Lost in a dying world I reach for something more...
Characters: seeya-next-life and Compass (NPC)
Date/Time: EXTREMELY BACKDATED to 06Feb, after Axel hangs out with bb!Cloud. jasdhgfkadf i never meant for this to take so frakking long. /kicks 8-day workweeks
Location: Silent Hillderness Redux
Rating: uh. PG13?
Summary: extreme teal. like 8k words of it. no i'm not kidding. this was really just a scene i had in my head i wanted to write out so feel free to ignore it. if you actually wanna read it, expect creepiness, regurgitation of lines from Chain of Memories, and Axel Setting Shit on Fire.
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It took a lot to really genuinely make Axel feel foolish. While a lot of his overt cockiness and blasé unflappability were defense mechanisms, he was genuinely confident by nature, and wasn't easily offended or abashed, but yesterday's little run-in with the reptilian denizens of the Wilderness had left him feeling decidedly sheepish. He still couldn't believe he'd been spat at. That stuff had really hurt, too! His face was still all irritated from the... whatever the hell that weird sticky venom had been. Boy he'd had a fun time with that at the clinic.
What really ground his gears, though, was the fact that he hadn't accomplished a single damn useful thing for all his efforts. Sure, it had been dramatic and exciting, but he'd gone to the Wilderness in the hopes of getting his head back into his job instead of letting his mind dwell on recent events. Well, if those oversized lizards thought they were going to get away with making a fool of Axel, they had another thing coming. He was prepared this time, and he was going to do this right. I.e., he was not going to end up running for his life or getting poisonous sticky goo shot in his face, and he wasn't going to have to call on Toushi for help. Of course he appreciated Toushi's willingness to come to his assistance, but this time he was starting off on the right foot. He wasn't going to get lost this time, which would surely help.
Compass had seemed genuinely excited about going to this Wilderness. Axel hadn't had any idea what in the world these 'dinosaurs' were, but Compass apparently came from a place where they were a familiar concept, because as soon as he had uttered the word she had squealed in delight and started nattering about something called a Dinonychus, which was apparently her favorite kind. He waited patiently at the Access Point for her, still dressed in that ridiculous uniform he'd been forced into for some reason--really, plaid pants weren't going to be very good camouflage, but... well, maybe dinosaurs were colorblind. When he spotted her jogging toward him, however, he couldn't help but laugh.
"Compass, what are you wearing?" he chuckled. She was dressed in khaki shorts and was wearing what appeared to be a twill safari hat.
Putting her hands on her hips, Compass frowned at him. "You said we'd be fighting dinosaurs in the jungle," she said, and then doffed her hat. "I figured I should dress for the occasion." Then she gestured at him. "What are you wearing? You look like some kind of reject Catholic schoolboy. Turquoise plaid really doesn't go with your skintone at all."
Axel arched one eyebrow. "Trust me, this isn't exactly my usual style," he assured her. "I woke up dressed like this this morning and haven't been able to do anything about it since."
"Well, I guess it's good we're dealing with dinosaurs and not the fashion police," she snickered.
"Whenever you're done," he said, rolling his eyes and folding his arms.
Compass grinned and reached past him to press the elevator button. "You're too sensitive," she said, nudging him with her shoulder.
"'You're too sensitive~'" he echoed in a mocking tone, his eyes reeling skyward as the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Stepping backward into the elevator, he folded his arms and leaned against the wall. "At least it's jungle and not winter down here," he said; "damn Sphere refuses to let me wear my coat." He plucked at one arm, pinching the skin on the back of his wrist between two fingers. "Ain't exactly like I have much insulation, you know?"
She tilted her head thoughtfully at him, frowning a bit. "I still say it's completely unfair that you keep that girlish figure so easily, eating all that ice cream," she said. "Would that I had your metabolism."
"Yeah I get that a lot."
"What happened to your face, by the way?" she asked then, tactless and without segue as usual, and he looked confused for a moment, lifting one hand to his cheek as if to make certain his skin was still there.
"Ah?"
She waggled her fingers near the side of her face. "The skin around your eyes looks all angry and sunburnt," she said, and then covered her mouth with one hand for an instant. "You didn't have a close encounter with Miss Rosalind's chemicals, did you?"
He frowned. "Ah... oh. Er, no." Pressing his fingertips into the visibly irritated skin around his eye, he forced a watery grin. "Watch out for the little dinosaurs that look like frilled lizards," he warned; "they... spit."
"Spit?"
"Spit."
She stared at him for a moment, her brow furrowed and her eyes narrow, and then she asked carefully, "What in the world were you doing near its face?"
A valid question indeed. With a harrumph, he shifted a bit as the elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open. "Toushi and I had been trying to evade some bigger, aggressive ones," he explained, and then lifted both hands to either side of his face, splaying his fingers out to look like fish fins or, in this case, the frills from the dinosaur. "We ducked behind some foliage and there was this little guy there, with his frills all open."
"You know that's usually intended to be a deterrent," Compass said, walking past him and out of the elevator, mimicking his pantomime and then making a sibilant rattling noise. "The frills and all are supposed to scare you off, and they puff out frills to make themselves look bigger. Did you know that's the original purpose of goosebumps? When you get scared, it's a natural response to make yourself look bigger to spook away enemies, but humans don't have fur anymore, so the effect is kind of lost."
"Well it didn't attack us," he said, mostly ignoring her trivia and addressing the original point again; "we just wanted to chill behind that bush until we could regroup and get away from the other ones." He glowered at that, like maybe the dinosaur should have known better. Realizing he still had his hands in frill-position beside his face, he instead covered his eyes with his palm and turned to follow her out of the elevator. "So I turned to kind of shoo it away, since the rattly noise was loud and we were kinda worried it would attract the others--"
"Oh, brilliant," Compass remarked.
"--and it spat at me," he concluded, still covering his face. "Man, the folks at Wellspring had a regular field day with me when I got there. Never mind Toushi, dragging me along like some kind'a cripple."
"You're just lucky it didn't blind you or something," Compass said, and Axel let his hand fall away from his face.
"Fair enough," he said, pointing at her, "but it really hurt, either way, so..."
Axel could practically feel his heart hiccup as his peripheral vision focused on their surroundings. His voice trailed off as his throat tightened and everything behind his sternum tensed up, his spine stiffening and his eyes widening.
They were standing on a dusty road that was half-obscured in fog, the buildings beyond them shifting in and out of vision as the mist swirled eerily along the street. The nearest facade had a sign in the window, but the glass was spiderwebbed and he couldn't make out what it said. The air was almost uncomfortably tepid, humid, heavy, but his skin felt clammy all the same. This was not a jungle full of dinosaurs. This was--
"No..."
He didn't even hear if Compass was still talking or not; Axel twisted sharply to try and catch the elevator doors as he heard them sliding closed behind him, but he was an instant too late. His hand hit wall, and he exhaled audibly as all traces of the elevator vanished, leaving his palm pressed against the peeling paint of an old wooden bus stop. He stared at the solid wall a moment, willing the doors to come back, silently pleading for a quick way out of this place before anything happened, but the paint just cracked and flaked away beneath his hand as he pressed his fingertips fiercely into the rotting wood. Pulling his hand away, he looked at the paint chips on his palm--rust-red, smudging across his skin like he had torn his hand open--and with a soft cry he smeared the paint onto the thigh of his pants.
"Compass."
"This doesn't look much like a jungle, Axe--ah?" She had strayed out from under the awning over the bus stop, and squeaked in alarm when Axel snatched her arm to yank her back under it, as if keeping out of the misty rain that sort of drifted down from the roiling grey skies above would protect them. "What's the matter?" she asked, her eyes wide as she looked up at him. She had never really seen him look quite so alarmed, he was pretty sure--they had been on their share of complicated missions, but this place was a whole other ballgame.
"We have to get out of here," he said, and she rubbed her arms, perhaps subconsciously. The air wasn't cold, but it clung to the skin like cobwebs, and Axel repressed the shudder that wanted to crawl up his spine. "This isn't the place with the dinosaurs--this is not a place we want to be."
"You've been here before?" she asked, and he nodded.
"Yeah, a while back, with Toushi," he said, his long fingers still closed around her arm, though he didn't seem to notice he was still holding on to her. "I didn't think the Wilderness would have changed so quickly."
Compass fiddled with her hat. "W-well I heard some people saying that it seemed to be more unstable," she said, "but nobody's ever heard of it changing in just 24 hours."
Realizing he was still gripping her arm, he released her, leaving faint white lines across her skin where his fingers had been closed around her arm. Compass stared at the lines as they faded back to the pinkish tone of her skin, and then glanced up at him.
"Axel, what... is this place?" she asked. "I don't think I've ever seen you look so freaked out--like even that time we went to that castle that was all drenched in sunset."
Yeah, that had been a fun Wilderness. Those weird twilight monsters had been a real pain in the ass. But they really had nothing on the beasties in this town. "Compass, those dreadlock-monsters really can't hold a candle to this place," he said without looking at her. He was scanning the street and trying to figure out which building would be the most likely to have an elevator, since that would probably be their best bet at finding the right elevator to take them back up into the tree. At the end of the street there was a four-story building that looked like it could have been a hotel or a hospital at one point, and decided that was probably the most likely candidate. Now, how to get half a click down a foggy monster-infested road without getting killed? That was going to be the tricky part.
