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Breaking and Making Soldiers

Part 4

for Justacritic

by Draconicon

More time passed, how much impossible to tell. Meat-Theo - that was not his name, but it was as close as he could get without risk - barely noticed when he was asleep, seldom noticed what he was doing when he was not following an order directly. His hold of reality was slipping, and every time that he followed an order, he felt that grip slip that little bit more.

How long, he once wondered? How long before his grip on reality was gone completely, and he had nothing left?

Crack.

Another blow, another reminder of the world around him. The hare dragged himself back up from the depths of his mind, staring through bleary eyes at the fighting arena before him. Someone else had gone down, this time a bull. He hit the metal floor and didn't get up. The other Meat - no, no, prey, prey - species did not move from their positions around the fighting arena, bearing silent and often unseeing witness to the fighting training that they were forced to go through.

Meat-Theo had found that if he thought about it, he could 'remember' the fights, though not what he had felt on seeing them. It was almost like looking at a security recording, something that had been put into his mind, but not something that he had been responsible for putting there. He didn't understand it, but it was still part of him, something that allowed him to remember the moves that the others used, the training that they put to use in the ring. Though none of the others seemed to see what happened before them, or at least, never reacted to it, they were, on some level, still taking it in.

What was happening to them?

Two medics, the ferrets from before, stepped into the ring. They prodded the bull, then one of them stood up and shook his head. The other predators around the ring grinned, and though nobody said it, they all knew the fate of the dead subject.

He was carted off, and Meat-Theo tried to tell himself that he hadn't seen the knives coming out already. He wasn't sure that he believed himself.

"Next," Doctor Arseny Vlad called.

Meat-Theo wasn't next, but he was behind the one who was. He watched as a rat stepped out of line, but he couldn't hold onto awareness long enough to see who the rodent's opponent was. Someone strong, he was sure. Someone that had taken to the treatment as well as the rest of them had.

The awareness faded, the effort to maintain seeing the others and not just blindly obeying too much for him to keep up. He stared straight ahead, his vision fogging and his thoughts doing the same. The core of Meat-Theo tried to surface, to keep itself from sinking back into the commands and the reliance on orders to do anything, but the most that they could manage was to stare straight ahead, to not close their eyes and rest.

They - he - was tired. So tired. They were not allowed to sleep until they were pumped and hypnotized and conditioned at night, and before they were put through that, they were made to fight until they were ready to drop. Any resistance was pummeled from them, and the others...the others...

They were made to fight.

They were made to fight, to hurt, to push each other to see just how well the serums were working. And the next morning, they rose again, unharmed, unbruised, unmarked, and were made to do it all over again. The pain, the exhaustion, they were gone, banished as if they had never been.

But for some of them, some few, the memories remained.

Questions, too. He had heard some of the other Meat talk about it. Very quietly, so quietly that the slightest twitch of an ear would have lost the entire thread of the conversation, but they wondered. What was happening to them? Why couldn't they stop? What had happened to their bodies, such that they could punch metal, that they could lift their beds and throw them if they were ordered? That they could take that much abuse and then just keep going?

Crack.

Another blow, and he managed to drag himself up through the fog. The rat was down, and across the room, the stag stood victorious over his opponent. The barn owl overseeing the match nodded, and said the thing that nobody wanted to hear.

"Finish."

The stag stepped forward, and his hoof came up before coming back down. A second, much louder crack echoed through the air, and there was no need for the ferrets this time. The rat's life bled out through the hoof-shaped hole through his neck, spurting through the back and pooling through the front.

There was no guilt on the stag's face. He was just following orders. Meat-Theo imagined that he didn't even know that he had done anything.

"Next."

Meat-Theo found himself moving, stepping out of line as the stag stepped back in, replaced by a brutish rhino as naked as the hare was. The sensation of movement, of his muscles pulling and stretching, of his bare body being brushed by the still air of the room as he passed through it, drew his attention everywhere. The hare had grown far more aware of his body, more comfortable with it, more attentive to the aches and pains, but also to the tell-tale pleasures and little bits of information that told him what it needed, where it was sensitive, where it was tired. He understood it, used it as a weapon better than he had ever done with his rifle.

The stag was not the only one with blood on his hands. They had all killed, at least once, and some far more.

Taking a defensive stance, he held one hand near his chest and the other under his chin. His legs split slightly, toes pointed to the rhino, the other foot pushed back. He stared straight ahead, feeling everything, from the sweat running down the back of his neck to the cool ache of the metal against his spine. The chunks of metal, the only thing that had saved him from paralysis, still ached on the daily. He could not ignore them. He could not forget them. And he could not allow anyone else to strike them. One good blow with their strength would shatter it completely, and then he would be on the serving platter.

