The next day. Unlike Roxas, Roman never kept count of the days he was there. All he really knew was that it had been around three months or so since he himself joined the Organization. For kicks, Roman tried to remember his first day in the Organization. The day the leader found him.

Nothing. Roman felt nothing. His mind was a complete blank, and all he could physically feel was grass on his back, and what he saw with blank, expressionless eyes was the blue sky, with clouds rolling by lazily. This derelict state of his prevented him from noticing the swirling portal of dark matter than materialized about two meters away, and a man wearing a hood to obscure his face stepped through. The man went directly to Roman, laying in the grass like a dead person who was never found by comrades or good Samaritans. "You. Boy."

Roman didn't reply. He continued to stare at the sky, unblinking. "You seek answers. I can give you purpose."

He still didn't reply. Grabbing him by the shirt, Xemnas heaved him into standing with one hand. This time, Roman stared at the ground. Xemnas materialized the letters of a name from thin air. The shimmering letters appearing before him and the boy. They shimmered and spun around him for but a moment before Xemnas stopped them in front of him by materializing a large glowing X. The letters were scattered somewhat by its appearance. It soon began to shake, which had Xemnas raise an eyebrow.

The X shattered, it pieces showering the ground, and the remaining letters moving into formation to spell a name. "Hm. This is interesting. A Nobody with a heart... perhaps. Or maybe..."

The letters spelled out a name now. Roman. "Something entirely different?"

For the first time he could remember, Roman looked up. "Roman."

His remembrance was shaky at best. His sometimes poor memory did nothing to allieviate the problem. He put on his robes and went out of his room to the Grey Area, where he saw Roxas, Xion, the pirate, the musician and Saix. The first ones he approached were the Keybladers. "'Sup, guys?"

"Hey Roman," Roxas said.

"Hi. Whatcha doin'?" Xion asked.

Roman had to concentrate to keep from laughing when he heard that. "Hey... what do you make of this thing?" Roxas asked, pointing to the keychain on the bottom end of the weapon.

More than once had Roman envisioned three circles, two where the top of the third, the largest, was designated as the keychain, but no such luck was found here. Instead, he saw what looked like a pirate's head, complete with the Jolly Roger hat. "I have no clue, dude. Maybe our own pirate put that there."

"Xigbar!" the pirate said.

"Pirate," the three youngest members said.

"Feh, whatever."

Next was the musician. "Hey, Vexen doing that recon thing today? You know, it makes me wonder how old he's supposed to be for some reason," he asked.

"Yeah, I know. First a rape face, now possible pedophilia? Dude's got issues."

Finally, Saix, the blue-haired man with an X-shaped scar on his face which, for the life of Roman, no one knows where he got that. "This is your mission for today. An unidentified powerful being has been detected in Youkai Academy. Team up with Roxas and Xion to find out who or what it is, and defeat it if you can find it. It may have already fled, so return to the castle only if you are sure that it is not there."

In his head, Roman partied. Youkai Academy was the world where Luxord prevented him from glomping the Kurono girl, so now he could finally get his chance to see her again! But wait... a three-person group? "So by unidentified... it could be like a Heartless or a bitch local?"

"If I understand your words correctly... yes."

"Alright, let's get this thing started already. Roxas! Xion! Get your stuff ready!"

Both looked up from their keychains. "Both of us?" Roxas asked quizzically.

"A three-man mission?" Xion asked.

"Apparently, the dude who reported something in Youkai Academy didn't know what it was. It's probably dangerous."

"Remember," Saix added as he opened a dark corridor, "Return only if you are sure there is nothing."

Vexen walked out into the streets of the City That Never Was. The dark buildings with illuminated windows stood as a point of curiosity to him. Now who's responsible for these lights? he thought to himself. It's probably a so-called "ghost."

Vexen chuckled to himself as he walked further down the street. No Heartless to worry about. Besides, they were all Pureblooded, so he could handle any by himself very well. He approached an alley where the lights were off, as it should be throughout the city. He looked above himself, then behind, and smiled. Good, he thought, No one following me.

