Halloween Town, First Visit:
In Which The Heart Is Made Of Strange Things
The first thing he noticed when he arrived in Halloween Town was that everything had been grayed out -- the sky, the trees, the ground, with even the bit of hair falling into his eyes a much more ashen blond than it should have been. The second thing he noticed was that Axel was some sort of werewolf. The redhead was now in possession of a shaggy tail and furred arms that he was currently admiring, turning his hands over to observe them, and he stood on what looked like haunches rather than legs, with thick paws instead of feet. He looked up at Roxas as he emerged and grinned broadly around the dusting of dark red fur on his cheeks.
"You're definitely hunched enough to pull that off," Roxas observed.
"I'm not the only one attending this costume party," Axel said dryly, pointing a black claw at him.
Roxas glanced down at himself. His fingers were curled into claws, and his lower body was similarly haunched, but covered with leathery skin and separated cloven hooves. A thin twist of arrow-tipped tail lashed around his ankles; it swung around when it caught his attention, allowing him a better glimpse of it. "This place really doesn't like humanoids, huh?" he said dryly. He could feel the fangs crowding his mouth.
"Check out your horns," Axel added, almost gleeful. "So you're a little devil, huh? I'm S-C-A-R-E-D."
He reached up to feel them, and glanced behind him at the corridor in time to see three Assassins emerging from the darkness, unchanged. They swirled gracefully in the air and then dove below the combed gray surface of the ground. Strange, Roxas thought, but he supposed it was only natural. After all, they were already very short of humanoid.
Namine followed them out, the corridor slipping away behind her. She was also shifted -- a half-transparent white save for her ashen blonde hair, still the same color as Roxas's. She didn't have any legs at all, simply hovering a few feet above the ground while her dress swayed in a nonexistent breeze, empty. "Oh," she said, surprised, looking down at herself. "I guess I'm a ghost."
"Does that tail actually do what you want?" Axel wanted to know. "Mine seems twitchy. Like it kinda wants to move on its own." His tail swayed a little, perked up.
Roxas smirked a bit, imagining someone scratching Axel's head and getting it to wag enthusiastically. "Just another one of us that doesn't listen to anything you say, then." Namine snickered into her hands, and he took the moment to actually try and make his tail do something. It curled very responsively around his calf at his whim. ...Neat.
"You're so cruel," Axel complained, hands on his hips. "So where do we find this doctor guy?"
The reminder of the reason why they came here in the first place was slightly sobering. Roxas glanced at Namine, who said mildly, "He should be in town." She lifted an arm to point past the gray trees.
Roxas vaguely remembered the town where she meant, although it wasn't clear in his mind -- as if it had been tangled up with something else he couldn't quite remember. He shrugged and started heading down the path to the town, a little slow at first. His legs were moving strangely; much more powerful, and each step more springy. He found a comfortable stride and paused to glance back at the others, making sure they were catching on as quickly. Namine was floating quickly behind him, but Axel had fallen slightly behind, his gait awkward and overbalancing. Catching the glance, the redhead muttered a curse under his breath and hunched further, ambling forward in an almost loping rhythm instead, every few steps using a hand to fix his balance.
"Do they let his kind in town without leashes?" Roxas asked Namine innocently, to which Axel muttered, "Shut it."
"I'm sure we have other compensations for not being able to-- walk," Namine said, and drifted ahead towards the town. "...Hmm."
Roxas quickened his pace to catch up to her. "What is it?"
She was frowning, and pointed again towards the town. "It's funny... Some of those decorations look kind of..."
"Christmassy," Roxas finished for her, brows drawing together thoughtfully as they came in range of the square. There were orange-and-green lights strung up around the roofs of the houses and in the skeletal trees neighboring them, and there was an eerie little display set out in front of one of the houses. One of the dolls was holding an infant doll in an uncomfortably menacing manner. There was a conspicuous sled in the main square, being unpacked by a tall skeleton in a Santa costume.
"How festive," Axel said dryly.
The skeleton man looked up, and grinned broadly. "Merry Christmas!" he called.
There was definitely no doubt he was from Halloween Town, despite the costume. Roxas eyed the sled he was unpacking warily. "Aren't you supposed to handle Halloween here, Jack?" he asked. He couldn't imagine there was anything good in that bag.
"Oh! You know my name, but I'm afraid I don't know yours...?"
"We're off-worlders," Namine explained. "I'm Namine, and this is Roxas, and Axel. This is Jack Skellington," she added, mostly to Axel.
Jack seemed delighted to hear that. "Off-worlders! How wonderful!" He bowed politely, and they bowed back with varying degrees of sincerity. "This year I thought I might help with Christmas! I understand you have to bring every single child presents, and there's a lot of worlds out there! Although they've asked me not to help them..." He frowned thoughtfully here, bringing one bony finger to his mouth. But he didn't seem particularly dissuaded.
