Mille: Oh wow, check this out. Took me half of forever to update. I hate having a life. Anyone want to, like, work at a Mexican Grill in my place or something? You'd get updates faster…

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Volurin: Hey, it would've been sex in a morgue, but I wasn't sure how to work that in. Though, funny you should mention a threesome as I was just thinking how to work that in with some relevance.

TwistedAffection: Yes, Saix needs more love, but sadly, shall get only a fraction of it seeing as he isn't the main pairing. So much angst, you could cut it with a hack saw now. Not sure about the reader thing myself. I think people are just lurking and being shy about reviewing. x3

Jewlin-chan: Unfortunately it wasn't Zexion, I'm not sure where he is actually. He won't return any of my calls. D:

t0nifasic: Yes, crack pairings, I just love a good crack pairing, and if you read between the text, Seph and Xemnas aren't the only pairings in here.

Mix Golden Phoenix: Saix…sex…how strangely often those two go hand in hand with each other.

Levi: Yay! New reviewer! Well, so glad I could pop your Seph/Xemnas cherry. I do hope I can hold your attention till the bitter end.

postitnotesarelife: Your penname speaks volumes of truth. I couldn't function if it were not for the note of post it. And much thanks for leaving me a review!

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-:-Warnings-:- Actual plot, angst, angst, angst, non-existential meltdowns, donuts.

Disclaimer: Copy&Paste.

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Shad-rack Ruse of Blue Suede Shoes

Or a better title:

In which Purgatory gets a whole lot shittier all over again.

----

Usually the Goddess would start the beginning of a chapter with a completely unrelated series of events having nothing to do with the previous events of some such characters, however, due to certain pressing circumstances and letters of concern from aforementioned characters, though choosing to be unnamed individuals, of a non-existent stand point, the Goddess is forced to begin such "chaptoral" events with the happenings of last chapter because it is actually, for once, relevant and crucial to the development of the plot and has nothing to do with the after math of moving van sex, and no it is not because a character saw the fourth way, broke it down and scared the poop out of the Goddess, but simply because it is a necessary deviation from the norm.

And yes, for once, that wasn't a huge run on sentence. Microsoft Word approved it for your viewing pleasure. Have a nice day.

Currently, two figures were occupying the Savage Nymphs very comfy, broken in couch, while said Nymph eyed them critically from an arm chair, a cup of coffee to her lips as she sucked down its scalding contents.

Body number one belonged to a pretty head of blonde hair, starched white collared shirt, though it was unbuttoned for infirmed circumstances, black tie, pants and dress shoes, polished and ironed to obsessive neatness, black jacket folded neatly on a table beside the couch. Vexen was a bit anal about his appearance, even while passed out on the couch of a person close enough to receive the loose label of "friend." He was curled up against the arm of it, looking exceptionally cute, more so than most would describe him as, seeing as the only characteristics he seems to have are "insane" "catty (also interchangeable with bitchy)" and "mad-scientist", which are anything but cute.

Body number two belonged to, no, not Zexion (sorry folks), but to Xigbar, the Cyclops Nobody with the lively Californian accent, who, at the moment, looked anything but lively. Actually, he looked dead, which he technically was, but seeing as he was a pleasant shade of pale and blue highlights and hadn't moved at all, not even when Larxene dropped hot cider on him, it's probably safe to label him under 'temporary stiff' for the moment.

Lexaeus was watching the cider seep into the front of the gunman's white shirt, with some sort of designer newspaper patterning all over it, thinking he should probably start keeping Hi-Potions on his person from now on.

"I should probably start keeping Hi-Potions on my person from now on," Lexaeus reiterated.

"That'd be smart," Larxene drawled, not listening, as she was too busy digesting the information the rock of a man had given her.

Apparently, some unpleasant plot device had been implemented just beneath the surface of all this maddeningly repetitive humor, but what it was exactly wasn't entirely certain to her.

He'd explained that on his way to work, there had been a gaggle of uniformed persons outside his store, milling around, looking ominous and unwelcome, before they descended upon him and dragged him into a large black SUV with spinning hubcaps and a light up dashboard. All pimpness aside, they'd informed him, after seeing that their abduction and torment tactics picked up from Mission Impossible movies had failed, that the nice little memo that he'd received from the Guild, asking him very politely to report to his trial, had been ignored and they were now implementing harsher methods of retrieval.

Lexaeus informed them that he'd received no such note, mostly because he'd gotten into the habit of discarding all his mail. He'd been thinking of asking to be relocated since he'd been receiving countless stacks of junk mail, many of which were the same ads for Extense, Cosmogirl, and pamphlets from the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints, whatever that was.

Upon reaching The Hall of Judgment, which was a series of large futuristic metallic buildings slapped together to form ominous jagged angles, generally a very unfeeling and hopelessly unyielding governmental structure, he was fitted with a neck collar that would explode, releasing pheromones that would attract misguided yaoi fan girls from miles around if he so dared an escape while in the custody of the The Hall. All unpleasantries aside, he made a note to himself to tell Xemnas of this building's structure, that perhaps they should consider renovating the Castle to fit such a theme. It would be a most fitting place for a collection of cultish invisibles like themselves.

Crossing an expanse of black marble flooring, he'd run into Number II and IV, or more accurately, seen them coming as Vexen was making a considerable amount of noise, spouting disgruntled SAT words and threatening to freeze his captor's "special places" together. Xigbar looked like he'd just woken up with a hangover, so he sort of hung between the men holding his arms, face scrunched up in post-inebriated agony.

To make a long story short, and it was an extensively long story, one that'd taken three pots of coffee to get through, much of the wee hours of the morning, and a bottle of medicine to keep Samuel from chewing his fingers and knocked him out, Lexaeus explained that, through whatever twisted logic this bureaucracy of the afterlife possessed, the three of them had been sentenced to immediate liquidation.

