A/N: Thanks: native-kitten, AGCourtney and CrystalEarth. Enjoy reading! :)

Now it was her turn to be utterly dumbfounded. Her dark thin eyebrows shot up in pure surprise and disappeared into her hairline. How did he know her name when they had never met before?

"Xehanort mentioned your name," he explained, when he saw the expression that crossed her face. "My name is Axel, by the way. That's A-X-E-L, got it memorized?"

"Sure," she said, smiling.

It was silent for a moment, but then the man asked, "Are you doing this every day, because it's kind of weird, don't you think?"

Her brows knitted together in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Climbing through the window, instead of using the door."

He pointed to the door.

Hailey started to laugh. "Oh, that? No. This was my first time. And I hope the last."

"Oh. You really look like a pro, if you ask me."

Hailey chuckled. "Thanks."

At least now she knew for sure that he was a good guy. And a funny one. She was glad that not everyone was like Xehanort. That would've been a creepy world.

She looked around. The room was not that big. It actually looked quite gloomy. She saw a blackboard, a bookcase, a bed, two wooden chairs with a spotless wooden table and a big wooden desk with papers and pens on it. It was such a mess here. How was it possible for him to survive here?

"How long have you been sitting here, all on your own?" she asked him.

"Let's see... about a week, I think. But don't worry, they bring me food if I need it and if they don't forget..."

Hailey gasped, her dark chocolate-colored eyes widening in pure shock. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Were the people here really that heartless?

"What?"

When he saw how shocked she looked, he continued, "Hey, that didn't happen yet, I was just kidding. And I also have a mirror here, so that I can do my hair. So I'm pretty content," he answered smiling.

"Oh."

She then took her time to look around some more. On the wooden table was a chiq, thin and silver expensive-looking serving tray with several beautiful glass figurines on it. Upon closer inspection, she found out that the figurines were made of crystal. Especially the statues of the cat, the cock and the peacock caught her attention immediately. It was like she had seen those statues somewhere before. They were so familiar to her, but she couldn't remember where exactly she had seen them.

"Poor you! I would never survived here... Hey, aren't you the physics teacher, Mr. Axel? You were absent today. Someone told me that you were still on vacation," she noticed. "So I guess it was just a rumor."

A physics teacher with fire red hair. How suitable, she couldn't help but think.

"So that's the excuse Xehanort is using. I was wondering why nobody even tried to go look for me, while I'm a pretty popular teacher. I thought they all didn't care..."

He sounded very sad all of a sudden, much like a lost, kicked puppy. She started to feel for him.

She wasn't that surprised to hear that Axel was a popular teacher, since he was the only normal one she had met so far. "That's not true. I've heard that every student here thinks you're cool, because you're not like those other teachers," Hailey said, instantly trying to cheer him up.

"Oh! That's always a good thing to hear. That really makes my day. So, it seems that we both knew more about each other, before we even have met each other. Funny, don't you think?"

She nodded. Meanwhile, Axel grabbed the delicate figurine of the peacock and examinated it thoughtfully. It shone beautifully and glisterned when the sunlight shone through it. Glass definitely didn't shine like that.

So it is crystal. Wow, wish I had such a beautiful figurine. And he seems to like it too, otherwise he wouldn't have looked at it like that.

Without a warning, Axel suddenly let go of it and it fell on the ground, breaking when it made contact with the hard ground.

"Oops!" Axel said, smirking, even though he didn't sound surprised at all.

Is he nuts? Why did he do that? It was such a beautiful figurine! Well, guess he didn't like it that much, then, she thought, shocked beyond belief.

But that still didn't explain his particularly odd behavior.

"Hmm... I'm getting hungry. I wonder what they'll be serving for dinner today," he said softly.

"I don't know. They didn't tell me," she answered, almost absent-mindedly.

He started to laugh, almost like a maniac, which turned her back to reality. Okay... now he really was scaring her. What was wrong with him? Maybe he was acting like that because he'd been locked up for too long. The poor guy.

He grabbed another figurine from the silver tray now. This time it was a beautiful swan, its long neck curled in slightly to give it an almost magical effect.

He examined this one too, while frowning slightly. "Not that you can keep in the food they make here. You'd better watch out what you eat in the canteen, girl. The last time they brought me something, the meatloaf was as hard as a rock. I almost lost a tooth. And then the potatoes... they were alive, seriously! For me it felt like I was trapped in one of my worst nightmares!"

He shivered.

"Eew!" Hailey said, while she shivered too.

"Yeah, tell me about it."

It certainly was good to know all this. Today was the last time she ate something from the canteen! She didn't want to die already! Not with such a jerk as Xehanort prancing around the school as its headmaster. She bet he knew about all this and he did this on purpose. But the pizza was tasty today, she had to admit that. However, she didn't think she wanted to know how it was made and what the ingredients of it were...

