Chapter 3

As it turns out, breaking into the places when you have a magic key that unlocks anything and a pair of friends who are used to sneaking around without being seen made getting into the castle a lot easier.

Getting the girl was something they'd accomplished on their first trip in, and with her now off in the stars on a Gummi Ship to find her lost memories, they could focus on saving Radiant Garden.

By making things as hard for Ansem the Wise's apprentices as possible.

Which leads to why Xion was frowning at Lea's plans for their current break-in of the labs. "Um, Ax-er-Lea, I get us stealing all of Vexen's-"

"Even," Lea corrected as he shoved a desk a couple of inches to the left.

"Even's notes," Xion corrected quickly. She and Roxas still often made the mistake of calling the apprentices by their Nobody's names, but they were getting much better at it with Isa. "I get that. But why do we have to move everything a little bit to the left? That doesn't look like it'll do much."

Lea shot her a mischievous grin. "Trust me, Xion. It'll do plenty."

At that moment, Isa hurried in and whispered, "They're coming! Hide!"

Hearing that, Xion and Lea quickly stopped what they were doing and crawled into the air ducts above the lab to hide, Isa right behind them.

Peering down through the grate, they watched Even enter the lab with Ienzo in tow, not looking like he was in a good mood.

And promptly banged his leg against the desk Lea had moved with a muttered curse as he passed, then promptly tripped over a chair and went sprawling.

Seeing that, Isa bit his lip to keep from laughing and Lea had to bury his face in his arms to muffle his snickers, which grew even louder when he caught a glimpse of Xion's face and saw realization dawn over it about what Lea's plan had been.

Not wanting to be caught, the three quickly crawled through the vents to where they could make their exit, Even's angry shouts upon finding his research stolen echoing after them as they went.

No one ever said rebelling couldn't be fun.

"Do you ever miss being Axel?" asked Xion one day out of the blue.

Lea had to stop and think about that. "Hmm, not really. Axel wasn't too different from me. Just the no heart thing made it easier to do, er, icky things that I'd rather not think about," he said, trying hard not to think about some of the worse things Axel had done as the Organization's assassin.

Shaking his head, Lea continued. "Axel's basically just me but taller." He paused and frowned. "Now that I think about it, I do miss being tall."

Their conversation was cut off when Roxas and Isa hurried over to them with their arms full with large boxes. "We filled all the apprentices' rooms with frogs, and stuck magnets on their computers so they can't put in that new security system Ansem was talking about," said Isa. "Now let's get out of here."

As they snuck their way back out of the castle, Xion got a better look at just what Roxas and Isa were carrying. "Wait, is that Ansem the Wise's sea-salt ice cream stash?"

"It is," Roxas confirmed.

"He wouldn't let us leave without it," added Isa dryly.

Lea huffed a laugh. "Roxas, I'm starting to think you have a problem."

Roxas just hugged the boxes of ice cream closer to himself and said, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

To hide the fact it's them that have been sneaking into the castle to cause trouble, the four of them would occasionally stage very bad break-in attempts so they'd get caught and look like they weren't sneaky enough to be the more troublesome masterminds.

No one would suspect the same people slipping in and out of the castle without a trace would be the same kids dumb enough to attempt the old pizza delivery ruse.

"For the last time, no one in this castle ordered pizza," said Braig, looking more amused than annoyed.

The four kids standing in front of him holding a pizza box and wearing fake nose glasses for a disguise exchanged a look.

"Are you sure?" asked the blond one. "Maybe we should go in and ask."

Braig laughed at that. "Nice try, better luck next time, Tiger," he said as he slammed the castle door in their faces.

Roxas took off his glasses and scowled. He hated that nickname.

A week later had Braig running down the castle halls yelling his head off as a full-grown tiger chased after him.

"Okay, how did you do that?" asked Lea, one part freaked out and one part impressed.

"I finally figured out how summons worked," said Roxas nonchalantly as they watched the show, having already finished their sabotage.

"Wow!" said Xion, looking excited. "Can you show me next?"

"Sure," said Roxas.

Finally, there was a loud ripping sound, and the tiger came over to them carrying Braig's pants in his mouth.

Roxas grinned and patted the tiger's head, making it purr. "Good boy, Rajah."

Isa made a mental note to avoid their bad side if this was the consequence.

His decision was proven right when Xion's first summon turned out to be Hades' giant three-headed dog.