Of course, liquidation didn't happen, as their continued presence is proof of, so in quick words, the Goddess will try to relate the B movie action sequence as best as she can.

Approached site of liquidation, Vexen freaking out, Xigbar still hung over, stuffed into cylindrical tanks, Vexen freaking out more(claustrophobia), chambers filling with some odd electrically conductive substance, lots of volts charged into said substance, bad hair day, Vexen suffering a panic attack due to partial liquidation, glass ices over, insert dramatic final hour close ups here, Xigbar pulling out guns and shooting at Vexen to shut him up, inadvertently busting holes in iced glass, broken glass, lots of mayhem, ice on floor, slipping, Vexen freeing Lexaeus, lots of earth damage, insert Matrix action sequence here, freeing nearly liquidated Xigbar, gettin the hell out of dodge, eluding the clutches of rabid fangirls, cue credits.

There, did I miss anything?

"Nothing of note, it was a splendidly summarized account, many thanks to you Goddess."

Any time Lex.

"But I just don't get it," Larxene grumbled, placing the cup to one side and leaned back in her chair massaging her temples. "Why try to liquidate us? We've been their lap-dogs for this long, doing their shit jobs and all without too much barking, why get rid of us now?"

"Perhaps we are a liability," Lexaeus murmured quietly, casting a critical eye on Number II and continued to scrape the dull blade of a butter knife at the sticky residue of the pheromones still on his neck. He'd yet to make a move since their Grand Master Escape from the Alter of the Sacrificial Lamb. "We are criminals after all, according to their records, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to be rid of us."

"Yeah, so is every other bitch around here, but that's not the point of Purgatory, just off anybody just because they're a serial rapist!" The blonde huffed, rising swiftly from her seat and began pacing in an angry circle, wearing a ring of crackling light snaps into the carpet. "Why target us? Half a zillion specks of pond scum around here and they decide to fuck with us!"

"Perhaps there is a reason for such a thing-"

"There is no reason! They just wanna fuck with someone! Miserable fat Belgian bastards!(1)"

(1): Couldn't help sticking in a Stewie line.

"Larxene, please try to keep a level head for five more minutes. Causing a black out won't be received too well, and I don't have the right face to be a terrorist."

"Fine...But I'm raising hell as soon as you guys leave," she snapped, plopping back down in her chair, antennae twitching restlessly with static build up. She sighed at length, more of a grunt really, and shifted her eyes to the two members on the couch. "What should we do about those two slackers?"

"I'm not sure, plenty of rest is all I can think of now," Lexaeus shook his head. "I'm no healer, and I'm unsure as to the location of the other official healer."

"I would say, 'go to the Registrar and have them locate Demyx for you', but they'll probably have a warrant out for you guys by now." She cracked her knuckles with the finger of one hand. "Either way, we've got to get these two some help, 'specially Dirty Harry over there. I don't think he's breathed once this entire time."

"Yes, my fear was that we were not in time to save him," the Silent Hero said hesitantly, lacing his fingers together and rested his chin against them, elbows on his knees and tried to think pleasant thoughts as Xigbar turned a different shade of white: Eggshell white. "Still we must reach at least one of the others, however with Vexen in such a state, and even my own reserves spent from our escape, we won't be able to hold our own for too much longer."

"Hey now, don't be forgettin about lil ol me over here," Larxene purred impishly, straightening up a bit and tilted her head. "I know it's hard to forget about the estrogen in our testosterone, but don't think for a second I'd let you guys hog all the fun."

Despite the mass amounts of insanity her smile oozed, Lexaeus smiled and chanced a bit of a laugh, a nervous laugh. "Oh, don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you. It's just that I do not want to needlessly involve you in this affair," his face fell to distracted seriousness. "If you entangle yourself in this, you will most likely be putting yourself at risk, or perhaps even more than what we are facing at the moment."

"Lex, come on," Larxene breathed, a smirk upon her lips as she reached for her cup again, eyeing its contents. "Chances are if they're after you guys, it's only a matter of time before they start paying the rest of us a special house call." She frowned, looking over to him. "That reminds me, you said they'd sent you a letter indicating a trial date for you, but I'm guessing you didn't get it, so they assumed you just ignored it and sent you straight to the chair."

"Yes, that is correct, though, I did not see any sort of correspondence from the Guild," he said thoughtfully, but then he remembered he tossed out all his mail. Junk mail is the downfall of important messages.

"Hm…wonder if…" The brown haired giant watched the little blonde bolt up and scurry off to some corner of her small house, digging around in shelves, cursing, and he had to duck a few times as objects flew past him. He cast a nervous eye to a knife embedded just above Vexen's head and started sweating a little.

"Does it look anything like this?" She came back, carrying a white envelope with a dot of red wax, stamped with the Guild's insignia to keep it closed.

"Hm," he took the envelope, inspecting it, before tearing it open and unfolded the waxy paper within, eyes trailing over the spidery neat handwriting. "Oh my…this is," he looked up and over to the blonde who was giving him a queasy face. "We have to show this to Xemnas, immediately."

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

He dipped his tongue to lap up a portion of his sweetness, sucking him in, breathing him with every pore and fiber of his being, tugging restlessly, almost irritably at the fabric keeping him from properly worshipping his alter, his messiah, his most beloved. Fingers, lightest of touches, curling into his back, a babbling of nonsense his reward for a curt nipping at his flesh, and he was of a doctrine to give himself fully and completely if that was what was desired.

A lilting sigh called his attention overhead, demanding his most immediate attention, and, not one to leave a body waiting, clawing his way up to hover in the space of desperate shaky breathes, a trembling sort of smile forming on the other's face, which brought him such joy he might collapse under the stress of its weight.

