6,581 Miles to Luma [ 4/?? ]
Grah, still don't know if I'm entirely happy with this--I took this chapter and split it into two because it just moved too fast and had too much information, and was already super-long. So. That's one more to tag onto my final chapter count. Not that anyone else is complaining. xD
Title: 6,581 Miles to Luma [ 4/?? ]
Author: Casey
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: R/M
Pairings: Axel/Roxas, Riku/Sora
Warnings: The holy trinity of language, sex and violence.
Genre: Post-apocalyptic sci-fi/fantasy road trip
Summary: A clone, a priestess, a fugitive and a knight are crossing the desert together in a V-class 1300-series armored truck. There must be a punchline.
Previous: 1 | 2 | 3
The Girl in the Desert, Part Three
Roxas stood in the space between the driver's seat and passenger seat, one hand on the console bank above the windshield, staring out across the pavement from where the truck was parked a quarter mile distant yet to the barricade in the road, and muttered, "Shit," for probably the tenth time.
Kairi fidgeted with the wheel, fingers tracing the grooves in the cushioned leather. Her voice was slow and thoughtful, feeling out the words and stretching them like a suggestion. "You think this might be the waypoint the guy in the other truck was talking about?"
"They don't put barricades across the road for waypoints," Roxas explained very firmly, hand on the consoles tightening while the other cut through the air for emphasis. "They put barricades in the road because they want you to stop."
Kairi nodded and thought that was pretty obvious, examining the carefully constructed wall of scrap, piled up high and wide; long, threatening spiked poles stuck up at intervals along the top. There was certainly no getting around it, no getting through it, and she was pretty sure that the definition of a barricade indicated as much. "So..."
"If someone wants you to stop in the road in the middle of the desert, it's probably not for a friendly reason."
Kairi drummed her fingers against the wheel and stared up at him, noting the way his jaw was set and his shoulders were tense. Roxas and whatever went through his mind were mysteries comparable to the ones the High Priestess of Luma guarded, but there were moments when things broke through. She was pretty sure, now, that the thing coiling up his nerves was fear, and she would have thought that Roxas being afraid would be enough to unsettle her own protracted state of calm. It didn't, and she cleared her throat, tried to be altruistic. "So what do we do? Turn around and go back?"
Roxas muttered something low and harsh into the air.
"What?"
"I said I don't have enough supplies to go back. The last waypoint was four thousand miles in from Rhohadam and that's over three thousand miles back. I have enough for another thousand, maybe, if we don't eat for the last five hundred." He glanced sideways at her, blue eyes sharp. "I packed for one."
Kairi felt her smile go watery and looked back down, at the hulking black mass in the road. There was no driving around it, no plowing through it, and no going back. From this distance she could see that it was manned, figures moving around on top of it like the guard on the balustrades of a temple, head and shoulders visible over the edge. They looked like they were wearing blast armor, muted black and gray, dull metal woven with a leathery reptilian skin. Cheap but efficient, enough to dissuade the idea of fighting their way through.
She cleared her throat, finally, straightened in the seat, because with all that aside there was only one option remaining. "I can talk to them."
"No, I'll talk to them." Roxas reached down for her shoulder to pull her out of the seat, silent hiss through his teeth the only resignation that showed. "I need you with me, though. If it's a caravan and not the tribes they won't fire on you."
His statement begged the question, and she asked while curling into the passenger seat, tucking loose strands of hair back behind her ears. "What if it is the tribes?"
His eyes flickered over to her for an instant, intense and blue for that one fraction of a second, a morbid sort of finality to the look. His voice was still tight and his shoulders were still tense and Kairi still wasn't the least bit frightened, even when he shifted the truck into drive and hissed, "Then it was a pleasure knowing you, Kairi."
Roxas drove the truck the rest of the way, slowing gradually until the yards became feet, ultimately inching along closer and closer. The top of the barricade was a sort of parapet, several feet higher than the truck was tall, and two of the figures she had seen from a distance were standing there now, watching the vehicle as it inched along. One was a head taller than the other, and all that could be seen of either were the lower half of their faces; the taller one was leaning on a long, rusted pike and watching the whole of the world around them, attention turning from the desert to the truck and occasionally back to whatever lay behind the barricade. The shorter one, though, hovered forward and watched their approach eagerly, fingers tapping against the parapet's edge.
Closer to the ground, a small rectangle was cut away from the piles of scrap--most of it appeared to be junked truck bodies and old tires, like a bigger, more serious version of a child's play fort. Through the opening and the heavy glass protecting it was a small, unlit room and two more figures, less distinct in the shadows, and emerging from one corner was the protruding horn of a sonophone.
Just as she noted the device, a dark male voice boomed through it, "PLEASE, EXIT YOUR VEHICLE."
Kairi let out a breath, exchanging a look with Roxas. Not the tribes, if they were speaking the common language. He didn't look as mollified as she hoped, though, and he continued inching the truck along, slightly faster, as though he really did intend to ram it.
On top of the parapet, the shorter person looked up at the taller, received a nod in response, then rubbed his hands together in some kind of anticipatory glee, rolled his shoulders and ducked down, disappearing behind the walls for a few seconds. When he reappeared, he had a massive black particle canon on his shoulder, and he rested the end of it on the parapet, pointed comfortably at the truck. As she watched, the interior of the barrel began to glow blue, and the guy offered them both a broad, toothy grin.
"Shit," Roxas muttered for the eleventh time.
"PLEASE," the sonophone voice repeated, ever so patient, "EXIT YOUR VEHICLE."
Roxas finally hit the brakes and cut the engine, one hand lingering on the parking brake as he stared across the console at her, licking his lips. If he'd ever truly looked as young as he really was, as well as she could guess, at least, it was now--his eyes were wide and the mind behind them was churning, searching desperately for a solution, lost in the middle of a world that was bigger and more dangerous than he had ever imagined. She felt sorry for him, just for a moment, wondering what the root of his fear really was, if it had anything to do with the barricade and the people manning it or if that was just the catalyst.
She wondered, while some unknown memory ached, what the real story was.
"Here we go," Roxas said in a low breath, staring out the windshield instead of at her, left hand settling on the latch.
"It'll be okay," Kairi assured him, smiling, and opened the door.
The air outside was heavy and hot and her feet touched the ground at the same time she heard Roxas yelling, "I have a woman with me!" Kairi pushed the door closed, then held her hands out in front of her in a display of harmlessness. Through the hole in the scrap she could see the two figures engaged in some kind of discussion--the bigger of the two was handling the sonophone and stood rather stiffly while the other, smaller and more femininely-built person waved her hands around in grand gestures and seemed to be doing a majority of the talking. On the parapet, the guy with the particle cannon was still grinning and offered her a thumbs-up. The taller one, next to him, tilted his head back in what looked suspiciously like an eyeroll.
Kairi frowned at the casual air they affected, and wondered just what was really going on, here.
