Underagethinker: HEEYYYyyyyyyyyyy! Umm…why's everyone glaring at me like that?

Zexion: when was the last time you looked at a calendar?

Me: what calendar

Zexion: well, that explains it

Me: Explains what

Zexion: usually when a person says 'I'll update tomorrow' it means within 24 hours. Apparently to you that means over a month

Me: psh, I don't even know what year it is let alone what day it is. Well anyway I've been going through withdrawal from not writing random crap in these A/Ns so ill do one after the chapter! YAAAAAAY!

Chip: Underagethinker doesn't own kingdom hearts!

Dale: Yea! So bug off lawyer creeps!

Me: OH MY GOD MICE!! ( I was just kidding all you lawyers out there, don't sue me!)

The castle was filled with an eerie silence. No one wandered the halls, not a gust of wind passed by. If you were to stand in the castle that never was, you would feel as if you were trapped in time, like nothing would be able to move even if it wanted to. That's where we found Nira, standing alone in the halted hallway, utterly silent and afraid.

"I am so lost." She muttered to herself, biting her lower lip.

Finding no better solution, she headed to the nearest door she saw. Upon opening the door she found what looked to be a massive library, filled wall to wall with multicolored books. The shelves towered up to the ceiling, which was very high up, and a single ladder stood leaned against the far right bookshelf.

Nira walked to one row of particularly thick looking books and ran her index finger across them idly. They looked very old and she got the impression they hadn't been moved in a very long time.

Curious, Nira slowly pulled out one of the thick books, careful to not disturb its neighbors. She ran a hand across its tight leather cover and got rid of the dust before reading its title, "Ansem Report 3." It read in bold black letters. The title meant completely nothing to her, and yet she found herself opening its smooth cover to a random page in the middle and began reading a passage from it.

"The shadows that crawl beneath the castle... Are they the people who lost their hearts, or incarnations of darkness? Or something entirely beyond my imagination?

All my knowledge has provided no answer. One thing I am sure of is that they are entirely devoid of emotion. Perhaps further study will unlock the mysteries of the heart.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of test samples. They are multiplying underground even as I write this report. They still need a name. Those who lack hearts... I will call them the Heartless."

Nira read it again and tried to make sense of the scrawled writing. Heartless? Of course she knew much about the horrible creatures that lurked in darkness most commonly known as heartless, but who was this Ansem? By the sound of it he didn't know anything about heartless, but in fact was the one that first came across them.

"How strange." She said softly to herself.

Curious, she flipped through the rest of the book but they only consisted of random snap shots of heartless. Small ones, the ones that did minimal damage and were easily avoided.

She reached over and placed the book back in the gap on the shelf, the only gap among the thousands of tightly placed books.

Nira reached for another one. This one read "Ansem report 13." When she removed the dust. Nira opened the cover and there, like the other book, was a paragraph written in tiny scratched writing.

"When the heart casts off the flesh, where does the body go?

Heart and soul are separate, and the spirit remains in the body. But can we assume that the leftover body and soul perish?

Certainly when the heart changes into a Heartless the body disappears.

However, that is only this world's story; in another world, mightn't they change forms like the Heartless and exist there?

If we take that to be the case, there must be a you other than yourself existing somewhere.

An existence neither of darkness nor of light.

An in-between existence.

Cast off by the heart, a mere shell, one who begrudges both the darkness and the light.

This mystery cannot be easily resolved.

The relationship between the heart and the flesh is a complex one.

But since we exist here, they cannot be termed as existent.

Therefore I shall call them...

"The non-existent ones."

'So this must be what organization 13 is.' She thought to herself. 'This Ansem guy really knows what he's talking about' flipping through this book Nira saw pictures of white heartless with funny symbols on their heads. In each shot they seemed to be in an awkward position, like they were always dancing…..or raping something invisible.

"Strange." She repeated to herself.

Putting the Ansem report back, she reached for a new one. This one said "Secret Ansem Report 6." Inside it read,

"My choice to befriend darkness here in the midst of nothingness was a sound one.

The moment I stared straight ahead with a calm heart, neither rejecting darkness nor fearing it, I gained a newfound power.

A superhuman power—the power of darkness.

It is likely Xehanort and the others were enraptured by this power, eventually becoming its prisoners.

I do not intend to allow my heart to be devoured by the darkness as they did, of course.

With this new power, I uncovered a "corridor of darkness" that connects the realm of nothingness to the outside world. While it is still difficult to come and go as I please, my banishment is now a thing of the past.

To deceive Xehanort and my apprentices, I first used my power to change form before returning to the realm of light.

As I had suspected, Xehanort had become a Heartless.

