Revenance Info
Feb. 19th, 2013 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eternalfrolicbond[OOC Information]
Name: Crysi
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
crysiana/crysiana/crysiana@gmail.com
[IC Information]
Character Name: Lea
Series: Kingdom Hearts
Gender: Male
Age: 26ish
Species: Human
Appearance: Lea is a lanky young man of middling height with spiky, cherry-red hair and green eyes. His current outfit consists of black gloves and a long black coat with a silver zipper over black pants and tall black boots.
Personality: Lea's friends are the center of his life and existence; his greatest virtue is his loyalty to his friends, and his biggest problems have come out of acting against his friends' wishes in a misguided effort to protect them. He can be confusing to others because he is at turns deadly serious (though less so now than in the past) and incredibly puppyish.
When Lea was young, he wanted more than anything to be remembered. This is something that has stayed with him all his life through is catchphrase, "Got it memorized?" He wanted everyone to remember him so that in people's memories, he could live forever. This took on a tragic bent when Lea became a Nobody; Nobodies lack emotions, so their memories are all that sustain them. While Lea is less concerned with fame now, he has decided that he must become a hero. Wanting to be known - wanting people to know of him - is very much a factor in this, but another, equal factor is the fact that Lea feels that if he becomes a hero, he'll be able to save his friends.
Lea, overall, is a positive person. He tends to live in the moment and looks to the future rather than mulling over the past. He is very open and friendly, and will cheerfully approach new people to say hello. Part of this is the aforementioned wish to be known, but Lea genuinely likes people and wants to be friends. He has a tendency in particular to look out for people who are alone or sad or both, and he will try to cheer them up and give them a boost. Isa describes this as Lea's picking up stray puppies and implies that it's a habit he's had since he was small. Lea is the sort of person who has no problem going out and meeting new people, and he would be happiest with a large group of friends with whom to share his life.
While Lea is a good person who cares about others, he tends to care about his friends above other people. When he ended up in the Organization, he and Saix stuck together. Part of this was a justified suspicion that the organization was not all puppies and rainbows, admittedly. However, Axel’s willingness to kill other Organization members such as Zexion and Lexaeus - who presumably shared Axel and Saix’s goal of recovering their hearts - is indicative of his general attitude in this regard. Lea can be and is very nice, but when it comes to protecting his friends he can be ruthless, pragmatic, and ruthlessly pragmatic. On the one hand, this demonstrates how deeply he feels about his friends; he loves them more than anything. The ruthlessness that Lea can display is the dark side of that loyalty.
Lea is not the sort of person who plans things in advance. He tends to deal with things as they come, and he's very good at thinking on his feet and dealing with sudden surprises. However, his tendency to react rather than make a plan of action means that he often doesn't think the results of his actions all the way through and in some cases leads to extremely poor decisions on Lea's part. In the situation he faced in Castle Oblivion, thinking on his feet and waiting for opportunities to complete his plans worked out very well for Lea and he came out on top. However, in his attempts to protect his friends, Roxas and Xion, Axel comes up with the idea of lying to them in order to keep them complacent and therefore safe, and holding to this ill-advised action ends up costing him both of his friends.
One of Lea's failings - though less severe than it was in his past when he was Axel - is that he has a tendency to want to override his friends' wishes if he feels their actions would put them in danger. He's still trying to work past a certain amount of selfishness in his attitude towards his friends. For a long time, as a Nobody, Lea didn't have a heart and couldn't feel pain or sorrow, and so when he made new friends and started to feel again, he selfishly wanted to hoard the happiness he had with them and keep his friends nearby. He convinced himself fully that he only wanted to protect them and that he was doing everything in order to keep them safe, but Axel lied to both of his best friends, Roxas and Xion, about what he knew about them and the Organization. He dragged Xion back to the Organization against her wishes. Axel believed he wanted to save them, and couldn't admit to himself that he was trying to protect himself as much or more as he was trying to protect his friends.
Axel had fallen into worse and worse behavior, justifying it as things he had to do to get Roxas back, and it took his actions getting Kairi captured for him to see how pointless and destructive he was becoming. Lea has now realized how selfish that sort of friendship is, and he's taken his recent death and the reclaiming of his heart as a clean slate. Lea is determined to be a hero, to save his friends and do good for others. He left his home after having returned to it, and himself, for the first time in a decade and traveled to meet with a former keyblade master, all so that he could try to get a keyblade for himself so that he could help in the upcoming final battle against Xehanort.
Abilities: Lea has the ability to summon his chakrams or keyblade to fight. He uses his chakrams for both ranged combat - throwing them - and close combat. Currently he's not using them as often as he's trying to learn how to use the keyblade properly. Though he's not very experienced with it yet, the keyblade gives its user a boost in combat, bolstering their natural physical and magical strength. In addition, Lea has an affinity for and is very familiar with the use of all kinds of fire magics. He could learn other types of magic, but currently he hasn't really bothered with them. While Lea is still capable of creating dark portals to travel between worlds, it's very risky to do as a human and he's generally disinclined to do it since it might involve risking losing his heart to darkness again.
Items: Lea has his chakrams and his keyblade with him. He also took it upon himself to procure two popsicle sticks with "winner" on them; when he finds Roxas and Xion, he fully plans to give them the sticks so that they can all get ice cream together.
