Some things:

1. Thanks for sticking with me, LightJakRises.

2. I do have a plan to explain the massive contradiction/plot hole of "Only masters can craft elements" and "A Precursor clearly made this Element" and "There are obviously no evidence of Precusor/Ottsel Keyblade Masters participating the the Keyblade War." I won't lie and say it was that way from the beginning because it wasn't. Originally I did plan to shoe-horn them in, but if Nomura can pull stuff from his ass and insist it isn't shit; so can I. I'm salty, but I can still play by the rules.

3. Jak's on-point insights are, eventually, going to start being hilariously wrong. It's a set up. It's for a gag. I'm playing the long-con and I'm concerned we won't get to that point, so I'm telling you now: He won't always be right.

Chapter twenty eight:

Daxter swallowed dryly. He did not know where to start. He was supposed to find Axel missing pieces—not exhuming corpses from his own past. He wanted to tell Axel exactly what he suspected, what he knew: that it was Erol's Heartless, but that it could not be Erol's heartless because Erol was dead, but it had been him, all the same. He wanted to beg Axel to leave, to forget they had ever seen it, because thinking about the possibility that Erol could be alive, even as a Heartless... It was too much. He could not speak.

Axel set him down. He did not care about getting dirt on his knees as he sat back on his heels and fixed him with a stare, "Tell me."

It trickled out. Part stammer, part sob, "T-that was E-erol..."

Axel was reasonable, but he sounded unsure, "Dead men can't become heartless."

"So…" Daxter hated the possibility, "So he's alive!?"

"No, no, that's...! There are lots of worlds. Lots of people become Heartless."

"But he asked if the freak made it—He was asking about Jak!"

"He… did." Axel frowed. He crossed his arms and looked back to the crater Daxter had left in the junk. Daxter did not look. He only wanted to ignore it, "He did, but… But he's dead!"

Daxter could only echo, "He's dead, he's dead."

Axel ran his hand through his hair, "But he's not dead? Oh, this is icky. I don't like this."

He did not like it!? Daxter clenched his teeth. What? And Jak would think it was swell? For all his snarling, he knew Axel did not mean it like that, "What happens if he isn't killed with a keyblade? What happened to him now?"

"He'll come back, probably here, maybe somewhere else."

"And when he's killed with a Keyblade, what?"

"His heart will join the others in Kingdom Hearts."

"And if Sora wins? Then what? You think he'll let those hearts stay there because one evil man is trapped in there? No—in no way would that be the moral choice to make. So... what? He's back? As a Heartless? Immortal? Unkillable? He won't age? He can't die? He's got all the power he needs to hunt Jak down and without a keyblade Jak is going to be powerless!? And he only thinks to look for Jak because he recognized ME!?"

Daxter could not tell if it was uncertainty or reluctance, but Axel's reply was slow, "... Yes?"

"He'll be alive again, just even… " Daxter could not bring himself to say it: even worse. Erol was a monster. Jak had said a few things, but only when he could bring himself to share them. Most of the time, what he said was bad and all the other times Jak had just said, 'he's a monster,' and his eyes turned dark and his shoulders tensed and he did not breathe and Daxter knew he was fighting tears because he was too damn proud to be seen crying. So Daxter left it at that. He was too damn proud to be seen crying, too. "He should have stayed dead."

"I'm… No one should have to face this." Axel mumbled. He rubbed his temples. He shifted so he was sitting crossed-legged in the dirt. He pressed his elbows to his knees, "I do not like this. I do not like the implications of this. I do not like the emotional fall out that will result from this. I do not like the options that are presented here. If we have Sora take care of it, he'll tell Jak, if we have Tess take care of it, she'll tell Jak. If we get Riku to take care of it Xemnas will wonder why I'm going behind his back and disobeying orders—" he moved his hand with a flourish, "And Riku wouldn't let me hear the end of it."

"That is a very small potato, Axel!"

"Don't be stingy!" he hit his knee with his fist, lightly, "I am allowed a potato! In case you've forgotten, not only do we have to make a choice, Sora or Tess, but I have to explain it to Saix… and I have to explain how, exactly, simple recon became a fight without saying, 'Sorry, bro. Tarxed just started screaming for me to kill it, and the next thing I knew he was ripping it apart. With. His. Mind.'"

"Oh…"

"I shouldn't have snapped."

