sleazeoverstyle | (no subject)

(no subject)

Shit.

Shit. It's pretty much all he can do to follow through this dark nothingness at Axel's heels, and he ain't so fond of the way this feels. He's been in worse situations before, of course, and he's about 99% sure he will be again, but this place can kiss his ass. It's like drowning in a nightmare and his Electro-Mag rod's buzzing and giving off the occasional nearly-invisible spark in his left hand and yeah, he's moving as fast as he can, even though he doesn't know where the hell he's going.

Every friggin' sense is on high alert, and because sight is low on the availability scale he does what he's trained to do: ignores the pounding of his own heart, lets himself adjust to the surroundings however he can, and shuts the hell up. If this is that Void he heard about, it ain't a place he wants to stay.

In the darkness he nods to Axel in a get us the fuck out of here now kind of way.

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Axel shakes his head.

"Not even a synthesis shop," he says. "There should be Heartless around somewhere, but the locals haven't been bothered. Then again, it's not like I know everything about the place." He pauses, parsing the unfamiliar terms from Reno's questions.

"What's materia?"

"It's..." What the hell's the official line on it? He's only read it a million times: materia are small crystallized spheres of spiritual energy that allow the user to cast various spells and use special abilities; the orbs contain the knowledge and memories of all who have lived and died in the past. While that answer's easy as shit on his world, -- everyone knows what materia is -- it's kind of a can of worms to explain.

Axel probably doesn't know the term Lifestream either, right. "Well, to put it in simple terms, materia are these little crystal spheres and they're what let us harness any magic at all." He holds his hand out, thumb and forefinger maybe an inch and a half apart. "The spheres are about that big and if you're lucky you might find 'em, but nowadays, they're mostly manufactured from Mako."

And he won't know what Mako is either.

"And Mako's... pretty much the pure liquid energy that runs my planet. Any of that make any sense at all, or you need me to whip out the Beginning Materia User's Instruction Manual?"

"No, I follow," Axel replies. "Sounds... Well, it's pretty lame that you have to use something like that to use any magic, but I guess whatever works, I mean... Actually, here, check this out--"

Reno's description - crystals made of energy - remind him a little of the composition of synthesis materials. So he rummages in his pocket a little, and snags out a little crescent-shaped shard of blue - a Frost Shard, as it happens - and tosses it to his not'twin.

"That's a Frost Shard," he explains, rubbing his fingers together; the things are cold.

He catches it easy with his left hand but doesn't hold onto it long: that thing's friggin' freezing and he holds it as little as possible between that same thumb and forefinger he used to show the size of materia before his whole hand goes numb and he has to toss it back. "You tryin' to freeze my nuts off, pal?"

It takes a while for him to shake the feeling back into his hand but once it's warmed up again, he reaches back for his own weapon, does a quick bit of disassembling, and holds out a small green orb. It glows and sparkles and looks like shit's moving around inside it. "That's materia. The green ones are magic and this one happens to be lightning." By itself it ain't gonna do a friggin' thing; it's safe to touch and hold. Not like that frost shard thing.

"How the hell you carry that ice thing around without freezing your ass off anyhow?"

"Magic pockets," Axel replies. "See?" He demonstrates by putting his arm into the pocket up to his elbow, without making a dent in the exterior of the coat. "It's really handy, especially for things like that.

He leans close, to peer at the materia. Reno says it's safe to touch, but he's not elementally normal, and even though it's not ice or water, he's still a little leery of handling unfamiliar magic that isn't fire.

"So you have a thing for lightning?" he asks. The moving, sparkling bits make him think of Elixir; golden and glowing, with shifting sparkling motes of something in it.

"Maybe." Casual as hell and in a ladies really dig electricity sort of way, he reequips the rod with the materia and stows it away. "Depends who's askin' and what kind of storm's brewin'."

Yeah, there might just be a smug little smile on his face.

"You might say electricity and I could help each other out in a pinch." It ain't just lightning, but that's the visual form it most often takes. Give him a good fight and it might just show.

There's other materia slots on that rod too, but a guy has to keep some things to himself.

"Well, I guess no one's perfect," Axel says, with a slight shake of his head.

Fire is way, way better.

"Smug egocentric I-play-with-matches ugly bastard." But he laughs -- out loud and everything -- and shrugs in amusement. "You gonna start your volcano flowing to amuse the locals?"

What he's really curious about is where this door of Axel's is that's gonna lead them back to the bar. He ain't in no hurry to go -- he's been in warm places dressed like this before and it's no big deal -- but he's always been a watch-and-learn kind of guy. And if his significantly less perfect partner-in-crime here can make a door to the bar show up from wherever the hell they are, then he can learn to do it too.

Talk about a nice impressive trick.

"What, you want to see an eruption?" Axel asks, grinning at him. Liken he'd pass up a perfectly good chance to show off? ...Well, he might, actually, if the circumstances were less than ideal, like if the Heartless suddenly started pouring out of the corners, but he thinks that's a little less than likely to happen.

"Far be it for me to be the cause of wanton destruction, my morally unscrupulous almost-twin." Hey, even he has to laugh at that one. Hello, Sector 7? And that was his home town?

Just his job.

Click.

"Well, if you insist, I'll hold myself back, somehow, Mr. Goody-goody," Axel replies, laughing along with him.

