**Please keep in mind that this was written a LONG time ago; it was one of my first complete stories. If you find errors in spelling or grammar, please let me know. I'm going to keep this, and all of my other old stories, posted so I can track my crawling progress as a writer. Thank you for reading.**

"And who are you supposed to be?" the man with the eyepatch sniggered. "Sorry, kid, but we don't buy Girl Scout cookies." The crowd behind him laughed under their hoods, and the man's one yellow eye glinted in the dull light that seemed to come from the walls. Roxas glared at his superior, knowing now that he had a long road ahead if he wanted to be left alone, let alone respected.

"Hey, Vexen! Look what the little losers of darkness dragged in today! Another little squirt!" the man cackled, and a passing figure turned in disgust. The one named Vexen wasn't amused at all, and the look on his face gave Roxas the impression that he had somewhere better to be.

"The last time we got one as useless as this, it rained for three days because you broke his sitar..." Another cloaked man joined the conversation, and the one with the eyepatch grinned with amusement.

"Oh, come on, Xiggy... Lighten up on the kid a little, will you? Are you trying to scare off another one?" A woman with short blonde hair entered the room, seeming to care more about arguing with Xigbar than standing up for the newest member.

"Hello, Larxene... You seem to care about the little brat," he said, walking around Roxas toward her. "Think you've got a chance at a little boyfriend?" She smiled in a way that reminded Roxas of the face he had seen somebody make after they had stubbed their toe.

"I don't know. You seem to like him quite a bit... Is there something you aren't telling us, Number Two?" she asked. The rest of the group went wild with laughter, and Xigbar turned bright red; this had obviously floated to the surface at least once before.

"As if! Coming from the girl who's had so many boyfriends she can't keep 'em straight?" he retorted, very briefly satisfied with his answer.

"Is that what happened to you?" blurted out another, and a roar of laughter echoed in the seemingly endless room.

"Him? Oh, yeah right!" Larxene responded with a high pitched laugh. "As if!" Xigbar scowled and disappeared through a black cloud-like door that materialized, and the others followed.

"What have I gotten myself into this time?" Roxas said aloud after all visible potential enemies had departed. He looked down at the black uniform he had been given, which he would have thought was a joke if Saix hadn't been the one to hand it to him. A flash of movement caught his eye, and he looked up to see another Organization member enter the room.

"Let's see: huge mess, disaster, nightmare. Pick one," the other said almost jokingly.

"Seriously, are all of you total assholes, or is it just me?" Roxas replied, finally giving up on pretending he couldn't hear what was being said.

"Whoa, chill out before I have to drag you to Vexen. And they say I'm the hot-head!" He stopped where he was and crossed his arms, looking as though he was simply bored.

"Well, excuse me for not having a happy first day!" Roxas said, turning to go the way Saix had instructed.

"I'm really sorry to tell you this, but I don't think you'll find much happiness here," he answered, and Roxas stopped and looked back. "If that's what you're after, then I think your fluffy pink pony made a wrong turn on the way to Super-Happy-Fun-Land."

"Excuse me?" Roxas yelled, finally losing his temper. "And what wonderful world are you from?" The other member laughed and began to walk around the room, like a tiger pacing in its cage.

"Trust me when I say you don't want to know."

"And why should I trust you? Give me one good reason I shouldn't take you down like a Heartless!" He laughed again and stopped walking, daring Roxas to do something stupid.

"But I'm not a Heartless, although I would like to see you try... And your trust issues are not my problem." The Keyblade appeared in Roxas' hand and he charged forward to show this loser what he was made of, but at the last moment the Key collided with metal and he found himself staggering backwards.

"And who are you supposed to be?" he asked, bringing the Keyblade forward again, only to find that his intended target was still blocked.

"I guess I'm supposed to be your tour guide, although right now I wouldn't mind leaving you here with one of these sticking out of your head," he replied, indicating the chakram he was using as a shield from Roxas' temper tantrum. He let the Key fall to the floor, deciding that attacking another Organization member was not something that he should be doing.

"Aw, come on! You're giving up already?" another person shouted from the doorway. He began walking toward them now that the battle was over. "Don't let him get to you! Watch this!" The new hooded figure held out his hand and grabbed the blue guitar-like weapon that appeared.

"I swear, if you play that thing, you'll get yours!" the first person threatened, throwing the metal stars to the side and stepping forward.

"I'm not afraid of you!" the sitar player shouted, doing what appeared to Roxas as a strange little dance. When the other stepped forward, he began to play, and sent a stream of geysers crashing toward his opponent from all sides. Happy to have actually hit the target, the strange Nobody started laughing as his dripping-wet enemy started forward again. From the force of the water, his hood had been knocked back, and from the expression on his face, he seemed to have lost all sanity. With his red hair plastered to his head and taking on an odd shade of maroon, the one Roxas had fought with looked as though he had just come back from the beach with the other residents of the asylum.

"Not afraid, huh? We'll see about that." He stopped and held his hand up in the direction of the celebrating figure, who began to panic once fire began to eat away at his cloak in several places. After a moment of dancing around and screaming, he finally had enough sense to surround himself with water. The one with the red hair smirked.