He had not snapped. Not as far as Daxter was concerned. It had been a rough encounter for both of them. Axel shook his head and rubbed his gloved hand over his face and through his hair with a heavy sigh, "Really, it's… I don't have to explain that. All have to do is say it saw us. I'm hard to miss. I'm an easy target. It'll be back maybe in a few hours, maybe a couple of days, but it will be back, that much I'm sure of. But we have to get Sora to take care of it, and soon. We can't wait around for him to swallow a tank, or worse. Sora has enough experience—Sora will not recognize him. If he can't recognize him, he won't think to tell Jak."

Axel was right. Tess would recognize him. Any one in the underground would recognize him. Tess would tell Jak, but maybe that would be for the best? Tess would be better at telling Jak than him, she could bear to do it. She had told lots of people that their friends and loved ones had passed on. How different could telling someone their once-dead enemy was still alive be? But Daxter did not want Jak to know. Jak should know. Jak had the right to know. But it would break him to know.

If he knew, when they got back home, Jak would spend each day looking over his shoulder. The uncertainty of life was bad enough, they did not need the certainty of Erol's return. Daxter did not want to see him reduced to that all over again, but when Erol came out of the blue? Daxter felt guilty even thinking about letting Jak get blindsided by the news. He was supposed to watch his six, and if he let Erol slip under the radar, sneak up on him when he knew very well he was still alive, and a threat? He was not watching Jak's six.

Axel cleared his throat, "Dax, we need to talk about the other thing."

"Other thing? What other thing?"

"Well," Axel chuckled nervously, "I remember what hearts are like. You've got a lot to unpack right now, but you still ripped him apart with your mind. I saw you send an engine flying."

"I must have cast haste on myself," deep down, he suspected that was not it, "I was moving so fast you couldn't see me."

"Dax!" Axel shook his head and chuckled, "You are in a class all your own. I mean that in the best possible way, but also that if you were to try and be a boxer, you couldn't because you'd be left boxing toddlers. You are lighter than atomweight. You are subatomic weight. You are electron weight. There is no way no possible way you could tear a motorcycle apart with your bare hands, no matter how fast you were going!"

The joke was lost on him. He had no idea what an electron was or what subatomic meant, and he was not in the mood to learn.

"What you did was not haste. I'm sure of that. The watch never left your wrist."

It had never left his wrist, but Axel could conjure fire while his elements were still on their chain. How was haste any different? Daxter let it be. He thought it was haste, Axel thought it was not. Only one of them was right, but that was all Daxter wanted to say. Erol was alive. He did not want to think about anything else, he could not think about anything else, until that problem was solved.

"Come on," Axel picked himself up and opened a doorway through the darkness, "Namine spent a year with DiZ, and he knows more than me. She'll shed some light on this."

They found Namine stretched out on a plastic chaise on her private island, staring at the sky. She turned her face to them and smiled. She waved, but she did not stand. She dropped her head back to the chaise and went back to watching the clouds. She would be baked to a crisp in an hour. She had a beach umbrella, but there were deep gashes in the sand. She had dragged her chair out into the sun.

"Bored?"

"I've drawn through another sketchpad."

"I'll bring you another." Axel smiled, "But I've got a puzzler for you. Can a dead man become a Heartless?"

"Well, no." Namine sat up. Now that he was closer, Daxter could see her face was now an unflattering shade of pink. A burn that would fade, not peel. She looked at Axel, then realized it was not his puzzler. She looked at Daxter. How stressed he was must have been written on his face, because her brows pinched and she bit her lips and she did him the kindness of grasping at straws, "In theory, a Heartless could be made at the very moment of death, particularly if it was… bad."

The relief surged out of him: "Oh, it was bad!"

Namine giggled, and Daxter relaxed, kicking back in the sand. Namine had been a huge help. Erol was dead. If he had become a Heartless the second he had plunged head first into those eco barrels, fine. Good riddance. It was what he deserved. It just meant the threat of the Heartless had been brewing on the fringes of Haven City for a little over a month before they struck. Probing attacks, a favorite method of the Metalheads. Maybe some Metalheads were Heartless, maybe that was why Jak was able to fight through their nest on his own, their dumb luck had just been another enemy in the shadows.

Of course, that meant he had to accept that Metalheads had hearts.

"If the Heartless was defeated, the world restored, the heart would pass on, as if it had never happened. But I only say in theory because I have never seen it done, neither has DiZ, or Riku." he could tell by the look on Namine's face she did not want to know the answer, but she asked anyway: "Why do you ask?"