He knew Compass wasn't really a brawler. Hell, he wasn't really a brawler, he didn't have the bulk or the stamina for it. He relied on strategy to end a fight quickly before things got too messy. Either way, though Compass had proven she could hold her own in a fistfight (she'd punched one of those twilight monsters right in the kisser she had), he wasn't about to see how well she fared dealing with undead creepers and creatures whose internal organs weren't so internal anymore.
"It's called Silent Hill," he said, his voice low and his spine taut as he moved to the edge of the little bus stop enclosure and peered around the corner carefully. He made a beckoning gesture at her, his eyes still on the road, a silent order to stay close. Axel wasn't exactly poster child for Big Damn Hero or Protective Sentinel type (he usually left that sort of crap to Toushi), but Compass was his partner, and more than that she was... well, his friend, and he wasn't too keen on getting separated. "I dunno how it works," he admitted, "but it's like this place can get inside your head. It knows how to scare you and it does a damn good job of it."
"I hardly pegged you for the jumpy type." Compass's voice was thin, wavering ever so slightly. Axel had to grin a bit--he was rubbing off on her. She was being sassy to hide what she really wanted to say.
"Let's just say I'd rather watch a scary movie than live it," he said, and felt her move up right beside him, as if she'd suddenly decided to take what he was saying seriously. "Come on, there's a taller building at the end of the road. There's probably an elevator in there."
"With luck it'll be the one we're looking for, right?" she asked, and he craned his neck to look back at her, giving a silent nod. She frowned. "Wish I'd brought my rabbit's foot."
"I dunno why they say those are lucky," he said, stepping out from beneath the enclosure and into the strange heavy mist. "I mean, the rabbit wasn't very lucky if it lost its foot, right?" The chatter was nervous and rattled, hushed and almost muffled in the mist, but it was better than silence.
"I guess you're right," she said, following half a stride behind him. She had taken off her hat and was clutching it to her chest, her thatch of dishwater blond hair slightly disheveled from the apparently hasty removal of the cranial accessory. "But then, four-leaf-clovers are just mutations based on environment or a recessive gene," she said; "nobody's even certain, really, so I guess they're no better."
"Some people believe acorns are good luck," Axel said, slinking across the road to move quietly along the buildings on the far side of the street. "Those aren't even rare: all you need's an oak tree."
"Same could be said for horseshoes," she pointed out, "though substitute horse for oak tree. Actually you don't even need a horse--a barn will usually suffice." Then turned when there was a sound from behind them. He felt her jerk and sort of scrabble to one side of him, and she gasped sharply. "A-Axel, what the hell is--?"
He didn't wait for her to finish asking the question. Whirling at the sound of footsteps, he summoned one of his chakrams and let it fly--anyone he didn't want to skewer would have spoken up by now; he was easy enough to recognize, even in this mist. The weapon spun through the air, whistling as it arced and cut neatly into the body of what looked like a dog. A dog that... had no skin. Compass let out a cry and covered her face with her hat, and Axel just grimaced, dismissing the chakram before it returned to his hand. He really didn't want skinless zombie dog blood on him.
Putting a hand on Compass's shoulder as he moved past her to examine the corpse, he dropped to a crouch about a foot away and just stared for a moment. He hadn't seen any of these the last time he'd been here. There had only been the strange, shambling figures that had followed him around, and those had been easy enough to outrun. A quadruped would always outrun a biped of comparable mass, though--that was just plain old physics, and he wasn't liking these odds. If the sheer numbers of shambling zombies from before gave any indication of just how social the creatures in this place were, he didn't want to wait around for this thing's friends to show up.
Rising quickly and making a face as one of his knees gave an audible crack, Axel grabbed Compass by the arm again and tugged.
"Come on, let's go." He paused just long enough for her to fall into step behind him again, then moved quickly along the sidewalk.
Somewhere in the distance, he heard an unearthly howl. Damn, had that thing's friends figured it out already? He picked up his pace just a little. Compass had short legs, after all.
"What about lucky bugs?"
"Huh?" Her voice was sharp against the quiet, a little too shrill. She was audibly shaken.
"Ladybugs, scarab beetles," he said, trying to get back to that nervous energy from before. The chatter made the eeriness of it all seem a little more tolerable. Far be it from Axel to admit that anything really had him bothered, but this place genuinely scared the bejeezus out of him, and right now he just honestly didn't care if he was nattering like an idiot to make it a little easier to handle. "Dragonflies are lucky in some places, too. Wonder how that happened." Ancient Egyptian scarab beetles were dung beetles--that didn't seem very lucky, or even very pleasant.
"Crickets, too," she added, walking almost too-close behind him and nearly stepping on the backs of his shoes.
Another howl. It was closer this time.
"Well, crickets are just obnoxious," he said. They were nearly to the tall building now. Another hundred yards. "Ever had one of those suckers in your room at night? Can't find it, can't shut it up... who decided those were lucky, huh?"
"Prolly the same guy who decided a disembodied rabbit foot was lucky." There was a grin in her voice, and Axel let out a helpless laugh. It was a little too nervous, a little too loud, and she joined in the hesitant, anxious laughter.
Fifty yards. Another howl. Twenty-five yards. There was the sound of snarling, gnashing teeth, and far-off footsteps on damp earth. Running footsteps. Galloping? It was a steady, pounding rhythm. Axel didn't look behind them.
Ten yards. Eight. Another howl. Another snarl. He reached blindly behind him and snatched Compass's arm, pulling her roughly forward and all but shoving her up the steps to the front door of the building. She stumbled, but didn't fall, and grabbed the door handles, yanking them open as five more of the skinless dogs came cantering up behind them, appearing out of the mist almost as if they had been born from it. Axel summoned his chakrams again, but didn't have a chance to throw them before the dogs lunged forward, rushing up the steps like a cresting wave.
Compass's hands tangled in the back of his shirt and she pulled him through the open doorway with all her might, sending him staggering backward with an unbecoming yelp. She slammed the door and drove a crowbar through the handles as the dogs hurled themselves at it. Axel was seated on the floor, leaning back on his hands, his chakrams a few feet away having clattered to the dusty tile beneath them. He was staring at Compass where she was slowly backing away from the rattling door. She glanced at him, her eyes wide and questioning--"Are you okay?" Her voice was barely a squeak.
He nodded wordlessly, then said, "You're stronger than you look."
"Well you weigh like ninety pounds soaking wet," she rebuffed, as if he had insulted her, and there was a beat of silence and then more anxious laughter.
"We gotta get the hell out of here," he said, getting to his feet, dismissing his weapons again without physically retrieving them; "I dunno how much more my blood pressure can handle."
The old building was derelict at best; it would have been condemned in any town that wasn't already apparently haunted. The tile floors were peeling, the squares pulled up at the corners almost like tiny hands had been trying to lift them from the floor. ... Had they? He didn't want to think about it. The walls were paneled in wood, with crooked old paintings of old men with sagging jowls and wire-rimmed glasses. Doctors, by the look of them--so it was a hospital, then. Great, just what they needed: an environment full of surgical knives and other potential instruments of torture at the zombies' disposal.
Well, maybe the zombies hadn't figured out how to open doors.
They moved down a hallway, and the light from the grimy windows faded, leaving them half in obscurity, and Axel felt Compass sidle right up alongside him, as if they were running a three-legged race. He glanced down to see her clutching at her hat again, and frowned. Holding one hand up, he snapped his fingers to summon a little ball of flame. It hovered in the air above his palm, and he had to be a little extra careful since he hadn't been allowed to wear his gloves, but the additional illumination was worth the risk. No sooner had they turned a corner did he stop dead in his tracks.
"Wh--?"
He held up his free hand to silence her before she could ask what the problem was. She lifted her head and glanced down the hallway before them, and he heard her exhale, then gasp for breath.
It seemed the zombies could open doors after all. At the end of the hall was a tall, thin figure, draped in black. It was the thing that had approached him in the graveyard, he was sure of it. The image of the beating heart in its hands was still burned into his mind, and the sound of it still pounded in his ears.
... No, that was his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, wasn't it?
"Compass, run."
"What?" She shook her head fiercely. "If we get separated, we won't be able to get out of here."
"Just go," he said, his chakrams in his hands again before he really even thought about it, the firelight flickering eerily off the walls as the figure began its familiar slow walk toward him. "I'll find you, okay? Just get out of here, and I'll find you."
He had already killed this thing once, he would kill it again... but he didn't want her to see it. Whatever this thing wanted, whatever it was going to show him this time, he wasn't going to make her watch. The thing paused in its steps, inhaled audibly, and then let out an unearthly screeching howl, like the cry of some horrific banshee, and Compass dropped her hat to cover her ears, squeezing her eyes closed.
"Compass, go!" Axel shouted, taking a step back. "I'll be right behind you, just go. Find the end of the hall--there's got to be an elevator in here somewhere. Just meet me at the far end of the hall."
The creature shambled toward them again, and Compass shakily reached down to grab her hat. "O-okay," she said, and Axel glanced over his shoulder to look at her. She was scowling at him. "You'd better come," she said fiercely. "If you die here, I'm gonna have to report to Captain Locket that you were acting recklessly, and that could reflect poorly on your status as an Adventurer, and I really don't want to have to do that, cuz then when you came back you'd probably have to go up for review to make sure you were mentally sound enough to continue doing missions, and the whole thing would just be a big mess and--"
"Compass. Get out of here before I throw you down the hall."
