Disclaimer: I do not own the characters from Kingdom Hearts nor am I making any money by writing this.

Chapter 1

2000AA1

Roxas did not know the men who came to his house, though he knew why they were there. He had been branded a Bearer—a male capable of having children. The number of Bearers in the world was now less than a hundred. Their kind was a dying breed.

Long ago, the rest of humanity had been led to believe that the Bearers had all died out. The few Bearers left founded The Institute, a state-of-the-art facility designed to give them a safe place to repopulate. For a time, it seemed to work; the number of Bearers in the world had tripled. Now, however, their numbers were rapidly dropping again, and they were on the brink of extinction.

The few Bearers left spent the first years of their life with a foster family on the outside and then on their thirteenth birthday returned to The Institute where they were carefully bred with another male to try and bring up their numbers. Roxas had known this day would come, when he would be called back to The Institute to begin his duties as a Bearer.

"It's time to go," one of the men told him.

"I know," Roxas responded quietly.

He had said good-bye to his foster parents at breakfast; both of them had been called into work and would not be there to see Roxas off. There was nothing left for him to do except leave. Sighing quietly, Roxas pulled on a light jacket.

"Are you ready?" the man Roxas understood to be the leader asked.

"Yes," Roxas answered with a nod.

He followed the men out of the house, making sure the door was securely closed and locked, and the key was carefully hidden under the welcome mat, before trudging to a waiting car. It was a black sedan with heavily tinted windows so no one could see either in or out of it. One of the men held the door open for him and he slid into the back. He was joined by the other men who never said a word.

The city where Roxas had grown up had never looked as beautiful as it did now. He felt tears in his eyes and pushed them back, angry with himself for losing control of his emotions. He was a Bearer now and he needed to start acting like one.

They soon left the city and entered the countryside. The sprawling meadows turned to gentle rolling hills. Roxas, who had never once left the city he had grown up in, stared interestedly out the rolled-down window at this change in scenery. Water from an earlier gentle spring rain dripped from the leaves of the trees and the sweet after-rain perfume filled the car.

At last, they came to a large, sprawling estate guarded by a tall gate. The car stopped in front of the gate and the driver spoke to someone over an intercom. A few seconds later, the gates automatically opened and the car entered. They traveled down a long gravel driveway and then finally stopped in front of a large white building that seemed to stretch for miles. One of the men opened the door for Roxas and he crawled out.

Roxas couldn't help feeling nervous as they went into the building. He found that they were in what looked like a reception area in a hospital. There was a TV hanging from the ceiling with some news channel on, uncomfortable-looking chairs made of plastic set up in rows, tables with old magazines on them, and a young, but plain-looking receptionist with strawberry blonde hair pinned back behind her head, sitting behind a desk, looking extremely bored. One of the men went to the desk and talked to the receptionist in a low tone. Then, he returned and motioned for Roxas to sit in a vacant chair.

"Someone will be with you shortly," he said gruffly.

He and the other men left. Roxas fidgeted nervously and looked around the room. It was deserted except for the receptionist, who never said a word. He didn't know how much time had gone by when a stern-looking nurse came out of a door next to where the receptionist sat and told him to come with her. She was in her forties with blonde hair pulled into a tight bun at the back of her neck and light grey eyes. They went down the whitewashed corridors and stopped in front of a scale.

"Shoes off, please, and step onto the scale," she said crisply.

Roxas obeyed without question. She marked down his weight on a clipboard she carried with her, then measured his height, and marked that down as well. Then, they went into a small examination room and he sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair next to the door.

Looking around, Roxas could see a table in the corner with some sort of a thin paper covering it for sanitary reasons, cabinets over the counter for the doctor's use, and a desk next to the chair he occupied with another chair that the nurse sat in. There were graphic posters depicting various parts of the human body plastered on the walls, which were painted a faint yellow color.

"What is your name?" the nurse asked.

