Disclaimer: I suppose I should slip one of these in here huh? Well seeing as I don't currently possess the rights to Kingdom Hearts or anything else that might pop up in future writing, it can be safely concluded that I own nothing.

It could be argued that Demyx was not the brightest crayon in the box but the teen himself didn't exactly believe that. It was simply the case that his intelligence lay in other areas, ones most people wouldn't think to ask him about. Sure, he didn't know the major item of commerce of the small country of Lithuania but he could give an extremely articulate dissertation on the works of most composers as well as perform many of their pieces. Yeah, he was just a genius like that. Likewise, Demyx also knew what to do when it came to shopping. After growing up with three older sisters, it was a sad but inevitable given. In fact, if he hadn't wanted to give up the last shred of his masculinity and go tend flower beds with Marluxia, he would say that he could coordinate an outfit even better than Zexion could do mental math and the guy was almost legendary when it came to that.

Which is what led Demyx to elect himself to go buy clothes for the shrunken Riku, Sora, Roxas, Axel, Cloud, and Leon while they stayed with Zexion in his house. He was currently standing in the entrance to the local mall contemplating this decision. Looking back on it, he was forced to reconsider. One, he was only experienced in dressing teens and he doubted any clothes stores for small children would have skinny jeans and band t-shirts. Two, he didn't even know where to go to buy kid's clothes and he really doubted his usual much-frequented stores could help him out with that. Lastly, he had left Zexion alone with six toddlers in his house. Alone. And he was struck with fear.

"Well crap." he muttered. "The house better be standing when I get back."

Axel was most definitely not pouting. Nope, no way because pouting would imply that he was cute. Axel did not like being called cute. Unless it was Roxas. Yeah, he could deal with Roxas calling him cute, or hot. Oh he could definitely deal with that. But sadly Roxas was ignoring him because Riku, the whiny little brat, just had to go and blame this whole mess on the poor, poor redhead. Did he think Axel was enjoying this! Because he was most definitely not and the small protrusion of his lower lip proved it.

Because Zexion was a cruel, sadistic person and assisting in what obviously must be Riku's grand master plot to steal the redhead's best friend, he had sentenced Axel to stay in the kitchen until further notice while Roxas watched Sora and Riku play with each other. Cloud and Leon were sitting quietly outside on the porch doing whatever it is unsocial people do. Axel just wanted to go do something with Roxas already but the door was shut tight and frankly Axel didn't think he'd be able to open it without falling over and then someone would hear and that wouldn't do.

Instead he satisfied himself with dragging the chair he was sitting on at the counter over to the cupboards to rifle through them looking for something to eat. His search was rewarded with a jar filled with what smelled like cookies. Pulling the jar down, Axel discovered that it was heavier than he had thought and nearly toppled backwards. He was saved by the back of the chair he was standing on but the cookie jar wasn't so lucky. It slipped and crashed to the floor loudly enough that it could probably be heard from the other side of the house. Mumbling some watered down version of his usual curses, Axel scrambled down and began to pick up the pieces.

Demyx had recently developed a new fear for any and all females. Now as stated before, he grew up with three of them so respect for those of the feminine class had been instilled in his early childhood. After years of that damage, ahem, education it was almost natural but his most recent encounter had led him to believe that it might be best if he refrained from drawing any more girls into his current predicament.

It had all started innocently enough. Demyx had been wandering the mall, searching for a store in which to buy clothing for his friends but had come up empty. So he had gone up to what looked to be a young mother toting around a toddler that looked the same size as Sora and asked where she bought clothes for her kid. Tapping her on the shoulder he politely asked, "Excuse me but, could you tell me where you buy clothes for your child?"

The woman tilted her head to one side, causing part of her brown hair (that had a really insane way of flipping at the ends) to fall across part of her face. All of a sudden Demyx was reminded of Zexion. "Could I ask why?" The woman pulled him back from his brief daydream as she spoke. "I don't think they have anything that would fit you…"

Demyx quickly shook his head, saying as he did so, "No! I mean, the clothes aren't for me miss…"

The woman laughed. "Yeah, I thought so. Call me Selphie!" she chirped.

"Well, um, Selphie actually I'm looking after some of…my cousins! Yeah, my relatives are in town and while they go off reminiscing about the old days with my parents I volunteered to watch their kids. So I thought that while they were here I'd buy some clothes for them as a present of sorts…" Demyx trailed off, reviewing the lie he'd made up quickly in his mind, scanning for any holes he'd left in his fabricated story.

"How many are you looking after?"

"Six." he told her.