History: Note: the KH2 portion uses novel canon to outline what went on with Axel, Namine, and Riku. The Namine player in Revenance is fine with this, and I am willing to work things out with future players if they prefer to stick purely to game canon.
Lea was born in a world called Radiant Garden. Not much is known about his childhood, but nothing indicates that it was a bad one. Radiant Garden was a peaceful place to grow up, and Lea was happy with his life there. When he was a teenager, he started to be a bit of a troublemaker, sneaking into places with his best friend.
When Lea was around fifteen years old, his world fell to darkness. Thanks to the machinations of a man named Xehanort, Lea and six other people from his world, including his best friend Isa, lost their hearts and became beings called Nobodies. Without their hearts, they couldn't feel emotions and became rather sociopathic. Xehanort - who now called himself Xemnas - brought all of the Nobodies together into a group he called Organization XIII. The avowed goal of Organization XIII was to gather hearts to summon up a force called Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts, being the heart of all worlds would have the power to restore them, according to Xemnas. This was in fact a lie; Nobodies could regain their hearts either over time by forging emotional connections with others, or in the circumstances that both they and their opposite - the heartless formed from their heart - died. Xemnas' real goals for the Organization were myriad, but none of them had to do with helping the members regain their hearts, so the mistrust of the leaders was quite justified.
Lea - now renamed Axel - made a pact with his friend Isa - now Saix - that they would work their way up in the Organization and take it over. Because the other members of the Organization were all, as far as Axel and Saix thought, at least partially responsible for the downfall of Radiant Garden, they didn't trust them. Axel and Saix agreed they would work together and get their hearts back, and the first step was to make themselves seem trustworthy. To this end, Axel supported Saix's working to be second in command.
Things continued apace, with the Organizaiton gaining more major members, until the the thirteenth member arrived. He was named Roxas, and he had the ability to summon the keyblade and was the nobody of Sora, another keyblade weilder. Previously, no one in the Organization had been using the keyblade to capture hearts, but now they could move on their plans to capture Kingdom Hearts. Axel found himself tasked with being Roxas' glorified babysitter for Roxas' first week in the Organization, and was relieved when Roxas shook of his initial zombieness and started reacting to things in a more active fashion.
Axel was mostly keeping an eye on Roxas as a valuable commodity but he had - as Saix noted - a penchant for picking up stray puppies, adopting people in need, and he had started becoming friendlier to Roxas when he was sent away to Castle Oblivion. Before Axel went to Castle Oblivion, he was given the instructions to smoke out the traitors in the Organization. However, per his agreement with Saix, he was also there to try to kill members who were loyal to the Organization who would stop them from taking over, specifically Zexion.
Axel had to perform a balancing act in Castle Oblivion; Marluxia and Larxene had an alliance like his and Saix's, dedicated to taking over the Organization (though their focus was power, not regaining their hearts). Lexaeus and Zexion strongly believed in supporting the Organization, holding to the idea that the purpose of the Organization was to help them regain their hearts. Vexen, the final member of the Organization in the castle, only cared about his scientific experiments. Also present in the castle was Namine, a girl with power over the memories of the hero and keyblade weilder, Sora.
Sora arrived at Castle Oblivion, and Marluxia and Larxene put into plans for Namine to warp his memories so that they could control him and use him to take over the Organization. Axel pretended to join them, going so far as to kill Vexen when he attempted to tell Sora of their plans. Meanwhile, Axel kept an eye on the people in the basement; Riku, Sora's best friend and a strong fighter in his own right had arrived and was making his way through the castle in search of Sora. Vexen had made a replica of Riku based on Riku's memories, and Marluxia had used Namine to fool the replica into thinking he was Riku in order to lure Sora on.
For the most part, Axel sat back and enjoyed the show, but he realized something in him had changed when he noted that he was having fun. He hadn't had feelings in a long time, and he was amazed that, apparently due to Sora, he was getting something like them back. Seeing the progression of events, Axel felt that Marluxia and Larxene's plans were coming dangerously close to succeeding. He played on Namine's feelings of guilt over what she'd done to Sora and the replica and convinced her that she needed to help Sora rather than turning him over to Marluxia. In the end, Sora killed both Larxene and Marluxia.
Riku had accounted for Lexaeus, but Zexion remained at large in the castle. Axel goaded Zexion into fighting Riku - not that he needed a very large push. When this didn't suffice to kill him, Axel convinced the Riku replica that if he killed Zexion and absorbed his essence that he would become a real person. After witnessing Zexion's death, Axel hid himself in the castle until things quieted down; Sora had gone to sleep so that Namine could fix his memories and Riku headed out to try to find his balance and guard the worlds until Sora woke. He wasn't overly concernd with either of these events; he'd completed his task. However, Saix had told him to try to find a hidden chamber in the castle, and took some time to try to find it before returning to the Organization's home base. From that point on, Axel became warmer and more human than he had been before, more open and friendly to Roxas and eventually Xion in particular.
Roxas had, while Axel was gone, made friends with the fourteenth member of Organization XIII, Xion. He invited her to hang out with them at their spot on the station tower in Twilight Town, but duties kept them separate for a time. Soon after Axel's return to the Organization headquarters, he and Roxas were assigned to find Xion, who had gone missing. She had been sent on a mission, but was unable to finish it because she'd lost the ability to use the keyblade. Xion and Axel quickly became friends when Axel suggested a solution to the problem: doing missions together so that Roxas could cover for Xion's weakness. Unbeknownst to Axel, Axel had started to regain his heart, a little, enough to care about his friends and enjoy being with them.
