wires loom over us.

The Professor comes into our view, standing over us with an expression of surprise. He says something, but his voice is muffled.

...

Everything is... fuzzy.

Black creeps into our vision.

. . .

Rain...bow...?

Why... are you... quiet...

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. . .

...

I open my eyes to see we're being held in place by a machine... the machine we landed in front of.

Our limbs are held in place by these strange bindings, looking to be made of fabric but stronger than metal. I can feel blood caked on the side of our head, and judging by the colorful stain on the floor nearby, I can guess how that happened. The Professor has his back turned to us, fiddling with something on the big computer that's now showing... something about us. Dang it.

Wait- Rainbow?

...Rainbow's still out.

Hey, Rainbow!

...

Rainbow, wake up!

Wh- huh? ...Oh crap.

Yeah. We're in big trouble. Quick, while he's distracted, try to teleport us out of here.

Why can't you-

I don't know how, remember?! Last time I tried to teleport, we ended up in a swamp five thousand blocks away from home! And that was after ten minutes of trying.

Alright, alright.

Rainbow gathers some energy to teleport, but as soon as he tries to, we get electrocuted. That was... unpleasantly familiar.

The Professor turns to us as it stops.

"Ah- Quit causing feedback from the machine, you're going to ruin outputs." He says, quickly turning back to the computer. "The extra voltage will also probably ruin some hardware."

"Let us out." I say, tensing. The binds on us pull at our wrists as I struggle to put our hands up in a defensive stance, something creaking inside the machine.

Professor Red turns his head once he hears it, and looks at us with surprise.

"You shouldn't be able to pull the restraints that far..." He mumbles, walking towards us. "The machine already couldn't get a grasp on you to hold you in place using power magnetism. Just how strong are you?"

"Let us out." Rainbow repeats.

"Again with the two voices- Are you two different consciousnesses in one body? Is that why you keep referring to yourself as 'us' and 'we'?"

"...If we give you answers, will you let us go?" I ask, breaking the defensive stance. There's no fighting our way out, so it's worth a shot.

The Professor brightens up and grins.

"Precisely! That's all I've wanted from you in the beginning of this predicament." He smiles. "Answers."

Professor Red turns back to the computer, opening and closing a few programs.

"I've never seen anything like you- Every Chromatic color, yet also something not of this world? It's fascinating! And so much power, too. I'd feel sorry for whoever crosses you. Or, rather, you two if my guess earlier is correct?"

Sabre, I don't wanna tell him anything.

But it might be our only way out. We can't fight, we can't teleport, and we can't run. If we try to fight our way out, we'll either cause too much of a commotion or get ourselves more injured. If we somehow break out of this machine and try to run, we have nowhere to run to. We don't know where we are.

...I guess you're right. But we're not gonna tell him everything, right?

Of course we won't, that'd be stupid.

"Hello? Are you there?" The Professor calls to us. "Did I cause some kind of feedback loop?"

"No, just debating." I reply.

"Ah, so you can communicate with each other internally! Wonderful."

He takes a book and quill off the desk and faces us, his look of excitement kind of unsettling.

"Now, first off, what are your names and which voice belongs to who?" He asks. "I heard your two companions refer to you as 'Rainbre', but judging by how you are two separate people, that must not be your actual name, correct?"

"Yeah. That's a nickname that refers to both of us, since we're fused." I answer. "I'm Sabre."

"Rainbow Steve." Rainbow adds.

The Professor has a weird expression for a little bit. He suddenly snaps out of it after a minute and finishes writing down something.

"M-Moving on. How did this happen?" He continues. "This obviously isn't natural."

"There was... an accident." I say. "Rainbow was almost split, and his consciousness and most of his power went to me, while the rest of it..."

We look down at the small crystal hanging on our neck, string tied to a wire wrapping the colorful stone. It glitters, even in this dark room.

"...So that crystal is the rest of the power of the Hero?" Professor Red asks.

"And my other half. Don't touch it." Rainbow glared at him.

Rainbow, be nice... we don't know what he'll do if we're not.

Fine.

The Professor doesn't seem to pay attention to Rainbow's little outburst. He looks up at us again after a minute of writing.

"Do you know if there's any oddities because of your fusion? Extra organs or anything? Defects?"

Don't tell him about our power outbursts or episodes.

We shrug.

"No idea. But there hasn't been any defects so far." Rainbow replies.

"Huh. Well, seems you're about to find out, because the scan I took is finally complete!" The Professor says enthusiastically, turning back to the computer for a moment.

"The what?"

"Oh, I started a scan while you were unconscious. That's why you're in the machine. You weren't even able to be uncooperative and an opportunity like this is once in a lifetime, so might as well take it right?"

This guy scares me.

Me too.

A list pops up on the computer's screen, and the Professor skims through it. He occasionally tells us something on it. Most things are a surprise, but there's some things we already knew.

"Hm, seems you don't have two hearts as I expected, but three! Makes sense with the power output you have. The third is much smaller, though. There's a lot of new chemicals present as natural, likely due to- What was your name again? Sabre? Oh, that 'adrenaline' one is interesting. Hah, called the two voice boxes! Wow, seems that when you fused, your brains melded together into one larger one with two versions of each side of the brain. Two halves are familiar to the biology I've studied while the other two are not, so I can tell which belong to who. It presses against your skull a bit, doesn't that hurt? Will definitely cause issues, that's for sure. The fusion almost doubled your muscle mass, no wonder you could pull the restraints so far."