Roxas made a gesture from the other side of the truck, waving her ahead, and they both moved forward until they were standing in front of it, side by side, hands in the air. She could feel the heat from the engine radiating against her back, and that coupled with the heat radiating from above made a trickle of sweat run down the side of her face, down the center of her back. Kairi pursed her lips once, turned just enough to see Roxas's profile--all stiff, jaw clenched. "I can talk to them," she offered again, but he shook his head firmly.
"No. I'll do the talking." Roxas's mouth barely moved when he spoke, almost like a statue there, eternally trapped in submission. "You can't exactly explain why you're here, anyway."
"ARE YOU A PRIESTESS OF LUMA?" the sonophone demanded with a high-pitched squeal, and they both jumped and winced. The armored figure fiddled with the device's controls for a moment, head bent in such a way that Kairi could practically hear him cursing under his breath. Then resumed with, "Sorry. Are you a priestess of Luma?"
Kairi exchanged a glance with Roxas before nodding a little in response. The two figures in the lower part of the barricade discussed something again, and the one Kairi figured was a girl nodded a lot and scurried out of sight, further into whatever little compound they had built. A moment later the taller guy on the parapet leaned away from his pike and backward, as though to listen to something, then exchanged a word with the canon guy. On the ground, Kairi frowned and waited while they passed around whatever information they felt was important, until finally the girl returned to the lower box, passing whatever conclusion had been reached to the guy with the sonophone.
"We will accept the priestess without testimony on the basis of the Oath of compassion and nonviolence." The sonophone squealed momentarily and the person operating it thumped the controls with a fist until it stopped. "The boy must answer our questions honestly. Our Truthsayer will tell us if you are lying."
"Shit," Roxas muttered for the twelfth time, and his eyes darted over to her, back and forth from her face to the barricade, licking his lips as he reconsidered this, their situation and what was being asked of him. He kept his voice low, limited to themselves. "Maybe you should talk to them, see if you can vouch for me."
Kairi offered him a sidelong glance, eyebrow raised, watching him backpedal. "You don't want to answer the questions, Mr. I'll Do the Talking?"
"I have a feeling I know what they're going to be." Roxas swallowed and set his jaw, looking at the barricade now with his head tilted towards her. "In which case, no, I really don't."
"Declare your weapons," sonophone guy demanded.
Roxas hissed through his teeth, rolled his eyes skywards for a moment like a prayer to whomever would listen, or possibly a curse to whomever wouldn't. "This is a V-class truck, it's equipped with a small arsenal of high-range mana blasters and a personal-use rifle. For obvious reasons."
Kairi clicked her tongue and muttered under her breath. "And you didn't use those on the Angels because...?"
He leaned slightly to the side to mutter back, "They draw mana from the fuel core. It was more efficient to just outrun them, Miss Compassion and Nonviolence."
She let out a breath through her nose, thought abound informing him that the Oath had a clause regarding a priestess's duty to defend her temple and her people when threatened; considered the way Roxas never discussed anything until it was unavoidable, and considered, in turn, what that meant for them right now.
The figures occupying the barricade were performing their information pass again, the girl going from the box to somewhere behind the parapet and returning. The sonophone was quiet for a few long, agonizing minutes while this happened, and then while the guy behind it contemplated whatever the cannon guy had passed along. Kairi spent those minutes wondering if she should be more worried than she was and how much of what Roxas said was the truth, and how much of the truth he never said at all; Roxas spent them shifting his weight from his left foot to his right, jaw clenching, eyes staring straight ahead.
Then, finally, the device crackled again. "Declare your Arts."
"Shit," Roxas hissed, and Kairi stopped keeping count.
She blinked, instead, head turned away from the barricade and watching as his tension began transforming into agitation. "Is that a bad thing?"
"It could be," Roxas said, and that didn't really answer anything. He grumbled to himself under his breath for a moment, shifted on his feet some more, then seemed to come to a decision and raised his voice enough to say, "I'm a Scholar of photology."
The two figures in the cutout box turned to look at each other, and despite the armor covering most of their faces Kairi got the impression of them blinking--whether in amazement or confusion was unknown. The sonophone asked, finally, "You're a Lightwielder?"
Roxas groaned and his hands were curling into fists in the air. "Yes."
The projected voice, although still flat, sounded vaguely impressed. "That's a rare Art."
"Yes, it is. Whatever." Roxas was looking towards heaven again, barely restraining the desire to wave his arms, gesture his frustration, and Kairi watched him with eyebrows gradually drawing together. "What the hell is the point of all this, anyway?"
But the barricade's guards were passing their information again, the girl in motion and the others considering, speaking, making the exchange. Kairi stopped watching them and shifted closer to Roxas instead, keeping her voice as low as possible, head tilted down, barely moving her lips. "Is it so bad?" She chanced a look at his face, watched how his teeth were showing, grit tight. "You're not telling the whole truth, are you?"
"I can't," he said, through the grimace, teeth still clenched.
Kairi processed this for a long minute, sonophone crackling in the background, before asking, "Can Truthsayers detect lies of omission?"
"I don't know." Roxas unclenched long enough to breathe, heat clogging the air around them, closing his eyes and inhaling deep, opening them and finding that nothing had changed. "We'll find out in a minute."
The sonophone squeaked, crackled, and the man behind it said, "State your name, House, and city of origin."
Roxas's agitation returned with a vengeance, feet shifting constantly on the pavement, entire body tense and coiled like a tightly wound spring and it was painfully obvious that he was either trying hard to lie believably or trying hard not to; nobody needed a Truthsayer to see that. Kairi looked up to the guy with the cannon again, noting the blue glow and the casual air he held it with. She frowned again, but he acknowledged her--lifted one hand, palm flat, like an unspoken, Wait, just for a moment.
"My name is Roxas, and I am not aware of my family having any House affiliation, seems how they're all dead." He spat the last word like a curse and scowled, blue eyes burning. "I'm from the city of Nocturne."
"Never heard of it," the sonophone declared gruffly.
"That's what everyone says." Roxas shuffled again, tightened his fists again and took another deep breath, like he was attempting to relax and remain in control. "I've answered all your questions, now you answer mine. What the hell is all this about?"
Sonophone guy was sending the runner back up to talk to cannon guy's guard, but after the girl disappeared out the back and a moment of thought, he said simply, "We need your truck."
Roxas, after a protracted second of sheer disbelief, mouth open and eyes wide, exploded. "Well, you can't fucking have it, how about that? How about you and your buddies stop playing soldier boys and let me through before I run you all down?"
Kairi hissed in warning, shifting to the side enough that their arms bumped against each other, watching the parapet and the unheard conversation occurring there. "Shh. Just wait."
"You don't understand," sonophone guy said, perpetually calm. "This is a matter of life and death."
Roxas, though, was through with submission, hands dropping to his sides, fists clenched, shoulders trembling. He stared at the ground with a startling ferocity, grimacing at it and gathering all of his nerves together, taut and angry and--Kairi realized all at once--completely terrified. She didn't have time to contemplate this, to resolve it at all or even to process it through the haze of calm that only made her blink at him, the way his head jerked up, the way his eyes blazed and a ruffle of light stirred over his hands and the abrupt way he all but roared, "What makes you think that what I'm doing isn't a matter of life and death?"