Axel used his pull with Saix as his friend to convince Saix to let it slide, but his relationship with Saix was already starting to become a bit rocky. Saix was bothered that Axel hadn't reported to him immediately after things had resolved themselves at Castle Oblivion and how Axel had let Namine escape. Axel, for his part, had done all that Saix asked of him and felt that Saix should trust him to be doing his part. On top of this, Saix didn't understand Axel's interest in Xion or why Axel went out of his way to look out for Roxas and Xion.
Axel's relationship with Saix was complicated by one of Xemnas' ulterior plans for the Organization. Part of the goal was to create vessels for Xehanort's heart, so that he could form a group of thirteen versions of himself. He would eventually displace the original personality in his host body. This was what happened to Saix; Xehanort's personality took root. How much of the conflict between Axel and Saix began because of Xehanort's presence in Saix's heart is unclear, but it was undoubtedly a factor, and undoubtedly intentional.
Soon, however, Xion and Roxas started to question their roles in the Organization and the Organization's plans in general. Axel reassured them that they were doing okay and should keep doing what they were doing, discouraging them from asking questions about what was going on. Axel gradually started to realize there was something different about Roxas and Xion - especially Xion.
Xion was sent to find and eliminate an imposter wearing the Organization coat - it was revealed to be Riku, who told Xion that she should get away from the Organization and that her keyblade was a sham. She was both angered and puzzled by what he'd said; it fed into her questions about who she was and where she'd come from. Soon afterwards, she fell into a deep, comalike sleep, similar to the condition that Roxas suffered while Axel was at Castle Oblivion. Roxas asked Axel to try to find out what was going on with Xion, and Axel pressed Saix for answers, but only received vague hints that Xion's nature was different from that of the other Organization members. Without a conclusive answer, Axel lied to Roxas and told him that Saix had refused to tell him anything. Axel had found the answer, however: Xion was a replica of Sora. She resembled a girl - specifcally Kairi - because of the strength of Sora's memories of Kairi. Xion's existence was siphoning off Sora's memories, making it impossible for Namine to fix things and wake him up.
When Xion awoke, Axel and Roxas looked out for her; Axel sided with Xion when Saix insulted her, calling her broken, further distancing them from each other. Xion became increasingly tired, having visions of Sora's life constantly, and it drove her to find the answers about herself at any cost. Axel encountered Xion at Castle Oblivion and told her to go home and stop seeking the answers, that the Organization would destroy her for defying them. Despite his warning Xion and telling her to stop, Xion found out the truth about herself and went awol from the Organization as she tried to process who she was.
Axel, seeing how upset Roxas was over Xion's leaving, said that they should ignore the orders from Xemnas not to search for her and look anyway. He and Roxas, he said, could seek Xion after they finished their missions each day. Axel finally hinted to Roxas that there was somewhere Roxas hadn't looked yet, and Roxas hit upon Castle Oblivion as a possible place where Xion could be. Axel and Roxas were assigned to look for the organization imposter in Castle Oblivion, but Roxas collapsed immediately and Axel took him to Twilight Town. When Roxas regained consciousness, he saw Xion with the imposter and chased her through Twilight Town. Axel wasn't sure what was going on, but he assured Roxas that this just meant that Xion was okay and mgiht come back in time.
However, Saix then ordered Axel to hunt Xion down and bring her back by force for siding with the imposter. This was likely an additional push to break Axel and Saix's old friendship on the part of Xemnas, but Saix didn't precisely regret it. Roxas protested, and tried to find Xion so that he could talk her into coming back on her own. Despite Roxas' pleas, Xion refused and, also over Roxas' protests, Axel fought Xion and dragged her back. Axel did so because he felt that if he didn't, the next order would be to kill Xion, and he couldn't face doing that, even though he knew what he'd done had hurt his friendship with Roxas. Axel dismissed Roxas' angry questions about why he had done it; Saix had asked Axel to choose between Roxas and Xion, and Axel could only hope that he could keep both of them.
As Roxas got weaker and Xion got stronger, Axel started to fear that he wouldn't be able to keep both of his friends. Roxas progressively got slower and weaker, and finally Xion came to Axel to ask for help and ask him why. Axel revealed to Xion that because Roxas was Sora's Nobody and Xion was a replica of Sora's, she was siphoning off memories and strength from Roxas. He couldn't decide between his two best friends though, he told her. In the end, Axel told Xion that she needed to decide for herself what she would do, knowing that it might mean that she would leave again.
Soon afterward, Axel discovered that Xemnas had set Xion and Roxas on a mission that would pit them against each other. The organization's plans had reached a point where they only needed Xion or Roxas, not both, and the mission was designed so that Xion and Roxas would each see the other as a strong heartless. Axel managed to stop the battle just in time before Xion or Roxas could kill each other. Roxas suggested the three of them run away together, but none of them felt that they had anywhere to go.
Painfully aware that her presence might mean Roxas' death, Xion left again, committing herself to merging with Sora and offering him the memories that she held. Axel let her go, hoping that distance from her might help Roxas. He began to tell Roxas who Xion was, but couched it in such vague terms that his explanation only made Roxas get angry and leave. Roxas was confused and furious that Axel would bring Xion back only to let her go, not realizing that both of his friends were protecting him by leaving him in the dark.
