A/N: So, I went against what I said like…two chapters ago and I'm letting my chapters run down to where I only have one back-up chapter so blah.
I'm sorry that I haven't been replying to the reviews. The last few times I've updated they've been pretty sporadic. I try to remember, but like with this chappie I only just decided to post it.
Anyway, I hope you like this.
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Life is like a puzzle. You can only see the print when the pieces fit together.
Axel slowly strolled down the hallway of the science building. The first day of his detention began today, and his father had dropped him off on his way to work. He had been depressed when he had first woken that morning, thinking that Larxene wouldn't be up when he left at six. However, to his surprise, she had woken him as usual, having made eggs and bacon for him.
Lately, Larxene attuned to him more often. She had actually cancelled a few dates just to spend time with him. Okay, so spending time with her usually landed them both in trouble. But Axel was eighteen and she was twenty-one, so honestly, their parents had a limit on what 'punishment' was, even if the ideas were pretty ingenious. Yet, it was the fact that she was giving up her own activities to spend time with her little brother. It meant a lot to him.
As it turned out, their escapade off to the mall had proven that he indeed was grounded. As well as the fact that it was now extended to the week before Christmas. Not that he was disappointed…just bored.
His musings were cut short as he entered Mr. Vexen's room, where his detention was to be served.
He knew he had bad luck. He had had bad luck since he was three, when his mother died. Honestly, his bad luck was beginning to get to him, mentally. There were only so many times that fate could lead him to being in trouble with this specific person, right? Was there a glitch in the system with this person?
"Ah, Mr. Wise, you're here." Mr. Vexen said, standing in front of all of his desks as if he was giving a lecture, although there was only one person occupying a desk. "Take a seat. I was just telling Mr. Melosine you would be joining us."
Axel stayed in the doorway his eyes transfixed on Riku, who glared right back at him.
"You've got to be joking." Axel muttered under his breath, walking towards the other side of the classroom, as far away from Riku as he could get.
Riku didn't say anything; he angrily let his eyes rest on his books.
"Mr. Wise? Do you have any homework you can work on?"
"No." Axel answered, "Unlike some people I can…"
"Mr. Wise, my experience with you in prior years tells my you are going to say something rude, and demeaning, so let me take care of this problem before it even begins." He went to his desk and produced two beakers from the inside one of the many drawers he had. Then, scrounging in one of the other drawers, he pulled out a handful of droppers. Carefully, he put four in each beaker. Lastly, he pulled out tape and pressed a piece onto both with their names written on them in magic marker.
"Consider these your chances. The first one is a warning," he said, pulling one dropper out to get his point across. "The second one will earn you a page long report over an element of my choosing, and citing for your work. I will not have plagiarism." He said pulling another plastic pipette out and laying it down next to the other. He plucked out the third one. "This one will get you an entire afternoon stuck in my ingredients closet, sorting, alphabetizing and cleaning. Something that has not been done in the better part of four years, I assure you. And this one," He whipped out the fourth one. The one that spelt out the two young students' eminent doom, they were sure. "This one will get you a full week, seven days, sitting next to one another and learning everything about the other that you can possibly get in that amounted time space. And at the end of these seven days you will write a three paper report over your partner, front and back, on college rule paper over what you have learned and if that information had changed your opinion of the other in anyway."
He looked at his two students in a close to gleeful manner. "Am I in any way unclear?" He questioned.
Riku got the intense impression that Vexen was enjoying this more than he probably should be. There was a glint in his sage green eyes that was just…not quite right. And for fear of his safety in school, and in this particular teacher's classroom, he nodded. He wasn't sure if Axel had dome anything. Knowing the redhead, he probably hadn't.
"Good," Vexen said happily. He dumped three of the droppers into each beaker. "I always did hate warnings." He said putting the two extra in his pants pocket.
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Naminé smiled at Ollete as she walked into the office.
"How was you're night?" She asked the office aid.
Ollete looked up from her phone network, her bright green eyes showing all of her shock clearly. Then she shrugged. "I've decided never to speak to Hayner again." She said like she did every other morning.
Naminé smiled, walking over to the teacher's mail, preparing for her morning rounds of mail-girl. She sat down next the brunette, still smiling as the story went on, and on, and on.
It wasn't that she didn't care to listen, or even that she was even tired of listening. It was just that…well, Ollete and her went through this over other day. Hayner would say something he obviously didn't mean, try to take it back, while instead only making it worse. Ollete didn't really have a problem with it, in fact, Naminé was pretty sure that she got a kick out of it. Naminé had never thought it possible, but she was pretty sure that Ollete got pleasure out of making Hayner suffer, meaning Ollete was a sadist.
It was a very interesting detail for someone so innocent.
"Okay." The blonde said, picking up the sorted mail.
"Did you hear a word that came out of my mouth?" Ollete asked with a toothy grin. She knew the answer.