Axel then broke the other statue too, like he was doing this every day as some exercise.

"Oops, I'm getting clumsy. Must be because I'm so hungry."

If he doesn't like the figurines, then he can give them to me. It's such a sin to break these, they're so beautiful!

"So... which book were you reading?" Hailey asked, deciding to change the subject, before he would break the whole room down.

"Oh this?" He grabbed the book from the table in front of him. "It's called 'The struggle continues.' It's a really good book. You know, the writer is Veronica. She lives here, on Destiny Islands, too. I don't know her very well, but she's a good and and attractive writer. I heard she's great at cooking too. Wish she could prepare my food."

Veronica? Was that... Could it be-

"Oh really? May I look at it?" she asked him, curious now.

"Sure."

He handed her the thick book. It was quite heavy, but she wasn't surprised by that. She gave it a good look. Her suspicions were right. It was her aunt Veronica who had written this book. She saw from the corner of her eyes that Axel took another figurine from the table and started to examine it. It was a cat. Then she looked at the back of the book, to the summary. It said:

The day that Darkness overcame all the worlds, Violet had to leave her hometown and hide herself for the man who wanted to kill her. She had to leave her husband and move to a place she didn't even know, just because she was in danger. One of the apprentices of Aron, Violet's husband, was planning something dark. He wanted to take over the worlds. You will see everything from the eyes of Violet, Aron and Hailey, the niece of Aron. Hailey is in danger too. Aron and Violet are the only relatives that Hailey has. What will happen next and will anyone survive this dark time? All we can say in such times are,

When Light turns to Dark, the Calm becomes the Storm.

When Reality is a Dream, then Good must face Evil.

Courage is the Key.

Unlock your Destiny.

Understand everything you can...

That sounded pretty familiar. Apparently, she was famous and she didn't even know that!

"My aunt wrote this. It's her autobiography... well, sort of," she told Axel.

"Really? Then... you're the same Hailey from this book, right? I'm a big fan of yours, you know!"

She smiled. "Oh, thanks. I'm so flattered!"

She saw that Axel lost his grip on the figurine. It was going to fall. Something inside of her screamed that she had to save that figurine, no matter what.

So she trusted her instinct for the third time that day and jumped to the statue to grab Axel's arm. "No stop, don't do it!"

She was right on time.

Axel looked surprised at her. "Why not? These are not mine. They're from Xehanort, so who cares what happens with it?" he said.

She bit on her lower lip, looking away. "...I do."

"What? Do you even know what you're saying?" Axel asked, thoroughly surprised.

She looked at the figurine again. It attracted her a lot, but she had no idea why. She gave the statue a good look. Maybe she would find something rare on it... anything. But there was nothing strange she could notice about it, not even a scratch.

"What's wrong?"

"It's kinda hard to answer that question, when nothing is right," she answered, almost absent-mindedly.

"Wow. That's a deep one! It sounds almost like you're a philosopher!"

"Thanks."

She thought about all this for a while. Maybe her aunt Veronica knew what to do. The chance was big that she could help them.

"Axel, we've got to get out of here before Xehanort comes," she said, feeling her panic rise already and constrict her throat at the fear of getting caught.

Axel looked at her. "I don't want to discourage you or something, but what do you think I tried to do this whole week? How did you want to escape? The door is locked, remember?"

As if she didn't know that already. It was the main reason why she had used the window instead.

"I know how to escape. We just follow back the way I came here. Piece of cake!" she answered.

"But I think you forgot one little thing."

Oh really?

"What?" she asked, curiously.

"Hailey, have you been sleeping all this time or are you always that slow? Maybe you've missed some information, very important information I might add, but this is the fourth floor we're talking about! The fourth!"

He showed her four of his fingers to make his point ultra clear.

As if she didn't know that already. She could count too, believe it or not. He didn't have to stress that much.

"One misstep and we're both dead! Pancakes! It's far too dangerous. I'm not an expert, like you. I also can't fly. I don't have wings or something. I only have fire."

Well, she didn't have any wings, either. And how did he think that she came here?

"Hmm..." she only said.

She did get why he was scared and she couldn't really blame him for it... Wait, did he just say fire? What about that? It could be of good use.

"Don't worry, nothing will happen. Did you just mention fire? You mean fire as an element?" she asked him.

Axel nodded. It was written all over his face that he didn't know what she was up to yet.

"Well, why don't we use that? I mean, like some kind of rocket, so we can fly out of the window," she suggested.

He seemed to like that idea, because he started to smile again. "Okay, why not. At least that's safe enough for me to try... even though I've never done such a thing before. It shouldn't be that hard, right?"

She tilted her head in confusion. He really was bizarre if he truly thought that flying out of the window, while immitating a rocket was safe enough to try. What was he talking about? It was even more dangerous than the route she had planned to take at first and the chance of being seen was probably much bigger, too.

