"…" The red haired man folded his arms, looking over the crowd with a tolerant, mildly disdainful expression. They were all rich, or they wouldn't have been here, although you couldn't tell from appearances. No one dressed their best to visit the Twisted World.

"I hate this." The black haired girl beside him muttered, and he nodded thoughtfully. It was never pleasant, being looked at as merchandise. But at least they were the priciest, best merchandise on the market.

Technically, they weren't slaves. They were indentured servants. In a lot of prissy, uptight worlds that would have been considered a false distinction but in the Twisted World it actually had meaning. There were plenty of real slaves on the market, but they could only be trusted as far as the shackles on their necks. An indentured servant, who would take a blood bond willingly, was something else again. The red haired man idly ran a finger along his collarbone, feeling the old scar there. A very faint scar. The healing job had been almost perfect. It was astonishing, really, that he was so unmarked from injuries that should have killed him.

"At least it's a fairly good looking crowd. There's none I'd really object to." He commented, and the girl nodded, licking her lips thoughtfully as she eyed one likely young man. They were bodyguards and concubines, rolled into one. Also assassins and thieves, if that was what their master needed. It was a very difficult skillset to master, so only nine of them were currently for sale. And the prices were astronomical.

He leaned back against the wall, and watched a pair of his friends giving a demonstration of their battle skills on the platform. His turn would be coming soon, and when the battle demonstrations were done, they would change into silks and demonstrate how fetching they could look on a rich man's arm. It was all a little repulsive, in some ways. But he only had to touch that scar to remember where he could have been.

This was infinitely better than a shallow, unmarked grave.

"I don't want to do this." The newly made sixteen year old boy grimaced as he scanned the room. It was too hot, too loud, and the clash of blades from the platform made him wince. Although he could recognize the skill involved… the fighters were as good as they were good looking. And that was the problem. He wasn't interested in a bodyguard or a whore, and it looked like he was about to get both.

"Be quiet. This is not optional, Roxas." His father, Vexen, ordered and Roxas subsided with a grimace. "You've been a virgin for far too long, and despite your delusions of unimportance you're still my son." Roxas' eyes narrowed.

"I'm your fifth son, dad. And anyone who doesn't think you would sacrifice me in an instant is an idiot-oof!" Roxas gasped as Vexen grabbed his hair, yanking him close. Vexen's own bodyguard watched without comment, a bored expression on his face.

"Perhaps. But I'd prefer they had to work at it to get you. Now, pick one or I'll pick one for you." Vexen let go of his hair, and Roxas pouted for a moment, straitening his blond spikes. He glanced over the slaves… indentured servants… trying to find one he liked the look of. For a moment his eyes settled on a slender, dark skinned boy, hardly older than himself… but his eyes were so cold, like a human calculator. Roxas moved on… he didn't want a bodyguard like his father.

He wasn't sure what made him stop on the redhead. Maybe it was the way he leaned against the wall, as if he didn't have a care in the world. Maybe it was the tall, lanky but nicely muscled build. Maybe it was the odd little tattoos on his cheeks. Maybe it was that fire red hair and the bright, beautiful green eyes… and the amusement in them, as if everything that was happening was a fine joke. Or maybe it was just fate. But Roxas knew that he had found something he liked.

"That one." Roxas pointed at the red haired man, who smiled like a Cheshire cat. Vexen looked him over, unimpressed.

"A bit cocky. But very well, if that's the type you want." Vexen's disapproval couldn't have cemented his choice more firmly if his father had been trying.

"He's the one I want." Roxas said firmly, and met those green eyes again.

Maybe it was fate.

"That kid likes you." The girl said to him with a small smirk, and he shrugged. "He's cute, too."

"We'll see if he can afford me." The red haired man wasn't getting his hopes up. Because of the odd gifts he had, his price was even higher than most. Maybe even to the point that it would be an obstacle to his sale, but Kilersa and Mongo wanted to get back everything they had invested in him with a great deal of interest. He didn't begrudge them that, but the customers probably wouldn't understand how much effort it had taken to get him through his fear of fire and teach him to master the magic in his blood.

"If that guy with him is who I think he is, he can afford it. And he'll probably like getting the best of the best." He cocked an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged. "He's Vexen. Some kind of high noble, rich as hell, from a class one world."

"Hmm." Class one meant highly technological. That was interesting. His world had been a class three at best. Most of the indentured servants came from class three's, which had a lot to do with why they accepted the servant status in the first place. For some of them, the only thing going on their homeworlds had been starvation. That meant, though, that they all had to be trained to deal with technology. Fortunately, the Twisted World was full of technology from every level. After his five years of training, he was comfortable with all of it.

