Illusions

-break-

The lush, green forest in front of them makes Axel's fingers twitch. Roxas gives him a stern look, pans it over to Demyx for added measure, and leads them into the murky green depths without a glance behind himself. Axel rolls his eyes while Demyx cringes along, muttering something about how this place doesn't make him feel right, never mind the fact that they can't feel at all.

"You can 'mislike the feel of these woods' all you like, Demyx--" and Roxas manages to make names sound as impersonal as numbers, a feat Xemnas would appreciate if he had the heart to do so. "But the sooner you catch up to me and walk normally, the sooner we'll be out of these woods and into some nice snowy mountains. You like snow, right?"

"That's Vexen," Demyx mutters.

"I could totally, you know, get spring started early or something." All this wood and no one around for miles--Axel can taste the char already. "It'd kind of ruin my fire once we reached a certain, shall we say, threshold, but--"

"And you will keep your combustion to yourself," Roxas snaps, effectively shutting the two taller Nobodies up.

Axel and Demyx appear to have found a common ground in not liking Roxas' work ethic at all, so they edge closer to each other behind the midget's back and start talking, for once. Axel rolls his eyes. "Sometimes I forget why I hang out with that kid."

"I never knew the reason in the first place! Why do you hang out with that kid?"

"Oh, right. Because he's not Vexen or Marluxia or you or Xemnas or Vexen or Larxene or--"

-break-

"Alms, young man?" A beggar lady's fingers twitch in earnest as Roxas pauses for a moment. "For a desperate woman?" Axel sighs. This was about the fifth or sixth or twelfth beggar woman they'd seen so far, and Roxas is already showing signs of being greatly annoyed. Demyx cringes, but seeing as they have no particular funds of their own it's up to Roxas' short, blunt replies to save their time.

"We don't have any money," Roxas tells her. "Sorry."

Immediately after that, he starts to walk away and even though Axel feels a strange chill run down his spine (must be all this foliage absorbing the heat) he makes a move to follow. But Demyx loses whatever intellect he has and clutches at Axel's forearm suddenly. "Wait--"

"You dare to disrespect me like this?" And the voice that comes out of the old lady's mouth is suddenly not an old, creaky voice; it is a young and powerful voice that echoes off the trees around them, causing Roxas to turn around. Roxas blinks, and then shrugs it off. He shouldn't be scared, and he isn't. Though Axel starts to remember an inkling of the emotion...

"We really don't have any money though."

"Money?" she asks incredulously. "Ha!" She begins to stand up straighter and taller until Axel realizes her feet are coming off the ground, her skin is smooth, her hair is vibrant blonde, and she is floating in a terrible, magical light. "What fairy gives a care about material things?There was no sorrow in your heart!"

Wait. Fairies?! When the Superior said there were a lot of fairies on this world I didn't think they'd be--

She holds out now-long, slender fingers and light starts to pour out as if seeping from her veins. "I curse you to grow green and shrink to the size of a toad, you arrogant stripling, till a fair maiden... Ah, that would be too kind for you. You must be grievously injured in mind or in body by your one true friend!"

Roxas stares into the light without blinking, but his eyes grow wider and wider until Axel realizes the kid's shrinking as fast as the lady was growing, and the light's getting too bright for him to see so he crams his face into the crook of his arm for an indescribable period of time (seconds? No, minutes. Possibly days.)--until Demyx opens his eyes first and yells, "Roxas!"

Axel opens his eyes, blinks to get the purple spots out of his sight, and looks around for Roxas. But he and the lady have both vanished...

"Roxas!" Demyx cries again, pointing to a heap of black robes on the ground. Axel sprints to it and starts digging.

"Yo! Roxas! Buddy--" Gloves, coat, shoes, etc., but no...

"Croak."

Demyx throws himself at a small shadow that just flipped out from underneath Roxas' robes, and Axel's chakrams are in hand before he knows it. "What the hell are you doing?! You'll crush it! Him--whatever!"

