Title: The Road To the Dark City
Author: Lost Experiment
Word Count: 2600+
Rating: R for swearing and moderate sex and violence.
Pairings: Axel/Roxas, ???
Genre: Romance/Supernatural/Adventurey…thing?
Summary: AU. The infamous hitman Axel is not exactly what you would call a nice person, but opposites attract and he fell madly in love with the apparently innocent Roxas. Axel thought he'd lost Roxas forever when a job mistake left Roxas stranded in the dangerous City of Neverwas. When mysterious clues pop up that Roxas is indeed alive, Axel along with his very unwilling friend set out on a trip to find the love of Axel's life…but is this such a good idea?
Author's Notes: This story is for Xanthos Samurai, but the rest of you are welcome (and encouraged! I'll be grateful! And…give you cookies. Dark side cookies!) to tell me what you think as well!
Chapter 2:
Braig was staring at the laptop again when they woke up the next morning. Naturally, he'd been hoping for an incoming job from Xemnas, but their inbox was devoid of all but a few spam e-mails for enlarging some mangled spelling of one's reproductive organs.
"You ever wonder why it's so damn dark here all the time?" Braig muttered, still looking somewhat sleepy.
Axel glanced at the bolted down bedside clock which read that it was a bit past nine in the morning, then out at the sky which was as pitch dark as the dead of night. "They didn't teach you that in your fancy school?" he asked. "It's 'cause of the magic." Another thought occurred to him. "Thought you said you came from Neverwas, and that's supposed to be a major magic shit storm."
"Oh, I knew that." Braig said. "I just didn't know that Traverse Town had a magic thing going on. It makes some sense if it's all dark like this. Why haven't the people changed, like in Halloween Town and like that."
"I dunno, maybe it's because Merlin sort of caters to your typical magic user. I heard he was hot stuff when he was younger, but nowadays he just does those home courses."
Magic was a universal constant in the world, but there were surprisingly not a lot of fully-fledged magicians. Nor did people explicitly tend to settle in the areas where it got concentrated. Halloween Town was the only town that seemed to have successfully established itself in a major magic epicentre. In fact, the number of true magicians came to a not so grand total of five. Yen Sid, probably the world's most well-known magician, lived alone in his own tower and was reclusive. An Enchantress was said to live close to and was the reason for the prince of the west castle being known as "The Beast". Nobody sought out the witch called Malificent if they could help it, but she was rumoured to live in the Dark City herself. Merlin the Sorcerer had moved into Traverse Town and seemed to be dedicating the last of his days to teaching magic.
Strangely enough, outside of the rare case of an individual willing to become a hermit in order to master the art, the most prolific users were generally stay at home housewives who knew some low-level incantations designed to make household chores go faster. Due to the amount of dedication required to successfully master even the most basic of spells, only people with a lot of time on their hands ever really did.
"So, in that case, what the hell are you?"
"Huh?" Axel pulled a clean shirt over his head.
"You're from Halloween Town, right? From there, from there. So what kind of freak thing does that make you? A vampire? You seem the type."
"Hardly." Axel said, though he started to take an unusual amount of interest in packing his clothing, hoping the subject would be dropped. He wasn't fussy about discussion of his Halloween Town heritage.
"C'mon, we're stopping there next, right? Don't you have family you want to see? Even I took some time out of my day to see my sister!"
"Don't have siblings."
"Mum? Dad? Cousin? Auntie?"
"Fuck off Braig."
"Best friend?"
"I said, fuck off!"
"No, I'm not letting this go. If you want me to go with you to Neverwas, then I wanna see your hometown on this little roadtrip as well."
Axel pulled a face. "Fine." He muttered grudgingly, thinking for a second and pulling a high necked sweater out of his bag.
"I think you are a vampire." Braig muttered as the long red spines of Axel's hair flattened briefly, then bounced up into place.
Niebelheim was not the nicest place to grow up fifteen years ago, and perhaps that was why Tifa's family had eventually moved to Traverse Town. The kids who lived in the area, including Tifa and her friends Cloud and Aerith were slowly drifting in different directions, likely due to the age difference that was starting to become more and more apparent as they grew into teenagers.
"Well, Tifa honey, it's just that Aerith and Cloud are a little bit older than you and they're at that age where they might like to start dating."
"It's not fair!" Tifa had complained. Aerith and Cloud had always been older and they'd always included her in whatever they did. Her mother had always told her that she should include her friends, so why was it suddenly okay if they ignored her now?