They were both called to the platform, and began demonstrating their skills to the audience. He wielded two chakram while she handled a claymore with an ease that made the audience murmur in appreciation. Then, when they finished that, they displayed a bit of marksmanship skills on the target dummies. Guns were rarely the first weapon of choice… there were too many ways for magic to mess with non-enchanted ones… but depending on the worlds they went to, they would need to be flexible. The redhead smiled as he easily made headshots on the dummies. He liked guns quite a bit. Then, with hardly a thought, he cast a fire spell and incinerated his dummy. There was surprise in the murmurs then… the bodyguards bought here rarely had a knack for magic. Not that he had a lot of it, but fire was the redhead's element.

Stepping down from the platform to go change, he caught the little blond boy's eyes again, and smiled. He really was cute.

"Well, that was rather impressive." Vexen said, tone unimpressed. Roxas had to repress the urge to giggle nervously. His father clearly was impressed and trying not to show it, which was typical of him. "I'm tempted to get him for myself." That wiped away any urge to giggle, and Roxas shot his father a look. "Not seriously. But it seems you've made a good choice."

"I hope so." Roxas was still very nervous about the whole thing… especially the losing his virginity part. Technically, he could have just ordered the servant to pretend they had done it, but… Vexen would find out. It would be easier to just do it once, even if he hated it. Although he had trouble imaging he would hate it with that redhead…

Swallowing hard, Roxas tried his best to wait patiently until the bidding started. The redhead was right in the middle, and he blinked at the starting bid. How much? But Vexen seemed unperturbed and met it easily… and someone counter-bid. The bidding was fast and furious, and ended in a victory for his father, although Roxas thought he had spent three times what he had meant to. But then, Vexen hated to lose at auctions. They were quickly ushered into the back to fill out the paperwork and swear the blood oath. Roxas blinked at all the paperwork… this was a real contract, with many conditions. Vexen had already explained the important points, but Roxas decided he really needed to take a copy of the contract to read over himself. It would be boring, but he didn't want any surprises. He met the red haired man's gaze, and was surprised to see… sadness? Hesitating, Roxas stepped closer to him.

"What's your name?" In all the auction, he'd never heard any of the servants referred to by name. It was a deliberate omission… they were property, after all… but it suddenly seemed wrong. The man smiled, his green eyes warming before he answered.

"Axel. What's your name?" His voice was soft, almost caressing, and Roxas swallowed as he met those beautiful green eyes.

"I'm Roxas." He held out a hand, and Axel accepted it. Roxas felt a thrill at the touch of warm skin, the rough calluses on his hands. What would those hands feel like on him?

"Roxas, come here. You need to sign these forms." Vexen said impatiently. They both stepped back, the moment broken, and Roxas quickly scrawled his name on the forms. The blood bond followed, and Roxas grimaced at the primitive magic. But the oldest, most primitive spells were the hardest to break. Still… sharing blood was unpleasant, even mixed into wine. He noticed Axel staring at him, licking his lips, after they finished the bond and wondered why. Did the other man feel something?

Axel, meanwhile, was feeling quite a bit. The bond was one-sided in that regard… he could feel Roxas now, feel his location and general condition. If Roxas was ever in pain, the bond would let him know immediately. It made sense that this part was one-sided… a bodyguard was meant to take pain for his master, not the other way around… but Axel vaguely wished that Roxas could know what he was feeling. It was… nice.

"There." Axel blinked as he felt a quick shove on his shoulder, and looked over to see Vexen. "Now, I have business in the rest of town. I assume you know some interesting sights. Show my son around, then bring him back to the Black Swan Inn. I presume you know where it is?" Axel thought for a moment, then nodded. He'd been there on occasion, despite the expense. Mongo and Kilersa would sometimes take their students there to practice fancy dining… and also as a reward for hard work. Axel had found the whole place absurdly pretentious, but the service and food had been flawless. It didn't quite fit Vexen… Axel guessed the man's taste would run to minimalism… but the service and food probably outweighed that. "Good. Bring him back by eight."

"Yes sir." Axel said pleasantly. He wasn't going to call Roxas sir unless the boy demanded it, but his father was another story. It would have felt wrong to call the cold man Vexen, and he was certain he would have been corrected for doing that anyway. Axel offered Roxas his hand, who frowned but took it, letting Axel lead him out into the street. "So… what kind of things are you interested in?" Axel wanted a place to start in what to show the blond. But Roxas just shrugged.