Roxas couldn't precisely blame Santa for not wanting this guy's brand of help. The reindeer remains strung up to the front of the sled alone would give kids nightmares for months. "We're looking for someone. Can you point us--"
"Ah, I'm looking for someone too," Jack said cheerfully. "Sally! She was going to make me a hat to go with this outfit. Have you met her yet? I can introduce you..."
"We're looking for Dr. Finklestein, actually," Roxas said, keeping his voice firm. Obviously this conversation was going to need careful handling to keep it on track. "It's important."
Jack seemed slightly off-put, but he nodded at that. "Ohh, I see. Well, I can take you there! It's all in the same place anyway. Sally is the Doctor's assistant!" He turned and waved them across the square, past a guillotine that appeared to be decorated with tinsel.
He led them up a set of stairs into a tower, and then up more stairs, twisting and somewhat unstable in appearance, that led up to a second door and into a laboratory. Inside was a small man in a wheelchair, and a group of odd-looking children who appeared to be helping to move a giant contraption onto a table.
"Doctor!" Jack called, ignoring the rest of the scene. "I've made some new friends, and they wanted to meet you!"
The little man in the wheelchair snorted derisively. "I'm in the middle of something, Jack. This experiment is crucial."
Roxas scowled briefly, and then said shortly before Jack could comment, "We understand that you've been researching hearts. I have a very unusual problem that we thought you might be interested in."
That caught at the doctor's attention. He studied Roxas for a moment, and then wheeled over, pausing in front of him. "I'm listening," he said grudgingly, unhinging his skull to scratch thoughtfully at his brain.
Horrifying. He definitely wasn't likely to be biased the way the Organization's researchers and DiZ were biased, but... Roxas glanced back at the others and said, "I used to be a Nobody."
"A Nobody is what's left of someone with a really strong will when their heart is removed," Axel recited, almost bored. "Think of us as the opposite of Heartless."
"Heartless, Heartless," the doctor murmured, and Jack prompted, helpful, "Those strange little fellows who visited last year, Doctor! Remember? They were very impolite."
Impolite isn't the word I'd use to describe them, Roxas thought, bemused, but he was cut off as the doctor glanced up at him measuringly. "So that would make you... an existence of pure body and soul."
"Well," Roxas started, "not anymore. I have a heart now. And that's where the problem started. I can't wield both my keyblades."
"You have a keyblade?"
Roxas kept from sighing. People were always more interested in the keyblade than in his problems. He held out a hand and summoned the curved blade of Traveler's Charm for the doctor to look over and nod at, solemnly, like he had any idea what he was looking at.
"And the other one?"
He had to brace himself before reaching out his other hand and calling up the off-hand blade. Immediately he felt the cramping in his chest, and the next breath was a struggle.
"And now you're in pain," Dr. Finklestein observed clinically. "Does it get very bad?"
"I don't know, it's -- hard to breathe." Roxas shook his head a little. "I think I'd probably... pass out after a while, and then the keyblades would vanish. I feel better the moment they dissipate."
"Mm-hmm." The doctor gazed at him for a long moment, and then prompted, "The pain is in your chest?"
Roxas nodded mutedly. "It feels tight -- like my heart is in a vice." He was starting to sweat again, and he shivered briefly. He couldn't go on like this. "And then exhaustion, I guess." He waved and banished the second keyblade, and the instantaneous sense of relief almost made him sag gratefully.
Dr. Finklestein nodded to himself, watching closely, and turned, repeating heart thoughtfully. He wheeled himself into a far corner of the room. "When someone stops being a Nobody, they don't normally have problems of this sort, am I correct?"
Behind him, Axel said mutedly, "He's the first. The only."
"Hmm." It wasn't the answer he'd wanted to hear, obviously, but the doctor was already reaching into a drawer and pulling out a book. "The keyblade is a mysterious weapon. Bound to the heart. Without indication that this is linked to your new state, it seems to me like making two of them is putting great strain on your heart."
Roxas froze. That meant it wasn't something he could fix -- and now that he had lost Oblivion and Oathkeeper, it wasn't even something he could undo. It was just... something he'd have to live with.
"Surely there must be something we can do?" Namine said anxiously.
The doctor had flipped open the book and was scrawling something down. "I should be able to create an artificial heart, that will take the strain of the second keyblade..."
The robot on the table lashed suddenly, causing the children to shriek with delight, and the doctor snapped at them, "Keep that thing down! It can't be allowed to run away again."
"Why do all the things you make run away anyhow, old man?!"
"Yeah, what she said!"
A slender rag-doll woman emerged from another room, her arms folded nervously over her stomach. "That artificial heart didn't work so well for Oogie," she said softly, but her voice still cut across the din.