Xion absolutely loved him.

Awkward was a good phrase for Isa's relationship with Roxas and Xion.

It took them a couple of weeks to stop giving him suspicious looks, and even then they'd still slip up and call him Saïx from time to time, though it was growing rarer by the day. Lea confided in him that his (evil?) future self hadn't been the nicest to either of them and sharing a face with that guy wasn't doing him any favors.

Not that he didn't give them his own suspicious looks too. They just appeared out of nowhere and were instantly best friends with his best friend and had this whole shared history with him that Isa had no memory of. It wasn't hard to be jealous, not that he'd ever say so.

Still, for the sake of Lea's happiness, they all shared an unspoken agreement to try to get along. It didn't stop things from being awkward between them whenever one or both of the keybearers were around Isa without Lea present.

Such was the case Isa found himself in now.

It had become a habit for all of them to meet on that same garden wall they'd planned their rebellion on to eat ice cream and watch the sunset every evening. Usually, by the time Isa arrived Lea was already there with ice cream in hand and ready to act as a buffer between him and his time-traveling friends.

This time, however, Roxas sat there alone with the ice cream bag beside him, clearly waiting for the rest to arrive.

Hovering a little ways away, Isa debated with himself if he should come back later when Roxas turned and caught sight of him.

Knowing he couldn't just leave now, Isa bit the bullet and went up to sit next to the blond.

Roxas said nothing. Just handed him an ice cream, and continued to stare off in the distance as the sky began turning colors.

The silence between them stretched on, and on until Isa felt compelled to break it.

"Do you ever wonder what our actions will do to affect the time stream?" he asked.

Roxas looked over at him in confusion, his ice cream halfway to his mouth. "What?" he asked.

"You and Xion are from the future," Isa said. "Do you ever worry that changing things here in the past could cause the two of you to disappear? It played a pretty big role in your creation, after all." It had been something he'd been wondering for a while now.

Such a thing clearly hadn't occurred to Roxas, if his alarmed expression was anything to go by. "What? I haven't- No," he said, struggling to come up with a response. "You don't really think that would happen, do you?"

Isa shrugged. "Honestly, at this point, probably not. We've already changed things from what Lea remembers. If you were going to disappear, it would have happened sooner."

Roxas let out a sigh of relief but still seemed on edge.

"Truthfully, I hope it doesn't," Isa continued, staring out at the purple clouds overhead. "Lea would be devastated."

"..." Roxas was silent for a long moment, then asked, "What about you?" he asked.

Isa looked at him in surprise.

"Would you be sad?" asked Roxas curiously. "We are friends, right?"

Isa blinked at him in bewilderment. "I didn't think you thought we were friends," he said.

Roxas nodded to the ice cream in both their hands. "Axel told me friends eat ice cream together, and talk and laugh about stupid things. That's what we do here, don't we?"

Isa actually had to laugh at that. "That sounds like something Lea would say."

Roxas smiled. "See, you're laughing about something stupid."

"You mean Lea, yeah that does sound fitting," said Isa, making Roxas snicker as well.

"I heard my name, who's talking about me?" said Lea as he and Xion finally came up to join them.

That only made the two of them laugh harder, much to Lea's confusion.

Still, Xion must have overheard at least part of their conversation, because while Lea was distracted, she whispered to him, "I'm glad we're friends. I like you better than Saïx," leaving him rather speechless.

Privately, Isa hoped their attempts to change the future didn't have any effect on the keybearers being there.

He really would be sad if they disappeared.

A/N I did say this would get lighthearted, didn't I. They're not doing a big fighty rebellion (yet, anyway), just guerrilla warfare to sabotage any and all progress the Apprentices make that could lead to them losing their hearts. Stealing notes, breaking their computers, and generally making a nuisance of themselves on top of pranking everyone they can. The mystery girl isn't going to show up again, and I'm not going to speculate on who she is. She was rescued and is off finding her memory, and we'll leave it at that. Also, the security program that they put magnets on the computers to stop from being uploaded was Tron, so Tron wasn't hurt since he hadn't been uploaded yet... though now he might not ever be uploaded. Also, yes, that is Rajah from Aladdin and Cerebus from Hercules as Roxas and Xion's respective summons.

Next Time: New faces arrive at Radiant Garden. Ven is irked, Terra is confused, and Aqua's just here to save the little girl, that's all.