A not so sandy place {open}

“Hey um… Moz-guy” implored a voice from far overhead. A young man took perilous refuge on a moss covered tree branch, back resting against the ancient tree’s massive truck. He was clad in torn cargo pants and a vest that might’ve been white once, but was now coated with the same dark dried blood, jungle grime, and sweat that also caked a face adorned in livid bruises and dripping gashes. Despite its dizzying elevation, Roxas’ perch proved to be providing little safety.

Using the term ape or monkey to describe the creatures ascending the liana vines up towards the Twilight High yearbook’s ‘Most Likely to be Brutally Dismembered,’ was to vastly overextend the words’ meaning. Their stooped dangly forms were mostly covered in slick fur of an oily bluish-black hue. It terminated around the the paws and feet, leaving them bare and sickly pink like the digits of an immense rat, bristling in black talons with the serrated curvature of scalpels. More curiously yet, the creatures’ torso and entire skull were covered in a beige boney carapace, as if the mussel of ossein had been forced upon and welded to the hapless animals. A gap in this shell-armor revealed only a hollow pit within which danced a pair of yellow will-o-wisps vaguely evocative of ‘eyes.’ Whatever cruel force had birthed the arboreal abominations had also seen fit to brand them. In the erratic patchwork of shadows and sunlight cast upon the jungle's emerald verdancy by the web-like canopy, emblems of a twice-stitched heart dripping down into a thorny cross pulsed with a dull scarlet light that mimicked, or perhaps mocked, a heartbeat.

The battered boy swallowed, looking down at the simian tide scratching and scraping over each either in their eagerness to devouring him utterly, before shifting wide blue eyes to the young sorcerer. “Could you like,” Roxas stubbornly kept up a brave face, but an adolescent crack hit hard in the last syllable. “Go get the Park Ranger….or something!”


ooc: 7 Powerwilds appear

The wizard’s demand was met with a brief period of dazed blinks. Shaggy blonde hair shifted as Roxas blankly moved his head between where’d his interlocutor’d previously resided nearly sixty feet down on the jungle floor and where he now stood on the broad branch, sending out crackling busts of pale light and concussive force. Mental wheels visibly turned but there came no brightening of revelation. Mozenrath was just suddenly…here…zapping rabid monkeys into boiling dark bits like his glove were some kinna railgun.

Abstractly Roxas knew what ‘magic,’ was, it was like electricity (or something) in the body you could do tricks with if you concentrated really hard. A few folks in town could do a little of it, clap their hands to make lights and stuff, neat. Moogles could make medicine that people said had ‘life energy’ or whatever in it. At freakin thirty munny a pop, Roxas hadn’t tested that out. Really, the only magic he’d seen up close was Vivi’s little fires, which while really cool ….really wasn’t anything like this.

Wide blue eyes starred dumbly at the winged shoes before lifting their bearer.

“Oh..um, thanks.”

Mozenrath looked, despite his imperious tone, to be around Roxas’ own age, though about a head or so taller. His face had very distinct angularity, an impression not helped by gold trimmed shoulder guards that ascended into points and a stiff color splaying outward from a high thin neck swaddled in grey wrappings. Tangles of strikingly black hair tumbled down in errant curls that occasionally escaped a turban of violet silk set with a ruby Roxas was pretty sure was worth more then all his worldly possessions and bodily organs put together. His skin had a pallor just a few shades shy of a corpse, full lips almost completely bloodless. Almond shaped eyes, set on either side of a long prominent hawkish nose, were completely black, like twin points of charcoal that melded iris and pupil. His cloak only came to down to about his waist, but haughtiness was a shroud far more complete.

Overall, not exactly the kinna guy Roxas would’ve sat next to on the tram.

Also was that an eel…flying…talking?

Neither fact stopped Roxas from ripping off his skate sneakers (another pair…Dad was going to kill him) and shuffling into the curious upturned shoes with diminutive wings.

The lurch into the air was unexpected, sending the jungle’s greenery tumbling in over itself as Roxas was sent upside-down before being righted as if from invisible strings. In fits, starts, and spins, the winged shoes spat in the face of physics and carried their wearer beyond the reach of howling heartless down toward the forest floor. However vertigo and holts didn’t distract raw rush of elation that brightened the boy's eyes to exultant sapphires, softening the set of his face in a unabashed childish wonder even amidst bruises and bloodstains.

“Awesome!”

@mozenrath

The wizard of Moz and his assistant Xeres the creepy eel may not fit Roxas’ idea of graciousness, but then again neither did Roxas. Besides, when a guy saves you from becoming demon monkey chow and gives you a ride on some sweet magic shoes, just makes sense to him some slack right? “Thanks man, seriously you probably saved my life back there!”

That eel though…

“Not sure,” answered the bruised boy with the amiable stoicism reserved for those who spent their whole lifetimes lost.The giddiness of flight had faded from his system, leaving in its wake far too mild a concern for being wounded in a unknown jungle. Cognitively, Roxas, junior at Twilight High knew this should freak him out, but muscle memory transcended fickle remembrance. Roxas had more then one martial lifetime lurking beneath amnesiac mundanity. Now that the threat had passed, Roxas felt strangely…alright, which considering he was ripped up and talking to laser-wielding wizard asking deserts nowhere on any map, should probably be its own cause for concern?

Hey, rather be alright for no reason then freaked for lots of them right?

“Thought I was in Evenvale National Park,” supplied Roxas, eyeing the looming tropical tangle and misty boscages thick enough to reduce all sight beyond a hundred meters to nothing more more then mossy shadows and emerald haze. “But this is doesn’t look like any of the photos…” Ugh, Mr. Nashida was gonna skin him alive. Just one job, stay with the class and listen about animals and whatnot. But no, Roxas just had to be 'that guy' that holds up everyone at closing time by getting his ass lost. “Don’t remember anything about deserts either.” Honestly, Roxas’d never heard anything about deserts near town. What island was this guy even from?