She turned and darted down the hall, into the darkness, into the encompassing obscurity, and as he watched her form vanish into the shadows, he suddenly felt horribly alone. Shaky, unsteady footsteps tore him from his sudden stupor, and he watched as the creature before him drew ever closer, its hands drawn up near its chest, its face obscured beneath the black hood. Axel didn't wait this time--he knew what was coming. It would rip its heart out and offer it to him, and he would have to suppress that urge to vomit, and he didn't have time for this crap today.
Pausing in its shuffling step, the figure canted its head and peered at him, its eyes obscured beneath its black hood, and it made a snuffling noise, like maybe it was having trouble breathing. "What'd you, rip your lungs out to offer somebody, too?" Axel taunted. "I don't wanna play with you today."
The creature howled, and Axel bared his teeth, thrusting his chakrams forward and sending a blast of flame toward the shrouded figure. It flailed briefly, making a horrible screeching noise, and he backpedaled quickly as it pitched to the floor. Its body twitched briefly, its arms reached toward him, pulling itself across the floor even as its back and legs burned. The horrific howling never stopped, and Axel flinched as its fingers dug into the floor, pulling its ruined body along as if it was trying to drag itself out of quicksand.
He didn't bother to finish it off. Maybe it wasn't worth it, or maybe he just wanted the thing to suffer. Either way, he wasn't going to hang around to let the stench of burning, rotting flesh cling to his clothes. Turning, he dashed down the same hallway Compass had taken, his chakrams in his hands, the flames lighting up the hallway as he ran.
The hall was long, straight, the darkness thick and almost cloying. He glanced over his shoulder briefly, watching as the creature's flaming shape dragged itself along the floor behind him, yards away, tens of yards away, all the way at the end of the hall, the fire along its body like a beacon at the end of a tunnel. It wouldn't catch up. Coming to the end of the hall, he found it opened in a T-shape. Had Compass gone left or right? Had she even been able to see in this darkness? Axel suddenly wondered if he had made the right choice sending her ahead. What if she had encountered something else? What if she hadn't even seen it until it was too late?
"Dammit..."
The chakrams disappeared, leaving just the little ball of flame in his hand again, and that sound of blood pounding in his ears was deafening all over again in the quiet. The creature's howls had stopped, and now only the occasional scraping noise of its body dragging along the floor could be heard. After catching his breath, Axel turned down the hallway to the right. Compass was right-handed--maybe she'd gone to the right. It was as good a guess as the other direction, he supposed, and he had a 50% chance of guessing right. Following the hall where it curved around to the right, he spotted faint footprints in the dust. The prints were small and hurried--definitely Compass's. Good.
Rounding the next bend, though, he paused, frowning. There was a path straight ahead and a path to his right, but more worrisome than the sudden need to make a choice again was the floor. Suddenly there were two sets of footprints on it. Both of them appeared to be Compass's, and one came from the path to the right. Had she doubled back? Why would she bother?
"Compass?" he called in the darkness, suddenly a hair more concerned than he had been a moment ago. This place was creepy enough as it was, but his missing partner and her mysterious footprints weren't helping.
One of the sets of footprints led to a door, and passed through. Maybe she was hiding--no, that couldn't be right. The footprints came back out again, he noted, and continued down the straight hallway. He reached for the door handle, wondering if maybe she'd found something unsavory in there. He didn't see any blood on the floor, so he assumed she wasn't injured, at least.
"Eh?" The door was locked. He jiggled the knob and leaned into the door with his shoulder, but it wouldn't open. "How in the hell...?" Compass's footprints definitely went into, and out of, that room. Had she locked the door behind her for some reason? No, that couldn't be it: it was an old door, an old knob, it needed a key to lock it. He could see the keyhole, big and clunky like the rusted rings of keys military prison guards always carried in old pirate movies.
So how had she gotten in? Had someone locked the door after she'd left? Axel didn't bother suppressing a shudder this time when the creature at the end of the hall moaned, its miserable cry lilting dissonantly down the corridor like that of an injured, scared animal.
Okay, back to the footsteps.
There were many doors along this hallway, and he could see Compass's footsteps move toward each one, pause at some, and move through others. Every door he tried to open was locked, and when he tried one she had paused at and moved beyond, as if she had been unable to open it, he found it was unlocked. How had she moved through the locked doors and been blocked at the open one? This just made no sense.
He heard a rustling noise and held the little flame up. "Compass?" The light caught a flicker of pale clothing, and he spotted a tiny figure curled up in a corner of the hallway, its knees drawn up and its head bowed into them, arms encircling its shins. There was no sign of her hat anywhere, and her hair looked ever more disheveled now. She looked so much smaller than he had ever seen her. "Oi, Compass," he said, moving quickly toward her and hoping this wasn't some kind of trick. "Compass."
Axel paused beside a table at the end of the hallway that conveniently had a small candelabrum on it. Most of the candles were burnt down to the point that they wouldn't even light anymore, but he was able to set three of them alight, and then waved away the flame in his hand so he could drop to a crouch beside her when she didn't lift her head. She was rocking back and forth like a child only barely awoken from a nightmare.
"Compass."
"I can't make a map," she said into her knees. "I can't do it. The doors keep changing."
He blinked. "Huh?"
She lifted her head then, her lower lip trembling and her eyes wide and wild, glinting yellow in the candlelight. "I tried all the doors," she said, "in the hallway as I was running. I tried them all. Three on the left opened, two on the right. I remember--I remember!" Her voice was frantic but soft, almost a wheeze, and she buried her face in her knees again. "But the hallway comes around, and I was in the same place again," she said. Ah, that explained the two sets of footprints. "But the doors had changed. The ones that had opened before were locked now. I couldn't open them--I can't make a map. I don't know where we are, I don't know where we've been, I don't know where we're going! We're lost... we're lost.. I'm lost!"
"Easy, Compass," he said, but didn't touch her. Kagerou was very tactile--she always put a hand on his arm when he wasn't quite right, or playfully tweaked at his hair when she was teasing him--but it was a habit he hadn't quite picked up. The occasional headruffle was about as far as he went, and this was one of those situations where touching her would probably have just made it worse. "Remember what I told you about this place?"
She lifted her head then, breathing rapidly, raggedly, and he gave her a stern stare, tapping his temple.
"It gets into your head," he said. "It knows how to scare you. So don't let it." Of course, the fact that he was pretty freaked out right now probably wasn't helping his case, but that wasn't the point. Compass lived up to her name, after all--she always knew where she was and where she was headed, and that this place had taken away her orientation of all things was terrifyingly specific. If she couldn't make a map, even in her head, she was lost, and Compass was never lost. "Come on, get up," he said, rising and now extending a hand. "There's gotta be an elevator somewhere."
"I-I looked in the open rooms," she said shakily, unfolding her legs slowly and then reaching hesitantly for his hand, as if she wasn't certain he was real. "I was looking for the elevator so I could tell you where it was." She paused, swallowed, then grabbed his hand and seemed to relax a little as he pulled her upright. Shaking her head, she lifted a hand to her crown and looked momentarily disappointed when she realized her hat was nowhere to be found before straightening a little and giving Axel a helpless look. "I'm sorry," she said, and he made a face.
"Buh? For what?" he asked, shaking his head. "I wasn't sending you to find the damn elevator, I was telling you to get away from the creepy monster, that's all." It was easier to pretend this whole thing didn't have his every last nerve on edge when he could distract himself by trying to keep Compass from having a meltdown. "Come on, we'll find the elevator together," he said, releasing her hand and grabbing the candelabrum off the table. He was less likely to burn the crap out of his hand holding that, in any case. "It'll be a little easier if you can see, I'd wager."
Nervous laughter tumbled out of her, and she fell into step beside him, her fingers threaded together as if she were trying to keep herself from gripping his arm. Without her hat to keep her hands occupied, she just fidgeted with her fingers, interlocking them and splaying them intermittently. They moved silently down the hall, Axel's spine rigid and Compass walking stiff-legged beside him.
"I already went down here," she said softly, like maybe raising her voice would attract another monster. "The third and fifth doors on the left opened, but they probably won't now."
"Don't let's be pessimistic," Axel chided, holding the candelabrum up to see if he could see a bit further down the hall.
The scraping sound of the cloaked creature from the end of the hall had stopped. The silence actually made him more nervous, because that could have meant the thing had died... or it could have meant it was back on its feet and creeping silently down the hall. He really hoped it was the former.
They turned the corner to the right, and moved silently down the hall, and then turned again, and Axel stopped in his tracks, furrowing his brow.
"What?" came Compass's voice, and he glanced at her, the angles of his face sharp and jerky in the flickering light of the candles.
"This should be the original hallway," he said, peering both ways before looking back at her, "but it's not." They had made three rights, which should have brought them back to that first hallway, but when he held the candelabrum up, he saw a photo on the wall in a cracked black frame, the image obscured by the broken glass before it. "That wasn't there before," he said, pointing, "and... that, either." He gestured at a chair beside the first door on the right.
"Ah!" Compass grabbed his arm and squeezed, pointing toward the far end of the hall. "And neither was that!"
His eyes moved down the hall, and he was pretty sure he exhaled audibly when he spotted what she'd seen. At the far end of the hall were a pair of sliding metal doors: an elevator. If the halls were changing rapidly and things were there now that hadn't been there before, he had a feeling this elevator was the right one.
