Trespassers [Axel; closed]

[axie]

The instant he was through the portal, after the brief delay in transit, Axel only noticed one thing; the door was open. It was the same one Skell headed towards, and even if he'd had time to listen for the running footsteps that would be muffled by the carpet anyway he might get the slip when she realized it was a dead end. At least he knew that much, but was she really fast enough that the room was already clear? He'd vanished the second she got to the top of that landing, he should've been in here before she even opened the door.

Maybe it was a ruse, but the simple fact is that Axel didn't stop to think this time. It made sense in a distant way not to expose her to all of DiZ's latent machinations downstairs, at least. Axel was jealous with his information; if it didn't benefit him to have someone know something, he cut off their access at the first opportune moment. That and the wildfire realization of Got her had him moving.

Sure, he couldn't see Skell, or for the most part hear her over his own hurried steps. But that doesn't mean he wasn't unknowingly right at her heels the whole way down the stairs. There were several moments when he might've run right into her, but he cut corners on the last few steps, hopping right off the side with a metallic clack-ack as his boots hit and sprinting for the door. Computer room was empty, dammit, must've already gone on--so he whipped right past it and into the room where he'd fought Roxas.

It's a good thing he didn't have time to think about being there.

Tearing past his own portal to between, down the hallway with the emptied pods lined up assembly style, and dead center into the room that had lost him Roxas, and Axel stopped short.

Not here?

The room stretched into blankness as far as the eye could see--an illusion, Axel knew, but a disorienting one. At its center, the flowerbud shape of Sora's memory pod bloomed in a twisted, glowing heap of pointed metal--nature besmirched by science. But there was very clearly no one here, and he wasn't going to waste time checking behind that busted thing. He just wasn't sure what to make of it. Where else could she've...

Cloaked.

Dammit. Obviously she must'ved used something to dupe him. That or she'd teleported out directly. Either way, he wasn't going to find her just by looking.

If she was cloaked by something, chances were she was still substantial. Even if he couldn't see her, she'd push air around. Outright teleportation out he couldn't fix, and if it was a darkness portal he wasn't even gonna try, but invisibility was something he could work around.

On the off chance she was already gone, he didn't really have a choice. Besides, maybe he'd still bump into something interesting.

So Axel spread his hands out in a thoughtlessly dramatic gesture, snapping his fingers with the hiss of fire starting, but instead of erupting into flame he only conjured two glowing tongues at his fingertips. Tiny flames give off a surprising amount of smoke, and with Axel's influence it didn't take long for that effect to repeat itself in triplicate. He could outright smoke her out if he wanted, but that was unnecessarily dangerous to himself. His only concern now was to keep from breathing too much of it himself, so he kept it low, spiraling from his fingers to seep toward the floor in an imperceptibly deepening cloud.

Heat rises and so does smoke; he couldn't keep it there for long, but by that time he could do this floor by floor.

[Skell]

Clack-ack.

No way she could focus on reading the screen when her hunter was evidently on her tail. Standing rigidly straight, frozen, she only had the sense to worry about what to do. Either he could really see her and was just toying with her by not attacking this very moment, or maybe he had really keen senses. Maybe her perfume was a bit stronger than she was hoping for. Mark this day as a reminder to skip without it... if she even makes it out to remember.

In any case -- the invisibility trick was definitely worth a shot. Who would have thought this guy was as gifted as he was in sleuthing people out? Really, though, if it's over, it's over. No use in trying to hide now.

Yet as she turned on her heel, she quickly switched to a more cautious position on the matter. There he was, zipping out of the room and into another. She blinked her eyes a few times, in slight rejoice and disbelief.

Maybe he couldn't see her, after all...

Oh, she liked this. This'd buy her curiosity a good load of time to read in to what the computer had to offer. So, turning back, she leaned in closer and read...

Words of revenge filled countless paragraphs... Words of a project... Creatures... the Heartless and maybe a touch on the Nobodies...

Someone named Xehanort. This guy was listed near a million times it seemed... and as much Skell wanted to dissect every sentence of each paragraph, she honestly didn't think she had that sort of time. But she gathered the author had some bitter feelings toward this Xehanort. So much so to change his own name. Change it to DiZ. DiZ...

