The oblong table was almost completely filled. Only a few of the organization members had not yet arrived.
Larxene sat down in her seat across from Roxas as she asked, "So who was it that made breakfast this morning?"
One of the short-winded members that was already there replied, "Zexion."
A shriek of, "PANCAKES!" came from the corner seat. Everyone looked and saw Roxas covering his mouth. Yes, the shout had come from his mouth, but it had been Sora's voice. After a second, everybody went back to their own conversations, and Roxas sighed. Apparently, none of them had seen the split second where he had momentarily flashed into Sora.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry…was repeating through his head like a broken record as Sora apologized for being so stupid.
Okay, shut up! You're sorry, I get it.
Then, a bunch of Dusks came around and served all the members pancakes. Just to be mean, Xemnas made all of the fake, replacement members sit at a different table, where they could drool and gawk over Axel all they wanted. Finally, Zexion popped out of the kitchen to take his seat next to Axel. That would make there be only two empty seats—that of Saix, who was dead, and that of Demyx, who was always late—but Xemnas stopped Zexion from sitting down.
"Number VI," he began, stopping Zexion just before he would have sat. After a pause to build tension, he continued, "Thank you for the breakfast."
Zexion sighed in relief and continued sitting as he responded, "Not a problem Superior."
Xemnas stopped him again. "Number VI…aren't you forgetting something?" Looking around the room obliviously, Zexion couldn't figure it out, so Xemnas hinted by gesturing to the corner Roxas was sitting in.
A little surprised, Zexion inquired, "Oh, you mean the—? How did you—? Never mind, I won't ask." Then, he turned to Roxas and announced across the table, "While you were busy yesterday, an old friend of yours called. He just wanted to make sure you'd gotten here all right and were adjusting well to being back. He had long hair if that helps you figure out which one."
"Warren," Roxas replied contently, with a smile. His feet couldn't reach the ground, so he swung them back and forth like an excited six year old.
Zexion once again tried to sit down and was once again halted by a single word from their boss. This time it was, "And…"
Clenching his fist in frustration because he knew it would be embarrassing, he muttered, "He asked me to give you a hug," because he also knew Xemnas would make him do it.
Roxas broke out laughing. He laughed so hard that his whole chair fell over backwards. When he hit the ground, the laughter jerked a little bit, but it didn't faze him at all. He just grabbed his sides and laughed some more. He laughed for at least fifteen seconds before he stopped long enough to stumble out, "Come…h-hug me…Pancake Boy," as he raised his hands in the air as if he was hugging someone.
"Now this I've gotta see," Xigbar mentioned from his position at the right hand of Xemnas.
Zexion looked miserably over to his Superior, hoping for a miracle, but Xemnas just waved him on. Zexion closed his eyes for a second and then slowly walked over to Roxas. When Zexion had made it to Roxas, Roxas tried to stop laughing as he crawled to his feet. Completely embarrassed, Zexion tried to build up the courage to give a fellow male a "big, squishy hug." Roxas was trying to muffle his laughter, which was now coming in bursts a couple seconds apart. Other people at the table were starting to chuckle too.
Counting to three in his head, Zexion reached his hands out to begin the hug, but then he stopped. Roxas stood there expectantly, biting his lip with a giant smile on his face. After another couple of seconds, Zexion stretched his arms out around Roxas and stepped a little closer to make it a real hug. He squished a little and held for a moment so Xemnas wouldn't make him do it again because it wasn't "squishy" enough.
Katex sent a glare over from the replacement table to Axel, and Axel uttered a small, "Squeak-oo," since Demyx wasn't there. Roxas noticed it again, and finally understood why Demyx had done it in the first place. It was a hugging noise.
Then, Roxas whispered, "Love ya Kitten," into Zexion's ear, and he pushed away real quick after that, horrified.
"You," Zexion said disgustedly as he shook his hands, but Roxas was just laughing again.