"Well, Daxter and I found an old enemy of his, presumed dead, turned Heartless."

"How did you know? Most people who become heartless are just shadows, nothing more. Even Sora just became a shadow—Impossible to recognize!"

"I recognized his racing mask. He knew it was me. He knew about Jak. It was him, but it doesn't matter. Like you said, he became a Heartless the moment he died, and he won't be a problem once he's gone. It's bad, but it's not a disaster! The body was destroyed, it was a melted, mutilated mess! he would not have a Nobody!"

He threw himself down into the sand and folded his arms behind his head, "Let's just unwind a second, Axel? I need to decompress, and I think I've earned it."

"That's… distressing." Namine began to gnaw at her lip and twirl her hair, "I want to agree."

"... Namine, do not add a but." Daxter held up a claw, "I am happy. Let me stay that way."

"But I do not know everything. How long before the heartless came did he die? A day, a week? Years?"

"I don't want to have this conversation."

"Dax…" Darkness passed over Daxter's eyelids. He opened one eye to see Axel leaning over him, his red hair spilling over his shoulders, blocking his well-earned sun. He tried to sound like a reasonable, rational adult. It did not suit him, "Just because you like an answer, doesn't mean it's true."

His fist hit the sand, "I know that!"

"So if the answer you like isn't true? That leaves us with conclusion number one." Axel held up a finger, "Erol isn't as dead as you though."

"Why are we going down this road? We've got our answer—Axel, why make it worse?" Daxter shook his head, "He became a Heartless when he revved his engine and tried to kill Jak. Sure, fine, it means the Heartless were around for a month or more, but it also means he's dead. Sora will deep six what's left of him and we'll never have to tell Jak."

Axel waited.

Daxter said nothing more. If they were going to pull his teeth, then he was not going to keep his mouth shut. He laced his fingers behind his head and crossed his ankles in the sand and thought about the crumbling sentinels and the hum of the green eco vents.

"If Erol has a Nobody out there, it's going to be trouble," Axel sighed again and sat down in the sand beside him, "Daxter, I don't want you to be hit with another bombshell like that. You need to think about the possibilities, I don't like it either, but you have to come to terms with them now."

Axel was right. Again. Daxter opened his eyes and frowned at the clouds as the passed, care-free bastards.

"Erol had been dead for at least a month before the heartless came," he finally admitted, "But Erol is the type to bide his time and hide. He told Keira lies for years about where Jak, and even her father, were. Maybe the anger in a heart can make a Heartless lash out, but…"

Daxter sat up. His relaxed mood was gone. Again. "Jak never said much, not until he wanted to, and I never pestered him, but one of the things Jak said, was that Erol always blamed anger that he never seemed to actually... have.

"I mean, yeah, maybe Jak is not a reliable source on the guy whose job was to make sure the sages working on him were always afraid to speak up or refuse to continue, but I know what Dark Eco scars look like, and Jak has a lot of scars that don't look like them. The only name he ever pins to them is Erol—but he said Erol didn't get angry. He yells, he hits, he bares his teeth… And it comes out of nowhere, endless, oppressive, overwhelming, so you're scared to look up. But if you're brave enough to look in his eyes? You'd see he's... delighted."

Axel's hand hovered, then came to rest comfortingly on Daxter's shoulders. Daxter squashed down the need to cry; he did not do it very well, "I'll admit, I don't know him, and I've never seen what Jak is talking about, but Jak is not a liar. If he had said it in front of Keira, maybe I'd suspect he had other motives, but it was just me and him. A day, maybe two, after it happened, and Jak had calmed down, he told me Erol had always wanted him dead, that he had threatened, when Jak was still locked up, 'I'll make it look like an accident,' so Jak figured Erol saw his chance to stage his accident… And he failed. I don't think Erol's Heartless was born out of anger. I think it was something else, and I do I think Erol would have spent a month hiding as a Heartless."

"If you ask me, it sounds like he was always a Heartless," Axel narrowed his eyes and looked out to sea. He took his hand away, "You do know more about him than me, that's true."

The first thing Daxter was going to do when this was over was give Jak the biggest hug he could. He squeezed his knees to his chest. Axel sighed again, shook his head, "If he's got a Nobody, too..."

