Cali IX: I don’t own Kingdom Hearts! And again, sorry for the long wait.

VI: Sleeping Zexy

It was Anniversary at the World that Never Was. Anniversary celebrates the creation of Organization XIII. We have a lame-ass staff party/ meeting to celebrate and then disperse into the city to party.

Every year people go nuts organizing for it. It is THE most important event in the whole year, even more important than Financial Assessment Day. If you aren’t helping in some shape or form you’re as good as dead. Dead.

Xemnas assigned everyone a job today to help out with the non-festivities, and as you can guess, ADR got the worst one.

We’re supposed to wake Zexion up.

This is probably the most unfair job we’ve ever been given. I don’t think you readers understand just how difficult this job is.

Zexion will never wake up. I mean it. The man is in a coma. In fact, during meetings we have to use a stand-in dummy with a screen for his face just to depict him sitting up.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen him actually awake, except for the five minutes he swaps recipes with Xaldin, and when he gambles with Luxord for a bit on special occasions.

Currently, Axel Roxas and I sat in Zexion’s extremely boring gray room thinking of ways to wake him up.

We flicked through the several books lining the walls, and generally wracked our brains for thought….thinking wasn’t exactly our strong suit.

Roxas blew into a sandwich bag and popped it with a loud blast.

Axel and I stared at him awkwardly.

“Roxas….if it was that easy we wouldn’t have been assigned this,” Axel said.

“What?” he shrugged “It was worth a shot.”

Zexion continued to snore in the background.

“God, I was really hoping he wasn’t gonna make us do this…It’s impossible to wake Zexion up. He slept through the time we blew up the castle, you know,” Axel commented, as if he couldn’t let us forget just how difficult this task was.

“So what do we do?” Roxas asked. “My Samurai are hosting a huge party in a couple hours, and I don’t want this to take all day.”

“Same here. Well, here goes,” I said.

We tried ripping him out of bed.

“On the count of three…one, two…THREE!” Axel ordered.

We all grabbed onto his cloak and heaved to the best of our ability. It was extremely difficult. Felt like the man was sewed INTO the mattress.

We heaved, and heaved, until FINALLY, Zexion was dislodged from his extremely comfortable position.

His eyes instantly snapped open.

“Hey, we did it!” Roxas celebrated.

But before we could celebrate, it seemed that taking Zexion out of bed put him into a shock.

And when I mean shock, I don’t mean the fake Nobody kind of shock. His hair went white, his eyes pulled out of his skull, and he went rigid.

He started wheezing uncontrollably, until he started coughing blood.

“We sure didn’t count on that,” I commented.

“I didn’t know getting out of bed could actually kill someone,” Roxas said, as he pulled a candy bar out of his cloak and bit into it, like he was at the movies or something.

“I don’t want to find out what’ll happen. Get him back in there now!” Axel panicked.

We all settled him back into bed after that extremely failed attempt at waking Zexion up.

So, we tried the old fashioned way. The ice-cube mattress. I stole into the kitchens while Xaldin was on his cooking spree. I was nearly reduced to confetti but I stole a whole bunch of ice. Go me!

“Think this’ll work?” Axel asked.

“Works on Roxas all the time. Just dump it on him already,” I snapped.

We removed Zexion’s cloak, stripped the bed and dumped several pans of ice into the bed.

Then we sat back and waited.

“Whoa. His skin’s already turning blue,” Roxas commented. “Does that usually happen?”

“Maybe he’s so used to the nice, cozy comfort of his bed. Hehehehe….well, he won’t last much longer at this rate. That ice doesn’t melt. Vexen supplied it,” I snickered evilly.

“Are you sure he’s not gonna die? This seems a bit extreme,” Axel replied, slightly concerned as Zexion changed colors.

“If worse comes to worse, I’ll eject his true self out and stick it in a flower pot. It’s extreme but at least he’ll actually be present at a meeting for once. Lazy SOB…” I snapped.

We tried stealing his recipe book.

“Okay, here’s the plan. Roxas, we’re going to confiscate your Keyblades for a few minutes. Then when you’re good and rabid, we’re gonna toss you into his recipe vault and leave it to you from there,” I said.