"Whatever you like." Roxas glanced up at the sky and shuddered faintly. Axel frowned, tilting his head back to see what he had spotted.

"What is it?" He couldn't see anything unusual. "Something wrong?"

"Just… that." Roxas gestured upwards, puzzling Axel further. "You know… the way it goes up like that…" Axel blinked as he suddenly understood, and felt like a fool for not getting it.

"Oh, that! Yeah, you get used to it after a while and then you stop noticing entirely." That was the way the Twisted World worked. The Twisted World was not in any way natural… it was a giant spiral of rock, with large, dark red lights set on the bottom to illuminate the level below. The spiral had perhaps a dozen levels, and the middle levels were most desirable. The very top and bottom were subject to peeling and shifting. "So, is this the first time you've visited the Twisted World?" Axel quickly decided on a destination and led Roxas easily through the crowd, keeping his other hand free and near his weapons like the trained bodyguard he was.

"Uh, yes… where are you taking me?" Roxas chewed his lip as he watched Axel scan the crowd. He was only one man and couldn't do a perfect bodyguarding job, but he was clearly going to try.

"My favorite hang-out." Axel explained. "Have you ever been to an ice cream parlor?" He couldn't be certain. Until he had come to the Twisted World, Axel had never experienced ice cream… his own world didn't have it at all. Roxas blinked and nodded. "This place is the best ice cream parlor… ever. At least, that's what all the visitors say. I've never had ice cream anywhere else so I wouldn't know, but I think it's great."

"You go to an ice cream parlor?" Roxas stared at the tall, red haired bodyguard. Axel cocked his head to one side, looking down at Roxas with a small smile.

"Yeah. There something wrong with that?" He found Roxas surprise quite amusing.

"Oh, no! It's just… I'm pretty sure none of dad's or my brother's bodyguards go to ice cream parlors. I think they go to the bar." Roxas said, a touch diffidently, and Axel grinned as he scanned the crowd for possible threats.

"Oh, I do that too, but I don't want to scare you. Besides, it's way too early in the day for that." Axel subtly put himself between Roxas and a big man who was shoving his way through the crowd, and Roxas blinked as he realized he probably wouldn't have to deal with bullies anymore… Axel would do it for him. He wasn't sure if he was grateful for that or not, but it would be a relief. "If you want, I'll take you to the best tavern in the Twisted World later."

"Please." Roxas wasn't legal for alcohol in his own world, but Axel couldn't know that, and he'd been curious forever. This would be a perfect opportunity to get some adult experiences. That his father might blame Axel for it didn't occur to him at all.

"Here we are!" Roxas blinked at the building. To him, it was like something straight out of the past… an old fashioned ice cream parlor, white and pink with murals of the various cones and sundaes on the front of the building. Inside there were stools and little tables, all in the classic ice cream parlor style. An older man with slate grey hair and a natty uniform with a little white cap was serving the customers, and the place was fairly busy. Axel looked around carefully, evaluating the place for any threats. "So, what flavor you like? This place has everything." Roxas looked at the list of flavors, and thought that wasn't an exaggeration. He'd never seen so many different types in one place.

"Um… do they have salty sweet ice cream?" Roxas asked, and Axel quickly checked the listings with the ease of long practice.

"They surely do. I've never tried that. Is it any good?" Axel asked curiously, and Roxas grinned.

"It's the best! Get that." Axel shrugged with a smile, and when they reached the front of the queue, ordered two large bowls of the salty sweet ice cream. There were no tables available, so they carried the waffle bowls outside to eat the ice cream and lean against the building, watching the crowd going by.

"Axel?" Roxas said as he licked his spoon before taking another spoonful of his ice cream. "Um… can you tell me a bit about this place? I mean… it's not natural." That was blindingly obvious. A spiral world simply couldn't be natural… and the whole Twisted World was the size of a very large city, not a real world.

"Oh sure. It's artificial alright. It was made by Ya Tashra. He's a wizard so powerful he borders on being a demi-god. See, he's got a bug up his ass about the prohibitions a lot of wizards try to put in place about moving people and goods between worlds and shadow universes. He believes that the universe is self correcting, and as long as we don't move really massive amounts of things around, everything just rights itself. Apparently, he's written a lot of treatise about it and makes a good argument, but there's not much data." Axel gestured at the sky above them, and the underside of the next level. "So he made this place to be a hub. There are hundreds of portals here, reaching all kinds of different worlds and shadow universes. They say that Ya Tashra monitors everything that comes in and out and the effect it has on the universe."

