Disclaimer:I have no claim to Kingdom Hearts. If I did I'd make them release the Roxas game in the US this February, not just Japan. It belongs to Square Enix by the by.

Warning, this chapter contains:Swearing.

(spoilers)Future Pairings:Axel/Roxas, Sora/Kairi, Sora/Riku and other mild ones on the side.

Author's Notes:
This is, indeed, another high school AU. I realize they're quite over done and clique, but they're wickedly fun to write as well. I'll try my hardest to make this a good fic, and keep things moderately original. Meaning everything I use in here will be something I thought up on my own, not something I took from another AU. This fic will be switching first person perspective between Roxas and Sora, for the most part, and will switch off every chapter. You can tell who's POV it is by the large bolded name at the start, which should stop most confusion. The chapters will be staying relatively short, because it allows for fast updates and is just plain easier. I'll be updating chapter 2 soon, but it's currently in the betaing process. Much thanks to you, my betas! I'd love feedback if you could find the time to review; I'm not really satisfied with how this turned out and I'd like to hear what you think. At any rate, ENJOY!

Chapter 1: Self Portrait

Roxas

When most kids are little they like to draw, usually just little line art pictures done in crayon, of flowers or dragons or what ever. The thing is, I was one of those kids that just couldn't be creatively structured. My father always wanted me to paint, or sing, anything artistic really. He made me take piano lessons, acting lessons and even ballet. But even out of all that, the worst was painting. My father had always wanted to paint when he was younger, but his parents made him focus on his academics first and foremost. "Artists go hungry while scholars eat like kings," they always told me whenever I went over for the occasional dinner.

As far as I'm concerned they're half right at least, I don't think that people will necessarily get paid better as a teacher then they might as a painter. One thing you have to consider when you say stuff like that, is that if someone doesn't have a head for numbers they're not going to get a job at NASA, and likewise if you're tone deaf you won't get a job singing the classics. My father can not for the life of him paint a picture worth five cents, and believe me he's tried.

After a while, he figured out that no one was going to hire him for church ceilings and took over for his father as Head Master of the school he created. So as you might have guessed, my father projected his expectations and dreams onto me. What made it even worse for me, was the fact that I wasn't half bad at it; I got my mom's genes I guess. I could paint pretty fucking well, for a ten year-old at any rate, which just egged him on. It was some time around then that Mom decided she'd had enough. She packed her bags and headed out to Paris on a red-eye flight. I really can't blame her for it; if I could have left, I would have gone with her. My father had conveniently made sure I never got a passport. Mom works for a big fashion design studio somewhere in France now. I don't know much about it, but she writes to me a lot. She tells me that once I finish high school I can move there. Admittedly it's a long time to wait, but I made my vow after her first letter to get the hell out of here as soon as I turned eighteen.

With that in mind, I've survived the past five stifling years of my life. My father and I don't exactly see eye to eye. When I told him I'd rather hang outside with the other kids, he set up an easel on the patio, telling me I could paint the other kids now. For my 13th Birthday I told him I wanted a skateboard or an Xbox 360. He got me, wouldn't you know it, some expensive oil paints and an easel made of marble and ivory. I know, I probably should have appreciated the gesture, but it's not like he was trying to please me anyways, so why bother? It wasn't until I was 14 that I met Hayner and the gang.

Hayner's a kid who lives in my neighborhood. The first time I met him was when I caught him and his two friends, Pence and Olette, graffitiing our fence. I scared them all shitless, I might add. I don't care how much Hayner denies it; he screamed like a little girl. The thing is, I wasn't angry about it at all. It's not like I felt any loyalty to the house that had suffocated me like a pillow over my face. I don't know if it surprised him when I asked for one of the cans and began to spray "FUCK YOU" in large letters along my own fence; if anything, he looked relieved. But then I started laughing and it sounded fucking creepy, even to me. I hadn't laughed since Mom left, but now I couldn't stop. I just kept laughing and laughing like a psychopath. When I'd finally finished, I was gasping for breath, bent over on all fours in the dirt. The ringleader, Hayner, a skinny boy in camo pants who's hair looked like a chicken's butt, yanked me up by the arm, and extended his fist to me.

"I'm Hayner," he'd said; his cocky smirk making him look even dorkier. "Looks like you could use some friends."

It was a pretty rude thing to say, and if I'd actually had any friends, I'm sure I would have been offended. But as it so happened, I didn't have any friends and there was something about Hayner that made me feel an immediate kinship with him. I looked at his fist, more then a little confused. Was he going to punch me?

After a minute or so, the girl had coughed loudly to brake the awkward silence we had fallen into. "Pound it, man," Hayner elaborated for my benefit, pushing his fist foreword in a helpful gesture. We knocked our fists together.

From then on, I had three new friends: Hayner, who's pushy and stubborn as a mule, likes to think he's, in the words of Olette, the cat's pajamas. Pence, who is, it seems, the brains of the operation, always investigates stuff around town and listens in on the idle gossip around Tram Common and Station Heights. Olette, the tomboyish girl with the cute smile, I'm pretty sure is only friends with Hayner because he's funnier then cable. Along with me, Roxas, the quite one that Hayner likes to get a rise out of. We made a strange and wonderful foursome, until that is, we got arrested for vandalism.

We'd sprayed our sign, a large triangle with the letters R, P and O at each point and an H in center, onto the side of the clock tower at Station Plaza, which had been a stupid idea, apparently. The station employees saw us and, of course, they called the cops. It was the conversation I had with my father when he picked me up at the police station that night that marked the end of my new found life.

"Roxas..." He started talking in that obnoxiously slow way he did with his colleagues. "You start school again in a couple of weeks...correct?"

"Yeah," I answered, feeling way to tired to have a conversation this slow paced. Man, getting arrested really drains you. If I wasn't careful, I'd fall asleep, and that wouldn't go over well.

"I think it would be best.... if you were to attend Oblivion Academy instead of the public high school..." He started to say in his long drawling voice.

"WHAT?! WHY?!" I interrupted, suddenly feeling very defensive.

My father cringed slightly at my volume before answering in his usual monotone. "It seems... that you are in need of a more structured and disciplined environment... for your studies."

"This is..." he continued. "Not a proposal you can refuse...Roxas."

I felt like I was going to be sick. He expected me to go to his fucking boarding school, where everyone would know me as 'The Head Master's Kid'. Where all the kids would think they were little prodigies and walk around discussing how brilliant they were with each other. It's not like I'm dumb. I get good grades when I try, but I'm not exactly one of those kids who plans to go to Harvard or P.D.U. and uses all their extra time studying. The only plus side about Oblivion Academy was that it was supposed to have a great science program, or so said Olette at any rate. She'll be there too; I remembered her applying months ago. Apparently it's a very selective school. There's one thing I actually like in school and it's science. There's just something refreshing about dissecting a frog, or mixing dangerous chemicals; something distinctly unlike art and music.

After a while, I finished my internal consideration and realized that I hadn't actually said anything yet. It's not like I had to or anything. He already made it clear that I couldn't say 'no', but there was something uncomfortable and stuffy about the silence the car had fallen into. "I'll go." I said after taking a long and deep breath. "But only if you enroll me as 'Roxas LeBlanc', and only if you don't tell anyone we're related, not even the teachers. Also, I want to stay in the dorms." I exhaled noisily from the passenger seat. My shoulders slumped into the leather seat as another wave of tiredness washed over me.

And that... that is how I ended up here: at the gates to the Oblivion campus, holding a duffel bag of clothes and carrying a skateboard under one arm.