"Come on," he said, jerking his chin and heading down the hall. He kept his eye on the double doors the entire time, almost afraid they would vanish if he looked away. Ten yards to go... eight... five...
"Leaving so soon?"
Axel jumped, whirling sharply when a voice broke through the silence of the hallway. It wasn't so much the sudden advent of sound as it was the familiarity of the voice that startled him. Holding up the candles, he turned to see a figure back at the fork in the hallway. This silhouette was small, thin, a contour shadow barely backlit by the diffused grey light from the other end of the corridor. That voice... why did he know that voice?
"Haven't you figured out yet that running away never fixes things?" the figure asked, and Axel narrowed his eyes. Another black coat, another obscured face, but this time with a voice that sent goosebumps up and down his arms.
"Who are you?" he asked, feeling Compass's fingers tighten around his arm. "What do you want?"
He could practically feel the figure smile. "I just wanted to bid you farewell," the figure said, and then there was a light, airy chuckle. "After all, we never really got to say goodbye properly, did we?"
"Wh--"
"Traitor."
Axel didn't even had a chance to ask what the figure meant by a proper goodbye before it spat out the word as if it tasted terrible. Traitor? What? The man on the beach had said that, too, had called him a traitor. How did--? No.
"You're only saying that because you're in my head," he snarled, tapping his temple and handing the candelabrum off to Compass, who only reluctantly released his arm to accept it. "You, this place, somehow you know how to get under peoples' skin, don't you? You can see what throws me out of my comfort zone, so you exploit it." He strode purposefully toward the figure, suddenly not afraid anymore. This was all in his head. He didn't doubt these things, these visions, were real, were substantial, but they wouldn't have any power if he wasn't afraid, right? "If you wanna scare me, pal, you're gonna have to try harder; I don't remember betraying anybody, so maybe you should try another angle."
The figure seemed unfazed as Axel approached. "Traitor," it hissed again. "Wretched, foolish deserter, do you really think what you don't remember can't hurt you?" Another raspy laugh dusted out from beneath the hood. "Trust what you remember, seek what you forget... and you will find someone very special."
"Quit the cryptic doubletalk," he snarled, frustrated now and not sure why the words the figure spoke bothered him so much. "What the hell does that mean?"
"You don't know?" it said. "But you're the one who said it! You said it, and then you betrayed them all. Your coworkers. Your colleagues. Your comrades. Your friends."
"I didn't betray anybody!" he snapped, swiping a hand through the air and closing the distance between himself and the figure. "Show your face, you worthless coward--"
As he yanked the hood away from the small figure's head, however, nothing could have prepared him for the sight beneath it. He backpedaled, staggering, like he'd been struck in the head, and there was another peal of hoarse laughter.
"Be forewarned..." the figure said, the voice sterner now, deeper, more serious. The voice was familiar, so familiar... the face, the eyes, the voice... "When your sleeping memories awaken, you may no longer be you."
Axel stared, horrified, into his own bright turquoise eyes. The face was younger, the hair shorter... he lacked the tattoos, but this thing, shrouded in black, was him. It was like looking through a mirror back in time. He had been cursed by the Sphere once and put in this body he now gazed upon, the body of a fifteen-year-old. Why would this place say these words to him in his own voice? From his own mouth?
"You betrayed them once, you'll betray them again," his younger self said, eyes narrow as Axel staggered backward, bumping into Compass. She grabbed his arm again, but he barely registered the pressure. "You turned your back on your friend--your best friend! Your only friend. You left him behind. You turned to the puppet and the key instead. You left him behind!"
"Axel." Compass's voice was quiet but urgent. He didn't really hear her. There was a scraping sound from somewhere off to their left, somewhere behind them, where the hall faded into shadow beyond the elevator lobby.
The younger image of himself hadn't moved, and was now shouting from where he stood in the hallway fork. "Our most precious memories lie deep in our hearts, out of reach. You said it yourself, Axel, but what do you know of hearts?"
"A-Axel..." Her voice was more urgent, a little sharper now. The scraping grew louder. "... Axel?"
"The light within the darkness," the cloaked figure of his past said. "You've lost sight of it. You've forgotten forgetting."
"Axel!"
Baring his teeth, he summoned his chakrams and brought them both to bear, twisting to his left as Compass screamed. The candelabrum tumbled from her grip, the candles rolling across the floor. There was a great clangg! and a shower of sparks as a massive blade struck his weapons, heavy and with such force that he actually almost dropped to his knees with the sheer power of it. Snapping his head up, the snarl on his face abated, melting away into something like outright horror at the figure standing in the quickly fading light.
He was huge, tall, with great muscled arms and a massive machete-like blade caught in one meaty hand. His head was obscured beneath a triangular helm, and he was clad only in what looked like the bottom half of a robe made of... oh god, was that skin? There was a stench of blood and death about him, and the helm tilted ever so slightly to one side, almost as if in curiosity, before the figure took a step backward and dragged his massive blade back. Axel grit his teeth as the ragged edge of the huge sword scraped deafeningly against his chakrams, but he dared not move away. The blade was massive and heavy--if he shifted, it would have cloven him in two!
ding!
Light flooded the hall as the elevator doors slid open, unbidden.
"Compass, go."
"Axel--"
"Don't worry about me, just go!" he barked, and waited until the man with the helmet's blade had slid from his chakrams to fall heavily to the floor, splintering the tile beneath it like it was made of ice. "Go to the elevator. I'll be right behind you."
"Axel, I'm not--"
"Just go!" Axel snarled, his chakrams blazing suddenly and causing the helmeted figure to pause briefly as it gathered its sword up to make another swing. "This thing can't swing that blade quickly, but if it gets to us before we get to the elevator, the captain'll be pissed at us for coming home in pieces." He took a step back, pressing her backward with his own body. "Now go. I'll keep him busy."
He felt Compass turn and run for the elevator, and his eyes strayed for just an instant back to the younger image of himself. It was just staring at him, at the struggle, eyes narrowed with mirth.
"Traitor my ass," Axel said darkly, and thrust the chakrams forward, pressing them flush against the helmeted man's bare torso. The flames of the weapons seared into its skin, and Axel barely noticed the flames licking his own arms as the figure howled in pain and flailed backward. Dismissing the weapons, Axel whirled as Compass stood in the doorway of the elevator to keep it open, her eyes wide. "Inside!" he shouted, not bothering to look back as he heard the scraping sound of the helmeted figure pulling its sword behind it as it closed in on them.
She backed away, and the doors began to close. Five yards. Four yards. Three yards. The doors were halfway closed.
Two yards.
The sword scraped behind him, and he could feel the air shift as the sword was raised.
Five feet. Four. Compass had covered her face in the elevator. Three feet, two, the doors were still closing. He dove the last of the distance, crashing into the elevator with a clatter and a grunt of pain, and Compass gasped loudly, dropping to her knees to fold herself over his head as the massive rusted blade glinted in the light from the inside of the elevator.
The doors closed. There was a deafening bang. And then there was nothing.
An endless moment of silence stretched out in which neither Axel nor Compass dared move, dared breathe, and then the elevator jostled slightly and hummed to life, and there was that familiar sensation of rising as it carried them back up into the Sphere. Axel let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and Compass opened her eyes to peer at him where she was still folded over him.
"A-a-are you...?"
He closed his eyes. "I'm okay."
She tumbled backward onto her rump and leaned against the elevator wall, letting her head loll limply to one side. "I thought we were gonna die."
"You thought we were gonna die..." he grumbled, grimacing as he rolled to one side and pushed up to his hands and knees to examine the burns on his arms. Stupid Sphere and its stupid uniform... if he'd been wearing his coat this wouldn't have been a problem, but no~ it had to stuff him in short sleeves.
"He was wrong." Compass's voice was firm, determined, and Axel glanced at her.
"Huh?"
"I don't care what your memories tell you," she said, shaking her head, "you're not a traitor. You wouldn't betray your friends. Not unless they betrayed you first." She averted her eyes and scowled at the floor. "You've stuck your neck out for me before," she said. "You've done it for your sister, too. For Toushi, and Smoke--you would never betray your friends." Her eyes found his again. "So forget what that stupid kid said. I don't care how much he looked like you, or what he says he knows about you."
"C-Compass"...
"He doesn't know jack crap."
She said it so sternly, so matter-of-factly that it sounded absolutely ridiculous, and before he even realized it, he was laughing hysterically. Maybe it was the adrenaline, maybe it was because he'd just burned the crap out of his arms, or maybe it was just because sometimes Compass was unintentionally hilarious, but whatever it was, he couldn't stop laughing, and he doubled over, clutching his abdomen as he just cackled with a sort of abandon he rarely utilized.
Compass didn't lie--if there was one thing he had learned about her over his months of working with her, it was that aside from never knowing when to put down the mostly-useless trivia, she was honest to a fault. If Compass said she believed in him, then it was the god-honest truth, and maybe that meant something after all. Somewhere along the way she had joined in the helpless, almost delirious laughter, maybe because laughter was better than crying--they'd just almost been cleaved to bits by a half-naked man wearing a pyramid on his head... it was either laugh or pass out.
He would worry about trying to figure out what it all had meant later, after he had bandaged his arms and taken one hell of a nap. Right now he was just relieved to be out of there in one piece. And when the elevator opened at the Access Point to a thin crowd of people waiting for a ride, the image of two ragged, injured explorers howling with hysterical laughter was enough to make anyone question the sanity of the Adventurers under Locket's employ.