In the box, the guy was about to retort, or make some other perfectly reasonable argument, but the runner reappeared at precisely that moment and immediately began to relate something to him with grand gestures, small body thrumming with excitement. Sonophone guy considered this for a long moment, while Roxas fumed silently, sweat trickling down from his temples, and Kairi looked up at cannon guy, who smiled in reassurance.
Sonophone guy cleared his throat, one fist in front of his mouth, before continuing. "Our Truthsayer tells us that you have not declared all of your weapons, or all of your Arts, and that you are lying about your House affiliation."
Sand skittered across the pavement in the breeze in the silence that followed. Then Roxas, under his breath and between his teeth, muttered, "Kairi, get back in the truck."
She looked from him, to the barricade, and back and the truck, and wondered just what the hell he planned on doing, anyway. "But--"
"Get back in the truck!"
Kairi hesitated, backed up a little and then caught sight of movement out of the corner of her eye. On the parapet, cannon guy was waving to get her attention, then pointing at something on the side of his massive gun. A little red light, solid and unblinking. He grinned at her again, and it was like encouragement.
Was it... the safety? Had it been on all this time?
Kairi wasn't sure what she was doing out here, in the middle of nowhere for no reason, impossibly, with no memory of how she'd gotten there and very little memory of anything else. She didn't know what was causing the fog in her mind, what was keeping the veil of calm over her senses, why either were there to begin with. She didn't know why she felt such an affinity to Roxas, why she wanted to help and support and protect him, other than the fact that he was the only person she knew, the only one with a physical form and a face, who wasn't a vague silhouette or a baseless voice hovering in the blur of her memory. The world was a big place, and she was lost within it, but she wasn't afraid. Her memory was mostly ideas, but because of that she knew what her place and purpose was. She knew what her abilities were, and where her duties lay.
And one of them was right here, on the edge of something dangerous. She licked her lips, squared her shoulders, and stepped forward. "I have a proposal, please!"
Roxas caught her by the elbow, not quite forceful enough to pull her back; more like a threat that he could. She couldn't see his face and what expression had settled there, just heard his voice, how it was tight and whispered. "What the hell are you doing?"
She turned her head back slightly, just to the side. "Just wait."
On the barricade, the four guards all seemed to find this interesting, and the sonophone crackled in approval. "We will hear out the priestess."
Kairi took a deep breath, steeled herself under the hand still on her elbow, and prepared for the tirade that would inevitably follow. When she spoke, she turned her attention up to the guy on the parapet, cannon on his shoulder. "We will temporarily relinquish control of the truck."
"WHAT." And this time, Roxas really did yank her backwards. "No. Fuck no and what's all this 'we' stuff about? It's MY truck, and I say hell no, I'm not giving up control of it to anyone, whether they have a particle cannon in my face or not!"
"Roxas," Kairi said softly, turning enough to look in his eyes, and gently pulled his hand off her elbow, "you're going to have to give a little bit if you want us to get through this without incident."
Roxas stared back, and his voice was low and stuttered, painfully uncertain and dark. "Don't fucking do this."
"It's okay," she murmured, smiled to reassure him and squeezed his hand before letting go. Roxas scowled and stared at the ground, and she figured that was the most approval she was going to get.
Kairi faced the barricade again, swallowed and thought she had probably never felt as much of an adult as she did right now, in this moment, hearing the words of a grown and trained priestess tumbling out of her mouth. "In exchange for our show of good faith, I propose that we be allowed to sit down with you peacefully and discuss this issue as civilized people. I will offer myself to act as mediator, as I am both bound by my Oath to assist you in your claim of need, and have a vested interest in this truck as it is," she paused, swallowed, tongue wetting her lips and continued, "at the moment, my home."
On the parapet, cannon guy smiled and offered her a thumbs up. His taller companion leaned over to murmur something, and he nodded, indicating where Kairi and Roxas were standing in the road. A nod in return, and the taller one lowered his pike, and climbed down behind the barricade walls.
A few minutes passed in silence with some discussion going on somewhere Kairi couldn't see, and she stood there, something in her knees shaking as she wondered what she'd just done, if she could really carry this through, if Roxas was standing behind her and wishing he'd never picked up that poor sunburnt girl off the side of the road. She stood her ground, though, waiting for the word, tongue pressing prayers against the roof of her mouth.
And then the sonophone crackled and the gruff voice behind it said, "We accept your proposal."
There was a shift in the junk piled up alongside where the cut-away rectangle sat, and after a moment of creaking and groaning it became a massive door, scraping backwards over the pavement just enough to allow a person through. The guy with the pike came out first, weapon lowered at his side, followed by the one who manned the sonophone, and the girl hurried past them at a light jog. She smiled in consolation as she passed Roxas, making a beeline for the driver's door.
"Don't worry," she sang, almost reaching out to pat him on the shoulder but drawing away upon sight of the dark glare Roxas was wearing. "We'll take good care of it, promise."
Roxas scowled at her as she passed him, opened the door and climbed inside, then turned just enough to scowl at Kairi when the engine grumbled to life. Then, finally, he scowled at the ground, as though the pavement and the sand scattered over it was at fault for this defeat.
Sonophone guy appeared at Kairi's side with a curt nod, helmet obscuring everything but the flat line of his mouth, one hand out toward her elbow without touching. "If you prefer not to be manhandled, I recommend coming along quietly."
Kairi took a breath and nodded in agreement, following at his side as he guided them back to the doorway. Somewhere behind her she was vaguely aware of Roxas glowering and stubbornly standing in place until the guy with the pike finally grabbed the shoulder of his shirt and hauled him along. She looked up to the parapet and noted that the guy still on it, the smaller one, had lowered and powered off his cannon, and as they passed under it to go through the open door he waved at her with a pleased smile.
The man at her side made a low grunt, hand not quite on her back to guide her through the small entry. "This was all his idea. Sora's sense of diplomacy is... strange."
Kairi heard Roxas protesting behind them and silently agreed, noting that the man's voice sounded vaguely apologetic, if gruff. His hand touched her back briefly as they had to move sideways to get around the door itself, and then pushed slightly when she paused to stare.
The barricade was blocking a small compound, a few shelters built of scrap metal on either side of the road, floodlights held on high poles overhead. A small crush of people, mostly youths and older children, scampered around at various tasks--some of which appeared to involve maintaining the barricade and the things beyond it, and some of which appeared to be tag, or sticks, or other games that children got underfoot playing. At the opposite end of the compound a low fence ran across the road, a handful of four-wheeled motorbikes and a rusting green rover sitting just inside and a small hopper parked outside. Just past that the road split, the main part of it winding around the dip in the land as it sharpened into a plateau, curving north and then back to its original trajectory to continue eastward further on.
The other fork disappeared below the plateau's edge, and at sight of all the people here, she wondered what was down there.
