A/N: Eh, 1 review is better than no reviews. :D –Engage Optimism to the max- I'm really hoping that adding more chaptersgetting more reviews. I really suck at summaries, but I do believe this story will be mildly, if not, quite entertaining…or maybe that's just me that finds it entertaining. O.o

Disclaimer: …Well…technically…if you change three things about something-

Lurking Lawyers: ::Glares of lurking loominess that threaten to gut your finances like rotting fish::

Alright fine, I don't own Kingdom Hearts --;;

Warnings: Still more language, half naked bishies, insane amounts of OOC and reptiles.

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The Winding Road To Wonderland

Or a better title:

In which they encounter the Trail Dancers underfoot

----

"There are lots of mirrors in this room."

"Gracious me, it's ever so lovely to have someone around to state the obvious."

Sephiroth blissfully ignored that last comment because he had a feeling he wouldn't be able to get away with stabbing the man again. He'd gotten smart after the first couple of times he'd pinned him to a wall, but unfortunately he was rather quick to learn when to dodge his thrusts…heh heh…thrust.

Keep your mind outta the gutter Sephy! It's only the second chapter!

"Sorry."

"What was that?"

"Nothing, just apologizing to the Goddess."

"…" Xemnas had forgotten between Chapter 1 and this one that the narrator periodically intruded upon the story, so for the moment, the golden eyed man decided that Sephy was mildly schizophrenic, which is far too close to the truth than he ever would imagine.

That was the least on his mind though, he was much more irritated at the fact that between the room he'd woken up in, the lengthy hallway filled with elegant religious-ey looking frescos and this very large room covered from wall to ceiling to floor with mirrors of various designs, shapes and sizes, they'd made absolutely no progress at all.

Xemnas hadn't liked the fact that there were mirrors on the floor; you wouldn't either if all you had on was a thin piece of fabric for clothing, so he'd been sitting on the ground for the past hour or so to preserve some shred of his dignity while the silver haired schizoid tramped around the room looking for something…something…actually he hadn't thought to ask what he was looking for.

"If you're looking for a door I doubt you'll find one, unless you've just decided to ignore our surroundings and keep a positive outlook on our situation."

He ignored him…AGAIN. Really, he wasn't asking for him to hold a philosophical conversation about the inner workings of jelly donuts or anything, just a simple yes and no here and there or at least something to let him know he wasn't as completely uncivilized as Xemnas figured he was. Or maybe he was asking for too much, after all, this was supposed to be Purgatory, civility wasn't the highest thing on the menu down here.

Folding his arms over his chest, Xemnas sighed and watched the Boy Wonder inspect one particular mirror, feel around behind it, back away, then made some sort of decisive noise as he stared at the wall of mirrors opposite him, then over to Xemnas.

"This's the one. Come here."

"Is it important enough that I have to get up to see this? Can't I just see it from where I-"

"Get. Up. Now."

"Alright, alright, calm down Attila." Struggling to his feet, he carefully made his way over to the man, watching his eyes to make sure he wasn't peeking anywhere he shouldn't be and stared at the mirror he was displaying to him. He shrugged lightly, paused, then licked his finger and rubbed a smudge off his cheek.

"Well, that's nice of you to go so far out of your way to tell me there's dirt on my face."

Sephiroth gave him a disgruntled look. "That's the wrong mirror idiot. Stand before this one," he said grasping his arm and roughly yanking him over to the red rimmed one he'd been inspecting earlier.

Xemnas was about to bitch at him for manhandling him when he realized something just wasn't quite right about this mirror, and it took him a full 8 brain cells to figure out that his feet were backwards, actually, his entire reflection was backwards, as well as the part of the swordsman that could be visible within it. He narrowed his eyes and looked to another mirror, finding that his reflection was perfectly normal, and then back at the odd mirror playing funhouse with him.

"I'm assuming………………….this isn't an ordinary mirror."

"It's so nice to have someone around to state the obvious."

"Oh hush, no one asked for your input."

Sephiroth replied with a thin smirk and then turned his attention to the crazy backwards mirror thing with possible metaphoric meaning behind it. "While I've been here, I have noticed that out of all these mirrors, only one of them is not truly a mirror, but is in fact a doorway, and the only way to find this doorway is to find the one that skews your reflection."

