Chapter 5

"Rufus,"

"Hope you've been doing better than I have."

"Damnit Demyx, what do you think you're doing?" Axel half screamed to his fellow Nobody. The sitarist was to absorbed in his playing to actually hear him, and continued with his music.

"DEMYX." Axel repeated, raising his voice even further. This time, Demyx recognized his voice and half shouted back. At least he got a reply this time.

"Hey Axel! Let me just finish this song really quick." Onwards the sitarist played.

"..." The Nobody was getting quite irritated at this point; he crossed his arms, and waited at the side of the stage; surely his song couldn't be that long?

"…" Five minutes passed, and Demyx was still playing.

"…" Ten more minutes passed, and Axel was still standing at the side of the stage. Really, how long could one song last!

"All right, that's it, no way this song is really that long." Axel uncrossed his arms and snapped his fingers. After a couple seconds, the sitarist suddenly stopped playing darted back stage.

"Ow ow ow ow oww!" Demyx, quite literally, had his ass on fire.

Back at the serving counter, Reno could hear a loud splash of water, followed by a long hiss of steam. He turned around, only to see a thin cloud of steam coming from the leftmost side of the stage. Really, the things that you see when you worked at a bar…

"What the…Who put a pool back there?" He thought sarcastically. The red headed bartender stepped out of his serving counter and made his way towards the stage. He could see water running it's way across the stage, and running off the stage, onto the floor. "Great." More sarcastic thoughts went through his head. He walked as his shoes splashed through the shallow water that was now starting to make its way across the floors.

Demyx got back out from back stage, completely soaked, and strode over to Axel. "What was that for?" He demanded.
"Your little 'song' was taking to long." Axel replied.
"Aw, you're no fun."
"How the hell does one song take fifteen minutes to finish?"
"Oh I just put a bunch of songs together."
"…Of course. Anyway, you were supposed to be helping out with Sora and Riku, remember?" Axel used a rather irritated tone, attempting to change the subject.

"You realize that you just flooded half of my bar, don't you?" Reno said as he approached the two. He glanced at the hooded figure-Axel. He, of course, couldn't see his face under that hood he was wearing. "Another one?" He thought. This was his third customer wearing the same hooded coat that day. Hopefully he was different from the others, as the first two were nothing but trouble at this point.

---

"Why doesn't he love me?" The blue-haired Nobody asked, vibrant yellow eyes looking down into his drink.

Reno let out another sigh, this guy had been sitting at his bar for the past hour, asking himself the same question every ten minutes. Sometimes he wished that he had chosen to do something else for his spare time. He actually missed being a member of the Turks, and Rufus. There wasn't really much need for the Turks now, everything had settled down and The ShinRa Company was working its way back up.

"You four should take a break." Was what Rufus had said to him and three other Turks, before sending them off on a long-term vacation.

"I've tried so hard..." Said Saïx, Reno's thoughts were interrupted by his blue haired customer once again. He turned to look at the moping figure, and decided he should do something to shut him up.

"Hey, uh." What he was going to say? He didn't know.

"What." Saïx replied.

"Maybe, you should try going for someone else?" He said, unsure of what could result from the upcoming conversation.

"Nonsense, I will do no such thing."

"I was just making a suggestion. If he's not gonna love you after working so hard, maybe he's not worth the time." The bartender told him with a shrug.

"He will always be worth my time and effort." Said Saïx, sounding a little irritated. Really who was he to judge?

"I don't know. I mean, if you've been trying as hard as you've been complaining, this guy must be pretty thick in the head."

Saïx finished his drink and clenched his fists. Now this bartender was staring to go a little to far. He made an attempt at ignoring the Reno's comments, he would probably be leaving soon anyway.

"Just forget about him, probably not that good looking anyway." He turned around and started preparing a drink for another customer. "Get a grip man, you're acting real pathetic about the whole thing."

The Nobody suddenly stood up from his seat, slamming his hands onto the surface of the counter. "I think that's quite enough."

He held his hands out as an otherworldly light started materializing something in his palms.

Reno turned around, about to serve the customer sitting a couple seats away from the Nobody.