He had returned to leg smacking, rolling on the floor, type laughter, and somehow he managed to spit out, "He did call you Kitten…I…I knew it." He grabbed his sides and did return to the floor, repeating, "I knew it."
Just then Demyx walked into the room. "Did I miss something?" He asked as he heard all the laughing—which had since spread noxiously across the table—and noticed the shade of red Zexion had turned.
Zexion mumbled, "Nothing," as he wandered, obviously humiliated, back to his seat. Poor him had to sit between Axel and Vexen, though, and wouldn't hear the end of it all breakfast. It was especially bad since Demyx sat right across from Axel, and Axel recounted the entire story for him, along with a few exaggerations. At least Saix didn't know what happened.
Finally, Zexion came up with an idea of how to change the subject. He leaned over to Vexen and mentioned, "I was reading the Book of Roxas you gave me last night, and it's quite apparent, he doesn't remember a thing about us. It begins in the middle of his search for Sora and goes forward from there. It's kinda sad, though. I got to the part where he remembers waking up one morning and not remembering anything. It freaked him out pretty bad."
Axel stopped eating and listened in on their conversation as Vexen responded, "We'll have to bring him back to my laboratory today and see what we can't bring back."
Axel leaned over and suggested threateningly, "How 'bout we don't."
"You keep out of our business," Vexen ordered.
"It's not your business to mess with Roxas's memory."
"Xemnas ordered—"
"Xemnas's orders were that you determine what he knows and what he doesn't. Now that you have all that information, you have no authority to do anything to him!" Axel had started to get loud, and the entire table had grown silent.
After allowing a moment for the three to be embarrassed about making a scene, Xemnas stated bluntly, "Number VIII is correct. You cannot proceed without further discussion on the matter."
Everyone looked around for a second until they all came to the same conclusion: to portal away to the meeting room. Roxas looked around at the now-empty table and sighed. He didn't even know where they had gone.
Katex called over from the replacement table, "Aren't you going with them Roxas?"
Roxas looked at her with a confused expression. "Where'd they go?"
A handful of girls near Katex giggled uncontrollably, but Katex, who understood the problem, answered, "They all went to the meeting room to talk about you."
His shoulders slumped and he reached up to scratch his head. "The meeting room? I don't know how to get there. Can you take me there?"
That brought some more giggles from the peanut gallery, so Katex made a portal to the meeting room for him before he got too embarrassed. Roxas walked through, appearing a second later in the meeting room. He hopped up onto his tall, floating chair just as the conversation began.
"So what have your scientific inquiries uncovered? What does Roxas remember?" Xemnas questioned.
"Nothing," Zexion responded.
"Nothing?" Xaldin repeated. "I find that hard to believe."
"Wait, nothing at all, or nothing about us?" Someone else asked.
"That's not true," Demyx broke in thoughtfully. "He knew about Vexen's experiments, and he remembered Axel."
"Something has to explain how he knew Saix was the one who died," Lexaeus pointed out, contemplatively agreeing.
"And what about the pancakes?" Larxene mentioned.
"Silence!" Xemnas ordered, "This is not a mad house. I'm sure Number VI has a reasonable explanation for saying such things."
"In fact it's quite simple," Zexion replied. "You see there are two types of memory…permanent and temporary. He has nothing about us—not a single word—in his permanent memory. Everything we've heard him talk about to this point is stored in temporary memory. Which means he's been memorizing us, watching us and taking in everything he sees, and, since he knows so much, it wouldn't be illogical to assume someone's helping him."
"No," Roxas countered quietly, "I remember Axel…for real."
"He keeps insisting of that, but there's…there's nothing."
Xemnas turned to Vexen. "Is there anyway to recover the things that are missing?"
"There are things I could try," Vexen responded, slightly excited by the idea of experimenting a bit.
"Try-y?" Roxas complained, worriedly.
"It's not worth it," Axel interrupted. "It won't work. Naminé couldn't even fix it, you see? There's no point in torturing him with different recovery methods if nothing's going to come back. That will only make him hate us."
