Day one: No, I don't like it. I'm trying again.
Day two: No, I don't like it. I'm trying again.
Day three: No, I don't like it. I'm trying again.
Day four:Hey, maybe I was on to something on day one…? Yeah. This is… No, I don't like it. I'm trying again.
Day five: No, I don't like it. I'm trying again.
Day six: *dying noises*
Day seven: but what if I started a garden? And what if I made a tiny house on a trailer?
Chapter twenty seven:
Daxer had wanted to have a peaceful lunch.
He knew better, of course. When he and Jak had been with the underground—even when he was working for Ozmo, the Metalheads and the Krimzon Guard had not given them much downtime. And why would they? The Metalheads were mindless ravaging beasts bent on consuming everything in their path and the KG were worse. They had a personal vendetta. Now he was with the Organization. They were understaffed, same as the underground, and also bent on consuming everything in their path.
Still, knowing better did not keep him from being upset when he, and his pepper steak, were rudely interrupted by Saix, "Tarxed, Axel, you have a mission."
"Kay, fine." Axel muttered through a mouthful, "The kid's a growing boy. Let him eat."
Saix did not argue, but he did not wait, either. "There is a Heartless in Traverse Town, a powerful one. You are to find it, observe it, and then decide who we use to dispose of it, Sora or Tess."
"Alright." Axel stayed right where he was, "After lunch."
"I expect a full report in twelve hours. Tarxed, I expect you to put the elements I gave you to good use."
Daxter swallowed. "Y-yes, of course."
Saix left them in silence. The grey area was completely empty except for the two of them and their lunch, bought from a little joint in some world Axel had not bothered to name. The name of the little joint was printed on the corner of some paper napkins, but Daxter could not read it.
"What did Saix give you?" Axel asked, "Let's see it."
Daxter unhooked the spyglass and the watch from the chain on his wrist. The spell he had cast on them broke, but they did not grow, or, Daxter could not see them grow. One moment they were no bigger than a fingertip, and the next, they were big enough to use. It was a broken illusion, not a change of state.
It made him uncomfortable to think about where they came from. A dead Keyblade Master. It meant… There had been a Keyblade Master that knew of the Precursors. He got the feeling that graveyard did not mean headstones and mausoleums, either. He got the feeling Saix meant a battlefield. It scared him a little. Only a little. He—or she—was dead. They had probably died thousands of years ago, because there was thousands of years of history before Daxter had been born in Sandover, and he had never even heard a whisper of them. There were stories of heroes, but no mention of a Keyblade Master—Who wanted to hear a story where the hero marched off to die? No one. No one did.
Daxter pushed the thought from his mind, and told himself the Keyblade Master would want him to have them, rather than anyone else, someone who could read the words carved on into the metal, someone who shared the same gods. Now that he watched Axel turn the spyglass over in his hands, he realized how small it was. It was not human-sized. It was Ottsel sized. Had the keyblade wielder been an Ottsel, like him?
He looked at the watch in his hand. It was just the right size for him, like the spyglass. If Axel wanted to use it, to wind the hands and press the buttons to stop and start the movements, he would have to hold it awkwardly. He even had to hold the spyglass delicately to see the letter etched into the side. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the lettering, "What does this say?"
"To know my enemy is to know myself." Daxter answered, "I watch with both eyes."
"Insightful." he handed it back, "And the watch?"
"Be Swift." Daxter showed him the clock face, and he traced the letters on the metal case, so that Axel would know which one was which, "Be Prudent. Death is Certain."
Axel covered his mouth as choked out, "Morbid!"
"Precursor Artifacts are usually a little more light hearted."
"Give it a try. Try looking at me through it."
Daxter set the watch down on the couch beside him and held the spyglass up to his right eye. Axel glowed green, it turned his red hair a muddy brown. There were little pin-pricks of light on his shoulders. Daxter wondered what they were, but then he remembered, Axel did not have any armor protecting him from his claws. He counted them—one for each little claw.
It was also throwing numbers at him along the edge of the lens. Some were green, some were red. If he kept the spyglass still and focused his eye on the numbers, the spyglass would bring that number into the center of the lense and explain what it meant, but he had to be careful. If he blinked or moved his eye too quickly, it went away. "It says you've got high blood pressure. It recommends you eat less salt. Also, weird, your body temperature is low. Lower than I would expect. You're severely underweight for your height… I mean, wow."