"Cid!" The man at her side called abruptly, pausing with a hand on her shoulder and indicating an older man in dusty clothing, dirty blond hair held back by an equally dirty rag, who appeared to be scolding a trio of boys who appeared to not be listening very well. "Yuffie needs to bring the truck in, open the main gate."
"You heard the man," he growled to the boys, and they scampered over to a large wheel, turning the crank in tandem and the door they'd just crossed through began to open wider, large enough to let a truck much bigger than Roxas's pass. She tilted her head back to watch it, and noted that the guy with the cannon was no longer on the parapet.
When she looked back down, Roxas and his captor were engaged in an advanced argument.
"Fucking let go of me! Where the hell do you think I'm going to run to, anyway? You have my truck!" Roxas twisted and raged against the hand still resiliently holding on to his shirt, until the guy with the pike finally let him go, staring down at him with what must have been a dubious, affronted expression judging by the way his lips pressed into a tight line. A moment later, once Roxas had shook himself out and tugged his shirt straight, the guy settled the pike in the crook of his elbow and reached up to pull his helmet off.
Kairi knew, immediately and from the bits of understanding that came out of the fog, by the fall of silver hair that tumbled out of the helmet and onto his shoulders that the guy was a Replican. Roxas noted the same thing at the same instant, and his expression twisted on itself.
The guy tucked his helmet under his free arm without much concern for what Roxas did, scowling back at him in pretty much equal measure. "You could stand to show a little dignity after your woman saved your ass."
Roxas was practically spitting, eyes blazing electric blue and if he really was a Lightwielder, the Replican was going to find himself blind or worse in another second. Kairi opened her mouth, but it was the man beside her who interjected.
"Riku." His voice was firm and flat, and the Replican's head jerked to the side. "I'll take them down, you bring Sora and Yuffie once the truck is inside. We'll be in the red room."
The Replican nodded sharply and retreated without another word or even a glance for Roxas, who continued to stand and fume and glare at the ground around his feet. After a moment of this, when it was clear he wasn't going to come along quietly with them, Kairi pulled away from her guard and approached him, pausing just close enough to have something like a private conversation. "Roxas," she murmured, considered reaching for his hand but didn't think they were quite connected enough for that to be appropriate. "I need you to trust me."
When he looked up at her he was still scowling, and he was still glowering, but there was something deep and honest behind the expression, something in the blue depths of his eyes, that was absolutely terrified, just the way he'd been before. The fear hovered there between them and wrapped around her throat, made her mouth drop open. "I understand what you're trying to do, Kairi. I do, and I appreciate it," he said, voice low and tight. "But you have to understand that we can't stay here." He emphasized the words in short, hard bursts of breath. "We can't."
Kairi considered the words and the implications, the idea that something bad would happen if they didn't keep moving, and wondered how much of what Roxas told her was the truth. What it was that he struggled so hard to hide. She swallowed, nevertheless, because Roxas was all she knew and if her fate was tied to his, then his fears were hers as well. "We'll get the truck back. Let's just hear them out, okay?"
Roxas deflated, slowly, rage draining out of his body and gaze dropping back to the ground, nodding in a kind of defeat. "Yeah, okay."
When she turned back, the man guarding her had pulled his helmet off, revealing tousled brown hair and a scar running down his nose, and he held an expression that was halfway between bored and irritated. He gestured for them to follow and turned towards the rover parked by the fence, waiting until his two charges were climbing into the back seat of the open-air vehicle before tossing his helmet onto the floorboards. He regarded Roxas for a long moment. "Feeling more cooperative?"
Roxas was still scowling, but it was mostly a sulk, now. "Yeah."
"Good." The man slid into the driver's seat and turned over the engine, waiting until the roar faded into a low buzz. "Don't patronize our Replican. He has a bad temper."
Roxas scoffed softly and hunkered down in the back seat, avoiding Kairi's eyes and holding tightly to the side of the vehicle as the driver threw it in reverse, then waited for one of the many kids running around to open the gate in the fence so they could proceed to the road beyond. "So he's yours?"
"If you wanted to say he belonged to someone, that would be Sora." The man's voice was short and curt. "If you have a problem, take it up with him and his particle cannon."
Roxas slid even lower in his seat, grumbled something about, "Since when do clones have tempers," but he didn't raise his voice any further and their guard didn't say anything about it, so Kairi just sighed and watched as the rover sped out of the barricade's little compound and took the left fork down into the hollow.
The ground cut off sharply just beyond the road and the compound, and the smaller path followed it down in a slow gradient, walls of orange tinted rock rising up all around them, throwing the upper world into a high mesa as they descended. And right there, nestled in the curve of the plateau walls, a haphazard village sat, built of rock and brick and scrap metal, aluminum roofs reflecting the sun. A huge caravan was parked at the south end where one of the small avenues widened into a square for just that purpose. All around the outskirts were high poles strung with wire, iron spikes driven in the side to allow one to climb up and inspect the floodlights above. A high, barbed-wire fence marked the perimeter where the lights and the waypoint village ended and the desert began, the only barrier between them and the tribes and the darkness that occupied the night.
It was a clever location, she realized, noting how the shadows were lengthening after midday--in the hottest part of the afternoon with the sun dipping to the west, the village would be completely in the shade of the plateau. The walls behind the village had little footpaths leading up and switching back along it, leading to a few open-mouthed caverns, the metal tiers of a refinery all but built into the rock alongside, the only building in the town that wasn't made of spare parts. The waypoint had probably started out with just that, a factory to stabilize the mana drawn from the pool within the caverns, inject it into fuel cores and channel it into the electric currents that powered the perimeter and the refinery itself. Over time a village sprang up, people one by one choosing to stay and work, or establish trade, or provide a service for the passing caravans.
That was a noble choice, in its own way, Kairi thought. It would take a lot of fortitude to want to stay in the desert, to help operate a waypoint that would never really prosper.
When the road reached level ground once again, it turned sharply and carried them along the fence for a short while before turning toward the village, hot wind billowing past them and blowing strands of hair out of the carefully plaited knot on the back of her head and into her face. The drive through the village was swift, only a few people out and about in the heat of the day, younger kids than the ones helping at the barricade playing with wooden swords and brightly colored balls and refugees from the caravan bartering for food and fuel and water and parts to repair their trucks. They drove to where the shadows were deepest, right along the rock walls and their guard parked the rover in front of one of the larger buildings, three stories with wide overhangs and railed balconies, strung with Candlemas lights, front door draped with a patterned red scarf.
A woman stepped through the door as the engine cut, long black hair tied back from her face and a bar towel between her hands, mouth open to speak and then pausing as she observed the two unfamiliar faces in the back seat. Kairi stared back at her for that moment, noting how her eyes flickered to the god-knot at her throat and then over to the driver. "What's going on?"
"We might have a truck." The driver picked up his helmet off the floorboards and climbed out, not paying any attention or bothering to introduce his passengers in the same way he'd never bothered to introduce himself. "Get the conference room ready and find Cloud, the others will be down soon." And with that, he brushed past the woman and through the scarf-covered doorway, disappearing inside and leaving the three of them to stare at each other.