"Saix…" Lazy, delicate hand rising to brush tendrils of blue from his face, and he leaned into the touch, purring unabashedly and feeling the ache, the pull to be near him, be with him, engulf him in an emotion he hadn't the words to express. He licked the palm of his hand, sliding his fingers up and along the back of his hand, fingers over knuckles, curling his fingers about his hand, tightly, gently, insisting to himself that he'd never let a moment like this slip by him again.

"…Saix." He looked to him, expectantly, studying his face, his haze filled amber eyes, a half formed smile on his lips, a kind of sweetness he'd never seen in him, and he'd be the only one to see it, if he could help it. He bent forward to him, wanting to taste him, touch him, anything, anything but be separated from him. He had to have him again and again and again and-

"Saix?" Yes? Oh, yes, he was here, he'd always been here, and now, suddenly, he was realizing it. If he'd had a heart, he would've died from sheer joy, and he might've done some crying too, but not in front of him, not in front of this man. He couldn't demean himself to such a level as blubbering, not before this-

"Saix-" What?

"Saix!" What?!

"SAIX!"

"WHAT?!"

The blunette became painfully aware that he'd crushed his seventeenth glass of water. He twitched a little, feeling the shards beginning to burrow into his skin.

"…Well…I was going to ask you if you wanted anything else besides water…"

"Thank you sir, you are too kind to me." Saix strained, fingers laced together as a stream of dark blood started seeping into the thread of his pants. He couldn't take them to the cleaners anymore; they were starting to get suspicious.

Twitching his mouth worriedly, Xemnas made his way, again, towards a shelf with a bright red metal box perched beside a book on autoerotic asphyxiation. After the fourth broken glass, he'd just started leaving it there.

"You know, you really need to work on that reflex of yours, especially if you want to get out of anger management sooner," Xemnas insisted gently, returning to his ex-colleague and crouched before him, eyeing the shards sticking out of the man's tightly clenched blood streaked hands like translucent strands of punk hair.

"Yes sir, I will do my utmost to control it," Saix responded tightly. He swore he could feel microscopic crystalline pieces melding through his skin to be carried along by his blood stream.

Xemnas smirked, nodding his head a touch before grasping his hands and pulled them apart, noting the muted hissing sound the blunette emitted as he wiggled a shard. He frowned. "Mm…well this's no good," he murmured absently, shifting the piece back and forth before sliding it from the wound, looking up and watching Saix's face do some repressed calisthenics in response to not wanting to show pain.

"Hn, and that's certainly no good," he smiled thinly. "Holding everything in like that."

"S-Sir?"

"Holding in pain, not wanting to show it; Too much of that, and you'll cut your un-dead existence short."

"Forgive me sir, but it is a habit."

"Mind over matter is it?"

"Yes sir, it has helped me, ngh-" He watched him slip another shard from his hands, sighing unevenly as it was removed, continuing on: "It has helped me considerably in the past."

"Really? How then, do you fair when you're faced with an immaterial circumstance?"

"Imma-…Sir?" A thin line of confused carved its way into the Diviner's face, trying to break down the nuances of what he might've meant. "I don't think I understand."

"Oh, I think you do…" Xemnas smiled, something a bit darker, something twisted that was all together unsettling and insistent on his full and undivided attention. "You're just being coy." And before he could think on it, more that he wasn't really sure it was even happening to begin with, he watched, wide eyed, as his superior bent his head to flick his tongue over the end of his finger.

The contact was rewarded with a jump of alarm, as the gesture was completely unexpected, and he made to pull away, stopped only by a hand clutching his wrist. Smirking, the silver haired male kept his eyes on Number VII, slipping his lips around the weeping appendage, sucking the metallic tang against the roof of his mouth and to the back of his throat.

"Oooh," Saix oozed, feeling his limbs turn to paste as he melted in the elder Nobody's mouth, jittering nervously beneath the piercing orbs of gold that held him in place, kept him from de-evolving to something single-cellular and noodly.

As Xemnas drew his finger from his mouth, Saix curled the digit upwards, brushing the tip along the very edges of his teeth before the saliva had a chance to cool it. Hypnotically, he leaned into him, stopping when a hand was placed at his lips, prodding them, urging his lips apart, even as he became achingly aware of the fact that his hand was killing him, but it just didn't matter because now he was all bothered.

He could taste him, taste him even before this moment, had envisioned it so many times when the moon was particularly pleasant on some nights, and he tasted, he tasted like…air….air?

Saix blinked abruptly and stared across the room at the red velvet chair Xemnas occupied.

"…Goddamnit…"

"Another episode?"

"Yes, sir, unfortunately."

"Do you remember what it was about by any chance?"

"No," Saix lied, turning away to stare uneasily at a spot on the carpet. It was a lovely shade of dark spot, so very unsymmetrical and mysterious in its spot-like ways.

"Hm," Xemnas turned his attention to a cluster of papers in his hands, shuffling through a few before seeming to set upon one in particular. He never really thought about it, but Xemnas looked particularly attractive wearing glasses. "It sounds like what you're describing is a mild case of Delirium, especially from what I've just seen."

"Ah, I see," Saix responded distractedly, because he was being distracted by the delicately lethal pianists fingers plucking at the air, and it occurred to him that he'd never seen the man's hands before…actually…he hadn't really seen any of the other members hands before. It was weird, sort of like looking at your best friend naked.

"Have you had trouble sleeping lately?"

"Ah, no, not more than usual sir."

"Have you been eating less?"

"No, not that I can recall sir."

"Have you experienced any sort of traumatic episode recently?"

