Disclaimer: I do not own Axel, or any of the characters of Kingdom Hearts, which belongs to Square Enix; I do not own any of the elements belonging to Disney, as well.

Well, this is my first attempt at posting on here (The action will start in the next chapter, which I am currently starting), so enjoy at the very least!

~1~

Chapter one

Laura Letterwood lay stomach-down on her bed, frustrated at the flustered pile of Algebra homework before her. After 3 solid hours of studying for the test the next day, the equations seemed far from comprehendible. She let out an exasperated sigh, and flipped over onto her stomach. Stretching her arms and legs out as far as possible, her blackberry phone vibrates next to her side. Feeling a rush of momentary relief from her tortuous study, she rolls over to pick it up.

"Oh, Shelagh, how you amuse me..." she mumbles, lips curling to a small grin as she reads the 'distress message' her dear friend sent to her:

"Lorie, I am on my last legs. University-level Algebra is definitely a torture device. Got it all memorized, champ? I can feel it curdling my fluids as I type...ahhhhh! Anyhow, I'm back to my slow, painful death. Cheers and see you tomorrow love! xo."

Laura seemed attached to her phone. It was one of those necessities that she felt she couldn't live without. From keeping in touch with friends (new and old) to making plans, and even research, the Blackberry never left her side. Noticing how caught up in the small device she really was, she glanced painfully over to the study notes laying beside her.

She gave it a cold, death-sentence-like stare. "Screw that, all right." she tells herself triumphantly, neatly putting away the notes stuffing the many accursed pages into her math binder and quickly putting it into her schoolbag. "Glad that's over with. It's not like it would help me or anything...Math is a lost cause!" she sighs as she flops back onto her bed.

Her stepfather hadn't returned from the car dealership and she began to wonder what was taking so long. It had been, incidentally, 3 hours since he had left. Laura always got after her dad for ever taking too long away from the "base" ever since her mother had gone missing where she used to live in Oshawa, Ontario. The investigators hadn't found her mother's body until a year later, in a swamp some 200km away.

There were significant signs of suicide.

It's been 7 years since the confirmation and funeral of her mother, yet she had come to terms with what had happened. However, she did not, and never would, come to terms with how it had happened.

Her birthfather was abusive and a serious control-freak, insulting and smacking Laura occasionally and constantly mentally and physically abusing her mother. One day, the father had disappeared, never to be seen or heard of again. Now her stepfather, Adam Letterwood, had replaced her old name, Eden, with his own, Letterwood, just incase her real father was still out there.

Adam was a confident, safe young man of only 31. she treated him as her stepfather, when really all he was close friend to her and her mother.

He really did replace the broken image of a father that Laura had pictured for many years, which made Laura worry because she did not like to stray from him for too long. Even being 17, Laura found it hard to be on her own just yet.

As she made her way down the short hall of their larger-than-average apartment in Manhattan, NY, she stretched her arms as far as she possibly could, yawning long and audibly.

Her feet lead her into the kitchen, which smelled strongly of a slow-simmering Dutch oven full of chili. The rich aroma of spices filled her sinuses as she opened the lid. Closing it, her attention is drawn quickly from the chili on the stove to the clock on the wall. It read almost 6 'o' clock.

'News time.' she thought as she quickly grabbed a bowl of the chili that was simmering and sat down on the couch. The TV was coincidentally already on the news channel, and thus began her news-watching session.

For the past little while she had been constantly watching the news, due to her fascination in the latest news discoveries: Foreign objects found scattered all over the continents of Oceania and Iceland, as well as the northern islands of Nunavut and the North-west Territories.

Laura sat still on the couch, listening intently. It was not often that this phenomenon did occur, especially at school, where attention to her schoolwork was seldom an option for her.

The anchors began to speak of the war in the middle east, the famines in certain limited countries and the Christmas preparations in Manhattan. "So far, so boring..." she remarks as she piles a large spoonful of chili into her mouth. Laura was very slim, but it was due to her high metabolism.

She needed all the energy she could handle, which lead to her eating two average Manhattan teenagers' worth of food a day. After a bunch of "rambling (as she thought of it) from the anchors, they finally got to the weekly updates on paranormal findings. The news crew's travel anchor, Mary Anderson, began her report on the latest find:

"Joggers have found evidence of what seems to be some sort of foreign piece of material earlier this week near Turtle Pond in Central park..."