Axel frowned at him, "Daxter, Libra doesn't work that way."
"I can also see where I clawed you. Sorry about that."
Axel shrugged, "No biggie."
Daxter took the spyglass away from his right eye and thought about the inscription. I watch with both eyes… He held the glass to his left eye. He could not see the numbers, or the little lights. It was hard to describe what he saw, at first. He was sure he was seeing something, because Axel was covered in a strange haze. He wondered if it was broken, or if the words had been misleading, or perhaps the glass had nothing to tell him. Axel frowned at him, his eyes narrowed, and he asked, "What are you doing?"
Weak to blizzard, water, gravity. The words started to circle around the lense. Resistant to fire, dark. Daxter kept watching Axel watch him as the spyglass told him, fourteenth door.
"What's it telling you?"
Daxter opened his mouth to blurt out fourteenth door, but something, instinct, maybe a change in the air that only his whiskers could feel, stopped him. He would investigate the fourteenth door later, on his own. He smiled, closed the spyglass and put it away, "Oh, nothing I don't already know."
Axel leaned away, "What do you know?"
"You're resistant to fire magic and weak to blizzard. I mean, look at you. Obviously."
He ran a nervous hand through his fire-red hair. Daxter could tell by his eyes that Axel did not believe him, but he forced himself to let it go. He would investigate the fourteenth door later—when Axel was asleep, probably. Daxter slept very fitfully in the overbearing silence, and it would be the only time he would be alone. It would be the better, he told himself, to know all he could before he reminded Axel of his vanished friend. He would have been much happier if he had remembered Jak, and then someone else had done all the work of planning to get into the palace jail block to free him.
One of the best things about having a tiny Ottsel body was that one take out lunch was enough to last him a few days. Usually, he and Jak just split something; Daxter did not have a very big stomach and Jak just ate less than he should most days. He hated the feeling of being too full, he said, but Daxter knew very well (or, at least, he knew it because Keira said it and Keira would remember) that Jak had been a big eater before his days in Haven City. Daxter had never asked before, it had never seemed important. Jak was eating, and he was not losing any weight, but now that they were apart, he wondered if Jak was even bothering to eat.
"What's troubling you?"
Daxter changed the subject, "Who do you think'd be most likely to steal this? If I put it in the fridge? Demyx or Xigbar?"
"Xigbar. Definitely Xigbar." Axel grinned as he took the plastic container from him, "Demyx has his own fridge because he's sick of Xigbar pinning the blame on him. He won't let you use it, though."
Daxter supposed that was a risk he would have to live with. He cleaned up the trash while Axel put his leftovers away. When Axel came back, he had his hood up, the cords cinched, only a little, so it would stay, "Well, time for the icky job. You'll want to put your hood up."
Daxter did as he was told, and climbed from the couch to the table to Axel's arm as he opened a corridor through the darkness. It was harder to stay put without Axel's hood to catch him. He hoped that he would find, or could have made, a piece of armor that he could use to hold himself on. Even just a sling, something he could put his feet in, something to stop the long, long trip from Axel's shoulder to the ground. It was impossible to keep up with Axel's long strides.
The alleyway Axel took him too was loud, lit by a few street lamps. There was a waterway to their right, a tall building to their left. It was so tall it felt like it closed them in. Paper banners were strung high up, but not so tall Axel could not reach them. Daxter heard shouting. He thought it was fear, at first, but then he heard a cork popping. Someone was throwing a party on the third floor. Axel looked up and frowned. "It's… It's got more floors."
"Is… Is that a good thing?"
"Remember what I said about worlds coming together wrong? Traverse Town is like that. I don't know, I don't think anyone knows, what makes it so special, but unlike some worlds that come together in the realm of darkness and split apart, Traverse Town is always as big as it needs to be. Seeing the extra rooms, the new floors, it just means a lot of worlds have been lost… and alot of survivors are here."