"Well," the woman said finally, eyeroll followed by a brilliant smile. "Welcome to the Bastion. Come on inside, I'll get you some drinks."
[ NEXT ]
Title: 6,581 Miles to Luma [ 4/?? ]
Author: Casey
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: R/M
Pairings: Axel/Roxas, Riku/Sora
Warnings: The holy trinity of language, sex and violence.
Genre: Post-apocalyptic sci-fi/fantasy road trip
Summary: A clone, a priestess, a fugitive and a knight are crossing the desert together in a V-class 1300-series armored truck. There must be a punchline.
Previous: 1 | 2 | 3
The Girl in the Desert, Part Three
Roxas stood in the space between the driver's seat and passenger seat, one hand on the console bank above the windshield, staring out across the pavement from where the truck was parked a quarter mile distant yet to the barricade in the road, and muttered, "Shit," for probably the tenth time.
Kairi fidgeted with the wheel, fingers tracing the grooves in the cushioned leather. Her voice was slow and thoughtful, feeling out the words and stretching them like a suggestion. "You think this might be the waypoint the guy in the other truck was talking about?"
"They don't put barricades across the road for waypoints," Roxas explained very firmly, hand on the consoles tightening while the other cut through the air for emphasis. "They put barricades in the road because they want you to stop."
Kairi nodded and thought that was pretty obvious, examining the carefully constructed wall of scrap, piled up high and wide; long, threatening spiked poles stuck up at intervals along the top. There was certainly no getting around it, no getting through it, and she was pretty sure that the definition of a barricade indicated as much. "So..."
"If someone wants you to stop in the road in the middle of the desert, it's probably not for a friendly reason."
Kairi drummed her fingers against the wheel and stared up at him, noting the way his jaw was set and his shoulders were tense. Roxas and whatever went through his mind were mysteries comparable to the ones the High Priestess of Luma guarded, but there were moments when things broke through. She was pretty sure, now, that the thing coiling up his nerves was fear, and she would have thought that Roxas being afraid would be enough to unsettle her own protracted state of calm. It didn't, and she cleared her throat, tried to be altruistic. "So what do we do? Turn around and go back?"
Roxas muttered something low and harsh into the air.
"What?"
"I said I don't have enough supplies to go back. The last waypoint was four thousand miles in from Rhohadam and that's over three thousand miles back. I have enough for another thousand, maybe, if we don't eat for the last five hundred." He glanced sideways at her, blue eyes sharp. "I packed for one."
Kairi felt her smile go watery and looked back down, at the hulking black mass in the road. There was no driving around it, no plowing through it, and no going back. From this distance she could see that it was manned, figures moving around on top of it like the guard on the balustrades of a temple, head and shoulders visible over the edge. They looked like they were wearing blast armor, muted black and gray, dull metal woven with a leathery reptilian skin. Cheap but efficient, enough to dissuade the idea of fighting their way through.
She cleared her throat, finally, straightened in the seat, because with all that aside there was only one option remaining. "I can talk to them."
"No, I'll talk to them." Roxas reached down for her shoulder to pull her out of the seat, silent hiss through his teeth the only resignation that showed. "I need you with me, though. If it's a caravan and not the tribes they won't fire on you."
His statement begged the question, and she asked while curling into the passenger seat, tucking loose strands of hair back behind her ears. "What if it is the tribes?"
His eyes flickered over to her for an instant, intense and blue for that one fraction of a second, a morbid sort of finality to the look. His voice was still tight and his shoulders were still tense and Kairi still wasn't the least bit frightened, even when he shifted the truck into drive and hissed, "Then it was a pleasure knowing you, Kairi."
Roxas drove the truck the rest of the way, slowing gradually until the yards became feet, ultimately inching along closer and closer. The top of the barricade was a sort of parapet, several feet higher than the truck was tall, and two of the figures she had seen from a distance were standing there now, watching the vehicle as it inched along. One was a head taller than the other, and all that could be seen of either were the lower half of their faces; the taller one was leaning on a long, rusted pike and watching the whole of the world around them, attention turning from the desert to the truck and occasionally back to whatever lay behind the barricade. The shorter one, though, hovered forward and watched their approach eagerly, fingers tapping against the parapet's edge.
Closer to the ground, a small rectangle was cut away from the piles of scrap--most of it appeared to be junked truck bodies and old tires, like a bigger, more serious version of a child's play fort. Through the opening and the heavy glass protecting it was a small, unlit room and two more figures, less distinct in the shadows, and emerging from one corner was the protruding horn of a sonophone.
Just as she noted the device, a dark male voice boomed through it, "PLEASE, EXIT YOUR VEHICLE."
Kairi let out a breath, exchanging a look with Roxas. Not the tribes, if they were speaking the common language. He didn't look as mollified as she hoped, though, and he continued inching the truck along, slightly faster, as though he really did intend to ram it.
On top of the parapet, the shorter person looked up at the taller, received a nod in response, then rubbed his hands together in some kind of anticipatory glee, rolled his shoulders and ducked down, disappearing behind the walls for a few seconds. When he reappeared, he had a massive black particle canon on his shoulder, and he rested the end of it on the parapet, pointed comfortably at the truck. As she watched, the interior of the barrel began to glow blue, and the guy offered them both a broad, toothy grin.
"Shit," Roxas muttered for the eleventh time.
"PLEASE," the sonophone voice repeated, ever so patient, "EXIT YOUR VEHICLE."
Roxas finally hit the brakes and cut the engine, one hand lingering on the parking brake as he stared across the console at her, licking his lips. If he'd ever truly looked as young as he really was, as well as she could guess, at least, it was now--his eyes were wide and the mind behind them was churning, searching desperately for a solution, lost in the middle of a world that was bigger and more dangerous than he had ever imagined. She felt sorry for him, just for a moment, wondering what the root of his fear really was, if it had anything to do with the barricade and the people manning it or if that was just the catalyst.
She wondered, while some unknown memory ached, what the real story was.
"Here we go," Roxas said in a low breath, staring out the windshield instead of at her, left hand settling on the latch.
"It'll be okay," Kairi assured him, smiling, and opened the door.
The air outside was heavy and hot and her feet touched the ground at the same time she heard Roxas yelling, "I have a woman with me!" Kairi pushed the door closed, then held her hands out in front of her in a display of harmlessness. Through the hole in the scrap she could see the two figures engaged in some kind of discussion--the bigger of the two was handling the sonophone and stood rather stiffly while the other, smaller and more femininely-built person waved her hands around in grand gestures and seemed to be doing a majority of the talking. On the parapet, the guy with the particle cannon was still grinning and offered her a thumbs-up. The taller one, next to him, tilted his head back in what looked suspiciously like an eyeroll.
Kairi frowned at the casual air they affected, and wondered just what was really going on, here.
Roxas made a gesture from the other side of the truck, waving her ahead, and they both moved forward until they were standing in front of it, side by side, hands in the air. She could feel the heat from the engine radiating against her back, and that coupled with the heat radiating from above made a trickle of sweat run down the side of her face, down the center of her back. Kairi pursed her lips once, turned just enough to see Roxas's profile--all stiff, jaw clenched. "I can talk to them," she offered again, but he shook his head firmly.