We tune him out. This is getting too creepy and he's getting way too excited about this, we need a way out now.

We look around the room, but can't see anything of use. We try to wriggle out of the bindings, but they're too tight. The Professor notices us trying to pull them again.

"What are you doing?" He asks. "We're not done yet, stop trying to break my machine."

"We want out." We say. "We gave you answers, now let us go."

"I said we're not done yet, I still need a few more answers."

"How many more questions do you have?!" I shout.

"We want to leave, let us go!" Rainbow says.

"Oh, questions...?" The Professor says with an odd expression, pressing a button near the computer's keyboard.

A series of levers, switches, and sliders on a control panel are brought out from a hidden hatch in the desk. A tray slides out from the side of the panel filled with surgical equipment.

"No, no more questions... I need a different kind of answers."

We begin to thrash and squirm in the machine, panicking. As he opens a program on the computer, Professor Red continues.

"I told you to stop that, you'll break it." He says. "You'll both be fine. Won't you be happy to be separate again for a while? I'll put you back together after the fact, of course, I just need information on your individual biologies, but being fused ruins any chance of that. Heck, my machine will probably do a better job of fusing you two together than whatever thrown together science project did this to you in the first place. Actually, before I do this, I should..."

The Professor suddenly has another empty syringe, and a scalpel in his other hand as he walks towards us. We continue to try to break free, but he turns a knob on the side of the machine once he's next to it, and it pulls back on the restraints until there's no slack left. It almost feels like it's pulling our limbs out of their sockets.

He steps up to us, and reaches to our arm. With the scalpel, he makes a tiny incision, drawing multicolored blood.

"Your fusion has somehow made your skin too tough to be pierced by a syringe, so this is necessary." The Professor explains as we wince. "It'll only take a moment."

He then takes the syringe and takes some of the blood, sticking the point directly into the wound. OW.

Rainbow gets the idea to try headbutting him while he's close, but missed as the Professor quickly steps back.

"Woah, no need to be violent! Calm down." The Professor says, walking back to the computer.

"LET US OUT." We scream. Our last word is distorted and... unified. It's like a new voice instead of both of ours overlapping.

The Professor flinches for a second before rushing back to the control panel.

"Alright, maybe that was a tiny bit uncalled for. I get it." He says. "But this will all be over soon; I promise."

Just has he has his hand on a lever, a voice echoes from a nearby stairway.

"Professor, I just realized I had- PROFESSOR, WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING?!"

The Red Leader is standing there, shocked. M stands behind him with a horrified look, staring us in the eyes. We return a pleading expression, begging for help, hoping that M could somehow stop that madman and get us out of this machine.

But it's too late.

The Professor pulls the lever, and the machine whirrs to life.

That's all we hear before everything goes dark again.

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[3rd Person POV]

The Red Leader rushes to the Professor, trying to get him to turn off the machine, as lightning sounds everywhere in the room, the strikes centered at the machine.

While he does, M runs to his fused friends, looking for a way to shut off the machine manually. No button or lever is labeled, however, so he doesn't know if doing something will help or make it worse.

 Neither side has time to act, however, as the fusion of Chromatic and Catalyst begins to scream.

It's loud, blood-curdling, and... wrong. It sounds like an amalgamation of beastly screeches and horrifying shrieks. However, the voices of the people inside are most prominent, cracking and changing pitch like they were glitching. It froze the Red Steves in place.

And how they wished they could turn away from the scene, but they couldn't look away from what happened next.

Their body began to melt and fall apart.

Drips like wax ran down their distorting skin. Their face became stretched and almost looked like a rubber mask set over a skinless head. Their flesh began to split and separate, starting to section off into a pastel orange on the right and a tan color on the left. A wound split their torso in half like a crack in porcelain.

Suddenly, the fusion pulled the restraints with all the strength they could gather. Internals of the machine creaked and broke as they pulled harder and harder, desperate to get out. The Red Leader pulled M back, away from the mechanical torture.

In a split second, the restraints snapped, and a shockwave of electricity went off as the machine was stopped by a failsafe.

When the Red Steves opened their eyes again, the machine was torn apart. The fused heroes were laid on the floor, the broken restraints still on them, bleeding.

Somehow, the fused body brought itself back together. As if being played in reverse, all of the damage from the machine disappeared. Soon, they were back to how they were just seconds earlier.

After a moment, the Red Leader goes to shout at the Professor for his stupidity, but he's interrupted by a shadowy cloud appearing in the room next to the fusion.

One figure is purely Darkness in a form similar to theirs, with yellow and orange eyes. The other is a silhouette of something they don't recognize.

The dark form picks up the now unconscious fusion, and turns to the Red Steves with malice.

"You two have no part in this," It says, pointing at the Leader and M, but then turns to the Professor. "But you."

The Professor backs up as the dark figure takes a step forward.

"You try something like this again, and I mean ever..." It scowls. "And we will not be so polite while retrieving them. Understand?"

The Professor nods.

"Good. Now you better leave them alone."

The dark beings disappear, taking the fusion with them. The lab is left in silence.

...Until the Red Leader starts giving the Professor the scolding of a lifetime.