With a motion of a hand, he produced a dark portal and stepped through it, making sure to close it in the space between there and his destination. When the other end of the portal opened up, it revealed a large laboratory of machines, chemicals storage and other things. In the center of the lab, roughly, was a large metal containment unit. Walking up to its control console, he checked its statistics. Vitals were good, growth unstunted, everything was flowing smoothly. Much work has been put into this since that boy came into our Organization, he thought. In fact, without him, this would never have come to as much fruition as it has now! "You have my thanks, Roman," he said aloud.

Pimp, my ass, Roman thought as he chucked a can at the back of a passing student's head. What's so special about you? I swear, you're no better off than that Tsuna kid.

After the can hit him, the student looked behind him, but found no one who would do such a thing. "Maybe someone just kicked it," he said.

Yup, you suck, Roman thought. As he thought that, two other students passed him, both girls. One had long, pink hair and green eyes, from what he saw, and the other looked younger and had black hair. A witch? "Did something hit you, Tsukune?" the pink haired girl asked.

"Yeah... a soda can," Tsukune replied, picking up said soda can.

He observed the strange logo on it, like an upside down heart with spikes coming out or something to that effect. "There's no brand, just this logo."

"Maybe that's someone's personal drink?" the witch girl asked. "They must be able to somehow get it into cans time after time... maybe a witch like me or a wizard?"

Next thing Roman heard was two voices asking "What did you do?" at the same time.

He turned around, and shouted when he found Roxas and Xion behind him. He also fell through the bush he threw the can from, causing another student to trip and fall. A purple haired girl with a lollipop. "Ow... mission's bein' a bitch," Roman said under his breath so no one else could hear him.

The three students rushed to help the girl who had fallen. "Mizore! What happened? And where did he come from?"

The girl replied, "He came out of nowhere, probably startled by something."

"Friend troubles," Roman said quickly before ducking into the bush again.

The pink haired girl reached into the bush after Roman ducked in, hoping to catch him. "Hold on!"

What she pulled out wasn't Roman. She pulled out Roxas, who was protesting. "Ow! Hey! Let me go! He was the one who threw the can!"

She quickly stuck him back in the bush. The next time she tried, the girl pulled out Xion. "Ouch! I have nothing to do with this!"

The girl stuck Xion back into the bush as well. "Three people in one bush? They must be better at hiding than you, Mizore!" she said to the purple haired girl, who was staring intently at the bush.

"So I take it that she's a kunoichi trainee?" Roman said, pointing to Mizore. To everyone's surprise, he was in a different bush.

The next thing everyone knew, he was pulled back into the bush by a cloaked hand. "What- dude!"

The bush then started to jiggle around and thrash wildly as three protesting voices and various violent noises came from it, some lines including, "What were you thinking!" "Dude, it's called 'expression!' Fuck lack of emotion: look it up!" "Guys! Calm down! We still have our mission to get to!"

Quickly, the witch waved a wand in the air, with a white aura surrounding the end. A gold colored pan appeared above the bush, and fell right on it, resulting in three currently unhappy Organization members who cried out. "Son of a bitch!" Roman added.

"That should do it!" she said cheerfully.

"I don't think that was the way to go about it..." Mizore said, with ice forming on her hands to make claws.

The three members fell out of the bush, with Xion on top of the boys and Roman getting out of the minidogpile first. "Okay, who did that?" he said, pointing to the pan.

The witch raised her hand happily while the others were fairly certain that something bad was going to happen. With this in mind, Tsukune had to put the witch's hand down himself. Roxas and Xion got back up on their feet as the pan disappeared into thin air, much to their surprise. "Hey, where'd it go?" Roxas asked, increduous.

"That was also me!" the witch said happily. "I may be younger than everyone else, but I'm an accomplished student here!"

"Wait, Yukari!" the pink haired girl said. "They might be human, so don't say so much!"

"Human-looking- wait, what?" Roman asked. "Oh... right. This is that academy for monsters or something. Youkai, right?"

"Yes, that's right," Mizore answered. "How did you know?"

"Well, the three of us here wanted to inquire about enrolling sometime after we've taken care of some personal business," Roman said, "See, we may look and talk like humans, and have no alternate form to speak of, but we're not actually humans. Humans have hearts."