"No. I'll do the talking." Roxas's mouth barely moved when he spoke, almost like a statue there, eternally trapped in submission. "You can't exactly explain why you're here, anyway."
"ARE YOU A PRIESTESS OF LUMA?" the sonophone demanded with a high-pitched squeal, and they both jumped and winced. The armored figure fiddled with the device's controls for a moment, head bent in such a way that Kairi could practically hear him cursing under his breath. Then resumed with, "Sorry. Are you a priestess of Luma?"
Kairi exchanged a glance with Roxas before nodding a little in response. The two figures in the lower part of the barricade discussed something again, and the one Kairi figured was a girl nodded a lot and scurried out of sight, further into whatever little compound they had built. A moment later the taller guy on the parapet leaned away from his pike and backward, as though to listen to something, then exchanged a word with the canon guy. On the ground, Kairi frowned and waited while they passed around whatever information they felt was important, until finally the girl returned to the lower box, passing whatever conclusion had been reached to the guy with the sonophone.
"We will accept the priestess without testimony on the basis of the Oath of compassion and nonviolence." The sonophone squealed momentarily and the person operating it thumped the controls with a fist until it stopped. "The boy must answer our questions honestly. Our Truthsayer will tell us if you are lying."
"Shit," Roxas muttered for the twelfth time, and his eyes darted over to her, back and forth from her face to the barricade, licking his lips as he reconsidered this, their situation and what was being asked of him. He kept his voice low, limited to themselves. "Maybe you should talk to them, see if you can vouch for me."
Kairi offered him a sidelong glance, eyebrow raised, watching him backpedal. "You don't want to answer the questions, Mr. I'll Do the Talking?"
"I have a feeling I know what they're going to be." Roxas swallowed and set his jaw, looking at the barricade now with his head tilted towards her. "In which case, no, I really don't."
"Declare your weapons," sonophone guy demanded.
Roxas hissed through his teeth, rolled his eyes skywards for a moment like a prayer to whomever would listen, or possibly a curse to whomever wouldn't. "This is a V-class truck, it's equipped with a small arsenal of high-range mana blasters and a personal-use rifle. For obvious reasons."
Kairi clicked her tongue and muttered under her breath. "And you didn't use those on the Angels because...?"
He leaned slightly to the side to mutter back, "They draw mana from the fuel core. It was more efficient to just outrun them, Miss Compassion and Nonviolence."
She let out a breath through her nose, thought abound informing him that the Oath had a clause regarding a priestess's duty to defend her temple and her people when threatened; considered the way Roxas never discussed anything until it was unavoidable, and considered, in turn, what that meant for them right now.
The figures occupying the barricade were performing their information pass again, the girl going from the box to somewhere behind the parapet and returning. The sonophone was quiet for a few long, agonizing minutes while this happened, and then while the guy behind it contemplated whatever the cannon guy had passed along. Kairi spent those minutes wondering if she should be more worried than she was and how much of what Roxas said was the truth, and how much of the truth he never said at all; Roxas spent them shifting his weight from his left foot to his right, jaw clenching, eyes staring straight ahead.
Then, finally, the device crackled again. "Declare your Arts."
"Shit," Roxas hissed, and Kairi stopped keeping count.
She blinked, instead, head turned away from the barricade and watching as his tension began transforming into agitation. "Is that a bad thing?"
"It could be," Roxas said, and that didn't really answer anything. He grumbled to himself under his breath for a moment, shifted on his feet some more, then seemed to come to a decision and raised his voice enough to say, "I'm a Scholar of photology."
The two figures in the cutout box turned to look at each other, and despite the armor covering most of their faces Kairi got the impression of them blinking--whether in amazement or confusion was unknown. The sonophone asked, finally, "You're a Lightwielder?"
Roxas groaned and his hands were curling into fists in the air. "Yes."
The projected voice, although still flat, sounded vaguely impressed. "That's a rare Art."
"Yes, it is. Whatever." Roxas was looking towards heaven again, barely restraining the desire to wave his arms, gesture his frustration, and Kairi watched him with eyebrows gradually drawing together. "What the hell is the point of all this, anyway?"
But the barricade's guards were passing their information again, the girl in motion and the others considering, speaking, making the exchange. Kairi stopped watching them and shifted closer to Roxas instead, keeping her voice as low as possible, head tilted down, barely moving her lips. "Is it so bad?" She chanced a look at his face, watched how his teeth were showing, grit tight. "You're not telling the whole truth, are you?"
"I can't," he said, through the grimace, teeth still clenched.
Kairi processed this for a long minute, sonophone crackling in the background, before asking, "Can Truthsayers detect lies of omission?"
"I don't know." Roxas unclenched long enough to breathe, heat clogging the air around them, closing his eyes and inhaling deep, opening them and finding that nothing had changed. "We'll find out in a minute."
The sonophone squeaked, crackled, and the man behind it said, "State your name, House, and city of origin."
Roxas's agitation returned with a vengeance, feet shifting constantly on the pavement, entire body tense and coiled like a tightly wound spring and it was painfully obvious that he was either trying hard to lie believably or trying hard not to; nobody needed a Truthsayer to see that. Kairi looked up to the guy with the cannon again, noting the blue glow and the casual air he held it with. She frowned again, but he acknowledged her--lifted one hand, palm flat, like an unspoken, Wait, just for a moment.
"My name is Roxas, and I am not aware of my family having any House affiliation, seems how they're all dead." He spat the last word like a curse and scowled, blue eyes burning. "I'm from the city of Nocturne."
"Never heard of it," the sonophone declared gruffly.
"That's what everyone says." Roxas shuffled again, tightened his fists again and took another deep breath, like he was attempting to relax and remain in control. "I've answered all your questions, now you answer mine. What the hell is all this about?"
Sonophone guy was sending the runner back up to talk to cannon guy's guard, but after the girl disappeared out the back and a moment of thought, he said simply, "We need your truck."
Roxas, after a protracted second of sheer disbelief, mouth open and eyes wide, exploded. "Well, you can't fucking have it, how about that? How about you and your buddies stop playing soldier boys and let me through before I run you all down?"
Kairi hissed in warning, shifting to the side enough that their arms bumped against each other, watching the parapet and the unheard conversation occurring there. "Shh. Just wait."
"You don't understand," sonophone guy said, perpetually calm. "This is a matter of life and death."
Roxas, though, was through with submission, hands dropping to his sides, fists clenched, shoulders trembling. He stared at the ground with a startling ferocity, grimacing at it and gathering all of his nerves together, taut and angry and--Kairi realized all at once--completely terrified. She didn't have time to contemplate this, to resolve it at all or even to process it through the haze of calm that only made her blink at him, the way his head jerked up, the way his eyes blazed and a ruffle of light stirred over his hands and the abrupt way he all but roared, "What makes you think that what I'm doing isn't a matter of life and death?"