Thoughts. So many thoughts. So many, and so tiring. It was not right for Meat to think. Hunters thought. Prey obeyed, or were slaughtered.

"Fight."

The barn owl's order had them both closing distance, moving against each other without thinking about it. His body was on autopilot, taking everything that it had seen in the previous fights and putting it to use. The prancing of a slender deer that had been almost a doe came to mind, and he leaped over the sweeping leg of his opponent. He landed with a kick, a stiff-legged blow from that he'd seen from a stallion, the impact hard enough to make his knees pop but sufficient to knock the rhino back a pace, making his arms go dead.

The moves came without thinking, drawn from a repository of techniques that had been burned in from the deaths of so many others. The numbers were no longer clear. Thought was no longer possible. Only movement. Only impact. Only fighting.

The rhino charged, shouldering him into a wall. He took the blow with no more than a gasp, the air blasted from his lungs, but somewhere deep down, he knew it should have been more. A full charge, their size difference. That should have been broken ribs at best. There were none.

What was going on?

He slumped forward, grabbing the rhino around the neck. He squeezed, not believing that it would work, but the brute gasped for breath. The gray-skinned bruiser twisted, turned, and then spun to the ground, slamming him against the floor. Meat-Theo turned, taking it on the side and shoulder. Bruising, crushing, but no breaking?

What was going on?

They rolled apart, the rhino lashing out with a kick to his side, and him doing the same. Their legs rebounded off each other, and what should have been a knee-cracker was nothing more than a dull ache in the middle of his leg, something that made him bounce a little lighter as he jumped back to his feet.

What was going on?

The question would not stop, and it distracted him, making him think of something besides the fight. The rhino, no more a thinker than the clipboard in the barn owl's hand, was faster, and lacked any such distraction. His next punch landed.

It landed right in the metal part of Meat-Theo's spine.

CRACK!

The pain rippled out from the middle of his spine as if in slow motion, the hare stumbling forward and expecting to lose his legs any second now. His mouth hung open, his eyes wide and his entire being in agony. The pure pain of the metal cracking, the reminder of what it had protected, the rush of fire up and down his back...

Meant that he could still feel...

And that meant...

Something had happened.

He didn't question it. He turned his stumble into a leap, landing only long enough to spin around and swing his leg in a fierce kick. His heel connected with the side of the rhino's neck, sending him flying back. The command to fight kept him moving, taking advantage of the stunned silence, and his fists pummeled forward.

What had been bruising jabs turned into something else. Instant bruises appeared as his knuckles made contact with the rhino's ribs, and he felt the skin tearing under his fingers. He wanted to stop. He needed to stop.

He could not stop.

His knee came up, and he felt the gasp that came loose. Not the same gasp of wheezing breath when the air was merely knocked from the lungs, but a rattling sound, something that implied something was broken. The fire burned like a lash down Meat-Theo's spine, pushing him further, reminding him that his life was on the line, that he could not stop until he was commanded to stop.

Another punch, this time to the rhino's throat, knocking his head back. He grabbed the other man by the horn, swung him back down into his knee. Another crack, another split. Was there blood? There had to be; his knee hurt, his everything hurt, but he wasn't allowed to stop.

He couldn't stop.

He couldn't stop!

Another blow, and then another. A punch, a kick, a knee to another sensitive place. The rhino fought back, or tried, but the pain was getting through the fog. No. It wasn't just the pain. The rhino couldn't keep up. Not anymore.

They'd been the same, just as fast, just as strong. Now they weren't. Now Theo was not just the stronger, but the faster, and everything that he did was too much for his opponent to stop. The other Meat could not stop him, and he could not stop himself.

The rhino stumbled back with the latest blow to the chest, wheezing, a line of blood coming down the side of his face. Meat-Theo wanted to stop, desperately tried to still himself, but his body would not obey. He leaped into the air, spinning into another kick. Too fast, too hard.

He felt the crack before he heard it. The snap, the shatter, the utter destruction of the rhino's neck told him that he'd taken it too far again, far too far.

They both hit the ground, the rhino falling on his stomach and Meat-Theo to his knees. He panted for breath, wheezing through his teeth. The fire burned in his back, but it was slowly fading...fading and hardening...stiffening.

My...spine...

He remembered the injury. He remembered everything that had been done to him to make him able to move again. The metal chunks in his back, the metal plates that had been their way of pinning him in place and holding him down, the things that had made it possible for him to move at all. They'd been broken, shattered, and now...

Now he could...

