Waking up to another puddle in his face was never the way Axel thought he'd wake up again. Not after the first time he met Xemnas and became a member of Organization XIII. But, wake up to another puddle in his face he did, and so he sat up on his hands and knees, spluttering, trying to get the dirty water from out of both his nose and his mouth. Once he felt that he had gotten enough of the gritty water out of his mouth and his nose wouldn't try to drown him in the near future whenever he breathed, he looked up from the ground and slowly stood up.

He was in an old forest that much he could gather on his own. That and it was raining, the cold water hitting his face softly and rolling down his cheeks, making it seem like he was crying. 'I guess this is the closest to crying I can get, seeing as I can't feel emotion and all.' The thought was his own, but the image that flashed before his eyes was unbidden and he nearly fell over in shock.

A young woman sitting next to him in a chair, crying hard, as if unable to stop. He can't see her face, it hidden behind her hands and hair. "Don't…cry…" He knew it was his voice, but it didn't sound like his voice. For one, it was way too gravelly and rough sounding, not surprising since, talking made it fell like he had rocks rubbing against the inside of his throat. And secondly, he didn't hear the lilt of amusement he should usually have in his voice. Either that or a touch of cocky mixed in with a little annoyed. She looked up at him, her eyebrows knitted together in anger and she stared at him, thoroughly shocked and upset.

"Don't cry? Don't cry?! God damn it Reno! You could have died back there, and here you are, telling me 'don't cry'. Are you aware of how scared I was back there!? Are you?" She looked at him with wide, innocent brown eyes that had thick black lashes that touched her cheeks whenever she blinked. Her almost black hair framed her face and she had small, thin features that he couldn't help but absolutely love, features that had tears running down them.

All together, she was beautiful, even when she was sad and crying. "Kumo…I'm fine now. See?"

After that image, it seemed like the flood-gates opened and all of his memories came back to him, hitting him hard. He remembered being a kid living in a city called Midgar. He remembered the death of his mother by his father's drunken hands and very nearly dieing after his father, still in a drunken rage, attacked him with a knife. He remembered waking up in the hospital to see a strange man with short brown hair and a severe attitude, just standing there, watching him, before he fell back asleep.

He remembered waking up again, but this time, a man with longish black hair done up in a short ponytail was there to greet him. A man named Tseng who told him that he had killed his father in self-defense and that a group called the Turks wanted him to join in their ranks. He remembered joining in the Turks and going through all of the training with another guy named Rude and a girl who said her name was Cissnei. He remembered being really good with a weapon called an Electro-Mag Rod.

He remembered being involved in a lot of stuff that he considered not fun at first, but then got involved with a lot of the cooler stuff, especially after the first guy he saw, Verdot, left the Turks and was branded a traitor. He remembered Cloud, Tifa, Aeris, Vincent, Nanaki, Barret, Sephiroth, Yuffie, Rufus, and Elena, everything that happened in his life. And, he especially remembered Kumo. Her hating him, her introducing him to her friends when he wouldn't go away, her first kissing him, the day he changed.

He didn't know when he fell to the ground, but he had, sometime during his 'walk' down memory lane, and he looked down at the muddy ground, his fingers trying to grab a hold onto anything to keep him connected, keep him from falling into an endless oblivion of half-forgotten memories and the remnants of a feeling called 'guilt' that tried to eat away at the hollow that once housed his heart.

He slowly breathed and tried to right himself by standing up, but his wobbly legs couldn't hold him up and he leaned back against a tree. He was cold, but he didn't want to move, he felt too tired as it was, and so he just leaned back, allowing the cold water to splash against him in an almost hypnotic dance.

As the rain slowed and then finally stopped, he opened eyes he hadn't realized he'd closed and almost gasped. The moon had come out of hiding sometime as the rain stopped, and he was standing in a forest of white trees, next to a lake with a house that looked like a conch-shell at the far end. 'But…this is…the Forgotten City!'

The rumbling of something coming towards him alerted him to another visitor and he jumped back, instantly going into fight mode. Fire engulfed his hands and formed into his trademark chakrams and he waited for a second. A large, black motorcycle came into view and a blonde-haired man, sitting atop it stopped in front of him. The man pulled off the goggles he was wearing, revealing the bright, mako-enhanced eyes of a SOLDIER, and stared at Axel for a moment, his face one of shock.

"Shiva…Reno?" Axel was silent for a moment before he dropped his guard, letting his chakrams fade back into flames.

"I…I wish. The name's Axel now. A-X-E-L, got it memorized, Cloudy?" Cloud just sat there, staring as another rumbling sound was heard overhead, before a large air-ship came down and landed somewhere behind them.

"Alright kid, do ya know what th' source o' that strange light fallin' wa-" Another blonde came out of the airship and stopped to gape at Axel as several other familiar faces came out and stopped.

"What seems to be the problem, Cloud?" The familiar, smooth voice filled the air and Axel picked his head up to see a, now walking, Rufus Shinra come towards them and stop, Rude, Elena, and Tseng stopping too. "Reno…? Bahamut…I thought, we thought…didn't you die?"

Axel smirked and shook his head. "Nope, didn't die. And the name's not Reno anymore. It's Axel. Got it memorized?" He touched his finger to his head in his usual stance and continued, "And I'm not what you'd call human anymore. In fact…I shouldn't even exist, seeing as I'm like Kadaj and his gang, and I'm a Nobody." The small speech stunned everyone into silence, until…

"Reno?" Axel's eye's widened and he turned to look at a familiar face, now older, framed by dark brown hair and with large brown eyes.

"…Kumo."