Roxas peered at the vault, which had a little sign next to it that said: Enter Only If You Wish To Have an Empty-Coffin Funeral.

Roxas decided he didn’t like that.

“Look, I’m all for violence and challenges, but use a Dusk or some-”

“Too bad!” Axel instantly snatched away Roxas’ Keyblades and swallowed them. When Roxas tried to get them back, he thought better of the prospect of finding out what was actually INSIDE Axel.

“That’s right, Roxas. You don’t want to know,” Axel smirked, triumphant. “Now, just to make sure you go completely crazy, we’ll lock down your room. No violence for ten minutes.”

Roxas lost it after two.

“GIVE EM BACK GIVE EM BACK I’M LOSIN’ IT!!” he screamed.

“Is he rabid yet?” I asked.

“Give him another fifteen seconds and-” Axel paused as Roxas began foaming “Oh, wait, and never mind. He’s ready.”

Axel and I picked him up and threw him into the vault with his Keyblades.

“Now, if for some reason, you don’t make it, we’ll-he’s gone,” I said. “What a bummer. Now all we have to fill his seat is a bloodied pulp. And the alarms didn’t even wake Zexion up.”

Axel sighed at the smoking crater that was Roxas.

“Back to the drawing board.”

Axel tried burning him. Zexion apparently didn’t seem to feel the sudden improvement in central heating.

“Dammit, why isn’t this working? He’s not burning at all!” Axel growled, obviously frustrated that fire was not the answer to everything.

“Did you check the tag on his cloak?” Roxas asked. He held out the tag, which read ‘Made with 100 percent fireproof material. Also impervious to loud music and annoying secretaries.’

“That’s one hell of a cloak,” I commented. “Well, I’ll just soak him then. No one likes a squishy wet mattress.”

I mustered up my powers and let great bursts of ice cold water gush onto Zexion’s bed. He remained immobile.

“I guess he likes his mattresses unpleasantly wet and squishy…” I sighed.

Roxas stabbed him.

“Roxas!” Axel snapped.

“What? If he’s not waking up after all that what’s the point of keeping him alive?” Roxas asked.

Axel smacked his head in exasperation.

“I don’t think Xemnas would like it if we killed Zexion, especially on Anniversary,” Axel reasoned. “Let’s just keep trying.”

So then we kept trying.

We searched the room and found a collection of lovely cakes underneath Zexion’s bed.

“So that’s where he keeps ‘em,” Roxas said.

“How does he make them? The man never wakes up,” I asked.

“I dunno, but they sure look good. Maybe it’s from all the cookbooks,” Axel replied “Hey, I know! Let’s choke him with cake! If it doesn’t wake him up at least no one will have to IV him with nourishment.”

Axel stuffed a large white wedding-sized cake into the snoring youth’s face. He stopped snoring, but didn’t wake up.

“Just give it some time…” Axel added, and sat down and waited.

We waited. And waited. And waited some more.

“Nothing’s happening. Why is nothing happening? COME ON PEOPLE, work with me here!!” Axel snapped.

“I don’t know! He’s like some kind of machine! He just sleeps all day!” Roxas snapped.

“When was the last time he woke up? If I could just remember…” I muttered “That’s it! Back when we caused that crisis situation back when we stole Larxene’s underwear! He was gambling with Luxord! We have to get Luxord. It could be our only lead!”

“I don’t know. The guy’s not exactly easy to crack open. And we don’t have that much time to wake Zexion up,” Axel reasoned “We’ll have to use some ultra drastic measures.”

“Personally I was hoping we’d have to resort to something like this. My interrogation skills are getting kinda rusty…” Roxas commented.

“Interrogating Luxord might be a bad idea. We’ll have to bargain with him. I don’t like the sound of it, but it’ll produce faster results than by force,” I said.

“Handing ourselves over to Luxord…why does it feel like things can only get worse from here?” Axel asked.

“Cheer up Axel. We’ll be celebrities for doing the impossible. We’ll start our own line of sportswear at my store,” Roxas said.