“It’s ok though,” the high schooler affirmed with a firm nod, as if the sorcerer packing disintegration bolts were the one in need of reassurance. “Couldn’t have gotten too far from Tram line, if we head North we should hit it eventually.”

@mozenrath

As Mozenrath’s soliloquy ran its course two things first became readily apparent.

First, that Roxas was stranded without bearings, weapons, or supplies besides textbooks in a man-eating monkey infested jungle with a complete jerkwad trust fund wizard guy.

Secondly, when they ran out of food, creepy eel here was so going to be dinner.

Secure in ruminations of moray-murder and the knowledge of how throughly boned they were, Roxas wiped off some of the blood with a towel from his backpack and turned his mind to non-monkey-chow thoughts. “Hello your majesty,” it seemed best to humor people who could sling laser bolts. “…and Xerxes,” Roxas gave the future Unagi Roll a curt nod. “I’m Roxas, from Twilight Town a little ways off.” Ruler of the Tram Commons Struggle Pits!

Huh, maybe…more blood-loss then he’d thought there..

Roxas shouldered his backpack and gave the wandering path a long look. It zigzagged out sight through vine choked brush, laden with soaked lichen that hung in almost chiropteran shapes from seeming every surface.

“Lead the way your majesty.”

@mozenrath

Mozenrath’s mentions of ‘planet’ evinced raised eyebrows from Roxas, the implication too strange to really process. The rationalization that he’d just heard wrong didn’t ease the doubt that only gnawed more ever more keenly as they ducked under hanging creepers. It was when the elephantine trumpet echoed through the vast verdancy that Roxas finally accepted that beyond all reason, this wasn’t Evenvale National Park. His thoughts reeled with how he could go from falling asleep on the tram to an actual jungle with animals he’d only seen in books. Everything was gaining the surreal quality of a dream. Problem was, in actual dreams you usually didn’t wonder that kind of thing. Secondly these cuts all over him sure as hell felt real. Whether he was trying to find the way out or just wake back up, Roxas figured that his options were pretty much the same in either case.

Huh weird, would’ve have though he’d been more panicy in a situation like this. But really it just felt…familiar somehow?

“He’s right,” Roxas said, affirming Xerxes’ deduction as the sinking feeling grew more acute. “While I was up there,” he nodded up towards the tangled canopy, remembering something other then killer monkeys now that things had settled down.  “the trees went on and on. Would’ve seen a gap or the horizon if we were at an oasis.”

@mozenrath

“So,” interjected Roxas after a period of quietly watching the divinations proceed from the edge of the clearing, arms folded across his chest and face set in a mounting adolescent sullenness. “Sorry for trying your patience again,” a none-too-subtle weight of intonation blunted the pretense of an apology. “But what is your mood crystal supposed to be doing anyway?”

Not sorry to see the creepy eel make an exit, Roxas took the opportunity to walk about in the clearing, eyes lifted to the span of sky bared by the break in the canopy. A corse yawn and sleepy reach upward resulted in a sudden weight entering his hands. Long metal lengths in the shapes of keys, one cast in the delicate winged filigree and the other dark and cruelly spiked, greeted Roxas’ wide eyes as he lowered his arms. Panic, surprise, curiosity all flowed through him in a dizzying rush. A ringing built in his ears until the pressure building against the inside of his skull seemed to threatened a gory explosion. The clearing’s edge spun as if he were at the center of a wobbling top. Verdant green and azure welkin commingled in a blur of lights and sounds from other times and impossible places. The world became a scream pierced only by the sound of his racing heartbeat.

…and then he was fine. Like a fever broken by a cold sweat, the inner cacophony was silent and memory bled freely. Roxas the Key of Destiny looked down at familiar weapons and pondered whether this world seemed familiar.

Gah, his head was fuzzy. There was something he was supposed to do…couldn’t quite place it.

“Mozenrath,” Roxas said when his faculties stabilized, getting steady on his feet again. “What sorta forces would be able to block your magic,” the boy inquired in a business-like tone, previous skepticism erased like a stray piece of code.

@mozenrath

Roxas looked from his weapons to Mozenrath’s glowing crystal, sheepish comprehension dawning across his face.

The truth was of course that it’d been an accident, an intersection of amnesia and Keyblades having a mind of their own. Roxas really didn’t have the brain space to deliberate on how exactly he’d though himself a normal Twilight Towner about five minutes ago. The possible answers were all equally troubling, and he really didn’t have enough information to to piece things out. What was certain was that firstly he was on some jungle World without any real explanation how. Secondly, he’d broken whatever brain-lock’d been in place just in time really tick off an already jerkish wizard with weird tastes in pests.

But c’mon really, no way he was copping to the fact that the ’stupid monkey bait’ option had been the right one.

Monkeybait considered the situation for a second or two and decided that things were way too far up Weird-Creek to throw down over not entirely unjustified insults of his IQ. “Look,” the boy ventured cautiously, taking the very unfamiliar role of being the guy trying to avert a fight rather then start one. “Sorry I screwed up your crystal, wasn’t intentional.” Dangit, admitted to stupid monkey-baitness! “But,” he ameliorated quickly, “I might have figured out a way off this jungle World.” Roxas wasn’t sure how he was going to fly the whole ‘step right up into this Dark Corridor sir’ thing, but one monkey-step a time. “This isn’t a game,” he assured, “I want to get home too.”

@mozenrath