"...I've really gotta learn to watch what I say." Saïx was now holding a large blue claymore, not very pleasant looking if he did say so himself.

"Wonderful." The bartender said, with a hint of sarcasm. He set down the drink, leaped over the counter, and started running as fast possible. The now angered Nobody made no hesitation of initiating pursuit of the bartender, and luckily, caused no damage to the bar.

Reno didn't bother looking back, he could hear Saïx's quick footsteps as he chased.

---

"I don't even know how the hell I made it out of that mess." The bartender thought, for now he would just consider himself as lucky.

Axel almost jumped at hearing Reno's voice, was he hearing things? He turned around and saw the red-headed bartender. Blue eyes, red hair, and little red marks under his eyes. For the first couple of seconds he thought he could have been looking into some strange mirror, but realized that this man, in truth, was indeed the bartender who ran the bar. "So, this was the 'Reno' Kadaj had mentioned earlier." He thought.

"You know how long it's gonna take to clean all this water up?" Reno asked, he wasn't even going to bother questioning how so much water got onto the stage. Probably using some materia, or something...

Demyx took a quick glance down, at the floor. "Oh don't worry, I'll clean it up later."

"It'd be kinda nice if you could clean it up now." Said Reno, the Nobody's carefree attitude didn't help quell his irritation whatsoever.

"Fine, we'll have it your way." Demyx clapped his hands twice, and the water started running backwards. The water made it's way back up the stage and disappeared.

"...As long as it gets the job done." Thought Reno.

"Hey, Axel, this guy looks kinda like you, don't you think?" Demyx asked.

"...What." Now Reno was getting a little curious, come to think of it, this 'Axel' had been pretty quiet.

And Axel only stayed quiet.

"Aw, c'mon, you don't have to be shy! Reno's pretty nice." Demyx flung his arm around Axel's shoulder and started leading him to the serving counter. "Let's go get a couple drinks, just don't set anything on fire, okay?"

"Haven't you had enough to drink?" Axel could tell that his partner had been here for a while.

"Of course not!" Demyx said cheerfully.

"Fine, just one drink." Axel took off his hood, and the two continued over to the serving counter.

Reno stood back at the stage, he also started making his way back to the serving counter, when he saw Axel take off his hood. All he could really see was the Nobody's red hair.

About an hour and a half later.

"Hey Demyx, you wanna play that one game?" Axel asked with a laugh, his eight glasses had taken their toll on him.

"You mean that one with the cottonball?" Demyx said with a smile, he drank nine glasses.

"Yeah I mean the one with the cottonball." Axel replied.

"Sure why not? Only problem is, I don't have a cottonball with me right now." Demyx frowned.

"I don't have one either." Then again, who carries cottonballs with them? It made sense that they didn't have any.

"Hey Reno!" Demyx asked.

"Hmm? What do you want now?" The bartender replied.

"Do you have a cottonball or two we could use?"

"The hell do you need a cottonball fo--" Reno decided it would probably be better if he didn't ask. He let out a sigh and took out a small first-aid kit from under the counter, one could never be to prepared. He took out a small white cottonball and handed it to Axel.

"Knock yourselves out." He put away the first aid kit, turned around and resumed what he was doing.

"Thanks." Said Axel.

"You wanna go first?" Axel asked.

"No, you go ahead since you already have it. Throw it!" Demyx replied, a little to energetic.

Axel covered his eyes and threw the little ball of fluff into the air. It landed on Reno's head and fell off into the drink he was preparing for himself. He picked it up from out of the glass and turned around, a little irritated.

"Hey I thought you were going to use thi--" Before he could finish, he was quickly cut of by a hot kiss to the lips.

"Mmmph!" Axel had grabbed Reno by the shoulders and held him tightly on the spot. Reno pushed the Nobody away and quickly made his way to the sink, washing his mouth out with water. He strode back to the two Nobodies, this time they had gone to far.

"What the fuck was that!" Reno demanded an explanation to their little 'game.'

He could tell this was going to be a long, long night.

Disclaimer: No, I don't own Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy, Square Enix and Disney do.