"No." The brown-haired Nobody gets up with a sphere of water swirling above one upraised hand. "I just caught him."

-break-

As they sit on the leaf-covered and uncomfortable ground with Roxas' clothes transferred to a spot in-between them, wondering what exactly they will say to the Superior, Demyx shifts the water from a solid sphere into more of a bubble with a hollow interior. "I can't believe she turned him into a frog..." the Nocturne says, watching Roxas' antics--or rather, Roxas' lack of them. Axel can't read frog faces as well as he can read people faces, but odds are good that Roxas is really pissed off from the way he's just glaring at them with his big blue frog eyes.

"Are... Are you going to actually do it?"

"Do what?"

"She said to break the spell his one true friend had to 'injure him grievously', or something like that, and the closest thing to that is you! Are you going to... th-throw him into a tree or something?"

"That is a lose-lose question which I am not going to answer," Axel snaps. Roxas croaks within the bubble and his whole throat swells up freakishly. "Oh, come on!"

"I don't think I'd be able to do it," Demyx confesses. "He's so cute and small. Look at his big blue eyes, and... er, green lumpy skin. Think we should ask Vexen if--"

"No, no, no, no, and no. We are not going to Vexen."

"But he might--"

"No!"

"Okay! Fine. No Vexen!" A huffy sigh, and then Demyx pokes his hand through the bubble and grips Roxas' torso to observe him more closely. "Wow! I have never seen a frog this close before!" Roxas shows his disapproval by croaking and attempting to squirm out of the Nocturne's hands. The bulgy eyes are even narrowed in distaste.

Axel scowls and takes what used to be his friend in one hand. "Give him here."

"Oh, sweet darkness, you're going to do it!" Demyx clutches even tighter, then remembers that 1.) he shouldn't be doing that to small, squishy animals and 2.) Axel in this time and place is the one who should. So he reluctantly surrenders. "Promise you'll be nice about injuring him. Don't roast him or--"

"Keep calm, Drippy, I'm not going to roast him. Yet." The resulting croak is huge and sends Axel's closest ear into a tinny ringing sound. He stares at his frog-friend for a moment, holding him tight in both hands, and remarks, "You know, I seem to remember old Frost-Face saying that some frogs had a mild and awful-tasting poison on their bags which primitive people would ingest to enter a trance state. Call me batshit insane, but I have always wanted to know what that was like."

"You... what?!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But it's just--"

"You don't have any means of extracting the poison!" Demyx points out.

Axel has to think about that for a second. "Poison's a liquid. Usually. Am I right?"

Demyx registers the question and his face blanks out for at least ten seconds out of remembered shock. Then he shakes his head fervently, reaching for Roxas. "I'm not going to extract poison out of your best friend just so you can get high and possibly kill yourself on it. I'm going to--"

"Well, fine. Keep your hands clean." Axel shrugs out of Demyx's reach and turns to the side, ignoring Roxas' massive croaks of protest.

"What are you doing?!"

"Improvising." Axel waits for the moment to sink in, and then licks Roxas across the back really fast.

-break-

Before he knows it, Roxas is pulling on his clothes and yelling some very nasty things at Axel while Demyx just stands to the side and mutters, "Told you so." Axel manages to finish vomiting up whatever non-psychedelic poison he'd ingested and nurses his broken hand for a moment before taking a potion for both.

"--That what I was? I was a way for you to get high off frog poison! Did you have a good trip?! I can't believe you did that to me! I can't think about what you would you have done after that--eat me?! I hope you die in your sleep dreaming horrible dreams about frogs and you never, ever see the light again and that--"

-break-

A couple people are waiting in the hallway. Zexion, Lexaeus, Xigbar... The sudden lack of sunlight coupled with hard-to-see dark figures all around make Axel's eyes bug out for just a second--or maybe it was the aftereffects from the poison. He rubs the offended organs wearily, then stops in time to see Roxas stalk off in a huff. Demyx gives them both a look, then shakes his head and goes away too. Axel sighs.

"Worst. Trip. Ever."