Chapter 92: Finding a Rescue

Joseph stretched slightly after the star shard landed. So far, being a distraction was going rather well. He had picked up his WINNER sticks, had at least three Larxene Replicas yell at/attempt to kill him, and swung on the chandelier a couple times. Oh! And he had seen Axel!

Can't believe I forgot THAT, he thought with a grimace, shaking his head in shame at himself. He glanced around.

Anyway, I need something can possibly help me bring that chandelier down from the ceiling. I NEED to crash that thing on SOMEONE'S head!

Well, no, I just want to crash it…

Having it land on a Larxene Replica's head WOULD be a nice bonus, though.

He laughed slightly at that thought and then started walking, even though he wasn't quite sure what he was looking for. A screwdriver, maybe, since obviously he didn't weigh enough to bring the chandelier down on his own. If he undid some of the fixtures that were holding it to the ceiling…

But… where would I find a screwdriver?

He sighed and started to shove his hands in his pockets, only to find that he couldn't. His pockets were too full of WINNER sticks. He made a slight face at that, but something caught his attention.

He paused and took a few steps backwards, straining his ears to see if he had indeed heard what he thought he had heard.

He listened for a second and, sure enough, he had really heard what he thought he had heard.

Someone was crying.

He turned to the door that said crying seemed to be coming from, and cocked his head to the side in slight confusion.

It didn't sound like anyone he recognized.

"What in the Worlds?" he muttered.

Then, slowly, he headed over to the door. He reached for the doorknob, paused, and then knocked instead. The crying immediately stopped, as if whoever had been crying had been stunned to silence. Joseph stood there a moment, unsure of what he should do.

"Hey," he called, a bit tentatively. "Are you okay?"

Silence.

He frowned.

Then-

"What do you care?" someone asked.

Joseph backed away from the door in shock.

That voice…

That was a boy's voice.

And, from the sounds of it, it belonged to a boy younger than him.

Without second thought, he tried to open the door. It was locked.

"Hey, are you supposed to be in there?" he asked.

There was another bit of silence.

"This is where they put me," the boy said finally.

Joseph paused this time, taking a second to wonder who "they" were, and why this boy had been locked in a room. Though, the more important question was probably who this boy was.

Joseph decided that the questions could wait.

Because what was really important right now was getting this boy out of here.

The World That Never Was wasn't a kind place to kids anymore.

"Hey, I'm gonna see if I can get you out of here," Joseph said. "Do you know if the room's corridor-proof?"

The boy was silent for a moment.

"I can't form dark corridors…" he replied slowly.

"I can."

"Well, I still don't know."

THAT'S unhelpful, Joseph thought with a sigh.

Well, only one way to find out, really.

He opened a dark corridor and stuck an arm in, hesitantly. For a second it seemed like he was going to get through, but then he hit the barrier. He muttered something that 29 would've smacked him for, and then closed the dark corridor.

"I… I might be able to melt the locks, though…" the boy said, though he sounded quite a bit uncertain about it. "I mean, I haven't tried before or anything, 'cause I get in trouble if I'm out, so I'm not sure if it'll work…"

Joseph heard movement on the other side of the door, and then the doorknob jiggled slightly, like someone on the other side had grabbed it.

There was another moment of silence.

"You… said you could get me out of here?" the boy asked.

"Yeah," Joseph replied, nodding, though he knew it didn't do him any good.

"Where would you take me?"

"Castle Oblivion," Joseph said, and then, noting the boy's uneasiness, added: "You'd be safer there, and it'd certainly be more fun. I mean, you don't really want to stay here, do you?"

"No…" the boy admitted. "Right, step away from the door," he instructed, sounding quite a bit more certain now. "I'm not sure how bad this might turn out." He laughed then.

"Got it!" Joseph quickly backed away from the door. The hairs on his skin were already beginning to stand up in reaction to a build of energy. He swallowed.

The boy suddenly screamed, and there was a crash from the other side of the door. It sounded like he had stumbled back and ran into something. Joseph quickly rushed to the door.

"Are you alright!" he gasped.

"Yeah, I'm fine!" the boy called quickly. "It just didn't work like I hoped it would."

Joseph frowned.

