Title: Cat's Cradle

Summary: (AU-ish: keeps details from the game but mixes them with FFVII and a healthy dose of my own little mental universe- will have many descriptions, for clarity.) One wouldn't expect Axel to be a Turk. Then again, one wouldn't expect Roxas to be on the run for something he didn't do. But since when has anything been normal?

Rating: M

Warnings: The general shit. No citrus forseen. (Note: 'general shit' entails violence, language, possible mentions of nudity… and a meddling female OC not unlike Sakura.)

BGM: None

Comments: Sorry for the late updates! See, here's the story: Wednesday (yanno, the day I usually update?) there was a Student Organizations fair at my college. I was helping out with the Anime Club booth for said fair, and I brought my Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories vol. 1 and KHII vol.2 so I could work on the pictures for the chapters to be released this week... long story short, I lent them to the table while I had classes, and came back to find out that a friend of mine had borrowed them. It was cool, I had said she could, but I hadn't counted on not finishing the pics that day. (They're done, actually, so if you want to check them out, check out my Deviant Art site and the chapters on there.) Then when I put more thought into it, I had been starting to stress myself out with the Wednesday release schedule since Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are my really packed days. So from now on, expect new chapters on Fridays or Saturdays, since it'll be easier for me to release stuff up at Anime Club or when I'm babysitting on Saturday nights. Finally, in this chapter, please excuse the two OCs… the second shouldn't be mentioned much.

Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. Which is a fact that I am glad for, because that means I don't have Xemnas trying to find me and force me to give him the rights to it. You can have that one, Nomura-sama, he's all yours. (My brain deserts me when I'm awake at six in the blinking morning.)


Shot III: A hidden past, a broken recollection


The ringing of the phone brought Izumi to her senses. She lifted her head up, stared around the room, removed the sheet of paper that had stuck to her face in her nap, and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. With a yawn, she answered.

"'Ello, Izumi here."

"Working hard or hardly working?"

"Axel, no fucking jokes, please. I can't work on no sleep, and with the case I just finished up yesterday I have been. Tailing that bastard ended my influence in it."

"And Shinra will thank you greatly, I'm sure. How goes the APBs?"

"Signed, sealed and delivered." Izumi grinned, leaning back and wincing as the chair under her squealed. Nanashi looked up at her, but a smile settled him back down. "How goes the Roxas hunt?"

"Well, an officer in Coliseum says he saw the plate number go by last night, but he had no reason to stop him… the APB didn't get opened until this morning." Izumi growled at this revelation and hit the desk in front of her.

"God, I HATE those backwater, good-ol-boy run joints! They never get SHIT done right! I thought police stations were open 24-7-365."

"Apparently the officer who was supposed to be in charge last night didn't show up- they said he was ill. The switchboard operator came in, but she didn't have the clearance required to open the email."

"I'll give her clearance- I'll clear her sinuses with as far as my foot will go up her…"

"Izumi, no use getting pissed about it now. I called the next three towns over- I made them open the mail right then, they're on the lookout. Besides, it's pretty well a straight shot, no real sideroads the kid would know about. So just settle. You probably took your dog with you last night, right? No sense getting stressed, he'll know it. Hey. When I get back, bring him in again. I like dogs. Just never could get one because of the job."

"They're dead useful." Izumi said calmly, taking deep breaths to settle down. "Good companions, no one thinks anything of a kid walking a dog… and you can train 'em to take down suspects. Old Nanashi here helped me out like that a few times… and he's still a baby, virtually." Okay, not so much a baby, Nanashi was about two and a half, but to Izumi, that was still baby. "Hey, yanno they say the average time to make or break a habit is 21 days… I wonder if that would be 21 repetitions for a word or name…"

"What are you talking about, Izumi?" Axel asked, confused as all hell.

"That makes five. 16 to go." She said cryptically before hanging up. "We'll see if he remembers my name again the next time he calls, eh, Nanashi?" she laughed to the dog, now sitting at attention by her feet.

"You brought the puppy?" Violet eyes shot up to meet bright Mako blues and a smile.

"R-Reno… sir!" Izumi declared, standing up. Reno wasn't much older than her, so this display annoyed him a little.

"Izumi, we're the same rank. We are almost the same age. You don't have to 'sir' me. Hey, boy." He smiled as Nanashi loped over and stood on him, paws on the lapels of his coat. "Sorry, no treats, didn't know your lady friend was bringing you in today."

