I really love writing this story, and I'm glad everyone encouraged me to continue. . . but it took me a while to remember I started this because I wanted to. Not for ~fame~ within the KH fanbase, not for the reviews (which are nice, don't get me wrong 3) but because I love these characters. Thank you all for the support.

Three o'clock in the afternoon, two hours in Lexeaus' truck, an hour on foot; about half of the town covered and to no avail. Lexeaus was fueled on the black coffee Zexion has ordered and the thrill that he got out of hanging out with his grandma under the pretense that his best friend was having a nervous break down. The larger of the two suggested, yet again, Yuffie probably just ran home and Zexion finally caved and agreed.

Lexeaus shifted the ancient knob in the middle of the truck making the gears shift as Zexion frantically pounded the speed dial for Yuffie again.

"You've tried calling her seventeen-"

"Ten." Zexion snapped, not looking at his friend and holding the phone away from his ear while Yuffie's Micheal Jackson ringback tone played for the tenth time.

"Ten times, dude. She's not going to pick up. Call home."

Zexion groaned and slid his phone shut. He didn't care if it made him look girly, he goddamn loved his chocolate. He slid it back into his jeans, a tight fit considering the tiny nature of them and leaned his head on the window. The rattling of the old pick up was lulling him off.

"I'm going to die."

"You're going to be grounded for a week." Lexeaus corrected, shifting the gear down again to turn into Zexion's sub division. "Calm down."

Zexion sighed. "You're right." He closed his eyes and let the slow movement of the truck relax him. "I don't know what I'd do without you. Thanks."

Lexeaus smiled.

Axel was in one of the most awkward positions he'd been in since bible camp.

He was sitting on Demyx-- who was face down on his floor, Axel's hand on the back of his head; giving him enough room to breath but not enough that his yelling fit of "THIS IS UNFAIR" could be heard.

"I'm so sorry, Roxas." he pleaded. "I'm so so so so sorry." he closed his eyes and shut his mouth, waiting for a reply. He was almost expecting "NO AXEL. I'M DONE WITH YOUR HOMO SHENANIGANS AND I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN." Then Axel would have to get a mariachi band and play "Baby Come Back" on Roxas' lawn.

Demyx wailed into the carpet again about how unfair this was, and how he could pound on anyone he wanted to. Axel covered the receiver to the phone and muttered "Pound on Marluxia's ass, you queer." and eagerly awaited a response.

Roxas flinched. Not only was Axel talking to him-- over the phone-- he was begging for forgiveness for his friend almost pummeling him. Woah. Big day.

Sora was laying on his stomach with his feet kicking in the air like a thirteen year old girl thinking about Seth Jonas, or whatever his name was. Roxas barfed a little in his mouth watching his cousin giggling and rolled his eyes.

"It's not a problem. Demyx and I just don't get along." he said very confidently. He wasn't' about to be the douche in this situation, the gooey melt in your mouth weenie boy he'd been around Axel since they first started talking. So your friend wants to maim me, whatever. Like I care.

"Oh, good. We grabbed coffee and went back to my place" Axel said with an obvious sigh of relief. It sounded like Demyx was crying in the background. "So. . . do you know those people?"

Oh, great. The apology and awkward "SORRY WE TOOK OFF RUNNING" part was down, now he had to explain himself. "My cousins and their friend."

"Yuffie? That's my friend's little sister. That explains why he had to show up." Axel said, more talking to himself than anything.

"Yeah." Roxas said awkwardly.

"Do you wanna hang out?" Axel blurted, suddenly. "I mean, everyone. You don't have to ditch your cousins and I'm still hanging out with Demyx. We might drag Zexion along or something." Axel offered. He haden't hung out with a group of people in a while. Hey, the change might be nice.

Roxas flinched. He almost said that there was nothing he'd rather do than ditch his cousins, but, Sora was about half an inch away from his face listening to the conversation and, unfortunately, Sora was growing on him. Not literally though. . . SORA BEANS! Now available sprouting out of ROXAS' HEAD!

"Get a pen. I'll give you directions. Bring whoever."

Roxas swooned, stealing a pen out of the pen cup at the coffee bar.

"When does the coffee shop close?" Aerith asked, cocking her head slightly to the side. Tifa flinched as one of the bars navigated in the wrong direction and she lost the game of tetris. Level 12 wasn't good enough for her, anymore.

