A/N: Hi, guys, I'm updating this story yet again. Thanks Angel M. Demon and Burning-x-Innocence for reviewing! XD I didn't expect the reviews or quite a few alerts I got. So, I'm glad you guys like it. OK. Here I go.

Disclaimer: Own nothing off KH at all except the games. And I wouldn't play the PS2 CoM game...not unless you want to lose your sanity.

Chapter 2: Not a Shadow

A few days following the almost eccentric events of what would have been an average day, Zexion noticed some things were different. First of all, he kept deluding himself into wrongly assuming there was a second shadow he cast. By the time he would turn around to see it, though, it disappeared. It caused him to speculate if he had gone insane or not. The second odd thing was that Demyx no longer seemed to follow him around. His scent of salty ocean water and ice cream (which Zexion had at last started getting used to) would originate form nearly the opposite end of the castle. It was as though Number Nine took great care to avoid him after their minor dispute. Of course, that weakling would not argue against him. And that bothered Zexion indeed.

Maybe he should have chosen his words more carefully, articulated them so they would have seemed less harsh. And that was where the third weird thing came in. As sharp as his sense of smell, he persistently yet vaguely felt vestiges of emotions. They came on more strongly each day, alarmingly so. He worried that he would lose control over how he acted and what he said even. This especially was becoming all too much to handle. For once in his non-existence, he was grateful for the daily missions, which were distracting enough. He could forget his troubles while watching Lexaeus take down Heartless.

After one such mission in Wonderland, he ate a different type of sandwich (a BLT this time, bacon with his other two preferred sandwich ingredients), he went directly to his room. If he couldn't be found at the library, this was his other retreat. Frankly, he was willing to stay here all day today, to figure out the strange things that were happening to him. It was a bit of new information he could not classify or explain. And Zexion hated not knowing things. Knowledge was power, after all, and without it, he was nothing.

His private bedroom was nothing much, though he painted the walls indigo instead of leaving them that stark white. The white hurt his eyes. He had his own set of bookshelves with all the books alphabetized by title. There were a couple of dark purple armchairs, an ebony bureau, and a closet door through which all of his clothes were contained, organized by color.

Zexion needed to sort this out, especially the deal with the shadow, which had been present for nearly a week now. He swore someone was there, but the only scent he could recognize was his own. Usually, he would smell his own scent (the smell of old books, fittingly enough) on one of his illusions. The fact remained that he had seen that identical shadow. It could not have been the trick of the light or purely coincidence. He was as sensible as anyone could get.

"Surely, there has to be someone following me," he remarked to himself.

Suddenly, as if by magic, the closet door burst open along with someone shouting, "And you would be right, my man!" This startled Zexion to the point that he toppled onto his bed.

The clumsy fall caused him to swear every curse word he knew under his breath while laughter filled the room. He cracked his eyes open and saw what appeared to be a look-a-like of himself. But, it couldn't be, for this double looked perfectly ridiculous. He wore street clothes that almost made Zexion cringe that such baggy things were on a body and frame identical to his. This clone wore a red baseball cap backwards, a tie-dye T-shirt, baggy blue jeans, and big black sneakers. His hair was somewhat longer than Zexion's and quite shaggy. Worst of all, he chewed bubble gum. Loudly.

"And just who do you think you are?" Zexion stood to his feet, giving the fraud one of his icy glares.

The teenage boy was currently making himself somewhat too comfortable by sitting on one of the armchairs. He turned around where he sat and stared at him with matching cerulean eyes.

He asked in response, "Isn't it obvious, dude?"

"No, I'm afraid not...unless you're willing to confess you are a fraud."

"Fine, I'm Ienzo."

Ienzo? But, from what he knew of his past (which was most of it), Zexion was certain that Ienzo had not acted like this or dressed like this.

He pursed his lips. "Liar. Ienzo never was this disorganized."