He paused for a moment to turn his back completely away from the mirror, and Xemnas watched with an insane amount of fascination as his reflection, previously backwards, turned itself forwards. What he wouldn't give for a punch in the face to make sure he wasn't hallucinating…but that would be alright if no one punched him. He'd still be happy.

"Every 5 minutes," Sephiroth continued. "These mirrors shift, and with it, the doorway shifts to another mirror in this room."

"Well isn't that mystical," Xemnas sighed tiredly. He really wanted a bath…and some clothes. He missed his robe, even if it was practically the only piece of decent clothing he'd really had post-Nobodyness.

He was going to ask something about why someone would make a doorway out of a mirror, wondering if it had some higher aesthetic meaning to it, or perhaps it just made the story that much more interesting than just a roomful of random doors, when the silver haired man backed up into the mirror and, holy toast on bread! He went straight through the damn thing and friggin vanished!

"?!?!!? Wait! Come back here-" Xemnas made the mistake of running into a mirror. He felt very silly for doing that, and the Goddess thought he looked very silly doing it too, so she laughed at him.

"It's not funny! My nose is bleeding damnit!"

The Goddess was very surprised that Xemnas didn't break his nose…or the mirror…but maybe now his pride was a bit fractured.

"I've a feeling my pride is going to be raped and beaten every which way in this fic."

The Goddess thinks Xemnas is very perceptive….but anyway.

Collecting his composure and looking around for any teeth that might've fallen out of his head, Xemnas eyed his backwards reflection, turned himself around as Sephiroth had done, prayed to whatever power governed the area for safe measure and ran backwards through the doorway….which failed…because he ran backwards into the mirror, which was no longer a doorway, but had become a regular old mirror after the white haired wonder had vanished through it.

Running backwards into a mirror is even funnier than running forwards into a mirror, and the Goddess broke a rib laughing at Xemnas.

"Stop laughing at me! I don't think I can see out of my left eye anymore!"

The Goddess just sighed and rolled her eyes, wondering when Xemnas was going to remember a key piece of information about the mirrors and the doorway.

"What key piece of information?"

…About the doorway…

"About the doorway."

…And the mirrors…

"And the mirrors."

…….About the connection between the doorway and the mirrors!!

"…Doorway and mirrors….and-Oh yes! Yes! I remember; the 5 minute rule!"

The Goddess decided to keep her comments to herself in the interest of continuing the story, and thus had Xemnas search out the location of the next doorway-mirror thingy, which, after a few hours of searching, happened to be one of the mirrors on the floor, which only took so long because figuring out if your reflection is backwards on the floor is pretty tricky.

After staring at himself for a few moments, Xemnas sat down just before the mirror, looking back and cringing to find his reflection doing that strange forwards thing as he was turned away from it, said a small prayer to Tom Cruise, then tipped himself backwards through the mirror and screamed as he fell through something wet and…watery and…oh dear, looks like we've fallen into some body of water…which was horrible, because it is a little known fact that Xemnas didn't remember how to swim.

As his head broke the surface, the first thing he did was thrash and scream like a chicken with its head cut off. Somewhere not too far away from him, crouched down on top of a rock, Sephiroth was watching in silent amusement as the dark skinned man screeched and flailed about in the water.

"Xemnas."

"Can't swim! Can't swim! Gonna die! Gonna die! Oh my god, I'm gonna die!"

"Xemnas."

"Why're you just sitting there?! I'm dying! I'm drowning! Help me damnit!"

"Xemnas!"

"Fortheloveofgodpleasehelpmepleasehelpmepleasehelpme!!"

"Xemnas!"

"WHAT?!"

"Stand up. You're only in 3 feet of water."

Xemnas stopped his flailing for a moment, blinked, then slowly got to his feet and looked down at himself. Clawing his hair out of his eyes, he looked very sheepish for a few moments and then sighed irritably, jabbing a finger at the silver haired man doing a poor job of hiding his laughter.

"Don't you say a word."

"I don't believe I need to."

-------------

Xemnas wished there was a small animal around for him to kick into a bruised pulp. Perhaps then its wretched screams would take his mind off the ungodly pain in his feet and legs, actually, at some point in their wanderings, that pain had slowly began to crawl upwards into his body, and now he felt like a giant walking sore.

Ah! Correction! He was still sopping wet since he'd fallen in that small body of water…which had turned out to be a creek, so technically he was a giant walking sopping wet, miserably pitiful, sore…oh and he was still wearing just about nothing at all, because since the gown had gotten wet and suctioned against his skin, he really didn't consider it a piece of clothing anymore, so he was also sore, wet, naked, and all other sorts of miserable adjectives.