Under my name, he commanded other Heartless in quests to snatch away the hearts of many different worlds.

At the center of the hearts Xehanort had stolen was "Kingdom Hearts," which attracts tremendous darkness to itself and attempts to send any and all matter back into its depths.

The other five have disappeared. Have they become Heartless, like Xehanort?

Or did they vanish after Xehanort exploited them?

I became familiar with an unusual "entity" while pursuing the truth.

It is the soul and body that remain when a being loses its heart.

When a Heartless is born, these entities disappear from the realm of light, to be reborn as entirely new beings in a completely different realm."

Once again, Nira reread the passage. This seemed to resemble what Zexion had told her before about Kingdom Hearts, but it was still different. She couldn't quite explain it, but something about it just seemed…wrong.

She read a section from the middle of the passage out loud. "Under my name he commands other heartless in quests to snatch away the hearts of many different worlds." Something pulled in her stomach. Why did this seem so wrong? Preparing to search for more answers, Nira turned another page in the book. Some dust flew up from the pages and hit her in the face. Nira's nose was filled with years and years of dust, grim, and that strange smell that always comes off of old books that makes you want to sneeze all over the place and throw the book out the window.

Nira didn't throw the book out the window, but she did let out a very small sneeze.

"Bless you." Someone said from behind her.

She turned around and stared into Axel's eyes sadly.

"What's wrong?" he asked, then his expression changed when he saw what she was holding. "Oh it's about that, isn't it?" Axel reached out and took the book from her, tossing it carelessly on a wooden table nearby. "Don't worry about it, Xemnas is obsessed with keeping these things." He waved his hand as he talked and looked up and around at all the books surrounding them.

"I was just wondering…" Nira said ignoring him. Axel rested his gaze back on her. "How many people had to die to make Kingdom Hearts."

Judging by the look he was giving her, Axel had not been expecting that at all. He stared at her eyes wide for awhile, then looked back at the Ansem report.

"Um…" he began unsure of what to say. "Well see, we don't really-"

"Because that doesn't seem right, stealing all those hearts from innocent people."

Axel was at a complete loss for words. He turned his pleading eyes on the door as if waiting for someone to come in and tell him exactly what to say.

"Killing people-

"-Now wait a second-

"For your own selfish purposes-

"-You make it sound worse than it is-

"Is really sickening to me."

Nira stared up at him with disgust written plainly across her face.

"We don't steal hearts, the heartless do." He countered back.

"And then you steal the hearts from the heartless, what's the difference?" she asked skeptically.

"They wouldn't know what to do with them anyway. We need those hearts! And anyway, it's not like we control the heartless, we don't tell them to go around stealing hearts."

"Not according to this." Nira said, grabbing the Ansem report off the table and waving it in front of his face. "Is everything you've said to me a lie Axel?" she asked, sadly this time. Her voice died down to almost a whisper.

"Not…everything." He said scratching the back of his head. "But we need those hearts Nira, to be whole. Without them we're just empty shells."

"Is that how you justify it?"

"Justify what?"

"Killing people."

Axel flung his arms up in exasperation and groaned in fury. "Yes, ok? Is that what you wanted me to say?! Everything is a lie! We're heartless shells incapable of loving, or hating, or anything else! We betray each other, we kill each other, and we don't give a damn about anything but filling kingdom hearts with hearts! And we sure as hell won't stop at anything until we do!"

Nira's eyes filled up. She struggled to keep the tears in her eyes, stop them from running down her cheeks.

"I don't want to hear anymore." She said, flinging the bulky book at Axel's chest and scurried out of the room.

She ran and ran until she rounded a corner and stopped, clutching at her bandaged arm. The pulse in it was throbbing.

Nira could hear him calling after her, but she kept running, fighting tears all the way.

Riku: what are you doing?

Me: setting out mice traps

Riku: um…ok

Me: so how was the chapter? Well I didn't update because I didn't know what to write, then a few days ago I was sitting in the car (one of the places I always get my inspirations) and the whole Nira and Axel scene just played out in front of me. Weird how that happens. My inspiration is always random.

SNAP

Riku: Your majesty!!

Me: I caught the mouse! I caught the mouse!

Sora: King…Mickey?

Me: oops…well….he'll taste good as our dinner.

Sora: Don't tell Minnie about this.

Me: oh you mean that mouse with the dress? We ate her last night silly!

Sora: o.O

Riku: then why did you say it was chicken!?

Me: I thought that's what she was at the time…

Zexion: someone gave her soda last night while she was making dinner. It made her…how shall I put this…crazy.

Xigbar: SHE POKED OUT MY OTHER EYE!

Me: hehe I go stabbity stab stab