FicWad

"Any of you ever seen one of these before?" the girl asked, reaching into her backpack and pulling out aplate-sized disc with four large holes cut out of it. "It's a whistling frisbee. You throw it like a regular frisbee, and -" She gave it a toss. The frisbee made a clear, low whistle as it soared through the air. "- it whistles while it flies."

Roxas was distracted by something or other. Hayner poked him in the side. "Isn't that cool?"

"What? Oh, yeah, it is pretty cool." Olette caught the frisbee and sent it whistling back to the strange girl. Hayner poked him again. "What? I saw it. I said it was cool."

Poke.

"What!"

Poke.

"Stop it!"

Roxas sat up, rubbing his eyes. Axel was wide awake and watching him intensely, one finger still extended; Roxas noticed his eyes were glowing like a cat's in the dark. "Are you awake now?" he asked.

"I am now," Roxas replied, reminding himself that Axel was very sick and not really in his right mind."Why'd you keep poking me?"

"I get a little worried when you fall asleep," Axel said matter-of-factly, as if his reasoning should be perfectly obvious.

It wasn't obvious to Roxas."...Why, exactly, do you worry when I fall asleep?" he asked in atone suggesting Axel had better have a very good answer.

"Because when you fall asleep, you stop playing. And when you stop playing, the water starts rising again. Look where it is now -" he indignantly pointed to some abstract spot on the brick floor "- it's six inches higher than it was before you fell asleep."

Roxas's first impulse was to grab Axel by the shoulders and give him a good shake, yelling "I...AM...NOT...DEMYX!GOT...IT...MEMORIZED?!" Maybe Axel was temporarily out of his mind, but being mistaken for Demyx all the time - and having to act like him to keep Axel something like balanced - was starting to wear. He choked down that impulse and said, in an icily calm tone, "Axel, either I sleep sometime or I keep going until I simply fade away. And while I'm playing myself to death through sleep deprivation, I'm going to start messing up the music and playing wrong notes, and if I did that, the water might start rising faster, or worse. That wouldn't be good either, would it?"

Axel thought about this for a moment, then grumbled a bit as he accepted "Demyx's" explanation. "Oh, all right, you don't need to get huffy about it. Fine. Get some sleep. But I'm waking you up if anything happens."

Roxas groaned and buried his head under the covers again.


When he'd first arrived in New Orleans, Zexion had thought he would never be hungry again. Now, well over 24 hours later, he barely noticed the hideous stench that had kicked him in the gut on arrival; he probably smelled that bad himself. And he was hungrier than he'd ever been.

Well, staying at the hospital wouldn't have helped that; nobody there had had more to eat than a few cups of cold beans or tomato soup, and he'd watched some of the staff feeding themselves intravenously just so they wouldn't collapse while assisting patients. He shuddered a little at the thought. I intend to /never be that hungry/, he'd thought at the time.

At dark-thirty in the morning, standing chest-deep in filthy water, holding his lexicon over his head so it wouldn't get wet, he was starting to wonder.

He'd left Tulane University Hospital on a direct path to the Superdome, but he was fairly certain he hadn't stayed on it. He'd had to keep adjusting his route slightly to keep his head above water, or to avoid a street clogged with debris, or because he thought he caught afaint scent of ocean and seahorses coming from that direction...and after Kingdom Hearts knew how many slight adjustments, he was no longer sure he was going in even the right general direction. And he couldn't check the map in his lexicon without the risk of getting it soaked.

He sighed, adjusted his grip, and kept going. Find Nine. Go home. Eat. Rest.




There was a large bridge connecting the Superdome to a nearby mall. Thousands of people were crowded onto that bridge that morning, waiting expectantly for their deliverance from the crowded, filthy hell that was brewing inside the stadium. Surely the buses would come at 6:00 like they were supposed to. Surely the government had heard how awful things were in there and would waste no time- well, no more time than they already had - sending help. Surely, this time, FEMA would come through.

6:00 came and went. Well, driving conditions were terrible throughout the city; it must be taking a while for the buses to find their way safely.

7:00. Those buses were taking a long time, weren't they? Most of the roads were flooded, after all.

8:00. The buses were supposed to be here at 6:00 this morning, right? Not 6:00 this evening?

By 9:00, the crowd had more-or-less decided the buses weren't coming and they'd been given the shaft once again. Demyx, who'd been lying on the concrete towards the edge of the crowd, trying to stretch out and relax a little after being kept in such cramped conditions, hastily gathered his ruined cloak and his water bottle and tried to put some distance between himself and what looked like an impending riot. People were starting to yell at the uniformed men nearby.

"Where the hell are those buses?" "They said they'd be getting us out of there today!""I can't keep my family in there no more, look, my baby's running afever!" "They can't ask us to live in there no more, they don't know what it's like!" "What the hell's going on - they forgot we were here?"

Someone held up one of those strange little devices that seemed so popular - Demyx had seen people talking into them, or repeating messages from them, so they must have been some form of communication. "Hey, y'all, my friend in Baton Rouge says there's only 2500 of us left in here and he's glad I'm gonna get out soon! Anyone got anything to say about that?" Everyone in the area started shouting and swearing at the hapless, misinformed person on the other end of the communicator.