In the box, the guy was about to retort, or make some other perfectly reasonable argument, but the runner reappeared at precisely that moment and immediately began to relate something to him with grand gestures, small body thrumming with excitement. Sonophone guy considered this for a long moment, while Roxas fumed silently, sweat trickling down from his temples, and Kairi looked up at cannon guy, who smiled in reassurance.
Sonophone guy cleared his throat, one fist in front of his mouth, before continuing. "Our Truthsayer tells us that you have not declared all of your weapons, or all of your Arts, and that you are lying about your House affiliation."
Sand skittered across the pavement in the breeze in the silence that followed. Then Roxas, under his breath and between his teeth, muttered, "Kairi, get back in the truck."
She looked from him, to the barricade, and back and the truck, and wondered just what the hell he planned on doing, anyway. "But--"
"Get back in the truck!"
Kairi hesitated, backed up a little and then caught sight of movement out of the corner of her eye. On the parapet, cannon guy was waving to get her attention, then pointing at something on the side of his massive gun. A little red light, solid and unblinking. He grinned at her again, and it was like encouragement.
Was it... the safety? Had it been on all this time?
Kairi wasn't sure what she was doing out here, in the middle of nowhere for no reason, impossibly, with no memory of how she'd gotten there and very little memory of anything else. She didn't know what was causing the fog in her mind, what was keeping the veil of calm over her senses, why either were there to begin with. She didn't know why she felt such an affinity to Roxas, why she wanted to help and support and protect him, other than the fact that he was the only person she knew, the only one with a physical form and a face, who wasn't a vague silhouette or a baseless voice hovering in the blur of her memory. The world was a big place, and she was lost within it, but she wasn't afraid. Her memory was mostly ideas, but because of that she knew what her place and purpose was. She knew what her abilities were, and where her duties lay.
And one of them was right here, on the edge of something dangerous. She licked her lips, squared her shoulders, and stepped forward. "I have a proposal, please!"
Roxas caught her by the elbow, not quite forceful enough to pull her back; more like a threat that he could. She couldn't see his face and what expression had settled there, just heard his voice, how it was tight and whispered. "What the hell are you doing?"
She turned her head back slightly, just to the side. "Just wait."
On the barricade, the four guards all seemed to find this interesting, and the sonophone crackled in approval. "We will hear out the priestess."
Kairi took a deep breath, steeled herself under the hand still on her elbow, and prepared for the tirade that would inevitably follow. When she spoke, she turned her attention up to the guy on the parapet, cannon on his shoulder. "We will temporarily relinquish control of the truck."
"WHAT." And this time, Roxas really did yank her backwards. "No. Fuck no and what's all this 'we' stuff about? It's MY truck, and I say hell no, I'm not giving up control of it to anyone, whether they have a particle cannon in my face or not!"
"Roxas," Kairi said softly, turning enough to look in his eyes, and gently pulled his hand off her elbow, "you're going to have to give a little bit if you want us to get through this without incident."
Roxas stared back, and his voice was low and stuttered, painfully uncertain and dark. "Don't fucking do this."
"It's okay," she murmured, smiled to reassure him and squeezed his hand before letting go. Roxas scowled and stared at the ground, and she figured that was the most approval she was going to get.
Kairi faced the barricade again, swallowed and thought she had probably never felt as much of an adult as she did right now, in this moment, hearing the words of a grown and trained priestess tumbling out of her mouth. "In exchange for our show of good faith, I propose that we be allowed to sit down with you peacefully and discuss this issue as civilized people. I will offer myself to act as mediator, as I am both bound by my Oath to assist you in your claim of need, and have a vested interest in this truck as it is," she paused, swallowed, tongue wetting her lips and continued, "at the moment, my home."
On the parapet, cannon guy smiled and offered her a thumbs up. His taller companion leaned over to murmur something, and he nodded, indicating where Kairi and Roxas were standing in the road. A nod in return, and the taller one lowered his pike, and climbed down behind the barricade walls.
A few minutes passed in silence with some discussion going on somewhere Kairi couldn't see, and she stood there, something in her knees shaking as she wondered what she'd just done, if she could really carry this through, if Roxas was standing behind her and wishing he'd never picked up that poor sunburnt girl off the side of the road. She stood her ground, though, waiting for the word, tongue pressing prayers against the roof of her mouth.
And then the sonophone crackled and the gruff voice behind it said, "We accept your proposal."
There was a shift in the junk piled up alongside where the cut-away rectangle sat, and after a moment of creaking and groaning it became a massive door, scraping backwards over the pavement just enough to allow a person through. The guy with the pike came out first, weapon lowered at his side, followed by the one who manned the sonophone, and the girl hurried past them at a light jog. She smiled in consolation as she passed Roxas, making a beeline for the driver's door.
"Don't worry," she sang, almost reaching out to pat him on the shoulder but drawing away upon sight of the dark glare Roxas was wearing. "We'll take good care of it, promise."
Roxas scowled at her as she passed him, opened the door and climbed inside, then turned just enough to scowl at Kairi when the engine grumbled to life. Then, finally, he scowled at the ground, as though the pavement and the sand scattered over it was at fault for this defeat.
Sonophone guy appeared at Kairi's side with a curt nod, helmet obscuring everything but the flat line of his mouth, one hand out toward her elbow without touching. "If you prefer not to be manhandled, I recommend coming along quietly."
Kairi took a breath and nodded in agreement, following at his side as he guided them back to the doorway. Somewhere behind her she was vaguely aware of Roxas glowering and stubbornly standing in place until the guy with the pike finally grabbed the shoulder of his shirt and hauled him along. She looked up to the parapet and noted that the guy still on it, the smaller one, had lowered and powered off his cannon, and as they passed under it to go through the open door he waved at her with a pleased smile.
The man at her side made a low grunt, hand not quite on her back to guide her through the small entry. "This was all his idea. Sora's sense of diplomacy is... strange."
Kairi heard Roxas protesting behind them and silently agreed, noting that the man's voice sounded vaguely apologetic, if gruff. His hand touched her back briefly as they had to move sideways to get around the door itself, and then pushed slightly when she paused to stare.
The barricade was blocking a small compound, a few shelters built of scrap metal on either side of the road, floodlights held on high poles overhead. A small crush of people, mostly youths and older children, scampered around at various tasks--some of which appeared to involve maintaining the barricade and the things beyond it, and some of which appeared to be tag, or sticks, or other games that children got underfoot playing. At the opposite end of the compound a low fence ran across the road, a handful of four-wheeled motorbikes and a rusting green rover sitting just inside and a small hopper parked outside. Just past that the road split, the main part of it winding around the dip in the land as it sharpened into a plateau, curving north and then back to its original trajectory to continue eastward further on.
The other fork disappeared below the plateau's edge, and at sight of all the people here, she wondered what was down there.
"Cid!" The man at her side called abruptly, pausing with a hand on her shoulder and indicating an older man in dusty clothing, dirty blond hair held back by an equally dirty rag, who appeared to be scolding a trio of boys who appeared to not be listening very well. "Yuffie needs to bring the truck in, open the main gate."