"What? It was funny, at least until you tried to kill me!" the other one yelled, doing another strange movement as he peered through the new hole in his cloak. He lowered his burnt hood, causing his enemy to laugh and Roxas to stare in horror. "What are you laughing at? You look like you just got done swimming in a pond of ugly!"

"Was that supposed to be an insult? And I don't plan to travel to your home world, thank you." The one that controlled water glared at Roxas and the other, who was now bent over from laughing at the other's new haircut.

"Um... I think you have a problem..." Roxas said, pointing to his own head. He reached up, and a horrified look passed over his face.

"Hey, Demyx, at least you don't look like Number Four anymore!"

"It's not funny!"

"Yes, it is!"

"Is not!"

"You know, you're right... It's not funny, it's hilarious!"

"You're funny! Funny looking!"

"Whatever you say, Mr. 'Melodious Nocturne'!"

"You're the 'Thing-I-Don't-Know of Dancing Flames'!"

"Well, I would be if that damn sitar of yours would disappear and stop making the flames vomit instead!"

"What kind of name is 'Axel', anyway?"

"What about 'Demyx'? 'Demi' means half. So what are you?"

"Do you guys ever stop?" Roxas asked, looking at the doorway as if it would run away.

"We stop when he either says something really stupid, or one of us can't think of anything else," Axel replied, as a column of fire surrounded him and made the water crackle out of existance. "Or he explodes, which looks like it already happened." Roxas took another look at Demyx's new hair style and began to walk toward the doorway... At least there were a few others here who weren't as uptight as that Saix guy...

"Where are you going?" Demyx asked, looking quickly between Roxas and another new hole in his cloak. "I can't imagine that you have anything important to attend to."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Roxas asked, trying to look offended, and suceeding halfway because Demyx flinched and stepped back.

"N-nothing! It's just... Life here isn't particularly interesting, that's all!" Axel rolled his eyes and glanced toward the entrance to the previous room.

"You can be such a push-over sometimes, little Melodious one!" Demyx grimaced and looked like a pouting child for a moment. "Remember when you let Bigrax walk all over you last week? It was kind of pathetic, really..." There was a short pause and Roxas burst out laughing.

"You're kidding me, right? You mean that there's some poor loser here who's name is 'Bigrax'?"

"Well, not technically. It's more of a nickname."

"For the highest ranking and biggest jerk of Organization XIII, as we are now called... His real name is Xigbar," Axel explained in distaste; Xigbar obviously wasn't an incredibly popular guy.

"So where did the name come from?" Roxas asked, picturing the man with the scars and eyepatch doing something very stupid and disturbing.

"You just switch the letters," Demyx said simply, shrugging. "There's not much else to do around here right now."

"The head honcho has the worst one, though. He's Xemnas. I'll leave you to figure that one out yourself... I don't really want to have my head chopped off by a light saber, thank you very much!" Axel joked as they began walking toward the door Roxas had been staring at all along. He now realized that he was stuck in a place that he knew absolutely nothing about.

"What do you mean light saber?" he asked, picturing some kind of lunatic in a black cloak, whacking random objects with a light saber.

"Look at it this way: if you're lucky, you'll never understand," Axel replied as they continued onward to somewhere Roxas guessed he was supposed to go.

"Oh. What happened to the Xigbar guy? Was he messing with the wrong person at the wrong time, or is he just that ugly?" Roxas asked, as Demyx shuddered at the name.

"It would... serve you well to stay away from Xigbar... He's nothing but trouble. If you don't, you'll probably end up looking kinda like him," he squeaked, obviously having had more than one unpleasant encounter with the one-eyed man.

"Yeah, he'll probably try to use you for target practice... Like that one time right after I joined," Axel said. "Back then, Saix was a fairly new member, and ol' Xiggy decided to see if X really did mark the spot..."

"Let's just say that Saix's face is not a bullseye," Demyx finished, making the others laugh.

"Any idiot could have told you that was a bad idea, even Lexaeus! Well, any idiot except Xiggy, anyway!"

"So Xigbar likes to mess with people, right? And I should stay away from Xemnas and Saix if I can help it, right?" Roxas asked sarcastically, and Demyx nodded furiously, like he was on a sugar high.

"And Xaldin can be unpleasant as well... Whatever you do, if he's in or around the kitchen, don't touch anything, or you'll likely lose a finger, or more," Axel remarked.

"Not even the grapes," Demyx added, as if it was the most important bit of information.

"Then there's the rumors about him and Xiggy," he said in a tone that showed disgust. "I still can't see that... Xiggy and the Ape Man! Once you see the other one, and try to picture them together, it's an extremely disturbing scene."

"And what about that Vexen guy?" Roxas asked, remembering the glance he had thrown Xigbar and the others, full of obvious dislike. "He seemed to be in a hurry earlier."

"What about him? Poor loser has no life, so he was probably on his creepy, paranoid way back down to the basement to his ever-growing collection of clones... It's where he belongs, if you ask me," Axel explained as the other Nobody fell to the ground like he had been shot, laughing hysterically. "You know it's true! He has at least thirty clones of himself down there, and he literally talks to 'himself' more than the usual insane human does."