"That many?" Selphie seemed startled and Demyx briefly wondered if six children was a lot. He had as many as eighteen cousins and those were only the ones under ten. Now that was a lot. But he told her he had an extensive family anyway. Selphie accepted the answer and instead asked him how old his cousins were.

"Uh…two, no three of them are around…five? And then one is six and the other two are eight!" Demyx concluded happily. He paused at the strange expression on Selphie's face. But wait, it was changing into-oh no. She had that expression on her face.

Demyx was very familiar with that expression, much to his regret. He had seen it while shopping, while at the beach, at school, almost anywhere he had at some point in time seen that expression, just like he was seeing it now. It was the face girls got whenever they had just pictured something so incredibly adorable and cute that they would never ever let it go, even if the real thing didn't come close to the image they had in their mind. Rather, they'd make the image into reality. This was the expression Selphie had. Demyx suddenly had a really terrible feeling.

Selphie, with a new glint in her eyes that Demyx was too scared to call slight insanity suddenly latched hold onto his arm and held. "They sound so cute! I'll help you shop for them!" she squealed. How she was able to deduce that from the very limited information he had given her was a mystery but Demyx figured he'd have plenty of time to think about it as the woman in possession of his arm quickly dragged him off into the depths of the mall.

Zexion was really starting to question his so-called "intelligence" because really, if he was supposed to be so smart how the hell had he been stupid enough to ever agree to watch these children? This is what he had been thinking before the crash. After the crash, he seriously contemplated just ditching Demyx and saving himself. But sadly his own morals made him go check up on the source of that noise before any further thoughts of escape could surface. Pesky little things.

From what he could tell, it sounded like it had come from the kitchen where Axel was. Of course it would be Axel. Passing through the living room he glanced at Sora and Riku who had the volume of the TV up too loud to have heard Axel making a mess but Roxas, who had been near the door, was looking around in confusion. Motioning for the boy to follow him, Zexion headed to the kitchen thoroughly prepared to let the blond give his irresponsible friend a scolding. Preferably with at least one hit. Axel wouldn't take shit from anyone but Roxas and Zexion had always kind of wanted the redhead to get one square punch in the face. It might stop his incessant smirking. Roxas was getting the suspicious feeling he sometimes experienced when Axel had done something to piss someone off. He had gotten quite accustomed to it seeing as it was almost always there, so it was easy to recognize when it was happening, like now.

Entering the kitchen the two were surprised to see Axel crouched on the floor, attempting to actually pick up the pieces of the jar he had dropped. Cookies were all over the floor, making it clear as to what his goal had been. The noise from their entrance startled him and he dropped the piece he'd been holding, spinning around to face them with a guilty look on his face. "I didn't do it!"

Zexion leaned against the door, arms crossed and eyebrow raised. Obviously he was not impressed. "Sure you didn't. So would you like to direct me to the ghost that did?"

Axel nodded and pointed to somewhere in the vague direction of the pantry. "It's in there!"

"Did you happen to pick up on the sarcasm in that sentence?" Zexion asked.

Axel grinned. "Sure did, just ignoring it Zexy." His smile widened at the slight twitch of irritation the older teen had given at the detested nickname. Only Demyx called him that! Wait, no, no one was allowed to call him that. Right.

Roxas, meanwhile, had remained silent, choosing to observe the mess scattered around the kitchen and finally his friend who was currently bickering with their caretaker. Not such a smart idea but that wasn't what caused the small blond to frown. All of a sudden, he rushed over to Axel, grabbing his wrist and holding it up. "You're bleeding!" he cried.

And it was true. Apparently, in his surprise Axel had cut himself when he dropped the piece of the jar when Roxas and Zexion entered. "Oh wow, it's true!" Axel looked at the cut which was bleeding rather a lot. He wasn't particularly worried seeing as it didn't even hurt but Roxas looked anxious.

"Zexion, Axel needs a band aid! Shit, this is a pretty deep cut…Axel don't die!" The last statement was a bit of an overreaction but the redhead who was currently being fawned over by his best friend couldn't care less. It was better than getting yelled at after all.

Zexion sighed and called out to Sora and Riku. When they answered he told them to go look for band aids in the bathroom while he hunted around for a first aid kit. "Knowing that idiot," Zexion murmured, referencing to Demyx, "along with the kind of trouble he gets into, there should be one somewhere."

AN: Do people even read this? Anyway, I know there's been a severe lack of Sora and Riku but that will be fixed in the next chapter or so for sure! Sorry about that, up until now. Again, thanks for reading and reviewing! You have no idea how happy I am when I see someone has added this to their favorites or alerts too. If you feel inclined to leave a review, I'd be interested to know what you think will happen in this story, but if not I'd be happy if you left one anyway.