"Roxas," Roxas mumbled, shifting slightly in his seat under the nurse's frown.

"How old are you, Roxas?"

"I just turned thirteen."

"Today?"

"Yes."

The questioning went on—his health history, allergies, and so on. The nurse took his temperature, blood pressure, and pulse, and recorded them on her clipboard. Then, she went to a drawer beneath the examination table and pulled out a flimsy paper gown.

"Take off all your clothes—even your underclothes, and put this on. The doctor will be in shortly," she said, tossing the gown at him.

She left, closing the door softly behind her. Trembling slightly, Roxas stripped off all his clothes and put the gown on. It was as flimsy as it looked, made out of the thinnest paper imaginable. He shivered as he sat on the chair, trying hard not to move too much and rip the paper gown while he waited.

There was a sharp knock on the door and the doctor came in, carrying a manila folder with him. He was around forty or so, Roxas guessed. He had long blonde hair and pale green eyes. His rather pointed chin gave him the appearance of a child molester.

"Hello. Roxas, I presume?" he asked, sitting in a chair across from Roxas, and setting the folder on the desk.

"Yes," Roxas replied.

"I'm Dr. Vexen. I'm going to do a physical examination so if you could go lay on the table for me," he said, motioning to the table in the corner.

Roxas did as he was told. Dr. Vexen pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and examined every inch of his body. Finally, he spread Roxas's legs apart and put a finger inside him, causing him to jerk upwards and blush.

"Yes, everything looks all right. It seems you are good to go," Dr. Vexen said, withdrawing his finger. "You already know about the Breeders?"

"Yes," Roxas mumbled as he sat up, embarrassed that the older doctor had touched him like that, doctor or not.

"Good." Dr. Vexen peeled off his gloves and disposed of them in a rubbish bin on the far side of the room. "All you need to know for now is that your mate's name is Axel. Don't forget that name, okay?"

"Okay," Roxas responded.

"You will be bound to him, though not for a while. Your body needs to reach sexual maturity first, which happens during your fourteenth year. Then, your physical bond with your mate will begin, which will last a lifetime."

Roxas nodded. He did not notice Dr. Vexen rubbing his arm with a cotton ball.

"We'll be in touch later," Dr. Vexen said.

He stuck a needle into Roxas's arm and injected something into his body. Roxas yelped, but it seemed to be ignored. The room started spinning around. He put his hand to his forehead and tried to steady himself, but fell back. A pair of strong arms caught him and gently laid him on the table. Everything blurred together and the voices he heard were strangely distorted.

"Take him into OR three. I just want to make sure there's nothing wrong with him before we let him go with the others," a man said.

"Yes, doctor," a woman responded.

A blurred image of the same stern-looking nurse as before appeared over him.

"Just relax," she said soothingly, pressing a mask to his nose and mouth. "Don't try and fight. Everything's going to be all right."

Roxas fought as hard as he could to try and keep his eyes open, but eventually, he was overpowered, and felt himself drifting away.

Author's Notes

Well, this has been a project long in the making. A while back, I decided that I was very unhappy with The Last Bearers so I decided to rewrite it and then repost it. I'm still rewriting it, in fact, but I decided that I wanted to start working on the fanfiction version of this. Things are…a lot different this time. It'll become clear just how different things are as they story progresses. But I think it's a lot better this time. And I swear I'm going to work hard to make sure there are no errors this time.

Updates will be coming at random, whenever I feel like working on this. Sometimes I might actually get a couple chapters posted. Other times, updates won't come for a while. It just depends on what I feel like doing. And, of course, getting the original version finished will be my priority. But once that's done, this will be the priority. So far, I'm planning for there to be 42 chapters and I'm hoping to reach over 100,000 words. So…yeah.

1 AA stands for "after apocalypse" and refers to the destruction of the Earth and the rebirth of the human race through the twins Hayden and Harou. 2000AA means that 2,000 years have passed since these events took place.