Shrugging, Ienzo told him, "True. But, this is what Ienzo (well, me, you—you get it, right?) would have looked like if he hadn't gotten into that scientific crap."

Zexion didn't understand how that would have been possible, and it didn't seem fair. He only wanted to put himself to good use, no matter what his age at the time. A small sixteen-year-old boy who never felt like he belonged anywhere. He'd thought...

"That's not true. I thought I could actually be useful in my research."

Ienzo scoffed, "Yeah, right. The only reason you became so obsessed with science, especially that Heartless thing or whatever, was you wanted friends. That was your weak attempt at friendship. Oh, and a lonely single old dude coming up to you and asking you and five other guys to be his apprentices? Don't tell me that wasn't suspicious."

Despite his obnoxious talking, his Other was right. He had a brain back then. He should have suspected something.

For a while, Zexion didn't say anything, only looked out his small window at the constant night sky. The stars looked nice, but he couldn't really tell if there were constellations. Of course, there had to be. No matter, his thoughts strayed once he lost sight of what it was the two of them were conversing about. It was the past, the time in his life he had sworn never to look back on again. Even before his apprenticeship, his former life had left something to be desired. Though his mind was advanced as a child, this didn't stop him from trying dismally to befriend his peers. But, they had turned their backs on him before he could get a chance.

Ienzo might have hit the nail on the head too hard why he accepted Ansem the Wise's offer. At the time, he assumed it was because he wanted to become a great scientist, to do something constructive for the rest of his life. That hadn't been it at all. He had hoped with feeble optimism that the other five apprentices would be his friends in place of teenagers his own age. His irrational, thoughtless social ineptness was what had driven him to this in the first place. Long ago, when his parents contemplated over sending him away to a private boarding school (at age five, no less), he had accepted the fact he would never be normal. But, had he embraced it?

Sighing almost sympathetically, Ienzo patted his shoulder. "Well, if you're done with your emo thoughts...I can read your mind by the way, so there's no hiding from me. Anyway, I gotta say you didn't really like being weird. But, you really shouldn't have turned to science."

Why? Science had been the one solace in his life among his parents not paying much attention to him, getting picked last in everything at school, and habitually sleeping outside under the stars at one of the gardens. What else had there been to do? Zexion wished Ienzo hadn't brought all this metaphorical baggage with him.

"Let me tell you what would have happened if you didn't say yes to Ansem. Five days after school would have let out, these guys would have caught you in an alley. You thought they would beat you up, but they decided that one more weirdo to their group wouldn't be so bad. You would have started hanging out with them and getting a life. You would even try spraypainting graffiti on the school. And you would have been alive."

Him spraying trashy phrases on a building from the establishment? That bit of knowledge shook Zexion to his core. Yet...it would have been rather exciting to be adventurous and have a total disregard for the rules. Best of all, he wouldn't have had the other original members taunting him on that first week of scientific work. Suddenly, it occurred to him exactly why Ienzo had been following him around.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I suppose you know my innermost goal?"

"To be less boring?" Ienzo grinned, and Zexion realized how weird that looked on a face like his. "Sure do. I really have to teach—no, train—you, though. You got a way to go."

He started counting issues Zexion had with being exciting off on his fingers. "You go to the library every day. Every day! No self-respecting man reads that much unless it's the newspaper. Then, there's that superiority complex of yours. Oh, and you keep treating Demyx like crap when that guy gets treated like crap on a daily basis."

Zexion's eyes narrowed. "What does that have to do with me being boring?"

"You shouldn't be that much of a jerk to him, that's why! I mean, what'd he ever do to you?"

"Annoy me."

Ienzo snapped his fingers. "That's not a good enough reason, Zex. Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. And your wardrobe sucks, too. I should know. I've just been in your closet."

Didn't this moron understand that Organization XIII wasn't necessarily known for fashion sense?