Xemnas looked tiredly around himself at the landscape they'd been wandering through for half of forever, which for the most part was just an excessive amount of flat short grassland with the occasional Tim Burton-esque tree or shrub sprinkled here and there. In fact, a few miles back, he'd narrowly missed being strangled by an emo weeping willow.

Despite that last bit of excitement, it hadn't been enough to distract his body from the fact that it was in pain…and he should stop…and if he didn't stop it was going to self-destruct with or without his consent.

"Hey, do you mind slowing down some? I'm in pain."

"If you ache it's because you're out of shape."

"I am not out of shape."

"Then why are you so far behind?"

Xemnas pulled a face and jogged a bit to catch up with the other man, who was somehow able to keep this same break neck pace for the past 5 hours, and wearing all that leather too! What the hell was he?! He wasn't even breaking a sweat and here he was, wheezing and gasping like a 90 year old cow with lung cancer. Or, well, maybe that whole no sweating thing had something to do with the fact that he was dead.

Things went on for a few more miles in relative silence, crushing, suffocating, Boa-constricting silence, until Xemnas was fairly sure that he no longer had any skin on the bottoms of his feet and to distract himself he decided to torment the swordsman into possibly getting him to let him rest for 5 minutes.

"Sephiroth."

"What."

"My feet hurt."

"…"

"Sephiroth."

"What."

"I'm cold and I'm wet."

"…"

"Can we please stop now?"

"No. Stop bothering me."

Xemnas sulked for a moment. "Please?"

"No."

"….Please?-"

Somehow, Xemnas had seen this cunning plan going very differently in his head. He'd managed to dance out of the way before Sephiroth's long shiny sword slashed his head off. Yet despite his increasing nimbleness, he wasn't able to avoid the pointy object nicking the end of his nose.

Xemnas tried to swallow the grapefruit sized lump in his throat as he stared down the length of the cold steel tickling his nose, trying to decide what flavor of malice was coating Sephiroth's eyes this time around.

"What?...I said please." Not the right answer apparently. Before his mind could register it, the silver haired man had closed the distance between them and was steadily cutting off his air with a gloved hand. His face was devoid of emotion, which made Xemnas wonder, through his momentary peril, if perhaps this man was also a Nobody that they'd somehow missed. He would've made a fine addition to their clubhouse cult, what with all that power radiating off him like a friggin-

"Xemnas," Sephiroth said very softly, cutting into his thoughts and digging his fingers into his neck just a little.

Xemnas couldn't answer because he was slowly suffocating, but he managed to nod his head and look as attentive as he could.

"I don't have to keep you alive, do you know that?"

Xemnas shook his head no. He was going to make some comment about him being already dead, so technically keeping him alive would be hard to do anyway…but he very wisely kept his comments to himself.

"It would be imperative to your well being if you remained in my good graces. Do you understand?"

Xemnas nodded as vigorously as he could with a hand around his throat, hacking and hungrily sucking in air when the hand released him and allowed sweet, tasty, oxygen, or whatever made up the air around here, to fill his lungs once more. The silver haired Nobody decided he didn't mind lingering so far behind the schizo after that.

This can't possibly be Purgatory. This is something far worse if I had the impeccable misfortune of being stuck with him.

Once more, Xemnas shows us all just how perceptive he is!

"Are you mocking me?"

Why of course not dearie, why ever would you think such a thing?

"You say something back there?" Sephiroth didn't turn his head, but Xemnas noted that the fingers of his sword hand had twitched rather ominously.

"Em…There's gnats flocking around me?"

"That doesn't surprise me. You still smell like creek scum."

-------------

Normally fog didn't bother him, but its sudden oncoming and the fact that it was thick enough for Sephiroth to cut through it with his sword was agitating him.

Everywhere his golden eyes rested, he was met with a curtain of thick white foggy, soppy, dampness, which also reminded him that he was still somewhat wet, and still mildly miserable from being dropped in that lake…creek…but more importantly he was finding it very difficult to see two inches in front of his face. If he wasn't careful he'd-

"Ow! Could you pay attention and not run into me anymore?!"