Mrs. Lockheart sighed. At least Tifa didn't seem to feel she was in a competition for Cloud's love. Try explaining to a sixteen year old why it was that Cloud had not wanted to date her two years ago, but was suddenly asking out a different girl now. She could see the wheels turning in her daughter's head. They hadn't all changed THAT much, had they?
On the other hand, maybe it was a blessing in disguise. "Tifa, a lot of things are going to be changing soon. Cloud's going to be heading off with the ShinRa soon. He's going to be eighteen in just a few months. Your father and I aren't that young anymore, so we're thinking of moving to Traverse Town. It's quieter."
The girl seemed to think this over. "What about Aerith?"
"Her mother's been thinking of moving to Gongaga." At that, Tifa's face went solemn.
There was more thinking. Unlike Cloud, who had had trouble making friends besides the two girls when he was younger, Tifa had never had that problem. She was always surrounded by kids her own age. "I guess that's okay, as long as Aerith doesn't forget about me."
"I'm sure she'll write, sweetie."
Tifa had spent the rest of the day waiting up for Cloud and Aerith.
***
At the outset the move was not fraught with unforeseen complications. Aerith and Tifa had cried and hugged each other. Cloud had been gone for almost a year by that point, and the girls' friendship hadn't been damaged beyond repair in the end.
The issue came when they arrived in Traverse Town.
"Tifa's going to be unhappy." Mrs. Lockheart whispered to her husband. Tifa overheard and didn't quite understand what they'd meant until the unpacking procedure was over and she went to look for people her own age to hang out with. The population seemed to be primarily comprised of small children under the age of five, new parents with little time to devote to someone Tifa's age and the elderly. It wasn't much fun.
That's when she met the boy. He wasn't entirely a boy, not really. He might have been Cloud's age or even older. A long, fresh scar that ran from his jaw to just beneath his eye disfigured his face and a grubby bloodstained patch was taped clumsily over his right eye.
"Do you need help to get to a doctor?" Tifa asked him.
The guy looked up at her. Even with his face as mangled as it was, he was clearly impressed with her level headedness. Most people in her situation would have asked something silly like "Do you need a doctor?", probably hoping to absolve themselves of touching or being close to someone like him.
"No. No doctors." The man shook his head violently. There was something wrong and missing from the eye she could see. It looked a bit wild, but Tifa didn't back off.
"What about your family? Is there someone I can take you home to or get?"
"No!" The man was louder this time. "They'll send me back there, and I'm not going back there!"
"Where?" If he'd escaped from jail, she'd kick his ass, scars and wounds or not.
"Neverwas." It came out as a whisper.
For whatever reason, Tifa didn't tell her parents about the boy, whose name turned out to be Braig. Respecting the guy's wishes seemed like it was very important, even if it went against everything she'd learned as a little girl. "I think I can get some stuff to clean up your face." She said at last.
Long years of trustworthiness on their daughter's behalf didn't cause them to question what her brief return home "to get something" was for. They assumed she was looking for a book to read at the café or some of her makeup. Braig's wounds looked bad, but not infected, like that time a rat had bit Cloud's finger while they were playing outside close to the mountains. She could probably clean him up.
Braig's personality improved dramatically as he realized that Tifa wasn't about to ship him back to Neverwas, and he allowed her to instruct him on what exactly he should be doing in a new town. In the end, he didn't have trouble finding work – Cid Highwind, a rather rough-edged man, living in the third district found lodging for Braig, in return for assistance on his Gummiship shop.
When the man named Xemnas came into Cid's, Braig left with him.
"That still doesn't answer my question." Axel was gripping the wheel, a decidedly dissatisfied expression on his face. "You didn't tell me anything at all about Neverwas!"
"I'm getting there." Braig shrugged. "It's hard to explain all of this."
The statement was punctuated by something landing with a very loud thunk on the hood of their car. A groan of "Braiiiiiins" was punctuated by the door on Axel's side being ripped clean off.
"What the hell?" Braig had been startled quite badly.
"Zombie." Axel said casually, grabbing the creature by the back of the collar and wrestling a bit with it. It had a fuzzy blonde mullet-hawk above its stitched face, but it was smiling and panting in Axel's face like a big dog.
"Sorry Axel."
"Hi, Dyme. No Brains, okay? This is my friend."
Braig raised his eyebrows. If there was a zombie here, they were in Halloween Town, but Axel remained depressingly normal looking. Not even the glimmer of a fang peeped out when he spoke.