"Number VIII," Xemnas warned, "it is not your place to question the decisions of your superiors, even in matters regarding your friend…Once again, my orders will remain the same. Do what you can for Roxas…preferably by some method not involving experimentation."
Then, Xemnas portal-ed away from the meeting room, followed by most of the organization. Axel glanced over to Roxas for a second before he left, but Roxas wasn't paying any attention. Instead, Roxas was staring across the room at Vexen, trying to stay composed enough to survive another day. Eventually, he hopped miserably from his chair and wandered over to where Vexen and Zexion were waiting for him.
"Why couldn't this day have ended with the pancakes?" He wondered.
"Certainly we don't have to explain to you that every day has twenty-four hours," Vexen stated.
"No," Roxas replied grumpily, adding in his head, I wish I could just make a portal and go home. Suddenly, a dark circle appeared off to the side—a portal. "Whoa!" Roxas began when he noticed it. "Did I do that?"
"I know I didn't," Zexion replied. Then he looked over to Vexen who just shrugged.
Roxas pointed behind him, asking, "Could I—?"
They both just shrugged again, so Roxas cautiously stepped through the portal just to see where it would go. A second later he stepped out into his own living room.
Nori saw him first and exclaimed, "Roxas!" After that, everyone else noticed him too and repeated his name excitedly.
"Oops," Roxas mumbled.
"You're alive!" Naminé screamed in elation, running towards him.
Roxas smiled but hardly showed any signs of recognition towards them until he saw Warren. He pointed at Warren, laughed, and said, "Kitten!" Before anyone could answer, though, he thought really hard, I want to go to…Vexen's lab, and as the portal appeared, he stepped through it wondering, did I really just mean that?
Nori looked to Warren and inquired, "What did he mean, Kitten?"
Warren looked very embarrassed as he said, "Oh, about that…"
Then Roxas showed up before anyone else and destroyed the entire lab!
I don't think so Sora, Roxas replied to Sora's crazy fantasies.
But there's a bunch of really bad stuff in here. Remember the Heartless-mouse hybrid?
You heard that too? I thought I was hearing things.
Maybe so. I think we hear the same things.
I guess I could play with a little bit of something, Roxas decided, forming in his right hand one of his keyblades which he called Oblivion.
"Number XIII," came an urgent call from behind him. He turned and saw Vexen and Zexion in the doorway. The latter continued, "What are you doing?"
Just practicing to make sure it still works, Sora replied instantly, so Roxas wouldn't take too long coming up with his own answer.
Roxas lowered Oblivion from its attack position replying cautiously, "Just practicing…y'know, to make sure it still works. I just found out I can still make portals, so I wanted to try it."
The two scientists looked at each other for a second as Oblivion disappeared into thin air. They weren't sure whether or not they wanted to believe him because they remembered what he did to the computers. Even if he didn't remember that, they knew he could be prone to violence. Eventually they came to the conclusion that now that they were there, he wouldn't try anything, so it didn't really matter.
They decided to proceed, and sat Roxas down in the same chair as last time. Vexen set the same machine up—the patches, the ring, and the hat—while Zexion played around with the computer, trying to find a specific setting. Pulling out a different vile with a needle, Vexen once again injected half the volume into Roxas's arm. Roxas just sat there cooperatively, wishing he were somewhere else but being careful to not make another portal.
After a second, Zexion announced, "It's working," and Vexen hurried over to the computer screen as well. Zexion described what they were seeing, saying, "This is a three dimensional scan of his brain. The part that's circled in green is what should be his memory. The part that is filled in green is what he actually has for memory."
"About half," Vexen stated, "that's not too bad."
Zexion shook his head. "It's not just 'inaccessible.' That we could work with. This is dead."
"Hmm…let me take a look…" Vexen muttered distantly as he went over to his cupboards and started rummaging again. After emptying one and not finding what he was looking for, he jumped onto the counter and started looking through a higher one. Zexion wandered over as well when Vexen started taking things out of the cupboard.