"There was no body left. Leave it alone!" Daxter waved him away, but he watched Axel carefully. The man left it alone. He took Daxter's words to heart—Well, whatever he had in place of one, and he got to his feet, "Well, we can make this a little easier if we find a place to put it now, rather than later."

Daxter did not want to think about it anymore. He did not want to look at it, he did not want to go near it, "We can't leave it there?"

"For now? Yes, but Sora can't travel like us—when you're walking through doors, it seems like it's close. But it's not. Sora has to use a ship, and Traverse Town is out of his way."

"But it's… It's right next to Disney Castle!" Namine corrected him, "That's…"

Axel chuckled, "That was last year! The worlds are fickle places. They like to move."

"Oh, of course they do."

"They do! They do!" Axel stooped down and held out his arm to Daxter, an unspoken order for him to climb up and settle into place. Daxter wanted to stay on the beach, "What? We'll be back! You don't want to take a little tour? What about you, Namine, want to come with?"

Namine jumped to her feet, "Yes, of course!"

Daxter did not want to sit on a beach alone. He clawed his way up to his shoulder while Axel opened a doorway into the betwixt, "We'll go where Sora hasn't gone first. He'll be more likely to find what we put in front of him."

"How do we know where Sora is?"

"Well, we know he was just in Hollow Bastion, and he's already gone to Olympus Coliseum—since he wiped the floor with Demyx. That means he's gone to Land of Dragons, probably Beast's Castle, too—I think Xaldin said something about him going there, and leaving."

Daxter did not remember, but he had spaced out during most meetings, so Axel was probably right.

Atlantica, or at least, the town that bordered the underwater kingdom of Atlantica and the nearby worlds of San Fransokyo (which was the world Axel had, rudely, not bothered to name when he bought their lunch!) and Sora's own Destiny Islands, were untouched by the scourge so far, and if they invited one Heartless, more would follow and that would be a terrible, terrible tragedy, so for the sake of San Fransokyo and the best stir-fry in the known worlds, they decided to leave Atlantica be.

"You're mistaken." Namine teased, "You're thinking of the best pizza in the known worlds. I've had the best stir-fry: Riku's mom makes it."

Axel laughed, "Am I?"

"Yeah, you're both wrong. There's a place in Haven City that was even better."

For a place they knocked off this list, they spent a lot of time in that town—Daxter quickly realized it was not for recon. It was for Namine's cabin fever. He had only ever known her to be cooped up on that island; and only Axel and Riku knew she was there. With Riku running after Jak for them, and maybe even Tess, he had even less time for her.

Axel was not rushing her along. He kept his hands in his pockets, and his distance. Namine gasped over necklaces she never bought, paintings she did not have a place to hang, dresses the islands were too warm for, but the colors all suited her. It was obvious she enjoyed talking to someone who was not Axel or Riku. She spoke to everyone, though it was still soft and shy and Axel kept so far back Daxter could barely hear her.

Daxter had said he wanted to unwind. He let himself unwind. Settling into Axel's hood had become second nature. He watched the crowd behind them. No one seemed to notice him, and he thought that was odd, pets in clothes were usually a big hit. But it was the cloaks. No one would see him until he spoke to them. He wondered if they would see Axel, since he was technically in his cloak, too, or would they see him, floating cradled in nothing?

He opened his mouth to test his theory, but Axel spoke first, "If you like this, you should see the Kingdom of Corona during the lantern festival."

"Is it busy?" Namine asked. She was excited, "Really busy?"

"Busier every year!"

"Have you been?"

"Yes. A few times. It's not so fun alone. Really, it's kind of awkward when you're standing there, surrounded by parents with their kids and couples, no lantern, no friends, no…" Axel was teasing, "Maybe Riku should take you?"

Daxter sat up in Axel's hood. He had to see Namine's face—but he did not see it, because she had it buried behind a new, leather-bound sketchbook, "Shut up."

Axel laughed, but he did shut up.

Port Royal, with its lack of radios, tanks, and large machinery, would give Junkeater a little less junk to eat—but he could always swallow a forty-gunner and that was… less than ideal. However, with it had plenty of little islands and atolls and sandbars they could maroon him on, possibly luring him there with another Zoomer, or an old car that would sink like a rock if he tried to leave.

Axel bought Namine another blank book, and a pretty case of watercolors.