"Three thirty." Tifa said, flipping her phone shut. She was shaking a little. Shots of espresso and that game really didn't mix well.

"That's an awkward number." Aerith said, looking genuinely concerned.

"I know, right?" Tifa laughed. Aerith laughed to, just because she was supposed to. "The lady that owns it is crazy."

"Is she?"

"She's my Aunt." Tifa threw on, and laughed again. Aerith smiled; not because she was supposed to, just because she was happy Tifa was laughing. "Three is her favorite number."

"Mine is seven." Aerith replied. Usually whoever was talking to her would give her a weird look and politley laugh incase she was joking, but Tifa, honest to god, laughed.

"You are so awesome, you know that?" Tifa said, poking Aerith in between the eyebrows.

Aerith smiled again.

Lexeaus opened the front door and Zexion feebly stepped in behind him.

Yuffie was sitting on the couch in a. . . yellow vest.

"Yuffie thank GOD!" Zexion yelled, ignoring all his needed emotional walls to throw his arms around his sister, who didn't notice.

"I got a job!" she said, not looking up from the game. "When you left I took off running and--"

"She ended up at Cheese Barn." A third voice snarled. A female voice. That wasn't Lexeaus'.

". . . hey Mom." Zexion said, peeling himself off the couch and shuffled over in front of his mother.

What took place next was painful to watch. Lexeaus had hung out with Zexion for years, and knew that the kid had the tendency to be kind of depressing and sad but the look on his face grew gloomier and sadder by the second as him Mom grilled him about what it meant to have responsibilities and take care of your own flesh and blood.

Even sadder, several times Zexion attempted feebly mentioning that Yuffie took off running and there wasn't a lot he could do, only to be overlapped by other seventy decibel falcon screeches erupting from the womans mouth.

Finally, it came to and end. Or at least it was starting to; the final rung of the speech had begun. "Hope you've learned a lesson" and "I expect better in the future" kept coming up, and Zexion was praying for his punishment to just come swiftly.

"That is why you're going out with your sister again." she finished, turning her back and heading off to the kitchen. "Half an hour. If you loose her again, you're only allowed in your room to sleep-- the rest of the year you will be on your hands and knees scrubbing the house down every damn day, you hear me?"

Zexion flinched. That was a lot worse than he thought. . . reverse grounding. He never really minded being confined to his room, after all. That seemed to easy.

"Fine. Whatever." Zexion grumbled. He sat down on the couch next to Yuffie and sighed. "So, you got a job?"

"Uh-huh." She said, unblinkingly playing the video game in front of her. "I ran to cheese barn to hang out and steal a couple wheels of cheddar--"

"What would you do with--"

"And the manager seemed impressed I was so passionate about cheese. So I get to hand out samples on the weekends."

"That's going to be awesome when he finds out your a bleeding clepto."

"Yeah, I can't remember." Yuffie replied, obviously ignoring him. "

"Where am I following you later?" Zexion said, too exhausted to even complain about it.

"Some kid named Axel's house. He's a friend of Sora's cousin Roxas." she thought for a moment. "That was a lot of 'x's."

"Hngh. Wanna come?" Zexion asked, perking his head back at Lexeaus, who was sitting on a rocking chair watching Yuffie play "Speedy the Porcupine".

"Sure. I've got nowhere to be."

Roxas was festering. Sitting cross legged on his bed, festering. On the floor (where Sora had made a makeshift bed with extra blankets and an air mattress, to his mother's insist) Sora was on the phone with his girlfriend. . . or his boyfriend. Roxas wasn't sure which one, but he was reciting the day's events.

"Yeah, awesome huh? Hey, put Riku on the phone."

Roxas flinched. Wasn't he that dick of a lacrosse player? Come to think of it, he hadn't heard much about him in the past year. Maybe he moved. Hmm.

"Kay! Love you both too! Haha! Bye!" Sora said, clicking his phone shut and sighing contently.

Roxas was mad at his cousin again. Not in a "wow you're a moron." sort of way like before. In a sinking, depressed, lonely sort of way. He let himself fester for a while longer.

"This isn't a house." Lexeaus said, putting his car in park. The directions Axel had sent to Zexion led to an abandoned lot on the outskirts of town by the train tracks and an old slaughter house. Creepy.