The four of them had a stunned look. "Beings without hearts?" Yukari, the witch, asked. "So... you're heartless?"

"Let's clarify: Heartless with a capital H are something else entirely. We're what called Nobodies, with a capital N," Roman said, drawing out the letters in the air with his finger. "Hoo boy- Listen, if you want a prime example of the former, look behind you. No, seriously, you should look behind you."

The four turned around to find that a small horde of Soldiers, Air Soldiers and Turquoise Marches led by a Solid Armor had suddenly appeared, and were heading straight for them. "What the hell-" Tsukune had started, but he was interrupted by Roman, Roxas and Xion pushing through the four to the front lines.

"We got this!" Roman said behind him happily as Roxas and Xion started to fight off the smaller Heartless.

He practically jumped into the horde feet first, embedding them in a Soldier's head, promptly dissolving the entire Heartless. He delivered two quick punches to another following up with a spin kick to a March, which was sent flying towards three Air Soldiers close together, knocking them down, and flamed by Xion. Roxas practically bisected another Soldier vertically and completely pierced an Air Soldier with a thrust. He then swung the Keyblade with the Air Soldier still on it to get two more Marches who were about to attack Xion as she froze an Air Soldier and knocked down the Armor with another well aimed Blizzard. It was not her who inflicted the final blow to the Armor, but Mizore, who had threw a large volley of ice knives directly at its head. The locals soon added to the chaos in the members' favor.

Yukari set the remaining Air Soldiers on fire while Tsukune did his best to fend off a March. Mizore and the pink haired girl were finishing off another Solid Armor that recently appeared when tree roots had suddenly come out of the ground, whipping at the remaining Heartless, releasing their hearts to the skies to everyone's amazement. However, the roots stayed, now whipping at the three cloaked members and then either cut down, flamed or flat-out stomped. Roman was busy stomping the last root when something flew by him. Instinctively, he swung his right arm downwards to his side, but missed, and the object grabbed Tsukune and pulled him up to a leafless tree. "Ah shit!" Roman exclaimed.

When he looked up, he saw not an Artful Flyer or anything of the sorts, but the girl of this world he coveted so much: Kurono. "What was all that? Are you hurt?" she asked Tsukune.

"No, Kurumu. I'm not hurt. And why did you have tree roots attack them?" he said, pointing to the Organization members.

"I thought they were attacking you, too!"

"Uuh, no," Roman said. "If we were, he'd already be dead."

That was the wrong thing for him to say, since Kurumu gave him a mean look. It didn't really faze him, as he gave her a puppy dog look. "Uh... Roman? Is that the girl you were talking about that one time?"

That made everyone's head turn towards Roman, who had snapped out of his trance. "Uh... what? Oh, right. Heh, sorry." In an aside, he said to Roxas, "The only rut is the size of her boobs, actually."

"WHAT!" he shouted, which made Yukari jump. "They're too BIG!"

This led to a struggle for Roman to make Roxas shut up about men and the size of a woman's breasts, which prompted Xion to whack both boys with her Keyblade. "Guys, we still have a mission to do! That crowd didn't have our target, so we'll need to keep looking."

"Hey, remember what Saix said," Roman said, "If we can't find it, we can't find it."

All of this was said without anyone else hearing. "Well, we've checked all the areas not blocked off by anything, and it's probably huge, so we would have seen it in all this open space." "So... it's not here?" "Guess not."

The three sighed in unison as the local group of five approached them from Roman's behind. "What are you three talking about?" the pink hair asked.

"Top secret, unfortunately," Roman replied. "Need-to-know basis."

"We have to get back to where we came from," Xion added, "But it was nice of you all to help with the Heartless."

"You're welcome!" the pink hair said. "Oh, and if no one heard, my name is Moka Akashiya."

"Like a drink?" Roxas asked. The next thing he knew, he was cut off before he could say more.

Moka sighed as the left as the others had a confused look to them, though not in regards to Roxas's comment. "He's not the only one to ask something like that..."

[Author's Notes]

Youkai Academy - My name for the Rosario + Vampire world.