"Well I'm sorry, it isn't my fault you blend in so well with this atmosphere, you pasty freak," Xemnas snapped, rubbing the spot on his face that'd smashed into the swordsman's broad leather clad back.

Said leather clad individual turned back to throw a poisonous comment at him, only to find that even with his dark skin, he could only tell that Xemnas was even there only because his golden eyes shone so brightly through the thick blanket of fog that'd descended. He raised an eyebrow.

"Are you related to anything remotely feline?"

"What?...No, why would you ask me something like that?"

"Your eyes are shiny. How do you get them to do that?"

"I don't….know? Why are you asking me this again?"

"No reason. Don't worry about it, and stay close to me. I highly doubt you could look after yourself if you got lost in this fog."

"You obviously don't know me very well." A vein stood out in the Nobody's head and for a few moments, the idea of stabbing him 12 times in the back with his blades, scalping him and tying him up with his own hair was very alluring.

However, whatever thought he was having was very nicely diced, cubed and served to guests at a cocktail party with toothpicks jammed in them, when he stepped on something slick and tubular, ah, but that's not what got him, what got him was the fact that said tubular object had a seizure and attacked his leg.

"Whatthecrap?!" Xemnas did the same crazy headless chicken dance and scrambling up Sephiroth's back to get away from it, where he remained, trying to find some leverage on the man as he hooked one leg over his shoulder and pulled at his hair.

"Ngh! Xemnas get off me! Quit pulling my hair out, damn you!"

"Something fucking bit me!!"

"I'll bite you if you don't get the hell off me!"

"I'm bleeding!"

"So am I! You're pulling chunks of my hair out!"

"Good god, what the hell bit me? I can stick my thumb in these holes."

Sephiroth was about to just peel Xemnas off his back with his sword, when he as well stepped on something which squirmed very violently out of the way and…was it cursing at him? That thing just cursed at him…and in a British accent.

"Sephiroth, I can't see the pathway anymore. Are you sure you were paying attention to where you were going?"

"That thing just cursed at me."

"That's nice, but we have more important things to worry about, like your lack of attentiveness!"

"Quiet!….Did you hear that just now?"

"No, I heard nothing, the very same sound that your empty head's going to make when I smack you around for leading us off the road!"

"Am I going to have to continuously remind you that you are expendable? Because you know I could very easily-"

A very loud bit of rustling sounded all around them and both men ceased their squabbling and stared through the fog, the green eyed swordsman crouching reflexively, halting any further movement he made and breathed faintly, getting a momentary snatch of déjà vu as a speck of memory teased at the general in his mind.

Xemnas had very slowly slid down from his temporary outpost, and dropped himself onto the ground, allowing just the tip of one of his blades to penetrate the flesh of his palm. It was only now that he noticed, upon a chance glance at the ground, that the grass they were standing on was laying over flat, as if something had been resting over it for quite some time.

Frowning curiously, he looked to the sides, finding that there was a visible line where the grass stood straight once more and where it lay flattened down. This same oddity was present as the flattened grass stretched out before and behind him, as if to create a path…Oh! Pathway!

"Sephiroth…I think this pathway moved itself," Xemnas said thoughtfully, looking up and out over the fog, wondering offhandedly if all this moisture wasn't bad for his lungs.

"Don't be daft. Path's don't just get up and move all on their own." Sephiroth was too busy worrying about all the shifty rustling noises in the grass. From what he could tell, there seemed to be at least 8 or 9 of whatever these things were that were stalking them lurking around. This fog was going to make it very difficult to kill things. It just wasn't fun to killing things when they refused to play by the rules.

While Xemnas' little brain cells worked themselves into a frenzy trying to decipher the mysteries of fog-life, he'd neglected to turn his eyes towards the ground once more, and the next thought that ran through his head was trying to figure out what this cold slippery thing was curling around his leg.

His head shot down and a muffled sound left his throat as he found his foot constricted by a white something or other. He wasn't sure what it was, or even cared what it was for the moment. All he knew was that it was all up in his space, it was a foreign object and it was molesting his leg.

Kicking his leg hard enough to knock himself backwards, he accomplished his goal of object removal, and watched as a thick white line sailed off into the air with a receding scream to collide with something in the fog.

Ha. 20 points for Xemnas. 0 for the beastie.

….Your keeping a score sheet now?

"Why not? It'll boost moral."

Eh, whatever helps you sleep at night. Now where were we? Oh yes, thick white screaming line flying off into the fog.