Axel sighed.

-X-

Luxord walked down the eerily empty hall. It was dark and the silence was so thick the gambler deemed it appropriate to feign unease.

Every sing footstep echoed as he walked through. Suddenly, the power shut off.

“That’s funny. I pay the electric bill for three month’s service…and I just paid it a week ago. Ah well…I gotta go and fix my juke box…” he thought to himself.

Suddenly a vase cracked, a shadow passed over, and Luxord was suddenly tackled into the ground.

“Gotcha!” I yelled.

“Idiot, you’re not supposed to say that! We’re supposed to bargain. BARGAIN!” Roxas snapped “Oh god…”

“Well, let’s just tie him up and haul him off before he causes a fuss…” Axel grumbled.

We tied up his limbs and took him to Roxas’s room for interrogation.

Roxas shined a hundred watt bulb right into Luxord’s eyes, and put on his most menacing face.

“Listen up, Luxord. Axel, Demyx and I are nice guys…provided you tell us what you know. If you decide to be uncooperative, we’ll switch off the nice guy act and beat the living tar out of you!” Roxas said.

Luxord simply squinted his eyes, looked at Roxas with an incredulous look, and laughed his butt off.

“I don’t think you guys thought very much when you decided to interrogate me. You’re supposed to bargain,” Luxord said.

“You see? Even the captive knows it! Turn off that goddamn light and let me take over!” Axel snapped. “And untie him too.”

Roxas, with a now defeated look on his face, untied Luxord and ripped the light bulb right off the cord it dangled from.

Luxord leisurely stretched and helped himself to a sea-salt ice cream.

“Much better. Now, what do you three want with my extremely valuable time?” he asked.

“We’re not going to mince words here. We need to know how to wake Zexion up. Anniversary is in one hour and we’re all out of ideas,” Axel said.

“Well, that’s some pretty confidential information you asked there. My fee would be oh…let’s say…five million munny,” Luxord continued to enjoy his sea-salt ice cream.

“Five million munny?! We don’t have five million munny, we’re poor! Isn’t there some other way?” I asked.

“You could always go and nick a few feathers off Sephiroth’s wings. They’re worth at least a million munny each,” Luxord said.

“We asked for another way, not suicide,” Axel deadpanned.

“Okay, I get it. Well, you COULD run a few errands for me. I’ve been a little late with my debt collecting you see, so you three would be-”

“Why are you so bent on getting us killed? DEBT COLLECTING, that’s a freaking death sentence!” I snapped.

“Well, you asked. And until I get five million, either out of your pockets or from other people, I’m not telling you anything. Besides, it’s not going to take very long. Just collect debts from three of my more stubborn clients, and I’ll tell you how to wake him up, no strings attached,” Luxord said. “So which one?”

Axel, Roxas and I shared a glance.

“We’ll take the debt collecting,” I said.

“Excellent!” Luxord said. We tried very hard to ignore the evil look on his face, because it really did look like he meant it.

-X-

“I have this really nasty feeling that this job is going to get us hurt,” I whimpered.

“Oh, stop worrying stupid. We knock on a few doors, ask for some munny, beat them to an unrecognizable pulp if they refuse and then go to the next one. We should finish this in half an hour, tops,” Axel said, uncharacteristically optimistic.

“You weren’t a debt collector in your past life, were you?” I asked suspiciously.

“I dabbled in it. It’s kind of fun…” Axel replied.

“Well, just as long as I get to beat someone up, I don’t care,” Roxas added.

“Okay, so the first house is 331 Eternal Darkness Avenue,” I read. “I’m not sure if I like that.”

“Just ring the doorbell so we can get out of here,” Axel huffed.

Uneasily, I rang the doorbell.

One of Saix’s Berserkers opened the door.

“Oh crap, look at the size of that one…” I whimpered.

Roxas grinned.

“Looks like a fun fight…” he commented.

Axel put on his nice guy face, and said “Hi! We’re from the Luxord Collection Agency. We’re here about a little munny issue…”

“Debt collectors huh?” the Berserker asked “Hey, fellas. Get over here. Debt collectors.”