"To be honest, I didn't know I was bringing him in up until about midnight last night, si-… Reno." Izumi admitted. "I don't go out at night without him, actually. I figure anyone thinking I'm an easy target will see Commodore Fluff-n-Stuff here and freak out."

"So, I'm guessing you fell asleep over your desk, then?"

"Afraid so." Izumi admitted hesitantly. Reno just took a step closer, tilted the girl's face one way, and nodded.

"Yep, just what I thought." He nodded. "Ink stains." With the bottle of water from the desk (she really wasn't sure when she'd gotten that, but it had to have been the night before to wash down the coffee she was drinking) and a tissue from a box on a nearby desk (probably Johnson's, she mused, seeing as how the man had the beginnings of a cold the last time she saw him), he cleaned the ink off her face. "There you go, kid. Clean faced and ready to take on the world- or at least Shinra himself. You don't even look like you slept here."

Reno, at 24, was about four years older than Izumi- the girl was, with the exception of the new recruits, the youngest Turk there, and definitely the youngest of her rank- and had appointed himself the girl's older brother. He was no replacement for Hiroshi, but she liked him well enough. All she could figure was that he'd gotten a hold of her file somehow, read the bit about the brother killed in SOLDIER when she was just about 16, and taken it upon himself to be her big brother. And out of all the other Turks there, she knew she could count on him.

"Hey, I bet you haven't eaten anything since yesterday." Reno nodded.

"Just coffee… sludge really, I guess I did the interns a favor by drinking some of that radioactive slop left over from the day." Izumi muttered dryly.

"Then it's my duty to get some food in your stomach. And they're serving bacon and eggs in that cafeteria down the street."

"Wow, heart attack waiting to happen," Izumi laughed, but he knew she'd agree. After all, it was pretty much her favorite breakfast. And with all the water she drank and how strict she was about her diet, her cholesterol levels would practically be nil when she died, as far as anyone saw. "Do they allow dogs?" she asked- she rarely went there, and never with Nanashi.

"We're Turks, kid. If we say they allow dogs, they allow dogs."

"Right. I'll pull the blind act." Izumi laughed, knowing she would do no such thing.

--

"Damn it… she had to have gone through here, just had to have…" Roxas sighed, head in his hands as he sat in the park. The officers in this town (called 'Neverwas', oddly enough) said that they hadn't had any suspicious cars or plates with Larxene's number come through ever. He was starting to despair of ever finding her, really… and it was only the second day of his search.

As Roxas was bemoaning his fate and life in general, something gently thwacked him on top of the head. As he looked up, he absolutely expected to find Axel standing there, handcuffs out and telling him he was under arrest.

Instead, a young raven haired girl was standing in front of him, smiling and holding out a sandwich. "Here. You really look like you could use some food," she smiled.

"T-thank you…" Roxas said, staring at the sandwich in mild confusion.

"My name is Fiona. What's yours?"

"It's Roxas…" he smiled back. She looked like was going to sit down and chat with him, but just then someone yelled out.

"Fiona! Come on, it's time to go!" She sighed, bright green eyes sad, and grinned back at Roxas.

"Sorry… my uncle Vexen calling me. We stopped here to visit some family, but we're headed back to Midgar this afternoon."

"That's my hometown!" Roxas blurted out. Now she really was smiling again. "Uhm… yeah… if you want to look up Strife in the phonebook… I think there's only one entry… but if you wanna talk, you can call there."

"I'd like that." She smiled, before the voice called out again.

"FIONA!"

"Coming, uncle!" she called back. "Sorry… gotta go. It was nice meeting you, Roxas." She smiled and ran off.

"You… too…" he said as he watched her leave.

--

"Fiona, where were you?" Vexen sighed. Honestly, he didn't have time for this. Hojo would have his guts on a plate if he were back one second late, and that cloning experiment of his was something he couldn't afford to miss much time on.

"I was talking, Uncle Vexen… there was a guy I think is an upperclassman in my school here."

"Well, let's go. Larxene just wanted money, as usual… honestly, how much does she think Shinra pays me, anyway?" Vexen sighed. Fiona looked over at him in confusion.

"When does Cousin Larxene not want money? I hate to be mean about it… but something's off about her. Her and her boyfriend… they were in a real hurry, and she was meaner than usual."

"I know, Fiona. Let it go. She didn't get much, at any rate, just gas money as it stands. She can be mad but in the end all that matters is that your aunt knows about this. Let's go home." Vexen sighed.