"I think I stopped listening when you opened your mouth." She said with a slight blush that came up every time she was caught, no matter how much the other conversationalist didn't care.
Ollete laughed, poking her cheek. "You're all pink, Namie!"
The blonde ducked out of her reach, grabbing her little pink clutch, calling. "I'll talk to you later Ollete!" as she walked toward the door.
Ollete waved at first. Then she waved her hands around wildly. "Oh, no! Don't go!" She yelled, firmly stopping Naminé in her tracks. "I almost forgot!" She said as she jumped out of her seat to run into the back room.
Naminé stood, shocked, in the middle of the room, with mail in her hands, and her clutch under her arm. Meanwhile, Ollete trifled around in the back room, which was filthy, the blonde would attest to that. Naminé went over to the counter, close to the entrance of the office, and set her things down. She sat in the chair she had been using earlier, sighing out of her occasional wave of boredom.
"Ollete!" She yelled after five minutes of sitting in that chair. However, instead of the calculatedly calm voice she heard…nothing. "Ollete?" She jumped out of her chair to make sure one of the many piles of paperwork hadn't fallen down on top of her friend. "Ollie?" She started to run to the backroom.
In the doorway of the room that she had lost her friend, she saw why it might have taken her more than a few seconds to retrieve whatever it was she was trying to retrieve. Naminé gingerly stepped into the room, afraid of what was actually hiding in there. She stepped over a few backpacks, a mountain of paper work, and a doodle bear? She didn't want to know.
"Ollete! Where are you?" She cried heading further and further into the room of despair. She looked around the room frantically, not seeing how the other girl could have disappeared so easily. Close to the end of the place, she sighed in relief as she saw another door. Thank god! She hadn't walked into the twilight zone. She opened the door. "Ollete! What was so important that you had to brave the wild…blue…?" In front of her was the biggest floral garden that she had ever seen. "Wow. Is this just from today?"
Ollete, who had been rummaging around from bouquet to bouquet, stopped and smiled. "From yesterday afternoon and this morning."
"Wow! What do I need from in here?" She said, touching a bunch of carnations.
Ollete scoffed. "Guess."
"Who gave me flowers?"
She shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. He had pink hair, but he didn't give me a name." She said, completely missing the look of indignation that crossed the blonde's face as she pulled an entire garden, Naminé was sure, of tiger lilies out of the masses. "These are for you!" She said thrusting them into her hands.
She looked down and the orange and brown plants in her hands.
He knew they were her favorite, tiger lilies.
"Thanks, Ollete." She said, pulling the card off them. It wouldn't do for anyone to be snooping. "I'll pick them up after school."
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"Saix? I believe in this ridiculous plan of yours, but I think that may have been pushing it."
"No one was hurt. I made sure of it. It was executed perfectly! It was just the stunt Wise would pull."
"You blew the football field house up! That's just a little out there! Axel has only ever blown classrooms up."
"He needed to blow off steam…you know what? Just hush. It got me what I wanted. It's not as if he's going to juvie."
"Just don't pull anything like that again. It's dangerous and it's tampering with a student's life."
"Don't worry, I have what I want. I can now move on."
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"Mr. Wise? Mr. Wise, come with me," said the school counselor, Rowena Fairbanks.
Axel sighed, slamming his General Music book shut. "Fucking bullshit." He breathed, following the small brunette out of the room. As he trailed behind, he ran a hand through his hair, feeling a sense of foreboding settle in the pit of his stomach. Why would she want him? She only pulled people out of class to tell them that they were dumb, who needed to change their schedules. Whereas, he was sure that had answered his question, he didn't see where he had screwed up on his transcript.
"In here." Rowena said, holding the door and following in after him. "Have a seat." She said kindly. "This may take a while."
He flipped the chair around, choosing to sit in backwards instead of traditional style. He watched her carefully as she sat behind her desk, pulling out his folder. "I was going through your transcript over the weekend, and I noticed that there were some…gaps, for lack of a better word."
He scoffed, just his luck. "How?" He bit.
She looked, impatiently. "Well for starters, you didn't have both years of Spanish. Only one…Why is that?"
"I didn't like the teacher."
Rowena sighed. "There are going to be instances in you life, Axel, when you have to work with people you don't like. It is not excusable just to throw in the towel. You won't be able to do that when you get a job will you?" She looked at him imploringly, while he just looked bored. "Look, you're going to college, right?"
"So my father threatens."
"It'll look good on your transcript. The better your transcript looks, the better chance you have of getting into a college miles away from here." She said, authoritatively. "That's what you want, isn't it?" He didn't answer her. In fact, he just crossed his arms over the back of his chair and laid his head down. She nodded, knowing she probably wasn't getting anywhere with him. "This isn't the only place. You have fillers for this year. You only have electives." She exclaimed rummaging through his papers. "General Music, first hour, Physical Education, second hour, Art theory, Linguistics! There are only art classes for most of the day."