Suddenly, ten or fifteen of those really big, scary looking Berserkers came out, each carrying a particularly menacing weapon.

One had a bag full of doorknobs. And the burlap was bloody…

Another preferred the good old caveman club. Except it had nails hammered into it at odd angles, and looked like it would hurt like a bitch if someone got hit with it.

One even had an electric garrote string. You know, the one that decapitates AND electrocutes you, just in case you survive the decapitation…

That’s it Demyx. Just back away nice and slow and maybe you won’t be turned into Figgie pudding…

“You know what; we’ll come back at a later date to discuss your financial option-”

“You jerks don’t look so tough!” Roxas yelled like the big old idiot he is. And like the big old idiot who WANTS to die, he started dancing and mocking them with little monkey noises.

“Roxas, shut up! Do you WANT to die?” I freaked.

“Oh, come on. We can take them. Stop acting like such a big baby. Besides, we need to collect whatever debt we can before the hour’s up,” Roxas said.

And so he continued with the monkey noises.

Now, nothing infuriates people like monkey noises. It infers that they are hairy, smelly, and have sub-human intelligence, and that at odd points during the day, they throw their own feces.

No one likes being called a monkey.

The worst part is Axel joined in.

“Come on you overgrown gorillas! Eek-eek, ook-ook!” Axel monkey-ed.

I gave up and broke down crying.

“We’re gonna die we’re gonna die we’re gonna die AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!!!” I screeched.

“Put ‘em up!!” Roxas roared.

The infuriated Berserkers drew their weapons, or in the case of the chain wielder and the one with the doorknobs, began swinging their weapons about.

I readied my sitar, Roxas brought out his Keyblades, and Axel set his chakrams ablaze.

“Well, here goes!” I said, attempting not to cry.

Right off the bat I got flung over the house and was impaled on the weather vane.

“Well, that was fast,” I said. I attempted to jimmy myself off the vane, but the cross-shape of the bars made it particularly difficult to move. I craned my neck to watch the carnage.

Axel had set himself on fire and was now simply trying to get into physical contact with the Berserkers. Roxas was literally pulled apart by the Berserker crowd. That had to hurt.

“Well. Let’s just skip to the next house, shall we?”

-X-

“That was a total disaster. Well, at least this house is on Eternal Light Avenue. Can’t be that bad,” I said.

I was currently walking like a Gambler, as I had to be sawed in half to be removed from the weather vane. Roxas was a mummy in a wheelchair. Axel was simply blackened and disgruntled.

“It used to go differently when I was a collector. I used to actually hurt them. Luxord must have set us up,” Axel snapped.

“I don’t care. We’ve got forty-five minutes until Xemnas kills us, so let’s go,” Roxas blithered through his bandaged mouth.

I knocked on the door, and in a second it opened.

There was no one in there.

We tentatively walked inside, and discovered…

Heartless. Coating every single surface of that house.

“Wow. Didn’t look like a pit of darkness from the outside,” I commented.

“Today is really just unfair,” Axel said.

“Let’s just get them,” Roxas growled, bringing out his Keyblades.

“There’s too many of them. They’ll eat us alive!!!!!” I screamed.

“Roxas, I think stupid is actually right. This might be a bit much for us…There must be thousands in here! And they’re all boss-class, too!!” Axel said “Let’s just back away slowly...carefully…maybe they haven’t smelled us yet…”

“I’ll kill them all! I don’t need you chickens!!”

And Roxas bravely wheeled to his doom. Axel and I jumped in to stop him, but by then, the Heartless had woken up.

By the time we managed to fend them off, Roxas had disappeared. Or perhaps he was just in too many pieces to be seen, who knows.

-X-

“Ow…ow…ow…ow…” I groaned “That. Hurt.”

“At least you still have arms. I can’t find mine,” Axel complained.

“I’m in a JAR and you guys are COMPLAINING?!” Roxas screeched.

I was currently strapped to a sort of carter-thingy, as I was unable to move or stand up on my own.