"No-Well, I did stir up a bit of trouble at the Registrar…But that was a while ago…and they wouldn't give me my damn appointment," Saix snapped, paused, then folded back in on himself, adding a conclusive: "Sir."

"Well, that's normal for you I guess," Xemnas scratched his head. "But I can't seem to figure out what's causing this. Hm…has anything been stressing you out lately?"

"Something's always stressing me out sir," Saix sighed, rolling his eyes a bit.

"Then maybe that's it," the elder Nobody said with a decisive flick of his wrist, stuffing the stack of papers back in a folder and dropped them beside his chair on the floor. He leaned back, stretching one of his legs, which Saix tried not to watch too closely. "Maybe you just need to try and…relax more, Saix. Even if you are dead, it's unhealthy to be putting that much unneeded strain on yourself."

"I understand sir, I'll try."

"Good, then that's all I can ask of you," Xemnas said with a shadow of a smile before it fell as a ringing assaulted every nerve of his patience, and he edged away from the phone on his desk like a disease, glaring warily at it. Saix noted his behavior and tried not to laugh at him being so, well, unusual. It was like he was a completely different person, a side of him he'd never dared show to the others, if it had ever existed at all. But that didn't matter to the moon worshipper; he still was and always would be his superior, no matter how insane he'd gotten near the end. When you didn't have a heart, stress makes you do some terribly unimaginably stupid things.

The ringing stopped after a minute, and no sooner had it done so than the bored looking receptionist poked her head into his office. "Sir, that was-"

"I know who it was," Xemnas snapped. "And tell her that if she ever calls here again I'll hunt her down and turn her into a Dusk."

The receptionist seemed to stiffen at this response, nodding her head and quickly vacated the premises.

Saix raised an eyebrow. "A Dusk?"

"I've done it twelve other times, to twelve other stalkers." Xemnas glowered, rising slowly, the other Nobody following suit.

"Well, perhaps if I..." Became your assistant, you wouldn't have to worry about stupid people sucking up your oxygen, you know, like old times, but instead of a salary, could you, maybe, pay me in s-"Just broke their legs the first time they bothered you, you wouldn't need to exert yourself, sir."

"Hm, a kind offer indeed, but I've got to keep my record some semblance of clean," Xemnas smirked. "And having a psychotic secretary might not go over well with Them."

Secretary, no, Psychotic Secretary…Saix liked the way that sounded. But, first things first…

Shifting uneasily in place, watching Xemnas dig in a drawer of his desk for some odd thing, he tried to remember Marluxia's words of masculine will power, which hadn't been very helpfuly advice to begin with and wasn't very much consolation in a situation like this, knowing he'd be teased horribly if he came back to The Salty Dog without having at least asked the man.

Looking up for a minute, Xemnas noted the considerable amount of too much movement still in his office, which would be Saix tearing the hell out of a piece of paper and staring at some spot on his desk. "Saix?"

"Yes?!"

"You know, our session's over for today, you can go now."

"Yes, yes, sir," Saix nodded, turning about and made a beeline for the door, stopping only as the doorknob shocked him, well, not really, but the cold metal sent a pulsating 'coward' message up his arm and into his brain. He dropped his head, suppressing a growl, and turned his head back to face the silver haired man, who had a crease of concentrated irritation on his face; his usual face when looking over paperwork.

"Aww, lookit the sad lil puppy, runnin scared with his tail between his legs."

An obnoxiously small depiction of himself in Hot Topic bondage threads appeared on one of his shoulders, spiky collar about its neck, entirely too many cumbersome bracelets on its wrists, faded black converse shoes, wearing eyeliner, black lipstick, and filing prissily away at its little black painted nails.

"You'll never get anyone to screw you with that kind of cowardice, lil mutt face."

"Oh come on now, leave him alone, he's got more important things to do, like making it on time to anger management, right Saixy?"

Another obnoxiously small depiction of himself appeared on his free shoulder, dressed in a tight black long sleeved shirt, an equally tight red short sleeved shirt with the words 'I see you've met the twins' in white lettering, and a pair of clingy blue jeans hanging off its waist and over its brown shoes. It even had the audacity to pull its hair back into a pony tail and wear 'emo' glasses. Somewhere in the real world, a young teenage boy screamed in horror to find his favorite Ambercrombie&Fitch outfit gone.

"You can always come back down and find him later, he'll be here, won't he hun?"

Saix stared very hard at the door handle and tried to ignore the terribly over-used plot cliché's seated oh so comfily on him.

"Tss, whatever, that's just a pretty way of saying 'procrastination'. You've been all over this dudes ass for half of fucking forever, and now that you get a chance you're just going to crawl away like the spineless wussy bitch that you know you are."

"Spineless?!" Pony-tailed Saix sprang to his feet and leaned around to hiss at Spiky Saix. "Puh-leease! The only things spineless and wussy are your steadily failing attempts at being demeaning. Maybe if you read something other than manga and Emily Dickenson, you'd be able to think up something intelligent."

"Nani?!" Bondage Saix tried to throw his nail filer at Trendy Saix, but it failed when the other caught it and began filing his own nails. "You dare insult that which you do not know of?! Insulting someone else's hobby of interest is SO totally High School." Hair flip.

"Oh no you didn't...you did not just totally take my signature Hair Flip."

"Yeah, I think I totally just did."

"You bitch!"

"You slut!"

Saix sighed and flipped his hair over one shoulder, the plot cliché's dissipating in a cloud of navy colored invisible smoke, and turned about to regard Xemnas, still bent over some insidiously difficult looking notes and cleared his throat. The dark skinned male looked up and over to him, blinking for a moment before responding with a slow: "Yes?"