Date/Time: EXTREMELY BACKDATED to 06Feb, after Axel hangs out with bb!Cloud. jasdhgfkadf i never meant for this to take so frakking long. /kicks 8-day workweeks
Location: Silent Hillderness Redux
Rating: uh. PG13?
Summary: extreme teal. like 8k words of it. no i'm not kidding. this was really just a scene i had in my head i wanted to write out so feel free to ignore it. if you actually wanna read it, expect creepiness, regurgitation of lines from Chain of Memories, and Axel Setting Shit on Fire.
------
It took a lot to really genuinely make Axel feel foolish. While a lot of his overt cockiness and blasé unflappability were defense mechanisms, he was genuinely confident by nature, and wasn't easily offended or abashed, but yesterday's little run-in with the reptilian denizens of the Wilderness had left him feeling decidedly sheepish. He still couldn't believe he'd been spat at. That stuff had really hurt, too! His face was still all irritated from the... whatever the hell that weird sticky venom had been. Boy he'd had a fun time with that at the clinic.
What really ground his gears, though, was the fact that he hadn't accomplished a single damn useful thing for all his efforts. Sure, it had been dramatic and exciting, but he'd gone to the Wilderness in the hopes of getting his head back into his job instead of letting his mind dwell on recent events. Well, if those oversized lizards thought they were going to get away with making a fool of Axel, they had another thing coming. He was prepared this time, and he was going to do this right. I.e., he was not going to end up running for his life or getting poisonous sticky goo shot in his face, and he wasn't going to have to call on Toushi for help. Of course he appreciated Toushi's willingness to come to his assistance, but this time he was starting off on the right foot. He wasn't going to get lost this time, which would surely help.
Compass had seemed genuinely excited about going to this Wilderness. Axel hadn't had any idea what in the world these 'dinosaurs' were, but Compass apparently came from a place where they were a familiar concept, because as soon as he had uttered the word she had squealed in delight and started nattering about something called a Dinonychus, which was apparently her favorite kind. He waited patiently at the Access Point for her, still dressed in that ridiculous uniform he'd been forced into for some reason--really, plaid pants weren't going to be very good camouflage, but... well, maybe dinosaurs were colorblind. When he spotted her jogging toward him, however, he couldn't help but laugh.
"Compass, what are you wearing?" he chuckled. She was dressed in khaki shorts and was wearing what appeared to be a twill safari hat.
Putting her hands on her hips, Compass frowned at him. "You said we'd be fighting dinosaurs in the jungle," she said, and then doffed her hat. "I figured I should dress for the occasion." Then she gestured at him. "What are you wearing? You look like some kind of reject Catholic schoolboy. Turquoise plaid really doesn't go with your skintone at all."
Axel arched one eyebrow. "Trust me, this isn't exactly my usual style," he assured her. "I woke up dressed like this this morning and haven't been able to do anything about it since."
"Well, I guess it's good we're dealing with dinosaurs and not the fashion police," she snickered.
"Whenever you're done," he said, rolling his eyes and folding his arms.
Compass grinned and reached past him to press the elevator button. "You're too sensitive," she said, nudging him with her shoulder.
"'You're too sensitive~'" he echoed in a mocking tone, his eyes reeling skyward as the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Stepping backward into the elevator, he folded his arms and leaned against the wall. "At least it's jungle and not winter down here," he said; "damn Sphere refuses to let me wear my coat." He plucked at one arm, pinching the skin on the back of his wrist between two fingers. "Ain't exactly like I have much insulation, you know?"
She tilted her head thoughtfully at him, frowning a bit. "I still say it's completely unfair that you keep that girlish figure so easily, eating all that ice cream," she said. "Would that I had your metabolism."
"Yeah I get that a lot."
"What happened to your face, by the way?" she asked then, tactless and without segue as usual, and he looked confused for a moment, lifting one hand to his cheek as if to make certain his skin was still there.
"Ah?"
She waggled her fingers near the side of her face. "The skin around your eyes looks all angry and sunburnt," she said, and then covered her mouth with one hand for an instant. "You didn't have a close encounter with Miss Rosalind's chemicals, did you?"
He frowned. "Ah... oh. Er, no." Pressing his fingertips into the visibly irritated skin around his eye, he forced a watery grin. "Watch out for the little dinosaurs that look like frilled lizards," he warned; "they... spit."
"Spit?"
"Spit."
She stared at him for a moment, her brow furrowed and her eyes narrow, and then she asked carefully, "What in the world were you doing near its face?"
A valid question indeed. With a harrumph, he shifted a bit as the elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open. "Toushi and I had been trying to evade some bigger, aggressive ones," he explained, and then lifted both hands to either side of his face, splaying his fingers out to look like fish fins or, in this case, the frills from the dinosaur. "We ducked behind some foliage and there was this little guy there, with his frills all open."
"You know that's usually intended to be a deterrent," Compass said, walking past him and out of the elevator, mimicking his pantomime and then making a sibilant rattling noise. "The frills and all are supposed to scare you off, and they puff out frills to make themselves look bigger. Did you know that's the original purpose of goosebumps? When you get scared, it's a natural response to make yourself look bigger to spook away enemies, but humans don't have fur anymore, so the effect is kind of lost."
"Well it didn't attack us," he said, mostly ignoring her trivia and addressing the original point again; "we just wanted to chill behind that bush until we could regroup and get away from the other ones." He glowered at that, like maybe the dinosaur should have known better. Realizing he still had his hands in frill-position beside his face, he instead covered his eyes with his palm and turned to follow her out of the elevator. "So I turned to kind of shoo it away, since the rattly noise was loud and we were kinda worried it would attract the others--"
"Oh, brilliant," Compass remarked.
"--and it spat at me," he concluded, still covering his face. "Man, the folks at Wellspring had a regular field day with me when I got there. Never mind Toushi, dragging me along like some kind'a cripple."
"You're just lucky it didn't blind you or something," Compass said, and Axel let his hand fall away from his face.
"Fair enough," he said, pointing at her, "but it really hurt, either way, so..."
Axel could practically feel his heart hiccup as his peripheral vision focused on their surroundings. His voice trailed off as his throat tightened and everything behind his sternum tensed up, his spine stiffening and his eyes widening.
They were standing on a dusty road that was half-obscured in fog, the buildings beyond them shifting in and out of vision as the mist swirled eerily along the street. The nearest facade had a sign in the window, but the glass was spiderwebbed and he couldn't make out what it said. The air was almost uncomfortably tepid, humid, heavy, but his skin felt clammy all the same. This was not a jungle full of dinosaurs. This was--
"No..."
He didn't even hear if Compass was still talking or not; Axel twisted sharply to try and catch the elevator doors as he heard them sliding closed behind him, but he was an instant too late. His hand hit wall, and he exhaled audibly as all traces of the elevator vanished, leaving his palm pressed against the peeling paint of an old wooden bus stop. He stared at the solid wall a moment, willing the doors to come back, silently pleading for a quick way out of this place before anything happened, but the paint just cracked and flaked away beneath his hand as he pressed his fingertips fiercely into the rotting wood. Pulling his hand away, he looked at the paint chips on his palm--rust-red, smudging across his skin like he had torn his hand open--and with a soft cry he smeared the paint onto the thigh of his pants.
"Compass."
"This doesn't look much like a jungle, Axe--ah?" She had strayed out from under the awning over the bus stop, and squeaked in alarm when Axel snatched her arm to yank her back under it, as if keeping out of the misty rain that sort of drifted down from the roiling grey skies above would protect them. "What's the matter?" she asked, her eyes wide as she looked up at him. She had never really seen him look quite so alarmed, he was pretty sure--they had been on their share of complicated missions, but this place was a whole other ballgame.
"We have to get out of here," he said, and she rubbed her arms, perhaps subconsciously. The air wasn't cold, but it clung to the skin like cobwebs, and Axel repressed the shudder that wanted to crawl up his spine. "This isn't the place with the dinosaurs--this is not a place we want to be."
"You've been here before?" she asked, and he nodded.
"Yeah, a while back, with Toushi," he said, his long fingers still closed around her arm, though he didn't seem to notice he was still holding on to her. "I didn't think the Wilderness would have changed so quickly."
Compass fiddled with her hat. "W-well I heard some people saying that it seemed to be more unstable," she said, "but nobody's ever heard of it changing in just 24 hours."
Realizing he was still gripping her arm, he released her, leaving faint white lines across her skin where his fingers had been closed around her arm. Compass stared at the lines as they faded back to the pinkish tone of her skin, and then glanced up at him.
"Axel, what... is this place?" she asked. "I don't think I've ever seen you look so freaked out--like even that time we went to that castle that was all drenched in sunset."
Yeah, that had been a fun Wilderness. Those weird twilight monsters had been a real pain in the ass. But they really had nothing on the beasties in this town. "Compass, those dreadlock-monsters really can't hold a candle to this place," he said without looking at her. He was scanning the street and trying to figure out which building would be the most likely to have an elevator, since that would probably be their best bet at finding the right elevator to take them back up into the tree. At the end of the street there was a four-story building that looked like it could have been a hotel or a hospital at one point, and decided that was probably the most likely candidate. Now, how to get half a click down a foggy monster-infested road without getting killed? That was going to be the tricky part.