He could feel them oozing out of him, sliding through his back, pushed out. It was almost like sweat, if sweat was thick and firm and solid enough to be felt sliding through the skin. He wanted to throw up. His conditioning kept everything right where it was supposed to be. The hare stared down at the dead body as the ferrets finally returned, looking at the broken rhino, and then at him.

Even through his haze, he could see that their eyes believed that this was impossible, that this was where he had been supposed to die. But the experiment, whatever it was, had done something to him. It had made him survive, and had made him thrive. The rhino was gone instead.

Meat-Theo looked up, past the dead body, past the other Meat subjects, and stared at the stag across the way. The many-antlered buck stared back, though his eyes were completely hazed over. That man...that man was fast. As fast as him. As strong as him. He remembered more moments now, more flickers from what fights had happened while he had been completely out of it.

They were the ones showing the greatest success. They were the ones that would have to fight each other. Eventually...eventually, they would be the only ones left.

"Next."

Dr. Arseny Vlad's command rippled through the room, and against his will, Meat-Theo stood up, rejoining the line. They would fight each other, soon enough. They would be forced to do it. If not today, or the next day, then the next day after that. Every fight made them better. Every fight made them faster. Every fight made them stronger. Soon, too soon, they would be beyond the scope of those that they were fighting against.

It was not that day.

It was not the next day.

And it was not the day after that.

It was, however, the fourth day when their numbers lined up. Every day that passed, they were treated with the serum again, fed the drugs of the experiment along with the conditioning in the chair. They would obey. They would fight and follow any and all orders of the Hunters. The APS would be their masters, and they would do what they were told as the super-soldiers that they were meant to be.

Obedient.

Swift.

Deadly.

Meat-Theo and the nameless stag stood across from each other. There were no other prey species to see them now, no more Meat. The bodies had been taken from the arena, sent down to some locker somewhere, he might have imagined if he had any real thought left. Meat-Theo. Meat-Theo. The name was all he had left. Thinking was too much effort. Planning, trying to remember things that barely mattered in this place of steel and crimson were luxuries that he could not afford. His name, his name, was all that he had, and all that he kept.

"Fight."

The barn owl's order had barely left his beak before the hare and the stag were at it. Their fists impacted one another, beating a shockwave through the air. They bounced back a step each, their legs coming up. Crack-ack, then a bounce back. The echoes of pain rippled up his leg, but they did not pause. They could not.

Their mirrored moves came to an end with a hoof-kick straight for his forehead, one he ducked and avoided by going low and letting it pass between his ears. He whipped one hand back and one leg up, aiming for a crotch-shot, only for the stag to bring his leg down and kick Meat-Theo's out of the way.

It was the first mistake. He rolled with it, spinning as he brought it back, using the momentum to bring his heel down into the stag's forehead.

They split, the stag a hair slower than him, and that was enough. The hare jumped forward, headbutting the other male in the stomach. The wheeze was just enough to tell him that they were mismatched.

The serum had affected them all differently. Those that had taken to it well had been stronger, their bodies tougher, their limbs faster. Skill didn't matter. Technique didn't matter. If the serum didn't favor you, anything that you had was just fodder, something to feed those that the serum did favor.

Until now, they were too close to know who the serum favored more. They'd outstripped everyone else, but never tested against each other. Now they knew.

It was Meat-Theo that had the advantage.

And it was in that moment that he knew that he was not a predator. He could have played. Even under the commands on him, even under the forced-command to fight and push himself as hard as he could, to never hold back, he could have played and tormented the stag, making it clear that he was the better. He could have turned the fight into a complete insult to the other male.

But he did not.

He punched up, landing a hit on the stag's chin. The other male started tilting back, naked body stumbling against its will as physics took control. Meat-Theo followed up with an instant blow to the ribs, one that the stag half-deflected, pushing off to the side to keep it from being a lethal rib-shot. Another punch to the arm, knocking it up. The stag was turning, bringing his armpit out of reach, but exposed a kidney, which took a knee-strike.

It took half a second for the rapid exchange of blows to occur. That half a second was filled with more battery and more pain than most fighters took over the course of an entire match, and the stag spun as he was taken off his feet and knocked sideways from the blow.

Yet, he got to his hooves again. He came for Meat-Theo in a flying kick. The rabbit ducked, leaning back to avoid getting his head snared. The same move had been used by a giraffe soldier at the start, a kick distraction and a noose-grab to bring someone down to snap their neck. Not for him.