Axel was missing his arms and was currently pushing my forward with his head.

Roxas was…in a jar beside my head.

Given our pitiful state, you’d THINK we’d stop debt collecting before there’s nothing left for even Xemnas to punish, but no, because Roxas-in-a-Jar said so.

We reached the door.

“Axel, lean me forward with your teeth so I can ring the doorbell,” I said.

He did, but way too far. I had to push the doorbell with my tongue.

Alright, so you’d think we’d catch a break after Roxas was reduced to a jar version of himself, but no, because…

Sora opened the door.

“Hi there!” he said, cheerfully.

“Crap! I’m going to kick Luxord’s ass for this!” I screeched.

“FIIIIIIIIIGHT!!!!!!” Roxas shouted.

“Um…Roxas. You can’t fight. You’re in a jar,” Axel reasoned.

“Axel, we have to go. NOW! GOOOO!!! BEOFRE JARHEAD FINDS OUT WHO HE IS!!” I snapped.

Sora simply watched incredulously as Axel pushed a man strapped to a carrier away while balancing what appeared to be human remains in a jar on his head.

“Well, that was weird,” he thought. He cheerfully walked back into his house and closed the door.

-X-

We had no choice but to return to the castle.

“No munny, no dignity, no time, and Roxas is in a jar. We’ve been having a great day, haven’t we?” I asked.

“What are we gonna do?” Axel asked “I mean…it just seems really hopeless.”

“Xemnas will kill us, I missed the party, and we’ve made yet another list of enemies. What else is new?” Roxas asked.

“You know what the really annoying part is? We went through ALL that trouble and we STILL don’t know how to wake this bastard up!” I snapped.

In a fit of fake rage, I slammed my foot against the bed. The force of the kick pushed my phalanges into the rest of my foot, causing a pain so fatal my heart actually stopped.

“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I wailed, and began crying in the most pathetic crying.

Axel and Roxas-well, I guess just Axel, could only gape in shock.

“Demyx…” Axel gasped.

“Idiot…” Roxas breathed.

“Oh, I just love seeing pain. It’s better than a feature film,” said a voice.

This voice brought out a bag of popcorn and munched it loudly.

I was still crying on the floor, but I paused for a second to look up, and who should I see but…

“Zexion?! What the hell? You woke up!” I gasped.

“Of course. I love watching other people in pain. It’s just so much fun. It’s just about the only thing that’ll wake me up,” he answered “Don’t stop crying on my account. Continue to the best of your ability.”

“You’re pretty evil. I like that,” Roxas said, rolling his jar form over to Zexion.

“Roxas, have you always been a jar?” he asked. “Never mind, don’t interrupt Demyx’s wonderful show of pain.”

“You’re telling me that if we’d kicked your bed earlier you would have woken up to see us cry?” Axel asked.

“That’s right. I just love seeing someone in pain,” Zexion replied.

“Luxord…he didn’t make us debt collectors for the five million! He just wanted to see us in pain because he knew that would wake you up! That sneaky bastard…” Roxas snapped. “In fact, I’d bet you’d LOVE to see how I got turned into a jar!”

“Oh, don’t worry. I know all about that. In fact, today’s Anniversary celebration is about pain. We were going to have a meeting about how we were going to convey this, but seeing as how an angry mob of people in debt has collected for you three outside the castle, I can just toss you in and record it! How fortuitous!” Zexion cheered.

“Oh crap no…” I whined.

“We’re going to die. Again. Great…” Axel said “We went through all that trouble of waking him up, and he’s going to get us killed.”

“I liked you better when you were asleep!” Roxas snapped.

Zexion simply grinned and tossed us out the window to be dismembered by the crowd below.

“I look forward to finding out what comes after the jar, Roxas!” Zexion called out.

“Oh, I’m screwed-”

That’s all he had a chance to say before the angry mob dismembered us.

---X-the end-X---

Author’s Notes: WHEW! Sorry I took so LONG! Betcha thought I was gone huh? NOPE! I LIVE!! And don’t YOU want to find out what comes after the jar? Send your ideas, comments, questions blah, blah via review!