"Oh Axel…" the zombie looked not-quite sorry enough for Braig's tastes. "I destroyed all your collection. It was an accident, but I didn't think you were coming back. And…I broke your car." He waved the broken door around as if it weighed next to nothing. "I'm not really all that good at this still. Maybe I should go live somewhere else like you, but I can't eat brains out there and that wouldn't be much fun."
"It's alright Dyme. But you can help us out. We need a place to stay the night."
The zombie looked excited. "Like old times!"
"This is Dyme." Axel said needlessly, but added some extra information. "He was my best friend back when I was a kid."
Braig nodded, somewhat politely at the zombie. It was hard to think of having the undead for your best pal in school, but it was silly to think that Axel had never had some kind of childhood. If you lived in Halloween Town, your school just happened to include more witches than the average institution, was all.
"Here we are!" The zombie opened the crypt, and a earthy smell, combined with some decay leaked out. The room below was actually well furnished, with a couch, some chairs, a bedroom and kitchen and well-lit with candles. A few brainless corpses lay in a corner.
"Hey, it's like home!" Axel remarked sarcastically, jabbing Braig in the ribs with his elbow and pointing to the corpses.
"Haha. So, what did you collect, Axel?" It was curious – he'd known Axel for a long time, and the only hobby he'd ever seen him at besides being on the computer was the fact that he'd bought a beat up guitar and fooled around on it occasionally. He'd never known him to collect things – weird pieces of munny or anything of the ilk.
"Human heads!" Dyme spouted cheerfully, and Axel looked stricken.
"Shit."
"Shit!" Braig looked over at Axel, who had the expression of a condemned man.
"You wanted to know what I was, right?" he pulled down his high-collared sweater, to reveal what seemed to be a red scar line around his throat. "I'm a headhunter."
"You mean…like a cannibal?" Braig asked, thinking of world history.
"No, no, I don't eat them. It's a disguise thing, I guess. I can swap my head with that of another person."
"I think it's kind of cool." Braig mused.
"I thought you'd be horrified." Axel said in surprise.
"Nah, Red I mean, I help you kill people on a daily basis. Besides, it seems kind of useful. If I wanted to make out with someone hot, I could just get you to hook me up."
"Now THAT'S gross." Axel teased, but the words didn't have their usual malicious bite. He was grateful.
"…and so Dyme ate the Principal's BRAIN, and we all got about a week off of school, 'cause no one would take the job! We thought we were so clever…and so they got Jack Skellington himself to run school for a week and Dyme and I got about three months detention and summer school!" Axel was laughing so hard that tears were leaking out his eyes.
"Lock, Shock and Barrel hated us because everyone said we were better pranksters than they were, so I threatened to eat their brains." Dyme added. This seemed to be the zombie's solution to everything.
"Hey, Braig?" They were outside the crypt at the present, Braig looking under the hood of Axel's car. "How's it coming?"
"The engine seems like it'll live. The door was harder to fix and we can ding the hood out when we get back."
"Then that settles it. We oughtta get to bed. We're heading out tomorrow Dyme, so we won't intrude on your hospitality anylonger."
"Where are you guys going anyway?"
"Neverwas. I guess you could say I lost my heart there. Dyme, you remember when I was into Sally? Before she was with Jack? Well, Roxas is ten times…" Axel stopped and looked at his companions. Braig had gone so white his old scars looked brand new, stark against his cheek. Dyme was crouched like an animal.
"What the HELL? Is there a troll behind me or something?"
"I am DYME!" the undead man spit.
"Um, yes, you are Dyme." There weren't a LOT of zombies as friendly as Dyme around, but they weren't noted for their excessive intelligence, friendliness or not.
"Demyx!" Axel swung around to note that it was Braig who was speaking now.
He didn't have long to ponder it, as Dyme made a strangled sort of howl again. "I'll eat your brains! They won't get you too if you're dead!"
In half a second, Braig had his gun out, a little red snipe dot hovering calmly above Dyme's heart.
"I'm immortal." The zombie spit. Braig backed up, but remarkably held his ground. "You can't kill me, but I can kill you."
Axel knew it was time to take charge. He pulled out his own gun and aimed it at the zombie. "Eternity can be spent whole or in pieces, Dyme. Your choice."
The zombie snarled and paced. Usually the threat of dismemberment and more stitching up was enough to make Dyme back down. Now however the zombie simply leaped. Axel's head cracked hard on the top of the car as Braig pulled him through the door and they sped away.
"Iffn I have a concussion'll kill you." Axel mumbled, rubbing his abused head. "'ll ask whutthefuck t'morrow."
Braig's didn't reply, he just drove.
To Be Continued.