Suddenly Axel had casted fire in his hands. "Come on, we're leaving, at last!" he said with a forming smile on his lips.

The statue of the cat was still in her hands.

She took a look at it and then made a decision. "Wait."

"Now what?" Axel asked, rather impatiently.

"We're forgetting to bring important things with us."

She quickly grabbed Axel's book and another statue with her. This statue was a statue of a rooster. The one that was attracting her so much.

"Now I'm really ready to leave this place. Let's go!" she said.

When he aimed the fire at the ground, he started to float slowly in the air, in the direction of the open window. She quickly grabbed one of his legs with her free arm, so she could fly away with him, too, before he would burn everything behind him. The fire left a mark on the floor, but both of them couldn't care less at the moment. That was how they escaped. They had a beautiful sight here, high in the air. It felt amazing to see all the tiny houses with a garden around them under her and the immense ocean, not so far away, while the wind blew softly through their hair. The salty water was reflecting the sunlight, but not in an annoying way.

Suddenly, she started to remember something that she had completely forgotten. Something very important. The memory suddenly popped into her head, like it had played hide and seek with her first and only now thinking that it was time to show itself to her. The fact was that she knew Axel! She had seen him before! How could she forget about him?

I mean, man, that hair! Nobody can ever forget that! How stupid am I?

Her uncle talked a lot about him. He said that he was dangerous for everyone. Especially for Roxas and his plans to wake Sora up and give him back all his precious memories. And she had to watch out for him. Now that she thought about it, she even had fought once with Axel, about a year ago...

~Flashback, one year ago~

"Hailey, quick! Come here!" Ansem the Wise, Hailey's uncle called.

"Yeah, I'm coming, uncle!" she yelled back.

If there was a chance that she could find him, that is. She couldn't help but think that that sounded like he had just commanded one of his slaves instead of his own niece! She hoped for him that it was important enough. Maybe he was in trouble. She guessed that he probably couldn't find Naminé again. It was always something stupid like that. And she was always panicking for nothing, never learning from it. She'd better check it out, though, since one could never know for sure with him.

She ran as hard as she could to the place from where his voice came. He was in his computer room, as usual. That didn't surprise her. She could always find him there, even when he was taking a break from his work. The other Ansem was there with him, too, which wasn't an entire surprise, either. Those two men were like always together, joined at the hip. She often found herself wondering why. Maybe there was something about them that she didn't know yet. Something that they refused to tell her... Nah, what was she thinking?

She tried to stop smirking, because she felt how the other Ansem was looking at her. She never saw his face, but still, she could feel when he was looking at her and to be honest, it was kinda creepy. Therefor, she was more than glad that he couldn't read minds (as far as she knew, at least), otherwise he would totally freak out from some of her thoughts. Not that she didn't want to see that, though.

"Uncle DIZ, what's wrong?" she asked immediately, to change the subject.

She could easily tell that this was pretty serious, because looked and sounded worried.

"He has come, just like I had expected," he answered.

Hailey rolled her eyes.

Thanks a bunch, uncle. At least I know now who or what you're talking about!

"Who? Who has come? I would like to hear a name," she suggested, quite impatiently.

She really couldn't stand it when people gave her some important piece of information, but just not enough for her to understand what was really going on. It happened all the time, though, and that made her feel quite frustrated and impotent.

"He means Axel," the other Ansem quickly answered, filling in the silence.

He knew which things she hated. He also knew how dangerous she could be if anyone was annoying.

Axel? she mused. Okay, I've heard of him before. Isn't that-

She looked up at him, to the point where she thought his eyes would be. "Oh! Do you mean that guy with-" She pointed at her hair and lifted it up, so it looked a little like they were spikes, standing erect. "-That funny, fire red spiky hair?"

He nodded briefly and said, "If you can call that funny. I'd rather call it a disaster."

She laughed at his dry answer. She like that kind of humor, though. Why did he always know what to say to make her laugh? Ansem was definitely not like other men, it was much more fun with him. Almost as if he actually wasn't completely grown up yet.

"Why is he here in this town again? What does he want now?" she asked.

Ugh! Why didn't they just explain everything to her? She really hated it when this happened!

"He wants to take Roxas with him. We can't let that happen though, because that will mean that all the work we did this month would be for nothing," Diz said.

That was true. Then why did he call her out for help?

"Okay. So... what do you want me to do about it then?" she asked again, facing his uncle.

The two Ansem's exchanged glances. She gulped, preparing for the worst. After all, it couldn't be something good if they were giving each other such looks.

A/N: Believe it or not, but I had a strange dream about Axel being locked up and how he destroyed those statues, etc., so I thought I might as well use it in my story. Of course I realise that Axel is much smarter than this. Reviews make my day! :)