Roxas hated wasted words. Fillers that flawed and detracted from the idea. He also hated clichés and refused to accept the inkling that his existence might be one.

One of the few things that Roxas did love about writing and the world around them, though, and would mention this to Axel on a regular basis, was that they lived in a digital age. They lived every moment in a modern Enlightenment era where authors, artists, poets, every one of them could transfer thoughts, words, or an image from Hong Kong to London in a matter of moments. In a blink of an eye, the idea for a new form of renewable energy or a book could be in thousands of peoples' hands. To him that was amazing.

Axel would usually agree and said that he hadn't thought about it like that. He would usually say that Roxas was really smart and had a different perspective on things that was unique. Roxas would always feel rather fluffed up and proud when complimented like that.

Another thing that Roxas thought about besides wasted words and their digital age was shoes. Axel would always laugh at him, but would quiet down to listen to what the blond had to say after he got a bit huffy, "Seriously, Axel." He pouted. "The thing about shoes," Roxas always began, "Is that they're a lie." Humans were originally designed to walk toe first to reduce stress on their joints. It wasn't until major shoe companies began to have universities study heel-toe running and walking in the sixties and seventies, that they found it to be 'more energy efficient'. Doctors began to report more injuries with these shoes and style of running, but that was put aside because there were always injuries. In the early twenty-first century, there was a resurgence of barefoot running. The bottom of a human's foot was tough, durable, and easily washable. Toe first running was healthier and better for your joints. Running blogs and articles around the country suddenly started coming out about how this was bad regardless of what people were saying. Awful. Why? Shoe companies were losing business to alternative competition who were making shoes for barefoot or toe first running.

"And if they can get one million people to act one way, to walk one way, to think one way then wouldn't you think that they can get people to do anything? One demonstration of how much our culture is lied to is shoes, Axel! And it's so ingrained in us to wear them that it's not socially acceptable to go barefoot anywhere. Hell, even on the beach we wear flip flops because the sand seems hot, but that's because our feet are weak." The blond laughed, "They've got millions of people walking the wrong way- heel first." To him, when people say that they would have never fallen for Hitler's ploys or would have resisted communism, it just made him laugh and laugh. Hitler was a handsome charismatic man, and sadly, not that he supported what had happened to the Jewish people in anyway, but if he had lived back then, he probably would have been one of the millions of Germans that rallied behind them being deceived until the end.

Every day, they flipped on the television, watched the news channel of their choice, the ads that came with it, and then their favorite shows. "Weird thing about TV, Ax, is that it makes money off you paying for the channels and from people paying to advertise to you. You pay to watch advertisements!" Roxas didn't watch TV. Ever. No exceptions. When he wanted to watch a show, he just waited until the season came out on box set and watched it then. "If you read a lot of news like I do, though, you see trends, ya know? And the media lies and covers things up all the time. They even do it in synch sometimes. Television is one of the most beautiful tools of mass control that I've ever seen other than maybe the gladiator fights. Bread and circuses, ya know?"

The redhead learned a lot of thing with Roxas about thinking outside the system. He learned to resent public education more than he already did when he was told that it was a mechanism of control. He learned to hate roadwork when he found out part of their economic troubles could be cracked up to the fact that the government had AI doing it now, and that the government should hire out to private companies for their roadwork and a lot of other things to be done. He learned that a lot of people thought the same, but too many of them had been pacified and wouldn't fight for their thoughts anymore. They were hooked on safety. The comforts of home and not being under attack were more valuable than the truth.

"When your life doesn't matter to you," Roxas had whispered to him from where he was sprawled out on the floor one night during a sleep over, "You can do anything. "

A thing Axel had also learned about from Roxas about Roxas was that he didn't bother the teachers, he didn't talk down about people just going about their lives, he just silently resisted. He resisted mentally. "Try it. Just try it for a day. When you see something wrong, resist." Eventually Axel found his thoughts to be different. To be his own. And he stopped thinking 'The system is bad' and started thinking, 'How can I change things?' How could we change things? What could the world change?

Axel hadn't been friends with Roxas for a long time. He had been dating him even shorter, but in the time that they had been together, he found himself seeing things in a new light. People who he had originally wrote off as crazy, he gave a little bit more of his attention too.

After all, if people were saying that these loons were crazy, just like the shoes, there must be some truth behind their ideas.

Axel was home before midnight. Just barely.

11: 47, Roxas was already in bed asleep, but the laptop was open beside him.

"How many times did you refresh this page?" He asked the sleeping blond softly as the screen revealed that he was on the competition sight, trying to see if Xion had been selected for the final round. "Well, I guess you'll have good news to wake up to, huh?"

Being with Roxas would never get old.

The two could learn from each other 200 years and it would still be too short of a time.

Should be finishing up the competition soon. Review! Layla was my beta.