"What can I say?" Axel asked. "I'm trying to get in touch with my inner artist."
"Axel, you need to be serious about this." She said, exasperatedly. "I've come up with a trial schedule," She pushed a pink paper in front of him. "I think you'll enjoy this a lot better than what you have."
Axel took the sheet, angrily, his poison green eyes going over every detail of his "demo-schedule." He nodded disgustedly, not liking what he was seeing at all. "You got rid of all my easy classes!" He said. "I have all my needed classes. All my maths, all my arts, and all my languages! I took all of the classes I needed so I could take bullshit classes for my senior year. Why do you want to load me down with crap that will just push more homework on me? What the hell, do I need calculus for? And-and what is this? World History 101? What's the point?" He crumpled the obnoxious pink sheet up, then threw it on the desk. "My answer is no."
Rowena sighed patiently, "You need something to take up more of your time." She unfolded the paper. "You're bored. I can tell."
"No, I'm not! I'm relaxing!"
"Blowing up the field house is not relaxing. It's juvenile delinquency!"
Axel slammed his hand down on her desk, "I didn't…dammit!" He clenched his fists; trying to count to ten before he let his mouth got carried away. He took a deep breath, gritting his teeth together. "Fine!" He said. "Whatever! Do what you want and give my new schedule to me when it's done!"
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"The teachers," Naminé started after taking a sip of her orange juice. "The teachers have actually joined in your race to set Axel and Riku up."
It was lunchtime all ready. Naminé, who had been sitting with her cousin, Roxas, and Sora, had already finished her sandwich within the first five minutes of the fifteen minutes they had before Riku and Axel arrived. She had heard Vexen and Xigbar talking about Axel's new schedule on her mail delivery, and thought she would share the news.
"Really?" Sora asked. He had been sitting sideways in his seat, leaning over to Roxas to talk about whatever those two talked about.
"How exciting to have the teachers on our side." Roxas said excitedly. "This should make for a most interesting game."
Kairi scoffed irately. "Can't you losers find something better to do other than play matchmaker? That was so last year!" She said.
Roxas snapped his attention over to her, taking a deep breath in order to start degrading her.
"Roxie! Did you watch the football game last night?" Sora said, drawing the blonde's attention from the Hyena.
"No. Why?"
"I…wanted to get the score from you." Sora said off the top of his head.
"Oh, the Dragons won." He said nonchalantly, now having forgot about Kairi.
Naminé stood up, grabbing her clutch. "Roxas will you come outside with me? I have to find Ollete to see how her relationship is going."
Roxas nodded, picking up his hat, while shrugging on his giant marshmallow coat. He began following his friend out of the cafeteria, only stopping when he reached into his pockets to get his gloves. "Namie, where are my gloves?"
"I don't know, Roxas?"
"Neither do I!" He exclaimed turning his coat pockets inside out.
"Roxas!" Sora called out from behind him. He twirled around, staring at his brunette friend with curiosity. Sora ran up to him, still only in his red hoodie, with his messenger bag beating against his leg. Once in front of the blonde, he held out his hand, showing him the missing gloves with a crooked grin. "Don't loose those." He said. "Your fingers might fall off with all the cold." He pulled Roxas' blue hat further down on his head affectionately; making sure it covered the pale ears. "See ya in Economics." He said as he ran off to his table, again.
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"Mr. Wise!" Rowena called, her sensible heels clicking annoyingly against the tile floor. "Mr. Wise, I have your new schedule. I think you'll like it." She said with a smile. She handed him a white sheet of paper, folded cleanly in half with his name written in curvy, fancy writing.
"That's bull, but thanks for the vote of confidence." Axel snatching the paper from her, then stuffing it in his pocket without looking at it. "I can't wait." He glared.
"You start on that tomorrow!" She called after him as he walked away without being dismissed.
"That's nice."
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Naminé walked out to the parking lot, waiting for her ride.
She had already grabbed her flowers from the office; it was harder for the office lady to find it since she had taken the tag with her name on it off. In the end, she had had to go to the floral room herself to fetch them.
The young lady gasped as she felt arms wrap around her, a faint chuckling in her left ear.
"Did you like the flowers I sent you?" Asked an all too familiar voice.
Naminé relaxed, falling back into her captor. "You really shouldn't do that. It'll be my luck you get stuffed in jail for dating jail bate the month before my eighteenth birthday." She smiled, letting him lead them across the parking lot to his car.
"I wanted to do something nice for you. Just say you liked them." He crooned, taking her flowers from her as she settled into his black bug.
She looked up, grinning at the way his pink hair fell over his hazel eyes. He reached out to stroke her cheek, with well-groomed hands. "I did like them, Marluxia. They're my favorite."
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A/N: Yay story line! Lol. That's pretty much all I have to say. I really have a lack of ability to ramble today.
InnocentGuilt