"Ah…I just wanted to ask, sir, if…" Saix trailed off, cracking his knuckles, caught himself, and forced his hands down to his sides. "If maybe…ah," he took a step forward, raising his hands and fidgeting with them. He needed paper to shred, but the pile by the chair he'd previously occupied was proof that he wasn't going to get any relief.

"Yes?" Xemnas repeated, sitting up a bit straighter, wondering if the material on shirts should be so easy to shred, seeing as Saix was doing an exceptional job of destroying his shirt cuffs.

"Well, sir are you…?...Eh, are you, doing anything…later on?" Saix finished unsteadily, snapping a quick: "Later on today! Are you doing anything later on today?"

"Mm…I'm not sure," Xemnas looked about for his little black book, finding it under a stack of shredded paper…the hell?...and flipped through it till he found the right page, trailing a finger down the list, as Saix watched him trail his finger down the list, watched him very sexily trail his finger down the list. "Looks like I have a chunk of time between 12:30 and 5:45, assuming my last client doesn't cancel. Why, did you have something in mind?" He looked blankly up at Saix, who was turning a few different shades of nervous.

"Ah, well, actually…." Saix got stuck for a minute before he stalked his way over to the desk, placing his hands firmly on the edge and stared hard at his leader. "I'd like to ask you if you wanted to accompany me to a wine tasting gathering at this Italian restaurant that just opened up not too far from here," he blurted out all at once.

There was silence.

And then there was a smile, and if it was at all possible, Xemnas' eyes radiated a lighter color of amber. "I'd love to! How did you know I was partial to such things?"

"Oh…ah," Marluxia's network of flamboyantly fashionable floral spies. "Intuition perhaps? I should think that serving at your side granted me some level of, eh, attention to detail."

"Well, you've certainly got an impressive eye for detail; I've never told anyone of my tastes." Xemnas absolutely beamed with non-existent effervescence, which, had it been any other time, would have worried Saix considerably. He was just too damn expressive, but seeing as the reaction had been caused by his offer, well, he just couldn't bring himself to scoff at it.

"Hm," the silver haired Nobody glanced off to a dull looking wall clock. 10:35. "Your session lasts for two or so hours today, right?"

"Ah, yes, sir, it does."

"I could meet you up on the 5th floor and we can leave from there, does that sound alright?"

"It sounds fine, sir."

"Then I'll see you in two hours."

"Yes, two hours, have a good afternoon sir."

"And a good afternoon to you as well, Saix."

Upon exiting his office and closing the door, Saix had the irrational urge to fall back first against a wall and slide down it, emitting a lilting sigh of repressed elation, but he was Saix, and he had Saix standards to uphold, so he just released the breath he hadn't been aware was being held. He immediately felt light headed, light headed all the way down the hall, in the elevator, and into the circle of pathologically irritated people, taking a seat beside a prickly looking man with a pink Mohawk and enough piercings to make airport security nervous.

"The fuck are you smiling about dickweed," he sneered.

"Nothing," Saix breathed. "Just that it's a particularly nice day today."

Angry-hawk shifted his position to another level of slouched teenager and spat out a figurative loogie. "Pansy."

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By the time Larxene arrived at M.E.R.C.Y. it was already too late, the silver haired Nobody had disappeared. Strangely enough, so had Saix, which she would've expected to be standing on the street corner waiting for a cab to go back to Purgatory. It was a peculiar detail, but one that she couldn't bother herself over at the moment. She needed to see Xemnas, or at least get him on the phone.

Some idiot tried to stop her at the door and got a face full of electrified bitch slappage, and a rather nervous looking Lexaeus trailed cautiously behind her as she tore through the building, a nymph on a mission, though, her epic mission was cut back a few minutes because the elevator kept shorting out every two seconds. Larxene was forced to calm herself in order to resume her mission in a timely dramatic fashion.

Upon bursting through the door of Xemnas' office, splintering wood and glass in her efforts to create a theatrical revealing moment, she paused and blinked in confusion at the silver haired man leaning against the edge of the desk, legs crossed, arms folded.

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow. "Hm…same attitude, wrong person."

"Who the hell are you?!" Larxene spat, antennae twitching indignantly.

"Apparently, someone here for the same reason you are."

"That's not what I asked pretty boy." A flick of her wrist was all it took for two threads of electricity to dance about her arm and form two kunai. "I'll ask again, and this time I'll use simpler words." She assumed all men with silky hair and visually pleasing complexions were idiots. It was usually the case, unless they'd worn leather and wielded 7 foot swords in their past lives.

"Hold on a moment Larxene, let's see what this gentleman is here for before we start throwing things," The Hero interjected quickly, not wanting to attract more attention than was absolutely necessary, which hadn't been working out too well seeing as he'd taken up half the space in the elevator. He shifted his gaze from the angry little woman to their leggy stranger. "It seems, sir, that you must be acquainted in some way with the man this office belongs to, for your presence here is not mere coincidence."

"My, how observant. Seems you are smarter than you look," Sephiroth smirked listlessly. Lexaeus wondered for the umpteenth time that day, what this strange misconception about his physical stature being detrimental to his IQ was all about. "But I'm not here to antagonize you. The fact that you've come here proves all of this," and reached inside pocket of his blazer, producing a white envelope held between index and middle finger.

"Ah-"

"That's!-"

"Ah, so I am correct. You did receive a letter like this, which means you are also apart of this 'Organization XIII'."

"Why'd you get one?"

"I didn't. This one is addressed to Xemnas," he finished slowly, loosing a touch of his cynicism as he trailed off, staring at the offending article between his fingers. Pulling it within his hand, he rubbed a thumb over the surface of the broken wax seal. "I've read its contents," he looked up slowly, eyeing the two across the room. Larxene fidgeted slightly, unusually uneasy under this man's gaze, as if he were boring a hole in her head and setting up a surveillance team in her soul, or, you know, something poetic like that.