Whoever this "Fema" person is, I don't think they can really be trusted in a disaster, Demyx thought as he tried to work his way out of the angry crowd. They're not sending food, not sending help, not getting people out of here... The people were packed almost too close together for him to move. Even when a sudden breath of cigarette smoke set him hacking again - /oh, man, make it stop, it hurts/- no one could make much room for the young man who seemed about to cough up alung.

"S-sorry," he choked. "I c-"

"See that?" someone yelled, pointing at him. "It's makin' people sick in there! Can't nobody breathe in that shit! If we don't get outta here soon, people are gonna start droppin'dead in there!"

"I hear there's a hundred people who've already died in there - most of 'em just died of the heat! How many more of 'em are there gonna be before those buses get here?"

"They're not coming! They don't care about us!"

"They're hopin' we all die and go away!"

Demyx was gasping for breath, trying to calm himself. His throat was raw, and he'd been coughing so hard that breathing was becoming a little painful. He looked up at the sky. Guess I should have waited for a star...

He looked down at his water bottle."Dance, water, dance," he whispered, as he had the night before. Once again, the water splashed by itself - maybe even a little higher this time. He hadn't been imagining it - his powers were starting to return. Just like he'd wished for.

The buses will come...




Zexion couldn't catch himself this time. He stumbled and fell, splashing into the murky water and thoroughly soaking himself and his lexicon.

He stood up, coughing and spluttering, trying to wipe the water out of his face without dropping his lexicon again. I can't do this, he thought to himself. I cannot simply keep going. Ifsobe Nine is in the Superdome at this moment, he will be evacuated well before Icould possibly reach him, if he has not already been evacuated to parts unknown, and if I continue to make my way in that direction, I am going to drown. He waded over to a partially submerged fire escape and sat down on one of the few dry steps. Giving up on his mission entirely wasn't an option. As long as Nine was alive and his whereabouts unknown, he had to be found, and Zexion had volunteered to find him.

And why? In Kingdom Heart's name, why?Someone else would have done just as well or better...

Well, who, for instance? Three and Five were gone on missions of their own; Two and Four were needed at the Castle that Never Was. Eight was ill, and Thirteen was needed to take care of him. Ten was too easily distracted, in a world known as much for vice as anything, and Twelve would gladly let Nine rot. Seven and Eleven, no matter how ill, injured, or otherwise incapacitated Nine was, would likely rough him up a bit more when they found him just to teach him not to get lost. In Eleven's case, maybe more than a bit. That didn't leave a great many possibilities.

But Zexion's physical needs kept clouding his prized mental faculties. He was lost. He was starving. He was exhausted. He was filthy. He was hot. He was sweaty. He was soaked to the bone. He smelled like a pit toilet on an oil rig. He couldn't keep his hair out of his eyes. He'd been up to his chest in filthy water since hours before sunrise and he wanted /out/.

It wouldn't hurt to portal back to the World that Never Was just long enough for a shower, would it? Or a meal? Change of clothes? Maybe check the Proof of Existence again, make certain he wasn't searching for the dead?

He opened his magically undamaged lexicon to the map to regain his bearings and plot a shallower route. After I check the Superdome.

I can do this.




Most of the stuff Xigbar had brought on his first trip had remained untouched since Roxas unpacked it. All he'd used was the CD player; right now, he was lying on his cot letting his thoughts run free while music was pumped into his ears.

How long is Axel going to be like this?Will he be all right? What was in that medicine Vexen made that he won't take anymore? Was it just something to help with the symptoms, or could it have been the only thing that would save his life? What's wrong with him, anyway? Is it contagious? Is that why he couldn't stay in the Castle, and not because he kept starting fires accidentally? No, because Xigbar said the Superior didn't want anything to happen to me, and if they'd sent Axel away because he was contagious, I wouldn't have been sent with him, because then I'd be in danger of catching it...why doesn't the Superior want anything to happen to me in particular? Is it just because I'm the newest and youngest - I doubt it - or because of the Keyblades?...His thoughts wandered along those paths until he glanced to the side and realized Axel was awake.

He switched the CD player off and removed his headphones. "See, we're both still alive." Axel muttered something under his breath. "What was that?"

"I said, that's good." Somehow, Roxas doubted it, but he didn't feel like arguing the point."When can we get out of here?"

Roxas sat up suddenly in surprise."What do you mean by 'when can we get out of here'?" he asked carefully, hoping Axel was wondering what he and Roxas were doing in a tent on an ice world.

"When will this storm be over? I hate sitting up here and waiting."

Roxas sighed in disappointment. "I don't know."

"Oh." Axel paused. "I'm sorry for flipping out earlier."

"It's okay. I know you don't like water."

"Okay. Um...Can I pretend you're Roxas? Just for a little while?"

"..." I don't believe this. Can he pretend I'm me/ for a while?!/ "...I don't mind."

"Good." Axel suddenly grabbed him and hugged him tight. Roxas squeaked a bit in surprise.

Well, as long as he doesn't try to kiss me or anything...and as long as he lets me go before my shirt catches fire...