"What the hell was that?"

"Something else tried to attack my leg again, but fortunately I am equipped with catlike reflexes and have disposed of it before it could do further damage to my legs."

"Is that a fact."

"You're just jealous because I defeated one of them before you did."

Xemnas was very proud of himself. Rising very wobbly to his feet, he crossed his arms over his chest, and struck a triumphant pose until his brain registered that the thing he'd just kicked into the stratosphere had screamed, a very human sounding scream actually, and the thing was still making some sort of noise that sounded very much like words.

Well that was strange. What sort of beastie screamed like a human and rambled on in words?

The threat of danger gave way to the advancing tides of curiosity, and the two men threaded their way carefully through the fog towards the source of the noise that was growing louder as they approached.

"Stupid blitherin fool of an idiot!...Complete disrespect of-……Absolutely incomprehensible!..."

"I told you something was cursing at me."

"But why with a British accent?"

"Why indeed…"

The Goddess blinked rather innocently as Sephiroth stared up at her, somehow able to see her even though she is the narrator and has made herself invisible. The Goddess wasn't sure why she decided to give the beastie a British accent…it seemed much easier to type out the phonetic sounds of that accent, even if she'll do a crappy job of it, then trying to do the same thing with, say, French or German.

"Right. A monster yelling in French would be cause for much alarm."

And a beast yelling in German isn't any better either. Moving on!

Two platinum haired men eventually found themselves staring down at the thing they'd assumed to have been attacking them in the fog, and felt slightly silly for being chased by it actually. Lying there on the ground, writhing around itself in the grass was a small white snake, just about the length of ones arm, and accompanied with its thrashing was a voice that should've belonged in a disgruntled Englishman.

"Confounded Leggies! Always kickin me around like a bloody 'ooley 'oop! Simply no respect for Belly Walkers, no respect at all!"

They guessed all that thrashing and writhing around in the grass was because it was having a tantrum and not because it was having difficulty getting up. It made more sense, because it seemed rather impossible for a snake to be unable to get up without legs or arms.

At some point in its ranting it righted itself on the ground and shot its head up, narrowing its beady red eyes at the two figures looming over it and pulling its head back into what seemed to be its way of lifting its nose up at them.

"And what the 'ell do you two want? Thought you'd come back an rough me up some more eh?! Spineless cowards, always pickin on Grass Wanderers jus 'cause were wee little things." It hissed savagely, but considering its size, it wasn't as intimidating a sound as it probably wanted it to be. "Well?! Aren't ya goin to say anythin?! Like maybe a 'sorry for almost killin ye' or maybe a 'sorry I kicked ya into next week' or somethin, eh?! Eh?!"

"Yes, Xemnas, aren't you going to apologize to the poor thing for kicking it?"

"Oh right, and just completely disregard the fact that the damn thing bit me!"

"Ah only bit ya cause you were standin on mah neck! You don't know 'ow 'eavy you are! You coulda killed me!"

"Oh, and you biting me isn't just as lethal?! How do I know you aren't poisonous or anything?!"

"Oh poppy cock! I ain't poisonous! What ya think I am, a Snake?"

"What else would you be?! You think maybe the fact that you have no arms and legs isn't just a birth defect?!"

"Don't ya get smart with me lad! Ah know what I am, and I ain't no Snake! No siree, I am a Belly Walker, a Grass Wanderer if ya please, and I won't take lightly to anyone tryin to lump me in with our unsavory ancestors."

"What the hell are you talking about?!"

Sephiroth was very amused by the fact that Xemnas was arguing with an English reptile, but as interesting as this all was, he wanted to get out of this damn fog, and he wanted the story to progress and not become a 4 page dialogue argument which sounded like it wasn't going to be conducive to the plot.

"Xemnas, apologize to the misguided reptile for kicking it. Misguided reptile, apologize to Xemnas for biting him."

Both parties seemed to want to protest to that idea, but Sephiroth had this very interesting way of negotiating with the threat of decapitation on the table, which was enough to persuade them both to kiss and make up…not literally of course. Kissing a snake is unhealthy I hear, and it would also bring the inter-species card into play, which we are so not doing in this fic.

"Now, if you don't mind," Sephiroth began calmly, crouching down before the snake that sort of shied away from the scary man-thing. "We seem to have run into some trouble in finding our way back to the road since this fog descended. Do you know your way around here well enough to lead us?"