She returned his frown nonetheless, pursing her lips and sighed, voice hushed as she spoke: "Then you already know."

"Yes." A pause. "And I want to know why."

"We aren't too sure about that just yet," Lexaeus answered while closing the office door as quietly as possible. Turning to face the man, folding his arms across his chest, he paced some ways towards him and stopped, stopped mostly by his presence, because he was emitting a considerable amount of psycho waves and he didn't want to get any on him. "But for whatever reason, these people seem hell bent on getting rid of us all of a sudden."

"Sounds like a crappy angst ridden plot device if I ever heard one," Larxene drawled, leaning against the back of a chair inspecting her nails.

"Well, crappy or not, the mere fact that we could die in this fic is a very real possibility."

"We can't die. We're already dead. Besides, it'd create unrest amongst the readers."

"I know, which is exactly why it's such a diabolical crappy plot device."

Larxene turned a shade of pale pink and felt herself suffer a momentary non-existential crisis.

"More importantly, sir, I'd like to know why that isn't in Xemnas' hands."

"Because it's obviously in mine," the General replied with sluggish sarcasm. He really didn't want to talk to these people, especially the woman with insect appendages growing out of her head, as he'd planned to wait here for Xemnas to return and corner him. He'd even scheduled himself as his last client for the day (under the name Mitsy Delighted) to be sure of their meeting. He wasn't one to nose around in other people's mail, but, well, it was from the Guild, and the only time the Guild ever sent you shit was always a bad sign. "They're going to find him, and they're going to come here first."

"Hm, so just slash any authority figure you see, s'that the brilliant plan?" Larxene chirped harshly, a vicious smile on her face. "I like it. It's simple. Easy to remember. Lex?"

"No, not while I'm here, especially, not while I'm here." He shifted a bit nervously, glancing back at the door before making his way over to the silver haired man, who shifted a full three inches away from him and folded his arms as he took a seat beside him. "Listen to me, I can tell you that they won't be coming here to look for him first."

"And how do you figure that."

"Do you remember when you were first brought to the Registrar? That little branding they gave you?" Lexaeus watched as the man curled the fingers of his right hand, rubbing a small circle with his index finger on some specific spot. Hm, left bicep, that's where it was. "Think of it as a sort of tracking device. If not for that, your atonement work wouldn't be logged into their records at all."

"Yes, but this letter is addressing the issue that he, as well as the rest of you, haven't done any atonement work."

"This is why this is so peculiar, being as we were all subject to the same sort of tagging upon our arrival." The brunette paused, narrowing his eyes. "We are suspecting foul play. Somehow, someone somewhere seems to have some sort of vendetta against us, more so than to any other criminal down here, and is seeking us out for immediate removal via liquidation."

"That makes no amount of sense, to think that someone out there completely overrode my presence to harass you people."

"What? You someone important we should give a shit about or something," Larxene raised an eyebrow.

Sephiroth looked to her, smiling slowly. "No, not to you anyway." He turned back to Lexaeus then, leaving the blonde woman to ponder any sticky suggestions in those words. "I highly doubt it's something as complex as foul play. As backwards as this system is, it might just be a simple human error."

"Which would cause a sudden call for the liquidation of 13 people?"

"Where I'm from, you get a bullet in the skull for smelling suspicious. Be thankful they even bothered to send you a letter before hand."

"That's harsh. And here I thought being Dusk-ified was bad."

The General hadn't anything witty to say to that, more so because he didn't know what the hell a Dusk was, but mostly because he was a bit more concerned with how on earth he was going to get to Xemnas before the Guild did. He was probably going to hate him for a week for reading his mail, and hiding it from him, for a month…and a half, when this was obviously the sort of thing to be handled post-haste. Well, he could live with it, granted it allowed him another month of make up sex before they pulled the plug on him. Some part of him wouldn't allow the thought that he would miss make up sex with Xemnas, to even permeate any ounce of his rationale, because it meant that the Nobody actually meant something to him, which was preposterous coming from a man who'd trade his whole damn planet for God status.

And yet somehow, that same man was now asking the question: "What should we do?"

"There's not much we can do. We don't have very many options," Lexaeus said at length. "Two of our own have been seriously injured from escaping liquidation, even I myself am still in the process of regaining at least half of my own strength from participating in that ordeal."

Sephiroth let his words digest for a moment, unsure of what to do, stuck, and really, there wasn't a damn thing he could do. All the powers of a megalomaniac, and he couldn't do anything to change the fate of one measly Nobody, or, was there? He could go to the Guild, talk to them, reason with them somehow. He honestly didn't care much for the remainder of his members, but he wasn't letting Xemnas just die without his two cents in the matter. Besides, paying rent was a bitch when you did it by yourself, and with the decrease in temperature, having one less body in the bed would be terribly inconvenient to his toes.

"Perhaps I can prolong his sentence," he said finally, rising to his feet and making his way towards the door, paused, then turned about, eyes boring harshly into the brunette. "That letter…there must've been something else to it, perhaps calling him to a trial, right? They keep ranting about equality and all that rot, I would at least think they would allow him a trial."

"Yes, he'll get a trial all right, fuckin' kangaroo court," Larxene glowered, beginning to pace the room at around the same time Sephiroth had decided to do the same. Their combined pacing was making The Hero nervous, because their energies were making a flammable looking vortex of plotting that couldn't lead anywhere helpful. "He might as well just walk in there with the noose around his neck already!"

"Well it's better than sitting here doing nothing, or do you just not care what happens to him."