Survivors. Daxter felt scared and excited all at once. He thought about Torn, Ashelin, and Sig. They were all strong willed, could they have wound up here? He would even be happy to see Grandpa Green, but… How long would they be stuck here, waiting for their home to be restored, if it ever was? "How do they get home? How do they know?"
"You find a door that no one else sees. You turn the knob and it's exactly where you'd hope it leads, your room, your friends house, the arcade. It never locks, but once you walk through it, you can't come back, not unless your world falls into darkness again."
"So you could stay, if you wanted too?"
"Who would want to? There's never any sun!"
Yeah, that was a bit of a drawback. Still, it seemed like the people on the balcony were happy enough. Daxter looked down the alleyway. In Haven City, most alleyways were filled with the homeless. If Traverse Town was always just as big as it needed to be, there must be a room for everyone, a roof and bed. A bum from Haven City that found themselves in a place free of Metalheads and a good bed would not think too much of the endless night.
"And food?"
"I spent about a week hiding out here. I know it sounds insane, but, yeah, there's food. It's… I don't know how it works. Traverse town is just here, and it's got everything you need."
Yeah, a bum from Haven City would not mind the endless night.
"But, too many survivors means the heartless would be scarce. They wait until you're alone. They won't even try to overwhelm this world. I don't even think a strong Heartless would try it."
"You don't think Saix sent us on a fool's errand again?"
"Wouldn't put it past him." Axel shrugged, "There are other places we can look."
The two of them slipped unnoticed through the streets. For a simple refuge between the light and the darkness, it seemed like a real swinging joint. The streets were full, not so crowded as Haven City, but crowded enough to keep the heartless at bay, just as Axel said they would. It looked like a normal night in a normal town. Stores were open, people were stretching out on the brick safety rails and watching the stars. There was even a fellow down by the fountain playing a guitar.
But not much by way of heartless. Weak heartless knew better than to attack Axel; he had no heart for them to be drawn to in the first place, so why would they bother? Daxter supposed Axel could use his heart to lure them out, if he wanted to try, but Shadows were small fry and they were not here for small fry.
Daxter was delighted with his walking tour of Traverse Town. It was nice to see new faces. It was nice to see stars. It was nice to hear real laughter. Axel was not impressed, "This is a pickle."
"Well," Daxter decided it was okay to rib him, "If the Organization hadn't plunged so many worlds into darkness to make Kingdom Hearts maybe Traverse Town wouldn't be so crowded and we wouldn't have this problem."
"Ooof." he chuckled, "Fair, but Ooof."
Axel went through a pair of double doors. There was not a town beyond those doors. It was just a sea of things. It stretched on as far as he could see, and he could see far on Axel's shoulder. It was scrap from all corners of the known worlds. Like Axel had said before, bits and pieces of worlds were stitched together, along with all their crap. A junkyard between the light and the darkness, filled with just what you would expect in a junkyard, things that Keira would be delighted to sift through, just to see how things from other worlds worked, like old vehicles, tires, air conditioning units, but also things you would not expect, like an entire library shelf, a wilting willow tree, a telephone booth with a shattered window, a corner of an office with a tree house perched on top, and approximately ten square meters of tall grass.
And what Daxter assumed was a no-littering sign.
Daxter looked around. It was hard to see anything moving in the darkness. The junk yard was lit almost entirely by stars, and a little light creeping past the wall of Traverse Town proper. Axel walked, Daxter listened. Soon he got a feeling in his whiskers. Then that feeling crept down his neck, down his spine to the pit of his stomach. It was too quiet. Too quiet in the way the Castle was too quiet—there was no traffic at night, no shifting foundations, no heater or air conditioning running.
There was a trail in the mud, like something had been dragged through it—or something was dragging itself, Daxter thought. Axel was following it. Daxter really wished he was not. He kept his ears open for the sound of a body dragging through the mud, not stepping or crawling. Still, he heard nothing, but he still felt the presence. They were close. Whatever it was, it was still.
He heard something shift ahead. Metal scraped metal. Daxter sunk his claws in. Again. Axel sucked in a gasp through clenched teeth, but Daxter barely heard it over the hollow thud that swept around them. Axel braced for trouble. Daxter had been braced for trouble.
"Dax," Axel hissed, "That hurts."
"It's close."