"That sounded like an explosion! I thought you said you were going to melt the locks!"

"I haven't quite figured out to separate my fire from my lightning, though," the boy muttered. "So it ended up exploding instead."

Joseph made a mental note to ask the boy more about that later, along with warning him about lightning around Riku…

As for now, though-

He let out a long exasperated sigh.

He was officially at a loss of what to do; short of coming back later and trying to hack the system so that he could un-corridor-proof the room. But hacking the system would be dangerous, 29 wouldn't allow it, and he really didn't want to leave the boy here.

"Wait a minute!" he exclaimed, as he remembered something. He reached into his pocket, dug past all the WINNER sticks (dropping a few in the process) until his hand finally closed around what he was looking for.

That ring of random keys Axel had found.

He pulled it out of his pocket (sending a few more WINNER sticks to the floor as he did so) and fumbled to separate one of them, any one of them, from the rest.

"What's that?" the boy asked. He must've heard the jingling of the keys.

"A bunch of completely random keys. Maybe one of them will work on this door!"

"You think so?"

Joseph shrugged. "Well, I've got a lot of them here, so it's possible." He stuck the first key in the lock, tried to turn it-

Nothing.

He sighed, pulled the key out and tried another one.

Still nothing.

He paused, quickly collected the WINNER sticks that he'd dropped, and then went back to the door and tried another key.

Nothing again.

He grimaced.

He tried another key.

The lock turned.

"No way!" Joseph laughed, quickly pulling the door open.

"Talk about lucky!" they boy agreed, stepping out of the room and stretching.

He was a bit shorter than Joseph, his hair a mess of flaming red spikes that reminded Joseph of Axel, though the boy's hair was much shorter. His eyes, however, were a blue that Joseph had only seen Marluxia Replicas possess. He wore a plain black T-shirt that looked a little large for him and jeans.

"I'm Joseph, by the way," Joseph said. "Who are you?"

"The name's Toby, sir," the boy replied. "I'm basically an experiment that Master Vexen conducted to see what would happen if-"

"He combined the data of more than one person," Joseph finished, voice quiet, his eyes widening in shock.

That was the explanation that every "experiment" had been taught so that they could explain exactly what they were to anyone who asked so that Vexen or one of his Replicas didn't have to.

Which meant this boy, Toby, was an experiment.

Which meant Toby should be dead.

Joseph couldn't help himself:

"Saix didn't kill you!" he blurted.

Toby shook his head.

"Said that I reminded him of someone named 'Lea', whoever that is." He shrugged, and then laughed. "What about you though, Joseph? Shouldn't have Saix killed you, too?"

"29 went to extreme lengths to make sure I wasn't caught in Saix's rampage," Joseph replied. "Then the rest of this time I've mainly just gotten really lucky." He grinned then, laughing slightly. "Saix sure wants to kill me, though." He paused, something occurring to him, and turned to Toby, frowning. "What have you been doing for all this time? Did you just sit in that closet?"

Toby shook his head.

"I used to explore, back while I could still form dark corridors."

Joseph cocked his head to the side. "So you used to be able to form them?"

Toby nodded.

"What happened?"

Toby shifted uncomfortably.

"I… sorta accidentally walked in on 37 and L…" he muttered, making a face and then scratching his head in a very Axel-like manner. He shifted again. "Yeah… they weren't too happy about that…" He laughed then, though the laugh was uneasy. "It was fun watching Saix explain to them why I was still around, though."

Joseph chuckled at the thought of Saix being forced to explain himself to anyone, but stopped short when his brain processed the rest of what Toby had said. He made a face. "Wait, you- ew…"

"Yes, it was gross," Toby interrupted, before they could dwell on that thought any longer. "Moving on! Shouldn't we be going? We've been standing here talking for the last like, ten minutes! Someone's bound to notice I'm out eventually!"

"Oh, yeah!" Joseph laughed. "Sorry, yeah. I just have to find-"

He stopped, something occurring to him. He was sure that his weight alone wasn't enough to take down the chandelier, but…

What if he had some extra weight?

He glanced over at Toby, a mischievous grin forming on his face.

"That 'eventually' of yours might come a bit sooner," he said. "C'mon!"

He ran off, Toby following close at his heels.