"It sounds like he lost his brain when he lost his heart," Roxas added as he watched Demyx rolling around on the floor like an idiot.

"No, his brain's still there, but I'll bet Luxord that his heart out-lived his mind by a long shot. Hey Dem, imagine a Vexen Heartless!" Axel laughed, as Demyx started laughing like a maniac again. "But seriously, can you imagine torturing anything so much as to stick his head on it?" Roxas, vaguely remembering what this person looked like, decided that he would have to agree.

"Imagine... Head... Shadow Heartless..." was all Demyx managed to choke out before returning to his fit of laughter, his face streaked with tears. "Re... Re... Respect your elders!" he yelled, miming the words with his hand, as if he was part of a drugged up puppet show. Even Roxas, who knew absolutely nothing about this man, couldn't help laughing.

"The old goat doesn't have enough sense left to walk a straight line... What's there left to respect, his extreme level of insanity?" Axel laughed as Demyx dried away the rest of his tears and finally stood up.

"He sounds like a real nut job," Roxas concluded, wondering if there really was a psychotic old man living in the basement of the castle. "Are there any other people I should know about, since I honestly don't want to figure any of this out first hand?"

"Larxene. Make her mad and she'll practically go cannibal on you. Marley... He's nothing to really be worried about," Demyx said, counting off the people on his hands. "Except..."

"Beware the cow plant up on the roof, and never, ever assume he's a woman under any circumstances, or you'll get yourself decapitated."

"It was funny with Xiggy, though. Anyway, never play any kind of game with Luxord because he cheats and takes everything you've got, just stay away from Saix altogether, don't touch Zexion's books, don't call Lexaeus 'Rockhead', mess with Vexen but don't push him too far, stay away from the kitchen when Xaldin's around, ignore Xiggy and he'll eventually go away, and if Xemnas gets mad for any reason (or if he's smiling), run, run away!" Demyx finished, looking proud that he had just explained Organization XIII in a nutshell.

"O-kay... I'll be sure to remember that..." Roxas replied, on the verge of running out the front door and hiding under a rock somewhere far, far away, where these psychos would never find him.

"And the sad thing is that it's all true," Axel added as they continued their seemingly endless trek to an unknown place. "Welcome to Organization XIII."

"Seems more like the asylum for the obsurdly insane." Roxas gestured toward the white walls.

"Very true, most of the members are a little bizarre, but..."

"Bizarre? Coming from the guy who looks like he got run down by a lawnmower?" Axel snickered as Demyx's hand flew to his head again.

"Oh, shut up!"

"'Now that's just plain rude'!"

"Ugh! You are so annoying!" He covered his ears and stared up at the ceiling, humming something that didn't even remotely sound like a song. "I'm not listening!"

"Like you ever do... Anyway, this is the funny farm in more than one way, so don't expect too much from the experience, or something will probably spontaneously combust." A door behind them opened, and a short cloaked figure walked out, nearly sprinting, and carrying a book. Demyx stopped humming and grinned in an evil way.

"Hey, Zexy!" The person came to a halt and stared back at them, far from pleased at being called that name.

"What... happened to you?" the person asked, pointing to the top of his hood.

"To make a long story short..."

"Demy was being an idiot again," Axel interrupted and the other seemed to nod in agreement.

"I see... Well, good luck with that." He turned back toward the door and hurried away from them.

"Is that really his name?" Roxas asked as Demyx crossed his arms moodily.

"Kind of. Zexion. Everybody just calls him that to make him mad. You have to admit, it is an awful name, Zexion."

"I still say Xemnas is the worst name," Demyx said, returning to the real world, "even though they only call him that behind his back."

"What do you...? Oh..." Roxas started, thinking anybody to call Xemnas that to be both very brave and very stupid. "You guys actually call him that?"

"Sometimes. Usually only when he does something stupid. And to think he's our leader!"

"Hey, who are you guys talking about? Mister Mansex?" the man with the eyepatch asked as be entered the room. "Teaching the little squirt all of the important stuff, huh?"

"Oh, get lost, Bigrax!" Axel replied, to Xigbar's dismay.

"Whatever, Ale!"

"You don't even know what my other name is, do you?" he sneered. Apparently, Xigbar didn't. "And I'm definitely not going to be the one to tell you."

"You think I care? As if!" Xiggy shrugged.

"Your loss. Oh, and remember those pictures that magically appeared everywhere? What was it called? Oh, yeah... Xiggy, the 'Pritty' Birdie!" Axel said, trying to keep a blank face at Xigbar's look of absolute horror.

"You are not doing that again!"

"Whatcha gonna do about it? Go tell wittle Saix about it? I'm so terrified!"

"You know, you guys are a real drag," he said, and then disappeared through another portal of darkness.

"Xiggy the 'Pritty' Birdie?" Roxas was amused by anything that could possibly look like a Xigbar bird.

"You'll see, the next time the jerk tries to mess with us, which will probably be very soon," Demyx replied as they finally reached what would come to be known as the Throne Room.