Set during: The First Day (Chapter 1)
Summary: Christmas 2009 Short 1 - in the morning, Axel wanders around town for the third time and realises something is wrong.
"Today I just feel like something funny's happened," Axel mused, walking into the square.
Axel sometimes just liked to muse aloud. While he was an individual who enjoyed being… well, individual, he hated there not being another voice; especially recently, after the last few weeks. He'd gotten so used to at least having somebody there, even if he didn't listen, that the world just seemed empty.
But the 'empty' he felt today was markedly different from the 'empty' of yesterday. The 'empty' of yesterday had been completely invisible, and he'd been used to it, ultimately. The 'empty' of today was encompassing, as if the word was a misnomer.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and kept walking. "What is this feeling…?" The air felt a little funny. Heavy. And the ground felt a little tough and uneven. And he swore his coat was scraping into his skin a bit. He probably should have picked out some better clothes – a haramaki was not suitable attire under a thick full-body leather coat.
But it hadn't bothered him earlier – or, at least, certainly not yesterday – and it was a bit hard to blame it all on his imagination. He only used his when planning. He didn't dare think of anything else; much too risky.
Few people were walking around at this hour. They gave him no mind. A couple of days ago, when the incident had happened, he'd said screw it to hiding and just barged straight into the train station, acting like he'd just come over by train. The shocks were done and dealt with. It was fine now. He was as good as incognito –the only threats in the town were Heartless and Nobodies. He didn't resemble either, and though some had picked out a bunch of black-coated people walking around in the past year, the older generation would probably think of it as just some new fashion trend.
He'd tracked him down to here… Now it was just time to find out where and how they were hiding Roxas.
His gloved fingers brushed the envelope, and he tugged it out a little to glance at it. The shape of its contents was all too visible. He'd need a thicker one before the thing ripped out of it by accident.
A moving door in the corner of his vision distracted him for a second, and he dodged up to a random roof in a black mess before anything could catch him from behind (never knew when an Organisation member would drop in to take him home). The top of the green building was nice and flat, and offered a pretty good overlook of the common from where he was sitting, but more importantly people would only look up if they knew they'd have something to look at.
It seemed to have been the wind, or something, because nobody came out, and the door closed rather slowly. It was too early for most of the population to wake up; only the old man who cleaned up the rubbish really poked his head out at this time. He guessed the owners just hadn't locked the door last night.
However, this strange door was embedded in a wall Axel distinctly did not remember having either that many doors or even windows, but there they were now. Sometimes the way places liked to change shape confused him. Maybe the children had done it. He'd heard that legend himself, a long time ago, and not exactly disbelieved it.
…Never mind all this, though – he could nearly smell XIII. He had to be somewhere close…
A thought struck him, and he whipped around to stare at the hole in the wall. Beyond there was an abandoned mansion. Funny, that sounded just like the place to start…
Reaching the place was not an easy task. The forest was slightly difficult to navigate if one wasn't holding a map, and Axel had forgotten his when he appeared here a couple of days ago.
A quick smirk crossed his face as he simply teleported himself straight through the wall surrounding the wrecked courtyard. There may have once been pedestals here, and possibly arches over the top, but the building was so old and photographs showed it decrepit from the earliest records. The wrought iron gate was sealed shut. Normal people wouldn't be able to get in.
Maybe Roxas would've made it, and maybe one other person they couldn't catch could try, but that seemed to be about it. A very pitiful 'it', indeed. Hadn't there been many Keyblade Masters at some point?
The doors opened with a quick kick to the centre, right underneath the handles, and he strode right into the room. He eyed the dioramas in the glass cases before looking around the stairs.
"Now what am I looking for…?" he asked himself, knowing full-well somebody probably could hear him.
Some searching of the rooms yielded nothing – a couple of treasure chests he could leave for somebody else to open, and a lot of broken furniture. Somebody had trashed up the place pretty bad.
Eventually the doors lead him to a large library, except half of the floor was missing, revealing a large lower level and a door. Axel's smirk spread into a wide grin as he hopped down with much disregard for health and safety practices and forced his way into the next room, which sat… very empty, much to his surprise. It wasn't wise to abandon a post, especially when a large computer and a huge number of monitors were just sitting there. Were the owners feeling too smart?