"Of course I can lead you two out, it's mah job to be a guide anyway, an you should be lucky ya ran into me, or rather, ran onto me. Gimme a minute an we'll be on our way, k lads?"

The snake coiled itself into a ball and the swordsman backed away from it when its shape began to melt together in a bit of a white blob, its form expanding and taking on a human-esque figure, and after a brief pulsating glow of bluish white light, the figure of a crouching man was before him in the place of that snake.

The deathly pale young man raised his head, eyes covered with a white blindfold, wisps of thin straight white shoulder length hair with a few bird feathers sticking out if it, and gave him a pleasant smile. He was wearing a short white kimono of some sort, the top of which looked like it had been cut away to just above his narrow chest that was otherwise plain aside from the light purple flower patterns littering small portions of the fabric.

Bandages ran up the length of his arms, stopping just beneath his shoulders, as well as running up his legs to stop just below his knees, each tied together with some sort of thick string. He wore simple canvas shoes and an assortment of odd trinkets hung from his person wherever he could hook them.

Rising fluidly, standing just a few feet shorter than the two, he gave them another fangy happy sort of grin. In all honesty, if he hadn't made that goofball smile, he would've looked like a very graceful creature.

"Well? How do you like me now? I don't usually get ta take this shape unless guests are around." He chirped happily, spreading his arms out and twirling in a small circle and just looked entirely too happy to be anything remotely related to the cold slippery creature he was previously. "Oh! But no talkin time now, we've got ta get you two to The First Of, or they'll close the gates on ya and you'll get eaten by fog beasties."

Sephiroth watched the snake…thing…frolic off into the sunset singing show tunes before following after him, calling back to Xemnas who appeared to be in some state of moderate shock, which wasn't really shock at all, he was just mildly worried about following a blind singing snake to wherever it was they were supposed to go.

"You really think we can trust him to lead us the right way?" Xemnas whispered to the green eyed man beside him, watching the odd youth stop, blow on a whistle that made no sound, crane his head around as if he were listening for something, then dart off in some random direction. "I mean, he is a snake after all."

"He just said he wasn't a snake."

"Oh don't you start on me too!"

-------------

"Mmmmm….It's this way!"

"And how, pray tell, do you know that? You've been bobbing and weaving and blowing on that damn thing for 2 hours! How the hell do you know where your going?!"

"Mah friend's are telling me which way ta go."

"…Friends?"

"Yes, friends. See this whistle? That's 'ow we get people through the fog, but only we can 'ear em, and if another of us in the area 'ears it, they'll return the call and 'elp direct me to where I want to go. This fog's so thick, this's really the only way ta get through it. See? Arent'cha lucky ya ran into me? You woulda been wanderin around 'ere for the next millennium!"

Xemnas had decided that he was going to be surrounded by crazy people for the remainder of his un-life, and resigned himself to an anxious silence as he plodded on behind the silent figure looming beside him and the spastic little ghost flitting around ahead of him.

He was still wet because of all this damn fog, and even if he was thankful that the bites on his leg had healed a few miles back, he was still sure he was going to get bitten again. Every now and then there would be some rustling of grass here and there, sometimes near, sometimes farther away, but he was just waiting for it now. It was going to happen any minute now.

"You never did tell us your name."

"Oh, that's right, so sorry 'bout that. Names Elijah, but I'd rather you call me Eli, all mah friends do. And you are?"

"Sephiroth, and the unusually quiet thing over there is Xegnas."

"Xemnas! It's Xemnas you idiot!"

"Right, Lembas, whatever. But I have to ask, why is it that you're out in this fog? Seems like a strange place to hang around in."

"No one told you who we are?" Elijah seemed rather shocked and awed by this bit of information that even a toddler should've known, but then logic kicked him in the teeth. "Oh, but of course no one told you, this's ya first time down here ain't it?"

Sephiroth chose to remain silent at that question, but Elijah went on regardless.

"That path you two were wanderin on, the one that sorta vanished on ya? They call it the Trail Dancers path, only cause it moves around so, which is our doin I'm sorry ta say."

"You mean to say you moved an entire trail?"

"Actually, we are the trail." Elijah decided to further elaborate after a plethora of question marks popped up over the two silver haired men's head's.