"It sure would be a pretty explosion." With a sigh, he gives the volcano a wistful look.

"Not that I'm advocating random acts of... fire, unless you want to."

"This isn't the kind of volcano that explodes very well," Axel says with a sigh. "It'll be really fucking cool if we stick around until after dark though."

He looks at Axel, then at the volcano, then up at the sky, then back at Axel. "Hey. Same deal with time standing still at home when we're here as it does when we're at the bar?"

If that's true, he ain't in any kind of rush at all. If it ain't, though, someone -- probably the boss -- is gonna notice he ain't around to answer his phone or ask how high when the guy says jump.

And the boss is the only person he does that for.

"As far as I know, as long as you don't leave through your door, time stands still. I don't know how it'd work if you were to go back to your world from here though," he says. "As far as I know, I'm the only one who wanders around as regularly as I do, and I'm usually pretty careful about how I do it."

Again, he looks from Axel to the sky to the volcano; there's a faraway and almost content look on his face for just a moment.

"Fuck it. It's a risk I'll take. You want to wait till dark, then set that sucker off?"

It'll be so pretty and he really can't resist the very idea of it.

Axel flexes his hands, and grins. It's not what most people would call a pleasant grin, but it is very much the sort of grin that takes a great deal of pleasure in its life's work.

"Sounds like a plan to me," he says.

He knows grins like that. Not just 'cause Demyx gave him one when they talked either: he's seen 'em lots of times. He's made 'em lots of times himself, usually before he does something a little... oh, say destructive.

The time passes pleasantly enough: there's plenty of shade and one of the locals even brings over a couple drinks just to be nice -- what the fuck, who does that besides no one? -- as the afternoon turns to evening and the sun begins to set. This town of Axel's is a real sleepy one but it's cool and he's almost ready to revisit his whole thing about being able to live in a place like this. But that's just an afternoon of nothin' but friggin' lazy talking, and he knows he'd get sick of it sooner or later. Probably sooner.

The stars from here are pretty spectacular, and if he was the kind of guy who actually gave a shit about that kind of thing he'd be impressed. But a nature boy he ain't, and as the sky darkens he gives Axel an expectant look.

"What do you think? Time for the show?"

"Oh yeah," Axel says, turning to look up at the black blot of the mountain looming up over the island. Everything looks quiet, sounds quiet, but underneath, he can feel the fire, just waiting to be called out. Him, or Mother Nature, it'll happen one way or the other, and given the amount of elemental fire boiling just under the surface of everything here... sooner rather than later is always, always the option.

Axel's fingers curl a little, and his eyes narrow slightly; there's fire in them, if you look closely enough. If you know what to look for.

And the ground rumbles, as the magma shifts.

"You may want to find something to hold onto," he murmurs. He flexes his hands, and pours power into the fire under his feet; the ground directly underneath him has taken on a reddish glow in the dark, and up near the peak, from one of the lower magma vents, something red-hot nd glowing can be seen starting to ooze out.

It's a fuck of a thing, when the ground starts to rumble underfoot like that. He's walked through every single friggin' Mako reactor in his world and he knows what it feels like when raw power's harnessed: it's an unmistakable feeling and he likes the rush you get from it... a lot. There's elemental things that just turn him right the fuck on.

Maybe him and Axel ain't so different at heart. Fire, electricity: it's all there, it's all cool.

And as the lava starts to flow, he grabs onto a nearby tree branch and even that's humming and resonating with whatever it is Axel's doing.

It's a hell of a show: his kinda-sorta twin was right. It's way better against the backdrop of black sky, with the sound of the ocean in the background. When that lava hits the water -- if it runs that far -- it's gonna make a great friggin' sound.

Oh, it'll get that far; there's enough for that right now, even if there's not enough for a really big show. But the bright glowing red is oozing quickly down the side of the mountain now, following the easy path already carved by the earlier eruption.

The villagers have stopped their usual activities, to look and point, and chatter excitedly. Another eruption hadn't been expected this soon.

A little while longer, and it has enough momentum to keep itself going.

Axel's hands relax, and he sits... not quite hard, but it's clear he's been going to some effort. And he laughs.

That laugh makes him smile, right there in the darkness where no one can see him. No one except Axel, that is, and he ain't looking.

"That's somethin' friggin' else." He sits now too, cross-legged next to Axel, and watches the lava flow down from the top of that mountain. It inches but it's mesmerizing as anything and he appreciates it.

"Nice doin'. Yeah, my boss would hire you in a second. You ever decide you want to go into pro... Administrative Research and if you get sick of the end of the universe, let me know."

His world just might be big enough for both of 'em.

There's still a laugh in his voice when he replies.

"If you ever need a freelancer for some asset liquidation-" yeah, he's pretty damned sure Reno will get that "-let me know, and I'll try your world on for size."

He leans back on his elbows, and watches his lava flow, red, and burning, and gorgeous.

"Fuck but I could use an Ether after that though."

The whole asset liquidation thing makes him laugh all over again, until Axel mentions Ether.

"Where do you gotta go to get one of those?" It ain't a drink he's heard of, but he never considered himself stupid. This whole other worlds thing is startin' to... not make sense, but become a little more normal or more expected. He learns fast.

And he thinks he can feel the heat from the volcano all the way over here.

"Item shops, and Moogles, usually," Axel replies. "I probably have one in my pockets, as soon as I can be bothered to look."