"What's this?" Zexion asked, picking up one of the bottles of pills.
"Plesexcuyaaep," Vexen replied.
Zexion grabbed a chart that was hanging on the wall and started flipping through it until he came to a page with that name on it. Reading over the page, he mentioned, "But it's still in it's last stages of approval. We don't know—"
"It's not experimental. It's as good as done," Vexen insisted.
"Side effects of memory loss?"
"Look at this one instead," Vexen suggested, shoving a different bottle in Zexion's hands.
He read the label Omxeymryexmo and then flipped to the page for that drug. "This one's side effects are: nausea, drowsiness, vomiting, fainting, lightheadedness, heavyheadedness—whatever that is—diarrhea, minor headaches, and possibly death."
"At least it's not memory loss."
Zexion gave him an annoyed glare, so Vexen handed him the next one.
"Iettsukami," Zexion described as he flipped to the page, "has side effects of…" Finally, he got to the page and read, "shrinkage of the…" He raised an eyebrow at Vexen. "Do you really want to use this?"
"Fine," Vexen replied, taking all his pills back, "if you don't like my methods, then come up with something better yourself."
After thinking for a very long time and glancing over to Roxas a couple times, Zexion just smiled.
"What?" Vexen asked, "What did you come up with? You hardly ever smile."
He didn't answer, though. He just laughed evilly. Vexen was silent for a moment, but then he laughed evilly too.
"So it's to be one of those days then, is it?" Vexen inquired.
"Back to the very beginning when this lab actually did stuff."
"Experiments?" Vexen wondered expectantly.
"No…electricity."
Roxas looked over with a very concerned look on his face. "Electricity? Xemnas said no torture."
"Ah, Xemnas said no such thing. Axel said no torture, and who is Number VIII to argue with Number IV and VI?"
"Zexion," Vexen interrupted, "what electricity?"
Zexion elbowed his side to make him shut up and then he approached Roxas, explaining, "You see, it is a long proven fact that when a person is utterly desperate, they can do the impossible…even remember things they never knew in the first place. So what do you say, Vexen, should we try it?"
"No-o," Roxas pleaded.
"Are you being uncooperative Roxas?" Zexion paused for a second. "I can understand why you're not entirely pleased with the idea, the pain and all, but it is necessary."
Zexion elbowed Vexen again, so he added reluctantly, "O-of course. Necessary."
"Nuh-uh," Roxas countered worriedly, "you haven't tried anything yet!"
"Well, I suppose there is one other thing," Zexion mentioned.
"Yes, another thing," Vexen agreed.
"Since you're being so uncooperative, we'll have to bring someone else in whose suffering can make you comply. What do you think, Vexen? Will Sora do?"
"No!" Roxas shouted, halfway because he would never want to see Sora suffer, halfway because he knew Sora was inside of him.
"No? Perhaps a certain person by the name Hayner?"
Roxas frowned. "Hayner?"
"Or Pence?"
"Pence?"
"Or Olette?"
"Olette?" The names sounded slightly familiar to Roxas, but he wasn't sure why. Suddenly, his head started pounding. He reached up to it and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, he was standing in an empty city square, but the headache hadn't gone away. Then, the ground started moving, and the air warped like he was looking at its reflection in water. He felt like he would pass out, but he resisted.
Instead he looked up and shouted, "Hayner! Pence! Olette!"
Three people—two boys and one girl—instantly appeared around him. They grabbed him by his arms and ran out of the square, leading him to the clock tower. Roxas was happy to be there because he knew where it was, and it also meant Hayner, Pence, and Olette were from Twilight Town too. He wasn't sure why, but they gave him a strange blue rock. He looked at it for a while before a voice came from some place distant.
See, look at that. That's why I did this.
Oh…that. That's why…what's it doing?
It's growing, the first voice said like that should have been obvious.
Well, I knew that, but I didn't believe. You said it wasn't possible.
I guess it is…wait what's that?
Roxas was falling off the tower again, and once again it switched midway to the stained glass platform. He slid off of it and fell through the darkness until he could see nothing but darkness.