He knew Compass wasn't really a brawler. Hell, he wasn't really a brawler, he didn't have the bulk or the stamina for it. He relied on strategy to end a fight quickly before things got too messy. Either way, though Compass had proven she could hold her own in a fistfight (she'd punched one of those twilight monsters right in the kisser she had), he wasn't about to see how well she fared dealing with undead creepers and creatures whose internal organs weren't so internal anymore.
"It's called Silent Hill," he said, his voice low and his spine taut as he moved to the edge of the little bus stop enclosure and peered around the corner carefully. He made a beckoning gesture at her, his eyes still on the road, a silent order to stay close. Axel wasn't exactly poster child for Big Damn Hero or Protective Sentinel type (he usually left that sort of crap to Toushi), but Compass was his partner, and more than that she was... well, his friend, and he wasn't too keen on getting separated. "I dunno how it works," he admitted, "but it's like this place can get inside your head. It knows how to scare you and it does a damn good job of it."
"I hardly pegged you for the jumpy type." Compass's voice was thin, wavering ever so slightly. Axel had to grin a bit--he was rubbing off on her. She was being sassy to hide what she really wanted to say.
"Let's just say I'd rather watch a scary movie than live it," he said, and felt her move up right beside him, as if she'd suddenly decided to take what he was saying seriously. "Come on, there's a taller building at the end of the road. There's probably an elevator in there."
"With luck it'll be the one we're looking for, right?" she asked, and he craned his neck to look back at her, giving a silent nod. She frowned. "Wish I'd brought my rabbit's foot."
"I dunno why they say those are lucky," he said, stepping out from beneath the enclosure and into the strange heavy mist. "I mean, the rabbit wasn't very lucky if it lost its foot, right?" The chatter was nervous and rattled, hushed and almost muffled in the mist, but it was better than silence.
"I guess you're right," she said, following half a stride behind him. She had taken off her hat and was clutching it to her chest, her thatch of dishwater blond hair slightly disheveled from the apparently hasty removal of the cranial accessory. "But then, four-leaf-clovers are just mutations based on environment or a recessive gene," she said; "nobody's even certain, really, so I guess they're no better."
"Some people believe acorns are good luck," Axel said, slinking across the road to move quietly along the buildings on the far side of the street. "Those aren't even rare: all you need's an oak tree."
"Same could be said for horseshoes," she pointed out, "though substitute horse for oak tree. Actually you don't even need a horse--a barn will usually suffice." Then turned when there was a sound from behind them. He felt her jerk and sort of scrabble to one side of him, and she gasped sharply. "A-Axel, what the hell is--?"
He didn't wait for her to finish asking the question. Whirling at the sound of footsteps, he summoned one of his chakrams and let it fly--anyone he didn't want to skewer would have spoken up by now; he was easy enough to recognize, even in this mist. The weapon spun through the air, whistling as it arced and cut neatly into the body of what looked like a dog. A dog that... had no skin. Compass let out a cry and covered her face with her hat, and Axel just grimaced, dismissing the chakram before it returned to his hand. He really didn't want skinless zombie dog blood on him.
Putting a hand on Compass's shoulder as he moved past her to examine the corpse, he dropped to a crouch about a foot away and just stared for a moment. He hadn't seen any of these the last time he'd been here. There had only been the strange, shambling figures that had followed him around, and those had been easy enough to outrun. A quadruped would always outrun a biped of comparable mass, though--that was just plain old physics, and he wasn't liking these odds. If the sheer numbers of shambling zombies from before gave any indication of just how social the creatures in this place were, he didn't want to wait around for this thing's friends to show up.
Rising quickly and making a face as one of his knees gave an audible crack, Axel grabbed Compass by the arm again and tugged.
"Come on, let's go." He paused just long enough for her to fall into step behind him again, then moved quickly along the sidewalk.
Somewhere in the distance, he heard an unearthly howl. Damn, had that thing's friends figured it out already? He picked up his pace just a little. Compass had short legs, after all.
"What about lucky bugs?"
"Huh?" Her voice was sharp against the quiet, a little too shrill. She was audibly shaken.
"Ladybugs, scarab beetles," he said, trying to get back to that nervous energy from before. The chatter made the eeriness of it all seem a little more tolerable. Far be it from Axel to admit that anything really had him bothered, but this place genuinely scared the bejeezus out of him, and right now he just honestly didn't care if he was nattering like an idiot to make it a little easier to handle. "Dragonflies are lucky in some places, too. Wonder how that happened." Ancient Egyptian scarab beetles were dung beetles--that didn't seem very lucky, or even very pleasant.
"Crickets, too," she added, walking almost too-close behind him and nearly stepping on the backs of his shoes.
Another howl. It was closer this time.
"Well, crickets are just obnoxious," he said. They were nearly to the tall building now. Another hundred yards. "Ever had one of those suckers in your room at night? Can't find it, can't shut it up... who decided those were lucky, huh?"
"Prolly the same guy who decided a disembodied rabbit foot was lucky." There was a grin in her voice, and Axel let out a helpless laugh. It was a little too nervous, a little too loud, and she joined in the hesitant, anxious laughter.
Fifty yards. Another howl. Twenty-five yards. There was the sound of snarling, gnashing teeth, and far-off footsteps on damp earth. Running footsteps. Galloping? It was a steady, pounding rhythm. Axel didn't look behind them.
Ten yards. Eight. Another howl. Another snarl. He reached blindly behind him and snatched Compass's arm, pulling her roughly forward and all but shoving her up the steps to the front door of the building. She stumbled, but didn't fall, and grabbed the door handles, yanking them open as five more of the skinless dogs came cantering up behind them, appearing out of the mist almost as if they had been born from it. Axel summoned his chakrams again, but didn't have a chance to throw them before the dogs lunged forward, rushing up the steps like a cresting wave.
Compass's hands tangled in the back of his shirt and she pulled him through the open doorway with all her might, sending him staggering backward with an unbecoming yelp. She slammed the door and drove a crowbar through the handles as the dogs hurled themselves at it. Axel was seated on the floor, leaning back on his hands, his chakrams a few feet away having clattered to the dusty tile beneath them. He was staring at Compass where she was slowly backing away from the rattling door. She glanced at him, her eyes wide and questioning--"Are you okay?" Her voice was barely a squeak.
He nodded wordlessly, then said, "You're stronger than you look."
"Well you weigh like ninety pounds soaking wet," she rebuffed, as if he had insulted her, and there was a beat of silence and then more anxious laughter.
"We gotta get the hell out of here," he said, getting to his feet, dismissing his weapons again without physically retrieving them; "I dunno how much more my blood pressure can handle."
The old building was derelict at best; it would have been condemned in any town that wasn't already apparently haunted. The tile floors were peeling, the squares pulled up at the corners almost like tiny hands had been trying to lift them from the floor. ... Had they? He didn't want to think about it. The walls were paneled in wood, with crooked old paintings of old men with sagging jowls and wire-rimmed glasses. Doctors, by the look of them--so it was a hospital, then. Great, just what they needed: an environment full of surgical knives and other potential instruments of torture at the zombies' disposal.
Well, maybe the zombies hadn't figured out how to open doors.
They moved down a hallway, and the light from the grimy windows faded, leaving them half in obscurity, and Axel felt Compass sidle right up alongside him, as if they were running a three-legged race. He glanced down to see her clutching at her hat again, and frowned. Holding one hand up, he snapped his fingers to summon a little ball of flame. It hovered in the air above his palm, and he had to be a little extra careful since he hadn't been allowed to wear his gloves, but the additional illumination was worth the risk. No sooner had they turned a corner did he stop dead in his tracks.
"Wh--?"
He held up his free hand to silence her before she could ask what the problem was. She lifted her head and glanced down the hallway before them, and he heard her exhale, then gasp for breath.
It seemed the zombies could open doors after all. At the end of the hall was a tall, thin figure, draped in black. It was the thing that had approached him in the graveyard, he was sure of it. The image of the beating heart in its hands was still burned into his mind, and the sound of it still pounded in his ears.
... No, that was his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, wasn't it?
"Compass, run."
"What?" She shook her head fiercely. "If we get separated, we won't be able to get out of here."
"Just go," he said, his chakrams in his hands again before he really even thought about it, the firelight flickering eerily off the walls as the figure began its familiar slow walk toward him. "I'll find you, okay? Just get out of here, and I'll find you."
He had already killed this thing once, he would kill it again... but he didn't want her to see it. Whatever this thing wanted, whatever it was going to show him this time, he wasn't going to make her watch. The thing paused in its steps, inhaled audibly, and then let out an unearthly screeching howl, like the cry of some horrific banshee, and Compass dropped her hat to cover her ears, squeezing her eyes closed.
"Compass, go!" Axel shouted, taking a step back. "I'll be right behind you, just go. Find the end of the hall--there's got to be an elevator in here somewhere. Just meet me at the far end of the hall."
The creature shambled toward them again, and Compass shakily reached down to grab her hat. "O-okay," she said, and Axel glanced over his shoulder to look at her. She was scowling at him. "You'd better come," she said fiercely. "If you die here, I'm gonna have to report to Captain Locket that you were acting recklessly, and that could reflect poorly on your status as an Adventurer, and I really don't want to have to do that, cuz then when you came back you'd probably have to go up for review to make sure you were mentally sound enough to continue doing missions, and the whole thing would just be a big mess and--"
"Compass. Get out of here before I throw you down the hall."