Treating this room as though he lazed around here every day, Ienzo took off his hat and threw it on the floor. This was certainly not the boy Zexion had in mind when he thought of his old self. Maybe there were occasions in his past life when he thought about breaking free and rebelling and being exciting. These thoughts wouldn't last too long at a time before he would continue being the boring teenager he had always been.

"I feel ya," Ienzo ended up reading his mind yet again. "Honestly, though, you have black jeans and white T-shirts apart from those robes of yours. That's all. You really do need to stop being boring. And I will follow you around until you do."

Great, it had already been bad enough with Demyx trailing after him.

Besides, from the sounds of things, Ienzo had already done enough following. The only difference in the future would be Zexion being more acutely aware of his other half's existence. Maybe the ultimate goal he would accomplish here might get him...friends, not like he cared. Friendship wasn't supposed to matter to him. Science, however, could no longer be important either, for it was the one thing he had used to shut out the world. In fact, what he had done in the past was bordering on unhealthy.

"Then what happens?" he asked, wanting to know what he got from his end of the bargain.

Smiling in an easygoing way, Ienzo replied, "It's a surprise, the good kind."

Zexion gave him an apathetic nod, wary of the surprise despite the assurances that not being a boring person any more would pay off.

"Still...you will follow me. I'm not exactly enthused by that, even though I'm a Nobody that can't feel anything. Will anyone else see you?"

"Nope, so you'll look crazy talking to me."

Zexion's nostrils flared slightly. "That's a comfort."

"Isn't it, though?"

A sharp knock on the door interrupted their conversation, so he barely pushed himself off the bed to answer it. One of his least favorite members, Saix, was standing right outside while glaring at him. Zexion rolled his eyes at him.

Saix irritated him in so many ways, but one thing he disliked most about him was that he acted like six members didn't outrank him. No, Number Seven seemed to value himself so highly that he thought he deserved to be number two. He shamelessly kept attempting to get into the Superior's good graces, and when he wasn't doing that, he would gaze hungrily at Kingdom Hearts. Clearly, underneath his calm façade, there was a psychotic maniac just waiting to burst out. Of course, he was a berserker, meaning he would kill everyone and blow up the whole castle.

Ienzo heard his thoughts and laughed. "Good one!"

Since Saix didn't notice the other half, he asked Zexion, "Who were you talking to?"

Indifferently shrugging, Zexion muttered, "No one, I was merely rambling to myself like I usually do. You should know better than to pry into other people's business, Saix."

"We aren't people, Number Six."

"I thank you for reminding me of that. Now what is it you came here for?"

"I know you are lying to me. I may be lower than you in rank but only just." Saix dropped his voice to a low, menacing whisper. "You are the weakest out of the original six."

The tension then became so thick, it was nearly palpable.

However, Zexion chose not to retaliate to that insult but instead responded with, "You are only paranoid, Saix, always thinking that people lie when they don't. Is there a meeting today or not?"

"Yes, in five minutes. I'll leave you now and spare you from more questioning, but I wouldn't lie if I were you."

"As if I care...pun intended."

With nearly frozen golden eyes, Saix bestowed him with one last glare before he teleported. Zexion closed the door, snorting somewhat angrily. Of all people to discover him talking to someone invisible in this early stage, it had to be that meddlesome Number Seven. He was by far the worst member inferior to him. Not even Axel or Demyx could surpass him in that.

Still chewing his gum, Ienzo blew an enormous bubble before it popped all over his face. As he struggled to get the sticky substance off his face, he commented, "What a guy. Dude, as soon as we get to the pranking phase, you're going to prank him."

Zexion stared condescendingly at him. "Pranking is for childish morons."

His other half fake yawned. "What's that? Sounds like you're being boring again."

"Shut up. I have a meeting to go to."

"You mean we have a meeting to go to."

"Joy," Zexion spat out sarcastically. "But, I suppose no time like the present."

"That's the spirit, dude!"