Or maybe they were waiting for this? Who knew? He was just standing there, looking at the one symbol and thinking, 'hey, I think I know that guy'.
The grin faded, ever so slightly, into a frown, and he traced under some of the apparent data with his index finger. "…Nine percent what…?" he mumbled under his breath, drawing back. "What's going on here…?"
His skin started itching under the edge of his coat. In frustration, he drew the hood up to cover his face, hoping that the stiff and more comfortable position would at least calm it down for a while, while going at it with his gloved fingers. Eventually he sighed, stripped the glove off and started digging his nails in.
Which hurt, a little, but not in a bad way. Still, he didn't like getting itches out of the blue. Before today it was stress. Now it was nothing.
Axel wasn't used to doing things like this, completely without warning. He was used to remembering things that triggered random motion, but this wasn't like that. It had just happened.
The air felt wrong, and his coat was making his skin itch, and every now at then he swore he saw lines running up and down the computer screen that weren't meant to be there. The computers back at the castle only did that when they were burned out, and this thing looked like it could go on for weeks unless somebody physically broke it instead.
There was a thin beam of light behind him in a tiny alcove, which pulsed quietly in time to the wavering hum of the computer's processor. He paused, and then waved his hand underneath.
"I'm gonna need a better look at this…"
Just a small distance from the light was another door, and at once he barged through into the next chamber. It was empty… perfectly void.
He studied the wall for a second, before entering the next corridor. There were a series of lily-like pods along the edge on a track, all closed, with two holding people inside. What on earth these things were was anyone's guess, so he used his and decided they were stasis pods.
The shadows of these people were a rather odd shape, and he knew he'd seen them before somewhere… A memory of Castle Oblivion came to mind. Something about a boy and his two rather odd-looking friends wandering around, and he'd helped them out in a fit of sudden loyalty to the Superior…
Of course! These two were Donald and Goofy! And the kid with them was…
Wait… if Donald and Goofy were here…
Any traces left of Axel's smile now completely vanished, and he burst through the next to see a large pod, this one more like a rose than anything. Another body floated inside it, this time a more human shape and size. The air in here felt even thicker than before, but there was no reason for it to, and once again he found himself irritated by his coat. He was rather regretting that haramaki now.
A tiny computer sat beside the pod, and when Axel moved forward he could see two characters written on the screen next another version of that symbol. Was this the nine percent?
He looked up, and watched the boy in the pod sleep for a few seconds, recognising that face of his. Though he hadn't seen Sora for a while (the boy had grown about a foot since he'd last seen him, but he'd heard good things about the combination of puberty and sleep), he'd know that face anywhere. He'd watched it change and mature over time on its other owner. Roxas' real face, the one he had seen for little under a year by now, was much too familiar to him, for a creature with no emotions to speak of, and only his memories to supply his moods.
What had happened during that mission to Castle Oblivion eleven months ago? Sora's memory had been nearly wiped clean and replaced, and Axel had needed to free the culprit to stop two of the subordinates in the middle of their uprising. From that point on, his only action had been to keep moving. Sora had disappeared while the top floor of the building came into need of some refurbishment.
Sora had disappeared here, and the only thing there could've been nine percent of was memories. From that point on it had been Roxas' turn to inherit the rest. And come to think of it, wasn't one of the rooms in the back of the castle like this?
A quick movement off to Castle Oblivion, to run through the halls and reach a room very similar to the one he had just been in, the only differences being that the place was completely clear of any pods, and that there seemed to have been three in this room, judging by the blank circles left.
Was Naminé restoring his memories here? In which case, they'd need to get hold of the thief… Roxas.
Roxas was giving all his memories back to Sora, and as far as Axel remembered he had only vowed to meet him, not join back with him. Naminé must have been doing this… but she couldn't have been the only one involved. There had to be somebody else there…
"Are you going to leave?"
The deep, deep baritone cut through the air like a well-intentioned swipe from a Dual Blade.
"What's going on here?" Axel replied, not bothering to turn around.
There was a dark chuckle. If he'd had any memories of fear he would have shivered. "The Keyblade Master is merely being restored to the way he should be." A pause. "I'd recommend returning to your fellows. Your youngest member will be no more very soon."