She turned and darted down the hall, into the darkness, into the encompassing obscurity, and as he watched her form vanish into the shadows, he suddenly felt horribly alone. Shaky, unsteady footsteps tore him from his sudden stupor, and he watched as the creature before him drew ever closer, its hands drawn up near its chest, its face obscured beneath the black hood. Axel didn't wait this time--he knew what was coming. It would rip its heart out and offer it to him, and he would have to suppress that urge to vomit, and he didn't have time for this crap today.
Pausing in its shuffling step, the figure canted its head and peered at him, its eyes obscured beneath its black hood, and it made a snuffling noise, like maybe it was having trouble breathing. "What'd you, rip your lungs out to offer somebody, too?" Axel taunted. "I don't wanna play with you today."
The creature howled, and Axel bared his teeth, thrusting his chakrams forward and sending a blast of flame toward the shrouded figure. It flailed briefly, making a horrible screeching noise, and he backpedaled quickly as it pitched to the floor. Its body twitched briefly, its arms reached toward him, pulling itself across the floor even as its back and legs burned. The horrific howling never stopped, and Axel flinched as its fingers dug into the floor, pulling its ruined body along as if it was trying to drag itself out of quicksand.
He didn't bother to finish it off. Maybe it wasn't worth it, or maybe he just wanted the thing to suffer. Either way, he wasn't going to hang around to let the stench of burning, rotting flesh cling to his clothes. Turning, he dashed down the same hallway Compass had taken, his chakrams in his hands, the flames lighting up the hallway as he ran.
The hall was long, straight, the darkness thick and almost cloying. He glanced over his shoulder briefly, watching as the creature's flaming shape dragged itself along the floor behind him, yards away, tens of yards away, all the way at the end of the hall, the fire along its body like a beacon at the end of a tunnel. It wouldn't catch up. Coming to the end of the hall, he found it opened in a T-shape. Had Compass gone left or right? Had she even been able to see in this darkness? Axel suddenly wondered if he had made the right choice sending her ahead. What if she had encountered something else? What if she hadn't even seen it until it was too late?
"Dammit..."
The chakrams disappeared, leaving just the little ball of flame in his hand again, and that sound of blood pounding in his ears was deafening all over again in the quiet. The creature's howls had stopped, and now only the occasional scraping noise of its body dragging along the floor could be heard. After catching his breath, Axel turned down the hallway to the right. Compass was right-handed--maybe she'd gone to the right. It was as good a guess as the other direction, he supposed, and he had a 50% chance of guessing right. Following the hall where it curved around to the right, he spotted faint footprints in the dust. The prints were small and hurried--definitely Compass's. Good.
Rounding the next bend, though, he paused, frowning. There was a path straight ahead and a path to his right, but more worrisome than the sudden need to make a choice again was the floor. Suddenly there were two sets of footprints on it. Both of them appeared to be Compass's, and one came from the path to the right. Had she doubled back? Why would she bother?
"Compass?" he called in the darkness, suddenly a hair more concerned than he had been a moment ago. This place was creepy enough as it was, but his missing partner and her mysterious footprints weren't helping.
One of the sets of footprints led to a door, and passed through. Maybe she was hiding--no, that couldn't be right. The footprints came back out again, he noted, and continued down the straight hallway. He reached for the door handle, wondering if maybe she'd found something unsavory in there. He didn't see any blood on the floor, so he assumed she wasn't injured, at least.
"Eh?" The door was locked. He jiggled the knob and leaned into the door with his shoulder, but it wouldn't open. "How in the hell...?" Compass's footprints definitely went into, and out of, that room. Had she locked the door behind her for some reason? No, that couldn't be it: it was an old door, an old knob, it needed a key to lock it. He could see the keyhole, big and clunky like the rusted rings of keys military prison guards always carried in old pirate movies.
So how had she gotten in? Had someone locked the door after she'd left? Axel didn't bother suppressing a shudder this time when the creature at the end of the hall moaned, its miserable cry lilting dissonantly down the corridor like that of an injured, scared animal.
Okay, back to the footsteps.
There were many doors along this hallway, and he could see Compass's footsteps move toward each one, pause at some, and move through others. Every door he tried to open was locked, and when he tried one she had paused at and moved beyond, as if she had been unable to open it, he found it was unlocked. How had she moved through the locked doors and been blocked at the open one? This just made no sense.
He heard a rustling noise and held the little flame up. "Compass?" The light caught a flicker of pale clothing, and he spotted a tiny figure curled up in a corner of the hallway, its knees drawn up and its head bowed into them, arms encircling its shins. There was no sign of her hat anywhere, and her hair looked ever more disheveled now. She looked so much smaller than he had ever seen her. "Oi, Compass," he said, moving quickly toward her and hoping this wasn't some kind of trick. "Compass."
Axel paused beside a table at the end of the hallway that conveniently had a small candelabrum on it. Most of the candles were burnt down to the point that they wouldn't even light anymore, but he was able to set three of them alight, and then waved away the flame in his hand so he could drop to a crouch beside her when she didn't lift her head. She was rocking back and forth like a child only barely awoken from a nightmare.
"Compass."
"I can't make a map," she said into her knees. "I can't do it. The doors keep changing."
He blinked. "Huh?"
She lifted her head then, her lower lip trembling and her eyes wide and wild, glinting yellow in the candlelight. "I tried all the doors," she said, "in the hallway as I was running. I tried them all. Three on the left opened, two on the right. I remember--I remember!" Her voice was frantic but soft, almost a wheeze, and she buried her face in her knees again. "But the hallway comes around, and I was in the same place again," she said. Ah, that explained the two sets of footprints. "But the doors had changed. The ones that had opened before were locked now. I couldn't open them--I can't make a map. I don't know where we are, I don't know where we've been, I don't know where we're going! We're lost... we're lost.. I'm lost!"
"Easy, Compass," he said, but didn't touch her. Kagerou was very tactile--she always put a hand on his arm when he wasn't quite right, or playfully tweaked at his hair when she was teasing him--but it was a habit he hadn't quite picked up. The occasional headruffle was about as far as he went, and this was one of those situations where touching her would probably have just made it worse. "Remember what I told you about this place?"
She lifted her head then, breathing rapidly, raggedly, and he gave her a stern stare, tapping his temple.
"It gets into your head," he said. "It knows how to scare you. So don't let it." Of course, the fact that he was pretty freaked out right now probably wasn't helping his case, but that wasn't the point. Compass lived up to her name, after all--she always knew where she was and where she was headed, and that this place had taken away her orientation of all things was terrifyingly specific. If she couldn't make a map, even in her head, she was lost, and Compass was never lost. "Come on, get up," he said, rising and now extending a hand. "There's gotta be an elevator somewhere."
"I-I looked in the open rooms," she said shakily, unfolding her legs slowly and then reaching hesitantly for his hand, as if she wasn't certain he was real. "I was looking for the elevator so I could tell you where it was." She paused, swallowed, then grabbed his hand and seemed to relax a little as he pulled her upright. Shaking her head, she lifted a hand to her crown and looked momentarily disappointed when she realized her hat was nowhere to be found before straightening a little and giving Axel a helpless look. "I'm sorry," she said, and he made a face.
"Buh? For what?" he asked, shaking his head. "I wasn't sending you to find the damn elevator, I was telling you to get away from the creepy monster, that's all." It was easier to pretend this whole thing didn't have his every last nerve on edge when he could distract himself by trying to keep Compass from having a meltdown. "Come on, we'll find the elevator together," he said, releasing her hand and grabbing the candelabrum off the table. He was less likely to burn the crap out of his hand holding that, in any case. "It'll be a little easier if you can see, I'd wager."
Nervous laughter tumbled out of her, and she fell into step beside him, her fingers threaded together as if she were trying to keep herself from gripping his arm. Without her hat to keep her hands occupied, she just fidgeted with her fingers, interlocking them and splaying them intermittently. They moved silently down the hall, Axel's spine rigid and Compass walking stiff-legged beside him.
"I already went down here," she said softly, like maybe raising her voice would attract another monster. "The third and fifth doors on the left opened, but they probably won't now."
"Don't let's be pessimistic," Axel chided, holding the candelabrum up to see if he could see a bit further down the hall.
The scraping sound of the cloaked creature from the end of the hall had stopped. The silence actually made him more nervous, because that could have meant the thing had died... or it could have meant it was back on its feet and creeping silently down the hall. He really hoped it was the former.
They turned the corner to the right, and moved silently down the hall, and then turned again, and Axel stopped in his tracks, furrowing his brow.
"What?" came Compass's voice, and he glanced at her, the angles of his face sharp and jerky in the flickering light of the candles.
"This should be the original hallway," he said, peering both ways before looking back at her, "but it's not." They had made three rights, which should have brought them back to that first hallway, but when he held the candelabrum up, he saw a photo on the wall in a cracked black frame, the image obscured by the broken glass before it. "That wasn't there before," he said, pointing, "and... that, either." He gestured at a chair beside the first door on the right.
"Ah!" Compass grabbed his arm and squeezed, pointing toward the far end of the hall. "And neither was that!"
His eyes moved down the hall, and he was pretty sure he exhaled audibly when he spotted what she'd seen. At the far end of the hall were a pair of sliding metal doors: an elevator. If the halls were changing rapidly and things were there now that hadn't been there before, he had a feeling this elevator was the right one.