--

Axel had been hunting through Neverwas (who the hell came up with that name anyhow, he wondered), looking all over for the small car that Roxas was driving. As he was heading to the park, a familiar face caught his eye… one of the men from the Shinra Science division… what was his name again?

"Axel." Ah, right, he knew that voice, the name returned to him.

"Vexen. What brings you and…Fiona? Wow, aren't you two a little far from Shinra?"

"We came to visit family, but the trip was… unfruitful." Vexen scowled (but really, when was he not scowling?). "But Fiona got a chance to get out more, and that's better than a lot of people can say."

"Ouch, you wound me." Axel replied sarcastically. Really, there was no love lost between the two; Axel disliked that Vexen didn't see that Hojo had no control over him anymore and Vexen just disliked the Turks- period. According to him, the Turks were the ones who had killed Fiona's mother and drove her father insane. The scientist was really no relation to the girl, but he had worked with her mother, and she had stipulated in her will that if anyone got her daughter (only five at the time) in the event of her death and her husband being unable to care for her, that it was Vexen… not even her own sister could have custody, and her sister had a daughter of her own. When they had finally figured out that something was wrong in the household, Fiona had been out of school three weeks, locked in her room to hide herself from her insane father, barely eating, only leaving when she heard him fall asleep. The poor girl had been so mentally scarred from that…

In reality, the Turks were not responsible. The Turks couldn't have been any less responsible if they had tried, but since at the time Fiona's mother had been working on a new project that would benefit the Turks, Vexen counted them responsible. Really, it was wrong to blame them- it had been raining hard and a man was trying to cross the street, he didn't see the car and before anyone knew it, she'd been sideswiped by a car trying to dodge him. The car cleared the ditch and proceeded to bury itself in a tree. Fiona's mother died instantly. Fiona held no ill will to the group- she could often be found down there talking to them, especially when Izumi brought the dog.

"Is Miss Izumi with you, Mister Axel?" the girl asked. At thirteen, she was still very polite, almost childlike.

"Nope, afraid not. I'm searching for someone, though… maybe I should have had her bring the pup." Axel mused. Vexen was growing bored with this.

"What are you talking about, Axel? Who are you tracking?"

"A kid, about 18 years old. Blond hair, blue eyes, name of Roxas Hikaru." Fiona's eyes widened, and the two men noticed. "Fiona… what are you trying to hide?"

"N-nothing…" she tried. Axel wasn't buying it.

"He's here, isn't he? Fiona, come on. I'm not here to hurt him, I have a couple of questions for him. I give you my word."

"Oh, great, the word of a Turk, that's a laugh." Vexen scoffed. Fiona cut her uncle a look, then looked back to Axel.

"Yes… I gave him a sandwich, he looked hungry… There he is now! Roxas!" Fiona called, breaking off from her uncle to go talk to Roxas again.

"Fiona! Thanks for the sandwich, it was really good." He smiled, blushing a little as she grabbed his hand.

"You're welcome, but that's not why I'm here. You gotta come with me and talk to my uncle and one of his coworkers!" she giggled. Roxas blushed again, and grinned.

"That's a nice thought, but… I kinda need to get on the road again… I think I'm gonna visit some family in Nibelheim for a while… but tell you what! I'll give you my number and you can call any time!" Fiona looked sad but she was willing to take him up on that. Axel really seemed to want to talk to him… any bit helped. So she traded numbers with him and let him go. As she ran back up to the men, both looked shocked.

"Fiona! You let him go!" Axel sighed.

"Nu-uh! I got his number. It's more than you had before, right? Plus if I call him you can get a fix by the cell towers, right?" Vexen had taught this child well, and Axel nodded his thanks in his direction. "Besides, he told me he was going to Nibelheim for a bit to visit family."

"Fiona… you are one hell of a smart kid." Axel laughed, ruffling the raven locks. Vexen nodded at her, a small smile on his face, and for some reason that made the girl happier than she had been in a while. "Well, nice seeing you guys. Hey, Fiona, I think Izumi has Nanashi with her when you guys get back."

"Yay! Nanashi!" Fiona clapped. Vexen sighed.

"In the meantime, I better get going. See you two when I get back!" Axel laughed as he headed for the bike. Fiona stared off after him, green eyes sparkling.

"He's not coming back without Roxas, is he, Uncle?" she asked.

"It's not his style to leave a job unfinished. That's a Turk for you." Vexen sighed, and ushered his niece back to the car.

--

"'Ello, Izumi here." It was lunchtime now, and Izumi was in the cafeteria down the street, again eating with Reno, who had decided to help on the case.