Halloween Town had a mad scientist with a heap of failed inventions for the heartless to corrupt, it was an option, though, because they were failed, and just because a Heartless ate them did not mean they would suddenly work. Daxter liked the idea of Erol trying to assimilate failed experiments, then dragging useless bric-a-brac as he tried to raise hell. Christmas town had toys galore, which would do no harm, even if Junkeater had them—And Santa Clause! And snow! Brighter and more sparkly than Daxter had ever seen.

He realized the trip was just a ruse by the time he threw his fifth snowball.

Agrabah, in Daxter's opinion, was the perfect place for Erol's Heartless to get curb-stomped. It was all sand, maybe with some wagons. He had nothing to use, but Axel reminded him that they wanted Junkeater to stay, and he was smart enough to leave on his own. So the Pride Lands was out, too, because it was a world of wild animals, and Axel assured him that a heartless that had eaten and assimilated the rotting carcass of say, a lion was just about as scary as one that had eaten a battleship. Though Daxter did not know what a lion was, and they had no reason to believe Erol's Heartless would try to consume anything organic, he trusted Axel's judgement.

Hollow Bastion was out of the question, as Jak was there. Twilight Town had Tess, so it was a no-go, too. The Land of Dragons, Beast's Castle and the village beside it were, again, a poor fit for Junkeater.

The last stop on their tour was a place called Olympus Coliseum, Axel told him there was a chance, a slim chance, they could slip it into a tournament there, even though Sora was not likely to go there again anytime soon and it meant striking a deal with Hades, who was always looking for a Heartless that could get rid of Hercules. But Hades was shifty—if they told him to keep it away from Jak he would make sure Jak was exactly where it ended up.

Olympus Coliseum was a mess, though. It was completely demolished. No tournaments were being held there. Axel left Namine in the rubble to wait while they went below to deal with Hades—really, Daxter wanted to be left behind, too, but to keep it above board, and in case Saix sniffed around, Axel forced him along, muttering that, "At least Hades can keep it contained."

The Underworld was… Well, the reason no one wanted to die. Daxer hunkered down and was overcome with the need to watch every single shadow in every single cranny—and there were so many, because it was a labyrinth of caves shrouded in mist, so it looked like ghosts were emerging from every crack. Heartless appeared, but they did not attack. They could sense that Axel had no heart, that he was not worth their time, but their glowing eyes focused on Daxter, sizing him up like they could feel his heart, but they considered tangling with Axel, and they decided against it.

The Lord of the Dead was a terrifying specter of a man. His hair was blue fire. If he had flesh, it was something you recoiled from, an uncomfortable shade of blue. When he turned to look at him his face changed from indifference, to pleasant surprise, to indifference, "Oh, look at that. It's you."

"Yes."

"If you're here to give the Underdrome a chance it's not open yet."

"No."

"I remember seeing you in the ring upstairs, you were magic."

Axel wanted to cut to the chase, "Hmm."

Hades wanted to push his own agenda. "We have so much in common, you and I. I think you're my favorite. Can't I trade you out?"

Axel chuckled like he was flattered, but the smile did not reach his eyes, "I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, I have a deal, a contender for your... Underdrome: a Heartless. An interesting one."

Hades hid his smile behind a thoughtful hand to his chin, "I'm listening."

"We found it on the outskirts of Traverse Town."

"We..?" Then Hades' yellow eyes turned to Daxter on his shoulder and he said, "Oh—filling the void?"

Then—Daxter always hated this part—he reached out and curled an ice-cold finger under Daxter's chin and he was not sure if he should nip at him or just take it, but he knew he did not want to, so he jumped to Axel's other shoulder and snipped, "Hands off the merchandise!"

Hades did not try again, "Traverse Town, you said?"

"Yes. It likes the bric-a-brac. Eats it. Feed it an old chariot—you're Lord of everything under the earth, give it diamonds. I don't think Wonderboy is strong enough to punch through diamond."

Hades was intrigued. His smile turned into deep thought and Daxter got the idea that he already knew exactly what he would do with Erol's Heartless. He felt ill, not for the Heartless itself, but for the worlds that found themselves on the menu.

OK, but the idea of Erol's Heartless being passed around from Organization XIII to Hades, to Maleficent (not a spoiler, just an idea) in a parallel to how he and Praxis planned to use Jak as a disposable, sub-human weapon?

Don't mean to blow my own horn, but like? Chef's kiss. Beautiful.

And like 99.9% of the fic, completely accidental.