"No, actually, I couldn't give a rat's ass what happens to any of these fuckers, but let me tell you something, I'll be damned if I get my ass dragged down by these Purgatory dogs," Larxene hissed, jabbing the man's chest, seeing as he was entirely too much taller than her, so the venom dripping out of her eyes was less lethal looking than it should have been to the man hovering over her.

"Ho nooo no, no, if Larxene's goin out, she's takin everyone with her, but you see, that's the problem, that's what they want us to do! They want us to fight back at them and give the high ups a legitimate excuse to get rid of us! They're waiting for one of us to pop, freak the hell out, go ape shit, and just damn all of us to the murky oblivion of something worse than being non-existent. So yes, I'm going to sit here and do nothing because as long as I do nothing, I get to live longer, and so do the rest of these gay-wads-"

She broke herself off abruptly, realizing she was rambling about nothing again, a habit she had when shit hit the fan and she wasn't sure if putting a mop to it was going to clean it up enough. She sighed, slapped her hands over her face and dug frustrated nails into her scalp, up through her hair and paced away from the taller man whose chest she'd been harassing.

"Look, we just…we don't know what to do okay," she grumbled, whirling about to face him, face flushed. "If we fuck up, this is it, we're through, we can't reset and come back all over again like before." Sharp blue eyes hazed over with aggravation as she hugged herself tightly, rocking from side to side and shaking her head. "You don't die when you're a Nobody…you just…stop," she muttered. "It's so empty…I'm not going back there again, no way, no how. I can't go back there, I'll sleep with Saix before I let myself get sucked back into that abyss all over again."

This was one of those rare moments that Lexaeus really didn't like seeing. Watching Larxene sort of cave in on herself was disturbing, made this whole nightmare seem frighteningly real, that even though he'd gotten hit by a bus on a daily basis, the fact that there was someone out there that could permanently crush what little life was left to them created a sort of alien paranoia and fragility, something none of them were willing to admit to. To admit it meant subconsciously succumbing to the inevitable.

So, for the sake of the moment, the brick of a man detached himself from the desk and crossed over to the nymph to grant her an uncharacteristicaly loose one armed hug. After an awkward moment, she snorted a little and squirmed away from him, smoothing the folds of her blouse and skirt slowly.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

"Don't worry I won't, and if you tell anyone I was bein weepy I'll break your spine."

"Sounds fair to me."

"Fantastic," Sephiroth sniffed pointedly. "I could've gone all day without needing to see that bit of mushiness."

"You're telling me, there's an atmosphere of tasteless melodrama floating about that needs to be destroyed very quickly before I vomit."

It took Sephiroth a full eight minutes to figure out that there was suddenly a man standing next to him near the leftmost book shelf of the office, but it wasn't the fact that he'd just suddenly appeared out of fucking nowhere that thew him off (He was getting used to that. That sort of thing seemed to happen quite often in his fic, people just appearing out of thin air with no respect to conventional efforts to compose an entrance paragraph for the arrival of a character), nor was it the fact that his lover had somehow managed to bend space and time (especially when neither Luxord nor Xigbar were around for such a maneuver) to buy himself an expensive looking white suit and a pair of dwarfed angel wings in the time allotted, but apparently didn't have the time to buy himself shoes and socks. No, it was something significantly smaller and much less important that demanded his full and complete attention.

"Xemnas, why do you smell like cupcakes?"

"What the hell?!" Larxene on the other hand, who hadn't yet encountered odd people popping out of nowhere every so often, was on high alert and had already picked up a floor lamp, ready to chuck it at the time traveler when Lexaeus stopped her sweep of doom with an oustretched arm.The larger man eyed the dark skinned white haired golden eyed man and slowly began shaking his head from side to side. "That's not Xemnas."

Sephiroth frowned at him. "Of course it's Xemnas."

"No, it's not. I know my leader, that's not him."

"And I know my Xemnas, that's him." The general turned to regard the peculiarly familiar face, quirking his mouth to one side and tried to reason with the brown haired buffoon. And here he'd commended him on his intelligence. "Well…except for the wings I suppose, but when the hell did you find the time to get yourself enlisted in L.U.C.I.D? Does the Guild know about this?...I can't imagine they just let you go...how did you do that?"

'Xemnas' raised a thin white eyebrow and looked thoroughly offended, more so than Xemnas usually looked, but didn't seem to take it so far up the ass like he usually would. "I'm magical like that. And no, the Guild doesn't know, and they don't need to know, kay' sweet cheeks? As far as you're concerned, I was never here."

Sephiroth stared. He was using romantic endearments and he hadn't even done anything yet. Maybe Xemnas already knew that he'd been through his mail? Damn he was good.

"Sir, I must insist that you're mistaken," Lexaeus continued on, shifted further between Larxene and 'Xemnas' to keep her from maiming him. Poor girl, hadn't beaten anything meaningful up for who knew how long, and all that PMS was going to keep building up till she spontaneously combusted (It is a little known fact that that is why Larxene is so catty, or why any woman is so catty, for you see, it is necessary to be so lest they risk certain bodily ignition to themselves and those unfortunate enough to be around them within a 30 mile radius.)

"I don't know who that is, or why it's not correcting itself, but that is not Xemnas."

"That's because it is Xemnas, his prettier half," the dark skinned man purred, flipping his hair over one shoulder and smirked haughtily.

"…"

"What?"

"Since when do you flip your hair?"

"Since for-….since just now……What? I have past shoulder length hair, so that gives me the right as a bishounen to flip it all I want……Look, don't hate on me just because you can't flip your hair because your so much of a tart that you had to grow your hair past ass-length. You trying to make a point with all that shojo shinyness? Give it to a cancer patient you selfish bastard! There are kids in Venezuela that could use a good head of silver hair!"