"So this place is a huge science experiment?" That was an unpalatable thought to Roxas, but Axel grinned.

"Pretty much! But don't mention that to him, I think he'd call it a MAGIC experiment." Roxas snorted at the semantics. If magic used math, in his mind it was just another kind of science. Axel paused to nip off a chunk of his waffle bowl. "Mmm, tasty. This ice cream is great, I'll have to remember the flavor."

"Mmm." They ate in silence for a while, just enjoying the ice cream and the people watching. To Axel, that was old hat, but to Roxas it was fascinating. There was everything in the crowd from faeries to talking animals. A pair of hyenas sauntered casually through the crowd, chatting and wearing little boxes on their necks that he presumed were translators. He wondered what they used for munny. Surely hyenas didn't carry munny around?

Axel finished his ice cream and bowl, and just watched Roxas, in between scanning the surroundings. Roxas blushed faintly under Axel's gaze, and he smiled slightly, enjoying how cute his new master was. That spiky blond hair made him want to run his fingers through it… although it wasn't really a proper thought for a bodyguard or a courtesan. But maybe Roxas would like it.

"So, Roxas… do you like pets?" Axel suddenly asked, and Roxas shook his head. "Hmm. How about toys?"

"I'm not a child, Axel." Roxas said with a frown, and Axel shrugged.

"Not saying you are. But there's a really spectacular pet store and a really cool toy store not far from here. A lot of the toys are magical, and there's a whole adult section, so if you want to see cool stuff it might be worth looking at." Axel smiled, a touch nostalgically. "When I first got here a friend showed me the toy store, and they had to pull me out with a pry bar."

"How old were you when you came here?" That made Roxas curious. Axel hesitated a moment, then shrugged.

"Fourteen. I'm nineteen now. Just hit my full growth last year." That had been when his growth spurt finally stopped, to everyone's relief. He'd been outgrowing clothes at a record pace.

"Oh. You look older." Roxas was a little surprised. He had put Axel at twenty-two, maybe twenty-five. Axel grinned.

"Gee, thanks!" He teased, and Roxas blushed. "No worries… c'mon, let me show you that toy store." Kid or not, he was sure Roxas would like it.

He was right. Roxas stared at the old fashioned trains running in their rails along the walls of the shop. Little wooden horses danced and played in a pen, hand painted porcelain dolls lined the walls, and a beautifully made rocking horse creaked in a corner. Everywhere they looked, there were more toys… and they were almost all hand made. This wasn't the place for cheap toys, although it had plenty of toys that were meant to be used. It was the place for toys that had been made with love and care.

"Who makes these?" Roxas said reverently, touching a beautiful little porcelain doll. In his world, the most precious commodity was… people. Almost all toys were simply replicated plastic, which was good but had none of the beauty of these toys. Axel smiled, glancing around.

"A lot of people on class three worlds. Non-technological." He clarified at Roxas frown. "They're pretty heavy magical, most of them, and labor is cheap."

"Oh, I see… oh!" Roxas beamed as he found a display of kaleidoscopes. They were made of bronze, with intricate glass panels to make the patterns when spun. "These are beautiful Axel."

"Aren't they?" Axel sighed… he'd lusted after everything in the store the first time he'd seen it, but the kaleidoscopes had been a particular favorite. "Too bad the light here is so dim. Can't really get the most out of them." That had stopped him from saving up for one. Well, that and the fact that they were too expensive. Roxas looked at the price and smiled.

"I'll get you one, how's that?" Axel blinked, shocked by the suggestion. "And one for myself… this is a really great price. I could probably resell them for more at my school." That made Axel's jaw drop a little. Were the prices really that different?

"No wonder people do a lot of trading here…" He muttered to himself, then shrugged with a smile. "You don't have to Roxas." He wasn't fourteen anymore and while he would enjoy a kaleidoscope, he wasn't going to die without one.

"I want to." Roxas said firmly, paying for the scopes. "Did you say something about an adult section?" He was curious about that. Axel grinned like a naughty boy.

"Yeah… but it's the kind of stuff you might find embarrassing. All hand made with leather and blown glass but… yeah." Roxas looked puzzled and Axel realized he would have to spell it out. "You know, like… leashes… and stuff." Roxas' eyes widened and he blushed.

"We can skip that." He said firmly, and Axel found he was slightly disappointed. "Why don't you show me your bar?" Axel checked his watch for the time, and nodded.

"They just opened. Sure, why not?" It was early, but they could always spend a fair amount of time at the tavern, soaking up the ambience. It required a lot of soaking to get the full impact of the World's End Tavern.