So, both boys set off for the throne room, where the meetings were generally held. Usually, they consisted of nothing but basic stats from the members on the other worlds, mainly the Heartless count. And Kingdom Hearts was brought up six times on an average meeting. Zexion had been bored enough to count the times. Though the others considered him rather loyal to the Organization, he could really care less about being included. This was just until he obtained his heart and felt it beating against his chest again. Nothing else mattered.

En route to the throne room, he saw out of the corner of his eye Ienzo sticking his spit-out gum against the back of Xaldin's robes as they passed him.

Now, Zexion was an extraordinarily intelligent person (as he rightly considered himself) and as such, he was aware of what would happen next. He added two and two together, so to speak. Honestly, what was Ienzo thinking?

"What are you thinking?" he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, looking straight ahead so as not to attract too much attention.

"You did say no time like the present, y'know. Why not give you an example?"

Controlling the volume of his voice rather forcedly, he replied, "I meant the two of us attending the meeting, not the pranks."

Ienzo mockingly flinched. "Oh, so threatening! So, you don't want me to de-boring-fy you?"

"Fine, do what you have to. It's not as though I have a say in the matter," Zexion submitted.

Admittedly, he was curious about this surprise Ienzo mentioned once he accomplished the arduous task of getting out-of-character, to become interesting. Simply put, thinking about that surprise placed him in a rather uncompromising situation. He had no choice but to listen to his Other in spirit. Hm, he forgot to ask Ienzo if he was dead or not.

The boy in question sighed. "No, I'm not dead. But, I'm barely alive, thanks to that stupid lab accident Xehnotascientist started on purpose. I know he did."

"Good conspiracy theory," Zexion grudgingly remarked. "It is very possible and more so very likely. Let's hurry up. The meeting will start any minute now and—"

"ZEXION!" Xaldin bellowed, his fury almost palpable with its heat. "Why is there gum on my back?"

Number Three, the fiercest member after Saix that the Organization had to offer, was most certainly a force to be reckoned with. And that was when he was in an amiable mood. Once someone angered him, he would stop at nothing to ensure the wrongdoer received his just punishment. What Zexion found utterly befuddling in this instance, however, was he was never one to partake in practical jokes. Technically, the blame was Ienzo's...but he was invisible to everyone else. Even so, Zexion figured he would be the last person in the universe to be accused of being childish. Then again, for a big lummox, Xaldin definitely could put two and two together.

As the man with the atrociously styled facial hair closed in on the two of them, Zexion hissed to his unseen companion, "I think it's best that we don't dawdle here any longer. Besides, I'd rather have Xaldin be reprimanded by the Superior than myself."

"Really?" Ienzo raised a skeptical brow. "Huh...chicken."

Somewhat irritated at being falsely accused as a coward, Zexion merely told him, "Let's go," before the two of them teleported to the throne room.

"You know, I know that guy's Other. He's actually a calm, nice person who drinks tea and does tai-chi. He's awesome. And so is Isa, Saix's Other. But, seeing a big grin on a face like Saix's is pretty freaking disturbing if you ask me. Can even frighten small children."

Pretending (but not succeeding at it) to ignore Ienzo, who perched on the arm of his (their?) throne, Zexion shut his eyes tightly against the distracting noise. If he spoke now in front of the eleven other members (Xaldin had yet to arrive), he would positively look insane. Xemnas usually took no hesitation in throwing non-listeners out of meetings. He was just that cruel and tyrannical.

"And then there's Demyx's Other Myde," Ienzo commented off-handedly, on a full-scale rant now. For some reason, Zexion's ears perked up at that. What startled him further was the dreamy expression his Other wore. Oh no...

"Myde can be way too serious and even mean sometimes...like you. But, man, he sure is sexy."

Oh no...No! Before he knew it, Zexion had clapped his hands over his ears just as the meeting began. Luckily, no one else noticed.

Barely moving his lips, he told him, "For my sake, I wish you'd hate Demyx's Other."