Well…aside from the obvious, Sephiroth was a bit more convinced that this man wasn't Xemnas, but, just to be sure, he snaked a hand into his hair, dipped him back, and molested his mouth for a good five minutes. Lexaeus watched the strange silver haired man try in vain to claw the man off him, screams muffled by a tongue half way down his throat till the swordsman pulled away with a sour expression on his face.

"Eegad, you really aren't Xemnas. Only Marluxia would taste like a chocolate chip cookie dipped in hemp."

Fake Xemnas had nothing to say to that, because he was currently running his tongue along his sleeve and making wounded animal noises. The trio watched him scramble his way over to a trash can and loom over it, making some sort of motion with his hands before him and lurched forward a few times. He sounded like a cat trying to cough up a steel wool hair ball. After the fourth attempt to induce vomiting ending in more drying heaving, Fake Xemnas gave up and staggered his way back over to Sephiroth and glared liquid death at him.

"I hope your pleased with yourself, you rapist, now I have to deal with the taste of you in my mouth for the rest of the day!"

"Oh come now, I know some people that'd kill to have me in their mouth all day," Sephiroth drawled, completely distracted by the fact that though this man was nearly as bitchy as he was, this man was not Xemnas, he knew it now by test of wits and taste, and if he wasn't Xemnas, than who the hell was he? The Nobody never mentioned having a twin brother of any sort, though, with the vague resemblance, he could see why he wouldn't have mentioned him. Self-centered individuals rarely admit to having a sibling that could compete with them in the sex appeal department.

"Haven't…we seen you around the castle?" Lexaues murmured distrustfully, shifting slightly as Larxene peeped out from behind his arm. She didn't trust this doppelganger, and she was just dying for him to make a wrong move so she could impale him. "I believe Zexion's seen you, yes…I remember him telling me that he sensed another presence very similar to the Superior's."

"I wasn't there for you then and I'm not here for you now," Fake Xemnas huffed and rolled his eyes. "Empty shells don't interest me-" He was cut off when something large slammed into one of the windows. The occupants of the room backed away from the erratic fluttering sounds just beneath the window sill, and the nymph would've electrocuted the thing that popped its head up into view had she not recognized those huge baby blue eyes.

"What the…" Pacing over to the window, she slid it up and open and stared at the little blonde boy with a golf ball sized gash spurting blood out of his forehead. "Roxy?"

"Hi, long time no see," he grunted with as much interest to see her as a cat is interested to see you try and make them jump through flaming hoops. "Think you could, like, help me up? My arms are killing me." A sudden fist in his hair and a yank on his head had him tumbling into the room with a yelp, and after regaining some semblance of where he stood in relation to gravity, Roxas staggered to his feet and swayed, clutching at his throbbing head for a moment, before he began dusting off specks of dirt from his white shirt and clingy bondage pants. He seemed to have also caught the shoe-less disease from imposter Xemnas along with a pair of pitifully tiny looking bird wings twitching on his back.

Larxene rolled her eyes. "Of course he gets spared and becomes an angel just 'cause he's half a whole of a light wielding Keybearer."

"Pseudo-angel," Roxas corrected and sneezed. "Besides, you should've seen this coming a mile away."

"That still doesn't make it fair! This is bull, I totally have the credits to be an angel. Where's the Goddess?! I've got some bones to pick outta her!"

The Goddess chose to remain saftely hidden behind the fourth wall as Roxas turned to the golden eyed man and grumbled. "And you suck for leaving me behind again! You know I can't fly well, what if I get sucked into a jet engine again?!"

"Well that's your own damn fault for not gettin the hell out of the way. Pedestrians might have the right of way, but really, who do you thinks going to win in a game of cross-the-street chicken? The 5,000 pound airplane or the 100 pound pre-teen?"

Roxas was not amused. "Don't go to sleep tonight. I'm going to shave all your hair off."

"Just be sure you get all the important places."

"Ah, excuse me, I don't mean to interrupt this heartfelt reunion," Lexaeus began slowly. "But Roxas-"

"Who the fuck is this twat?" Larxene finished poetically.

"This twat," the blonde paused to look over the man, rolled his eyes, and rubbed a hand over his face. "Is my partner, but more importantly, he's Ansem."

"Ansem," Larxene trailed off, frowning. "…like…Ansem the Wise, Ansem?"

"No, like Ansem, Xemnas' Heartless Ansem."

"No…wait…that's not possible."

"Why? You planning on adding some dramatic exclamation or something to wrap up this chapter with?"

"No, I was just thinking that, like, I dunno, wouldn't that cause a rip in the universe or something, having two sides of Xemnas in the same plane of existence?" Larxene turned to Lexaeus, a scientist who obviously knew a lot about this sort of thing. She was just the woman they hired to stab things.

"I don't believe there's anything to worry about so long as temporal alteration isn't factored into the equation."

"Oh, good." Pause. "Damnit…please don't tell me you all want coffee…"

"Coffee would be nice," Sephiroth mused thoughtfully.

"Coffee without 8 cubes of sugar sounds even better," Ansem added.

"Coffee without 8 cubes of sugar and an explanation as to why Xemnas isn't here sounds much more appealing," Roxas finished, accenting his point by plopping down on Xemnas' desk and folding his arms irritably. He was still bleeding profusely from the face and no one had even bothered to ask if he was alright.

"I was really hoping you weren't all gonna to say that."

----

Mille: Well, somehow I managed to not have as much Saix and Xemnas in this chapter as I'd hoped I'd have, but I didn't want to rush things, but they felt rushed to me anyway, so instead we got…other…random…people…I swear this story is writing itself. Anyway, please excuse any glaring typos that come up. This chapter was a bit rushed I'm afraid, but leave me reviews none the less!