Is he scared? One voice asked, and then Roxas fell back out of the total darkness to a dark city street.
It was raining, and Roxas sank to his knees on the mucky pavement. A silver haired boy was blindfolded, laying half dead in the street. Then, Hayner, Pence, and Olette showed up again. Olette knelt next to Roxas and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. When he looked over to her, though, Axel picked him up under his armpits and threw him over his shoulder.
"I hate the rain," Axel complained, carrying Roxas away from the mob of people that had started to form. Roxas looked back and saw every member of Organization XIII appeared through a portal, and then all his friends, and then everyone he'd ever met showed up one by one. Then, Axel passed by Demyx, ripping the Sitar from Demyx's hands.
"Stop making it rain, you obsessive water freak," Axel ordered.
"I'm not making it rain," Demyx replied when the rain didn't stop.
"Then stop indulging in the fact that you're the only one who can stand this wet."
"Whoa! Don't go all Hades on me Number VIII."
Everything went black again, Demyx echoing through his mind until the voices came back. It's all coming back so fast. Is…Is that a bridge?
I believe he's creating memories to connect the old to the new.
Then Demyx came back into the dark, pushing Roxas along. "Where are we going?" Roxas asked.
"I can't tell you," Demyx answered, "it's a surprise." He had to remind Roxas, "Keep moving…a little to the left. No! Not that left! You'll fall off the bridge!" He exclaimed, grabbing Roxas's arm to keep him from falling. "Come on, we need to hurry."
A moment later, Demyx pushed Roxas to his knees on a little ledge and ripped the darkness away whispering, "Happy birthday Roxas! Now blow out the candle."
Roxas looked down below him at the unsuspecting Hades and questioned, "Wha—?"
"Hades's head…it's one giant candle. Make a wish and blow it out."
Roxas broke out laughing, stumbling out a few words like, "No? Me…really?...I can't."
"Just try…hurry, before he catches us."
Leaning over the edge, Roxas took a deep breath and tried to blow out Hades's hair. He was laughing so hard, though, that it came out more like a raspberry. That just made him laugh harder, and he tumbled off the ledge. Demyx desperately grabbed the bottom of Roxas's cloak, stopping him right at Hades's eye level.
Hades looked right at Roxas and grumbled, "You little imp." He was so angry to see Roxas and Demyx that his whole body burst into flames. Demyx pulled Roxas back up on the ledge in a hurry, while forming his Sitar in his other hand. As soon as he had his Sitar, he dowsed Hades in a shower of water and then turned to run. Roxas scrambled after him, and Hades chased them both.
A moment later, Hades changed to a flood of Heartless and Demyx turned into Saix. It was Roxas's first mission, and Saix had put him in charge of the planning. When the Heartless showed up, all Roxas could think of was to run. Saix just went along with it until they came to a dead end. Cornered between a rock a wall and a hundred Heartless, Saix once again looked to Roxas.
"What now?" He asked.
"We fight," Roxas replied; though, it seemed more like a question.
Saix waited another moment before he questioned, "And what are you going to fight with?"
"Oh yeah," Roxas remembered, forming a key between his hands and beginning to slice away at the Heartless.
After a while, the two Nobodies got separated, and Roxas was on the edge of a cliff. The Heartless were swarming him, pushing him backwards, until he tripped off it backwards. He was able to grab the edge and hold on by one hand.
"Help!" He shouted to Saix, but instead of Saix responding, the voices came back.
It's amazing how the memory bridge is growing right over the…
The probe! They both exclaimed. It's growing right over the probe.
We have to get the hat off before it…
Everything went black.
It broke.
The probe?
No, the memory bridge.
We killed the beautiful memory bridge! He sounded like he might cry. After a moment, he calmed down and asked, Is there any way we can rescue it?
I don't think so. It's bleeding all over.
Uh…the screen shows it's spreading to other things. The whole memory's gone.
Just the things he gained or everything?
Everything.