Axel padded quietly through the darkness of the rainforest. The time in this world ran differently to his own, and a great deal of others he'd visited, and what should have been midday appeared to be midnight. Fortunately, this was a world that required a physical transformation, and Axel wasn't unprepared for the deep darkness. To eyes other than his own, the night would be pitch black, but even to the feline eyesight he'd gained in this world, it was almost too dark to see. All light from the stars and half moon above was blocked out by the thick canopy of leaves. Unfortunately, what little knowledge he had been given wasn't exactly useful, and he wasn't exactly familiar with the terrain or the circumstances behind the time he would have to spend here.
After a few moments of wandering around, he gave up, and decided to wait until morning before trying to investigate his surroundings. He found a large hollow log half-hidden in the vegetation, curled up inside and let himself drift off into sleep.
The next day literally started with a bang. The sound of a huge explosion roared all around and the earth shuddered violently. Axel peered cautiously from his hiding place within the log as, high above, birds screeched in alarm and took to the wing.
With the sun high overhead, it wasn't that hard to see, although the light that filtered down was a deep, cool green, unlike the various neon green palms, ferns and grasses that grew in the rainforest. The green was accented in places by bell-shaped blue flowers and puffs of bright red, which could also be flowers, Axel supposed, but looked more like the fluffy stuff you find on ears of corn. It was definitely the strangest rainforest he'd ever been in.
As soon as he'd ascertained that there would be no more explosions, the Nobody left the safety of the log and trotted off through the forest in search of water. It didn't take long for him to find a stream at the base of a small slope, and he knelt by the water's edge to inspect the damage. His face was covered with reddish fur, his muzzle in white. His eyes were still slanted, but now heavily lined in black, as if he was wearing far too much eyeliner. His hair hadn't changed much, still spiked up messily, but now two large, pointed ears rose from behind a few tufts of hair. His body shape hadn't changed much, but his body was covered in reddish fur, striped with a darker reddish brown. A large, fluffy patch of white fur covered his chest. He seemed to have lost all of his clothes, bar his boots and gloves, which was a pity, really since Axel would have preferred no clothes at all. Still, if he still had them, there was a reason for it.
The Nobody scooped up a handful of water and sipped it slowly, studying his surroundings intently. Right now, his main concern was to figure out why he was here. He didn't understand the reasoning behind his 'mission', or lack thereof. He had very little idea what any of the other Nobodies had meant by their talk of weapons or elements, and the whole thing sounded pretty unbelievable to him. Still, you did what your superior officers demanded and didn't complain- where they could hear you, at least. The explosion he'd heard earlier seemed as good a place to start as any, and after a few moments of thought, he bounded towards the nearest tree and scaled it.
Off in the distance, a great cloud of smoke was rising from beyond the rainforest. Axel could just see a glint of sliver, but whatever it was that had crashed was mostly obscured by the tree line. And beyond that… The sea? Axel frowned, and scanned the entire area. The neon-bright rainforest stretched out for a fair distance, but around it there were hints of other places, a patch of desert here, a mountain range there. And around it all, obscured by the mountains which seemed to reach up to the sky, was the ocean, brilliant blue under a sky almost the same colour.
So. He was on an island somewhere, and there was more to the island than tropical rainforest and surf. Interesting, and what was up with the smoke? After a few moments of consideration, Axel bounded off through the trees in the direction of the smoke cloud. Where there was some, there were usually humans… Or in this case, animals? This should be entertaining.
Axel continued on for close to fifteen minutes, leaping from branch to branch as he moved in the direction of the smoke. The process got rather repetitive, leap from one branch, catch hold of another, swing down, leap to another. Right until he ran out of trees.
Axel yelped and dug his claws into the branch he was holding, just in time to avoid falling an uncomfortable looking distance. He climbed back up onto the branch and looked down. The rainforest simply… Stopped. There was no transition from rainforest to the scruffy, if bright, plains beyond. One just ended and the other began.
"This isn't natural…" Axel murmured. "It can't be."
"Been like that as long as I remember," a voice remarked from somewhere above. Axel jerked and looked up, eyes narrowed. All he could see was a small red bird, perched several branches higher up. He blinked, slightly confused.
"The zones have always been separate like that," the bird continued. "It's just the way the island evolved, I suppose. Now look sharp. Looks like that mangled mess over there is about to explode again."
"What do you mean?" Axel asked. The bird could talk, that wasn't so strange, really, he was a large cat wearing boots and gloves, after all.
"Over there," the bird responded with the flick of a wing. "I don't know what it is, but it fell from the sky a few days ago."
Axel glanced in the direction the bird indicated. Out in the plains, around and partly in what appeared to be an inland sea, a great number of somethings were moving around large piles of yellow stone and the wreckage of a large, silver… Spaceship? Axel lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the sunlight as he struggled to make out details. The distance, however, was simply too great, although he could make out that the massive wreck and the land around it was a veritable hive of activity.
"We're all waiting to see what the Guardian does about it, really," the bird went on. "It's rather disruptive to everyone's routines, you see…"
If the bird had anything else to say, it was drowned out with the sound of another massive explosion. Axel was forced to cling to the tree as the island shook. A small plume of flame rose from the bulk of the wreck, followed by another cloud of smoke. Axel looked around for the bird, but it appeared to have taken to the wing during the subsequent earth tremor and vanished. He turned his attention back to the volatile wreckage.
After a few moments of thought, Axel slid down the tree, catching a hold of several vines that wrapped around the trunk in an attempt to slow his descent. He hit the ground a little harder than he would have liked, but it didn't really hurt, he was simply aware of the impact. He stepped carefully over the rather clear dividing line between the rainforest and the scruffy plain, half expecting some sort of flashy transition. Yet nothing happened, and then Axel was running across the plain towards the massive, ruined hulk.
The closer Axel got, the more details he could make out. Whatever it was, it had once been perfectly round, and pressed against the ground were shapes that appeared to form a face. It appeared that the group of moving things were trying to repair the wreck, and they glinted silver in the sunlight. Robots, perhaps. Around the base of the wreck, a small fortress was being constructed, most likely to protect the ship as it was being repaired. It was definitely a spaceship or flying battleship of some kind, Axel decided as he drew closer and recognised the outlines of laser turrets.
But who had built it, and what had caused it to crash here?
Axel ducked behind a messy heap of yellow stone blocks. The situation needed a bit of thought, although he should have stopped to think about it long before he got close enough to hide behind the bricks. The wreck was what was left of a battleship of some kind, so either the robots working around it were hostile, or concerned only with the repairs and construction being carried out. Axel leant up against the bricks, peering over the top to get a better look at the robots in question. They were identical, almost spherical, faces situated at the top of their rounded structure, with long, spindly appendages that served as legs and arms protruding from the bottom and sides. Most of the robots' bodies were red and black, the "face" and limbs dull silver. From what the cat could see, there were two types of the robots, some with spindly, almost delicate metal arms that were working on the bulk of the fallen battleship, repairing the hull, and others with more heavily-built limbs that were digging up the yellow stone, cutting it into blocks, and constructing the fortress with it.
Axel frowned. Why build the fortress when the ship itself appeared to be flight capable? Perhaps whoever was in charge knew that his enemies would find this eventually, and was preparing for the fact. Either way, a closer inspection of the facility was in order. He turned around, intending to circle around the site, and came face to face with a small squad of a third type of robot, each armed with a medium sized firearm.
"Well this went to shit pretty fast," Axel muttered to himself.