The truth was revealed soon after, however. Xemnas informed the Organization members that Xion was a puppet and that they needed to get her back. Axel was given the task of retrieving Xion, since he had let her leave when she had asked it of him. Roxas was frantic with worry, suddenly realizing that the Organization wasn't a safe place for Xion. He asked Axel not to bring her back and, when told that Axel couldn't defy the orders or that he would pay, that Axel not hurt her badly. Axel still didn't want to bring Xion home; he knew both that she didn't want to return and that if he did, Roxas might begin to suffer again. However, he didn't see any other option, and had to hunt Xion down. He found her at the mansion in Twilight Town and, after a hard fought battle, dragged her home.
The Organization had already prepared to use Xion as a weapon, and Xemnas took her away to finalize the plan. Roxas had reached his breaking point with Axel's evasions and lies. He asked Axel one final time to tell him who he was, but Axel tried to evade once again. Axel asked Roxas to trust him, but Roxas had learned that Axel had lied to him many times. Roxas was done with being used and lied to, and chose to leave.
Roxas left behind a popsicle stick embossed with the word "Winner" on it (good for a free ice cream) for Axel; he'd intended to get them for both of his friends eventually, but he'd only other gotten the one. Since Roxas' definition of friendship - provided by Axel, who had struggled with it - was "people you eat ice cream and laugh with," this was a major gift for Roxas to give. The Organization set it up so that Roxas would end up fighting Xion, but she retained enough of herself to choose to sacrifice herself and let Roxas kill her and be the one to survive.
After Roxas fought Xion, because of her nature, everyone forgot she existed. All Axel knew was that he'd lost his friend, and he had enough pain in his heart for the loss of two. This contributed to his being more frantic and desparate in the weeks that followed.
Axel was sent to look for Roxas because of his previous record of bringing Xion back despite their friendship. He initially refused, but gave in when Xemnas threatened him. By the time he went looking, however, DiZ and Riku had trapped Roxas in a virtual version of Twilight Town and had Namine give him false memories. They needed Roxas and the memories he held to go back to Sora so that Sora would wake again. Riku wanted his friend back; DiZ wanted Sora to wreak havoc on the Organization. Both wishes would be fulfilled.
Axel had to struggle to reach Roxas in the virtual Twilight Town, only to discover that his friend didn't remember him. Roxas remembered Axel, but it was too late; pushed beyond the brink of despair and rage, Axel attacked Roxas without restraint. Axel had been badly injured in their fight and had to leave, and by the time he could try to find Roxas again, Roxas had merged with Sora.
Axel, Riku, and Namine exchanged information and decided to go their separate ways; the Organization was still out there and dangerous. Namine asked Axel if he could bring her to meet Kairi, but Saix overheard them discussing it. Axel told Namine to run while he distracted Saix, and eventually managed to get away to Kairi on the Destiny Islands. She refused to go with him, as he was an unknown (and coming off as somewhat overly familiar, since she'd never met him). Kairi hurried through a corridor when it opened for her and Axel followed, catching up with her in Twilight Town, but soon Saix caught them took Kairi away.
Axel met up with Riku and Namine again, and the three of them agreed to do what they needed to to help Sora, monitoring his progress from afar. After a while, though, Axel couldn't stand just watching and waiting; he offered to go to the Organization and to pretend to betray Riku and Namine in order to give them a chance of getting to Kairi. Despite their severe misgivings about the plan, Riku and Namine agreed that if Axel could do it reasonably safely, they should try. The plan went awry and Saix caught Axel as he tried to rescue Kairi, beating him to the point of death. Axel managed to return to Namine and Riku, telling them to follow the trail he left to Kairi and to rescue her.
He went to where Sora was to guide him to the Organization HQ, finding him surrounded by legions of Nobodies and in danger of being trapped in a void between worlds. Axel, already heavily injured, took out the Nobodies with all of the power he had left, sacrificing his life to make sure that Sora could get through.
Some period of time after Axel died, he woke up again in the basement of the castle in Radiant Garden, only to find that he had his heart back and was once again Lea. He found some other former Organization members there, but notably missing were Braig and Isa. Lea knew that he needed to find a way to rescue Roxas, but a thought nagged at him - it seemed like there was another person, someone who he couldn't quite remember. He knew that he had promised both to Roxas and this person that he would always bring them home.
Knowing that memories could be changed or manipulated, Lea decided he needed to go to Disney Castle and request help from Mickey and the others there. Along the way, he hoped that he might find information about Isa and Braig's location, but first he needed to know what he had forgotten. He arrived at the world just in time to help defend the castle against Maleficent and Pete.
Afterwards, Lea journeyed to the home of Yen Sid, a former keyblade master. He requested training to become a keyblade weilder, so that he would have the strength, right, and ability to try to fight for his friends. He tried, without success, to summon a keyblade for a time, until it was revealed that Sora was in deep trouble and needed help.
In the end, Lea descended into the realm of sleep in order to assist Riku and King Mickey in saving Sora from Xehanort's plans. He came face to face with Saix, finding out the truth of what had happened to his former best friend. Upon returning to the waking world Lea successfully summoned a keyblade, shocking everyone present. He headed back to check on things at home, and upon taking a rest found himself in the Realm of Sleep.