"Izumi! Hey, I'll get to fulfill your favor early! Seems Roxy's going to Nibelheim, so if you have contacts there that can hold him, I'd love you forever." Axel's voice filtered over the phone. Izumi laughed happily, a smile on her face- Reno was stunned; she didn't smile that much for anyone. She either had a plan or his brother had just said something absolutely amazing or awesomely funny.

"Man, I don't just have contacts there. I've got family. And he's about his age too, I think they'd get along great. I'll call him."

"Izumi, you are a miracle worker."

"No, just a person with a scattered family. Oh, and that makes seven. 14 to go." With that she hung up the phone.

"Huh? What's that last part about?" Reno asked.

"Oh, just a little experiment with the memory. They say it takes 21 days to make or break a habit, so I have to wonder- does it take 21 repetitions to make someone remember a name?" Violet eyes shone brightly, and it wasn't just the Mako there. "I gotta make a call, forgive me."

"Hey, work is work. I'm not telling." Reno laughed, and went back to eating.

--

"Demyx? Demyx! DEMYX!" A dirty-blond haired boy popped out from under the house. "Do I even want to know what you were doing under there?"

"I was fixing that pipe, Zexy!" Demyx smiled to the periwinkle-haired, emo-looking boy who was standing on the porch. As he swiped at dirt on his face, he went on. "It's been leaking for a week, and I figured today was as good a day as any to fix it."

"Dare I ask, how?" Zexion sighed. Sometimes the boy was so insane… he wouldn't have put it past him to try jamming peanut butter in the cracked pipe to stop it.

"I got some of this tape… it'll do until the plumber gets here Friday."

"I wouldn't think this many people would have issues…"

"That hotel the next town over sorta had a massive breakdown, according to the guy that runs the plumbing company. It's gonna take until Wednesday to get it under control, according to him." Demyx gave up on the dirt, and just smiled to Zexion. "Can I get a hug?"

"After you shower, why not?" Zexion sighed, but it was a smiling sigh, and Demyx knew it was all joking. Suddenly, a loud ringtone went off from under the house, and Demyx reached in his pocket, then around him, finally unearthing an ocean blue cell phone. Zexion wondered who it was- the sound of a piano and a harp, the song being "Always on my Mind"… it wasn't familiar. Demyx obviously knew who it was, though.

"Hey! Hold on, Zexion's here, I'll put it on speaker!" he grinned and did so. "Okay, talk to me."

"Demyx, do you know how much I hate speaker?" the tinny soprano… it was Izumi, Demyx's cousin in Midgar. "How are you two, by the way?"

"I'm good! Just patched up the pipe under the house that was busted!"

"You patched up the pipe?" Izumi said in shock that carried over the miles perfectly.

"We'll see when he showers and gets all the dirt off." Zexion laughed. "How have you been?"

"Busy." The sigh came over as static. "Hey, guys, I need you two to be on the lookout for someone for me."

"Who, Izumi?" Demyx smiled as he finally decided to stop sitting under the house.

"Short blond, blue eyed boy. Name of Roxas. I'll send a picture when I get back to the office, but don't expect him to be there until tomorrow at the earliest. He just left Neverwas at a little after noon today. I've got a coworker coming to get him."

"What'd he do?" both boys asked. They knew the girl's job quite well.

"It's what he didn't do really. We need his help catching the actual perp. He knows her well- not that well, Demyx, I know what you're thinking."

"Actually this time it was Zexion." Demyx grinned when he saw the look on the other's face. "All right, send the details as fast as possible, we'll keep him here. Oh, and we said hi to Hiroshi the other day…" Demyx wasn't smiling anymore- it was a sad task but one he carried out for his cousin regularly.

"Hiroshi's going to be feeling the love- my coworker's gonna give him a holler too… ah, hell, I've got time off coming to me, if you can manage to keep Roxas and Axel both there for a couple of days, I'll be there."

"Ooh! Are you bringing the puppy?" Demyx asked.

"Nanashi will be coming with me." Izumi laughed.

"Right. We'll keep them." Zexion said, smiling too. He couldn't help it; when Demyx smiled it was contagious.

"I appreciate it. Look, I gotta get going, I'm on lunch and I need to finish so I can get back to work. I'll see you guys soon."

"Bye, Izumi." Both said, though Demyx was a little more enthusiastic about it.

"Well, we better get ready for this." Demyx sighed. Zexion nodded and the two went inside to plot and wait for Izumi's email.