"Daxter!" he chided in good humor, "You have maimed me!"
Daxter opened his mouth to argue but the air shook with the sound of metal bending and buckling. Axel did not wait for the silence. He kept low and crawled forward, the buckling metal covering the sound of his boots as he slipped into a hiding spot, an overturned plastic table, with a white and red checkered table cloth.
"Okay, do your thing," Axel pointed up to the edge of the table, "See what it is."
Daxter took a bracing breath as he pulled his claws from Axel's coat. He unhooked the spyglass from his chain. His whiskers were telling him not to look. The pit of his stomach was telling him to run. His hands were shaking as he turned himself around on Axel's shoulder and drew himself up to full height. Axel leaned forward, so Daxter was standing on his shoulder blade, not his clavicle. There was a busted Hellcat cruiser. The metal they had heard, it was torn away under the wing, like it had been gutted by an animal. The power cells were gone, pulled out by what ever had ripped the sheet metal (three inch thick sheet metal!) open.
The Spyglass showed him something in the darkness under the Hellcat's wing. It was their Heartless, for sure. A dark lump in the shadows, lit very faintly by the power cell in its hand. Daxter was transfixed, the same way a rat was transfixed by a snake, as he watched it bring the power cell to his mouth the same way he or Axel would an apple. But then the mouth kept growing. And growing. And growing. Daxter did not know anyone that could swallow an apple whole.
Junkeater. The spyglass told him, Weak to thunder, blizzard, stop.
It turned.
"It…" Daxter gasped, "It can't be."
But it was. Only one eye was yellow, the other was covered with a broken mask. A racing mask. Erol's racing mask. But it could not be. Erol was dead. He had watched from Jak's shoulder as they unceremoniously loaded his mangled corpse onto a hazmat bin. He had been a shit excuse for a human, but he had been a human—and they just piled him into a bin. They had not laid him out properly.
"Daxter." Axel whispered, "You're getting weird. Is something wrong?"
He should have felt delighted to see Erol crawling, one-armed and mutilated, in the mud and trash. Even as a Heartless. He was a worm; he should live like one. But… But he had already died like one. Daxter had heard his screams. He had seen him crawling blind from the burning wreckage of his zoomer, the fire, the dark eco, the grit of the racing track, stripping the flesh from his skin, what was left of his mask fused into his face. It was a fitting end. It was what he deserved. It was what he had gotten, right?
So how was he here?
"Dax," Axel whispered, "You're shaking. Talk to me."
Something hit him faster than he could process and knocked him off of Axel's shoulder. Axel shouted in shock, and Daxter heard the whoosh of fire and the sound of his chakram hitting its target. He thought, as he was sailing through the air, that it was a hellcat bullet. But then he hit the ground in one piece and he knew it was not. It was a hand, squeezing the life out of him. All he could think was that it just could not be. Erol was dead. Dead men—they could not become Heartless, right? A dead heart was out of reach, right? What was he going to tell Jak? How was he going to explain this to Jak? Daxter blinked in the starlight. Spots danced in his eyes. A rock was stabbing between his shoulder blades and the hand pressed painfully onto his ribcage, forbidding him to breathe. He expected the Heartless to be staring him down, but it was just an arm, a black, spindly arm.
Then the arm was knocked far and away by a swift kick from Axel. Daxter took a grateful breath of air while Axel scooped him up. Daxter dug in his claws to keep himself steady against his chest as to keep himself safe, "Ok," Axel said, "We're leaving, we're leaving."
He heard the sound of another corridor of darkness. He shook his head and crawled into the safety of his hood, "Go back! Kill him!"
"Dax, I can't kill him—not without a keyblade. He'll just come back, and..."
"I don't care! We'll come back here and we'll kill him again!"
Behind them, Daxter heard an engine revving. Axel looked, gasped, and dove for cover as something barreled past them, throwing up mud and rocks and breaking the picnic table in two. Daxter fumbled with the spyglass, hooking it to the chain at his wrist, his claws slipping over the clasp on the watch. He could hear Erol's heartless turning around. How did he cast haste? Axel's chakrams burst to life. The flames in his hands reached up his arms. Daxter felt the heat on his toes.