Name: Crysi
Contact:
crysiana/crysiana@gmail.com[IC Information]
Character Name: Lea
Series: Kingdom Hearts
Gender: Male
Age: 26ish
Species: Human
Appearance: Lea is a lanky young man of middling height with spiky, cherry-red hair and green eyes. His current outfit consists of black gloves and a long black coat with a silver zipper over black pants and tall black boots.
Personality: Lea's friends are the center of his life and existence; his greatest virtue is his loyalty to his friends, and his biggest problems have come out of acting against his friends' wishes in a misguided effort to protect them. He can be confusing to others because he is at turns deadly serious (though less so now than in the past) and incredibly puppyish.
When Lea was young, he wanted more than anything to be remembered. This is something that has stayed with him all his life through is catchphrase, "Got it memorized?" He wanted everyone to remember him so that in people's memories, he could live forever. This took on a tragic bent when Lea became a Nobody; Nobodies lack emotions, so their memories are all that sustain them. While Lea is less concerned with fame now, he has decided that he must become a hero. Wanting to be known - wanting people to know of him - is very much a factor in this, but another, equal factor is the fact that Lea feels that if he becomes a hero, he'll be able to save his friends.
Lea, overall, is a positive person. He tends to live in the moment and looks to the future rather than mulling over the past. He is very open and friendly, and will cheerfully approach new people to say hello. Part of this is the aforementioned wish to be known, but Lea genuinely likes people and wants to be friends. He has a tendency in particular to look out for people who are alone or sad or both, and he will try to cheer them up and give them a boost. Isa describes this as Lea's picking up stray puppies and implies that it's a habit he's had since he was small. Lea is the sort of person who has no problem going out and meeting new people, and he would be happiest with a large group of friends with whom to share his life.
While Lea is a good person who cares about others, he tends to care about his friends above other people. When he ended up in the Organization, he and Saix stuck together. Part of this was a justified suspicion that the organization was not all puppies and rainbows, admittedly. However, Axel’s willingness to kill other Organization members such as Zexion and Lexaeus - who presumably shared Axel and Saix’s goal of recovering their hearts - is indicative of his general attitude in this regard. Lea can be and is very nice, but when it comes to protecting his friends he can be ruthless, pragmatic, and ruthlessly pragmatic. On the one hand, this demonstrates how deeply he feels about his friends; he loves them more than anything. The ruthlessness that Lea can display is the dark side of that loyalty.
Lea is not the sort of person who plans things in advance. He tends to deal with things as they come, and he's very good at thinking on his feet and dealing with sudden surprises. However, his tendency to react rather than make a plan of action means that he often doesn't think the results of his actions all the way through and in some cases leads to extremely poor decisions on Lea's part. In the situation he faced in Castle Oblivion, thinking on his feet and waiting for opportunities to complete his plans worked out very well for Lea and he came out on top. However, in his attempts to protect his friends, Roxas and Xion, Axel comes up with the idea of lying to them in order to keep them complacent and therefore safe, and holding to this ill-advised action ends up costing him both of his friends.
One of Lea's failings - though less severe than it was in his past when he was Axel - is that he has a tendency to want to override his friends' wishes if he feels their actions would put them in danger. He's still trying to work past a certain amount of selfishness in his attitude towards his friends. For a long time, as a Nobody, Lea didn't have a heart and couldn't feel pain or sorrow, and so when he made new friends and started to feel again, he selfishly wanted to hoard the happiness he had with them and keep his friends nearby. He convinced himself fully that he only wanted to protect them and that he was doing everything in order to keep them safe, but Axel lied to both of his best friends, Roxas and Xion, about what he knew about them and the Organization. He dragged Xion back to the Organization against her wishes. Axel believed he wanted to save them, and couldn't admit to himself that he was trying to protect himself as much or more as he was trying to protect his friends.
Axel had fallen into worse and worse behavior, justifying it as things he had to do to get Roxas back, and it took his actions getting Kairi captured for him to see how pointless and destructive he was becoming. Lea has now realized how selfish that sort of friendship is, and he's taken his recent death and the reclaiming of his heart as a clean slate. Lea is determined to be a hero, to save his friends and do good for others. He left his home after having returned to it, and himself, for the first time in a decade and traveled to meet with a former keyblade master, all so that he could try to get a keyblade for himself so that he could help in the upcoming final battle against Xehanort.
Abilities: Lea has the ability to summon his chakrams or keyblade to fight. He uses his chakrams for both ranged combat - throwing them - and close combat. Currently he's not using them as often as he's trying to learn how to use the keyblade properly. Though he's not very experienced with it yet, the keyblade gives its user a boost in combat, bolstering their natural physical and magical strength. In addition, Lea has an affinity for and is very familiar with the use of all kinds of fire magics. He could learn other types of magic, but currently he hasn't really bothered with them. While Lea is still capable of creating dark portals to travel between worlds, it's very risky to do as a human and he's generally disinclined to do it since it might involve risking losing his heart to darkness again.
Items: Lea has his chakrams and his keyblade with him. He also took it upon himself to procure two popsicle sticks with "winner" on them; when he finds Roxas and Xion, he fully plans to give them the sticks so that they can all get ice cream together.