He somersaulted backwards, kicking up. He felt the tail break, but not the spine. The stag stumbled, falling forward, unable to move so easily with the bottom part of his spine broken. He struggled, trying to pull himself around, but Meat-Theo had the advantage. He stomped down, cracking the back of the stag's head. Not dead; unconscious.

As the stag slumped down, he panted for breath, his thoughts struggling to come to the fore. He fought. He managed to fight without the same desperation as before. He was strong enough to be able to keep from a death blow as long as he knew that he could win. That...

That was good...

He wasn't -

"Dominate."

His eyes widened. Dominate. A rare command, one only given when it was sure that the opponent was alive, that they might live through to the next day. He turned his head toward the owl, even as his own shaft started to rise at the command.

Dominate. He was supposed to kneel, to take, fuck, rut his opponent, to take his pleasure and show the other male where he belonged. His shaft obeyed the Hunters, meat craving the Meat below him, but...but...

He clenched his hands into fists, his head lowered and bowed, his mouth moving in little whispers, little mutters. No, no, no, he would not just do this. It was not...right. It was not...right. It was not right!

He could feel the tension in his skin, the fact that blood wanted to flow down his hands, wanted to break through his palms and start running out, but even as his fingernails - grown so long that they might as well be claws - tried to break through, his flesh kept knitting back over them.

That was part of the serum. Just as he was 'healed' from the spinal injury and the metal plates, he was healed from the injuries of the fight even as they happened. He could tell the same was happening to the stag beneath him, that his tail-bone was knitting back together, that he would be healthy again by the morning. If he was able to live that long, he would become something, someone, that might be able to last in a fight against him.

The thought was pure ego. Might. Might. Might. That was pushing it, but he would be stronger, too. They could not help but grow stronger. Everything that they did was another reminder of something else that they could do.

But he would not do this.

"Meat. Dominate."

"..."

"You...will...dominate. Obey."

Meat-Theo gasped, his chest thrusting forward and puffing out, his cock reaching full erection. He took one shaky step forward, then another before falling to his knees behind the stag. His cock throbbed all the harder as he stared at the upturned ass. He could see the bones knitting, the shape of the broken tail slowly sliding back into alignment as the healing continued.

He did not want this. But he was Meat. Meat obeyed the Hunters. Inferior Meat Obeyed the Hunters.

"A clear success for the serum...but not quite ready for release just yet," Dr. Arseny Vlad said. "But a round in the new machine should take care of that..."

But not before he was put to use rutting the stag beneath him. He felt the owl's muscular hand pushing him forward, his shaft rubbing between the buck's cheeks. His indignation, his wish to hold back, meant nothing.

He was Meat.

He had to obey.

"Dominate."

His meager resistance crumbled over so many repetitions, and he pushed forward. The feeling of that pucker bending around his cock seized hold of the feral instincts inside him, and the hare started doing what his cousins, the rabbits, did so very well. He humped, and he humped, and he humped some more.

In, out, in, out. Each thrust encouraged the next one, and it didn't take long before he felt Dr. Arseny Vlad behind him, large hands spreading his cheeks. There was no sudden penetration from behind, no great pain that came from the owl just taking him the way that he had done so many times before, in the times before Meat-Theo had learned how to take it, even dry, without hurting.

No, there was just a finger, something that slithered deeper and deeper and pressed down on his prostate, followed by the click of the owl's beak so close to his ears.

"You are Meat. This is your only chance to dominate a member of the herd."

"Nnngh..."

"Unless you are so incapable that you need one of us inside you to take care of it."

"Ah...ah..."

"Pathetic..."

"Mmmph...nngh..."

The pressure on his prostate only got worse as the owl twisted his finger around, grinding down on his pleasure button and milking him, forcing him to ooze and dribble into the stag's rump. He pressed back as much to get the finger pressed against him properly as he did to try and grind forward again.

"That's it, Meat. Nothing more than the puppets of the Hunters around you. No matter how strong you get, no matter how powerful you become, it all comes from what we give you. And we are the ones in charge. Remember that."

Meat-Theo wondered if he could ever forget that. Then again, he had once thought that he could never forget who he was...and look what had happened with that?

Meat-Theo was strapped into a series of rings, his arms overhead, his legs spread, his head tilted back into a binding ring that wrapped around his forehead and his temples. The hare was forced to stare straight ahead, the ring slowly rising from the ground to hang from the center of a large chamber. The barn owl shook his head as the hare was lifted further up, Meat-Theo's cock hanging almost on level with the tall owl's shaft.

"A great deal of work has gone into you, Meat...It seems a pity that you fought it for so long. Perhaps you might have enjoyed that last session, if you had just stopped thinking. APS will ensure that nobody has to suffer through guilt like you do. Nobody has to suffer through the same feelings of concern. All you have to do is obey like little Meat dolls that you are. From now on, that's all that you will ever do."