Ienzo shook his head, letting out a sigh, "Can't. Myde and I...We just get along too well. Maybe you need to lighten up on Demyx. No, wait, you should."

"This conversation is over." Straightening his posture on his throne, Zexion dully watched Xemnas talk about Kingdom Hearts again. Let it be known the Superior mentioned it once already.

"This conversation is over," Ienzo mimicked but finally quieted down after that. Xaldin abruptly came in then, five minutes late for the meeting.

As though at some rowdy, masculine sporting event, Ienzo suddenly yelled at the top of his lungs, "Woot, Xaldy in trouble! And all because I put gum on him. Too bad! Hey, the acoustics are great in here! Nobody can hear but you, brother from the same mother!"

At least that was the truth, because Zexion thought for sure someone would hear this obnoxious shouting. But no, though Lexaeus cleaned out one of his ears. In the mean time, every single pair of eyes was glued to Xaldin who, being one of the original six, showed up punctually most of the time. Xemnas glared daggers at him.

"You are late, Number Three. Can you warrant me a good explanation for this tardiness?"

"Sir," Xaldin replied stiffly. "There was chewed gum on my back. I thought Number Six did it."

Every member's eyes then drifted to Zexion, stewing in his own vague anger. Of course, Ienzo would put him in a situation like this already, and he had only revealed himself to him today. The cool, rational part of his brain knew what to respond with, though.

"Superior, I believe Number Three is deluding himself into thinking this. Given that I'm not one for immature practical jokes, this must be so."

Axel and Roxas exchanged amused glances while Demyx made a point to avert his eyes from Zexion. The rest of the members appeared to agree with him, meantime, and Xemnas inclined his head.

Finally, he declared in a dull monotone, "I believe you, Number Six. Number Three, I'd advise you not to tell tall tales."

And that was that. The sleep-inducing meeting was back in session again, the incident with Xaldin seeming to have been forgotten. It was all stats and recollections of prior reports. As usual, Zexion practically dozed off again, and he found he was grateful for the chance to rest.

"Psst!" Ienzo whispered in his ear, though drops of saliva managed to land on the inner lobe. An unintentional kind of wet willy was the worst kind.

In a tired yet annoyed voice, Zexion asked, "What now?"

"I got an idea for your first attempt at not being boring. Armpit music!"

"Come again?"

"Armpit music. Just put your hand into your armpit and squeeze."

Most of his mind that comprised of sane rationality screamed in protest. But, part of his mind he was certain he shared with Ienzo told him to go for it. So, Zexion, for once in his boring non-existence, listened to that .00005% of his mind. Soon, a loud, disgusting noise filled the entire room. To say the least, the Superior was highly displeased.

"What a repulsive sound. Eight, you are hereby banned from this meeting."

Prior to this, Axel was snoring none too quietly. At the demand, though, he was at attention.

"But, sir, I—"

"Out. Now."

The redhead wasn't fazed as he shrugged. "OK, but hey, big props to the guy who did that."

Zexion couldn't believe he had done it. Furthermore, he couldn't believe he took the advice of an idiot like his Other.

A/N: OK, so you're probably wondering why Ienzo is so weird. Well, the stipulation I got for this fic was to make Zexion's Other his polar opposite basically along with any other Others (hope that's not too confusing XD) that might be mentioned or show up in the story. Since I knew Ienzo was probably this boring scientist dude in the past, I decided to come up with a valid explanation why this version of Ienzo was the way he was. Believe me, I had to read hayori-spirit-rain3's PM a couple of times before I understood what she meant.

So, apparently, Zexion deep down wants to be less boring. Insanity will ensure, I assure you!

Hope you liked this chapter. Kindly review if you want. It's more a courtesy than anything else anyway.

Oh, one more thing-even though Ienzo is different from scientific Ienzo, he still has the memories of the lab accident. Hope that clears everything up...somewhat.