History: Note: the KH2 portion uses novel canon to outline what went on with Axel, Namine, and Riku. The Namine player in Revenance is fine with this, and I am willing to work things out with future players if they prefer to stick purely to game canon.
Lea was born in a world called Radiant Garden. Not much is known about his childhood, but nothing indicates that it was a bad one. Radiant Garden was a peaceful place to grow up, and Lea was happy with his life there. When he was a teenager, he started to be a bit of a troublemaker, sneaking into places with his best friend.
When Lea was around fifteen years old, his world fell to darkness. Thanks to the machinations of a man named Xehanort, Lea and six other people from his world, including his best friend Isa, lost their hearts and became beings called Nobodies. Without their hearts, they couldn't feel emotions and became rather sociopathic. Xehanort - who now called himself Xemnas - brought all of the Nobodies together into a group he called Organization XIII. The avowed goal of Organization XIII was to gather hearts to summon up a force called Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts, being the heart of all worlds would have the power to restore them, according to Xemnas. This was in fact a lie; Nobodies could regain their hearts either over time by forging emotional connections with others, or in the circumstances that both they and their opposite - the heartless formed from their heart - died. Xemnas' real goals for the Organization were myriad, but none of them had to do with helping the members regain their hearts, so the mistrust of the leaders was quite justified.
Lea - now renamed Axel - made a pact with his friend Isa - now Saix - that they would work their way up in the Organization and take it over. Because the other members of the Organization were all, as far as Axel and Saix thought, at least partially responsible for the downfall of Radiant Garden, they didn't trust them. Axel and Saix agreed they would work together and get their hearts back, and the first step was to make themselves seem trustworthy. To this end, Axel supported Saix's working to be second in command.
Things continued apace, with the Organizaiton gaining more major members, until the the thirteenth member arrived. He was named Roxas, and he had the ability to summon the keyblade and was the nobody of Sora, another keyblade weilder. Previously, no one in the Organization had been using the keyblade to capture hearts, but now they could move on their plans to capture Kingdom Hearts. Axel found himself tasked with being Roxas' glorified babysitter for Roxas' first week in the Organization, and was relieved when Roxas shook of his initial zombieness and started reacting to things in a more active fashion.
Axel was mostly keeping an eye on Roxas as a valuable commodity but he had - as Saix noted - a penchant for picking up stray puppies, adopting people in need, and he had started becoming friendlier to Roxas when he was sent away to Castle Oblivion. Before Axel went to Castle Oblivion, he was given the instructions to smoke out the traitors in the Organization. However, per his agreement with Saix, he was also there to try to kill members who were loyal to the Organization who would stop them from taking over, specifically Zexion.
Axel had to perform a balancing act in Castle Oblivion; Marluxia and Larxene had an alliance like his and Saix's, dedicated to taking over the Organization (though their focus was power, not regaining their hearts). Lexaeus and Zexion strongly believed in supporting the Organization, holding to the idea that the purpose of the Organization was to help them regain their hearts. Vexen, the final member of the Organization in the castle, only cared about his scientific experiments. Also present in the castle was Namine, a girl with power over the memories of the hero and keyblade weilder, Sora.
Sora arrived at Castle Oblivion, and Marluxia and Larxene put into plans for Namine to warp his memories so that they could control him and use him to take over the Organization. Axel pretended to join them, going so far as to kill Vexen when he attempted to tell Sora of their plans. Meanwhile, Axel kept an eye on the people in the basement; Riku, Sora's best friend and a strong fighter in his own right had arrived and was making his way through the castle in search of Sora. Vexen had made a replica of Riku based on Riku's memories, and Marluxia had used Namine to fool the replica into thinking he was Riku in order to lure Sora on.
For the most part, Axel sat back and enjoyed the show, but he realized something in him had changed when he noted that he was having fun. He hadn't had feelings in a long time, and he was amazed that, apparently due to Sora, he was getting something like them back. Seeing the progression of events, Axel felt that Marluxia and Larxene's plans were coming dangerously close to succeeding. He played on Namine's feelings of guilt over what she'd done to Sora and the replica and convinced her that she needed to help Sora rather than turning him over to Marluxia. In the end, Sora killed both Larxene and Marluxia.
Riku had accounted for Lexaeus, but Zexion remained at large in the castle. Axel goaded Zexion into fighting Riku - not that he needed a very large push. When this didn't suffice to kill him, Axel convinced the Riku replica that if he killed Zexion and absorbed his essence that he would become a real person. After witnessing Zexion's death, Axel hid himself in the castle until things quieted down; Sora had gone to sleep so that Namine could fix his memories and Riku headed out to try to find his balance and guard the worlds until Sora woke. He wasn't overly concernd with either of these events; he'd completed his task. However, Saix had told him to try to find a hidden chamber in the castle, and took some time to try to find it before returning to the Organization's home base. From that point on, Axel became warmer and more human than he had been before, more open and friendly to Roxas and eventually Xion in particular.
Roxas had, while Axel was gone, made friends with the fourteenth member of Organization XIII, Xion. He invited her to hang out with them at their spot on the station tower in Twilight Town, but duties kept them separate for a time. Soon after Axel's return to the Organization headquarters, he and Roxas were assigned to find Xion, who had gone missing. She had been sent on a mission, but was unable to finish it because she'd lost the ability to use the keyblade. Xion and Axel quickly became friends when Axel suggested a solution to the problem: doing missions together so that Roxas could cover for Xion's weakness. Unbeknownst to Axel, Axel had started to regain his heart, a little, enough to care about his friends and enjoy being with them.