"There's Axel," Zexion said, squiting behind his glasses at the red headed figure at the edge of the field who was doing something with a pipe halfway sticking out of the ground. A blonde, who had obviously gotten his mo hawk to stick back up waved at the vehicle.

Even Yuffie looked confused. Zexion was a little relieved. Nothing to steal here.

The three got out of the rickety truck (Zexion shut the door with a bit of a slam, worried the entire car was going to fall apart) and made their way over, padding in the dusty field to get to them.

"What's up?" Zexion said, waving his hair out of his face.

Axel gestured to the pile of brightly colored orbs at feet, all filled with water.

"I was pretty excited that this old pump works," he said, pointing at Demyx and the water spout.

Yuffie whooped and Zexion rolled his eyes. "I'll sit this one out."

"No, you're not." Demyx said, wagging his finger at him (letting a finger off the water balloon he was holding in place, which squirted him in the eye).

"Water balloon fight, huh?" Sora said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Awesome!"

Roxas had to run to catch up with him, panting after dashing across the field. "Thanks for waiting for me, dick."

"No problem!" Sora said, grinning at his cousin.

Aerith and another figure were still coming across the field.

"How exactly are we doing this?" Zexion asked, his bliss at his easy punishment dying in a millisecond. This was worse than any punishment he could imagine; he would have rather been at home scrubbing the undersides of the carpet.

"Teams. Last person standing wins. You get hit, you're down." Axel said, spinning a green balloon in the air.

Aerith and . . . . the coffee girl finally arrived at the scene.

"Uh. Hey. Coffee barista." Axel said, cocking his head. "The more the merrier, I mean."

"I invited her," Aerith said, smiling her airy weird smile.

Axel began counting on his fingers. "There's eight of us. Two teams."

After a moment of shuffling, they seperated into; Sora, Aerieth, Tifa and Yuffie against Roxas, Demyx, Lexeaus and Zexion.

"You guys can be the nobodies, because you're LOSERS!" Yuffie taunted from the oposite side of the field.

Axel rolled his eyes and laughed, followed by "A FREE FOR ALL IN THREE, TWO, ONE--"

They were off. Axel threw the first balloon, hitting Sora in the face. Aerith, confused, threw one at Lexeaus, who actually caught it, and threw it, and the one he was holding, hitting both Aerith and Tifa. Tifa laughed.

Yuffie was the only one to put up a real fight; only because she was fast. Demyx and Roxas chased her around for a moment, only to have Zexion sneak up and break a blue balloon over his little sisters head.

"BOO YA!" he yelled, his glassed falling off into the dirt. "BOOM, BITCH. THAT'S HOW WE DO IT IN MY HOUSE." he continued, doing a little dance.

Lexeaus rolled his eyes and picked up the discarded eye wear, wiped it off and handed them back.

It was a lot more fun than Axel thought it would be. He got the idea from his Mom, who did it with a kid's day camp she helped run in the summer, and thought most of them had the mentality of kids, so it would be fun for at least a while.

The first, second and third round was easily taken by 'the nobodies', who only had trouble with Yuffie. In between the third and fourth, 'the somebodies' huddled up and discussed tactics while Demyx filled up more balloons. Somebodies almost had the fourth, apart from Lexeaus who took the remaining three down within a matter of seconds. They only one the fifth because Lex felt left out, having not been hit yet.

After another two wins from the Nobodies, it was getting dark and everyone, drenched in freezing water, was getting cold in the cool spring evening.

"I'll uh. See you at school tomorrow I guess." Axel said. This didn't work the way he planned. He was hoping to at least distract everyone long enough to talk to Roxas alone.

Aerith and Sora were padding back to the minivan Roxas had managed to talk his Mom into borrowing, Tifa back to her motorcycle (a chick with a motorcycle, that was pretty goddamn cool, he had to admit) and the others back to Lexeaus' truck. Demyx was waiting for him. So much for privacy.

"Yeah, tomorrow." Roxas murmered. Out of complete impulse, he hugged the taller boy around the middle. Very quick, breif, and not gay. It could have been a bro hug, honestly.

Axel smiled and ruffled the smaller boy's hair. Two days ago he didn't know the kid and thought he would hate him.

Roxas began off before turning around and smiling. "Do you feel like this weekend took a couple of years to get through?"

"Yeah, Rox. I do."