'Hold up…In Manhattan?!' She thought aloud to herself, completely sucked into the news report. She turned up the volume as Meg kept taking:

"Now in possession of some very capable scientists conducting examinations in an Unnamed laboratory, it is confirmed that the small shard of material is beyond any recorded substance found currently on this earth. Local Scientist James MacLeigh has more information on this latest discovery."

"This...this is amazing!" Laura thought aloud to herself again, completely intrigued in what this news discovery was telling her. 'Now, the substances are being found all throughout the world...!' she thought, excited. The scientist came onto the television, just as eager as Laura.

James: "Hello Mary."

Mary: "Hello James, could you tell us about this new breakthrough?"

James: "We've examined it, and like we've said before, it is an unknown substance. The substance is of a bright reddish orange hue, and radiates a harmless, mysterious energy."

Mary: "That's very interesting. Do you know how it's just seemed to have appeared from nowhere?"

James: "We currently have no understanding of where it's from, or how it even got here. There is no evidence of it falling into our atmosphere. It's almost like it just...appeared out of nowhere, as hard as that is to believe...-"

"Laura, I'm home!" Adam called as he came into the apartment. A feeling of relief washed over her as she was safe with her stepfather. "Hi Adam!" she called back.

-Click- went the television as Laura turned it off. Her mind was full of ideas, theories and possibilities. 'What if she went down there herself and investigated further? Would she find anything?' her thoughts were interrupted as her father waved his hand in front of her face. "Laura, hellooo. Anyone there?" he joked as she snapped out of the conversation in her head. "Oh yeah. Sorry. Caught up in the news." she explains sheepishly. He sits down on the couch beside her.

"Man, am I EVER pooped. Remind me not to fall asleep at the wheel. It brings bad consequences." he groaned as he seemed to melt onto the worked in leather couch. Laura laughed. "Sure thing, daddio." He laughed a bit as well, and kicked off his Nike sneakers onto the TV room floor.

"Actually, don't let me drive after that long of a day at work. Too many phone calls and paperwork equals so little energy...Phew." he continued, sighing. Laura remembered the news just then. "So you know the news updates about the foreign material being found throughout the world lately?" she asked perkily. He removed his forearm from where it had been resting over his hazel eyes. "Yeah, what about them?" he replied. "Well, they found a larger SHARD of foreign material RIGHT HERE in Central Park!! We're only a few blocks away, it's incredible! I want to go down there first thing after school tomorrow and check things out!" Laura exclaimed, unraveling all of her excitement on the poor tired man.

He chuckles, exhausted. "Well," he began, making her nervous at what his reaction could be, "Sounds like a plan, champ," he continued. Laura sighed in happiness. "But, I can imagine that they'll have the area that the discovery was made all cordoned off, so maybe don't get in anybody's way, got it?" he replied, approving of her research.

Laura's face beamed, absolutely ecstatic. "Awesome! Amazing! Thanks Adam!" she giggles, scuffing his hair and walking off to her room. He grins and fixes his shaggy brown hair. "It's getting pretty late so maybe you should start getting ready to hit the hay, what do you think?" Adam suggested to her, contemplating going to bed soon himself after grabbing a bowl of hard-earned chili. "Sure thing, dad, I'll need the sleep for tomorrow's Algebra test. I'll need it..." she muttered the last part to herself.

All she could hear was a muffled "Good night!" from Adam's chili-filled mouth. That's what she liked about Adam. He didn't get on her back for things she would be otherwise stressing about more if he would have been on her back. It showed Laura that he had confidence in her, something her birth parents lacked. To her, Adam was the only person she really thought of as truly 'caring'.

As she got into bed later on that evening after getting washed, she found it hard to calm down to rest. All of the equations she needed to memorize for tomorrow mixed in with all of her excitement over the news report refused to let her fall asleep. Laura stared at her ceiling, reflecting over and over again about all of the random findings of the foreign substance. How could they have slipped under the radar as they entered the atmosphere?

Did they even actually fall into the atmosphere?

~*~*~*~*~*~*