The Heartless—Junkeater—slowed. It had carved a path in the junk, and now it sat there, a shadow with glowing eyes. It could still get to them. The golden eye narrowed. The son of a bitch was smiling at them. The sound of the radio hissing took them off guard. There was static; only static as the radio shifted from frequency to frequency. There were no radio towers for it to find. No one was communicating out here. It was just blast after blast of white noise.
Daxter heard clips of a voice, crystal clear and terrifying, "... The freak… Didn't make it?"
"Light him up!"
Axel threw both of his chakrams at the Heartless. They were both crippled by static that surged to a scream that shattered into blaring feedback as the Heartless was engulfed with fire. It was not enough for Daxter, not nearly enough. He had seen Erol in flames before. It had not ended him then. It would not end him now.
Junkeater raced forward, still blazing. Axel jumped out of the way as the bike's front wheel cut through the debris. Some of it caught on the spikes of the wheel guard. The spikes would have run them through, too, if Axel had not jumped out of the way. He lashed out at the rear wheel, and Erol's Heartless screamed, like he was damaged. Daxter looked at the gash Axel's chakram left in the rear wheel guard. It was touched by darkness. It looked almost organic, covered with black flesh and pulsing, purple veins. The same as the skin on his back, on his arm, clinging to his mask. Was it the skin of a heartless? Or skin contaminated with Dark Eco? Both?
The rear tire was too badly damaged to work. Junkeater skidded to a stop, toppled over, and crashed out of sight. Axel followed close. It made a gurgling noise that stirred something primal in Daxter's veins. It was a horrible sound, a bad excuse for a laugh. Axel made a little noise of disgust as he climbed over the busted Hellcat to get a look at it. It was not a pretty picture; the same fitting end as before. He was strewn on the ground. The wheels spinning slowly, then a little more slowly, as the shadow-black stuff the heartless were made of started to peel away from the motorcycle.
"... Do it." Junkeater taunted them through the static on the radio. He had cheated death before. He knew he was immortal.
Daxter's teeth clenched so hard he heard a ringing in his ears. He wished he was eight feet tall. He wished it had been him Erol had taken off the streets. He wished he had teeth like daggers and black claws that could reach into his chest, grab hold of the power cell he used for a heart, and rip it out. He wished he could swallow him whole. He wished he could break bones with a flick of his wrist. He wished he had a disembodied arm that could send the son of a bitch flying.
He wished he was all powerful.
"It won't... make any... difference."
"Abomination!" Daxter spit Erol's favorite insult back at him. He sprung from Axel's shoulder and he knew, as soon as his feet left the safety of Axel's hood, that he had made a very bad choice, but then the corners of his vision were lost in a blue glow. Then the top and bottom, too, and the choice to launch himself, claws first, at Junkeater's throat seemed like a great idea.
What happened to him next was hard to describe. Years later, when he was older and he knew how to put it into words, he would say he felt impossible, down to every little hair on his tail. He saw nothing but the blue light. He only heard his own voice, "How am I going to tell Jak?" There was no one to tell him. Not one man in any world, no matter how wise and sagely, could answer that question. But he still asked it again, demanding of the himself, the blue light, no one at all: "How am I going to tell Jak!? How am I going to tell Jak!? How am I going to tell Jak?!"
The next thing he knew he was dropping out of the air into Axel's waiting arms.
And his head was pounding, "W-what happened?"
"You levitated about eight feet and started screaming as you ripped him apart with your mind."
"I didn't!"
But Axel adjusted his grip, holding Daxter under his armpits, his fingers around his ribs, like one would hold a cat to make it see the mess it had made, and forced him to look at a cleared crater in the junk. The motorcycle was obliterated. "So, uuuh... Did you know him?"
I was very disappointed that Dax never displayed anything close to what the other Precursors were capable of, sure, he got a bit of an upgrade in the Lost Frontier, but we all know that game didn't happen, and Precursor abilities would have done more for his character in the long run, I think, than Dark Dax ever could. So I've decided he's capable of telekinesis now, same as the Otsell leader in Jak 3. Maybe more.
I am also, still, disappointed in this chapter, but I've restarted it so many times I'm sure I'd be disappointed with it no matter what I did.