Axel used his pull with Saix as his friend to convince Saix to let it slide, but his relationship with Saix was already starting to become a bit rocky. Saix was bothered that Axel hadn't reported to him immediately after things had resolved themselves at Castle Oblivion and how Axel had let Namine escape. Axel, for his part, had done all that Saix asked of him and felt that Saix should trust him to be doing his part. On top of this, Saix didn't understand Axel's interest in Xion or why Axel went out of his way to look out for Roxas and Xion.
Axel's relationship with Saix was complicated by one of Xemnas' ulterior plans for the Organization. Part of the goal was to create vessels for Xehanort's heart, so that he could form a group of thirteen versions of himself. He would eventually displace the original personality in his host body. This was what happened to Saix; Xehanort's personality took root. How much of the conflict between Axel and Saix began because of Xehanort's presence in Saix's heart is unclear, but it was undoubtedly a factor, and undoubtedly intentional.
Soon, however, Xion and Roxas started to question their roles in the Organization and the Organization's plans in general. Axel reassured them that they were doing okay and should keep doing what they were doing, discouraging them from asking questions about what was going on. Axel gradually started to realize there was something different about Roxas and Xion - especially Xion.
Xion was sent to find and eliminate an imposter wearing the Organization coat - it was revealed to be Riku, who told Xion that she should get away from the Organization and that her keyblade was a sham. She was both angered and puzzled by what he'd said; it fed into her questions about who she was and where she'd come from. Soon afterwards, she fell into a deep, comalike sleep, similar to the condition that Roxas suffered while Axel was at Castle Oblivion. Roxas asked Axel to try to find out what was going on with Xion, and Axel pressed Saix for answers, but only received vague hints that Xion's nature was different from that of the other Organization members. Without a conclusive answer, Axel lied to Roxas and told him that Saix had refused to tell him anything. Axel had found the answer, however: Xion was a replica of Sora. She resembled a girl - specifcally Kairi - because of the strength of Sora's memories of Kairi. Xion's existence was siphoning off Sora's memories, making it impossible for Namine to fix things and wake him up.
When Xion awoke, Axel and Roxas looked out for her; Axel sided with Xion when Saix insulted her, calling her broken, further distancing them from each other. Xion became increasingly tired, having visions of Sora's life constantly, and it drove her to find the answers about herself at any cost. Axel encountered Xion at Castle Oblivion and told her to go home and stop seeking the answers, that the Organization would destroy her for defying them. Despite his warning Xion and telling her to stop, Xion found out the truth about herself and went awol from the Organization as she tried to process who she was.
Axel, seeing how upset Roxas was over Xion's leaving, said that they should ignore the orders from Xemnas not to search for her and look anyway. He and Roxas, he said, could seek Xion after they finished their missions each day. Axel finally hinted to Roxas that there was somewhere Roxas hadn't looked yet, and Roxas hit upon Castle Oblivion as a possible place where Xion could be. Axel and Roxas were assigned to look for the organization imposter in Castle Oblivion, but Roxas collapsed immediately and Axel took him to Twilight Town. When Roxas regained consciousness, he saw Xion with the imposter and chased her through Twilight Town. Axel wasn't sure what was going on, but he assured Roxas that this just meant that Xion was okay and mgiht come back in time.
However, Saix then ordered Axel to hunt Xion down and bring her back by force for siding with the imposter. This was likely an additional push to break Axel and Saix's old friendship on the part of Xemnas, but Saix didn't precisely regret it. Roxas protested, and tried to find Xion so that he could talk her into coming back on her own. Despite Roxas' pleas, Xion refused and, also over Roxas' protests, Axel fought Xion and dragged her back. Axel did so because he felt that if he didn't, the next order would be to kill Xion, and he couldn't face doing that, even though he knew what he'd done had hurt his friendship with Roxas. Axel dismissed Roxas' angry questions about why he had done it; Saix had asked Axel to choose between Roxas and Xion, and Axel could only hope that he could keep both of them.
As Roxas got weaker and Xion got stronger, Axel started to fear that he wouldn't be able to keep both of his friends. Roxas progressively got slower and weaker, and finally Xion came to Axel to ask for help and ask him why. Axel revealed to Xion that because Roxas was Sora's Nobody and Xion was a replica of Sora's, she was siphoning off memories and strength from Roxas. He couldn't decide between his two best friends though, he told her. In the end, Axel told Xion that she needed to decide for herself what she would do, knowing that it might mean that she would leave again.
Soon afterward, Axel discovered that Xemnas had set Xion and Roxas on a mission that would pit them against each other. The organization's plans had reached a point where they only needed Xion or Roxas, not both, and the mission was designed so that Xion and Roxas would each see the other as a strong heartless. Axel managed to stop the battle just in time before Xion or Roxas could kill each other. Roxas suggested the three of them run away together, but none of them felt that they had anywhere to go.
Painfully aware that her presence might mean Roxas' death, Xion left again, committing herself to merging with Sora and offering him the memories that she held. Axel let her go, hoping that distance from her might help Roxas. He began to tell Roxas who Xion was, but couched it in such vague terms that his explanation only made Roxas get angry and leave. Roxas was confused and furious that Axel would bring Xion back only to let her go, not realizing that both of his friends were protecting him by leaving him in the dark.