Dr. Finklestein waved her concern off, saying dismissively, "The heart is more complicated than I had first thought."
Jack hastened over and found her arm, guiding her over to Roxas and the others. "Everyone! This is Sally!" he said cheerfully, ignoring the way he and Axel were frowning and glancing at Namine curiously. What happened to Oogie?
"Sally, these are my new friends -- Roxas, Axel, and Namine. They're from off-world!"
"Here." The doctor pushed himself into their midst, ignoring the way Jack and Sally had to stagger back to make room for his wheelchair, and he extended a scrawled list. "These are the ingredients I need to create a heart."
It was an extremely vague list. Roxas skimmed it, feeling his features shifting into a frown the further down he got and encountered only more unhelpful items. Surprise? Pulse? Compassion?
Jack leaned over his shoulder, his very tall form almost folding behind Roxas. "Ah! What simple things," he said cheerfully. "Oh, we can get surprise from the mayor -- and a reflection! How quaint! Memory, Sally knows where to get that..."
"Really?" Namine murmured, her lips quirking up, and Sally nodded reluctantly.
Roxas turned back to Dr. Finklestein and hesitated a beat before asking, "Can you make -- more than one of these?"
He felt Axel and Namine's attention sharpen on him immediately, but he didn't glance back. If this heart was even remotely capable of replacing what the Nobodies lacked...
"Of course I could do it," Dr. Finkelstein said snappishly. "But it would take time. Hearts don't just grow on trees, you know, and some of those ingredients are very rare."
"Okay," Roxas said, keeping his calm instead of asking the old... man-thing... to watch his manners. "I'll see if I can get enough for more than one, then."
The doctor made another dismissive sound and turned back to the hunk of scrap metal on his table. "We'll see how long you're willing to wait," he predicted direly.
Does he ever say anything that isn't depressing? Roxas shook his head, irritable, and waved the others towards the door.
"You don't really think that will work, do you, Roxas?" Namine asked quietly as they headed back down the stairs. "Can an artificial heart alone really fill this void...?"
He shrugged, concentrating more on the stairs -- half to avoid her large, melancholy gaze, and half because descending stairs with his current set of legs was very difficult. It didn't seem likely that some device would be able to remedy the soul-deep isolation of a Nobody's existence, but it had seemed much less likely when he'd thought the materials would be things like herbs and spare parts. "It's worth a try," he said mildly.
Pattering little footsteps came up alongside him, almost inaudible over the clomping of his hooves, and Sally drew up next to him as they arrived at the street level. "May I ask what the ingredients are?" she murmured, her stitched fingers tightly knotted together. "It's just that... I'm curious to know how it's different from last time."
Roxas glanced down at the list and paused to read aloud, "One pulse, fresh. A spark. A reflection. Hope. Then surprise, terror, courage, memory... Compassion, pain, emotion, and desire."
He looked up again to find both Namine and Axel as perplexed by the list as he had been. At least that was reassuring, and none of them had a pain in their pocket somehow.
"That's good," Sally said, her voice a touch relieved. "The last heart he made was full of nothing but -- dark, unhappy things. I knew that couldn't be right. A heart should have light in it, too."
Axel snorted softly, and Roxas was hard-pressed not to smirk. He knew exactly what the redhead was thinking. Sally had no idea how right she was about that.
"So how do we start looking for these?" he asked. "Sally, Jack said you know where to find memories?"
"Umm..." The doll woman glanced at Jack hesitantly, and then admitted, "Yes. But at this time of year, they only grow some distance from town..."
They grow? Roxas thought, bemused. Jack stepped in, waving one extravagant bony arm. "Maybe we should split up! Sally can take the memories, I can go get surprise from the Mayor... I think I know where we can find hope, too!"
That was already a better record than he'd been expecting. "Sounds like a great idea," Roxas agreed.
Sally leaned in, her eyebrows drawn together fretfully. She whispered, "Jack, promise me you won't go and bother--"
"Sally, Sally! I'm only in this to help our friends!" The skeleton flung an arm around Roxas's shoulders. Roxas glanced at it dubiously.
"...if you say so, Jack," she murmured, reluctant. "Then I'll start heading out to get one."
Roxas added quickly, "Three of them -- if it's not too much trouble."
Axel was very studiously not looking at him, but he turned to Jack coolly as Sally made her way off. "Well, where's 'hope'? So we can split up."
"Actually, I'd like to come with you to get that one!" Jack said cheerfully, lifting a finger, although not without a wide-eyed glance in Sally's direction to make sure she was out of hearing range. "You see... I believe Sandy Claws may have some." He paused, waiting for their excitement.
"Who is that?" Namine asked, polite.
NEXT >>> Halloween Town, First Visit (Part 2)