"Ya see, in Purgatory, you've gotta do the whole atonin for ya sin's thing, and one of the sins of snakes was that our eldest ancestor lead man astray. So our penance is to remain as guides for 'owever long They see fit. We're rather partial to this fog though, so we shed our dirt skins for our natural forms when it comes down like this. We're fairly fragile creatures you know, we can't take a lot of direct sunlight or anythin too 'arsh like that. So while the fogs are about, that's about the only time we come up from being the pathway and enjoy it while we can. That's why you two might've thought ya lost yer way."

"Well that's rather inconvenient to someone trying to find their way," Xemnas huffed, intent on getting his two cents in, seeing as he hadn't said very much for the past few hours and didn't want to be forgotten.

Elijah scratched at his feathered white head with a bit of guilt. "Yea, guess it is partially our fault that so many people get lost and wander so…sometimes people be wanderin about forever and never find where it is they need ta go, but really, it's just no fun lyin on the ground for ages at a time. We get bored too ya know, wouldn't you be too if you 'ad to just lie here all day long?"

Well, Xemnas couldn't argue with that. If he had to be a pathway for the rest of his whatever-life, then he'd get bored after the first five minutes of each day. These Belly Walkers certainly had some patience if they had to lay around until a fog descended for them to move about in, but even so, there must've been another way to do that, because it was still terribly horrid to find that your pathway just up and moved out from under you while you were trying to walk it.

They walked on for a few more minutes in silence, their reptilian turned human companion continuing his odd motions of stop, blow, and listen, until a question that'd been rolling around in his mind conjured itself up.

"Why do you call yourselves 'Belly Walkers'?" Xemnas asked, dancing out of Elijah's way as he skittered too close to him and changed their entire course once more. "It seems like a much longer thing to remember than just 'Snake'."

"Shh! We don't speak that word 'ere!" Elijah had whirled around and was talking to the air, then Sephiroth walked over and turned him around to face them.

"…Why can't we speak it? There isn't a village of people around here that's trying to keep you ignorant from the outside world is there?"

"No, we don't use that word because that was the name used to describe us while we were still evil ridden beings. We call ourselves Belly Walkers, because that's the name we call ourselves now."

"…And what vigilante decided that one?"

"They did."

"Whose 'They'?"

"I….can't tell ya that. But I can tell you about what their plan was for the Trail Dancer's Atonement. The word Snake was the word given to the descendents of the First Tempter, who was the first to lead man astray. But here, we are able to cleanse ourselves of our evils by taking up the new name Belly Walkers, or Grass Wanderers, so that we may find it easier to focus on atoning for the sins of our previous lives without the name of our ancestor looming over us."

"…"

"What?"

"Nothin. It all sounds so very noble and backwards to me."

"Well, that's just 'ow things are down 'ere." Elijah frowned and blew on his whistle again. "Ya do ya job, keep ya nose clean an' don't ask too many questions."

Xemnas was beginning to worry just a bit more about his predicament. It seemed that Purgatory was a very odd beurocraticical sort of place that wanted to pull the sheep hide over your eyes. If this place was convincing snakes that they weren't snakes, then what exactly did that mean for himself and the Schizoid? Who knew? Maybe they would try and convince him that he wasn't really a Nobody, but he was really an angst ridden goth kid or something.

You might as well be a goth Xemnas. You were the leader of a cult, so technically you've already hit most of your goth bases.

"It was not a cult!"

Right, and shady figures in black cloaks skittering around doing shady sort of things in the shadows isn't cultish at all. I'm surprised you guys didn't go out and sacrifice a blonde haired blued eyed kid…oh wait, well, there was Roxas wasn't there.

"We did not sacrifice him!"

Eh, give or take a few years and he would've been devil chow.

"I'm not continuing this conversation."

"Does he do that often?" Elijah was very worried by Xemnas' sudden bout of self-conversing. Xemnas had seemed like such a nice, level-headed sort of fellow.

"Don't worry about it. You get used to it after a while."

----

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A/N: I'm so not happy with this chapter. I swear I could've put more random funnyness in here, but I think school sucked all the funny out of me, that and I wanted to explain some bits about Eli and what his job was. Please give Fuss more reviews, Xemnas has promised to let Sephy stab at him more if you do.

Xemnas: Funny, I don't remember agreeing to that. ::glares::

Sephy: You might not remember, but the 12 glasses of Gin and Tonic remember, and it just sort of slipped out after that.

Xemnas: You people suck. -.-