His mind was blurred, dulled from the constant abuse that he had been put through. The session with the fallen stag had been cut short after Meat-Theo had held back from a climax for nearly two hours. His endurance, physical as it was, had the effect of boring the scientists around him, and they had decided that it would be better to put him through the last of his conditioning. The barn owl had been partial to allowing him to continue, but there was nothing more to be done there. The stag was too far out of it to really be dominated properly, and the fight had been decisive enough that there was nothing more to be gained for letting them fight it out more.

The barn owl reached up, jiggling the hare's shaft from left to right, and chuckled.

"Perhaps, afterward, you will be allowed some small pleasure of serving your Hunters. Certainly, your body is ready for it, now."

"Nnngh..."

"But until then...you will learn."

"I..."

"No. Silence."

His jaws clicked together at the command, leaving him staring straight ahead. He could not speak. He was not allowed to speak. He would not be allowed to speak no matter how hard he tried. All he could do was stare straight ahead and wait for the next command.

"Meat does not speak. Repeat."

"Meat...does not...speak."

"Meat does not think. Repeat."

"Meat does...not think..."

"Meat is not free. Repeat."

"Meat is not free."

"Meat belongs to the Hunters. Repeat."

"Meat belongs to the Hunters."

"Keep saying that."

"Meat belongs to the Hunters...Meat belongs to the Hunters...Meat belongs to the hunters..."

The barn owl left the chamber, leaving him to stare into the void ahead of him. The dark walls slowly lit up from some sort of inner source of illumination, shimmering with a wave of color in all directions. They formed patterns, then disappeared, then created new ones, all while a hum vibrated through the air, coming from all sides, almost like waves of pressure rolling along his skin.

Even with all the healing that the serum had put him through, he still felt the weight of guilt and shame, of regret and battle. Even through all the hypnotic conditioning that they had dragged him through, he felt some small knowledge that he was wrong, that something was off with him.

But this...This was their last way to break him. And Meat-Theo could already feel the second part of his name sliding away.

Without warning, the various rings around him started to move, swinging, swaying, spiraling around him. The restraints around his ankles and wrists moved, too, pulling him around, swaying him from side to side, at first, and then round and round. His eyes followed patterns that danced along the walls, somehow targeted directly at his eyes. No matter how he turned and no matter how he swayed, his eyes were always directed right back at the patterns, the colors following him around the walls.

"Ah...ah..."

Words, images, silhouettes, concepts were burned into his brain. Even as he shut his eyes, the colors still came, wracking him. Even as he tried to close his ears, folding them down, the hum in the air vibrated through his skin, making him feel the words around him even as he shut out the rest of reality.

Bit by bit, the rest of the world faded, replaced with nothing but the hum and the light, the colors and the words.

Meat will Obey.

"Meat will Obey."

Meat is Less.

"Meat is Less."

Meat is Property.

"Meat is Property."

The words came unbidden, but they were repeated with such careless ease that they felt right. There was nothing wrong with those concepts, nothing that he needed to worry about. All he had to do was obey. All he had to do was go along with what had happened to him, what was being said to him.

There was nothing wrong about that.

There was everything right about that.

You are Meat.

"I am Meat."

You are Less.

"I am Less."

You will Obey.

"I will Obey."

You will Fight.

"I will fight."

You will Kill.

"I will -"

For the first time in too long, a hesitation struck him. He felt...odd. Strange. His memory was pulled off in a different direction, a hazy place, somewhere before he had become Meat. Before he was surrounded by other Meats, and treated like this. Somewhere...somewhen...when he had been someone else.

Someone that fought...but didn't want to kill.

Someone that cared...but not with his body.

Or at least...not always.

No species, no face, no anything besides a simple feeling of someone that had mattered, someone that had been at his side, once, that he'd fought alongside, someone that had passed long, long ago...

Someone...someone named Logan...

There was a moment's hesitation, but no more. The patterns grew stronger, and so did the hum all around him.

You are Meat.

"I am...Meat."

You are Meat.

"I...I am Meat."

You are Meat.

"I am Meat. I will Obey."

The End

Summary: Theo is put through the wringer in terms of training, and made to do things that he never wanted to do.

Tags: M/solo, M/M, Nudity, Fighting, Killing, Death, Hypnosis, Corruption, Bondage, Anal, Broken Bones, Series, Brainwashing, Stag, Rabbit, Hare, Triggers, Bull, Ferret, Owl, Various Species, Rhino,