No more…!? "No way in hell he's going down! Not him!" he retorted, spinning around. A figure with his face in bandages, donning a long red robe and cape, stared back at him with a single amber eye on the right side of his face. "Who are you…?"
"So you aren't here on orders?"
"Of course not!"
"Interesting…" The dark figure exited the room. "Be aware you will not be able to rescue Roxas from his digital prison. There he will and should stay until Sora recovers."
And with that he swept out of view. Axel poked his head down the corridor and found himself looking at nothing but thin air and the door at the other end.
He growled, punching the white, almost-invisible wall in utter disgust. "Digital prison… What the...? Won't somebody speak straight for once!?" Flames threatened to burst from his body, but he watched it. Just about.
The floor gained a small scorch-mark, but he was sure that would clear up with just a little cleaning. Not that he cared much about the cleaning crew here anymore; just the fact that somebody was forcing Roxas to merge with Sora… it should be XIII's choice and XIII's choice alone!
Running back down the hall and through the doors, he skidded to a halt in the empty hall. A dozen thoughts had struck him, all along the lines of 'digital prison'. The pods. The computer. Everything being so out of the way. That beam of light.
The crazy grin returned to his face as he conjured up another dark portal and vanished from the building.
He reappeared in a dark alleyway somewhere south of the castle's broken path. The rain-soaked concrete glittered in the light from the heart-shaped moon above it. Once again, Axel found the bottom of his coat soaked, and silently vowed with a manic and off-kilter voice that the first thing he'd take care of once he eliminated everybody else was to invest in drains that actually did their job instead of just being there to look pretty. The fact that they didn't have any was a crime in itself.
He turned around, and looked at the plain, water-stained wall behind him. He stretched out his arm... and snapped his fingers twice. A little circular portal formed in the corner, this time with pinkish insides and a wispy white edge.
"Maybe this'll work..." he said, climbing in (the portal was a bit too small for him to get through normally) and falling over into its colourful insides.
This was what Axel assumed was meant by the term 'dark corridor' which fluttered so sweetly into his head. Not that it looked dark – a cheery blend of pastels that belonged to Twilight Town's sky was not what he had thought he'd find this way. Neither was a floor covered in Nobody symbols that disappeared as he walked over them. Maybe this was what happened when a Nobody rather than a Heartless called one up.
Shrugging, he wandered on down to the other end, a stroll that seemingly took an age, since there were no real markers on the ground. Instead he just found himself kicking his own heels as he walked.
His hand wandered into his pocket again and clutched the ice cream stick inside the envelope. If the kid hadn't given him this thing, he probably wouldn't have bothered trying. If he and Roxas were just members of the Organisation who worked together rather than friends… But then again, fate, and that little itch at the back of his head, had tied his hands that day one year ago.
He didn't believe in fate. The idea that everything you did was meant to happen, and you had no choice in matters? The only thing close to that in which he would willingly believe was that the psychopaths and the traitors tended to get their comeuppance one way or another, and that was it. But that meeting… It was like things had been set up for them to become friends.
Whatever. They'd been friends, and then Roxas had up-and-vanished one day. Told him he'd be going. Left him the ice cream stick with the word 'winner' written on it. You traded it in at the ice cream truck and got a free ice cream for it.
He didn't want to use it. It triggered a lot of memories of happy feelings that he wasn't ready to give up just yet.
At last the space came to an… end, of sorts; at least a point where the floor finished. In front of him was the other end of the corridor. Another hole about the size of his hips. Frowning, he turned around and came face to face with a number of Dusks.
He held out his hand tentatively. The creature in front of him 'blinked', before nodding. Thankful, he drew his arm back a little, frowning.
He sighed. "Alright. You guys here. I want you to help me find somebody. Err…" A quick rifle through his pockets managed to unearth a small leather book he had found on the ground just before leaving for Twilight Town a couple of days ago. Opening it, he skipped to the best page he could find and showed the Dusk a photograph.
He'd be ready to put the book back in its proper place when its proper owner came back.
"See the kid here? His name is Roxas. He's one of us." He closed the book. "I want you to go in there and find him, and then bring him back to me." The Dusk cocked its head questioningly. "Those are your orders."
The flurry of Dusk all slipped into the portal quickly, leaving Axel alone in the corridor. Tutting, he turned his back to them. "I'll be waiting, I guess."