The truth was revealed soon after, however. Xemnas informed the Organization members that Xion was a puppet and that they needed to get her back. Axel was given the task of retrieving Xion, since he had let her leave when she had asked it of him. Roxas was frantic with worry, suddenly realizing that the Organization wasn't a safe place for Xion. He asked Axel not to bring her back and, when told that Axel couldn't defy the orders or that he would pay, that Axel not hurt her badly. Axel still didn't want to bring Xion home; he knew both that she didn't want to return and that if he did, Roxas might begin to suffer again. However, he didn't see any other option, and had to hunt Xion down. He found her at the mansion in Twilight Town and, after a hard fought battle, dragged her home.
The Organization had already prepared to use Xion as a weapon, and Xemnas took her away to finalize the plan. Roxas had reached his breaking point with Axel's evasions and lies. He asked Axel one final time to tell him who he was, but Axel tried to evade once again. Axel asked Roxas to trust him, but Roxas had learned that Axel had lied to him many times. Roxas was done with being used and lied to, and chose to leave.
Roxas left behind a popsicle stick embossed with the word "Winner" on it (good for a free ice cream) for Axel; he'd intended to get them for both of his friends eventually, but he'd only other gotten the one. Since Roxas' definition of friendship - provided by Axel, who had struggled with it - was "people you eat ice cream and laugh with," this was a major gift for Roxas to give. The Organization set it up so that Roxas would end up fighting Xion, but she retained enough of herself to choose to sacrifice herself and let Roxas kill her and be the one to survive.
After Roxas fought Xion, because of her nature, everyone forgot she existed. All Axel knew was that he'd lost his friend, and he had enough pain in his heart for the loss of two. This contributed to his being more frantic and desparate in the weeks that followed.
Axel was sent to look for Roxas because of his previous record of bringing Xion back despite their friendship. He initially refused, but gave in when Xemnas threatened him. By the time he went looking, however, DiZ and Riku had trapped Roxas in a virtual version of Twilight Town and had Namine give him false memories. They needed Roxas and the memories he held to go back to Sora so that Sora would wake again. Riku wanted his friend back; DiZ wanted Sora to wreak havoc on the Organization. Both wishes would be fulfilled.
Axel had to struggle to reach Roxas in the virtual Twilight Town, only to discover that his friend didn't remember him. Roxas remembered Axel, but it was too late; pushed beyond the brink of despair and rage, Axel attacked Roxas without restraint. Axel had been badly injured in their fight and had to leave, and by the time he could try to find Roxas again, Roxas had merged with Sora.
Axel, Riku, and Namine exchanged information and decided to go their separate ways; the Organization was still out there and dangerous. Namine asked Axel if he could bring her to meet Kairi, but Saix overheard them discussing it. Axel told Namine to run while he distracted Saix, and eventually managed to get away to Kairi on the Destiny Islands. She refused to go with him, as he was an unknown (and coming off as somewhat overly familiar, since she'd never met him). Kairi hurried through a corridor when it opened for her and Axel followed, catching up with her in Twilight Town, but soon Saix caught them took Kairi away.
Axel met up with Riku and Namine again, and the three of them agreed to do what they needed to to help Sora, monitoring his progress from afar. After a while, though, Axel couldn't stand just watching and waiting; he offered to go to the Organization and to pretend to betray Riku and Namine in order to give them a chance of getting to Kairi. Despite their severe misgivings about the plan, Riku and Namine agreed that if Axel could do it reasonably safely, they should try. The plan went awry and Saix caught Axel as he tried to rescue Kairi, beating him to the point of death. Axel managed to return to Namine and Riku, telling them to follow the trail he left to Kairi and to rescue her.
He went to where Sora was to guide him to the Organization HQ, finding him surrounded by legions of Nobodies and in danger of being trapped in a void between worlds. Axel, already heavily injured, took out the Nobodies with all of the power he had left, sacrificing his life to make sure that Sora could get through.
Some period of time after Axel died, he woke up again in the basement of the castle in Radiant Garden, only to find that he had his heart back and was once again Lea. He found some other former Organization members there, but notably missing were Braig and Isa. Lea knew that he needed to find a way to rescue Roxas, but a thought nagged at him - it seemed like there was another person, someone who he couldn't quite remember. He knew that he had promised both to Roxas and this person that he would always bring them home.
Knowing that memories could be changed or manipulated, Lea decided he needed to go to Disney Castle and request help from Mickey and the others there. Along the way, he hoped that he might find information about Isa and Braig's location, but first he needed to know what he had forgotten. He arrived at the world just in time to help defend the castle against Maleficent and Pete.
Afterwards, Lea journeyed to the home of Yen Sid, a former keyblade master. He requested training to become a keyblade weilder, so that he would have the strength, right, and ability to try to fight for his friends. He tried, without success, to summon a keyblade for a time, until it was revealed that Sora was in deep trouble and needed help.
In the end, Lea descended into the realm of sleep in order to assist Riku and King Mickey in saving Sora from Xehanort's plans. He came face to face with Saix, finding out the truth of what had happened to his former best friend. Upon returning to the waking world Lea successfully summoned a keyblade, shocking everyone present. He headed back to check on things at home, and upon taking a rest found himself in the Realm of Sleep.