"Come on," he said, jerking his chin and heading down the hall. He kept his eye on the double doors the entire time, almost afraid they would vanish if he looked away. Ten yards to go... eight... five...
"Leaving so soon?"
Axel jumped, whirling sharply when a voice broke through the silence of the hallway. It wasn't so much the sudden advent of sound as it was the familiarity of the voice that startled him. Holding up the candles, he turned to see a figure back at the fork in the hallway. This silhouette was small, thin, a contour shadow barely backlit by the diffused grey light from the other end of the corridor. That voice... why did he know that voice?
"Haven't you figured out yet that running away never fixes things?" the figure asked, and Axel narrowed his eyes. Another black coat, another obscured face, but this time with a voice that sent goosebumps up and down his arms.
"Who are you?" he asked, feeling Compass's fingers tighten around his arm. "What do you want?"
He could practically feel the figure smile. "I just wanted to bid you farewell," the figure said, and then there was a light, airy chuckle. "After all, we never really got to say goodbye properly, did we?"
"Wh--"
"Traitor."
Axel didn't even had a chance to ask what the figure meant by a proper goodbye before it spat out the word as if it tasted terrible. Traitor? What? The man on the beach had said that, too, had called him a traitor. How did--? No.
"You're only saying that because you're in my head," he snarled, tapping his temple and handing the candelabrum off to Compass, who only reluctantly released his arm to accept it. "You, this place, somehow you know how to get under peoples' skin, don't you? You can see what throws me out of my comfort zone, so you exploit it." He strode purposefully toward the figure, suddenly not afraid anymore. This was all in his head. He didn't doubt these things, these visions, were real, were substantial, but they wouldn't have any power if he wasn't afraid, right? "If you wanna scare me, pal, you're gonna have to try harder; I don't remember betraying anybody, so maybe you should try another angle."
The figure seemed unfazed as Axel approached. "Traitor," it hissed again. "Wretched, foolish deserter, do you really think what you don't remember can't hurt you?" Another raspy laugh dusted out from beneath the hood. "Trust what you remember, seek what you forget... and you will find someone very special."
"Quit the cryptic doubletalk," he snarled, frustrated now and not sure why the words the figure spoke bothered him so much. "What the hell does that mean?"
"You don't know?" it said. "But you're the one who said it! You said it, and then you betrayed them all. Your coworkers. Your colleagues. Your comrades. Your friends."
"I didn't betray anybody!" he snapped, swiping a hand through the air and closing the distance between himself and the figure. "Show your face, you worthless coward--"
As he yanked the hood away from the small figure's head, however, nothing could have prepared him for the sight beneath it. He backpedaled, staggering, like he'd been struck in the head, and there was another peal of hoarse laughter.
"Be forewarned..." the figure said, the voice sterner now, deeper, more serious. The voice was familiar, so familiar... the face, the eyes, the voice... "When your sleeping memories awaken, you may no longer be you."
Axel stared, horrified, into his own bright turquoise eyes. The face was younger, the hair shorter... he lacked the tattoos, but this thing, shrouded in black, was him. It was like looking through a mirror back in time. He had been cursed by the Sphere once and put in this body he now gazed upon, the body of a fifteen-year-old. Why would this place say these words to him in his own voice? From his own mouth?
"You betrayed them once, you'll betray them again," his younger self said, eyes narrow as Axel staggered backward, bumping into Compass. She grabbed his arm again, but he barely registered the pressure. "You turned your back on your friend--your best friend! Your only friend. You left him behind. You turned to the puppet and the key instead. You left him behind!"
"Axel." Compass's voice was quiet but urgent. He didn't really hear her. There was a scraping sound from somewhere off to their left, somewhere behind them, where the hall faded into shadow beyond the elevator lobby.
The younger image of himself hadn't moved, and was now shouting from where he stood in the hallway fork. "Our most precious memories lie deep in our hearts, out of reach. You said it yourself, Axel, but what do you know of hearts?"
"A-Axel..." Her voice was more urgent, a little sharper now. The scraping grew louder. "... Axel?"
"The light within the darkness," the cloaked figure of his past said. "You've lost sight of it. You've forgotten forgetting."
"Axel!"
Baring his teeth, he summoned his chakrams and brought them both to bear, twisting to his left as Compass screamed. The candelabrum tumbled from her grip, the candles rolling across the floor. There was a great clangg! and a shower of sparks as a massive blade struck his weapons, heavy and with such force that he actually almost dropped to his knees with the sheer power of it. Snapping his head up, the snarl on his face abated, melting away into something like outright horror at the figure standing in the quickly fading light.
He was huge, tall, with great muscled arms and a massive machete-like blade caught in one meaty hand. His head was obscured beneath a triangular helm, and he was clad only in what looked like the bottom half of a robe made of... oh god, was that skin? There was a stench of blood and death about him, and the helm tilted ever so slightly to one side, almost as if in curiosity, before the figure took a step backward and dragged his massive blade back. Axel grit his teeth as the ragged edge of the huge sword scraped deafeningly against his chakrams, but he dared not move away. The blade was massive and heavy--if he shifted, it would have cloven him in two!
ding!
Light flooded the hall as the elevator doors slid open, unbidden.
"Compass, go."
"Axel--"
"Don't worry about me, just go!" he barked, and waited until the man with the helmet's blade had slid from his chakrams to fall heavily to the floor, splintering the tile beneath it like it was made of ice. "Go to the elevator. I'll be right behind you."
"Axel, I'm not--"
"Just go!" Axel snarled, his chakrams blazing suddenly and causing the helmeted figure to pause briefly as it gathered its sword up to make another swing. "This thing can't swing that blade quickly, but if it gets to us before we get to the elevator, the captain'll be pissed at us for coming home in pieces." He took a step back, pressing her backward with his own body. "Now go. I'll keep him busy."
He felt Compass turn and run for the elevator, and his eyes strayed for just an instant back to the younger image of himself. It was just staring at him, at the struggle, eyes narrowed with mirth.
"Traitor my ass," Axel said darkly, and thrust the chakrams forward, pressing them flush against the helmeted man's bare torso. The flames of the weapons seared into its skin, and Axel barely noticed the flames licking his own arms as the figure howled in pain and flailed backward. Dismissing the weapons, Axel whirled as Compass stood in the doorway of the elevator to keep it open, her eyes wide. "Inside!" he shouted, not bothering to look back as he heard the scraping sound of the helmeted figure pulling its sword behind it as it closed in on them.
She backed away, and the doors began to close. Five yards. Four yards. Three yards. The doors were halfway closed.
Two yards.
The sword scraped behind him, and he could feel the air shift as the sword was raised.
Five feet. Four. Compass had covered her face in the elevator. Three feet, two, the doors were still closing. He dove the last of the distance, crashing into the elevator with a clatter and a grunt of pain, and Compass gasped loudly, dropping to her knees to fold herself over his head as the massive rusted blade glinted in the light from the inside of the elevator.
The doors closed. There was a deafening bang. And then there was nothing.
An endless moment of silence stretched out in which neither Axel nor Compass dared move, dared breathe, and then the elevator jostled slightly and hummed to life, and there was that familiar sensation of rising as it carried them back up into the Sphere. Axel let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and Compass opened her eyes to peer at him where she was still folded over him.
"A-a-are you...?"
He closed his eyes. "I'm okay."
She tumbled backward onto her rump and leaned against the elevator wall, letting her head loll limply to one side. "I thought we were gonna die."
"You thought we were gonna die..." he grumbled, grimacing as he rolled to one side and pushed up to his hands and knees to examine the burns on his arms. Stupid Sphere and its stupid uniform... if he'd been wearing his coat this wouldn't have been a problem, but no~ it had to stuff him in short sleeves.
"He was wrong." Compass's voice was firm, determined, and Axel glanced at her.
"Huh?"
"I don't care what your memories tell you," she said, shaking her head, "you're not a traitor. You wouldn't betray your friends. Not unless they betrayed you first." She averted her eyes and scowled at the floor. "You've stuck your neck out for me before," she said. "You've done it for your sister, too. For Toushi, and Smoke--you would never betray your friends." Her eyes found his again. "So forget what that stupid kid said. I don't care how much he looked like you, or what he says he knows about you."
"C-Compass"...
"He doesn't know jack crap."
She said it so sternly, so matter-of-factly that it sounded absolutely ridiculous, and before he even realized it, he was laughing hysterically. Maybe it was the adrenaline, maybe it was because he'd just burned the crap out of his arms, or maybe it was just because sometimes Compass was unintentionally hilarious, but whatever it was, he couldn't stop laughing, and he doubled over, clutching his abdomen as he just cackled with a sort of abandon he rarely utilized.
Compass didn't lie--if there was one thing he had learned about her over his months of working with her, it was that aside from never knowing when to put down the mostly-useless trivia, she was honest to a fault. If Compass said she believed in him, then it was the god-honest truth, and maybe that meant something after all. Somewhere along the way she had joined in the helpless, almost delirious laughter, maybe because laughter was better than crying--they'd just almost been cleaved to bits by a half-naked man wearing a pyramid on his head... it was either laugh or pass out.
He would worry about trying to figure out what it all had meant later, after he had bandaged his arms and taken one hell of a nap. Right now he was just relieved to be out of there in one piece. And when the elevator opened at the Access Point to a thin crowd of people waiting for a ride, the image of two ragged, injured explorers howling with hysterical laughter was enough to make anyone question the sanity of the Adventurers under Locket's employ.