Now who would want to name themselves "Dizzy"? What an eccentric --

An odd smell tickled her nostrils. More like stung at them. But it was very subtle, and figured it was something in the walls that she may have picked up just then. Mildew, perhaps.

Her eyes scanned the screen further, trying to trace back to where they were before they flickered out from the increasingly potent smell. A new name was appearing more frequently. Sora. And something about a key. Something... a key...

Goddammit.[/i] She rubbed at her eyes as they began to water, going out of focus. The odor was growing drier, if that was possible, and it even felt like it was scratching at her throat. A hand rose to her lips to help push back a cough that wanted to come through. Smoke...

It was coming from the door Axel had run through earlier, and unfortunately she had wasted enough time at the computer that the smoke was dense enough to raise a flag. Was he planning on burning the whole mansion down?

She wouldn't put it past him, this guy was insane enough. She had no choice but to leave the computer room in exactly the way she had entered, through a door and up some stairs, back to the book-shelved room that Axel had warped to earlier. There was even some smoke in that room, too. And as much as she tried to hold it in, a faint series of coughs forced themselves out of her, an attempt to muffle them shown by her covering hand.

A step into the hallway and she was met with the same dilemma she had had earlier. To return downstairs or go down the hallway? She really needed to clear her thoughts...

[axie]

[OOC: And then Axel derped forever.]

He might've run through the basement the first time, but taking it slow on the way back meant dealing with the fact that nothing he remembered about this room ever actually happened in it. The intensity of the moment was burned into his mind, searing shadows of rage that made him focused but careless, and Roxas barely riled. It was a hopeless fight that broke him in a way he hadn't been broken before when he got hasty--messed up, took a blow too agonizing to bear, left a blood spatter where he hit the wall. But all that was gone now. It was hard to think the soot and dents in the walls hadn't been outright erased, when he'd put all that there himself. The feel of it was eerily similar to the realization that Roxas had forgotten--confining everything that had been important to Axel to his own memories alone.

But those were powerful things, and jarringly or not they brought him back to the bitter taste of iron and the unintentionally cold look in Roxas's eye when Axel left. He made a sullen noise in the back of his throat and moved ahead with solid footsteps, cloak carving a path through the fog gathering by the floor, but concentrating on the problem at hand was impossible. It already annoyed him--so to speak--that he wasn't out of this place yet. Maybe finding Roxas was just as unlikely as rejoining the Organization, but Axel would rather do either of those than linger here and drown in his memory.

Stepping out of there and hitting the computer room again with an exhale was like a breath of fresh air, and not just because the smoke was getting a little dense. It was also a jolt out of the past into the present, and for an instant he wondered what he was even still doing here--but then the smoke near the top of the stairs moved. There were no footsteps, though, so at first Axel was completely boggled by it. Was there another door open upstairs, and why would--but then the barely audible flap of clothing finally made sense to his ears and Axel dove at the stairs in hot pursuit. By that point she was ahead of him, but as he switched up his focus entirely he let go of the smoke and it rose with him in a billowing cloud. It was a nice effect, but a leeeetle on the stupid side. Almost the moment he heard her cough, muffled as it was, he could feel his own eyes water and had to choke back a wheeze. But at this point there was just nothing to do but let the smoke disperse on its own--wind wasn't his deal--so he reached for a chakram...

Dammit.

No. He wasn't supposed to be letting Roxas into his head now, of all times. That kid just shouldn't have a place there. Nobodies weren't supposed to mourn. So that only made it doubly frustrating when his fingertips shied from the heat of Eternal Flames, and instead of being intent on survival of the fittest he got hit with the thought of regret he couldn't legitimately feel.

"Would you just give it a rest...!" Instead of swinging a hand out filled with flaming spikes, he tried to seize her by that cloak--so red back when he could see it--to fling her to the floor. Maybe then he could get a foot on something to keep her there, but he wasn't optimistic when he couldn't friggin' see. The words that kept pouring out weren't like him...but maybe that wasn't true. "I'm not out to make this an ugly day!"

Sounded like Lea, anyway.

Maybe this was just another mistake, but Axel rarely didn't keep his word--he just interpreted it more liberally than people tended to like.