"You heard the man," he growled to the boys, and they scampered over to a large wheel, turning the crank in tandem and the door they'd just crossed through began to open wider, large enough to let a truck much bigger than Roxas's pass. She tilted her head back to watch it, and noted that the guy with the cannon was no longer on the parapet.
When she looked back down, Roxas and his captor were engaged in an advanced argument.
"Fucking let go of me! Where the hell do you think I'm going to run to, anyway? You have my truck!" Roxas twisted and raged against the hand still resiliently holding on to his shirt, until the guy with the pike finally let him go, staring down at him with what must have been a dubious, affronted expression judging by the way his lips pressed into a tight line. A moment later, once Roxas had shook himself out and tugged his shirt straight, the guy settled the pike in the crook of his elbow and reached up to pull his helmet off.
Kairi knew, immediately and from the bits of understanding that came out of the fog, by the fall of silver hair that tumbled out of the helmet and onto his shoulders that the guy was a Replican. Roxas noted the same thing at the same instant, and his expression twisted on itself.
The guy tucked his helmet under his free arm without much concern for what Roxas did, scowling back at him in pretty much equal measure. "You could stand to show a little dignity after your woman saved your ass."
Roxas was practically spitting, eyes blazing electric blue and if he really was a Lightwielder, the Replican was going to find himself blind or worse in another second. Kairi opened her mouth, but it was the man beside her who interjected.
"Riku." His voice was firm and flat, and the Replican's head jerked to the side. "I'll take them down, you bring Sora and Yuffie once the truck is inside. We'll be in the red room."
The Replican nodded sharply and retreated without another word or even a glance for Roxas, who continued to stand and fume and glare at the ground around his feet. After a moment of this, when it was clear he wasn't going to come along quietly with them, Kairi pulled away from her guard and approached him, pausing just close enough to have something like a private conversation. "Roxas," she murmured, considered reaching for his hand but didn't think they were quite connected enough for that to be appropriate. "I need you to trust me."
When he looked up at her he was still scowling, and he was still glowering, but there was something deep and honest behind the expression, something in the blue depths of his eyes, that was absolutely terrified, just the way he'd been before. The fear hovered there between them and wrapped around her throat, made her mouth drop open. "I understand what you're trying to do, Kairi. I do, and I appreciate it," he said, voice low and tight. "But you have to understand that we can't stay here." He emphasized the words in short, hard bursts of breath. "We can't."
Kairi considered the words and the implications, the idea that something bad would happen if they didn't keep moving, and wondered how much of what Roxas told her was the truth. What it was that he struggled so hard to hide. She swallowed, nevertheless, because Roxas was all she knew and if her fate was tied to his, then his fears were hers as well. "We'll get the truck back. Let's just hear them out, okay?"
Roxas deflated, slowly, rage draining out of his body and gaze dropping back to the ground, nodding in a kind of defeat. "Yeah, okay."
When she turned back, the man guarding her had pulled his helmet off, revealing tousled brown hair and a scar running down his nose, and he held an expression that was halfway between bored and irritated. He gestured for them to follow and turned towards the rover parked by the fence, waiting until his two charges were climbing into the back seat of the open-air vehicle before tossing his helmet onto the floorboards. He regarded Roxas for a long moment. "Feeling more cooperative?"
Roxas was still scowling, but it was mostly a sulk, now. "Yeah."
"Good." The man slid into the driver's seat and turned over the engine, waiting until the roar faded into a low buzz. "Don't patronize our Replican. He has a bad temper."
Roxas scoffed softly and hunkered down in the back seat, avoiding Kairi's eyes and holding tightly to the side of the vehicle as the driver threw it in reverse, then waited for one of the many kids running around to open the gate in the fence so they could proceed to the road beyond. "So he's yours?"
"If you wanted to say he belonged to someone, that would be Sora." The man's voice was short and curt. "If you have a problem, take it up with him and his particle cannon."
Roxas slid even lower in his seat, grumbled something about, "Since when do clones have tempers," but he didn't raise his voice any further and their guard didn't say anything about it, so Kairi just sighed and watched as the rover sped out of the barricade's little compound and took the left fork down into the hollow.
The ground cut off sharply just beyond the road and the compound, and the smaller path followed it down in a slow gradient, walls of orange tinted rock rising up all around them, throwing the upper world into a high mesa as they descended. And right there, nestled in the curve of the plateau walls, a haphazard village sat, built of rock and brick and scrap metal, aluminum roofs reflecting the sun. A huge caravan was parked at the south end where one of the small avenues widened into a square for just that purpose. All around the outskirts were high poles strung with wire, iron spikes driven in the side to allow one to climb up and inspect the floodlights above. A high, barbed-wire fence marked the perimeter where the lights and the waypoint village ended and the desert began, the only barrier between them and the tribes and the darkness that occupied the night.
It was a clever location, she realized, noting how the shadows were lengthening after midday--in the hottest part of the afternoon with the sun dipping to the west, the village would be completely in the shade of the plateau. The walls behind the village had little footpaths leading up and switching back along it, leading to a few open-mouthed caverns, the metal tiers of a refinery all but built into the rock alongside, the only building in the town that wasn't made of spare parts. The waypoint had probably started out with just that, a factory to stabilize the mana drawn from the pool within the caverns, inject it into fuel cores and channel it into the electric currents that powered the perimeter and the refinery itself. Over time a village sprang up, people one by one choosing to stay and work, or establish trade, or provide a service for the passing caravans.
That was a noble choice, in its own way, Kairi thought. It would take a lot of fortitude to want to stay in the desert, to help operate a waypoint that would never really prosper.
When the road reached level ground once again, it turned sharply and carried them along the fence for a short while before turning toward the village, hot wind billowing past them and blowing strands of hair out of the carefully plaited knot on the back of her head and into her face. The drive through the village was swift, only a few people out and about in the heat of the day, younger kids than the ones helping at the barricade playing with wooden swords and brightly colored balls and refugees from the caravan bartering for food and fuel and water and parts to repair their trucks. They drove to where the shadows were deepest, right along the rock walls and their guard parked the rover in front of one of the larger buildings, three stories with wide overhangs and railed balconies, strung with Candlemas lights, front door draped with a patterned red scarf.
A woman stepped through the door as the engine cut, long black hair tied back from her face and a bar towel between her hands, mouth open to speak and then pausing as she observed the two unfamiliar faces in the back seat. Kairi stared back at her for that moment, noting how her eyes flickered to the god-knot at her throat and then over to the driver. "What's going on?"
"We might have a truck." The driver picked up his helmet off the floorboards and climbed out, not paying any attention or bothering to introduce his passengers in the same way he'd never bothered to introduce himself. "Get the conference room ready and find Cloud, the others will be down soon." And with that, he brushed past the woman and through the scarf-covered doorway, disappearing inside and leaving the three of them to stare at each other.
"Well," the woman said finally, eyeroll followed by a brilliant smile. "Welcome to the Bastion. Come on inside, I'll get you some drinks."
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